The Seer - eARC (39 page)

“When I’m tired, I sleep. No one comes for me in the night.”

The anger stayed, along with a fear she refused to feel. “I could have killed you,” she said. “Right there in the forest. With your own bow. With your own knife.”

He clasped his hands in front of him. “But you didn’t. It didn’t even occur to you until you were far, far away. Am I right?”

How could he know that?

“Amarta, end this hunt, right now. Take the crown’s protection.”

“I’m fine where I am. I escape you every time you come for me. Day or night.”

“Ah. You think it’s been me after you, all these months here in Munasee.” He grinned a little, shook his head. “I’ve only been watching. Has it not occurred to you to wonder why your pursuers all seem so inept?”

At that, doubt crept into her mind. She shook her head, tried to push it away.

“Sooner or later someone will find a way around your magic,” he said.

“It’s not magic.”

“As you say. What about Dirina and Pas?”

He knew their names. She suppressed a shiver. “Who?”

A small tilt of his head. “You courier for the trader Magrit. Your sister and nephew eat by your work, when they eat at all. I know the room in which the three of you sleep.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything.”

“You just did. And while you’re out delivering messages and evading clumsy attempts on your life, who is protecting your family from those who pursue you? Indeed, Seer, who is protecting them right now?”

He was only trying to scare her. But it was working. She wanted to run home right now to make sure they were okay. Did he really know where they lived?

“The Lord Commander offers you and your family the sanctuary of the crown. He is more than the queen’s consort; he is the commander of the army. You could not be safer anywhere in the empire. Anywhere in the world.”

“So you say. You who have been hunting me for years.”

He spread his hands. “The crown extends the offer. My task is to present it. To bring you safely to the capital, after you accept.”

“So,” she said, putting as much insult in her voice as she could, “you’re no more than a hired hound.”

“I am exactly that, but no longer the only one in pursuit.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

But she was gasping as if she could not get enough air. What if he were telling the truth? What if all these months in Munasee it had not even been him coming after her?

“Consider, Seer: safety for your family. Plenty of food. Shoes that fit.”

She looked at him, aghast. How could he know about the shoes? “If I say yes, then what?”

“From that moment forward you will be under contract to the Lord Commander. You and your family, under his protection and secure. A life of ease and luxury in the queen’s palace. This is a rare opportunity.”

And a stunningly good offer. Yet she hesitated. Why?

“How do you answer, Seer?”

She looked back at him, forced herself to meet his eyes. It seemed she had been facing him her whole life.

To stop running. To eat regularly. A new life for the three of them. One of unimaginable riches.

A far better life than she could ever hope to earn for them in Munasee.

“I have to think.”

“Think fast. This offer will not be open long, and when it closes, Amarta, the life you have found here may no longer be so easy.”

Easy? What was easy about it? But if the attacks she was escaping weren’t even his—

She had felt so clever, avoiding the hunters, day after day, confident in her vision’s guidance. But what if, rather than the result of her ability to navigate the city, and her foresight to guide her, the attacks had been merely inadequate and poorly done? Weak, compared to what he was capable of?

If she said no to this, he would come after her again.

“I will give you a day to consider, Seer. Come here, by this time tomorrow. Bring your sister and nephew, or not—we can fetch them easily enough. All you need do is agree.” He leaned forward. “All three of you: safe, secure, never hungry again. Surely this is everything you have wanted?”

It did seem so. What would happen if she said yes?

The future seemed to exhale upon her like a great beast, teeth sharp, breath of smoke and burning flesh. In the roar were human screams. In the air a salt brine from an ocean she had never seen. Around her shoulders, a cold and bleak freedom.

Then it was gone, leaving her in the stark silence of a small room, sitting across from the man who hunted her across the years. She opened her mouth to say something, but all that came out was a small, wordless cry.

No safety here. Not now. Not ever. She leapt to her feet.

“Be very careful, Seer,” he said as she went to the door, his tone edging to warning. “The Lord Commander wants to hire you. Others only want your head.”

