The Black Star (Book 3) (76 page)

Instead, he found Minn and grinned. "Been out for a walk yet? It's like another country."

"Not yet." She smiled wanly. "And I don't think I'll get to."

"Why..?" His grin fell to earth like a pigeon with a heart attack. "You're going back with them."

"I'm not sure what use I'd be here. They're still my people. I think it's time to rejoin them."

"Well."

"Is there a reason for me to stay?"

He gazed up at the western peaks. He could have fabricated any number of excuses to keep her around, including a few that might be halfway true. But the fact was they didn't need her, not really; for her talents, Dante surpassed her at jerking rocks around, and while she was a superior shadowalker to Blays, he could handle himself well enough. True, it never hurt to have another nethermancer around, but she was outclassed by the members of the Council who were present, and they'd brought a dozen monks besides.

All that was here for her was unnecessary risk for a city she had no ties to. That was it.

"You're right," he said. "You should go back with them. When this is over, I'll drop by the cove to tell you how it played out."

She touched his arm. "I'd like that."

As if Ro had been waiting for them to conclude, she nodded to the People of the Pocket. They filed inside the tunnel. Within a couple minutes, they were gone.

Dante crunched through the snow beside him. "Ready to go?"

"Ready to fling myself at a hateful madman in possession of the world's most powerful object? Let's ride."

The plan, as he understood it, was loose but sound. Move everyone to a safe, out of the way spot near the borders of the Spirish forest, then keep the body of the troops there while a few heavy hitters snuck into Corl and skulked around to figure out where Cellen was. Once that was established, they'd send in a lean, stealthy strike to try to liberate it while simultaneously moving the troops close enough to respond should the strike result in disaster. Then, with Cellen in hand, they'd rush to the tunnel, close it behind them, and abscond back to Narashtovik.

It remained to be seen whether actual events would resemble that plan in the slightest.

The army marched across the snowfields. Human and norren scouts moved ahead. According to their guide Ast, they were several days from the nearest real settlements, but if a single traveler spotted them and spread the word, the whole thing could be stillborn.

They didn't see a soul for the first four days, however, and as far as they knew, they managed to elude detection all the way to their base camp, a pine-filled valley in sight of the first lorens towering above the lesser trees. As troops went to gather lorbells and replenish their dwindling provisions, Dante called together those bound for the infiltration of Corl: Somburr, Cee, Ast, Mourn, Blays, and a handful of scouts. They gathered under the pines, out of earshot of the others.

Dante gazed between them. "In one way, this will be easier than it sounds. The Minister will have it on him at all times. I guarantee it."

"Difficult to get to him in his compound," Somburr said. "But if he leaves, we'll have a real opportunity."

"Is he arrogant?" Blays said. "Stupid?"

Dante shrugged. "Probably the former. Definitely not the latter. Why?"

"Because his people have waited a thousand years to get their hands on Cellen. Unless he's unbelievably arrogant, dumb, or some combination of the two, there's no way he leaves his little treetop castle."

"Until it's time to smash Narashtovik." They all thought about that a moment. Dante bit his lip. "We should count on that coming sooner than later. His army must be close to assembled. Once it's ready, he'll be shuffling thousands of troops in. It'll be impossible for us to miss. I think the conservative approach is best: watch carefully and wait for opportunity."

Dante passed out funny-looking clothes with loose sleeves and legs, along with cinches for the wrists and ankles. He promised they were Spirish, but as Blays dressed, he suspected it was a prank of some kind.

They moved east into the forest. From a distance, the lorens looked pretty tall, but Blays soon found that was a trick of perspective: in fact, they were gigantic. Bizarre roots, too. Like a tangle of horrifically enormous worms holding a race to see who could get out of the ground fastest. Dante warned them that many of the trees were inhabited, some with entire towns. He'd explained this before, but now that Blays was seeing the trees in person, he understood it on a whole new level.

