“The elves that remain,” I said in Lit. “There has been an uprising.”
Chester’s brows lifted. “I see. And now you have the far more difficult task of negotiating the end of a war.”
“No,” I said firmly. “You have the task of negotiating the end of a war. Because Serendipity, as always, has arrived at just the right time.” I bowed to her, to her delight. “You two, and Ivy, I will ask you and Emily to go as well. Will you go to Suleris and Erevar for me? Find the current leaders there and ask them to come. We will be having a summit at Nudain.”
Serendipity bounced on the balls of her feet. “I knew we were supposed to be here!”
“And that you would get yourself and Chester and the drake here!” Emily studied her twin admiringly, then hugged her. “You really are the first genet magician!”
“I have a title,” Serendipity said smugly.
“Wait, when did we decide that I was leaving?” Ivy asked, folding her arms.
“Or me?” Chester added. “I have only just arrived!”
“I am bringing the remains of the elven nation—or at least, the largest concentration of living elves on the Archipelago, given the size of the remaining isles—to a redoubt claimed by humans with very little desire to parley,” I said. “And if it becomes a contest between myself and the current head of Nudain’s human enclave, then the battle will be personal and intimate and very little will prevent it from becoming a duel. But if we bring other powers to the party, then we have some hope of playing the personalities off one another and securing a truce.” I sighed. “A peace will have to wait. Perhaps decades. But a truce so that we can build that peace… that I think we might accomplish. If we are bold. And if—” I glanced at Serendipity and smiled, “—a certain genet can bring you all back just as we arrive. I think it will do some good for my reputation to be able to summon a dragon to my cause.”
“You haven’t returned to the topic of my leaving,” Ivy said.
“I want you to go because I need to send humans,” I said. “And frankly, I want them to be outnumbered once they’re riding back with you. Also, because you are charming, my dear, and the fact that you need a translator will confuse them into pondering whether you might be telling the truth about your provenance.”
“I don’t want to be parted from you,” she murmured. And sighed. “But I think you’re right. The more humans like us they see, the better.”
“And now you may tell me why you believe I should be doing your work?” Chester said.
“Because I can’t,” I said. “Do this work. It needs a human, Chester. Further, it needs a human who can speak the Gift as well as Lit, so it can’t be Ivy, Radburn, or Guy. Or anyone else, really, unless you wish to import a Church scholar… and I suspect you don’t.”
He hesitated.
“Do you?” I pressed, brows lifting.
“I do find the prospect…” He paused. “...diverting.”
“Mmm,” said I, noncommittal, until he dissolved into laughter.
“All right, fine, I find it exhilarating, but only if you’ll be present. If this is a process that must be begun by a human, it cannot be ended without elves.”
“I’ll be there,” I said firmly.
“Then I suppose we are for the drake again,” Chester said. “And you have only just brought us here, Serendipity! I hope you know the way. All these places are but names to me.”
“We know the way,” Emily said, serious. “We would never forget the way to Suleris.”
“But if they do,” I said, resting my hand on his shoulder. “Go south. Erevar is a city on the southern coast near the midpoint of the island. Suleris is on Kesina, and owns all of it, so if you fly south you will eventually find it.”
“South,” he said with a nod. “That I can do.” He embraced me again, and against my ear added, “I see you managed to remain whole this time. Contrive to continue, if you please!”
“I would not dare risk your censure,” I said, amused, glad of him. This, I thought, would be his life’s work, and better suited to him than supporting Princess Minda and her parents. His talents would have been wasted in the management of a trade network. Giving him a country seemed meet, even if neither he nor the country knew what I was about yet. “I will see you soon.”
Ivy stepped into my arms as soon as he’d left them, tucking her head under mine. I sighed and murmured, “And you, stay safe, and come home to me.”
“Isn’t that the woman’s to say, usually?”
“Perhaps some other woman, and some other husband, and some other life,” I said. “But we are as we are, and I would have it no other way.”
“Flatterer.” She went on her toes to kiss my nose, and then allowed me to distract her lips on the way down. She smiled against my mouth. “You stay whole as well. No glass blades, you hear?”
“Not on my flesh,” I said. “Or at least, not unless by accident.”
She tugged at the chain holding her grandmother’s ring. “Not even by accident.”
“My lady commands.”
“She does!” Another kiss and then she left me, joining the two genets and Chester on the back of the drake. There disposed I saw a good chunk of my heart, preparing to leave me. Kelu had told me too truly: I loved many, and too well, and as I’d said to Ivy, would have it no other way.
“Godspeed!” I called. “Come back to me!”
“With your errand discharged,” Chester promised, and then the drake was on its way.
I could not be long bereft with the hand that lit on my shoulder, though I missed them. Turning to Amhric, I said, “I find I have unexpected hopes for the future.”
He smiled up at me, eyes bright. “Strange. I find I do as well.”
“Don’t even try,” I said, laughing. “You have always had hope.”
“Well. Perhaps.” He smiled. “God is good.”
“I suppose He must be,” I said, and followed him toward the horses. But seeing Kelu there, awaiting us, I wondered.
