Paths of Alir (A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book 3)

by Melissa McPhail

  Björn arched an amused brow. “Would you like to take a swing at me for good measure?”

  Aldaeon looked faintly horrified at this suggestion.

  Björn walked a few steps along the celantia, trailing his fingers across the walls as the currents revealed them, examining the spiraling sapphire patterns that burst forth at his touch. “I’ve really never seen anything like this.”

  Aldaeon opened the gilded box. “Are you keeping the other Vestals hostage in T’khendar, Björn?”

  Björn placed a hand on the celantia’s ceiling above his head. A burst of cerulean swirls spiraled away. “Yes, myself included. Can you not see the chains upon my wrists?”

  “Alshiba claims you are,” Aldaeon said tightly.

  “She’s claimed many things of me over the years.”

  “Are you—” But he bit off whatever he’d meant to say and settled Björn a tense look instead. “I said nothing to Alshiba because in your letter you asked me not to, but Björn…” He pressed fingertips to the desktop and frowned. “All these long years…she has grieved. I’ve never seen a woman more agonized by love.”

  The flicker of a sad smile graced Björn’s lips, and he lifted his gaze again to the whorls above his head. He would make things right with Alshiba if it took an eternity to do it. “Ah, my friend…” Björn looked back at him as he ran his hand slowly from high to low along the celantia’s wall, “that tragedy, at least, I will one day put to rights.”

  Looking conflicted, Aldaeon turned back to the ornate box. He placed a hand inside, paused, frowned ponderously, seemed to finally make a decision, and pushed a button. Alarms rang. “You understand…I have to—” but the Speaker’s words halted on his tongue, for he’d just then lifted his gaze again and found Björn standing at the glass doors.

  Aldaeon sat down abruptly on the corner of his desk as if his knees had simply collapsed, much like his attempt to reason out the impossibility before his eyes. He clapped a hand to his face wearing the candid color of astonishment. Nearby, the shouting of men could be heard over the continuing alarm, followed by heavy banging upon the Speaker’s doors.

  Well…he hadn’t rewoven the trace seal exactly like the original…

  The Speaker’s colorless eyes looked from the space where the celantia had been and back to Björn, who remained by the doors. Apology flickered once more across his brow. He exhaled a resigned sigh and dropped his hand to his lap. “You won’t fault me for trying, I suppose?”

  Björn’s gaze was warm. “I fault you for nothing, my friend.”

  Aldaeon clasped his hands and shook his head wondrously. “The celantia has been in use in my culture for over nine thousand years. In all of that time, no one has ever escaped it. Even I don’t know how to escape it.”

  Björn opened the balcony doors and turned a smile over his shoulder. “Pity.”

  Aldaeon’s face went slack. He stood in sudden alarm with a hand extended—

  Spiraling patterns erupted around him.

  Björn winked. “One must take some precautions…even with friends.”

  Aldaeon shook his head, his eyes round. “Is there no physical law you cannot break?”

  “Break, bend…” Björn waggled a hand. Then he flashed a grin, winsome and insouciant. “One of the benefits of being a fugitive is that no one expects you to follow the rules.”

  “You never followed any of them to begin with.”

  “Well…there is that.” Björn’s eyes danced. “As my sister might say, perhaps I was always destined for this path.” He gave Aldaeon a bow, murmured, “Farewell my friend,” and spirited himself away into the night.

  Fifty-Three

  “A truthreader cannot be corrupted save by the erosion of his moral compass.”

  – Valentina van Gelderan, Empress of Agasan

  “I don’t like it,” Tanis said for about the fourteenth time. He shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the doors to Nadia’s balcony, staring outside while she changed behind a screen.

  “Tanis, you know there’s no other way.” Nadia’s voice sounded muffled.

  “There is another way.” Tanis stared hard at the balcony railing to resist the temptation of looking at her. “I can go. I’ll distract him while you and Felix search his rooms.”

  “You’re the only one who really understands what he is, Tanis. Felix and I could walk right past some evidence and not see it. Besides,” she added, coming around from behind the screen, “I’ll be perfectly safe as Phoebe della Buonara.”

