Mir Jalu’d, the Seeker, who reeked of patchouli and had just oiled his hair, laughed a merry laugh at odds with the gravity of the situation.
“For much time that I ought to have spent in contemplation of the infinite, I thought instead of how to resist this Master. I think I have some resources.”
“I find that…” Tribane shrugged. “Reassuring. Despite knowing nothing about you.”
“I am a person of infinite resource. I know many things and many rare words. I know poetry from before there were humans. Also, I am an expert lover of both men and women.”
Tribane smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She looked at Aranthur. “What do you intend?”
He looked around. But he’d already made up his mind.
“I think that I should go back to the Empire as your messenger. I share the General’s fears for our friends there. The General cannot go, and I see why Dahlia and Sasan are needed here. But someone needs to find out what is going on, and stop it.”
He looked around. Neither Inoques nor the priest, Haras, were present. He wondered how many of his friends knew what lay on board the black trabaccolo.
“How safe is this city?” he asked the General.
She shrugged. “I don’t know how big this third force is. How many armies can this Master raise? This city could fall. You know that—you almost saw it happen.”
Aranthur narrowed his eyes in thought. He knew too much. He looked at Dahlia. The complications rolled away from him like his shields unrolling from his hands; only he knew the details of the Master of Arts’ intentions for the Ulmaghest. And since Masr, he was increasingly convinced that it held secrets that needed to be learnt. That had been his mission before any of these missions appeared—before war overruled everything. And the Black Stone—really, only he knew exactly what they carried.
He was tempted to share the knowledge with the General and let her be the leader; she had the skills. But it didn’t work. He couldn’t think of any reason to distrust any of them. But he wasn’t going to speak of the stone, or of the Ulmaghest, in front of people who could be captured by the Pure in Safi. It made his guts churn to think of it, but he made himself consider it all. Time stood still. He looked at the problem from several angles.
“I was hoping to give you a command,” the General said to his silence. “Equus said you could command the Nomadi, if he was nearby—”
Aranthur laughed. “I’m a terrible officer. I just do what Kallinikas and Vilna tell me to do.”
Syr Ippeas laughed. “You’re the only one who thinks so.”
Aranthur glanced at the General. Made his decision.
“I think I must accept that I am your messenger to the Emperor. I think that we must be sure… that our city and our government are secure,” he said in the language of war.
She nodded. “You are correct that I was going to send an officer with dispatches. It is usually a high honour—people would die to be sent with dispatches of a victory.”
Aranthur made a face.
“Vardar is a protégé of Roaris,” the General said thoughtfully.
“At least,” Ippeas commented. “I’d hold him close, Majesty.”
“Imagine the worst, Majesty,” Aranthur said. “Imagine Roaris seeks to control the government. What good will sending one officer with dispatches do? He’ll never let me go—worse, he’ll know I’m Cold Iron.”
She grimaced. “It can’t be that bad—at worst, you think on your feet.”
“Too often,” Dahlia said.
“All right,” Tribane said impatiently. “What do you intend?”
Aranthur looked around. “I think I’ll keep my plans to myself. I think we have to be very careful now, Majesty. I think our foe underestimated us, but no longer. And I think…” He paused. “I think I need to go to the City.”
She met his eye, and then nodded. “Very well. Aranthur, remain. Sasan, I will write you a commission and arrange supplies. I’d like you to move as soon as we can supply you.”
Dahlia glanced at him. She was trying to tell him something with her eyes.
He mouthed “later.”
Sasan shot him a smile. It was not a very genuine smile; not false. More… sad.
Aranthur nodded, and then moved to the seat nearest the General. Neither of them spoke until the room was empty.
“Clear as day, you’re telling me that you know things I don’t know,” she said.
Aranthur sat back. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I hate ‘ma’am.’” She smiled suddenly. “You have earned the right to call me Alis. In almost all situations.”
He nodded. “Very well. Alis…” He shook his head. “I know too much,” he admitted.
She nodded. She was as hesitant as he was. So they sat in hesitant silence for a long time.
Finally she spoke.
“It is possible…” she began, and then she looked up. “Fuck it. It’s possible that I’m the Imperial government right now. So please. I need to know whatever you know.”
Aranthur stood the scrutiny of her mild, wide-set eyes. He couldn’t think of any reason not to tell her. Except the caution he’d learned in the last months.
But he shook his head, because in fact, he knew that too much caution was the death of decision making.
“Damn,” he said. “Very well. Two things. First: in Megara, I am in charge of a research project—”
“The Ulmaghest. My cousin the Emperor told me in detail.” She breathed out. “Thank the gods, I thought it was something deadly.”
“Second,” he said, emboldened, “on board the black trabaccolo is the capstone of the Black Pyramid, sent by the priests of Masr to be protected.”
She blinked.
“It is some sort of… existential…” Aranthur shook his head. “I have experienced it. It’s not like anything, Alis. It’s… possibly our only defence against the Apep-Duat released by the Pure. Or… recapturing them,” he ended weakly. “I don’t even know—”
“A magikal artifact,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice.
Aranthur was going to let it go, and then he paused. And leant forward.
