The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (35 page)

Only perception did.

That first evening he had found his way here, he had been awestruck.  It had been years since he had been near a woman, so just seeing them in the lamplight, their white dresses aglow, was like watching fair spirits at play—if spirits knew how to do their hair fancily and paint their faces, and occasionally smacked people.  But with no money, he could only gawk and had eventually been driven off by the matrons, who had no patience for men who were not customers.

The second time had been in daylight, and he had arrived with that first image glimmering in his head only to find a fight threatening.  In the street, a handful of drunk soldiers had been shouting at each other, some with swords drawn, while a matron with a truncheon was being held back by three slave women, another slave—barely more than a girl—sobbing on the ground with a bloody nose and split lip.  All the other slave women had retreated into the barracks except for the few held in place by their customers.  After a standoff and some curt discussion, the soldiers had finally stood down.

Then one of them had grabbed the bleeding girl, hauled her up and flicked coins contemptuously at the truncheon-clutching matron before leading the girl into a barrack.

Weshker had not stuck around.

He hoped that someone had reported it to the General, but doubted it.  No officers came here; they could get women sent straight to their offices.  The military police were stationed close but spent most of their time policing the slave men, and though the matrons could threaten, most were slaves too.  If they hurt a freesoldier, they could be executed.

Still, he could not help thinking about this place.  He glanced sidelong to Sanava as they approached the barracks, wondering why she was here.  Imagining her serving at a table with a false smile always ended with some foolish soldier getting his throat cut.  No Imperial in his right mind would sleep with a Corvishwoman, and even most Corvishmen knew better.

That was the joke, anyway.

But when they approached the closest barrack, the matron on duty barely lifted a brow, only held her hand out to Weshker pointedly.

Weshker winced.  He still had not been paid, and had yet to ask Sanava about any of the spirit things, too focused on figuring out how to hit on her without getting mangled.  The matron stared down at him flatly, and he quailed.  As he started to back away, though, Sanava’s grip tightened on him, and he looked at her in surprise.

“
We go to talk,” she said, her dark eyes never moving from the matron.  “No pay.”

“
You’re not even on shift and you want to use a room?” said the matron, frowning.  Sanava stared back with utter indifference, and after a moment the larger woman sighed and stepped aside, waving them in with a gruff, “Half a mark.”

Wordlessly, Sanava hauled Weshker inside.

As a work-slave, Weshker had built his share of these barracks, and they were really no more than a rectangle with small rooms at either end—for storage or offices or kitchens, whatever was needed.  The rest of the space usually held bunk-beds.

In here, though, pastel lamplight and flowing curtains made the place ethereal and strange and relatively private, a realm of soft comforts that had no place for swords.  At least, metal swords.  The curtains cut the main space into a narrow corridor between flowing, shivering walls, and just the look of it made Weshker tense in anticipation.  By the low sounds from further in, this place was already busy.

Sanava opened a door directly to the right of the entry and shoved Weshker through, away from the writhe of the curtains and into a tiny storage room that reeked of tea and perfume.  Grabbing the lantern that hung outside the door, she closed them in together.

The light glinted evilly off her eyes.  Weshker backed into a corner between a stack of crates and a low shelf and said, “Please dun kill me.  I en’t done nothin’ to yeh.”

“
Au kurthina, therkhael
,” she said coolly, gliding closer.  It took him a moment to switch his brain over to his native tongue and understand it as ‘
I won’t kill you, for now
.’

He grinned sheepishly and held his hands up, just so she would have no excuse for suddenly defending herself through repeated stabbings.  His memory of his people’s language was rusty.  Licking dry lips, he managed, “
Reksirina vylire
.” 
I want to learn.

“
About what
?” she said, keeping to Corvish.

“
Spirits.  Crow spirits
.”

She eyed him for a moment, then threw her head back in a short, barking laugh.  “
I can’t speak with spirits
,” she said.  “
You think I can teach you magic I can’t do
?”

“
Au
,” he said, the word for ‘no’.  His shoulders sank.  Even though she thought him a traitor, she was the first of his people to not spit on him for not dying valiantly on the swords of his oppressors, the first Corvishwoman to last more than a month as a slave without slitting her own throat in defiance.  Already he felt shamefully attached to her—and unworthy.  Corvishfolk in captivity were fury made flesh, but he was a failed man, Imperialized into an Army pet.

Sanava punched him in the shoulder with a hard little fist, and he flinched back, realizing his mind had wandered.  “
Nin ha
,” he said apologetically. 
I yield.

She stared up at him, dark eyes flinty.  Though he was a handspan taller, what she lacked in height she made up for in disdain, and he swore he felt himself shriveling.  “
You need to remember you are Korvii
,” she said curtly.  “
What is your true name
?”

