by A Van Wyck
He shied from the next memory but recalled, too clearly, the noise like ripping fabric. The flare of blackness. The whiff of rotten earth. And when the lad came down again, there were two.
Magic! Fortune’s balding balls! I was this close to magic…
His skin crawled.
The memory of how he’d frozen, helpless in his surprise, remained his greatest shame. They were trained to act, not think. In his moment of inept hesitation, he’d allowed the assassin to escape. True, he hadn’t been the only guard there. Others had even been closer than he, at the time. But that was no excuse. However much he might want to, he’d been unable to hide his shame from the invigilator. The man could prohibit them from speaking of it but they all knew the truth: the empire boy had made a greater show of pursuing the assassin than they had. And that rankled.
He just wanted to be a good soldier. A good soldier, that was all!
From the corner of his eye, he saw Lelouch turn slightly. Following the man’s gaze, his heart slammed painfully to the top of his throat.
The princess Villet’s sole concession to the lateness of the day was the release of her hair from its imprisoning bun. It hung straight and motionless down the back of her formal dress, too scared to move with the breeze of her passage.
He knelt hurriedly. As a Royal Guardsman technically he wasn’t supposed to. But his sense of self-preservation insisted. From his low vantage he glimpsed her move swiftly and precisely to the wooden throne that dominated the reception area. Every step of her slippered feet seemed to bear down on his neck. She folded herself regally onto the heavy wooden seat. Though he didn’t dare look up before being acknowledged, he felt her icy regard prickle over him.
In the cool silence that settled, he feared she might hear the frantic pounding of his heart.
“You are named Dennik.”
Her voice rang through the small room – hard as steel and just as indifferent. She hadn’t voiced a question. He felt certain that, whatever she named him, he would answer to it until the day he died. Which might be sooner than he’d thought.
“Yes, highness,” he forced the words from his dry throat.
Protocol dictated she command him to rise but she remained silent and he remained kneeling. The under-padding of his helm was losing the battle. A drop of sweat marched down his face like biting ants, gathering at the tip of his nose. He didn’t dare move to wipe it away.
“And you were stationed here, on this level of the royal tower, in the main corridor, four nights past.”
He’d been expecting it but her assertion still threatened to undo his calm.
“Yes, highness,” he breathed in a whisper.
“Tell me,” she commanded, “of that night and of how the Royal Guard chased an intruder across the palace roofs.”
Fortune’s pitiless fulcrum…
The ants were all over his body now.
“Highness, I–” he began, and made the mistake of looking up. Cold, cold eyes burned a hole right through to the back of his skull. The half-formed equivocation he’d been about to voice died on his lips. He backtracked desperately, changing what he’d been about to say. He had no doubt that the wrong word could get him killed.
“The invigilator–” he tried.
“Is not here,” she interrupted him. “I am.”
His hands were trembling. Her merciless gaze pinned him, prostrate, to the floor. He was very aware of the silent swordmaster, who had not knelt but stood over his exposed neck. He wondered whether he would even feel the caress of the blade before it cleaved through him. What else could he do? He took a deep breath in a useless attempt to calm himself.
And told her everything.
When he was done, she sat in inscrutable silence for a long time, unmoving. When finally she spoke, every syllable rang with certainty. And doom.
“This is what you will do…”
As he listened, he could feel the deep waters closing over the top of his head. And the sharks were circling.
* * *
“If I recall,” Inquisitor Mattanuy said by way of greeting, “the last time we met in person you gave me an earful about not being seen together.” Although being seen was certainly not a problem down here. His breath plumed in the icy air of the Temple cold houses, deep underground. Imperial Advisor Emion Hallet’s footprints were the only other pair marring the frost in this little forgotten corner of it.
Hallet turned to face him, expensive fur bristling on narrow shoulders and half a smile hanging on blueing lips.
“And if I recall, your words were that you believed the circumstances merited a face-to-face.”
