Then he landed upon the reason, and his smile broadened.
Knowing his oath-sister, she would be trying to discern his strategy for winning a simple game of Kings as if it might somehow help her understand the larger game he’d masterminded. She’d probably spent many hours trying to piece together his plan for this game and wouldn’t restore the board until she had.
He noted that it was actually his turn.
Björn leaned and made his next move.
He slipped out onto the patio just as the study doors were opening.
***
Alshiba walked into her study with her head pounding and the hair standing up on the back of her neck like the ruff of an affronted cat. Yet even if she’d been a hissing and growling cat, Niko wouldn’t have noticed her irritation.
“…long have those responsible for our race’s decline gone unpunished.” Niko followed her into the room amid a diatribe she’d heard already once, and that once was a hundred times too many. “Our enemies flourish while Alorin withers. Fewer Adepts are born each year. Now, I must ask Your Excellency, is this fitting? Is it just?”
Alshiba somewhat slammed a journal she’d been carrying on her desk and turned him a strained look. “Niko…” she let out a slow exhale, measuring her patience as she counted her breath. “What do you think we’ll gain by attacking T’khendar? Do you think that in three centuries Björn won’t have planned for something like this?”
Niko looked perturbed by her interruption. “Perhaps, my lady,” he admitted, sounding dubious, “but surely he can’t have planned for two hundred Paladin Knights.”
“Two hundred.” She stared at him. “How do you imagine you could possibly rally two hundred Paladin Knights to invade T’khendar when the Speaker rarely sends more than fifty at a time, even into the most heated conflicts?”
Niko’s brows arched into condescension, resembling the f holes on a violin. “For the war criminal Björn val Gelderan? My lady…” his smile was nearly as patronizing as his tone, “he’s the most wanted man in the cityworld’s history. Sure the only reason the Speaker hasn’t already called for his extradition is the problem of how to reach the damned place.”
Alshiba laid her hands on the journal, feeling the smooth leather beneath her fingers. She took small comfort in it. The journal was one of Björn’s, part of a set he’d kept by his desk but which she now kept locked in her bedroom.
His thoughts, penned so candidly within the context of his private musings, were the only link she still had to him, her only guide beyond an imperfect memory as to how he would think, react, consider—how he would’ve handled a problem of policy or politics. Björn’s journals were treasures far more valuable than any of the hundreds of priceless tributes collecting dust around her chambers.
Unfortunately, they didn’t help her solve the problem of Niko. He was a problem she’d created all on her own. She fixed him with a level look. “And you think you have this solved, do you? Some means of reaching T’khendar?”
Niko gave her a condescending smirk. “Isn’t it obvious?” He walked to the sideboard and helped himself to some of her wine. Turning with goblet in hand, he smiled. “We have Franco Rohre.”
Something in the way Niko said Franco’s name made the hairs of her arms stand up in alarm.
Alshiba kept her expression neutral with effort. “I’m not sure I follow your logic.” She pulled out her chair and slowly sank down onto it, trying her best to keep him from noticing how exhausted she was, how drained emotionally and physically. Fortunately, the man only really noticed things happening within the radiating circle of his ego.
“Don’t you, my lady?” Niko leaned back against the sideboard and crossed his ankles, his manner smug and improperly familiar. “Did you not say that you know Franco serves Björn? Didn’t you declare he was holding the other Vestals in T’khendar?”
She had, but not to Niko.
Alshiba felt a trill of unease. Had Niko been listening to her private conversations? Was he spying on her? Or had he merely aligned himself with others who were?
She’d been so tired lately…so fatigued. It was making her careless. She would have to be more careful to ward her communication as well as her thoughts. The latter she did immediately, though if Niko had any skill with the fourth, she would eat her own shoes.
Alshiba slowly rose from her chair and walked to the sideboard. A gentleman would’ve offered to pour her some wine. Niko stepped out of her way.
“Whatever other allegiances he may or may not have,” Alshiba said as she attended to her own drink, “at the moment, Franco serves Alorin.”