Weshker opened his mouth, then closed it.  For eleven years—half his life—he had responded to his Imperialized name because there had been no other choice.  Even Sanava had not asked before this.  It felt strange to think of his birth-name now.

“Vesha,” he said finally.  “Vesha Geiri en-Nent.”

She smiled dryly and set the lantern atop a crate, then stepped toward him.  It took all his nerve to stand there as she touched his cheek and parted his lips with her thumb. 
“Sharp Tooth
?” she purred as she moved even closer.  “
You lie.  Your teeth aren’t sharp
.”

He bit her thumb at the insult and suddenly she was pressed against him, mouth at his jaw, one hand fisted in his hair, and his hands were on her backside, helping her hook a leg around him through the side-slit in her dress.  There was no fear now, only an overwhelming fire, and all he could think of as her nails clenched on the back of his neck was how inconvenient trousers were when his hands wanted to be properly occupied.

She was not helping, her tongue and teeth working along his neck while her hips pressed so tight against his that he could hardly slide a hand between.  When he tried to separate she shoved him bodily into the shelves then re-adhered like glue despite the tea canisters falling around them.  Frustrated, he grabbed her by the hair but she just hooked an arm around his neck and pulled him the same way he was pulling her.

Then her other hand found his crotch and for an instant he thought she would just rip the front from his trousers.  Some sanity intervened though, and the next thing he knew, they were on the floor amid spilled tea and perfume, her legs locked around his waist, his hands clamped on her hips where the straps of her daggers cinched, his mind molten with joy—

And the door swung open, the matron staring at them balefully.

Even had he wanted to stop, he could not; Sanava’s grip was a vise and it had been so long that there was no stepping back.  Sanava hooked arms around his neck, pulled his head down, and then there were stars bursting in the blackness, a universe of light.

Scant moments later, he staggered out of the barrack, skin humming and ears ringing from the shrieking fight between Sanava and the matron.  Soldiers and slave women watched but he barely saw them, barely managed the coordination to walk and buckle his belt.  Only when she shouted his name again did he turn and see her, tea leaves in her wild hair and fire in her eyes, as the matron dragged her back into the barrack.

“
Kav si veitan
!”

I will find you later.

Threat or promise, the words echoed in his head as he stumbled toward the Blaze Company area, wondering dazedly where all his uniform buttons had gone.

Warder Geraad Iskaen was painstakingly turning a page when the summons came.

He looked toward the door, frowning.  On the other side of it, the faint scintillating tone of a messenger-elemental came again, and he reluctantly set the book aside and stood from the window seat.  On the thick rug before him, the young goblin paused in his cheerful destruction of yet another mechanical toy.

It had been fifteen days since Geraad’s abrupt return to the Citadel at Valent, bruised and battered and with the goblin Rian clinging to him.  His hands were still twisted into painful claws from the torture the Gold mages in Thynbell had meted out, and he did not know that he would retain the rank of Warder beyond the next examination.  After all, he could not channel wards with broken fingers.

For now, he had been given a Master’s suite rather than the journeyman quarters he had shared with his fellows, not because the Silent Circle felt any kindness toward its crippled members but because he was the subject of litigation between the Citadel and the Hawk’s Pride.  Though both were part of the Circle, the Hawk’s Pride—sometimes called the Citadel at Thynbell—was a military organization, composed entirely of Gold Army mages, and it had long chafed at being under the command of the non-military Valent Council.

Had he been injured by his own actions, Geraad knew he would have been left to fend for himself, but the Citadel was not happy that one of its civilian mages had been imprisoned by the Golds.

Rian rose up on his toes as Geraad passed, mimicking his walk to the door.  He was a gangly, bald creature with grey-black skin and large childlike eyes, and in the little coat and britches a neighbor had made for him, he looked like a cheerful nightmare toddler.  His prehensile tail swayed as he walked, keeping his balance.

Geraad shooed him back as he reached the door.  He had been warned to be cautious.  As the primary training center for the Empire’s mages, the Citadel at Valent was open to all—including Golds.  Though there had been no direct threats toward him, he had opted to stay in the safety of his suite as much as possible.

The wards on the painted door were somnolent, untriggered, and Geraad looked through the peephole and saw only a small cloud-serpent coiling in the air.  Its scales and ephemeral wings were pearl-white, and as he watched it shimmered again, sending out a faint ringing chime.

With a sigh, he tapped the wards and murmured the disabling key.  They flashed once, then the gears inside the door-frame groaned and turned.  The door cracked open, and the cloud-serpent arched to attention and opened its little maw wide.

‘
Warder Geraad Iskaen, your presence is required before the Council in one half-mark
,’ came a cool, clinical voice from the elemental’s throat.  ‘
A palanquin awaits you at the third balcony
.’

