The Seer - eARC (42 page)

At the edge of the gray-green flat that might have been a frozen sea, they stopped, the three of them staring in silence.

Maris took out a water bag, shared it around.

“What is that?” asked Pas at last.

“A monument to the ruin that my kind brings to the world.”

“The Glass Plains,” Dirina breathed.

“How was it made?” Pas asked, eyes wide.

“Some mages got into an argument,” Maris answered. “When it was over, the cities of Shentarat, Mundara, and Tutura had been flattened into molten earth. Tens of thousands dead. Farms, towns—every tree and rock flattened. This is what remains.” She gestured.

“Was it very exciting?” Pas asked.

“I was not yet born, little one.”

“The mages, did they die, too?” Amarta asked.

Maris laughed, bitterly, shook her head. “I am told they reconciled. Not much comfort to the dead, that.”

Along the edge where the glass ended and earth began, grasses and small shrubs grew. Amarta knelt to examine the surface. Like dirty, frozen water, but solid and hot to the touch. Up close it was riddled with sand-filled cracks and bits of hard shards.

“It’s sharp, Amarta. Watch yourself.”

Amarta touched an edge, pressing her thumb onto it, drawing it along, feeling it cut into her skin. She pulled back, put her thumb to her mouth.

“You see? It cuts. I walked barefoot here once.”

“Why?” Amarta asked.

“To give something back to the dead. To pay on a debt my kind is rarely called to account for.” A small shake of her head. “A debt beyond measure. What we bring the world, it neither wants nor needs.”

Amarta put her foot onto the surface of the glass. Under her the plate of gray-brown gravel shifted a little. She looked out at the expanse stretching away into the distance.

“Did your blood bring back the dead?”

A snort. “Nothing can bring back the dead. Or make up for the plains. Or for Nerainne. Or the Rift . . .” Maris paused. Her voice fell to a whisper. “I would see my kind melted flat here as well, though it is no reparation to those we so casually ruin with our petty, destructive whims. All we’ve done. All we’ve failed to do.”

Amarta followed Maris’s eyes to the horizon, past the plains, where the distant mountains faded into murky, heat-warped gray.

Strange words, but they also felt right in some way she could not name. Blood to pay for blood.

Behind her eyes, vision stirred. She sat down on the warm, hard surface and pulled off a shoe so worn it was no more than a tattered leather sock.

“What do you do there?” Maris asked.

“I take off my shoes.”

“I can see that,” the mage said sharply. “Refrain.”

“I have a debt to pay, too.”

“You? With your few years? Do you mock me?”

Amarta looked up at the mage in surprise. Maris’s expression had a furious intensity about it.

“The world would be better off without me, too,” she whispered.

“You presume. This debt has nothing to do with you. You are no mage.”

“What am I?” Amarta yanked off the other shoe.

“A woman-child who understands little of the world. Who had best do as she is told lest her actions and words lead her shortly to lament.”

“Amarta.” From Dirina a warning that she already heard clearly in Maris’s tone. Pas looked from her to Maris and back again in dismay.

She took a breath and paused, her shoes in hand, staring out across the plains, wondering what she was doing. A sort of double vision came to her: the world as it seemed, in which she was angering the only person they knew in this strange, hot land; and the dim flashes that something was giving her. Not foresight. Not quite.

“You will put your shoes back on. Now.”

It was a tone she had heard before. In the shadow man’s voice telling her to comply. From the tall stranger in Botaros years ago, demanding from her the visions that had made him powerful enough to try to kill her. Now in her body and blood she felt all the times she had done as she was told, hoping it would lead to safety, or at least out of danger. The times she had fled, wanting only to survive.

To whom did she truly owe this demanded compliance? Where was her duty?

Dirina and Pas. That was her duty. For them she saw no danger here and now and in the moments ahead. All that was at risk was herself.

She struggled to her bare feet. The sun-warmed glass was nearly too hot to stand on so she shifted between her feet, facing Maris, forcing herself to meet the growing storm in the mage’s dark eyes.

