“Possessing that painting,” Iraid went on, apparently expecting no response from Cyrus, “is more than a minor crime, did you know that? The Leagues, of course, have never hesitated to tell us when we’re doing wrong, and I suppose that keeping an icon depicting such a thing … well, it’s not right in their book, is it? But I can’t bear the thought of them burning it, which they would if I turned it over. So I keep it here, quietly. The Leagues need not worry themselves about destroying art, and I need not make myself sick at the thought of its destruction.” Iraid cocked his head, clearly admiring the piece. “Besides … it’s not as though merely looking at it could compel one to be a heretic, could it?” He smirked openly at Cyrus. “After all … you’re a heretic, and you’ve never even seen it until now.”
Cyrus stared at the painting, at the center. “It’s the Battle of Thurren Hill,” he said, and Iraid nodded. At the center stood a woman in twilight purple robes, clutching a sword—a very familiar sword—in one hand, the other glowing with what looked like a lightning bolt coming out of the clear sky. The blade she held was curved, unmistakably dangerous, and the look in her eyes was fury turned hot like molten metal, directed in the same place as the lightning, beyond the painter who had witnessed this moment and commemorated it on the canvas in glorious, painstaking detail. “And that’s Quinneria … the sorceress.”
He swallowed hard, and felt Vara nudge him as she came to stand next to him, her eyes fixed on the painting, and at its center, his mother. She did not say anything for a long moment, but when she did, it was quiet, even though everyone in the room heard it. “Well,” she said, her voice low and hoarse, “I suppose now we know what happened to your father’s sword.”
18.
“Your current predicament is a serious one,” Oliaryn Iraid said, once Cyrus and the others were seated around his desk. Cyrus, wanting to remain standing but not wishing to be perceived as rude, had taken the offered seat between Vara and Cattrine across the massive carved oak desk, but he found his eyes constantly drifting back to the painting of his mother in her wrath. He had recognized her instantly, of course, even without the sword and lightning. Even with the anger projected across her face like a shadow in the night. He remembered her differently, with a smile that had grown dimmer as his childhood went on.
“We do find ourselves in rather deep waters,” Vara said, “and without a boat in sight.”
“Mmm,” Iraid acknowledged with a nod. “I am by no means hung up on the tradition of the Leagues. Any thinking man can see through the fiction they’ve concocted as doctrine. Their game is control, nothing less, and in the name of gods we don’t even worship for the most part in this kingdom. But the nominal tie is there, and it is strong, as all traditions are.” He wore a ghostly smile, and even paying less than full attention, Cyrus had a feeling that much was being left unsaid by the Oliaryn.
“We appreciate your open-mindedness,” Cyrus said, trying to make it sound sincere.
“The trouble coming is, naturally, of concern,” Cattrine said, and once more Cyrus got the feeling that true meanings were being couched under seemingly meaningless words. The trouble coming? Of concern to whom? Cyrus resisted the frown that threatened to break across his lips. “Arkaria seems to be once more lining up for war.”
“Dark times, again,” Iraid nodded. “Though, if you’ll forgive me for saying so … the battle this time does not seem quite so lopsided as before, when the dark elves were ascendant under the leadership of a god and all others scrambled to hold them at bay.”
“I doubt the dark elves are a threat to your city at all,” Cattrine said with the hint of a smile.
“My province,” Iraid gently corrected with a smile of his own. “Termina is merely the capital of the region I oversee as both Oliaryn and the Lord of these lands. And you are correct, no military threat lies within sight of us, unless the humans decide to do something foolish.”
“I doubt even Pretnam Urides is that dumb,” Cyrus said, still fighting off the dark countenance that threatened to spill over his face. “His attention is focused on us, entirely, at the moment, and after that …” He shook his head. “Who knows? I doubt he’ll go starting any more wars in the near future.”
“But war always comes back,” Iraid said, nodding. “Trust me. I’ve seen enough of them to know.”
“True enough,” Cattrine said, still smiling as she leaned toward his desk. “But that’s a distance off. Hundreds, maybe thousands of years. A problem for the generations after mine, I think.” Iraid nodded subtly. “But other problems are here today,” she went on, prompting another nod from Iraid. “Surely, you must see what other difficulties loom on the horizon.”
