Taghesh raised his left hand, dismissive. "Your success, where Rajen is concerned, is not integral to our plans." He shrugged, extending his left arm and letting the under-developed right limb dangle like the mostly useless thing it was. "Perhaps your effectiveness was influenced by your greater desire to feed on her pain, hm?"
Disputing the point would serve no positive purpose. Ulthus focused on Taghesh's first statement.
"She is the only true magicker within an hatalaspan not committed to the endeavor, is she not?" At his master's bemused nod, Ulthus shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back, a kind of stationary pacing he quickly brought under control by pressing his palms against his thighs.
"Your directive was that I bring them all into the fold. All of them. Something has changed?"
Taghesh crossed to Ulthus and, laying his good left hand on the other's shoulder, gently steered him back to the door. "Walk with me to the glimpsing room."
As they left the office and moved down the hallway, Taghesh said, "You will get your chance with Rajen, though not in the way we assumed. The streams are bright. The braids are thick."
Desirous anticipation tightened Ulthus' gut. He found it hard to draw a full breath. He kept his silence until he could offer a measured response.
"Truly..?"
Taghesh glanced at his charge, gentle mockery in his eyes. "You do abhor being denied." He laughed. "Truly. As true as the strands may be, of course."
Ulthus swallowed and cleared his throat. "Of course."
They came to the glimpsing room. Taghesh strode into the darkened chamber as soon as Ulthus opened the door. Ulthus lingered just inside so that he could remove a glowglobe from its mount. He shook it a few times to inspire illumination, replaced it, and closed and latched the door.
The glimpsing room was empty save for a raised concave depression in its center, around which were a few cushions for sitting or kneeling. Taghesh lowered himself to his knees on the far side of the bowl, facing the center. Ulthus adopted a similar pose across from his master.
Taghesh said, "With me, Ulthus."
Ulthus closed his eyes and turned his attention to the colors that flowed across the blackness behind his forehead. As Taghesh had taught him many years before, he focused on the dark until the liquid color moved around an unmoving, abysmal center.
After a time, a faint thread of glimmering color writhed within that black core.
"With you, Taghesh."
Whatever Science Ulthus possessed was now wed to Taghesh's effort. All Ulthus need do was focus on the fluttering, gossamer representation of their link while his master read whatever the probability threads revealed.
After a time, Taghesh murmured, "Released."
Ulthus opened his eyes, blinked several times, and sighed. Working the Science with Taghesh always left him both refreshed and a little slow, as if he'd succumbed to an unplanned nap.
Taghesh seemed fully aware. He shifted from kneeling to seated. "Thank you for your Science, Ulthus."
The response was traditional. "Freely given." Ulthus seated himself as well.
Taghesh said, "The lines have shifted." He seemed miffed. "There are… voids. Frustrating blankness around which they twist, and… branch." His eyes narrowed and his mouth turned down. "I suspect the Plain One exerts influence. Or will."
Ulthus frowned. "We depend on White Eyes' thugs."
Taghesh nodded. "Of course I cannot directly sense it. The evidence is in the lack of evidence, as it always is with that one." Taghesh scratched his chest with his tiny right hand. "Opportunity is… diminished."
Taghesh squinted at the middle distance, frowned, and quickly stood up. Ulthus did the same.
His master said, "We cannot wait. Gather your lackeys. Extract the infant tomorrow night."
Rajen
Rajen voiced exhausted frustration with an exasperated sigh. There would be no sleep tonight.
She threw off her cover and abandoned her sleeping mat. It was chilly and absolutely dark in the cellar beneath her hut, but she'd always found mild physical discomfort to be an excellent point of focus, and she didn't need light to do what she'd avoided since her three visitors had left, many marks ago.
Nor did she need her seer's table, or props like a bag of sand.
Indeed, it was so perfectly dark, she need not even close her eyes.
