Breaking the Gloaming (18 page)

At first Malam had not believed the note. Ramzi’s script had been distressed. He likely wrote it just before the Valemidans executed him—a time when a man would question everything in this world. But now, after
feeling
this resistance, Malam was not so sure. Something, someone was working against him.

He listened to Ilias’ footsteps above him. The other priest was putting distance between them. Ilias seemed free from whatever was pressing down on Malam. The sun priest had embraced too many foreign ways.
 

It was not easy for a man to say the ritual words while praying for their defeat at the same time. But maybe Ilias had done just that. He had joined Malam for the incantations. He had used his key. He had blessed His Excellency. Through it all, Ilias had no passion in his voice. He was too tranquil. He should have feared Malam’s successes.
 

Malam fingered the dagger tucked in his robe. He stepped faster and caught up to Ilias, following close at his heels. The other priest was within his blade’s reach.
 

Malam’s blood was pumping. His mind was spinning. Maybe Ilias had allied with the high priest of Valemidas. Maybe they were both working against Malam and against His Excellency. Maybe killing Ilias was necessary for His Excellency to succeed. Malam began to pull out his dagger.

“Glad you caught up.” Ilias glanced back without stopping. “What was holding you back? You’re breathing heavy.”

“It just seems you’re faster tonight,” Malam answered. He did not think Ilias had seen the blade. “We went down together. Now we rise together.”
 

“That we do,” Ilias said. “His Excellency needs us both. He needs balance.”
 

“We’ll see,” Malam said. He was struggling to keep his breath steady and maintain Ilias’s pace.
 

They climbed the rest of the way in silence.

It was safer to let Ilias live for now, but Malam resolved to redouble his efforts. The Sunans had to believe in His Excellency. There was no other way to ensure order and victory for his people. Faith was not balance. Faith was not like walking on the crest of a dune. It was like walking in a tight valley between dunes. The surrounding dunes, holding the Sunan people in line, would be fear, shame, guilt, and duty. Those would be the guiding principles of their faith. No other principles could be trusted or controlled.
 

His Excellency would agree. He would follow Malam’s counsel, just as his father had. His Excellency would emerge with the dawn as the divine and all-powerful king of Sunan.

Chapter 18

THREADS LEADING TO CHAOS

“Wisdom is better than weapons of war,
 

but one sinner destroys much good.
 

Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment

give off a stench.”

Sebastian strapped another heavy box to his back. He took two steps across the sand and wiped his palms dry against his pants. He raised his eyes to the crevasse within the cliff. Even in the full moon’s light, even this close, he could not see the stack of boxes thirty feet above. He breathed in and out slowly, steadying himself. Then he began to climb, his hands and feet finding familiar cracks and holds.

This was his tenth trip up the cliff tonight. His body ached at the effort. He shouted inside at his muscles, commanding them to perform. He had made enough mistakes lately—Cid eluding him, an archivist tricking him into letting his partner live, Yates learning too much. He could not afford another slip now.

He reached the stack of boxes on the ledge. They were tucked deep within the crevasse. After unloading this last box, he sat down on the ledge.
 

The mouth of the River Tyne was below him, beyond the narrow beach under the cliff. The water was deep by this shore. An island rose out of the river a third of the way across. South of the river the water was shallow. At low tide, Sebastian could have walked across it without getting his chest wet.
 

He looked down at his left hand, flat against the stone. A thin stream of water had carved a narrow rivulet there. It dripped out of the rocks behind the boxes and flowed off the ledge by his side. 

This thread of a waterfall had confirmed his choice for the Icarian powder. If water seeped from the rocks here, then the Gloaming’s wall would likely be thinner, weaker here. Andor had mentioned that the place had fountains. The water had to exit somewhere. 

He pulled out a long string he had once taken from an Icarian man. It was not a normal string. It was thicker and more abrasive. He had tested it once, lighting the tip of it on fire. The spark had begun running along the twine, just as he had hoped.

