by Greg Keyes
“Right,” Attrebus said. “But if we’re caught up in some plot of Clavicus Vile’s—”
“Then we have to keep our brains in our heads,” Sul finished. “Same as if he’s got nothing to do with us.”
“Okay. But if Sathil has the sword, and Vile knows where it is—I mean, how strong could Sathil be?”
“From everything we’ve heard, Vile is weak. And all daedra are vulnerable here, in Tamriel. They can’t come here unless summoned, and even then their power is curtailed. He could send his followers, but they would be mortal, like us.”
“Right. So what now?”
“I’m going to my room to think. I’ve changed my mind about summoning daedra to explore the castle. From what I saw of Sathil, he would notice that, and I’m pretty sure we won’t survive his suspicion a second time.”
“Okay. I’m staying in the bath for a while.”
“Easy on the whiskey. We may have to fight at any time.”
“Sure,” Attrebus said, taking a final swallow of the stuff.
Sul left. Between the bath and the whiskey, Attrebus felt pretty human, and after a while the water actually seemed too hot, so he got out and wrapped himself in the heavy robe he’d been provided. He pulled out Coo and opened the little door, but Annaïg wasn’t there, so he set the mechanical bird on a table next to the bed.
He was tired, but not sleepy, and sat on the mattress turning the day’s events about—and wondering what Sul would do—when he heard a light knock at his door.
He answered it and found an anxious-looking Irinja.
“I heard what happened,” she said. “I hope you weren’t hurt.”
“I’m fine,” Attrebus assured her. “But I need to know—did you tell anyone about our conversation? Did you tell anyone that we were looking for the sword?”
“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t do that.”
He studied her face for a moment, searching for signs of disingenuity, remembering the conversation with Sul about his weakness for women.
“Come in,” he finally said.
“Your highness isn’t dressed for company.”
“I’m covered and comfortable,” he replied. “Come in.”
She did, and he saw the expression on her face, the same as he’d seen on many young women. Not long ago he would have taken advantage of that look in an instant, without thinking. Now he found himself uninterested.
But he needed to know where Umbra was.
“I was having a bit of whiskey,” he told her. “Would you care to join me?”
“Highness?”
“None of that, remember? Do you want the Frost Giant to come after me again?”
“Oh, no,” she replied. “Yes—a dram of whiskey would be nice.”
He gave her the dram and then some. She drank it nervously.
“I want to help you,” she said finally, but he could hear what was coming next, and put his hand on hers.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve put you in a bad position, I can see that. Just keep me company.”
He filled his glass. “I’m going to have a bit more. Join me?”
“I shouldn’t,” she said, so predictably that he could have mouthed the words along with her.
As predictably, she took the drink.
“I must seem very stupid to you,” she said.
“That’s not true,” he said. “You speak intelligently, you’re thoughtful, you don’t make important decisions without thinking them through. If I had met you at a ball in the Imperial City, I would have imagined you the educated daughter of Skyrim nobility.”
“Rather than a maid,” she said bluntly.
“Listen—my father was once just a soldier with ambition. Now he’s Emperor. He fought for everything he ever got, and I was born with it. Who should be admired the most?”
Unbelievably, as he said this, something seemed to shift in his chest, and his face became warm.
“What’s wrong?” Irinja asked. “Are you—are you crying?”
Attrebus realized a few tears were indeed trickling down his cheek.
He laughed. “Have you ever said something because it seemed like the right thing to say and then realized it was true?”
“I guess.”
“When I saw my father last, I said terrible things to him. What I’ve never told him is what I just told you.”
“And now you’re afraid you’ll never see him again, never get to tell him.”
Attrebus paused for a moment. The epiphany was that some part of him had always known he was less than his father but refused to admit it. That’s why he’d been so easily convinced of his own greatness, why he had been so blind to all the signs of deception that he should have noticed.
But where her mind had gone was more useful, wasn’t it?
“That’s right,” he said. “He won’t flee when Umbriel arrives. He’ll stand, and he’ll fight, and he’ll die. And he will never know how I really feel.”
“That’s awful,” she said, pouring herself another drink and gulping it down. He took another, too.
She wiped his cheeks, and he took her hand, looked into her eyes, let her know that he was going to kiss her, and then did it. She tilted her head back, eyes closed.
“I want to help you,” she said when their lips parted.
“I’m not asking you to,” he said, and kissed her again.
This time she kissed back, hard, with lots of enthusiasm and not much technique.
And he felt guilty, which was absurd. He kept seeing the little image of Annaïg’s face.
But that was all he had seen, wasn’t it? Below the neck, she might be hideous.
And now he felt even guiltier, for such a horrible thought.
He pushed Irinja back, gently. “I can’t,” he said, and sighed.
“I’m not asking you for anything,” Irinja said. “I’m not wanting you to marry me or take me away from here or—I just want to be part of your adventure. A part of something important.”
He noticed she was shuddering. “May I have another drink, please?”
He gave it to her, and poured himself a large one.
“It’s his son,” she said softly. “Lord Sathil’s son, Elhul.”