Rajen sat down cross-legged on the middle of the floor. The loosely woven rug was rough against her thighs; another tethering, and so, welcome, irritation. She let her hands rest loosely in her lap, breathed easily, and extended herself.
The streams and threads burst into her awareness as if she were a stone dropped in a river. She swayed amidst the viscous currents of probability flowing around her and, increasingly, from her. She was both root and tide; path and potential.
Patterns emerged, fleeting but not unrecognizable, like fragments of dreams of which one could remember impressions and emotions while events moved too swiftly to grasp; smoke in a storm.
Ulthus.
Taghesh.
The infant, Ranith.
Even Talen.
Their threads whipped and writhed alongside her awareness, sometimes twisting around her in a directed tangle, sometimes branching away, looping back…
And there, in the middle of it all—as if the probability streams could ever have anything so certain as a central point—was cold.
An empty, unyielding presence.
An absence of presence.
The Plain One.
Her threads had never buffeted against his… its… deeply unsettling void.
The shock nearly threw her from the ritual. She drew her focus back to herself and worked hard to take the streams and threads as a whole, like watching pigments dropped in a poorly stirred pot.
Jarring though the impression of the Plain One was, there was something else, as well. Another… offense at the edge of her perception; just beyond.
Outside.
Rajen shuddered, gasping, and the chromatic, swirling web of incandescence blinked back to the simple, comforting darkness of her cellar.
She sat in the dark, shivering.
She could no longer deny it. Taghesh might have truly stumbled onto something.
Whatever that was, its influence was a looming pressure, like the change in the air before a storm.
Rajen stood up and moved without hesitation to where a glowglobe waited on the table next to her bed. She shook it to life.
Somehow, the pale light, and the shadows it cast, intensified her unease.
Very briefly, she considered that it might at last be time to leave the city.
Memory of the ritual, already fading, belayed that thought.
Whatever was about to happen, she was very likely already part of it.
She sat on the edge of her bed and deliberately, defiantly set her gaze on the deepest shadows in the cold little room.
Running away, she reminded herself, was not something she did.
Chapter Sixteen
Dennick
Dennick and Agane's perfect mid-morning view was marred by a thin wisp of smoke across a finger's breadth of sky, the last exhalation of castle fire embers.
They sat side by side on their favorite reed bench in the shade of the vine-crawled wall of their home. Agane's semi-wild garden spread tangled before them. All morning, Dennick had behaved as if unsettled thoughts were not tangled between them.
It had been a painful day for Agane in all ways. He'd had to carry her to the garden, and she found it difficult to breathe.
"How goes," she said at last, voice constricted, strained, and tinted with bitterness, "the hunt?"
Dennick invested his sigh with contentment, but he could not entirely veil his exasperation. He plodded on despite the flash of irritation on her face.
"The day," he said, "is more beautiful than this city deserves. Let us not speak of bleak things just yet."
Her reply was more polite than he deserved. "The night co
mes soon enough…" She had to pause to breathe. "…and you'll be about your business well before then." He saw stiffness in her face; the suppression of pain. "I expect," she finished.
Agane's hand nearest Dennick slid a finger farther away. Her gaze fixed on the overgrowth before them. Once, it had been the epitome of her tranquil creative expression.
"So," she took a deep and labored breath. "Let us be clear as this lovely sky of yours, and true as this unfettered garden of mine."
Shame dipped Dennick's head. He was loath to bicker with her, especially now, and had only inspired her to spend precious energy on a response appropriate to his selfish reticence.
His next sigh was sincere.
"The trail is clearing," he said. "Fareye and Bentwing are watching someone. I have a runner, and eyes, ready where the messageflites cannot follow."
Agane still opted not to look at him. "Hm."
She pursed her lips; blinked. More pain.
"Something like this… the flites are loyal, of course…" A quick breath, and another. "Can you trust your Shadow District proxies?"
Dennick shrugged. He could only hope so. "They know no more than whom to watch, and what activity to report, should it occur."
