Holes in the floor along the left side—possibly once holding urns—had been converted into privies and accounted for the stench. The air was heavy enough to burn their lungs.
“Fiera’s breath.” Loukas turned Trell a look of horror framed with implication.
Obviously some kind of working was pinning the soldiers to immobility—no man in his right mind would sit there and calmly endure such a punishing stench—but his own men were exploring the room without any ill effects. So how had the wielder formed his working?
Trell headed for the stairs, keen to the eerie human sea, pricklingly aware of the presence of magical workings, yet frustratingly obtuse to their construction. Between them and the front doors, five hundred men sat enveloped in death’s own silence.
Something struck him in this thought. He halted Loukas with a hand on his arm. “Look at them. Look at their positions.”
“You mean how they’re chained in groups of five? Do you think it’s important?”
“I don’t know.” Trell could almost grasp a significance… He continued down the stairs.
“Maybe five were as many as they could secure to one chain,” Loukas offered from behind him.
“Maybe.” But Trell had never seen men so oddly shackled, and the closer he came, the stranger they appeared. Braided silver ropes bound each man’s wrists and then connected to a similar band collaring their necks. The same rope linked the band on each man’s wrist to his neighbor’s, until the circle completed itself with all five men linked together.
When Trell lifted the soldier’s bound arms to get a better look at the rope, the man kept his arms in the air until Trell lowered them again. The soldier made no effort to move of his own accord, nor even acted as though he knew Trell was there.
Trell and Loukas regrouped in the shallows of that unnerving sea, surrounded by dull-eyed soldiers sitting in daisy-clusters of docility. He pushed off a frustrating sense of time’s insistent ticking.
Loukas rubbed his brow. “If some pattern is holding their minds, why isn’t it affecting us?”
Trell shook his head. “That’s the question, isn’t it?” He crouched to study the rope up close. Multiple silver strands had been intricately braided…
Multiple strands.
Could each strand of braided rope represent a strand of elae? Could the ropes be the pattern?
Quickly Trell drew his dagger and tried to sever the rope binding one soldier’s wrist. He sawed at it with fervor, but the rope didn’t even warm beneath the dagger’s edge.
Trell turned a significant look to Loukas.
The Avataren’s eyes were wide. “Fethe, Trell. If your blade can’t sever it…”
Trell settled a determined gaze on a hanging lantern. “Maybe fire can.”
***
With Air-fuelled sight, Tannour watched the energies from the nearest pattern come funneling towards him. He whispered a fraction of an inch to his right. The spear of power splintered the door behind him.
Kifat threw two more patterns at him, rapid fire. Tannour angled his body slightly to avoid one and then the next. Stone and wood shattered instead of blood and bone.
Kifat cursed him vehemently. Barbed words, they notched a sharp staccato. Now the wielder’s sweat filled the air with musk and his heart beat a rapid rhythm of fear. He threw another pattern.
Tannour stepped an inch to his left. The wall behind him exploded.
Four more patterns came in quick succession.
Tannour leaned slightly left or right, and the deadly energies whispered past him. The last pattern disintegrated a large portion of the stone wall and opened the room to the night.
Tannour returned his blinded gaze to the wielder. “You’re destroying your tower.”
Kifat screamed rage into the air. He shoved fists at his sides, thrust forward his neck and shouted, “I’m not afraid of you!”
“I do not require your fear.” Tannour started towards him.
A web above him hummed, collecting energy unto itself. Its waves whispered of wielder’s compulsion. Tannour communed with Air, and his body vanished to worldly sight.
Kifat slashed wildly with his knife. He threw pattern after pattern—deadly energies these, embodying vicious devices—but Tannour walked ver’alir, and the patterns whispered harmlessly past him.
Kifat threw out long arms of power and hooked stone, wood, furniture. These he pitched as desperate weapons. The air became a frenzy of flying, shattered things—sharp implements of pain, heavy rock to crush skull and bone—but Tannour walked ver’alir, and the deadly storm swirled harmlessly around him.
He reappeared directly before the wielder.
Kifat slashed at him.
