by Lisa Shearin
Mychael glanced back at Markus, a muscle working in his jaw. “I can’t leave him—even for Isibel.”
I gripped the message in my hand. “I’ll take care of it. Phaelan will find that ship.”
If there was a ship left to find.
Chapter 3
Brina Daesage stayed with Markus for obvious reasons. Justinius and I went downstairs to the citadel’s communication center. Vegard and the old man’s four bodyguards followed, close enough for protection, far enough for privacy.
I took advantage of it, though I still kept my voice down.
“How are you doing, sir?”
A perfectly normal question, usually the opening for polite small talk. Neither Justinius nor myself were known for our politeness. And most people who asked the question weren’t interested in a response other than “fine.” I knew the old man wasn’t fine, and I wanted to help if I could, even if that help was just to lend a sympathetic ear.
Archmagus Justinius Valerian had his hands more than full. The old man had to be close to overwhelmed, though he’d never admit it.
The Conclave of Sorcerers had never been a squeaky-clean organization, but no one had ever attempted to clean house to the extent Justinius had in mind.
As archmagus, Justinius was the ultimate power and authority on this island and over the Conclave of Sorcerers, and he was using that authority to its limits and beyond. If anyone had a problem with him bending the law until it squealed to clean up the Conclave, they weren’t speaking up. They probably fell into one of two camps: those who were cheering him on, and those who were plotting his death. Weeding out traitors was a lot like weeding a garden—unless you got the roots, those weeds were going to come right back.
“Good analogy, girl,” Justinius said. “Though I was thinking more along the lines of bad apples.”
I smiled a little. “I keep forgetting you can read minds.”
“You’re an easy read. Besides, you asked how I was doing, and you know what I’m trying to do. And you know better than anyone just how nasty the men and women on this island can get when there’s power at stake.”
“Power corrupts—to say the least,” I muttered.
“And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Things had been bad for years; that was why I brought Mychael in as paladin. I knew it was too big a job to do by myself. The Saghred surfacing for the first time in centuries, and you being able to use the rock without going off the deep end…Well, it kicked the greed to new heights.”
Mychael had brought the Saghred here to keep it safe. I’d come to Mid for help in ridding myself of the rock’s bond to me. We’d set off the firestorm Justinius Valerian was trying to stomp out. If anyone could do it, he could, but that didn’t make me feel any less guilty about striking the match.
I winced. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s not your fault that at least half of the mages here have the morals of a Nebian snake oil merchant. Besides, it lured the lot of them out in the open like the swarm of cockroaches they are. And since you’ve smashed the rock, now there’s nothing left for them to get their power-grubbing hands on. I’ve started at the top and I’m working my way down. By eliminating the wealthy traitors first, though, we gave the little ones time to squirm their way back under the rocks they’d come out from under.”
“So they got away.”
Justinius waved a negligent hand. “Some. People like that won’t risk anything—most of all their lives and livelihoods—if they won’t be well paid for the trouble. I took away the people paying the bribes, and half the problems on this island vanished overnight. That leaves the other half of the problem—the mages with plenty of magical and political power. They’re not rich; they’re just dangerous. Some of them wisely turned in their resignations, so they can do their plotting in private. Others have been more reluctant to give up their lucrative positions.”
I grinned. “I’ll bet you ate their reluctance for breakfast and their excuses for lunch.”
The old man snorted, a sort of laugh. “The smart ones were gone by dinner. That left the stupid and the stubborn. The stupid will take care of themselves, always have.” Any sign of humor vanished. “That leaves the stubborn, the patient. They’re biding their time and making alliances while they wait. And while they scurry around like rats behind a wall, I’ve got entirely too many vacant positions, important positions. As a result, I’m not exactly operating from a position of power here. Hell, only half the mages are left on the Seat of Twelve. It’s more like the Park Bench of Six.”
Damn. Six of the most powerful mages in the Seven Kingdoms had been corrupt, either living in a power broker’s pocket or—like Carnades Silvanus—had minions of their own.
Justinius scowled. “With the bad guys down but definitely not out, and the good guys not all that plentiful, the winner’s going to be whoever can get their feet underneath them first. I want mages who know what they stand for, and stand for it openly. I may not agree with a mage’s politics and beliefs, but I respect their right to think that way. Say what you believe in and stick to it, don’t skulk around in corners. Ass-kissers, bootlickers, and two-faced turncoats have no place in the government of this island or holding any power over the magic users in the Seven Kingdoms. I’ve started the ball rolling on making some appointees of my own.”
“So…As to how you’re doing, you’re tired, but you know what your job is, and you’re determined to dig in and do it.”
“Damn right.”
That job would be one of the most difficult I’d ever heard of, but it was the one he’d picked, and he was the best man for the job.
So was Mychael.
After what had happened in the mirror room this morning, I didn’t know what I was best qualified for, but I suspected it wasn’t anything I wanted to do.
I glanced down at my hands. Hands that had been glowing dark red only an hour ago. Red with unknown power.
