by Radu Aldea
“So you didn’t advertise exactly how powerful you are, either.”
“Actually, I did exactly that. We did exactly that. We didn’t go into specifics, but both Julia and I let senators know that we are a lot more powerful. It was a deterrent.”
“But they didn’t believe you?”
Either that or she was wrong and it wasn’t a test. Maybe it was all the soldiers they could gather in the given time. And the distance could’ve been some arbitrary choice made by the archers. A feeling is worth nothing until you got some proof.
“If it was a test, they didn’t. Three hundred people were always considered a hard limit, impossible to beat. The onslaught on a senator’s mind was thought to be unbearable and the senator could not focus. In our histories of the last three hundred years, the closest a senator came to that limit was two hundred and ninety-eight people.”
“That hard limit is gone now,” Michael replied.
“Yes, it is. But the preconception was so deeply rooted in the senators’ minds they believed it only when they were shown. I encountered that more than you would think.”
“Why did they want you out of the villa?” Michael asked.
The question took her by surprise. She knew the answer, of course, but she didn’t want to share all her secrets with Michael just yet. She decided to tell a half-truth.
“It was probably about the test, if there was a test.”
“What does your instinct tell you?”
“That it was a test. I felt it during the battle and I feel it now.”
“That’s it then. It was a test. You are too well trained to be wrong. You must’ve picked up on something. It wasn’t because of the test they wanted you out of a villa. Your father might’ve been the target, but they wanted you dead too. It was too reckless and costly to do something like that just to learn about someone’s abilities. Why didn’t they just send the sorceress to kill you? Why did you have so few guards with you? Any senator could just get twenty soldiers close to you and kill you. You know you have enemies, so why let yourself become so vulnerable. I really don’t understand you.”
Kara gave him a long look and hoped he would understand and stop with the questions. She must’ve seemed like a complete idiot to him considering the circumstances.
“You are not going to answer those questions, are you?”
“I have made a lot of mistakes. Let’s just leave it at that!”
Michael seemed to agree and remained silent. Kara understood his curiosity. She would’ve been just as curious in his position. She wanted to give more reasons for her refusal to answer when she saw Matilda’s house. They had arrived.
“We are here,” Amelia announced.
Matilda’s house was not a typical senatorial residence. The difference between it and Kara’s villa could not be more obvious. This was not a fortress. It was a small house made of wood that had maybe five rooms. Matilda didn’t have many servants and soldiers living with her. Michael gave Kara a questioning look. It was Cecilia that answered.
“Matilda is old and crazy. Nobody wants to kill an old and crazy woman so she doesn’t need guards. And she wants to live as far from people as possible.”
There was light in one of the rooms and they all heard noises coming from the house. Kara half-expected Matilda to be asleep. Then she remembered it was not that late, it only seemed like that because she had such an insane day. Michael made his light orb dissolve, which was probably a very good idea. Matilda would not appreciate a wizard in the house.
The old senator came out of the house. She had a lamp in her hands and Kara could see her well. Matilda was more than sixty years old and was short and stout. She had no family of her own and that was why she was living alone on the mountain. She probably had some servants, but that was all the contact she had with other people.
“What are you doing here at this hour, girl?” Matilda asked when she recognized Kara.
“May we come in?”
“I guess there is nowhere else you could go at this hour and I doubt you would leave even if I asked you. Find a place for your horses! I doubt there is space in the stable for them.”
“Thank you very much,” Kara answered. “It has been a very long day.”
“Where is that human who always hangs around you?” Matilda asked.
“Dead!”
It was enough to feel all the grief again. She fought back the tears, followed Michael’s lead and tied the horses to trees. There were plenty of those. Then she walked to the stable to find them some food. Hopefully Matilda would have something.
She did. During the next half hour, they tended to the horses. They had a very difficult day as well and Kara would need them again in the morning. In the house Matilda was waiting for them with food on the table. Kara didn’t remember when she had last eaten. It was probably in the morning, but she wasn’t hungry.
“What happened to the girl?”
“We were attacked!”
“Considering the fact you are here and the number of your companions I’m guessing you lost. So who was it, Lucian or Julia?”
“I didn’t lose,” Kara said through her teeth. “It was almost a thousand free humans who attacked me. Father is dead as well. I need time to think, that’s why I am here.”
“You’ve made mistakes girl, but less than your father. A thousand soldiers with no senatorial control managed to get close to you. I see why you’re here. Your father, what happened to him?”
Matilda may have been old, but she still had a sharp mind and got quickly to the point.
“He invited two senators in and they poisoned him. I’m guessing there were two because there were three cups of wine and only one with poison. They didn’t bother much with hiding their tracks. I was at the lake when he was attacked.”
“They broke the guest law? That is sacrosanct!”
Not anymore it wasn’t. The guest law was part of the senatorial law and mainly it stipulated that if you invited a guest in your house you couldn’t harm him in any way and the guest could not use his entry in the house to act in detriment to the host. The law only applied to senator guests or hosts, and the people who came with the guest had the same protection, but the guest was responsible for them. So the host could not attempt to connect to or control any persons in the guest’s retinue. The penalties for breaking the law were severe.
