Not fooled for a moment by his snarling threats or insults, Tiji crossed the rug, stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I’ll always keep your secrets, Declan, you know that. Just be careful.”
“Of what?”
“Of whoever it is you’re going to confront,” she corrected.
“I never said…”
“You don’t have to,” she replied, her smile fading. “If you’re sending me to warn Arkady because you think she’s in danger, the only reason is because the Cabal has other plans for you. The Pentangle of the Cabal of the Tarot is far too cautious to waste the likes of Declan Hawkes on trivial matters that can be taken care of by lesser men. So whoever you’re going to see, or whatever it is you’re going to do for the Cabal, Declan, be careful. I don’t have that many friends, you know. I can’t really afford to lose any of the few I do have.”
Declan studied her for a moment and then he shook his head, looking more irritated than touched by her warning. “Tides, I really should cut out your tongue, you stupid, sentimental reptile. Get out of here. And I mean it about not commandeering a ship unless the world’s coming to an end.”
“Yes, sir!” she replied, standing dutifully to attention, offering a mocking salute. “Anything you say, sir!”
“You’re pushing it, Slinky.”
Tiji laughed at his frown and, clutching the precious diplomatic pouch to her breast, turned for the door, knowing how much Declan hated goodbyes, particularly when he was sending somebody off to do something dangerous. She hesitated with her hand on the door, and smiled back at him. “Did you want a souvenir of Torlenia?”
“Hang around here much longer and I won’t need any souvenirs. I’ll have you skinned and made into a belt.”
Without answering such a preposterous threat, Tiji opened the door and slipped into the narrow stairwell, leaving Declan standing by the table next to his pack with its cold-weather gear that gave away far more than the spymaster imagined.
There was only one place Declan can be heading, she reasoned, hesitating at the foot of the stairs to check if the coast was clear. Maisie had finished her sweeping and now the street was empty, filled only with the aromas of half-cooked meat and any number of spices that didn’t really complement each other as the residents of Apothecary Row prepared their many different dinners.
Waiting out of habit, as much as anything, to ensure the street was really deserted, Tiji’s thoughts returned to Declan’s pack. It had been filled with warm clothes, wet-weather gear and trail rations, which might mean he was heading to Caelum, but if that was the case, Declan would simply have packed a trunk and taken a boat across the lake. He’d need little else and certainly not the food he was packing if he was going to check on the Empress of the Five Realms.
No, Declan was packing for something rougher and far more primitive.
Which means he’s heading for the mountains, she decided with a chill of fear, pulling the cloak around her as she stepped out onto the street. To hunt down either Maralyce or the Immortal Prince.
The wheel was turning. The game was being played once more.
The Cabal was getting ready to make contact with the Tide Lords.
Part II
The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls.
—“The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls,”
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
(1807–1882)
Chapter 18
Given how long the Cabal had been trying to locate Maralyce’s mine, it proved disturbingly easy to locate the path, once they had the last few details to fill in the blanks in their knowledge. The vital pieces of missing information were provided by Arkady in the days leading up to the wedding of her husband’s niece to the Crown Prince of Glaeba, during which time both Tilly and Declan had questioned her closely and at length about what really happened in the time she was Cayal’s prisoner.
Her kidnapping by the Immortal Prince might have given Declan nightmares, he mused, but it had proved a boon for the Cabal of the Tarot in other things. She’d been able to confirm things they’d only suspected up until now, fill in details lost to antiquity or during the cataclysmic natural disasters so frequently caused by the Tide Lords that—time and again—almost wiped humanity off the face of Amyrantha.
The depth of Arkady’s knowledge disturbed Declan more than he was willing to admit. For her to have learned such things from the Immortal Prince, he’d obviously confided in her—at length—sharing details Cayal had probably not shared with another living soul in centuries. Immortal or not, men didn’t pour their hearts out to any woman on a whim. No…Declan decided as he trudged steadily upward through the rain, Cayal had told his tale to Arkady because he was looking for sympathy and that meant he wanted her to look favourably upon him.
Declan knew what he was after when he found himself trying to impress a girl.
He didn’t kid himself for a moment that the Immortal Prince wasn’t after exactly the same thing.
Still, it was his own fault Arkady and Cayal had become so close. Declan knew that and cursed his own stupidity. He was the one, after all, who’d sent her to interview the Immortal Prince after his hanging failed. He had nobody to blame but himself…
Which begged another question. What would have happened if the headsman had been on duty in Lebec Prison that chilly spring day a few months ago when they’d tried to execute the Immortal Prince? If Cayal’s plan to destroy his memories by having himself decapitated had succeeded, would they even still be here worrying about it? Or would his beheading have unleashed the power of the Tide and destroyed Glaeba in a single, unsuspecting blow?
When you think about it like that, is there really anything for which to blame myself? he wondered, the solitude of the mountains giving him far too much time to dwell on such thoughts. We were a heartbeat away from destroying the continent by accident, anyway.
And, when all was said and done, Arkady had done nothing more than he’d asked of her. She’d simply learned all she could about the Immortal Prince and shared everything she knew with the Cabal.
