The Silvered

by Tanya Huff

  Murmuring comfort to the others, Danika made plans. They had to find out if Adeline Curtin was the keeper of the second artifact and, if not, where it was kept. Stina had to finish freeing the hinges on her door. And they had to escape before Leopald took his testing to its logical conclusion and injured one of them—injured her—in a way Jesine couldn’t heal.

  * * *

  “Well, you’ll never fucking fit in his, but I might be able to help.”

  Mirian stopped trying to lay words onto the breeze—she’d been practicing all day, and couldn’t figure out how Lady Hagen had made it seem so effortless—and waited to see if Jake would speak again. Gryham and Tomas had gone out hunting, disdaining the downpour that had held them at the cottage for a second day, and she’d been told to remember anything Jake said.

  “What did you See?” she asked when he picked another potato out of the basket she’d matured and began to peel it.

  He raised his head, gaze unfocused, and Mirian realized he still stared into the future. “Hurry.”

  The knife slipped and he swore, back in the present as blood dripped on the floor.

  * * *

  “So, Captain Reiter, is it true there’s captured Aydori mages in the north wing?”

  Reiter turned, surprising the woman seated next to him, who’d been leaning in, her breath warm and wine-scented against his cheek.

  Her name was Onnyle Cobb. Her family was minor nobility. She did something at the treasury and wanted to do something more important. He had no idea who most of the people sitting down every evening at the formal dinner were, but over the last few days, he’d managed a reasonably thorough threat assessment of those he ate with.

  Ate beside.

  Over the last four meals, there’d been a bare exchange of common civility—he still wore his old dress uniform, making him the only one in the room except the guard not in court dress—but it seemed he’d been assessed in turn.

  Cobb waited for him to answer, still pressed a little too close, her eyes lying about how interesting she found him. Reiter found himself suddenly thinking of pale gray eyes, narrowed in scorn, and how he preferred their honesty.

  He turned his attention back to his chicken. He’d never been told not to speak of the mages, but, given that he alone accompanied the emperor to his observation booth, it didn’t take a genius to realize that the Aydori mages weren’t common knowledge. In order for a thing to remain uncommon knowledge, those who knew of it had to keep their mouths shut.

  “Is it true, Captain?”

  Ignoring her didn’t seem to be an option. “I can’t say.”

  A warm hand closed around his arm. “Ah, but rumor says you accompany His Imperial Majesty when he goes to visit them.”

  Most of the men who’d been sent into Aydori had been reassigned to the other divisions. No surprise that one of them had bragged about a successful mission before he’d left Karis. Less surprise if it had been Lieutenant Lord Geurin; that ass would brag about taking a successful shit.

  “People talk about you, you know. You were Seen by the Soothsayers. That’s impressive. Important. And now, because of the Soothsayers, you have the ear of the emperor.”

  Reiter considered telling her that the emperor had his ear, that the emperor talked and he listened, but that would only extend the conversation, so he cut to the chase. “What do you want?”

  She started but recovered quickly, allowing the flirtation to become business. “I’m wasted where I am. I have ideas that could revolutionize tax collecting. I want you to put a word in the Imperial ear.”

  “No.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it again. Reiter had sent soldiers to kill and he’d sent them to die and he knew how to draw a line in the sand. When Cobb turned her attention back to her meal, so did he.

  * * *

  “Head for the cleft…” Gryham put a hand on her shoulder and turned her slightly to the left. “…and that’ll take you to the Tardford Bridge.”

  “Karis is this way.” Mirian turned herself back, squinting into the morning sun.

  “And if you go that way, you’ll have to cross at the Vone at Chamon. Small town, everyone knows everyone, and they’re all suspicious as shit of strangers. No, you want to cross at Tardford. Second largest city in the old empire, shitload of people, and it’s easier to hide in a crowd. Lots of people wander into big cities looking for work. No one goes to a small town unless they got friends or relatives there. You go to Tardford, you avoid the kind what think a uniform or a piece of paper gives them power they’ve no right to…”

  “Bureaucrats, soldiers, priests,” Jake put in from Gryham’s other side.

