“Was the victim a prostitute, in this case?” Djena asked.
“We believe so. She had a single silver piece in her purse. The man had several, of similar vintage, in his.”
“They both had silver on them? They were killed in the Hill District, or near it, and were not robbed by their killer or anyone else? I am surprised.”
“Perhaps anyone who happened upon the bodies, before they were reported to us, was too disturbed by their condition to search them,” the templar speculated.
If the condition of the bodies had been described in detail, it was before the soldiers had brought Aric into the chamber. He had managed to get one of them to explain that he was being taken before the Council of Templars, and that Nibenay himself would be in attendance. But Aric was not the first item of business.
“That may be,” Djena said.
“Besides these killings,” the more junior templar added, “we can’t forget the murder of sixteen Sky Singers. That’s still got the elf community roiled up.”
“Elves,” Nibenay said. The dismissive tone of the single word couldn’t be ignored.
“Just the same, High Consort, people may not like elves but they like the goods elves can provide. Nibenay is known far and wide as a place where anything can be obtained. If the elves shut down their market, refuse to trade here, then that reputation will be in danger. We’ll lose that prestige.”
“Would the caravans stop coming to Nibenay?” the Shadow King asked. “Stop spending their coins here?”
“Some might, High Consort,” the templar said, still not answering the king directly. The question made sense to Aric, and was probably the most pertinent fact yet raised about the murders. Nibenay’s economic slide was widely known around the city-state, as if Tyr’s upheaval had caused people elsewhere to stop spending as freely as they once had. “This is my fear,” the templar went on, “and why I recommend posting guards around the elven market for a time.”
“Do that,” Nibenay said. “And keep this council apprised of any further developments.”
“Thank you, sister templar,” the High Consort of the King’s Law said with a forward curl of her hand. “You may take your leave.”
The templar bowed once and left the room. As she passed Aric and his escort, she gave him a curious glance. He offered a smile, which was not returned. Then she was gone, and Nibenay’s gurgling voice boomed out. “Is the smith here yet?”
Aric didn’t know how to respond. The templar had directed her words toward the High Consort of the Law. But she had been reporting about a crime, which would fall under that high consort’s purview. If Aric did the same, would he draw attention from the wrong high consort? He had committed no crimes that he knew of.
But one of the soldiers nudged him, hard, so he knew he was expected to say something. He took a half step forward, propelled by the force of that nudge. “I am Aric, the smith,” he said.
“Come forward, smith,” the High Consort of Thought said. Siemhouk’s voice was high, girlish.
He obeyed, walking as quickly as he could without falling down, his legs unsteady, knees locking.
“That’s far enough,” she said after a few moments. Aric stood before the five high consorts, arrayed in a half-circle about him, all seated in grand chairs.
“I have heard,” Nibenay himself said, “from Tunsall of Thrace, that you, smith, have a powerful psionic connection to metals. Is this true? You may address me directly.”
Yes or no? Aric wondered. Which answer will get me out of here fastest?
He decided the truth was his best bet, in case Nibenay was already convinced of it or was reading it in his mind at this moment. “It is true.”
“You have no objection to being tested?”
“Tested?” What could he mean by that? “No, I guess not.”
“Very well. Kahalya?”
The high consort seated on the far right rose from her ornately carved chair. Her nude body was taut and firm, with a slim waist, small breasts, and surprisingly long legs. She walked to Aric, and offered him a metal brooch. He took it from her. It was deep blue, with emerald green highlights, in the shape of a bird on the wing. Small gems adorned it. Aric thought it likely the most valuable object he had ever touched.
Aric never knew precisely what metal would say to him. Sometimes he handled metals that didn’t speak at all, that were simply inert objects, as they were to most people. Other times he saw, in his mind’s eye, vivid images of who had last handled the thing, or pictures of where the metal had been before, what it had been part of. But his most powerful connection came when he worked with the stuff, when it “told” him how to shape it, how to combine it with other metals to achieve strength, flexibility, sharpness, or some other attribute.
He closed his hand around the brooch, hoping his psionic ability wouldn’t let him down before such a distinguished audience.
He needn’t have worried.
Images flooded his mind, like water filling a basin. An elf, thin and bedraggled, hanging from a gallows, rope cinched tight around a distended neck, eyes bulging. A human woman, a member of the nobility, wearing fancy clothes; her hand clapped to her shoulder, fingers twitching as if feeling for something that wasn’t there. Another human, an artisan, shaping the bird. Then Aric saw the bird itself, as the artisan had seen it, in full flight, wings pounding against the sky as it gained elevation.
Kahalya yet stood before him. He handed the brooch back to her, and she closed her small fist over it.
“A man saw a bird in flight, and was inspired to create this brooch,” Aric said. “It fetched a high price, from a noblewoman. She wore it to.… I don’t know, a party, some sort of event. It was stolen by an elf. When he was hanged as a thief, it was recovered.”
“Close enough,” another high consort said. Aric recognized Djena, High Consort of the King’s Law. Kahalya returned to her seat as her sister templar spoke. “He was hanged because he tried to sell the brooch, but we had been alerted to its theft and we were looking for it. When we found out about him, we captured him. Apparently you’ve seen the result.”
