Nemias put his hands on my shoulders. “I know you wish a lot of things had gone better. It wasn’t your choice to leave. You came back as soon as you could. All the rest was the Empress’s doing, not yours.”
I noticed Guthre giving me an oddly quizzical look, but she wisely said nothing. It took a moment to compose myself. I hadn’t expected Sefa’s death to affect me, but it did. Regardless of all that had passed between us, I had loved her and thought she had loved me, and we had shared years and a daughter together.
“That’s not why you came here, I know,” Nemias said. “You did nice work with the engineers and the hospital both. I think we would have won anyway, at least this round, but it would have cost a lot more lives, and they would have been back sooner than they will now. You’ve added a bit to your legend, at least here in Whitmount.”
I shrugged. “We may have a problem.”
Nemias smiled grimly. “Well, you know how to handle problems.”
“It’s not that kind of problem,” I said. “It involves the chancellor.”
Nemias flexed his hands. “That is a problem. I should try the traitor, but what I really want to do is see him killed.”
I nodded. “I may need him. At least for a little while. He has information we need.”
Nemias didn’t seem terribly surprised.
“Do whatever you need, Sperrin. I’ll back you up. I imagine it would be easier for me if I didn’t have to put him on trial. Don’t tell me the details unless you need my help.”
This time I smiled. “You’d only worry.”
“Exactly. Don’t put me in a position where I have to stop you. If you feel like you have to do something stupid, make sure you’re gone before I find out about it. I’ll defend you afterward. Just don’t ask me to defend you during.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Nemias laughed. “Me too. But with your history, I wouldn’t bet on it. There’s no one better at winning a battle, but for such a great captain, you sure have made some bad decisions in other parts of your life.”
“That’s true enough,” I had to admit.
Nemias took a step forward and we embraced. “Just get out of here and do what you need to do,” said Nemias. “Take some troopers if they’ll help, anything you need. I have a battle to finish mopping up. But one thing?”
“Name it.”
“If you have to go, don’t take ten years to make it back next time, understood?”
“Understood.” I turned and left, Guthre like a shadow two paces behind me.
Chapter 24
Ketya
Whitmount: Six weeks after the Loss
I never thought it would be three days before Sperrin returned. I never thought Talye would die while I watched, helpless on the other side of a cell door. I never thought my father would betray all of us.
Somehow I had survived all that had happened in the palace, but I didn’t think I could survive this. So much of what had kept me going was not wanting to let my father down, and the whole time he didn’t even care.
I just stood there in the pool of blood and I couldn’t move. My father said something, but I couldn’t understand a word he said. It felt like standing underwater watching someone on the surface try to talk to me. I couldn’t even see him clearly. I don’t even know if he was talking with me. For all I know he was talking to that...creature who had killed Talye.
I wanted to die. I wanted to never move again. I wanted to stand silent and straight like a gallowwood tree, to die without ever having to move again.
Sperrin
We could hear voices by the time we reached the halfway point of the last stairway. Guthre touched my arm to stop me. Both of us put our packs down quietly. Guthre stepped ahead and took point, moving scout-stealthily.
Gradually the voices coalesced into Kern and the chancellor. The chancellor spoke in heated tones, while Kern sounded almost smug—an odd turnabout from the usual state of things, but perhaps not unexpected given who was on which side of the cell door. I’m surprised Kern is talking with him at all, I thought. He seemed pretty disgusted last time we spoke. Maybe he’s having second thoughts about volunteering for guard duty in the depths of Whitmount, far from the fighting.
“That’s not Kern,” Guthre said abruptly. “The tone is right, but the cadence is all wrong. And so are the words. They’re talking about gods and bargains. Kern talks about hunting and girls.”
“You’re sure?” I asked, as I drew my sword.
Guthre just nodded. She drew her own light blade and stepped aside to let me take point.
We moved silently down the stairs. Kern—or whatever had taken his shape—stood over Talye’s body, talking through the cell window to the chancellor. Guthre startled at the sight of her dead sergeant, but made no sound. We closed quickly and soundlessly.
The chancellor’s startled eyes in the cell must have given us away. Kern turned before I could close, stillsword already at the ready.
The luminous golden eyes gave the creature away.
“Pleased to meet you yet again. I see you found your daughter.”
Now what is that supposed to mean? No wonder this thing likes the chancellor. They both talk in the same kind of circles.
“Why are you here?” I asked, not expecting an answer.
“It amuses me. But you would probably get a better answer from your chancellor friend behind this door.”
“Or I could just kill you both and stop being lied to.”
“I can’t speak for your friend, but you will find that I am not so easy to kill.”
I shrugged. “I killed you once, I can kill you again. If I need to, I’ll just keep doing it until it takes.”
“Good luck with that. You are very proud. It will come back to haunt you someday.” The creature smiled wolfishly.
“Probably. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me your name?”
The eyes flashed. “For your book, no doubt. Ask your friend.”
I slashed, my dark blade a blur. The blade never struck. The creature vanished.
Putting my back to the wall, I cast around for shadows or signs of an invisible attacker.
