The False Martyr (126 page)

“
Fuck you!” Teth yelled.
“He said that we could never be together, that I could never have
him, that if I did he would die, that the Order would fall, that I
would live to see it happen.” The thought was so terrible, just
saying it sucked the life from her so thoroughly that she dropped
the knife back to her lap. Her head hung, shoulders
slumped.

“
I am sorry, Teth,” the
valati mumbled after a long pause. He seemed to consider his words.
“That is a terrible thing to believe. Not only must you deny your
love, not only must you live with the pain of never fulfilling it,
but you must live with the idea that the very fate of the world
hangs on you never having the one thing that you want most. It is
cruel beyond belief. And you should take it for what it
is?”

“
And what is that?” Teth
snuffled but lacked the energy to cry. She took a deep breath and
tried to build herself back up to the only action left
her.

“
A lie,” the valati said
the words at little more than a whisper. They hit Teth like the
crossbow bolt that should have ended her. Her eyes rose. The valati
crumpled the papers before him –
off his
script or nervous about his lines?
He took
a long, slow breath. “You saw the Master of the Five?” Teth nodded
numbly. “You are one of the only people in a hundred years to do
so.” The valati cleared his throat. “Even the the other members of
the Five were said to have only seen him a few times. The only
reason he would bring you to him is that he needed to guide you
directly, that there was no other way to create the outcome he
desired. Do you understand the significance of that?”

Teth did not and did not
bother to say so.

“
The Master could weave
his patterns across decades, across thousands of miles. He could
make nations fall and empires rise, but he brought
you
, the orphan daughter
of a blacksmith, to his tower. You, not Dasen, not me, not the King
of Liandria. You. Why? So that you would do what he wanted. He
weaves the Order as his followers weave their tapestries. He pulls
it, twists it, draws its threads together or pulls them apart. He
sees and controls the Order, and is, therefore, above
it.”

Teth thought about her
encounter with the Weaver, the empty sockets that saw everything,
the fused ears that heard, his hands in constant motion, the rocks
flying from the window, the papers, the vials, the spiders. And she
realized the truth of what the valati said. He had even told her,
had said that his every motion was planned, carefully choreographed
to create ripples in the Order, ripples that would echo through
time and space until a wind rose and destroyed a smithy, until a
girl picked up a bow, until a boy came and made her fall in love.
Until a river carried her to him.

“
To the Master, there is
no truth,” Valati Lareno continued. “There are possibilities that
he must manipulate. There are outcomes that he desires, but there
is no truth. His every action, his every breath is to serve a
purpose. So too was every word he said to you.”

“
What . . . what are you .
. . I don’t understand. Are you saying he lied to me?”

Valati Lareno sat back in
his chair, eyes tired and sad. “It is not that simple,” he
admitted. “The Master is a creature beyond me. I cannot hope to
understand his purpose. Even the Xi Valati, who was the least of
the Five, worked in ways that confounded those of us with some
ability to see. What I do know is that he told you what he did
because he wanted you to act in a certain way, to do certain
things. I know from the letter before me that he wanted you to come
here. I know that he wanted us to find you. I know that he wanted
you separated as much as possible from Dasen. That he wanted you on
that road, facing those men, in a mind to see yourself die. I know
that he wanted Dasen to be taken from you. Is what he told you
something that would make all those things happen?”

“
The Order be damned,”
Teth mumbled, entirely missing the irony. “I would have insisted
that we leave the boat sooner. I never would have allowed us to
come here. And even so, we would have been gone long ago. Kian
could not have held me here. I only stayed because I saw a way to
end it. I pushed Dasen away because I couldn’t stand to see him. I
left him today because I could only think of myself. I couldn’t see
past that one warning. With one phrase, he changed everything, he
made it all happen. I did exactly what he wanted me to
do.”

Valati Lareno nodded
slowly. His face and eyes were sad. “I do not understand the
pattern that my master was weaving, but I see now that it was a
cruel one.”

“
You see that now.” Teth’s
anger flared. All the wasted time, all the heartache and pain,
everything because these bastards were playing a game. And now he
was gone, Dasen was to be turned over to the invaders, and she was
sitting here talking with one of the traitors that had made it
happen. She picked up the knife, rose from the chair, clasped the
valati’s hair, and brought the blade to his throat. “Where is he?
What have you done with him?” Her emotions fought: anger, elation,
worry, grief. The Master had been lying. But Dasen was gone. She
could be with him. But she may never see him again.

“
Garth took
him.”

“
Where?” Teth asked again,
pressing the knife against his throat so that the skin bunched
around it. The slightest flick and he would die.

“
North,” the valati
squealed. It seemed they were off his script now. “They had a boat.
They were going to go north and deliver Dasen to his father outside
Lianne.”

“
Arghh!” Teth felt her
anger rising. He was gone. She knew it. She was finally free, and
he was gone. Because of this bastard. He had done it, had made her
feel all this pain, had allowed her to be miserable, to nearly kill
herself, to ruin everything. He could have stopped it any time, but
he let it happen. Even if it was at the order of his master, he was
complicit, he deserved the same fate as his asshole of a master.
She pressed on the knife, waited to see the blood flow, to add it
to the sheen that already covered her. “Join your fucking master,”
she growled.

The valati braced himself.
His bladder released, he held his breath, he mumbled a
prayer.

He
knows
, Teth suddenly realized.
He knows I’m going to kill him. He has known this
entire time.
“Arghh!” she screamed again,
lips inches from the valati’s face. Through the greatest force of
will in her life, she pulled the knife from his throat and planted
it between his hands in the polished surface of the table. She
pounded her hands down after it. “Fuck your fucking Order! I won’t
do it!”

