The Black Star (Book 3)

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Tea while you travel," Blays said, halfway to himself; he wanted to inquire what this summons was about, but knew better than to ask, and so he filled the time with idle chatter instead. "I need this in my carriage. Or what about a tea delivery service? Do you think people would go for that?"

  "I couldn't say, my lord," the king's man said.

  "Con: it's pretty easy to make tea for yourself. Pro: who wants to make their own damn tea?" Blays stared at the dark liquid in his cup. In order to help sustain the illusion that he was a wealthy merchant, he'd gotten in the habit of musing about hypothetical business ventures, and had found, to his great surprise, that he enjoyed it. Commerce was like a philosopher's stone that turned ideas into gold. It was fascinating.

  On reflection, a tea delivery service was probably not a viable enterprise. If someone were to run out to order tea delivered, they may as well just pick it up. Perhaps it would be useful at large meetings and the like, but anyone scheduling such an event would be wealthy enough to have servants to take care of their tea for them. The concept was intriguing, but the logistics rendered it a nonstarter. However, if people had the means to order tea without leaving their homes—if they all had loons, say—his brain might be sitting on a fortune.

  The cart slowed, climbing an arched bridge over a minor tributary of the river that split the capital. Now that he thought about it, loons were easily among the most valuable items in the world. Yet so far as he knew, they were completely uncommercialized. The only people who owned them were norren tribes and Dante's people. If Blays could get his hands on a source...

  ...then they'd soon wind up appropriated by King Moddegan, who would use them to solidify the very empire Blays was attempting to crumble.

  Still, fun to think about. Really, many parts of business were fun. He got to travel, see strange places, plot and scheme and brainstorm. If he had his life to do over, he'd spend part of it as a merchant. He'd be damn good at it, too. Become disgustingly rich while seeing the world and having a blast. Sounded pretty good. Especially if he got to challenge people to duels when they tried to gouge him.

  But he didn't have that option. His life was committed. To a much different course.

  The carriage swung onto the swarming Street of Kings. Blays swilled his tea, which had gone lukewarm. He didn't bother to glance at the lake as they crossed the causeway to the palace. The wheels crunched to a stop in the red gravel. A servant materialized to open Blays' door. He forgot to thank the man. He tilted back his head and pretended to appreciate the layered palace while he adjusted his attitude. No time for surliness. Not in front of the king.

  The man who'd summoned him waited until Blays was ready, then guided him up the steps. Two armed guards fell in beside them, accompanying them onto the lift. The bell jangled three times. The platform clunked and raised.

  "Has this thing ever collapsed?" Blays said.

  The servant glanced at him sidelong. "I can assure you it's safe."

  "If it's the same as the king's, I'm sure it is. I'm just curious. Would be a heck of a ride down, eh?"

  The man nodded indulgently. Blays made no further efforts to engage him. After a slow ascent, the platform rocked to a stop at the top floor. More guards waited on the landing, inspecting the platform's occupants. The servant gestured the way forward and Blays stepped off.

  Ceilings hung twenty feet above them. Patterns of bright red stone zagged through the white marble walls. Silver artifacts rested on pedestals around the walls of the vast circular foyer. The servant's shoes whispered over lush carpets. He brought Blays to a cherrywood door and led him through a quick series of wood-paneled passages. Typically when the weather was fine, as it was this morning, the nobles preferred to sit around their terraces, but the room Blays was deposited in was windowless and small.

  The walls featured paintings and end tables, but the middle of the room was empty except for two chairs. One was high-backed and red plush, elevated on a sandalwood plinth. The other was a plain but comfortable-looking white seat. It didn't take a genius to deduce which one was his. Five minutes later, the back door opened.

  He stood quickly. For the first time, Blays met the man he'd been fighting for the last ten years.