  Tanis turned to look at her and blinked. “But…I’ve seen you before.” He recalled the provincial girl he’d noticed standing beside Felix the night he met N’abranaacht. “You were at N’abranaacht’s lecture.”

  Nadia smiled, and only then did Tanis see a glimmer of the princess beneath the disguise. She looked almost nothing like herself with her dark hair braided and hung in unattractive, dog-ear loops on either side of her head, while the wire-rimmed spectacles, tinted lavender in hue, somehow altered the shape of her eyes along with their color. Add an ill-fitting dress of olive drab, which drowned her slender curves in voluminous bulk, and no one would look at her twice, much less think to compare her to the ephemeral Princess Nadia van Gelderan.

  Nadia spread her skirts and turned a circle. “How do I look?”

  Tanis stood a little in awe. “I think you look…awful.”

  She laughed and crossed the room to him. “You see? I’ll be perfectly fine. It would be far more dangerous for you to go. You said yourself he recognized you. There’s no telling what he’ll have planned.”

  Tanis exhaled and shifted his gaze away, trying to stay focused. Thinking of Nadia in the same room as Shailabanáchtran required him to use every bit of the training the zanthyr had impressed upon him just to keep from to screaming. “You have to maintain a flawless mental shield, and under no circumstances can you let him touch you.”

  She nodded her understanding. They’d been over this already.

  Tanis worked the muscles of his jaw. “He’s dangerous, Nadia.” He still wished they’d found some other way to do this. “It’s safe to assume he took Malin. He could just as easily take you.”

  “I understand.” She moved her head in front of his to capture his grim gaze. “As you said, he must have some end game for being at the Sormitáge, and I doubt he’ll throw that away over an insignificant Healer like Phoebe.”

  Tanis frowned.

  “Besides…” Nadia looked at him somewhat perplexedly. “It doesn’t make sense that he would’ve taken Malin simply because he knew this secret. I mean, who would have believed it?”

  Tanis narrowed his gaze as he considered her point. “You think he took Malin for some other reason?”

  She lifted one shoulder in a little shrug. “From everything you’ve told me of him—everything you said your friend Pelas told you of him—he seems the type to kill two birds with one stone.”

  Tanis let out a tense exhale. His entire body was rigid with apprehension. Just minutes from now, he’d be returning to the Sormitáge to send word to N’abranaacht that he would meet him for tea, thus giving the man time to bait his trap—which Tanis felt certain he would do. That Nadia would then walk into that trap…

  Tanis took up Nadia’s hand and drew her close, and she moved into his embrace. He closed his eyes, rested his cheek against her soft hair, and focused in that moment only on the feel of her in his arms. How quickly she’d become important to him!

  Yet…when he allowed himself to think upon it, he feared a pairing could never be. Who was he, after all, to court the heir to an empire? They were young and foolish and ‘quick in love’—as his Lady Alyneri would no doubt say—and this folly could only end in heartbreak.

  The Empress chooses her consort, Tanis. Nadia’s thought impinged upon these gloomy fears. She tightened her arms around him, sensitive to his emotions even when he hid his thoughts from her. My mother plucked Marius di L'Arlesé from among her Praetorian Guard—desp
ite his protests, I might add.

  And smiling, she murmured at his ear, “One day we must ask the High Lord to tell you their story. My father recounts it much more amusingly than my mother.”

  “Ahem…” Felix’s annoyed throat-clearing floated in from the other room. “Can I come in yet?”

  Nadia disappointingly withdrew from Tanis’s arms, but her smile when she looked at him offered the promise of future indiscretions. “Yes, come in, Felix.”

  Felix came striding in with a meat pie in each hand. He took a bite of one and asked through the mouthful, “You don’t have to sit in on Twelfth-day proceedings today?”

  She smoothed the folds of her woolen dress with a delicacy suited to finer cloth. “My mother is away, and my father has never had much patience for politics. He’s already told me I need not attend.”

  “Handy,” Felix mumbled. His mismatched eyes shifted between Tanis and Nadia. “So…are we ready?”

