The Humbled (The Lost Words: Volume 4) (43 page)

“What happens when one eats the powder?”

Junner snapped his fingers. “The powder is very, very fine. So even the tiniest amount of breathing gets it in your nose. And then you begin to sneeze and cough and retch, and then it gets into your lungs, and they bleed. Quite entertaining to watch.”

I see
, he thought. “Go ahead.”

Semgad was looking genuinely afraid now. “I do this, you let me go?”

Bart ignored the shoving and pushing around him, the mercenaries placing their last bets. “Yes.”

Junner said something in the Borei, and one of the soldiers removed a pin stoppering a metal bowl floating in a somewhat larger pan. Immediately, the bowl began filling, threatening to sink. The nomad prisoner exhaled carefully, a shuddering breath of kicked-in ribs, and with a trembling hand reached for the spoon.

“If you spill, we add more,” Junner warned.

Later, Bart found time to entertain his court, discussing the future of the realm with people who wanted to see him removed. He let them enjoy their false sense of superiority, and then, he gently set Sonya’s mother on them.

He found more time for his uncle and told him nothing of the grisly execution he had watched earlier, with the nomad vomiting blood until even his muscles grew too tired to spasm, and he choked on his own bile. Junner offered him a large bag of gold and silver, his share of the game, but he refused. He wasn’t sure if he felt disgusted by the ordeal, but it just did not feel right.

Finally, he tumbled Adam on his knees, making stupid faces that children supposedly loved, although the baby did not respond that much. His fault, Constance claimed, because children took time bonding with their parents. He did his fatherly part in the confines of her cabin so no one would witness his humiliation. Still, his mistress was pleased, and he got an autumn present from her, too, after so many months of solitude. He was becoming the monarch of the realm, he realized. Slowly, carefully, he was building the reality for after the war. It still wasn’t won, but somehow, he knew, Eracia would win. The realm might get obliterated by this northern army, but he would free Somar, and he would free Sonya.

Just days ago, he had dreaded the moment. But no longer. He had decided what he must do.

CHAPTER 30

D
isappointment. That was how Jarman summarized his time in the realms. He had expected Adam’s children to bring salvation to the land, to defeat the White Witch. Instead, they had both failed him. James had died, and Amalia turned out to be a frightened, confused young woman, not quite sure how to handle defeat.

He most certainly had not predicted a thin, unassuming lad would arrive one day in Ecol, carrying a bloodstaff. That was beyond even his dreams. He still wondered where Ewan fit in the bigger scheme of things, and the notion frightened him. After years spent at the temple, where all things had precise logic, the uncertainty of this war worried him. He was not quite sure how to interpret the recent events, and he was loath to make any decision, because it might turn out to be a grave mistake. Apparently, revenge was a double-edged blade.

In a situation like this, there was only one way to proceed.

Using the razor-sharp methodologies hammered out by Armin Wan’Der Markssin.

There is always a motive
, his father would say.
And every motive stems from a need. If you can figure out the need, you will figure out the crime
.

That was easier said than done, but he was trying his best. He realized he would not solve the puzzle of Adam’s offspring by focusing on the emperor’s death, nor the rash decision of his daughter to challenge all the realms. Her loss of the bloodstaff was intriguing, but not peculiar. Calemore would surely want his magical weapon back. How it had gotten into Adam’s hands in the first place…that was too much.

So the White Witch had upset the balance of power in the realms and brought about the defeat of the young empress. Then, the Caytorean councillors had found and sponsored Adam’s bastard as leverage against her aggressive diplomacy. Their plot had almost worked, but it was hard to beat the randomness of stray arrows in battle. Lords and peasants died as equals.

Now, there was the boy Ewan, and he was a great piece of confusion. Unrelated somehow, it seemed. And yet, he held the key to the victory of the people of the realms against Naum. Which made Jarman’s plan of a great unity among the continental nations redundant. He did not like that. If this awful war was a tree, then Ewan had just pruned a giant branch off the crown. Or created his own sapling.

Jarman kept staring at his drawing, a piece of coal pressed between his fingers. No, Ewan came much later. So did Gavril. There were older, unresolved mysteries. He knew his father would never neglect any detail. Armin called it cause and effect.

When Lucas and he had first met James, the emperor had reacted with too much familiarity to their claim of magic. And then, when they had asked him to believe their story of an impeding doom, that dandy Caytorean Rob had intervened and helped convince him to listen to them.

There it was. Why would Calemore want Rob dead?

Amalia had met the witch, but not James. And yet, he had been rather receptive to the notion of an ancient enemy
threatening the realms. Far too receptive, now that Jarman had hindsight of the situation.

Months later, the Eybalen investor got assassinated with the bloodstaff.

Not James or Amalia. A seemingly unimportant adviser to the emperor. Why?

Jarman realized once he solved this piece, he would know the whole truth. But his best investigative skills had only left his fingers smudged in soot. Frustrated, he tore yet another piece of thin paper off the clerk’s notebook and tossed it away. There was a small heap of intellectual failures lying crumpled behind him.

It all comes together
, he thought.
But I lack the reasons. I lack the motive
.

His father would probably have figured it out long ago. Jarman’s Anada education had left him well versed in spells, but he was a lousy explorer of the truth.

Jarman wished he had Lucas’s pragmatic approach to life. The old, experienced wizard did not worry too much about all these uncertainties. He knew he could not control them, so he focused on the elements that he could. At the moment, he only worried that the protective shield around Amalia held, and that it would alert against human intruders, too. And there was the small matter of defeating the gigantic Naum army, which was still sitting maddeningly idle.

