“Of course,” Jasnah replied. “He is my brother.”
The scribe didn’t move. The implication was obvious—she wanted proof, in the form of written documentation. Unfortunately, Elhokar was being stubborn—he claimed that now they were back in Ral Eram, it was time he began following tradition by using his wife as scribe instead of his sister. Jasnah may or may not have been able to get Nanavah to give her permission to see the records. Regardless, bowing to the woman’s authority was not a precedent she wanted to make.
“Come now,” Jasnah said smoothly. “Everyone knows the trust my brother bears me. Before the war, I ran all of his affairs.”
“With respect, my lady,” the scribe replied, “that was before he was married. Lady Nanavah is now the First Scribe.”
“I am the one he trusted to take with him into Prallah,” Jasnah pointed out.
“That was the king’s prerogative to decide,” the scribe replied. “However, I cannot release these records without proof of his consent.”
This time, Jasnah frowned openly, allowing the full brunt of her displeasure to shine on the woman. Analesh looked unfazed.
“Very well,” Jasnah said. “Kemnar, kindly go and fetch my brother.”
This finally got a reaction—if only a slight one. Even if Elhokar hadn’t been away at war the last few years, Analesh would have had little personal experience with the king. Her job was to keep the records—Nanavah would be the one who actually interpreted them for Elhokar.
“My lady,” Kemnar objected—just as he had been instructed. “The king is busy in conference with his generals . . . he won’t take kindly to interruption.”
“I see little other alternative,” Jasnah said.
“Very well, my lady,” Kemnar said, bowing then leaving.
Analesh’s eyes flickered toward the door as it closed. Jasnah let the silence hang for a moment before speaking. “Lady Analesh, might I borrow your pen and some paper for a moment?”
Analesh paused, then waved her aide forward. The younger woman deposited a brushpen and some paper on the writing board beside Jasnah’s chair. Jasnah began writing with a nonchalant air, paying no attention to the woman waiting before her. However, out of the corner of her eye she could see Analesh inching forward, straining to catch a glimpse of what Jasnah was scribing.
Analesh breathed in sharply as she saw what the paper contained—a formal order for Analesh to be discharged from her position. All Jasnah would have to do was read it out loud in front of Elhokar and get his agreement before three trustworthy witnesses.
Lady Analesh stood quietly, watching Jasnah’s brushstrokes with increasing nervousness. That’s right, Jasnah thought as she wrote. Think carefully. You’re relatively new to this position—you might know Nanavah well, but you barely know the king. He’s been gone too long—he’s an enigma to you. You’ve heard stories of how important I used to be, and how powerful Elhokar’s temper can become. You remember what I did the other week, with the madman.
Nanavah might have appointed you while I was gone, but can she protect you now that I’ve returned?
“My lady,” Analesh said. “I hardly think we need bother the king.”
Jasnah nodded toward Nelshenden, who immediately left in search of Kemnar. Of course, Kemnar would never have bothered Elhokar—but Analesh needn’t know that.
The aide stepped forward at Analesh’s order, depositing her tomes on Jasnah’s writing board. “A wise decision,” Jasnah said, picking up the order of discharge and folding it carefully, then setting it aside. “I will remember that you are a woman who can be trusted for her . . . prudence.”
Analesh bowed her head deferentially as Jasnah reached over to open the first of the books. Jasnah paused, looking up at the treasurer. “You may wait outside until I am finished.”
Analesh opened her mouth, as if to object—then her eyes fell on the order of discharge. Not destroyed, just tucked away. Finally, she bowed her head slightly and retreated from the room, her aide following.
The books contained the records of acquisitions and expenditures during the last three years. Jasnah could decipher them easily—she had been in charge of finances during the first few years of Elhokar’s reign, before the escalation of the Prallan war.
Jasnah scanned the lists. For a time, Balenmar had been the only one who requisitioned funds—as he had been authorized to do before Elhokar left for the extended campaign. Balenmar’s withdrawals were all carefully documented, explaining exactly what the payment was used for. He was efficient in his expenditures—as could be expected from the aged stormkeeper.
