A Dagger of the Mind (The Imperial Metals)

by Daniel Antoniazzi

  They returned once more to Corthos’ island, where they made final arrangements. Corthos left the fleet in the charge of one of his underlings, and the two of them returned to Rone in the Baron’s ship.

  Jareld presented himself as the recently returned Baron Dubon von Wrims. Corthos, without the eyepatch and having shaved his head, was unrecognizable to anyone who knew him as Corthos the Pirate. So Jareld introduced him as Dubon’s body man, Krugg. Corthos wasn’t sure he could mask his accent, so they added the detail that Krugg was mute.

  Jareld attended a formal event at Anuen, and finally “introduced” himself to Landos. He was nervous as all hell. But he managed it. He managed to get through the first conversation, and then the second was easier. He convinced Landos to let him commission the artwork in the Hall of Saint Michael. He convinced Landos to allow him to make the statue and the oil painting.

  And since then, he had slowly been gaining the Magistrate’s trust. He “confessed” to Landos about killing someone. And though he made up the details, he was thinking of his encounter with in the Caves of Drentar. Of the one man he had actually killed.

  He convinced Landos to write out his confession. And of course, when Krugg skewered it onto the fire poker, he had swapped out the parchment. He found the Fenrow when he visited Deliem. It felt strange, lying to Countess Vye as he asked to loan it out for the Hall of Saint Michael. It felt weird sitting across from her as a Baron, when really he counted her as a friend.

  But the final weapon in his arsenal was the Saintskeep. The Sword of Kings held power over anyone who stood before it. It commanded you. So Jareld had the marble statue of Michael carved. And he placed the Saintskeep in its hand. Hidden in plain sight. Jareld knew that if Landos kept standing in front of the Statue, it was only a matter of time before the Sword bent his will to confess.

  When all the pieces were in place, he wrote letters to Landos and the Council, forging the handwriting of King Michael. The Council was summoned to hide Within the Hollow Wall, while Landos naturally found his way to the Statue. Jareld knew he would be drawn to the Sword. That his will would be weak.

  And he knew if Landos escaped the Council, he would flee to the Baron. How could he have predicted such a thing? Couldn’t the Magistrate flee the city? Wouldn’t he run for the stables and escape?

  Jareld was certain he wouldn’t. He had seen into the mind of Landos. Landos didn’t want to be free. He wanted to be right. He wouldn’t accept defeat. And he wanted to be loved. To be a friend. No, Landos wouldn’t run right out of the Castle. He would try to fix it, and the first person he would ask for help would be his new confidante, the Baron.

  ---

  And now Landos was undone. He sat against the door, his back pressed into the wall as though his spine could tunnel a way out. Jareld leaned over the shocked Magistrate...

  “It can’t be you. It can’t be you,” Landos repeated, mumbling.

  “It is me,” Jareld said. “The sooner you come to accept that, the sooner we can get this over with. Now, I want you to drink this.”

  There was a pounding at the door. Landos, already jumpy, leapt to his feet, backing away from the knocking.

  “Landos!” Emily Brimford shouted, “Open the door!”

  “Don’t listen to them,” Jareld said. “Just drink this.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s not lethal,” Jareld said.

  “How can I trust you?” Landos sniveled.

  “Landos!” came the door again, this time a man’s voice. “Open up in the name of the Royal Council!” It was James Avonshire. The whole Council was probably there, likely backed up with some guards.

  “Landos,” Jareld said, resting his hand on the Magistrate’s shoulder, like he was comforting a small child, “How many times have you trusted the Baron in the last year? How many times did you turn your back to him? How many times did you accept his wine or his tea? Do you imagine, for even a moment, that if I wanted you dead, you would still be breathing?”

  “No...” Landos stuttered. The knocking on the door had turned to a rhythmic pounding. They were using something as a battering ram. The wood began to crack and splinter.

  “Landos, it won’t kill you, I promise,” Jareld said. “Drink now.”

