“Worse?” Ipid bellowed though he was almost holding his breath.
“The Ex . . . Liano, sir. The men, they turned on him. They say he did it on purpose.”
“Turned on him?” Ipid felt the news like a kick to the stomach. He reached for the handle of the door, opened it just enough to stick his head out, and yelled in Darthur, “Eia, now!”
She rose from her seat and sauntered toward the door, oblivious to his urgent tone. “How may I assist you, Lord Chancellor?” she asked in Darthur as she walked through the door. She positioned herself leaning against the table, half-sitting, arms behind, legs spread, breast nearly bared by the low cut of her sheer dress. Ipid closed the door behind her, and she switched to her universal language, but her voice remained languid. “Chief Advisor Cubbington, it is so good to see you. I hope that Ipid is not working you too hard.”
Watching her lull on the table like a cheap barroom whore made Ipid want to shake her. “We have a problem with Liano,” he said instead.
“We have discussed this,” Eia switched to Darthur so Jon would not understand. “He must create a sense of danger in order to use his powers. Though the means are repugnant, they are the only way to achieve the ends you desire.”
“He’s gone too far,” Ipid said in the Imperial tongue, bringing Jon from a seeming stupor. He jolted and shook his head as if just jarred awake. “A dozen men and boys were killed. The workers have turned on him.”
Eia took a second to process that. She brought her legs together and came forward slightly, face finally serious. “There must be more to it. Jon, what happened?”
“I only have second-hand accounts,” Jon answered, voice slurring slightly with his exhaustion. “But it . . . it sounds like he was taking apart a big slab of rubble – you know the way he does – when a piece just didn’t break apart. It fell and started a landslide of sorts. A dozen men, two of them boys, were crushed.”
Ipid felt sick, could only picture the men and boys as the stone rained down on them.
“Hmmm” Eia vocalized her contemplation, looking as if she were searching for the missing piece of a difficult puzzle. “And the workers turned on Liano?”
“So I have been told, my lady.”
“Did he hurt any of them?”
“Not that I am aware of. He cast some men back, I’m told, like your lot did with the Chancellor’s Own, but that’s it.”
“Where is he now?”
Jon took a deep breath, steadied himself, and wrung his hands. “The foreman said that he used one of his portals to transport away. The men are under control now, but they’re refusing to work. They say its rest day and they shouldn’t be working anyway. They want to uncover the bodies then be done. And they’re saying they won’t work with,” Jon paused and looked from Ipid to Eia and back. “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m quoting, ‘the black bastard’ anymore. They say he’s trying to kill them for sport, that he’s an Exile, that he’s condemning them all to the Maelstrom. They say they’ll kill him if they see him or any of his kind again.”
“Hilaal’s balls,” Ipid cursed and slapped his hand on the table. Jon jumped. Eia chuckled. Ipid was too caught up in his thoughts to care about the irony. They had cleared two of the city’s four bridges and almost completed the Capital District side of another, but without Liano, they’d never finish before the Darthur departed in four days. “They have to work with him. There’s no choice . . . .”
“They’ll riot, sir,” Jon interrupted then seemed to think better of it. “My apologies, sir, but they very nearly rioted today. If your man hadn’t transported himself away, he’d have had a fight.”
“And this disaster would only be worse,” Eia stated. “Liano has no experience with our peaceful past. He has not learned how to control his own emotions when those of the people around him rise. It is a skill that takes a lifetime to master. As Ipid knows, even I struggle with it.” Eia turned her full attention to Jon, rising and putting a hand on his arm. “You must understand, Mr. Cubbington. If your men try to attack him, Liano will use their anger against them. Even if he wants only to protect himself, their anger will flood him, and he will use it. I know that he enjoys helping your people. He feels for the first time that he is using his gift for good. He feels terrible that there have been accidents and has done everything he can to keep them contained. Likewise, it will destroy him if he hurts the people he has worked alongside, but it is not always possible to control that much anger. We are lucky that he was able to do it this time, that he only threw them back and transported away. Next time, the anger may drive him to do something far, far worse.”
