Sonata Form

by Carole Cummings

  The answer, of course, was that he hadn’t.

  Still, Folant lifted a finger. “Point of order.” When all eyes went to him, Folant said, “It is not the place of the everyday citizen to know the plans or preparations a Pennaeth has made in case the worst happens. It is the place of the citizens to trust that their Pennaeth will guide them true. As he’s done since before the ungrateful upstart begging your attention was spawned.”

  “Perhaps,” Ellis answered calmly. “If the Pennaeth were king. Or… Premier.” He let that one sit for a moment after it landed before he went on, “A fo ben, bid bont, yeah? ‘If you want to be a leader, be a bridge.’ Is that not the motto of Wellech and, purportedly, her Pennaeth?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “As such, it is most certainly the place of the Pennaeth to consult with and take direction from the Home Guard in times of national strife. Ours has not. It is the place of the Pennaeth to consult with and take direction from Parliament. Ours has not. It is the place of the Pennaeth to consult with the other parishes and coordinate with Kymbrygh’s MP. Ours has not.” Ellis leaned over the table, pinning Folant to his chair with his gaze. “And it is absolutely the Pennaeth’s place to consult with and report to the First Warden when there is a threat to Wellech and her people. Because the Wardens, might I remind you all”—he strafed his glance around the table again before settling it back on Folant—“are Wellech’s first and best defense. If I hadn’t been paying very close attention to what our Pennaeth has not been doing, the potential consequences—”

  “And how would you even know what your Pennaeth has and has not been doing?” Folant’s sneer was full of contempt.

  A bigger bogey. And here it was.

  Ellis stood back, straightened his spine, and allowed one corner of his mouth to turn up. “Indeed,” he said, hushed and grim. “How would I know?” He cut his glance away from Folant and toward the councilmembers. “Certainly not because our Pennaeth has been keeping your First Warden apprised. It’s really a good thing for all of us that I don’t rely on our Pennaeth for anything more than a nice pint down the pub now and then and perhaps a spot of cards or dicing when his pockets get light.” He shrugged. “Despite the lack of proper forthcoming, I’m well aware of what’s out there, what might be coming, and what needs to be done about it. I’m also well aware of why our Pennaeth has done nothing to protect us from the worst, should it happen.”

  Folant narrowed his eyes, not even a little bit shaken by the implication, but angry now. “So well informed about ‘reasons’ that don’t actually exist.”

  “Oh, they do. And I am.” Ellis held Folant’s gaze. “And, I’m afraid, I don’t think Wellech would take kindly to merely rolling over and welcoming their new foreign overlords.” Several soft mutters went up from around the table. Ellis only kept watching Folant. “Good thing I’ve planned ahead, yeah?”

  “You might,” Folant said, soft and dangerous, “want to plan for your defense when I bring a charge for false accusations.”

  Ellis tilted his head. “I might do. If I wasn’t quite confident I could prove it.”

  Folant stared for a moment, fury blazing behind his eyes, before he jerked his chin, dismissed Ellis altogether with a finality Ellis knew was going to stick. Forget Folant’s anger at what he’d see as another betrayal, that Ellis was trying to take Pennaeth, just as he’d taken First Warden. This, what Ellis had just done, the open accusation of treason he’d just thrown like a gauntlet, might as well have been an axe severing every last tie between them but for the genetic one neither of them could do a thing about.

  “I’ve my own plans.” Folant sat back. “If you had your way, dyn bach”—Ellis made himself not bristle at the derisive slant to that; little man, indeed!—“Wellech would be overrun from the inside, all those rats deserting their sinking—”

  “That analogy might hold more water,” Ellis cut in, “if those rats, as you call them, were actually deserting and not being run out. Which,” he said louder when Folant opened his mouth, “is beside the point.”

  It wasn’t, not really, but Ellis couldn’t let this get sidetracked into a debate about prejudice and its justifications. Because Ellis knew these people, and he knew whatever Alton had threatened wasn’t going to get through some of their biases. Not unless Ellis gave them something bigger to worry about.