“Do you know who they were?”Matilda asked.
“I don’t. I have five principal suspects, but that’s about it.”
“It’s not Julia or Lucian then, not Marcia either! The soldiers who attacked you, what do you know about them?”
“They come from Essland and they were ordered to come here and attack me by a count from there I’ve never heard of. Father must’ve been the main target, otherwise I cannot explain why they come from Essland for me and didn’t go after Julia.”
“Defeating a thousand soldiers when they managed to catch you unawares is impressive. That is a lot even for you.”
“I was lucky. I’ve made mistakes and I almost paid with my life. Aleyna died.”
“You must suspect that one of your clients betrayed you. That’s why you are here.”
“Maybe, maybe not! The soldiers who attacked me were led there by a sorceress.”
“So everyone who could be involved was involved. Was the sorceress free or under a senator’s control?”
“That’s the question! My guess is she was under the control of the senator although I have very good reasons to believe she wasn’t.”
Around the table Michael, Amelia and Cecilia were eating. Unlike Kara, they were hungry. They listened to the conversation but didn’t participate because their mouths were full. The food must’ve been pretty good or they had been really hungry.
“You must consider not only why you were attacked, but why now as well.”
Matilda was right and she had missed it. Organizing something like this could not be done overnight. Everyone was involved, senators, sorceresses an
d humans. That took time to organize, maybe a few weeks. It was so frustrating and that was probably the reason why the mastermind involved everyone. And to keep her confused.
“What are you going to do now?” Matilda asked.
“Get some rest so I can recover my powers. Tomorrow, I will decide.”
“You have to be ready for more than just dealing with a rogue senatorial family who has decided to break the law. You have to be ready for a war and you have to prepare your clients.”
“I was going to do that before I went to sleep. Do you have ravens?”
“Sure I do! They make the best company for an old woman.”
“Then I should get to it!”
“First, you should eat something. You are going to need it even if you are not hungry.”
“I will eat breakfast tomorrow. It will be enough!”
Kara wrote seven messages. Six of them were for her most trusted and powerful clients. The seventh was for Julia and was a short, simple message. Dove, the fences have crumbled! She just hoped everyone would listen and obey her. Maybe she shouldn’t leave. Yet the plan was clear in her mind and all she had to do was go over some details.
She sent the ravens. It was a commitment to a course of action. There was no going back now. The first messages would reach their destinations before dawn. The last recipient would be Julia. The raven would get to her in two or three days.
When she returned there were only Matilda and Michael around. Cecilia and Amelia must’ve gone to sleep. Matilda still wanted to talk about something and Kara assumed she would’ve gone to bed otherwise. Michael was probably just curious.
“This war will be different,” Matilda spoke. “You will have to fight senators. You will maybe have to fight sorceresses, and they might prove more difficult than the wizards. Especially those who can resist our powers. And you might have to fight humans. The fact they attacked a senator is what’s worrying me the most.”
“It is what’s worrying me as well.”
“Your generation does not remember how it was before the war with the wizards. We called it the Great War. It was rather presumptuous of us, wars have been fought for thousands of years and they will continue to be fought. We called it that because it was the greatest war we could remember. Some thought it would be the last we ever fought. The level of destruction was so complete and the losses so severe we could not afford to fight a new one. It was why we fought it like that, so we wouldn’t have to fight it again.”
“Well, you were wrong! Twenty years later we are possibly in a worse place.”
“You have to understand the fear we lived with before the war. Humans always hated and feared us. The feeling was mutual. Senators were killed by humans all the time. Yes, it was mostly the senatorial plebs that got themselves killed, but some powerful senators died as well. Most of us kept ourselves hidden. Nobody dared to reveal he was a senator. The wizards could find us, of course, and they were watching us very carefully just in case we exaggerated with our punishments. The truth is they wanted to keep us afraid and under attack from humans. They could see to their petty little battles among themselves that way.”
“That’s who we are! We fight our battles from the shadows through other people.”
“It is who we were. We are out in the light now, the rulers of the empire. You know that in the beginning of the Great War humans joined the wizards?”
Kara nodded. She knew the recent history just like every other senator.
“It was difficult enough fighting the wizards, contending with the humans at the same moment was not what we needed. Someone came up with the concept of the purge. If humans thought we were brutal before, we showed them exactly how much more brutal we can be. The idea caught and within the year the humans were out of the fight. We broke them!”
“It was necessary at the time. I know all this, so what are you trying to say?”
“The reason we fought the war the way we did, why we didn’t stop after it was clear we had the supremacy, was wrong. We made a mistake.”
“I know! You thought you were eliminating an enemy so another war wouldn’t have to be fought. Yet it was the threat of the wizards that kept us united and the Council and the law functioning. Without an enemy it was only a matter of time before we turned on each other.”