“You perform as Tunsall promised,” Nibenay said. “Since you have this expertise, I should like to make use of it.”
“In what way?” Aric could have kicked himself. He wasn’t certain of accepted court protocol, but he was pretty sure one didn’t question the Shadow King in that way.
“Presumptuous,” Siemhouk said.
“Indeed,” Djena added. She leaned toward Aric. “You speak as if he’s offering you a choice.”
“My apologies,” Aric said. “I … I am new to this sort of occasion.”
“That is abundantly evident,” Nibenay said. “And forgiven, this time.”
“Thank you, Sire.”
“And your question, presumptuous though it was, is a legitimate one, which I will dignify with a response. We have been told about a large trove of metals in a forgotten city called Akrankhot. Large enough, if it is as described, that it might be used to armor our army—already the most fearsome on all of Athas—making it more powerful still. What we don’t know is where precisely in this place the metal is, or if the metal described to us is all there is. For all we know, it might be the smaller of several stores. We need someone attuned to metals who can make sure we’re finding all that’s there.”
A strange sense of excitement ran through Aric, but it was mixed with deep foreboding. This sounded suspiciously like an adventure, and he distrusted the whole notion of adventure. He thought he knew enough to believe that adventures were nothing but stories told by people not brave enough to actually experience such events, because those who did so rarely survived them. “So you’re sending me on a journey?”
“You will accompany an expedition, yes. I can’t say that it will be without dangers. I trust that’s acceptable to you.”
Aric would never have made the claim that he knew the Shadow King. But he knew more about him than he had mere minutes before, and he was convinced that Nibenay w
as teasing. “Very acceptable,” he said graciously. Whatever perils the journey might hold he would have to face as they came—certainly any voyage on Athas was a dangerous one, or so he understood. That danger, he knew, didn’t affect his response to Nibenay, as he had no choice but to make the trip.
Anyway, he was intrigued by the whole thing. He had never traveled so much as a day’s walk from the gates of the city. Clearly, this journey would be longer than that. He would be accompanied, most likely, by soldiers from the Nibenese army, and probably others as well. Not the Shadow King himself, surely, but someone representing him. A templar, even one of the high consorts? Perhaps.
Aric had long harbored a half-formed belief—never shared with anyone—that Nibenay was looking out for him in some mysterious way. Throughout his life there had been otherwise inexplicable incidents, and Aric had seen a providential hand as the only possible explanation. Most recently, he had decided he needed to settle on a profession. Because of his long-standing affinity for metals, he had thought that working as a smith would be a natural course for him. But because metal was rare on Athas, smiths were also rare. Less common still were smiths who wanted to take on a half-elf as an apprentice.
Finally, Aric heard of a struggling blacksmith, injured in an accident, who might be willing to offer an apprenticeship, and he had arranged a meeting with the man to discuss it. When Aric arrived for the meeting, the blacksmith announced that he was retiring, and that if Aric wanted the shop, it was his. Although Aric had been hoping to study at the side of a master smith, he couldn’t turn down the opportunity to own the business.
As soon as he touched the metal the man had left behind, though, Aric knew that he had been pressured into retiring, and well compensated for placing the business into Aric’s hands. The metal wouldn’t tell him who had paid the smith off, though, and Aric often wondered who that had been. It was as if someone powerful had taken an interest in Aric’s life, and was working from behind a screen to make sure it progressed in a certain direction.
Did that unseen hand truly belong to the Shadow King? Unlikely, Aric knew. More likely, he was simply buffeted by the fates, as were all Athasians, and he had just been lucky a few times. He could certainly point to other occasions on which his fortune had run the other way.
“Then it’s settled,” Nibenay said.
“Apparently so.”
“One more thing,” the Shadow King said. “Although you had the good sense not to ask for it. If the expedition finds the metal and it’s as promised, then there will be a certain amount of financial reward. That much metal will help outfit our military, but there will be an excess amount, which can be sold off, the profits put to the benefit of the Nibenese treasury. If you should survive the journey and return with the metal, and your efforts were helpful in acquiring it, I will see to it that you receive the commission to outfit our guard. I trust this will be acceptable to you as well?”
“Not merely acceptable, Your Highness, but entirely unnecessary and unexpected.”
“Which is why it’s offered,” Nibenay replied. “Had I believed for an instant that you expected it, I would never have let you see the first bit of it.”
“You are most generous.”
“So I am often told.” Was that a smile on his face, back there in his shadowed corner? Aric couldn’t quite tell.
“It is settled, then,” the Shadow King said. “You will be notified as to the date of departure. It will be soon, however, not more than two or three days hence. So do not make any future plans. If you have someone you would like to accompany you, who could be helpful on such an expedition, by all means bring that person along.”
“My assistant Ruhm? He’s a goliath, very strong, and he knows his way around metals.”
“Delightful,” Nibenay said. From his reputation, Aric had a hard time imagining the Shadow King being delighted by anything. He had to admit, however, that during this conversation—imagine, he, a quarter-elf, a commoner, a smith, was having a conversation with a sorcerer-king! He could barely believe it even though he was part of it—Nibenay had been reasonable, even personable.
