The Seer - eARC (21 page)

Amarta kept her eyes on the puddle at her feet in which the lamps around the room reflected, points of light in dark water. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“We keep it to ourselves, Mara and I, but we guess it is so. Is it magery?”

“No,” she said sharply, realizing her answer for the admission it was, then pressed her lips tightly together.

He brushed her shoulder. “I hear your words. That does not mean I believe them. No one else knows, and we keep secrets well.”

She would say no more about it, she resolved. Not a word.

“I am also here to say good-bye,” he said.

“What?” Amarta scrambled to her feet. He stood with her.

“We continue our journey south, to deliver the goods we have come to trade and sell.”

“We can be ready in minutes. We—.”

“No. We do not take you with us. Stay here. The Emendi have no more desire to be found than you do.”

“They won’t let us stay without you.”

“They will. You work hard. They see this. We have spoken for you.”

Spoken for them? Vouched for strangers they had known mere days? Jolon and Mara could not know what they had saved her from, but until this moment, it had not occurred to her how much they had risked in bringing them here.

But to be left here?

Her mind raced. She thought of Darad, of laughing with him. With Nidem. “Jolon, you have been so good to us. Why?”

He made a thoughtful sound, then drew a large circle in the air with a forefinger and jabbed at a point along the circumference. “Today you need something, so we give it to you.” His finger continued along the circle, stopping at another point along the arc. “Another day you give something to someone who does not have what you do. That other, perhaps”—his finger traveled further and stopped.—“gives to another. And then”—his finger went back to the first spot—“who can say? It is a better place, the world, when we give what we can. But there is another reason.”

“What?”

His face turned sad. “Long ago,” he said, “a force came to Otevan, bearing weapons, claiming our lands. Before blood was shed, we showed them what we and the shaota do together. Not in challenge, but in display, you understand?”

She nodded.

“They saw the wisdom of having us by their side. So we fought with Arunkel and helped them take the lands, one hill after another.” His eyes narrowed, the ends of his mouth turned down. “We sold ourselves for freedom. For some of us, it is a great sorrow and a sharp shame that our ancestors did this.”

“But you had to, or—”

“Yes, it seemed so. But if we had all faced the invader as one? It cannot be known.” He sighed. “Now we have a debt. To those who come to us in need, we give what we can.”

“But it wasn’t your decision. It was your ancestors’. How is it your debt?”

“What affects one Teva affects all. With you and your sister it is the same, yes?”

She hadn’t thought about it that way, but now she could see it was so: Amarta’s visions caused Dirina and Pas to suffer. “But if you leave us here—”

“We come back to Kusan next year. If you wish to leave then, perhaps we can take you. Yes?”

“We’ll be here,” Amarta said, but even as she said it, the words echoed hollowly. She pushed away the tickle of vision that wanted to deny her words. No; they would stay or go as they decided.

Jolon gestured to the puddle below them. “I have heard this is how the future is seen, in still water. It is not so?”

Amarta thought of those who had come to her across the years with dead rabbits and birds. “No. Nor thrown sticks, nor animal entrails.”

“Then—since no blood or water is needed, will you tell me something of what is to come?”

She owed the Teva a debt, greater than they knew, but to foresee now felt like she was bringing her curse here into the tunnels, where she had the last few days felt safe and more.

Amarta glanced at the rest of the hall to be sure no one was listening. “I will,” she said, a soft whisper.

“Those who we meet in Perripur, can we trust them?”

Amarta took a deep breath. As she let it out, she cast her mind into the open space that was the future.

Perripur, he said.

A world of green and brown. Air wet and warm, full of scent. Walking and more walking. A dark-skinned woman by her side.

No, no—not for herself. For Jolon and Mara. She reached out a hand to Jolon’s arm, to help her focus. She saw the inked scars that circled his forearm and hesitated.

“Yes,” Jolon said, offering his arm forward for her examination.

“What are those?” Amarta asked of the circles around his arm.

“We call them
limisatae
. Life-doors we pass through. Our first shaota. The first mate. The first child.” He met Amarta’s eyes, and she saw for a moment a flicker of something she could not name. “A life taken to keep our people whole. That is
limisatae
as well.”

“What are yours for?” she asked.

He shook his head. “It is for me. Not about the telling, but the being.”

Not about the telling.

That she could understand.

“Do you have a life-door to mark, Amarta?”

She thought of Enana. Of her parents. Of the attack she had thwarted in the forest. Had any of it changed her as his three marks must have changed him? “I don’t think so.”

