Godspeaker

by Tessa Crowley

  “It wasn’t Silas who broke Ellorian!” Perenor suddenly said, stepping forward.

  “I told you not to say anything!” Soya snapped at him, but Perenor wasn’t listening.

  “He had as much hand in it as you or I,” he continued. “He needs protection, not more misdirected animosity!”

  “Perenor, for Sol’s sake, shut up!”

  “You are trying to talk the sun into setting in the north,” Lord Rhodan said, coming around the table. “I will not—”

  “Do you know what happened to the last people who came toward my brother in anger?” Perenor said, voice dangerous.

  Something cold grew in me. “P-P-P-Perenor—”

  Soya grabbed him sharply by the shoulder, spun him around, and glared directly into his eyes. “This is not helpful,” she hissed at him, before forcefully pushing him aside. Perenor growled in the back of his throat, and Soya stepped between the space that separated me and Lord Rhodan, still advancing around the table.

  For his part, Lord Rhodan seemed to hear Perenor’s words with great clarity. He was no longer looking at Perenor, nor at Soya, but rather directly at me. I swallowed hard and kept my footing.

  “Father,” Soya said, more sedately – or at least, more sedately compared to Perenor, “I would not have brought him here without good reason. Whether you would have it or not, we are stuck in the middle of a war of gods, and Silas is the only link we have to one of its most major players. We need him.”

  “And what is it you think this city can do?” he snapped. “What could possibly be worth putting all of Avenos in such danger?”

  “We have scholars here,” Soya insisted, frustration rising again in her voice. “We have diplomats from all over the world! With Ellorian and the Queen gone, that makes our house – you, Father, as Lord of Avenos – the Lord-Regent of Andelan. You need him because it’s your charge now to protect this world!”

  Lord Rhodan’s nostrils flared in anger. “You think that hasn’t crossed my mind?”

  “I know it has!”

  “How can I be sure that bringing him into this city does more good than it would harm?” he demanded, and though he was speaking to Soya, his eyes were now on me. “How can I be sure that he is not himself in league with Umbrion—?”

  “Watch what you say, Lord of Avenos,” Perenor growled.

  “These are my halls and this is my city, Scion Olen,” Lord Rhodan answered, teeth bared. “My words will be as I want them to be.”

  “It’s not only our ears that might hear you speaking,” Perenor said, which brought another look of disquiet to Lord Rhodan’s face.

  Silence lapsed a moment. Lord Rhodan was looking at me again. I was too weary to be frightened, so I met his eyes unflinchingly.

  “Can you promise me, Soya,” he said, eyes swiveling to his daughter, “that you consider him no danger to this city or anyone in it?”

  “Father,” Soya said, “whatever danger he may pose is worth the risk. We need him. Andelan needs him. He’s our only source of insight in these coming days and we cannot afford to err on the side of short-term security.”

  It was true in theory, but I found myself wondering what real, practical insight I could offer.

  Lord Rhodan couldn’t seem to decide who he wanted to more closely examine: me or his daughter. Eventually, he settled on me.

  “What say you, Godspeaker?” he asked. “Do you have no words in your defense?”

  “My s-s-s-stutter taught m-me long ago to n-n-never waste w-words,” I answered, voice raspy from disuse.

  “Words in your defense are wasted, are they?”

  “They are f-f-for those whose m-m-minds are already m-made up.”

  “Silas,” Soya muttered to me, “do you really think this is helping your cause?”

  “D-d-do you think there’s an-n-nything that c-can?” I returned.

  Soya didn’t seem to know how to respond apart from a look of frustration. I looked back at her father, breathed, and wasted some words.

  “Wh-wh-what would y-you have m-me say, L-Lord Rhodan?” I asked. “That I r-r-reject the actions of my p-patron g-g-god? I reject th-them. But y-y-you would d-doubt me still, and y-you’d be r-right to do s-s-s-so. What p-proof do y-y-you have of my intentions? Wh-what proof c-c-could you ever h-have? Y-you cannot see m-my heart.”

  “No,” he agrees, “but I can see your actions, which would tell me more of your heart than ten thousand wasted words.”

