Oressa squinted her eyes almost shut against the hot glare and watched the Kieba’s mountain grow gradually larger and taller before them. It wasn’t a very large mountain, she realized, and was obscurely disappointed. Then the river turned so that she saw the cottonwoods against the bulk of the mountain and changed her mind. It was large enough after all, though it still didn’t look to her like the abode of an immortal woman who had once been a goddess.
But for the first time, it looked close. She could see they would indeed arrive well before dusk.
In fact, they rode beneath the long shadows of the cottonwoods and guided their horses splashing across the river, here hardly more than a slow and lazy creek, two or three hours before sundown. Tania pointed, and Oressa saw, beyond the fields of drylands wheat and amaranth, the farmhouse that belonged to Tania’s family, the barns and other buildings beyond, and looming to the immediate north, the great bulk of the mountain. She grinned at the other girl and nudged her horse into a trot, riding out in front of the little troop, leaving Kelian to frown disapprovingly at her back.
That was why she was the first of them to run into the Tamaristan soldiers who had come to the Kieba’s mountain mere hours before them.
CHAPTER 8
Gulien was ashamed to realize how long it had taken him to notice that Oressa was missing.
There was just so much to do. The streets had to be cleared, the walls repaired, rubble from the golem’s violent demonstrations of power cleaned up, the injured seen to—some had no families to care for them, and those were rightfully Gulien’s responsibility. When he made time to visit these wounded and guarantee payment for their care, he found a few were Tamaristans, left behind because they were too badly hurt to move, and those were definitely his responsibility. The guildhouses had provided space and pallets for the injured men, but of course Tamaristan soldiers could hardly be left among the other injured. Gulien rather desperately had them all moved to the palace, where they could be both cared for and guarded, pressed for space as all of them were with the western wing mostly in ruins.
Two guildhouses had been burned, and the guilds were rightfully due aid in rebuilding. The debris at the harbor had to be cleared and work started to reset the cannons, those that were salvageable. A massive amount of gunpowder had been used and more had to be made by the cannonsmiths, and though neither charcoal nor sulfur were in short supply, Gulien had to approve the release of royal stores of saltpeter.
Worse, a great deal of the gunpowder had all too obviously been stolen and used by Prince Gajdosik’s agents. One expected foreign spies in any large city; Gulien knew there must surely be Estendan agents in Caras as well, and probably a couple Markandan or Illiana spies too, though neither Markand nor Illian were nearly so likely to try to take advantage of Carastind’s awkward situation as Estenda. Estenda had always resented Carastind’s independence; Gulien was almost more worried about what Estenda’s merchant-princes might decide to do than what else might come out of Tamarist.
But generally, whatever the relationships and tensions between one state and another, a foreign power’s agents confined themselves to gathering information. What Prince Gajdosik’s agents had done made it urgently necessary to find any who might yet linger in Caras. Unfortunately, Gulien had no idea how to find such agents. That was why he first looked for Oressa, the same morning he sent off Parianasaku’s Capture; he hoped she might be able to do exactly that, now that they knew of the problem.
But when he went by her apartment, she wasn’t there. Her maid, Nasia, only said that Oressa had seemed perfectly cheerful and lighthearted during her customary early breakfast; the woman had no idea where Oressa had gone after that. Gulien should have suspected the truth right then, because cheerful and lighthearted was exactly how his sister would seem when she was plotting the most appalling mischief. He should immediately have remembered all the times when, as a boy, he’d had to search out his little sister from the farthest dungeons or from some dusty secret passage in the attics.
He had all but gotten himself permanently stuck in a particularly cramped crawlspace in the attics, in fact—he remembered the incident vividly. His lantern had burned out, leaving him flat on his belly in the close dark, trapped because the secret panel had snapped closed behind him and, crawling forward, he’d found only what seemed a solid wall of cracked plaster and stone ahead of him. He’d had no idea where Oressa could have gone that time, either; he’d been sure she was right ahead of him until he’d found that wall.
