Aethersmith (Book 2)

by J. S. Morin

  I do not know how, but Rashan managed to arrange for Abbiley’s twin to be set right before me. Whatever scheme he is playing at, it seems he might really have found her.

  “Good. Caladris is a bit more jovial than Rashan, but he still dislikes being kept waiting.” Celia seemed relieved for the change of topic, and being given leave to depart. She turned for the door.

  “You are working for Caladris now?” Kyrus called after her. He had not delved into the matter of the enspelled maidservant, but he now had a better candidate, it seemed, for that particular conversation.

  “You were my last assignment for Rashan for the time being. Now that Juliana is safely married off, he does not have to worry that you will ruin the wedding,” she said, then grinned impishly back at Kyrus. “So he loaned me out to Caladris as an assistant. It ought to help my career … assuming I can actually get to my meetings with him on time.”

  “Fine. Be on your way, then. Just tell the old man to stop by and see me this evening. I do not expect he will object, and as he is Inner Circle, I have no authority as such, but you can tell him it is an order, if it comes to that,” Kyrus told her.

  Celia was a trifling sorceress, resourceful and clever, but lacking real power. She certainly had not cast the intricate spell he had seen on that maid. Caladris likely knew who had, though, even if he had not done so himself. The high likelihood of the latter gave Kyrus latitude to bully Brannis’s uncle a bit.

  “I will try not to let him think it is an order, if you do not mind. You play a dangerous game provoking him, you know. You might be able to get away with such transgressions now, Sir Dragon-Source, but the rest of us have hides to keep intact.” She smiled at him again, flirtatiously he thought this time, and strode off to her meeting with his uncle.

  Dangerous game? You have no idea, Abbiley.

  * * * * * * * *

  “This had best be worth my time, Brannis. I had planned to dine with your aunt for the first time this season,” Caladris huffed as sat down across from Kyrus.

  Kyrus had taken one of the small sitting rooms that were scattered throughout the residential portion of the palace for their meeting. He wanted it to be more cordial than an interrogation from across his desk; there was always the chance that Kyrus’s guess about Caladris’s guilt was wrong.

  “How is Aunt Fia?” Kyrus asked, proud that the name of Brannis’s perpetually ailing aunt Fiadora came so readily to mind that he could mention it casually without having to wrack his brain.

  “Awful as always, of course. The cough gets worse by the season,” Caladris grumbled. Fiadora was his second wife, and if matters kept their course, he would be looking for a third by the next winter. “You did not call me here for that, though. Of all the audacity, I might add! Celia had to tell me that you had ‘ordered’ me to attend you, as if you had any authority to do so!”

  “Then why did you come?” Kyrus asked, pouring a glass of wine for Caladris and another for himself.

  Rashan’s temperance efforts … ha! Kyrus snickered mentally.

  “Curiosity, I must say. A character flaw, I know, but one to which I am nonetheless a slave,” Caladris admitted.

  Oh, is it to be one of these conversations? Kyrus wondered. Celia must have noticed that “Brannis” had freed her lady-servant and told him.

  “So out with it, then,” Caladris said. “What is so important that you are issuing commands to the Inner Circle?”

  “I had business with Celia earlier today, and visited her home to find her. She was not there, and the maid who answered her door seemed to have been under a peculiar charm,” Kyrus began. “Celia is not well known for her expertise in … well, anything magical, so far as I can tell. She has a sharp wit but a Source as dull as a horseshoe.”

  “Oh, look who has grown snobbish now that his own Source can re-light the sun on a moonless night. She is clever and resourceful; that has always been more useful than a strong Source. You yourself showed that well enough getting Rashan’s attention,” Caladris spoke quickly, as if it were a line of logic that he had practiced before a mirror prior to meeting with Kyrus.

  “That is neither germane nor entirely accurate. I became far more useful to Rashan once I unshackled my Source. Celia, though, is just a pawn here; someone else tampered with her servant’s mind,” Kyrus said, steering them back to the matter at hand.