The flash of gold from the table caught her eye.

All hers, if she said yes and agreed to something she did not quite understand, that seemed too good to be possible, and for some reason scared her to her very bones.

She fled.

“We would live in the palace?” asked Dirina.

“The palace?” Pas asked eagerly.

Their few things were scattered across the floor. What to take? What to leave behind? No matter how little they had, it seemed they always left things behind. Things that mattered.

The seashell. Bits of their mother’s dress. People and places. Enana. Darad.

Nidem.

Was it the right decision, to flee now?

“The palace,” Dirina said softly, wistfully.

After all their running, he had tracked them here to Munasee. Her visions had only rescued her from the lesser hounds. Where could they go that he could not follow?

Perhaps better to say yes.

“And more coin, too, you said?”

It always came back to money. To cold mornings in the mountains, without firewood. To long hungry nights. To tight shoes that did not keep out the wet and dirt of the world.

Amarta nodded mutely, watching her sister. Dirina inhaled and looked at Pas, who was looking between them both.

“What should we do?” her sister asked her.

“Diri, we could eat, plenty, every single day. Be warm at night. Sleep on soft beds.”

Together they silently considered this seductive vision. What did a palace look like? What might they eat? How soft were the beds?

What would life be like if they were no longer on the run?

“Maybe we should say yes,” Amarta said, voice low. “How bad could it be?”

Her sister laughed once. “Ama. You see the future. Look and tell us.”

She had tried. It was like swimming through a bottomless lake of blood in which swam disembodied faces.

“It’s too big. I can’t.”

In truth, it was too awful.

“You can,” Dirina said, a sudden fierceness in her voice. “Again and again you have kept us safe. Amarta—”

“No! I made us leave, over and over, is what I did. What if I was wrong those times? What if I’m wrong now?” Amarta exhaled a sob. Dirina drew her down to sit on the cot. Pas was at their feet, his arms wrapped wide around both their legs. His eyes were wide, the trust in his face so clear.

Every time they had needed to flee, Dirina had stayed with her. Had refused to be separated. This, her only family, was at risk because of her. How could she give them less than everything she had?

She glanced around at the mess of the room, willing herself to look beyond it, to what might come.

A flicker here, a short flash there, then it was all tangled again—hundreds of threads in all directions, choices yet to be made by those who didn’t even know they would make them, all coming together in thousands of different ways, a tapestry with threads of smoke. As she looked, it moved and changed. None of it, not one piece, was certain.

She exhaled frustration.

Dirina and Pas watched silently, patiently, their faith in her as solid as her visions seemed smoke. She wanted to cry.

None of that, she told herself sternly.

She would start over. Begin with this moment. Find the thread, the next moment, then the next, until she found the one where she might decide to put herself into the hands of her hunter and his owner.

Time passed, Pas and Dirina’s long, quiet breaths the only sound in the room. She found a tangle of decisions and held it tight, feeling its shape as it squirmed to take many forms.

Not merely tomorrow. Not next month. But farther. Not only for herself. For Dirina and Pas, for Enana and her family. For Kusan and all who lived there. Mara, Jolon.

Kusan invaded by brutal mercenaries, this time, not soldiers. Emendi in cities, on platforms, sold in chains. At the farm, Enana’s sons overwhelmed by gangs with sticks, beaten to death for the bags of grain they had in the barn.

No, no, no. It was too much, to care for everyone.

Her cheeks were wet with tears, lips trembling.

Only Dirina and Pas, then. Only them.

He would let her see them, he said, when she gave him the answers he wanted. They would be hurt, he warned, tall in his red and black, if she did not comply. But no matter what she said, there were no right words to keep them safe, and she did not see her sister and nephew anymore.

When at last she opened her eyes and spoke, her voice was a hoarse whisper. “If we go to the palace, we will never leave.”

And they would be hurt, Dirina and Pas. She could not bear it.