Niko smirked down at her. He was standing far too close for propriety. “He’s been Called, my lady. Make no mistake of it.” He dared push a lock of hair back from her shoulder and let his fingers linger a little too long by her neck. “Franco Rohre has been to T’khendar, and he can take us there again.”
Us?
For a moment, as she stared at Niko, Alshiba wondered what she could possibly have been thinking. How could she not have seen the vile lining of his nature? Admittedly, she’d known Niko was vain; she’d thought those shallow waters were all there was to him. She’d never imagined the river of his comportment concealed so much decay, or so many deep holes of treachery.
Alshiba walked towards the wall of glass-paned doors and air that didn’t reek of duplicity. It felt as dangerous as turning her back on a bull. “What do you mean, he’s been called?” She aimed him a look over her shoulder. “Called to what?”
Niko blinked at her for a moment. Then he hurriedly drank his wine.
Alshiba arched a brow. That’s interesting. She would have to ask Franco what Niko had meant by the phrase—she’d no doubt whatever next came out of Niko’s mouth would be a lie, if he deigned to answer her at all. “In any case, Niko, I can’t see the Speaker agreeing to commit to a military campaign with the Interrealm Trade Measure’s enactment imminent and the Council still so divided.”
Niko glowered at her. Then he seemed to regroup and crossed the room purposefully. Whatever was driving him was clearly a harder taskmaster than she was proving to be.
He stopped close before her and gazed down, assuming an expression of deepest sympathy. A cobra’s calculating gaze would’ve been more sincere. “You cannot be hesitant to seek retribution for how Björn wronged you.” Niko ran his fingers along her arm. “Alshiba…he betrayed you.”
His advances were becoming more obvious and less endurable. Ever since she’d asked Franco to stay in the mansion with her, Niko seemed to have been trying to worm his way into her household too. Even had she been open to his courtship she wouldn’t have trusted his motives. She slipped free of his touch and moved away from him again. “This isn’t about Björn and myself, Niko.”
Niko stared blackly after her. “No, my lady, no indeed.” His tone held all the warmth of a glacial stream. “It’s about bringing justice to a man who held ultimate power and egregiously misused it. It’s about apprehending a man who let Shades wreak havoc on the innocents of our realm…” He was growing impassioned again—she could tell by the insultingly glib rhetoric he so easily summoned. “No, no indeed, not! It’s about a man who stood by to let our race be ravaged, and lest we forget, who committed the ultimate blasphemy and dared create a new world—an entire world, Alshiba!”
Björn…you created a world!
Three centuries, and the truth still astonished her…still awed her nearly to the point of breathlessness.
Alshiba regarded Niko through a haze of misgiving. She didn’t for a moment believe he cared about T’khendar, or Alorin, or even about Björn’s atonement. Frankly, she couldn’t fathom why Niko van Amstel was so adamant about invading Björn’s realm, but his interest certainly couldn’t spring from any altruistic purpose.
Alshiba set down her wine on a table and lowered herself onto the chair beside it—the same chair where Franco had confronted her on her illness, where she’d observed something in his gaze…
Alshiba leaned back against the cushion and rubbed her throbbing temples with thumb and forefinger. Her head was swimming, her stomach ever the source of a sickly turmoil. But mostly she felt thin. Wafer thin. Gossamer thin. The barest, crackling shell of herself. Not even a sketch anymore, merely a hasty outline on a scrap of parchment long discarded, fading in the sun.
“My lady, are you ill?”
What was it in his voice? Not concern…hope?
No, Niko. I’m not ill. I’m undone.
She no longer cared to understand the thousand choices Björn had made. She didn’t have the energy even to try. She only prayed he had things in hand—because oh, how she’d mangled it on her end! One of the finest misapplications of the First Law ever witnessed.
KNOW the effect you intend to create.
