The Seer - eARC (25 page)

“What you propose is an obscene expenditure that—”

“That employs half the tradesmen of the Lesser Houses, and puts coin in the pockets of the Eight Greater Houses whose support the new queen might well need from the moment she takes the crown. Raised in the Cohort, you say?”

“Careful where you step, seneschal.”

The gaunt man’s lips pressed together, making his face look even longer than it already did. “Do you know, ser Royal Consort, what year it was I began to serve the king in my current capacity?”

Innel could not remember any other seneschal. He shook his head in answer.

“Just so. Before you were born. Many years before. You may find it beneficial to consider the empire’s challenges during that time.”

Innel took a deep breath, let it out slowly. It was a compelling argument. “As you say, then,” he allowed. “But I want to approve all expenses.”

“No, ser, you most certainly don’t.” Then, with a look that bordered on pity, he added, “You’ll have to rely on me sooner or later. Why not start sooner, when I can do you the most good?”

“Midsummer, latest.” Two months hence.

At this the seneschal laughed outright, annoyingly unconcerned about offending Innel. “Invitations alone will take that long. There are foreign dignitaries to be notified. House eparchs and aristos traveling far from home to be called back.”

Innel made a sound that came out a growl. “Listen closely, seneschal: without a monarch on the throne, the empire and all her tangles of trade and production falter. Do you track the price of the metals that are key to Arunkel wealth?”

“No. That is not my—”

“No, it isn’t. But I do. You are going to have to rely on me, too, seneschal. Spend what the council will approve, but the coronation happens by midsummer, even if no one shows for it. Send the notice. Now.”

The seneschal exhaled, taking a very long time about it to make his displeasure unambiguous. His look told Innel that the man was wondering how sick the king really was and if he might be persuaded to come back to health and rule again.

He appeared to come to a decision. His head inclined very slightly. “As you say, Royal Consort.”

Innel smiled thinly.

It was a good title, Innel reflected as he walked back to his small office, but there was another one that he wanted very much, and he meant to have it.

“What do they say about me today, Srel?” he asked as the slight man poured a dark stream of bitter tea.

“That the coronation is to be the grandest, most splendid affair since the Grandmother Queen was crowned one hundred and six years ago. That it will be a tiny affair sponsored by the Eight because the crown is bankrupt. That the king is not really sick, but only testing loyalties. That he is away on campaign, conquering the wild lands past the Rift. That the king is dead.”

“That would seem to cover the range of possibilities,” Innel responded. “Seed a few more: the king is delighted to see his daughter ascending the throne. The royal consort is about to be promoted.”

Srel raised an eyebrow, but did not ask. “Yes, ser.”

Best would be to have the king seen happily supporting his daughter’s succession. Could the old man be persuaded to be at the coronation? To at least seem willing?

If Innel put it to him right, perhaps.

Time to ease the man’s isolation. A little.

Innel’s two guards stepped into his small office, escorting a small blonde slave. Her golden hair fell to her waist, her wide blue eyes flickered around the room.

“The slave Naulen.”

She was a startling sight, small and slender, her white silk tunic hanging to her calves, a thin gold chain showing off her long neck. Dwarfed next to the tall guards, her slight build made her look even more delicate.

With a nod, Innel dismissed the guards, watching her while she looked around.

It was obvious why she was Restarn’s favorite. Her face was something a master painter might have considered a life’s work, from the pale, arched eyebrows to the wide, angled, sky-blue eyes. Even the way she rubbed her slender wrist, a simple move, was somehow exquisitely graceful. As she stepped forward slightly, Innel found himself distracted by how the heavy silk outlined her curves.

“The king trusted you,” he said. “You slept in his room many nights.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Then I will trust you, too.”

“Thank you, ser,” she said, voice a delicate, breathy tone, like a wooden flute. She looked at him with a soft, grateful look that made his breath catch.

Yes, she would inspire the king to tell her things he would tell no one else. He could see why.

“He misses you,” Innel said.

“Thank you, ser.” Her look and tone were just the right mix of demure, uncertain, and eager to please.

“He may not be king for much longer. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I do, ser.”

He could not quite tell from her expression if she did or not. The Perripin liked to claim that dark hair and skin meant a capacity for sustained and complex thought. This was why, they said, the blond northerners had been so easily conquered and enslaved. The implication that Perripin were smarter than their lighter-skinned Arunkin neighbors was the foundation of a great number of Perripin jokes that were rarely told this far north.