Her sister sighed heavily. “Then we will not go.”

“Then we must leave Munasee.”

“Then we must leave.”

Again. Amarta shook her head as more tears of frustration came. She hated knowing enough to run away but never enough to stay.

Chapter Twenty

By nightfall Maris had reached the poorest of the neighborhoods. It was late summer, the air still and reeking of burning tallow and human waste and rot. She walked among the half-tents and broken buildings of the Arun slums, picking her way over a cobbled road missing so many stones that wagons did not come here at all. Nor did the sewers flow. The stench was pervasive.

This was her last neighborhood to search, then she could tell the Lord Commander with fair confidence that the girl was not in Yarpin.

She would be done. Not done with the library, no, that magnificent collection of books that she was now certain was the finest accomplishment of the Anandynars. But even that lure was weakening when set against this place she walked through.

No more healing today, she told herself again.

The children were hardest to pass by. The elderly, the ill—even the infants—she could ignore. Life and death—two sides of the same thing—but those who had struggled to their sixth or seventh year, who had survived what calamities and woes Yarpin could hurl at them—who might yet come to vitality, and possibly even adulthood—these she could not seem to pass by.

Only one more, she would find herself thinking. Only this one.

Overhead a clear night showed a haze around the moon, promising early morning fog. The stars of the compass again tempted her to the ocean and escape.

No. She would complete the city first.

As she walked past tents and open-air camps, she kept the work fast and quick, her palm out to taste each person’s etherics only long enough to rule them out.

From a crumbling stone archway a man emerged, stinking of rotgut and smoke and unwashed years. He stumbled a little, catching himself, then lurched toward her. He stopped, peering closely, somehow seeing her through the dusting of illusion and disguise in which she had wrapped herself.

Shock went through her. He was far too light-skinned, missing an ear, but otherwise he looked like her own father, dead these many decades.

A wide grin was on his face, and he stepped close to her, stumbling again. She caught his arm to hold him aright. His tension seemed to melt then, as if he had finally found what he’d been looking for, and he went half limp, a hand down, seeking the ground. She helped him lower himself, following him to sit at his side, one hand going to his chest, the other to his forehead.

He was muttering something. She was, she realized suddenly, leaking tears as she delved deep into his body, where, organ by organ, the tumors and damage were more places than they were not. She could not fix it. Oh, she could make a start on cleaning his blood, but to what end? To sober his mind so he could more keenly realize how diseased he was? Return to him the pain he had worked so hard to silence?

He coughed and sputtered, spittle and drool on his lips and chin. “Hush,” he slurred up at her with a gap-toothed smile, somehow reading her thoughts. “It is good enough. Just help me go.”

“What is that you say, ser?” she asked, blinking her tears away.

“Help me go,” he said more slowly. “Help me die.”

She looked at him once more and realized he looked nothing like her own father. He was only one more dying drunk on the streets of Arun.

But as she tried to rise, to leave him to his fate, he held her wrist and pulled her close, begging her with his eyes, and she found she did not quite have the will to push him away. Finally, with a shuddering exhale, she put her hands on him, and she led his spirit to the edge of life where she opened the door for him.

His grip on her arm relaxed.

Maris got to her feet, refusing to let herself think or feel as she walked back to the city’s main street and then climbed the long, steep road to the palace.

Once again in her palace room room, she fell onto the bed, staring at the ceiling.

The old man’s spirit clung to her the long night, and she could not sleep. Again, she could not quite bring herself to push him away.

In the early morning, Maris cleaned herself in every way she knew how, scouring body and mind and spirit until she felt raw.

Raw but not much cleaner.

How had it come to this folly again? How had she let herself become so weakened?
The ocean of suffering Iliban.
She must rest, replenish, recover.

She would do no more searching today. Instead she would go to the library, let herself wander aimlessly among the books and scrolls and boxes of scrawled treasures stacked up to the high ceilings. There she would find something to ease her battered spirit.