  “…and you’ll be fine. You move your ass,” Gryham continued, wrapping an arm around Jake’s shoulder and pulling him in close, “you get to Tardford tomorrow. You take Old Capital Street right through town, then strike off straight for Karis. The road follows the river, but you don’t have to. It’ll take a day off your run.”

  “We could get a ride.”

  “Could you?” Gryham snickered. “You’re going to put a wolf in a wagon behind a horse?”

  “We went from Abyek to the border in a wagon.”

  “Flat on your back and sweating out drugs. You get into a wagon now and you better be sure you stay downwind of anything pulling it.”

  “I could…” Mirian began, chin up, glaring at Gryham, but Jake cut her off.

  “Ignore him. He’s missing the point. Horses are fine if you’re carrying shit or if you need to cover a short distance fast. You…” He nodded at Tomas. “…can run for longer than any horse. Not as fast, but longer. Can probably run longer than Master Musclebound here…ow! You…” He turned his slightly manic grin on Mirian. “…are rebuilding yourself to keep up to him. Why the fuck would you slow yourselves down by bouncing along behind a horse?”

  Tomas stared out toward the cleft—although Mirian couldn’t see anything cleftlike, it was possible he could—and kicked at a clump of dead grass. “Tardford, Chamon; why don’t we just avoid people entirely?”

  “And walk across the Vone?” Jake snorted. “They put towns where bridges are.”

  “Mirian could part it.”

  “You sure?”

  “No,” Mirian answered before Tomas could. “I’m all about bridges!”

  “You need to be around people or you’ll be screwed in Karis,” Gryham told them. Mirian didn’t appreciate the whole you’re idiots subtext, but he wasn’t wrong. “You’ve gone wild last few days. Can’t say I blame you, but the capital’s not going to empty out when you walk in, is it? You need to practice being civilized.”

  Tomas kicked at another clump of grass, looked down at his foot, then up at Gryham in triumph. “We need shoes to go into a town.”

  “Well, you’ll never fucking fit in his,” Jake pointed out, smacking Gryham on the chest, “but I might be able to help.”

  Mirian leaned around Gryham. “You said that…Saw that yesterday.”

  “Did I? Well, now we know what I meant. Fucking yay. Stay here. Gryham…”

  Gryham rolled his eyes, but allowed the smaller man to pull him back to the cottage. As they disappeared inside, Mirian untied the bedroll and pulled out the telescope. Aim for the cleft was all very well, but she couldn’t even see the cleft. She pointed herself at Karis, then moved as much as she thought Gryham had moved her, shut one eye, and held the telescope up to the other. The brass eye-piece warmed quickly.

  “It’s right there.” Tomas moved in and shifted the telescope a little farther. “Can’t you see it?”

  Without the telescope, the triangular cut in the distant hills blended into the landscape. With the telescope, she could just make it out, although the edges were fuzzy. “You’ve got good eyes.”

  “It’s right there!”

  “I can see it now.” More or less. “It’s hazy by the river.”

  “No, it isn’t. Mirian…”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Because if they tal
ked about it, she’d have to acknowledge what was happening. That wasn’t sensible, but she didn’t care. Mirian lowered the telescope as Gryham and Jake returned, and slid it away as Jake dumped the carpetbag he carried out onto the ground. “Why do you have so many pairs of old shoes?”

  “I live in the middle of nowhere. I don’t get rid of shit.” He tossed a pair of work boots, tied by their laces, at Tomas who ducked. “Try these. They’re big on me and you lot have small feet for your size. I think it’s a paw thing.”

  Mirian had never noticed Tomas’ feet.

  “Now these…” Jack handed Mirian a pair of leather house shoes. “…are soft enough the laces might pull them tight enough to fit you. You’re not what I’d call delicate.”

  “Thank you.”

  He grinned. “Any time.”

  The shoes fit well enough, as much too big on her as the boots were too small on Tomas. They wouldn’t be comfortable, but if they had to rejoin civilization, they needed shoes.

