The Palace of Impossible Dreams

by Jennifer Fallon

  Declan shook his head. “Thanks, but I think I can cope.”

  The sailor moved off in response to a shouted command from the first mate, leaving Declan and the other passengers on the small freighter to admire the sparkling city walls. Declan fretted a little at the time he had taken to get here, as the sailors reefed the sails and the helmsman fought the rudder against the incoming tide. It was over a month since he’d left Clyden’s Inn after speaking to Aleki. He hoped everything was working out as he planned for Nyah and Stellan, but in truth, he’d spent little time worrying about it.

  He’d spent far more time wondering if he really did have the power to direct the wind and send his ship flying south; almost as much time as he’d spent worrying about what might happen if he tried.

  Once he was disembarked, cleared by the Customs men and suitably warned about behaving himself while a guest in Torlenia—a warning delivered to all unaccompanied men on the ship—he shouldered his pack and headed into the city.

  Of the many things Declan Hawkes had learned from the old King’s Spymaster, Daly Bridgeman—and one of the first things the Cabal of the Tarot had taught him—the most useful tip was not to rely on official channels, which could be disrupted all too easily. The vagaries of war, the death of kings, sometimes the sheer inefficiency of bureaucrats, were all capable of interrupting the flow of information an effective spymaster needed to do his job. Because of that advice, Declan had long ago set up a series of protocols for his spies to contact him or leave information for him, which he didn’t want to fall victim to the whim of chance or, worse, an overworked or corrupt government official.

  The drop-point Declan had arranged with Tiji in Ramahn was in a tavern called Cayal’s Rest. He’d chosen it because it was located in the central market of Ramahn and because it was a name he (or anyone in the employ of the Cabal) wasn’t likely to forget. He was very glad he’d arranged the drop too, given that he was now supposed to be dead and appearing at the front door of the embassy asking if any of his spies had left a message for him, might prove somewhat problematic.

  He ordered ale from the barkeep, looked around at the sea of unfamiliar faces and then asked the man if anybody had left a parcel or a letter for him. After a discreet exchange of currency, and the mention of a pre-arranged password, the barkeep admitted he did have such a letter and handed over a small packet with Declan’s name scrawled across it in Tiji’s spidery scrawl.

  Declan took the packet to a booth in the back of the taproom, swallowed down half his ale and then opened the letter.

  Not sure if you’ll ever get this, the letter began. But I’m leaving it here on the off-chance you’ll send someone to follow. As you suspected, the person of note you thought might be a suzerain is exactly what we suspected and it is your friend’s view that she’s probably arranging things to facilitate her lover’s return when the Tide peaks.

  Thought this might be a problem and then I got the news today that the Duke of Lebec was arrested. I don’t know what this means for your friend. I thought of trying to get into the Royal Seraglium to see her, but I don’t think I’ll be able to, because something else has come up.

  I have found the prisoner who escaped from Lebec with your friend’s help.

  I’ve seen him twice now, the first time when I was in the seraglium. Today I saw him again drinking in this very tavern. I followed him to the Temple of the Way of the Tide and heard him talking to one of the priests. I think he’s heading for a certain person’s stronghold in the desert, so I’m going to follow him. I’m sure your friend will be fine. Her new hostess likes her and I don’t think she’ll just hand your duchess over to the Glaeban authorities so they can send her home to stand trial for something she didn’t do.

  Or maybe she will. Who can tell with the suzerain?

  I’ve booked passage on the next caravan travelling to the abbey. It leaves tomorrow.

  I’ll try to get word to you from there. Don’t worry about me.

  Tiji

  He read the letter through twice, smiling at her attempts to be evasive, which he didn’t think very effective at all. Anybody with even a passing acquaintance with the characters involved would be able to identify the people she was so desperately trying to protect.

  And then he sighed, tore up the letter, and began burning the pieces, one at a time, using the candle on the table. Tides, Declan thought. She went after the Immortal Prince.

