The False Martyr (82 page)

“
Stop it!” Ipid brushed
her hand away. “Men are dead. Do you understand that?”

“
Men die every day. You
have done what you must. They must know that you will not back
down, that you will not hesitate to do what must be done.” She ran
her hand down her dress and pulled it up her leg.

Ipid walked away from her,
not wanting any part of whatever game she was playing. “And
Liano?”

Eia sighed. She came down
from the table and walked to him, placing her arms around him from
behind. “I will talk to him. Is that what you want?” She squeezed
him, and Ipid could not help but feel some of the anger seep from
him. He ran his hand along her arms where they stretched around his
middle.

He took a deep breath then
noticed her nuzzling into his back, her hands creeping down. She
moaned low. He spun around and clasped her arms to hold her away.
She looked up at him with longing. “You want to do this now? What
are you thinking?”

Eia stepped back from him
and turned away. “I thought you might want another try.” She
shrugged her shoulders. “I will talk to the Belab about Liano. Can
you go yell at your secretaries so I can create a portal?” She
walked to the other side of the room.

Ipid released a long
breath and reached for the door. “Their lives matter,” he said
before he opened it. “This is not a game.”

Eia did not say anything
immediately, so he turned and looked at her. Her head was tilted,
face sympathetic. “Of course they do,” she said softly. “But they
are already gone. You can only save the living.”

“
That is what I am trying
to do.”

“
You cannot save them all.
You know that. Better to condemn ten to death than stand by and
watch a thousand burn. You have to be strong enough to make that
choice because no one else will. It is you or destruction. Now,
yell at your scribes.”

Reluctantly, Ipid turned
the knob. He knew that Eia was right, but it felt wrong.
The Book of Valatarian
said that the Order favored every life, that each was of
equal value to Its plan. How could he hope to choose?

He looked out at the
scribes. They tried not to catch his eye though curiosity forced a
few eyes from their papers. Ipid selected a younger man who seemed
more intent on his surroundings than what was in front of him. He
descended on the man, pounded his hand on his desk, sending ink
splattering across the document he was writing, and yelled, “What
in the Order’s holy name are you looking at? Do you want to break
rocks? Do you want to die in a pile of rubble like your fellows in
the Capital District?” Ipid brought his face within inches of the
terrified young man. He saw his spittle hitting him, warm drops
spraying across his face. He felt the entire room burst with a
flood of anxiety.

Then he felt it all pulled
away. For a fleeting second, it was gone. And so was
Eia.

#

Ipid was in the study
discussing logistics with Jon, planning out routes that food should
take from the outlying regions to reach the Darthur at different
points in their march, when the third interruption occurred. Their
lunch plates had been pushed to the side an hour ago – sitting
half-finished for the flies as people slowly starved just outside –
when it became clear that Jon was almost literally drowning in the
sea of his responsibilities. Their daily briefing had devolved into
a quagmire as Ipid dug deeper, questioning each of Jon’s proposal,
poking hole after hole into his slapdash plans until the
unflappable manager was on the verge of tears and Ipid had realized
that it was all simply too much for him. Not enough food, not
enough wagons to haul it, not enough soldiers to guard it, not
enough of anything to keep Arin satisfied. And Jon was supposed to
hold it all together, was supposed to somehow make all the ledgers
balance, like the man at the leaking dyke, running out of fingers
and watching the holes grow bigger and bigger.

A knock sounded at the
door. A breathless courier followed. Jon looked relieved as Ipid’s
attention shifted to the sweat-soaked, mud-splattered, stinking
man. Ipid had the opposite reaction – there was almost no chance
that an exhausted courier could be carrying good news.

There was barely enough
space in the small room for the man to find a knee, but he managed
it. “Lord Chancellor,” he said, head bowed, satchel held out with
both hands.

Such drama,
Ipid thought. It seemed Illich Landon had learned
a bit too much from Liandria, but at least he had gotten the man to
stop using those ridiculous cryptics to protect the messages; he
did not know how many he had ruined trying to remember the stupid
codes. “Where have you come from?” he asked the courier as he
opened the satchel.

“
Aylesford,” the man
answered without bringing his eyes from the floor. “I left before
the sun was up and changed horsed four times.”

Aylesford
, Ipid thought,
in half a day
. He had to
admit that the speed, at least, impressed him. He unfolded the
message slowly, confident that he already knew what it would say.
The first sentence crumbled that confidence and none of those that
followed did anything to rebuild it. As he expected, the message
was to inform him that Lord Stully had escaped. That was exactly as
they had planned, but the plan was not supposed to include the
deaths of six guards. It was not supposed to include a fire in the
dungeons that killed all the other prisoners. It was not supposed
to include Lord Stully’s oldest son taking a crossbow bolt to the
back as he rode away with his father.

Holding back his stomach’s
attempt to reject the lunch he had just eaten, Ipid handed the
paper to Jon. How had such a simple plan possibly gone so
wrong?

Jon gasped as he read. “By
the Order,” he sighed. “What do we . . . ? He is going to . . .
.”

“
Hush,” Ipid
scolded.
Did the man have no sense
anymore?
“Leave us,” he said to the
courier. The man rose, saluted, and backed from the
room.

Ipid considered. The
escape was supposed to be clean. Vontel had sworn that he owned the
guards, that they would simply release Allard Stully and make it
look like there had been a struggle. It was all supposed to be a
show, a way to distance himself from Stully and give the man
credibility with the resistance he was to lead. Why had his son
even been there? He’d promised Allard that his family would be
protected, so why was he even involved? And Eia was the only one
who knew how to contact Ambassador Pmalatir to learn the truth. It
was a disaster – more deaths, more blood on his hands – and Allard
Stully would blame him.
But what will his
reaction be? Is everything now ruined? Can I hope to control him if
he already thinks he’s been betrayed?

