The Seer - eARC (29 page)

If she were truly vexed, she could have him torn to pieces in Execution Square, relieving him of his oversight of that particular job. That would be an irony many would appreciate.

He was betting she was too smart for that. Betting rather a lot.

“Then, my lady,” he said with a calmness he didn’t feel, “give the job to someone else. Someone you trust to make such decisions.”

“No mages,” she said, slowly, forcefully.

“I’m sure Lason would take back his command if you offered it to him.”

“Cold crack your balls.” She slammed her hand against the side of the tub. “Do as I say.”

Their gazes locked.

“I am your queen.”

“Without question, ma’am.”

“You will obey me.”

“You’ve given me conflicting orders.”

“No mages. Isn’t that simple enough?”

She was not yielding.
Don’t push until you must. And then go in with all you have.

“Perhaps you should break the marriage, my queen.”

A step too far, he judged from her sudden change of expression. She was furious now, eyes wide, fists tight.

Innel suppressed a wince; worse yet would be to retreat. So with effort, he stayed silent, letting his last words echo.

“I’ll have you in charge of the kitchens first,” she said at last.

“I am reassured,” he said, dryly, to hide how reassured he really was. He sat back on the tiles, letting himself softly exhale. “The Houses use mages, Cern. We must have at least the advantages they do.”

She gritted her teeth, splashed the water a little. “Be sure your hire is a citizen of the empire. One who pays taxes.”

Unlikely, given the laws about practicing magic.

But, he realized, she had just said yes.

“I thought it prudent to find one from outside Yarpin, outside Arunkel. Someone without obligations or ties here.”

Her expression bordered on the incredulous. “You have already done this thing.”

He hesitated, then wished he hadn’t. “Yes.”

“You broke the laws.”

“Your father’s laws, which he himself broke regularly.
Your
laws now, my queen.”

“When did you—” She broke off, stared at him with hard, green eyes. “How long have you been planning this?”

He wondered what answer would pacify her most, decided to risk the truth. “A year and some, my lady.”

To his surprise, she smiled. “When my father still ruled. You planned ahead, for me. I like that.” Then the smile turned brittle. “But don’t hide things from me. If there’s a mage in my palace, I want to know about it. No secrets from me, Innel, the way you did with him.”

“No secrets.”

Cern moved through the water to come close to him at the edge of the tub, then reached up and grabbed the back of his head with her wet hand, slowly pulling him close. She kissed him for long moments.

This he had not expected. For a fair number of moments afterward she continued to surprise him.

When Innel returned at the fifth bell, Lason left, finally and gracelessly, storming out of the office along with an entourage of his remaining loyal retainers. They left with the best of the old king’s travel set. “Stole” might be the more accurate word, but it was unclear what the legal status of the king’s royal horses was now that Cern was queen. From there the group had headed north, Innel was told, but to where no one knew.

It had better not be to cause trouble at the mines. He instructed Srel to send word to his people there to report back anything that sounded like Lason’s work.

Finally the Lord Commander’s office was Innel’s.

He signalled Srel, who gestured to the many servants who were unpacking his things onto the mantles, making the final touches Innel wanted—new maps on the walls, weapons on racks so they were more accessible than ornamental—to stop. They streamed out the door, leaving only the young, uniformed woman who had just arrived. She stood arrow-straight, staring at nothing.

When the two of them were alone, he spoke. “Identify yourself,” he said

“Vevan sev Arunkel, Lord Commander.”

“Sit down.”

Startled at this, she obeyed, taking the chair across from him. The manner in which people sat in chairs told Innel a great deal about them, soldiers especially. They were accustomed to being watched when they stood; sitting was what they did off-duty, drinking or eating, their defenses lowered.

“You have a lover,” he said. “Bintal.”

Her eyes widened. She stuttered in her reply. “Yes, Lord Commander.”

“He spoke to you before you left Yarpin on campaign last year. About me and my brother, Pohut sev Restarn. Is that so?” He was guessing. Satisfyingly, the blood drained from her face and her stark expression made reply unnecessary. “What was said?”

“Some sort of plan,” she said, her voice low. “Against you. By Lieutenant Pohut.”

“Give me details, Sergeant.”

“The lieutenant was asking someone questions.”

“Who? Where?”

“In the mountains south? Some fortune-teller.” She laughed a little, uneasily.

Innel’s stomach clenched. “Who did you tell this to?”

“No one, ser.”

“No one? Not one person in your company?”

“No, Lord Commander.”

