by Guy Antibes
“And you?”
“I told you my story in the mines. What I said was the truth, no matter what Lenis says. If his account differs from the one I gave you—”
“Believe more in what an actual participant says?” Jojo said, grinning. “I do. So what shall we do with Lenis? Kill him?”
Tembul gave Trak a look of warning.
“We can’t do that,” Trak said. “I can’t stop your ruling bureaucracy from doing that, but he’s not a threat to me.” Trak didn’t know if he believed his own words, but Tembul saw Lenis as a fellow Toryan and wouldn’t look positively on anything happening to him.
“I doubt if he is very important,” Tembul said. “So far, he has been a nuisance, nothing more.”
“We have no indication otherwise,” Nashi said. “However, he might lead us to the location of the princess. I will direct one of my palace servants to follow him.”
“Do that,” Jojo said. “In the meantime, I’m hungry.”
~
“Now that Lenis is here, we need to give some thought to planning a rescue and escape,” Trak said. “If we are to leave Bennin, we have to fly north all the way to the port of Homika; that means we will need to build a flyer.”
Sirul perked up. “I may not be as powerful as either of you, but I know my way around a hammer and nails. If Mori can get the materials, I’ll build a flyer. How big?”
“We will assume the three of us and the princess, but perhaps we might have to rescue Lenis, as well,” Tembul said. “Enough for six people?”
“That makes it bigger than our old ones. I had to ferry five soldiers a number of times, when you were captured by the Kandannans. We were all pretty well squeezed into the flyer to keep everyone from falling off. This time we will be in the air for more than a week, if we can travel unimpeded,” Trak said. “We should have a railing around the edges. I’d also install a raised edge to keep things from rolling off. I may not need to strike a pose this time, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to have an internal railing or a post like Valanna had on her flyer. Remember, Tembul?”
“I do. I’ll help with the design,” the Toryan said. “When will we need it?”
Trak shrugged. “We should get it ready as soon as possible and then hide it in the stable, if we can. Advanced preparation is always better than haste.”
“Indeed it is. Do you have any ideas on how to get the princess out?”
Trak squinted his eyes as he thought. “I can use teleportation to remove her from the castle, but we have to find a way to get to her. Perhaps, I’ll need to get caught and taken to the dungeons. Mori is certain none of us would make it past the guards. Our coloring can be changed, but our facial features can’t.” Trak wouldn’t dare try a poseless spell to modify a person’s features, or would he? He tucked that thought away and thought of what they would need to leave.
“We will need non-perishable supplies and waterskins. We should plan on two week’s worth for five people,” Tembul said. “I’ll talk to Mori about that.”
Trak ran his tongue along his teeth while he thought about that. “I guess it depends on how much we can trust Jojo and his group. Will they let us go? I know he’s anxious to retake control of the country.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
Sirul sat up straighter. “If we don’t trust them, then let’s make two flyers; one in plain sight, and another in pieces that we can quickly assemble. There are enough useless items cast off in the stables to hide what we’re doing.”
“Same thing for the food,” Trak said. “Two caches. One that Mori knows about, and another she doesn’t.” He felt much better now that they had a reserve strategy. “I think we can be open with asking Jojo about plans for the castle, don’t you?”
Tembul scratched his head. “I guess. Why wouldn’t he? If he resists, then we know for sure we can’t trust him.”
~
“What a maze,” Sirul said, looking down at the plans to the castle that Mori had delivered. “How can we find our way through there?”
Trak smiled at the Toryan. “It won’t be easy, but we have to learn our way in and out. Who knows where the princess is? She could be working as a scullery maid or living in luxurious captivity.”
Tembul laughed. “Luxurious captivity means she is the object of a lord’s attention?”
Trak shrugged, and then called Mori over. “Are there lords in Bennin? I thought the bureaucracy ruled underneath the Emperor.”
