The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (31 page)

As he consulted his mental checklist, he felt his eavesdroppers tune in as well.  There were always three of them, but they had to eat and sleep and shit the same as normal people.  In fact, they
were
normal people, for it was impossible to modify mages without breaking their ability to wield magic.  He had tried.  So there were perhaps twelve of them dedicated to him, working in shifts and sharing their observations.  He hoped they found it entertaining.

Midwinter Festival robe...it could wait.  It was only the 23rd.  Care packages: components ordered, others being assembled.  Inquisition: next meeting on the 28th.  Journeyman evokers' papers needed grading, as did the treatise for one of the Master-rank candidates he was advising.  His agents' reports needed to be read.  And then there was the Gold surprise.

He nodded to himself and drifted toward his office, passing the mirror as always to check the view.  His hand slid over the stone slab beside it, noting the faint irregularities on the empty surface—focusing on them.  He'd have to polish this one.  He couldn't have rough work-spaces.

A mentalist-probe drilled into him and he grimaced and shot anger at it, like swatting a pest.  They could not see through his eyes or hear through his ears, nor access his memories without touching him; all they could do was skim his surface thoughts and dive the dense clouds of his musings.  He liked to read student papers while they watched, or attend plays, or compile cancer epidemiologies, and see which ones nodded off or turned queasy first.

And when he worked his spells, he took pains to make them inscrutable.  He mingled languages, played word-games, solved equations and sang old songs while his hands moved by muscle-memory—defacing the process in his mind as the power flowed through his body, beyond their view.

Some day, they would decode him.  He had no doubt of that.  Even handicapped, they had their claws in him deep, and he was tired.  But the less they understood, the better—and if he burnt a few out in the process?

Good riddance.

The Emperor sometimes chided him for his secrets, but playfully.  Enkhaelen knew he liked the intrigue.

He was just at the door when the bangle on his right wrist throbbed.  He sighed, shook it out from under his sleeve and eyed the cabochon stones.  Black.  That meant upstairs.

“Office time, my ass,” he muttered, correcting his trajectory toward the portal-frame.  It lit up when he slapped it, automatically weaving a connection to its last destination, but he checked that target and cued a different one.  In a moment he saw it: the back-side of the tapestry he used to cover his portal alcove.  With a sigh, he stepped through.

He had done so much traveling that he no longer felt the spatial disjunction, just the change in atmosphere as cold-and-dry gave way to temperate-and-spice-scented—the latter caused by the sachets Warder Farcry kept pressing upon him.  She said the place smelled too chemical, and that he should try to live like a human being instead of one of Artificer Varrol's automatons.  Using them seemed to satisfy her.

He deactivated the portal-frame and pushed through into his sparse topside office.  It had an inkwood desk, padded chair, other padded chair, and three tapestries from his jaunts to Gejara with Scryer Snowfoot, lavishly embroidered with scenes of snow and forest.  Like all Archmagus offices, it was circular with the iron ring around the edge plus a short notch of entry-space.  Unlike the others, and unlike his true office, it contained absolutely nothing else of interest.

He flopped into his seat, propped chin in hand, and made the door-open gesture.

It ground open noisily, followed by a silence as his visitor hesitated.  He had placed a sheet of arcane darkness across the threshold long ago because it amused him to see how people reacted to it—how long it took them to step into the unknown.  For this visitor it was only a moment, then he strode in: a tall man in a Sapphire robe, face tight with annoyance.

Enkhaelen sagged in his chair. 
Blast it, not Salandry.
  “Summoner Archmagus,” he said. “Not exactly on my list of students.  Can I help you?”

Summoner Archmagus Careil Salandry stared down at him, slate-grey eyes like knives.  He was Enkhaelen's major rival on the council, a Trivestean with significant skill but an arrogance excessive even by the measure of his people.  He also fancied himself an artist, his medium elementals.  In Enkhaelen's opinion, he was shit.

Then his tight face cracked into a smile, and Enkhaelen forced himself to return it.  “It is so difficult to catch you in,” said the summoner.  “I am surprised you responded.  You should know that I am getting impatient.”