He leaned forward. “No talk about the lieutenant’s funeral? No rumors about how he might have been killed? No late-night speculations about the new Lord Commander? I find this hard to believe. I can have you interviewed at length by someone who can tell the truth of your words if I have any doubt about your sincerity. You are far better off telling me. Now.”

Her face went even paler, her voice barely a whisper. “I might have said something, Lord Commander. In jest. Once.”

“How many might have heard you, had you said this something?”

Her mouth opened and closed and then again. “We were out. Drinking and smoking, Lord Commander. Truly, I don’t recall.”

She was too easy to read: she wanted anything but to recall.

“Guess,” he urged.

“A tencount, perhaps, my lord.”

“Just one?”

She swallowed. Her mouth fished open again. “Perhaps a few more than that.”

There it was, then: a rumor based in fact, with plenty of time for it to have found life across the public houses of the cities and the fire pits of the camps. It would sound like typical aristo dalliance and excess, consulting a fortune-teller, but Pohut’s death might give it more credence than he could afford.

Innel would start his own rumors to combat it, of course, far more outrageous. Pigs that snorted predictions, dogs that burped tomorrow’s weather. This would help confuse anyone looking for a kernel of truth. He hoped.

The woman before him was slumped in her chair, face a mask of despair, gaze on the floor.

“You’ll want to go back to your company,” he said after a moment’s consideration.

“Yes, ser,” she said, her tone flat.

She did not expect to survive this interview. In Restarn and Lason’s time, she might not have. Might have quietly disappeared, family and friends acting as if she had never existed at all. No funeral, no gift ceremony, no body. Innel had seen it countless times.

“I can’t let you go back,” he said, letting that sink in, watching her face collapse, giving her another moment to consider her mortality. “So I will post you here, on the palace grounds. Something modest, perhaps the cavalry inventory staff. Would you like that?”

She blinked a few times, doubt warring with hope, then nodded with fragile enthusiasm.

“You can keep seeing Bintal; indeed, I encourage it. But you will tell me anything that is said around you, about me or anyone in my family. My own people will be feeding you some of those rumors, just to keep you in practice. Understand?”

“Lord Commander, thank you, I—”

He waved it away. “You’ll tell me you’re loyal, that you owe me your life.” He leaned forward, caught her gaze. “I advise you to make sure I never question having let you keep it. Yes?”

“Yes, Lord Commander.”

Getting away from the palace was harder than it had ever been, taking hours to arrange. Again he made his way to the toilet room of the Frosted Rose.

“Where in the hells have you been?” Innel demanded of the vent overhead.

“Finding your girl, Lord Commander.”

“And?”

“You were right: she sees the future.”

“You have her?”

“No. And I will need more funds to continue my search.”

Innel’s fist trembled as he touched white knuckles to the wall of the small toilet room. Softly. “Hiring you, first and most expensively, was intended to resolve this matter quickly. Yet I see no resolution.”

“Commander, this no a simple girl. In each moment she knew what I was about to do next. A seer. Truly, this is extraordinary.”

“It took you a year to come to the conclusion that I was right? And you are supposed to be the best?”

“Few escape me, even once. I doubt anyone will get closer to her than I have.”

“We can celebrate that at least,” Innel said, “because rumors of the girl are now everywhere. Let’s hope your competition is even less competent than you are.”

“Lord Commander, I urge you to allow me to kill her. She will be far easier to control when she is dead.”

“Absolutely not. I need her alive.” Cern’s rule was yet weak, his own command under hers consequently tenuous. Innel needed the girl’s answers far more than he needed her silence. “So you come to me with nothing?”

“Not quite. I have some items that once belonged to her. A small seashell, some blue cloth. You may wish to ask your mage about these.”

His mage. Tayre was surely guessing. That Innel had every intention of doing just this as soon as he could bring Marisel dua Mage to the palace did not change the fact that it was still against both law and custom. He wondered if he should pretend to be offended for the sake of appearances. “Explain your meaning.”

“You are an insightful man, not given to common superstitions during your uncommon rise.” Mutt to Royal Consort to Lord Commander, he meant. Innel frowned a little at this, wondering if Tayre was flattering him. “You would have a mage.”

Innel made a noncommittal sound.

“Though,” Tayre continued, “I suspect the girl’s ability to anticipate danger will work equally well against magical forces.”

“Is that intended to reassure me?”

“If you want reassurance, ser, you’ll find it for far less coin than what you’ve been paying me. But coin is the least of your costs if someone else finds her first.”

The very thought that kept Innel awake at night. “This is neither news nor does it put her in my hands. If you cannot find her—”

“I know where she is.”

“What? Why didn’t you say that before?”