26
Revealing my relation to the drake had a salutary effect on the elves. They seemed both unnerved by my command of a predator out of legend, and proud of me, and these feelings existed simultaneously within them… somehow. I was glad of it, if only because they marched more quickly, and even now and then some sang: long chains of melodies that somehow evoked the blood ladders, divine music bound by mortal throats. I wiped my eyes and made as little of my reaction as I could, fearing that among these refugees were too many villains, and to have my heart sore on their account would lead only to grief if they proved themselves unworthy of it.
There I found the difference between folk tale and reality. In those stories the choices were as clear as an angel could make them. Would that we all owned such clarity—but then, if we did, what use living here? Heaven would be more fit for us then.
I thought often of the genets, even with Emily gone. Kelu riding alone on her horse brought me back again and again to the fate of her race. They had not deserved what had been done to them. How could I make it right? How could anyone?
She did not sleep with us at night, though I made the invitation, and yet her presence remained in her observation about my heart. I missed Ivy, but it was good to sleep against Amhric’s back again. If now and then I said a prayer for Sihret, who too had once held a king in his arms, then perhaps it was unavoidable, given the circumstances. The course I’d set us upon felt inevitable, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t end in violence. Life was precious and fleeting.
We moved through the Archipelago’s bright sun, endured the occasional tempestuous afternoons, slashed with hot rain and speared with lightnings, which I observed less with fear for ourselves and more in hopes that the drake was far distant from any such similar storms. The days passed, and we found ourselves at last approaching Nudain.
“Ready?” Kelu asked me in Lit.
“I was wondering the same of you.”
She snorted. “I’m just your spare teeth. Yo
u’re the one about to get us all into trouble.”
“And you are surprised. Have I ceased since the moment you met me?”
She glanced at me, by now an accomplished enough rider to shoot me askance looks without confusing her mount with shifts in balance or unconscious tugs on the reins. “You’ve been making trouble for me since before I met you.”
“Of course. All the trips to the mainland.”
Kelu blew her forelock off her eye. “At least it got me away from the elves.”
“You’re welcome.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t get too cocky, elf. They won’t be impressed by it in Nudain.”
“Fortunately for me, I have a rather more persuasive display of my power planned.”
She laughed. “Your power. Right.”
I grinned at her. “They won’t know the difference until it’s too late.”
“Probably, yes.” She shook her head, the sun flashing off the silver ink inside her ears. “I’ll say this for you, Morgan. It hasn’t been boring.”
“God forfend I ever bore you. You bite me enough when I’m not. I shudder to think what you might do to entertain yourself for lack of any better way to spend your time.”
She laughed. “Ugh. Go away! Ride up there,” waving a hand toward the front of the column, “and be leaderly.”
“That’s for Amhric to do,” I said. “But I will keep him company.” As I rode forth, I cast over my shoulder, “I hope you are prepared for more adventure!”
“Have I mentioned how annoying you are?”
I laughed all the way to my brother’s side.
I had hoped that the drake would arrive just as we crested the ridge for the dramatic impact, but Serendipity’s timing was far more serendipitous than that. When we spotted Nudain, the drake was already perched on one of the building’s roofs, and the shadow of a waiting scout vanished at the sight of us. So it was that we were greeted, and this was for the best, for had not Chester already been there to speak for us I thought we would have been met with ambush rather than welcome.
As I’d said to Kelu, it was not a good plan, merely the best of many bad alternatives.
But Chester was awaiting us, with a silent Ikaros and angry Diantha, and all their genets who wanted only to see Amhric. Ivy was there as well, and my Black Pearls… and several strangers, who were later introduced as Jonthil, the new head of Ekadet’s sovereign human populace, and a man I recognized instantly: “Davor?”
The former steward of Suleris hesitated. “Is it you, then? Your friends said so, but.…”
“You shipped me off to serve the Fount before Thameis took too great a liking to me,” I said. “It is me, and I remember you.” I bowed, and startled he returned it.
“You really were an elf all this time. And yet—”
“And yet,” I agreed, quieter. “But you did save me, sir, and through your intervention I found my brother and freed him. For that you have my gratitude.”
“His gratitude is pretty useful,” Kelu added.
Davor glanced at her, then chuckled. “The thanks of an elven prince? Who knows a little of what it is to be human among them?” He considered me, then nodded. “Perhaps I may nourish hopes now that I did not before.”
This interaction was not lost on Ikaros, I saw.
The last cluster of three enfolded me before I had time to look at them, but I knew them by scent somehow, and by the reflection of sun off dark curls. Galen and Basilia, Kemses’s beloved human brethren, the latter embracing me in greeting and the former with a hand on my arm. Past their effusive gladness I espied a stranger: not human, but elven, a maid with skin the warm yellow of a topaz, but without the febrile glitter of the enchantment to render it unbearable. But I had wondered if the unlikely hues that graced some elven heads were a result of immortality’s paintbrush, and did no longer, for her hair was braided into a crown as green as new leaves, streaked through with vein-gold yellows. There was something in her face that reminded me of Kemses: perhaps the kindness in her eyes, or their color? So when she offered her hand and curtseyed after I’d captured it, her introduction did not surprise me. “My lord prince. I am Iset e Sadar, Lord Kemses’s niece. I have come with Galen and Basilia to speak for Erevar.”