“You've always been impatient,” said Enkhaelen, making the door-close gesture before nodding to the other seat.  Salandry disdained it, instead moving to rest his fingertips on the desk.  His forearms were ungarbed, robe-sleeves truncated above the elbows to show his summoner bands with their enslaving sigils.  To arcane sight, thin threads of power drifted out from them—more than three dozen minor bonds plus the four major chains on his thick rings.

“I want this to progress,” said Salandry, attention never straying from Enkhaelen's eyes.  In someone else, it would have been hostility, but Trivesteans had to be trained not to stare others down and Salandry had obviously shrugged off that part of his education.  “I am tired of being belittled by the foreigners and that glorified mechanic Varrol.”

“I really don't see them belittling you.  Mostly it's me.”

“Yes, but I expect it from you.  It is the part you play.  Varrol, Qisvar, Snowfoot, they do not respect me.  They interrupt me, speak out of turn.  You understand my problem; you are blood of the hawk.  We can not allow these low-blooded clods to drag us down to their level.  We must rise as the phoenix that is our patron, to the Throne itself if necessary—“

Enkhaelen made a show of nodding and mentally detached from the conversation.  They had been through this a dozen times: Salandry pitching his idealized uprising of all the raptor-bloods against the tyranny of the mammals, himself mouthing encouragements but throwing up roadblocks at every turn.  It was the type of lunacy that only came out of deep Trivestes or high Darronwy anymore.  Though public avowal of beast-blood was not a crime, it was considered gauche and backward and invited accusations of spiritism—or worse, anti-Imperialism.

Enkhaelen had no real interest in Salandry's idiocy, so he just listened and made agreeing sounds, and imagined himself dissecting the man.  Particularly his tiny, tiny brain.

“—And your evokers are essential,” Salandry was saying.  “Retrained as battle-mages—“

“Which is forbidden.”

“Who forbids it?  The laws of the Silent Circle, which were clasped upon us like shackles when the Altaerans claimed our land?  For hundreds of years, we have—”

Funny you speak of shackles
, Enkhaelen thought as he let the summoner babble on.  There was a revolutionary on every council.  If not a Trivestean claiming to speak for the Sapphire Eye, it was a Wynd who had some clout with the Golden Wing, or a Riddishperson who had all the warring tribes just waiting for their command, or an unusually uppity Amand who wanted the rest of the Empire to understand the importance of farmers.  Back when he was young, he'd known the Heartlands as a morass of internecine strife, political oneupsmanship and stubborn resistance to progress.  It was comforting, sometimes, to see that hadn't changed.

Mostly, though, it was annoying.  In his imaginary dissection, he had already stripped Salandry nude, made the entry incision, pinned back the flesh, snipped open the ribcage and started removing and cataloging the organs when he caught the man saying, “Firebird.”

“What?” he said, blinking back to reality.

“You must have a connection to the Firebird,” Salandry repeated as if to a dim student.  “I know it exists; you cannot convince me otherwise.  The Emperor's 'phoenix' is merely an appropriation of the iconography of the Darronwayn fire-spirit, the god of the Khaeleokiels.  Even your name—“

“You've been reading banned books again.”

Salandry scowled defensively.  “The truth is obvious.  As a Darronwayn, you most of all should understand this, and support me in retaking this land for our people—“

In his imagination, Enkhaelen cut out Salandry's heart and weighed it.  Large for his height and mass; he projected the summoner at three-quarters eagle-kin minimum, which made for a more avian cardiovascular system.  Perhaps further enlarged for stress, but Salandry was quite fit which might ameliorate the issue.  Good bronchial flow—perhaps enough to feed a circulatory lung structure, which would explain how he could talk and talk and talk.

Merits investigation
, he thought, and added Salandry to the list.

“Careil—  Careil,” he said aloud, breaking into the diatribe.  “I wish you would pick a single target.  One day you say 'the Circle' and the next you say 'Demathry'.  Do you not have the Sapphire General on your side?”

