The Fair Elaine: A Kethem Novel

by Dave Dickie

  I have a lot of experience with fighting.

  When I was in arm's reach, he held out his hand to put his palm on my chest. I grabbed the top of his fingers and bent them backwards. He yelled and fell to his knees, which was a good idea as it was the only way he was going to keep his wrist from breaking. I leaned forward and said quietly in his ear “I am going to the desk. If they turn me away, I’ll go quietly. But I am going to the desk. If you try to stop me, I will break your arm. If you create a ruckus, I will break both of them. Am I clear?”

  His face was screwed up in pain but he nodded quickly. I let go of his hand and he rubbed his wrist but didn’t make any other move. I walked around him and approached the desk. He stood, still holding his wrist, and followed me, but he didn’t try to stop me.

  Taite and another woman I didn’t know were manning the desk, the new girl a redhead. She was the first Sambhal priestess I’d met that didn’t have large breasts, but she didn’t need them. She was thin and tall and ephemerally beautiful, with wide eyes and a pale complexion that offset her vivid hair perfectly. Another ten. That had to be part of the Sambhal package. Taite was watching me carefully, not nervous, not happy, just watching. I had on my formal cloak. Out of an inside pocket I pulled out Sariel’s belt and laid it on the desk. After it had been removed from her body, the color had faded until it was back to simple brown leather like the one Taite was wearing, and then all color had leeched out and it had turned white. Taite looked down at it for a moment, and then looked back up, expression studiously neutral. “I want to see the Chikal.” I said.

  She looked past my shoulder and said, “Granon, would you be so kind as to fetch Chikal Ouscyra?” to the man still standing behind me. I hadn’t seen any gold thread on the man’s vest, and I guessed Taite outranked him.

  “Certainly, mistress,” he replied, sounding subservient and verifying my assumption. “I will return in a moment.” He moved off at a clip just a hair’s breadth short of a run.

  Taite smiled at me, which made her look impossibly beautiful, and my heart started thumping painfully. I was getting use to the glamours and I was still angry, so it didn’t have that much of an impact. She said, “Master Driktend, you do continue to surprise and delight. I’m afraid I cannot offer you the hospitality of the temple without an invitation, but I sincerely hope we can rectify that, and that you would honor me by letting me be your guide to the many things Sambhal can offer.”

  There was no point being rude to her, so I said, “I couldn’t ask for more,” and we spent the next ten minutes talking about how much each other’s company would brighten our respective days. Then Tessa swept down the staircase with Granon in tow, and even knowing she was using a glamour didn’t stop me, or any of the others, from falling silent and watching her walk down the stairs.

  “Gur, I’m delighted to see you again,” she said, and sounded like she meant it, but I noticed her eyes glanced over to Sariel’s belt, still sitting on the desk.

  “Tessa, I think we need to have a little heart to heart,” I said.

  She nodded. “Taite, a temporary invitation for Master Driktend, please,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “No invitation. I’ll leave my weapons here, but that’s it.” I didn’t want the magicked up Sambhal invitation to give Tessa an inventory of everything I was carrying, given that she might be trying to kill me when we finished chatting.

  I could see her weighing options, but there was that belt on the desk, and she finally nodded and said, “As you wish.” I pulled out the same set of weapons as before, including the lightning stone, now empty of mana and therefore worthless, and handed them over to Taite. “This way, Gur,” Tessa said, and I followed her up the stairs. She opened a different one of those well-disguised doors in the main corridor. This one lead down a passageway that was longer, with fewer doors, but it was lined with paintings and had ornate molding that gave it an antique look. At the end were two more muscular gentlemen that reminded me of Granon standing outside a door. Tessa lead me past them and through it.

  Inside, the room was huge and appeared to be a bedroom. There was a writing desk, small tables with chairs and love seats, but at the far end was a gigantic circular bed, with deep royal blue drapes hanging from a canopy, large pillows and what looked like satin sheets peeking out from under a soft comforter. There was an open archway that lead into a room done in tile, and through it I could see the edge of a raised tub that had to be large enough for four people. Tessa waved me to a chair, which I took, and sat in one facing it. “And what can I do for you, Gur?” she asked, still burning brightly in the light of the glamour.

  “Glamour off, Tessa,” I said. “We need to have a serious talk, and that’s just a distraction.”

  She gave me a thin smile but suddenly she was just beautiful, not a goddess descended from the heavens. “Better?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Sariel is dead,” I said.

  Tessa didn’t look particularly upset at that. She said, “Yes, I know. The belt turns white when the acolyte that wears it dies. They open side doors into the temple and are the only other way in without a pass, so they deactivate when their owner dies.”

  She was calm enough about it that I started to get angry all over again. “So, I know the deal, you can’t talk about the temple and what happens inside the walls and all that sort of thing. So I will tell you a little story. You don’t have to confirm or deny it, but we can figure out how to move forward when I’m done. Ok?”

  She nodded cautiously.

