“I…I am pleased to use the language of my father…if it pleases you,” she added, feeling herself blushing for no good reason at all. She heard him sit down beside her then and become still. His was a quiet yet forceful presence that made her feel strangely…safe. “Yara said,” Alyneri began, hesitant to disturb the sudden sense of peace that had descended upon her by just being near him, “…she said there was a story to your name?”
“Yes, she likes to imagine greater things of me than I ever have hope of becoming.”
“Greatness is as greatness does, Ama-Kai’alil,” Yara admonished from the other room.
He chuckled. “But I would know of you, azizam, and then I must share some news—though I hope…well, we shall cross that bridge soon enough.”
Alyneri felt at once thrilled and anxious; thrilled to have his attentions—azizam meant ‘darling one’—and anxious that such attentions came at a time when she could not have been more vulnerable. “All right,” she said after a moment, catching her lip between her teeth and wishing she had a clue what she looked like to him—then deciding it was best that she didn’t know. “What would you learn of me?”
“What if we started with your name?”
His tone was so kind, his voice so melodic and soft, it at once put her at ease. “I am Alyneri,” she managed. “Alyneri d’Giverny.” She felt a silence descend, felt him grow tense at her side, and became immediately dismayed. What had she done? What could she have done? “Is…is something wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” he sounded almost breathless. “Sometimes…I will explain at some point, I promise you, it’s only that sometimes certain words bring on memories that were long buried. Sometimes the memories are very…powerful.”
Alyneri waited, unsure how to proceed.
“Your name,” he said after a moment. “I know it somehow. I don’t know how I know it.” In the silence that followed, she felt him growing distant again.
“I’m a Healer,” she offered to fill the space expanding between them. “I’m not famous, but I served my king, as my mother and grandmother did before me. I have traveled some, and the Giverny name is known. I’m…well, I’m a duchess, you see.”
“I see,” he replied, and then he added to himself, “that would explain some things.”
“What kind of things?”
“We’ll get to that,” he said gently. “Can you tell me what happened to you? How you came to need rescuing by a ne’er-do-well like me?”
At which Yara snorted loudly from the other room.
“I was…” but she wasn’t sure how much she should say—or how much she really even understood of what had happened. “There was a storm…and a mudslide, I think. Our coach was caught. I don’t remember it clearly.” Laudanum has that effect on a mind.
“The road washed out about six miles south of L’Aubernay,” he advised as she was mentally cringing from memories of Sandrine and the drugged tea. “Could be your coach was caught then.”
“That sounds plausible,” she agreed.
“Were you traveling with others? Is there anyone we can notify? Surely a duchess has a retinue?”
“I…” but as much as she wanted to tell him of Ean and the others, as much as she wanted to trust this man with the golden voice, she dared not. “No,” she whispered, turning her head away though her eyes were already hidden from him. “There is no one,” and the equal truth of this stung bitterly.
He took her hand with unexpected compassion. His was warm, calloused like a soldier’s, strong. “Alyneri d’Giverny,” he said again, as if testing the name on his tongue, trying to remember where he’d tasted of it before. “It’s a lovely name.”
“Ama-Kai’alil,” she said, turning to face him again though the bandages quite prevented their eyes from meeting. “It’s a…really strange name,” she said, and they both laughed at the truth of this.
He told her then of being lost at sea and washing up on the shore of Kai’alil, how they’d taken him to Duan’Bai and called him Man of the Tides.”
“And upon waking in Duan’Bai?” she asked. “You remembered nothing?”
“Only my given name,” he confessed, “but Yara likes calling me Ama-Kai’alil. She says it reminds her of home, and I don’t mind either way.”
“Then I shall call you that as well,” Alyneri said. “It has a certain cadence, I suppose.” Her hand felt warm in his, and she hoped he wouldn’t let go too quickly. “So…Duan Bai. How long ago was that?”
“Five years,” he admitted, and she heard the hollow ache in this confession.