  Tanis looked back to the princess. It was instinctive, this need to protect Nadia, and he found himself drawing from the zanthyr’s example, acting as Phaedor did in moments of danger—leading without questioning his right to do so.

  “Be careful.” Fear for Nadia’s safety lay sharp on his tongue and thick in his thoughts. The very air tasted of his apprehension. “N’abranaacht will probably be working the fourth from the moment he lets you inside. You won’t be able to feel it.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he held up a finger emphatically. “You won’t be able to feel it. Assume he can tell immediately if you’re trying to deceive him and do nothing to raise his suspicions.”

  Nadia arched an eyebrow imperiously. “I understand, Lord Adonnai.”

  He growled at her, “You’re only meant to be a distraction, Nadia. Don’t ask him pressing questions. Don’t try to learn anything important from him. Just keep him occupied as long as possible.”

  Nadia squeezed his hand. “I’ll contact you the moment I depart the literato’s chambers.”

  ***

  Nadia kept her head low and her gaze downcast as she walked toward Literato N’abranaacht’s office, though few, if any, would recognize her disguised as Phoebe della Buonara. It thrilled her to wander the Sormitáge halls unknown and unwatched—the oddest of sensations to someone who’d rarely walked a stretch of hallway without a froth of guards and an ocean of staring eyes.

  Outside the literato’s office, Nadia gathered herself, pressed out her skirts, adjusted her violet spectacles, and mentally checked her fourth-strand shields. Then she took a deep breath and knocked.

  The door opened to reveal a man dressed in a white, hooded cassock. He folded his hands in his sleeves and bowed his head so the hood’s deep cowl hid his face.

  When the man said nothing, Nadia cleared her throat. “Is…Literato N’abranaacht within?”

  The hooded man stepped aside that she might enter as he shut the door. Then he turned and led away. Nadia supposed she was meant to follow.

  The literato’s office was vast, dim and very cold. To her right, a floor-to ceiling bookcase containing obviously rare volumes dominated the wall, while to her left, just beyond a long table, hung all manner of ancient weapons. She saw a particularly wicked saber among them with a dark, curving blade as black as iron and obviously Merdanti. She wondered somewhat nervously if that was the saber the literato had nearly used on Felix.

  The servant led her down a hall, past several closed doors, and into a large drawing room where firelight flickered. N’abranaacht stood beside the mantle with his back to her. He was not wearing his hood.

  This then, she surmised, was meant to be his moment of great revelation, when he unveiled his face to Tanis and watched him wilt with chagrin. It emboldened Nadia to deny the literato that victory.

  N’abranaacht’s black hair hung nearly to his waist, falling like water from the broad cliff of his shoulders. “Well, Tanis—” he began as he turned, but the words halted on his tongue. Dark eyes flashed to the man in white—questioning, castigating—and then went abruptly blank of emotion. A smile appeared, summoned in a blink, but the tightening of his eyes revealed his lingering displeasure.

  “I fear you’ve caught me at a disadvantage, young lady. I was expecting another.” His hands motioned to his bare head and face, the eyes now smiling too. “I would not otherwise present myself so.”

  The literato’s almond-shaped eyes were so dark as to seem black. Nadia hadn’t realized how tall he was until she found herself staring up at him. His features were striking but fearsome—the countenance of a predator. Thankfully he wasn’t also wearing his sword, yet the very fact surprised her. Arcane Scholars were known to wear their blades even when in residence, for they lived such lives of danger beyond the university that they rarely walked unarmed.

  Clasping her hands before herself, Nadia bowed her head slightly and drew in a breath to calm her suddenly racing heart. “Literato N’abranaacht, please forgive my imposition. I would have announced myself but your…” she glanced uncertainly to the servant in white, “assistant… somewhat confused me as to the protocol expected.”

  The literato gave her a gentle look, yet he radiated fury. She understood better now of Tanis’s warnings, for N’abranaacht emanated emotions quite in disagreement with his courteous façade. Had he been openly enraged, she would’ve felt less frightened than in observing how adroitly he kept his true feelings hidden behind a mask of civility.