Or did her relationship with that wretched immortal go further? Does she feel something for him? Has she fallen victim to his legendary charms?
Declan didn’t like to think about it. And he was exceptionally good at not thinking about Arkady, a skill he’d been forced to master many years ago. It had been hard enough learning to deal with the notion of Arkady married to Stellan Desean. For seven years he’d tried not to think about that, too; the only thing making it bearable was the knowledge Stellan Desean—although he seemed a decent enough man—had little or no interest in Arkady physically, and that situation wasn’t likely to change. Arkady had no idea Declan knew the truth about Stellan…at least, she acted as if she didn’t. Perhaps she suspected the truth. Arkady wasn’t stupid. She must know Stellan’s secret was something not easily kept, particularly from the King’s Spymaster.
Whatever the case, Stellan’s secret and the sham of Arkady’s marriage remained unspoken between them.
Declan could live with that. He had no choice but to live with it.
But it was the nature of the Cabal to demand a sacrifice of its members. For the sake of the Cabal of the Tarot—and the greater good of humanity, Declan liked to kid himself—he may well have pushed the woman he loved into the arms of an immortal, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
The worst of it was, as far as the Pentangle was concerned, the sacrifice was probably worth it. For the first time in several thousand years, the Cabal was able to pinpoint the Seeker’s exact location. And they were able to confirm that Maralyce remained aloof and at odds with the majority of her immortal brethren. That was something they’d always suspected, but had never been able to confirm. The cost of such intelligence was not something the Cabal was too concerned about, particularly as no lives had been lost gaining the information and the only casualty was likely to be the tender feelings of a woman who existed
on the very periphery of the Cabal’s awareness. People had given their lives for information a lot less important in the past. Arkady’s effort would barely rate a mention in the annals of the Cabal.
For the Cabal of the Tarot, the search for an answer was never ending. Now they knew for certain where Maralyce was hiding, Shalimar had come into these mountains to find the immortal miner, Maralyce the Seeker, to beg her aid.
Strangely enough, Declan’s journey into the mountains was expedited by his missing grandfather. Perhaps fearing his fate when he confronted the immortal, Shalimar had marked the trail, either assuming he wasn’t coming back, or in the belief he would be able to use the route again. The marks weren’t obvious; a broken twig here, a small length of coloured twine tied to a bush there. Declan knew his grandfather well. He had no trouble finding the subtle signs Shalimar Hawkes left—which also explained why Tilly had sent Declan in pursuit of his grandfather, at a time when it could be argued he was badly needed elsewhere.
Declan had no trouble following in Shalimar’s footsteps, all the way to the three unmarked graves he found just off the road where it widened for a short time and then narrowed once more, leading into the dark trees curving away to the left, disappearing amid the dense foliage ahead of him.
It was raining, as it had been most of the night. Declan was wet, miserable and too drained to feel much of anything when he spied the fresh graves.
Pushing away his increasingly morose thoughts about Arkady and his part in pushing her into the arms of the Immortal Prince, he fell to his knees against the muddy ground, weariness weighing him down more than his pack ever had.
“Tides,” he muttered, staring at the three mounds.
He stared at the graves for a long time. Whoever had died here, they had been treated with respect. They’d not been killed and left to rot by bandits.
But there were three of them. And it was three men not heard of for months that Declan was in pursuit of. He hesitated, wondering if he should disturb the dead.
Was he looking at the last resting place of three loggers or hunters come to grief in the mountains?
Or was he kneeling at the side of Shalimar’s final resting place?
Squinting in the rain that beat a steady, depressing tattoo on his oilskin cape, Declan stood up. If these graves belonged to men he didn’t know, they deserved to be left in peace.
He glanced up the path, knowing he was less than an hour from Maralyce’s mine, and then looked down at the runnels of water cutting through the loose topsoil covering the bodies. If these graves contained the bodies of his grandfather and the two men Aleki Ponting had sent to watch over him, Declan didn’t really want to know.
He needed a clear head, a mind not warped with grief or anger, if he was going to confront an immortal.
Forcing himself to move, Declan shouldered his pack a little higher and stepped back onto the faint trail leading further up the mountain. Without looking back he headed into the trees, hoping against all reasonable hope that his grandfather was still alive and waiting for him at Maralyce’s mine.
The mine, when Declan finally reached it, proved to be something of a let-down. It was smaller than he’d imagined; the muddy clearing cluttered with numerous bits of discarded or broken mining equipment and the detritus of many lifetimes of habitation. On the far side the mountain loomed over the clearing, sheltering it in winter from the worst storms, but doing nothing to halt the steady downpour that had dogged Declan’s heels all morning.
He looked around with interest, not really surprised to find—built into the lee of the cliff wall just as Arkady had described it—a cottage with two shuttered windows and a silent forge beside it. On his right were an out house and a rickety shaft that could only be the mine entrance, shored up by wooden planking that looked set to topple at any moment.
The rain beat down steadily, the camp showing no signs of life.
Tides, he thought. Isn’t that just typical? Come all this way and there’s nobody home.
