The Palace of Impossible Dreams (50 page)

Arkady smiled at them, looking mightily relieved, as the wind died down and Arryl stepped forward into the sudden calm.

“Release them!” she commanded, pointing at Arkady and a wounded ginger feline who lay on the ground beside her, using what was, Declan assumed,
her very best Sorceress of the Tide voice. It certainly wasn't the way she'd spoken to anybody back at the Outpost.

The marines holding Arkady did as she bid without any further encouragement, reacting instinctively to the authority in her voice. Nobody moved to release the chained feline, however, who lay a few feet away.

The man in charge recovered first, obviously annoyed by the lack of resistance from his men. “I am Ulag Pardura,” he said, pushing his sister behind him, “of the House Pardura, here representing the House Medura. I don't know who you are, but this is a company matter. You have no business here.”

“I am Arryl, Sorceress of the Tide.”

“I don't care if you're the Lord of Temperance himself,” the man replied, unimpressed. “You have no business here.”

Arkady climbed to her feet, rubbing her bruised arms. “She is, you know. You'd better pay attention.”

Olegra turned to Arkady, forced to look up at her now her slave was standing. “Silence, whore!” Then she added to the guards who had just released her, “I did not command you to let the slave go.”

“I'm not your slave, you stupid little bitch,” she told Olegra, grabbing the edge of the fake slave brand where she'd been picking at it. She tore the brand off and tossed it at Olegra.

“Lay another hand on that woman and you will regret it,” Arryl warned, before Olegra could react. “She is a disciple of mine and under my protection.”

Wisely, the men didn't move.

The young woman was livid. “Don't listen to her! I commanded you to arrest this murderous slut!”

The men wavered with indecision for a moment and then nodded to their mistress. Declan struck as soon as they moved toward Arkady. He plunged into the Tide as Cayal had instructed earlier, pushing the air away from the two marines, who began to suffocate before his very eyes. He felt the Tide surge and every man present began to gasp and pull at their collars. Cayal was doing the same to the rest of the marines. Within moments, the only mortals in the vicinity still able to breathe were Arkady, the wounded feline on the ground, Ulag Pardura and the young woman beside him.

Pardura looked around in a panic as his men began to fall. “What's happening! What are you doing?”

Interesting
, Declan thought,
that Pardura knows the source of the trouble
without asking.
Perhaps he was one of the men who'd tried to torture the truth out of Medwen and Ambria and discovered the immortals were still among them.

“You will leave the wetlands,” Arryl said. “And you will not return, except for one ship, which will bring my sisters—whom you currently hold prisoner—back to me.”

“I don't know what—”

“If you fail,” Arryl continued, as if he hadn't spoken, “then I will allow my brothers to wreak the punishment they believe you and your people deserve. You will agree to this now, and without conditions, or your men will die, followed by you and your young lady friend here.” Arryl glanced around at the choking marines dispassionately. “Make up your mind, puny mortal. You have about thirty seconds before your men begin to die.”

Ulag Pardura looked as if he was going to quibble about it, so Declan pushed a little harder, sucking the air away from the young woman as well.

The moment she began to choke, the mortal surrendered. “All right! Stop it! I agree!”

Exhilarated by the surging Tide, Declan stopped pushing the air away with some reluctance, allowing it to rush back into the void. The young woman began to cry inconsolably. The soldiers he'd been restraining began to cough and splutter as their starved lungs gulped in the precious air.

Arryl turned to Cayal and smiled. “You see. I told you mortals could be reasonable.” Then she turned back to Ulag Pardura. “Leave now. You have two days to return with my sisters. If you fail, the last swamp-fever epidemic to devastate Port Traeker will seem merciful by comparison to the destruction my brothers will rain down on your pitiful lives.”

“What about my husband?” the girl asked, through her tears.

“Your husband has paid for his crimes, child,” Arryl said. “Be grateful I don't hold you responsible for them too.”