They marched for a couple of days, following the roads like the innocent travelers they weren't. Dante, as per his habit, had killed a couple of genuinely innocent forest mammals, sending them ahead down the path to ensure there was no sign of soldiers. Just as Blays was beginning to wonder if they were leaving their own troops too far behind, Dante, Ast, and Cee stopped to confer, pointing off into the never-ending woods.

"Corl's just a couple miles from here," Dante said. "We'll find an unoccupied tree, then get to work.

They did just that, locating a loren that was on the small side, relatively speaking, and climbing up its roots to shelter in the hollows circling its trunk. There, "work" turned out to be everyone sitting around while Dante ordered a dead mouse to climb piggyback on a dead squirrel, then sent the squirrel bounding into the brush.

"I think," Blays said after ten minutes of near silence, "we may have brought too many people."

Dante waved a hand, distracted. "If the only 'people' at risk are a couple of dead animals, we should consider ourselves lucky."

He was right. Even so, it wasn't a whole lot of fun to sit around in a damp tree with a bunch of smelly people while Dante gazed blankly into space.

A couple hours later, Dante shifted position. "He's there. In his palace."

"Better news than if he weren't," Blays said. "Unless he were off in a temple renouncing his wicked ways. What's he doing?"

"Writing. Quit bothering me."

Blays sighed thinly. A half hour later, he got up to go stroll around. Somburr followed him out of the entry of the round. "Where are you going?"

"Anywhere," Blays said.

"Now's not the time to wander."

"You realize I'm not—and haven't been for years—Narashtovik's servant?"

"I do," Somburr said. "And I believe you're smart enough to know better than to jeopardize our mission because you're bored."

Blays chuckled. "Keen one, aren't you? I'll be good."

He returned inside the round. A whole lot of nothing transpired. Just after sunset, Dante let out a breath and his eyes lit up the way they always did when he withdrew from the mind of a dead thing and came back to the here and now.

"The Minister's been in his chambers all day. Had his food brought to him. Held a couple of meetings, also in his chambers. One was about logistics. Very tedious. Because they've been very thorough. Nothing there for us, although it will be useful to Olivander."

Dante glanced around, rubbing the corners of his eyes. "The other was a civil issue. Apparently the citizens assigned to do all the extra lorbell-gathering have grown resentful of their new responsibilities. Today, a team of them refused to work until their pay was increased. The Minister ordered them to be executed—and for wages to be increased for everyone else."

"How is that relevant?" Somburr said.

"I'm not sure. There may be a domestic angle we can exploit."

"Like poisoning the lorbells," Blays said.

Dante gave him a look. "We're not poisoning the lorbells."

"Why not? Like it's so much more righteous to kill his soldiers on the battlefield where we can die too?"

"It's at least ten percent more righteous."

"All right, agreed, but given the circumstances of our cause, I think
everything
we do is extra righteous." Blays stood and paced, stretching his legs. "Anyway, I wasn't serious."

"This is the Minister in a nutshell," Dante said. "Brutal and highly effective at getting the most from each act of that brutality. He kills the dissidents, discouraging others, then cuts the legs out beneath their resentment by raising wages."

"What a jerk. Sounds like we should kill him or something."

"If he keeps refusing to leave his palace, it's not going to be easy."

"What about Cellen?" Somburr said.

"I didn't see it directly," Dante said. "But he kept touching the front pocket of his shirt. Either he's got a rash, or that's where he's keeping it."

That was the end of the first day. On the second day, Blays let himself sleep in until well after sunrise, and it was excellent. He ate some lorbell and went to pee. In the upper branches, scouts ruffled the leaves, but Mourn appeared to have gone off somewhere. Back in the round, Dante was deep in one of his dead-animal trances.

Blays sat near the others. "As long as we're sitting around, we may as well put our heads together. Seems to me there are two general routes here: either we go to the Minister, or we do as planned and grab him up as soon as he steps into the open."

"Wrong," Cee said. "There's a hundred different things we could do. Like tricking him into giving it up."

"How are we going to do that? Tell him this was all a big mistake, and what he thinks is Cellen is actually the egg of a giant raven? One that is growing increasingly angry at being separated from its young?"