“It is obvious to you now. It wasn’t to us then. Nobody considered what the next generation would do. Because if there is one thing we are, it is warriors.”
“When you raised us as soldiers you cannot expect us to turn out architects.”
“No, you can’t,” Matilda chuckled. “Just don’t make the same mistake the wizards did. Don’t think the enemy easy prey. We outnumbered the wizards twenty to one. The humans outnumber us ten thousand to one. And they are ready to attack us again.”
The humans had a new generation in place, and just like the senators, they were willing to fight. But it was time for Kara to ask the questions that brought her here. Matilda had raised her mother, just like Marcia had raised her. She would have some answers.
“Matilda, tell me about the day my mother disappeared.”
“Why do you want to hear about that?” When Kara didn’t reply she continued. “She did not return in three hours so you father went looking for her. He followed the tracks to a field where he found no bodies, only burned remains. He sent ravens in all directions.”
“Why would a wizard take the time to burn the bodies?”
“I don’t know! You’ll have to ask the wizard about it.”
“I can’t, because you didn’t catch him. Was it common for wizards to burn the bodies?”
“No, I don’t think so! It happened only during their last attacks,” Matilda remembered.
“The attacks when the perpetrators were not caught and the senatorial nets failed!”
“I guess, but I think they were caught later!”
“Two more wizards were killed after and they were found far away from Suttland. There was significant evidence they were nowhere near here at that time.”
“Maybe they were killed and we didn’t know about it.”
“Why did the nets fail? They worked perfectly in the beginning.”
“I don’t know. The wizards must’ve learned how to avoid them.”
“How is that possible? Nobody can slip through a senatorial net if it’s done right. So what did you do wrong?”
“We didn’t do anything wrong. The net was perfect but we didn’t catch anybody.”
Chapter eight
“Wake up!”
Marcia’s voice was sharp and edgy and cut through her sleep. Aleyna knew it was a command backed by senatorial power and she had no other choice but to obey. She didn’t appreciate being ordered like this. In all the time she had been under Kara’s control her friend had not commanded her once. Aleyna realized everything would change for her. Without her friend she had no status and certainly no protection. She opened her eyes. It was before dawn and both Christian and Marcia were there and looked tired. Probably a sleepless night for them. She must’ve been out for more than twelve hours.
“Why did you let me sleep for so long?” Aleyna asked. “What happened?”
“You needed the rest,” Marcia answered. “You’ve lost a lot of blood and you were of no help to us like that. Tell me, did you see a sorceress or a wizard during the attack?”
“There were no wizards, sorceresses or senators, you know that. Only stupid humans and I hope you catch them all and make them pay. Did you find her body?”
“No, we didn’t! We didn’t find any bodies there. We found some at the villa, in fact, we found everyone except Rufus. The villa was attacked probably before you were.”
Rufus was Kara’s father and the one who had decided to bring Aleyna to the villa so Kara would have a companion. How could it have happened? The villa was built to resist against thousands of soldiers with only a small contingent of defenders. It could withstand attacks from wizards and yet somehow it fell. This was al
most unbelievable for Aleyna. And what did Marcia mean when she said they didn’t find any bodies at the lake. There should’ve been almost six hundred bodies there. They couldn’t just walk away and it was too much work to carry them.
“How could they have taken the villa?” Aleyna wondered.
“It is not clear yet, but it seems senators might’ve been involved,” Christian answered.
“And what do you mean you found no bodies at the lake? There should’ve been more than six hundred there. What have you been doing while I was asleep?”
Marcia explained. They’ve sent a group of soldiers to the lake and one to the villa. The group sent to the lake had a tracker with them. When they got there they found no bodies, but managed to track where the soldier came from. They came from the direction of the villa and then the tracks turned north. Other soldiers scoured the land between the lake and the mountains. Messages were sent to other senators by riders or ravens. As news got to them they joined the search. While all that was happening Marcia and Christian went to the nearest garrison and acquired more soldiers. They had almost four hundred with them now.
“You didn’t find them!” It was a statement not a question. “How could you not find them? You keep talking about where they came from and not where they went.”
“Because I don’t think there is anything to find. You’ll see, we’ll leave for the lake as soon as you get dressed. Anyway, night came and the tracker had to stop, but right now it becomes clear they came over the mountains from Cuttland. We are looking for out of place senators, but there isn’t much chance we’ll get them. They’ve probably crossed the Serelians by now. Then, two hours ago, this came.”
Marcia gave Aleyna a message. It was immediately obvious to her because of the size that the message came with a raven. It told Marcia to militarize, which in senator talk meant using between two thirds and three quarters of a senator’s capabilities to control soldiers. Only very rarely senators used the full extent of their powers. It was sound thinking, because otherwise they couldn’t take over more people, which was very useful when fighting humans. In fact, the best way for a senator to fight humans was by stealth. Infiltrate them and destroy them from within. The message also said to get control of the mountain passes and the fortresses in the mountains. Aleyna looked at the message and it didn’t have a sender.