Except it wasn’t her weapon. It didn’t look anything at all like her godly dagger, in fact. It was ornate, certainly, but when she’d held it in her hand, it didn’t cause her to fade out of sight in the slightest.
Cyrus found something reassuring about that and held utterly still as the guards confiscated his new sword and unwrapped the mystical chain from around his chest. At least I’ve still got my armor, he thought, trying not to show his anger as the guards began to filter out of the room.
“I want you to remember who’s in charge here,” Frost said, still standing behind his desk, the complement of guards down to only a half dozen, two bowmen still drawn on Cyrus, one on Aisling, and the other guards with their swords out, watching for the slightest sign of intransigence. The wizard still lingered in the corner, his low murmuring a reassurance that a return spell wouldn’t save Aisling before she was run through. For his own part, Cyrus felt fairly confident he could pummel all six men plus the wizard and kill Frost before any of them could land a killing blow on him, but he didn’t feel the need to share that, nor the fact that he’d learned the resurrection spell. “I find many a problem comes in negotiations when one party fails to realize how much at the mercy of the other they are,” Frost went on. “You’re a heretic,” he said with a look of superiority, “I’m the Governor of the Northlands. You’re an outcast; I’m practically a king. At my word, you’d be turned over for execution. At your word …” he chuckled, “well … I think we know nothing would happen.”
Cyrus glanced at Aisling. Beneath her cool, seeming indifference, he felt as if he could pick up on what she was saying with just a look, as if somehow all the time they’d spent together, even though it had all been a lie, had given him an insight to her thoughts. Do nothing, she was saying. Let him have his sense of power, see where it leads.
Or perhaps he was just imagining it.
“Nothing would happen,” Cyrus said, and he caught an almost imperceptible nod from Aisling of approval.
Frost’s grin grew even broader. “Damned right. You’re at the lowest rung now, Davidon.”
“So why does the governor of the Northlands want to meet with a man on the lowest rung?” Cyrus asked, folding his arms in front of him. Perhaps it might have looked to the guards like he was just putting up a defense, but he wanted his arms closer to action, in place where he could throw them quickly behind him while the rangers were discovering that their arrows didn’t do a damned thing against his armor. “Seems like a man in your position could have conversations with any number of more … useful? … partners. More powerful ones, at least.”
“Aye,” Frost said, nodding. “I could. But you know … they are lacking something critical that only you possess.” His canines poked slightly out of his lips, and Cyrus could see yellowing upon the teeth. “Do you know what that is?”
“No,” Cyrus said, shrugging. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“Desperation,” Frost said. “Everyone else—they’re rebuilding after the war, timidly consolidating their power, afraid to reach out and make a move, but you—you’re backed into a corner.” He raised a finger and pointed it at Cyrus. “You’re desperate, because you’re fighting to survive right now. You can feel the boot about to land on the back of your neck.”
“I’ve generally heard it referred to as an axe,” Cyrus said, “but yes, your meaning is taken.”
“We don’t waste an axe on executions up here,” Frost said with a cruel smile. “We lay a man down and crush his spine with a few good stomps. Break the neck, you end the man.”
“Is that what I have to look forward to here?” Cyrus asked. “Or do you have use for my … desperation?”
“Desperation can be very useful,” Frost said. “You were a citizen of the Confederation at one point. You know how they constitute the Council of Twelve?”
“One member from each district,” Cyrus said, “plus six from Reikonos—”
“Nine from Reikonos,” Frost said, and there was a sliver of irritation in his voice. “Time was, we in the outlying lands of the Confederation, we had a voice that could be heard. Now Reikonos, now Pretnam Urides … he rules the whole roost. He’s folding the western plains, the Mountain District and the southeast and dividing them among we who remain.” Frost’s eyes glittered dangerously. “Now at first that sounds good to Reynard Coulton in the Southern Reaches, to Karrin Waterman in the Riverlands, and me over here, increasing the size of our territory but then we realize—we’re three against Reikonos’s nine. We’re rump states in servitude to the capital. Who grows the food? Who gets the lumber, who mines the ore, and who gets it all sucked away at whatever price they’re offering in the name of rebuilding Reikonos?” He thumped a thumb into his chest. “Yeah, that’s us, we few who will remain.”