“No, Alis. As far as I can tell, it is the magikal artifact. All the others pale in comparison. It is the key to a one-way gate that controls…” He shrugged. “The most dangerous components of the past. I can’t think of a better way to express this.”
“Sweet Aphres’ cunt.” Tribane shook her head. “And Draxos’ prick. Are you kidding me? This thing is in my harbour, right now?”
Aranthur paused. “Yes.”
She shook her head. Now she was pale.
“How bad is it in Masr?” she asked, pouring him wine.
“Very bad, Alis. So bad that they sent this precious thing with us, assuming our city was safe.” He met her eyes. “Their… chief priest begged me to return with food, and with fifty Studion-trained Magi. And the stone.”
“Why didn’t he keep the stone, then?”
Aranthur looked away. “Because if it falls to the Pure, Qna Liras—Harlequin—”
“I know who you mean.” Tribane was like a wife dealing with her husband’s death. Strictly business. “Go on.”
“Harlequin says that if the Pure get it, or if the entities took it, we’d be done. All done—the whole world.” He shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I’ve had this confirmed by another source.”
“What other source?”
He looked her in the eye. “Not my secret.”
She smiled crookedly. “Why’d the Vicar arrest you?” she asked suddenly.
“I wouldn’t let him execute the Safian prisoners.”
She nodded, and drank off her wine.
“Aranthur, why in ten thousand hells are you the centre of this?” She shook her head. “Over and over again, since we first started watching you, you have been at the very centre of the struggle with the Pure. Why you?”
Aranthur met her eyes. “I think it’s the sword. Qna Liras says my sword is one of the Seven. T
he one with the woman.” He sat back.
“Blessed Sophia. You have Myr Orsin in your scabbard?” The General looked at him. “I admit—that would explain…” She steepled her fingers. “Well. Regardless. Sophia, I’m tired of making these decisions. But to the best of my knowledge, the City is a safer haven for this thing than this cursed place. If it was safe in the Treasury at the Academy, I think we’d know we were secure.”
“Even from treason?” Aranthur asked.
Tribane blinked. “I no longer know what I believe,” she said, and for the first time, he heard the despair and the exhaustion. “I’m like a punch-drunk fighter in a prizefight. It’s all I can do to come up to scratch at the beginning of each round, and keep swinging. We need to fight back—we need to counter-attack and stop reacting. If this were a sword fight, I’d say we need to steal the initiative.”
“Give me a month with the Ulmaghest. I might find you a tool.”
“Really?” she asked. “Is this what the sword says?”
“I’ve never asked.”
Go to Megara, the woman said. Save the Emperor.
He sat up as if he’d been hit by a shock.
Tribane shook her head. “I heard it too,” she said, and leant forward to touch the worn hilt. “Sweet Sophia. You give me hope, old lady.”
Aranthur swallowed.
“Really. Listen—it’s not just the sword. Dahlia will back me. I have a way to…unravel the Exalted. They’re constructs. We didn’t know that before. I think the Disciples are similar.” He shrugged. “I don’t want to get your hopes up. But I think… I think I know where to look for the keys. I think I know why we were brought the Ulmaghest, and I think I know what the Master has done.”
“You, the twenty-two year old third year Student.” Tribane smiled.
“Exactly.”
Aranthur grinned. He couldn’t help himself. At some point since the Black Bastion, he’d lost hope, and found it again. Between Inoques’ ruthless pragmatism and Ippeas’ bent morality, perhaps.
She sat up. “Damn, Timos. I want to believe you. Very well. You take the dispatches home. Get me a massive resupply for the fleet and what the hells, get us fifty Studion-trained Magi to send to Masr.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She grimaced. “You need Myr Tarkas.”
He hesitated.
“Timos, the world is at stake, and Myr Tarkas’ love life cannot influence you. Or me.” She raised an eyebrow. “No one would ever take her for a Safian, either.” She sighed. “Very well. I’ll write a lot of orders.”
3
Megara
“I ought to fucking hate you,” Dahlia said. The beaches of Lenos were visible in the morning light to starboard, and the trabaccolo was running free, quarter reaching with her big lateens full of wind. “Your little friend—”
“Kati is a grown woman—” Aranthur said.
“Oh, I know,” she said. “Very grown. Very clever. Never mind. What’s done is done. I know my duty. I don’t need you to tell it to me.”
Aranthur remembered exactly how arrogant she had sounded when they’d been together.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Are you, though? It’s like a nursery game, except that when you all fall into bed with someone, I’m left alone.” She turned and looked at him. “You look like death, by the way. Maybe that’s why the construct fancies you, eh?”
She turned on her heel and walked off.
Inoques came up behind him.
“Do you still love her?” she asked.
Aranthur thought about that for a moment. He turned and looked into his wife’s eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “But not in any way you should read as a threat.”
“I’m fairly astute at reading you people,” she said mildly. “There is a point when you move beyond mating to actual…” She shrugged. “To something better than mating. Why is she so angry?”
“Her chosen mate is going on…” Aranthur was caught in an endless web of trust nets. “On a mission. A different mission.”
“With another woman.”
“Exactly.”
