by Tia Reed
“What was Levi trying to do to you?”
She took a tremulous breath and turned her white eyes right on him, like she saw him or, worse, saw into him. “He was doing nothing good. Please, help me.”
He swallowed. The man was a slave driver but his whippings had enabled Vinsant to escape more than one scrape. It was just that of late his voice was rasping with spite. It was sending shudders down Vinsant’s spine. “It’s important, huh? Okay. Come on.” He pulled her up, picking up the staff with his free hand. The mahktashaan had no authority to decide the shah’s business, after all.
“No mahktashaan.”
“Yes, I gathered.” He placed the staff in her hand. “I don’t know how I’m going to sneak you out of here. I mean the place is crawling with the guys and Levi, well, he’s. . .” There wasn’t a fit way to end that sentence. He scratched his freckled nose and poked his head into the next room. It was still clear. “This is going to get me in a lot of trouble, you know.”
“I will be grateful, Vinsant deq Wilshem. My people will be grateful.”
He dropped her wrist. “How do you know my name? Who are you?”
“I am a soothsayer of the Akerin. I bring warning of descending chaos.” Her voice was strumming with power. It was scary stuff, the kind a smart apprentice avoided. Levi might have stashed her here for good reason.
“Do you mean Terlaan harm?” Forget authoritative. That question sounded plain stupid.
She turned her disconcerting blind eyes right on him again. “We are not the ones who have slaughtered innocent travellers to our realm. I come to beg aid.”
“Yes,” he said, fidgeting. He was so hot he was sure his face was turning red. He bet she knew he had watched the mahktashaan cut down an intoxicated hill tribe man that long ago day at the wharves. But if Indie wanted her discredited, there was every chance she was friend rather than a threat. He summoned a mahktashaan robe. “Here put this on.” He had to help her into it. “Don’t let anyone see you don’t have a crystal.” Not that the oversized garment was going to fool anyone, but they might think it was Naikil playing a prank.
She dropped to the floor and began fumbling.
“Are you looking for this?” Vinsant asked, taking a wooden box inlaid with derral from the table. She seemed more confident with it in her hand. She didn’t stumble once but he winced with every tap of her staff on the hexagonal flagstones.
They hid behind the crystal statue of Mahktos. He dispelled his light, and left her so he could check the altar room. The Inner Circle, robed, cloaked and hooded, were still arguing under a shield. He stole back.
“Get ready,” he said. “We’ll need to move fast. You can’t use your staff.” They couldn’t risk its clack alerting anyone.
The smoke trick was all he could come up with. The mahktashaan didn’t even pause in their bickering. He edged out from behind the statue and moulded it into a decent image of a genie, if he did say so himself. The mahktashaan must have thought so too because they dismantled the shield so Apprentice-master Branak could go into the temple room and set it ablaze with light. Vinsant ducked behind a squat, crystal leg. What worried him was that Branak seemed to pause with the intense stillness of thoughtspeak.
“We can do it with a majority vote from the Circle,” Garzene was saying, his voice clear now the shield was down.
“You cannot establish a breach of conduct.” Levi snarled.
“Torturing a girl. I’d say that was in violation of your oath,” Strauss said.
“She is not Terlaani and we are at war! The shah will ratify my actions! Mahktos already has.”
Branak waved a hand. The smoke disappeared. “Come here, apprentice.”
“Uh oh,” Vinsant whispered. He eased a little further behind Mahktos, just in case Branak was fishing.
“Mahktos has reserved judgement. It is not the same, Levi. You must stand down until this is resolved,” Garzene said.
“Now!” Branak ordered. Loud enough to quieten every bickering mahktashaan.
“Here goes nothing,” Vinsant said, taking Sian’s hand. “If this doesn’t work, I’m sorry.” He imagined the kitchen fires and harnessed their smoke, pushing it out through the temple and into the altar room. The mahktashaan began to cough. From deeper in the lair, footsteps marched their way.
“Come on.” He pulled Sian past Branak. The smoke was thicker in the altar room. He spluttered as his eyes began to sting but kept trudging towards the stairs.