  He shouldn’t be surprised, really. That was too much temptation for a little Crasii with an abiding hatred of the suzerain. But what had happened to Arkady? He would have heard if she was still a guest at the palace; the whole city would be talking about it. There would have been a major diplomatic incident over the notion that a Glaeban citizen wanted by the Glaeban crown was being offered sanctuary in the Torlenian Royal Seraglium and they were refusing to hand her over.

  That might mean Arkady had already left the seraglium. Maybe of her own free will and maybe not.

  I could always just turn up at the palace, make an appointment to see the Imperator’s Consort, and ask her what she’s done with our missing duchess, I suppose.

  Which was a grand plan, except for two small problems. He’d never get in to see the Imperator’s Consort in the first place, and even if he did, she would be able to tell from across the room that he was immortal.

  Declan wasn’t ready for the news to get about among the rest of the immortals that another had joined their ranks.

  He didn’t think he ever would be ready for that moment.

  The chances were good that someone at the Glaeban Embassy had at least an inkling about Arkady’s whereabouts. He couldn’t knock on the front door of the embassy, however, any more than he could arrive unannounced at the royal palace. He was supposed to be dead, and it wouldn’t take long for word to reach Glaeba that he wasn’t if he miraculously turned up in Torlenia.

  That meant finding someone who might know something, outside the walls of the embassy. And while he was at it, he had to ensure he didn’t betray the fact that the King’s Spymaster was alive and well and lurking about the Torlenian capital, undoubtedly up to no good.

  Declan sighed again as he burned the last pieces of Tiji’s note.

  There was only one thing for it, really. He was going to have to kidnap a stray Glaeban embassy official off the streets, frighten him into submission, interrogate him, possibly cause him grievous bodily harm and all while not betraying his own identity.

  Why is there never an easy way to do these things?

  Declan found a likely victim a few days later, after lurking in the street outside the embassy in the hope that someone had some social engagement or official function they were required to attend. Just as Declan was starting to think the entire embassy was under house arrest, the main gate opened and a lone horseman ventured forth, after waving to the feline Crasii on the gate and saying something Declan couldn’t hear from his post behind the bushes outside what he thought must be the embassy for the Commonwealth of Elenovia. Given the garden beds on the lawn leading up to the entrance were laid out in the shape of the three nation-states that made up the Commonwealth, it was a reasonable assumption. Declan cursed his inability to hear what the man said. It would have been useful to know where he was headed, but his magical abilities didn’t include super-hearing, apparently.

  And then Declan slapped his forehead at his own stupidity.

  He might not have super-hearing, but there wasn’t a Crasii on Amyrantha—unless they were a Scard—who wouldn’t now do his bidding without question.

  To serve me, after all, is the reason they breathe . . .

  As soon as the man had ridden a short way down the street, Declan stepped out from his place of concealment and crossed the road to the embassy gate.

  The felines had come to attention before he was halfway across the street. By the time he reached the gate, they were on their knees, and sure enough, as soon as he stopped at the gate, the senior feline bowed her head and said, “T
o serve you is the reason we breathe, my lord.”

  Tides, Declan thought, they could turn every Crasii on the planet against us.

  Declan still thought in terms of “them” and “us.” He’d yet to come around to the notion of “we.” But at that moment it occurred to Declan why his grandfather, and Tilly and all the others in the Cabal, worried so much about the immortals. He’d known on an intellectual level, of course, but now he understood it in his gut. It wasn’t so much the cataclysms they could cause—they tended to hurt the immortals almost as much as their human victims and, as a rule, excesses were attributed to only a few of their number. It was that the viability of all the nations on Amyrantha was underpinned by the Crasii, a slave force that could, on the whim of a Tide Lord, be turned against the rest of the population.

  “The man who just left here. Who was he?”

  “Dashin Deray, my lord,” the feline replied without hesitation.

  “Where was he going?”

  “To the home of Lord Nisenly, my lord, the Trade Secretary of the Tenacian Embassy. They meet each week to play cards.”

  “Where does Lord Nisenly live?”

  The feline gave him the address and instructions on how to get there with the same eagerness as she’d answered the rest of his questions. When she was done, he glanced at the other three guards. “You will tell no one you have seen me or spoken to me. Understood?”