“Boy, if only there was some way a desperate man could help you with that problem,” Cyrus said, coolly.
“Well, as it happens,” Frost said, cruel satisfaction on his lips, “I think you just might, and we might be able to do something for you in return.”
“You don’t say.”
“Be a smartass all you want,” Frost said, starting to show the first sign of ire, “but you’ll either agree to this at the end or die.”
“Well, tell me what you want me to do, and we’ll see which I pick,” Cyrus said, staring him down.
Frost’s expression became sullen. “I want you to kill Pretnam Urides. While you’re at it, I want the rest of the Council of Twelve dead as well.”
Cyrus stared at the stone wall behind Frost. “If I do that … it seems to me that the Human Confederation is going to come at me with every man at arms they’ve got, and probably quite a few that aren’t under arms with them. Mercenaries, I mean, and other guilds.”
“They could,” Frost said with a nod and a smirk. “But without a council, most of the power falls to us Governors. The other three districts aren’t quite folded in yet, but it’s coming.” He nodded. “We have a common enemy.”
“You’re desperate, too,” Cyrus noted. “You know damned well the dark elves didn’t assassinate the Governors of those other districts.”
“I can’t say for certain,” Frost said with a grim smile, “but you could probably find out from your good friend the Sovereign.” His amusement vanished. “If his people had anything to do with it, I’ll eat a block of ice without a pick to break it up first. The dark elves were in turmoil, fighting among themselves for control of Saekaj when it happened. This Confederation of ours is being tugged closer together all the time, and all the expense of those of us who aren’t in Reikonos.” His smile faded.
“So I somehow arrange a similar fate for the Council of Twelve as has befallen some of your fellow Governors,” Cyrus said, thinking it over, “and suddenly my problems all disappear?”
“Your problems with the Northlands do,” Frost said, smiling again. “You’re going to have to work a little harder to convince the other two governors to get on board with this mad plan of yours, though. Assassinating people?” He put a hand over his fur-covered chest. “I don’t know, that’s so … dodgy.” He grinned like a predator. “I wouldn’t want anything to do with it, personally. Might sully my reputation.”
“How do I know you won’t just turn your dogs loose on me after I do this?” Cyrus asked. “I wrap things up nicely for you, maybe you decide you don’t want to take any chances with me opening my big mouth and telling anyone?”
“You know what’s going to happen after you do this?” Frost asked, looking at him warily now. “We’re going to break away from the Confederation. Reynard Coulton and Karrin Waterman will want to follow, and the Confederation could find itself in a fair amount of chaos. Into that chaos, a few clear voices are going to start shouting, trying to pick up the pieces of what’s left. I’m going to call my part of the army camped around Reikonos home. My fellow Governors would surely like to do the same. Do you know how much of that army is our men?”
“I have no idea.”
&n
bsp; “Ninety percent,” Frost said. “Because these are the ones we held back to defend our own territories until after Reikonos got sacked. So—you strike your bargain with me, you manage to squeeze one with Waterman and Coulton, you’re not going to have to worry about the Confederation army.” He flashed Cyrus a toothy smile. “In one fell swoop you’re going to lose two-thirds of the raw force that’s threatening you right now at the Leagues’ behest, because my boys will come home when I call, and the rest of the Confederation will be in too much upheaval to go after some heretic with the little they have left.”
“Why not just yank your troops right now?” Cyrus asked, his gaze flicking around Frost’s office. An enormous bearskin hung on one of the stone walls. “If you and the other two remaining governors own that much of the army?”
“Because then we’d get assassinated,” Frost said, looking at Cyrus as though he were a moron. “You’ve met Pretnam Urides, yeah?”
“Many times.”
