by Shannon Page
Maronne and Lucia dropped quick curtsies to the Factor and retreated back into the hallway.
“Well, my dear,” he asked, “how much new trouble have you caused us?”
“Some,” she said, dreadfully self-conscious of her bizarre cosmetic mask and overblown attire. “Quite a lot, I suspect.”
He nodded, seeming neither much surprised nor even too upset. “Yes, well, we can talk about it later, I suppose. Right now, I am afraid we have much bigger trouble to attend to. Would you come with me, please?”
She gave him a startled look. “Like this?” Was her punishment to start this quickly? “Has someone already told you?” she asked, trying not to sound as frightened as she was.
“About your visit to Duon?” He shook his head, and started for the doorway. “That doesn’t matter now. Just come.”
She raised a hand to her mouth in alarm as he came abreast of her. “Is it about Konrad?”
“No,” he said, beginning, finally, to show some sign of irritation. “Please stop second-guessing me, and just come along now, will you?”
In the hallway, Maronne and Lucia gazed at Arian in obvious concern. Arian glanced questioningly at Viktor, who shook his head. “Go and change,” she told them. “Then await me here.”
They curtsied and re-entered her apartments.
“Viktor,” she said as they began to walk, “won’t you just tell me what is —”
“Not until we are in my apartments.”
“Oh.” It was something that unsafe for discussion then, even though they seemed quite alone here. Her trepidation grew.
As they continued through the house, Viktor turned and took her hand. “I’ve had much time — and much new cause, I fear — to think about the things you said to me this morning. You were right, my dear. I’m sorry. Truly. If there really is some way left to fight, even with our feet, I will try.” He gave her a tender and apologetic smile.
She smiled back, deeply grateful for this reassurance that she might not be in as much trouble as she’d feared — with Viktor, anyway. Then again, he hadn’t heard what she had done yet. “Viktor, there is something you should know.” She saw no reason to reserve this news for greater privacy. It had all been said quite publicly already. “The Mishrah-Khote has been lying to us. There is no healer in seclusion at the temple. It seems clear there never was. Duon has just been —”
He put a finger to his lips, and shook his head again.
Not even this? she wondered anxiously. What in all the world can be going on now?
The entrance to Viktor’s apartments was flanked by guards who pulled the double doors open as they arrived. After instructing them to allow no one else entry for any reason, Viktor led Arian through his outer chambers to the sitting room outside his bedchamber, where two men stood waiting. The first she recognized immediately: Nishahl Hivat. The other man was a young copper-skinned military officer in Alkattha house guard livery whom she had never seen before. Hivat showed no surprise at her bizarre attire, probably better apprised of her activities since breakfast than even she herself was. The other man was clearly struggling not to stare.
“My Lady Factora-Consort,” said Hivat, giving her a bow, immediately duplicated by the young officer at his side. “Allow me to introduce Prefect-Sergeant Ennias, commander of Escotte Alkattha’s house guard.”
The sergeant bowed again, unnecessarily, though if he was Escotte’s man, Arian supposed he would have learned quite quickly to err on the side of excessive deference.
“This involves the Census Taker?” she asked, wondering just how much more alarming all this could become.
“I fear it does,” said Hivat.
Worse and worse. She glanced around, and went to sink into a chair beside the case of exotic maps and charts that Viktor had collected since his boyhood. Hivat and the young officer pivoted to face her as Viktor came to stand beside her. She thought of trying to explain her clothing to their younger guest, but could think of no way to do so that would not just make her seem even more ridiculous.
“Have you by chance, my lady, heard any of the rumors circulating in the city about a new healer commonly referred to as Our Lady of the Islands?” asked Hivat.
“A healer?” she asked, wondering how they had veered to such a topic from Escotte Alkattha. “I haven’t. No. But …” She turned to Viktor. “This can’t be the healer Duon has been pretending to offer us, can it?” She looked back to Hivat. “Duon has always said their healer was a man, and I cannot imagine the Mishrah-Khote would tolerate a woman in their midst, regardless of her talent. I’ve just been lectured on the costs of such contamination.”