  “The point right now is that Wellech’s Pennaeth has left us defenseless in the face of a very real and very dangerous threat. And if any of you think for one second that any invasion that might be coming wouldn’t include magical strikes—against which, we’ve also been left nearly defenseless—then Wellech will deserve what might be coming to her.

  “I’ll be kind, for now, and assume it’s mere incompetence that’s left us open to what an enemy might try to bring down on us. But kindness only works while a Pennaeth serves as nothing more than a figurehead like Whitpool’s—someone to cut ribbons and smile at school children.” He paused and swept the council with another hard look. “When our Pennaeth has not only refused to do his duty by the people he’s meant to protect but has actively worked against his country, I will not choose kindness, and I will not stand by and watch it done. You have a decision to make here, one that’s likely to be one of the most important ones you’ll ever make, and it will affect each and every one of us here and everyone we love.”

  He’d allowed himself to become angry. To all but shout toward the end there. Because he couldn’t help seeing Milo’s face every time he thought of those “rats” Folant wouldn’t shut up about.

  Sighing, Ellis slowly took his seat, and shrugged as nonchalantly as he could manage. “You don’t decide when enemy ships show up in our harbors, and you don’t decide based on who’s bought you the most cups of cider over the years. You do it now, and you do it based on who can actually lead when a leader is needed. A fo ben, bid bont. Who d’you trust to build that bridge, then?”

  He left it there, making it clear he was done, and waited for someone to call a vote. It only took a few minutes of uncomfortable silence and meaningful looks skidding back and forth across the table before Watcyn knocked his gnarled knuckles against it and motioned that the vote be secret this time, rather than the usual voice vote. No one objected as Cled scrounged up enough slips of paper and pieces of graphite or charcoal to go around.

  Folant was smirking, overly confident, because he still had his boyos around him, he still had no reason to worry he didn’t have the votes he thought he did. He didn’t even bother to look around the table at the councilmembers as they bent their necks and marked their slips. He wasn’t insightful by nature, he didn’t pay attention, so he hadn’t seen the shock of understanding on several of their faces as Ellis had leveled his accusations. The anger on several others when Folant hadn’t bothered to deny them. Or even the betrayal on at least one of the men who’d likely never have dreamed of voting against Folant Rees until a man who called himself Mastermind had paid him a visit.

  Ellis could’ve told Alton he hadn’t really needed to threaten anyone. Rah-rahing along to hateful rhetoric that fed one’s bigotry was one thing—understanding that the person feeding it to you was also willing to feed you to it was entirely another. Folant had given them their bogey, but Ellis had just delivered a bigger one in Folant himself. And Folant clearly didn’t know it.

  Folant said nothing while the votes were collected and counted, still assured, still self-righteous and smug. Until the tally was announced. Then Folant had a lot to say.

  Ellis merely sat back, silent, and let it all wash over him. Folant’s rage, Folant’s betrayal, Folant’s rude slings and vicious barbs at the councilmembers who were “supposed to have my back!” He didn’t say a word about Ellis. He didn’t even look at him. It was as though Folant had wiped his son entirely from his world. Except for one moment amidst the raving when he shook off the hands of the two trying to lead him out and turned on Ellis. Folant’s fists slammed the table, and he leaned over them, right in Ellis’s face.


  “You bring that Dewin scum that’s twisted your head around here and I’ll kill him.”

  Ellis ignored the gasps from the others at the blatant, public threat, and looked steadily back at Folant. “Your friends already tried. With magic, you bloody hypocrite. Didn’t work. But try it again, and I’ll make sure I’m the one to arrest you. That’s if you don’t give me a reason before that.”

  It was the lack of surprise on Folant’s face. The narrowing down of wrath to cold calculation.

  Ellis hadn’t been sure before. Alton hadn’t implied Folant had been involved in what happened at Old Forge. But once Ellis’s eyes had been opened to just how far Folant would go to get something he wanted—or be rid of something he didn’t—the immoral deviousness he’d employ when thwarted, all while convinced he was perfectly righteous and justified, it only made sense.

  Horrible, awful sense.

