“It’s hardly tumult,” the other said, condescending. “Let’s at least be honest about that. A rise from nearly-nothing results in an amount only slightly more than nearly-nothing.”
“You mean to teach me about numbers?” The man turned toward Itharin, his speech heated. “You’ve called upon the House of Sonder, of all the Houses you could have, and you expect us to march with you, with this ludicrous plan? How do we know it will work?”
“We don’t,” the Mesiter said. “But as I told you privately before this meeting, the number of expected deaths, granting that it does—and there’s not reason to think it won’t—is below point-two percent, and we often come out ahead on those estimates, grisly though they are.”
The man from Sonder’s tone and attitude evaporated. “Okay then.” He sat.
Itharin’s posture fell, and he breathed a long sigh.
Coulda left forty-two minutes ago if not for that, Kendra thought. She smirked. That’s probably what he’s thinking.
The woman from Propense remained standing. “None of us have any problems with death, so long as the cause under which we die is good.”
“The Grand Master represents nothing but,” Itharin said. “He’s perhaps the best of all of us and has returned. Though he hasn’t asked personally”—much to the chagrin of a few House here, Kendra knew—“the king has asked of us by rite, and so we shall provide.”
Kendra’s gaze passed over the rest. A group had set up a tent, around which they’d built a fire of real wood and hung a kettle over the flame to make themselves tea. They all acted so casually, a cool uncaring that Kendra had cultivated only in affectation. Though she had wondered at times if they simply pretended, those who wore it well did so gracefully enough to make it seem natural.
“And what of the Priests?” said a deep voice to her left, where a House had ported a small part of their forest to the theater. Among the branches, ravens and owls, eagles and falcons, and pigeons perched; and under them lay or stood bears, horses, deer, moose, ducks, swans, wolves, rats, and most any other fauna with four legs or a pair of wings.
Kendra remembered asking one of another House, the members of which transformed into anything coldblooded, why they and Wyndamere didn’t share a banner. The kin had only stared at her before he walked away without answering. Only later did she learn how inappropriate what she’d asked had been.
“It’s somethin ya gotta be a part of to get,” a Leynar in Reyastock had told her during her eighth schooling year, so even now she didn’t understand why.
Wyndamere’s fur and feathers all had a similar merle pattern in muted shades of black, white, and brown and gray. Their speaker took the shape of a bear, as tall lying down as a man standing. Scars crossed his face and muzzle, and his fur quavered in a breeze Kendra couldn’t feel. His eyes shined as black mirrors.
“Karhaal has access to our power now,” he said, “in one way at least. What need have they of us? It’s my understanding”—
“None of us need House Wyndamere,” a small wizard to Kendra’s right said. He sat with his group, their robes streaked red and purple. “While your lot is out gamboling through forests and trying to stick your dicks in”—
“The Priests are Leynars,” the Mesiter said, raising his voice against the man from House Gntinac, “but their power and godly politics lie with the Order, which doesn’t, as I’ve told many of you repeatedly, mean they aren’t apart of us anymore. We all live on one Coroth, and it’s under that banner we must now come together, no matter what your opinion is of Karhaal or the Grand Master or the Priests”—he looked at the man in the streaked robes—“or House. Do you—all of you—understand me?”
No one said a thing against him.
“If you’ve no other grievances,” said Itharin, “we have portals prepared to guide us to our staging area, but you’re more than welcome to use your own.” He pulled back the sleeve on his left wrist and checked his watch. “Daylight already sets time against us. My Leynars”—the Mesiter swept his gaze over the lot of them—“Leynarim ex tehd.” Ley is life.
“Leynarim ex tehd,” Kendra intoned in time with everyone else.
They cleared away their chairs and tents and fires with sweeps of their arms and talked amongst their cliques. Kendra watched their smoke float away on the open air. Their mutterings filled the theater in a dull drone.