Ipid watched Jon as Eia spoke. He seemed to understand little of it beyond the headline, ‘Liano will kill the workers if they attack him again.’
“Get them back to work,” Ipid commanded. “Have Commander Tyne send a patrol. If men resist, have them arrested. If they don’t work, take their ration allowance. Let them see what a day of work without Liano is like. They may learn to appreciate him.” He looked at Eia. She smiled and nodded as he knew she would. He had been tempted to give the men what they wanted – a day off to mourn their fellows – but he could already hear her argument. If you give into them now, how will you stand up to them tomorrow or the following day or the one after that? They have to know that you will not back down, that if they push you, you will push back harder.
“As you wish, Lord Chancellor,” Jon said. His eyes and face said the opposite. Ipid wanted to slap the doubt and recrimination out of them. What would he have me do? Back down? Cower before some disgruntled workers? And let the whole thing come crumbling down? Not now! By the Order, not now!
“Is there anything else?” Ipid asked with an edge.
“No, Lord Chancellor.” Jon said the title almost as an insult – or was that just the way Ipid heard it.
“You know what you must do. You are dismissed.” Ipid forced his hands open so they would not clench.
“Thank you, Lord Chancellor.” Jon bowed and walked stiffly through the door. Ipid watched him go, wondering if he could still do what was asked, if he could still trust his most important advisor.
When Jon was out of the room, he turned back to Eia. She was again lounging against the table as if this were all part of some game. “What is that idiot, Liano, thinking?” he fumed, pounding his hand again on the table.
“It was an accident,” Eia assured, reaching a hand to his arm. “How many more men would have died by now if he had not been helping?” She cocked her head, ran her hand up to his cheek to bring his attention to her.
“Stop it!” Ipid brushed her hand away. “Men are dead. Do you understand that?”
“Men die every day. You have done what you must. They must know that you will not back down, that you will not hesitate to do what must be done.” She ran her hand down her dress and pulled it up her leg.
Ipid walked away from her, not wanting any part of whatever game she was playing. “And Liano?”
Eia sighed. She came down from the table and walked to him, placing her arms around him from behind. “I will talk to him. Is that what you want?” She squeezed him, and Ipid could not help but feel some of the anger seep from him. He ran his hand along her arms where they stretched around his middle.
He took a deep breath then noticed her nuzzling into his back, her hands creeping down. She moaned low. He spun around and clasped her arms to hold her away. She looked up at him with longing. “You want to do this now? What are you thinking?”
Eia stepped back from him and turned away. “I thought you might want another try.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I will talk to the Belab about Liano. Can you go yell at your secretaries so I can create a portal?” She walked to the other side of the room.
Ipid released a long breath and reached for the door. “Their lives matter,” he said before he opened it. “This is not a game.”
Eia did not say anything immediately, so he turned and looked at her. Her head was tilted, face sympathetic. “Of course they do
,” she said softly. “But they are already gone. You can only save the living.”
“That is what I am trying to do.”
“You cannot save them all. You know that. Better to condemn ten to death than stand by and watch a thousand burn. You have to be strong enough to make that choice because no one else will. It is you or destruction. Now, yell at your scribes.”
Reluctantly, Ipid turned the knob. He knew that Eia was right, but it felt wrong. The Book of Valatarian said that the Order favored every life, that each was of equal value to Its plan. How could he hope to choose?
He looked out at the scribes. They tried not to catch his eye though curiosity forced a few eyes from their papers. Ipid selected a younger man who seemed more intent on his surroundings than what was in front of him. He descended on the man, pounded his hand on his desk, sending ink splattering across the document he was writing, and yelled, “What in the Order’s holy name are you looking at? Do you want to break rocks? Do you want to die in a pile of rubble like your fellows in the Capital District?” Ipid brought his face within inches of the terrified young man. He saw his spittle hitting him, warm drops spraying across his face. He felt the entire room burst with a flood of anxiety.
