Winterfinding (3 page)

“
That’s
madness.”

“
Nope, completely true.
Bithumin, especially the more refined it is, will spike growth in
crops but it will then leech all life from the soil. It’ll scorch
the land leaving nothing but a dead sandy mess.”

“
So they had to stop you.
And they had to stop me from bringing you back.”

“
They need to know who
knows. That’s the information they want. In the meantime, they’re
making one last grand gesture. Then cutting us off.”

“
The countryside, it’ll
collapse.”

“
Not at first.”

“
When it does though,
it’ll come fast.” Riv was solemn.

“
Think so?” Cochrane
asked.

“
Rikonen refined bithumin
to its purest state. Used it to become the heart of the world. When
the Spires cut it off from trade, there were reports of the fields
going sour.”

“
Storms they said, dust
storms.”

“
Aye, huge storms. I saw
them, leagues wide, leagues high. They rage for hours and leave
everything covered in feet of dirt. The storms choked the city off,
kept them from getting supplies to break The Blockade.”

“
Silvincians have won that
already.”

“
I was just at The
Blockade. It’s going strong. Rikonen is all but dead. But that
woman, she didn’t seem to know it. Said they were heading
there.”

“
It took them years to
build this fleet. They must have assumed that The Blockade was just
a passing thing, after all, merchants were still buying bithumin
and shipping it north.”

“
If this fleet decided to
break The Blockade…” Riv thought.

“
Why would they?” Cochrane
shook his head, “They’ll just sail on, to Anhra or even Bandra
maybe. Either way. The Spires are going to get a gift poisoned
gift.”

There was quiet as the two men sat. Both
knew in their hearts that they’d be lucky to see sunlight again.
Riv thought of his ship, his crew, and of Asa, and then he chuckled
a bit.

“
What’s so funny?”
Cochrane asked.

“
If we had been on time,”
Riv tapped the back of his head against the wall, “If we had left
when I wanted to, we would have gotten to Wick before this fleet
would gotten to us. We could’ve dodge all this.”

“
If only.” Cochrane
shrugged.

“
If only.” Riv
muttered.

Rikonen

“
My point is—we have a
plan.” Soren stood over the desk rummaging through the parchments
and journals strewn all over and haphazardly piled up.

Since Wynne had left, Soren had been
desperately trying to piece together his research. It had been
arduous not the least of which because of Wynne’s own notes. While
not in code, his notes were an obscure shorthand seeming only to
gesture toward Wynne’s own intuition. In trying to figure out just
what exactly made Kira Ambrose so important while holding Wynne’s
seat on the council, Soren had run himself ragged. Sleep often
overcame him like a thief. He’d startle awake, confused. Soren had
resolved not to let it happen again, he couldn’t afford to lose
time. The result was a jittery mania.

“
The council had a plan as
well, before Landis returned and vetoed it.” Qala said dismissively
as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other standing bored
in the doorway to the chamber.

Soren spun around pointing viciously at
Qala, “You need to shut your mouth.” Picking up an armful of papers
he quickly folded them into the leaves of two large ledgers lying
on the small straw mattress just inside the room.

“
Are you ready now?” Qala
asked bored. Soren gathered the ledgers up into one arm and
brusquely shoved her out of the way. He strode down the cold dark
hall with Qala following close on his heels.

“
You,” Soren was assertive
as he opened one of his ledgers and began to re-order the loose
pages not looking at Qala as they walked, “barely have an inkling
of the kind of man Wynne Landis is and what he did for this city.
All you know are the benefits you’ve received from his
efforts.”

Qala rolled her eyes, “These pass three
years have been just delightful.” She fidgeted with her leather
gloves, and then adjusted her scabbard belt.

“I don’t want to get into a generational
debate with you.”

“Sure, sure,” Qala had heard the lecture
before, “You’re the responsible older brother; I’m the spoiled
little sister. I don’t know what things were like in your day.”