  “I never thought I’d say this,” Tomas murmured as Mirian packed them into the bedroll, “but I miss those wooden clogs.”

  “Definitely easier to get out of,” Mirian agreed. “And not…”

  “Just keep to the right, you’ll be…Your right, you idiot, not their right! Good night!”

  They turned to see Jake staring toward the east, one hand holding a slipper, Gryham a step away.

  “And now,” Gryham grinned. “…you know what to do tomorrow.” He reached for Jake’s free hand, but Jake snatched it away and stiffened.

  “Hurry!”

  Mirian felt as though someone had just stroked a cold finger down the center of her back. “Gryham. He Saw that yesterday, too.”

  “About keeping to the right?”

  “No. He said, ‘Hurry.’”

  “Did he?” Graham wrapped his arms around the smaller man and pulled him close. “Then you’d better be getting a move on.”

  * * *

  Reiter stared at the jacket Linnit had laid out on his bed, at the gold braid on the epaulets, the double strands of gold cord hanging down under his left arm, and the gold frogging across the front and around the cuffs. “Tell me this is a joke.”

  “It’s court dress, sir.”

  He knew it was court dress. He saw officers in court dress every day. But, like many things, it looked a lot worse when it was applied to him personally. The only thing that made it even remotely acceptable was that the gold was a color only and at that he’d be paying for the color out of his next half dozen pay packets—real gold would take the rest of his flaming life.

  Linnit approached, fabric draped over his hands. “The sash has to go on before the jacket.”

  The sash had fringe. Reiter felt like an idiot. He took what comfort he could in the plainness of the black trousers and that his dress boots had been deemed suitable. Wearing this mockery of a military uniform, he’d be less noticeable within the court but unable to hide should he want to step to the side.

  One of the officers whistled as he entered the guards’ mess. He hadn’t made any friends, he wasn’t around enough for that, but they’d ignored him the way they’d have ignored any new man posted to the unit. That easy neutrality was gone. He wasn’t just another military man doing a job; court dress in that room was about equal to bragging that he’d been mentioned by the Soothsayers and he had the emperor’s ear.

  Except he didn’t have the emperor’s ear. Not today. The emperor was closeted with policy makers, Tavert informed him, and had left no instructions, so he had the morning to himself.

  All that braid pulled him into an inane conversation with the Imperial cousin and one of the other hangers-on, neither of whom had spoken a word to him before. Reiter declined an invitation to a race meeting and was less polite when they expressed a stupidly uninformed opinion about how the Swords were fighting in Aydori. They’d no need to be as extreme in their advance as Onnyle Cobb—they had the ear of the emperor as well—they just wanted him on their side. Another voice lobbing their desires at the emperor’s defenses.

  He finally freed himself, feeling grimier than he did after months of campaigning, and went to find the balloon he’d seen from his window. Got lost twice, surrendered, and asked a page.

  “People used to be all around it all the time, back when it first went up. His Imperial Majesty, he went up in it every day. Well, maybe not every day, but every other day for sure. And the prince, too. But His Majesty doesn’t go to it much anymore, so nobody really does. Until his Majesty tells them to take it down, though, they’ve got to keep it ready in case His Majesty wants to go up.”

  Even the pages were talking to the braid. They’d been as disdainful of his old uniform in the way only boys who knew they were essential to the running of an Imperial palace could be. What did they care for the guard? The guard was like furniture that just happened to move on its own.

  “This is as far as you can go behind things.” The shortcut ended in a false wall a foot in from the ubiquitous tapestry. “From here,” the page pointed as they stepped out into a broad corridor in what was clearly a high traffic part of the palace, “you go straight to the Sun Gallery and turn left. There’s doors out into the courtyard.” He smiled up at Reiter expectantly.

  In his old uniform, the pages hadn’t expected “gifts” for doing their flaming jobs.