“Of course,” Iraid said, a little drily. “Every man has his problems. Though few have them as bad as you at the moment,” he said to Cyrus with a chuckle.
“Ah, but in his—and Sanctuary’s—problems may lie the solution to your own,” Cattrine said carefully.
Iraid did not react to this small suggestion, his eyes a smoky grey that stared seemingly into the distance behind the head of his guests. “What problems do you think I have, Administrator?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t presume to tell you your mind,” Cattrine said, and it was as though Cyrus could see her gently withdrawing bait at the end of a string, waiting to see if the Oliaryn would swipe at it.
When he did, it was graceful. “We live in perhaps the wealthiest nation in Arkaria,” Iraid said. “We are rebuilding from the catastrophic damage of the last war, and certainly,” he said right to Cyrus, “are having an easier time of it than your fellow man in the outlying areas of the Confederation. The King … he helps fund our reconstruction, unlike Reikonos to its orbiting … what do they call them? Dominances? I forget.”
“So the King is utterly responsive to your every concern?” Cattrine asked, apparently leaving subtlety behind. Vara’s brow rose.
“And we come to it at last,” Iraid said softly, smoothing his silk doublet, which to Cyrus looked less like something a general would wear and more like something to be found on a monarch. “Danay is your enemy, not mine.”
“Of course,” Cattrine said, nodding. “I only thought, given his …” Her eyes glimmered and reminded Cyrus of someone brandishing a dagger, the blade catching the light, “… his claims about the growth of the Kingdom’s fortunes—” Iraid’s face grew stiff, “—about all the successes he has presided over, both before the war and since—that perhaps, given how much you and this province have helped shape those fortunes with your burgeoning trade, even this ruined city, you might have warranted perhaps a bit more … recognition for your role in things.”
She just buried that dagger right into Iraid’s rib cage, straight to the hilt, Cyrus thought, watching the Oliaryn’s stricken face. His lower lip twitched, betraying resentment turned to rage. “Very good,” Iraid said when he finally spoke, every word coming out in a harsh whisper. “I always knew you were clever, Administrator, so very clever in our dealings.” His voice rose closer to its normal volume as he began to recover. “Fine. You have it. We in Termina put forth our best efforts, and the King taxes us harshly from afar. It slows our recovery; we send gold to Pharesia and receive only a fraction of the value back. As if that were not vexing enough, he says nothing about Termina’s place in his Kingdom’s economy.” He slapped his desk hard with the palm of his hand then pointed at Cattrine. “Without the two of us, and Amti, he would be bankrupt in a year. We feather his nest and he tosses us twigs. In your case, he makes ready to war upon you.” An ugly resentment darkened the face of the General. “But that does not mean I am fool enough to cast my lot with heretics who come to me with some … what do you come to me with?” He held his hands up. “Some plan to go against the king? Because to stick out my neck next to yours … that would be foolish. More foolish than keeping my mouth shut and letting gold flow away from my city’s coffers, for that injustice would matter little to me as a dead man.” Both his eyebrows rose with significan
ce as he looked to each of them in turn.
“What if,” Cattrine said, suddenly pensive, “there were a way for you to cast off those chains? To capture more of that outflow of gold, and due credit, and keep it here.” Her eyes glittered. “For your people … and yourself, of course.”
“I think it would be treason,” Iraid said with a small smile, “against the monarchy.”
Cattrine’s smile grew vicious. “It’s only treason if you fail. If you succeed, then you are the undisputed Lord of this province and this city, which is practically a nation all on its own, is it not?”
Iraid returned her gaze without even a flicker of emotion. “And you say this as the Administrator of a fellow province seeking its own freedom of course, I take it?”
“We have a very similar problem, you and I,” Cattrine said. “We watch the gold flow out and wonder how much more beneficial it might be to keep even a small percentage of it in our borders. We think … how much benefit does this net me? And we find those scales … lacking in balance.”
“I would rather the scales lack balance than my body lack its head,” Iraid said.