Agane's grin was sharp. "Your patron," she invested their code-word for Vuldt with syrupy acid, "has tokens enough to surely counter any…" A breath. "…inquisitive ambition." A breath to fuel sarcasm. "I am sure all will be well."
Dennick frowned. "I cannot be everywhere, Agane. I have to sleep." He brushed her hand with his fingertips. "And I wanted some time with you."
Her face softened to sadness for a blink before tidal pain restored her stony distance.
"Agane," he said, "I will find a way through this. You… I must know you believe that."
She turned her head away from him, but it clearly hurt too much. It seemed relative comfort denied her desire to hide from him. "From the day you shared all your selves with me," she said, "I knew we would come to this place."
Her arms trembled, answering to her illness, and she scowled. "We could not know…" She glanced at her jumping limbs. "…this would come along with us."
She licked her lips and seemed to will her arms to be still. Dennick waited with her until they did so.
She continued.
"Your devotion, however ardent…"
Pain, a breath.
"…denies me the volition…
Pain. A breath.
"…to honor my integrity."
Dennick could tell she would soon have to rest. One way or another, their garden visit was almost over. He abhorred the fraction of his nature that was relieved. He knew well enough that circumstance would not always grant him the gift of a convenient stalemate.
"I cannot lose you," was all he could say.
She strained to turn her head so she could face him at last. Pain glittered in her eyes.
"Fail, and I die, as I will regardless, before long."
She trembled through a ripple of pain. "And if you succeed…" Her jaw moved as she gritted her teeth. "Even if you drag me across the realm to this rumored… healer… and I…" Pain. "…I am… restored…"
"Agane…"
She shook her head, wincing.
"I will use… my blood-earned… vigor… to leave you, Dennick. Forever."
She slumped back on the bench, chest heaving. Her welling eyes did not leave his face.
"I have said it." She was nearly spent. "I mean it."
Frustration shook Dennick even as his words burst from his lips.
"What would you have me do? I am so tired, Agane! My path is… is a ditch! No! A canyon! All my life!"
She said nothing. Tears down her cheeks diluted his rage to despair.
He stood, trembling, and shoved hopelessness into a tight cage of resolve. He held out his arms and breathed out, "I will help you inside."
She nodded.
Gently, with care born from unwanted practice, he drew her up in the cradle of his arms and carried her to their bed, where he lay her on her side.
He settled behind her and wrapped his arm around her chest.
Though he knew she could not bear the restraining contact for long, she pushed against him.
They stayed there, that way, for a time, and they wept.
Fagahg
Dennick's footfalls, heavy with the burden in his arms, sent dust through the floorboards of the porch, where Fagahg, who lay beneath, exhaled smoothly to avoid a potentially catastrophic sneeze.
It was time to move.
Even as Dennick and Agane retreated within, Fagahg excreted himself from the tight, musty space between the porch and the moist, root-woven earth. He kept to his belly and the garden's tangled, shaded perimeter until he was sheltered by the cool, concealing shade between the house and the garden wall.
With the unhurried certainty of one protected by the armor of their conviction, Fagahg rose to his feet, climbed the thorny, twig-snagged wall, and dropped to the alley on the other side. If any had heard his escape, they would have discovered no difference from the ongoing twitter and rustle of tiny flites and crawlers that made the garden their home.
Fagahg noted the burn of scratches on his hands and face, shunted the sensation into the void he cultivated as his persistent practice, and strode onto the avenue and into the flow of citizens.
Before long, he ducked from the pale glare of Azaav's Eye into the dim sanctuary that was his small, unadorned house. His patron waited within.
Vuldt did not rise from the austere, and only, chair in the parlor. "You have mud on your clothes."
The observation was too obvious for relevance, and so was ignored. "I have four things to tell you."
Vuldt inclined his head and extended a hand.