  “Wh-wh-what would y-y-you have m-me do?”

  “Help us,” the Lord answered.

  “How?” I asked.

  It was not a rhetorical question and never had been; I made sure the Lord of Avenos could see as much on my face. He was silent a moment, mouth half-open, as he tried to think of something.

  “Tell us his plans,” he said eventually.

  “I d-d-d-d-do not know th-them.”

  “Ask him,” he continued.

  “I c-c-cannot s-s-summon him.”

  He was starting to get angry. “Pray to him!”

  “And r-r-risk the l-l-lives of ever-r-ryone around m-me?”

  “Then take a pilgrimage alone into the moor!” he bellowed, pointing west out the window. “Starve and chastise yourself like the priests of old until you are beset with a vision that will give us answers!”

  “Father, enough!”

  “But no, if we leave you alone, who knows what you’ll do!” He keeps shouting, starts to pace the floor. “What, then, is the point of you, if you can do nothing?”

  “Excell-l-l-llent question,” I muttered. It must have been too low for anyone to hear, because the Lord Rhodan kept ranting.

  “You’ve brought Umbrion’s doom upon this city, Soya! The walls of the Silver City will crumble before the monsoon falls!”

  “And so will the rest of the world!” Soya finally matched his volume. “In case it has escaped your notice, Father, this is not a battle for the fate of Avenos; all of Andelan hangs in the balance! If the Lord-Regent’s city will not take the necessary risks, will not stand up and fight, then who will?”

  “Take the Godspeaker to a bedroom in the east wing!” Lord Rhodan ordered the nearby guard. “Do not let him out. And so help me, if you hear so much as a rustle—!”

  Two guards flanked me, grabbed me by the arms.

  “Let him go!” Perenor cried. “Don’t you dare hurt him, Lord of Avenos, or I swear by all the gods—!”

  “D-d-don’t worry,” I said. “Th-they c-c-could not h-hurt m-m-me if they t-tried.”

  I could feel the guards’ flinch in the tips of their fingers that gripped my arms.

  “They won’t mistreat him,” I heard Soya say as I am marched out of the room and down the hall. “I won’t let them, I swear it.”

  And despite the fact that I was now a prisoner in nature if not in name, despite the fact that I had a Lord and an entire palace of people who feared and distrusted me in equal measure, despite the creeping numbness ever seeping out from my core, at least, I thought, at least I could bathe and sleep and stay away from those who would fall into my cloud of death.

  The clouds of the coming monsoon came rolling onto the horizon that afternoon, blanketing the sky in undulating waves of gray. I watched them through the window of the bedroom to which I was quarantined. My window had a sprawling view of the city and the ocean that stretched out past it. Ships came to harbor, channels of smoke rose into the sky, and I could see workers clear out the gutters and drains in preparation for the coming stormfall.

  For nearly a full day, no one came to my room. The bedroom to which I had been sequestered was small but well furnished, with a desk, a chair, a hearth, and a connected bath. I mostly slept; when I could not force myself into those lapses of death any longer, I bathed and worked the knots of travel from my hair. I read from the small selection of books on the shelf by the desk. I watched the window and the muted rumble of the city. I fled from my thoughts as a shadow flees sunlight.

  The next day, there cam
e a knock on the door. I turned in time to see it opened by two well-armored, nervous guards.

  “Godspeaker,” said the one in front, and I rose to my feet. “The Lord-Regent and his council have summoned you to the council chambers.”

  I nodded slowly and rose from the bed to pull on a nondescript outer robe.

  “The Lord-Regent has requested privacy,” continued the guard haltingly, “from any – ah – from any gods that might have interest in the conversation.”

  I laughed once, humorlessly.

  “Th-th-th-that is out of m-m-my control.”

  “Oh,” said the guard, trying her best not to look nervous, to middling success. “This way.”

  They did not grab me by the arms this time, which was a refreshing change of pace. Instead they kept a wide berth as they escorted me down the hall, hands on their weapons, as though that might protect them.

