The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (22 page)

“Too good an Imperial?”

“No, it's a family thing.”

Lark grimaced.  “Nevermind then, I know how that is.”

Dasira smiled wryly, then leaned over to retrieve the cup Fiora had left behind.  She'd been watching the girl since their acquaintance began, and every night Fiora sprinkled something from her pack into her tea.  A glance showed her the familiar splay of tea-leaves plus mysterious red flecks.

“Are you snooping?” said Lark.

“No.”

“You're such a bad liar.”  Lark leaned across her to grab for the cup, and though Dasira held it away, the Shadow girl just planted a hand on her shoulder and half-stood to grab at it again.  Instinct prompted her to twist, trip, shove—impel her opponent toward the fire-pit and the hard edges of the cook-pot.  She resisted, and let Lark snag the cup with a crow of victory.

“What is this?” she said as she settled back down.  “You trying to tell the future?”

“No.”

“Then what?  Come on, we all know you have it in for her.”

“I don't,” Dasira said through her teeth.  “She has it in for me—and there's something going on with her.  The Erestoia spire, the arrowhead...”

Lark frowned, toying with the cup.  “I don't know what you think that means.  So her goddess can't veil her...so what?  Maybe she has her own magic.”

“Unlikely,” Ilshenrir interjected.  “All humans have the potential for magic, but a god's touch suppresses it.  Perhaps to encourage dependence.”

Dasira eyed the wraith.  “Is that so?”

In the firelight, his fine features were unreadable, inhuman.  “A lack of such suppression is what draws followers to Daenivar of Nightmares.  He teaches arcane secrets even my people do not know.  We disdain him for this as much as for his rebirth as the Blood Goddess's 'son'.”

“So the gods do this on purpose?” said Lark.

“Perhaps.  Magic is the manipulation of energy by a singular entity, either a wraith essence or a human soul.  It requires full control over oneself—and a god's presence interferes with this.  I do not know if it is intentional.  As a former wraith, Daenivar may simply know how to keep his followers' channels clear.”

Dasira opened her mouth to ask what this meant for Fiora, but Lark spoke first: “So I could do magic?  I'm a laywoman.”

Ilshenrir regarded her, lens-like eyes shifting as if to focus.  “Yes.  I see no interference.”

“Could Arik?”

“No.  He has no soul, merely a tethered fragment of the Wolf spirit.”

“Das?”

“No.”

“Huh.”  Lark's gaze trailed to where she'd dropped her pack and most of her furs, and in the lapse, Dasira opened her mouth to try her question again.  Then Lark said, “So I could actually be a mage, instead of just wearing a robe and pretending?”

“Yes.”

“The shadows don't like magic, though.”

Silence stretched.  Experimentally, Dasira opened her mouth again.

“Do you think you could teach me?” said Lark.

Ilshenrir gave a good facsimile of a smile.  “I can at least show you how to empower your garment as a proper mage would.  It will make the masquerade more believable.”

With a sound of glee, Lark scrambled up and tore through her pack for the orange robe.  Arik seemed to take this as a sign to depart, for he rose and shucked his chiton, then shifted into wolf-form and padded out through the shimmer of the entry-ward.

As Lark planted herself next to Ilshenrir, robe in hand and expression intent, Dasira picked up the cup she'd left behind.  Though she would have liked an answer, she already knew what the wraith would say.

Whatever trick Fiora had used in the Erestoia spire, it wasn't magic.

Chapter 6 – Balance of Power

Captain Sarovy descended the steps slowly, his lantern's light gilding the damp stone walls.  At his back were Lancers Garrenson and Serinel, still assigned to his protective detail, and Medic Shuralla in her red-and-white striped coat.  Down at the base of the stairs he recognized two Shields from Lieutenant Arlin's platoon, stolid in their red jackets and light mail.  They saluted in advance of his approach, and he returned it, then passed them into the dim chamber beyond.  Another lantern glowed there but could not penetrate all the shadows that cloaked the cells.

“You are temporarily relieved of duty,” he said.  “Get yourselves something to eat and be back in a quarter mark.”

“Yessir,” the Shields chorused.

He did not look back as they left, confident that his Lancers would fall into position unordered.  Instead he moved deeper into the chamber, lifting his lantern to light the cells.

There were miserably few; he supposed the Bahlaeran militia did not incarcerate many people, just fined and released them or else sent them to the debtors' prison.  The first two were vacant, though the second only recently, since Shield Satherson had spent the night there sleeping off a drunk-and-disorderly.  Sarovy had ordered another lantern hung above him for the duration, because he was not a part of the experiment.  As he passed the empty cell, he wondered what he might have caught in the others.

Nothing, it seemed, for the runes on the walls remained untriggered, and the two militiamen Rynher and Beltras were still there.  They wore street-clothes, their wives having visited during both days of their incarceration, but now on the morning of the third they just slumped tiredly on their pallet-platforms with matching expressions of defeat.