  “So this story is about a Silver Ring Holder, one Ralin Ellison, from Telburn Hold. He’s from a regular house, not all that well to do, and he’s got the love bug, flipped head over heels by a priestess from Sambhal named Sariel. But he can barely afford to see her every couple of weeks, and even that is draining gold from the hourglass. Then the gods of dice smile on him, and he gets involved in a mutli-Hold project to bring back raw, primordial chaos. Enough for a temple to instantiate their god. So he suggests to the woman he loves that he could steal it for the temple, as long as the temple, with a real god sitting in place, will protect him afterwards. That, and he gets the girl.” Tessa was impassive, just watching me attentively. I reminded myself never to play poker with her. “I’m pretty sure Sariel is not that interested in becoming Ralin’s companion, but she’s an up and comer and willing to take one for the team.”

  Tessa finally nodded. “We do have some discretion with the geas. Given you have found all this out without help from me, I am allowed to discuss it with you, even fill in some of the gaps if they don’t add much to what you know.”

  “So why did you send Sariel to me?” I asked.

  She smiled, but it was a grim smile. “That I can tell you regardless, since it doesn’t involve a client. I didn’t. Sariel was, as you said, an up and comer. Frankly, I’m fairly sure she didn’t think Sambhal would force her to stay with Ralin, or even protect him from Kethem or Pranan, but we aren’t required to blurt out the truth. We just can’t coerce with sorcery or lie to get our way. So she let Ralin believe what he wanted to believe. But Ralin didn’t make it back. There was another, better player. Sariel was young and impetuous and angry that the plan fell apart. She didn’t understand the risks of going directly after the chaos vial were too high.”

  “And she thought she could pull it off by herself?” I asked.

  Tessa said, “I am sure that she thought if she did it on her own, she would end up the high priestess, take my job. And for her, maybe that was enough to justify a fool’s roll at success.” I thought about Sariel in my apartment and suspected it wasn’t the high priestess job that made any cost, any risk worth it. It was the chance to be able to rain pain and destruction down on Holders. It was a moot point. Tessa was close enough. “But that’s not how we work,” continued Tessa. “We move quietly, subtly, without making a splash. Our entire reputation is based on being servants, pleasure givers, very, very discrete and not at all invested in the world outside. If Holder
s ever thought the temple of Sambhal was involved in some kind of power grab, it would be disastrous. Sariel wasn’t thinking of our god, our order, or our temple. She was looking for revenge for something that happened a long time ago, before she joined the order. I kept her from doing anything foolish for a couple of days, but she was too impatient. Honestly, if I’d known what she was doing, I would have stopped her.”

  Something in what she said bothered me. It took a second for me to play it back, then it clicked. “Wait. You said Ralin was looking for protection from Kethem and Pranan? Why was he worried about Pranan?” I asked. From what I had gathered from Maizon’s wife, the deal with the Ohulhug had been completely independent from the Rotkruz City-State negotiations.

  Tessa shrugged. “I don’t know. He did most of his talking to Sariel. But she was clear about his demands, and he was more worried about retribution from Pranan than from his own Hold.”

  And suddenly the last piece of the puzzle dropped in place, those hazy disconnected dots lining up in a neat row. Leppol was the one trying to kill me. I’d been looking at it the wrong way. It wasn’t the primordial chaos that made the mission so secret. As soon as they used it, one way or the other, word would get out. It wasn’t that important to keep it under wraps.

  It was what they had traded away for it.

  If there was any justice in the world, that would include their souls. But I’m not that metaphysical. If the Holders had done what I thought they had done, their souls were too low a price to pay.

  Tessa was watching me as the cogs turned. There was nothing there she needed to know about, so I returned to the topic at hand. "So Sariel let Ralin believe he’d get her and his protection if he stole the primordial chaos for the temple. And you went along with it. To summon an arch demon. That doesn’t seem like a bad idea to you?”

  Tessa snorted and said, “He is my God, Gur. I would sit at his right hand. He would rule this city, maybe the province. Aren’t you tired of bowing to Holders? Wouldn’t you like to see something that shook up the status quo? Do you really think that people in the Holds are so much better than you? Than me?”

  I replied angrily “A demon, Tessa. Would I like to see Holders put in their place? What commoner wouldn’t. But by a human. This is… it’s insane,“ I said, shaking my head.

  She rolled her eyes, which is when I realized she was truly angry, angry enough to shed the veneer of tranquility and poise that she wore more tightly than the form hugging Sambhal dress. “I told you once, Gur, not to be so parochial. Demons are not monsters. They are intelligent, they have feelings, they can be kind. They are mercurial because they are chaos feeders. So are enchanters, or at least they are tapping into chaos to put food in their mouths.”

  I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do. “Still not human, Tessa. What does he owe the people of Kethem? What does he owe you? What makes you think it’s all going to be flowers and garden parties with him in charge?”