  “Why should I?”

  A head of marble burst through the door. The statue that they were using as a battering ram would destroy the barricade in seconds.

  “Because I won,” Jareld said. “You lied. You locked me away and you tried to have me killed. You carried on an affair with the Queen and tried to elevate your bastard son to the throne. And I...Still...Won.”

  Landos looked at Jareld contemptuously, then drained the vial. Jareld casually walked back to the desk and stood behind the chair. He picked up the sword that Landos had been carrying.

  The door burst open. Emily, James, and the entire Council burst in. Jareld held the sword out to James.

  “Sir Avonshire,” Jareld said, “Please take care of this. It isn’t just a model, it’s the actual Saintskeep.”

  “Jareld?” Emily said. She ran over and hugged him. “You’re alive!” Her heart sang a thousand choruses of joy.

  “Yes,” Jareld said. But then Emily saw the wig and fake beard on the ground.

  “You were the Baron?” Emily asked, backing away from Jareld.

  “Yes,” he answered. And Emily’s heart broke all over again. And the look on her face, the sadness, the betrayal, broke Jareld’s heart in turn.

  “What happened?” James asked.

  “He drank that poison,” Jareld said. “I tried to stop him, but he was determined. He must have been carrying it with him, in case he ever got caught. He’s dead.”

  “It’s so hard to believe any of this,” Emily said. Jareld couldn’t tell if she meant Landos’ confession, Landos’ death, or the fact that Jareld was alive but had never contacted her.

  “I know,” Jareld said.

  “What about the throne?” James asked.

  “What do you mean?” the Trentford representative, Gaelin, asked.

  “Landos’ confession means Prince William isn’t the Prince. And what of the Queen?”

  “We will have to try her for treason,” Emily said.

  “Perhaps,” James agreed, “But we can’t do anything until after the Peace Festival is over.”

  “Agreed,” Emily nodded. “Guards, find the Queen and the Prince. Bring them both to her quarters. See that they have whatever they need, but they are not to leave that room until today’s brunch. I will be up shortly to explain.”

  The Guards froze, staring at one another.

  “Do we even have the authority to do that?” James Avonshire wondered aloud.

  “Yes,” Jareld said. “Or, at least, you will shortly. Guards, follow Lady Brimford’s orders. I think I have a way to solve our problems.”

  Chapter 40: The Bliss of the Dead

  Vye was dreaming again. She had stopped dreaming for a while, as her mind rested, but now she was back. There was no beginning of the dream. She just found herself, once again, in the room with the fireplace. She was comfortable with the fact that this room didn’t exist. That her entire experience since meeting Frost had been a sort of visual and auditory metaphor.

  Frost was pacing the room, as though waiting for something. Vye realized she was sipping tea, though she couldn’t remember picking up a mug.

  “Have you decided?” Frost asked.

  “Decided what?”

  “I must train you to speak to the dead,” Frost said. “Not to just exchange words with them, but to learn from them. You must choose someone else. Someone who has something to teach you.”

  “Teach me...” Vye repeated, more for herself than anyone. “Alright, I know who to choose.”

  “And you know what you want to ask?”

  “Yes.”

  And then they were somewhere else again. A place so familiar that Vye gasped. The smell of iron and sawdust. The roar of the furnace. It was Gab
riel’s room in the basement of the Castle Hartstone. The old one, from before the War. Vye insisted on building a similar room in the new Hartstone, but the architect had trumped her nostalgia with pragmatism.

  And there was Gabriel, as Vye so often found him, working on some piece of armor or another. Rivets, rings, knots... Something was always torn, bent, or broken, and Gabriel’s tireless fingers were always mending.

  Once again, Frost faded from the room. He didn’t disappear, he just wasn’t as there as he had been moments ago. Vye stepped up to Gabriel.

  “What do you want?” Gabriel growled. Even though he greeted her with the same words now as he had when he was alive, there was no warmth in them. He seemed bitter, angry, incensed at the world.