  He had seen Moddegan from a distance on a few occasions, however, so he wasn't surprised by the king's limp, or the fact he refused the use of a cane. Like most nobles, he was tall, and though he was on the wrong side of sixty, he'd succumbed to neither paunchiness nor the rickety thinness that greeted so many men on their approach to old age. He had the broad, flat nose common to Gaskan aristocracy and his stare was like the glare of sunlight from polished silver.

  The door closed behind him. He moved to his throne and stood before it, facing Blays. "You are Pendelles."

  Blays knelt and bowed his head until it touched the king's outstretched hand. "My liege."

  "You may sit," the king said. Blays obeyed. The king was silent for a moment. "I have heard of you."

  That had the ring of significance. Blays cocked a brow. "Should I be honored, or worried I've done something that warrants spying?"

  "I would be yourself."

  "In any event, your invitation is as humbling as it is mysterious."

  The king squinted. "Are you a man of words?"

  "I've been known to wield them."

  "Most men of your trade are. Occupational hazard. It's your job to convince people to give you money."

  "Whereas kings are men of action. Always rolling up their scepters and wading into the front lines."

  Moddegan chuckled without smiling. "I said nothing about dividing the world between men of words and men of action."

  Blays tapped the arm of his chair. "You'd add a third type to the list?"

  The king nodded gravely. "Men of decision."

  "Not the man who cooks the breakfast. But the man who decides it's time for the fast to be broken."

  "An apt summary, although constructed to hold as little rhetorical weight as possible. Rather, the distinction should be drawn at the level of a general and his soldiers. Does a general act? Does he dive into battle with drawn sword? Only if he is a fool, or if the battle is going very poorly. Instead, he decides."

  "Sounds a lot like acting to me," Blays said.

  Moddegan made the smallest gesture with his fingertip. "Only a man of words would argue that point."

  With difficulty, Blays stopped his eyes from rolling. "You're the ultimate decider, aren't you? You didn't invite me here to play games with words. So the question is, have you made your decision already? Or am I being judged right now?"

  Moddegan smiled with the detached amusement of those elevated beyond all mortal concerns. "I will buy your bossen."

  "You will?"

  The king nodded.

  Blays shifted in his chair. "You'll have to excuse me. I've never done business with a regent before. When you say you'll buy it, do you mean if I wish to sell it to you? Or do you mean that the same way you'd say 'I will conquer Mallon'?"

  Moddegan tipped his head five degrees. The man's gestures were all small, forcing you to pay constant attention to his every mood. "If it were an offer instead of an order, would you refuse me?"

  "If it were an offer, I'd ask to hear your terms, then ride straight to your rivals and see if they want to up the bidding." But he knew these were words. The king had decided. Blays' task was to play along. "May I ask your proposal?"

  "The whole shipment. Same terms you've offered the others."

  "My instincts scream at me to haggle. But my brains tell me that if I attempt to take advantage of your lofty finances, I'll find my body dragged through the streets by a fancy horse."

  "Something like that," Moddegan said. "Do you have the goods here?"

  "Close enough."

  "Then I shall send for you in three days to conclude affairs." He leaned back. Blays began to rise, but the king twitched his fingers, stilling him. "I have heard your concerns about the safety of the king's roads."

&
nbsp; Blays laughed with as much self-deprecation as he could muster. "In my defense, if we could saddle complaints, our feet would never have to touch the ground."

  "I will deal with the roads," Moddegan said. "You will speak of it no more."

  "Is that what this is about?" Blays made a quick calculation, then pressed on. "This isn't the strongest of bribes. I had another buyer."

  "This was about business. The roads are a secondary matter—but they are the veins of my empire. If circulation is blocked, the limbs wither."

  Blays bowed low enough to show the crown of his head. "I will say no more, my lord."

  The servant opened the door and escorted Blays to the lift, then the carriage outside. As Blays returned home, he sensed the city but absorbed none of its impressions, like a sponge too saturated to take on any more water.