“Because finding her is not the problem.”

Again his hand was clenched into a fist. “And yet it seems to have thwarted you repeatedly.”

“Lord Commander, your other hires—have any of them reported finding her?” He paused. “Or reported finding me?”

“No,” he admitted.

“I’ve threatened her life twice. If any of your other hounds had done that much, I doubt you would be here.”

“Damn this. Can you apprehend her or not?”

“Her foresight has limitations or she wouldn’t be fleeing from me in the first place. I will keep pursuing, but I can offer no promises.”

Unlike the others Innel had hired, all of whom had been quite willing to give promises. That it would be easily accomplished. That they would have the girl to him shortly.

“She is still on the run,” Tayre said. “No one else has her, either.”

“Someone will.”

A doubtful sound. “Perhaps.”

So many ways to use the girl if he could only get his hands on her. He thought of the mountain regions, where towns thought taxes and House Charters didn’t apply to them, or the Greater and Lesser Houses and their squabbles. Trade boats that had been lost in bad weather, costing the crown astonishing amounts. The shifting metals markets.

For whoever held her, the potential advantages were boundless. He exhaled in a long stream.

“If capture is not possible . . .” It would be a great shame to lose her. But far worse to let someone else have her. “Bring me her head.”

“A prudent decision, Lord Commander. And the woman and the boy?”

For all Innel knew, the girl’s exceptional ability ran in the family. It made no sense to remove the girl and leave alive two other potential and similar threats. It was time to finish this.

“Yes. If you cannot capture, kill them. All of them.”

Chapter Fifteen

At the meal, Amarta looked for Darad, but he had slipped out some time ago, to where she did not know. Without even signing good-bye to her.

There had been a conversation the previous evening between the handful of them, the subject turning to the upcoming trip. Someone had pointed out that she and Dirina already looked like Arunkin, because they
were
Arunkin, and why, he wondered, couldn’t
they
be sent on the out-trips instead of sending Emendi?

“That’s a dumb idea,” Darad had said. “They don’t know what we need to get.”

“So give them a list. They can read, can’t they?”

“Not really,” Amarta admitted.

“Why not?” asked a younger boy.

“I just never had to learn, I guess.”

“I mean why can’t you go on these trips instead of us?”

Another girl spoke up. “We risk our lives on the trips. It’s no risk for you at all.”

Amarta could not—would not—tell her how wrong she was. But at this Nidem and Darad exchanged quick looks, making Amarta wonder how much they suspected about why she and Dirina and Pas were in Kusan in the first place.

“No,” Nidem said adamantly. She gave Amarta a brief, unfriendly stare. “I’ve worked hard for my place in the out-trip. She hasn’t done anything to earn it at all.”

Amarta nodded her agreement at this, feeling both relief and gratitude to Nidem. Darad gave her a thoughtful, unreadable look.

Which was why, now, with him gone early from the meal, she worried that she had said or done something he didn’t like.

The meal was finishing and Emendi were leaving. Some to the baths, some to the nursery, some to the music room, some to the coops.

Nidem caught her eye from the door.
Come with
, she signed.

Clean-up duty
, Amarta signed back with one hand, holding a stack of bowls with the other, hoping she was properly conveying with the abruptness of her movements the frustration she felt at being stuck here. She desperately wanted to get Nidem alone so she could ask her where Darad had gone.

But no, it was beyond important that they be reliable here. To be worth the sanctuary and food the Emendi generously gave them.

Washroom Three,
Nidem signed back.
Come soon.

Maybe she could get Dirina to take her clean-up duty, she thought, looking for her sister. She was with Kosal, a young man she had been spending a lot of time with. Judging by her happy look, her sister wouldn’t be in a mood to wash dishes for Amarta.

Again Kosal was trying to teach Dirina hand signs by holding her hand and moving her fingers. It seemed to Amarta that her sister was taking a very long time to learn. But no real mystery there; Dirina grinned foolishly as he slowly manipulated her fingers.

It was good that they were making friends among the Emendi. Still, many Emendi would not even speak to them, despite how diligently she and Dirina had worked these last months to find a place here in Kusan, to make themselves valuable and trusted to the suspicious Emendi.

After the Teva left, Nidem had warmed to Amarta, joking that it was best to keep enemies as close as possible. At Amarta’s hurt look, Nidem had rolled her eyes and cuffed her lightly.
Joking
, she signed.

Not long after, Nidem had taken Amarta on a night-rabbit hunt, the two of them standing well to the back of the group of adults who released the hunting ferrets to find and flush the rabbit warrens, where two of the hugest ferrets Amarta had seen waited. As the rabbits exited their holes, the ferrets clamped onto their necks, rolling hard to break them.