The doctor's wife looked like she might argue the point, but the man grabbed her by the arm and pulled her close, whispering something in her ear, after which she visibly calmed down. He then turned and ordered his men to withdraw.

A few moments later, with a canine slave on her heels whose sole function seemed to be to hold her parasol, the young Lady Medura headed back through the village with her marines and her brother in tow.

Declan hurried to Arkady to see if she was harmed, but she was kneeling on the ground, pulling the chains from the wounded feline.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. This is Jojo. Can you help her?”

He squatted down by Arkady and studied the feline curiously. “Isn't she the feline who betrayed you to the doctor's family?”

“She's Crasii, Declan. It wasn't her fault. She wouldn't have known what else to do.”

Declan frowned, not sure he was quite as forgiving as Arkady. The feline pushed herself onto her knees, clearly in agony, but nonetheless determined to kneel before him. “To . . . to serve you . . . is the reason I breathe . . .”

Tides, I wish they'd stop doing that
 . . .

“Are you unharmed, Arkady?” Arryl asked, coming up behind them.

She nodded. “Jojo's in a bad way, though. I was just asking Declan to help her.”

Arryl shook her head. “Let's not go
there
again, for a while. Not until your friend here figures out what he's doing. I'll heal your little friend. In the meantime, Declan, why don't you and Cayal follow our friends back to their ship? Just to make sure they leave.”

Declan nodded and rose to his feet. “Do you think they'll be back?”

“For certain.”

“Will they bring Medwen and Ambria?”

“Probably.”

He studied Arryl's face in the light of her blazing staff. “But you don't think they plan to surrender them?”

“Not without us having to make the point much more forcibly the second time around,” Cayal said, his back to them as he watched the mortals cautiously retreating toward the village and their ships.

Arryl nodded in agreement. “Mortals often need to be told things more than once, Declan, before they absorb the lesson. Not a trait uncommon among
im
mortals, either.”

Declan was fairly sure she was having a dig at him, but not entirely certain what he'd done to deserve it. He turned to Arkady. “Will you be all right?”

She nodded. “Go. Help Cayal rid us of all those
puny
mortals.”

Arryl smiled. “Can you believe I said that without cracking so much as a smile?”

Declan was astonished at how smug Arryl sounded. He smiled at her childlike glee.

“You were very convincing,” Cayal assured her.

“Kentravyon does it better.”

“I thought you said he was a psychotic murderer?” Declan said.

“Which is
why
he does it so much better,” she replied. “Now go, Declan, and give Cayal a hand. Arkady, you can help me get this poor creature inside so we can fix her. Where are Azquil and Tiji?”

“I told them to hide until the soldiers left.”

“Then they should be back soon. As soon as they reappear, have them boil some water.”

“You'll need it to bathe her wounds?”

“Not at all,” Arryl said to Arkady, lifting the feline between them, as Declan headed off with Cayal in pursuit of the fleeing marines. “I can heal her injuries with the Tide. The water is for me, dear. I'd like a cup of tea.”

They waited on the dock until the last of the ships had been towed out of sight by the amphibians before Cayal judged it safe to return to the house where Arkady and Arryl waited. It was well and truly dark by then, the night filled with the chittering song of a million hungry insects, none of whom, Cayal had been delighted to discover, considered him edible.

Declan Hawkes waited beside him, hands thrust deep into his pockets, full of questions, full of doubt, full of anger and full of awe. Cayal vaguely remembered feeling the same way once, several eons ago. Discovering the Tide was a dangerous yet wondrous time for a new immortal, and while he mistrusted and disliked the spymaster, he couldn't help but envy him his journey.

At least until the poor sod realises it's a journey without end
, he amended silently. The voyage lost its allure when one came to understand what eternity
really
meant.

But this new immortal was still in that halcyon phase of discovery all immortals went through, no matter how unwillingly.

Declan Hawkes
knew
he was immortal, but he didn't
understand
it yet.

Which raised the question, yet again, of how Hawkes could even exist.