And so she did. Once among the books she was so absorbed she did not notice the servant who brought her tea along with a plate of small, cream-filled pastries so delicate and moist they might have been spiced butter in her mouth.

Not restored, not so fast as that, but her stomach at least was content.

Again the seductive trap of the palace. Knowing she could leave at any time made it that much easier to stay.

She took another pastry.

“Good morning, ser.” Srel inclined his head to her.

Respect first. Reason later.

But did she truly object? This same respect gave her access to this library.

“The Lord Commander asks your company and attention, if you will permit,” he said.

At this she felt a flicker of hope. Perhaps the girl had been found, or something else had occurred that might honorably allow her to stop her searching.

Putting one last pastry in her mouth, she followed him to Innel’s offices.

“The queen is most grateful,” Innel said. “The conspirators you most recently identified have been spoken to, their efforts appropriately redirected.”

Maris had wondered at the new residents of Execution Square she had seen through the windows, their limbs spread in what seemed such uncomfortable positions. Redirection indeed.

“How is the search, Marisel?”

There was new something in Innel’s tone. Had his interest in finding the girl waned?

No, that wasn’t it. It was something else. What?

A faint and familiar scent clung to the Lord Commander. Actual smell or etheric impression, she could not quite tell. She sat across from him at the small table.

“I am very nearly done searching the city,” she said, distracted by the barest hint of something on Innel that she knew but could not place. She took the mug of tea he offered her—Arun tea, not Perripin—and took a tentative sip. Bitter. She made a face.

“It is time to make a change,” he said. “To speed this work.”

“I warned you it would take too long, this search. But you—”

“Yes, you have done all that I have asked and more, Marisel. I am grateful. But I can wait no longer, so I have acquired some assistance for you.”

Maris froze, the cup in her hand. “What is this you say?”

“Two mages, it is said, are better than one. I have hired another.”

She slammed her cup onto the table, splashing hot tea over the sides onto her hand. “Our contract does not include this.”

“Nor does it exclude it. Two mages in cooperation could surely accomplish far more than one. Find my missing girl, perhaps.”

She looked at him, gaping incredulously. “You cannot throw two mages together without warning, as if they were ingredients in a stew. You should have consulted me first. Mages are generally unpleasant. I’m a rare exception.”

His hands were up in a placating gesture. “Most certainly, Marisel. But cooperation under a contract is simply a practical matter. Even mages must eat, yes?”

At this Maris stood, mouth open in astonishment. “Eat? This has nothing to do with food.”

He stood, too, hands still up. “I ask you to meet him first, Marisel. Then you can decide.”

“What? You’ve brought him here? You fool—”

As the words left her mouth, Maris hurled her focus out in all directions, questing as fast as she knew how, searching for the etheric spoor that a mage left behind as he walked the world.

“Who?” she demanded, finding none of her kind nearby.

Could Innel be lying? No, that would make no sense.

She strained harder, swirling through the passages and rooms of the palace that she now knew so well. Up and down floors. Out to the edges of the building and back. Down into the tunnels and up to the roof. She felt herself stretched thin.

Foolish, foolish: she had pushed herself too hard these last months, let herself become wearied. Lulled to distraction by these soft beds, good food, an unending supply of books, she had forgotten the first and most important lesson of magery: self-protection.

Still she pushed, casting her attention wider. The stables. The laundry. The garrison.

Nothing.

Could Innel be mistaken? Could he have found a Sensitive or Adept incautious enough to claim to be a mage? Or perhaps a mage recently created, so young and inexperienced that they trailed only a tiny wake that she had yet to find?

Or one so powerful they could choose to leave no trail at all?

“I am sorry, Marisel,” Innel said, his tone sounding uncertain, as if he had not quite anticipated this reaction. “I did not realize—”

She snorted her disbelief. Surely Innel could not have been so ignorant.

But she could not reason about this matter and search at the same time, so she put analysis aside.

“In any case,” Innel went on, “he’s assured me that you two will work well together.”