Then he felt it all pulled away. For a fleeting second, it was gone. And so was Eia.
#
Ipid was in the study discussing logistics with Jon, planning out routes that food should take from the outlying regions to reach the Darthur at different points in their march, when the third interruption occurred. Their lunch plates had been pushed to the side an hour ago – sitting half-finished for the flies as people slowly starved just outside – when it became clear that Jon was almost literally drowning in the sea of his responsibilities. Their daily briefing had devolved into a quagmire as Ipid dug deeper, questioning each of Jon’s proposal, poking hole after hole into his slapdash plans until the unflappable manager was on the verge of tears and Ipid had realized that it was all simply too much for him. Not enough food, not enough wagons to haul it, not enough soldiers to guard it, not enough of anything to keep Arin satisfied. And Jon was supposed to hold it all together, was supposed to somehow make all the ledgers balance, like the man at the leaking dyke, running out of fingers and watching the holes grow bigger and bigger.
A knock sounded at the door. A breathless courier followed. Jon looked relieved as Ipid’s attention shifted to the sweat-soaked, mud-splattered, stinking man. Ipid had the opposite reaction – there was almost no chance that an exhausted courier could be carrying good news.
There was barely enough space in the small room for the man to find a knee, but he managed it. “Lord Chancellor,” he said, head bowed, satchel held out with both hands.
Such drama, Ipid thought. It seemed Illich Landon had learned a bit too much from Liandria, but at least he had gotten the man to stop using those ridiculous cryptics to protect the messages; he did not know how many he had ruined trying to remember the stupid codes. “Where have you come from?” he asked the courier as he opened the satchel.
“Aylesford,” the man answered without bringing his eyes from the floor. “I left before the sun was up and changed horsed four times.”
Aylesford, Ipid thought, in half a day. He had to admit that the speed, at least, impressed him. He unfolded the message slowly, confident that he already knew what it would say. The first sentence crumbled that confidence and none of those that followed did anything to rebuild it. As he expected, the message was to inform him that Lord Stully had escaped. That was exactly as they had planned, but the plan was not supposed to include the deaths of six guards. It was not supposed to include a fire in the dungeons that killed all the other prisoners. It was not supposed to include Lord Stully’s oldest son taking a crossbow bolt to the back as he rode away with his father.
Holding back his stomach’s attempt to reject the lunch he had just eaten, Ipid handed the paper to Jon. How had such a simple plan possibly gone so wrong?
Jon gasped as he read. “By the Order,” he sighed. “What do we . . . ? He is going to . . . .”
“Hush,” Ipid scolded. Did the man have no sense anymore? “Leave us,” he said to the courier. The man rose, saluted, and backed from the room.
Ipid considered. The escape was supposed to be clean. Vontel had sworn that he owned the guards, that they would simply release Allard Stully and make it look like there had been a struggle. It was all supposed to be a show, a way to distance himself from Stully and give the man credibility with the resistance he was to lead. Why had his son even been there? He’d promised Allard that his family would be protected, so why was he even involved? And Eia was the only one who knew how to contact Ambassador Pmalatir to learn the truth. It was a disaster – more deaths, more blood on his hands – and Allard Stully would blame him. But what will his reaction be? Is everything now ruined? Can I hope to control him if he already thinks he’s been betrayed?
“What do you think, Jon?” he asked finally. He had not included Jon in his plans related to Allard Stully and hoped that the man might provide the outside perspective he needed.
“He’s dangerous. You probably shouldn’t have . . . .” Jon started then froze.
“Tell me, Jon,” Ipid implored with a sigh. “You used to tell me anything. I’m sorry if you don’t feel that you can do that any longer. I know I’ve been short, but you have to know that none of this is easy.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I can only imagine.”
“Then what is it you wanted to say? Please, I need your thoughts on this.”
“I thought it was a risk, sir, to arrest Lord Stully in the first place. It only gives him credibility with those who resist your rule. He was never a man of the people. That’s why he could never defeat Kavich, but you’ve humanized him. They’ll rally to him now.”