Tannour caught the wielder’s arm in one hand and his throat in the other. His howl became a choked gurgle. Tannour forced him backwards over a plinth of air and pinned him there, arched awkwardly across the invisible barrier, his arms drawn back into a painful extension and bound at the wrists with ropes of air.
“They told my master you could no longer c-commune,” Kifat gasped. “They told us you had no tether!”
Tannour stroked a gloved hand down Kifat’s arching throat. His voice barely disturbed Air’s sudden stillness. “I found a new one.” He methodically sliced the buckles off the wielder’s breastplate and tossed the leather carapace aside.
“Wait—wait!” Kifat smeared the spittle on his lips with a darting pink tongue. “We can help each other.”
Tannour sliced the wielder’s robes down the center and ripped them aside, baring Kifat’s chest, clearing a canvas for his knives. He exchanged one dagger for a different one from a cache within his vest.
Kifat struggled, but air bound him more surely than stone. Now desperation flushed his face but bled the color from his chest. Now his heart announced his fear to any who would hear it. “Release me—I’ll tell you what you want to know!”
“You’ll tell me anyway, as I warned you.” Tannour began marking meridian points on the wielder’s chest with tiny crosscuts of blood. He could make them shallow or deep. These were deep.
“I can offer you gold!” Kifat’s eyes were round, his red face sweating. “Power! I can—”
“We’ve come too far on the path together to turn back now.”
The wielder’s desperation formed rigid waves. “I am Shamshir’im! You’ll pay dearly—”
Tannour cut another deep X. Kifat started cursing.
‘You’ll pay dearly…’
Didn’t he know Tannour paid dearly every time he walked ver’alir. The path demanded…unconscionable things of him. He paid in sleepless nights and blood vigils and most desperately in a loss of his humanity.
Then again, the man shouting obscenities at him was a Shamshir’im wielder. How much humanity could he have possessed?
Tannour cleaned his blade with a whisper of air and swapped it for a steel needle, uniquely constructed, as long as his forearm and hollow. While the wielder damned him in two languages, Tannour readied the needle at the precision junction of one of the crosspoints he’d marked. Then he inserted it between Kifat’s ribs—but carefully, so as to puncture the lung at just the right angle.
Kifat’s vitriol was abruptly replaced by a long bout of strangled choking.
Tannour’s instructors had assured him that this technique simulated the sensation of drowning. He tried not to think too hard on the methods by which they’d perfected the procedure. The Sorceresy’s torturers—researchers, they called themselves—walked mor’alir. The Path of Shadows didn’t only demand pain, punishment, sacrifice…it reveled in them.
Kifat’s eyes grew bloodshot. Pain, fear, and the grim light of understanding also made them wet. He coughed, choked, struggled for breath. “What…have you…done to me?”
A dark smile twitched in a corner of Tannour’s mouth, but of course, all Kifat would’ve seen was a man’s head shrouded in black silk, as blind and mouthless as the bundled dead.
“Now…” Tannour plucked
a thin dagger from his arsenal of blades and drew the razor point down Kifat’s chest, his air-fuelled gaze contemplative, “let’s see what you know.”
Sixty-four
“What he lacks in aptitude he makes up for in ambition.”
–The Nodefinder Devangshu Vita, on Niko van Amstel
Niko van Amstel slouched in a chair in a drawing room of his Bemothi estate with his fist shoved against his jaw and malcontent churning turbulence in his stomach. He bet Alshiba never had to deal with the issues he was facing. Likely even Björn van Gelderan hadn’t had to handle so many troubling problems as those plaguing Niko at present. He felt the weight of the entire realm resting on his shoulders.
Of course, they were broad shoulders. Strong. A fitting support for his handsome countenance. Vestals should be fine-looking specimens of the race. Only fools and Fhorgs worshiped ugly gods.
Niko hadn’t expected godhood to require so much effort, though. Dagmar had always seemed to strut around the realm—or ride, he supposed, on the famous steed Caldar, who galloped on hooves of gold—and the strand-brothers bowed to him, virgins begged to become the vessels for his seed, and queens preened beneath his cool, green-eyed gaze.