“How did you come to Veneisea then?” she asked, not wanting to pry into the tender places of his soul any more than she’d want him poking at hers. “Did you cross the Assifiyahs with Yara?”
“No,” he said, and she heard his smile again.
“I suspect there’s another story there,” she observed.
“Indeed there is, soraya,” Yara said, re-entering the room.
“Ahh,” Alyneri sighed with delight as the heady fragrance of stew wafted to her senses. “That smells heavenly!”
Yara shooed Ama-Kai’alil from her side and sat in his place. Sad as she was to lose the touch of his hand, Alyneri found that she was quite famished.
“Some stew now,” Yara admonished, “and then back to sleep with you.”
“Balé, Yara,” Alyneri dutifully submitted, though she wanted nothing more than to spend all night talking with him.
“Salam aleikom, Alyneri d’Giverny,” he said. Peace be with you. “Shab be kheyr.”
“Good night to you also, Ama-Kai’alil,” she returned, missing his touch already.
Six
“A man is best judged by the reputation of his enemies.”
- The Adept wielder Viernan hal’Jaitar
The Espial Franco Rohre stood staring at the doorknocker on a pair of black lacquered doors, trying to make up his mind to use it. The device was cast in rubbed iron in the shape of a roaring lion, and it was nearly as big as his head. Of course, it quite had to be if anyone was to notice it at all upon the massive doors leading into Niko van Amstel’s Bemothi estate.
Niko…
It had been three centuries since Franco laid eyes on the Nodefinder Niko van Amstel, though their names were spoken in the same circles. But most of the Fifty Companions went out of their way to avoid one another. Little conviviality was shared between them, for at the basis of their acquaintanceship lay the knowledge that each knew the other’s most wretched secret. It was ever more comfortable to associate with strangers than to see one’s own conscience mirrored in another’s haunted gaze.
But it wasn’t seeing Niko again that troubled Franco, so much as the reason for his visit. Only that morning—yet an entire world away—the Second Vestal had called Franco to chambers…
“Franco, welcome!” Dagmar had said, rising from his chair at a long table as a chrome-faced Shade showed Franco into Björn van Gelderan’s library in T’khendar.
Franco had barely recovered his strength from the recent ordeal in Rethynnea’s Temple of the Vestals, where he and Ean val Lorian had helped unravel the physical form of the Malorin’athgul named Rinokh. Yet he might’ve been on his deathbed, for all that his condition mattered—when the Great Master summoned, you went.
Björn’s massive, three-story library dwarfed Franco as he strode across Akkadian carpets to clasp wrists with his mentor. “Great Master,” Franco murmured, feeling wary and exhausted and not a little awed to be standing in the personal library of Björn van Gelderan in the presence of the greatest Nodefinder who’d ever lived.
“Come, sit—drink,” said Dagmar with an amiable smile bright beneath his pale green eyes.
Franco was still trying to get used to the idea of conversing with the Great Master in person. Three hundred years of knowing him only in his dreams made their fleshly meetings perpetually surreal. Dagmar poured a goblet of wine for him and indicated a leather-upholstered armchair across the table for Franco
to take a seat. Maps that looked old enough to have been penned on the day of the Genesis littered the polished tabletop between them.
“You called for me, my lord?” Franco inquired as he accepted the wine and sat.
Dagmar retook his chair as well. “Indeed. To congratulate you on a job well done.”
Franco didn’t consider the job exactly well done. He’d barely survived the encounter with the Malorin’athgul—holding open a node while a volatile creature capable of unmaking the realm was dragged across the aether between worlds and partly unmade wasn’t an experience he’d wish upon his worst enemy. That their plan had been successful only somewhat lessened his latent sense of horror over it.
“Um…thank you, milord.”
“And you’ve recovered fully I hear?”
“So they tell me,” Franco muttered. He’d taken more than a few blows during the battle with Raine’s forces, but someone had healed his injuries while he slept.
Too bad they couldn’t heal the lunatic in your head, yea?
Shut up.
“The First Lord is pleased with your work thus far.”