As he recalled, before Oressa had wiggled back through the crawlspace and showed him the trick of opening the second hidden panel, Gulien had cursed his little sister in the name of every god he could remember, which, since he’d had a good memory even as a boy, was quite a few. More than once in the years since, he had found it satisfying to curse his sister with cat eyes and bat ears, with a pig’s tail and dog’s feet. She had generally deserved it, and besides, it was perfectly safe to invoke the gods since they were all long dead. Except the Kieba. But even the Kieba wasn’t a goddess any longer, so praying to her wouldn’t do anything anyway. Though Gulien had been in the habit of leaving her out, just to be safe.
Now, of course, he knew that he might as well have invoked the Kieba with the rest of them. At least, she seemed to have been keeping an eye on his family regardless.
Well, the wall that time had turned out to be a trick panel, actually, and the secret room on the other side had been interesting, if not nearly so filled with hidden treasures as his sister had insisted it would be. The only thing of interest had been the shard of crystal he’d found, and that merely in the crawlspace itself, not in the secret room at all. He’d bruised his knee on it, but the shard had caught his interest because it hadn’t been sandstone or marble or quartz or anything familiar, but a dark gray crystal, roundish and flattish, more like melted glass than like a broken bit of stone. When he’d stroked it with the tip of a finger, it had felt almost like soap or wax, but . . . smoother or warmer or softer, or something. Later, once they’d got out into the light, he’d found one could sort of see into it, though it was not transparent like glass. He hadn’t found it beautiful, but it had been interesting. “I don’t think it’s magic, but I bet it’s the only thing we’re going to find in there,” he had told Oressa. “Do you want it?”
His sister had shrugged, dismissing the unshaped bit of stone.
So Gulien had kept it. He had carried the crystal in his pocket, liking to think about the kind of medallion or staff or dagger hilt it might have once decorated. Eventually he’d had it shaped into a little falcon, something his father could not object to, and set into a pendant so he could wear it on a chain around his neck, though he assuredly hadn’t guessed the Kieba’s guardian kephalos would recognize the crystal he’d made his pendant from, or call it a key. So Oressa had been more right than she knew, about finding secret treasures in that hidden chamber, fragments of artifacts long unrecognized or forgotten. Had he remembered to tell her that, in all the rush of events since he’d returned to Caras? He would be sure to tell her once she turned up.
But she didn’t turn up. Only, when Gulien couldn’t immediately find his sister, he assumed she must have disappeared into the servants’ parts of the palace. Everyone was so overworked, and tucking up her skirts and helping sweep out hearths, or pinning back the lace on her sleeves so she could help gut fish or peel turnips—that was just the sort of thing she’d do. This habit was one reason their father thought she was lack-witted, but Oressa always said she found out more by chatting with the chambermaids and potboys than she ever could from Nasia’s staid gossip. Gulien had his own quiet arrangements to make among the palace staff, and then his attention was pulled away by other matters, and he didn’t even realize he’d gone the whole day without once setting eyes on his sister until he fell into bed. Tomorrow, he thought fuzzily, sinking exhaustedly into sleep. Tomorrow he would certainly ask Oressa what she thought they might do against foreign spies.
Then he had to find reliable men to send north and south, to assure he had a better idea of what had happened in Paree, where the Tamaristans had landed, and what might be happening in the north. The palace guardsmen were stretched so thin, he was forced to apply to Lord Paulin and Lord Bennet for men, which required courtesy visits to each man’s town house. So with one thing after another, it was after noon before Gulien once again realized he hadn’t yet seen his sister.
She must, he decided, have slipped away onto the roof, or into the maze of secret passages that she knew so well, listening to private conversations from behind peepholes and tapestries. His sister had never been as interested as Gulien in poking through the dusty knickknacks and broken furniture in the highest attics, but even as quite a young a child she had loved nothing better than finding her way through the secret doors and passageways and attics. She had always longed to find real treasures—jeweled crowns or forgotten artifacts. Gulien had always known that no king would ever lose track of anything important once he recognized it and claimed it and held it in his hand. Certainly it was impossible to imagine their father forgetting about anything he’d ever hidden.
