Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Robert Brady

  Ancenon fell quiet. I hadn’t known that Dorkan had pulled out from the High Council, but it didn’t surprise me, either.

  “So I’m going to Andurin?” Karel said, probably hoping to save the conversation.

  “I would like that if you can spare him,” I said.

  “He is right in that there would be little for him to do,” Ancenon said. “His people won’t fight for us as they will for you.”

  I smiled about that. I don’t think I would make him love me more by telling him whose gold now rebuilt the damage I did.

  The meal broke up after that. Ancenon had to find D’gattis. Thorn actually wanted to speak with Shela about some Andaran something. I ended up going out to the stables with Nantar, Arath and Dilvesh. Karel went somewhere on his own, but he didn’t say where.

  “I heard about the battle for Thera,” Nantar said to me. “Arath, of course, speaks of nothing else.”

  “Even with all of us in Conflu, they were not so easily bested,” the woodsman said.

  “How long do you think it will be before they adopt Wolf Soldier training?” I asked them, seriously.

  “Years,” Dilvesh said. “Maybe never. You’ve beaten them twice. The Andarans have defeated them more than that and they don’t ride horses.”

  “Horses aren’t suited to their Andaran border,” I said.

  “Your method isn’t suited to their idea that we are all inferior to them,” Arath said.

  “That isn’t just the Uman-Chi, then?” I asked

  The others laughed. “I think you will find that every race on Fovea is convinced they hold that position,” Dilvesh said.

  “When in fact it is clearly the Volkhydrans who are superior,” Nantar added.

  Arath shoved him, widening his grin.

  I felt the smile come off of my lips. “I think I might be in too deep with this whole issue,” I said.

  “This business of you being the Heir to Eldador?” Nantar asked.

  I nodded.

  “Well, I know I wouldn’t want it,” Arath said. “Better a general than a King. The nations line up to kill a general one at a time.”

  Nantar barked a laugh. Dilvesh took my shoulder. “I don’t think that anyone who ever stood at the threshold of where you are ever thought any differently. It is a daunting thing, to be responsible for so many lives.”

  “I know,” I said. “The Wolf Soldiers want what I do. The Eldadorians just want to be alive tomorrow. I don’t know if I can bring them that.”

  “Not the way you live,” Nantar agreed. Arath nudged him again.

  They had clearly spent the last year together, getting to know each other, supporting each other. I seemed an outsider now.

  “I didn’t want to discuss this with D’gattis in the room,” I said, finally.

  “The Trenboni are trying to kill you?” Arath said.

  “And the Confluni are working with them?” Nantar added.

  “And the Bounty Hunter’s guild?” said Dilvesh.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “He knows,” Arath said.

  “He probably likes the idea now,” Nantar said.

  “Well, he won’t stop it, anyway,” Arath said.

  “D’gattis is a loyal Uman-Chi,” Dilvesh said. “He wants what is best for his nation, and he sees his future there. Ancenon is more of a pragmatist. He has a belief that there will be a new Uman-Chi nation called Angador, and that he will father it.”

  “He might change his mind about that, when I tell him something I learned lately,” I said.

  They waited. I chewed it over in my mind. I needed something to bring them back in the fold, and to get them to think I had some more to offer to the group.

  “Let’s get everyone back together again,” I said, finally. “No Oligarchs, no titles, just Free Legion.”

  “Very well, for breakfast in the morning then?” Dilvesh asked.

  “I don’t think D’gattis is too far away yet,” Nantar said.

  I nodded. “Yes, breakfast in my personal chambers. I think that Shela has the wards up there to give us privacy.”

  “This is big, guys,” I said, looking at each of them. “This changes everything.”

  Chapter Seven

  Archeology

  Shela warded the bedroom as I thought she had. She embraced the idea to have the meeting of just Free Legion, until she found out that she wasn’t included.

  “He will threaten you,” she warned me, her arms wrapped around me and her head pressed against my chest as we stood in the middle of the Heir’s chambers. She’d taken to wearing palace dresses with long, blue and white skirts that ballooned out around her hips, and plunging necklines. The whole thing rustled like fall leaves against me.