Cayal wasn't sure how he felt about that. Instinct told him Hawkes would be a dangerous adversary, but knowing Lukys needed all the power he could muster to end Cayal's life, finding a new Tide Lord, one who wasn't yet involved in the politics of immortals, was beyond good fortune. Cayal was fairly certain it wasn't luck, though. The likelihood of this new immortal being the result of random chance was so remote it was effectively impossible. Lukys learning Maralyce had borne a child was much more plausible. That he'd waited until the child had fathered a daughter he could impregnate was much more likely too than the idea of another immortal just happening by a brothel in Lebec, to do the deed by accident.

What probably
was
chance, Cayal figured, was Hawkes being caught in a fire that, had he not been more than half-immortal already, should have killed him.

Cayal knew Lukys had gone to Glaeba looking for his son. He wondered now if that's why he returned early. Was it because when he got
there, his son was gone? Had Lukys heard the news of Declan Hawkes's death and written off his experiment as a failure?

Is that why he'd gone to Jelidia and awakened Kentravyon? Because he needed the power of another Tide Lord for his plans, and thought the new, much more malleable (not to mention sane) one he'd been trying to manufacture, was lost to him?

It was going to be interesting to see the look on Lukys's face, Cayal decided, when he returned to Jelidia with Hawkes, all bright and shiny and alive—and immortal.

Of course, that raised another question Cayal had been carefully avoiding until now. If Lukys had been responsible for this, what was he really up to? Not for a moment did Cayal believe Lukys would go to all this trouble just to help him die.

Lukys telling Cayal he wanted to be God didn't seem so far-fetched these days. Not if he was out there making new immortals.

“So what happens when they return in force?”

Cayal pushed aside that alarming thought to answer Hawkes. “We'll have to give them a memorable lesson in the perils of pissing off a Tide Lord.”

Hawkes cracked a rare smile. He was slowly being seduced, Cayal knew, by the power he now commanded. “And how do we do that? By choking every man they send after us?”

Cayal shook his head. “Tide's not up far enough to do anything on that scale. Besides, you start sucking the air out of anything but the most localised area, it'll affect the weather. And that never seems to work well for anybody.”

“I'm surprised something like that bothers you.”

“That's because you're a narrow-minded, judgemental son-of-a-bitch,” Cayal replied pleasantly, “who thinks all immortals are evil. How are you coping with that, by the way? You know . . . being evil?”

“I'm thinking of growing a moustache and maybe wearing an eye patch,” Hawkes replied without missing a beat. “So I can look the part too.”

Cayal smiled. Hawkes might be a narrow-minded, judgemental son-of-a-bitch, but he was quick. “Sorry, old son, but that's not going to happen unless you had one the day you were immolated. Whatever hair you had the day you became immortal, that's pretty much what you're stuck with until the end of time.”

“Good thing I didn't get immortalised with a bad haircut,” Hawkes said
with a faint smile. “But still, that would explain why I haven't had to shave in months. Why is that, do you think?”

“I have no idea.”

“But you must have wondered about it?”

“Wondered, yes,” Cayal said. “Cared about it? No.”

Hawkes fell silent for a time, staring out over the dark water of the channel. After a while, he turned to Cayal. “Do you think they've gone now?”

He nodded. “Certain of it. I ordered the amphibians towing the boats not to stop until they reached the Delta Settlement. No mere human is going to be able to override that compulsion any time soon.” He turned from the water to look back at the darkened village. “We should probably get back to the others.”

Declan nodded in agreement, falling in beside Cayal as they turned toward the town. “And when they come back? What then?”

“We'll give them something else to think about other than murdering the inhabitants of the wetlands.”

“Can you do that, though?” Hawkes said, unconvinced. “Like you said, the Tide's not all the way up and Pardura didn't strike me as the type to give up easily. If he comes back here in force . . .”

“Then so much the better,” Cayal said.

“I don't understand.”

“That's because in addition to being a narrow-minded, judgemental son-of-a-bitch, you appear to be quite stupid.”