“
What do you think, Jon?”
he asked finally. He had not included Jon in his plans related to
Allard Stully and hoped that the man might provide the outside
perspective he needed.

“
He’s dangerous. You
probably shouldn’t have . . . .” Jon started then froze.

“
Tell me, Jon,” Ipid
implored with a sigh. “You used to tell me anything. I’m sorry if
you don’t feel that you can do that any longer. I know I’ve been
short, but you have to know that none of this is easy.”

“
I’m sorry, sir. I can
only imagine.”

“
Then what is it you
wanted to say? Please, I need your thoughts on this.”

“
I thought it was a risk,
sir, to arrest Lord Stully in the first place. It only gives him
credibility with those who resist your rule. He was never a man of
the people. That’s why he could never defeat Kavich, but you’ve
humanized him. They’ll rally to him now.”

That was exactly what Ipid
had wanted. The question now was whether he could still control his
creation. “I realize that, but what do you think he will he do with
the people who rally to him? Jon, you know him better than I.
You’ve lived here in Wildern your entire life.”

“
He’s cautious,” Jon
started slowly, thoughts still formulating. “He likes to move
slowly, gather all his support, and strike only when he is certain
of victory. That’s what he did to us, do you remember?”

Ipid did not. He shook his
head.

“
It was about seven years
ago. We were using the Widdle Brothers for our river shipping out
and our own boys to bring the logs in. All of a sudden, everything
stopped. We didn’t get a single log to cut for two weeks and the
Widdles wouldn’t schedule a single outbound boat.”

“
I remember now. I was up
north negotiating lumber rights out of the Stormwoods and setting
up the mill in Mandarb’s Leap. I think I just told you to solve it.
You ended up using Stully, right?”

“
We didn’t have any
choice,” Jon chuckled. Ipid looked at him twice, did not realize he
could still make that sound. “He bought the Widdles’ operation and
hired all our men from under us without our ever knowing. They’d
all been collecting two wages for a month. Then he told them to
stop.”

“
And you didn’t see it
coming?”

“
How could I? There were
no interruptions, no grumbles that the foremen heard, no leaks.
Stully owned every man. Then when he had us sweating, he swoops in
and gives me the what’s for. He increased our rates twenty percent
for nothing.”

“
And I agreed,” Ipid
mused. “I remember now. It was such a small part of our costs and I
was so distracted that I conceded without even putting up a
fight.”

“
And our rates went up
every year.”

“
But never enough that I
would bother finding someone else.” Ipid sat back in his chair. It
was perfect. “And you think that is what he will do
now?”

“
He did the same thing up
and down the river. All my neighbors had the same stories. He’s a
ruthless ol’ lamprey. He just latches on and sucks.”

Ipid laughed, thinking
about all of Allard’s trout when the lamprey was his real avatar.
“Thank you, Jon. That has been very helpful. You should go now.
Take the rest of the day and get some sleep. You look like you’re
about to collapse. We can work on all this again tomorrow after the
weekly lessons.”

“
Thank you, sir. Are you
sure?”

“
I am. Everything is ready
for tomorrow. There is nothing more that must be done now. Tomorrow
is Teaching Day. I’ve granted the whole country a holiday. You can,
at least, take an afternoon.”

“
Alright, sir. I’m sorry
I’ve not been myself. I haven’t slept in days, and it’s starting to
take a toll.”

“
I can tell. Go now. Get
some sleep. And don’t worry about attending the weekly lessons.
Take a copy with you before you go. I just got done approving
it.”

Jon could not help but
chuckle at that and shake his head. “The Order help us, what are we
doing, sir?”

Ipid thought. “I don’t
know, Jon. I just hope that the Order forgives us.”

Jon had nothing to say to
that. He rose from his seat, bowed, and took his leave. Ipid barely
acknowledged him. His thoughts were on Lord Stully. He realized
that Jon was right. Any hope he had of controlling Allard Stully
were gone. But that did not mean that he would do anything rash. He
would still want Ipid to think that he was being controlled. And he
would keep it that way until he had all the cards he needed to
guarantee his victory.

Ipid pulled a piece of
paper toward him and began writing a note to Vontel. They just had
to make sure that Allard Stully did not get those cards until Ipid
was ready to concede the game.

#

Field Marshal Landon did
not bother with a courier to provide the final interruption of the
day. It was late into the night, and Ipid was swirling a crystal
snifter of Lord Stully’s finest brandy – and it was fine indeed. He
examined the glass, watching Eia through it and wondering what to
make of her. She had returned over an hour ago but had insisted on
changing and freshening before joining him back in the office. They
sat now in the big, leather armchairs that stood at the side of the
room around the hearth, facing each other, silently studying. The
scribes, bookkeepers, even the guards had gone, so they had the
room to themselves. Most of the lamps had been extinguished,
leaving only the dim light of the few that remained and a small
fire burning in the nearby hearth despite the warmth of the
evening.

Eia had joined him a few
minutes before and taken a glass of red wine for herself. She
swirled the wine and drank it so that the deep red stained her pale
lips. The alcohol, even in such small quantities, added a glow to
her white cheeks. The great leather chair was far too large for
her, and she allowed it to absorb her, tucked into a corner, legs
bent under her, bare feet peeking out. In the shadows, her deep
burgundy dress blended almost perfectly with the leather of the
chair making her bare upper chest, arms, face, and hair seem to be
floating. She stared at him with her huge dark eyes but said
nothing, a white apparition sitting in judgement.

“
Stully escaped,” Ipid
started the conversation when it became clear that Eia had no
intention of doing so.