Or worse, a power that I knew only too well.
I needed to find my father as soon as I could.
Eamaliel Anguis had been bonded to the Saghred for nearly nine hundred years. His life had been lengthened by contact with the stone. Maybe soul-sucking rocks got lonely, too, but I knew the real reason—the Saghred couldn’t feed itself; it needed someone to sacrifice souls to it. My father hadn’t fed it a thing, so the first chance it got, the Saghred had slurped him up and used its wiles to try and trick me into eternal servitude.
If anyone would know what magical remnants the stone could have left with me, he would.
I lowered my voice even further than it had been. “Sir, did you hear what happened in the mirror room with Markus?”
Justinius kept walking by my side in silence for at least a minute.
I swallowed with an audible gulp.
“Raine, whatever you’ve got going on in there, you saved two men today—Mychael and Markus Sevelien. Whoever almost killed Sevelien and latched on to Mychael didn’t like whatever it was you did. In my opinion, that makes it good; I don’t care what color your hands were.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m simply calling it like I see it.”
If word got out, other people would be calling it something else—something evil.
“I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks,” the old man said. “And neither should you. You possibly still being more powerful than anyone else is their problem, not yours.”
I smiled a little. “Anything I can do to keep you from picking up my thoughts like dice on a table?”
“Nope. You don’t play cards, do you?”
“I try to avoid it—for just that reason.”
“Probably a good thing. For you, that is.” He gave me an impish grin. “But if you ever feel the need to play a few hands, promise you’ll let me know.”
“I’ll do that.”
We walked in silence for the next few moments.
The attack on Markus might be enough to postpone the peace talks. I
f it turned out the elven ambassador was dead, they might be scuttled before they even got started. Not to mention, what Justinius was trying to accomplish by getting rid of the Conclave’s corruption had never been attempted at this level.
“Sir, I don’t mean to be the voice of gloom and doom—”
The old man snorted. “Since when?”
I pressed on. “Do you really think this stands a chance of working? Especially now with what happened to Markus, and whatever may have happened to Ambassador Eldor and his staff.”
“This isn’t just about the elves and goblins agreeing to play nice and not enslave each other,” Justinius said. “The elven queen Lisara Ambrosius has always had a level head on her shoulders, and now that Carnades and Taltek Balmorlan and their treason-plotting cronies have been exposed to the light of day, that little lady’s taking a broom to her house, the same as I’m doing with mine. As to the goblins, I don’t know their new king—”
“You’re not missing out.”
“I’ve heard he’s about as easy to get along with as a boil on your backside.”
“Let’s just say that while he’s finally started showing some redeeming qualities, he’s not someone I’d choose to spend an evening drinking with.”
“Trust?”
“Depends on what’s in it for him.” I paused thoughtfully. “And his. I think he really does care about his people.”
“That’s what Mychael told me.”
“But I trust Tam and Imala and the people they’re putting around Chigaru, so I think he’ll turn out all right.”
“For a Mal’Salin.”
“That goes without saying.”
“It’s not the elves and goblins that concern me. They know what a thing like the Saghred can do, the level of destructive power. History says the Saghred fell from the sky. What are the chances of there being only one? Or what if there’s something out there waiting to be found that’s even worse?”
“I can’t imagine what could—”
“Your papa led the team that got the Saghred away from Rudra Muralin. The damage was limited. A thousand years ago when he was the chief mage for the goblin king, there were fewer people around for him to sacrifice. There are a lot more now. Every kingdom has several centers of population; cities are larger and packed with people. Another lunatic backed by a government with a grudge against another, or a group of zealots with warped ideology—”
“Like the Khrynsani.”
The Khrynsani were an ancient goblin secret society and military order, with even more outdated political ideas. The Khrynsani’s credo was simple. Goblins were meant to rule, and if anyone disagreed, they weren’t meant to live. Those who disagreed included every other race. Sarad Nukpana had been their leader. The night I’d smashed the Saghred and Nukpana had gotten himself carried off to Hell had essentially marked the end of the Khrynsani. I hoped.
The old man nodded. “If they get their hands on an object of power and the chance to use it…”
Justinius didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. I knew what could happen, what would happen when the next Rudra Muralin or Sarad Nukpana found a new magical toy and took it home with them. I also didn’t need him to remind me just how close we’d come to Sarad Nukpana unleashing Armageddon—and using me to do it.
“The elves and goblins—at least those in charge now—know that such power should never be allowed to fall into anyone’s hands,” he continued. “The other kingdoms have only seen such power from afar. They’ve never been threatened with annihilation. They see power that has never been theirs, respect that has never been theirs. Some people think respect and fear mean the same thing. Are their leaders, and the powerful and influential who support them, content with what they have under their control? It’s been my experience that mankind—and I use that to encompass all the races—is seldom satisfied with what they have. Most people’s striving is harmless, beneficial even. But there are those who strive for subjugation, having control over others’ lives, lives held in the palm of their hand.”
“A treaty won’t stop those people.”