But Niko could paint his entire horse in gilt and still not gain the worshipful reverence of his strand—shade and darkness, if he believed the rumors, fully half the strand was rebelling against him!
They’re but children, your unruly flock, a soothing voice of reason reminded him. It might’ve been his mother’s, though Epiphany knew the Lady van Amstel had never conversed with reason when she was alive. They cannot know what’s best for them. You must be their shepherd and guide them to make the right choices.
Niko thought of the rebellion’s unknown leaders, whose faces were blanks in his mind. He didn’t want to guide them. He wanted to throttle them. He wanted to see their bland, featureless heads bulge and pop beneath his strangling hands. He wanted to watch their eyes bleed, their tongues blacken. He wanted to hear their wheezed choking. He wanted—
“Niko, damn it, have you heard a bloody word I’ve said?”
Niko focused back on the Nodefinder Demetrio Consuevé, who was sprawled on a couch across from him with one hose-covered leg draped over the couch’s upholstered arm and his other leg splayed wide, so as to give Niko the full-frontal view of his oversized codpiece.
Lifting his gaze from this unpleasant contemplation, he fixed it instead on Consuevé’s waxed moustache and goatee, a style far out of vogue beyond the borders of Rimaldi, where the man made his home. Niko reflected that he was going to have to find more fashionable attendants if he meant to be taken seriously in Alorin’s royal courts.
His eyes tightened on Consuevé. “Perhaps if you had something valuable to offer.” All the man had ever provided mankind was a use for moustache oil.
Consuevé gestured with his goblet. “It’s not my bloody fault that the stinking maps don’t exist. I’m not the one who sank Tiern’aval into the goddamned Bay of Jewels.”
Niko made a scoffing noise. “I find it difficult to believe that no weldmaps survive anywhere in the realm.” Never mind that Dore had been telling him this for months. Dore didn’t know everything. He eyed Consuevé up and down. “You’re saying there are none to be found for purchase anywhere? Not even on the Eltanin black market?”
“Aye, there’s some.” Consuevé’s dark eyes gleamed wickedly. “But you want the kind showing the welds linking to the other realms. One of those you couldn’t buy for all the wealth in Eltanin’s vaults—hell, if they could find one, be assured those greedy Eltanin bastards would keep it for themselves.”
This explained why Dore was pushing him so hard to acquire Dagmar’s weldmap. But Dore might as well have demanded that Niko make the sun rise in the west—Raine’s truth, it would’ve been easier to accomplish.
Raine’s truth…
Niko glowered at the vestal ring on his hand. When were people going to start swearing by his name? Currently they mostly seemed to be cursing it.
Dore had promised him a lode of luxury in Illume Belliel. All Niko had hit with his digging so far was disapproval. It was almost enough to convince him to return to his old life, where he could simply be rich and popular, a patron of artists and host of the realm’s most illustrious perpetual party—Cassius of Rogue had nothing on him.
Dore was used to people despising him, but Niko saw his hard-won popularity—hard-won might’ve been slightly self-aggrandizing; everyone just naturally loved him—slipping like sand through his fingers. The injustice of it made his eyes burn.
Verily, he was doing them all a favor, wasn’t he? Stepping up when no one else would, trying to revert Malachai’s legacy and overcome the inertia of Björn van Gelderan’s indifferent abandonment…and all he had to show for his efforts were death threats.
Niko frowned ponderously at Consuevé. “What if we offered more money?”
“I’m telling you, it won’t matter.”
“Could the Karakurt perhaps—”
“Bloody Sanctos on a stake, Niko—the maps don’t exist. Cassius of Rogue couldn’t get one of these damned maps for you, even if you paid him with a whore that squirted rubies out of her twat.”
Niko frowned at this crude visual. He was really going to have to find someone more cultured to accompany him when he started being invited to court.
He shifted agitatedly in his chair. “One map exists. Dagmar’s map. Legend says he had it with him when he vanished to T’khendar after the Citadel fell.”
Consuevé snorted. “Sure. Are you gonna risk you life traveling twisted nodes between the realms to go retrieve it?”