  As usual, Taya intercepted him in the foyer of the manor. Blays had been working with his servants for months, and trusted them to a man, yet he refused to speak until he and Taya were alone in the library, doors and windows shut from prying eyes and ears.

  "Forget about the duke," he said. "We're taking down the king."

  7

  They were three hours into the journey and twenty miles west of the city before Dante realized he was missing a vital piece of information. "Where exactly are we headed?"

  Cee gave no indication she'd heard. For a moment, he thought his words had been lost beneath the tromp of the horses' hooves and the coo of the birds in the trees. It was black as sin except for a small pool of light he was maintaining in front of Cee's mount to watch for any bad spots in the road that might cripple a horse.

  "To find your friend," she said at last.

  "Useful information. While I have you here, can you tell me more about this 'ground' we're walking on?"

  "You'll find out where we're going once we're there."

  "That's just it," Dante said. "I will see. So why not tell me now?"

  "To encourage you to see the deal to the end."

  "You've already got my coin and my word. Do you realize I could rescind both with one flick of nether? If I were going to kill you, what difference does it make whether it's now or when we reach our destination?"

  Cee clopped along. Without turning, she said, "Setteven."

  "Setteven?" Dante said. "What's he doing there?"

  "Last I saw? Getting rich."

  "Is a widowed dowager involved?"

  Cee turned, but her expression was silhouetted by the light at the front of the horses. "I wouldn't be surprised. He's doing business with every nobleman and woman in the court."

  A misstep from the horse jostled Dante's spine, but his brain was reeling before that. "You must be mistaken. We fought a war against those people."

  "I followed him for weeks. Except when I couldn't. Like when he went to stay at one of their chateaus."

  "There has to be more to it."

  "See for yourself," she said. "Either way, I'm keeping the silver."

  He couldn't believe it, yet her confidence undermined his own. What would motivate Blays to trade with those who'd once been their worst enemies? Was Cee mistaken? Was Blays up to something? Or had he simply moved on, putting his past with Setteven behind him as thoroughly as he'd done so with Narashtovik? If so, he wouldn't be the first to forsake everything else in pursuit of a life of wealth and pleasure. Maybe he thought he had nothing left to him.

  Dante lapsed into silence. They had crossed a few villages after leaving Narashtovik, but they were currently traveling a stretch of woods populated entirely by squirrels and owls. That night, they had to make camp in the wilds. Compared to sleeping in caves in the Woduns, however, the discomfort was trifling.

  They made steady progress, pushing the horses without exceeding their limits, stabling them in a new town each night. Dante wanted nothing more than to race all the way to Setteven, but his impatience was tempered by an ironclad fact: if Cee was right about Blays, he wouldn't be going anywhere soon. Not if he was in bed with the capital. Not when there was a fortune to be had.

  It was an odd thing. Blays had never been greedy. Even when Dante had been elevated to the Council, and all the wealth of Narashtovik had been at their disposal, Blays had shown little interest in throwing it around. He'd wanted no more than clean clothes, sharp swords, and the occasional night in the taverns. He'd mocked merchants more than once, scorning them for scurrying around after slivers of silver, noses buried too deep in their ledgers to ever see the world around them.

  But the death of Lira had broken him. That much was clear. It was why Blays had left. In that state, he could have become anything. Grief had a way of transforming a person into what they most hated. Perhaps instead of killing himself, falling in with the enemy was Blays' way of destroying everything he'd once been—and his pain with it.

  Mile after mile faded behind them, pine forests and grassy plains and ridges of weathered limestone. He gave some thought to sailing to Yallen and then heading upriver to the capital, but in all likelihood that would require backtracking to Narashtovik to find passage on a boat. Instead, they took the road nearly all the way to Dollendun before cutting overland to the west, intercepting the road and the river after a day in the wilds.