  I’d expected to be taken back to the room that Soya had first taken me to upon our arrival the day before, but we went to a different room in a different wing. This room – the council chambers, I could only assume – were much larger, with a large ring of tables and chairs on an elevated platform. The faces of some fifty people peered down at me, all of them varying degrees of wary.

  There was no chair for me, but one of the guards gestured for me to stand in the center of the semicircle, so I did. I stood silent for several moments, waiting for something to happen.

  In the middle of the semicircle, just in front of me, was seated Lord Rhodan, straight-backed and uncomfortable in his seat. Soya was just to his left, loose but apprehensive. Perenor was just behind them both, and he was the only one with something resembling a smile. Inexplicably, the sight of him made me feel better.

  “My scion has been gracious enough to get me up to speed on recent events,” Lord Rhodan – or Lord-Regent Rhodan now, I supposed – said without preamble. He was turning a crow’s quill over in his hands as he spoke, and his eyes didn’t move from mine. “It’s quite a story.”

  He stopped as though he was waiting for a response, but I didn’t know what it was he meant for me to say, so I stayed quiet.

  “She claims that you had no agency in the Breaking of Ellorian,” he continued eventually. “Is that true?”

  “Y-y-yes.” I looked sideways at Soya. I wondered how deeply she really believed that and found no clue on her face.

  “And your brother insists that this cloud of death that follows you – the ambush, the temple in Iriallum – has less to do with you and more to do with the Traitor God’s protective instincts over his Godspeaker. Would you say that’s accurate?”

  Protective was an interesting word for it. “Y-y-y-y-yes.”

  There was a trace of something in his eyes; I imagined it to be pity, but it was gone before I could say for sure.

  “We have sent out crows to the other Godspeakers, and I have spoken with the diplomats from all the major cities. We plan to convene a moot.”

  “A m-m-m-moot?”

  “It’s usually a legislative practice,” the Lord-Regent continued, “for the voting and vetoing of national laws, but we are somewhat repurposing it. If we are going to act at all, then it must be done together. And if we are going to come up with any plan at all, it will only be planned together.”

  It was not, to my fragile heart’s surprise, a bad plan. In fact, with the insight of the other four Godspeakers, perhaps it may even prove useful. If there was anyone in Andelan who could do something, it was they.

  “Although we are officially awaiting the responses, they will presumably be amenable to meet and come up with a plan of action, given the direness of the circumstances,” he continued. “I trust that we can count on your loyalty in this?”

  “It is n-n-n-not m-my loyalty y-y-you n-need c-concern yourself w-w-with.”

  “One can only hope,” the Lord-Regent answered, voice thin. “We have also decided that extracting information must be made a priority. After all, what plan could possibly thwart a god without substantial intelligence to back it up?”

  I did not understand where he was going with this, which turned out not to be a problem, because he continued:

  “We will arrange to have you escorted to Umbrion’s temple,” he said. “We will empty it out for you, and you will pray to him to learn his plans.”

  I knew at once that, “There are a m-m-m-million w-ways that c-c-could b-backfire.”

  “There are a million ways that your mere presence in this city could backfire,” the Lord-Regent answered. “You represent a walking, talking risk to the security of Avenos. We may as well get something out of it, if we can.”

  “But th-this could s-s-s-summon him,” I said. “I am his G-G-Godspeaker; there’s a ch-ch-chance he c-could manifest.”

  “Umbrion’s temple is several leagues outside the city,” the Lord-Regent said. “Any damage would be… contained.”

  He meant the damage would be contained to me, of course. He didn’t have to say it.

  “We’ll arrange it for tomorrow sometime,” he continued. “Meanwhile, you’re not to leave your room without an escort, nor the palace under any circumstance.”

  “I’ll go with him wherever he needs to go,” Perenor volunteered at once.

  “And he won’t be mistreated,” Soya interjected suddenly. “Will he, Father?”

  The Lord-Regent’s mouth twisted. “No,” he answered, sounding almost reluctant. “Your needs will not be neglected.”

  “You’re not a prisoner here,” Soya told me. “Your confinement is for your own safety as much as anyone else’s.”

