Borund simply nodded.
“And how are we going to distribute this food as the winter progresses?” Avrell asked, his brow creased with honest concern.
I sighed and leaned back, feeling tired already. “I don’t know yet. Just move the supplies for now.”
Erick shifted forward, eyes worried. He searched my face and must have seen the exhaustion there. “I think that’s enough for now,” he said meaningfully.
Avrell seemed about to protest, but he subsided under Erick’s flat stare and a quick look at me. “Of course. We’ll continue this tomorrow, after you’ve had more time to rest.”
I said nothing as they departed. Almost immediately after they’d left, Marielle returned with a tray containing a steaming bowl of soup and a small dish of fruit. She began to set it up next to the bed. I was already beginning to feel sleepy, but the thought of food kept me upright and awake. The smell from the soup made my stomach clench and growl.
Erick began to turn away, but I stopped him with a touch on his hand. He gave me a grave look, eyes intent.
“Thank you,” I said.
I wasn’t certain what I was thanking him for—wasn’t certain he knew either—but his expression softened and he smiled, then reached up and flicked away a sweaty lock of hair from my forehead before settling into the chair to watch me eat.
* * *
“So tell me,” Eryn said, taking a slow sip of her tea, “what did you find when you were on the throne?”
We were sitting in chairs in the doorway of the balcony in my rooms, a small table with our cups and the pitcher of tea between us. Erick had dozed off in the chair next to my bed. Eryn had arrived almost an hour before, our initial conversation tense and meaningless, lapsing into thoughtful silence interrupted by Erick’s snores as we stared up at the pale winter sky hazed with thin clouds. The afternoon light had just begun to fade toward evening.
I shifted uncomfortably. I’d been dreading this meeting since I’d seen Eryn’s shade on the mock Dredge, since her shade had shown me the city burning. But Eryn hadn’t come to see me, and I’d been too weak to go to her . . . and too angry.
But I hadn’t hidden in my room doing nothing. I’d experimented with the throne’s powers, searched the city for more of the wardings like the one she placed on the building in the Dredge. I hadn’t found anything. I didn’t think any of the other buildings hiding stored foods had wardings. Once I knew what to look for, the warding in the Dredge had been easy to spot.
I’d also tried other things, tested the throne’s reach, tested my own reach. But I’d been careful, never letting the tenuous connection to my body break.
I just didn’t want all of my knowledge about the throne to come from Eryn. I didn’t trust her yet.
Eryn’s gaze dropped to her cup. “You said that it was me.”
I nodded, thinking back to the dream. I felt a surge of that anger now, but it was smothered by the sudden need to understand what had happened. “It was you behind the dreams. You were there, in the shadow as you said, nudging me to remember, and finally appearing yourself.”
Eryn frowned. “That would explain why it was my image that appeared at the end of the dream,” she said. “But it couldn’t have been me. The Sight can’t be used in that fashion. I know it! I’ve tried since then to influence Laurren’s dreams, but it doesn’t work!”
She set her cup down with a sharp clatter, tea spilling over one side, then stood and crossed her arms, moving stiffly toward the edge of the balcony.
My lips thinned, but my anger faltered. Her emotion was too raw to be faked, her distress too sincere. “Who’s Laurren?”
Eryn huffed, then tensed in an effort to control herself. In a much calmer tone, she said, “Laurren is my principal servant, also one of the true Servants, one of the more powerful ones here. I’ve known her for years. If I could influence anyone’s dreams with the Sight, it would be hers.”
I hesitated, then stood and moved to Eryn’s side, leaned against the iron railing as I stared down at the palace and city beneath us. “I don’t think you used the Sight to influence my dreams.”
Eryn flicked a glance toward me, confused and irritated. “How else could I have touched your dreams?”
I grimaced. “I think you used the throne.”
Eryn straightened. “But that’s impossible,” she scoffed. “I’m not connected to the throne anymore. I can’t feel it, can’t hear it. When I reach for it, even out of habit, there’s nothing there!” There was a tremor of loss beneath her voice.