Sarovy sighed, annoyed by their continued presence.  Neither had been much of an assassin, and their motive was clear: a witless, ill-targeted sense of vengeance.  Scryer Mako had verified that, but then refused to scan their minds further on the grounds that she was not an Inquisitor and thus not legally permitted to inquisit.

Regardless, he had learned plenty from their wives.  Beltras was childless, ireful—the instigator of the pair, though no great thinker; Rynher was a family man, moody and malleable.  His wife was wroth over Beltras' influence on him, and both women bemoaned the massacre in the depths and the downturn of their lives since then.  The scouts had been out to their homes to snoop and reported nothing; even had Sarovy been interested in torturing them, he already knew they had little to tell.  It was exasperating.

He had hoped he could at least lure the Shadow Cult with them.

“We've got nothing to say,” grunted Beltras.  “If you won't charge or release us, just pike off and let us rot.”  A moment later, he added, “You should've left us in the depths.”

Perhaps
, thought Sarovy, but even in his irritation he could not sustain the idea.  Those swarming black creatures with their shiny eyes and bloody teeth...  “No.  I do not regret saving you.  I would have saved all your comrades if I could.  It was the Shadow's trap that slew them, the Shadows who have abandoned you here.  I am only interested in them.”

Beltras sneered.  “You should've backed off when our captain told you to, you and your stupid scout.  The depths aren't for anyone who cares to see daylight again.  It's your piking fault they all died, my brother among them, and then you dare to come back here and fox up the Shadowland?  Do you know how much trouble you're in?”

“Do tell.”

“Pike you.  Find out for yourself.”

Sarovy stepped closer to the cell bars, trying to construct an argument that would bring them to his side.  He did not want to execute them.

Then he noticed the stillness of the shadow beneath Rynher's bed-platform.  All the other shadows had tilted with the movement of his lantern, but that one stayed steady, a pane of depthless black.  A cultist spyhole that had somehow failed to trigger the mages' trap.

For a moment, he wished dearly for the days of the Jernizan campaign: a proper sword-on-sword war, not magic and monsters and a spontaneous need for espionage.  But this was an opening of sorts.  The cultists were listening.

He had to capitalize on it.  He'd planned for the mages' trap to catch any attempted rescuers, or if it could not, to let the two men be snatched away and then follow the arcane tracers Scryer Mako had placed on them.  Instead, the Shadows were showing the same caution he saw in the streets.  The city had calmed itself, its riots subsiding, but he did not trust such lulls.  He imagined agents circling, knives being sharpened.

A hand moving in opposition to his own.

This was evidence.

The rest of the garrison was warded wall-to-wall, including the stables and the practice yard.  The men had settled into their shifts, though some complained it was difficult to sleep with the glow from the runes.  Too bad.  They were restless, yes; his lieutenants had already lashed several men for petty infractions born of the close quarters.  But they were safe in here, and that gave him confidence.

And his enemy, his opposite, was paying attention.

“Can you tell me what this is?” he said, withdrawing a small object from his uniform jacket pocket.  Dark glass and twisted metal, it glittered in the lantern-light: the misshapen trinket he had picked up at the verge of the ruins.  His reminder.  He had contemplated it often in the sleepless nights since the disaster, and had gleaned an inkling of its purpose from the way the shadows deepened in the spots unlit by ward-light.  Deepened, but never opened.

Both prisoners leaned forward, surprise registering on their faces.  “Don't wave that around unless you want to get eaten,” said Beltras.  “It's an eiyetakri.  They make 'em as toys or offerings to the little shadows, the biting things like what got my fellows.  Summons them, and sometimes the attention of the Kheri.”

“Kheri...  The Shadow Cult.”  Sarovy nodded.  “How would I use it?”

The militiamen looked at him like he was mad, and behind him he heard Medic Shuralla shift uncomfortably.  “Put it in a shadow, I guess,” said Beltras.  “Then just...wait.”

“Then I would like it to be known that I have this.”  Sarovy turned his stare to the darkness under Rynher's bed, holding up the eiyetakri so that whatever was beyond could see.  “The time will come, no doubt, that we find ourselves with our teeth in each other's necks.  I may endeavor to speak with you directly then.  And you, of course, know where to find me.”

“Captain?” said the medic.  Behind her, his bodyguards' ears were probably burning with his words, but those two were lancers.  He trusted them.

“I meant what I told the council,” he continued.  “I am here to root you out, to see that no more business transacts between you and the citizens of Bahlaer—but we do not have to do this by violence.  It is the way of darkness to yield to light.  Those who leave will not be pursued.  Those who surrender cult materials will not be charged.  However, I will meet any opposition with deadly force, and have presented a writ of purpose to your council to that effect.  My mission is to make Bahlaer safe, stable and law-abiding, and anyone who stands in the way of that is my enemy.”  Glancing to Rynher, he added, “I would think that you, as a husband and father, could support such a cause.”

Rynher looked away, while Beltras growled, “Stow your pretty words.  You're not running for office.  Who piking wants to be Imperial?  All you've brought us is a boot to the neck.”