And if it had been him all these years, looking out for Aric.…
But that was impossible. Hardly worth wasting a second thinking about.
“You may take your leave,” Siemhouk said. “We will contact you when we need you again.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Aric said. He backed toward the door, wondering if that was the right protocol, if the soldiers would suddenly appear behind him, grasping his arms and hauling him to a dungeon for committing some offense of which he wasn’t even aware. “Thank you, high consorts, for your hospitality.”
None of them spoke, but the soldiers didn’t seize him. Someone else opened the door as he neared it, and then he was outside in a hallway of the temple. Templars and others hurried past him, paying him not an instant’s mind. He found his own way out, and home, his mind racing with every step.
4
I should like to have my sister templar Kadya lead the expedition,” Siemhouk said after the smith was gone. “If that would please you, Father.”
Kadya had known that Siemhouk would make the request. She didn’t know that she would be in the room at the time, or that it would be put so bluntly. Siemhouk, despite her youth, played the templar power games as well as any she had ever met, so she had expected a more subtle, strategic approach to be employed.
“Is that right?” Nibenay asked. Kadya couldn’t read his tenor.
“As High Consort of the House,” Kahalya put in, an angry edge in her voice, “and as this clearly concerns issues of the national treasury, I should have at least equal say in the expedition’s makeup.”
“Each of you will no doubt have some reason—all perfectly valid, I have no doubt—as to why you should be involved in this process,” the Shadow King said. He moved out of the shadows, not entirely but enough to let everyone see the weary look on his face, as if the argument had already raged for hours. For all Kadya knew, it had, only in private, each of the high consorts coming to him in their marriage bed to press her case. “The High Consort of War certainly has an interest,” he went on. “As does the High Consort of Trade.”
“But psionics are involved,” Siemhouk said. “Which fall under my sphere of influence.”
That was the weakest case she could have made, Kadya thought. Because they were taking one half-elf along, in order to make use of his psionic ability? Why not argue that there should be a High Consort of the Walking Dead, who should take charge because the person who had brought the news in the first place had been one of those?
Perhaps, though, she had underestimated Siemhouk’s influence with her father. “Of course,” he said. “And I feel inclined to grant your request. You others will feel slighted, no doubt, but when all have a claim on something, then not everybody can prevail. Kadya is a capable templar, and I have every faith that under her leadership the expedition will be a grand success.”
Kadya was astonished. It had been so easy! Now she felt as if every gaze in the room burned in on her. She felt her cheeks color. She stood and went to the center of the room, dizzy, hoping her balance did not desert her. It wouldn’t do to fall down. “Thank you, Sire,” she said. “I shall endeavor to live up to your confidence, and more.”
“See that you do,” Nibenay said. His voice had turned suddenly cool. “And if you fail to acquire metal in amounts unheard of before, then might I suggest that you don’t return at all? Your fate alone, naked and unarmed in the middle of the Sea of Silt would doubtless be more kind than the reception that would await you here in our glorious city.”
Kadya didn’t know how to respond to that. “I … if the metal is there, I shall deliver it. And if it’s not, then I’ll never again darken the city’s gates.”
The Shadow King was silent. When that silence had dragged on for an awkward period of time, Djena clapped her hands together once. “Then we are adjourned,” she declared.
> Kadya walked slowly to the council chamber’s doorway, lest her quaking legs reveal her terror at what had just transpired.
She had just let Siemhouk seal her fate, one way or another. Either she would return to the city celebrated, or she would die.
For most people, life’s options were not so wildly divergent. Or so final.
But she was not most people, she was Kadya, a templar of Nibenay. And her fate, as of this moment, was almost entirely out of her control.
VI
PREPARING TO EMBARK
1
Because literacy was frowned upon by the Shadow King and his legions of templar wives—and by most sorcerer-kings, or that’s what Aric had heard—punishable by enslavement, time in the city’s dungeons, or worse, when Aric wanted to read he had to go to great lengths to find reading material. Sometimes books or scrolls could be had from the elven market, but even there, they were kept under the tables, and one had to know at which stalls to ask about them. They were expensive and had to be handled with discretion, tucked away under a cloak or in a satchel before anyone could spot the contraband.
Aric had no experience with adventuring, and he didn’t know many who did. So to find out what to expect, he went to the elven market and made some discreet inquiries. From there he was directed to a merchant in the Hill District, which he typically thought of as a place one went to acquire lethal poisons, banned weapons, and other dangerous objects. He suspected that he was being set up for robbery or murder, so he wore his bone dagger close to his hand, visible to one and all, and he took Ruhm along.
Ruhm refused to enter the abandoned building in which Aric had been told reading material might be available—he did not read, and wanted nothing to do with those who did. Aric went in alone, nose tickling at the thick dust covering every surface. A gaunt man whose tattered, filthy clothing made him look as if he and the building were separate parts of the same whole stepped out from an interior doorway and smiled at him, revealing a mouth with more gaps than teeth. “You’re here for what?” he asked.
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