  “I’ll have Adriam looking out for my safety,” I said. “No need to blow up his chair or kill him.”

  “There are other ways that he can get at you,” she told me, pushing away and looking up into my eyes. “You cannot think that any Fire Bond means anything to D’gattis. He won’t kill you, but he will help anyone who wants to and think himself innocent, and if Adriam disagrees after the fact, you will be just as dead, or worse.”

  I ran a hand through her long, black hair. It was morning and they would be coming soon. I had already sent for them in their chambers. “You and I know that, when it comes to magical might, D’gattis is no match for you. And we both know that, when it comes to guile and deception, we are no match for an Uman-Chi.

  “Our best chance,” I said, looking into her beautiful brown eyes, “is to give him such a stake in us, that he doesn’t want us dead.”

  “And you think you can do that?” she said.

  “If not,” I told her, “you can always sink the ship he’s on when they pull out of port.”

  She grinned and kissed me. I had been kidding, but I felt just as sure that she hadn’t been, and that it would bother her no more to eliminate D’gattis than it would him to kill her.

  She left with Lee and I watched her, the wiggle beneath her formal palace dress still more than enough to drive me wild.

  I didn’t wait long for Nantar, Thorn and Arath to arrive together. I greeted them at the door to my chamber, and turned to see Karel sitting on the corner of my bed. He grinned at the idea that he could indeed get past me. I would have to ask him how he did it.

  Dilvesh came alone. When he arrived, we sat at the table, and Uman servants in green Eldadorian livery piled it with breakfast foods: oatcakes and fried meats and eggs and fresh milk. The five of them, male or female, had their long hair pulled back into a pony tail. I liked strong tea in the morning and one of the females poured it for me, bending at the waist and smiling into my eyes, but no one else took any. We sat and commenced to eat as the Uman-Chi entered.

  I think they expected us to rise, but we didn’t. We’d left two seats at the table open to them, but the table itself was overcrowded and they pulled the seats away, to watch us eat from the other side of the room as the Uman filed out. They sat saying nothing, waiting for me to make my move.

  As I had with my advisors, I rose and crossed the room to where my pack lay by the bed and withdrew a bar of gold, wrapped in oilcloth. Rather than place it on the table, I handed it to D’gattis. He almost dropped it for the unexpected weight.

  He unwrapped it in his lap and studied it, then handed it to Ancenon.

  “We have seen this before,” he said, looking at me.

  “Have you?”

  They turned toward each other, then to me. “This is the Cheyak seal,” D’gattis said.

  “It is,” I agreed.

  Dilvesh stood and walked over to them, his heavy riding boots clunking on the polished wood floor. He took one look at the bar and his jaw dropped. He turned to me, looked into my eyes, then grinned and sat back down.

  “What?” Thorn insisted.

  “Does that resonate like Outpost X?” I asked the Uman-Chi.

  Ancenon focused on it, then looked several times between the bar and D’gattis. D
’gattis did the same thing, and then they began to mutter to each other, then looked up at me.

  “Where did you get this?” D’gattis asked me.

  “Where do you think I got it?” I asked them.

  D’gattis sighed, exasperated, and brought the gold bar back to the breakfast table. The other members of the Free Legion studied it with interest, picking it up and handing it to each other, except for Dilvesh who kept watching me.

  “You found another Outpost?” Ancenon asked me. “Or you just found this evidence of one?”

  “I found this evidence of one, in Outpost V,” I said.

  There it was, cat out of the bag. Everything hinged on this now. This could make me, or this could burn me down.

  “And I know the truth of Outpost VII,” I added.

  The Uman-Chi straightened in their chairs, their faces pointed at me. Even they couldn’t hide their excitement.

  “You know that the Cheyak did not make Outpost VII,” Dilvesh said.

  Arath, Nantar and Thorn regarded him, then the Uman-Chi. Karel of Stone just laughed.