“
Required?” he said, worried, but the elemental closed its mouth and hung in the air, message complete.  Geraad grimaced and dismissed it, and it zipped away down the stairs.

He closed the door slowly, his stomach in a knot.  He had never been summoned to the Council before, not even to discuss his case.

“It must be about that,” he told himself aloud, and headed across the sitting-room to the bedroom for his winter robe.  Technically it was the previous occupant’s winter robe; all of his personal belongings were still with his former employer in Fort Varence, near the Rift Climb.  He had protested being assigned the suite of a Master Magus who had recently died in action, but it was common practice.  Circle Magi were often estranged from their families, with tools and possessions that could not be passed along to common folk, thus most Master suites were furnished with the accumulated goods of past inhabitants.  While the décor here—bearhide rugs and paneled walls, framed artificing schematics, welded tables, plush chairs and a well-stocked liquor cabinet—was not quite to Geraad’s taste, at least it meant he had access to a wardrobe.

He struggled into a green robe-coat with fox-fur trim, then stared at the hat-tree in mystification and reluctantly selected the hat with the fewest feathers.  In such attire, he felt dreadfully conspicuous and very un-Wyndish, but it was cold out.  He had to make compromises.

As he headed to the main door again, he heard Rian tiptoeing after him, and stopped in his tracks.  Looking back, he saw the goblin frozen as well, spindly hands raised imploringly.

“
No, you can’t come,” he said.

“
Ys!” the goblin rejoined.

“
No.  I know you hate being left alone but this is not a place you can go.”

The goblin’s pointed ears drooped, and he gave Geraad the big-eyed, imploring look that ensured that Geraad had eaten no more than two bites of anything meat- or pastry-based in the last two weeks before handing it guiltily to the goblin.  Even now, with his nerves on edge, the look made him waver.

“It won’t be safe for you,” he said more gently.  “I know they said I could keep you, but not everyone is kindly disposed toward your people, and you can’t come in with me.  You’d be stuck with the constructs and guard-elementals.  As fun as that might sound, it’s not an option.”

The goblin’s pitiful look did not slacken.  Geraad bit his lip, then said, “You can have the rest of the candied cherries in the cupboard.”

With a squeal of victory, Rian whipped around and raced to the kitchen on all fours, tail lashing happily.  Geraad shook his head as the clatter of opening cupboards began.

“
Just the cherries!” he called after, then headed out and closed the door behind him.  A touch and the activating word, and the wards sealed tight, all the clockwork latches falling back into place.

In the cool, ambient light from the column of the staircase, Geraad took a deep breath and started onward.

There were no halls here.  This was the Sea Tower, one of the six Master towers, and each floor held only four suites, one in each cardinal direction.  Geraad’s was the north.  His neighbors’ doors were closed, but looked as individual as each mage: striated red stone to the south, carved inkwood to the east, blank blue metal to the west.  The door he had inherited was green, painted with blocky mystic symbols he only vaguely recognized, and beneath was mostly clockwork.  If he stayed, he would make his own door.  It was traditional.

All the doors opened into a central circle of walkway around the grand staircase that cored the tower.  A column of bubbling phantasmal water lit the descent, tiny golden fish flitting within.

Geraad headed down, keeping his hands on the banisters despite the occasional flare of pain.  The third balcony was two floors below, and he arrived quickly, the tails of his robe-coat flapping behind him.  At the landing, a long, narrow passageway led outward, lit by bands of glowing coral on the walls.  He followed it to the balcony door and pushed through with his forearms and a grimace of effort.

A gust of cold air washed in as the door unsealed long enough to let him through.  He held his hat down with his wrist and squinted in the late light.  The balcony stretched like a white bib around this level of the tower, a few patches of flowers browning in the planters between the benches.  Positioned only a few yards away was a palanquin with Council-sigiled curtains, four branded construct bearers, and a hare-shaped stepstool awaiting him.

Beyond them, the Citadel at Valent stretched in all directions.  Titanic walls of black obsidian ringed the wild collection of towers, artificing factories, terraced gardens, journeyman apartments and communes, initiate dormitories, casting domes, greenhouses, markets, and construct-transport depots, all draped in old harvest-festival banners or coated in whitewash and sigils.  Residents and servitors moved like ants on distant walkways.  Behind Geraad, the Sea Tower rose eight additional floors but did not quite surmount the rim of the great wall; below him, it descended sixteen floors to the broad mesh layer that served as the ground level.  Beneath that, constructs and elementals and arcanely adapted sea-slimes did their janitorial and maintenance-work among the detritus of the city.

Usually there would be Masters’ apprentices lingering on the balcony, taking the opportunity to escape the stifling confines of their teachers’ suites and chat amongst themselves, but the weather had gone crisp recently and like migratory birds, they had sought warmer climes.  Geraad’s footfalls echoed emptily on the whitewashed stone.