“He’s a powerful wizard,” Frost said, looking around with something approaching nervousness. “Head of the Commonwealth of Arcanists. The only thing more powerful than the man himself is his ambition, and in this you’ll be doing us both a favor; I wouldn’t put it past him to have done those other governors himself.”
“Seems like a cessation spell would fix him right up, then,” Cyrus said, nodding at the wizard in the corner. “Lure him in for a meeting, do the job.”
“But then everyone would know he was assassinated here,” Aisling said softly.
“The dark elf gets it in one,” Frost said, pointing at finger at her. “The point here, Davidon, is to get out of the Confederation while it’s in confusion and no knows what the hell is going on. I don’t want to tell my troops to come home and start a war with Urides and his cohorts in the process. I want Reikonos to be stewing in its own leaderless chaos so that my fellow Governors and I can go on our merry ways. I want to be so far removed and independent by the time they find themselves marching in the same direction again that it’s not even a thought to try and drag us back in. We’ll be their number one trade partners, and they’ll know that if they come roaring at our doors, that trade’s going to stop and their precious city’s going to starve.”
“All right,” Cyrus said, looking at Frost’s desk. “I guess I don’t have much choice.”
“Don’t play like you weren’t already casting about for a way to kill Urides,” Frost said sourly. “I’ve heard what he’s said about you before; there’s no love lost between you two.”
“No,” Cyrus said, “there’s not. I just want to be sure I’m not starting a bigger fire than the one I’m already in.” He smiled faintly. “Desperation does funny things to people, you know.”
Frost rolled his eyes at this. “Kill the Council of Twelve and strike pacts with Waterman in the Riverlands and Coulton in the Southern Reaches and you’ll walk out of this with a little blood on your hands and the Confederation in such a mess that even if they had an army, they wouldn’t be able to point it at you.” He knocked once on his desk and guards began to re-enter the room. One of them slipped Cyrus’s sword back into his scabbard while another hung his chains back around his neck, but loosely, shoving him a little once finished. Cyrus looked back and saw grinning faces as well as drawn bows pointed at him. “Oh, and Davidon?” Frost asked, smiling like his men. “Don’t forget who brought you in to do this. Because if you bollocks this up, if you try and drag my name into it … I’ll throw you to the bloody wolves.” The thin howling outside in the hills beyond the keep assured Cyrus that Frost was not bluffing.
40.
Rough hands shoved Cyrus and Aisling along, out the path of the keep, scarcely allowing them to walk under their own power. He watched the guards, the smiling pack of jackals that paraded behind them, poking at him lightly with their swords. They were being somewhat kinder to Aisling. He wondered if perhaps it was because she was a dark elf, or if it was because she was an unknown quantity to them. He was, after all, the man in black armor, known throughout Arkaria. Something he’d noticed since his fall was that no shortage of people seemed happy to take a poke at him now that he’d been brought low. They wouldn’t have dreamed of it before, he raged, forcing his anger not to show.
He and Aisling were dumped out on the long drawbridge, the guards halting their escort at the edge of the long wooden path to the other side of the moat. Cyrus gave them a glance back, trying to commit their faces to memory in case he ever had to come back. They were truly pack animals, braying and laughing at him from within their safe little grouping. The next howl of the wolves in the distance seemed somehow even more appropriate to him now.
“Come on,” Aisling said, taking him by the elbow and pulling him toward the other side. “This is no place to get caught out, and smashing their faces will do nothing but give you a short-lived rush of satisfaction.”
“Don’t underestimate a short-lived rush of satisfaction,” Cyrus said, casting another hostile look behind him. The guards were still there, jeering now, laughing to see the back of him.
“I never have,” Aisling said, steely and resentful, “especially as relates to the appetites of men.”
Her remark killed his desire for a fight and drew his ire from the men behind him back onto her. She seemed to have done it purposefully, walking quickly ahead of him and forcing him to hurry to catch up.
She halted in an alley just on the other side of the bridge, shivering, her dark blue flesh exposed to the chilly air, a patch of dirty, half-melted snow a slushy mess beside her. “We can’t wander through town like this.”
