“Nor is Lord Yaresh’s door-warden empowered to forbid me,” Aimee quipped back in a dangerous tone.
Behind them, Rachim’s men shifted to a defensive stance. As one, Yaresh’s men tightened their grips on their weapons. The sergeant’s hand fingered the hilt of his sword.
Elias stepped forward. “Surely then,” he said quietly, “you’ve heard the rumors of me as well?”
The armsman turned. Elias was a few inches taller than him. The man assessed him, frowned. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “He warned us. I know all about you.”
The black knight let a small smile flicker across his face. “Do you?”
It took a moment for the two words to sink in. Elias watched the man come to the proper conclusions. When he did, his face drained of color.
“Sergeant!” Turning, Elias watched as Vallus approached from behind them. A host of his father’s own men was at his back. Viltas’s son had never looked more than boyish and innocent to the black knight’s eyes, but in the moment his face was livid. “The Lord of the Muster has no right to keep lawful members or attendants of this council from entering the hall. In the name of the ship’s charter I command you to open these doors that we may pass through. Rachim and I both hold voting seats, and my father is within. Stand aside, or by the beating heart of Iseult, full censure will be brought against both you and your master!”
The sergeant looked back and forth between the lot of them, then said to Vallus, “Count yourself fortunate, Vallus, that this council recognizes the votes of heroes’ sons, even if they’ve never done anything of note themselves. Other than talk.”
Then, grudgingly, he stepped aside, and two of his men began opening the immense doors.
Vallus walked straight past the man. “Thankfully I don’t require the approval of bullies in uniforms.”
The interior of the Council Hall hadn’t changed much since the previous night, though Pentus’s body had been since removed. The session had already started, Elias realized the moment they entered the room. A large number of officer aristocrats surrounded the blue table, and at either end sat the two remaining candidates for the captaincy. Likewise present, and still resplendent in her red armor, was Belit. Two of her Red Guardsmen flanked her.
Yaresh wore armor as well. A gilded suit of plate wrapped his physique, gray steel edged in lapis and crimson, and a curved blade hung from his right hip, its pommel bearing just enough signs of cleaning for Elias to feel certain that the lord of the muster knew how to use it. He barely spared them a glance as they entered, but what look he sent their way was angry and disapproving.
Diara sat, patiently, at the opposite end. Her calm, inscrutable face was as unreadable as ever, and she wore a uniform of dark blue, her hands folded upon the table before her. The Countess of Astronomers had several sheaves of parchment in front of her, but as they emerged into the room proper she rose. “Aimee de Laurent,” she said, her stoic voice echoing in the room, “where is your teacher?”
“Absent, I am afraid,” Aimee answered, stepping forward. “But I am empowered to act in his stead, if this council is willing.” Only the faint twitch of one of her hands showed Elias just how nervous she was.
“That is not what was agreed upon–” Yaresh began.
“–But it is acceptable to me,” Diara said. “I move that this council recognize Aimee de Laurent as valid stand-in for her teacher in his absence. I believe that the heroism she displayed in the midst of the portal storm demonstrates that she is more than qualified. At least half the people in this room owe her their lives.”
“I move to second the honorable Countess’s suggestion,” Vallus said with a triumphant smile. “All in favor?”
Elias caught the head functionary’s glare as a small majority chorus arose from the council. “Motion carried,” the bureaucrat-priest agreed with obvious distaste.
“Very well,” Yaresh said, rising. “With that bit of business out of the way, we can get to the heart of the issue: Countess Diara. By my position as Lord of the Muster and defender of Iseult, I formally accuse you of dereliction of duty, of collusion to commit murder, and of the unlawful killing of Pentus, Duke of the Midlevels. Answer these accusations which I lay at your feet, or prepare to face righteous justice on behalf of all of Iseult.”
Elias stared, momentarily shocked into silence by the sudden turn.
That had not been what he expected.
“Lord Yaresh, forgive my bluntness,” Viltas said from his seat, “but have you completely lost your mind?”