“He’s gone,” the chancellor said from inside the cell. “He will return, but not soon. He can return to his homeland that way, but to get back here he must travel more slowly, through the barrows.”
“I think you have some explaining to do,” I said. “It’s time you told us the truth.”
“Why, assuming I had been less than candid with you in the past, would I tell you a different story now?” the chancellor asked.
“Because I can open this door for you if I choose. But I need to know everything if you want a chance at freedom. I need to know what you were doing in the palace and why you were doing it. I need to know the truth.”
“And what difference would that make?”
“You hold the key to Ananya’s magic. I’m already convinced that you should die for what you did—just for the things I know you did, even without knowing all of it yet. But I’m willing to free you if you can help to restore the magic.”
“If I agree to do so, will you be willing to promise me an escort to safety? Freedom someplace where Burren can retake me isn’t of much use.”
“I think we need to hear a full account of what you did before we agree to anything. No more lies.”
“And if you don’t like what I have to say?”
I hefted my blade. “I’ll be happy to kill you right now if I think you’ve lied again.”
The chancellor didn’t seem bothered by the threat. “You would lose your last chance to save Ananya if you did.”
“It would almost be worth it,” muttered Guthre.
Lifting the bolt, I opened the cell door. “Again, I think you have some explaining to do.”
“I suppose I do,” the chancellor answered. “You would like me to show my cards to you and claim my winnings or accept my loss. It is not an unreasonable expectation. Come inside
and we will talk forthrightly, you and I. And then, as you have already surmised, it will be time for us to leave.”
Ketya stood just inside the door, still as a wax statue. Guthre went to her quickly, while I entered the room more warily, my eyes never leaving the chancellor.
“Revive her,” I said to Guthre, more roughly than I intended. “She needs to hear what he has to say, too.”
Ketya
I woke up to the sound of my father speaking. At first I thought I still dreamed, because he spoke clearly and directly, speaking of things he had never talked about, at least not since my mother’s death. All of the secrets he said he had never told: It had to be a dream. I lay back and listened, my eyes half-lidded. I was on a couch, my head pillowed in someone’s lap. I saw Guthre sitting above me. I’m supposed to be nursing you back to health, not the other way around, I thought. Still, I felt groggy and distant, as if I listened to my father’s words from far away. Guthre’s lap pillowing my head, and Guthre’s hands light on my shoulders, felt like the only things connecting me to the same world she and my father lived in.
“You probably know of my wife’s death,” my father was saying. “Most people would have accepted the loss of a spouse as one of life’s tragedies. You did,” he said, looking at Sperrin. “But I did not. I knew that only a god could undo what life had done to me—to my wife.
“At the time I was a powerful man, but not yet a part of the Empress’s inner circle. Still, I thought I had enough to offer a god. The god did not have to talk to me, since I had no standing in the Talisman of Truce, but he did so anyway. We concluded a bargain with certain promises. My daughter’s name was included to seal the deal.”
“Which god?” Sperrin asked. My father clearly wanted to avoid giving a name, but Sperrin pressed the point. “Which god did you talk to?”
“I am surprised you hadn’t surmised it for yourselves. My daughter, at least, should have foreseen it. Only one god had anything to offer me. Only one god had lost as I had.”
And then it came to me and I murmured the name without thinking: “Kedessen.”
I saw triumph in my father’s eyes. I had guessed right.
“Who?” asked Guthre.
A little flush of strength returned to me. “He was the lover of Senne, the goddess who agreed—some say volunteered—to become the source af Ananya’s magic as part of the Holy War settlement. She wasn’t dead, but she might as well have been dead to him, since feeding her strength to Ananya put her in a sort of coma. There were a lot of sad songs written about their lost love, once enough time had passed after the Holy War for people to think of the gods as exotic and romantic instead of as bloodthirsty killers.”
“Oh,” said Guthre, glancing at the dead body sprawled just outside the doorway. “I guess they’ll have to rethink those songs again for a while.”
“So you made a deal with Kedessen,” said Sperrin. “That was some years ago. What happened?”
“Yes,” said the chancellor. “What happened was that my first approach to the god was...flawed. I was not in the bargaining position I supposed. The god did not feel compelled to keep his word at that time. He brought the old magical abilities in my wife’s bloodline back to life, deliberatly misreading a term I had used a touch ambiguously. Why do you think my daughter can see the symbols of the old magic so easily? If there were anyone alive to train her, she could become a sorceror. And Kedessen claimed that technically that bringing to life satisfied our bargain. But he freely admitted that he was cheating me.”
“He cheated you?” Guthre asked, incredulous. “And he took your daughter’s name? And you went back to him?”
“I allowed myself to be cheated,” the chancellor responded, stiffly. “I learned from my indiscretion. I did not repeat the mistake.”
“Go on,” said Sperrin.
“From that time on I worked on attaining a position of real power, one where the god would not be able to break his word or cheat me when I approached him again. I devoted my whole life to it. I did great service for the empire.”
“Excuse me if we’re less than impressed now,” said Guthre.
