Dore Madden bowed obsequiously to Radov. “Your Highness—”
Radov silenced him with a severe look. “Hold your tongue, Madden.” He waved his glass towards the Prophet. “I want to hear what he has to say.”
Viernan admitted that his prince commanded a certain ferocity when not playing absinthe’s drunken lover. His heavy brow and aquiline nose lent an intensity to his gaze, while the tattoos circling his throat seemed a collar of dark thorns inside his ornate kameez. Certainly the large ruby in the center of his royal agal gave a sense of wealth and state to his person. Yet Hal’Jaitar knew it was only a matter of time before the Ruling Prince of M’Nador melted into a toadying vassal again. No one held dominion before the Prophet.
Bethamin shifted his gaze slowly and deliberately to Radov, a minute change of direction, yet it gave the impression that his own thoughts resided a realm away. “When a dog misbehaves,” he posed in his sonorous voice, one that had already gathered legions of followers to a doctrine of questionable logic, “do you punish the animal, or its trainer? Only one course reaps a lasting change in the dog’s behavior.”
“Saldarians require a hard lash, my prince.” Dore crossed one knee over the other—a scarce plug of bone jutting against his robes—and folded fingers around the protrusion. “They must be corralled and dominated, as a pen of hogs.” He looked up at Radov beneath his brow, his black eyes little agates of malice. “But as with hogs, my prince, with proper handling, they’ll ravage your enemies, flesh and bone.”
Radov grunted and sipped his absinthe. “Leadership. The problem is always leadership. Those northern captains couldn’t corral chickens, much less men of ambition, such as your Saldarians.”
Viernan stifled a sigh. “Saldarians aside,” he stepped in before Radov offered the princedom to the Prophet in shuddering tribute, “Raku must be reclaimed or we’ll lose the support of the Council of Princes.”
The Prophet radiated disinterest. His gaze began shifting away again.
“If we lose their support,” Viernan stressed, nabbing Bethamin’s attention before it slipped off to another dimension, “the Hadorin line could fall within a fortnight, the princedom within the month.” He leveled the Prophet a burning look, speaking only to him. “All which you sought through our alliance will be lost.”
The Prophet looked back to him. “Not all.”
The consul curled his lips in a poisonous smile. “Enough.”
“Viernan, you needn’t threaten our guest.” Radov threw himself onto one of the couches and spread an arm along the back. “He’s our ally. He’s come all this way to help us.”
Hal’Jaitar bowed in acquiescence, but as he straightened, he aimed a look of warning at Dore Madden. The wielder had his skeletal fingers stuck in a host of putrid pies, and Viernan knew the bakers of most of them. He let it be known with his gaze that he wouldn’t hesitate to retaliate against Dore if the Prophet denied them aid.
Bethamin feared naught of Viernan’s vengeance; Dore understood better. The latter licked his spidery lips. “What is needed to reclaim the oasis?”
“Soldiers,” grumbled Radov.
“Wielders,” said Viernan.
“Dragon…bane,” Radov finished through a belch. He gestured with his glass. “Something to dispatch those damnable Sundragons.”
“You have thousands hovering outside your city walls,” the Prophet remarked. “Why do you not rout them before you to overrun this oasis?”
Radov snorted. “Peasants. Women and children. Refugees. What do they know of swordplay? Abdul-Basir’s cavalry would trample them in seconds—if those bloody Sundragons didn’t fry them all first.”
The Prophet inspected Radov with his dark eyes like two black holes, sucking the light out of everything that came within their gravity. “These dragons guard the oasis?”
The prince tossed back the last of his absinthe and answered hoarsely, “Not just the oasis. The things are a bloody nuisance all up and down the lines.”
The Prophet shifted his gaze to Dore. “Why have I heard so little about these dragons?”
“The drachwyr do not pose a threat to you, my lord.” Dore licked his lips and looked back to Viernan. “If there was a way to…divert the drachwyr, what size force would you need to reclaim Raku?”