  N’abranaacht motioned to his servant. “My…assistant, as you named him, follows a vow of silence until accepted into our Order. I fear we must conduct the introductions ourselves. You are?”

  “I beg your pardon, Literato N’abranaacht.” Nadia had no trouble appearing flustered—just the force of his gaze unsettled her—never mind that she was about to tell a calculated and practiced lie. “Please allow me to present myself as Phoebe della Buonara.” She gave an awkward curtsy.

  That gaze looked her over speculatively. “And how may I assist you…Phoebe della Buonara?”

  His resonant voice reached out and enveloped her, wrapped and clenched around her. Nadia dropped her gaze and fought back the feeling of the air being slowly squeezed from her lungs. “I beg you to forgive my imposition, Literato. It’s just…I thought you might be…I mean—I know who you were expecting.”

  He shifted his head slightly. “You do?”

  She managed a fleeting smile, sheepish and apologetic. “I saw the new Postulant, Tanis, walking with another. They were discussing the Quai game tonight and talking about placing their bets, and then Tanis mentioned he had to hurry if they were going to get their bets down in time, because he had an appointment with you…” It was all true of course—they’d purposefully staged the exchange to make it easy for Nadia to say…though Felix was genuinely disappointed at the prospect of missing the game and had gone so far as to ask Tanis how long he thought they’d be snooping in N’abranaacht’s apartments.

  Nadia clasped her hands tightly in front of her. “I thought I might be able to speak with you for a few minutes…since I knew your appointment would be late arriving.”

  “I see.”

  She looked up quickly. “I attended your lecture on the inverteré pattern you found. It was…awe-inspiring.”

  “The Sobra Scholars are studying the Pattern of Awakening,” he said in a low voice. Its timbre sounded so resonant in the high-ceilinged room that his words seemed to come from everywhere, like a god speaking from the heavens. “I’m afraid I cannot discuss it at this time.”

  “Oh, that’s…that’s not why I’ve come.” Nadia cast an uncertain glance at the eerily silent servant. “I just wanted…I wondered if you’d be willing to speak with me about your faith.”

  He arched a brow. “You are interested in the Order of Holy Palmers?”

  “Yes. I’ve studied the writings of Epiphany’s Prophet and thought perhaps I could ask you a few questions.”

  He considered her for a moment and then nodded slightly. “I’m always keen to pro
mote the tenets of our Order. While I’m awaiting my other guest,” and something hidden in these words crackled with displeasure, “perhaps you would join me for tea.”

  She put on a smile to hide her nervousness. “That is most generous of you, Literato.”

  “It is my pleasure, Miss Buonara. Please…” Long fingers motioned towards a near table already set for tea. It stood between two tall windows whose intrusive light had been blocked by curtains of heavy brocade. Nadia watched the literato as he flowed across the dim room, noting the way the silk of his white robes billowed with every motion. He seemed a flame floating among the shadows.

  Nadia drew in a breath, carefully pushed up her lavender spectacles—the illusion crafted into the glass only worked if someone looked at her eyes through the lenses—and followed.

  N’abranaacht settled into an armchair across the table while the servant came over to help Nadia into hers. She noted then that the ghostly apparition of a man even wore white gloves. He poured tea from an elaborate pewter pot, all the while keeping his head so bent and his face so hidden in the deep cowl that she marveled he could see at all.

  Taking up his cup, N’abranaacht leaned all the way back in his chair so that his face fell into the shadow of its wings. Only his dark eyes were visible, luminous as moonlight on a midnight lake. “What questions do you have, Miss Buonara?”

  Nadia dropped her gaze to her cup. She felt more comfortable watching the firelight dancing on the china than reflecting off N’abranaacht’s eyes. “I wondered…could you tell me if the Holy Palmers agree with the writings of Epiphany’s Prophet?” She looked up again as she finished this question.

  N’abranaacht considered her quietly while steam rose from his tea, forming a thin stream of haze across his darkly lambent gaze. “Epiphany’s Prophet…” Condescension permeated the currents. “Her writings are extensive. I cannot say that our Order agrees with all of the Prophetess’s views.”