by Sonia Lyris
The Jewel of the Empire. No one who saw this immense palace could wonder why it was so named.
Foresight was whispering urgently, warning that in moments she would walk into a dire darkness without escape. She pressed the whispers away, instead studying the palace windows, wondering who was inside and might be looking down on her now.
When they reached the front of the line Tayre spoke quietly to one of the guards. They were motioned inside, beyond the gate. The guard left at a jog, another stepping up to replace him, looking them over curiously.
Too late to run, though vision kept pushing, suggesting quickly closing options.
Tayre watched her attentively. Ready. Always ready.
Hunter’s eyes. Still. Always.
Minutes later the guard returned, a tencount or more of soldiers trotting alongside, large men in red and black. The two of them were instantly surrounded, her arms were pinned, and she was nearly lifted off the ground as she was rushed forward to a destination she could no longer see. Fighting panic and trying not to struggle, she could see little through the black and red uniforms. She and Tayre were swept forward, toward and through huge palace doors to the inside of the Jewel of the Arunkel Empire.
Glimpses of long hallways, colorful throngs of people stepping quickly back from the mass of guards rushing forward. Stairs and more stairs. Another long hallway. They stopped a moment. She tried to catch her breath. Then movement again, and they were inside a high-ceilinged room. The guards released her. Unsteady and shaking, she looked around.
Walls a pale pink with delicate red swirls. A floor of gray wood and milk tile. High windows letting in light but showing nothing but flat sky.
No one moved. The guards stood silent and large, making even Tayre look small. No—he was making himself look small. The way he held himself. One shoulder dropped. Head tilted. Eyes wide, mouth slack, as if he were as stunned to be here as she was.
When we walk through those gates, I will leave you.
He had already left. The man standing beside her was not the man who had held her in his arms only that morning.
The door to the room opened. In walked another large man, his red and black uniform glinting with gold. His gaze went to her and stayed there a long moment, then went to Tayre, then back to her.
Looking as he did now, she would not have recognized him from her memory of that dark night, years ago in Botaros.
“Lord Commander,” Tayre said, bowing deeply, bobbing slightly at the deepest part of the bow, as if nervous and uncertain, which Amarta was certain he was not. His voice was accented with a lilt Amarta had not heard him use before. “I am servant and messenger. This girl, I deliver her to you. I am to tell you she has come of her own will. That she gives herself to you without influence.”
Should she bow as Tayre had done? She watched the Lord Commander as keenly as he now watched her, hoping for a clue, finding none. Why hadn’t she thought to ask Maris or Tayre enough to prepare for this moment?
All her vision and resolve had not prepared her for this. Not even to ask the right questions.
“Yes,” the man said. “This is the one. You may go. Tell your master I will contact him. Tell him he has done well.”
Tayre bowed again and again and backed to the door.
She had known he would leave, yet he had been right: it was only in thought. She felt a rising panic, a curious transfer of her fear from Tayre from these many years of running to the man in front of her.
Who was, after all, the man who had sent him. The holder of the hunting dog’s leash. The man in whose hands her life rested. Who had killed his brother, because she had told him how.
If she had been able to look further into the future, then, back in Botaros—if she had seen more clearly—would she would have chosen his brother instead? And then, might she now not be standing here? Perhaps his brother would have been worse.
It didn’t matter: there was no asking about what might have happened in events already passed. That was not vision; that was regret.
The Lord Commander gestured, and the rest of the men followed Tayre out. Suddenly the room was empty but for the two of them, the echo of the door closing the only sound in this quiet room.
The Lord Commander seemed to look everywhere but at her. “Amarta al . . . ?” he prompted.
She swallowed. Tension was a pressure in her head and throat, fear a tightness in her chest. She sensed every word she spoke would matter. “Nowhere,” she answered. Her voice sounding small in her own ears. “There is no home.”
“Amarta al Arunkel, then,” he said roughly. “And that’s far from nowhere.”
It took her a moment to understand his words, to comprehend their meaning, to realize she had already earned his annoyance.
“Yes, ser.”
“When last we spoke, I was short on time, and you were short on sleep. Now I have plenty of time. Is it true that you come here of your own free will?”
“Yes, ser.” He had a way of asking questions that made her want to answer. Her hands were clenched into tight, damp fists. With effort she uncurled her fingers.
“You have no need to fear me, Amarta al Arunkel. All those years running—all a misunderstanding now addressed. You are safe here. Safer than you’ve ever been.”
She didn’t believe him. But it didn’t matter; she had not come here to be safe. For him to say this, though, what did that mean? Was he trying to reassure her? Or make her more afraid?
He motioned to one of the chairs. “Sit. I’ll have food sent for. Later, a room for you. A clean bed in which to sleep. Perhaps even a bath. Yes?”