  “Is that really all that you brought me here for, Brannis?” Caladris sounded exasperated. “I had truly hoped that was a pretense for a more interesting conversation. I thought that maybe you were beginning to grasp the subtler side of politics. Alas, the claws of the knighthood are sunk deep in you: ‘Do what is right, and you shall never sleep light.’ Awful rhyme, childish sentiment.”

  “So you admit that you were a party to this mind-control magic?” Kyrus asked, surprised to have gotten even a tacit admission so quickly.

  “Admit? Admit what?” Caladris asked in return. “That I do my job, do it well, and do not sleep any the worse for it, despite what your knightly comrades would have you believe? I am tempted to leave you to ferment on the subject a while, and be about my evening, but I think I have some duty to see this righted.”

  “I did not entirely follow that. Are you going to undo the damage you have done to the girl?” Kyrus wondered aloud.

  “Damage? Nonsense, the girl is fine, I am sure. This sort of magic is used all over. It is subtle; you cannot see it with all the aether used about the palace unless you know what to look for. Now that you do, pay attention to the chambermaids, porters, rat-catchers, and the like. We cannot find trustworthy, honest, loyal folk for every position needed to run the Empire. The magic keeps them from spreading secrets they were not meant to hear, or bringing violence against their betters.”

  Kyrus sat mutely for a time, letting all he had just heard process itself in his head. He thought back to something that Denrik Zayne had said to him once. “… your people suffer for the rule of the powerful houses—noble and sorcerous alike—and I intend to see them free to live as Megrenn do …”

  “You are beginning to understand,” Caladris spoke after a time. “There are measures in place to see that events do not pass beyond our control. It is we who are in charge of the Empire: Rashan, myself … even you, I suppose. The warlock suspects some conspiracy against him, and I feel in my bones that he has the right of it. There are a scant few who are loyal to him; most just serve the Empire, and would turn on him at the first hint of vulnerability. He has never been well liked. He was always too brutal, too ruthless, too focused on twisting emperors to do what he wished. Only a few of us stand well and truly behind him. You would do well to count yourself among them. Do not let our methods put into question our rightness or our conviction. If there ever comes a time when we must choose sides over the course of the Empire, remember that House Solaran is on Rashan’s side.”

  “I will remember,” Kyrus answered flatly. He was not sure he understood, but he had just seen a glimpse behind the curtain of the puppet show. Colorful cloth characters had turned out to be filthy, drunken old men, playing at civility for an audience.

  “Oh, get over it, Brannis! Mind wards are simple and harmless—a mild unpleasantness that keeps the world running. You ought to understand that, being a soldier. By the winds, the world is full of necessary unpleasantness, the sorts of things that you are glad someone else did, but would rather not either do or see: butchering calves, cleaning and dressing battle wounds, the … the … the whole process of childbirth.” Caladris found himself rambling, and paused a few breaths to compose himself. “Just content yourself that the proper controls are in place, and keep your eyes wide in the aether as you walk the palace. You will see more now that you know what to look for.”

  “I will,” Kyrus promised. Caladris drained his wineglass and took his leave, allowing Kyrus time to mull his revelations.

  The emperor? Kyrus realized after sitting, pondering, for a time he had not tried to count. Could they be controlling the soon-to
-be emperor the same way? Kyrus was not certain just then that the conspiracy that Maruk Solaran, Gravis Archon, and Stalia Gardarus died for was not being replaced with another just as sinister.

  * * * * * * * *

  “None may enter,” the guard informed Kyrus as he approached the door to the chambers of Sommick Highwater, the man who would be emperor in a few days’ time. “Warlock Rashan’s orders.”

  “Those orders were not meant for the likes of me,” Kyrus replied. “I would prefer to abide by the niceties, have the wards released for me, and for you two men to stand aside.” The guards held halberds crossed ceremonially in front of the door. It was a poor tactical position, intended less for defending the doorway, and more to imply that they were really not letting you in without a fight. A sorcerer was stationed nearby, idling away the hours ogling the chambermaids as he minded the door wards to let food and drink be delivered. “However, I will be going in to see the emperor-in-waiting regardless of how it befalls.”