  “R-r-r-r-right,” I muttered.

  “For now, you’ll be kept to your room,” the Lord-Regent said. “We will count on your cooperation in the coming days. Guards?”

  I turned around, grateful, if for nothing else, to be out of that cursed room.

  “You look hungry,” I heard from behind when the door shut. I looked around; Perenor was approaching from behind. “I suppose they haven’t fed you yet. It’s been hectic since we arrived. How are you?”

  “I’m f-f-f-fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “I kn-kn-know. I was l-l-l-lying.”

  “Oh. Right.” Perenor kept stride with me. It aggravated me, though I wasn’t sure why. “How are you doing, then, if not fine?”

  I didn’t answer, hoping I could get away with not talking long enough to get back to my room.

  “Are you going to ignore me?”

  “Th-th-th-that w-would be impossible, c-c-clearly.”

  “Is our relationship so far gone that you can’t even tell your brother how you are?” he asked me. “With all those lessons in Craft, I thought…”

  I stopped, and Perenor and the guards all stopped with me. The hallway between the council chambers and my room was empty.

  “I want to help you, if I can,” he said.

  “You c-c-can’t.”

  “I can try,” he pressed. “You haven’t eaten – I’ll have something brought up. Would it help to continue lessons in Craft? We were getting into some pretty advanced areas, but we could keep going – you’ve got a talent, you know, if we just—”

  “D-d-d-do you r-really th-th-think any of th-th-that will h-help me?”

  Perenor’s words fell off.

  “D-d-d-d-do you really th-think food, d-d-distractions are wh-what I n-n-need m-most?”

  “Silas,” he said, though he didn’t continue, so I went on talking.

  “C-c-c-can’t y-y-y-you s-s-see that I’m b-b-b-barely holding it t-t-t-together?” I stammered at him, and Perenor was worrying his lower lip with his teeth, flexing his hands at his sides. “F-f-f-f-ood w-won’t even m-m-make a dent—”

  “But it’s a place to start,” he said, and I swallowed thickly. I wanted to be angry with him, but I didn’t have the energy. “Come on, brother-mine. What good will you be to anyone if you starve to death?”

  He put a hand on my shoulder and ushered me further down the hallw
ay. I followed along, trying to fight the welling emotion.

  “We’ll go walking through the gardens tomorrow, all right?” he said. “Silverwatch has a beautiful garden, you know. It’s got four levels. We need to get you out of your own head, even if it’s only for an afternoon.”

  The monsoon came the next day, and the heavy gray overcast split open at its seams. It was, I supposed, bound to arrive earlier this far north. It came lightly at first, a soft pitter-patter on the thin glass of the window, but within an hour it had become a familiar, pounding torrent.

  Though Avenos was by all rights a similar city, geographically, to Ellorian, both being coastal cities otherwise in the middle of nothing, the monsoon here felt like an altogether different experience. The ocean was darker, cooler than the familiar topaz waters of the southern coast, and it felt somehow more sedate and more heavy; the raindrops fatter, the air more stagnant.

  Perenor arrived in the morning with breakfast for two on a tray.

  “They say we’ll go to Umbrion’s temple after breakfast,” he said by way of greeting.

  My stomach sank.

  “They’ve arranged for a carriage to pick us up and take us there once we’re finished eating.”

  I worried my lower lip. I suddenly could not find my appetite, and ended up pushing around the neatly sliced ham steak on my plate.

  “You’re nervous,” Perenor said. It was not quite a question, nor really a statement.

  “I f-f-fear wh-what he might d-d-do if I p-pray to him,” I said.

  “Have you prayed to him before?”

  I shook my head.

  “But he has manifested to you. You said so.”

  “In d-d-dreams, mostly,” I said. “But this… I d-d-don’t know wh-what will happen.”

  “The Lord-Regent seems to think it’s for the best.”

  “The L-L-L-Lord-Regent is n-not a G-Godspeaker.”

  Perenor sighed. He poured two cups of tea from a small pot they’d provided him. “Well, he won’t hurt you, right? I mean, you’re his Godspeaker. He likes you.”