“Save them? From what?” he said. “A crazed bird?”
“Hessier from the Bunda-Hith are on the move through Berm. These birds are mere scouts. When the rest arrive, every person in Yudyith will perish.”
The man sitting next to him, a colonel of the guard or some similar rank, said, “We’ve been looking for this cretin. He has been whoring and drinking since the start of the season, posing as a Roto.”
“Colonel, you offer distractions. I am Sikhek Vesteal, and I am 1,400 years old. I built the road from Cyaudi to Bessradi and I built this palace. Ten thousand slaves perished to see it done. Their bones were laid as the foundation of this palace. If you go beneath the cellar, you can walk upon them still.”
“Phh,” the arilas said, reaching for his wine and motioning for his redhead to sit on his lap. “A story often told. Take whatever you are selling and go before we add you to the pile. I am not buying anything today.”
“And the ghosts that swirl up from the pile? They are starting fires now, I would imagine. Is that a tale often told?”
It was a guess, but I am rarely wrong. Their faces confirmed it.
“There will be more,” I said. “More foul beasts. More ghosts. Death marches across Berm. Yudyith is next. Heed this. Your people will become the livestock of the Hessier.”
“A Hessier like yourself,” the colonel said. “If you are to be believed.”
“There are other powers at play now. I am no longer the creature that ruled Bessradi.”
The Arilas lost his patience and stood up out of his chair, almost knocking the redhead to the floor. “You speak of Adanas in my presence? I have read the letter from those fools in Enhedu. A heathen religion conjured by his whore admiral.”
“That is not what I speak of. Adanas is a fiction, same as Bayen’s Church. Your hatred for both is wise.”
“Who do you serve, then, if not these?”
“Myself. I am free of these false religions. You would be wise to remain the same.”
“If I were to believe you, then what? You think we should turn tail and flee our homes? An exodus of the people of my province? To where?”
“Rally your pikemen. Call every person in Yudyith to your pennant and march north. Pillage Havish and Dahar. Taken all you find as slaves or slaughter them. Leave no person behind. March through Aneth and on to Khrim. Let Bessradi deal with the trouble broiling up from the Berm, and save your people.”
The Arilas frowned, and the colonel said, “Make him prove it. If he is Sikhek, he can rid us of our ghosts.”
“Yes,” the Arilas said. “Take him to the cellar first. I’ll wait here.”
I wanted to seize his heart with my magic and make it burn, but did not have magic enough to do it.
“Let us be quick,” I said instead to the colonel and had to suffer the chatter of the group that clamored along with us toward the cellars until we started down the gray stairs with only two lanterns to tell shadows from spiders. The long passage below was narrow and reeked of the mold.
A red light outlined the trapdoor in the middle of the last room. I was encouraged forward and wrestled with the trapdoor until it opened with a rusty growl. The room flooding with red light, and the pit below was as I remembered—a long bowl of rock filled with tortured bones. A few newer one had been added on top and the red light of the awakening ghosts came from further in.
“Go on,” the colonel said and drew his sword.
The crowd looked on with glee. They had made people jump down.
I’d sooner eat a bowl of powdered silver. I drank in the heavy touch of the Shadow and got ready to boil the colonel’s blood.
The ghosts did not care for our dispute, nor were they confined to the pit. Several rose through the floor, wearing shrouds of flame. They were naked, tortured, and scorched the ancient timbers as they came. They grew vivid—substantial.
This was not the petty apparitions I’d expected. I’d murdered these men a thousand years ago to quell a slave revolt in the fledgling province. There should have been nothing left of them after so long. Something had stirred them, and I imagined ghosts rising up from the hundred places like it where I had stacked the dead to collect my power. The bone pile below was thick with it still, the tang of the Shadow swirling like a soup.
“Sikhek,” one ghost hissed. “Murderer.”
“Get rid of them,” the colonel shouted as our audience backed away. He dropped his sword.
The ghosts slid closer. Their heat became that of an open forge and the collection of detritus in the old basement began to smolder.
“You must forgive them,” I said to them. “Wish them love and joy. You must forgive them and send their soul away to rest.”
They whimpered and groveled.
“Vermin,” I said and turned toward the ghosts. “You as well. Your misery is of no importance. Be gone.”
They hissed and swung in around me. My skin scorched, and I had to close my eyes.
The black touch of the Shadow swelled up into the room, but my useless body rejected it as fast as I took it in. But there was so much of it there. I embraced the old feeling and crafted a song that the human Geart would have loved.
men forgive
The crowd smiled and wept. They said loving things and wished the ghosts to rest. The ghost’s heat bled away, but not their hate. They gathered around me still, hissing my name. I tried to craft another song, but I’d spent the darkness there and my body would take in no more.
These ghosts could kill me. I was surrounded. Their mangled bodies and pitiful faces—I’d done this to them. It was my love they needed. It was for me to wish them to a quiet rest.
I saw my daughter’s face through the swirls of hot ash. She pled for her life. She told me she was cold while I sank my knife deeper in to her chest.
“I am sorry. I had not loved you, my darling. I used you and discarded you. Forgive me. I love you.”