“You have been able to confirm my latest missive through your own channels, then?”
Hallet nodded, cold smile waxing to a grimace. “‘Official bodyguard to the royal house’,” the advisor quoted as if testing the words for a hidden barb. “And Keeper Justin Wisenpraal concurrently climbing in eminence in the foreign court.”
Mattanuy nodded his understanding. “If the modernists gain the support of the Renali monarchy,” he mused mildly, “this treaty could prove to be but the first – the mold after which they seek to cast all future relations with the colonies. If they succeed in the Kingdom, if they are seen to succeed, the new model may gain favor with the Imperial Court–”
“I well know the risks,” Hallet cut him off sharply. The advisor took a moment to shrug his thick over-robe into a more snug embrace. The sable fur looked like a creature still alive but stunned into inaction. “What do you know of this boy – the keeper’s ward?” the advisor queried in a more moderate tone.
Volumes more than I’ll share with you.
“Officially? A distant relative of the keeper’s. Birth parents died in a fire. Came to the Temple aged five. The keeper stood surety for his initiation and education. Trained in the usual way until age ten. Thereafter focused on the scholarly arts until switching over to the martial curriculum two years ago.”
Hallet digested this, cold breath misting like a dragon from legend.
“And unofficially?”
Mattanuy smiled.
“My agents could find no trace of the birth parents, living or dead. The boy has no past before coming to the Temple. Despite his joining Clatter Court he continued to receive evening instruction from the keeper five times a week. On language, history and politics, my sources say. He is fluent in Renali and, according to his masha’na instructor, fluent with steel.”
The silence between them lengthened, slowly settling to the frozen floor. The emperor’s advisor’s black gloves crackled as they flexed in thought.
“So,” the advisor plumed at last. “The keeper has trained himself a spy.” The smile that grew to grace the archon’s chin was the first one he’d seen that seemed halfway genuine. “And,” the advisor continued, “deftly placed him inside the inner circle of the Renali monarchy. How?”
“My information suggests the boy foiled an assassination attempt.”
A miniscule twitch of the cheek said Hallet’s own spies had been unable to ferret out this little tidbit. The man considered a moment.
“Staged?”
“It is hard to imagine it a coincidence.”
Hallet’s complete stillness was akin to any other man’s rapid pacing. Only the man’s eyes moved, flicking to and fro as information was reconsidered, the state of affairs reordered and strategies adjusted. “Then we have severely underestimated this keeper.”
You have no idea.
But he kept silent, content to let Hallet arrive at all the wrong conclusions.
Finally, Hallet seemed to regain equilibrium. The archon’s eyes said, despite whatever upset this new information had caused, he was still firmly balanced on top of the political dog pile.
“Our next meeting will be through a different agent. Keep me apprised of any new information you come across.”
Knowing a dismissal when he heard one, Mattanuy gave a polite nod and turned to leave, tracking a third set of tra
cks through the frost. Though it was cold, the suspicions he’d kept from Hallet were like comforting coals in his chest.
A spy? he smiled to himself. No, nothing so mundane.
His own investigation indicated something much more… exotic. Wherever he’d found him, however he’d selected him, the keeper – the most powerful empath in living memory – had purposely broken that boy’s mind… and had then proceeded to stitch it back together in a new shape.
Like a quilt, the keeper had borrowed from all sources he’d found pleasing to his design. But the most vital patch, the secret ingredient, was not something that occurred in nature. It had to be manufactured, cultivated, distilled and then transplanted. A ritual, taken straight from the Dark Places, to turn the mind of a peaceful butcher to murder. A violent bloom, flowering in a blaze of crimson and then, spent, closing around all that was left, shrinking to a dormant seed to hide, crouching, within the shell of the man upon whom it had been forced.
The keeper had known the watch would call for him and only him. And when they had, he’d taken his pet project with him. In a dank cell, the watchmen blind to his actions, the keeper had plucked from the poor butcher that seed, leaving him empty, and had thrust it into the fertile soil that was Marco dei Toriam.
