by Sonia Lyris
Certainly she could ask. Did you fail the study? Is that why you live in this wretched land that abhors you?
“How long have you been employed thus?” she asked instead.
He would not meet her eyes. “Since childhood, High One.”
“Call me Marisel.”
“Yes, High One.”
Oh, well.
“I am to ask if you are receptive to a contract.”
Of course. It would be some task that only magic could accomplish, that only the very wealthy could afford. A troubled conception to be smoothed. Treasures to be secured in strongboxes that would open only for one specific hand. An impossible decoration high atop some glittering, ostentatious spire.
But nothing as draining as the healing she had given across the countrysides, over and over, for no pay at all.
“A contract with . . . ?”
“It is not given to me to know, High One. May I tell them you are willing to discuss?”
Gallelon had said something about this when they were last together, as he had been repairing a saddle. “Do something other than tend to the endless ocean of suffering Iliban, Maris,” he had said as his needle dipped through the hard leather. She suspected he was using magic to help make the holes, and, curious, she tasted the air around the needle, keeping her touch focused so he would not notice. He did anyway, grinning back at her. “Take an expensive contract. Get paid for your work for a change.”
And she needed the coin.
“You may,” she told the Sensitive. The waif slipped off the chair and sprinted out the door.
Maris drank down the rest of the ale in front of her, which was neither as bad as she had expected nor as good as she’d hoped, and wondered what the contract might be about.
A motion from the high window caught her eyes. A small gray kitten had found its way up onto the thin ledge and was walking toward the tomcat. He had stopped grooming himself as the kitten approached, coming rather closer than she thought prudent. The kitten then sat back on its haunches, intently watching the older male, who gazed out over the assembled humans as if he were alone.
Slowly, as if to test the idea, the kitten raised a paw, reaching toward the older cat.
Foolish creature, Maris thought, strangely absorbed by this drama. A sudden swipe from the big cat and the kitten would fly off the narrow ledge and fall some ten feet or so into the room of tables and chairs. It would probably survive. Perhaps with something broken. A painful lesson.
The elder cat turned a sudden, hard look on the kitten, and the tiny paw froze midair.
“Ser High One?” A whispered voice. A figure tentatively sat across from her.
Another Sensitive? Who had this much money—or desperation—to be so fervently seeking mages so far from the capital?
This one stank of poorly washed clothes, smoke, and cheap rotgut. Her face was thin, the cords in her neck raised. Maris was done being polite; a quick touch into her body told Maris that many substances swam in the woman’s blood, that she ate little food, that her kidneys would not serve her much longer.
It tugged at her, this suffering. Sensitives had no choice but to use every means they had to quiet what they could not control. Lacking a mage’s training, their lives would be cacophonous with the etherics of the world, that Iliban could not hear.
“Will you speak with my employers?” She spoke in a hoarse whisper. “They have a contract to offer you.”
Well, she had already said yes once. “I will.”
A quick duck of the head, and the woman slid off the chair and was gone.
Maris returned her attention to the high rafters, to the tomcat and impertinent kitten, to see where the drama stood. But they were both gone. With a disappointed exhale, she returned her attention to her stew, which tasted much better than it looked, and wondered who would show up next.
He arrived the next morning as she sat in the eating room, sipping at a dark and fermented bitter Arun tea, wishing for honey. His gaze swept the room, settled on her.
A tall man, broadshouldered and wearing clothes nearly as anonymous as her own. She dipped her attention into him to find that he was strong, with a large number of scars. A trained soldier, then, though she could have told this from the way he strode across the room to her.
In Perripur the wealthy and powerful did not send soldiers to talk to mages. But here in Arun, the monarchy and military were tightly entwined, explaining the empire’s insatiable appetite for land.
What will Arunkin not eat? went the Perripin saying, expecting no answer.
He sat. “High One—” he began.
“Marisel,” she said sharply, tired of the game.
“Marisel, then. I won’t waste your time. The palace offers you a contract.”
“Does it indeed? The red, beating heart of Arunkel? Where your king outlaws our very existence?”
At this he tilted his head. “Times change. I intend to see them change further.”
Maris exhaled a short laugh, then sobered, considered this, and realized from his words and demeanor that she was talking to someone from the palace.
An intriguing notion, to see altered the near thousand-year tradition of loudly denouncing magic with one side of the mouth while hiring a mage with the other.
“What sort of contract?”
“To give the monarch the benefit of your excellent vision.”
The monarch? She sat back, surprised. That the Arun king quietly employed mages when he could persuade them to come close, she knew. Gallelon himself had played that game years ago. He had told her about the king’s library one warm night as they sat watching a storm of falling stars. His description had filled her with a kind of lust. She felt it now.
“The library is exquisite, but be careful of the Arunkel monarchy,” Gallelon had added. “The snake bites.”
Rumor held that the old king was ill. Maris had wondered whether his mages had abandoned him.
Was she being recruited to replace them?
“The old monarch or the new?” she asked.