A single, sharp clap was accompanied a flash of black. The smoke vanished. Vinsant froze mid step. He had not even turned to face the mahktashaan when magic seized him, forcing him to his knees, pulling his hand off Sian’s, twisting him around.
“You dare, apprentice.”
Levi was squeezing his chest was so tight he had to grunt out words. “She. . . is. . . an envoy. She. . . has. . . a right. . . to see. . .the shah.”
The pressure tightened. If it got any worse it would pop his teeth out.
“Release him.” Strauss said. “He speaks truth.”
His good hand bent before him, Levi curled his fingers. Vinsant cried out as he collapsed in a huddle. Pain was coursing through every muscle in his body.
“She is a soothsayer. That makes her our domain,” Levi said.
“If so, the Inner Circle will decide what to do with her,” Garzene said, nice and firm.
Tangerine Crystal stomped his foot. “Release the apprentice, Majoria.”
“Release him,” Strauss said with a stomp.
“Let us turn to Mahktos right now.”
“Let us. But you will first release the boy,” Garzene said, and stomped.
Levi was almost spitting in his fury. “You will pay for this. My actions are sourced in our god. In questioning me, you betray Him.”
“If that is so, we will accept our punishment,” Garzene said, more meek than he should have been if he hoped Levi would comply.
The majoria stabbed his burned hand towards each of the five Inner Circle members in turn. “This apprentice presumes too far. His lesson is far from over.”
It was an impossible lesson to learn. Vinsant couldn’t do anything except roll on the ground. “Please,” he managed to grunt. Between grimaces, he wished he could disappear, just like the djinn. What a time to realise mahktashaan powers were limited. He titled his head and saw the girl standing near him, rigid as she stared straight ahead, the staff in her hand.
A gentle breeze swept through the chamber and with it a pungent stink of rotten eggs. Your power is sourced in Mahktos, a voice echoed in his head. Sian’s voice. Was she telling him he could disappear?
The magical vice loosened.
“Stand up, apprentice,” Levi demanded.
At this point, he had nothing to lose. He wouldn’t be reneging on his duty if the majoria had to stand down. He reached out and grabbed Sian’s ankle, concentrated on Father’s bedchamber, the canopied bed, the elegant rosewood chest of drawers. The bureau appeared next to the altar. The stunned mahktashaan fell into silence. It wasn’t quite what he had in mind. He should picture himself in that chamber, perhaps on the bed as he had been a million times when Father was inclined to indulge him. His quartz heated. A flash of crimson cocooned him before the world turned mind-numbing, bone-brittle cold. Blizzard white, nothing and nowhere around him. Focus, an echo of Levi roared, all praise to him a thousand times over, although he had to be hissing a scathing scold right now. Vinsant focused on the hint of a dark shape, on Father’s plush mattress.
He blinked. Wouldn’t you know it, he was lying across a bed. Across a body under sumptuous, purple covers. Father’s body. In Father’s canopied bed. In Father’s chamber. Out of the lair.
“Um,” he said, letting go of Sian’s ankle. She was standing on the bed, looking pale.
“What is the meaning of this?” Father said, scrambling out from beneath him, not at all careful about what his knees and elbows poked.
“Ow. Um.” Vinsant crawled to the other s
ide and helped Sian onto the floor. Father was shaking with rage. Now was probably not a good time to gloat over his astonishing success. “Hello Father. Um, I mean, Your Majesty. You have an envoy.” He winced. These were unfortunate circumstances for a reunion. “Soothsayer Sian of the Akerin.” He bowed. “I’ll be right outside,” he told Sian, and fled through the reception room as Father put on a robe and yelled for a mahktashaan guard to summon Levi.
The door to the hall burst open as Vinsant reached it. Two mahktashaan grabbed his arms and dragged him into the bedchamber, a major presumption if you asked him, although he didn’t think anyone would. One tossed him next to Sian, as though he were a petty thief, while the other stomped off to fetch his persecutor. Using her staff to feel the way, Sian took three steps along the length of the bed. Father paced around the end posts and regarded her as he might a cockroach. At this point, it was better her than him.