  There were the congratulations still to get through once Folant was escorted out of the council offices. There was the swearing-in as Ellis set his hand over his heart and promised to guide and protect Wellech as its Pennaeth or die trying. There were the invitations to the Grange to celebrate, the toasts to raise his cup to, the smiles to return.

  And all Ellis could think about through all of it was that he missed Milo with an ache so deep and painful he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to keep breathing through it.

  “HOW D’YOU manage a clever codename like Wildfire, and I get a crap one?”

  “Maybe ’cause I am clever, and you’re… well, we’ll leave that one unsaid, shall we?” Dilys’s voice was distant and tinny, but the grin behind it was clear even through the static.

  Ellis rolled his eyes at the box of plugs and switches and dials he only still barely knew how to work. The book of instructions that was delivered with the equipment was thorough, but it wasn’t as though Ellis had the time to study it like he needed to.

  He adjusted the headset that never failed to pinch at his ears and leave them red, sometimes even bruised if he left them on for too long. “Tell me how things are there.”

  Ynys Dawel was still occasionally suffering assaults coming from the Surgebreaks, but according to what intelligence came through—along the ad hoc but still growing underground network across Kymbrygh—the Royal Navy had already decimated most of the planes stationed there. What they missed, the Tirryderch magic folk sent to defend the island took care of. Between the wards and the focused battlemagic and the sheer numbers of those wielding it, nothing had broken through to Tirryderch like the attacks clearly intended.

  There was a pause before Dilys’s voice came back, more subdued. “Let’s say that many here have come to the realization that it was perhaps a good thing in the end that citizens of one place became citizens of another.”

  Ellis almost laughed, but it wasn’t really funny. Who knew Folant more or less running nearly anyone with magic out of Wellech for over a decade would one day be a blessing? For Tirryderch, at least.

  He didn’t say it was starting look like it might come bite them all on their collective arses before too long. Dilys would know that. Anyway, it wasn’t something one should say on uncoded chatter over open radio waves. They were speaking in Kymrae, erring on caution’s side, but Folant had taught Ellis the very hard lesson that one couldn’t necessarily count on one’s own countrymen to keep the good of the country in mind.

  “El—Prince.” Dilys had lowered her voice, her tone holding none of the good-natured mockery that had been there when she’d greeted him with Prince? Really? through open laughter. “Every parish needs its citizens right now. So how are things there?”

  Ellis paused, going over the numbers in his head. Again. He didn’t have enough actual witches and sorcerers, and only two mages who’d been refugees from Ostlich-Sztym in early spring whom Ellis had managed to talk into staying put. If Ellis could get Lilibet to work with all of them, along with those who had magic but not enough of it to qualify for a coven, Wellech might be all right. Maybe.

  “We’ll be fine,” Ellis managed, and tried really hard to believe it.

  They exchanged what information it was safe to exchange. The first reports of dragon attacks were coming in from Nasbrun, seemingly orchestrated by dragonkin who, yes, really were commanding dragons in a way no one had suspected was possible. Verdish warships had broken through the blockade in the Gulf of White Sands and made a play for the southeastern shore of Preidyn; the Royal Navy had taken heavy losses but hadn’t given an inch of ground, and the Royal Forces had deployed its infant Air Brigade from Werrdig for the first time to back them up. Other Western Unified countries were finally entering the various theaters. Desgaul and Eretia had at long last ratified their own war declarations against Taraverde and placed whole divisions under the Western Unified banner, finally deploying naval support to Preidyn and ground troops to Błodwyl and Esplad to try to staunch the flow across the continent. When word spread that Taraverde was using dragons as weapons, even Macran had made it official, wary of Taraverde marching down through Proyya once it was through with Nasbrun, and arriving at Macran’s borders.

  The only relatively good news coming out of the continent lately was an unconfirmed report of some kind of attack on a garrison in Colorat, a lot of explosions, and a small clutch of sickly dragons flying off while the whole place burned. Ellis had Dreamed very little, had seen no reports from Alton or anyone else that even mentioned it, but he knew it was Milo. Somehow.