“In time, perhaps.” He took her hand and wrapped her fingers around his forearm. “Will you tell now? Those we meet in Perripur? How much caution? How much trust?”

With her fingers on his arm, she reached into his future.

Faint smells of flowers, spice, smoke, fish. A collection of people standing in a circle. Voices.

“This is your first meeting with them?”

“It is.”

A knife separated links of heavy twine; a roughspun pouch opened. A deep-throated woman’s voice, another language. Words, back and forth. Dark faces turning away, smirking. Secrets.

Amarta opened her eyes to the dark and drip of the cave, the images already fading, the meaning sorting itself out in her mind. Trust was too big a word for this meeting, too wide a river to cross. “I think you will offer them a lot. Too much?”

She closed her eyes again, tried to find the place in time where she had seen the dark faces, to see if another outcome might change their expression. It was hard to hold, hard to see.

The same faces, different expressions. Fewer bags.

“Keep back more of what you brought to trade. The bags of . . .” She tried to remember what she’d seen. “Rocks? See what they offer for a smaller set first.”

“Then we will know what the rest is worth. I see. Thank you for that good counsel.” He clasped her shoulder and gave her a gentle smile. “Amarta, if hundreds of Emendi are safe here, you might be, too. Kusan has stood for centuries. You are safer here than anywhere in the world.”

Could he be right? Here in the dark, underground, might she be safe from the hunter who pursued above?

“Now I must ask another thing of you,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Nidem was not wrong to doubt us, bringing you here. The Emendi are safe only as long as Kusan is also secret. We have trusted you very much.”

“We are grateful. We—”

“Yes, this I know. But Amarta, whatever it is you run from, do not bring it here.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Chapter Twelve

The first thing Innel did when he returned to the palace from Arteni was find a bath. Caked in dirt, blood, and the ever-present dust of Arteni’s grain mills, he stripped off his clothes and kicked them away from the tub, lowered his aching body into the hot and salted soaking water.

“Burn them,” he told Srel.

Srel made a sound intended to convey acquiescence but which Innel knew really wasn’t. Coming from deep poverty, Srel was incapable of disposing of anything that could possibly be reclaimed or repaired. But Innel wouldn’t see the clothes again, and that was enough.

As for Cern and her father, well, this time they could both wait. He would be clean and fed before he faced either of them.

“Is she still marrying me?” he asked Srel bluntly.

Another sound, this time thoughtful. “The wedding plans were put on hold when you left, ser.”

Disappointing but not unexpected. The campaign had taken the three months he’d anticipated and then some, but if the slog of dirt and blood, the tedious meetings and hurried executions had earned him a promotion, it would be worth it.

Colonel, most likely, he thought. General would be far better, of course, but it would be a stretch. Still, if the king wanted it for him and pushed, it was possible. He wondered what the other generals, decades his senior, born to the Houses or royals, would think of the king promoting him that far, that fast.

“She has shown no favor toward anyone else, ser.”

The other men of the Cohort were his only competition now. That she was seeing none of them was good news.

“And my reports to the king?” From the field, sent by Cahlen’s birds.

“I am told he read them very closely.”

Carefully written to achieve that very end. When the Cohort had been taught by minstrels and versifiers how best to fashion a story, Innel and his brother had paid keen attention. Thus Innel’s reports were more than factual; each started with a triumph, however minor, and ended with an uncertainty, the pattern intended to make the king eager to read the next dispatch describing how Innel sev Restarn was taking Arteni in the king’s name.

The people of Arteni had been astounded at the force that had been called down on them for attempting to sell grain outside their contract. They had at first presented some optimistic resistance that Innel crushed with heavily armored cavalry that crashed through the rusted iron gates. The line of millers and farmers, holding pitchforks and scythes, had broken fast. Those who had not run had died quickly.

Those who had run had also died, but more slowly.

After that it had been a matter of rounding up the troublemakers and giving them the choice between providing names and being hung with the next morning’s executions.

Innel made sure bread was passed out to the watching crowds to help them understand that they now ate by the king’s mercy.

What had taken the most time had been restructuring the town’s governance. The old council had stood firm in their insistence that this should be a negotiation rather than a surrender, finally retreating with their families into the mayor’s house, where Innel explained that they were wrong by burning it to the ground. The ashes didn’t argue.