Inoques looked out at the island sliding by.
“You know what I wish?” she asked.
“What?”
“I wish we had more time. I wish I was more…” She turned away. “Human.”
Aranthur thought of replying. Instead he put a hand around her waist, and they watched the island’s magnificent beaches slide by, the water as blue as the sky above, the sun, which at Antioke had been a sort of enemy, now just a kindly and brilliant light in the sky. There were whitewashed houses with red-tiled roofs, and little harbours dotted with fishing boats.
“I’d like to run this boat ashore, and wander off,” he said. “We could lie on the beaches, steal fish from the traps, and lie under the stars—”
“And watch the Forge grow. But yes. Every fishing boat we pass—every woman washing clothes, every village—I wonder what it’s like to be them.”
At the end of the deck, Kollotronis was dancing a sailor’s dance. Aranthur was pretty sure he was trying to attract Dahlia, and wished him luck. Later, when Inoques went to con her ship among the shoals at the north end of the island, Aranthur went and learnt the dance. Then he and Kollotronis fought with sticks. The sticks had leather hilts to cover the hand; it was the way the Masran sailors practised repelling pirates. The other soldiers gathered around, including Chimeg and Vilna, who had remained with Aranthur, and Nata, who never seemed to leave Chimeg’s side.
He had become a bitter man, his humour extinguished. When his eyes rested on Aranthur’s, he had to wonder if the man blamed him for his wound, which was terrible enough. But when Aranthur approached him on deck one night, the man was all smiles and false humility, and Aranthur didn’t want to press him.
He tried to ignore the wounded man, and Vilna’s raised eyebrow, and the rest of them, and so he knew the moment Dahlia appeared on deck. His back was to her, but his opponent leapt forward and threw a whole flurry of blows with a showy leap. Aranthur allowed himself to be backed to the edge of a hatch cover in four successive parries, and then on the fifth parry, he didn’t retreat. In fact, he stepped forward into his cover, caught his opponent’s wrist, and disarmed him. Kollotronis was minded to struggle. Aranthur passed an arm across his throat and caught his opposite shoulder for the throw, but Kollotronis was an experienced wrestler and evaded the grip, retreating. Aranthur still had both swords.
Kollotronis grinned.
Aranthur also grinned.
Dahlia came down the deck and stripped off her doublet.
“This is just what I need,” she said.
When Aranthur made to step away, she smiled wickedly.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I mean you.”
She hefted the oak stick, and then saluted, as if they were at Master Tercel’s School of Defence.
It was a long time since Aranthur had faced Dahlia, and he was cautious. But she made simple attacks, and by the third cover, he thought he had her tempo. He stepped into the parry as he had with Kollotronis, took her weapon, and she punched him in the jaw.
At least, that was her intention, but he dropped both swords and spun her by her punching arm.
He let go before he formed the shoulder-breaking lock.
“Damn you,” she spat. “That hurt.” She looked at him. “You are very fast now.”
This time she attacked with a very simple, well-executed deception, a high cut and a deceptive thrust following. Aranthur parried the first, and then the second, and struck a risposta from her thrust, tapping her in the head.
She saluted smartly and came straight back at him. He covered and countered. He threw a deceptive attack of his own, but the third bout went on and on, or so it seemed. She thrust to his leg, he voided and counter-cut to her head, which she parried and carried around to back-cut at his wrist. He parried moving forward, but this time she stood her ground. Their hands went to each other’s elbows, and then
they were locked together, both of them gripping their sticks at the hilt and again halfway down the blade, at the so-called “half-sword.” Point, and then pommel, and then point—strikes as fast as heartbeats, and parries to match, and then they moved apart. As they retreated, she flicked a rising cut off her last parry.
It caught him on the wrist because he thought he was out of distance.
He smiled, and so did she.
“I remember when you weren’t very good,” she said.
“I had good teachers.”
She smiled. Her smile included Kollotronis, and even Inoques.
“So you did.”
That night, in the little cabin under the command deck, Haras and Inoques sat at one end of the captain’s table and Dahlia, Kollotronis and Aranthur sat at the other end. They drank arak, and Aranthur explained his plan.
Dahlia heard him out.
“You are taking all the risks,” she said.
He shrugged. “In many ways I’m the most expendable. In a worst case, I’m captured and you are still free. Best case, I put up the signal and you run in and I’m on the customs boat. If the whole thing is wrecked, I put a red light up and meet you at Lonika.”
Haras nodded. “I am ageing every day we’re at sea. One storm, and the best hope…” He shook his head.
Inoques laughed. “I’ve never lost a ship, priest.” She looked at Aranthur.
“When we’re under the batteries of the City, we are very much at their mercy. We need to know.” He glanced at Dahlia. “You know that we’re going to be in time for the Autumn Session at the Studion.”
Dahlia leant back and laughed.
“I don’t really care a rat’s arse about the Studion.” But a slow smile spread over her face. “We’ve only been gone two months…” She laughed. “I’d like to take advanced battlefield concealment and perhaps a research class. And then, more serious, “I don’t think you should pass a gate. If they have our names…”
Aranthur paused. “I have a new idea,” he said.
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