“I know. I don’t think you’re connected to the throne anymore either. I can’t sense any of the threads that bound you to it, the threads that I removed when I seized control.”
“Then how could I have used the throne to touch your dreams!” Eryn said sharply.
I felt my shoulders tense. “I think part of you is still inside the throne,” I said bluntly.
Eryn stilled, anger building tight and fast, like a storm cloud. “What—?” she began. But then she stopped herself, forced herself to think instead of react.
I seized the opening. “There’s a piece of you still inside the throne. I sensed it, found it hidden among the rest of the voices. A shadow of yourself, almost an echo, as if somehow, when I took control, when I cut the bonds between you and the throne, a memory of you got left behind. And I think that piece of you holds the memories that you’ve lost.”
I halted, waited. I’d tried to connect with the shadow of Eryn in the throne itself, the one that had shown me the vision of the city burning. Tried to find out from her where some of the stores might have been hidden. But she refused to speak to me, didn’t even appear to be sane.
The thought of a piece of myself being torn away, imprisoned outside of myself, sent a queasy shudder through my gut, made my mouth dry and tasteless. I expected Eryn to react the same way.
Instead, Eryn stared out across the harbor, her face unreadable, eyes pinched, skin taut.
“That’s why I don’t remember the wine,” she said to herself, anger still evident in the curt words.
I felt the tension in my shoulders release. “And why the shadow of you does.”
Eryn remained quiet, then said in a trembling, vulnerable voice, “I thought I’d escaped the throne.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. The statement was at odds with the loss I’d heard in her words before. I wondered which emotion would eventually win out: yearning for the throne, or acceptance that it was lost.
Before us, the thin clouds became tinged with dark orange as the sun set. In the courtyard of the palace, a troop of guardsmen tramped in from the city and after a pause broke up, each guardsman going his separate way. On the wall of the inner ward, I saw the palace guardsmen changing shifts as well.
Eventually, the turmoil I felt from Eryn subsided. She turned to me. “But that doesn’t explain your reaction at the end. Something else happened, something that startled you, frightened you.” When I didn’t respond immediately, she shifted closer, her voice hardening. “If you were better trained, you would have killed me with that blast of power.”
I flinched, but straightened, my hand dropping to my dagger at the threat in her tone. “But I didn’t kill you.”
Eryn’s face darkened, her head lifting. “No, you didn’t. Instead, you knocked me unconscious and seriously overextended yourself.”
“I’ve done it before and survived,” I said, annoyance rising at the rebuke.
Eryn snorted. “Then you were lucky. You could have killed yourself as well, pushed yourself too far. All it takes is one careless mistake, and you could end up lost, your body nothing but a husk, your focus too scattered to bring you back. You need to be better trained in the use of the Sight.”
I bristled, but Eryn halted, her lips pursed. She shook her head and let it drop, turning away as she asked, “So
what happened?”
I felt an urge to confront her, my skin prickling, hand gripping tight on my dagger, but I forced my breathing to slow, forced the anger back. It didn’t feel right, too sharp and quick and uncontrolled. Too impulsive.
Once I’d calmed, I said, “The memory of you still inside the throne showed me a vision of the city burning, all of the people slaughtered. It was horrible, so I used the river to shove it away without thinking.”
Eryn frowned. “I don’t remember any such vision. But if the Eryn inside the throne, my shadow, knew of it . . .” She trailed off, thinking. “Do you think it was a scrying, a vision of the future?”
I shuddered. “Yes.”
Eryn’s expression grew grim. “Then you must prepare.”
I laughed, the sound short and humorless. “For what? There was nothing in the vision except fire and death, nothing but smoke and ruin.”
“But it is still a warning. My shadow was trying to help you, with the wine and now with this. Think back to the image, look for details. What season was it? Winter? Spring? Summer?”