“Maris, how can you be responsible for this? You weren’t even alive then.”

“Do you intend this as challenge, child?” Maris asked with a sudden and frightening softness. “Or is it merely a foolish lapse of judgment?”

In her chest she felt the fast heartbeat of the prey. So many years of running, of being the rabbit. She wanted to be something else.

“I am not a child,” she replied, voice quavering. “And you will not hurt me today.”

At this Maris raised a hand, her fingers spreading slowly, pointing at the sky, her other hand a fist at her chest.

Not the right thing to say, Amarta realized quickly, sensing the future shift away from the one in which her last words had been true. As she watched Maris and tried to figure out what to do next, she dimly recalled having seen Maris and this moment before in vision, years ago.

No more running, she decided suddenly. The mage began to hum, very low. Vision began to warn that something was coming that might hurt.

“Maris,” she said. “My parents are dead because of me. All those who took us in came to harm or death. Dirina and Pas have nothing, no home, because of me. Let me walk the plains as I must. Help me understand. I beg you.”

At this the Perripin woman inhaled sharply, and turned away, dropping her hands.

For long moments there was no sound. Distantly, away from the plains, a hawk cried. Amarta dared not move, despite the heat of the glass under her soles.

When Maris turned back, Amarta could feel the mage’s look though she did not understand it.

“There is an old saying,” Maris said. “‘With mages, respect first, reason later.’ I wonder, should reason be mentioned at all?” A thoughtful sound. “He was so quick to anger, my teacher. I loathed him. More than you can know. And look at me, threatening you. I sound almost exactly like him.”

“Not to me,” Pas said quickly, shaking loose his mother’s grasp and going to Maris, taking her hand, looking up. “You sound like you.”

Maris seemed more shocked by this than anything that had come before. She picked Pas up in her arms and held him, burying her face in his hair and neck while he hooked his legs around her waist.

Finally she lifted her head and looked back.

“What is it you want, Amarta?”

“To walk.”

“The shoes.”

“They’re too tight. If I’m going to hurt anyway, let me choose how.”

Maris was silent a moment.

“So be it.”

“Amarta,” said Dirina softly as she walked behind with Pas, Maris leading, “this is foolishness. If you cut your feet, how will you walk the rest of the way? What if your cuts go bad?”

“They will not go bad,” Maris said.

Amarta’s focus was on the dark glass underfoot, soaking up the blazing sun, returning the heat to her with each step. Some spots were smooth, others rough and sharp. Maris was right: in places it was edged like a sharpened blade. In some places tiny plants grew in crevasses, small and prickly, tenaciously grabbing what life they could from the sand and dirt that had collected there.

She would not slow for the ground. Not for thorns, not for heat, not for cuts. Nor would she let vision guide her. She would follow where Maris led.

Her debt could never be paid back. Her parents—she could tell herself that she had been too young to understand and thus save them, even though the vision had been clear. But Enana and her family? She had known danger followed them to that house.

And then there was Nidem.

A friend. Perhaps the only one she’d ever had. Someone who had laughed with her, hugged her, and whom she had killed as surely as if she had herself sent the arrow into her heart.

To save Kusan, a small voice seemed to cry inside her.

No. She could have tried harder. Used her foresight more deftly. If she and Dirina and Pas had never gone to Kusan in the first place, Nidem would still be alive.

A cut to her right foot, deep and sudden. She bit back a cry of pain.

Because of her, Nidem was gone from the world. Because of her, their parents were dead. Enana and her sons, urged to let a deadly hunter in their door who might have done them grievous harm. How many more would die because of her?

She let herself cry, very softly, for all who had suffered for her coming into their lives, and for those she had put on the road to the Beyond.

Now she was leaving blood on the glass underfoot with each step. It did not absolve her of Nidem’s death. Nor her parents’. Not even a little. Not a hair’s weight on a merchant’s scale. Nothing could make right what she had done.