The hare-shaped stepstool scuttled into position as he approached.  It was a construct itself, squat and stony, and he stepped up on it and parted the curtains, then swung into the padded seat and pulled his robe tight.  As soon as he had settled, the constructs lifted the palanquin and started off.

Geraad sat back and tried to quell his anxiety.  He had done nothing wrong; the Master Scryer overseeing his case had assured him of that.  Escape from confinement deemed unlawful by the Silent Circle was not a crime no matter how it had been committed, and if he was going to be interrogated by Valent mentalists, he would not have been called to the Council Tower.  He would be headed to the Tower of the Inner Eye.

He had been trained there and knew its ways well.  Though he was now a Warder, he had been born with a talent for mentalism, and thus had come to the Citadel as a youth to learn to harness it.  Anyone with even a smidge of mentalist ability was required to do so; as the only spontaneously-occurring magical talent, it could not be permitted to grow wild among the populace.  His choice to become a Warder had been made at the behest of his patron, Count Varen, who wanted a bodyguard-mage on staff, but he had still spent more time in the Tower of the Inner Eye than anywhere else in Valent.

Now, he thought he might have to return there.  Mentalist studies did not require hands.

The palanquin’s interior was warmed by the heatstone between his feet, and he held his hands over it, trying to stretch his fingers.  His path-superior and current protectress, Warder Archmagus Farcry, had suggested a few minor exercises as physical therapy, but it had been obvious despite the woman’s clinical mien that Geraad’s injuries disturbed her—as they would disturb any mage.  They terrified Geraad; he could barely turn pages, and certainly could not write.  Beneath his pain-shields, he sometimes felt bone splinters shifting in his palms, and at night he often woke from terrible dreams where his hands had detached from his wrists and scuttled away like demented spiders.

Sometimes he wished he had yielded to the Gold mages, let them search through the whole of his mind, but their methods had forced him to resist.  He had told them all he knew and still they had tortured him; he would not let them see into his heart.

With a practiced mental effort, he cleared the bad memories from the slate of his thoughts and fell into blank meditation until he felt the palanquin halt.  Blinking back to reality, he brushed the curtain aside and peered out at the Council balcony.

It was not nearly as casual as that of the Sea Tower.  A cage of wrought iron covered it like a glassless hothouse roof, each bar etched with protective sigils that would rebound anything unauthorized, and a constant stream of messenger-elementals flitted through the gaps, their brands of servitude flashing before they disappeared into the messenger-holes in the tower’s white façade.  Behind Geraad, the gate had closed, and the air felt bottled despite the openness of the roof.  No benches or greenery disturbed the polished floor, nor any sign that the occupants might linger out here for relief.  A few other palanquins and their construct bearers stood off to one side, and the double doors hung open between two massive obsidian guards, with a cloud-serpent coiling idly in the gap.

‘
Warder Geraad Iskaen
,’ it said as he approached.  ‘
This way, please.
’

Geraad followed, skin prickling as the guardian constructs’ heads turned to track his passage.  As he crossed the threshold, the doors swung shut at his heels.  He plucked his hat off automatically.

The guide led him up a dimly-lit corkscrewing ramp, past tiny rooms that overlooked the balcony like archers’ posts, to a wide and imposing hallway lined with portraits and living sculptures of chained, twining elementals.  The flickering radiance of lava snakes and cloud-serpents, sea-slimes and rock phosphors cast conflicting colors on the polished walls, and as the guide passed a winged statue formed of cloud-serpents, the whole mass of them hissed and flared bright white.  The guide paused for an instant, runes rippling along its spine, before resuming its airy glide.

Geraad shuddered.  He understood the value of the Summoners to the Silent Circle, but creating art from enslaved elementals did not sit well with him.

Beyond the portrait hall was an intersection, with two side-paths curving up and away beyond rune-barred gates.  Straight ahead stood a tall double door so covered in protective wards that they spilled over onto the wall itself.  From just a glance, Geraad knew that they could stop an army.

The guide elemental ghosted up to the doors and hovered, whispering some inaudible incantation in a strange voice.  A moment passed, then the doors unsealed.  Geraad stepped after it into a shallow antechamber just off the Council room, and the doors closed behind him with the hiss of reactivating wards.

Not far past his feet lay the inset iron ring that enclosed the entire chamber, protecting it from external magic.  The floor within was tiled in dark diamond-shapes that glowed like jade where the light from the narrow windows striped them; between windows, the walls bore elaborate, flowing, interlocking designs in ivory and gold and celadon, almost too beautiful to be wards.  The vaulted ceiling echoed the diamond pattern in paler green, flecked with pearly stars.  A great crescent-shaped table filled the floor-space, with six chairs surrounding it, all turned toward the empty center where three concentric rings had been set into the floor, copper then silver then gold.