I thought about refusing, but under Eryn’s harsh glare, I closed my eyes and concentrated. At first, I held the image still, just a memory of what I’d seen before, static and senseless.
But then I felt the vision twist, felt the power of the river surge through it.
The image enfolded me again, as real as it had been on the throne, full of sound and sensation, and I found myself back on the roof of the tower staring out over the city. My breath came in shorter gasps as I tried not to breathe the smoke, as I tried not to choke on the stench, even though I knew it didn’t exist. Heat touched my skin, turned it waxy and slick, and from the city below I heard screams.
I pushed the horrible sound away, looked up at the sky clouded with plumes of smoke and ash. “I can’t tell what season it is,” I said, voice raised over the crackle of flame, the sucking roar of fire. “It’s dark. Nighttime. I can only see smoke and flames in the streets. I can’t even see the stars, or the moon.”
Distantly, I heard the rustle of cloth as Eryn shifted closer, smelled the perfume she was wearing, the scent of the large white flowers from her garden warring with the reek of the smoke. “Look at the banners on the palace walls. What color are they?”
On the tower, stone cracked with a sharp retort and part of the palace wall fell away, slowly, but I ignored it and leaned out over the edge of the rooftop, hands pressed to the gritty stone. For a moment, the same dizziness that had overwhelmed me before sent the world spinning. A blast of heat hit my face, but I squinted, fought the vertigo long enough to see the banners, then lurched back with a gasp.
“They’re yellow! A bright yellow!”
“Summer, then,” Eryn said.
I continued to gasp, the raw stench becoming overpowering, then broke out in ragged coughing, the smoke invading my lungs. I doubled over, felt Eryn’s hands on my shoulders, attempting to steady me.
“Look to the harbor,” she commanded. “Look at the ships. What flags are flying on the masts?”
Still doubled over, coughing harshly, I forced myself to straighten and move to the edge of the tower, Eryn helping me to stand upright. I gagged, swallowed the sickening taste back, and scanned the ships burning in the water, trying not to see the bodies rolling in the movement of the waves.
“I can’t see,” I said. “I can’t—”
The river suddenly gathered, and I drew in a harsh breath, felt the weight of the river coalesce into a focused thrust and release.
Far out on the edge of the harbor one of the watchtowers that guarded the bay exploded.
“They can use the river,” I gasped, as the debris from the watchtower began to rain down into the bay, the realization sharp and horrifying, like a hand at my throat.
Then something else caught my eye. The warehouse district.
A plume of smoke drifted directly over the tower and I drew in a lungful of char and ash. Doubling over again, I lost my grip on the vision, felt it tatter and shred as I fell back into Eryn’s arms. She guided me to my chair as tears streamed down my sweat-drenched face; reaction from the smoke. But of course there was no smoke, no fire.
Not yet.
“They can use the Sight,” I managed between wheezing breaths, the sensation of heat and flame fading.
“Who?” Eryn snapped.
“The ones attacking Amenkor. The ones burning the city. They used the river to destroy one of the watchtowers.”
Eryn’s eyes flashed, then handed me my cup filled with tea. “Drink this.”
I sipped as I shook my head, scrubbed the tears away from my face with the back of a trembling hand. My throat felt raw, my lungs dirty with soot. “Who else along the coast has Servants—true Servants?”
Eryn hesitated. “Everyone. There are men and women all along the coast that have and can use the Sight. Most don’t realize what they are doing, using it in only mundane ways—to coax the fish into the net, to calm the deer’s heart during a hunt, to smooth the escalating tensions in the tavern to avoid a fight.” Her frown deepened and she turned away, moved toward the edge of the balcony. “There’s only one other city that actually trains Servants as we do.”
“Which city?”
“Venitte.” Short and terse. “They have a school, almost exclusively male students. In fact, we have an agreement with them: they send any women proficient in the Sight here to be trained, we send the men down there. Anyone with sufficient power on the coast ends up here or there eventually.”
“Why?”