“I would rather balance the scales and keep my head,” Cattrine said. “And I suspect a few more of the provinces around here, the Lords and Ladies, feel exactly the same.”
“Perhaps,” Iraid said. “But perhaps not.”
“Come now,” Cattrine said, leaning in conspiratorially, “what do you really want, Lord Iraid? To be something akin to the King of your own province, independent of a monarch who bleeds you dry and steals your glory? If that were an actual possibility, something achievable, that you could reach out and take without worry—would you?”
Iraid looked past them again. “I would, were it possible.” He leaned forward. “But let me tell you, without the proper help … it is not possible.”
“We have some help,” Cattrine said coolly.
“The elves of Amti will hardly be enough,” Iraid said with a wave of his hand, and Cyrus caught a flicker of emotion from Cattrine that suggested to him that she had, indeed, counted them among her allies in this. It seems natural she would have opened negotiations with them; they hate King Danay as much or more than she does, and they all certainly have goods to trade. “You will need, by my reckoning, Lord Merrish of Traegon and Lady Voryn of the Emerald Coast, at minimum.” He looked directly at Cyrus. “You would be well advised if you attempted a meeting with Morianza Yemer, as well.”
“‘Morianza’ is roughly translated to ‘Duke,’” Vara said quietly as she leaned forward. “Yemer is …”
“He was the father of your man Odellan, I believe?” Iraid asked, eyes narrowed in consideration. “He is one of Danay’s closest councilors, though he is a bit … estranged from the King at the moment, as the Morianza has retreated to an estate in the north in his grief.”
“His grief?” Cyrus asked and felt like someone had run a finger through his chest as it dawned on him what that meant. “Because of the loss of his son.”
“Indeed,” Iraid said flatly. “Mention my name to any of these individuals, and I will deny this meeting, and I will be believed. But if you can get them on board with your cause …” He tilted his head thoughtfully to the side. “I would be almost inclined to believe you could do it … supposing you could do one final thing.”
“And what’s that?” Cattrine asked, leaning forward.
Iraid smiled mirthlessly. “With the three of us Lords and Ladies, Morianza Yemer, the leadership of Amti, your Lord of Rockridge, the official Lord of Emerald Fields, and the Lady of Nalikh’akur,” he nodded at Vara, “you will have many of the Kingdom’s provinces on your side. The remaining provinces are not particularly loyal to Danay, but you will need a palatable alternative to him, and you will need the people. And for that,” he said, smiling smugly, “you will need an endorsement that would prove impossible for most.”
And with that, Iraid smiled broadly, looking directly at Vara, who closed her eyes in understanding. “Damn,” she whispered.
“What?” Cattrine asked, clearly hesitant to reveal her ignorance. Cyrus did not need to ask, for he already suspected, and when his wife spoke the answer aloud, it was like the lightning from Quinneria’s hand had been loosed in the room, a word so charged it might as well have ended the meeting right there, resonating through all of them as if it had sparked straight out of the sky itself.
19.
“Gods,” Terian said at their meeting place at a disused portal in the Gradsden Savanna, the air less brisk than in the wintery north. “Iraid set a damned near impossible task for you on that one. Why didn’t he just ask you to storm the upper Realms and bring some god heads back while he was at it?”
“It is hardly impossible,” Vara said, speaking quietly, as if afraid Larana and Bowe would overhear their meeting from where they stood in the afternoon sun, hovering over the portal a hundred feet or so away, the Falcon’s Essence spell allowing the two of them to function as lookouts. The tall grass of the savanna had grown brown for the winter and seemed not to stand fully upright in this area. “But it will require some effort on my part.”
“Well, in that case,” Terian said with a smirk, “see if you can perhaps carve some time out of your busy schedule, maybe skip the afternoon lovemaking with the man in black armor and get to work on it.”
“The rest of Iraid’s list,” Cattrine said, now genuinely pensive, “the people he mentioned—I don’t know them. Lady Voryn, Morianza Yemer … the only one I have contact with is Lord Merrish of Traegon. He trades in some of our crops, though I don’t think I’ve met him more than once or twice.”