Apparently that’s exactly what Dore expected him to do since Franco wouldn’t.
If only he could send someone else in his stead, someone more…expendable.
Niko thumbed the stone on his ring, pondering expendable resources. The jewel really did look clouded—it had looked clouded ever since Viernan hal’Jaitar had pointed it out. He wondered if the man had cursed him.
“Franco Rohre could get Dagmar’s map for us.” Niko lifted his gaze to Consuevé. “He could, but he won’t.”
Consuevé sat forward. “Wait—isn’t bloody Rohre your deputy? Can’t you just order him to do it?”
“No.” Niko’s eyes narrowed to sullen slits. “Alshiba made sure of that.”
Consuevé sat back, eying him meaningfully. “You’ve really got to do something about her.”
Indignation darkened Niko’s gaze. “What exactly am I meant to do about her, Consuevé?” Never mind that he was already trying his damnedest. People had no idea of the grave effort he was making on the realm’s behalf. The obdurate woman really should’ve died by now. He’d put enough atrophae in her rooms to dispose of a herd of cattle.
“There’s got to be a way to get Rohre beneath your thumb.” Consuevé twirled a corner of his moustache. “He’s not that hard to figure out. Pull the right strings, and he’ll dance like a marionette. You just need to find the right strings.”
Niko brooded on this.
“And really, you can’t let the bastard get away with serving a traitor without making him pay a blood-price for it. When I had him beneath the point of my blade, Rohre all but admitted to being sworn to Björn van Gelderan.” Consuevé sucked on his tooth, thinking hard. After an annoying while of this, he asked, “Does Alshiba know?”
“Does it even matter what she knows?” Niko cast a scathing look in the general direction of the node to Illume Belliel. “Björn made her his whore for three hundred years, betrayed and abandoned her, and despite this, she’s still infatuated with him. She’s become the laughingstock of the entire Thousand Realms. To think of a woman like that holding the Seat…it’s a wonder they let Alorin maintain its thrones on the Council.”
Consuevé finally pulled his leg off the couch and propped his feet on Niko’s table instead. “If only Lord Abanachtran had given me leave to show Rohre the sharp side of my steel.”
�
�You did show him the sharp side of your steel.”
“Yeah, but only once. Traitors like Rohre…you’ve got to stab them a dozen times for every one poke that kills an honorable man.”
“We can’t kill Franco until he gets us Dagmar’s map or we’ll have to deal with Dore.” Niko made it a point to never have to deal with Dore.
“But you said Franco won’t get you the map.”
Niko glared at him. “Why else do you think you’re here? You’re the expert on ignoble methods of coercion.”
Consuevé pondered this with a slow nod. “What about getting one of your Eltanin mates to compel him? Didn’t you say you and the Eltanin Seat were in like thieves?”
“I don’t recall putting it so crudely.” He made a face as he tried to imagine possible ways of getting Franco Rohre together with Mir Arkadhi so as to give Mir a chance to put Franco under compulsion. The contemplation just made his head ache.
Niko puffed a plaintive exhale. “It’s this rebellion. I can’t think for the audacity of it.” He narrowed his gaze on Consuevé. “I ordered you to take the matter in hand!”
Consuevé twirled his moustache. “Yeah, and Dore Madden ordered you to get Dagmar’s weldmap. It’s hell, wading through the morass of other men’s shite, ain’t it?”
“What have you done about it, Consuevé? Have you the names of the leaders at least? This Admiral fellow—” Niko bit back a curse. When he got his hands around the one they called the Admiral, he was going to throttle him very, very slowly. He might drag it out for days…
“I’ve got nothing that will cheer you.” Consuevé pushed up to go refill his wine. “No one will speak this so-called Admiral’s real name, even under the knife. I wager they’ve been truthbound on it. Gannon Bair is their rumored leader, and he’s as indiscriminate with truthbindings as a whore with her tricks. Carian vran Lea’s the only vocal one of the bunch—and he’s damned vocal, let me tell you—but we can’t touch him.”
Niko’s expression had lifted. Now it fell into petulance. “Why not?”
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