  The mountains of Gallador sat in the south, gauzed in mist. A fork in the road fed them straight toward Setteven. They were deep in Gask now and Dante rode with his cowl pulled over his head. He wasn't certain what would happen if he were recognized. Narashtovik had been at peace with its former masters for more than three years, and while the two states weren't throwing each other tea parties, neither were they on the brink of conflict.

  But peaceful relations between countries would mean nothing to anyone who bore Dante a personal grudge. A blood relative of the slain Cassinder, for instance. Or the friends and family of the thousands of Gaskan soldiers killed in the war. Dante's role had generated far too much anguish to assume he could move through these lands in safety.

  On the morning of the day they expected to reach Setteven, they entered a quiet forest. Sparrows flitted across the road, passing through thin beams of light. They had traveled close to four hundred miles, and with their destination so close, Dante let the horses amble at their own pace.

  "Redshirts," Cee murmured.

  Dante snapped up his head. Down the leaf-littered road, men in red doublets blocked the way. King's men. Just like the thousands Dante had plunged to their deaths in the final battle of the Chainbreakers' War. This time, there were just eight. He could kill them in moments if it came to it. Yet his pulse quickened. The last thing Dante needed was to draw attention. And by definition, there was no such thing as a safe fight.

  Hurriedly, he called on the nether and went to work on his face. Shifting the planes of his cheekbones. Lengthening his nose. Thickening his brows. The illusions were slight, a dim version of the method Cally had used when he'd infiltrated the Council, but it should be enough to hide his identity.

  "Act normal," he said. "No killing."

  Cee gave him a look. "Do your friends normally have to be ordered not to kill strangers?"

  "He's reminding himself," Lew muttered.

  Dante shook his head. He let Cee lead. She slowed as they approached the soldiers. The men watched them alertly, but didn't reach for swords or bows. Once Cee rode within twenty feet, a trooper held up his hand. Cee stopped and nodded in greeting.

  "Where are you headed?" the soldier said.

  "Setteven," Cee said; early in the trip, they'd arranged a cover story. "We're on business from Tantonnen."

  "Are you armed?"

  Cee flipped back her cloak to show the scabbard on her hip. "If I draw this, it'll flash."

  "Why do you have weapons?"

  "For the same reasons you do, I expect."

  The redshirt nodded. "Have you run into trouble? Seen anything fishy?"

  "Nothing but quiet. Something we should be wary of?"

  "Highwaymen," the man spat. "We appear to have cleared out the ver
min. But be on watch."

  Cee tipped her head. "Will do. Safe travels."

  The group parted, allowing them to ride through. Lew looked back. Dante didn't.

  Cee waited until they were out of earshot. "Awfully close to the capital for bandits."

  "Is this road normally patrolled?" Dante said.

  "Rarely." She flashed a grin. "Or I would have been caught years ago."

  Dante kept his eyes open and they crossed the forest without incident, riding into a wide plain of farms and hamlets. At one settlement, another group of redshirts eyed them, but let them pass without questions.

  Then Setteven sprawled before them, stretched across the hills and the river, bustling with trade and life, smoky from chimneys, raucous with talk and clicking hooves and shutters squeaking closed against the growing cold of late afternoon. Dante could smell the manure from beyond the walls, but as they rode through the white gate on the south end of town, the odor was fought by wood smoke, the freshwater smell of the river, and frying bacon, which Setteven was famous for.

  It looked younger than Narashtovik, perhaps because it wasn't littered with ruins, yet it had the unmistakable appearance of a city that's been around for eras. Many of the structures were patchwork: wooden upper floors atop stone ground floors; rowhouses grafted onto each other one after another; classical arches on a temple of Mennok beside a manor house designed with modern parallel lines. As in Narashtovik, many of the locals wore long coats, but the people here combined them with round hats trimmed with fur. One disdainful-looking lady wore a shirt made from a single piece of seamless leather. Dante recognized it vaguely: norren clothing.

  Lew glanced from side to side. "Doesn't look like the capital felt the war at all."

  "They felt it," Dante said. "You'll note they haven't come back."