Itharin finished speaking with the woman whose hair hung stark-white around her. Her porcelain skin reflected light, and her eyes misted white, broken each time she blinked. To Kendra she almost looked alien, and she lamented that even as Leynars, time played its tune on each of them. Yet the Mesiter, as he approached her against the flow walking past him, appeared as young as a boy fresh through his schooling years, his gait springy, his mind balanced.
The group who’d had tea hadn’t yet folded their tent. An elder tossed his bag in air, the opening of which spread wide enough to envelope the canopy without taking it down.
“You can’t just let your bag eat this stuff,” a woman said, her voice a drawling nag.
“Deal with it later.” Despite Leynars’ abilities, the gentleman had allowed age to toll his body. He walked with a limp under his left leg and headed away from the woman he spoke to. His bag collapsed under his right arm, and with his left, he offhandedly traced a portal, manifesting while he spoke. “Anything inside is suspended”—
“I know how a fucking suspension differential works,” she said, walking after him. “The tent is made of Algene Silk”—
“If anything happened to it, I’ll buy another one. Hells, I’ll make one for you. It’s not worthy of my time to keep track of what you say I can and can’t”—their conversation lost itself to the portal’s other side.
For a minute, Kendra and Itharin watched the Leynars’ procession, only a minority of which headed to the portal stage.
Then the Mesiter crossed his arms and leaned against the stone wall behind them. His silvered robe shimmered in the evening sun, fluttering at its hem in the fledgling night’s breeze. “Suppose that went about as well as it could have.”
“Better, maybe,” Kendra said. “You all just might make it there in time.”
The Mesiter huffed and checked his watch again. “Only we could make a five-minute declaration a forty-seven-minute forum of whether helping save the planet is moral and necessary.”
“Time’s not terribly important to many here.” Even with the impetus of War, the Leynar proceeded in a time of their own.
“That doesn’t mean others are immune to such contrivances. Yet watch them move, all at your counsel.”
“Behold the forest, for I am we,” said Kendra in Old Magornian, quoting Horis Baldaman from his work critical of the War of the Bridges, ironically titled Why the War of the Bridges Failed.
Wyndamere finished their ritual and ported the piece of forest from under them, then joined the march.
Itharin attended them all with quick-flitting glances. “It’s good to see you, by the way—wondered if you’d ever pop up again, what with those years you went dark.”
“You’re welcome.”
Itharin tutted. He turned toward her, his left shoulder against the stone wall. “I wish you would, but I don’t expect you to come with us, Ms. Drander. You always showed such promise”—
“Oh, how long have you been waiting for this?” she asked.
The Mesiter ignored her interruption. “I used to think if you could just get past whatever held you up, you’d do well in leadership here. Perhaps I could have even retired and passed the position on to you.”
“I’d have loved that,” Kendra said, painting her words with sarcasm. “Doubly glad I didn’t come back, then.”
“Such is life.” The Mesiter gestured uncaring. “All that ever holds anyone back is themselves.”
“I didn’t.”
“Hmm?”
“Hold myself back. Shit just happens sometimes. There are some things no one can fix.” Kendra glanced at him. “
Think about me often, do you?”
Itharin shook his head, watching everyone else. Silence became them for a short time until he said, “You’re the lucky one. People like you, not bound by the game’s ministrations. I’m glad you left. Many were, for their reasons, but you would have wasted your talents here, working for idiots like me, trying to prove yourself to fools like them.” He gestured toward the retreating crowd.
“Your flattery won’t gain you favor with me. Not then, not now.”
“Damn,” said Itharin, taking his turn at sarcasm, his a subtler brand. “I’d hoped I could convince you this time.”
“I don’t like being convinced.” And that had cost her more than once. “But you could tell me one thing.”
The Mesiter waited.
“Why are you going?”