His nights had been spent crafting these missives to flatter and intrigue the king, working in repetition to cover for the one or two in ten messenger birds that weather or predation would prevent returning home to the palace.

Cahlen had assured him that all these birds would return. Every last one of them. She had come to his rooms early the morning he had left, a cowed-looking assistant in tow carrying cages of noisy and annoyed birds.

“My best,” Cahlen had told Innel. “No hawks or bad weather will stop these.” Her eyes were bright and too wide. “Don’t put your hands on them. They bite.” Innel glanced at the assistant handler’s heavy leather gloves.

“They bite?” Before Cahlen, messenger birds were not known for their temper.

“Make sure you feed them,” she had said, her tone cross, as though he had already forgotten.

He took the soap Srel offered him, and began to scrub.

“What was the bird count?” he asked, dunking his head, feeling months of tension and dirt come off in the hot water.

“Eleven.”

He made a surprised sound. Cahlen had been right: every bird had returned. He must remember to tell her so. With luck, she would take it as a compliment.

When he toweled off, taking clean clothes from Srel, he asked: “Who should I see first?”

The smaller man dug into a pocket and held out something to Innel.

An earring. A magenta sapphire.

Cern it was, then.

“Took you long enough.” Her first words were softened a little by her hand on his face. She gathered his fingers in her own and drew him into her room. He hid his relief that she was glad to see him.

When, much later, she called for a plate of food and drink, the food came arrayed like a miniature garden, cheese and olives cleverly cut into the shape of flowers, and surrounded by hedges of herbed breads.

This, he realized, was wealth. Great wealth. Not the mere substance of the food, which was by itself rare and extraordinary, as befitted a princess, but the presentation itself. For a moment he simply stared at the miniature landscape so painstakingly prepared, laid across a lace-cut red ceramic platter that sat atop a table polished to a deep mahogany sheen. Around the edge of the table, inlaid in ebony and cherrywood, was the star, moon, pickax, and sword of the Anandynar sigil.

“The earring is a nice touch,” she said to him with a wry half-smile.

The irony of this struck him; the sapphire in his ear was worth a tiny fraction of what was arrayed before him, but it was his gesture that mattered to her.

I thought of you every moment I was away
.

No, she wouldn’t like that. Something more pragmatic.

He smiled. “Let no one wonder where my loyalty lies.”

To his surprise, rather than be pleased, as he had expected, her gaze swept away across the room, her half-smile gone. A spike of anxiety went through him.

“What excitement have I missed?” he asked lightly, pretending not to have noticed her ill ease.

Her lengthening silence did nothing to reassure him. She was, he realized, trying to figure out how to tell him something.

That by itself was impressive: the heir-apparent to the Arunkel throne was struggling with how to say something to him, the mutt. Flattering, to be sure, but it could not mean good news. He watched closely as she put on a grimace that meant she felt she had no choice.

And that meant it was about her father.

Dread slowly trickled down his spine. She could certainly take him to bed for entertainment and marry someone else if she chose. Had he been cast aside, after all? What had happened while he had been away?

She glanced at him, and he gave her yet another easy smile, the work of years of practice, hoping to calm her. Or himself.

At last she cleared her throat and gave a forced laugh. “How would you like to be the lord commander?”

Lord Commander
? The highest rank in the military?

“Of the Host of Arunkel?” he asked, incredulous, his careful presentation of equanimity swept away.

“Yes,” she said, tone suddenly dry, “that would be the one.”

Could the king have decided to elevate him that far, that fast? Surely it was not possible.

But then, perhaps it was.

He could not suppress a smile of elation. “How would I like it?” He asked. “It . . .”

This was as far from bad news as possible, to be made the commander of the empire’s armies. It made sense, now that he thought about it; coming as he did from outside the palace and far below the Houses, Innel could well imagine Restarn deciding such a rank would appropriately elevate him to marry his daughter.

Innel would need to get the generals on his side, and quickly. Lismar, the king’s sister, first and foremost. Make a point of showing great humility. Have it known he was only complying with the king’s direct command.

A tricky prospect, politically. It would take a not insignificant amount of effort to arrange. But it could be done.

Cern was watching him, waiting for an answer.

“It would be my great honor to serve the crown,” he finished.

“Yes,” she agreed, shortly, but she did not sound happy.

“What is it, my lady?” he asked, unable to contain his tension at this unexpected reaction. “Do you think it is a bad decision?”

It wasn’t. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that it was a good outcome. A far better one than to promote him to colonel or even general. He was, after all, marrying the heir to the throne.