The rabbit stew had been delicious.

When conversation after that meal turned to Arun slavers, Nidem defended them, explaining adamantly that they had never owned slaves. Never even been to Munasee, let alone Yarpin.

Now Nidem flashed her a final sign:
Hurry!
and left the eating hall.

Amarta took dirty plates to the kitchen, passing by Dirina laughing with Kosal. She felt oddly uneasy. At the waterway where she soaped dishes beside others she wondered if it were premonition.

She had not looked for the visions these last months, nor had they come to her unbidden. She was not pushing them away—she had learned not to do that from her escape in the Nesmar forest—but also she did not ask for them.

No, she decided after a time, her unease did not have the feel of that other sort of knowing, the future scratching like tiny beetles in the back of her head, slipping in through the cracks. It was more that time was passing, and they were some kind of happy here. The happier they were, the more it hurt to leave.

And surely they would have to leave.

But if not vision, then perhaps it was not even true. Nothing bad had happened. The hunter had not found them. No one had suffered from her visions.

Yet.

As soon as she felt she could leave the kitchen, she grabbed a lantern and ran to the washroom two levels down. There a crowd had gathered at the far end of the room, by the waterway. Nidem saw her and motioned her over, leading her close in. On the floor lay a boy, his head tilted back in one of the basins, Astru and another man kneeling over him.

“What—” Amarta whispered, but Nidem hushed her with hand squeezes.

The boy grinned at her, and with a shock she realized it was Darad, his hair dyed black.

“He goes on the out-trip next month,” Nidem said. “This is the first time for the dye, to test his hair to see how it takes. So—a ceremony, you see. He is more an adult today than yesterday.”

Was that pride in Nidem’s voice? Amarta looked at the other girl, and decided it was.

That the Emendi studied for this, she knew, but she hadn’t really understood how much it meant to them, this opportunity to leave Kusan for the world outside, even for a few days.

Darad sat up. The men surrounding him toweled his hair dry with a cloth already darkly stained.

“Enough,” said Astru, waving at the various watchers standing around. “The rest is for Darad only.”

Out in the corridor Nidem’s eyes were wide and bright, her look at Amarta intense. “I will go in the next out-group. The month after.”

“If you do well in the exams,” the elder Vatti said, standing nearby, running her hands through Nidem’s hair, inspecting it.

“Your tests are harder than Astru’s,” Nidem said. “That’s not fair.”

“Fair is what you take,” Vatti said. “You’ll be glad of the extra study if you ever get caught.”

“Why?” Amarta asked.

“Because what Arunkin do to blond girls they do not do to blond boys,” Vatti said.

“None of us have been caught out in years,” Nidem said. “A decade and more. Maybe we need less preparation for a few days outside to the market than you think.”

At this Vatti said nothing, but she signed, once, sharply, a sign that Amarta didn’t know, and walked away.

Nidem lost her smile.

“What?” Amarta asked her when Vatti had gone. “What did that mean?”

Nidem shook her head.

“Come on, tell me.”

Nidem looked subdued as her eyes traced around the empty hall and back to Amarta.

“It is the sign for ‘slave.’”

“You didn’t recognize me,” Darad said to her.

“No, not at first.”

“I’m going on the out-trip next month. I look like Arunkin now, don’t I?”

“Not your blue eyes.”

“We look down,” he said. “Part of the training. No one will notice. You worry too much.”

“Be careful,” she said, now suddenly truly worried.

He laughed. “I’ll be fine.”

Would
he? She tried to foresee the out-trip to the market and back. Would Darad be sound through all that, and return unharmed?

“When were you last up in the gardens?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer he took her hand, pulling her along to the stairs and up the levels. A black and white ferret followed them curiously. Amarta didn’t much like going outside, despite being encouraged to see the sun regularly, despite how hidden the gardens were, nestled among high rocks. It reminded here that there was a world beyond Kusan. A world in which she was not safe.

“It’s spring,” he said. “You have to, now.”

“What? No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. And now that I have dark hair, you can’t argue with me.”

At this she laughed. “Watch me argue with you.”

“I will, and closely. Okay, you can argue, but I’ll win.” At that he stopped suddenly, putting the lantern behind himself while he pulled her close with the other hand. Before she quite realized it, he had kissed her on the lips. She felt herself warm all over.

“See? I’m winning the argument already,” he said, pulling her along to the gardens as if nothing unusual had happened. “Up we go, to see the sun.”