Fagahg said, "Dennick has determined the infant is almost certainly hidden at the Steadfast Capful, an inn in the Shadow District. A sellsong called Talen has discovered this. The sellsong brought a seer, Rajen, into his confidence, though neither have taken any action. Dennick is conflicted."
"You are reliably concise and ever effective, Fagahg." Vuldt steepled his hands beneath his chin. "It seems we near a juncture."
Fagahg, too long out of doors, longed for solitude and the stillness of his shed and Nzaav's shadow. It made him impatient. "Would you have me act?"
Vuldt's expression of mild surprise at this initiative brought a flush of shame to Fagahg. Such an exhibition of vitality was unbecoming; a diminishment of entropy.
The Mouth of the Plainslord said, "Recall that you are not to act unless Dennick fails, however that failure might manifest. Until then… no. I would not have you act."
Fagahg nodded.
Vuldt sighed. "Concise and reliable, indeed, but come, Fagahg. You are uncommonly agitated today, though I doubt anyone else would recognize it as such. What is it?"
"The infant." Yes. The rare, impossibly valuable gift he so wanted to personally acquire for Nzaav. "What if the sellsong acts before Dennick? Or the seer?"
"So many words. Don't stop now."
"We know Ranith's location. Allow me to go there; kill him myself. We wait, we could lose the chance."
Vuldt leaned forward in his seat, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. "You long for it."
Again, the observation did not merit comment.
Vuldt shook his head. "Your god rewards entropy and death, and you wish to serve him." He sat back. "My cause is the disruption and hobbling of Aenik, from within. Your knives are all darkness and silence; mine are wrapped in sweet words and brandished at a distance… a nick here, a jab there." He unclasped his hands and spread them wide. "My goals are generational, Fagahg. Larger.
"I must discover the architect of this adventure, the better to turn events in favor of the Alliance. Draw on that practiced, abundant patience of yours and let the threads play out just a few stride more."
Fagahg nodded once again.
Vuldt stood and drew his cloak about his chest. "Aenik is in chaos. Alwarden Deanae stru
ggles to survive her burns. Her doting husband is ineffectual in grief." He stepped past his assassin. "You desire entropy and death in the realm, Fagahg?" His grin was all feral delight. "Wait, and see. Wait and see."
Chapter Seventeen
Kug
As he often did on a bustling night at the Steadfast Capful, Kug stood a few steps up on the stairs on the perimeter of the common room. From there, he could get a good sense of the flow of activity and quickly see where he might need to step in to assist Ressa or, more likely, Prak.
Watching the room usually brought Kug a sense of satisfaction and peace, inasmuch as he had the capacity for either of those things.
He'd never aspired to settle down and run a tavern. During his far-gone life of wandering adventure in the Khal caravan town, he'd not considered settling down at all. Then, the planks of a wagon were the only stability he knew, or cared to know.
The Capful had not always been his. Still, whatever the place meant to the dozens of Shadow District folk trading their tokens for his hospitality tonight, it was thanks to Kug. No one else had run the place as long as he. Not even his sister.
Kug missed his sister.
Lama used to remind him of her mother, which had been a welcome, if complicated, comfort. These last few years had worn away all affinity under hardship's abrasive and seemingly constant cruel hand, until Lama bore little resemblance to Latha, or even to the little kit she had been.
Kug's gut groaned with anxiety. Who was the Lama hiding upstairs? Was her life truly so desperate that she—an orphan in fact, no matter how long Kug had tried to stand on his sister's sundered path—could do what she had done?
A quiet thought whispered from the depths of his unease, and not for the first time.
My obligation ended long ago. I could fix this. Save us.
Save all but Lama, that is. And knowing the guard, especially that dim sycophant Dunak, Kug would end up on a spike right next to her.
And Ressa. And Prak.
Were they all worth more than the son of the Alwardendyn?
Probably not to the realm.
But this, here, Kug thought as he brought his focus back to the busy floor, this is my realm. These are my people.
Light of the Outsider Page 12