  It might have been the polite, casual tone he used that convinced them that he was unconcerned about their ability to block his passage, or the knowledge that Rashan would deal with any fallout from the incident in his own fashion should “Marshal Brannis” have overstepped his authority, but the sorcerer un-warded the door, and the guards stood aside to let him pass. Kyrus gave them all close scrutiny in the aether, shutting out his light vision briefly to better see any aether constructs that might be about their persons. None were afflicted like Celia’s maid had been.

  “Marshal Brannis, how wonderful!” Sommick greeted him once the door closed behind Kyrus. “I have been shut up in here for far too long with no visitors, but Warlock Rashan said it would not be safe to have visitors, but—”

  Giving lie to the statement Sommick seemed about to make, Kyrus suddenly felt a sharp impact against the shielding spell he had kept constantly active since learning it. Reflexively, Kyrus drew more aether and reinforced the shield. Something flickered where the stabbing sensation had originated, and a man appeared, dagger in hand, trying to stab him in the back. He was “dressed” just like the assassin at Iridan and Juliana’s wedding, naked but for the elaborate runes painted all across his body, and carrying a runed dagger. Brannis had been the one to see the wedding-day assassin, so Kyrus was mildly surprised to note how strong this one’s Source was.

  The man cried out wordless surprise, and drew back. A moment’s panic passed through his eyes before he turned his attention to the would-be emperor, and made a lunge for him.

  The assassin never made it halfway there. A vice-like grip closed about him as Kyrus’s silent (and probably spectacularly inefficient) telekinesis spell took hold. Kyrus noted with a detached curiosity that the aether within the man’s Source rushed to and fro as he struggled against the spell that held him; he might as well have been encased in stone for all he was able to move.

  Kyrus checked to see that Sommick Highwater was unharmed. The successor to the throne was speechless with shock, but in all ways physical, he was whole. Kyrus remembered to look him over for signs of magical tampering, and discovered to his relief that all was well. For all their other crimes, at least Rashan and Caladris are not planning to mind-control their way to power over the emperor.

  “If you will excuse me, Your Highness—I might as well begin calling you that, I suppose—I think I must deal with this matter presently. I am sorry my visit was so brief,” Kyrus excused himself. He left by the door he came in, startling the guards and sorcerer who waited for him outside. They shouted questions after him, and rushed inside to check on the well-being of Sommick Highwater. Kyrus did not answer and continued down the corridors, the assassin towed telekinetically behind him, wrapped in a coverlet from the emperor’s bed.

  * * * * * * * *

  There were just three of the cells left, but Kyrus was well aware of their location within the lowest level of the palace dungeon. Shortly into their journey down, he had realized that his prisoner could not breathe for how tightly he was being held. Kyrus had recast his spell and gripped the man by the limbs alone, allowing his chest room to expand and contract enough to draw breath. The man had not spoken a word.

  Kyrus left the blanket for his attempted killer as he dumped him unceremoniously into the middle of one of the sorcerer cells.

  “What you do with me?” the man asked, his Kadrin accented by a language Kyrus did not know well enough to identify. The paint obscured his features and made his appearance—such as it might have been in his natural state—difficult to discern. He could have been thirty or forty winters, by his voice, which was gravelly with worldly wear.

  “Me? Nothing. This is one of those things that I will be glad for someone else to do, but which I would rather not see,” Kyrus informed him. The look on the man’s face before the door slammed shut between them was wide eyed with fear.

  Good enough for him. Better than he probably deserved after trying to kill me—oh, and kill the emperor, too, I suppose.

  * * * * * * * *

  “So what are you going to do?” Juliana asked, smiling. “You going to like having a new boss in two worlds?” She sat across a small table from Varnus in an empty room in the Archon Estate.

  Varnus scratched his chin, and twisted his face up as he pondered. “I guess this must have been his plan all along, sending me off with Faolen’s twin. Makes a certain amount of sense, I suppose. Faolen’s all the way out in Megrenn with no way to communicate. Brannis is pretty clever. How come we never thought of it?”

