The Councillor

by E. J. Beaton

  Three kept his hands folded in his lap. Nothing in his face suggested he was going to answer anything she might ask. Lysande was reminded of Luca’s words at the Arena: his provocation, by suggesting that Sarelin had known Mea Tacitus as a girl. Three could be bargaining on the strength of rumor, of course. There was no way of being sure.

  “Even if you’re certain that she’ll attack again, I fail to see what I can do to help.”

  “We need someone at the highest level of rule to work with us. If we are to defeat her in any permanent capacity, it must be with the support of the crown, as I tried to convince our late Queen Sarelin.”

  Lysande smelled the rose-oil, again, floating up from one of the pages on the table.

  “Your letter was the last thing she read,” she said.

  “It was the last letter of several. I tried to warn her that an attack was being planned for a hunting trip—I wrote with increasing urgency, stressing that she should avoid riding out at all costs.”

  How easily she could picture Sarelin reading that letter, giving a snort of contempt, and tossing the missive over her shoulder into the fireplace.

  “So you do serve the crown,” she said.

  “I serve magic, Signore Prior.” Three touched his pendant again, stroking a carving of a smaller triangle within the triangle. “Sometimes, that means choosing one leader over another; but always, it means acting for our people.”

  As she considered his proposition, feeling the weight of what she had been offered, she remembered Sarelin hacking and coughing, jerking on the grass, urging her to find the Shadows, and then going still: cold and still in her arms. Sarelin had always charged into the things she thought necessary. She might have done so now. Lysande was well aware of the differences between herself and her queen, as well as the similarities.

  “You must understand . . . I prefer to be certain,” she said.

  “Of your safety?”

  “Of your information.”

  Three’s hands unclasped and he regarded her for a protracted moment before nodding to Six. While the woman rummaged among the papers on the table, Lysande maintained eye contact with Three. They did not speak. Six selected a number of pages from the mess and dropped them down in front of Three; he unfolded them one by one, revealing messages written in Bastillonian, modern Eliran, Royamese dialects, and snatches of the ancient wayfarer tongues of the Periclean States. Even Luca would have marveled at such a range. Cartography was not the only discipline to draw the lines between the Three Lands—the study of language, too, had made its mark.

  “Letters from our correspondents. Remarks our people have overheard while we track her spies. I see you have noticed what we have,” Three said, as Lysande reached for a page. “She moves around in our neighboring lands, where even the most determined of our agents struggle to trace her. Most of the time, we fear, she has been further north.” Three’s mouth pursed. “Across the North Sea, the Exalted are not so scrupulous about driving out tyrants when the tyrants can pay. Some of our recent information is tenuous, but still . . . we suspect she is selling heirlooms she stole in the White War.”

  A description of the map Lysande had made of the White Queen’s known and suspected thefts during the war sprang to her tongue, but she held it there. Something, deep in the part of her that she suspected was not very sensible at all, still believed that the map was for Sarelin’s eyes only.

  The next page appeared to be a transcription. Was she holding the words of the greatest enemy of the crown? No . . . the greeting was addressing a “true queen.” As she smoothed the paper out, she saw that the first line had been written in Bastillonian, followed by a few words in Eliran and Royamese.

  “We leave Axium Palace in the morning,” she read aloud, decoding the author’s neat letters. “We will take the Scarlet Road and most likely camp near Ardua.” She dropped the page as the words sank in. “This was written yesterday!”

  She had known that a viper was slithering around her. It was something different to see the fact of it inked out on paper, the intercepted message inches from her. The letters were shaped elegantly on the page; a little too elegantly, perhaps, as the author had achieved a style devoid of all vigor and personality, a style that could not be entirely natural.

  “I’d like to say we catch doves mid-flight all the time. But I was raised not to lie.” Three smiled ruefully. “Six snagged this one as we neared your camp, carrying the letter. Only someone with an intimate knowledge of this Council’s movements could have sent such a message.” He tapped a finger against the page. “Possibly one of the city-rulers. The White Queen’s servant, as you can see, is a woman or man of talent, with several languages at their command. Someone resourceful enough to send a dove unnoticed amid a crowd of guards.”

  “Someone who has no scruple to throw our trust to the wind!” If she spoke hotly, she did not care. The nerve of it. The sheer disrespect for the Council, already, when it had scarcely been formed. She knew someone who had prowess with several languages, of course, and although she knew, rationally, that he was unlikely to parade the basis of his deception about, she indulged herself by directing all her frustration toward Luca.

  “The White Queen addresses them as the Umbra. That is all we have—they cover their tracks so efficiently that I suspect some magical method may be involved.”

  He seemed to be plunged in thought for a moment. Lysande had driven past apprehension to reach impatience, however. “That is all?”

  “Almost all. We know that the Umbra has no great love for Sarelin Brey. In one letter they refer to her as a ‘cur’; in another as a ‘brute.’”

  Like my dear Lady Pelory. But Pelory could not have sent the dove, being dozens of miles behind them in Axium. It was hard to think when her mind was encumbered by wine, fatigue, and emotion.

  “Could this Umbra have been the one who killed Sarelin?”