After a short time, however, Nanavah’s name began to replace Balenmar’s. Jasnah frowned, studying the woman’s entries. She was only a few minutes into her analysis when Nelshenden and Kemnar returned.
When they entered, Nelshenden nodded to the other six guards, waving for them to leave the room. As the door closed, he frowned in Jasnah’s direction. “I don’t like this deception, my lady.”
“You didn’t have to lie, Nelshenden,” Jasnah said, not looking up from the ledger. “You just went looking for Kemnar. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
She glanced up when he didn’t reply. His eyes were still troubled.
“You think like a man, Nelshenden,” Jasnah said, looking back at the ledger. “This is woman’s business—trust me, it’s perfectly accepted. Some day your wife will do it too.”
Kemnar obviously didn’t have any trouble with his part in the deception. He walked forward, regarding the ledger with curiosity. He would be able to read the numbers—they were based on the twenty-five palen glyphs, which everyone could read. He might even recognize some of the glyphs in the requisition descriptions. The intricacies of the palh language, however—with its confusing syntax, its non-verbal markers, and its mixture of the ancient tongue with the Aleth language—would be completely beyond him.
“You can make sense of this?” he asked.
“Of course,” Jasnah said, scanning down a column of entries. Nanavah had started carefully, taking over Balenmar’s duties one at a time, making payments to the city guard, royal scribes, and street maintainers. Nothing irregular—at first, she had followed Balenmar’s schedules with exactness. It was not surprising that she had been able to make the switch—by legal right and tradition, the king’s wife was the First Scribe, and had charge of all bureaucratic affairs.
“It seems reading would be a useful skill to have,” Kemnar said musingly.
“Kemnar!” Nelshenden snapped. “Scribing is a Feminine Art! Would you have women picking up Shardblades and dueling?”
“Of course not,” Kemnar said, still regarding the page with interest. “What does it say, my lady?”
“It says that our queen is a very clever woman,” Jasnah said. “It looks like she had Balenmar teach her what to do. Then, about six months ago, she took over the royal finances completely. That’s when the oddities begin to appear.”
“Oddities?” Kemnar asked.
“Moneys withdrawn without explanation,” Jasnah explained. “Never very much. Probably bribe money, used to expand her influence in the court. A lot of the projects she commissioned also appear to favor one noble house or another.”
“My lady!” Nelshenden said. “We must inform the king of this.”
Jasnah snorted. “Nothing she did is illegal, Nelshenden. She is First Scribe—she may disperse the funds as she sees fit. Besides, I did the same thing when I was in charge.”
Nelshenden paled visibly.
“I may have to shatter a few more pedestals today, Nelshenden,” Jasnah said. “If you wish, you may wait outside.”
“No, my lady,” he replied. “I will be fine.”
Jasnah nodded, turning back to the ledger, picking up her brushpen and taking notes on which cities had received aid, which projects had been advanced, and which requests for funds had been denied. The information was vital. Over the last week, Jasnah had begun reestablishing connections with the co
urt’s women, making allegiances where she could, taking charge of those women—such as Analesh—that she thought she could influence.
However, the women receiving the most aid from Nanavah would be the most difficult to persuade—Jasnah’s time would be far more effective if she spent it on women who had been denied or ignored. Of those, there were plenty. One could not divert funds to the maintenance of certain roads, the building of certain ports, or the establishment of certain political treaties without offending ones who might have otherwise received favor. These would have to become Jasnah’s core of support.
“What of your search, Kemnar?” she said as she began copying down the names of those women who had received the most support from the queen.
“Lord Balenmar was right about one thing,” Kemnar replied. “Jezenrosh’s ‘sickness’ certainly wasn’t debilitating enough to stop him from forming a strong political union against the king.”
“Only political?” Jasnah asked.