Yet it seemed right and necessary, each pained step a kind of balm to her spirit. They walked in silence for a while.

“Enough,” Maris said at last. She had Amarta sit, and examined her feet, dabbing at them with a cloth. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” she told Dirina. “She’ll heal fast.” Then, to Amarta: “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Some measure of it, perhaps.”

“At times that is all that is possible.” Maris touched her face a moment, looking into her eyes, and Amarta felt some long-held pain seep out of her. For a time she trembled with sobs, then brushed the wet from her face and stood, ready to continue.

“Amarta,” Maris asked, “do you truly see the future?”

“I—” She looked at the woman curiously. “It seems so, yes.”

“Then tell me something: these plains—a hundred years hence—what do they look like?”

There were some things in the world that, as they changed across many years, left little room for deviation. The land before her was like that, and when she looked, all the futures seemed to lead to similar places, making them easier to see. Like the ocean at a distance.

“Small trees,” she said. “Over there, a large town. That way, farms. Green, everywhere, breaking through the glass. Taking back the land.”

Maris exhaled a long sigh and handed her back her shoes. She could barely pull them on now with her skin raw and cut as it was, but she did anyway. As the land rose into hills and they hiked, climbing away from the plains, the pain seemed to fade, turning to itch, and then to calm.

“Thank you,” she said to Maris, who nodded.

As they hiked into the mountains, she thought of the unforgivable things she had done, the unpayable debts, and realized Maris was right: it was necessary to pay against the debts anyway.

* * *

They hiked the next day and another after that, passing infrequent houses, an occasional fox, and some oddly shaped four-legged animals with long snouts who bobbed their heads as they went by. At last they came to Maris’s high mountain desert cabin.

The house was made of orange brick and a flat roof surrounded by a long-overgrown garden. Once inside, they put down their packs on a floor covered with a thick layer of dust. One wall was entirely covered with shelves of dust-gray books. Pas struggled in Dirina’s grip, wanting to explore. Dirina held his hand tightly, keeping him close.

“It is a shambles, but the well works. With a little effort, the garden will return full force.”

“Even this late in the year?” Amarta asked.

Maris smiled. “You are in Perripur, where everything grows with great passion. I will go to the nearest town for supplies tomorrow. The two rooms in the back are yours.”

Amarta turned a startled look on Dirina. Sleep without Dirina and Pas by her side?

“Or take the same room,” Maris said. “This is your home, as long as you wish.”

“Let go, let go,” Pas complained up at his mother. Once released he took Maris’s hand, staring up at her with what Amarta had come to think of as his charm-spell. Maris petted his head with her other hand and trailed the small boy while together they made an inspection of the house, opening doors and cabinets.

Amarta’s suspicion had faded, and she felt instead something like gratitude, almost relief. Here in Maris’s remote mountain home, Dirina and Pas might truly be safe. And that meant Amarta might be able to—what?

Be something besides afraid for them.

“Home,” Dirina said softly, walking around the room, looking wonderingly at Amarta, giving her a tentative smile.

She looked around. Furniture. Food. A fortune in books. A warm, dusty smell.

Home. She mouthed the word to herself to see how it sounded. Could this really be home?

Snow crunched underfoot. A winter sun shone weakly through tall fir and pine.

Angrily, she pushed the vision away. It wasn’t fair, the way the future so often ruined the present. She realized Dirina had gone somewhere else in the house.

“Ama?” came her sister’s voice from out of sight. “Come see our room!”

“Coming.”

Chapter Twenty-three

“What do they say today, Srel?” Innel asked.

A knock at the door of Innel’s office delayed his steward’s reply. Srel opened the door, took a large platter from a servant with one hand, and closed the door with the other. As he walked to Innel’s desk, he passed by Nalas, who reached for a slice of mutton. Moving the platter just out of his reach, Srel arrived at Innel’s desk. Finding no available space among the books and ledgers and maps, he sighed, setting the platter of food on a side table.