She’d intended for Björn—or in the very least, Dagmar—to return and claim his place on the Council. She’d intended that they would see Niko aiming for the Vestal Seat and experience a driving need to prevent the man’s ascension—or at least fear she’d gone out of her mind and feel some obligation to step in and resume their duties in defense of the realm. She’d expected them still to harbor at least a miniscule concern for the positions they’d once so selflessly and brilliantly held. She’d never imagined she would be stuck with Niko!
“I’ll be all right.” Alshiba dropped her hand into her lap. “It’s just a spell.”
Niko looked dubious but gave her a smile, the first time his insincerity seemed appropriate. He wandered over to her Kings board and gazed down at it while sipping his wine. Then he reached a hand—
She gasped. “Don’t!”
Niko paused with his fingers just shy of one of the pieces. He turned her a look of puzzled injury. “Is it a game in play then?” The obvious inquiry in his tone asked who she might be playing with.
Alshiba found herself on her feet, not having realized she’d moved at all. She smoothed her skirts and tried to calm herself with a slow exhale. “It’s a long story.”
She walked to the Kings board, mostly to be certain he didn’t try to touch any of the pieces again. “I think I should turn in early, Niko.” She tried to put kindness into her tone but probably only succeeded at impatience. “Perhaps you should leave now.”
He held her gaze. “Very well, my lady…if that’s what you want.” His words were very much at odds with his expression, his suggestive tone very much implying that this couldn’t actually be what she wanted.
Alshiba dropped her eyes to summon her patience—
Her gaze flew back to his in alarm. “Did you touch it? Did you touch the board?” Her heart was suddenly frantic at the mere thought of Björn having been there—for who else could’ve made that move, one she’d hardly considered in all her years of careful scrutiny?
A thrill pulsed through her—damn you, Björn!
Niko drew back with a look of confused protest. “I touched nothing. I promise you.”
Alshiba stared at the Kings board with her breath coming embarrassingly fast. Her heart was frustratingly at odds with her conscience.
She swallowed and looked back to Niko. “Alert the Speaker. Sound the alarm.”
***
Aldaeon H’rathigian, Seat of Markhengar and Speaker of the Council of Realms, closed the doors to his study with a slow sigh. He slipped out of his bejeweled Speaker’s robe, hung it in its case behind the door and flowed with the grace of the Elven races around the corner into the main room.
Where he froze, his colorless gaze riveted to a distinctive crystal decanter resting on a low table between a grouping of chairs. “Where did you get that?” He lifted incredulous eyes to the man seated in one of those chairs, then looked swiftly back to the decanter as if fearing it might vanish at any moment.
“From my apartments.” Björn sipped a caramel-colored liquor from the cut crystal glass he held in one hand, the other being draped along the low back of his leather chair. “Well…Alshiba’s apartments.”
A ponderous mystification overtook the elf’s features. He looked somewhat desperately back to Björn. “I searched those apartments personally from end to end!”
Björn smiled, all culpable innocence. “Perhaps you weren’t looking in the right places, my friend.”
Aldaeon speared him with a stare of disbelief. “I very nearly tore the mansion apart!”
“Oh, wait—no, that’s right,” Björn winked at him while swirling the coveted liquid around in his glass, “you must not have been looking in the right when.”
Aldaeon stood for a moment with incredulity widening his gaze. Then he sank down onto the chair across from Björn with a slow sort of grace. For an elf, it was very nearly a plop.
Björn nodded to the other glass on the table. “Join me, my friend.”
Aldaeon settled such a look upon him. Then he stared hard at the bourbon. “As furious as I was with what I perceived to be your betrayal at the time…I was almost more furious for thinking you’d taken this damned bottle to T’khendar with you. But it was here all the time?”
Björn gave him a soft smile. “I would’ve told you if you’d asked.”
Aldaeon picked up the glass and studied the amber liquid within. “I’ll remember that the next time you abscond to a foreign realm with the only bottle in existence of my favorite bourbon.”
Björn’s blue eyes danced. “If I’d known you were missing it so desperately, I’d have sent you a case of it. We distill it now in T’khendar.”