“It’s unclear,” Kemnar said. “This isn’t exactly my area of expertise. My contacts can tell you exactly how to find an underground Awakener, but they don’t pay much attention to high-level allegiances. From what I can tell, Jezenrosh is planning dissent, not coups.”
Jasnah frowned, shuffling through the ledger and locating lists of women who had made petitions in court, and been refused. Balenmar had spoken to her several times since the feast, but he still had nothing to offer by way of evidence beyond his own suspicions. However, these were grave—rumors did indeed indicate that Jezenrosh was heavily displeased with the king, and several ladies at court had heard that the faceless Shardbearer had not come upon Elhokar by happenstance.
She needed control, and she needed it quickly. There was real danger in Alethkar; she could sense it. However, she wouldn’t be able to gather the information her brother needed until her power in Alethkar was re-established. She had to deal with Nanavah quickly.
As Jasnah moved through the ledger, something odd caught her eye. “Emeralds again,” she mumbled.
“What?” Kemnar asked.
“Emeralds,” Jasnah repeated. “The ladies at the feast were right—Nanavah keeps buying emeralds. Over the last year, she’s steadily purchased them at higher and higher prices.”
“Perhaps she simply wants to increase the stockpile,” Kemnar said. “In case of famine.”
“That’s what the ledger claims,” Jasnah said. “But I don’t believe it. The palace already has an enormous stockpile.” Jasnah paused, studying the ledger. “She’s trying to drive the price up for some reason.”
But why? Jasnah scanned the records, trying to dig out secrets that just weren’t there. The ledgers explained the overt purpose of the requisition, but only in very simple terms. There were lines to show goods received in exchange for the money taken, and they showed that the emeralds had actually been purchased and delivered—even the First Scribe couldn’t have gotten away with putting that much money into her own pocket. In addition, someone else usually did the purchasing—Nanavah only gave the orders and arranged the deals. She had purchased from a number of different places, though one company did stand out. Channal, a merchant organization out of Palinar, a Fourth City in the middle of the kingdom.
The door to her room opened, and a white-robed form stepped in. “Lady Jasnah?” she asked.
Jasnah held up a hand. “Tell Analesh I am nearly finished,” she said.
“My lady?” the attendant asked, confused. “I was sent to bring you to the royal libraries.”
Jasnah paused, looking up from her ledger, realizing that this scribe wasn’t the same one who had accompanied Analesh.
“What?” Jasnah asked with a frown.
“The libraries, my lady,” the scribe explained. “There’s been . . . a disturbance.”
The madman looked quite different with a haircut, a shave, and clean clothing. In fact, much of his wild eccentricity was gone—Jasnah now saw a man of mundane, if muscular, appearance. He could have been an average citizen—a military man, or perhaps a smith of some sort. He had a strong jaw and a handsome profile without being overpoweringly attractive.
The monks had given him a shirt of woven shennah and a pair of loose trousers, along with a sturdy thick cloak to protect against highstorms. His light hair and rectangular face made it unlikely that he was an Aleth—if his accent was to believed, he was probably from somewhere to the west. The area where the Epoch Kingdom of Riemak had once stood was now a refuge for bandits, tyrants, and mercenaries.
Except for his great height, the man wouldn’t have earned a second look had she passed him on the street. Unfortunately, he was rather hard to ignore, sitting as he was in the middle of the royal library, a stack of books on the table in front of him. Female scribes and historians stood nervously at the edges of the room, peeking in at him from other chambers and half-hiding behind bookshelves. By coming here, the madman had broken one of the strongest traditions in modern society.
Men were not allowed in libraries.
“Why did you send for me?” Jasnah asked, turning toward the palace guards who stood just inside the library entrance. Even they were a bit unnerved by the taboo. Most of the scribes would be unmarried women—those who had never managed to find a husband, or those who had disagreed with the matches their mothers had made for them and asked for permission to become scribes instead. They now served as writers, historians, or royal glyphwriters, and the library was their sanctuary.