“At least another five thousand men to augment the prince’s forces gathering now at Taj al’Jahanna,” Viernan said. “The bulk of the Emir’s army is stationed at Raku and they hold the high ground. It will be a brutal and bloody reclaiming.” Especially since they’d lost the support of Dannym’s army.
“Five thousand.” Radov stared at his empty glass. “But no more Saldarian trash.” He shifted his gaze to the Prophet. “I want trained soldiers, men who will follow commands and not flee from the lines. And I want the new things. Those things.” He motioned with his head towards the four hooded men standing by the doors.
Bethamin arched a brow.
Dore seemed to tremble all over. “The eidola are the Prophet’s blessed children.” He cast said Prophet an ingratiating gaze rife with unwholesome adoration. “He does not sell his children.”
“But he’ll trade them, won’t he?” Radov glared at Bethamin. “Why’d you bring them today if not to barter with them? Like the first two black-skinned things who came and went so quickly…or that other one—that undead truthreader you sent to spy on me.”
Viernan stifled a grimace. He regretted telling Radov about Kjieran van Stone’s unique physicality, but he would’ve regretted more not informing his liege. Radov extended trust no farther than his glass of absinthe, and the increasingly paranoid prince was quick to rid himself of suspected enemies.
The Prophet folded fingers in his lap and replied with chilly equanimity, “What need would I have to spy on my allies?” He shifted his attention to Viernan, pointedly adjusting the focus of his inquiry.
It occurred to Viernan in that moment to wonder if Kjieran van Stone had told his master of their mutual interactions, their…altercations? A suddenly disquieting thought, for the Prophet repaid betrayal with his thumb to a man’s forehead, marking him with a long, suffering end.
Dore offered meanwhile, “My prince, the eidola are here as the Prophet’s bodyguards.”
Radov snorted with derision. “What need would the Prophet have for bodyguards among allies?”
The Prophet skewered Viernan with his gaze. “Interestingly, Kjieran van Stone thought the same.”
Despite himself, Viernan paled.
The Prophet turned his searing attention back to Radov. “You ask for a new agreement, yet I haven’t any confirmation that your part of our last accord was completed.”
“No—I mean, yes, it’s done.” Radov pulled a flask from his pocket and refilled his glass, much to Viernan’s grinding frustration. “You wanted the val Lorian princes out of the way. They’re out of the way. You wanted the King of Dannym killed. We eliminated him.”
Hearing Radov speaking so openly about these treasons made Viernan’s skin crawl.
“These treasons were not committed beneath my name.” Bethamin flicked at his muscled knee, as if a spec of dust had dared alight upon it.
Radov frowned into his absinthe. “Well…of course, I mean, on behalf of the Duke of Morwyk. In any case, Gydryn val Lorian is dead.” Then he frowned. “He must be dead.”
Viernan was not so certain, but he kept this thought to himself.
“The king vanished with all of his…knights,” Radov gave another belch, “and then some.”
Viernan had not yet told his prince that the entire Dannish army had also vanished. He preferred that his head remained attached to his neck.
Radov leveled Dore a black glare that he then turned on the Prophet. “Whatever your creature Kjieran van Stone did, he vaporized my entire force—including the marauders we sent in to be certain the deed was well accomplished. No-no. Gydryn val Lorian must be dead. Otherwise we would’ve heard from him…of him.”
The Prophet crossed a s
andaled foot over one knee. “You want troops, and eidola among them. What do you offer me in return, Radov abin Hadorin?”
“Not gold. I can spare little enough of that.” Radov ran his forefinger along the rim of his glass. “What do you want?”
“The Prophet desires to rebuild the great cities within his governance,” Dore said. “Workers are in short supply.”
Radov grunted. “Tradesmen, craftsmen…I’ve put every one I could find to use serving my army.”
Dore licked his lips. “You’ve a cornucopia of refugees outside Tal’Shira’s walls.”
Hal’Jaitar misliked the dark light of intent burning in Dore’s gaze.
Radov frowned. “A nuisance. They want me to feed them, clothe them, suckle their babes...”
