by Anna Eluvae
She had drained three of the Allunio so far. The cumulative standing had made her faster and stronger than she had ever been before, even if her individual control of the new domains was weak. Glass was still what she favored, for reasons she told herself went beyond sentimentality. She'd had a lifetime of experience shaping glass, making it do her bidding, and thinking up new ways that she could use it. If she ever had some downtime, she would have to think seriously about whether daggers of glass still made sense. From the perspective of a bard, a single theme was ideal, but it was possible that she could change her costume to incorporate some of her new aspects. Crafting stories seemed far away now, as it often did when she was at war.
There was a slight chill in the air that bothered her for a moment before she realized that she no longer needed to worry about cold. Heat was the strongest of the new domains she had taken. All it took was a mere thought for her to warm up. She hadn't had time to converse with the multistrati she'd taken it from, so Nemm had no clue who it had originally belonged to. More likely than not, it had been one of the illustrati who worked the forges of the Iron Kingdom, or heated water to boiling for the steam engines. Without knowing whose it had been, Nemm had no way to keep the legend going; the power would fade with time. It already seemed weaker than it had been a few days before. If the legend had been built artificially by the Ministry of Legends, it would erode quickly. For now though, it kept her pleasantly warm.
It was nice to imagine that this adventure in the Iron Kingdom would fade away as well, just another story among the many that littered her past. That seemed improbable. The artifact was too powerful. It might have been one thing if Lexari intended to collect every copy of it and throw them in the ocean, but he had displayed only a single-minded fascination with what the Harbingers had created. It was trouble. Perhaps more trouble than the civil war.
The wait was interminable. She wished that she had picked up the domain of sound so that she might be able to hear through the windows and find out what they were saying. The idea of a truce had been floating around Castle Launtine the last time Nemm had been there, but Lexari was firmly against it. He saw the detente in Torland as a resounding failure that couldn't be allowed to happen again. Without being able to listen in on their conversations, Nemm had no way of knowing whether the Allunio might be amenable to a truce in return, and she didn't want to push back against Lexari.
She perked up slightly when she saw someone approaching the manor. He had darker skin than was usual in the Iron Kingdom, but he would have passed a cursory look from the guards — those that were still at their posts, at any rate. He was wearing peasant's clothing, with dark, curly hair was was cropped close to his skull. It wasn't until he turned to the side that she recognized him as Dravus.
* * *
Their small party had landed on the coast to the north, anchoring the yacht out to sea before taking a small boat to shore. The yacht itself was sailing away by the time they had their boat flipped over on the sand; Tellula, one of the three illustrati that the Bone Warden had sent with him, took a half hour to cover it with a thick layer of rock.
"What if something happens to you?" Dravus asked her. "How will we return?"
"We have resources," replied Finola. Her domain was ink. She had tattooed herself from wrists to throat, though she now had leather armor on that covered most of it. Neither of these women had shown a particular desire to talk to him, in part because they were something approaching family. The man didn't seem to talk at all.
They had ventured south to Parance, moving slowly and stopping often, especially to converse with the locals. They heard stories as they went, though Dravus didn't credit most of them. Quill was the new king of the Iron Kingdom, an illustrati of ink who would usher in a new era of peace through diplomacy, wielding the pen just as his father had wielded the sword. It was an overwrought narrative that Dravus thought was likely to be Lexari's work. There was another story about the day the Minister of Legends had been killed, mostly involving the innocents that had lost their lives as a result of the frantic escape. The Minister of Legends himself was given short shrift in the story as it was relayed, but Dravus couldn't tell if that was how the conspiracy wanted it or if that was just how it had been filtered by the common folk. It made sense that they would care less about an important man; it was difficult to imagine yourself as a hand of the king but easy to imagine walking past one of those tall buildings and being sliced open by falling glass. The conspiracy had a name now — the Allunio, the Reshapers, an unimaginative callback to some of the oldest stories about the making of the world.
The worst thing Dravus listened to was the story of how Lightscour had betrayed Lexari.
"They stood on top of Castle Launtine," said the innkeeper. "They'd just found out the Iron King was dead, having routed those Allunio bastards right quick, tearing through them together, a team, like Darchere and Lummi, light and shadow playing across that grand courtyard. Together there was nothing that could stop them, but they couldn't put the Iron King back together, could they? So they went up to the top of the castle together and stood there on the ramparts, looking out on the kingdom and trying to figure out their next move. Only, Lightscour knew that it was now or never. His ego had been growing the whole time they'd been traveling companions. He'd coveted Lexari's fame from the start. He stepped back, just a touch, and drove his blade forward to stab Lexari. It was cowardice, hubris, and betrayal all rolled into one. For all that he thought he was cock of the walk, his aim wasn't true. He slid that sword of inky black shadow straight through Lexari, but did no more than pierce a lung."