“It does appear they had her, briefly,” Hivat said. “In their dungeons on charges of spiritual fraud.”
“I see,” she replied wearily, only conscious of the latest ghost of hope briefly risen up within her as it faded in the inevitable light. “More empty theater. Not that I’m surprised.”
“That’s what I’ve assumed as well, my lady,” said Hivat. “Until this afternoon, when our young sergeant here very wisely came to see me with some disturbing information.” Hivat turned to Sergeant Ennias. “Would you please tell the Factora-Consort the tale you’ve shared with the Factor and me?”
The sergeant raised his chin a bit, gazing into the air before his face, and began reciting his tale in the dispassionate tones of a military dispatch. “Ten days ago, my lady, my employer, Escotte Alkattha, informed me that a relative of his had been arrested and imprisoned by the Mishrah-Khote on false charges of spiritual fraud.”
“This is the healer?” Arian asked in surprise. “This Lady of the Islands is a relative of ours?”
“Sian Kattë, it seems,” Viktor told her. “A very distant cousin. I have never met her.”
Arian shook her head. Stranger and stranger. “Please continue, Sergeant.”
Ennias nodded, still meeting no one’s eyes. “Lord Alkattha also informed me that this woman had escaped the temple somehow, and had last been seen on Cutter’s, involved in some sort of public disturbance there just that morning. He did not explain how he had come by all this information, but ordered me to find her and bring her to him secretly. He was also in possession, somehow, of a marital complaint recently filed by the woman’s husband, which he gave to me with instructions to detain her under the pretense of some related investigative matter. Lord Alkattha said I was to do this so that no one witnessing our exchange would learn of his involvement, or of the woman’s actual destination.”
“But … was that not also false arrest?” Arian interjected, wondering what new trouble Viktor’s cousin had gotten them all into now while trying to cover up some petty family scandal.
Ennias nodded, still looking no one in the eye. “In a sense, my lady. But I assumed the woman herself would approve once she understood the reasons for our deception. She was not actually to be arrested or imprisoned, after all. It was just for show, as I have said.
“We tracked her to Three Cats, and overtook her after dark, in the company of two male companions who, unfortunately, assumed that we were part of some temple ruse to recapture her. They attempted to defend her forcibly. One of my men and the younger of her companions were injured in the resulting skirmish; the young man very gravely. Regrettably, this made it necessary to subdue both of Domina Kattë’s companions and bring them with her to the Census Hall, where all three were delivered into my employer’s keeping.” For the first time in his presentation, Ennias looked directly at Arian. “At that time, my lady, I witnessed what I can only describe as a miraculous event. The lady’s younger companion had suffered a deep pike wound to his side and stomach. By the time we had reached the Census Hall, I’d have wagered his chances of survival low to nonexistant, though I denied this concern to Domina Kattë for fear she might become hysterical.”
As women always do, of course, Arian thought irritably.
“The injured boy was brought and laid out on the steps, unconscious,” Ennias continued. “Dom
ina Kattë knelt down and laid her hands over his wound. At first, she appeared to suffer greatly, crying out and seeming near the loss of consciousness. Then the boy revived and started speaking. When Domina Kattë was able to sit again, I saw with my own eyes that his stab wound had closed completely. Not just closed, but healed and scarred already.” The sergeant shook his head, clearly still haunted by the wonder of it. “She had healed my injured man as well by then, but his wound had been so minor that I had just suspected trickery of some kind. This second healing, though … My lady, I grew up and served for eight years in Kalimpura before enlisting here. I’ve seen a lot of things I can’t explain, but nothing more impossible than this.”
Arian looked in astonishment at Viktor, then at Hivat. “Then … she is not a fraud?”
