The day had started well. A crisp early Spring day, like this one, the cloudless sky accented by chirping birds and traces of wood smoke. In the afternoon he'd set her to work making everflames, and she'd made the mistake of complaining.
“Why do you still have me doing this? I'm ready for the next step.”
“The teacher decides who is ready, not the student.”
“Oh come on, you know I'm ready to start learning how to make everwheels.” She pointed at one of his candles and lit it with a touch of tonespace manipulation.
“The everflames you're making will be cooking food for people and keeping them from freezing to death next Winter,” he told her. “They're more useful than everwheels because anyone can use them.”
“Anyone can use an everwheel, too” she said.
“Not really,” he said, “unless you're talking about some blacksmith with a lazy man's grindstone wheel. Sure, I could put the everwheel spell on the rear axle of a cart and make it move without horses. But a non-wizard has to actually touch one of the Gifts to control it. That's no problem for someone turning on an everflame, but how is a farmer supposed to reach under his cart and stroke the axle to turn off the spell and stop his cart...when he's riding in it?”
“You wouldn't have that problem,” she said.
“No,” he agreed. “But I'm used to horses, and the governor has plenty of those.” He turned to leave the room.
“Aren't you going to help me make these?”
“Later,” he said. “I have a meeting to get to.”
Of course he did. But she could make everflames anytime. Why should she labor alone at it while he sat through a meeting, when she could just wait until he could help?
A meeting? Most meetings happened in the morning, when everyone was fresh and rested. Either he was lying, or not telling her everything. No surprise there; Xander had his secrets like everyone else.
After a few minutes she decided to follow him.
When she heard the stairwell door open and close again, she hurried out of her room and dashed to it. After allowing enough time for him to descend to the next lower floor, she eased the door open and slipped into the stairwell.
She half-expected him to descend all the way to ground level and leave the building to meet a mistress somewhere. He might be a wizard, but he was also a man.
But they never reached the ground floor. He stopped and left the stairwell long before that. Rochelle dashed down to the door at the landing and silently cracked it open.
If she'd counted correctly, they were a couple of floors above the Governor's quarters. Only a couple of glow-tubes fought the dimness here. Xander was about to turn the corner, so she slipped out of the stairwell and wrapped enough pathspace around her to make it hard to see her, but not enough to blind herself completely. As she crept down the corridor toward his last position, she heard two voices, both familiar.
“We shouldn't be doing this. If your soldiers catch us, it will undermine your ability to rule.”
“Rules never stopped you before.”
“You know what I mean! It was hard enough consolidating your control after Roberto died. Only the fact that he'd obviously wanted you to succeed him made it possible in the first place.”
“That was two years ago. They're used to it now.”
“Not all of them. There's still a few who think Rado would be better off with a man in charge.”
“Oh good grief! It's not as if ruling the country involves heavy lifting or frequent fistfights. A woman can do it as well as a man.”
“I agree, but I'm not one of the men you have to convince. It might be years before they all accept you. Until then, enemies who think like them may consider Rado a good target for invasion. We both know the Honcho is always looking to expand his Lone Star Empire.”
“So you don't want me any more? Your agreement with Robbie, is it over now that he's gone?”
A sound of exasperation. “You know that's not it. I'll always be here to give you all the help you need.”
“There's more than one kind of help.”
“Your people are going to wonder where you are...”
“So stop wasting time, damn it!”
The voices died away. Were they going somewhere else?
Rochelle crept forward, straining her ears. Small sounds came to her ears but they seemed random, unrecognizable.
When she finally recognized them it was like reliving a shocking day of her childhood: the day she barged in and witnessed her parents making another baby. The shadowy form of Xander leaned back against the wall, with the woman clasping him from his font, her legs wrapped around his waist.
That evening she left the building and followed the setting sun into the West. She did not look back.
Chapter 66
Raul: Convenient Rumors
“...he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.”
– Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Hard faces glowered at each other across the table. There was no chitchat, no icebreakers, no perfunctory attempts at presenting an air of camaraderie.
“Doesn't anyone have something good to report?” Vaca finally barked. “None of you?”
The Commanders assembled didn't like his tone. Several hands went to the to the hilts of their swords. For his part, however, Anderson merely rolled his eyes as if bored. “Do you really think we'd catch him and keep it a secret? News like that leaks.”
“He's right,” said Karlota. He twirled one end of his mustache. “Finding an army, that's not so hard. They're hard to hide. But finding one man on the run? That's not nearly as simple. For all we know he could be in Mexico.”
“Well, it's been weeks now,” growled Vaca. “Even if he crawled down a hole in the ground somewhere, he'd have had to come up for food by now.”
Raul shrugged. “Dunno what to tell you.”
“Well I know what to tell you. Your Excalibur protocol has failed. After all this time, none of has gotten him, and so we still have no leader.”
“Do we really have to have a single leader before we go invade Rado?” Karlota wondered. “Back before the Tourists showed up and gave us their damned Gifts, the President had to ask Congress to declare war. It was a group decision.”