“
You aren’t . . . I mean
you won’t . . . .” the valati stammered, hand to his throat.
“You’re not going to . . . .“

“
Shut your lying mouth!”
Teth roared. She snatched the wad of papers from his hands, paged
through them, saw every facet of the plan, every piece, all the
words he had said. It was all here. It was all planned. Every
detail was described. She threw the pages aside one after another
until she reached the last. She scanned down the page until she
found what she was looking for.
She will
kill you,
the paper said. The last words
scrawled in that ragged script, preceded by an exact explanation of
everything that had happened to them in the past six weeks. It was
all there, spelled out like prophesy but far more detailed and
exact. Teth plucked her knife from the table, used it to cut out
those last words, then drove the knife back through them.
Every word except those.

“
You . . . you have to . .
.” Lareno stammered. “It is part of . . . the pattern . . . the
Tapestry is . . .”

“
The Maelstrom take your
pattern. And your fucking tapestry too. It’s all a lie.” She
laughed a mad laugh. “You said it yourself. Maybe he wrote that
planning on me seeing it. Maybe he wanted you to think it was true.
Maybe he told you to explain all this to me, so that I will do
exactly what I am doing now. It is all lies. The only truth is that
we cannot know. We can never know where the lie ends and the truth
begins. Which means there is no reason to try. It is just as Mrs.
Tappers said, we have to choose to live the life we want, can only
fight to be the people we want to be. And that’s what I’m going to
do. I don’t care what your Master says any longer. He can
manipulate me all he wants, but he will do it silently.”

“
What are you going to
do?”

“
I am getting him back,”
she said with certainty. “I am going to get him, and I am going to
love him because that is what the Order made me to do. It is what I
want. It is what I need, and if it brings the world to an end, then
at least I won’t be trapped in this . . . maze of lies.”

“
But . . . but the
Tapestry. The pattern must be . . . .”

“
Fuck your tapestry! If
your Weaver is so powerful, then he has already planned for me to
say that, he knew that you would tell me those things and I would
do exactly this. And if he’s not, if I destroy his precious
tapestry and cast us all into the Maelstrom, then he should have
been a fuck-load clearer. Now, get me food, water, and a bow. I
have to find Dasen. And when I do, I am going to do exactly what I
should have done all along.”

Valati Lareno rose from
his chair and scampered from the room. Teth returned to her chair.
She sat back and looked at the ceiling.
I’m coming Dasen,
she
thought.
We will be together again, I
promise, and this time I’ll let you win.

Chapter 73

The
60
^th
Day of Summer

The bells rang. The
morning had been remarkably quiet to this point, Ipid realized as
he set aside the report he had been reading. Despite a series of
Liandrin raids across the river and anarchy in Gorin West, it
appeared that almost all the men from the south had reached Lianne
and started crossing the Alta. It meant that the last of Arin’s
demands had been met. The Liandrin Battle of Testing would occur
three days from now, and Ipid had to return before it did. His time
as Chancellor was almost finished. Stully was clearly in control of
the rebellion that would end him – Gorin proved it if nothing else,
showing what the Kingdoms would be like if Allard Stully weren’t
controlling the mobs – but if he did not move quickly, Ipid would
not be here to see it.

With a glance at Eia, who
was scooping the last of the yolk from a soft-boiled egg, he rose
and walked to the window. They were in an upstairs sitting room
that he’d had converted into an intimate dining room. It was
Teaching Day, but with Stully’s threat looming large, Ipid dared
not venture from the estate, so their morning was leisurely. He was
dressed in light pants, had forgone his vest, and had not even tied
a scarf around the top of his shirt. Eia had not gotten that far.
She still wore her white silk nightgown with a flowered seafoam
dressing gown that she had left open so that her breasts were
nearly visible through the silk. Her legs were bare to the knees as
were her feet. A few weeks before it would have been scandalous,
but he and the servants now barely seemed to notice.

In the courtyard, all was
as it should be. It was almost completely empty given that most of
the servants had been given their leave and the city watch was a
skeleton crew. A few members of the watch patrolled the grounds or
stood at the closed gates, but those were the only people visible.
And beyond the walls, the city was quiet. A few streamers rose from
chimneys, but fewer than he would have expected. There were no
people that Ipid could see, and almost no sound made it through the
glass panes beyond the resonate gong of the bells announcing the
start of the weekly lessons.

He had been sure that
Stully would come yesterday, had spent the entire day in his office
with the remaining Darthur, ready to transport away. Neither Jon
nor Captain Tyne had any knowledge of the deal with Stully, but he
had pestered them nonetheless about the state of the city until Jon
took his leave and Tyne was actively avoiding him. Di Valati
Wallock, who had not answered his summons in nearly a week, was of
even less use, so Ipid had simply waited. For nothing as it turned
out. He was still shocked by that. A Rest Day coup would have
allowed Stully to use the weekly lessons to communicate the
tyrant’s overthrow to the masses. It had been perfect, and it had
passed without incident.

So it would have to be
tomorrow. They would never desecrate the holy day with bloodshed.
Besides, today was too quiet. There would be riots. There would be
mobs. He’d see them coming from miles away with Allard Stully in
the lead. First Day was the day for it. Or maybe they had decided
to simply wait until Ipid left of his own accord. Maybe Allard had
put all the blame for his son’s death on Vontel. Maybe he had no
more stomach for a fight, even one he was guaranteed to
win.

Either way, Lord Stully
would unify the Kingdoms, would be the hero who had defeated a
tyrant. Wallock would pardon Jon and Captain Tyne. The Kingdoms
would rebuild and Ipid would transport away, would join Arin and
accept his place in infamy. It had all been decided weeks before.
Whether Stully played along or not, the result would be the same.
Ipid’s only uncertainty was what would happen to him and Eia when
this was all through.