"My lords," the steward said.
"Yes?" Dante said.
"I have taken you to Callimandicus. May I return to the Citadel now?"
Blays knelt and touched the patina of charcoal around the chimney. "Ye gods, we're too late! He's blown himself to hell!"
Two skinny legs thrust from the entrance to the chimney, wrinkled and bare. They were accompanied by a muffled, echoing voice. "Who goes there?"
"A confused person," Dante said.
"Two confused people," Blays said.
"Oh," the voice said. "You two."
The legs kicked, toenails scraping soot from the chimney walls. Ash sifted to the blasted ground at the chimney's base. The old man tumbled to the ground with a grunt. Cally blinked at them in the overcast sunlight, soot smearing his cheeks and his tangled beard. Between the black of the ash and the white of his beard, his eyes gleamed from his cheeks like captured sky. His bare legs sprawled, liver-spotted and hairless. A long shirt draped past his loins.
"What happened to your pants?" Blays said.
"My—?" Cally glanced down at his legs. "Oh. Lost those about an hour ago."
"Doing what?" Dante said. "Or is that a question I should leave in peace?"
"Doing this." Cally collected himself from the fireplace, careful not to bang his head on the brick of the overhanging hearth, and padded to a cart parked halfway across the field. There, he loaded a wheelbarrow with two sacks; one small and shifting with something like sand, the other big, clanky, and bulging with what sounded like crockery.
"Wheel this over for me, would you? Crawling up chimneys is hard work."
Dante muttered and leaned into the wheelbarrow. Back at the chimney, Cally tossed the small sack into the soot at its base, then gestured at the bag of dishes. "Get those out and pile them up, would you?"
Dante tore open the sack, which was indeed full of dishes, and began placing them atop the smaller bag, stirring fine clouds of choking dust. He dropped his third handful, shattering crockery over the brickwork. He swore.
"No matter." Cally flapped his hand as if to wave away the dust. "It'll all be like that in a moment."
Dante shrugged and returned, with considerably more roughness, to loading up the dishes. Cally swung the iron door closed and clamped it shut with several locks, sealing the hearth.
He batted cinders from his beard. "You might want to step back. Unless you would prefer to be flung back instead."
Cally turned and ran, shirttails flapping. Dante and Blays followed. Some fifty feet from the towering chimney, Cally hunkered down in the snowy grass. Nether roiled around his hands. His tongue poked from the corner of his mouth. Shadows flowed in a river from his hands, gushing under the iron door and disappearing into the chimney.
A tremendous bang rattled the chimney, the door, and Dante's teeth. Black smoke plumed from its mouth. An upward hail of crockery vomited into the sky.
"Taim's virgin daughter!" Dante hollered.
Cally chortled, pointing at the soaring debris. "You see?"
"Very good," Blays said, rubbing his ear. "You've discovered the world's worst way to clean a chimney."
Dante goggled up at the tumbling specks. "What was in the other sack?"
Cally shrugged his bony shoulders. "Dried urine. Black sand. A few other things. That just gives it an extra shove. Most of the force came from the nether."
"What happens when it comes down?"
"Oh, yes. Well, we should probably run again before that happens." Cally took his own advice, dashing across the field with considerable speed for his advanced age. A stand of pines flanked the dilapidated farmland. Before they'd crossed half the distance to the shield of trees, jagged flecks of dishes rained down to earth, pattering the snow and plinking from stones. Cally flung his arms over his head and laughed.
Dante reached the pines and hunkered under the branches to catch his breath. Black smog drifted south on the bay-birthed wind. "What's all this about? A crusade against crockery?"
"Imagine if you aimed that chimney at, say, thirty degrees." Cally sketched its angle through the air. "What if you fired it at a formation of enemy troops? Or a fortress' walls?"
"How much nether does it take?"
"Lots. A lot of lots."
"Why not aim the nether directly at the enemy instead? A lot fewer things can go wrong then."