A faint smile crossed his face. “The new.”
In Perripur, state parliaments discussed every issue at length, often until it was far past relevant, producing treaties that covered inches-thick sheaves of papers. The Perripin government did not hesitate to hire elder mages to advise and remove deadlocks. Far less often for their magic, though to have a mage handy meant a show of power. A little like having a swordsman as a servant.
“You wish only my advice, Arunkin? I find that hard to believe.”
He spread his hands. “I would be a fool to try to bind you beyond your will. Come to the palace. Let us show you Arunkel hospitality. When we need more than advice, we will ask, and you decide.”
“You have a library.”
He smiled. “Histories going back to Arunkel’s founding and before. Poems from the masters. We have the most extensive collection in the empire. You would be most welcome there.”
Hot baths. Good meals.
Books.
A memory of Keyretura’s voice: What are you missing, Marisel?
“I will not wear the black for you,” she said, suddenly annoyed at him, at herself. “I will not be used to put fear into your enemies or set your monarch on the throne. We do no king-making.”
At least they weren’t supposed to. The council of mages had uncompromising penalties for such actions.
She tasted the quickening of the man’s heartbeat, though he hid it well.
“I don’t need your help in that regard, Marisel. The princess will be crowned midsummer, or sooner.”
Maris’s mind, fickle thing, was already in the fabled library, imagining running her fingers across the leather-clad spines of books, velum scrolls, stacks of amardide sheaves. The treasures that must be there. Unique across the world. A sublime opportunity.
The snake bites.
“After your queen is crowned,” she said, compromising with the warnings in her head.
He considere
d her for a moment. “Allow me to put you on retainer until then,” he said. “Enough that you can stay wherever you like . . .” With this, his eyes flickered quickly around the room. “And then I will send someone for you, after the coronation.”
Maris had already decided, she realized. To see the inside of the palace, the Jewel of the Empire, and browse its library . . . irresistible. The contract obligated her to little.
“So be it,” she said.
He held his hand out, palm up. On it was a gold Arunkel souver, king-side showing.
She hesitated. What was she missing?
Hot baths, she reminded herself. Good food.
The library.
She put her hand on top of his, palm down, the gold coin between them.
“Our contract is made,” she said. Their hands turned in place, the coin now hers.
After Samnt, she had despaired of caring about anything for some time to come. Now there was something she wanted, and she cherished the thought of it, pushing away the nagging sense that she was, indeed, missing something.
Chapter Fourteen
“He wants his dogs, too, ser,” Naulen told Innel.
Easy enough, Innel thought, if that would get them the old king’s cooperation in the coronation ceremony.
“And to see his daughter,” she added.
That might be harder. Still, Restarn’s cooperation was worth a lot to the strength of Cern’s rule. It might be worth everything.
He gestured, inviting the small blond slave to sit at a table where a mug of hot wine and a plate of pastries waited. “Have all you like,” he said.
She sat where he directed, seeming bewildered, each movement somehow a graceful submission. She touched the cream-filled confections with her fingertips, as if she had never seen such a wondrous thing before.
Enchanting, he thought, wondering how much was pretense. All of it, he suspected, though it was nonetheless compelling. Beyond her value as entertainment, Naulen was proving her worth by regularly relating to him bits of conversation from the old king, who talked a great deal now that he had no one else but his blond slave to listen to him.
Naming names. Innel was gathering a very useful list.
As for Cern, that had turned out to be the work of nearly a tenday, starting with gentle suggestions, outlining his reasoning, gingerly turning her objections into his own supporting arguments. In the end he convinced her to see her father, to even try to be pleasant to him. To take to him the dogs she hated so much.
The king had always held the beasts with voice and will, but Cern had wanted nothing to do with them. Innel knew the king’s dichu dogs would fight harness and lead if Cern held the other end, so he had the kennelmaster give them something to make them more compliant.
The coronation, Innel had reminded Cern.
Outside the king’s room Cern took the leads of the muzzled dogs from the kennelmaster and went in. Innel waited in the hallway.
When Cern emerged a bell later, she vibrated with pent-up fury. Innel took her to her rooms, signaling Srel to fetch for him the previously arranged-for wines and twunta and infused oils. He spent the next hours in attentive application of the collection.
Day by day, as the coronation date inched closer, Cern became, if possible, even more tightly strung.
The seneschal continued beyond annoying, insisting on extravagant expenditures that would dwarf those of the royal wedding. Again, Innel objected.
“You can have it when you want it, ser Royal Consort, or you can have it for less coin, but you cannot have both. Trust me, ser.”
Innel bit down on his objections and again gave way.
If the ceremony happened—if Restarn did his part—if Cern was made queen—it would all be worth it.
It was high summer when the coronation finally began. It took the better part of five days, dawn to midnight, most of it loud and brightly colored, excessive and ostentatious. The spectacle would culminate with the single most important moment, the one in which the old king was to hand his daughter the Anandynar scepter, passed down through the generations, from monarch to monarch.