  He did not pause; the response flowed from him as if it had been composed some time ago. “The White Queen is careful not to say so directly. But what we hear hints at it. I am personally sure that her Umbra performed the crime; the White Queen’s tactics are written all over it.” With a meaningful look, he added, “I take it you know of Orbonne.”

  No, she considered saying, I have been living down a country well. Even the northernmost farmer knew what had happened in that Lyrian town, and Lysande had translated the soldiers’ accounts of that infamous encounter in the first year of the White War, detailing how the White Queen had attacked a legion of Lyrian guards outside the large town of Orbonne, using a group of archers dressed in Lyrian armor. While the guards were blaming each other and brawling, confused by the assault from what seemed to be their own people, the White Queen’s soldiers slipped into the center of the town. They destroyed most of Orbonne with elemental flames within minutes, and where one family had lived, the only object to remain was a thumbnail, blackened and thinned, like bread that had been left in an oven. Sarelin had said that Elira learned at Orbonne that it was not fighting a short campaign.

  Lysande had heard some guards retell that story with relish, but she had never found it gratifying.

  “Two strikes. One to distract, the next to destroy,” she said.

  Panther and poison. Silent sword and wolf. The problem, Lysande thought, was not identifying the White Queen’s tactic, but trying to guess how she would use it next.

  She tapped a finger on the table. Logic. You had to use logic at times like this. Many things were opaque, still, and she found herself trying to think like the White Queen, trying to stretch to her reasoning. The first step had been to murder Sarelin, she guessed. After that, the city-rulers would squabble for the crown. Presumably, the Umbra would maneuver their way to take the throne, then leave the way open for the White Queen to sweep in on a tide of blood. Yes. That would make sense. Reduce the work by setting up a puppet to control the realm; transfer power, the
n attack. The White Queen would not need to squander so many resources.

  Yet the opposite had happened. Lysande had thrown her plan into disarray by forming the Council. Now Mea Tacitus had several Councillors to outmaneuver, instead of a single monarch. And all of the Councillors were surrounded by the best guards from every city . . . she had not realized, until now, just how lucky her decision had been. From now on, strategy should come first in her priorities. She should lay out all the possible outcomes as beads on her abacus, sliding one forward, retracting another, letting them click.

  “Why not attack us from the Periclean States, now that assassination is hard?” she said.

  “Her funds will probably stretch to a legion or two of mercenary soldiers, but crawling through the frozen northlands to attack Valderos, the only impregnable city in the realm—is that a brilliant plan?” Three ran a hand along his angular jaw. “We believe she has adopted a tactic from the Conquest Era. The employment of diplomatic deceit comes more naturally to some than others. The hints from her spies suggest she aims to poison our relations with our neighbors. Turn them against Elira so that she can penetrate their thinking, and penetrate their inner councils.” Nothing lightened in his expression.

  “Oh, Bastillón and Royam will be ramparts in our defense,” Lysande said bitterly. “One border riddled with arrows, another decorated with a wall.”

  The fact hit her that the effort was already underway. The news of a Bastillonian attack on an Eliran ship had reached her right after Sarelin’s death. It could have been subtly done, a false report about a ship here, a description of a captain there . . . could it not?

  The prize jewel in the Three Lands’ trading crown had always been Elira. Anyone who had ever read a history knew that; their neighbors would not like to lose their flow of goods, yet if Elira launched a counter-move to the sea attack, might not Bastillón avail itself of the opportunity to seize those goods, under the guise of responding?

  She knew the frustration of the wealthy, who had been raised to embody the spirit of profit, even though she had never had the luxury to nourish it in herself.

  It wouldn’t take much, she thought. Just a spark to light the tinder.

  “Tell me, then, if you’re abreast of it, who can I trust?”

  Three turned one palm up. The invitation was not subtle, but the way it had been reached was almost an art: work with us, first, and then work with us or the realm burns. There was a bite in that. But she had been getting to know people with sharp teeth.

  “Any woman who agrees to help elementals without asking what they want from her is dancing on a precipice.” She tried to sound firm and calm. She was not sure that she managed it.

  “We ask only that you be on the alert in these next weeks. Intervene, where you think a lie has been planted. Find evidence of treachery, and hold it up where all can see. Rumors will not suffice. You will need proof, Signore Prior—hard proof—and once you have it, you must stop the Council from doing anything hasty. Need I remind you that this is about more than such players as you and I—that on this stage, the realm’s longevity is at stake?”

  “I can’t imagine telling Dante to put down his sword.” She heard the note of bitterness in her voice. “I may be a Councillor, but I am still a member of the populace in the eyes of the world.”

  “You have read histories and poems. You should know that sometimes the lowest-born can climb like a mountain rose. A palace scholar thinks deeply and knows the shadowed places, the quiet corners that silverbloods would not deign to step into.”

  What was it he had said before? I prefer to rest on the margins of the page. She watched the candles flicker, casting light and then throwing gray shapes over his face.

  “You are the only Councillor without years of ties and obligations to a court.” Three pushed a strand of white hair out of his eyes. “Of course, you have no family name, but equally, you have no family ties.”

  “So I am the most convenient choice.”