Eryn shrugged. “It’s always been that way. Venitte and Amenkor are sister cities, the ties between us old and strong. And we’ve always been the greatest powers on the Frigean coast.”
“But if the people in the vision are using the Sight, then it must be Venitte that is attacking.”
“I don’t believe that.” Eryn caught my gaze briefly, her eyes flaring, before returning to her scrutiny of the harbor, back stiff. “We’ve had good relations with Venitte for decades. There’s no reason for Venitte to attack. It makes no sense.”
I shifted in my seat, trying to recall everything that Avrell had told me regarding Venitte during the last month. But there was nothing. Nothing important anyway. Venitte had always aided Amenkor whenever possible, the Mistress and the Lord of Venitte always on good terms. There were occasional trade disputes, but Venitte was far enough south that these were rarely so serious that the merchants’ guild couldn’t handle it themselves. The rulers of the two cities almost never got involved.
Eryn suddenly sighed. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, turning away from the city to face me. “Whoever is attacking—Venitte or someone else—they are using the Sight. Which means we need to prepare.”
“How?”
Eryn grimaced. “We need to begin training the remaining Servants. Marielle and Laurren have already had the minimal training required, so they can help. But if what you have Seen is true, then those that are attacking are extremely powerful. It takes effort to destroy a building as large as the watchtowers with one strike. It takes brute force. We’ll have to start building on Marielle’s and Laurren’s abilities as well, and anyone else who shows early promise.”
“When should we start?”
“As soon as possible. If the attack is coming this summer, that doesn’t leave us much time.”
I was already working with Avrell, learning about the political situation along the coast and the daily activities of the Mistress. Then there was Marielle with the reading and writing and now numbers, Westen for dagger play and defense. . . .
I sighed.
Eryn placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder, misinterpreting my sigh. “Scrying, especially that far into the future, is always unreliable and difficult to control. There may not be an attack coming at all. And if it is coming, it may not be this summer.
Right now, we have more pressing matters.”
“Such as?”
Eryn didn’t hear the sarcasm in my voice, or did and chose to ignore it. She settled herself into her seat. “Such as figuring out how to distribute all the food we have stored for the winter.”
I scowled. “I don’t see why we can’t just hand it out.”
Eryn laughed and shook her head. “And how would you go about doing that? Look at all the people in the city, Varis. Think of how many of them there are. How are you going to make certain everyone gets what they deserve? And what about the people that already have supplies of their own? We don’t want to be giving food out to people who don’t need it, and there are plenty of people in the city who would take advantage of something like that. Even if they don’t have their own foodstocks, what’s to stop them from going back twice? Or going to two different warehouses? Or three? No. Hoarding is going to be a serious problem, no matter how we distribute the food.”
I thought about what she’d said, thought about how I’d lived on the Dredge, taking whatever I could, storing it for leaner times when necessary, especially during winter. On the Dredge I would have killed for food if I’d needed to. Most of those who lived in the warrens beyond the Dredge would. None of them would think twice about it.
I grunted in agreement, suddenly thankful the baker—the white-dusty man—had been there to keep me from such desperation. “I didn’t think it would be this difficult.”
Eryn smiled in understanding but didn’t say anything, sitting back thoughtfully.
I tried to take another sip of the tea but found the cup empty. “So, how are we going to distribute the food?”
Eryn glanced toward me. “I have a few ideas. Avrell seems to think they’ll work as well.”
I frowned. I hadn’t realized Eryn and Avrell had been discussing it, and didn’t understand why the thought bothered me so much. “What ideas?”
Eryn hesitated. “I think we should make them work for it. Have the women make bread from the grains at common ovens, or curdle milk for cheese and butter. Have the men help to rebuild the warehouse district, fish when they can, butcher the cattle. Children can help with the hauling of wood and rock, or water for the workers. Find something to do for everyone willing, something constructive. For every day’s work, they get an allowance of food.”
The Throne of Amenkor Page 43