He fed the string into a hole in one of the bottom boxes until it came out the box’s other side. He tied that end of the string tightly, and tied the other end to his waist. He climbed back down the cliff.

Back on the sandy ground, he untied the string at his waist and hid it within a crack of the rock. All was now ready for him to return, light the fuse, and run away as fast as he could.
 

He would break the Gloaming. He would bring forth chaos that neither the Sunans nor the Valemidans expected. The world needed chaos like that, if old orders were ever to be disrupted, and new men were to rise to power.

Several hours remained before dawn. He could not bear to return to his modest room within the palace. Reports from his spies would be waiting for him there. More hints about the Sunans’ arrival. More rumors about Ravien and His Excellency. More news of nobles bickering, Andor trying to avoid war, Yates placating the people, and the minister of prisons slowing the rescue of men from the Gloaming. The night hours were too valuable to waste time reading more of what he already knew. He decided to pay a visit to Page and Petra.

His slender, black boat slid into the water without a splash. He pulled out the oars and found the rhythm of pressing his legs and pulling. The tide was with him, so he rounded the corner of the palace’s bluff in little time. He rowed into the northern end of the Valemidas harbor. No one was on the docks.

People of importance never visited this part of the city. The broader docks at the southern end of the harbor hosted merchants and dignitaries. These northern docks were nothing but decaying wooden planks jutting over the foul water. It was home to the lowest of fishermen, smugglers, and drunks. If he were the prince, Sebastian would flatten this cesspool. But since he was not the prince, Sebastian had taken to using the cesspool to grow unsavory things.

He squeezed into an alley between two brothels pretending to be inns. At the back end of the alley, steps led down to a cellar door. He had found this place because one of his spies had demanded they meet here some years ago. That spy had since been discovered, so Sebastian had taken his life and his hideaway. A spy was only a liability once known.

Sebastian knocked six times, in the pattern Page expected. A moment later he heard a bar lift from the other side of the door. It inched open and he saw Page’s blue eyes.

“Finally,” she said as she welcomed him in and replaced the bar. “I have little time before I must return to the archives. After two nights without seeing you, I was growing worried.”

“A man must sleep, right?” Sebastian took her in his arms and stared into her eyes. No woman in Sunan had eyes like this. 

“A man, perhaps, but not you.” Her face was serious as always. She nodded to the side. “She is watching us.”

Sebastian turned and saw Petra. The old woman was tied to the far wall. Her face was calm and sad. He stalked towards her.

“So you say you never even kissed the old priest?” Sebastian mocked. “You know he has obeyed me because of you. He has not whispered a word to Andor about what he learned of me, all because he cannot bear the thought of you being harmed.”
 

He tapped the tip of her nose. “Surely you’ve given him something over the years to affect him so.”

“Yes,” she said, her face unflinching, “I have given him something you are incapable of: loyal, loving service.”

“Service!” Sebastian laughed and looked to Page. “See, maybe the priest is not as celibate as he claims.”

“You have drawn more words from her than she has uttered to me since you brought her here.” Page motioned for him to follow her. “You have checked on her. Now come, she has no useful information.”

Sebastian nodded and trailed her as she led him upstairs to the room above the cellar. The room had no door but the one on the floor, and no windows. A small fire crackled opposite a plush bed.
 

“A man of real power will be prince again,” he said as he began to untie the laces at her back. “And you will be at his side.”

She laid down on the bed and looked up at him. He shuddered under the hard stare of her blue eyes. He had never met another woman who looked at him without a trace of fear.

“Show me real power,” she demanded, “and I will show you a prince.”

Chapter 19

WAR GAMES

“The words of the wise heard in quiet

 
are better than the shouting
 

of a rule among fools.”

Ulysses knew these men needed more time. The warmth of the summer was gone and so were most of the leaves. Today there were no glittering gold and red leaves drifting in a sun-lit sky. There were only dampened autumn browns knocked to the ground by steady falling rain.

Because of the chill in the air, the men wore heavy wool under their armor as they practiced. They moved like sloths, weighed down by the soaked fabric, the heavy metal on top of it, and the worn down bodies underneath.