“Your...elected officials have retained their offices,” said Sarovy, using the words Scryer Mako had provided yet still puzzled by them.  His people lived within strict military hierarchy, and while he could understand certain other methods of rule, it seemed ridiculous to let civilians choose who led them.  “Conscription is the same here as in any Imperial province, curfews likewise.  Our only demand is that you cease your worship of Dark and heretical powers and give your allegiance to the Emperor and the Light.”

“Pike you.  This is just another piking gang-war.  You want their turf, they won't give it, so you pull us all into this whether we pick a side or not.  I'm no Shadow follower but you won't find me giving them up to you blood-coated thugs.  Nor will any Bahlaeran.”

Sarovy frowned.  Thus far, Beltras was not wrong.  The citizens served his soldiers like any other customer, but spoke no more than the standard pleasantries.  Even the whores were said to be coldly businesslike.  The attacks had ebbed but no one smiled, and no one came forward.

It aggravated him.  Bad enough that he had to write his own writ of purpose, had to present it to the council with his own signature at the bottom because his commander could not be bothered.  Bad enough that his finances were thin, the weekly pay-chest from headquarters barely enough to cover meals.  Lieutenant Linciard wanted to stockpile supplies but there were no funds for that, and if the Bahlaerans did not turn over any goods or pass on any tips...

He clenched his hand around the eiyetakri.  For all that he resented the intrusion of the arcane and the mystical, he wanted this challenge.  He had been courting it since the raids on the cliff-coves.  But to face it with so little, and with an enemy so vast and obscure, made it less of a spar and more of a massacre waiting to happen.

Perhaps this had been a bad choice.

“When you wish to speak, inform the guards.  They will summon me no matter the mark,” he said finally.  “I would not see you waste your lives when we could be working for the good of Imperial Bahlaer.  Think of your families, if nothing else.”

With that, he turned away, aware of the target this made of his back.  They could shoot through shadows, he knew, though perhaps not with the wards in place.

But no attack came.

Instead the medic snatched at his sleeve, and his keyed-up nerves almost made him smack her.  “Take care, woman,” he said.

“I want to inspect them.”

Sarovy frowned at her.  Medic Shuralla was a frowzy little dumpling of a woman, no taller than his collarbone and probably half again his age, but she stared up with a steely determination that reminded him of the Cray woman, and it made him uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, he said, “No.  You can see from here that they have not been abused.  I will not allow you in with them.”

“Then release them!  You have no reason to hold them.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Bahlaeran law states that—“

“Imperial law supersedes.  I am sorry, madam medic, but I will not discuss this further.”

“Captain, I must insist!  In the name of—“

“Stop.”  He had been turning away, but now he wheeled back to look her square in the eye.  “Invoke no names, madam medic.  I appreciate what you do for my men, but if you state your allegiance aloud, I will have to act according to the Empire's tenets.  Do not force my hand.”

She blinked up at him, startlement melting to sadness.  “Your tragedy, captain, is that you know you are wrong.”

He had no words for that—nothing coherent—but he did his best to be calm and stride through the doorway, up the stairs, without a sign of his anger.  Her footsteps pattered after him, and it was all he could do not to shove her back down.

Summon the sentries
, he thought to the faint tingle in his mind that was Scryer Mako.  Aloud, he said, “Garrenson, Serinel, await replacement then dismissed.”

“Yessir,” they chorused as he left them behind.

The Scryer was awaiting him at the top of the steps, one brow raised.  The rune-light of the assembly hall caught on the pins in her chestnut hair and the fine metallic embroidery that covered her peach-colored robe-dress, making her petite form glimmer as she moved out of his way.  “Worthwhile?” she said, gloved fingers tapping an absent tempo atop her crossed arms.

“Perhaps,” said Sarovy, cutting across the assembly hall without pause.  Now that the runes provided constant light, the place was cluttered with men talking or dicing or mending their gear, the bunkrooms too cramped to allow much of that.  The great doors at the far end were open to allow in fresh air, and on the front steps he glimpsed men catching a quick smoke while they watched the kickball game in the courtyard.

He turned a blind eye to all such things, though he appreciated it when the men covered their dice or their cheroots at his passing.  Back at the Crimson camp, gambling and rashi-use were fine-worthy offenses, but they boosted morale here and he needed that.

“Hoi, medic,” someone called out as he reached the opposite stairs, and he was relieved to see Medic Shuralla peel off to attend a man's concerns.

'Don't be too hard on her,'
said Scryer Mako in his head. 
'She's all alone here.'

Sarovy grunted.  The other medics assigned to this post had stopped showing up after Blaze Company's first day in residence, and his scouts had reported their homes abandoned.  They were Trifold cultists, he knew; Darilan Trevere had pointed it out to him, and he had seen the evidence at the Crimson camp.  Harmless women—helpful, even—but still cultists.

Medic Shuralla's husband had been one of the victims of the shadow-monsters in the depths.  She lived here now, sleeping in the infirmary and dedicating all her time to the men.  Her presence pained him.