Cally rolled his eyes in disgust. "Except if they have sorcerers of their own. Then they snap their fingers and your big ball of nether fizzles away like dandelion seeds in the gale. But I suppose you didn't think of that."
"I suppose I didn't."
"Anyway, this is just the theoretical stage. A perfected model would be much more effective." He clapped his knobby hands. "Want to fire it again?"
"Yes, but we need to talk first." Dante blew into his hands. "Listen. Have you heard? About what happened?"
Cally's white brows shot up. "That you burned down the ancestral manor of Cassinder of Beckonridge? And he's going to talk the king into declaring war on us? Why the fuck do you think I'm out here blowing stuff up?"
Dante laughed hollowly. "Oh."
"His Highest Kingship Lord Moddegan has already levied a new estate tax, you know. It's enough to think he plans to pay for several thousand men to march across several hundred miles."
"It's his fault." Blays pointed at Dante. "He was chasing down the infamous Quivering Bow."
Dante whirled. "What the hell?"
"What? You'd rather he hear it from someone else?"
"I was going to ease him into it!"
"How were you going to ease me into explaining that?" Cally snarled. He drew himself to his full gangly height, his elbows as swollen as the gut of a freshly-fed snake. Beneath the soot, his hair and beard hadn't been combed in days or cut in months. "Well, did you find it? Or did you get diverted by a herd of snipes?"
"Regrettably," Dante said, "we discovered that it doesn't exist."
"Do you know what you've done?"
"I thought it could win the war before it began. We made contact with the Clan of the Nine Pines. They promised it was real."
Cally ran his hand down his snarled white beard. His eyes were closed, as if he were weathering a cramp. "Within the next few weeks, the king is going to issue an ultimatum. It's going to be outrageous. Possibly so much that the Norren Territories, if they accept, will wish they'd simply gone to war instead."
"I thought war was the plan all along."
"Years from now! When we were ready! When our position would be so strong even the clowns in Setteven would rather let the norren go than try to march against them."
Dante stared at the grass. Beetles crawled between the blades. "I thought I could help."
"The norren won't back down from this. Not all of them. They're too fractured." Cally turned away from the city. Bitter wind whipped his beard. "People are going to die, Dante."
"I found something else instead. Something—"
Cally raised his splayed palms to his shoulders. "The Council meets tonight. The issue, to put it indelicately, is whether Narashtovik will stand with the norren or abandon them to the war-hounds of Gask."
Dante cocked his head. "How did they know I'd be back today?"
"They didn't. As it turns out, the world goes on without you. Try to make it a better place for once."
Cally's weary disappointment stung worse than any wrath. There was too much to say, so Dante said nothing. In time, they returned to the Citadel together, wordless the whole way. Pantsless and begrimed as Cally was, the gatekeepers still recognized him. Dante supposed it wasn't the first time they'd seen him in such a state.
"That could have been worse," Blays said once they were alone in the stairwell.
"Oh really?" Dante said.
"We could be dead."
Dante gazed at the walls of the musty walls. "I think I'd rather be."
"Maimed, then. Weighed down by a brick of guilt and two broken legs."
"Pain would be a welcome distr
action."
Blays grabbed Dante's shoulder, jarring him. "Will you knock off the self-pity? This thing has hardly begun. What do we do to de-disaster it?"
"We have no choice." Dante lifted his face. "We have to help the norren. We're the ones who got them into this mess."
"Great. So quit moping and figure out what you'll say to the Council. I'll go get the molten silver."
"Molten silver?"
"To pour on your tongue."
Dante shook his head. A floor down, he discovered his long-vacant room had recently been cleaned. The bedsheets smelled like soap and the pine needles the servants pestled to scent the linens. There was no fire, of course, and it was too cold to take off his cloak, but he left his door shut and locked. For the moment, he needed isolation.
In time, he belled a servant for a bath, which he sat in until the water grew lukewarm, letting the slow work of water wear the salt and dirt from his skin. He shaved and dressed himself in the Council's colors, then faced himself in the small mirror above his basin. His jaw and cheeks had gone harder. Suggestions had become definitions.