But the seed had sprouted faster than even the keeper could have anticipated. For the space of only a single day it had escaped its master’s control. Like a weed reaching for the sun, its first green shoots had drunk deep. It had left two dockside workers, and an unfortunate street urchin, dead and broken. A small setback. The experiment had been a success. And the keeper had set about his plan in earnest.
Mattanuy continued through the cold house passages, chill vapors swirling in his wake.
The boy, of course, would have to be put down. After sufficient study. But the keeper… The keeper would explain to him exactly how he had managed this feat.
And how to duplicate it.
* * *
He kept his relief tightly bundled as the crew bustled on deck and in the rigging, preparing to dock. Any tension in his countenance could be ascribed to the crew’s infectious excitement. The port city of Genla beckoned invitingly, the black sheep of the four great Heli cities – or so he’d heard. He couldn’t wait to see if its reputation was deserved. For weeks now, he’d had to listen to the crew boasting to each other of their adventures in Genla City. These invariably centered around women, drinking, fist fights, women, gambling, scuffles with the guard, women, drunken stupors, gaols visited and women. He’d thought himself beyond surprise. The slums of Oaragh were a rough place, famous for its general moral corruption and its generous portions of disillusionment. But he’d found himself listening, sometimes a little wide eyed, sometimes in genuine astonishment and sometimes in horrified contemplation, as the crew expounded on their varied, colorful and sometimes implausible sexual exploits.
And this was the empire that had the audacity to call his people heathens?
He watched their berth draw closer, casting his gaze inwards toward the heart of the city. Genla had no local produce worth exporting, so Squint had said – the old sailor was suspiciously well informed on a great many subjects – but Genla was on the south-easternmost lip of the continent and strategically placed. The imperial coastline was an impregnable shelf of cliffs and reefs with just enough sporadic beach to support a few meager coastal towns – no better than overgrown fishing villages. Like the ones they’d had to row out to in the skiffs on their journey here.
Its rarity made a natural bay like Genla’s a national treasure. The old imperial authorities must have wanted it bad. The Genlani probably never stood a chance. Theirs was the only other bay large enough to receive ships from the empire’s only other coastal city – Tellar.
He would have liked to see Tellar as well. The capital’s pearlescent spire was famous even in the desert cities.
“Ho!” came the shout as the mooring ropes were tossed to the waiting dockhands.
Almost there. Just keep calm, he told himself and forced himself to slouch nonchalantly. He was moments away from being away from the Spear and away from the hovering danger of his unfound lock pick set. For good.
He rose from the coiled line that was his seat and ambled over to where the gangplank was being lowered. A line of men, eager to disembark, had started forming already. Many had large canvass bags slung over one shoulder, intending to take lodging on shore. He did not. This wasn’t because he was planning to come back and overnight aboard ship, like the rest, but because he was wearing everything he owned that he could take with him. The loss of the lock pick set was a necessary sacrifice and he accepted that. But he would grieve for his lost knives. He’d had them specially made and their balance had been perfect.
He also hadn’t asked for his full wage to be paid out to him – like most of the crew had. From their talk, he knew more than half of them would be crawling back to the Spear at the end of their shore leave dead broke. Their coin vanished into the pockets of pimps, bookies and tavern tenders. It wasn’t that he couldn’t use the money but he couldn’t risk arousing suspicion with the captain. He’d abandon it and look like a forward thinking crewman rather than look like he was making ready to cut bait and run. He’d be fine. He had his purse, some loose coin in his pockets and if he got into trouble, he still had a single golden Oaragh sun, concealed in the sash at his waist.
The line of crewmen were starting to disembark. He moved forward – only to have a hand close around his elbow. On instinct, he whirled, snatching for a knife he wasn’t wearing.
“Squint!” he cursed. “Salt and silver!” he confronted the silent cook, who let the saucepan hand fall away from his elbow. “You almost stopped my heart!”