“It begins to seem so,” Hivat said. “During the past week, my agents have begun encountering tales of people miraculously healed from all sorts of ailments by this so-called Lady of the Islands. Until Sergeant Ennias appeared this afternoon, however, we had found no one who knew — or would admit to knowing, anyway — who this woman was; and, to be quite candid, my lady, the very suddenness of so many seemingly implausible tales led us to dismiss them out of hand as just one more manifestation of the religious hysteria that has gripped the islands since that would-be priest appeared.” His eyes, she noticed, wandered everywhere just then except toward her husband. “The rumors we were hearing just seemed far too overblown to merit serious consideration. This Lady of the Islands seemed to be everywhere at once, and yet never anyone identifiable.” He shrugged. “What were we to think?”
“Then, she might really heal Konrad?” Arian exclaimed, hardly daring to believe. “And Escotte has her?”
“So it would seem,” Viktor said, looking anything but happy. In fact, everyone looked extremely grim.
“But why is this bad news?” she asked, rising from her chair. “Why have we not —”
“Arian, my love,” Viktor said softly, “you are so much smarter at this sort of thing than I am. Can you really still not see it?”
“See what?” she asked. “If there’s finally a real healer on these islands, and Escotte has her safely in his …” Then she saw it, and sat down again. “Oh … Oh dear.”
Hivat nodded. “He’s had her there for nine full days, and not a word to either of you. Or to anybody else we know of. It would seem, my lady, that the Census Taker may want your son to die.”
“I’ve been telling you for months now,” Viktor sighed. “They want my head.”
“You’ve been telling me that my family wants your head,” she replied, trying to untangle the vast new knot of possibilities unfurling in her mind. “But this is your family, Viktor. That’s what I cannot begin to understand. Escotte is Alkattha too. If Konrad dies, you have no heir and would surely be deposed. Your cousin knows as well as we do that any family replacing us would trade out the Census Taker too. Why slit his own throat that way? It makes no sense.”
“Unless he’s been assured by someone that in exchange for his help securing the Factorate, they will keep him on,” said Viktor. He began fiddling with the bronze latch on his map-case. “The question now, it seems to me, is who, and how many others in our camp might be in league with this conspiracy?”
“If the Census Taker himself is turned against us,” said Hivat, “then, beyond the people in this room, I fear there may be absolutely no one we can trust completely.”
Arian looked sharply up at Sergeant Ennias. Deception might run in many directions. If someone wanted to drive a wedge just now between the Factorate and the Census Taker, for instance … “What exactly led you to come betray your own employer, Sergeant?”
He looked her in the eye this time, betraying no sign of nervousness at all. “After the boy had been healed that night, I was told to lock both of Domina Kattë’s companions up inside his private detention facility beneath the house — where they remain today. Lord Alkattha clearly did not want his cousin to know what he’d done with them. A chance comment from her just this morning leads me to believe she’s been told they’re off on some important secret mission on his behalf.” He gave Arian a shrug. “They did attack a detachment of duly appointed house guard, I guess, but only in response to the incorrect but well-intentioned assumption that we posed some dire threat to the Census Taker’s cousin. I have never understood why Lord Alkattha should want them locked away for that — in secret, even from his cousin — nor why a healer of her obvious power was being held in secret too, when all the world knows of your great need for her services.”
“You say held in secret,” Arian interjected. “Is she part of this conspiracy? Does she hide there willingly, or is she captive against her will?”
“Not quite either, I would say,” said Ennias. “I think she believes she’s being hidden there from the temple, but … Lord Alkattha has made it very clear that no one is to know she’s there, and I do not think she would be allowed to leave the hall, even if she asked to. She is very closely guarded, even inside the house; always accompanied by her maid during the day, and at least myself or Lord Alkattha at other times. She seems more a prisoner to me, however unwitting, than a guest. Which is why I thought I’d better come make sure I wasn’t being made party to some act I would be left to take the blame for later. I did not enlist to be anybody’s scapegoat, my lady.”
“But why come all the way to Domni Hivat, rather than to some more immediate superior?” Arian asked. This defection still seemed terribly convenient.