The object itself was a too-long, slightly dented stiletto encrusted with gems and worked through with various metals, so over-decorated and lightweight that Innel suspected it would break if one tried to use it for anything beyond ceremony.
At least it would not be too heavy for a sick old man. All Restarn would need to do would be to hand the scepter to his daughter. His heir and only progeny.
It seemed simple enough, so Innel worried.
During each day of ceremonies and all-night celebrations leading to the main event, Innel reviewed the seer’s words to him that night in Botaros, and the extensive resources he had now put into finding her. It was starting to seem to him as if he were dumping coins into the depths of the ocean for all that his various hires, Tayre most expensively among them, were providing him.
When Cern was queen, he would have more funds. But once he started tapping the royal purse, he would need to be even more discreet. He might even need to tell her, in case this all came to light. Another problem entirely, and for another time.
The final day of the coronation—then the final hour—arrived. The king was carried in his chair to the Great Hall, wrapped in red and black and gold.
It was the first time Restarn had been out of his sickbed in over six months, and he looked startled, eyes too wide, gaze flickering here and there as if not quite certain where he was. Innel felt an edge of alarm. Had the doctor given him too much of the various herbs intended to keep him calm and compliant?
Surely the man would be able, at the very least, to hand Cern the scepter. It was all he needed to do. Such a simple thing. But even after a lifetime of studying the man, trying to read his thoughts through his eyes and turn of mouth, Innel could not tell what was in his mind or what he would do.
“Get his dogs,” Innel hissed to Nalas and Srel. They hurried off, returning with the pair of brindled canines.
With one dog on each side of him, their heads in his lap, one licking his hand, the king seemed to calm, something like sense coming back into his eyes. Innel watched him intently.
When the moment finally came, the Great Hall packed with thousands of aristos and eparchs and royals, all falling utterly silent, the old king looked slowly around the room. His gaze settled on Innel. The moment lengthened. Innel looked back at the king, feeling sweat drip down his back.
Finally Restarn looked to his daughter, then handed the long, sharp scepter to her with a casual, almost disgusted look, as if it were an unwashed dinner knife that he was well rid of.
Innel could live with that. It didn’t matter now. Cern was queen.
The next morning Cern announced Innel as her new Lord Commander.
Innel sat in his small office as the day went on, receiving visitors, noting those who came—some to ask questions, some to explain past decisions at length, and some to lecture, as in the case of the seneschal—and those who stayed away.
Conspicuously absent was the now-former Lord Commander, whom Innel could well imagine seething as he paced the much larger offices Innel was now entitled to. While Innel thought a military rebellion highly unlikely, he didn’t want to inspire one by mishandling the king’s older and now more powerful brother, either.
Don’t push until you must.
Yes, but when must he?
Among his visitors were Cohort brothers and sisters, even those who had left years ago, all wanting to make sure he would not forget how passionate had been their support for him these many years.
“Put in a good word for me, when the time is right, hmm?” Taba had said, referring to the commander of the navy, whom Innel had yet to speak with.
“No, really, Innel—congratulations. Truly.” This from Mulack, pushing toward him an excellent bottle of greened brandy, then eating the rest of the fruit plate Srel had brought, that Innel had barely touched.
“And the mage?” Tok had asked him.
Quietly. Tempting as it was, it would be some time yet before he could parade a mage down the hallways without upsetting a significant number of influential aristos with whom he was not yet ready to lock horns.
The Great Houses seemed content to let Innel’s Cohort siblings represent their good wishes. Those Houses who had not been fortunate enough to have sons and daughters in the Cohort these last two decades instead sent notes. The pale red amardide envelopes were collecting in piles.
But a good many of the rest, generals and royals, eparchs and bloodlines, would be waiting to see how well Innel handled this powerful beast he had gotten on top of, over the next days. It was one thing to mount up, but another thing, entirely different, to ride.
They would be especially watching to see how he handled the former Lord Commander Lason.
He missed his brother’s advice keenly now. Opening a drawer, he pulled out a metal arrowhead. It was the only thing he had kept of his brother’s.
When he and his brother had been boys, during a particularly foolish game in the woods, Innel had grazed Pohut’s leg with an arrow. While Pohut pressed his hand against his leg where blood seeped out around his fingers, he had explained to the younger Innel that injuring your allies is a poor practice. As an apology Innel had broken the arrow, then broken the bow as well. Pohut had called him a fool, mocking him for wasting a valuable weapon, so Innel was surprised to find the arrowhead from that broken arrow among Pohut’s few possessions all these years later.
Holding the bit of metal now, he ran his finger lightly over the still-sharp edge and considered the former Lord Commander and what do with him. Innel had every right to pressure the man as hard as he wanted now—he could push Lason past his temper, if he chose. It was an extraordinarily tempting idea.
But it would be a short-term satisfaction. He did not need to push yet. He would give Lason a few days first to spend some rage and digest the meal of having been replaced.