"I don't know how we
would
. I'm just saying we
could
."

"Fair enough. And good thinking, too. It's no wonder the bossman keeps you around."

"Is anything off the table?" Somburr asked.

Blays scrunched his eyebrows together. "Why would it be?"

"Because for most people, the means can get too mean to justify the ends."

"Why do I feel like that comment is directed at me?"

"Vanity, I would imagine."

Blays burst out laughing. "For the purpose of this discussion, nothing is off the table. I'll keep my judgment of your character to myself."

Somburr leaned forward. "If we could somehow kill everyone in the Minister's tree, you would have no objection?"

"Let me check. Ah yes, I do have a soul. Thus: objections. But hypothetically speaking, how many people are in that tree?"

"Ten thousand."

"
Ten thousand?
In one tree?"

"It includes some five hundred feet of habitable height. Nine separate lofts. Each loft includes some four to twelve flats. Rounds surround the entire trunk of the tree. You can see how the living space adds up."

Blays glanced to the side. "Most of those who live in it are innocent, or near enough to it. Weighed against all the lives lost in a clash against Narashtovik. Could you guarantee killing them would put Cellen in our hands?"

Somburr touched his index fingers together. "As you say, I have been speaking hypothetically. When all that matters is the goal, many new options become clear."

"Well, it's not up to me, is it? So I say we come up with anything that could work, pass it on to Wise Leader over there, and let him decide how much his conscience can handle."

Somburr smiled. "Your self-awareness has been sorely missed."

"Sorry about that. So do you have a way to take them all out and get us Cellen or not?"

"I might be able to neutralize the citizens. But it would be too chaotic to guarantee where the Black Star winds up."

Ast, quiet this whole time, raised his head. "I would say he is a man of great ego. If I were to scheme to deceive him, I would prey on that."

"Good," Blays said. "How?"

"I don't know."

"Even better you can admit that." He met their eyes in turn. "Look, the point is, we're more limited by our own thinking than the circumstances at hand. I hope we get a solution dropped in our laps. Until that happens, the broader our thinking, the sooner we'll get where we want to be."

They kicked around a few more ideas, but it was mostly more what-ifs and suppose-so's. As the morning shifted to afternoon and approached the evening, Dante withdrew from his otherworldly sight to tend to his body.

When he came back to the round, he shook his head. "Nothing new. He's been in his rooms all day. The only words he's spoken are to tell the servants what he'd like to eat next."

"Arsenic?" Blays said. "Please tell me it's arsenic. Hey, why
don't
we poison his food?"

"Because he has one servant watching its preparation at all times and another to taste it for him."

Outside, someone crunched through the leaves. Cee reached for her bow. Distantly, Blays felt Dante reach for the nether. But it was just Mourn. His boots were dark with damp and soil, his face streaked with dried gray mud.

"I think we should move the troops closer," he suggested once he'd climbed up the roots.

"What did you see?" Dante said. "Have the Minister's soldiers been on the march?"

"Probably. Given that they're soldiers, and marching is what soldiers do, if only to impress their captains. But I didn't see any strategic movements."

"Then why shift our people?"

He shrugged his broad norren shoulders. "Because they're too far away. And I found a better place for them."

A tactical discussion ensued involving the Minister's unknown scouting capacities and the ability of two hundred Narashtovik soldiers to camp within his borders without being noticed. Blays listened, because why not, but had no strong opinions either way.

"We've taken a conservative stance," Dante said. "There's no reason to move them up until we're closer to understanding what we need to do next."

"That appears to be true," Mourn said. "But you know where the Minister is. You know where Cellen is. When you figure out how to extract the latter from the former, do you want to wait two days for your support to arrive? Or a few hours?"

"Is that a trick question?" Blays said.

"I walked around, because walking around is how you see new things, and I found a nice valley. Good cover. Much closer." He swept his dark, shaggy hair from his brows. "The question is whether you trust your people to go unseen. And if they are seen, to take care of those who saw them."