  “There is the best-guarded non-secret in Fovean history,” the Scitai said.

  “I do not agree,” D’gattis said.

  “Oh, come on,” Karel said. “You have been to Outpost IX, and to Outpost X. Are they anything like Outpost VII?”

  “There is nothing to say that all Outposts are built the same,” D’gattis said.

  “Outpost V is a mirror of Outpost IX and Outpost X,” I said.

  “And you have been there?” Ancenon insisted.

  “Yes,” I said, “and odds are that you have, too.”

  “You mean walked over it, like Outpost X,” Thorn said.

  Dilvesh shook his head. “He has walked its halls,” he said. “Look in his eyes. He went right to the vaults from the throne room, like he did in Outpost X, but this time he knew to avoid the wards.”

  I nodded.

  “Where?” Ancenon asked me again.

  “I need a guarantee first,” I said. “I know that Outpost V is covered by no Fire Bond.”

  “And your guarantee?” Ancenon asked.

  I looked right at D’gattis. “I am tired of your alluding to your willingness to work with my enemies against me.”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” D’gattis said. Thorn clicked his tongue, and even Ancenon looked away from him.

  “Then you are too stupid to be trusted with the secret,” I said. “I think I will keep it with me.”

  “We will rip Eldador apart,” D’gattis warned.

  “I have a lot of soldiers who think you won’t,” I told him. “And like I said, you’ve probably already been there. I could take you right to the city, and you wouldn’t know it if I didn’t tell you.”

  They were all quiet.

  “You said that this would change everything,” Arath said. “I think I just figured out how.”

  “You think that the lost Outposts aren’t lost,” Nantar said. “You think they are just not realized.”

  “Not all of them,” I said. “But I think most of them are where we can find them.”

  Ancenon slammed his hand down on the arm of his chair. “Where is Outpost V?” he demanded.

  “Your cousin won’t let me tell you,” I said.

  D’gattis sighed. “You may have inferred that I would be amused or furthered by your downfall,” he said. “And if that is so, I apologize to your frail ego –“

  “Not even close, D’gattis,” I said. “I want your word, on your name, on the lives of your children future and past, on your honor, and in the name of Adriam, that you will help no one who would act against me, directly or otherwise, and warn me if you become aware of any enemy of mine.”

  “That is a serious oath,” Dilvesh said.

  “And made in the Uman-Chi tradition,” Ancenon noted. “Which I was not aware you knew.”

  “I knew Cheyak, didn’t I?”

  They had never had an answer for that, although I think they suspected.

  “And you think you can find more Outposts,” D’gattis said.

  “I know I have a theory,” I said. “Which is more than you have.”

  “Then I swear,” D’gattis said, standing, just as Avek had stood, “on my family’s honor, and my own, on the lives of my children future and past, and in the name of Adriam, the All Father, that I will never act against you, or aid anyone who would act against you, directly or otherwise, and that as I learn of your enemies, I will report them to you.”

  I nodded, and I thanked him. He sat back down and waited.

  I looked Ancenon straight in the eye.

  “Uman City,” Dilvesh said.

  “I could have told you that,” added Arath.

  Every time I think I am being clever, it turns out that I’m not. Every time I think I have it all figured out, it turns out that I am a step behind the rest of the room.

  This turned out no different.

  “Of course it’s Uman City,” Nantar said, exasperated. “Where did he just come from?”

  “Thera,” D’gattis said.

  “Do you think that Outpost V is Thera?”

  “Well, I have been there,” Ancenon said.

  “And to Uman City, as well,” said D’gattis. “And its walls are too small to be the walls of an Outpost.”

  “It is half covered,” I said. “Its palace, which I believe once sat on a hill, now sits at the level of the ground.”

  “Like Outpost IX,” Ancenon said, looking at D’gattis.

  “And Outpost IX itself once sat on top of a mountain,” Arath said. That’s why Trenbon is an island now.