The kiss had left her wordless. At the end of the tunnel, the garden Keeper, a tall, slender man with a blond beard, nodded his permission to them to go out. The ferret following them jumped into his lap.

The two of them stepped outside, standing and blinking in the bright day. In the small, flat garden, tiny green seedlings poked up. They walked the small path under the blue sky and overhead sun.

Emendi caution told her she was safe here, that she would not be seen. But she felt exposed.

“Look at my hair, Amarta. Look closely. Can you tell?”

He looked as if he had always had dark hair. Even his eyebrows had been dyed.

“No, but—”

He brought himself very close to her. For a moment she thought he might kiss her again. His blue eyes were on hers, searching. She felt herself warm again.

“Where did you come from, Amarta?” he asked. “And will you go back there?”

“No, no. This is our home now.”

He stroked her face with his fingertips, the touch sending chills down her spine. She wanted him to never stop. “But your eyes,” she finished.

He laughed lightly and petted her head slowly. It was the most marvelous sensation she’d ever felt.

“You worry so much. Trust me, we know what we’re doing. We’ve been doing this a very long time. Truly, I will be fine.”

He was right, she decided at last. As the days and weeks leading up to him leaving on the out-trip went by, she looked into the future as often as she could. There was something odd coming, something to do with Darad, but it was after he got back. He would return safe and sound. She was reassured.

Amarta could give every one of their kisses a name. “First kiss” or “washroom kiss” or “the tossing-ferrets-joke kiss.” Sometimes she named them for what he said before or after. A simple, “Hey, dark-hair” or “There, I think you won that argument after all,” or “You taste sweet.”

When she was not sneaking off somewhere alone with him, she replayed every word he said. She felt as if she were floating. While she ached to tell someone, she knew it would not be Dirina, who, she was somehow sure, would not quite approve, despite that Amarta was pretty certain she was doing something similar when she snuck off in the night with Kosal.

Nidem, though, she might tell. She wasn’t sure she would approve, so for a time she stayed silent, but finally she could bear it no longer and whispered to the girl all that had happened, and how she felt. Nidem seemed uncertain for a moment, then nodded.

“It is good that you keep it secret, though,” she said. “Some would not be so happy to see Emendi and Arunkin close. I am pleased for your joy, Ama.”

Maybe, Amarta thought, this really was their home now.

The day of the out-trip arrived. Amarta went to see them off at the staging area, the same entranceway through which they had first come with the Teva, which she now knew had stables to one side and another huge room for wagons off to the other.

A tencount of Emendi loaded barrels and sacks onto the wagon, then water and food for the three days out and back. Astru and Vatti stood by, directing.

Darad came to her and took her hand, drawing her close. Then, despite all those standing near and watching, he kissed her again, longer than ever before, as if to make a point. As he drew back, Astru and Vatti looked on with unreadable expressions.

Well, it was no secret now.

Then, with one last look at her, he said, “I’ll be back for more.” He squeezed her hand one last time and smiled.

The huge stones were rolled back from the cave entrance and the wagons set out into the sunlight, carthorse hitched. From the front of the wagon, Darad waved at her as they went.

A handful of days. Practically no time at all. She was not worried; vision had told her he would come back whole. She waved back.

Some seven days later, right on schedule, Darad came back. The group was well, returning with sacks of grain, dried fruits, seeds and nuts, bolts of burlap. Even some casks of wine. There were celebrations that night.

But something had changed. From the moment he returned, Darad acted as if the last kiss and all the kisses before had never occurred. She tried to catch him alone, to ask him what had happened, but somehow he was always busy, always walking away or talking to someone else. The next day and the next she tried again.

In despair she went to Nidem.

“He doesn’t want to talk to you,” Nidem told her.

Her stomach went leaden. “But why not?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He won’t tell me.” Seeing Amarta’s expression, she did not even make it into a joke.

“Did someone tell him not to? Because I’m not Emendi?”

“Maybe that,” Nidem said, nodding slowly. “But just as likely it is that he is fickle.”

“But . . .” He had said things to her, things that did not go away so fast. “I said or did something to upset him, perhaps?” Her throat hurt. Her chest was tight.

“He went out into the world, Ama. It is not easy for us to do that, to be in the day, all day. To see the freedom your kind has so easily, that we can never have. Sometimes it changes us. Perhaps it changed him.”

“That much? I don’t believe it.”

Surprising Amarta, Nidem took her in a hug and held her a long moment, then pulled back to look into her eyes. “You are not the first to be bruised by Darad’s changing affections. He is a fickle boy. Someday he will be a fickle man. Be glad you discovered so early, so easily.”