The cook shrugged stooped shoulders. “Wanted tae see ye off,” the sailor grunted by way of explanation.
He relaxed a little. He suddenly realized that this would be the last time he spoke with the weathered cook and felt a pang of regret. On the spur of the moment, he offered Squint his hand in parting, trader style. Slivers of pale eyes searched his from within deep nests of crow’s feet. A callused and scarred hand closed about his own.
“So this be farewell then, methinks,” the cook grunted quietly.
Realizing with a shock that the gesture had betrayed his intentions–
Damn damn damn!
–he tried to make light of it.
“Oh?” he forced himself to smile. “Where are you going?” It was well known Squint never went ashore. He lived aboard ship. He’d once asked the man about it and had been met with a terse, Nuthin left out ther’ as I wants tae see.
Squint’s grip tightened on his hand.
“Stow tha’ shite,” the cook growled angrily. He realized he’d never heard the reticent man swear before. “I see the trim o’ yer sails, Davin. They ain’t bringin’ ye back ‘ere.”
Imprisoned by the vice of the old sailor’s grip, he quickly saw it was useless to argue. He looked around to see if any of the crew were near enough to hear. None were. He pitched his voice for Squint’s ears alone anyway.
“What will you do?” he asked, with no hint of a smile this time. He had no wish to hurt Squint but, if he had to, he could drop the old man to the deck and be over the side and lost in the bustling dock crowd before anyone could blink.
Squint held his gaze as inescapably as his hand, the silence dragging on and on under the sailor’s critical examination.
“As m’ said,” the cook’s hand dropped away from his, “m’ here to see you off. An’ tae give ye this…”
Hands like gnarled teak thrust a burlap sack into his chest. His arms closed about it instinctively. In that moment while they both held onto the sack, Squint pulled him close.
“Life,” the old sailor breathed into his ear, “ain’t nuffin bu’ a series o’ good an’ bad choices.” And then the cook added a little shove that sent him stumbling a step toward the gangplank. “Ye be good now, Mr Noname,” the old man said, loud enough for
bystanders to hear. “An’ don’ bother comin’ back iffin yer bringin’ the guard after ye!”
That earned a guffaw or two but most of the crew were too stunned at having heard Squint speak to notice Jiminy clomping down the wobbling gangplank.
The transition onto the dock was jarring, the unmoving planks feeling unnatural beneath his feet after so long at sea. But he forged on, not daring to look back at the ship until he was well away. The ever-present pessimist in him expected at any moment to hear the cry of pursuit raised. His calves ached with the strain of hurried steps… But no alarm came. No pursuit. He was well into the dockside crowd now, with people jostling on all sides. He knew crowds. He would be safe here.
He weighed the burlap sack Squint had given him, loosening the drawstring as he walked. He quested inside with careful fingers and his heart gave an elated lurch as they contacted his brace of knives, their leather sheathes freshly oiled by the feel of them. The smile that threatened his face froze as his fingers found an unexpected shape. A bundle of supple leather and fleecy wool overlaying a quiver of hard, thin shapes… His picks!
His steps slowed.
Squint. Squint had had them all along. But that couldn’t be. The captain had said that Squint had put in a good word for him. Was it possible Squint had not told the captain? He imagined the rakish sea captain’s twinkling gaze and glinting teeth. No, if the captain had known about the picks, the man would have pitched him over the side in a flash. So Squint had known about the picks – had hidden them from the captain – and had recommended Mr Noname to the captain anyway? Why? Why give them back? Why let him go at all?
As clean a break as I could have wished for.
There was now nothing holding him to that ship. Nor, he realized, any reason for him not to return to it. In his own way, Squint had endorsed the Spear to Jiminy every bit as much as he’d endorsed Jiminy to the captain. With the threat of his discovery removed (after all, Squint had proven worthy of trust) he could take the captain up on the offer of crewing...