“My lady, none of my superiors are higher in the chain of command than the employer I had come to check on, and as there were clearly important secrets being kept at the highest levels here from someone, for some reason, I had no idea what I might spill into the wrong ears, even if Lord Alkattha’s motives were legitimate. Especially if they were legitimate.” He shrugged again. “I knew who the master of all secrets was, and assumed that if even he did not know what I had to tell him, I’d have been right to come.”
She nodded, impressed despite herself. “You are a perceptive man, Sergeant. Perhaps you would be better employed as a diplomat than as a soldier.”
“Soldiers are the front line of diplomacy, my lady, are they not?”
She could see him suppress a smile, and felt sure that if she were not the Factora-Consort, he’d have winked at her. She was developing a begrudging respect for him, despite his hysterical woman remark.
“To our good fortune,” said Hivat, “it seems he spoke to no one else before reaching me, my lady. I brought him straight here to the Factor. We may reasonably hope that none of this conspiracy suspects we are the wiser yet.”
“Which buys us some time, perhaps,” said Viktor. “Now we must decide what we’re to do with it — and quickly.”
“So, who has more to offer your dear cousin than his own quite powerful family?” Arian asked. “That’s what I still want to know.”
The room fell silent as everyone grew thoughtful — except for the sergeant, who just stared straight ahead, awaiting further instruction.
“Could Escotte think to make himself Factor somehow,” asked Arian, “once Viktor was deposed? That, at least, would make a little sense.”
“I don’t see how he could do it without some other substantial base of political support,” Hivat said. “And I can hardly imagine any of the other families supporting an Alkatthan candidate over one of their own house. Maybe House Suba, but …”
“What about the temple?” Arian parried. “Their support of Escotte might mobilize enough of the general public to overrule the wishes of any single house. Duon had this healer in his possession too, it seems, and said nothing to us either.”
Hivat shook his head. “If the Census Taker were in league with the temple, my lady, why not just hand Domina Kattë right back to them, and let her rot there? Far fewer of his fingerprints left on this that way, if it were discovered — as it has been. And why would Duon have spent the past week promising to deliver her to
you if their intent were simply to withhold her? No, it seems more likely now that this mysterious healer Duon’s been promising was, in fact, Sian Kattë. They were probably planning to disguise her as a priest somehow, just long enough to use her gift to heal Konrad and restore the temple’s reputation, then dispatch her somehow. But it seems they lost her before she could be put to their intended use. I would guess Duon’s been vamping ever since in hope of finding and arresting her again.” He gave her a dry smile. “I’d give a small fortune to know how her escape was managed. That might tell us quite a lot about who else is really playing here.”
“Still …” said Viktor, staring inward. “Might there be members of this conspiracy even inside the temple — unknown perhaps, even to Father Duon?”
“Like whom, sir?” Hivat asked. “Have you some particular suspicion?”
“My son seemed to be healing for a time. Then, suddenly, his illness returned and he’s grown worse ever since — no matter what his priestly healers seem to try …”
Arian felt her jaw go slack as his meaning registered. “Are you suggesting he’s been poisoned? By the priests themselves?”
Hivat looked troubled, his gaze turned inward too now. “We do have reconnaissance suggesting that Duon is not much better liked inside the temple these days than he is here in this room. He is perceived by many of his own priests as … well, rather pampered and self-serving, apparently. He could be headed toward a coup of his own, I suppose, completely unaware. If the Census Taker promised to throw his own considerable resources into seeing Duon replaced — legitimately or covertly — by one of these conspirators, perhaps, that might explain the temple’s strange lack of success — as well as Duon’s apparent ineffectuality.”
“I want every priest removed from this house, immediately,” Viktor growled, turning as if to march to the door and make it so.
“My lord,” said Hivat, stopping Viktor with a placating gesture. “If this conspiracy has any reason to believe they’ve been discovered, they might feel forced to desperate measures. We could bring the coup down on your head this instant without any time to prepare ourselves.”