That was exactly what Ipid had wanted. The question now was whether he could still control his creation. “I realize that, but what do you think he will he do with the people who rally to him? Jon, you know him better than I. You’ve lived here in Wildern your entire life.”
“He’s cautious,” Jon started slowly, thoughts still formulating. “He likes to move slowly, gather all his support, and strike only when he is certain of victory. That’s what he did to us, do you remember?”
Ipid did not. He shook his head.
“It was about seven years ago. We were using the Widdle Brothers for our river shipping out and our own boys to bring the logs in. All of a sudden, everything stopped. We didn’t get a single log to cut for two weeks and the Widdles wouldn’t schedule a single outbound boat.”
“I remember now. I was up north negotiating lumber rights out of the Stormwoods and setting up the mill in Mandarb’s Leap. I think I just told you to solve it. You ended up using Stully, right?”
“We didn’t have any choice,” Jon chuckled. Ipid looked at him twice, did not realize he could still make that sound. “He bought the Widdles’ operation and hired all our men from under us without our ever knowing. They’d all been collecting two wages for a month. Then he told them to stop.”
“And you didn’t see it coming?”
“How could I? There were no interruptions, no grumbles that the foremen heard, no leaks. Stully owned every man. Then when he had us sweating, he swoops in and gives me the what’s for. He increased our rates twenty percent for nothing.”
“And I agreed,” Ipid mused. “I remember now. It was such a small part of our costs and I was so distracted that I conceded without even putting up a fight.”
“And our rates went up every year.”
“But never enough that I would bother finding someone else.” Ipid sat back in his chair. It was perfect. “And you think that is what he will do now?”
“He did the same thing up and down the river. All my neighbors had the same stories. He’s a ruthless ol’ lamprey. He just latches on and sucks.”
Ipid laughed, thinking about all of Allard’s trout when the lamprey was his real avatar. “Thank you, Jon
. That has been very helpful. You should go now. Take the rest of the day and get some sleep. You look like you’re about to collapse. We can work on all this again tomorrow after the weekly lessons.”
“Thank you, sir. Are you sure?”
“I am. Everything is ready for tomorrow. There is nothing more that must be done now. Tomorrow is Teaching Day. I’ve granted the whole country a holiday. You can, at least, take an afternoon.”
“Alright, sir. I’m sorry I’ve not been myself. I haven’t slept in days, and it’s starting to take a toll.”
“I can tell. Go now. Get some sleep. And don’t worry about attending the weekly lessons. Take a copy with you before you go. I just got done approving it.”
Jon could not help but chuckle at that and shake his head. “The Order help us, what are we doing, sir?”
Ipid thought. “I don’t know, Jon. I just hope that the Order forgives us.”
Jon had nothing to say to that. He rose from his seat, bowed, and took his leave. Ipid barely acknowledged him. His thoughts were on Lord Stully. He realized that Jon was right. Any hope he had of controlling Allard Stully were gone. But that did not mean that he would do anything rash. He would still want Ipid to think that he was being controlled. And he would keep it that way until he had all the cards he needed to guarantee his victory.
Ipid pulled a piece of paper toward him and began writing a note to Vontel. They just had to make sure that Allard Stully did not get those cards until Ipid was ready to concede the game.
#
Field Marshal Landon did not bother with a courier to provide the final interruption of the day. It was late into the night, and Ipid was swirling a crystal snifter of Lord Stully’s finest brandy – and it was fine indeed. He examined the glass, watching Eia through it and wondering what to make of her. She had returned over an hour ago but had insisted on changing and freshening before joining him back in the office. They sat now in the big, leather armchairs that stood at the side of the room around the hearth, facing each other, silently studying. The scribes, bookkeepers, even the guards had gone, so they had the room to themselves. Most of the lamps had been extinguished, leaving only the dim light of the few that remained and a small fire burning in the nearby hearth despite the warmth of the evening.
The False Martyr Page 58