The innkeeper was watching the stony faces in front of him and smiling like they were egging him on. "They fought with swords clashing, back and forth across the parapets. Lexari could have killed him in an instant, even with only one working lung, but the boy was like a son to him. Lexari never had children, he was always traveling and too much of a gentleman to leave any bastards behind. Lightscour was supposed to be the Sunhawk's legacy, his rightful heir, if only he could have waited. They fought for a half hour with neither landing a decisive hit, the Sunhawk because he didn't want to and Lightscour because he couldn't. Finally the Queen of Blades comes up to see what's going on and begs them to stop fighting. Once she saw how it was going, she started begging for Lightscour's life, openly weeping for the first time in years." He grinned at Dravus. "Of all the men she'd had, it was a boy not much older than you that broke through the hard mask she'd made for herself."
"In the end it came down to exhaustion. Lightscour couldn't score a hit. His sword work became sloppy. He spent more energy than Lexari did, until eventually Lexari knocked him to the ground and put the tip of that spear of light right at the traitor's throat. 'Surrender,' he said. 'We might still repair things between us.' But the street rat they'd picked up in Genthric was too hot-blooded for that, too consumed with the image of himself. He turned to his domain and beckoned it forward, until the shadow touched his very soul. He gave himself over to it, until his physical body began to melt away. When Lexari saw what was happening he tried to blast it away with light, but by then it was too late and the transformation was complete. They say he's still out there, a man made of shadow, ready to exact his misguided revenge."
* * *
The Bone Warden had spies in the Iron Kingdom. Dravus shouldn't have been surprised.
They met their contact in a small cottage outside Parance, one hidden away in a copse of trees. The woman inside had the same dark hair and pale skin of Finola and Tellula. Dravus had no trouble imagining that this woman was another of the Bone Warden's many descendants. She didn't seem happy to see them.
"I'm not surprised that she sent someone," said the woman. No one had given Dravus the courtesy of an introduction. "What I want to know is what aim she had in mind."
"No aim," said Finola. "We're here to advance her interests in whatever way we see fit. She suspected that events might have progressed at a fast clip, fast en
ough that discretion would be required. We need information."
"It's hard to say," replied the woman. "The Iron King was killed by Lexari, or Lexari found the Iron King just as the Allunio murdered him, or the Iron King had been dead for years, or … well, the stories get wilder and less credible from there. Perhaps there never was an Iron King, or he's in hiding, or some other such thing. Lexari has gone insane, or revealed an insanity that was there all along, or perhaps Wenaru has descended back into his vile experiments, or Nemm is taking every man she can find to bed, or none of that and it's all lies spread around to discredit them. The Allunio have some artifact that allows them to steal the domain of anyone they touch, or maybe it's Nemm who has one, or they both do, or it's all a story that got spun out of control and the Allunio only have some secret techniques they bought from Maskoy. There are too many people telling too many stories to make much sense of it. I've been in the city enough to give some credit to the possibility that there's something involving the Harbingers."
"What is the disposition of the ministries?" asked Dravus.
The woman stared at him. "You're not a relative." She looked to Tellula. "And he's not hired muscle?"
"This is the man once known as Lightscour," said Tellula. "Dravus de Luca, this is Etain."
"The ministries are in holding," said Etain, as though Dravus's legend were meaningless. "Everyone is waiting to see who will win, whether they admit it or not. From what I can gather, the Allunio had been using the Iron King's authority, whether he was already dead or not, but with Lexari saying that the Iron King is no more, that lever's got nothing supporting it anymore. Parance moved on the Iron King's authority. Now it's ground to a halt. It's terrible for trade; people began to starve a week after the news broke, because no one wanted to ship food into the city when there wasn't a guarantee that they'd get paid."
"We need one of the Harbinger artifacts for great-grandmother, at least for a start," said Finola. "The conspiracy has one. How do we get it?"
"You're in luck," said Etain. "One of my informants gave me the location of their hideout just yesterday."
"Dravus," said Finola. "This is your part in the plan. You know someone in the Allunio. We'll try diplomacy first. Talk to them, find out their aims, and find out where we can get an artifact."
"I know a single person," said Dravus. "We have no guarantee that she's still alive. I don't know whether they'll give me a warm reception if some terrible fate has befallen her."
"This is your part in the plan," repeated Finola.
"I know," replied Dravus. "Tell me where to go."
* * *
Parance was different. The streets were empty and the posters that had hung on the walls were now mostly torn down. There was a smell that accompanied the emptiness, a lingering, rotting stench that hung over the city. Dravus couldn't account for the smell; by the account that Etain had given, most people had fled the city to seek refuge elsewhere. The fights had been between illustrati, two or more people with incredible power battling it out but all the same, small in number. There were few signs of these battles, only a charred wall or shattered cobblestones. For the most part, the city looked the same as it had before, only devoid of people. Dravus felt eyes watching him as he walked though. The city was less deserted than it looked.