  They all nodded fervently, leaving Declan marvelling at their need to please him. He turned to go, but the senior feline, the one who’d done all the talking thus far, called him back. “My lord?”

  “What?”

  “If I may presume, my lord, whom do we have the honour of serving?”

  He stared at her blankly for a moment, not sure what she meant. “What?”

  “Are you the Emperor of the Five Realms, my lord? The Immortal Prince? The Devil? The Lord of Reckoning?”

  “I’m . . . the lord of nothing,” he said, and then realising he could well wind up carrying such a ridiculous title into eternity, he added, “It is none of your concern who I am. How dare you even think to ask such a thing!”

  The feline prostrated herself on the ground before him, begging his forgiveness for her temerity.

  Declan didn’t answer her, thinking that’s what a Tide Lord would do. Instead, he turned on his heel and strode away, hoping his arrogant manner and the strange magical compulsion under which these creatures laboured, were enough to keep them silent.

  “I . . . can’t . . . breathe!”

  Declan eased off the pressure around his victim’s neck but kept his knee planted firmly in the small of the man’s back. Dashin Deray struggled weakly against Declan’s superior strength. He wasn’t a fighter in any case. He was a bureaucrat with a long history of good living behind him. He wasn’t equipped to fight off a determined thief, which is what he thought Declan was.

  “My money . . . my purse . . . take them . . .” he gasped in Torlenian.

  “Thank you,” Declan said in Glaeban, reaching forward to relieve him of the burden. It hadn’t occurred to Declan until that moment, but some extra cash might come in handy. He glanced up and down the alley where he’d dragged the man after knocking him from his horse, relieved to find they were still alone. It was late, past midnight, and in this part of town all the decent people were long abed. “Don’t mind if I do.”

  Realising his attacker had addressed him in his own language, Deray tried to twist around to look at him. Declan put paid to that notion by increasing the pressure on the man’s kidneys. “You’re . . . Glaeban . . .”

  “How observant of you to notice.”

  “Are you going to . . . kill me?”

  “I might,” Declan said, hoping he sounded indecisive. He tightened his arm around the man’s neck. “Guess it depends on whether or not you can tell me what I want to know.”

  “I won’t . . . betray my country!”

  “Good to know. Hate to think our embassy officials were a bunch of whining girls who give up state secrets at the first sight of their limbs dropping off. Where is the Duchess of Lebec?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me!”

  “I don’t know where she is!”

  “Damn, I was so hoping you’d be cooperative. I’ll never get the blood out of this shirt after I’ve—”

  “Truly! I don’t know!” he cried in desperation. “She was at the Royal Seraglium, and when the king’s men came for her, she was gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Tides, don’t you think I would have told the king’s men that if I knew?”

  “Did the king’s men offer to kill you?”

  “Of course not!”

  Declan pulled a long knife from his belt, holding it out in front of Deray, where the starlight reflected off its wickedly sharp blade. “Then you probably weren’t sufficiently motivated.”

  “No! wait!” Deray said, his voice so loud Declan was sure they’d wake the whole damned neighbourhood. “I swear, I don’t know where she is now. But my wife heard a rumour . . .”

  “What rumour?”

  “Apparently the Imperator’s Consort is a follower of The Way of the Tide. There’s a rumour getting around the women of Ramahn that Lady Chintara sent the duchess into the desert. They have an abbey somewhere in the Great Inland Desert. I don’t know where it is exactly, only that it’s not far from Elvere.”

  Elvere. That was something, Declan supposed. Certainly more than he’d had when he arrived here in Ramahn a few days ago. And it was the same abbey Tiji was heading for—following the Immortal Prince.

  Tides . . . that’s all I need. Cayal showing up.

  With a shove, Declan let Deray go. He landed on his face in the sandy lane. Declan placed his booted foot on the man’s neck to keep him there. “If I find out you’ve lied to me, Deray, I’ll be back.”

  “Who are you?” the man demanded through a mouthful of sand.