  “The entire continent will be at war by the end of the summer,” Ellis said, morose and missing Milo and rethinking yet again whether staying here to look after Wellech “just in case” had been the right choice.

  Dilys was quiet for a while, long enough Ellis started to wonder if she’d gone out of range, before she said, “Listen, I need to tell you something.”

  Ellis waited, but when she didn’t go on, he frowned. “So tell me, then.”

  It took another moment, somehow tense over blank staticky airwaves, but finally Dilys said, “I can’t tell you what I don’t really know is true. Right? But.” Static. Silence. Then, “We found a stray hawkweed. It was really hard digging it up, and it got mangled a bit. So we couldn’t really tell for sure. Anyway, it turned out to be poisonous.”

  Ellis narrowed his eyes at the radio’s control panel. Nonsense. All of it. But this was Dilys, and Dilys, for all her wry wisecracking ways, didn’t babble nonsense for no reason. And certainly not here, now, like this.

  So. Coded. Somehow.

  Hawkweed wasn’t poisonous. It also didn’t grow in Tirryderch. It didn’t grow anywhere in Kymbrygh except in Wellech, in the crags of the cliffs along the River Chwaer. Which was why the autumn riverboat race through Silver Run Valley was called the Hawkweed Sprint by the locals.

  There’d been scuttlebutt a couple days ago that three Tirryderch Wardens had raided what should have been an abandoned fishing camp on the southern coast. It turned out to be occupied by a group everyone suspected were the ones who’d bombed the mining camp and railroad tracks only weeks ago, hunkered down and waiting for their Verdish comrades to break through the navy and Ynys Dawel to storm Tirryderch.

  Hard digging it up. The suspected spies had been questioned.

  Mangled. Bloody damn, had they been tortured?

  Poisonous. Well. That was fairly clear.

  It didn’t surprise Ellis that Dilys had been one of the Wardens who’d captured the spies, if indeed that’s what they turned out to be. It didn’t surprise him that if something happened in Tirryderch, Dilys would be in the thick of it.

  It also didn’t surprise him that she’d bend the rules to warn him that something might be coming Wellech’s way.

  “Glad you caught it before it could hurt anyone.” Ellis took his finger off the transmit toggle to clear his throat, then pressed it again. “That stuff will give a person nightmares.”

  Ellis hoped the I’ll get Lilibet on it in that bit came through.

  “Yes.” The grin was back in Di
lys’s voice. “Yes. That’s it.”

  It had.

  Ellis grinned too, a bit winded without having even moved, until Dilys said, “Prince,” sober now, and soft, in a way that made Ellis sit up straight and brace himself. “It was…” Static again, the hesitation longer this time, before Dilys finally continued, “It was the thief who tried to steal your cariad’s treasure.”

  There was no need to pause and try to parse it.

  Cennydd.

  Caught. Finally. But only after he’d crossed the line completely into murderous sedition.

  Ellis just stared at the radio for a moment, breathless, before he managed, “And will he be trying to steal again?”

  “No.” Harsh. Clipped. “Never again.”

  Dead, then. Tortured to an end just as horrible and painful as what he’d tried to do to Milo, maybe, or a summary execution because That’s treason, Rhywun Ellis.

  Again, Ellis only sat there, staring at dials and wires, unable to decide how to feel about any of it. Except for the chunk of knotted grief behind his breastbone that Dilys had been a part of it.

  “I’m sorry,” was all he could think of.

  He was unsure if Dilys’s terse “I’m not” was the whole truth. He let it go. Because, really—what could he do?

  “I’ve got to go,” Dilys said, her tone once again cheerful enough if you didn’t know her.

  Ellis hesitated, deciding he owed her at least this, but unsure how to word it. Eventually he just said, “Blight it,” and toggled to transmit again. “Listen, he was all right last time I saw him.”

  Dead air for a long moment, a staticky whine as Dilys likely toggled on then off again, before she answered, “Yeah, last time I saw him too. What does that have to do with how he might be now?” Gloomy. Tired. And a bit annoyed.