  “Don’t know that it ever came up. We travel together. Really, this will be our first time truly being apart since I met you,” Juliana mused thoughtfully, her gaze wandering upward as if trying to see into her own thoughts.

  “’Spose not,” Varnus agreed. “Can’t say I like the idea of quittin’ on your family, though. It’s been years and years.” Varnus could not quite recall just how many it had even been. He had been a young man when he entered the Archon family’s service and he was no longer a young man.

  “Well, like it or not, we’re getting caught up in politics and warfare. I think my father will understand; palace guard captain is undeniably a promotion, and refusing to let you leave his service would cast us in a bad light with the regent,” she reasoned.

  “… who is also your father now,” Varnus continued on her behalf. He knew she was not fond of the warlock, but there were certainly perks of being his oathdaughter.

  “Oathfather, that is. I can be glad I wasn’t sired by that madman,” Juliana spat. There were times that Varnus got to see a bit of Soria in her, when they were the only two around. She seemed so much happier when there was no expectation of propriety placed on her.

  “Oh, he may be ruthless but I doubt he is a madman. Those are just slanders that build up when someone unlikeable has been gone a while,” Varnus said, waxing philosophical, at least by soldiers’ standards.

  “Oh, I think I have reason to believe he just might be,” Juliana stated cryptically.

  * * * * * * * *

  By the time Kyrus’s day allowed him the peace to return to his room for sleep, he was past exhaustion, and into the realm of activity normally left to the animate dead. The stir the assassin had caused had kept him up well past midnight answering questions from Rashan, Dolvaen, Caladris, and many others whose authority was far surpassed by their persistent curiosity.

  The door swung shut behind him as if by its own accord, though Kyrus had gotten used to doing it with magic, and had been the cause that time. He reactivated the wards that granted him privacy, and lit a soft blue glow to see by as he changed into his nightclothes.

  Upon doing so, he noticed something on his bed, cast oddly in the surreal bluish light. It was a book. Its cover proclaimed it The Warlock Prophecies. Kyrus opened it, and flipped through a few pages to see what it was about. A slip of paper fell out.

  You should read this. He wrote it. —SC

  The note was written in Acardian. “SC” could only have bee
n “Soria Coinblade.” “He” most assuredly meant that Rashan was the warlock mentioned on the cover. Kyrus let the note slip from his grasp and fall toward the floor. It never made it to the stone, however, turning to a puff of ash on the way down. The ashes made their way neatly to the fireplace.

  I can stay up a while longer, I suppose.

  Chapter 25 - Meanwhile

  A light rain wetted the air of Zorren, warm and smelling of the turn of spring. The scent was not quite enough to hide the fragrance of brine wafting off the Aliani Sea. The seagulls—dense, stubborn birds that they were—circled the harbor anyway, looking to pillage the treasures of the fishing boats as they returned with the morning’s catch.

  “Stuff this,” Tod griped, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve, and passing the flask over to Jodoul. “How we supposed to get anywhere now?”

  Jodoul shrugged in reply, already taking a swig.

  “I mean, we all come up here together, you think we’d have … you know … finished up together,” Tod continued. He gave his friend a lost, plaintive look.

  “Not the first time we got done by someone didn’t need us no more,” Jodoul replied, licking his lips clean of the Halaigh wine they had been drinking. He upended the flask, and watched for any sign of further liquid to emerge, but the flask was empty.

  “I mean, we done our part, right? We got the kid to come see him. We oughtta have gotten looked after a bit better, I think. That’s all,” Tod continued.

  “Deserved better. Yup. Deservin’ didn’t do us no good, though,” Jodoul agreed. “I reckon we gotta figure the rest out on our own.”

  “Rest of what?” Tod asked, a note of hope sounding in his voice.

  “I ain’t dead. Neither are you. Rest of livin’ through this whole mess, that’s all.”

  “You got some kinda plan?”

  “Yeah,” Jodoul answered, declining to elaborate.

  From their vantage on one of the low rises north of the city, they watched as a transport ship unloaded. Scores of dark-skinned Narrack soldiers filed down the docks and into the city: Megrenn reinforcements.