by Sonia Lyris
“Forgive me, High One, I had to ask.” Something else occurred to Innel. “The sister and nephew. Without knowing where they are, even what country they might be in, does it not seem to you I am constrained in how I can keep them safe from all those over whom I have command or influence?”
The mage gave Innel a look. “You propose to circumvent the contract?”
No chasing the subject around, then. But that was one of the advantages of Keyretura: he existed outside the usual web of delicately spoken truths and layers of veiled lies.
“I question how much safer they might be, guarded by the forces at my command and your excellent attention. Many of those who act at my direction will not know of their protected status. These are dangerous times. Anything could happen.”
Was that a flicker of amusement across Keyretura’s face?
“Let me be sure I understand your intention, Commander. After assenting to my witnessing this contact with the seer, are you now asking me to make sound a pursuit of the sister and nephew within the scope of that contract? Or are you asking me, under the terms of my contract with you, to compromise my witnessing obligations?”
And this, Innel was quickly coming to understand, was the problem with dealing with mages: they were often already standing where you were only looking to go.
“Let us say the first of those options, the one that keeps the seer’s contract whole.”
“The terms of the contract are that you and the crown of Arunkel do not harm the sister and her child, and further that you give them food and shelter if they should want it. Nothing was said of their liberty.”
“Though—abducting them . . . ?”
“I am confident that I can preserve the safety and full bellies of a woman and child while I move them somewhere safer.”
“You?” Innel blinked in surprise.
“Yes.”
The mage’s overwhelming confidence was a heady drink.
Innel made a thoughtful noise, then a dismissive one, and turned back to the table. “Irrelevant, though; they could be anywhere in your country or mine. I have no time to start another long search. Yes, if we happen across them, but otherwise—”
“When the seer came from Kelerre with your hire, there was someone else with them.”
Innel turned back. “What?”
“On your seer is the faint but unmistakable scent of my uslata, Commander. Marisel has touched her.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. I know my own.”
Marisel dua Mage, also traveling with the seer? He wondered what that meant. “And so?”
“And so I now have a very good idea of where the sister and nephew are.”
This was entirely unexpected. “Where?”
“I might obtain them in a matter of weeks, perhaps a month, in a manner consistent with and within the bounds of the contract that I witnessed, provided you have a safe and comfortable location to which I can deliver them. I suggest something well away from the city. Isolated. Quiet. Fortified.”
Innel could find such a thing. The crown had a number of distant residences.
“Truly? You can do this?”
“Do you need me to repeat myself? Shall I speak more slowly?”
“No, High One. I—” He what? It seemed too good to be possible. “Yes. I understand you.”
Innel’s contract with Keyretura was costing a very great deal of money, and perhaps this was why: because the mage could do what he said he could. He stared at the mage and wondered briefly what was between them, Keyretura and his former apprentice Marisel, and what the mage intended.
“If you wish, I can leave immediately,” Keyretura said. “This is, however, a greater level of effort on my part, and does not fall under our current contract.”
“Ah, of course.” With mages, there is always more to pay. “What more do you need, High One?”
“Not coin. Marisel dua Mage.”
“I can hardly deliver her to you. I could not even keep her here.”
“You need do nothing. If she comes here, when she does, you agree not to interfere.”
Interfere? How would he interfere?
Unbidden, the image of the glass plains came to him, from the one time he had glimpsed them from a distance, desolate and vast.
He inhaled, let it out. “I am told that when mages fight, everyone dies except the mages. Perhaps this is not a wise plan, High One.”
A small smile. “That risk only exists when the mages are of similar power. This is not that circumstance. Do not presume you know my intent. I assure you, not a stone on your precious walls will be so much as scratched.”
“Then—it seems a price easily paid.” Perhaps he should ask more, find out what this might be about. Or perhaps the business of mages was best left to mages. “I accept your amendment.”
Keyretura stood. “I will need a set of your fastest horses.”
Maybe you are asking too gently.
The next morning as Innel dressed, he thought of the seer, her answers, her motivations. That she had not negotiated for her own safety, only that of her family, meant what? That she was confident of her safety? Sure he would not hurt her?
Perhaps you give her too much credit.
She had known about the rails and the rocks. Years ago she had known about his brother. He was not yet ready to give up on her answers.
A long night’s sleep had done much to restore his good humor, but he had slept far later than he meant to, reading histories of the southern provinces and cities into the early morning, so he was surprised to see Srel and Nalas waiting outside the door for him.
“Don’t you two have other things to do than wait on me?” he asked, half serious.
“No, ser,” said Srel, at the same time Nalas began with, “Well, now that you—” Then, hearing Srel’s answer, added: “No, ser.”
“Arrange a meeting with the hire,” he told Srel. It was time to pay Tayre and ask him a few questions.
A messenger dashed up to them, coming to a fast stop, dipping her head in a bow. “Lord Commander, the queen wishes your presence at the aviary viewing walkway.”
The bird yards?
It did not sound urgent, but it was Cern, and possibly the unpredictable Cahlen as well, so they walked quickly.