“You work for me now. Do that work well and I will make sure you are not sent back to the slave’s quarters. Perhaps kept privately by someone who will treat you gently.”

“I will do all you say, ser.” She stepped close to him, looking up with a flawless, eager smile. “Anything and everything.”

He laughed lightly at the implied offer, sweeter for how unnecessary it was, and for a moment caressed her shoulder with his fingertips. He dragged his gaze from the large, mesmerizing blue eyes, with effort reclaiming his focus, and reluctantly drew his hand away.

“You’ll visit him daily,” he said. “You’ll be brought to me afterwards to tell me what he has said. This conversation, though, you will not repeat to anyone.”

She looked up at him, and her expression turned sober. “I understand you perfectly, ser.”

This time he believed her.

“And Naulen, don’t excite him too much.”

Chapter Thirteen

In Maris’s dream her parents were still alive. A breeze delivered scent of ginger vine and jasmine flower through the open windows, baking taro wafting in from the kitchen. Her father’s resonant laugh, her mother’s flute-like song. Home, where she had lived her earliest years in something very much like happiness.

A sweet dream. A rare, sweet dream.

In the dream he had knocked on the door, a rat-a-tat demanding response. She knew who it was, even before he stepped across the threshold, not waiting for an invitation.

Keyretura did not wait.

She cried out a warning, but her parents did not hear. They turned to him with gracious, deferring smiles, their Perripin hospitality unimpeachable.

Then his gaze found her, his dark eyes burning into hers.

She ran from door to door, searching for an escape, but he was always there. As the sweet dream turned ugly and rancid, Maris disgustedly took control away from her dreaming self and woke.

From under the warm blankets she spread her fingers and sent channels of thought out and past the walls of the small cabin into the overcast winter day, out to the perimeter of the property where her wards were woven through the land and the trees, tuned to warn her of any trespasses. Had he somehow found her?

No, he had not. Only a dream.

As she pulled her attention back into the cabin, she felt the new depth of snow on the ground. So much snow.

The first time she’d seen snow, it had been a marvel to her. White flakes falling endlessly from above, covering the world, making it seem clean. A canvas on which anything might be written. Even, somehow, her own freedom.

She remembered that moment vividly, sitting atop a bay mare, looking across the astonishing white fields. He was at her side, of course; there was no escaping him in those days. How she wished then that when she turned back to face him, he too would be covered in white, her life made clean of this black-robed man, releasing her from the nightmare of her apprenticeship.

Absurd, of course. Freedom did not come from bits of frozen water, praying to the nine elements, or wishing upon grains of sand. And when she turned back, he had still been there, eyes hard on her, assessing.

No escape. Year after year, lesson after lesson, that had become indisputable.

Then, at last, the test that did free her. An ordeal best forgotten, like Keyretura himself. In the years since, she had seen snow many times, had learned that it blanketed without discrimination, making all things white, from villages flattened by plague, to the dead of battle with pikes and flags sticking up like some odd winter flower.

But snow made nothing clean. It only covered for a time. When the seasons changed, it would melt away, revealing the debris beneath.

Now, in the waking world, the banging came again at her door. She sent a bit of herself outside, focus settling atop the boy, floating down over him. Youth came off Samnt in hot waves, the swirl of etheric flow around him bright and vibrant. She sank her attention in through his skin, feeling the press of blood in his veins, hearing his child’s heart beat strong and fast in his chest.

Not a child, she reminded herself. Not for long.

She withdrew her focus back under warm covers. The door was unlocked, but unlike the monster of her dreams, Samnt would never enter without invitation. Not because she was a mage. Not because he was afraid to offend. Because it was not done.

“Come in,” she called.

He threw open the front door, stamping inside, bringing in swirls of snow and wafts of cold air. This sent her burrowing deeper into the cocoon of blankets.

Grinning, he slammed the door behind. “My ma sends hello. And this,” he said, holding up a burlap bundle, fist closed around the top of the bag.

He was breathing hard from the run up the hill to her cabin, exhaling a white fog into the air. He could have come more slowly, but no—passion drove him to speed.

So young.

With a thunk he landed the bag on the table. The sides slid down to reveal bread, a large hunk of white cheese, and a brown ceramic jar. His eyes flickered around the room, as if to assure himself that nothing had changed in the day since he had been here last, then he was at the window, pulling back heavy drapes to let in a gray light.