Mori left her paperwork scattered over the kitchen table. “I hate doing this, but Jojo must be obeyed,” she said. Mori continued muttering in unintelligible Benninese until she stood over the map with her arms on her hips. “The leaders of the bureaucracy are lords. The aristocracy never went away; they just changed their titles into bureaucrats. In order to gain a high position, one of noble blood passes civil service examinations and is rated for potential. Even that is often rigged.”
“You’re Jojo’s cousin. Aren’t you noble?”
Mori laughed, but Trak could see it was born of frustration. “Not on my side. He uses me as he would any other tool. I’ve done what I can to make a good life for myself, yet Jojo demands more and more.” She scowled and shook a finger at them. “You didn’t hear me say any of this, right?”
Trak and Tembul nodded. Sirul seemed to nod because his companions did, but he probably had little better command in Benninese that Lenis did.
“So when Bennin buys the Toryan princess as a slave, what are they likely to do with her?”
Mori looked down at the castle plans that Nashi had delivered that morning. “As you said, she might be doing anything. Is she pretty?”
Trak looked at Sirul. “Is the princess pretty?” he said in Toryan.
Sirul colored. “She is comely enough,” he answered back in Benninese and gave Trak a triumphant look to show he had understood.
“Then she might be anywhere. It depends on why they bought the woman.” Mori turned around and went back to her paperwork.
“We need to learn this, then. Nashi should know how to get us in the castle at the right time,” Trak said.
“And when is the right time?” Tembul asked. He traced his finger through the passages and flipped to another page to see where the wide set of central stairs led to the next level. “This is an interesting plan, but you will note that the rooms have no labels, and this paper is new. Someone created this map just for us.”
Trak bent down to examine the paper. “Right. A question for Nashi when he comes tonight.”
Tembul and Sirul spent the day working on flyer parts, while Trak concentrated on memorizing the castle map. At dinner all of them lamented that Nashi hadn’t yet arrived, and ultimately they went to bed.
Trak rose in the middle of the night. He picked up the plans to the castle and donned his hooded cloak. In a moment, he stood in front of a remote corridor of the castle. Lamps dimly lit the hallway in both directions. He looked out the window and verified that he had ended up where he had intended. He couldn’t help but smile as he thought of being able to teleport his way around Beniko,
He walked around the corner of the empty passage and confronted a wider corridor and a set of stairs leading up and down. Trak spelled a tiny light and verified that the map wasn’t right. He turned around and quickly paced certain passages, running up a few stairways to avoid guards on their rounds before teleporting back to his bedroom.
After taking a deep breath, he poured a cup of water and sat down on his bed where he couldn’t think of any good reason why the map didn’t match the castle. Perhaps he couldn’t trust Jojo after all.
Trak opened the map again, and began making notations. It reminded him of all the sketches that he had made of poses for Honor when he spent six months with Misson Dalistro. He would have to make more trips to correct the map. He ground his teeth, since he was certain there were places where he couldn’t go without risking detection. Jojo must have drawn the map with traps, and Trak had to find out where they were
if he were to successfully rescue the princess.
He wanted to crumple up the paper in frustration. He understood that they couldn’t trust any Benninese, but did everyone have to betray them? Mori had seemed supportive enough, but now even she had begun to gripe about Jojo’s demands. Trak had to wonder what Jojo had up his silk sleeve.
~~~
Chapter Eighteen
~
ASEM PAWED AT THE NEW BEARD ON HIS CHIN that he had grown since arriving in Warish. He paced like an agitated animal while Valanna looked on. Valanna had spent months with Asem, and yet she had never seen him so agitated since telling him about the events in Pestle and the threat in the Arid Lands. After making Valanna write down every detail she could remember, he had taken the information to the King and had just returned.
She wished Kulara sat by her, but the woman had gone out into the city on another errand for Asem. Valanna looked out from the tower where King Marom had placed Asem under house arrest. Valanna put a finger to her lips. She just about bit into her nail, a bad habit she had broken in her teen years, but the tension in the room had destroyed the relief of returning to Balbaam intact. She should be proud of her actions, thankful to whatever gods had saved her life from the net the Vashtans had thrown to capture her, but Asem’s expression made her uncertain.