Sneaking about and eavesdropping was an appalling habit, as Gulien had told his sister more than a few times, but now when he needed Oressa’s particular talents—not merely to find Tamaristan agents, but to discover whether his own people mostly supported him privately, as they assured him to his face—where was she? He told one of his own servants to tell Oressa’s woman Nasia that he must see his sister at the earliest possible moment.
When his sister didn’t join him for the noon meal, Gulien wondered again, absently, where she might be. But by that time he was busy trying to sort out the news that was beginning to arrive from up and down the coast—had there been another Tamaristan landing north of Caras, or were those sightings merely nervous men worried over ordinary sea traffic? If the reported ships were Tamaristan, did they belong to Prince Gajdosik, in defiance of Gulien’s order, or to one of his brothers? Lord Paulin thought the former; Magister Lorren argued equally adamantly for the latter; Magister Toen did not believe a second Tamaristan attack was likely at all.
Gulien hoped Toen was right and that all the Garamanaji princes would simply stay in Tamarist and murder one another at home, but he had no confidence in such good fortune. And no confidence in the quiet from the north, either. Estenda would hardly fail to try to take advantage of Carastind’s weakness and confusion. Of course his father had his own agents in all the foreign courts, but no one held a secret closer than Osir Madalin. Gulien had no idea who his father’s spymaster might be, or how to make reports flow to him and not just run aground when they couldn’t reach his father. He could not possibly go back up to the tower apartment and ask his father for help or advice.
Not possibly.
It all gave him a pounding headache. No wonder Oressa was staying well out of it. Though he hoped she wouldn’t put a foot wrong on a rooftop that seemed more solid than it was. Surely she would have the sense to stay to the more sound parts of the palace and out of the shakier attics.
As evening approached, though, Gulien nodded as Magistra Lara, a scholar-mathematician associated with the architects’ guild, finished explaining how it would be necessary to finish pulling down part of a wing of the palace before they could start rebuilding it. They were both standing in one of the courtyards outside the most damaged part of the palace. The lowering sun showed the broken walls mercilessly. Gulien half expected the rest of the nearest wall to crash down before them, it was so badly damaged.
“Talk to Magister Toen about this,” Gulien told Magistra Lara. “I agree it’s important to preserve access to the cisterns, regardless of what other work must be done. Tell Toen that I leave this in his hands, and yours, of course, Magistra.” Then he turned distractedly to the next person who was waiting for his attention and found it was Beriad, the man he had, on Oressa’s advice, made senior captain over the guard.
“Beriad was loyal to Father,” she’d explained, “but loyalty in itself is just what you want, and he’s far too sensible to look at the Kieba’s golem and want to set Caras against the Kieba—especially not after the plague this spring, and Prince Gajdosik, and everything. Beriad has got the rank and the experience—he’s senior lieutenant, and he’d have been a captain ten years ago if his family weren’t in trade. His father’s only a cobbler, you know, but I’m sure Beriad really is loyal and honest. His wife is Ellea, one of the cooks. All the girls trust her, and his sons are all in the city guard, married to respectable women, honest men, by everything I’ve heard.”
Gulien hadn’t even been surprised by this flood of information. He’d simply nodded and followed Oressa’s advice, glad to have one decision that was easy to make.
Now here was his new senior captain, looking stiff and unhappy. And Gulien hadn’t seen Oressa all day, nor yesterday. Gulien found all the pieces suddenly fitting together, when he hadn’t even known there was a puzzle to solve.
“Oressa?” he asked.