Next at the woodstove, prying off bits of wood for kindling, setting them in the stove under the logs he had chopped and stacked for her back in autumn.

What, she wondered again, was she doing in this wretched, frigid land? For a time she lay there, thinking of her home in Perripur, in the Shentarat Mountains, and how overgrown with green it would be now. How warm.

The stove fire was burning enthusiastically. She struggled into clothes and braved the air of the room.

“Didn’t wake you, did I?” he asked, poking at the logs. Concern flickered briefly across his face, then his mind was elsewhere. “Snow later, I think.”

“Such fortune we are heir to,” Maris said wryly. “What’s in the jar?”

“Applesauce,” he said, “Our trees, our spices. Ma’s quite proud of it. You’ll like it, truly.”

“Thoughtful of her. Thoughtful of you. You may stay.”

He laughed and crouched down to put more wood into the fiercely burning stove and a kettle of water on top. She found herself smiling at him.

This, perhaps, was why she was still here.

“Let’s get started,” she said.

“Need more wood brought in.”

“It will wait. It’s not going anywhere.”

At this he sighed and dropped into the chair by her side. A moment later he was up again, tilting his head sideways to look at the books on her shelf. “Pa went to the village yesterday,” he said, running his fingers across the leather spines. “Trading tools at market. Saw a book there. Cost so much.” He turned back with a quick smile.

“What was it about, the book?”

A shrug. “He didn’t know. Leather working, maybe.”

“Next time you go with him. You read it for him, yes?”

Samnt nodded but without enthusiasm. That, she resolved, would change when he understood what books could be.

It had been so warm in autumn when she’d come here to wait out the winter in the mountains of Kathorn. Samnt had been eager to help stock the cabin, helping her lay in far more wood than she thought she would ever need. Now she found herself wondering if she would have enough to get through to spring thaw.

When the kettle boiled Samnt prepared tea from her dwindling supply that she had brought with her from Perripur. He sweetened it with local honey, just as she liked, without her even asking. A simple gesture, but one that touched her. He sipped his own mug, made a face, wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

The face of another boy came to mind, one who drank tea and wiped his face on his sleeve. Five years ago, was it? No, ten. The boy’s parents were already dead, his feverish sister restless on the soaked, stained mattress. Maris did all she could for them, gave the last of her herbs, but the illness held strong, eating through them, their family, their village. Still she stayed and nursed them.

The boy had died last.

“Let’s do some reading,” she said to Samnt. “From the animal book.”

“Teach me magic, Maris.”

“What, that again?”

“Yes. Why not?”

“You don’t need it.”

“But I do. I’m a fast learner. You said so yourself.”

To learn fast had little to do with it. Yes, he had the rare spark, but Maris would not wish the nightmare on anyone.

“Study something else.”

“What?”

“Anything. You must learn to read. Then we’ll go to numbers—”

Samnt cut in, exasperated. “Maris, I’m fifteen in spring. I’m going to plant grain, raise pigs, and dig crappers for my life’s keep, just like my parents do. I don’t need to read for that.”

“Learn to read and who can say what you might do? You could work a trade in-city. As bright as you are with numbers, perhaps even become a scribe.”

If he were lucky. If he didn’t get his head bashed in a moment after stepping through the city gates. He would need skills and sense enough to keep his mouth closed to survive in a city. He would need friends.

Her mind was already on how she would manage it. For Samnt she would go to Yarpin. Make some introductions. There were those in the capital city who would be pleased to be in her debt, who would help her find a position for a bright farm boy. They would go in spring, she decided, when he was of age. Something to look forward to.

Samnt snorted. “If I were a mage, I could . . .” He snapped his fingers. “Well, I don’t know, do I. Because you won’t show me.”

“You are correct in this.”

“Save me from plowing and shovels and shit-holes, Maris. Teach me. I’ll study hard. Please?”

He had no idea what he was asking.

Nor had she, at half his age, when her parents had put her small hand in the large hand of the black-robed stranger. Not until ten years later, when Keyretura had finally allowed her to visit home, where she sat by her father as he died, did she understand just how much her parents had paid to see their only child contracted in a mage’s apprenticeship.