Telemachus was somewhere among this group. Ulysses pretended not to look for him as he monitored the drills. They slammed blades into dummy soldiers, clashed shields against each other, and shot arrows at targets. The targets were set against the southern wall of Valemidas, with the River Tyne beyond the other side.

They were on the estate of House Talnor. The manicured grass—now trampled into mud—and the rows of slender pines leading to the hilltop villa made this an odd place for such training, but as the army grew, so did its need for space. Sir Ryn Talnor was making the prince pay dearly for it.

The knight leading this group, and walking at Ulysses’s side, was young enough to be his son. His name was Pikeli. Ulysses had first met him at Andor’s wedding months ago. At first, he had thought the young man nothing but a fool, raised to knighthood by Tryst for some political reason. Now, while the knight’s chirping mouth still marked him a fool, Ulysses understood his effect on the men he led. They were inspired by his boundless energy.

And so Ulysses had given Pikeli a greater duty. He had gone from a few hundred novice pikemen to a brigade of a thousand, evenly divided between bows, pikes, and swords. They would be responsible for holding the southern wall when the Sunans came.

Ulysses visited Pikeli and his men often. He believed this wall had to stand for the city to survive. He also believed in his son, and he wanted to make sure he was getting no special treatment. Telemachus needed hard training to survive a hard battle.

Pikeli was telling him about his men’s need for better sleeping conditions, asking if they could use more of Talnor’s empty guesthouses, when Ulysses first glimpsed his boy. Telemachus was with the swordsmen. A group of them were lined up facing each other, practicing parries and thrusts with wooden swords.

Ulysses stopped and watched. Pikeli closed his mouth, but just for a moment.

“Tel should be a knight.” The words bubbled out of Pikeli. Not even the rain could keep him down. Ulysses grunted, and Pikeli continued. “Sir, I have seen what he can do with a blade. He is one of our very best. These other men respect and admire him, and not just because he’s your son.”

“He is too young.” Ulysses answered, wishing it were true. He had been knighted at about the boy’s age.

“He will be fifteen soon.” Pikeli paused when Ulysses looked at him skeptically. “I know that is younger than most, but look at me. Tryst raised me to the knighthood just shy of nineteen. Tel has more skill than I do already, I’ll admit it. Just watch him, Sir.”

Tel had grown a foot in the past year. His head, full of dark shaggy curls, was even with that of the man across from him, who was twice his age. The boy deflected the stronger man’s attacks with ease. He moved fluidly, as if he had fought in battles before.

Ulysses had been raising his son for this from the start. Wrestling him at three, racing him at five, and playing swords with him ever since he could hold a stick.

It showed, as Tel ducked under an attack, swept the legs out from under the man facing him, and held his wooden blade at the man’s chest, smiling all the while. Tel held out his hand, which the older man clasped as he stood. The man patted Tel’s shoulder fondly, and they went back at it again.

“You might be right, Pikeli.” Ulysses turned toward the Talnor villa, with Pikeli at his heels.

The young knight kept talking about Tel, about the weather, about his men. Ulysses listened with half his mind, but he also thought about his boy. Pride filled him—the good kind of pride, the kind directed at someone else. Tel would be a knight soon, fighting at his side. None of that mattered much, though, unless they won this war.

As Ulysses walked up the straight white gravel path to the villa, he saw ahead two young men sitting on a bench outside. Jacodin Talnor and Jonas Davosman. They were drinking and laughing, pointing down at the men below. Ulysses was here to see Ryn. The last thing he needed was these two imbeciles getting in his way.

“The greatest knight in the land!” Jacodin saluted Ulysses, and Jonas followed suit. “To what do we owe this honor?”

“I need to see your father,” Ulysses said.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Jonas replied.

“Jonas is right,” Jacodin continued. “My father is busy. He said to not let anyone through the door. In fact, he specifically said that he would see
you
tomorrow. He has other affairs to tend to today.” The smug young man crossed his arms.