Under normal circumstances, he was the type to plot out every word of what he might say at the meeting. To sketch the branch of every argument he could make or anticipate facing. Instead, he closed his eyes and opened his inner sight to the nether, watching it trickle through the room's dark places, its minute pools under his bed and dresser, its shining dust glittering from every surface. A servant knocked. It was time.
Dante returned to the upper floor and made for the Council's chambers. The cherrywood double doors bore the image of the White Tree of Barden, ghastly and beautiful, its trunk and limbs fused from spines and ribs, molars and canines forming its flowers and thorns. Inside, a long, plain table dominated the room. Sectioned glass windows overlooked the vivid pink sunset on the bay. Dante was among the last to arrive. Old Tarkon was already seated, his cane leaned against the table. He winked Dante's way, heavy wrinkles bunching around his eye. Hart sat, too, a mountain of a norren with thick clouds of beard swirling about his head. Olivander's head was bent in apparent prayer, muscly soldier's shoulders bunched around his neck. Joseff's ancient eyes were closed. He may have been asleep.
These were the lone survivors of Cally's uprising beneath the boughs of Barden. Some of the dead had been replaced within days: wiry Kav, whose carved features betrayed his noble birth but not his age, which must have been passing sixty; Ulev, chubby, a simple monk raised above his station; Merria, the old woman whose blue tongue would better suit a stevedore than one of Arawn's chosen; Somburr, quick-eyed and twitchy, his brown skin and elusive accent a product of one of the southern isles; Varla, who spoke as rarely as an oracle. The last to arrive (besides Cally, whose habitual lateness was more a product of indifference than a conscious display of his station) was Wint, who in his mid-30s was the youngest councilman besides Dante himself.
Assorted servants orbited the table, too. Behind Dante's right shoulder, Blays leaned against the wall. Cally ambled into the room and the Council rose as one.
"Excellent," Cally said, seating himself. "I can't remember the last time we didn't have at least one empty chair."
Tarkon pursed his lips, ruffling his beard. "Then again, you can't remember the last time you emptied your bowels, either."
"Nonsense. On matters of importance, my scribe takes the strictest notes." Cally's smirk faded. "I'm not going to rehash every detail. If you're not up to date, it's your own damn fault. In short, a clan of norren burned Lord Cassinder's estate to the foundations. In response, King Moddegan has levied a new tax. He's begun headcounts in Bonn and Lattover. Headcounts means troop counts. Troop counts mean we'd better grab our balls and run for the hills."
"The debacle with Cassinder was my fault," Dante broke in. "We led a clan on a mission to rescue their enslaved cousins. Things turned violent."
Wint lifted a thin black brow. "I heard the search for a few missing norren was just one of the reasons you were there."
From behind Dante, Blays snorted. "Of course it was. Do you think we'd cartwheel through some lord's door, torches in hand, all for the sake of a single clan?"
"It doesn't matter why it happened," Cally said, cutting off any potential objections to lowly Blays speaking out of turn. "What matters is what course we take from here. If none of you want to figure that out, my next course is straight to bed."
The other members glanced between each other. A servant coughed. Olivander leaned forward and clasped his heavy hands on the table. "If Moddegan marches, it will be on the norren, not us."
"Sounds like the very reason we should stay clear," Wint said.
"They're counting on our loyalty."
Somburr's head jerked back and forth. "Since when is suicide the best expression of loyalty? We preserve ourselves. Stash our loyalty away. Then return it to the table when it's actually worth playing."
Tarkon rolled his eyes. "Would that be before or after the Norren Territories are converted into the world's largest charcoal bed?"
"I've met Moddegan," Kav said in his academy-honed tones. "He doesn't believe in half-measures. If we throw our sticks in with the norren, he'll burn us without blinking."
Cally grimaced. "Olivander, what kind of numbers can we muster? Reliably, I mean. You military men seem cursed with double vision whenever you survey the troops."
"Three thousand?" the big man shrugged. "A tenth that in cavalry. Between the last war and the immigrants, our infrastructure hasn't had time to rebuild."