“We are glad to have you at the table,” I said. “I make known to you the king, Amhric.”
Her curtsey this time was deeper, and Galen and Basilia repeated it.
“Well,” I said to Ikaros. “I see you’ve met my deputies, and I have kindly arranged for the powers that be—so far—to sit at the table. Shall we do so?”
“After we’ve had something to eat and a chance to wash off,” Kelu added.
“Your hospitality as hosts of our conference would be welcome,” I agreed.
Ikaros eyed me, and I could see in him the warring impulses: resentment at my high-handedness, amusement at the absurdity of the situation, resignation that it was going to happen, will he, nill he. At last he chuckled. “All right, Prince Locke. You’ve arranged it all to a fare-thee-well, so who am I to gainsay you. Do, come into Nudain. Make yourselves comfortable. We’ll meet after lunch.”
I nodded. “Before I may sit to eat and refresh myself, however, I would like to see Tchanu.”
His mouth twisted, but he restrained himself from uttering whatever it was that wanted egress. Behind him, Diantha wasn’t much happier. But at last, he said, “I’ll have someone lead you to her directly.”
On the way to the cells, Kelu muttered to me in Lit, “Who is he to gainsay you.”
“Who indeed.”
27
The parley would probably have proceeded with far more alacrity had I not insisted that Tchanu be allowed to sit at the table. Even my own argued with me about it, if with less acrimony and more concern. “Don’t you think she’ll set the proceedings back?” Ivy asked me. “They remember her as the tyrant of Nudain!”
“She was a lesser tyrant than most any other elf on the Archipelago,” I said, washing my face in the bowl on the stand. The water was scented with jasmine. “She did not torture anyone a-purpose.”
“Just by implication,” Kelu said.
“By thoughtlessness,” I said. “She had power and did not realize that her whims inspired fear in those who dared not disobey them. But she has fought alongside foreign humans now, and she knows, of a certainty, that there will no longer be a Serala like the one she ruled. More importantly, the elves think of me as a usurper, Amhric as an unwelcome figurehead, and Iset as a human sympathizer. Tchanu will appeal to those elves who still remember Serala’s culture with fondness. If we can convince her to convince them to change, then we have a good chance of saving them. Otherwise, they will fall back into old habits, and be sentenced by whatever judicial system I pray we have in place before someone decides vigilantism is preferable to rule of law.” I wiped my dripping brow and sighed. “Trust me, my own, I would much prefer we have only the mildest of personalities at the table. But if we are to have any hope of uniting what remains of the elven populace and binding them to whatever we decide here, then the old guard needs a voice. Tchanu must be there.”
This background I shared with Chester later, who agreed with me. “It’ll be harder in the beginning, but you’ll win points with everyone. Eventually.” He grinned at my expression and said, “If it was easy, Locke, everyone would play.”
I snorted. “And that is why I am sending you off to be my lead negotiator. Go forth, sir, and do my works.”
We had to wait in the hall for him to finish laughing before we could enter the room.
Chester was right: Tchanu had not expected me to remember her, much less to bring her to the negotiations as a principal party. Throughout the first session, which consisted mostly of introductions, she kept glancing my way as if waiting for me to pull her up short. When I did not, she cautiously joined the discussion, and showed admirable restraint in not being too forward with her desires or opinions. The humans explained their needs, which were just, and the
ir demands, which were rather less so. The genets spoke little, save to request more calm. Iset and I advocated for the elves, and I thought her hurt expressions far more devastating than any logic I advanced on our behalf, no matter how pragmatic. Other than Galen and Basilia, the humans at the table were not accustomed to elves who grew teary-eyed when hearing described the torments endured by humanity, nor did they expect any elf to agree that they deserved restitution for these horrors. Iset, I thought, would save us, if only by keeping everyone else so off balance they forgot to cling to their grudges.
After we adjourned, I chivvied my own from my room and prepared it for my guest. I did not have to wait long, for Tchanu requested entrance before I’d had time to pour the sweet citrus waters and set out the pillows. She stopped at the threshold, waiting for the guards who’d accompanied her to evanesce. Once the door closed, she faced me, so like Amoret in her pride… and so unlike her in her uncertainty.
“Tchanu,” I said. “Sit, please.” I handed her a glass after she’d settled on one of the pillows and took the one opposite her. “You are surprised to be succored, I am guessing.”
A hesitation. Then she said, “I expected you to abandon me, my prince.”
“Because it’s what you would have done?”
This pause was longer. “Because it would have been expedient,” she said at last. “To sacrifice me to the humans to save the rest of your party, and the king.”
“A poor prince I would be if I was willing to do that casually, and to someone who had lately proven herself to me.”
“Have I?” She set the glass down, her hand shaking, and then smoothed her palm on her knee. “I fought at your side, Morgan Locke. But I had to.”
“Once the dead came, yes,” I said. “But prior to that, you defied Suleris to stand with me.”
“Suleris was my rival. I was glad to see someone cut them down.”
On Wings of Bone and Glass Page 28