She stood, her hands waving about aimlessly, a motion that signified frustration. She turned away, took a bite of a smoked cheese flower and chewed slowly.

That she was not looking at him was not a good sign. With effort he said nothing, knowing better than to press.

“I’m to offer it to you,” she said at last.

“You? Forgive me, my lady, but you are not—”

A sharp gesture cut him off. “I know, Innel. I’m quite aware I’m not queen. I’m not an idiot.”

“Of course not, my lady.”

“Of course not, my lady,” she echoed, mockingly. “Because
he
told me to, is why,” she spat.

The king.

“But—”

“Shut up, Innel. I know perfectly well what you’re going to say. But here it is: you can have the lord commandership from my hand, or you can petition him for a colonelship.”

Petition? That’s what his hard, bloody work these last months had gained him? He would be allowed to
petition
?

Tempted as he was to reply, he had already opened his mouth once without thinking, and with Cern in this mood, that was a misstep. He clamped his mouth shut and considered.

He could not take the Lord Commandership from Cern. It would put him in a weak position and spark controversy, but to refuse it from her hand would be an insult to her, which he could afford even less.

A typical Restarn move, to force him into an impossible situation with no good choices.

He also could not push the decision back on her, tempting as that was; her faith in him was based in large part on his ability to navigate challenges like this one.

She watched him as he thought.

He desperately wanted to ask her to relate the conversation she had had with her father that had led to this outcome, to gain clues as to what was in the monarch’s mind, but that would underscore her weak position with her father, doing little to reassure in this difficult time. Cern’s confidence was already a thin thread.

It would be best to get through the wedding and coronation. Then any decisions she had made, like promoting Innel to the highest military position in the empire, would be far harder to question.

But here and now, what to do?

Well, he was wearing her colors. He had laid everything he had at her feet. Really, he could not refuse.

“It would be my great honor to serve you in this capacity, my lady.”

After a time he convinced Cern to wait to name him as lord commander until at least after the wedding. It would seem a more obvious move then, he explained.

And she would be one step closer to the throne, all her pronouncements carrying considerably more weight.

“Whatever you think best, Innel,” was all she had said. She was relying on him to make sense of the tangled political forces at play, a challenge she seemed to care little for. A challenge he had been studying his whole life.

She had been tinkering with one of her collapsible in-air creations, a set of wooden rods with twine and chain between them, some pulled tight, others balanced delicately on top of each other. In the years since she had shown him these works, he’d seen her use stiffened fabric, small lengths of metal and wood, and even straw.

This particular set was suspended from the ceiling, in an equilibrium of many parts. As she touched it on one end, the pieces of wood at the other clinked against each other, making an almost musical sound.

Collapsible so that they could be taken down and hidden quickly when her father came into her rooms without warning, as he used to do often.

From their conversations, Innel knew her father had not confided in her his embarrassment at her marrying a captain, as he had to Innel.

So be it. Innel would petition no one. Let Restarn decide how much embarrassment he could stomach.

Regardless, once they were wed, Innel would no longer be the mutt who had somehow survived the Cohort. He would be princess-consort.

The thought sent a chill through him. For a split second, he found himself thinking he must find his brother and tell him.

“I’m busy,” Innel responded to Mulack, putting a snap into the words, even though it was a good idea; it had been too long since he’d felt out his support in the Cohort.

He was truly busy; the king had called him back into service, and he now faced interminable council meetings that required summary reports, ongoing House contract negotiations with high-stakes outcomes, and again the near-daily work of sitting in the steam-filled royal bath to hear the king complain.

In a way it was reassuring that the king had not forgotten him, but it rankled that he had not yet made good on his promise to promote him, either.

Nor had he petitioned. Still a captain. But, as the saying went, not all captains had the same rank.

“Taba is in port,” Mulack insisted. “A good sign.”

“It’s no sign at all. She was scheduled to be here.”

Mulack waved this away. “We must celebrate your victorious return.” He managed to keep his mocking tone to a bare hint of derision. “You’re a hero, after all.” He clapped him on the shoulder.

Innel looked down at the shorter, thicker man he had, for excellent reasons, not liked since early childhood. “I have a report to prepare for the king.”

“Oh, come on, Innel. Give us a chance to spend too much money on you.”

Too much money? Was this Mulack’s way of saying he knew about Tok’s investment and might be offering similar backing? He couldn’t tell, which was how Mulack liked it.