Her father had comforted her then, wiping away her tears with his shaking hand, eyes full of pride, saying her name with his final breaths. It had shamed her to the core of her spirit to realize that while she had been studying in Keyretura’s mansion of glass and water, learning the impossible, her parents had been struggling to afford to eat.

She could tell Samnt that he had no spark, that this door would never open for him. But looking at him now, eyes sparkling, young face full of passion, she could not quite bring herself to give voice to that particular lie.

Pointing at the bookshelf, she took a tone she had learned from ships’ captains, Perripin magistrates, and Keyretura. “That book there, the brown one. Get it now.”

He watched her, expression defiant.

She remembered being so openly rebellious with Keyretura, recalled the agony that followed. Yet she had done it again and again.

Stubborn.

“Can you get the book with magic, Maris? Float it in the air?” He snapped his fingers again, up next to his ear. “Like that?”

“That one there,” Maris repeated, still pointing with her one hand, the other dropping toward the floor, three fingers curled, the other two pointing a ground into the earth. She was annoyed at his resistance, felt her emotion rise to anger, let it build.

“Come on, Maris,” he said, restlessly standing but not moving toward the shelves. “You don’t wear black. Aren’t mages supposed to wear black? Show me what mages can do.”

Keyretura’s voice was clear in memory.
Show me what you have learned to do, Marisel.

Samnt wouldn’t like to see what mages could do. What they had always done, from the Shentarat glass plains to the Battle of Nerainne to the melting plague, mages took what they wanted, destroyed what got in their way. Left the ruins for Iliban.

Iliban
. The mage word for those who weren’t.

Pushing aside such thoughts she stood and went to the bookshelf, pulling out the book she had indicated, hefted it in one hand. “Heavy. You were right to let me fetch it for you. Might have strained yourself.”

Samnt rolled his eyes. “Maris, show me just one thing and I’ll study. Whatever you say. On the harvest, I swear it.”

Maris held up the book. “Behold the one thing. Valuable beyond any trick I could show you. Now we study.”

He exhaled loudly, frustrated, just as Maris slammed the book flat on the table.

“Samnt, you must attend to my words—”

“—not the book,” he said loudly at the same moment, standing, waving his arms. “I meant—”

“I know what you meant. I’m a midwife, too, Samnt. Why don’t you ask me about birthing babies?”

“I’ve seen babies born. I don’t need to see more of that. Lots of blood. Now I want to see—”

“In the Buravin Tel fire pits they bet on how many heartbeats the condemned will stand before they topple into the lava. Trust me in this: there are things better not seen.”

But he was not listening. Too much curiosity, not enough sense. It tugged at her, his craving to understand, but it was a sharp blade and it would cut him if he were not careful.

“‘Fear magic from a distance’,” she said. “Have you not heard this wisdom?”

He waved it away. “I’ve heard it. I’m not afraid of you, Maris.”

“Then you’re a fool.”

How had her simple desire to teach this young man to read and write turned so sour? It was her own fault; she had been kind.

Was this what came from being raised by loving parents? From being treated gently?

He shook his head, refusing to be cowed. She could send him away, she supposed, but he would be back tomorrow, the same litany on his lips, the same hunger in his eyes. Reason would not convince him.

“So be it.”

His face lit up. “I’ll study after, I promise.”

Maris nodded, feeling distant.

“Maris, you’re not at all what I thought a mage would be. Friendly. Generous. I like you so much.”

His words threatened to slice through the layer of numbness she now spun around herself, but she had learned her protections across the decades with Keyretura. Even Samnt’s innocence could not cut through that.

“Sit down,” Maris told him flatly.

He sat down in the chair, smile wide, face eager. She exhaled, went deep into his body. A touch here, a shift there.

“Now stand up.”

He didn’t move.

“Stand up,” she said again, knowing he heard her.

He remained still.

“You wanted to see some magic, boy,” she said roughly. “Now you have. What do you think of it?”

His only movement was shallow breathing. Maris turned away from him as something bitter and familiar settled inside her. She picked up her mug. She sipped at her tea.

Again she had failed. Pain and suffering following in her wake.

Again.

The mother and fetus had not been working well together. She had given them all the healing herbs she could, and had delved deep into the woman’s belly with her focus, trying to smooth the child’s way out. One by one she tried to fix the many problems, but too much was wrong with the channels that connected them. Sunrise came, then midday, then evening. Another sunrise.