In other words, you’re still in his debt, the mad voice in his head goaded.
Franco ignored it, asking instead, “What would he have me do now?” For the millionth time, Franco wished that he might’ve shoved a dagger into Niko van Amstel’s twisted heart rather than follow him to the eventual doom of owing an eternal debt to Björn van Gelderan.
As if reading Franco’s mind, Dagmar said, “Niko van Amstel.”
Franco jerked upon hearing the very name as if plucked from his consciousness. His eyes flew to Dagmar’s.
“So you remember him,” the Great Master observed sardonically.
Franco’s wine tasted suddenly sour. He didn’t feel the need to comment on his memories.
“I called you here today, Franco, because I need you to find out what Niko is involved in.” Dagmar pushed a map idly aside and drummed the fingers of one hand on the table. “I have my suspicions, and lately I’ve sought his dreams, but the man eludes me.”
“He wards his dreams from you, my lord?” Franco gaped at him. “Does that not shout his crimes just as effectively as announcing them in person?”
Dagmar swirled the wine in his goblet and considered the liquid with a frown of pale brows. “To be certain, yet announcing them would at least be a confession. Now I must seek him out via other means to discover them for myself.”
“Buying time,” Franco said suddenly, realizing Niko’s likely tactic. “He’s betting it will take you longer to discover what he’s about than it will be to go about it.”
Dagmar looked up under his brows. “That’s my fear. The man has ever been as crafty as he is morally indiscriminate.”
Franco had to keep reminding himself that Dagmar knew the truth of their crimes—of those fateful events three centuries past that had led them to the catacombs during the Battle of the Citadel and which had resulted in their binding and loathsome oath to Björn van Gelderan. Most of the Fifty Companions had been bound against ever confessing this truth. Franco remembered the moment of that binding with all the torment of its original experience. He swallowed. “What would you have me do, my lord?”
Eyeing him quietly, Dagmar picked up a black envelope sealed with gold wax and handed it over. “You’ve received a summons to Niko’s estate in Bemoth.”
Franco looked the envelope over, not bothering to wonder how a letter addressed to him at his home in the Agasi province of Ma’hrkit had found its way to T’khendar. Björn had spies and allies everywhere. Franco frowned at the unbroken seal upon the envelope.
“There is a pattern upon it,” Dagmar advised as Franco was studying the signet pressed into the wax. “If anyone other than you opens it, the sender will be alerted.”
“Then how do you know what it says?”
Dagmar gave him a quirk of a grin. “Is there any pattern the First Lord cannot unwork and refashion better than the original, Franco?”
Franco grimaced at this obvious truth. He broke the seal and unfolded the four corners of the enveloping parchment. The card within was indeed an invitation from Niko. As Franco read the particulars, the Great Master advised, “Others have received such invitations—voting Guild members, and many of your compatriots who once called themselves the Fifty Companions.”
“That sounds ominous.” Franco knew too well Niko’s conniving temperament. He was only amazed it had taken the man this long to fashion another plan to doom them all.
“Attend him,” Dagmar ordered. “Gain his confidence in whatever way you must. Find out what he’s plotting and who conspires with him.”
Now Franco stood upon Niko’s doorstep feeling entirely too sober for this confrontation. Even so, he dared not drown his wits in wine, no matter the screaming lunatic in his head. His wits were the only protection he had.
Franco lifted the lion knocker’s iron tongue and banged three times, listening to the resounding echo within.
A moment later the doors opened to reveal a solemn-faced woman of indeterminate age. Arching an imperious eyebrow as her only greeting, she ushered him into a cavernous entry hall tiled from floor to ceiling in rose-hued Veneisean marble. It might’ve been a sultan’s palace for the sheer amount of gilt everywhere. Franco grimaced at the display—Raine’s truth, but Niko wore ostentation as a cloak.
The dour woman led him at a stately pace across the wide hall, down a passage and into a suite of connected rooms. “You may wait here,” she droned in a heavy Bemothi accent.