Asem said something, but Valanna didn’t quite catch the words. “Pardon me?”
“You have put the King into a dilemma. He has put me here for safety’s sake, and yet someone must pursue the rebels in the Arid Lands. The King wants you and Kulara to go, but I think it is too dangerous for the both of you.”
“Me?” Valanna couldn’t help but blurt it out. “How can I go up against the Ferezan?”
The ghost of a smile passed Asem’s lips. “You don’t have to worry about my family. Other clans of the Arid Lands are involved in this, as well. No one else has the power that these Vashtan magicians do, and the King doesn’t want an open civil war like you have just quelled in Santasia.”
“You were there to help stop it,” Valanna said.
“The Long War with Pestle has just about been won. I think if we can quietly defeat the Vashtans, we can walk into Pestledown and just replace King Harl with little more than a whimper. The Vashtans, by their actions, have accelerated out timetable, but it comes at great peril. The question is, can we risk you?”
Valanna bowed her head. “I live to serve King Marom.”
“But does he serve you?” Asem quickly turned his back to her and looked out the window, still fondling his beard. He stopped and raised his hand. “Forget that I said that. You do serve him, and you will travel to the Arid Lands. You’ve never been there, have you?”
Valanna shook her head, even though Asem still looked out the window. “What do you want me to do?”
“Whatever you want,” he said. “Kulara knows the people you can call on for support, and the pair of you can even fly out there if you wish.”
Valanna stood up. “We left our flyers behind in Santasia.”
Asem waved off her protest. “They are easy enough to build. My lovely second wife is testing out a new flyer as we speak. You can leave in the morning. The King may request an audience, but I would rather see you gone before he speaks to you.”
“Why would you defy your King?” Valanna really wanted to know.
“King Marom has a habit of making a simple demand less simple. You should have the maximum discretion, and if you speak to him, he may want more than you are willing to give.”
Valanna couldn’t help but furrow her brow. What did Asem mean by that? She looked at his back and knew the audience had ended.
~
“Do you like the new flyer?” Kulara said from her pose pointing backwards.
Valanna smiled, looking through the slanted glass window facing to the front. Once the engineers in Balbaam found out about the flyer, they had worked with Kulara on a design that would make it flow through the air more easily. Valanna thought the new contraption looked more like an upside down boat. The thick glass panels were split in the middle and slanted to either side, like the prow of a ship.
“Do the panels make it easier to fly, even though they add a lot of weight?” Valanna said.
“They do. I can fly faster with the same amount of effort. The engineers told me that most of the power I used to push the flyer was wasted fighting the air. I believe them.”
Valanna looked down at the emptiness below. The Arid Lands were often regarded as desert, but Kulara had pointed out that dry didn’t mean desert, and Kulara promised to show her what she meant.
“There’s the oasis,” Kulara said, pointing to a cluster of buildings up ahead. She broke her pose and let the flyer glide slowly on its own. The light wind at twenty stories in the air gently pushed the flyer towards their destination. “We can put the flyer down in the midst of those trees.”
Valanna would hardly call them trees. She didn’t think any of them were more than four paces high, but the clearing that Kulara spotted would keep the flyer from casual sight. She stepped off as they landed and lifted the door to a storage compartment built into the front underneath the glass panels, grabbing Kulara’s travel bag and her own.
“We aren’t deep into the Arid Lands, yet,” Kulara said. The inn is owned by a Balbaam merchant, so we should be safe enough.”
Valanna pursed her lips. “How long will we be ‘safe enough’ on this trip?”
That comment made Kulara laugh. “Wait until our next stop. Even the buildings will look different. Put up your hood to cover your hair.”