The Bone Warden's people were following him. They had escorted him to the edge of the city then sent him on his way, but he wasn't under the delusion that he was anything but bait. They planned to use him to get inside Faye's organization, or to force Nemm to make an appearance, possibly both if they could manage it. He was expendable. They'd never treated him as anything but that.
The manor he'd been told to go to had the same haunted feeling that the city did. The curtains were drawn on all the windows and the wrought iron gates were halfway open. Several of the windows were broken as well. If the illustrati had fled or been killed, this house had probably belonged to one of them. If the commoners had been looting, this was one of the first places that would have been hit. If not for the very faint sound of voices drifting through the shattered windows, Dravus might have thought that the manor was abandoned. He steeled himself for a confrontation, knowing that he couldn't possibly win any physical contest against illustrati, then knocked on the door.
It was Faye who answered.
"Our third meeting," she said with a sigh. "Do come in."
She seemed to have aged years in the space of two months. She still held that same self-assurance that she'd had in both their prior meetings, but if she was not broken then she was at least bent. There were bags beneath her eyes and she walked with a slight stoop. She wore a tight dress that showed signs of reinforcement. It was halfway to being armor.
Dravus stepped inside, where Faye appraised him.
"They're telling stories about you," said Faye. "We have no way of knowing whether it's a deception. I thought that perhaps you had tried to make your move against Lexari and been killed, but the others thought it more likely that the whole story was a lie concocted to raise your standing to ever greater heights. A rooftop battle, master against apprentice, while the love interest looks on? It was too picturesque to be true, we all agreed on that. We just couldn't agree on who had created the story."
"Lexari stole my power," said Dravus. He considered for a moment before saying more. "They have the artifact. One of them, if Lothaire was telling the truth about there being multiple." Faye seemed to flinch at the name.
"You've come at a fortuitous time," said Faye. She started down the hallway, then paused for a moment. "If you're lying to me, or mean to betray me, know that I have more power now than when we last met."
Dravus nodded.
When they came into the sitting room, he was met with cold stares. There were four people arrayed around a table, with a Harbinger artifact sitting in the middle. Their bodies were all turned towards it, even as they watched Dravus. Their clothing was almost typical for illustrati, though the make of it was less fine than Dravus had come to expect. It was common for the illustrati to be clad in their domains; here, multiple domains were represented. Faye was the only one among them that could pass for a normal citizen of the Iron Kingdom.
"This is Lightscour," said Faye. "He will be the one taking that power."
"Hell if he will," said a man with feathered armor.
"Lexari's protege?" asked a woman with arched eyebrows.
"It needs to stay within the group," said another woman.
"We are nothing if we concentrate our power!" shouted Faye. Her voice was enhanced, just as Korata's had been, loud enough to bring everyone else up short. "We would be no better than the people we're fighting against! We might as well go join them if this is the path we've chosen to take!" The room was deathly silent after her outburst. It was so quiet that it had to be the effect of her domain. Faye slowly let sound bleed back into the room, so that Dravus could hear his own heart beating again. "Am I the only one who remembers why we started this? The iniquity of the illustrati, the problems in the balance of power? Is it I alone who still thinks of Lothaire?"
"You've built up a story in your head about him," said the man in feathered armor. "You listened in on conversations and saw some spark of naivete that you thought mirrored your own, back when this was innocent fun."
"You don't know me so well as that, Boniface," said Faye through clenched teeth.
"Perhaps," he replied. "Lothaire knew you though. He told me to beware your idealism. There's a power in those who truly believe, he said, but that's no argument against practicality." He lunged forward, toward the artifact on the table.
The other man moved forward at the same time, swinging a fist with a grimace on his face. One of the women, the one with arched eyebrows, moved forward to grab at the artifact as the men grappled each other, but she was kicked to the side by one of the other women. They moved quickly, with the speed of illustrati, using force that would have broken Dravus's bones if he tried to get between them. The thought crossed
his mind as he watched them fight amongst themselves, but Faye laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her face had fallen; she made no attempt to stop the melee.
The fight didn't stop until the artifact began emitting its low tones, four of them in all. Dravus had only heard it do one at once, but from the triumphant way that the illustrati pulled his hand from it, he could guess at what it meant; four links, taken all in one fell swoop. The man had a feral, triumphant look in his eyes, the kind that Dravus remembered seeing on Nemm's face when her dagger was dripping red with blood.
"Well that's settled," he hissed.
* * *
"We are ruined," said Faye. They stood at the entryway of the manor. She held the spent artifact in her hand. Her face was hollow. "We have failed. You came to us too late, but I don't think it would have been any different if you had arrived earlier. If the pressure on us had been less overwhelming, if you had succeeded in killing Lexari —"
"I never tried," said Dravus.
"Oh," replied Faye. She closed her eyes.