Captain Beriad’s small, curt nod showed that he was angry, or perhaps embarrassed, or else wary of Gulien’s temper, or perhaps all of that at once. “I knew a handful of my men were out of place. I knew that last night. But the roster’s still confused, and I didn’t check the duty book near as quick as I should have. But Tarod’s a responsible man, and he signed ’em all out proper. Six of my men as an escort for Her Highness, though Kelian told me he’d be off about your mission on his own.” The man paused. Then he said, even more stiffly, “I ought to have realized much earlier.”
“So should I,” said Gulien. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Then, dropping his hand to his side, he added, “Captain Beriad, everything in the palace—in the whole city—is still very much out of order, and will be for days, I expect. We are all doing the best we can, but it’s going to be a scramble. I hardly see how you can be held to account for my sister’s whims. Nor are your men to blame. I’m sure Oressa could talk anyone into anything and make it all sound perfectly reasonable. She took six men?”
Beriad’s shoulders were no longer quite so stiff. “Seven, Your Highness, counting Kelian, which was more than I’m glad to spare, but not so many as I’d have sent if I’d known Her Highness meant to ride out.”
“Still, I hardly think they’ll encounter anything seven men can’t handle between Caras and the Kieba’s mountain,” Gulien said. He was both relieved and surprised Oressa had swept off with so many guardsmen, though on second thought that wasn’t fair. His sister was bold, not stupid—and besides, even if she’d suggested it, she would never have been able to persuade Kelian to let her run off with him, just the two of them. Not if Kelian valued his place here, not to mention wanting to avoid being hung from the palace walls by his thumbs. Unless he were in love with her after all, and Gulien didn’t believe he was, and anyway Gulien was perfectly certain that whatever she said, Oressa didn’t really care in that way for the new captain, however handsome Kelian might be, or she’d never have spoken so flippantly about marrying him.
He didn’t say any of that. He only said, “I should be grateful Oressa had the sense to hoodwink your men, I suppose, if she was going to hoodwink me.” He was grateful, and angry at the same time, and not in the least surprised at the trick his sister had pulled, now that he finally understood what she’d done. Run away to visit the Kieba! Of course she had—not just on his behalf, either, but because she was surely furious at Gulien himself for leaving her behind, pinned between their father and t
hat Tamaristan prince.
“The Kieba has no reason to be angry with Oressa,” he said out loud, partly to Beriad and partly just to reassure himself. “Especially since she’ll bring her Parianasaku’s Capture, after all. It’s quite fitting that a Madalin return the Kieba’s artifact to her hand. Oressa has too much sense to try her tricks on the Kieba. . . .” Surely Oressa had too much sense for that. But no, she would no doubt put on her meek, biddable manner, as she always had for their father. There would be nothing in that which could possibly cause offense. “Yes,” he decided. “I’d never have agreed to it, but this may be as well.” He nodded to his new guard captain. “And I’m certain you’ll have your people organized from top to toe by this time tomorrow.”
Beriad gave him a firm nod, plainly much relieved by Gulien’s reaction. “Yes, Your Highness, you may be sure of it.”
“Of course,” agreed Gulien. But he couldn’t quite let it go at that and added, “But send a man. Two, though I know how shorthanded you must be, and I’m sorry for it, but please send two men after her, with mounts and remounts. Just to make certain she’s well and bring back word. I doubt they’ll be able to persuade Oressa to let anyone else go up onto the Kieba’s mountain, so I won’t require they try. Only bring me word when she’s gone up and again the moment she returns. We’ll all worry less when we know she’s on her way back, eh?”
On the captain’s acknowledgment, Gulien dismissed him and turned distractedly back toward the more-or-less sound eastern wing and his own apartment. He might hope for as much as twenty minutes of quiet to think, perhaps, before he must meet Lord Paulin and Magisters Lorren and Baramis and begin to consider what matters might be so urgent that they had to be dealt with this evening and what might reasonably be left till morning.
He didn’t get ten steps before someone called out, stopping him.
The Mountain of Kept Memory Page 15