  The Sun Gallery had a wall of glass facing east. The other walls were a deep gold, and from the way they were glittering, Reiter guessed there was real gold in the square tiles. He thought of the times men had died because the artillery had fired everything it had and it hadn’t been enough and wondered how many shells one of those tiles could buy. The room was warm and bright and there was a priest murmuring prayers to a small group at the far end by a golden sunburst. The priest’s robes glittered as well.

  Although, in fairness, Reiter had to admit the tiles and the robe were the first overt signs of wasted wealth he’d seen. The emperor wasn’t the type to have golden statues of himself scattered around the place. He had five pregnant mages hidden away in private rooms instead. And each mage had two guards with drawn guns. And their “midwife” had a knife she was willing to use.

  Reiter would have preferred golden statues.

  The balloon in the courtyard was also gold—a huge, egg-shaped bubble of silk, tied by silk cords to an Imperial purple basket heavily adorned with the Imperial crest. Even the sandbags were stamped with the Imperial crest. A ridiculous number of tassels dripped from the whole thing—balloon, basket, bags. It didn’t look anything like the efficient one-man balloons the army used for recon.

  “It represents the Sun taking His Imperial Majesty up into the sky,” one of the young women told him as he frowned at the unexpected gaudiness. The six in charge of the balloon, young men and women both, dressed in uniforms of high-laced boots, leather breeches, leather vests—“Our flight jackets are stored in the balloon.”—were bored and happy to have someone to talk to. Reiter spent a surprisingly enjoyable morning—once he got them to ignore his personal gaudiness, learning about balloons.

  The men who rode the recon balloons were never willing to answer questions.

  Although all the seats at the table were full, Onnyle Cobb wasn’t at lunch.

  * * *

  “But you’re sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine, Annalyse.” It took almost everything Danika had left to force her fingers away from the scar. They’d replaced the dress while she was in the water room, so the pale line she could just see with her chin tucked in as far as it would go, was the only evidence of the wound.

  The younger woman met her gaze for a long moment, then nodded and turned to Jesine. “And are you all right?”

  “For the first time in my life,” Jesine ground out through clenched teeth, “I want to harm someone.”

  “That’s right…” Danika stirred a spoonful of honey into her tea. “…you have no younger brothers.”

  Annalyse laughed and clapped a ha
nd over her mouth as though the sound had surprised her.

  Jesine smiled and shook her head. “Please, only children have problems, too. I never had anyone to blame.” She picked up a biscuit and ripped it in half. “At least it’s over. He’s seen what I can do.”

  It wasn’t over. Danika had suggested Leopald scientifically test the parameters of mage-craft and, as her professors used to say, one test did not establish a parameter. Leopald would keep going until he caused an injury Jesine couldn’t heal. Kirstin, immersed as she was in politics, would have realized exactly where these tests were headed. Stina would have been suspicious. But neither Kirstin nor Stina were at breakfast, no doubt being punished for rudeness to the emperor and Danika couldn’t tell Jesine she was wrong. Not when the shadows under the Healer-mage’s eyes said she hadn’t slept. Not when Annalyse already believed laughter forbidden.

  Danika drank her tea, and dropped her other hand to curl into her lap so they couldn’t see her fingers tremble.

  “Speak to me alone.”

  She’d influenced Leopald once, and as much as she might personally wish it had gone differently, they now knew what they needed in order to get the nets off. He had no idea of what any of them were capable of. Of what she was capable of. While Stina continued to destabilize the wood of her door, the first step of the more conventional escape, Danika would try and convince His Imperial Majesty to take the net off her.

  Healers might not be able to cause damage; she could.

  * * *

  “It was fascinating to observe how unaffected she is, wasn’t it, Captain? It certainly seems to indicate that the lesser orders can shrug off pain that would flatten the rest of us.”

  Even with very little time granted him at the spyhole, Reiter had recognized faking it for an audience. Not only for the emperor—and he’d bet his pretty new uniform the blonde knew the emperor was watching—but for the other two women at the table. “Have you considered speaking to her about it, Majesty?” He had no idea where that had come from, but it wasn’t a bad idea. If he were talking to her, the emperor wouldn’t be ordering her cut. Probably.