“Drive them from your lands!” Dore spoke with a feverish enthusiasm that Viernan knew couldn’t bode well for anyone. “Cast them to the north, where we will receive them.”
Radov turned to Dore. “Even should I,” he retorted, assuming a sudden belligerence, “what guarantee do I have that you’ll carry out your part?”
The Prophet lifted one long-fingered hand to indicate the four hooded creatures standing by the door. “I leave you with a gift.”
Radov spun his head, and his brow furrowed fiercely. “Four? I want fifty!”
“Four for today,” Dore murmured. “Fifty in return for your people. A worthy trade, my prince.”
Viernan viewed Dore with disgust disfiguring his upper lip. Whatever malignant use Dore intended for M’Nador’s rabble, it had the man trembling with ecstasy at the thought.
“You will send the people forth?” Dore prodded.
“Yes, yes.” Radov waved irritably at him. “No idea what good they’ll be. I suppose you’ll find some use for them.”
“Oh, yes. Yes.”
Knowing that dreadful look in Dore’s eyes for what it heralded, Hal’Jaitar might’ve stopped this transaction; but regret, remorse…these were luxuries that neither he nor the princedom could afford. “And the Sundragons?” he inquired pointedly of Dore.
Madden looked to him. “We will give you the means to deal with the drachwyr.”
“Plus five thousand men and fifty eidola,” Radov reminded them. He smiled at this contemplation. “Then we have an accord.” He stood and extended his hand.
The Prophet drew back from it as if it was a repellant bug.
Radov glared hotly at him. “In my culture, we shake hands to seal a bargain!”
“A curious custom.” The Prophet arched an eminently superior brow. “Either a man intends to do what he says he will do, or he doesn’t. How does the pressing of flesh change this?”
“It’s our custom.”
Bethamin flowed from sitting to standing and looked down at the Ruling Prince, giving the impression of a god observing his creation and deliberating on whether or not it reflected enough divinity to allow it to live.
With a sort of deliberate dubiety, Bethamin took Radov’s hand, but as he gripped the prince’s palm in his own, he turned his eyes to hal’Jaitar with a single question burning clearly in his gaze: And once you’ve shaken a man’s hand and he betrays you, what then is your custom, Viernan hal’Jaitar?
Three
“A man never learns anything by doing it right.”
–Liam van Gheller, Endoge of the Sormitáge
The Nodefinder Felix di Sarcova della Buonara rested his chin on one hand and stared out the open window into a drizzly grey afternoon. There was something about a rainy afternoon that just didn’t inspire. A misty morning could still bode well for adventure, but a grey afternoon—Belloth’s balls, it might as well be all over at that point. Put the day to bed and hope for a more promising dawn.
A damp breeze teased at Felix’s hair, stirring strands of blonde, auburn and dark brown into his eyes—one green eye and one blue, the mismatched pair apparently a gift from the Avieth his mother swore was his real father, which was total bollocks. Felix fashioned himself about as daring as they came, and even he wouldn’t have the balls to cheat on Lord Davros di Sarcova.
Trying not to think about his father—because his stomach was already queasy from eating the very questionable meat pie that his jailors had offed on him that morning—Felix let his gaze idle across the empty courtyard while a slow exhale took its time crawling out of his lungs.
The stone-lined court was the kind of dull, featureless place that might’ve existed in any city the realm over, but this one was attached to the Order of the Glass Sword’s infamous Tower, home of the Imperial Inquisitors; a honeycomb spire of labyrinthine halls and secret rooms playing host to the Empire of Agasan’s condemned elite.
Or so everyone said.
Felix had seen with his own eyes the patterns carved everywhere into the stones—patterns which contained the Tower’s prisoners far more effectively than iron bars. He could imagine the truthreader spies that were probably even now treading secret passages between the walls; ghostly observers reading the minds of the Tower’s occupants when their diligence waned to its lowest ebb—a more effective means than torture for ferreting out the truth.
Or so Felix had decided during his many recent sleepless nights, when the suspected truthreaders scurrying behind his walls had been his only company. He’d spent plenty of bitter hours pouring out his heart to them. He hoped they’d been taking notes.