“I will not have my bedchamber invaded by a hill rat,” he said, ignoring Vinsant, which was, in Vinsant’s estimation, a very good thing. “Your time on this earth is limited.”
Vinsant felt the bottom of his stomach drop. “She’s come to warn you.”
“You, close your disrespectful mouth,” Father snapped without taking his eyes from Sian. Vinsant took the opportunity to pull his blue hood up.
“I bear the hope of my people in a warning and a request.” Her voice sounded steady, but her hand was closed tight over that staff of hers. He supposed it was her equivalent of a crystal.
“Remove that robe. You defile the office of mahktashaan,” Father said.
“It is not a garment I would have chosen.” She laid the staff against the bed, drew her arms up inside the sleeves and let the robe fall around her feet. It was clever that. She lost no dignity in the disrobing, and her embroidered Hill Tribe skirt and shirt set her apart.
“Kneel. You will do penance before me.”
She was quivering but she had the courage to reclaim her staff and turn her spooky white eyes on Father. “Hear well, Shah,” she said. Whatever power she drew on was infusing her voice. Not even Father could mistake it. He stood transfixed as she spoke. “Unless the peoples of this land unite, we are doomed to fall to an ancient power.”
The silence stretched. Sian diminished into a blind girl.
“Your people seek to win the assistance of Terlaan by sending a mere slip of a girl to parley. This threat you hint at pales in comparison to the least of our affairs.” Father pointed at the floor. “Kneel, I say.” Too bad his voice was every bit as powerful as hers had been. She wouldn’t have the benefit of seeing his rumpled hair and crooked robe.
The outer door opened. Levi glided in, flanked by the Inner Circle, all hooded, robed and gloved. As one, they stamped their right foot to attention.
“The girl is a soothsayer, Your Majesty, equal in rank among her people to a mahktashaan,” Garzene said, which was bordering on impertinent when a superior was in the room. But maybe Mahktos had said Levi needed to stand down.
“This blind child?”
“Her eyes are blind to the mortal world so that she might glimpse the spirit realm.”
“Your Majesty, you will forgive the intrusion. Let me deal with this rat and the apprentice,” Levi said, looming over Sian. She shifted with uncertainty.
“She’s an envoy! She has a right to be heard,” Vinsant protested.
“You will remember your place, apprentice.” Levi gripped Sian above the elbow. Her box rattled as she tripped over the crumpled robe.
“When,” said Father, forestalling Levi, “did this sorry excuse for an envoy arrive?”
“This morning, Your Majesty,” Garzene answered.
Father turned his shrewd appraisal upon Garzene. “Were you not detailed to one of the strike forces on the Myklaani fort?”
“I was, until Majoria Levi ordered me to accompany this girl here.”
Father snapped round to the Terlaani girl. Her unblinking, white eyes were unfocused and her cheeks looked pale. “Why was I not told of her presence in my court?”
Vinsant let out the breath he didn’t know he had been holding.
“Affairs of a mystic nature fall under the jurisdiction of the mahktashaan,” Levi said.
Through clamped teeth, father said, “Why is she HERE?”
Silence pounded around the room. Father snapped his head from one to the other of the mahktashaan. Levi pushed the girl forward. The shah levelled a hard look on Sian before his principle advisor could open his mouth. “You mentioned a request.”
Sian took another step forward. Levi let her go. He was none too pleased about it from the way he strained.
“The Olono Range is infested with armies of ogres. My people are run from their homes. We seek shelter in exchange for the protection of the spirits. I beg sanctuary within your realm.”
Vinsant winced. She sounded like a girl repeating a lesson.
“Impossible.”
“Father, they –”
Father turned on him. “Need I remind you we are at war? That our resources are already drained beyond the sustainable.”
“Er, no.” He was hot with shame, and Sian knew it. He saw that in the way her head moved. She might have been attuned to every slight nuance of sound now her sight was gone. He sidled over to Strauss. Father tucked his hands behind him and made a crooked line with his brows in the way he had when considering what to do next.