For a moment, a storm played behind Itharin’s eyes. “If the Grand Master of the Order fights, I can’t in good conscience withhold my powers from him, especially with the situation as dire as you describe. Leynars may have kept out of the last War, but I fought alongside Jeom and Perinold and those before them for a thousand years. I’ve got War stories as far back as Towers. Gods, I wasn’t even Mesiter then. Consider it a personal deficiency, but I can’t deny a call from the scepter or the Grand Master. I’d fight alongside them without question.”
“As Mesiter or yourself?”
Itharin shrugged. “Before I was Mesiter, I supported them as myself, and now that I’m Mesiter, I join them as both. Either way, I fight because my personal morals won’t let me do otherwise.”
“It better be personal,” Kendra warned, “and not some form of external duty. You might find in the coming days that the Accords mean less and less, especially to those in power.”
“And if the situation in Karhaal is as you describe, the Priests might end up running the place. What that means for us is as good as anyone’s guess, especially with the Undertaker being where and who she is.” His gaze seemed far away, even as he looked at her. “Wouldn’t be the man I am today if I let things like that bother me, though.”
“And I wouldn’t be the woman I am today if I weren’t such a bitch.” Kendra crossed her arms and mirrored the Mesiter, turning their conversation a little more private. “I can see the shadow that hangs over you, can feel you want to tell me something. Be out with it.”
“I’ve nothing to tell”—
“Then you wouldn’t need to hide it.”
“Whatever,” he said pointedly, but, perhaps despite himself, his mood sedated. “Fine, it’s just—we Leynar, we calculate. Were it not for my ability to foresee, I would have died long ago. I hear the echoes and whispers of all the realities in which I have, yet here”—he gestured to the theater with his right arm—“I remain. It’s easy to not fear death when you know you’re not facing it, but I’ve learned over the years it’s those who see their fate coming who fear it most. Mine scares me, for no matter the choices I make, I march inexorably toward a death that’s far away yet unignorably on my horizon. I can’t run from it—that’s why a goddess called it Fate. I just hope one day you find yours, or whatever you’re searching for in its stead.”
“I found it, and beyond it was another. Our paths aren’t etched in stone. There’s a reality out there where I’m living the way I wish I could. In this one, though, I’m needed for a different purpose. That’s not bad, it just is.”
The Mesiter smiled. “Gods.”
Kendra rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me I’ve impressed you that easily.”
“Impressed? You? No. You’re just either more jaded or far wiser than I am.” A trace of his smile remained on his face. “The Grand Master, I know he’s your friend, but your decision is one I’ll support without question. Where is it you think you’ll go?”
Yet there you ask. Kendra considered what to say, appraised how much the Mesiter already knew. Though no one could read minds—that gift had eluded them, much to her irritation; she’d often daydreamed about what she could have done, how her life could have turned out had the gods given her that ability; just as well They didn’t, knowing what she’d have done with it—Itharin had ways of finding out what no one wanted him to. He stared deliberately far-off, toward the sky over a gatehouse on the courtyard’s other side.
Kendra followed his gaze and saw nothing but a haze that beat south. “I have a few ideas.” She didn’t want his opinion. “Nothing concrete yet.”
The Mesiter looked to the ground between them, skated his foot over wet grass, and checked his watch. “Whatever you decide”—he pushed himself from the wall and turned to face her while he walked away—“I’m sure you’ll make it through just fine.” He winked, then he kicked and teleported away.
Kendra watched the last two groups go. Alone, torn. Like most choices she’d made in her life, her decision came down to what seemed objectively right and what matched her own self-interest. The former had often been the latter, disguised, splintering her mind until she’d made the wrong judgment. A small part of her wanted to go, to see Russ and make everything what it could be. But she fought it, for that life could never be anything more than an apparition.
She got through half her teleportation evocation when a great emptiness filled her. Just like every wrong choice she’d made since she met him, her mind turned to the one man on the planet she wished she wanted nothing to do with.
Russ, what in the hells did you do? she said to herself, for events well outside her control made her choice for her.