“In theory, yes,” said Anderson. “In actuality, there were many conflicts where was was never officially declared.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, the Gulf Wars...”
“Besides,” said Vaca, “we're an Empire. Not the damned Peoples Republic of Wyoming. We didn't get all this territory by taking a vote or arguing it out in committees.”
Torrez caught their eyes. “Everyone around this table wants to be Honcho,” he said. “Each of us considers himself most qualified, whether that's based on fact or ego, and we're not going to agree on who takes over, not any time soon.”
He took a breath. “But one thing we all agree on. It's time to finish what Peter Martinez started and conquer Rado.”
There were grunts of agreement around the table. Even Vaca nodded curtly, acknowledging the consensus.
“Well then,” he said. “it seems to me that we – ”
A knock interrupted him. All heads swung to the chamber's door, which opened to admit a junior officer. He had the look of a messenger bearing unwelcome news.
“What is it?" Vaca barked, before any of the others managed to speak.
The lieutenant swallowed. “Jeffrey has been sighted! He was heading north from Abilene, toward Rado, leading a small force, perhaps twenty or thirty men.”
The room erupted with questions as everyone tried to grill him at the same time.
“Enough!” Raul bellowed, drawing a glare from Vaca. “This report is garbage. Any force that large would have been sighted weeks ago.”
“Perhaps it took him this long to round up enough loyalists,” Anderson suggested.
“No, Torrez is right,” Vaca growled, as if it hurt him to admit
it. “My men at Abilene would have seen him long before this if he was hanging around near there. Someone saw one of our search parties and drew the wrong conclusion.” He shook his head. “Even Jeffrey wouldn't try to take Denver with twenty men.
“Maybe they just got the direction wrong, and he was heading west,” Karlota suggested.
Torrez snorted. “West? Into the arms of the Queen who killed his uncle? I think not.”
“So we should ignore the report?” asked Karlota.
“No,” said Anderson. “We should appear to believe it.”
Face turned toward him.
“We've been trying to catch him to decide who gets to be Honcho,” he said. “And all the while, we're giving Kristana extra time to prepare for us. I say, rather than waiting to crown a new Honcho, who can then order the invasion, we use this report.”
Vaca studied him. “Use it how, exactly?”
“As the justification for mounting an invasion sooner instead of later,” said Anderson. “The Honcho is taking a group of men with him to join up with Rado against us. Our objectives have converged. Capturing or killing the traitor obviously requires we go after him now in force. To Rado.”
“But the report is bullshit,” Raul objected.
“Yes,” said Anderson. “But we're the only ones who know. If we leak the report and act as if we believe it, the people will think it must be true. It will hurt his reputation, in case he ever shows up, and galvanize support for the war. No one will want to wait for a coronation before going after him.”
Chapter 67
Qusay: The Loophole
“Whoever receives guidance, receives it for his own benefit. Whoever goes astray, does so to his own loss.”
– Quran 17:15
It should have been an oasis. In a proper universe, he and Ateeqa should have had to cross a trackless waste on camel back or horseback, stopping at a caravansary or two until finally the tops of minarets grew out of the horizon. Topping an enormous dune, perhaps, they should finally have come within site of their goal, ancient mud brick walls, perhaps enclosing a mosque, and definitely enclosing a patch of incongruous green where the spring-fed oasis would be flourishing with date palms and such.
Not in this universe. This was Richmond, or used to be called such, and while some might call it an oasis, there were plenty of trees outside its borders. The only dunes were far to the east, pitiful humps of sand on the edge of the Atlantic that scarcely deserve the name.
Still it is civilization, if not that of the Ancients. This would be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer once they noted the guards on almost every corner, the madrassahs imbibing and emitting students, and the fact that everyone you saw had both hands, meaning there was very little theft. Qusay speculated that a woman from Rado could walk down the boulevards here with her head completely uncovered, perhaps even clad in the tight leather leggings that had made the female soldiers in Denver so distracting, and not have the slightest fear of rape or abduction...although they would draw stares from all of the male inhabitants.
“Do you have to report immediately?” Ateeqa asked. “Wouldn't tomorrow morning be just as good?”
He met her lovely eyes above the veil she was going to have to get used to wearing again. “I'm afraid so, beloved. Even in these modern times, when inter-Emir rivalry has been toned down, they insist upon it.”
“But why? Surely you deserve to rest after our journey.”
“In the old days,” he said, “a messenger could make it nearly all the way back, only to encounter death from an assassin on the very doorstep of home. Because of this, it is our custom to report immediately upon entering a city. If I'd known we would be delayed by that fool of a self-styled 'Caliph' Waqqas, I would have detoured around his little patch to avoid presenting myself.”
“But Waqqas isn't even in your Order!”
“True. But even in places bereft of the Sihr, we still follow the protocol with whoever is in charge.”
“Will it take long?” asked Ateeqa, who grew up here and until his posting to Denver had never had her husband pulled away on business just before reaching home.