“Vinsant, how did you evade us? What magic did you use?” Strauss asked, nice and calm, which was reassuring.
“Um, I’m not sure. I think –” He bit his lip. He didn’t have a clue.
Father paced. He seemed to favour the opportunity it gave for thought more often of late.
“What happened in the temple?” Vinsant asked under his breath.
The plump mahktashaan acknowledged him with a downward flick of his eyes. “Mahktos forbore to pronounce judgement on the majoria.”
Vinsant’s heart galloped. “Does that mean. . ?” There was a lump in his throat. He couldn’t say it.
“It means Mahktos has found neither him nor us at fault.”
“You decided that in a couple of minutes?”
Strauss started. “Vinsant you have been gone half an hour.”
Half an hour?
“Later,” Strauss cautioned.
“So we continue to follow Levi as majoria?”
His glance askance caught a tightening of Strauss’s lips. “We do.”
“And-the-Inner-Circle, I-mean-are-you-safe?” he said, running the words together.
“Levi cannot condemn that which Mahktos sanctions.”
Vinsant let out a sigh of relief as Father turned a keen eye on the majoria. “What trouble could ogres cause our forces?”
“That they collude is disturbing. There have been reports of sporadic attacks, some losses, but the brutes are no match for our magic. They are a problem for the hill rats, not our mahktashaan.”
“Could they come down to the plains?”
“Daylight is poison to them. The expanse of our land is our protection.”
“This dark power she alludes to, I presume it is same one you are taking precautions against?”
“So I presume. But we are strong in Mahktos. We are favoured in the sight our god. We would not have taken the forts with such ease if this were not true.”
Father ran a critical eye up and down the girl. “Would it benefit us to form an alliance?”
“With primitives who cannot defend themselves against a sword? The benefit would be all theirs.”
“As guides, with limited benefits?”
“We can compel them.”
“We have the blessing of the Forest.” Sian said. Her small words fizzled in the large room.
“And what would you do with this hill tribe girl?”
“She has power I can harness.”
“For your own selfish ends,” Vinsant muttered under his breath. Strauss shot him a warning look.
“Did you n
ot say her people are valueless?” Father demanded.
“The girl is blessed with the touch of her spirits. The majoria wishes to harness this power to regenerate his arm. He cannot claim it without some cost to the girl,” Garzene said with a frown.
“This is not a sacrifice to benefit our Realm from harm. The Inner Circle advises you deny this personal request,” Strauss said.
“I can cast the bones for you,” Sian pleaded.
Father’s eyes became slits. “What advantage would your bones bring my realm?”
“The spirits bring foresight, that we may better choose our path.”
“We do not acknowledge your spirits, whose whispers you will twist to your people’s benefit.” The shah pursed his lips and glared at each mahktashaan in turn. “Do you not follow the majoria as your leader?”
“All praise to Mahktos, all honour to Majoria Levi,” came several voices in unison. Vinsant suppressed a groan.
The shah placed a fist over mouth and beard. He dropped his hand. “We are at war. My men deserve every advantage they can find. If the hill tribes must be casualties, that is the price. I turn her over to you, Majoria. You may use her as you see fit.”
“Father –”
Father pointed at him with a force that made him flinch. “Get out of my sight. Majoria, I trust you will discipline your apprentice.”
“With pleasure, Majesty.” Levi settled a dark look on him. As he dragged Sian out of the door. She twisted her head, this way and that as though seeking him. Vinsant shuffled into the anonymous middle of the Inner Circle.
“I’ll get you out,” he muttered. He hoped both she and Father had heard.
✽ ✽ ✽
The candle was burning low. Still, it was early enough her husband might yet come. Kordahla continued to stare through the dark window at the starless sky.
The door to her room opened. Not a single member of her new family accorded her the courtesy of knocking. As a young woman, her station was beneath them all. And so, she braced herself for what the swine would demand and scanned the heavens for a glimpse of Daesoa. Let him move to appease her before she graced him with her attention.
“Remove your veil.”