“What about him?”
“Lord Sathil sent him down to Morrowind, to the ruins of Vivec City. Sent him after that sword, Umbra. But when Elhul picked it up, he went mad and started killing his guards. They had to bind him in chains. They took the sword away from him, and he seemed to get better, but then he found it. He killed his mother, Lady Sathil. He killed his two brothers and half of the guards before they dragged him down again. And then they couldn’t make him let go of it.”
“What then? What happened?”
“Lord Sathil prepared him chambers, deep in the stone. That’s where he is now, with the sword he can’t let go of. He’s been there for eight years.”
She wrung her hands. “Elhul was so sweet,” she said. “He used to play with me, pretend to be my knight, my defender. But when he had the sword, he almost killed me. His eyes—he wasn’t there. Nothing was there.”
“And you know where this place is? How to get there?”
She nodded, then threw her arms around his neck and began kissing him again. His head was starting to swirl, and he realized that he’d really had too much to drink, but he didn’t care about that. The kisses felt good, and why shouldn’t they? He had promised Annaïg a lot, but nothing to do with this …
Then the world spun, and he was on his back on clean bedding, and flesh was meeting flesh, and for the first time in a long while he gave up worrying, thinking, analyzing, and just was.
TEN
Annaïg was acutely aware of Lord Rhel watching her as she studied Glim’s corpse, but she couldn’t control the burn of tears in her eyes. They seemed to come from someplace in the middle of her, a place where everything had been seared out. Soon she would be nothing but skin, and fall in a pile on the floor.
“I’m sorry, Glim
,” she said in their private cant.
“Umbriel is pleased,” Rhel said.
“What’s going to happen to him?” she asked softly.
“First he’ll be shown to the skraws, so they know he’s dead. He’ll be cut in pieces, and each of the skraw dormitories will get one, to remind them.”
“That’s barbaric,” she said.
“I don’t know what that means,” Rhel said. “But you’ve done well for yourself. You should be proud.”
“That will take me a bit of time,” Annaïg replied.
“Umbriel told me you might show grief. He said you were not to be punished for it, that it would come to you naturally. He also said that it will pass.”
“It will,” Annaïg agreed. “May I be alone with him for a moment?”
“Why?”
“To tell him goodbye.”
“He’s already dead. He can’t hear you.”
“Umbriel would understand,” she said.
“Very well,” Rhel yielded. “But only a moment.”
She waited until she could no longer hear his footsteps before she bent down and hugged Glim’s still body. Hoping against hope that no one was watching, she pried open his mouth and took the crystal growing at the base of his tongue. Closing his mouth, she kissed him on the snout. She put the crystal in her pocket, straightened, and wiped her eyes. Then she left to prepare Rhel’s evening meal.
Annaïg had endured long nights before, but she had never felt as lost as she did after the work in the kitchen was done that evening. She drank nearly a bottle of wine, remembering drinking with Glim on her father’s balcony as the rains came in Lilmoth.
Eventually she opened her locket.
At first she didn’t know what she was seeing, but then the tangle of limbs and blankets sorted itself out. Attrebus was in profile, asleep. The woman—whoever she was—was facing Coo.
She snapped the locket shut and sat there a moment as the feeling of betrayal settled over her. On the surface of her mind, she knew she shouldn’t feel this way, that Attrebus had never implied that he had romantic feelings for her. And yet, something about the way he spoke to her, as if they had always been friends, as if when this was all over …
But no, of course not. He needed her, that was all. To do this thing, destroy this city. He had to keep her on his good side, motivated, willing to do whatever was required, even murder Glim, for the gods’ sake. This probably wasn’t even the first time, just the first time he’d slipped up and left Coo open.
And who was she anyway? Nobody. A silly girl, worshipping a prince. Probably sillier than the one who lay with him now. What must he actually think of her?
She was really stupid about people, wasn’t she? She’d thought that Slyr was her friend. She’d thought that Attrebus might—
Before she could finish the thought, she hurled the locket at the wall, then finished her wine.
ELEVEN
Colin reached into his pocket, but motion brought the thing’s attention to him, and it came at him, just as the last one had. He withdrew a small metal box—only an inch on each side—flipped open the lid, and held it out.
For an awful moment he didn’t think it would work, that Aronil was either wrong about what he faced or that the Ayleid soul-maze was old beyond functioning, but then the daedra suddenly dwindled, formed a stream that flew into the box, and was gone.
Colin closed the soul-maze and put it back in his pocket, silently thanking Aronil for showing him the book. Then he looked around to see what other wards were waiting to kill him.
What remained was more of the usual sort, and he was able to neutralize them without destroying them. It might take Hierem a while to discover the missing guardian, but if all of his protections were stripped away, the minister would know for certain that someone had been in his rooms.
He knew he should have a few hours—the minister was at court—but it was hard to resist the urge to hurry.
Hierem’s private suite had a bedroom with a dining area, a bath, and a conventional library; Colin noted them and passed on. He also discovered a room that had been converted into a small dungeon with four cells, all currently empty and clean.