Innel glanced over at the array of food. Olives cut open like tiny flowers, pâté arranged in swirls on small toasts, slices of mutton precisely fanned out as spokes on a wheel, sausage and onion and who-knew-what-else bits of vegetables on silver skewers, neatly piled in stacks.

So much fuss.

Then there were the bowls of dipping sauces.

He and Srel had had a number of conversations about how dipping sauces and important documents did not get along well together, but still his steward could not be persuaded to obtain simpler and less messy food. “Appearances, ser,” is all he would say.

“Well, ser,” Srel said, considering Innel’s question as he adjusted the plates on the tray. “Many are concerned about the insurgencies at Erakat, Lukata, Rott. The consequent import shortages. Speculation that rebellions are spreading. Some say Sinetel is holding back on shipments again, making our extended military efforts there seem ineffective.”

“Continue,” Innel said, suddenly in a bad mood.

Srel poured a mug of wine for Innel.

“Then there’s Garaya’s many years of tax shortfall. A large city, much like our own, and so there is concern the problem could spread to Munasee or even Yarpin, like a disease.”

“Pah,” Nalas said, stepping toward the platter of food. “Garaya is nothing like Munasee or Yarpin. Barely touched by the Houses. Barely a port, for that matter, and a far smaller garrison, whereas—”

“Agreed, ser,” Srel said, interrupting as he arranged a plate of food while managing to position himself between Nalas and the table. Srel handed the plate he’d prepared to Innel; then moved aside to finally allow Nalas access to the food. “But what is said is less about veracity and more about coin and who thinks what about whom.”

Innel looked for somewhere to put the plate Srel had given him that did not endanger some important document. “Go on,” he said.

“Then there is your mage, ser.”

Palace denizens might have suspected Marisel of magery, given the strange way she wandered the halls and looked as if she were not entirely present, but Keyretura’s traditional black garb left no room for doubt. In truth, Innel had expected more than whispers. The lack of outright objection told him that he had made the right decision in bringing Keyretura to the palace in the open.

“What do they say about him?”

“That he guards the queen. That he is making the king whole and hale. That he selects children for the upcoming Cohort. That he’s been turning iron into gold—or the other way around, depending on who is speaking. Is seeking certain of the queen’s relations for execution. Or commendation. Again, depending on who you ask. Is enchanting the army. Is helping the queen conceive a child. The list goes on.”

The last caught Innel by surprise. He considered the old king and his single child and wondered if there was some historical basis for that particular rumor.

“Oh, and the Minister of Accounts wants his books back, ser. No rumor, that—he addressed me directly in the hallway a few minutes ago.”

“Tell him he can ask
me
.”

“Yes, ser.”

* * *

“Do you think I’m hiding something, Lord Commander?”

The Minister of Accounts stood before him, nearly vibrating with emotion.

Innel had cleared the office of all but Srel in case the minister was inclined to confess to anything, though his current demeanor rather discouraged that hope.

Putting aside the temptation to answer as bluntly as the question allowed, Innel replied: “I am trying to understand the extent of the”—what was the best phrase?—“involved and subtle work you do for the crown, ser.”

“How is this your purview?”

“I sleep in the queen’s bed, Minister.”

“Not every night, Commander,” he said, words clipped.

Nowhere near confession, it seemed. Innel was sure the minister would never had said such a thing to his predecessor, Lason.

He put on what he hoped was a polite smile. “You are quite right, Minister. Our time apart whets our appetites nicely, and those nights I do spend with Her Majesty we talk very little. But some. We could, if you wish, talk about you.”

The man pressed his lips together, jaw working as if he were sucking on something sour. “I want my books back. I do actually use them.”

“You have copies.”

“Creating the originals is my work and my life, Commander.”

“I’m sure it is, Minister. Bring me copies and you can have these back. I’ll have my retainers verify both sets to be certain.”

The Minister of Accounts’ jaw worked again, faster, harder, for rather longer than Innel had expected.