“We have been corresponding.”

“And what does he say?”

“He is still considering my offer.”

Naturally.  Because the Sapphire General isn't an idiot.
  “And now you're saying the Throne?”

The summoner's gaze shifted uncomfortably, as if aware for the first time just how treasonous he was.  “I believe we need reform within the Empire.  Obviously the Emperor will retain his role; he is, after all, the Prime Scion of the Light.  But the memory of the Firebird should be rekindled—you must believe that!  Not as we see it now in the temples, all glass and gilt, but as a force of rage and power.  The standard of a new army, an arcane army—!”

“Just...pick one idea and stick with it,” said Enkhaelen.  “You're beginning to sound unreliable.  Overreaching.  I can't be involved with a scheme that doesn't have the muscle to pull through.  If you want my recommendation, stick with the Sapphire Army scheme and get Demathry's support.”

“And you will throw in with me?” said Salandry.  “Against the lowlanders?  You swear to this?”

“I swear.  But only if you get Demathry's support.”

The summoner sneered.  “Oh, I will get it.  I have a meeting scheduled with him soon.  If he thinks he can ignore the will of his fort-holder constituents, he is sorely mistaken.”

“If that is all?”

Salandry offered his hand, but Enkhaelen just stared at it, then at the summoner's smirk.  They both knew about the other rings Salandry wore: the empty but primed ones, waiting for their chance to ensnare a new servant.  Enslaving human souls was illegal—and impossible to maintain with summoner techniques—but it made for an effective threat.

“Oh go away,” said Enkhaelen, and Salandry chuckled and withdrew.

Though sorely tempted not to open the door and just let the summoner walk into it, Enkhaelen made the open-gesture.  Salandry's back disappeared through the curtain of darkness, then his boot-heels crossed the threshold, and he was gone.

Piking idiot.  And bringing up the Firebird...  Is he being fed information?  Is he meant to distract me, draw me out?

Good luck with that
, Enkhaelen thought, pushing up from his desk.  The Emperor had caught him tampering with the game once, and he knew better than to do it again.  Curiosity could wait until this round was over. 
Everything
could wait.

Though if all went as planned...

The bangle throbbed.  At the same time, he felt a resonance from the door.  Someone else seeking an audience.

“What?” he snapped despite knowing the room was soundproof.  After a moment's glare, he dropped back into his seat and gestured the door open.

This one strode through with no hesitation, his garishly patterned robe proclaiming him Psycher Archmagus Dzuren Qisvar to anyone who retained color vision after seeing it.  No one else dared wear such obviously southern garb in this political clime.  Even Qisvar's pointed black beard was a stab at northern sensibilities.

“Lurking, were you?” said Enkhaelen tiredly.

“Salandry's mental wards are not as strong as he believes,” said Qisvar, pulling up the other chair to the desk.  His dark eyes glittered beneath the edge of his headscarf, today a twisting design of lime, brown and blue-violet that complemented his robe.  Like the Gejarans, Padrastans enjoyed inflicting their idea of beauty on the world, as if to punish it for its crimes.

“And I told you I'm not bringing the subject to the Emperor,” said Enkhaelen.  “We can handle this ourselves.”

“Ah, handle it.  That is what you were doing, then.”

“Of course.”

Qisvar sat forward, expression grim.  “I saw the fantasies dancing in his head.  Authority, dominance, annihilation of his enemies—of which I am one.  You should not toy with him.”

“I'm not toying, Qisvar.”

“Then you are doing what?”

“Trying to steer him somewhere less disruptive.  You know I won't give details.”  For there was always someone like Qisvar on the council too.  Someone well-meaning but nosy, or justifiably paranoid.  A foreigner or an advocate listening for whispers of war.

The Padrastan mentalist sat back, steepling long fingers together.  “Sometimes I wonder why I trust you.  With the Inquisition at your disposal, you could be playing us all.”

“I'm just the custodian, I'm not the leader.  They would never truly follow a non-mentalist.”