Was Calemore waiting for all the nations of the realms to consolidate their might before he attacked? Would that make his conquest swifter? After all, the larger the defender’s forces, the easier they were to track down and destroy. Jarman was all too aware the witch had the second bloodstaff. He had used it once already.

His thoughts strayed to the Eybalen investor. Why had the witch murdered a wealthy member of the High Council? What did he matter?
Why
did he matter?

If Calemore had not bothered targeting either Amalia or James, it meant he considered them meaningless. True enough, James had died, and Adam’s daughter was now a puppet in the hands of the Parusite ruler. For some reason, Jarman felt the witch would not bother with King Sergei either. For some reason, he felt the scrawny youth named Ewan was the champion of the realms.

That meant his mission was a complete failure.

Jarman wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t bothered sailing for Caytor. Thinking more deeply, he was fairly certain he had breached the first rule of investigation. He had let his emotions steer him. He had lost objectivity. Now, events were unfolding in some bastardly manner, because of his meddling. In fact, he might be responsible for Rob’s death. He had pushed James toward difficult truths, he had prodded him about magic and ancient weapons, and it was the councillor helping James along. What had Rob known to warrant his death?

There. That was the key to the victory against Calemore, he knew. But he had destroyed that possibility. Now, he had Ewan, and he was frightened to push the young man, because he might precipitate an untold disaster that he could not control.

Jarman rose, smoothed the wrinkles of his robes, and left the inn. He found Lucas in the backyard, talking to Ewan. The holy man, Gavril, was not there.

“Only human blood,” the blue-faced wizard said.

Ewan nodded. “Yes.” He pushed a bucket with his foot. It joined half a dozen other pails, each brimming with a syrupy
maroon liquid that had the unmistakable texture of slowly congealing blood. “Cow, horse, sheep, goat, dog, cat, pigeon, pig.” He shrugged.

“Jarman,” Lucas said, turning.

The young man nodded in solemn greeting. Jarman had a feeling Ewan did not like him very much, not since the butchery of those Naum soldiers near Bassac.

“We were trying different types of blood to see if any could substitute for human sacrifice,” Lucas explained. “It seems not.”

Jarman leaned against a large barrel. It probably held winter cabbage. He glanced at the boy and his weapon of destruction. No story had ever had such an unlikely hero, he thought sourly. Jarman was almost too afraid to contemplate dissecting this young man’s past. He was troubled by his eyes, troubled by what he might discover. Ewan had the countenance of someone just coming to terms with his body and voice, but he had the behavior of an old, tormented being who had witnessed too much pain and suffering.

Perhaps this war was too big for him. Maybe he should just listen to Lucas. They could pack and leave, head back to Sirtai, leave the crazy people of the realms to their gods and wars, let them resolve their ancient feuds on their own. Sirtai would survive anyway, he figured. Just like it had in the first war so long ago.

“Are you planning an attack against the Naum forces?” he asked.

Ewan looked at him coolly, almost derisively. “We are defending ourselves, are we not? So we will defend ourselves.”

Jarman wanted to urge the boy to commit himself. But it was so easy goading someone else to do the killing when you didn’t have to do it yourself. He kept his mouth shut. He might have mastered the basics of communication that passed
for civic behavior among these people, he knew, but he still could not comprehend their sense of honor and guilt. The continental nations didn’t believe in right or wrong, he realized. They believed in justice, no matter how they defined it.

No, he must not push this lad. That would truly kill his investigation.

Lucas realized Jarman wanted to talk to him. “Thank you for your time,” he said to the youth.

Ewan nodded at the older wizard and walked around the back stall of the stable. Once alone, Jarman finally spoke his mind. “How do you measure a man’s worth? Is it his word?”

Lucas’s face was unreadable, as usual. He beckoned Jarman to follow him and led out of the backyard, the same way Ewan had gone. They greeted the handful of sentries casually and wove their way out of the busy square and into a side alley. The sky above was racing them, as if someone was pulling on a carpet of puffy white and lead and pale blue.

Ecol was so crowded, it was impossible to breathe. With all of the refugee population of northern Athesia converging on the town, with the addition of Gavril’s pilgrims, Sasha’s troops, and the Parusite reinforcements trickling from the south, Ecol was bursting. Any stretch of dry land of flat cobbles was good enough to pitch a tent. There were grubby, naked children everywhere, playing in the gutters, chasing rats.

Lucas led, his massive, forbidding presence clearing the path better than a file of shock cavalry. Jarman trailed, all too aware his question remained unanswered.

It wasn’t long before they left the town’s center, and it became easier to inhale. Still, the fields around Ecol were just as busy, but at least you did not have the buildings hugging you, smothering you. The old manor house was almost finished, and hopefully, Lucas’s and his assistance would be valued
enough to relocate them from the greasy inn. On the surface, everyone behaved as if the world was just lazily inching toward rain and wind. No one seemed to care it might all end in a massive surge of Naum forces.

Soldiers had little to do except to gamble and associate, men on one side, women on the other, a gulf of curiosity and old animosity yawning between them. The Borei were there, and all the wild-eyed pilgrims, and the elite troops of the Parusite nobility, drawn over from their secluded camp by simple human curiosity. The strained relations between different factions had thawed a little since the Autumn Festival. The end of the world had color and style, for sure.

Lucas kept walking, his stride long and efficient. He did not look back. Jarman got distracted by the figure of a fairly busty servant woman returning to her camp, but there was no time for that. He followed his friend and mentor.

Finally, the tattooed wizard stopped near the mining camp. The din was impressive. A thousand smithies growled and rang and hissed. The air stank of burnt metal and wood. You could hear men cursing as they mauled iron against anvil; you could hear the miners gasping in relief as they left the dark, hot pits and brought a fresh load of ore to the brisk autumn midday.