“Both Merrish and Voryn have territories that border my own,” Vara said, somewhat jarringly reminding Cyrus that as Lady of Nalikh’akur, Vara had something more than ceremonial duties. “I’ve met them both on occasion, and I have a semi-regular correspondence with Voryn. Odellan’s father, though—Yemer—him I don’t know.”
“What do you think the chances are that he’s mad at me about his son’s death?” Cyrus asked.
“Everyone’s mad at you about something,” Terian said with a nod. “So … very good, I would think.” His gaze flicked over the chain wrapped around Cyrus’s chest and waist. “By the way, I grade that a total failure as a fashion statement, but probably an excellent idea for survival purposes.” He looked at the others when his quip was greeted with nothing but blank stares. “Oh, come on. Someone had to speak for Vaste since he isn’t here.”
“I suppose we could have stopped off and picked him up,” J’anda said, “if we hadn’t wanted to keep our movements as mysterious as possible. Popping in and out of Sanctuary is probably not the wisest of courses, after all.”
“About that,” Terian said, a little darkly, “you need to use the return spell to get back home.”
Cyrus frowned, then the answer came to him. “If there are spies in Sanctuary, they might post an ambush at the portal to the north.”
“The topography there lends itself well to hiding,” Terian said with a nod, rather sagely. “Tell no one where you’re going and don’t dare go back via that portal. It’s probably safe, but I wouldn’t stake my life on it, and I’m not even a heretic at the moment.”
“Something I noticed in the conversation with Iraid,” Vara said, “is that he … almost seemed to offer us counsel on another matter at one point.”
“You noticed that, too?” Cattrine asked with a nod. “I think he is subtly trying to prod you in the direction of a solution to your problem with the Confederation but, if you’ll recall, it was before he, uhm …”
“Broke cleanly in the direction of giving us aid, yes,” J’anda said, nodding. “He was still being careful not to tip his hand at that point.” He inclined his head toward Cattrine. “You did a masterful job of drawing him out, I might add.”
“Am I the only one that missed whatever you’re all talking about?” Cyrus asked, staring at each of them blankly.
“Well, of course,” Terian sai
d haughtily. “Even I understood what he was saying, and I wasn’t even in the room.” He snorted and then shrugged. “Joking, of course. What did he say?”
“He hinted at some of the resentments and divisions in the Human Confederation,” Vara said. “He suggested that Reikonos is perhaps taking the lion’s share of the resources in rebuilding itself, leaving the outlying districts—the Riverlands, the Northlands, and the Southern Reaches rather dry.”
“There are more districts than that,” Cyrus said. “There’s also the Western, the Mountain, and the Southeastern Districts.”
“Ouch,” Terian said. “I can confirm he’s right, at least in the Southern Reaches, which borders us. The governor there, Reynard Coulton—well, his state took a walloping from our armies. Prehorta, Idiarna, Santir—Yartraak’s armies sacked them all, stripped their crops, murdered their garrisons and their people … the Confederation army sits encamped around Reikonos, a vestigial response to a siege now more than a year over, but Coulton’s meager force at arms are all sitting on our border, glaring resentfully with their skeleton defense.” He made a sour face. “Coulton has nothing nice to say about me personally, I hear. Seems he thinks that I’m the same as the old boss, and he’s just waiting for me to come marching through his desiccated corpse of a territory.” He puckered his lips mischievously. “Apparently he doesn’t realize I’ve got better things to do than try to squeeze gold out of a pauper.”
“What about the other districts?” Cyrus asked, peering at the dark elf.
“The Riverlands are probably experiencing something similar,” Terian said, wincing slightly. “If you recall, after Leaugarden they did receive a nasty shellacking from that undead army, plus Goliath. Malpravus marched them to the coast, plundering and pillaging all the way. That tends to leave a mark. As to the Northlands …” He shrugged. “Our spies don’t really consider it a high priority, being so far away. The governor up there is Allyn Frost, and all I know about him is that he’s a very vain man. For the other three, the war didn’t much touch them, and they’re all lacking governors at the moment.” He made a face. “Some kind of brouhaha at the end of the war, but the details are a little muddy. Our spies pegged it as internal warring in the Confederation.”
Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) Page 12