  She was digging her nails into the arms of her chair. She said, voice cracking a bit, “And it’s flowers and garden parties with the Holders lording it over us?” She pointed over at the bed and hissed, “This is my office. That’s where I entertain Leppol and other Lord Holders when they decide that the head of the temple would be another trophy on the shelf, another notch in their belt. Because they find the idea of doing it with the head priestess in the head priestess’s quarters exciting. Because entertaining heads of the Holds means doing whatever they ask, all part of the Sambhal package. Do you know that they talk to each other about it? About the things they make me do for them? Do you blame me if I think Sambhal is a step up?”

  And I found I didn’t have an answer to that. I thought about my first meeting with Tessa, the talk about finding perfection. I thought about Sariel, her perfect body lying on my floor with the handle of a knife sticking out of it. I thought about the beautiful women and men filling the temple. How many of them had been ugly ducklings, seeing Sambhal as a way to become a swan? Without thinking about the cost? I closed my eyes. Sariel’s face was there, just after I’d stabbed her. Young, hurt, scared, desperate. I opened my eyes. “They’re still human, Tessa.”

  She gave me a nasty grin. “Right. Is that Gur the commoner talking, or Gur the Holder?”

  She’d done some homework.

  I clamped down on a new surge of anger. “Gur the Holder was when I was a small child, Tessa. I barely remember it. It’s not a part of who I am anymore.” Which was true, but the residue of pain, the ten years of scraping by afterwards, that was still a part of me, had molded me into who I was, what I did. Tessa was looking at me. I don’t know what she saw there, but she bit her lip and held back from whatever else she was going to say. I breathed deeply and said, “It’s moot anyway. The chaos vial is out of reach. The question is, where do we go from here?” And then I suddenly found I couldn’t move.

  Tessa said quietly, “I’m afraid the journey is over, Gur. And I will say that I am truly sorry, and I really do like you. But you know too much. If word of this reached the Holders, it would be a disaster for the temple. For the order. They might close us down. They might kill everyone just to make an example of us. These are my people. I can’t let that happen.”

  I nodded calmly. “I’m sure you can’t. And I have no interest in seeing something like that occur. But there are better ways to handle this, and you are going to take one of them. Did you think I didn’t know about the little tricks built into the temple? Did you think I’d come here without making sure I had a way out? Why do you think I refused the invitation, the one that would let you know everything I’m carrying, when I came in?”

  She suddenly looked unsure of herself. Of course, I’d had no idea before the Tamil of the Nitheia temple had done the same thing to me. I owed that old crow a favor. And I wasn’t sure whether Tessa had something more lethal than paralysis, which is why this had been a risky move in the first place. She might have just killed me on the spot.

  She said, “You’re bluffing.”

  I tried to shrug, but nothing happened. "Perhaps. But hear me out. If we can’t come to an arrangement, you’ve lost nothing.”

  She nodded cautiously. “I’m listening.”

  “Sariel told me you can geas someone if they agree to it. And I will voluntarily agree to accept a geas that prevents me from talking about the temple’s involvement, or anything about Ralin’s attempted theft, anything that might lead back to the temple. I will even throw in, for free, that I'm intending to resolve this in a way that will leave you and Sambhal completely in the clear. But I want something in return.”

  She just nodded for me to continue.

  “I want a meeting with Leppol, here, in one of the private dining rooms. I don’t want him to know it’s me ahead of time. And I’m in without an invitation.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why?” she asked.

  “That’s confidential information that I can only share with my client,” I said. I could see her weighing it in her head. I had the safety teleport ready to go if it looked like she was leaning in the wrong direction. “Decision time, Tessa. You play this my way if you want me to keep you and the temple out of it.”

  Finally she nodded reluctantly. “Don’t disappoint me, Gur. He’s here tomorrow for another dinner rendezvous with Kyung-chul. I’ll make the arrangements.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The next evening, I visited a small shop that specialized in psiprints, signatures that were enhanced with sorcery to verify it wasn’t a forgery. It was one of the shops along Aron’s Way that backed up against the Sambhal temple. I’d spent the day walking the streets, looking for inspiration. Looking for answers. Hoping to convince myself that my plans for this evening made sense. Or, at least, were the right thing to do.

  It didn’t play out that way, and I stood in that store and wondered if I should just walk back out.

  After a few minutes of contemplation that didn’t do much to make me feel any better, I walked to the back of th
e store. There was a curtain hanging over it. One of the curators was nearby, looking at me a bit suspiciously. I pulled back the curtain. There was a plain wall behind it, stucco on wooden slats, a typical inside wall for this kind of establishment. I waited. The curator became more suspicious. I waited a bit longer. Suddenly a rectangle the size of a door lit up and the section of wall it outlined swung open on silent hinges. The curator wandered off, convinced I was entitled to be there, because the door would not have opened otherwise.

  I stepped through. On the other side was a narrow corridor lined with stone, spotty glow disks lighting the way, and a young woman who vaguely reminded me of Sariel. She was in a simple blue tunic, with the Sambhal belt with no gold thread at all. The door closed, and I looked into the woman’s eyes, blue green and … old, not necessarily in years, but in experience. “Tessa?” I said.