More interesting was a spacious room with various workbenches and a large sigil painted on the floor. Avoiding the latter, he looked over the benches, where he found a number of strange objects. Some—like his soul-maze—looked to be of the ancient race of mer known as Ayleids; others appeared more recent and probably of Nibenese origin. He didn’t know what any of them were so he didn’t touch them. There were shelves of powders, liquids, salts, and such, along with a scattering of alchemical equipment.
What most interested him was a large desk, built with several deep drawers. A few papers lay on it, covered with scrawled notes and a few puzzling drawings, but the language wasn’t one he knew. The drawers were locked in both mundane and magical fashion, and it took him a laborious ten minutes or so to deal with that and begin going through them, looking for something—anything—to connect Hierem to the Black Marsh trip or Umbriel. But after a frustrating half hour, he didn’t find anything.
He was feeling for hidden panels when he noticed a long tube propped against the side of the desk. One end was open and a large sheet of paper was rolled inside. He spread it on the desk and regarded it.
It seemed to be plans for a device of some sort, but the conventions of the drawing and an unreadable notation left him with no understanding of what it was. He did recognize bits of it from the notes and sketches on the table, however, which suggested that it was something of present concern to Hierem. So he studied it more carefully, and this time saw one word in the notations he understood.
Umbriel.
It could be anything. For all he knew it was a weapon designed to destroy the city, something the Synod had come up with. But he had the feeling that this was somehow key.
If he actually took it, however, Hierem would instantly know something was wrong.
He toyed with the idea of waiting, of murdering Hierem as Letine had suggested.
Instead, he stole some paper from deep in one of the drawers and began copying, as best he could, the things that seemed most important.
Letine traced her fingers over the lines of Colin’s drawings as he stroked his down her bare spine.
“I’ve no sense of scale,” she said. “It could be the size of a thumb or a siege engine.”
“And it might not be anything at all,” he said, and sighed. “It certainly isn’t the proof the Emperor asked for, at least not in this form. If only I could understand the language.”
“Well, it’s not a language,” she said. “Or not exactly. It looks like Synod encryptions, the sort they use for secret communications. I’ve intercepted a few of them.”
“Can you read it?”
“No, but I recognize some of the symbols,” she said. “Obviously, you can see they use the same letters Tamrielic does, but the words are nonsense. Some of the symbols—these small ones after the passages, that look like funny letters themselves—these contain the key to reading the previous passage. I’m told once you have them memorized properly, it’s almost as effortless as reading. These others, these large ones—they represent whole ideas—usually spells, artifacts, certain sorts of energies—” She broke off.
“How faithfully did you copy this?” she asked.
“As well as I could,” he replied, “without understanding what I was reproducing. The drawing was most difficult—I can’t tell even what the parts are, what holds it together. I mean, this seems to be the bottom,” he added, pointing, “but that doesn’t make sense. It looks like it would just fall over.”
“It’s not a drawing,” Letine said. “Or at least not a blueprint for a device. It’s more like a map.” He could hear the excitement creeping into her voice. “This, for instance—I’ve seen this before where it represented a soul gem—or at least the idea of something that can trap a soul. And here, this represents something that flows in o
nly one direction, like a river.”
“Then it is a plan, of sorts?” he asked.
“Right. It could be a device, or a spell, or a series of spells involving—well, at least two arcane objects, this one and that one.”
Colin drew himself closer. “If that’s the case,” he said, “this one might represent Umbriel.” He leafed through his copies of smaller sketches and notations. “You see? The word ‘Umbriel’ is in the passage next to it.”
“Possibly,” Letine allowed. “But if so, what is this one?”
“You know, if you turn it this way,” he mused, “it looks familiar to me—I’ve seen it before, or something really close. Not in Hierem’s chambers, but when I was studying to enter the Penitus Oculatus.”
“That’s a very different context,” she warned.
“I know. It was used by necromancers, back before the Mages’ Guild schismed. It was used to designate ghosts, but the meaning was more complicated. I think it could also mean ‘shadow,’ or even ‘echo.’ ”
“I don’t see how it can mean that here,” she said. “Not knowing any more than we do.”
“What, then? Do you know anyone you trust in the Synod?”
“Hierem is a member of the Synod,” she said. “Maybe we should just ask him.”
“Well, it might come to that,” he said.
“I know someone,” she said. “But he won’t like it if I bring company. You’re going to have to let me out of your custody for a little while.”
“The Dark Brotherhood is still out there,” he said. “They don’t give up easily. I would rather you stayed put.”
She turned and kissed him. “I’ll be careful. I’ll avoid anyplace I usually go, and I’ll go at night. Your protecting me is all very sweet, but I’ve been looking out for myself for a long time.”
“Things are different now,” he reminded her.
“Yes, and I’ll take that into account, right?” A flicker of irritation passed over her face. “Look,” she said, “just because you saved my life and we’ve been playing tussle-bug for a few days doesn’t mean you own me, Colin. What we have here is a common goal and mutual respect. If we don’t have that, then—”