"And what can Moddegan come up with?"
"Ten thousand by July. At the very least. Maybe double that."
"I'm no algebraist," Wint said, "but that sounds horrible."
"They'd have to thread their campaign through a narrow needle," Varla said softly. "The Dundens are often snowed in by October."
"And that snow won't fall on whatever hill we huddle on?" Kav countered.
"Why are we arguing whether to help?" Dante said. "We're the reason they're facing invasion. If we hadn't been stirring up trouble the last five years, they'd still be just another unhappy territory."
"'We'?" Wint said.
"The institution of this council and the higher lord we serve."
Kav gazed at the white plaster ceiling and the chandelier's twelve clusters of candles. "The key fact is that promise was made five years ago. If we were looking at the world as it lies right now, would we make that same promise?"
"Which of course has nothing to do with the fact we did make that promise," Cally said. "Anyway, the thinking here is very all-or-nothing. There are ways to aid and resist that don't involve a field of troops, a rousing speech, and a million kegs of blood."
"If we commit one man, we may as well send a thousand," Wint said. "You think they can sweep through the norren without picking up our tracks as well? With proof of our involvement and an army at our doorstep, what king in his right mind wouldn't take the chance to finally annex us properly?"
Talk went on for another half hour, but Wint's cold logic effectively settled the issue. Cally called for a vote. He, Dante, Tarkon, and Olivander favored continued support. The remaining eight decided to cease all involvement in norren matters until a later date.
While the others filed out, Dante slumped in his high-backed chair. Blays sat on the table and kicked his heels. "Well, good luck to the clans, I guess."
"This is bullshit," Dante said. "How can they just turn their backs? We've been working towards this for years."
"Maybe the norren will do all right. I'd rather break rocks with my balls than try to scour the clans from their own hills."
"You think so?"
"Well, probably not. I'd only expect to lose one ball fighting the norren."
Tarkon tarried with Cally for some time. With nowhere else to go, Dante sat and stewed, seething over every insipid argument and call to cowardice. Had he just wasted the last five years of his life? Had he actually made a bad thing worse? What was the plan from here? To si
t in the Citadel making faces of concern while the armies of Gask stamped, raped, and gorged their way across the norren lands?
Once Tarkon left, Cally ushered out the last of the servants, retook his seat, and hoisted one slippered foot to rest upon the table. "Disappointed?"
Dante smiled grimly. "Why would I be disappointed? It's only my fault the norren are facing war. I've just been ordered not to help them. I couldn't be happier if you told me my mom had walked back from the dead."
"I see."
"I suppose you think I deserve this. Well, the norren are about to be punished far worse than me."
"Deserve it?" Cally laughed scornfully. "I'm no Taim. I don't hand down judgment from my righteous throne. By and large, everyone deserves nothing. The rightness of this belief is proven by the fact that's precisely what they get."
"Now that's a rousing philosophy," Blays said. "The kind of thing that inspires you to spring out of bed, rub the grit from your eyes, and dive right back under the covers."
Cally flapped his hand. "Listen, dribblemouth, I'm no happier about their decision than you are."
"Could have fooled me," Dante said.
"Well, the answer to that quandary is very simple." Cally reached out to lower his stiff leg from the table. He stood, cracking his knuckles. "We're not going to do a damn thing the Council says."
9
Dante blinked. "You mean to help the norren anyway."
"That quick brain is precisely why I appointed you to the Council."
"In that case, I have something to show you." Dante jogged out the door to his rooms, gathered up his satchel, and returned to the meeting chambers, where Cally and Blays passed a badly-rolled cigarette between them. Dante closed the door behind him. Under the tobacco, Dante smelled siftspring, an odor of sage and cold winter mornings. It would perk their nerves a little bit; Cally favored it when he did his deepest thinking. Dante placed a lumpy rag on the table and unfolded it, revealing several pieces of cracked skull.
Cally leaned over, smoke rising dragonlike from his nostrils. "Very nice. Bits of dead things."
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