Crownbreaker

by Sebastien de Castell

  “Like emeralds…” Reichis would’ve said.

  “All right,” Emelda began. “We’ve played our little games and we’ve had our fun. The pieces are all on the board and now it’s time to hear from the witness.”

  The assembled Murmurers—the camel, the crocodile, the meerkat, the otters and all the rest (I was going to have to learn their proper names so that Reichis and I could pay them each a midnight visit sometime soon)—turned their gazes to my father.

  Ke’heops withdrew two small pouches from the folds of his robes. He set one aside and upended the other. Glittering purple sand scattered over the surface of the table, sending dust up into the air like a fog that settled beneath the lantern light.

  “What is this?” asked the meerkat. “Some type of mystical powder?”

  “Merely sand,” my father replied. “From this very city, in fact.”

  He held one hand palm down over the table. A shimmer of light flashed beneath his sleeves as two of his bands ignited. “Saver’et’aeoch,” he intoned softly.

  The sand began to swirl as if caught in a strong breeze. At first it rose and fell in waves, but soon the grains began to join together in orderly groups, forming shapes on the table. Buildings. Streets. Canals. And, at their centre, this very palace.

  “Impressive,” Emelda conceded. She whispered a question to me. “Sand magic?”

  I’m not sure why she expected any answers from me, but I saw no reason not to oblige. “Iron and silk, I think.”

  “Iron, silk and sand,” Ke’heops corrected. “Time has a part to play in this.”

  The rest of the Murmurers rose from their seats, leaning closer to examine the model carefully. It really was remarkable—almost a work of art. Every building and street appeared not only to be accurate, but alive somehow, as if the stray grains of sand gliding down the little avenues were people going about their daily business.

  “Darome,” he said, “a nation rich in resources and influence. A military power unlike any other. Five hundred years the empire has stood as the supreme political force on this continent.” His gaze swept across the assembled generals, spies and marshals staring back at him. “This is your capital. Your home.”

  He paused with all the theatrical gravitas of an actor about to deliver the final line of the play.

  “And this is Darome six months from now.”

  With a snap of his fingers, every building, every street, the palace itself, crumbled, becoming grains of sand scattered upon an otherwise empty table.

  8

  The Shine and the Hook

  A good con comes in two parts. The first we call “the shine.” It’s called that because a good shine always looks expensive, and you always give it away for free. In the end it turns out to be worth even less than the mark paid for it. In this case, my father had put on a compelling show of transforming a bag of sand into a perfect replica of the Daroman capital, only to then return it to dust.

  The second part? We call that “the hook,” because it’s what you use to reel in the fish.

  The Council of Murmurers were all staring down at the scattered purple sand on the table. Me? I was looking at the hook. “What’s in the second bag?” I asked, pointing at the leather pouch Ke’heops was still holding surreptitiously in his other hand.

  The look that earned me was made up of equal parts irritation and something that, coming from any other father, might’ve been confused with parental pride. “The enemy,” he said simply.

  Emelda looked up at me even as she asked my father, “And what will it cost us to glimpse this enemy, mighty Ke’heops, Mage Sovereign of the Jan’Tep people?”

  At first I wondered why she’d go to the trouble of addressing him using a title that wasn’t formally recognised by the Daroman throne. That, of course, was the answer: this was Emelda’s opening bid.

  Ke’heops dismissed the offer with a shake of his head. “The intelligence I bring cost my people a great deal to obtain. My… emissary was lost in the mission.”

  “We’ll be sure to weep tears of gratitude at your agent’s funeral,” Emelda said, waving the other Murmurers to silence with a flick of her hand.

  Ke’heops withdrew a rolled-up parchment from the folds of his robes. It looked expensive, with a gold wax seal that glimmered as though alive. He tossed the scroll at Emelda.

  “What’s this?” she asked, catching it.

  “Relations between the Daroman empire and the Jan’Tep arcanocracy are long overdue for… reconsideration. We will require certain assurances, concessions and… Let us call it an evolution of the diplomatic ties between our two peoples.”

  Torian’s outrage was so palpable you could practically feel the temperature in the room rise. “Any such reconsiderations are the purview of the queen. She is the ruler of this empire, in case no one informed you.”

  Ke’heops ignored her, his eyes still locked on Emelda’s. “We find it more expedient to deal with those who rule in fact rather than in name.”

  For her part, Emelda struck me as utterly at ease in what should have been a tense and complex diplomatic situation. She cracked the seal, igniting a flash of sparks that looked as if they would set the scroll on fire but faded away almost immediately. The parchment appeared blank at first, but then shimmering golden letters appeared across its surface. Emelda rolled it back up without bothering to read it.

  “The queen’s a reasonable girl,” she said. “I’m sure if what you’ve brought us is as vital to our interests as you claim, she’ll be persuaded to give due consideration to Darome’s most beloved ally.”

  The Daroman empire and Jan’Tep arcanocracy by and large despised each other, each looking down on the other nation as barely civilised. Ke’heops, however, seemed perfectly satisfied with this vague and informal assurance. He swept a hand over the table, washing away the sand. When he upended the second pouch, what poured out was the far less impressive yellow-brown sand that for me brings back several unpleasant memories of getting horribly lost and nearly dying of thirst.