“You don’t.” Soren said shaking his head.
“There’s been so much change over the last fifteen years. You’ve
never known what it was before. I was old enough. This city was
chaotic and bitter before Landis organized it. He’s the reason we
can even have this conversation.”

“I don’t know.” Qala smirked, “I could have
this conversation as a guild enforcer speaking with a journeyman.
What do you think we’d have been? Shoemakers? Masons? Probably odd
fellows.”

Soren shrugged, “We’d have been lucky to
have been rowhands or caravaners.” They reached the council room
coming to a stop before the entrance. “Shit, am I ready for this?”
he whispered to himself.

Qala put her hand on Soren’s shoulder, “You
know you are. They want to be kept on task; they just need a sure
hand.”

Soren hadn’t been in the council room since
the corsairs had presented the alm, Kira Ambrose. Wynne had told
him then to pretend to be the Prime Alder so that he could observe
the men. Before they had brought Wynne back to what remained of the
civic council, the Alders had all agreed to hold the alm as ransom.
The Cathedral would demand her return and having that advantage
might be enough to alleviate the siege, several convinced
themselves it would be enough to end The Blockade for good. Soren
had his doubts but said nothing.

His rise within the council was due almost
entirely to finding Wynne’s daughter Fery (which was simply dumb
luck) and then Wynne himself (which had been considered at best a
pointless search and at worst suicidal). But he had found them
both, he had presented them to the Alders, and been rewarded with a
seat on the council. Wynne had even made him an early confidant
upon his return to the civics and his own election as Prime
Alder.

Yet Soren knew the rest of the Alders were
not as assured of his abilities as they had been with Wynne, and
even though Soren was carrying out Wynne’s stratagem, the other
Alders were plagued by doubts. They would whine that capitulation
to the Spires was the answer, then in the same breath demand more
expeditions to the sister cities—Heveonen in the northeast and
Paraonen in the northwest. The Alders would bicker about rationing,
demand a draft to forge an army (“A tiny, tiny half-starved army,”
Qala always muttered), and cry to flee the city through the barren
fields believing the simooms not nearly as bad as claimed.

Terrible, panicky ideas, the lot. Wynne had
given Soren one directive when he had left with the alm, his
daughter, and the queer rover that had stolen through The Blockade
to find the alm—keep to the plan. Doing so was becoming more and
more difficult. Today the council had gotten it in their heads that
Wynne had fled the city, abandoning everyone, and was heading to
The Cathedral to curry favor for himself alone.

There were Alders that were claiming Wynne
was living luxuriously in Sulecin with his daughter married off to
a Vicegerent. It was nonsense, of course. Nevertheless, Soren
needed not just to reassure them of Wynne’s character, but also of
his plan. To do so, Soren needed to understand it better. The long
hours in the Prime Alder’s chambers, combing over Wynne’s research
from the athenaeum, trying to make it fit with the plan that he had
left for Soren in the others. It had been maddening. Qala had been
there, to support him, and without her, he would have fallen
apart.

Now he took a deep breath and straightened
his shoulders. Nodding to Qala, she opened the door and Soren
strode into the council room. There were pockets of conversation,
all quick, nearly urgent sounding. He felt eyes on him but he
didn’t look at anyone, rather he walked deliberately to the center
lectern at the head of the room. He laid the ledgers down,
pretended to fuss with them, straightened his own tunic, and then
looked out over the Alders. They all looked frozen, gazing at him
dumbfounded and hungry.

“My fellow Alders…” Soren’s voice broke the
quiet moving through the room with such assurance that nearly all
the Alders either sat on the narrow wooden benches or turned to
toward him at attention.

“I’ve come to address your seemingly
mounting concerns and be assured of your continued compliance with
our Prime Alder Wynne Landis.” There was an authority and
dismissiveness in Soren’s voice, a trait he quickly developed from
having to deal with every petty faction within the council. Before
he could finish speaking grumblings and not a few shouted
challenges arose from the safety of the rear shadows Soren
noted.

