The Great Rift (69 page)

That brought a smile to Dante's face. "Then it's all been worth it."

He propped open his door to coax the ocean breeze through his room and to defray suspicion as he sat in his doorway, one eye on his book, the other watching the hallway for Somburr. This tactic proved to be wholly useless. After an hour of a closed-door session between Somburr and Kav, Kav called a general assembly of the Council.

The council chambers looked barren. Cally was gone. Varla, too. Wint and Ulev were still in the norren wilds. Olivander remained in the eastern foothills gathering troops. That left seven councilmen out of twelve. Dante hadn't seen their ranks so depleted since the battle at the White Tree more than five years ago.

"Somburr's spies have paid off yet again," Kav said once everyone was settled. "If you would, Somburr?"

Somburr's gaze flicked between the other priests. He squirmed in his chair. "I have some insight into the enemy's strategy. My source says it's straightforward. They'll knock out any major resistance left in the Norren Territories, then march on Narashtovik without delay."

He fiddled with his collar, finished already. The priests exchanged glances.

"Well shit," Tarkon said.

"How long are we talking until they're here?" Dante said.

Somburr pinched the bridge of his nose with his brown fingers. "We'll all be dead in three weeks."

Tarkon repeated himself. Merria leaned forward, a sneer creasing her lined face. "I'm sorry, did you say three
weeks
?"

"Here is how my source expects it to play out," Somburr said. "The Gaskan army will make one more effort to confront the combined clans. My source anticipates this will result in the dispersal or outright destruction of the clans. Either way, a small portion of the army will be split off to control the Territories and destroy any holdouts, but it is further anticipated the Territories will surrender at this point. A few clans will still defy the king, but when haven't they?"

Somburr paused, chin twitching. "Once that is accomplished, they will march straight here. That march is anticipated to take seven to ten days. Leaving a full timeframe of three to four weeks before the Gaskan generals are sitting in this room congratulating each other on their victory."

"That is one potential outcome," Kav intoned. "And one somewhat less than sunny. Yet there is another option."

Dante could see straight through the nobleman's thinking. "Oh no there isn't."

Kav ignored him, meeting the eyes of the others instead. "We could surrender."

"Bullshit," Merria said. "Olivander would never stand for that. You try to pull that off and Cally will burst from his grave and strangle you himself."

Kav frowned delicately. "There is a point when the honor of resistance becomes the folly of futility. I fear we have reached that point."

"Fear away," Dante said. "That doesn't change the fact you're not the master of this council and it's not your decision to make."

"I never claimed I was," Kav said peevishly. "And yet I will not follow a path that ensures Cally is the last to ever rule the Council. We cannot disgrace him and this institution by committing strategic suicide in lieu of facing the facts."

Most of the Council looked pained, resigned. Merria was the only one who appeared outright defiant. Somburr looked outright disturbed, blinking repeatedly, his mouth tightly pursed.

"In any event," Kav continued, "it is not my intent to enforce a decision here and now. Only to broach the option and give us ample time to prepare in case events unfold as Somburr's source foresees."

Dante clamped down his anger. They would not surrender. Not if he had to kill Kav himself and lead the troops from the very front. With no intention of tipping his hand, he left as soon as the meeting dissolved and returned to his room. He frowned. Had he left his chair pulled away from his desk? He'd hidden Kav's letters in his copy of
The Cycle of Arawn
. He pocketed them and headed to Somburr's room. After he knocked, Somburr cracked the door an inch, eye gleaming whitely from the dimness of his room.

"Yes, Dante?"

"Can we speak?"

"We are speaking as we speak."

"Inside," Dante said. "Alone."

Somburr's mouth turned down at the corners. "Are you going to knife me?"

"I'm not going to knife you."

"Good. Just be aware I will know before you try and will have no qualms about knifing you first."

Dante agreed. Somburr let him inside. Three sets of heavy drapes blocked the windows, reducing the sunlight to nothing and leaving the room as hot as summer cobbles. Two candles shed a little yellow light around the spartan room.

"Who do you think killed Cally?" Dante said.

Somburr cocked his head. "A professional. Hired."