The guards regarded one another. “We went to the captain,” one of them explained in a hushed voice, “and he said you’d know what to do with the madman.”
“You did take responsibility for him, my lady,” Nelshenden reminded her.
Jasnah frowned, glancing at the sheepish, brown-robed monk who stood beside the guards. He was from Mercyhome—she recognized the glyph. “The monks of Mercyhome appear to have grown more lax in their duties since I left for the war.”
“Let me assure you, my lady,” the monk replied. “The monastery is anything but lax. Most of the monks are quite diligent—I just happen to be a particularly bad one.”
Jasnah snorted, turning back toward the room. It was dim, each table lit by a small reading lantern. The white-cloaked women at the edges of the room were like ghosts—frightened, yet fascinated, by this man who pretended to be able to read. Apparently, cleaning up his body had not helped his mind.
“Do you want us to drag him out?” the guard asked.
“Let me speak to him first,” Jasnah decided, walking into the library. Kemnar and Nelshenden followed closely, their eyes focused carefully on the madman. No taboo would keep them from protecting her.
Jasnah rounded the madman’s table, studying his face. He seemed intent on the book in front of him—the Ezorpan of Balen: Shardbearer of Vedenar. An interesting book, less famous for the man’s life it chronicled but far more so for the Justification—the commentary Balen’s wife had added at the bottom of each page.
The madman’s face seemed far more . . . stable than it had before. There was no fervor in his eyes, no imbalance to his movements. He flipped a page as he noticed her, then looked back at his book.
Cautious, she seated herself across from him, laying her long-sleeved left arm across her lap and her right arm on the tabletop.
“The Ten Epoch Kingdoms have fallen,” the madman said in his thick Riemak accent.
“Yes,” Jasnah replied. “About a thousand years ago.”
The madman shook his head. “A thousand years,” he whispered. “There have been long periods between Returns . . . but a thousand years? Even the first one was only eight hundred. Most have only been two or three centuries, four at the most.”
Jasnah wasn’t certain how to respond. The Epoch Kingdoms had been gone so long, they were practically myths. Names of what had once been kingdoms were now used as general references to geography.
The madman looked up at her, closing the book, his face pleasant. “You are Jasnah Kholin,
” he said. “The king’s sister—and you saved my life.”
“Yes,” Jasnah said carefully.
“You think I’m insane,” the madman noted. “I don’t blame you. That is, after all, why we came up with the Sign—so that we could dispel any doubts.”
“The Sign didn’t work,” Jasnah said.
The madman nodded. “So I noticed. I’m still trying to figure that out.” Despite his Riemak accent, or maybe because of it, he had a peaceful, quiet voice—very incongruous with the tempestuous way he had burst into the feast the week before.
The madman glanced down at the book. “I still can’t believe they’re gone. The book says the Oathpact was broken almost before the Khothen were defeated. The kings must have been waiting, saving strength to spring on each other. We should have guessed—I never trusted Vadren, and Ronad wasn’t very far behind. I never found out what happened, of course—I died early last time.”
“For a man who’s been gone for a thousand years,” Jasnah said tentatively, “your accent sounds remarkably like that of a man from Riemak.”
The madman raised an eyebrow. “Is that why everyone keeps saying I’m from there? I’d wondered.” He turned back from the book. “What I really want to know, however, is why all of these books are written by women? And why do they all claim to be biographies of their husbands, when half of them spend most of their time offering commentary on something completely different?”
Jasnah froze. “What did you say?” she asked.
The madman looked up, his eyes innocent. “Take this book, for instance. It claims to be a history of a man named Balen. There’s only a tiny bit about him at the top of each page, however. The rest is a rather interesting discussion on what happened at the dawn of the Tenth Epoch.”
Jasnah leaned forward, shooting a glance back at Kemnar and Nelshenden. The madman was speaking things that weren’t for masculine ears. “Who told you that?” she demanded in a hushed tone. “Who read to you from the Justification?”
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