Felix had also decided that the fact that he had nothing to do during his days but stare out the window was a harsher torture than any inquisition could mete out. And the absolute worst part of all? There was not a node in sight! Which probably accounted for why they’d put him in a room with an operable window.
Felix blew out his breath. Most places, you couldn’t spit without hitting a leis. But as far as his eyes could see spread only mundane stone, roof tiles and glass. Not a single portal opened onto the Pattern of the World. Not even a twisted node.
This fact unnerved Felix mightily.
They’d put him in a dead spot of the Pattern of the World, a place without nodes or leis, a place that shouldn’t exist in nature.
Put a Nodefinder on a dead spot where he couldn’t even sense the Pattern, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think or reason…the feeling was said to be akin to drowning. A Nodefinder could go mad in such a place.
Felix had heard of dead spots. They were central to the horror stories the second strand frites scared each other with in their first years at the Sormitáge. But any Nodefinder worth his salt knew that dead spots didn’t exist—couldn’t exist—leastwise not ones large enough to be the kind of terrifying things described in the stories.
Except…the Order of the Glass Sword’s tower had been built on one.
Felix puffed a discontented exhale. He hoped the spies crowded between the walls of his room were as bored of watching him as he was of watching the empty courtyard.
‘…Consider yourself an honored guest of the Empire…’
The last inquisitor who’d visited had told him that. He’d been a mealy-faced man with a moustache like an oxen yoke and a truthreader’s colorless eyes. According to said inquisitor, Felix wasn’t in prison—leastwise, that’s what they’d tell his family, if anyone in his family ever bothered to inquire as to his whereabouts, which Felix was pretty sure would never happen.
The room where they were holding him had a four-poster bed and was exactly ten paces and one foot-length square, which probably aligned with some obscure engineering formula but made pacing bloody awkward. Felix knew this because he’d paced the room a hundred times already. In both directions.
It also had a privy and a massive wooden table, the kind that would kill you if it fell on you, except you couldn’t so much as budge the dust off of it, so there wasn’t much fear of that.
Felix crinkled his upper lip towards his nose and slid another begrudging exhale out into the damp afternoon. They shouldn’t be able to hold him like this, tortured by boredom—and for no bloody good reason!
He wasn’t the one who’d vomited up a hundred bleedin’ Danes to wreak havoc at the Quai game.
He hadn’t summoned that pair of black-faced demons from Belloth-knew-where to throw the stadium into chaos.
And while everything else was blowing up, he most assuredly hadn’t allowed those Varangian arseheads to quietly spirit a bunch of Adepts out the bloody back door.
Felix was entirely innocent of the things they were accusing him of—which fact, he admitted, rather bolstered his disinclination to confess the things they ought to be accusing him of. That the princess had forged a trust-bond with him and Tanis also inclined him in the not-so-forthcoming direction.
Even so, he shouldn’t have to depend on fourth-strand workings to uphold his gods-given right to keep secrets. He was the son of a powerful lord! If his father only knew how they’d been treating him—
Actually…he thanked the Sanctos his father didn’t know. Felix would rather have dealt with the torturous interrogation of the Order of the Glass Sword than be questioned by Davros di Sarcova.
And he’d been ‘dealing’ with the Order’s intelligence people almost as much as he’d been dealing with the High Lord Marius di L'Arlesé’s men, Vincenzé and Giancarlo. In the countless days he’d been locked in that room, a dozen blockheads had questioned him, four different truthreaders had read him, and none of them trusted anything he told them. The High Lord’s man Vincenzé had paid him a score of visits, each time trying to get Felix to say something different than what he’d said the time before.
Felix had told them everything he knew.
That is…well, he hadn’t told them about the book Malin had stolen from the Imperial Archives, one of the apocryphal books from the Qhorith’quitara. Felix still had possession of the book—or would, as soon as they returned his satchel to him. But they hadn’t asked him specifically about the book, and he wasn’t obligated to bring it up.
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