  “So Outpost V sat at the top of a valley, which had been the plains of Tren before the Blast,” Thorn said.

  “That makes a lot of sense,” Karel said. “A lot more sense when you know where Outpost X is.”

  “And they never found the treasury?” D’gattis said.

  I shook my head. “They built a wall over the door to it. Anyone touching that door would be crippled. It probably scared the hell out of the first people to move back into the city. As far as the people who lived there knew, it was a blank wall at the end of a useless hallway.”

  “And what did you find in it?” Ancenon asked.

  “Less gold than in Outpost X,” I said. “A lot of ruined art and useless swords and armor. I have someone there cataloging it now.”

  “Who?” D’gattis asked me, leaning forward.

  “Ann,” I said, smiling. “She is my Oligarch – and –“

  “A priestess of War, or so you think,” D’gattis told me. Ancenon shook his head.

  Oh, crap.

  “You filthy-“ I began.

  “For the love of Adriam,” Thorn said.

  It was true. “How many of you knew this?”

  “I would have told you,” Nantar said. “I think I speak for Arath and Thorn as well.”

  They nodded. I looked at Karel. No need to ask about Dilvesh.

  “I suspected, but I saw no need to do anything until I knew,” D’gattis said. “You would have asked her, and you probably already did, and she already fooled you once.”

  “Not everyone is susceptible to a truth saying,” Dilvesh said.

  “Not the priests of Eveave, anyway,” Karel said. “There is another surprise for you.”

  Oh, this just kept getting better.

  “Ann is an agent of the Dorkans,” D’gattis said. “A wizard, to be sure, sent originally to recruit the other Dorkan wizards in your employ.”

  “When he couldn’t do that,” Ancenon said, “you recruited him as your advisor, thinking him Ann, a priestess of War, whom he killed.”

  “A glamour is an easy thing, especially for a Priest of Eveave,” Dilvesh noted.

  “And he is in Uman City right now,” Ancenon noted.

  “Probably not,” Karel said. “I would be long gone by now.”

  I whistled for the servants, waiting outside for the end of the meal. I sent one of the
m for Shela, who returned quickly. It didn’t take long to get her up to speed, but as soon as she saw the direction of the conversation, she drew her own conclusions.

  Her eyes unfocused then refocused a moment later. Even with the glamour, she knew the essence of the one we thought of as Ann.

  She unpacked her crystal, and looked into its depths. The Uman-Chi looked in with her, leaving no room for the rest of us.

  “He is on a fast ship,” Shela said finally. “He has many crates, and is bound for the Straights of Deception.”

  Ancenon smiled, looking up.

  “She is just now passing the Silent Isle.”

  D’gattis had already left.

  Two Trenboni Tech Ships pulled into Eldador the Port a week later. Glennen himself greeted them, wheeling drunkenly down the wooden dock with twenty Wolf Soldiers around him. More than once they kept him from walking right into the water. D’gattis and two Trenboni captains, both Uman-Chi, stood patiently while Glennen slurred his way through a greeting where he gave us his insight on Trenboni and Eldadorian friendship.

  One of these very ships had joined in the blockade here the month before. I couldn’t tell if Glennen even remembered it. He offered each of the Uman-Chi a barrel of mead, then asked them if they were here to discuss the death of Alekanna.

  “We come to speak with the Heir, your Majesty,” D’gattis told him. “If you recall, I helped him to exact vengeance in your lady’s honor.”

  It had probably been the wrong thing to remind him of, because Glennen took a swipe at D’gattis right there. To their credit, the Wolf Soldier squad around him had him separated from the Uman-Chi and moving back to the palace before D’gattis really had the time to appreciate what had just happened.

  Fortunately, all Uman-Chi saw Men this way, so it came as more of a disappointment to them than a surprise. I’d come with another 40 Wolf Soldiers, and D’gattis stepped over to me and nodded.

  “Your monarch is a disturbed man,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “You should strive to do better,” he said.

  “I will do my best.”

  D’gattis nodded.

  “Did you get the wizard?” I asked.