The queen stood at a balcony, various attendants and guards arranged about her in a set of interlocking circles that Innel reviewed weekly for security, despite that this required a certain amount of struggle with the existing hierarchy. A quick glance at the expressions on the faces of Sachare and the queen’s seneschal told him that this particular stop in the queen’s schedule was not exactly expected.
A path opened to allow him access to Cern.
“Your Majesty,” he said, coming close, giving her an exacting and proper bow, since they were observed.
“What is she doing, Innel?”
Three stories below, in the courtyard of the aviary, Cahlen stood, a bow and arrow in hand, instantly alarming him. At his sharp look, Sachare shrugged.
Fortunately, the bow and arrow in Cahlen’s grip was not pointed upward but held loosely as she watched the flying birds above, seemingly oblivious to her royal audience. On the verdant grass that grew happily under the droppings of so many messenger birds lay ten dead gray and white carcasses, an arrow through each.
Other bird-keepers scattered around the yard watched Cahlen nervously. Whatever Cahlen was doing, they were deferring to her. Even the Minister of Bird, it seemed, standing at the back with a tablet, making notes, was content to let her do whatever it was she was doing.
Which was what?
“I’ll find out, Your Majesty,” he said, motioning to Nalas, who drew the correct understanding and headed down the stairs at a quick trot. A few moments later, Cahlen looked to the side at her called name and left the courtyard.
“Another thing,” Cern said softly, and he came close so that they had a measure of verbal privacy. “The ministers, House liaisons and trade counci
l are concerned about the various troubles north and south. I told them you had it in hand.”
He thought of the map room and the seer and the answers he thought he’d have by now.
“I do, Your Majesty.”
“Good,” she said. Below in the courtyard the other keepers picked up the bird carcasses and followed Cahlen off the field. The drama seemingly over, Cern looked thoughtfully at Innel then left.
He headed to the dovecote. Anyone but Cahlen he would have had sent for, but she might not come, and his reputation did not need another failure of obedience from his own sister. He found her in the high, wide dovecote tower, atop a ladder, checking nests, handing down a handful of eggs to an assistant below.
Raising his voice to be heard over the calls of the birds, he spoke. “Cahlen.”
“Brother.”
“What was that about, in the yard?”
She turned on the ladder, grinning widely, another handful of eggs in her hand. “Culling the weak.”
“The weak? Do you mean the birds foolish enough to be killed by your arrow shot?”
“Yes.” She turned back around, poking into the nests.
“Explain this to me.”
She climbed down, handed the eggs to the keeper, who put them in a basket and with a fearful look at Innel fled the dovecote, leaving the two of them alone.
“They’re going to die when I send them into battle anyway, so best to kill them now, so that they don’t drop any messages as their final failure.”
“You are saying, then, that—”
“Don’t you have other things to do, brother?”
He ignored this. “—that your birds know how to avoid arrows?”
She scowled. “Not all of them, obviously. But the ones that go out with your troops, yes. Nineteen in twenty now come home.” Her smile went very wide.
“That’s very—” Impressive. He was pretty sure that between bad weather and predatory hawks, no one had ever achieved that rate of return before now and certainly not at the distances at which action was happening across the empire. “Very good, Cahlen.”
“Not good enough,” she said, angry again. “They will get smarter. The ones that don’t will die.”
At some point he might, he reflected, need to make Cahlen Minister of Birds, despite her strangeness.
Subsequent sessions with the seer produced no answers he liked better. Either she was holding back what she knew or her visions were indeed little more than speculation, as Keyretura had suggested.
Disappointing, perhaps, but Innel had done well enough without her these years since Botaros, making troop deployment assessments using the same tools Arunkel commanders had used throughout the years: military theory, a study of history, and the advice of veterans.
He sat now with General Lismar, who looked at the paper maps he had given her, glancing back and forth to the notes he had made.
“Yes,” she said at last, leaning back, though her expression indicated she was still considering. “There is room for argument, of course, as there is in any plan, but I see no place I would make substantial changes.” She looked at him. “Transitions are always difficult times, Innel.”
“Even when your brother took the throne?”
She smiled, a hard smile, eyes crinkling. “I sat by his side for a similar discussion. After Lason made a mess of things.”
This Innel had not known. “Why did you keep Lason as Lord Commander so long, if he was incompetent?”
A shrug. “He wasn’t, not quite. More importantly, he made friends easily, and a lot of them were the previous generation’s generals and aristos. We needed the support. As you do now.”
“I am grateful, General, for your backing, and—”
The door to his office slammed open. Two of the queen’s guards stomped in, dragging between them the slave Naulen, her long blond hair falling over her eyes. Innel and Lismar stood.
Cern followed tight on the heels of the guards. One look at her face silenced any objection Innel might have been forming. Cern looked around the room, her eyes wide and furious.
Lismar must have known the familial expression; she went to one knee, dropping her head low. Innel quickly debated following her down. A lifetime of studying Cern, but he had never before seen this expression on her face. Trusting his intuition, Innel only dipped his head, then met her furious glare.