"By who?"

"The list is heavy enough to break your foot, isn't it?"

Dante examined Somburr's middle-aged face. He didn't know whether he could trust the former spy, but he ultimately had no choice: he couldn't prove the identity of the killer on his own. "I think Kav may have had something to do with this."

"He exploited the situation very quickly," Somburr said. "Highly suspicious."

"You've thought about this?"

"Who hasn't?"

"Anyone who's inclined to not accuse their leader of treason?" Dante said.

"Contemplating whether someone could be guilty isn't the same as accusing them of being guilty." Somburr narrowed his eyes at Dante. "You, for instance, are highly ambitious. Perhaps you were tired of waiting for Cally to die. Also, you have been prosecuting this war with great ferocity, haven't you? Maybe Cally agreed with Kav and wanted to end it. Maybe you couldn't let that happen."

"You think
I
did it?"

"I doubt it," Somburr said. "But unless a thing is impossible, I don't like to rule it out."

"I think it was Kav," Dante said. "He stepped in like he'd been expecting it. I found these, too." He took out the three letters he'd taken from Kav and handed them to Somburr, whose face took on the eager gleam of a child in the bakery. "Why would he write them in code?"

Somburr clawed the letters from Dante's hand so smoothly he hardly felt them go. "He's been sending an extraordinary amount of letters ever since you burned down Cassinder's house. They've
all
been in code."

Dante's blood went cold. "I need you to tell me everything you know about Kav."

"Born in 867 P.C., the second son of Ronnimore and Allyria, Baron and Baroness of Landry. Showed first signs of nethereal talent at 13 and took to the priesthood at 17. His older brother died in mysterious circumstances two years later, leaving Kav with a clear path to the barony, which he took only to leave in the hands of a steward in 897, when he returned to the priesthood with a clear path to the Council of Narashtovik. To the best of our knowledge, the family barrister had wrangled a way for him to retain ownership of his lands and title even though priestly bylaws require—"

Dante cut him off. "You know all this off the top of your head?"

"Of course," Somburr said. "Would you like to know what I know about you?"

"Are his ties to the capital still as strong as they look?"

"One of Kav's first cousins is 16 steps from the throne. 15? No, it's 16, forgot the Duchess of Derriden. Kav's younger sister is married to the third son of the Earl of Prater. The other blood ties are more complicated unless you understand Nollen Theory. Do you? No? No matter. Moving on, Kav visits his homestead west of Dollendun one to three times each year. He's spoken with Moddegan in person more than once. To summarize, he has many long-standing connections to the king, the capital in Setteven, and any number of noblemen across Gask."

"Do you think you can decode those letters?" Dante said.

"I have before. I haven't tried to break his latest codes. He changes them yearly, not that it helps. What he ought to do is hire me to create his codes for him, but if I were to suggest that, he'd know I'd broken his old ones, wouldn't he?"

"We have to act fast," Dante said. "Try to decipher the letters. I can get more if you crack the code. I'm going to have a look at Cally's body and see if Kav's assassin left any clues on it." He touched Somburr's elbow. Somburr flinched. "Can I trust you, Somburr? This isn't just about the Council. All Narashtovik depends on this."

Somburr grinned like a ferret. "Why wouldn't you trust me?"

"Because for all I know,
you
did it."

The other man giggled. "That makes me wish I had. It would mean I've done a wonderful job misleading you to Kav."

Dante smiled and left him with the letters. He walked out of Somburr's room and into a forest of arned guards. Several monks were there, too. Competent nether-users. Shadows roiled in their hands. They were backed by two members of the Council on top of that: silent old Joseff, and Kav.

"Dante Galand," Kav said. "I will keep this simple. You are hereby charged with the murder of Callimandicus, High Priest of Arawn, Viceroy of Narashtovik, and one of my oldest friends."

26

Laughter burst from Dante's throat. "On what grounds? That you're completely insane?"

Kav held out a knife, brown with dried blood. "This was found in your room while we were at council."

"For one thing, that's not mine. For another,
all
my knives have blood on them. Have you seen my arms? I cut myself more often than most men have breakfast."