Finally: “Yes. All right, Lord Commander.” Then he bowed, an exaggerated motion that Innel chose to take as entirely sincere.

In a corner of Innel’s office, Srel spoke softly with the queen’s seneschal about scheduling and the trade council, while in another room the many ledgers of accounts were being compared to the copies that the Minister of Accounts had delivered.

Nalas looked out the window at the newest execution Innel’s oddest Cohort brother, Putar, had designed. Large screws drove belts that went to various sharp objects that moved slowly into the hands and feet of some five traitors, each turn of each screw based on a nonstop game of cards and dice the guards were overseeing a stone’s throw away, where a long line of Yarpin citizens waited to join in.

Wagers on the results of executions were a long-standing Yarpin tradition, but Putar had cleverly reversed cause and effect, making Execution Square’s activities even better attended than before. Innel wondered if Putar would make a good Minister of Justice, finding himself a bit queasy at the thought. But then, so would others, so it was worth considering. Perhaps when Cern’s rule was stronger.

Innel turned his attention to the bird-sent report from Garaya’s governor and re-read it to see if he was missing anything in the man’s words. At least these days he could be confident that he missed no letters; Cahlen’s new birds were achieving an impressive reliability record, topping nine in ten returns.

The cost for this performance seemed to be that only Cahlen would work with them. Her arms, hands, and fingers were always covered with bandages, doing little to inspire others to come near the birds. Innel briefly considered the wisdom of one day making her Minister of Bird.

Putar and Cahlen as ministers. Should those things come to pass, the palace would be an odd place indeed. He winced and put the thoughts aside.

Nalas poured himself some spiced wine, putting Innel in mind of his own cup, which he raised to his lips, finding it empty. He held it out silently until Nalas noticed and hastily refilled it.

“What does he say, ser?” Nalas gestured at the report with his cup.

“He uses a great many words to reiterate their continuing inability to make up the shortfall.” An entire city. A significant amount of revenue for the crown. “He’s blaming the merchants for creating unrest among the citizens. He wants our support, urges action.”

“Action? He wants us to send force?” Nalas frowned. “To Garaya?”

“Strongly hinting, yes.”

Innel did not imagine that any of the Houses would find the warrant for this particular tax region at all appealing. It was one thing to march across the countryside collecting taxes and who knew what else, and another entirely to march into a walled city and demand an accounting.

“Find someone who knows Garaya. As I recall, Sutarnan has business investments down there and is there often. Probably knows all the merchants personally. See if he’ll go along as an envoy. Tell him I’ll give him a rank if he helps us solve this.”

Nalas’s eyebrow rose at this. Sutarnan was one of the Cohort with little military service who wanted a rank anyway.

At the door, Innel heard Srel say: “Yes, of course—go in.”

Innel looked up. This particular queen’s guard was one of a number that Innel had handpicked. She knew to report to him directly when she needed to.

A quick dip of the head, a fast salute.

“Ser,” she said. “The queen was visiting the old king. When she emerged, she ordered the dogs taken away, which the handlers did. Then she went to the kennels. She says she wants them killed.”

Srel made a wordless, distressed sound. “That would not be good.”

A bit of an understatement.

With Nalas and Srel trailing, Innel left at a near run. Down the stairs, onto the palace grounds.

Arriving at the kennels, he exchanged a fast look with Sachare. From her expression and almost imperceptible shake of her head, he knew Cern was not likely to be reasonable.

“Where are they?” Cern demanded, striding back and forth past the cages of iron and oak. “Where?”

Seeing Innel, the kennelmaster almost swooned in relief, stumbling a few steps in his direction. “Lord Commander!”

Innel ignored him. “Your Majesty,” he said softly to Cern, coming close but careful not to touch her. “I am here now. Let me take care of this for you.”

“If by ‘take care of it,’ Innel, you mean run them through with your sword, as I watch, yes. Do so.”