She sat, clutching the loose fabric of her travel-stained trousers to keep her hands busy. She felt out of place in this room of high ceilings and heavy doors, of chairs of polished wood. It made her wonder how much Tayre had been paid to deliver her here, and decided that she would rather not know. She thought of Dirina and Pas and, bizarrely, what they would think of this room, of this moment, of this man.
He had, she realized, asked her a question, but she did not understand it. As he walked the room, watching her, vision played dimly at the edge of her awareness, shifting like flame-cast shadow.
He was the largest thing in front of her. From him came warm blood, and cold stillness, and the echoing screams and cries of thousands.
He stood at the door now, speaking to someone about food. She was too afraid to feel hungry. What she felt, she suspected, was no longer of much consequence.
The sound of his boots on the wood and tile reminded her of a moment in half-dream, some years ago. Vision or memory? Or both?
“Amarta, where are your sister and her child?”
Her gaze snapped to his, then down at the floor’s tile of gray and milk.
He pulled a chair around to face her. He took his time as he sat, his every movement unhurried. “Will you not answer?” His tone seemed to hint at consequence, at displeasure, at the unacceptability of silence. It cut through her thoughts, making it even harder to think of a reply. “I assumed you would cooperate with me now, since you came here willingly. Perhaps I assumed in error.”
She looked at him, afraid to see his face, afraid not to. His expression threatened some kind of heat, like dry tinder waved near a fire.
“My first question, and you refuse. This does not give me much confidence in you, Seer.” To her continued muteness, he made a dismissive gesture. “Never mind. I’ll find them if I want them. Why are you here?”
She must answer. Pushing away the dread she felt at these words, she stuttered. “To—to answer your questions, Lord Commander.”
“You rejected my offer only last year. Has the future changed so much since then?”
“The future is always changing.”
“Don’t play word games with me, Amarta,” he said, his tone forceful. “What has changed?”
She cringed, swallowed. “I have, Lord Commander.”
“In what way?”
Children screaming, burnin
g in basements. Heads sitting atop walls on spikes. Bodies swinging from trees.
What would he understand? What would he believe?
“I want Arunkel to be a good place for my nephew to grow up.”
“In what way is it not?” He sounded annoyed.
This was completely the wrong beginning. If she were to have a chance to make him change his mind about anything, she would have to gain his confidence, and she was already failing. It was not enough to convince him that she was sincere; she had to show him that she could help him in ways he cared about. She had to win his faith. But how?
The way Tayre had with her. Building trust, one careful detail at a time. Without pretending the past had not happened. That was why Tayre had told her his various reasons for doing what he did: he was building her trust.
She must be useful to the Lord Commander. Predict something both soon and likely. That had, perhaps, already happened, but that he had not yet heard about.
In his future she saw him slam a fist against a desk, furious with someone. With many someones. With a town. Many towns. People would die under this fury, but still he would still not get what he wanted. And what did he want?
Smithies stand idle, he spat, waiting for ore.
“There is a mine, ser,” she said, struggling for elusive detail, forcing herself to sound more confident than she was. “More than one. But one in particular.”
“Go on.”
His voice revealed nothing. She hesitated, then pressed ahead.
The rails.
“The rails.” She had never seen a rail-wagon or the rails it rode on, had barely heard of them until one of Maris’s long stories in one of the many inns.
“What about them?”
Rocks. Large rocks.
“They will break the rails. With rocks.”
“That would be astonishingly reckless of them. The mines and the rails are all that stand between them and my troops razing the town to the ground.”
“They want control of their land and future. They want it badly enough that they will sacrifice the mines, their homes, everything they have.”
“No, they won’t. No one goes that far.”
Amarta thought of her journey here.
“Tell me how to put this rebellion to rest, for good and for all, Seer.”
An impossible question; nothing could be that certain. She licked her lips, trying to see his future and those around him. What they might say. What they might do.
Too much detail.
What path took him to an ended rebellion?
“Give them ownership of the mines, ser.” Part guess, and it wasn’t quite right, but she could not see more.
“Impossible. The mines were opened by the crown at great cost. Find me another solution.”
Another solution? And this one already so hard to obtain? She must have looked as lost as she felt, because he said, “But later. First we come to an understanding. Who convinced you to come here? The man who found you, perhaps?”
He meant Tayre. “No.”
His eyebrows drew together. Clearly he did not believe her. “Despite your lack of contract, the crown will pay you for your service.”
“No,” she managed.
“No?” He sat back, seeming startled. “You refuse the queen’s gold?”
“Yes, ser.”
“No pay and no contract puts you entirely at the crown’s mercy. Is that really what you want?”
Surely she was already at his mercy? What was this game?
And what to say now?
He made a thoughtful sound. “You are tired after your journey. We will discuss it tomorrow. If you are, as you say, here to help the crown, the crown will take care of you. That is why you’re here, isn’t it, Amarta al Arunkel? To serve the queen?”
To change the future. To change this man’s intention.
“Yes, ser.”
“Then we are, at long last, aligned in our purpose.”