She absorbed these words slowly. As the meaning came clear, she yanked her attention back from the kennels. “What is this you say? How can he know that?
Who is it
?”

Watching her, Innel opened his mouth as if to answer, then grimaced, backing away from her toward the door, his expression betraying something close to fear.

About time.

“Let me send for him, Marisel. That will, I think, save a lot of explanation.”

“Tell me, damn you, before I—” She bit off the words.

Before she what? She could think of nothing she could do that would help this situation.

Who was it?

To Nalas, standing outside the door, Innel spoke a few fast words. “Get him,” Maris thought she heard.

All right, then: she would begin again. Maris slammed her attention through the walls and doors of the palace, touching and dismissing people as fast as she could. If he was here, she would find him. She must.

What are you missing, Marisel?

Catching her breath, she brought herself back into the room and forced herself to think in an ordered fashion.

Perhaps panic was unnecessary and her exhaustion was making her assume the worst. The other mage, she now realized, could well be Gallelon, having taken his own advice and come to Yarpin for the good food, books, and conversation whose qualities he had extolled to her. It was just the sort of thing he might do.

Indeed, he could have been recruited by Innel as she had. She could easily imagine him telling Innel that they two would work well together.

She exhaled her tension, throwing etheric taps down through her fingers and feet and into the earth, seeking ground to settle her agitation. Yes, it all fit; likely it was Gallelon.

Then, all at once, she found him. As he was stepping into the room. No longer hidden, no longer cloaked.

Not Gallelon.

She yanked her awareness fully back into her body.

Innel moved back quickly out of the invisible line that stretched between her and Keyretura, that etheric connection from him to the deepest parts of herself, that now felt as if it were made of fire.

Innel’s expression was guarded. She read no surprise, but she would not spare thought for his culpability, not now; all her attention was on the dark-skinned man in black robes who faced her from the door.

Her creator. Her
aetur
. The man whose side she had left the very first moment she could. She had not even said good-bye.

The dark, wide-set eyes sent a familiar, stomach-dropping sensation through her. She felt herself begin to tremble, struggled to control it. Which he would notice, of course, along with her racing pulse and the fatigue in her body. He never overlooked such things.

His gaze slowly took her in, a familiar, faint smile on his face.

Innel said, “Marisel al Perripur, this is—”

“We’ve met,” Maris said shortly.

“Marisel,” Keyretura said, drawing out her name. “It has been a long time.”

She switched to the ancient language of mages. Formality, Keyretura himself had long ago taught her, was the best refuge when conflict was possible. And with mages, it was always possible. “Teacher.” The words felt clumsy on her tongue. “In this place, at this time, on this flow, I greet you. My respect.”

In a way, it didn’t matter that she was so exhausted; even fully rested she would be no match for him. If this came to conflict, she could not hope to survive. So it must not come to that.

“Uslata,” Keyretura answered in the same tongue. “I have faith that you are well.”

In a language rich with indirection and ambiguity, his reply could mean any number of things, among them, that by asking, the asker considered the answer in doubt. In the right context, it was an insult. So how did he mean it?

Why could he not have simply said he was pleased to see her?

Because he was Keyretura.

Anger and embarrassment made shards of her focus. He would know that, too.

“Well enough,” she answered in Perripin, where nothing was so subtle. She turned to Innel, her back partly to Keyretura, conscious of the slight, reprimanding herself for being foolishly petty. “You told him I was here. But you gave me no warning. What is this?”

“I need you both.”

Breath escaped her in a humorless laugh. At least now she knew where she stood.

“Lord Commander,” she said tightly, summoning all her focus for what she must say so carefully in Arunkin, “what splendid good fortune for you, to have Keyretura dua Mage with you in contract. There is no labor or sagacity I could provide you with that he could not offer you in greater measure. To even attempt it would be to risk disrespect to my aetur, for which I could never forgive myself. With deference to you both, I absent myself.”