He inhaled, considering what to do about this rather unambiguous command. While the dichu were generally looked on with more fear than affection, slaughtering the king’s favorite two dogs would, at best, be seen as lack of respect for the old king and all he represented—including a half century of imperial expansion and prosperity—and at worst seem a kind of treason.

Cern’s popular regard in the palace might not yet be able to digest such a meal.

“Perhaps we should reflect on this somewhat first, my lady,” he said.

“They growled at me, Innel. They snapped at me.” She turned around, looking through into the cages of brindled black and tan dogs, all of whom sat up eagerly, heavy tails thumping, as if she might have snacks. “Which ones are they? Tell me!”

The kennelmaster’s mouth was opening and closing as, wide-eyed, he looked to Innel for guidance.

The two dichu she wanted sat in one of the corner cages, in plain view. With surprise Innel realized that though the two dogs had sat at the king’s side for years, Cern could not tell them from the others. Willful disregard on Cern’s part; she did not want to know anything about them.

That she hated the dogs was not a secret. Understandable, even, given how her father had used them and their forebears as object lessons, bringing them to Cohort meals and studies, extolling their virtues of wit and ferocity, using them to demonstrate how mating was properly done, his gaze pointedly on Cern all the while, while Cern pretended not to care.

Here and now, with guards standing ready but confused, hands on hilts, and the dog keepers fluttering about in near-panic, news would spread like a flash fire across the palace if the dogs were slain at Cern’s command. He had to stop this.

“Your Majesty,” he said, “let me—find them. I’ll bring them to you in your rooms”—no, she wouldn’t like that—“better yet, my offices. Surely this”—he waved a hand vaguely, as if to include possible slaughter, “is better done in private?”

She turned around, seeming to only now notice the many eyes on her. She gave an abrupt, angry nod and walked off, trailing her guards and Sachare, who paused long enough to mouth at Innel: “You had better fix this.” He gave her a small nod.

With Cern was gone, he gestured at the two dichu in the corner cage, the ones she had been looking for.

“Leads and muzzles. Bring them.”

“Lord Commander, I beg you,” the kennelmaster said. “Her Majesty startled them, I’m certain of it. They’re good dogs, sweet and smart, they would never—”

“I know what they are. I’ll save them if I can. Do as I say.”

Innel gave the dogs’ leads to Nalas to take elsewhere and went back to his office without them.

Cern was already there. Innel tipped his head to get rid of her guards so they could talk alone. They looked to her for confirmation, then left.

Sachare, of course, ignored this command, leaning back against a wall to watch. She was, Innel realized, nearly as good as Srel at fading into the background when she decided to. For a moment he wondered what the children of that particular union would be like, and whether Sachare found Srel at all appealing. He was arranging matches, he realized to his annoyance, and pushed the thought aside.

“You’re going to tell me I can’t, Innel,” Cern said in a brittle tone. “Somehow you’ll convince me it’s a poor plan and that I should look past this to some larger picture.”

“Yes, exactly, my lady. They are . . .” How to explain? “People see them and think of the king. I know how you feel, but we’re not yet ready to have them see butchered animals where he once stood.”

She was silent a moment. “You are right. But he may no longer have them with him. If I want to see my father—I, the queen—no animal will stand in my way.”

He bowed his head. “It will be as you say, Your Majesty.” This would mean finding another bargaining chip for the old king, but there was always the slave.

“Even now they obey him and only him. Anyone else, they growl and snap.”

“I can address this poor behavior, my lady.”

“You can?”

“Of course.” He was nowhere near as confident as he pretended, but when compared to everything else he was addressing, it seemed a small thing.

“Then they may live.”

Bowing to Cern, he caught Sachare’s smirk. He knew what she was thinking, that he had just agreed to train the old king’s dogs. He gave her a flat, humorless look, and she smiled even wider.

“Keyretura dua Mage al Perripur, ser,” Srel said, standing aside for Keyretura and dropping his head slightly. At Innel’s gesture, Srel left, along with the rest of the crowd Innel’s many-roomed office seemed to collect, staring at Keyretura as they went.