Valanna raised the hood of the full-length dark coat that most women wore in the Arid Lands. They walked into the inn. Other than thick walls, it looked much the same as any other inn. Valanna let Kulara do the talking with her Arid Lands accent.
“Rooms and stable fees,” the innkeeper said. The man stood at about Valanna’s height with scraggly hair and a sparse beard. He certainly didn’t look like any Ferezan she had ever seen.
Kulara slid coins across the counter and flashed a warning look at Valanna.
Once in their room in the middle of one of two wings, Valanna took her hood off. “You paid stable fees?”
Kulara shrugged. “That was easy enough to do in this busy inn. Just how do two women walk in from the wilderness without any evidence of such a trek?”
Valanna took off the cloak and realized that Kulara had a point. “I didn’t know…” She tried not to say it as an apology, but it had come out that way. Did Trak continually make mistakes? Was he likewise in a foreign land making mistakes, too? She took a deep breath. One learns as one lives. How many times had Asem told her that or something similar? “…But I do now.”
“Good. Now we have to do something about that Pestlan hair,” Kulara said pulling a smaller bag out of her valise. “I brought along something for you.”
Valanna turned up a corner of her lip. “Making me into a Ferezan warrior?”
Looking at Valanna sideways, “Do you want to be a Ferezan warrior?”
“No,” Valanna said shaking her head, “I just want to get this over with.”
Kulara nodded. “That makes two of us. I miss Asem warming my bed, and sorry, you are not an appropriate substitute.”
Valanna wondered who would ever warm her bed? Trak? She cringed that the thought came so easily into her mind. She had safely stowed his letter in her things in Balbaam, along with his portfolio. Valanna had only enough time to learn a few new poses and power words.
“Get over here,” Kulara said, while Valanna still sat on one of the two beds in the room. She poured the contents of a small vial into the washing-up pan and stirred it around with a metal spoon. “Take off your dress and put this towel around your neck.”
Some minutes later, Valanna didn’t recognize the face looking back in the mirror. Her hair and eyebrows had turned black, and Kulara had applied a stain to her face, neck, and arms. If her features had been a bit bolder, like Kulara’s, she would lo
ok like a tribeswoman.
“Good enough for most things,” Kulara said, rinsing out the towels in the bowl after she had filled four pitchers from the well between the two wings. “Don’t worry, I have a vial that will turn the color back.”
Valanna slid a fingertip along her arm and looked at it.
“The dye wears off after a few weeks. We should be done by then, shouldn’t we?”
Valanna nodded. She didn’t mention the thought that came to her mind…if they still lived. Her image in the mirror would certainly be sufficient in candle or lamplight. “It doesn’t appear to come off.”
“You’d look very dirty if it did, but don’t put your dress back on until morning, and sleep on top of the bed. No reason to take any chances.”
Valanna appreciated the caution. She regarded at Kulara’s advice as opportunities to learn.
~
The disguise didn’t draw any attention when they left the next morning. Valanna left the inn with her hood down, along with Kulara. They quickly walked out of the village and found their flyer undisturbed. In moments, Valanna had them up in the air, taking them farther into the Arid Lands.
“I really like this improvement,” Kulara said, looking out through the windows. The wind isn’t even an issue.”
Valanna couldn’t make a move, but said, “I can go faster. Everything you said yesterday is true about this new design.” She smiled to herself and watched the dry lands flow beneath them. She pushed her spell harder and could feel the flyer instantly speed up.
A few hours later, Valanna could feel the strain of maintaining the pose on her legs. “Time for a break.”
“You can take it down,” Kulara said. “It’s time for a lesson on the Arid Lands, and I’m a bit hungry.”
The flyer set down in the middle of nowhere. Valanna walked around and didn’t notice a single wheel track or print of anything but small animals.
Kulara gave her the wine skin. The wine had been watered down, but anything would work for Valanna after two hours of straight flying. She hadn’t gone so far at one time since her flight from Pestledown.