4
Grenn walked inside and stopped next to Russ, who stood near the tent’s flap. Order members passed through to secure orders and go over last-minute strategies, and deputies pushed notifications and alerts from one device to another and made sure minutiae made it to the right people. Those here knew War-time, and Russ watched them work, his opinion garnered when proper.
The job of Grand Master, as Jeom had told him, comprised two primary functions: “Number one is essentially acting as babysitter to all the factions across the world. Sometimes it’s simple disputes, other times it’s—well, it’s all bullshit, really. And two is being the first into battle and the last out if you can help it.”
“Got the list of all the assignments,” Grenn said. “We’ve got more of the old guard here than new.” Surprise grained his tone. “A battle urlan made the list real quick, like it was nothing.”
Impression shot Russ’s brow upward. “The Urlanmeister sent battle urlans?”
Grenn nodded.
“Huh. Make sure everyone gets a copy of that.”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
Grenn pressed the proper order of taps on his tablet, and a final swipe sent the dossier to everyone who had checked-in to the forward camp. “Done?”
Over the next few seconds, chimes and beeps and buzzes sounded through the tent at once.
“Great,” Russ said, whispering. “It’s good to see you.”
“Same, man.”
“Squire Abernathy,” Luke said, leaning past Barius to see him. “Good work.”
Grenn nodded after a second’s hesitation. “Ma’am.” Then he spoke to Russ: “I didn’t even do anything.”
Russ laughed. “Yeah, that’s about right.” The wound on Grenn’s right cheek still shined, but Luff’s tincture looked to be doing its work. At least the veins had reduced back into his skin. “Where’s Xenia?”
“Back at Rhine’s with Burth. She’s probably worried ragged.” He paused. “Look, I’m not trying to pansy out, but I know I’m not that good in a fight. I’ll stay back here if you want me to.”
Russell waited, trying to figure whether Grenn joked. “Fuck are ya talkin about? You’ll be with me. How else am I supposed to make sure ya don’t die?” Everything in the day—and further—counted on it.
“I mean, I could just stay here, help strategize.”
Russ shook his head. “No, ya gotta learn somehow. Put yourself with me, wherever you are.”
Grenn consulted the list
he’d brought with him. “No one’s assigned to you right now. According to that urlan’s databases, you’re still em-eye-ay, actually.”
“As Trent Geno or Russell Hollowman?”
“Both,” said Grenn, flicking through the report. “Shit, there’s an assignment on Trent. Gods damn it.” A group of the new guard, who’d set themselves up in an antechamber off the main room finally hailed him. Grenn’s face lit when he saw the callers. “Hey, I’ll catch you in a few.” He gestured through his tablet while he walked.
“What do they need you for?” Russ asked.
Grenn half-turned, smirking. “Official Karlian business.”
Russ couldn’t help smiling. “Sure.”
Before Grenn made it to them, he stopped by Passa Rovenstirk, who remained mostly quiet and out-of-the-way for her presence there. Grenn probably made some quip, and Passa laughed. Her face pulled into an honest smile that made it to her eyes and bared her straight teeth. She responded. Grenn got the last word as he backpedaled toward his friends. Passa watched him go, then returned her attention to the main table, a grin still smeared across her face, which she promptly straightened when she glanced at Russ.
The world, despite what anyone said, revolved around such harmless interactions, important because of how they made people feel. Passa’s smile reminded Russ of Lillie, who had given hers freely and with care. Arnin’s envoy, and everyone for that matter, needed to remember and value and unreservedly partake in those small instances of unshackled emotion despite what propriety or duty might instruct, especially in the coming days. Grenn needed to work on a lot, but that didn’t include his ability to bring out the best—and worst—in others.
Willa walked out of a room to Russ’s left, her tail flicking behind her. A hurrying Karlian bumped it, said nothing, and kept moving. She watched him leave, then she wandered toward Russ.
“What’s up?” Russ said, attempting to seem casual.
Willa stayed quiet a half-dozen seconds before she spoke. “I can’t help feeling like this is just the start.”
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