“No, but agreement now will get the kingdoms off their asses to stop them. If you don’t help, you face consequences. Sanctions, embargoes.”
“So, we won’t like you or play with you anymore?”
The old man gave me a flat look.
I raised my hands defensively. “I’m simply playing devil’s advocate here. The kind of people who would use something like the Saghred as a weapon to kill or conquer won’t care about sanctions or embargoes.”
“Which is why the treaty will give the Guardians the authority to go into any kingdom and do whatever they have to do to secure that weapon.”
Silence.
“That could be nasty,” I said.
“There’s no ‘could be’ about it. And by signing a treaty, each kingdom promises to allow the Guardians free and complete access to their lands to secure that object. If they don’t want a Guardian army inside their borders, fine. Get the thing and turn it over to us. I know what the delegates are going to say. They’ll say that for the Guardians, and goblins, and possibly the elves, this ‘treaty’ is merely a means to secure all magical power for themselves and render the kingdoms unable to obtain their own object of power, like the Saghred, with which to protect themselves. They’ll claim to want it as a deterrent. Then their neighbor across the border will get their hands on something even stronger.” Justinius was silent for a moment. “Where that ends…It’s not anyplace any of us want to be, or leave to our children and grandchildren to deal with. That’s why I’m going to do whatever I have to do to ensure my Katie and your Piaras don’t have to go through any of this ever again when we’re gone and they’re in charge. That is what we must accomplish.”
There was no time like the present to tell the old man what I wanted to be when I grew up.
“Sir, speaking of the cadets and the talented children they were—and you wanting me to be a Guardian—I’ve got your answer and an idea.”
Justinius stopped in the middle of the corridor. I did likewise, and so did Vegard and the archmagus’s guards. One wave from Justinius and they all backed out of hearing range and went to attention.
I hadn’t meant to cause all that.
“Uh…First, I can’t be a Guardian—at least not in the usual way.”
Those intense blue eyes came to rest on me. Eyes that could make a battle-hardened Guardian stammer like a newbie cadet.
“I’m listening,” he said.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with being the first woman Guardian. I don’t have a problem with that.” I tilted my head down the hall toward the at-attention men. “Those men all went through years of hard work and training to get where they are. I can’t just walk in and pick up a uniform. Plus, I’m about to marry their paladin and commander. I’ll gladly fight beside them, but I can’t wear a Guardian uniform without earning it. And don’t say I have earned it. Getting a power infusion from a soul-sucking rock didn’t earn me anything.”
“So what do you want to do?”
I told him.
“There’s the Conclave college, but there’s nothing for younger children,” I continued once I’d covered the basics. “That’s when they need teaching and guidance—and protection. There needs to be a school for them. Here. I know the Conclave is shorthanded right now, but we would need mages who not only have experience raising and guiding young talents but who can go out into the kingdoms and recognize potential when they see it, and who know the signs that these children’s gifts are being abused or are at risk for abuse. Too many of the rogue dark mages the Guardians end up hunting started out as kids with more talent than good sense and guidance. Then there are the kids whose parents were duped into apprenticing their child with a mage who was really a broker or a procurer for someone like Taltek Balmorlan. Piaras was lucky. He has a supportive family who are talents themselves. He’s in the minority. The kids who go to the Conclave’s college have weal
thy parents or families. Tam didn’t know he had a son until Talon was a teenager. When his mom died, he spent his childhood on his own. And you know what that kid’s packing and the trouble he can get into. And what about the poor kids? Or even the middle-class kids whose parents can’t afford qualified tutors or don’t even know how to find somebody who’s qualified?”
I wasn’t bothering to keep my voice down anymore. The Guardians could hear me. I didn’t care. It was a good idea. A needed idea.
“And being a Benares, my family has connections to people who would know who the brokers are and where they operate. It’d help find the kids who would otherwise fall through the cracks—or into the wrong hands.”
I stopped, mainly because I’d run out of air. I hadn’t said everything I wanted to say yet, but I’d said enough to get an opinion.
“What do you think, sir?”
“I think it would fit right in with finding those power objects. The nastiest thing about the objects and those brokers is that they both have a reputation for wanting young magic users to latch on to. I guarantee you, if you find one, the other will be close by. The same people who want to get their greedy hands on the next Saghred will be looking for talent to use it for them, and they don’t want someone like you—a grown woman who’s not about to let anyone make her do anything she doesn’t want to do. They want talent they can intimidate and manipulate.”
“Children.”
“The younger and more gifted, the better. It’s happening in every last kingdom, and I have long wanted it stopped. As much as I would like to do it myself, I can’t.”
“You have enough asses to kick here.”
“God’s own truth.” The old man grinned. “And I’ve known I would need someone I could trust and depend on to do it.” He slapped me on the back. “You’re in charge. Just let me know what you need.”
Chapter 4
Unlike the mirror room, nothing in here made me want to turn and run the other way. Anything that could come out of a crystal ball or scrying bowl would be small enough for me to stomp on.