  “Hello, Master,” Vye attempted to appease the curmudgeonly spirit.

  “I’m busy. Go away.”

  “Master, I--”

  “You don’t have to call me Master anymore!” he snapped at her.

  “Gabriel...” she murmured, her voice softer now. “Please, won’t you speak to me?”

  “Why should I? What do you want?”

  “You told me, once, that you had been in love. When you were younger.”

  “I don’t remember telling you that.”

  “You did.”

  Gabriel redoubled his efforts on the broken chain link he was fixing. It hadn’t been a chain link moments ago, but that didn’t matter.

  “So what if I did? What about it?”

  “Can you tell me her name?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Please.”

  “Vye, it was a long time ago. Why bring it up now?”

  “I want to know her name.”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I never lied to you.”

  “Then why start now?”

  “Of course I remember her name.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “What difference could it possibly make?”

  “Gabriel, you were...so important to me. You never would have let me say so when you were alive. But you meant the world to me. Yet I know nothing about you. I know who you are. I trust you and I love you. But I don’t know how you became the man you were. I don’t know your story.”

  “And you think there was a girl? You think of all the things that happened in the fifty years of my life before you met me, there was just one girl, one time, who changed everything? Who lifted me higher than I had ever been and broke my heart so fiercely that it would never again be mended? Is that what you think?”

  “Pretty much, yes.”

  And then they were in a theatre. Rows of seats faced a raked stage. Balconies lurked above them on all sides. Gabriel and Vye sat in the middle of the house, though there were no other patrons.

  “There was someone,” Gabriel admitted. “It’s a long story. And I won’t tell it to you.”

  “Why not?” Vye asked.

  “Because it is sad, even for the dead.”

  And then a dancer breezed onto the stage. She was foreign, though Vye could only guess where from. Her eyes were dark, her skin gently tanned. Her auburn hair flowed behind her as she spun, leapt, and pirouetted across the floor. She was beautiful. Exotic.

  But it was the way she moved that made her mesmerizing. Vye had never been able to sit through a dance. She would always grow restless. Bored. But now she was enthralled. The dancer had turned grace into a moving, breathing thing. Vye spotted a tear rolling down Gabriel’s cheek.

  “She’s amazing.”

  “She was.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I want to know this side of you. I want to carry it with me.”

  “Her name was Valentina,” Gabriel said, his voice faltering at the end of her name. He was becoming quite emotional for someone so dead.

  “Valentina...” Vye whispered, and then she was back in the room with the fireplace. Frost was reclined on the couch, staring back at her.

  “Well done,” he said.

  “Will he ever meet her again?” Vye asked. “Can he be with her in that world?”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible.”

  Vye suddenly noticed that her face was wet. She felt the water dripping down her cheeks. She tried to wipe it away, but it just stayed wet.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, alarmed.

  “It seems the waking world is intruding on us here,” Frost said, though he sounded kind of distant.

  “What?” Vye said, and suddenly found herself lying on the couch. Frost was still speaking, though he must have been behind her, because she couldn’t see him.

  “The real world,” Frost was saying, “You’re starting to wake up, and elements of it are leaking through.”

  “I’m waking up?” Vye said from the couch. Except it wasn’t a couch anymore. It was a bed. And the walls were changing color, and the room was changing shape, and Vye was getting dizzy.

  “Will I be able to contact you?” Vye asked.

  “In certain ways, at certain times.”

  “You never get tired of that cryptic shit, do you?”

  “Comes with the territory.”

  Vye felt a splash of water on her face--

  ----

  --Vye startled awake. She was in Duncan’s quarters in the Castle Hartstone. The new one, from after the War. A nurse was washing her face, gently running a damp cloth over her brow.

  “Hello?” Vye tried to say out loud, but really she said, “Herrfghr.”

  The nurse had grown so accustomed to Vye being in a coma, she jumped at the sound of Vye’s voice.