“Not at all,” Yaresh said. “Pentus declared it his intention to attempt the trials of captaincy, and Diara vehemently disagreed. I have eyewitnesses to a vigorous argument between the two in the hours before he was found killed. Diara is a powerful sorceress in her own right. Perhaps she has made a study of the forbidden arts herself?”
“Now you accuse me of trafficking in necromancy?” Diara said, incredulous. “You know even less about me than you know about magic. My duties have kept me at the star-map nearly the entirety of the past days, striving to provide the wheelhouse with the forecasts they need to keep us alive.”
“Clearly you had time to argue with your rival,” Yaresh accused. “And come to think of it, he is not the first to fall. Hephus – our dear, late chief engineer – lies likewise dead, and the two of you often quarreled. Every opponent to cross your path in thirty years of your political rise has conveniently fallen just as your ambition waxed. I posit that stories of this cult are nothing more than paid agitators from among the unwashed below, seeking to destabilize us in preparation for her ascendency. That her vision is nothing more than a sorceress’s hunger for ever more power.”
Elias looked at the Countess of Astronomers, and remembered the sentiment Aimee had expressed of her when they’d first been brought up to speed on the candidates. She must be everything to everyone, or they will have her be nothing at all.
“Your proof?” Diara said in low, dangerous tones. She straightened, staring across the open space with a sharp look in her cold eyes. “So far all I hear is bluster and threats from a man who would clench this ship in a steel fist until he’s crushed every ounce of dissent.”
“One of my men witnessed your argument,” he said, “and it was potent, deadly magic that killed Pentus, easily within your reach.”
“You have no concept of the differences between necromancy and the divination and star-tracing I practice.”
Yaresh spread his arms wide, laughing in a way that encouraged the other council members to do likewise. “Does a man need to be an expert in thievery before he may say that thievery is bad? Let us not split hairs, Countess.”
“And you intend to back up this threat how?” Rachim spoke up. “If your only proof is an overheard conversation, that hardly warrants arrest.”
“And a vote on captaincy has yet to produce a definitive winner,” Aimee said. “You lack the authority to back up the accusation, Lord Yaresh.”
A rumble of alternating agreement and objection rolled through the assembled officers. “And none of you,” Yaresh said, “are empowered to refuse me this investigation.”
“But I am,” Belit said. “And I remind you that the investigation into Pentus’s death falls under my authority. Should the countess come under suspicion in the course of that investigation, I will deal with the issue then.”
“So,” Yaresh said. “A full coalition of foreigners, downlevelers, activist officers, and one-time, two-bit heroes is what stands against justice for our ship, our society?”
His hand flashed dangerously close to his sword. Elias took a step forward. “You have a strange notion of gratitude, Lord Yaresh,” he said. It was not his place to speak. Not his prerogative, but silence wasn’t possible any more. His cold, relentless anger narrowed his focus to a pinprick as he stared at the lord of the muster. “You’ve been served by downlevelers, protected by activists, aided by heroes and saved at every turn by foreigners.”
Yaresh fixed hi
s gaze on Elias, and his voice lowered. “I do not need to be lectured by a foreign–” Something lurked, unuttered, and Elias knew what it was.
He met Yaresh’s eyes and said simply, “Go ahead. Finish your sentence.”
“–By a foreign criminal,” the Muster Lord finished.
Not certain enough, then, Elias thought. “I’m not lecturing you,” he said simply. “I’m using words. The things that civilized men use until one of them forgets to take his hand off his sword.”
Yaresh’s eyes narrowed. His face flushed. But his hand slipped slowly, reluctantly, away from his weapon. Then he fixed his eyes on Aimee. “Control your bodyguard.”
“He’s notoriously uncontrollable,” she answered. “But if you wish to call for another vote, the prerogative is yours.” Elias watched as the gamble was laid out by the young portalmage. To her credit, her expression betrayed none of the fear she must have been feeling. “Otherwise, I am afraid the issue must be left to lie.”