“Is this your doing, Innel?”
The slave looked up, her mouth opening and closing silently.
“Your Majesty,” Innel said. “What has happened?”
“Leave,” Cern said to Lismar, who lurched to her feet and left quickly.
“This—trash,” Cern said, waving her hand at the slave, “was with him. Your idea, Innel?”
Her hand was shaking. Innel looked at the guards and gave Cern a questioning look.
“They stay,” she said.
Innel felt his stomach clench. This should be a private conversation. Something had happened. But what?
“Yes, Your Majesty: the slave was my idea. To ease the king’s discomfort, perhaps calm him in these difficult times.”
“I know that, you bastard. You put her there to spy on him.”
“Of course.”
“And?”
Naulen suddenly went limp. Pretending a faint, Innel suspected. The two guards lowered her to the floor in a small heap.
“And she has been reporting to me, as I instructed,” he said.
“But not today, I’m fairly certain. Today when she was done with him she came to me.”
“To you?”
He wondered if Cern was deliberately drawing this out to induce fear in him; it was the sort of thing Restarn would have done.
No, he decided, she was upset, and profoundly so, even having trouble talking.
His pulse began to speed. If her anger found him the best target, his world could change very quickly.
Her face twisted into something stark. She put her a hand on either side of her own head. “He’s dead, Innel. She killed him. This worthless piece of shit killed him.”
Naulen cried out from the floor, a sound of anguish. “He ordered me to collect his spit, Gracious Majesty. Please, I only followed his direction. I would never hurt him, never, but he insisted. Mercy, Your Majesty, I beg you.”
Cern’s face went hard. “Get her up,” she said to the guards. They yanked Naulen to her feet and Cern put a hard fist into the small woman’s stomach. Naulen grunted, doubled over, gasping for air as the guards held her taut, and began to retch.
“Get her out of here,” Cern said.
“You are both bound to silence,” Innel said to the guards as they drew the slave to the door. “Any word of this is treason.” He hoped that would keep them quiet long enough to talk to them both later.
When the door was shut, they were alone. Hitting the slave had helped her mood, Innel judged, though she was rubbing her hand and a bitter expression was on her mouth. An improvement over rage.
“He saved his spit, Innel. For days or weeks. I don’t know. Held it in his mouth until the doctor was gone, spat it back out into a skin she smuggled in and out for him, wrapped flat between her breasts. Today he swallowed it all at once.”
Clever, Innel thought.
She was pacing the room, holding herself with her arms. “I thought I’d be glad to see him dead. But damn her, that blond rat—she had no right. Give her to the streets. Make her run. I want to see what they do to her.”
He knew exactly what they would do to her. Better, he strongly suspected, than Cern did. “She’ll last minutes.”
“Good.”
Keeping his his tone calm, he said, “If that’s what you want, my lady, I will see it done.”
“I do.”
Better to have her vent her fury on the slave than on him, but with the king dead a number of decisions needed to be made quickly. Killing the slave this way, this soon, would imply things. The wrong things.
“Cern,” he said, risking the familiar
ity, “she didn’t kill him. He killed himself.”
He was careful not to use the other term for suicide: the coward’s way.
She looked up at him, suddenly suspicious. “Did you set this up? Tell her to do this? Did you kill my father, Innel?”
“No and no and no,” he said with precision, meeting her wild-eyed look with every bit of certainty he could summon.
“The medicines the doctor has been giving him. The truth, damn you.”
“Yes, the doctor is mine and acts at my direction. Enough herbs to keep him abed these years, yes to that. But not to kill him. You know me, Cern; if I wanted him dead—” A small shrug. “He killed himself.”
Restarn had even warned them. They had simply ignored it.
Well, it was done.
“Damn him,” she said. “No gift ceremony. I don’t want him remembered. Let his spirit wander the Beyond in silence alone. That’s what he deserves.”
That would make Cern look bad, worse even than Restarn’s suicide. The Houses would be furious without the chance to show how wretched was their grief, and losing an opportunity to own something of the king’s. Cern’s unsteady rule would grow more precarious. But he could not say any of that, not now.
“Would that satisfy you?” he asked. “Would it be enough? To bury him as an unknown? A criminal?”
Her face fell and she exhaled, seeming to deflate. He decided to risk touching her, putting his hands on her shoulders with every bit of confidence he could.
“I hate him,” she said.
“With cause,” Innel responded, letting his face and tone mirror her own. “Even so. Let’s make no plans now. Wait until tomorrow to decide.”
Cern looked up at him, her face tight. “He always made me wait, Innel. Always tomorrow, never today. Then it would never happen, what I was waiting for.”
But never had finally arrived: the king was dead.
Rumor would spread like wildfire. Even threats would not stop the meaningful looks of those who knew what had occurred, nor guesses by those who watched and listened. Everyone would speculate. How to control that inevitability?
“That’s all over now. Whatever you want, it shall be so.”