  Ancestors, but I really hate the desert.

  “Saver’et’aeoch,” my father said for the second time as his hands formed somatic shapes above the table. Once again the grains swirled and spun, taking on the shapes of a glittering, golden city in the desert. “Behold the enemy who will destroy the Daroman empire and enslave its people.”

  The man I’d thought of as the meerkat barked out a laugh. “Berabesq? You expect us to fear a bunch of petulant viziers? These people can’t even agree on which of six holy texts to follow, never mind unite behind a single ruler. The only reason the Berabesq people haven’t already strung up their viziers from the tallest trees is that there aren’t enough trees in the desert!”

  That struck me as an ill-informed and somewhat bigoted view. First of all, deserts are home to far more diverse flora than people think, including some impressively tall trees. I knew this because I’d nearly been hanged from several of them during my unfortunate travels in that otherwise lovely and inviting country.

  The woman I’d thought of as the crocodile spoke in a breezy whisper. “The Berabesq are a spiritual people. More numerous than any other on the continent, and dangerous as well. The ones they call the Faithful are far more deadly than any warriors in our own armies.”

  That much was true. I’d fought a couple of the Faithful in my time. The powers they’d exhibited would have given even a Jan’Tep war mage pause.

  “But they are disunited,” the camel noted. “Factions within factions, all disputing which of their six codices offers a glimpse at the true face of their god. Any vizier who rises too high in power and influence soon finds himself short of a head.”

  Neither Emelda nor Torian had spoken in a while. My father just sat there watching, the subtle play of amusement on his features betraying his enjoyment at listening to the dreaded Daroman Murmurers debating trivialities. The best cons are the ones where you get the marks talking about the hook before you’ve even started reeli
ng them in.

  Me? I’ve seen plenty of con games. After a while even the most elegant become boring. “Time to show them your magic trick, Father.”

  Usually he gates my glib posturing, but this time he smiled. He intoned a new esoteric syllable under his breath and spread his hands. In response, the golden sands shifted and rearranged themselves, the centre of the desert city expanding outwards until almost the entire table was dominated by a temple that surrounded a tall spire. He stood up and traced a circle around the structure. As his fingers twitched, loose grains of sand became tiny people in the streets, gazing up at the spire. More and more of them appeared until it was like looking down from the clouds upon a mass of bodies worshipping something at the top of the spire. A soft roar rose from the grains rubbing together as the little sand shapes raised their arms and shook their fists. I could almost hear them chanting.

  “Who do they cheer for?” Torian asked.

  Ke’heops gave a final flutter of his fingers, very carefully, near the top of the spire where a balcony appeared, and a robed figure stepped out, holding a baby in his arms. “One who will unite them,” Ke’heops replied. “One for whom the largest army ever seen upon this continent will take the field. One who will lead them to the destruction of Darome.”

  “A baby?” the camel asked. “You expect us to fear a newborn child?”

  “That was eleven months ago,” Ke’heops replied. He held out his palm, fingers curled as if were gripping the dial of a clock. He turned his hand a fraction. The sands changed again, and as the crowds cheered with even greater enthusiasm, a boy who looked no older than five was standing upon the spire’s balcony.

  “This was five months ago.”

  His hand shifted again and the boy grew before our eyes, now at least eight years old.

  The camel gasped. “But how is this—”

  Ke’heops turned his hand one last time. The crowds were now so densely packed that it felt claustrophobic just watching them. At the edges of the street surrounding the temple, new figures arose, running to join the others, their arms outstretched in religious ecstasy.

  The boy on the balcony looked to be about twelve or thirteen.

  “His birthday comes in thirty-three days,” Ke’heops said. “The viziers have already announced their gift; they will present him with the severed head of the blasphemous Queen Ginevra of Darome.”

  My fingers slipped into the powder holsters at my side—a pointless reflex given this kid, whoever he was, had to be a good thousand miles from here. I felt somewhat better when I saw Torian holding a pair of throwing knives in her hand.

  Emelda was leaning against the table. She lifted one hand to reach out and touch the tip of her finger to the sandy figure who commanded such complete adoration from a notoriously divided people. “Who is he?”

  At first my father hesitated, but when he spoke I finally understood what had brought the mage sovereign of the Jan’Tep people to seek the aid of those he always thought of as insignificant barbarians.

  “God.”

  9

  The Question

  The Murmurers booted my father and me from the chamber pretty quickly after that. I suppose even ruthless spy councils deserve a little privacy after learning that a foreign god plans to strike down their entire civilisation.

  A hundred questions assailed me as I strode down the passage after my father. His longer legs forced me into an awkward jog and his greater height required that I crane my neck to watch his expression.

  “How did you pull off those spells inside a warded chamber?” I asked.

  He cast me a mildly amused glance. “After all that was revealed within the Chamber of Murmurers, this is your first question?”

  “I like to start with the small stuff before I move onto existential threats of deities and genocides.”

  My father finds glib remarks almost as distasteful as card tricks. A flash of irritation crossed his features. “Given your predilection for parading your own cleverness, Ke’helios, perhaps you should provide the answer yourself.”