Elias watched the lord of the muster’s eyes sweep the assembled room. He almost imagined he could see the calculations happening. The consideration of faction and politics. Risky. The faces were too unreadable, their countenance by and large too reserved.
“A time will come when you do not find yourself with such convenient allies all around you, Aimee de Laurent,” Yaresh said, stepping back. “This is not over.”
“Spoken as a man who has never stared true evil in the face,” Viltas murmured coldly.
“Should I find myself in such a position,” Aimee replied, “what fool corners me will learn of their errors. For the moment, Lord Yaresh, I assure you, it is.”
The rest was far less exciting. Arguments happened between various officers about where their armsmen should be sent to secure the upper levels. Another purge was suggested and shot down – there was not the manpower or means to execute it – and Viltas spoke of the status of Tristan: the ship was drifting further into the Tempest Crescent, and the vessel the lord shipman had arranged to send to Iseult’s twin had not reported back. The lights on the other behemoth were flickering oddly, and there was no word on the status of her crew.
They exited the long hallway to the hall onto the steps leading down to the streets. The sunlight was breaking through the clouds, but they still seemed more intense, oppressive than they’d appeared amongst the rest of the flotilla.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Rachim grunted. “That was a temporary stopgap. He’s been blunted, and enough people are worried by his stances that they won’t vote for him, but give us a few more disasters, and we’ll see how quickly the officers swing his way. And if he’s blunted further?”
“The answer,” Viltas said, “is to fix the underlying problems before he tries to seize power directly.”
Somewhere far in the distance, thunder rumbled in the heavens. Viltas looked upwards, then said, “Miss Laurent… I don’t suppose you and your bodyguard would mind walking with my son and me back to my residence? I would like to… talk, if I could.”
Aimee exchanged a look with Elias. The black knight nodded. “It’s fine,” she said to Rachim. “We’ll be back in a timely fashion.”
Elias fell into step beside Vallus, just behind his father and Aimee, and just ahead of about twenty armsmen of quality who walked behind them. Looking about in the windswept streets of the top level, none of the officers he saw going here and there were doing so unarmed.
“Thank you for your words today,” Vallus said beside him. Elias shot the young man a look. “I never thought to see Yaresh cowed.”
Elias considered carefully how to answer that. “I merely reminded him of inalienable realities.”
Vallus gave a small laugh. “Well spoken, for a bodyguard.”
The black knight caught a glance from Aimee over her shoulder. “I had a classical education,” he deadpanned.
“Have you had any luck finding your teacher?” Viltas asked earnestly.
As Elias watched, Aimee shook her head. “There hasn’t been time to search. He was last seen by one of ours at the Grand Ball, just before the storm. I’ve heard no rumors since, and we’ve barely been keeping on our feet.”
Viltas frowned as they turned into another side street and started towards one of the smaller estates spread out between other, more elaborate dwellings. The lord shipman gestured in the direction of what was apparently his home. “I heard… rumors,” he said, “of some sort of sorcerous confrontation in Platform 325. The same from which our rescue ship departed to make contact with Tristan. I will ask my people there for more precise descriptions of what was seen and exactly when. Despite the population of working mages on this ship, most people are not terribly educated on the finer points of sorcery. I don’t want to get your hopes up, Miss Laurent, but perhaps I can dig something useful up.”
“The crew and I would be… very grateful,” Aimee answered. Elias watched her fervently attempting to keep control over the spark of hope lit within her.
Another rumble of thunder passed overhead, and the skies began to darken quickly. “We need to get indoors,” Elias said. “That’s not a normal storm. In the crescent, squalls break off from the maelstrom and strike quickly.”
It was more than that, however. The hairs were rising on the back of the black knight’s neck as they neared Viltas’s home. Something in the air felt wrong. Breathing out and reaching for his rusty mystic senses, Elias felt a sudden surge of unease even as the recognition struck him: he’d last felt this the first time they met the Oracle, in the darkness of the ship’s bowels. Necromancy had a very specific scent.