“You may be less than impressed, but he”—the chancellor nodded at Sperrin—“knows how much I did. My daughter knows how much I did. While I advanced in the service of the Empress, I learned everything there was to know about the Talisman of Truce. Even the most minor-seeming clauses had their importance. I became the foremost authority on the treaty in all Ananya. I used my daughter to test my own knowledge: She probably knows the treaty as well as anyone other than me and the gods. I knew I would need to use it when the time came.
“Finally, I reached the Empress’s side as her chancellor, with the power to speak to the gods—and to compel them to keep promises under the terms of the Talisman. Finally, I was ready to return to the land of the gods.
“I chose my time carefully. There would only be one opportunity and it would have to be handled perfectly if I was to avoid reprisal. And their could be no fallback plans, even for me who always planned to turn failures into success; if this one opportunity did not succeed, there would be no other. So I took the Talisman of Truce, as was my right as chancellor, and returned to the land of the gods, this time through the Westbarrow entrance. That also gave me an opportunity to remove the seals that would give the palace warning if the gods returned through that entrance.”
He’s leaving something out, I thought. I still felt too fuzzy brained to think of exactly what, but somewhere he seemed to have skipped a step.
And then it came to me: the armor that he’d taken from the theater. The Talisman of Truce had a deportment clause, which specified that neither people nor gods would be required to speak to anyone not bearing the Talisman of Truce and clothed in suitable attire, defined in the clause as a formal costume bearing native enchantment of the party’s own world. It was further modified by clause 178, with its cryptic references to false costumes and false names. I had never entirely understood the clauses—but presumably they meant what Tenia had thought, that to speak to the gods you needed to wear something made with the old magic, the kind I saw in the runes on the stage of the theater, and in the sally tunnels. And in the Snake Slayer armor that I now wore.
He is trying to trick us into returning with him to the land of the gods, in such a way that the gods will only negotiate with him. Will I also be able to speak with a god? The whole idea seemed so overwhelming, but all of our lives and futures depended on it.
Guthre’s hands tightened slightly on my shoulders. She must have sensed a problem.
Should I confront him? I wondered. Can I confront him? Probably not, I knew. I would tell Sperrin at the first opportunity, but until then I would have to let my father’s words go unchallenged. As far as I knew, he had no idea that I carried the Talisman, or that I wore a costume suitable for conversation with the gods.
Fortunately, my father didn’t seem to have noticed my reaction.
“What, exactly, was the bargain you made?” asked Sperrin.
“It was simple, really,” my father answered. “My wife’s return for the return of Senne to her lover.”
“By betraying the Empress and her family?”
“By inviting Kedessen to send his messengers into the palace at a time when the Empress and her entire family would be present, after which he could do whatever he saw fit. The invitation was strictly according to the terms of the treaty.”
That didn’t seem quite right to me. I would need to recheck the exact wording of a couple of clauses to be certain, though.
“That explains the godlings. What about the Alliance soldiers?”
The chancellor smiled. “That’s actually an amusing story. Since I wouldn’t exactly be welcome to live in Ananya after my wife returned to me, I reached out to certain members of the Central Alliance leadership who I had become acquainted with in the course of my duties as chancellor. In return for knowledge of the exact time the Drowned City harbor defenses would be lifted and t
he Home Fleet would be away, they agreed to provide transportation out of the city and a retirement home and income suitable to my rank. Kedessen has by now delivered my wife to that home. She will be waiting there when I arrive.”
“If the god kept his promise this time,” Sperrin said.
“This time, he had to keep his promise.”
Sperrin shrugged. “And how do you intend to get there?”
“You will be escorting me, of course. In return for my cooperation in bringing you face-to-face with Kedessen so you may attempt to convince him to undo this. That’s what you want, right?”
Sperrin laughed bitterly. “I wonder what the Alliance thought of your bargain when they realized you forgot to tell them about the sea monsters in the harbor?”
“I forgot nothing,” my father said. “The sea monsters were proof against betrayal. If the Alliance kept their word and brought me out of the palace and to their ship, I would have informed them about the sea monsters, and which channel to take to avoid them.”
“I suppose it was neatly done,” Sperrin said, “up until the point where your daughter lived, and insisted I rescue you. And the point where I killed the Alliance soldiers sent to retrieve you.”
The chancellor nodded. “Those were unforeseen developments,” he admitted.
Those were the last words I heard my father say. I was still grappling with the idea that he had betrayed our country. To have him admit so coldly that he had planned my death as well was more than I could take. I must have passed out.
When I came to my senses again, my father and Sperrin were talking in low tones near the door, only a few steps from Sergeant Talye’s body. Guthre was packing my things for an immediate departure; her own pack already sat on the floor next to me.
Guthre noticed right away when I awoke. “You didn’t miss much,” she said. “We’re leaving now. They’ve reached some sort of agreement, at least until your father has another chance to betray us.”
“We won’t let him,” I said, trying to project confidence.
Guthre raised an eyebrow skeptically. “Can you get up?” she asked.
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