The heat and red light left the room. The smell of scorched dust and mold stung my throat and eyes. I was on my knees with my wet face held in my hands. The colonel stood over me.
“Well done, Minister,” he said and kicked me in the chest. I tumbled back through the trap door and landed upon the bed of bones. I scrambled up to see him slam the trapdoor closed.
I sat down and stared across the darkness while their laughter faded.
59
Goddess Emilia Grano
Silver Coins
Six priests paced across the plaza toward the open doors of the grand foyer of the archives, eying our men upon the plaza’s walls. The senior archivist was not amongst the group, but they each had four or five white stripes upon their red hats and the heels of their wooden shoes. One of them was not a priest at all, his pace a bit off with his connections with Corneth men. All of them hated me as passionately at Evand loved Liv.
I meant to make these men our friends, which would be tricky since at least one of them meant to kill me.
Uncle Phost was sitting at the long desk next to me, and Natan and his five best men were crouched behind it. Fifty more were within a stone’s throw of the front doors.
“Can I help you?” I asked as they stepped inside. “You all know Lord Phost, I trust?”
“Young miss,” the five-striped man said. “You’ve startled us. I’d expected you to be in one of the studies.”
“Where is the senior archivist?” I asked. “I have not seen him for days.”
I knew right where he was—hiding at an estate a half-day’s ride south of the city. Others who feared that I would set fire to Alsonelm had gone, too, including the senior Corneth men that wanted me dead.
“He sends his apologies,” he replied while his soul focused on me with such intensity all of his other connection shrank to the point of disappearance. “His wishes he could have come to assist you but is indisposed. You have finished your work and are ready to depart, I trust?”
“Not yet,” I said and close my eyes for a moment to study their angry so
uls. “Are you here to help me?”
“Help you?” the fake priest said. “You jumped-up urchin. Enough of this. Do it now.”
The others began to sing. Their souls reached down into the vastness, and their hands and mouths began to blaze purple.
I told myself no one loved me, and the priests fell to the floor, clutching at their skin. All those with me cried out, too.
Too much, damn it.
I imagined kissing Pia along the banks of the Bessradi, and the heat subsided.
I jumped off my chair and moved around toward the priests. Natan and his men hurried to follow me, despite the blisters on their arms and faces. The Grano boys couldn’t manage it. Evand’s voice carried down the hall.
“Go tell him I am fine,” I said to a freeman, while Natan and the rest kicked the priests onto their backs and leveled their spears at them. One of them struggled up and got stabbed upon the shoulder for his trouble.
Still their soul remained focused only on me.
“What would it take to change your minds?” I asked them.
They spat and cursed at me.
Natan said, “My Goddess, you should withdraw.”
I knelt down and touched the Corneth man’s cheek. No change.
I turned to the priests, trying to judge which of them was the best singer. The active connection they’d made with the spirits when they sang had been a surprise but perhaps should not have been. The black threads were fading fast, and I knelt next to the man whose connection lasted the longest.
“Do you know the healing song?”
He eyes were full of terror and he clutched at the spears pinned him to the carpeting.
“If one of you will sing for me now, I will let you leave.”
“Godless bitch,” he said. “We will kill you yet.”
“Will none of you sing for me? I offer a taste of real power. Who wants it?”
“I will,” said one, and it made sense that his connection had been the weakest. The rest yelled at him while I crossed and sat down next to him. Already the condition of his soul was changing. His hatred was becoming something else, and as the other priests looked on, their souls began to change, too. Two of them severed all connection with the weaker priest, while the rest became a jumble as they started to form a connection with me.
I took off the man’s red hat, tossed it aside, and stroked his forehead.
“Sing for the city,” I said. “Only a whisper though or you will burn.”
He began it, and I focused on the Corneth killer while the blast of white cooked the city through and through. The man’s soul trembled once but did not change.
The priest exhausted himself and his soul bent around, lost and confused. The other priests were similarly affected. Each of their relationships, near and far, ebbed and surged as though they had no idea where their love and loyalty lay. I bid the priests to stand.
“Discard your hats and robes and you are welcome to stay here with me,” I said. “Or you may leave with my blessing.”
The man who’d sung tore away his robes. The rest of the priests hesitated, and their connections to others in the city surged—their families who would be lost if they stayed. The killer glared at me from the floor while a freeman escorted our converted priest further into the archives.
“Go, sirs, if you must,” I said to the rest. “You remain welcome here. Gather your loved ones and return whenever you choose.”
“Thank you, young miss,” the five-stripped man said before they started across the plaza. I waved to them and turned to the killer. Natan’s spear remained pressed hard into his ribs. Both men had words to say to me, yet kept still.
I sat down beside the man who wanted to kill me. His soul was as black and damaged as Natan’s.
“How many people have they made you kill?”
“You don’t know me,” he said.
“Your soul is tortured by the death you have witnessed.”
He eyed Natan. “Does she ever shut up?”
“Stand with me,” I said. “You don’t have to feel this way anymore.”