  “Hefellah,” Vye managed, but she started to drool a little.

  “I’ll get your brother,” the nurse said. “I’ll be back in a second.”

  Vye’s nose itched. She tried to scratch it. Her arm flopped onto her belly, but she couldn’t coordinate it enough to scratch. The nurse returned, as promised, with Luke. He stood at the bedside.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “I had… a very… bad… dream,” Vye managed to say.

  “Well, it’s been no picnic for us around here either,” the nurse said, wiping Vye’s hair away from her face.

  “Scratch…my nose,” Vye also managed before she swooned into a light slumber.

  Chapter 41: Jareld and Emily

  Everybody had questions.

  Each member of the Council asked Jareld something about his escape and subsequent adventures. How had he gotten out of Goldmere? How had he met the Baron? Who else knew? They all kept asking and asking...

  Except Emily.

  None of the Council Members even noticed when Corthos (still looking like “Krugg”) took Landos’ body away. As Jareld had promised, the poison was not lethal. But it put Landos into such a deep sleep that he seemed dead. Jareld had plans for the Magistrate, and they didn’t involve the legal system. And it was the perfect time to move the body, since everyone was talking to Jareld.

  Everyone except Emily.

  Emily, after embracing Jareld and exchanging those first few words, had backed away and just stood and stared. The rest of the Council was eating up his story, devouring every word. But she didn’t speak. Or move. She barely blinked.

  Finally, Jareld put an end to the questions, “I’m sorry to have deceived so many of you. And I’m glad my tale is entertaining, but we have work to do.”

  “Are you in charge?” James challenged him.

  “It seems like it, doesn’t it?” Jareld said. “Lucky for all of you, in charge is the last thing I want to be. The Council will meet in one hour. I will draw up a document that will allow them to appoint a temporary leader.”

  “You’ll be able to write that in an hour?” one of the Council Members asked.

  “It’s already written in my head,” Jareld said, “I just need to get it down on paper. Now, if you’ll all excuse me...”

  The Council shuffled out
as Jareld sat at his desk. But when he looked up, there was still one person in the room.

  “You’ve been thinking about all this for a while, haven’t you?” Emily asked, once they were alone.

  “Years, in fact,” Jareld said. “I knew that when I made the truth known, we would need new leadership. And I’ve had six years to think about it.”

  “And you’re sure you don’t want to be the leader?”

  “Great Halinor, no,” Jareld laughed. “I’m here to fix the problem. Then, I want to disappear again, but on my terms. Open a library. Teach five students at a time. Drink tea on a second story balcony that overlooks a bay. Or perhaps fields of grass. I haven’t decided which.”

  “Even with six years to think about it?”

  “Can’t rush these things.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “I’m sorry about the Baron,” Jareld said, but his tone made it sound like he was apologizing for spilling a cup of milk.

  “I’m so fucking confused right now, I don’t know if I accept.”

  “That’s fine. I didn’t expect you to.”

  “Do you even want me to? I mean, do you care about anything any more?”

  “Alright, enough of that. I spent four years in a—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. We’re all terribly sorry for you and impressed with you and everything. But you got out and you decided to put on this elaborate charade and lie to us and manipulate us and… ugh. What do you want?”

  “I told you. I had to fix the situation here. I had to come back. I’m not sure if it was all noble. I was pissed at Landos. I mean really, really pissed at him. And I wanted to stop him. To defeat him. There was nothing noble about that. But once it was done, I really have this image of a small hut with a library in a faraway place.”

  “And where am I in this image?”

  “Where do you think? If I had my way? If all my dreams were to really come true? You would be right there with me. I know you’re tired of hearing it, but four years is a long fucking time. I know you think you know how long four years is, but when you’re locked up and you don’t speak to anyone, and you don’t know if you’ll ever be free again, it’s all the longer. There was only one thing that kept me sane, and it was you. I wouldn’t have lived this long if not for you.”