Aldaeon shook his head. “Of course you do.” He gazed at the amber fluid for a conflicted moment, as if debating the ethics of sharing libations with a wanted criminal. Then he took a sip, whereupon a blissful serenity overtook his expression. He closed his eyes and reclined back in his chair.
Björn leaned and placed a small marble box on the table between them.
At the sound of stone clacking against the glass, Aldaeon opened his eyes and fixed his colorless gaze on the box. “What’s that?”
“A gift for you to open later.” Björn sat back in his chair. “I heard you got my measure passed.”
The Speaker grunted. “Dubious congratulations. I barely survived with my head still attached.”
“Thank you for that, my friend.” Björn willed that his gaze might convey all that Aldaeon’s effort meant to him—his gratitude at what Aldaeon had done, what he’d risked, what he’d potentially sacrificed. He let his thoughts speak this loudly to the truthreader.
Aldaeon arched brows and gave a rueful exhale. “Yes, well…I recall what you said to me when you gave me the measure all those years ago.”
Björn smiled quietly over his glass, holding the rim just shy of his lips. “I…may have been a little hard on you then.”
Aldaeon frowned thoughtfully. “‘When the majority of people are benefited by taking the action,’ you said, ‘despite all obstacles and odds, you are ethically bound to push it forward.’” He shifted his gaze back to Björn, serious and solemn. “It’s become a guiding rule of my reign.”
“It has long been mine as well.” Björn lowered his arm to the chair with his glass caught beneath his fingers. “Who will you appoint to head the committee?”
Aldaeon looked up at him beneath his brows. “Do not pretend you don’t know who I’ve chosen.”
A half-smile twitched Björn’s lips. “Has she accepted?”
Aldaeon sighed resignedly. “I would ask you to speak with her, but I doubt your influence would prove beneficial.”
“I must agree with you there.”
There were times when Björn stood upon Time’s undulating pathway and looked both forwards and backwards, seeing choices that had brought him to where he stood then, and others whose full consequences had not yet come to bear. They marched on with him, those decisions, an army spreading in a phalanx at his back—his army, forged of judgment and conclusion, moving inexorably forth towards the moment of its intended strike. Past choices reflecting future action…both, in a sense, were al
ready behind him on Time’s pathway, for he couldn’t change them now. The events he’d set in motion had developed their own inertia, the game its own life.
He’d known at every moment, with his every choice, that he was permanently changing the future path of millions. He’d had to be so certain when he made those choices. He neither regretted nor second-guessed now the decisions he’d made in the past, but often he regretted the way those choices had impacted others.
Björn lifted his gaze back to the elf. “Has Alshiba spoken to you of her illness?”
“That…yes.” Solicitude shadowed the Speaker’s colorless eyes. “The best Healers in the cityworld have examined her. I hate to say it, but you may be the only one who can determine what ill is being worked against her.”
“I entertained a similar notion.”
“Ah…” Aldaeon arched brows in understanding. “So that’s why you’ve returned.” For some reason, this seemed to sadden him.
Björn regarded Aldaeon quietly. “You know you’ll only be placing her in greater danger if you make her the Committee Chair.”
The elf lifted him a swift and penetrating stare. “Are you volunteering in her stead?”
“Trust me, my friend,” Björn held up his drink soberly to him, “with what’s coming our way, I guarantee you’ll want me right where I am.”
The Speaker’s gaze tightened, the only indication of his unease—with Björn’s intimation, or perhaps with conversing so intimately with an infamous traitor…it was difficult to say which fact more unsettled the elf. “And what is coming our way?”
Björn lowered his glass to the arm of his chair and nodded towards the Speaker’s desk. “It’s all there in my letter.”
“Ah, yes.” Aldaeon cast a sooty gaze in the same direction. “By this, you no doubt reference the mysterious letter that literally appeared while I was conducting an inquest—what was it…a fortnight ago?” He arched a brow at him. “The timing seems a bit off, especially for you.”
“It isn’t an exact science, the mailing of letters to arrive centuries in the future.”
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