"This was the just the gust that cracked the limb," Kav said. "I feared this was your work from the very start."

"Cally was my first teacher," Dante said. "I wouldn't be alive without him. I would never have come to Narashtovik. He was my
friend
. Lyle's bruised balls, why would I kill him?"

"Because he was going to ask for a ceasefire."

"No he wasn't!"

"I spoke with him myself," Kav glowered.

"Sounds like he was making a joke you didn't get," Dante said.

"He was extremely uneasy about the prospects of a direct war with the king. He was ready to begin negotiations." Kav laid the heavy knife along his palm. "Besides, I tasted this blood with the nether. It's Cally's."

Dante's world went red. "Someone put that in my room. Or you've had it all along and are using it to get me out of the way. I was three hundred miles away when he was killed!"

"As if you couldn't have paid someone to do it?" Kav favored him with a tight and furious smile. "In fact, isn't that exactly what you endeavor to do in this letter?"

He produced a piece of bleached parchment. Dante didn't bother to look at it. "I didn't write that."

"I wished to deny it myself, but when we compared it to the other letters in your room, the writing matched." The nobleman's face grew pained. "My denial starved, withered, died."

Dante snatched the paper from his hand. His head filled with stars. The handwriting was his—the same tilt to the f's and t's, the e's drawn in a single outward-spiraling loop—but the words weren't anything he had ever put to paper. And the words spelled out death.

"This isn't mine," he said.

Kav bared his teeth. "Is that not your writing?"

"It's a forgery. A fake. I didn't order Cally's death! Are you doing this, Kav? Are you implicating me to sweep away your tracks?"

"Enough!" Kav thundered in the tones of a patrician who's spent decades in the pulpit. "I've told no lies and done no wrongs. We found what we have found. You will have time enough to rehearse your defense from the cells beneath the Citadel."

Nether condensed around Dante's whole body, fog-like. The guards drew back, swords wavering. Dante forced the shadows to dissolve away. The act was as hard as drinking boiling water.

"I'll find your lies," he said. "And then I'll kill you."

Kav snorted and gestured at the guards. "Bind his hands."

They locked him in chains and marched him to the disused dungeons beneath the keep. It smelled of must and old urine. As far as the scant torchlight showed, he was the only one there. The guards brought him to a room walled with stone and closed the iron door with a clang.

"You will be allowed to speak on your own behalf at the appropriate time," Kav said through the grille. "Despite your treachery, you are still one of Arawn's children."

"Then let me speak to Blays," Dante said.

"This reminds me. If you make any attempt to escape, your friends will be killed."

Dante pressed his face against the metal bars slitting the window. "Don't."

"Then don't do anything stupid," Kav said.

"Send Blays."

Kav disappeared from sight. A torch in the hallway shed the barest light into his cell. He wondered if it was the same one Larrimore had locked him in long ago when he'd bluffed his way into the Citadel with the intent of assassinating the woman who'd ruled it. He walked the corners of the room, fingers trailing the cool stone walls. There was nether in them. Faint, but present. Was there anything in the world beyond the shadows' touch?

He allowed himself to be angry for a while. He needed to let it boil away, leaving him with a clear head capable of establishing Kav's guilt and exonerating himself. Somburr's decryption of the letters might accomplish that, but he couldn't depend on it. His life—Narashtovik, norren freedom, everything—hung on proving Kav was the one who belonged in this cell.

So he sat, reached out for the nether, breathed. Soon, he calmed. There could be something that would help him on the knife. There could be something on Cally's body. What about Cally's last words? Skunks and whispers—had he been attacked by someone who smelled foul? A fishmonger? A dung-shoveler? Unlikely to help just now, that. Yet if he could find the killer, he was certain he could make the man talk. If he could make the man talk, he could out Kav's treachery to the world.

At least it was cool in the dungeons. He laid on the stones, hands clasped behind his head. He must have slept; footsteps woke him some time later. Blays' face appeared in the grille.

"Man, what have you done now?"

"Oh, nothing much," Dante said. "Just murdered Cally."

"Very talented of you," Blays said. "Weren't we two hundred miles away at the time?"