There was a flash of lightning and a rolling crack of thunder, and in the flickering shadows just up the street a figure was abruptly present. The rolling flicker of petering lightning revealed more shapes. Gaunt. Ragged. Makeshift weapons were in the hands of some. Others simply flexed blackened fingers as they approached. Elias heard one of the armsmen shout, and turning, saw a second group of them at their rear. Seven ahead, seven behind, and each of them more than a match for an ordinary soldier. “Get ready!” Elias shouted, and ripped Oath of Aurum free. The blade glowed white in his hands. It steamed faintly as the rain began to fall.
As one, the dead charged them. Aimee leaped forward, her shield spell slamming into place, a gossamer wall between the dead ahead and the startled living. Elias watched her physically wince as the first of them slammed its body into it.
No choice. Elias summoned his speed, and blurred forward, vaulting over the heads of the armsmen and into the oncoming press.
They were faster. Oath of Aurum’s descending blade struck a sword that whipped through the air with no physical tells. He heard sinew snapping and bones straining past their limit. He struck again. It danced back. The head whipped about, and rotted eye sockets lit by a fell light fixed on him. A rasping laugh echoed from a decomposing mouth. “Fallen Angel, is that the best you have?”
He heard the shifting of feet behind him, barely managed to snap his sword about for a parry. He twisted, cut. His enemy wasn’t there. Too fast. These undead were exponentially more powerful, quicker, and smarter than the last. Out of the corner of his eye, there again. He cut, pivoted, swept his sword at a blurry center of mass. It darted back, and steel rang on steel. From his left side, another lunged at him simultaneously. He hammered forward, pushing his first foe aside and making just enough space for the other to crash into a stone wall on the street-side. Its claws shattered granite.
If they could do that–
Elias pressed into the bind. The dead thing was stronger than him. It pushed harder. The black knight yielded to the pressure and wound his hilt outwards. It didn’t notice that his point was in line with its face until the black knight – screaming – was already driving the glowing sword a foot through its mouth. Fire blazed. The corpse fell. Then he turned and rushed back towards the group. Stupid. He’d let himself get pulled away from the people who needed his protection. The second of the dead launched through the air at hi
m. No time. He called on his strength and heelkicked it through the stone wall with a brick-shattering crunch. “I’m just getting started,” he snarled.
Screams. The first of the dead slammed into the wall of shock-spears the armsmen had formed. Two of the crackling spearpoints punched through its body. In return, the lurching thing laughed. “Oh Viltas,” it cackled. “As if these tawdry flesh-rags could ever stop my children.”
Elias rushed back towards them as the thing pushed itself further forward on the spears and the crude splitting-maul in its fists set to rend the heads and bodies of the foremost armsmen like exploding wine-grapes. Red showered everywhere. Before he could reach them, another came at his flank. An axe descended, strong enough to shatter cobbles. Oath of Aurum sheared through its shaft as it dropped, and this time he was fast enough. The white sword exited the body, heat trailing red steam as the thing burnt out and dropped. He charged. A second of the dead had joined its companion, ripping and tearing. Five of Viltas’s armsmen lay on the ground, dead or screaming as blood pulsed from open wounds. None of the spells Elias knew would spare the living in such close quarters. He surged forward anyway, nearly back with them.
Viltas shouted a warning. The thing Elias had kicked through a wall scrambled up the back of a decorative statue and leaped through the air, as another jumped from the opposite direction.
Elias saw Aimee twist. Her free hand flashed through the gestures of a spell as she aimed at one. He summoned his strength and leaped upwards straight into the trajectory of the other. His sword sheared through its center of mass, and burning chunks fell to the earth as he angled for a landing atop the wall.
The first of the dead from the other side of Aimee’s shield spell cleared it, and slammed into him as he came down. He felt razor claws ripping at the mail and leathers he wore. The two of them hammered into the shrubbery of a decorative garden, and Elias nearly lost his breath. The rotting, hideous face loomed above him. Behind it, he glimpsed the specter of his former self, smirking. He couldn’t reach his sword, somewhere in the grass nearby.
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