Franco headed through an archway from a drawing room into a long gallery overlooking the jungle canopy. A man and a woman stood before the tall windows, observing the mountain view. Rain was falling near the coast, striating the sky in great charcoal strokes, while the long rays of the setting sun put closer clouds to flame.
“Majestic,” Franco said.
The others turned.
Franco knew them both—of course, for all of them had been forced to work the same pattern while kneeling wretchedly at the feet of the Fifth Vestal. The petite Healer Mian Gartelt wore a gown in the colors of Queen Indora, while the jet-haired Nodefinder Devangshu Vita stood as regal as ever, scowling down his aristocratic nose with typical disdain. Franco had never been friends with the man, but neither had they been enemies. Mian was another story.
“Franco Rohre,” Devangshu observed as Franco came to stand of a height with the tall Bemothi. “I see the years since the war have treated you with tolerable grace.”
The war. The war. The only war that mattered to them.
Franco smiled crookedly. “I hide my imperfections well.”
Devangshu snorted.
“Did you just arrive, Franco?” Mian asked. She had the cherubic manner of a kindly farmer’s wife, with plump rosy cheeks and a tiny button nose, but Franco knew she was as devious as they came and was willing to bet Niko had already taken her into his confidence.
“Yes, Mian. You’re looking well.”
“I serve Queen Indora now,” she expressed proudly.
“A fulfilling position for you, no doubt,” Franco murmured, knowing first-hand the rampant backstabbing and vindictiveness of Indora’s court.
“Yes, quite,” she agreed cheerfully, missing completely the subtle subtext of his comment. “And you? Whose service are you in?”
No one that I dare tell you about, my dear. “I am currently between contracts.”
“That’s good for you, then, right?” She gave him a chipper little smile, but upon noting Devangshu’s stare, she added, “I only meant to appreciate how you Nodefinders loathe the restrictions of Espial patrons and their whims—do you…do you not?”
“Most of the time,” Franco agreed, giving her his most charming smile. In his many years masquerading as a minstrel after the wars, he’d become quite skilled at dissembling for the benefit of a lady’s favor. Moreover, these people expected a certain pattern of profligate behavior from him, and sticking to i
t was his best disguise.
“Mian, you were saying something about Laira di Giancora?” Devangshu remarked.
“Oh, yes, I was—”
“Laira di Giancora?” asked Franco.
“Yes, she’s here,” Mian informed him. “Quite a few of us have come already. You’ll see them all no doubt at dinner—oh!” she pressed a hand to her cheek. “I was meant to help with the seating arrangements. Do excuse me, gentlemen.”
When Mian had vanished out of hearing, Devangshu grumbled, “Finally. That woman is unbearable—naught but a receptacle for the trashiest sort of gossip which she spouts in an endless fount.” He walked to a long sideboard where wine service had been set. “Have a drink, Franco? I make no promises for the quality of Niko’s wine.”
Franco nodded, and Devangshu returned with two goblets, handing one to him. “So…Niko roped you into coming here as well.”
“How could I resist when he re-routes a leis to his door to celebrate the occasion?” Franco returned with some asperity.
“Just so,” Devangshu grumbled. “Haughty bastard. That’s the sort of thing I’d expect from Markal Morrelaine, but Niko has only ever aspired to the notable role of Markal’s lesser second, a bastardized copy matching the original neither in skill nor arrogance.”
“We share at least in our disdain for our host,” Franco murmured. “Speaking of, do you know what this ‘important briefing’ is about? Have you met with him?”
Devangshu grunted. “He’s been locked away with Dore since I arrived, no doubt plotting some nefarious scheme to damn us all yet again.”
“Dore Madden is here?” Franco couldn’t have been more dismayed at the news. If Niko van Amstel was a tornado, Dore Madden was the hurricane that spawned him. “I thought Dore was pretending to be Björn van Gelderan,” Franco said, recovering his composure with difficulty, “waging his own private little war in Avatar, safe across the Fire Sea.”
The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) Page 8