“Not long,” he promised. “I should be home well before the evening prayer.”
As he stepped from the wagon and gestured to the driver, who flicked the reins and got the horses moving again, Qusay once more reminded himself what a lucky man he was to have Ateeqa. Most in the Order of the Sihr were unmarried.
He knew all of the reasons for this: the frequent travel, the irregular hours, and the fact that having someone you really cared about could be a weakness, a liability exploitable by enemies.
But Allah, may He be praised, had been merciful to him. Ateeqa possessed more patience than any man had the right to expect, especially a man like himself, and her devotion to him surmounted and outweighed all obstacles. She did not ask him more than he was allowed to tell her, and so he told her everything. She did not demand to be the center of his universe, and so of course she was.
He turned and strode down the sidewalk toward a building so innocuous, so obviously blending in with its neighbors that the very stones of it would have screamed Don't look at me! if they could. It bore no sign, as if it were just a family residence, and only the number 718 and the fact that he'd been there before allowed him to notice its presence.
He skipped knocking and pulled open the front door, revealing an antechamber. A short man in a black robe looked up from the papers he had been perusing and lifted his eyebrows. Qusay did not recognize him, nor he Qusay, and so the ambassador waited as the man tried to unscrew his head from his shoulders with a burst of spinspace.
This attempt had no effect at all, and that was the point. It was a far more secure way of identifying a member of the Sihr than any combination of passwords, papers, or secret handshakes. The Way of Turning, otherwise known asطريقة الدوران the Axle Method, was the heart of Sihr power and, because of that, a power they were all immune to. Any pretender would have perished from the spinspace cast, whereas any member of the Sihr had more control over the spinspace near his body than a more distant attacker.
Even had he entered clad in the black robe of their Order, he would have had to endure the test, although if the sentry knew him it would have been a perfunctory gesture. When he failed to die, the man in the black robe nodded and rose to open the door to the inner sanctum.
Had he been visiting friends or business associates the next hour might have been consumed by ritual hospitality: the pouring of steaming al-qahwah into fenjan, the little cups without handles, the coffee laced, perhaps, with saffron, cloves or cinnamon. His hosts would have poured it from the dallah, the coffeepot, in amounts barely enough to cover the bottom of each fenjan, so that it would cool sufficiently for drinking quickly, and they would “refill” his cup in the same manner each time he drained it unless he gestured that he was done drinking. Candied fruit would have accompanied it, while they made small talk, perhaps inquiring after his health and the hardships of the journey.
Here there was none of that. It was not that the Order had no hospitality. They departed from common customs in cases like this to remind each other of the seriousness of their calling.
He face five men in black robes, all older than him, judging by the silver threads mingled with darker ones in their beards. The eldest regarded him impassively. “Report.”
“Kristana's situation is not improving. Rado faces a renewal of the former Honcho's invasion attempt now that his son has been supplanted by a junta of senior military officers.”
“This is not news to us,” the man told him. “The coup happened weeks ago. Continue.”
“Xander has graduated his first class of wizards, which includes our Kareef. Most will stay on to form the nucleus of the faculty so that Xander can continue his own researches.”
“Again, information weeks old that has already reached our ears. Is there nothing else?”
“Three things,” he said. “First, Kristan
a has proposed a trade agreement between Rado, the Emirates...and New Israel.”
The men he faced glanced at each other. “We already have trade with both countries,”noted the elder, “albeit through third parties, the trader caravans.”
“This would be more extensive,” said Qusay, withdrawing the sheaf of documents from an inner pocket of his robe and handing it to him. “It is obviously she hopes to prevent war, by involving us in commerce we would not wish to interrupt.”
The elder accepted the documents and set them aside for further consideration later. “Somehow I get the feeling, Ambassador, that you are endorsing this trade agreement.”
“Actually, I am.”
“Why is that? We've done fine up to now without it.”
“Because of what it involves.”
The elder stroked his beard. “And what could that be? Are we to trade food to our potential enemies, in return for gold or iron? Food that me might be better off using to increase our population to support larger armies?”
“”This,” he said, pulling the thermodyne out of his robe with a bit of a flourish.
The five Sihr tensed, regarding the length of pipe in his hand as if it were a coiled serpent. In a moment, however, they decided it was not a weapon and relaxed a bit. The elder eyed the thing calmly. “We have metal pipes,” he said. “Perhaps the New Israelites have more mines than us, but reclaimed metal from the things of the Ancients meet our needs.”
Qusay smiled. “It is not merely a pipe,” he said. He stroked the pipe lengthwise to turn up the swizzle effect and waved it at them so they could feel the breeze it made. The edge of the stack of documents curled up and began to flap in the wind.
The elder slapped a hand down on the papers before the breeze could scatter them. “We have some swizzles left in the Emirates,” he said. “I am sure the farmers would like to have more for their wells and irrigation, but I do not think it is worth feeding our enemies to obtain them.”
Tonespace: The Space of Energy (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 3) Page 26