  I’d been trying to puzzle that one out ever since those red ember sparks first appeared on his knuckles inside the Chamber of Murmurs. Warding physical spaces against spellcraft is easier than you might think and over the last couple of hundred years the royal marshals service have turned it into something of an art.

  Certain extrusions of copper wire, properly wound, disrupt the casting of spells—particularly ember magic, which is the sort most people fear because it produces such obviously destructive effects. Silver wire wrapped around an iron core can block silk magic, which is handy when you don’t want mages stealing your thoughts or filling your head with visions so terrifying you start clawing out your own eyeballs. The scents emitted by hallucinogenic flowers can disrupt a mage’s concentration, preventing them from casting spells, and there are even architectural designs—like the one to which the palace throne room was built—that confound the esoteric geometry required for spellcraft.

  So if you know what you’re doing, warding against magic isn’t all that hard; that’s why mages like my father don’t simply declare themselves emperors of the world and subjugate everyone to their rule. Which meant there was only one way he could’ve cast spells inside the most secure chamber in all of Darome.

  “You have someone on the inside,” I said.

  Ke’heops gave a passable impression of someone who’d entirely forgotten the topic under discussion. “Hmm?” he asked as he turned down another passageway that led towards the next set of stairs out of the palace dungeons.

  “I’m pretty sure the Murmurers have the means to test their wards every time they enter that chamber,” I went on. “Which means one of them disabled the wards after they’d begun the meeting.” My thoughts ran through each of the people sitting around that table. “Was it the camel? No… the meerkat?”

  Ke’heops finally stopped, a faint smile on his lips. “I suppose one of them did rather give off the impression of a meerkat, and the other certainly had the face of a camel. Your assumption that one of them is the infiltrator comes from some Argosi trick, I suppose? Arta precis, perhaps?”

  That question took me by surprise. My father had never, to my knowledge, given more than five seconds’ thought to the ways of the Argosi. As far as he was concerned, such things were of no more use to a lord magus than a rich knowledge of ditch digging or bonnet knitting. The fact that my father had clearly learned at least a little about the Argosi in recent years meant he was starting to take them seriously.

  “Arta loquit, actually.”

  His brow furrowed. “I thought arta loquit was languages?”

  “Arta loquit is eloquence, not just languages,” I explained. “One of its first tenets is that every utterance serves a purpose. So when someone says something that doesn’t need to be said, such as when the meerkat kept repeating the same concerns others had already raised, it signals his intent is something other than expressing his opinion.”

  “That seems like rather a lot of conjecture.”

  “Not really. The man’s speech was too even. If he was genuinely worried the others around the table weren’t sharing his concerns, the pitch in his voice would have risen when he was pounding the table. He was hiding something, I’m sure of it.” I caught my father’s eyes. “Just as you are right now.”

  My father laughed off the accusation. “And just what is it that your little deductions tell you I’m hiding?”

  Like most men who prided themselves on their honour and forthrightness, my father was a natural schemer but a lousy poker player. “That this is the longest conversation we’ve ever had without you calling me a weakling, a failure or a traitor to our house. What is it you need from me, Father?”

  Ke’heops returned my stare. I wondered if he was even aware that he was gazing at me the way someone does when assessing a potential threat. “Not here,” he said, and headed up the stairs.

  I followed, noticing too late the somatic forms h
e made with his hands that were half-hidden by the shadows. I heard the last whispered syllable of an incantation I didn’t recognise just as I reached the top of the stairs only to find myself looking up at what should have been the ceiling of the palace’s grand foyer, but turned out to be a sky full of stars.

  The air grew chill against my cheeks, and the stone floors beneath my boots gave way to soft sand. In the distance, the lights of a city caught my gaze. Mighty spires rose up from within its walls, reaching to touch the heavens, the moonlit shadows they cast reaching out towards us.

  “Makhan Mebab…” I whispered. “Capital of the Berabesq theocracy.”

  “You’ve always wanted to play the hero, Ke’helios,” my father said. “Now I’m giving you the perfect opportunity.” He gestured to the city. “All you have to do is slip inside those walls and murder a god before he can destroy everything and everyone you’ve ever loved.”

  10

  The Mission

  It’s hard not to panic when your senses are screaming at you that you’re a thousand miles from where you thought you were. The muscles in your lower body clench in preparation to flee even as your balance falters. Your hands shake and your tongue feels as if it’s swelling to the taste of copper. The nausea’s not much fun either.

  Focus, I told myself. Close your eyes. Ignore the outside world and trust what your insides are telling you.

  At times like these, Ferius Parfax likes to say, “Breathe in emptiness, kid.”

  I hate that phrase so much I almost wish it didn’t work.

  “Nice illusion,” I said finally, once the thumping in my chest had begun to subside. “You should’ve worked a little harder on the breeze though.”

  Ke’heops looked troubled by my critique. “What are you talking about? The spell—”

  I waved my hand gently back and forth in front of me. “One’s skin feels drier this far into the desert. The air pressure should also be heavier at these lower altitudes than it is in Darome.”