Amarta looked at him. At his wide smile she felt a chill.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Innel looked out the large windows onto the gardens below from the huge and high map room, his thoughts darting from one issue to the next, fitting together like pieces into puzzles.
Failing to fit.
Sinetel. Troop movements. Supply lines. Ore production.
The seer.
Outside, the gardens were bright with spring greens, dotted with rich blooms of red and white roses. Orderly and neat, a quiet contrast to the pictures in his head sketched from reports of bloody skirmishes on the borders and along the Great Road.
Innel was acutely aware of Keyretura sitting by the windows, a striking figure in his dark skin and black robe. Innel found it oddly reassuring that the mage seemed willing to sit for hours, listening and watching, his expression seeming to say that little could surprise him.
Good. He had not hired him to be surprised.
A knock at the door. Amarta was brought into the room. The simple green and white servants’ dress made her seem almost as if she belonged at the palace. He had thought it best to clothe her as if she were unimportant, though the guards surrounding her rather belied that implication.
Years of searching, handfuls of hires, and exorbitant expense, all to get her in hand. It was time to see what he had bought.
She looked around the room, at the walls of maps and ornamented swords and daggers, her wide-eyed expression one of bemusement. He waited while she walked the room, staring at the various gifts he’d been given by the Houses, from Helata’s extraordinarily detailed miniature sailing ship to the ornately carved rosewood and ebony box from Nital. At the painted shaota figurine with its lines of chestnut and amber, she stopped, reached out her fingers to touch the horse’s head.
The figurine put him in mind of the Arteni campaign two years back. That town, at least, had continued to behave well—very well, indeed—since he had replaced their leadership and explained to them in detail how Arunkel justice was applied.
Sufficient force. A willingness to make swift examples.
She turned to the huge table that dominated the center of the large room, covered with sculpted mountains and valleys, green and brown and white-tipped, small red markers where the troops were located.
“The empire,” she breathed, eyes lighting with understanding. He watched her gaze travel down the coast to Kelerre, inland, and back.
Catching on quickly. Interesting. When at last her gaze found Keyretura, it stayed there.
“Keyretura dua Mage al Perripur,” Innel said. “Amarta al Arunkel.”
“Blessings of the season, High One,” she said.
Innel was a little surprised at this. Where did she learn the formal address for mages?
Keyretura smiled. “Good manners for one so young, in a country so full of loathing for my kind. Warmth of spring to you, Amarta.”
She looked at him intently. Foreseeing for him? Keyretura looked back, expression flat.
“Amarta,” Innel said, gesturing to the table, “do you see these markers? These are troops. Do you understand what I want?”
“You want predictions.”
“Yes. You are safe here,” he added, hoping to reassure her.
She stared back at him. “You have wanted me dead for a long time.”
“All in the past, Amarta. Tell me your visions and I guarantee your continued safety here.”
She put a clenched fist to her mouth, doubt across her face. Understandable, he supposed.
“I have a suite of apartments set aside for you and your family. Quite a nice one. All you need do is cooperate with me.”
“I want my family safe.”
“Yes. As I said, I have a suite and—”
“From you.”
She had interrupted him. With a demand, challenge, and an implication. He suppressed his desire to explain to her how to speak to him respectfully. There was no time to teach her proper manners.
“Simply tell me your visions without evas
ion and—”
“My sister and my nephew remain safe, even if you don’t like my answers.” She held her arms across her stomach, as if she were in pain.
He wasn’t liking her answers much now. But he was understanding her, better and better. “I will agree to that.”
“Then I will have a contract with you, ser.”
“You will, will you?” he asked, finally letting his annoyance show. “Do you have a list of terms for this contract you now require?”
Her shoulders hunched at the force of his words. Perhaps he had spoken too sharply.
“I will answer your questions about my visions, ser,” she said. “As long as my sister and nephew are safe.”
“It is hardly in my power to look after the welfare of a woman and child at some mysterious location,” he said evenly. “But tell me where they are and—”
“Safe,” she repeated, again interrupting him. “From you. From the queen. From anyone you command.”
Clever, he thought, reassessing her, but she had left out key details. No mention of compensation. Or, glaringly, her own safety. Oversight? Or foresight? “Is that the entirety of the contract you require?”
Convenient if it were; under such a contract he could go so far as to have her killed and not even have to break the agreement.
Uncertainty flickered across her face. She looked at Keyretura, who was watching with more interest than he had yet shown. “Safe,” she said softly.
“So you said. But it is beyond my power to account for the actions of every person, horse, dog, or bird who marches under the banners of the empire, Amarta. Surely you can see this.”
Her eyes flickered between Innel and Keyretura as if looking for answers.
“What should I say to that?” she asked the mage.
Keyretura’s brows drew together. Was he actually surprised?
Innel certainly was. He was not used to a negotiation that involved asking the opposing side for guidance.
“I have no bond with you, Seer,” Keyretura answered. “Why would you give credence to anything I might say? Would you not expect me to lead you astray?”