Declan was still debating what to do next when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught the faintest wisp of smoke escaping the cabin’s chimney pot.
It seemed he wasn’t alone, after all.
He’d barely taken three steps across the yard before the cabin door opened and Declan found himself facing Maralyce. She was also exactly as Arkady had described her—wearing men’s clothing, of middling height, slender, dark-haired, with unlined skin and an unwelcoming expression on her face.
“Are you Maralyce?” he asked, while thinking: Tides, you moron, could you have thought up a more idiotic question?
She glowered at him. “Reckon you know the answer to that without my help.”
Declan nodded. “Reckon I do.”
She folded her arms, glaring at him through the persistent rain. “Then I reckon you know the next thing I’m gonna do is tell you to piss off.”
He smiled humourlessly. “Just as I’m quite sure you know, my lady, that I haven’t come all this way just to turn around and go home again.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. Shrugging, she stepped back into the house and slammed the door on him.
Deftly handled, old boy, Declan told himself, as the rain drizzled down his neck. He glanced around the yard, spying the forge off to the right. Shouldering his pack a little higher, Declan headed for it, hoping there was a fire going in there. The rain had chilled him to the bone and who knew how long it would be before Maralyce emerged from her cabin once more.
The wish for a fire proved an idle hope, Declan discovered, when he stepped out of the downpour into the shelter of the forge, the rain beating down on the shingles so loudly he could barely hear himself think. The huge stone fire-pit was warm—it took a long time for a decent forge to cool down, even in these unpleasant conditions—but there were no welcoming flames waiting for him.
Shrugging off his pack, he walked to the huge stone rectangle in the centre of the cluttered lean-to, placing his hands on the rock for a moment, letting his frozen fingers soak up the little remaining warmth. As he did, he glanced around, discovering a pile of chopped wood in the corner. Declan looked around some more until he spied an iron poker. He picked it up and turned back to the forge, plunging it into the ashes in the fire-pit. He stirred them up until he exposed the last remnants of the fire’s glowing coals at the bottom of the pit. Declan blew gently on the coals, raising a fine cloud of ash, but the coals responded by glowing a little brighter.
A bit of kindling and some tender loving care, he thought, glancing around the tattered lean-to with its split planking walls and leaking roof, and it’ll be quite toasty in here.
Getting the fire going again gave him something to do. He was sure Maralyce would emerge eventually, if only to tell him to leave again. In the meantime, there was no reason why he shouldn’t be warm.
Or as warm as I’m likely to get in this pitiful excuse for shelter.
The simple task also kept Declan’s mind off another much more disturbing train of thought. The spectre of those three unmarked graves further down the trail still haunted him, and all the denials in the world couldn’t hold back the creeping suspicion that he knew who must be buried in them.
It took a while to coax the fire back to life, but once he had, Declan opened his pack, took out the last of the cheese and jerky he’d brought with him, and with his back to the warm stone of the fire-pit in Maralyce’s forge, he settled down to wait, trying not to dwell on the one question that refused to go away.
If Shalimar and his escort had made it here to Maralyce’s mine without mishap, where are they?
Chapter 19
While it wasn’t unheard of for a slave to act as a diplomat, it was rare enough that Tiji intended to make the most of her status as an official envoy of the Glaeban king. She travelled from Herino in style in a Crasii-guided ship—with her own cabin, no less—all the way to Whitewater, where she changed to a smaller, and therefore safer, vessel for the journey through the Whitewater Narrows
to the coast. After several nights as a guest at an inn normally reserved for human patrons, she boarded a sleek ocean-going sloop for the crossing to the Chelae Islands and then south on to Ramahn, the fabled Crystal City of Torlenia.
The Crystal City didn’t let her down. Approaching the city on the morning tide, the chalky, salt-encrusted cliffs glittered like gemstones. Tiji leaned on the railing, covered by a simple long white linen coat and broad straw hat, watching the city grow larger in the distance, trying to appear unimpressed. Secretly, her heart was pounding. She was enjoying this opportunity to stand on deck and watch the city approaching without feeling guilty or nervous. She’d not ventured out of her adopted country openly since Declan brought her back from Senestra when she was fifteen years old. Usually she was on missions that required much hiding, lurking in dark, dank holds and remaining hidden.
Tiji’s life before Declan found her was more a montage of isolated incidents, rather than a coherent memory. She remembered random, disconnected faces. Odd, seemingly trivial incidents and a few bitter, tormented nightmares of beatings and lingering pain she had gone to a great deal of trouble to put out of her mind. It left her with nothing she could cling to. There was nothing in Tiji’s past she could look back on and call childhood. It was almost as if she didn’t have a past. As if she was born, fully grown, the day Declan traded a purse of gold for her freedom.
Tiji wondered if she’d simply blocked the past out of her mind, or if Declan’s assertion she’d been drugged to keep her docile was actually the case. It may have been a little bit of both. Whatever the case, stepping into a foreign country with a diplomatic pouch—offering a level of protection few humans enjoyed, let alone other Crasii—filled the young chameleon with a sense of anticipation and delight she’d rarely experienced before, despite the gravity of the news she carried.
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