Cyrus cast a resentful look back. “That bastard. I have half a mind not to go back and—”
“Why?” Aisling asked with some force, slapping him on the gauntlet, drawing his attention to her dark and furious purple eyes. “Put aside your pride. He gave you everything you wanted and needed except a sop to your ego.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Cyrus asked as she stood, breathing hard into the cold alley. “He threatened us—”
“Because he’s an impotent weasel who needs to do that in order to feel in control.” She rubbed her leather-clad shoulders. “Stop paying attention to his threats and look at what he did for you—he’s opened the door to the Confederation. Personality of an angry badger aside, he’s set up a very viable way for you to remove the Human Confederation from your list of worries. Stop feeling insulted. He slapped you in the face with one hand, but he gave you a bag of gold with the other.”
“Apparently I don’t let insults pass as easily as you do,” Cyrus growled, looking right at her. “Among other things.”
“You’d be wise to learn,” Aisling said, looking down the alley. They seemed to be behind another inn, and there was commotion within, carousing and singing. “When you’re in a position of power, say, running the largest guild in Arkaria, carrying the most powerful sword, there are things you can do and say that you can’t when you’re—oh, I don’t know—unarmed, for all intents and purposes, and a heretic, with everyone turned against you.” Her gaze flicked spitefully at him. “You’re under the wheel, Cyrus. Ignore the jeers of the crowd and get the damned wagon off your chest.” She turned and started to walk away. “Then get your revenge, if you have to have it.”
“Wait!” Cyrus said, almost spitting into the cold air.
“I don’t really want to,” Aisling said, her back to him. “I think I’ve said about all that needs to be said at this point, and far more than I think you’ll listen to.”
“I …” Cyrus began, feeling suddenly quite humbled, as though the ground had dropped from beneath him. “Thank you.”
She stiffened. “For what?” she asked without turning around.
“I know you didn’t have to help me,” Cyrus said, the chill frosting his breath into mist against the white wall of the inn, a shade of grey like a cloud blowing past. “And I’m sure you have other things you’d rather be doing. Other people you’d rather spend ti
me with.”
“Yes.” She nodded once and then bowed her head. “And you’re welcome.” She turned her head. “I don’t hate you, you know. I did, for a while, after it was over. But it wasn’t you I hated, any more than you’ll end up hating Frost once this is all over.” She turned, taking a deep breath, her deep blue skin flushed in the chill. “He’s a symbol of your powerlessness, a reminder of how far you’ve fallen since this began, just like you were a reminder to me that I was … not in control.” She nodded once, to nothing in particular. “You’re trapped, and to feel so powerless … I know that feeling. You’re surrounded by enemies. I know that feeling, too,” she said, looking at the ground.
“Thank you for taking your time to try and show me the way out,” Cyrus said, standing very still.
She nodded once. “You should return us to your tower before anyone sees us here. If Frost had been smart, he would have let us recast our illusion before sending us out.”
“I don’t think he cares who sees us here,” Cyrus said, shaking his head. “You heard the man. He thinks he’s a King in this place, not a Governor. He might mean to be, once this work of ours is done.”
“Does that matter?” Aisling asked softly, shivering in the cold. “If you get what you want?”
Cyrus opened his mouth to say yes. Putting Allyn Frost upon a throne here in Isselhelm feels like folly, like giving Bellarum more power, or handing Pretnam Urides the elven kingdom. And yet … “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Cyrus said, shrugging his shoulders and drawing forth the memory of the return spell. “All I can do right now is steadily work on removing my enemies.”
“A worthy goal, if not a laudable one,” Aisling said softly. The magic of the spell consumed them both, and they disappeared, leaving Isselhelm’s dirty, snowy alleys behind them for the Tower of the Guildmaster. Cyrus’s skin felt immediately warmer as he appeared, the chill gone from the air and replaced with a light breeze that felt positively tropical as it swept around him.
Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) Page 24