Qala had entered the chamber and was leaning
against the door with an amused look. It seemed that there would be
no escaping this charade. Soren let none of his emotions show on
his face nor in his tone as alder after alder stood up or stepped
forward to address him he simply gazed across the room at Qala. The
two exchanged a tired smirk.

“We are getting more and more refugees from
wards seven and twelve.” A tall thin alder asserted.

“Our stores are plentiful.” Soren
replied.

“They are common folk; some are even farmers
who abandoned their lands outside the city.” The tall alder
added.

“We can’t be expected to feed and house the
entire city in this one small enclave.” Another alder added, a
rather fat man in a very bright green robe.

Soren looked at him hard, “There’s no such
thing as a large enclave.”

“
You know what he meant.”
A third alder, an elderly looking woman spoke up, “We only have
enough for our assembly right now. We could survive here for
several more years if The Blockade continues but we
can’t…”

The fat alder broke in, “We won’t survive if
we take in more folk.”

“
Seems odd that an alder
would be advocating against the interests of the people of the
city.” Soren said pointedly.

“
It is in the interests of
the city that we speak.” The tall alder replied attempting to sound
like a sage.

“
So then, you would have
me end the surveys into the city proper.” Soren nodded looking
down; when he heard weak mumbling consent picked his head up and
coolly gazed into the face of each of the three alders, “Yes? Say
it.”

“
That is
correct.”

“
We would.”

“
It makes the most
sense.”

“
Say it clearly, plainly.”
Soren demanded.

The fat alder was perspiring and though his
generally ruddy complexion wouldn’t have suggested it, Soren knew
he was flush with anger and shame. Finally, the fat alder nodded,
“We,” he gestured to his two other cohorts, “would like the surveys
ended and for there to be no more common folk admitted to these
environs.”

“
Done.” Soren said quickly
and brightly. The alders seemed a bit taken back but couldn’t help
grins of victory come over themselves. Soren gestured for a page to
come forward and handed him a piece of parchment on which he had
just hastily scribbled the command.

“
Of course,” Soren said,
“this ukase will have to be administered and we are already
stretched thin so you three will be directly responsible for
enforcement.”

“
I, I, I…haven’t the
resources.” The tall alder replied. “You can’t expect us to
personally carry this out.” The older woman and fat man seemed to
concur.

“
I’m sure if you pool your
abilities, you’ll do just fine.” Soren smiled, and then waved them
off dismissively, “Go on, go out there and start turning people
away. We haven’t got a moment to lose.” Soren nodded to Qala who
herded the three alders out of the chamber, then closed the heavy
door cutting off their protests with a definitive, sure slam. She
turned back around with her arms folded grinning wickedly and
returned to leaning on the door.

“
So, that’s that then.”
Soren said in a false relief. “What else have we?”

An alder about Soren’s age but with severe,
aged eyes came forward, “Alder Redding, thank you for handling that
so swiftly.”

Soren nodded, “What do we need to discuss,
Alder Kerr?”

“
There are those of use
that find the plan of Prime Alder Landis far too obscure. It feels
as though we are merely waiting. That it is a plan of inaction.”
Kerr spoke slowly and without malice but it was clear that there
was no affection in the man for Wynne or for Soren as his proxy.
The remaining alders all assented to Kerr’s claim to varying
degrees of civility. Soren cocked his head and gave Kerr a rather
fed up look. Turning slightly, Kerr raised his hands in a
half-hearted attempt to settle his backers.

“
We have been waiting for
too long. We can’t keep doing nothing.” One alder called
out.

“
Before Landis returned,
we at least had a certain strategy!” Another shouted.

“
He scuttled that! For no
reason! Now we have nothing, no leverage at all!”

“
And where is
he?”

“
Gone with the girl.” As
the alders, all threw out their panicked accusations Kerr stood
with a faint smirk on his face before Soren.