  He said nothing, only fingered his pendant again, tracing the edges of the triangle.

  She thought of the girl with the braided hair who had shouted “Prior” at her in Elsington, running toward her. Something had swelled beneath her, in that moment, lifting her with a force that did not lift the others; and for all that it flattered her, she was astute enough to know that it came from the people. Prior.

  From horseback that day, she had glimpsed a place where the sphere of politics was different; where the velvet and jewels slid away. She had seen it roll toward her. A system where a palace scholar could step off the top rung of the ladder and ascend, and where ink counted as much as silver blood . . . it had lasted for less than the length of a breath, but she had seen it, and her imagination held it.

  “And what do you offer me in return?” she said.

  They stared at each other for a moment. Lysande was determined not to drop her gaze first. After a while, Three bowed his head. “I cannot shower you with riches,” he said, “for we do not pay our informers in cadres, mettles, or rackets, lest they begin to behave like mercenaries. But I can offer you revenge for Queen Sarelin. And for your parents.”

  “I never knew my parents, signore.”

  “That is precisely my point.”

  He folded his hands. The words resonated in Lysande’s head. The White War was just a series of events from before her time, to be plotted on a map, distant as a story in a book; she had never thought about it in terms of blame. Yet she had spent eight years in an orphanage thanks to the same war. She had lost her queen, the only real parent she had ever known, at the hands of the woman who had led the rebellion. The glimpse she had caught of a picture of Mea Tacitus in Sarelin’s vault came back to her: curiously bright, the woman painted on a crag, with her ink-black hair writhing in the wind and her cape the color of bones sweeping the rocky ground—every part of her vibrating with light, as if bathed in an aureole that had been starved of all color, while the landscape seemed to grow duller, to fade in her presence. Lysande had walked toward the painting, compelled to see it up close, until Sarelin had blocked her path.

  “There is one more thing.” Three’s rich voice interrupted her thoughts. “If you are loyal to us, the Shadows will commit all our resources to answer one question of your choosing.”

  She considered this slowly, studying his hair. It was not queer, like hers; not full of an angry glitter, nor hued in a silver that was either too bright or not bright enough; yet there was more than one way to be marked by the nearness of death, and she saw the reminder of that in Three’s long, white locks. She had heard it in his voice, too, when he made the offer.

  What are the long-term dangers of drinking chimera scale? Is Charice safe, or lying in a ditch somewhere—and why did she leave Axium? What do you know about Sarelin and Mea Tacitus? Who left the queensflower in the Great Hall? How much chimera blood is left in the Three Lands? Why “Fontaine, in particular”? There were too many questions to choose from. But there were certain things that a group of people who could create fires, floods, and storms might discover. “I will think hard on it,” she said. “As to your proposal . . . I accept.”

  “Excellent.”

  Lysande barely heard the remark. Her mind was already sizing up the task ahead, assessing where the spy might have opportunity to cause a rift with their neighbors. It was not until she was deep into her appraisal that she realized she was breathing fast—that the thought of working against the White Queen had not deterred her but set her whole body humming. All the more reason, then, to pull herself back; to impose restraints upon her speech, lest she reach too far toward these people.

  Restrain, constrain, subdue. The words had worked into her consciousness, like the grain in a piece of hewn oak.

  “When you have something to report, send a dove at night.” Three clicked his fingers, and Six brought over a speckled dove. “My bird, Cursora, always kno
ws where to find me.”

  “I should have thought you used chimeras.”

  He smiled. “Our powers stop short of resurrection, Signore Prior.”

  Three rose, and Lysande rose with him. She cradled the dove in her hands, and they walked back through the farmhouse. The light was still dim, but Three’s white hair shone brighter than the candles, guiding their way. His gait was even as he led them out.

  “Good luck, my dear, and remember that you go with our protection.”

  She had been moving in another realm ever since she walked through the farmhouse door. She ran a hand over the dove’s back, quelling its cooing. “Three.”

  “Yes?”

  “The question I can ask you . . . it can be anything? Even if it seems impossible that you could answer it?”

  His smile had more than a hint of amusement, and he regarded her for a long moment before he opened the door. “Naturally,” he said. “I detest boasting. But in thirty-six years, I am yet to be confronted by an impossible problem.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The township of Castelaggio bordered the river, a cascade of brown stone houses, almost twice as long as Spelato and Ferizia. Amber wine from Castelaggio flowed freely in most of the towns around Rhime, and its inhabitants had built their villas off their trade, shaping themselves into a silver-studded community: well-to-do merchants promenaded down the widest main street, while the square bustled with women and men laughing and chatting, some wheeling themselves about in the contraptions the Rhimese were known to construct for people with illnesses and injuries of the body. Walking and wheeling citizens merged in the fast-talking milieu. Lysande scarcely saw the township as she trotted through; she could hear the lively song of the eastern vowels, but her thoughts were back in the farmhouse.

  In the light of day, the letters on the table and the sight of a brimmed hat in a shadowed room seemed anything but real; only the speckled dove that was now nestling in the bird-cage assured her that she had really met elemental spies. The bird, positioned carefully out of sight in the wagon, reproached her with a chirrup every few minutes.