He twisted fast, and I hadn’t even thought to back away when Natan’s spear stabbed deep through his chest. I crawled back while the man spit blood at me. Natan boot was on his wrist, a dagger in the man’s hand.
I expected Natan to exhaust his anger by stabbing the man again and again, or to yell at me for my foolishness. He helped me up instead, saying, “I was starting to like him. It is sad he would not hear you.”
Phost and others began to gather around us. “I am sorry for burning you.”
“I am alright,” he said, but his connection to me remained weak.
I wasn’t sure if I liked Uncle Phost yet. There were greedier men, but not many. His concern for me and Ellyon seemed real enough though. He hated Evand, but so did half the city. How Alsonelm felt about me was as fickle as the wind. I was not a welcome, yet they all wanted something from me. The burns and healing magic had only made their feelings more chaotic.
When I opened my eyes again, I found myself lying upon the sedan. The sun was low, the dead man had been removed, and the city was turning in.
“Are you okay?” Evand asked and stood up from another sedan along the wall.
“Yes. I drifted off. Thank you for watching over me while I wandered.”
“You do it more often now, but that wasn’t any longer than most times.”
“It bothers people.”
“Only those that don’t know you.”
I found the priests we’d let leave. Their feelings for me had not lasted.” “Their hatred of us is spreading. This city is too wounded and ugly. We need Soma’s touch, or something else as dramatic. None of the people here are as stable as those in Bessradi.”
Uncle Phost’s soul stuck out again for his strong attachments beyond our group, and I studied his spider web. He had a wife and children at an estate along the east wall, but his strongest connections were with others. I focused on the connections only, and his friends of friends led me to Corneth men as well as threads that reached toward Bessradi.
“What is he up to?” I asked and opened my eyes.
No one was there. It had gotten late somehow, and I was alone except for the men standing guard. The rest of the city was fast asleep.
I decided the soft carpeting beneath the sedan was a better spot and crawled down into the dark and quiet.
I woke some time after the dawn to the dancing colors of the stained glass upon the sheet of rug. I yawned once and snoozed on and off while I watched the city’s angry men send one group after another to the plaza’s closed gates. They spoke to Phost but came no further.
Evand was not happy, and I knew why. The city was souring, and as I studied the slow shift against us, I spotted a person moving though the markets that sent every soul into a terrible frenzy. Another person speaking against us, it seemed.
“This isn’t working like we hoped,” I said. “Squatting in the archives has only earned us their animus.”
“Anything happening in the city?”
I took another look at the man in the market and at Phost. His connections to Bessradi had grown. I examined them and found a group moving up the river toward the city.
“Avin and Captain Benjam are sailing here, now,” I said. “Phost knows they are coming.”
“Damn it,” he said. “Anything else?”
“Hold on,” I said and gave the man in the markets a harder look. He was odd. He had no direct connection in the city, but was connected as a friend of a friend to Evand, Avin, and many others in Alsonelm. The people that connected them were all far beyond my range to the northwest. I looked and looked. On forever the threads seemed to go until a blazing globe filled my vision. A Vesteal. Barok. The man in the market was one of his. I opened my eyes to tell Evand and found the foyer crowded.
I was lying on the sedan again. Evand stood beside me with Phost and his officers, facing Avin, Benjam, and the man I’d spent too long studying. Benjam h
ad a troop of Hemari and several small chests that pressed deep into the carpeting.
“Hold on a moment, Nace,” Evand said to Barok’s man. “You changed what?”
“The exchange rate. The rate you can trade gold for silver.”
“No one will accept a new exchange rate, Nace. You’re a madman.”
This made no sense to me. Evand’s soul was confident, though, so I stayed still and tried to catch up on what they were saying.
Nace said back, “Walk through any market and learn for yourself. Every person in the Kaaryon not born a Yentif has been wearing and collecting silver for a generation. Your father concentrated too much gold in Bessradi. The average man trusts silver. Gold is a stranger to him. We have already exchanged many thousands of coins at the new rate here in the city.”
“You are reducing the value of gold to a fraction of what it was.”
“Twenty-five percent of its former value, yes. We’re adjusting it down again at the end of the season after the shock wears off. It will end up at four to one by weight for gold to silver—sixteen percent of its former value.”
“This will cause chaos. You must put a stop to this,” Evand said and saw me awake. He let me be, and I was only too happy to pretend I was still sleeping.
“Only those who hold gold will resist it,” Nace said. “Rahan emptied his treasury of gold last season. So have the Northern Kingdoms. We lose nothing if the rate holds. Yarik and Alsonelm will be bankrupted. Rahan and Barok have had this in the works for a very long time.”
Avin said, “We are not here to discuss the issue, Evand. Plans are in motion. You are to return to Bessradi. You can hear all the details on the way to Bessradi. I ship is waiting for you at the visitor’s docks.”
Avin’s tone was hostile, and his soul was much darker than the last time we’d met. What had he been doing that stained him so badly? He had threads reaching west, perhaps to Alsonvale. I resisted closing my eyes and stayed in the room.
Evand ignored Avin and asked Nace, “You mean to say the north is doing the same?”
“Not doing. Done with ease.”
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