  “Your worst nightmare if you ever mention this meeting to anyone.”

  “I’ll say nothing! I swear!”

  Declan considered his oath for a moment and then leaned forward. “Maybe I shouldn’t take the risk . . .”

  “No! Please! By the Tides, man, I’ve told you all I know. You can’t kill me in cold blood!”

  “I can, actually. The question you need to worry about is, will I?”

  Dashin Deray held his breath while Declan made a show of considering his options. He could feel the man trembling beneath his boot. When he decided Deray was sufficiently cowed that he’d say nothing to anybody, other than mention he’d been robbed. Declan lifted his foot from the man’s neck.

  “Seems I’m feeling patriotic this evening. Go. Get out of my sight before I change my mind.”

  Dashin Deray needed no further encouragement. He scrambled to his feet and fled the lane before Declan could say anything else, leaving the former spymaster with a decision to make.

  Arkady had gone to Elvere, possibly to the Abbey of the Way of the Tide. Maybe. It could be a rumour spread about to throw her pursuers off the scent. On the other hand, if Kinta had taken it into her head to aid Arkady, it made sense that she would have sent her to Brynden’s Abbey. Even if she’d taken her prisoner, she’d likely send Arkady to the same place. Which meant a journey of several weeks into the desert in the hope of picking up her trail. Or he could take a ship to Elvere, be there in a few days, and try to pick up her trail from there.

  Either way, he wasn’t done with his journey yet. And although he had all the time in the world, he wasn’t so sure of the fate that had befallen Arkady. The awful feeling she was in danger and he wouldn’t be able to get to her in time refused to go away.

  Chapter 17

  “What do you mean we can’t go any further?” Tiji asked.

  Ambria placed a bowl of delicious smelling chowder on the table in front of her and stepped back, as if she knew how much her presence disturbed the young chameleon.

  “The sickness is e
verywhere, Tiji. It would be foolish to come all this way to find your own kind, only to be struck down by swamp fever the day after you got here.”

  Tiji looked at Azquil, wondering if the suzerain was lying. He seemed to believe her, however, but there was no way of telling if that was because he was compelled to, or because he trusted her. They were sitting at the table in Ambria’s kitchen, which led off the back of the workroom in the front, where apparently they harvested nacre from the local freshwater molluscs. The kitchen was clean and homely and, most disturbingly of all, strikingly ordinary. Gleaming copper pots hung from the ceiling, along with bunches of herbs and several cloth-wrapped puddings. The large table was scrubbed white by years of use, and the soft buzz of flies hovered around the windowsill.

  It didn’t seem possible this was the lair of a suzerain.

  “Is Lady Arryl not able to heal the sick ones?” Azquil asked, accepting a bowl of the delicious fish stew from Ambria too.

  Ambria shook her head. “The Tide’s only just turning. Medwen’s helping her, of course, but there’s a limit to how much they can do. You’ll have to stay here until it’s safe, I’m afraid.”

  “So you’re the Trinity Azquil speaks of? You, Arryl and Medwen?”

  Ambria nodded. “Although it wasn’t us who thought up the name. Come to think of it, I’m not sure how it got started.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  Azquil’s spoon hesitated halfway to his mouth. “Tiji, you shouldn’t be—”

  “It’s all right,” Ambria said. “I don’t mind answering Tiji’s questions. And I’m sure she has many. We’ve been here the better part of seven hundred years.”

  Tiji glanced around the ramshackle outpost. “ ’Bout time you redecorated, don’t you think?”

  Ambria smiled. “We’re not all interested in building palaces, Tiji. We have a mutually convenient arrangement with our hosts. We protect the chameleon Crasii from the rest of our kind, and they provide us with somewhere to hide from the humans who don’t understand what it means to be immortal. We harvest nacre, craft buttons and beads and other trinkets from it, and we extract the mollusc fats to make a very effective topical cream that fetches a premium in Port Traeker. We trade, we earn our keep, and we help the Crasii. In return, they allow us to live here in peace, without having to vanish every score of years or so and resettle somewhere else where the fact that we never seem to age raises comment.”