The Silvered (49 page)

Well aware he wasn’t being asked if he wanted the job, Reiter managed a fairly neutral, “Sir?”

“I found Major Halyss’ study of mage-craft to be of use in my own research. You don’t have his academic background, but you’ve certainly had more exposure in the field and that might be of equal, albeit different, use. Also, your appointment should stop Lieutenant Geurin’s uncle from petitioning me on his behalf. The man’s an idiot. Actually, both men are idiots. It’s a family trait.” Reiter came to attention as the emperor stood. “Walk with me, Captain.”

A small door at the back of the room led to an empty hall—the walls the first without wallpaper he’d seen since arriving in the palace. When the emperor beckoned him forward, Reiter fell in behind his right shoulder. When His Imperial Majesty, Exalted ruler of the
Kresentian Empire, Commander in Truth of the Imperial army, said
walk
, there was only one option. Reiter suspected his legs would have obeyed regardless.

“When my father redesigned the palace, he added a way to get to the public rooms without having to deal with the public. Why should the servants have all the privacy?”

The emperor wasn’t particularly tall. The top of his head just cleared Reiter’s shoulder. Had he been a soldier not the emperor, Reiter would have described him as just over tit high on the average whore.

“I find myself with a decision to make, Captain. You’re aware of the reason you were in Aydori?”

“The Soothsayers’ prophecy, Majesty.”

“You don’t approve.”

Reiter thought he’d kept that from his voice.

“Of my using Soothsayers in general—and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how different your circumstances would be had the Soothsayers not Seen you—or of this prophecy in particular?” The question sounded conversational, but then every word out of the emperor’s mouth had
sounded
conversational.

Reiter couldn’t lie to the emperor. He was
the emperor.
“I think combat requires initiative that might be stifled by Soothsayers, Majesty.”

“Ah, yes, a soldier’s opinion.” He didn’t sound as though he disapproved. “I, however, need to maintain a wider perspective. Soothsayers are useful for that. One in six or six in one. Empires rise or empires fall, the unborn child begins it all. Clearly, I intend to see the empire rise. It’s in the nature of doing my job. Unfortunately, although the Soothsayers are quite emphatic about the sixth mage eventually arriving at the palace, they’ve Seen nothing about how she gets here. Is she captured again? Do you think that’s likely, Captain.”

“Not easily, Majesty.”

“Not easily.” The emperor frowned. “Well, then, let’s hope she’s being drawn by the power of the prophecy. However, in case the prophecy could use a little help…Tavert.”

“Majesty.”

“I want the army in Traiton and Pyrahn on high alert. Have Major Halyss pulled from the front and put in charge of making very certain
my sixth mage is heading in the right direction. Major Halyss is more of a thinker than a fighter. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to have something less dangerous to do.”

“I’m not sure she’s less dangerous,” Reiter said without thinking.

The emperor actually stopped walking long enough to stare into his face. As a drop of sweat rolled down his side, Reiter figured it wouldn’t hurt to show a few nerves. After a long moment, the emperor smiled. “I like you, Captain.”

There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that but, “Thank you, Majesty.”

Although the area next to the road became more built up as they moved deeper into the empire, it took a while to find what they needed. A skirt snatched off one line then later, a belt to cinch it tight. A shawl taken off another line. While Mirian might have no understanding of the whys and whens of laundry, she trusted her ability to judge price. And she thanked the Lord and Lady when they finally found a shirt. From a distance, she now looked like any lower class woman of the empire. Up close, however…

“This thing has no support!”

Head cocked, Tomas frowned as she twitched the unbleached muslin back and forth. “Why does it matter?”

“It tells anyone with eyes, I don’t belong here. Also, it hurts when I run.”

On the list of things Mirian thought she’d never do, shopping for Imperial undergarments off village clotheslines had to be right at the top. Running across the empire with Tomas Hagen to rescue the Mage-pack was an unlikely, but possible, childish daydream. Stumbling around in the dark, avoiding houses with geese, to find the ridiculous number of items Imperial fashion required to replace a simple set of banding, would never have occurred to her. She missed the simplicity of Aydori clothing.

In spite of Tomas’ protests that they were merely living off the enemy, which was perfectly legitimate in a time of war, they left a little money at every house they took clothing from.

Seedlings pulled from the edges of gardens, she assumed no one would miss. They all looked the same to her, a darker blur in the
shadows of the night, so maturing them was always a surprise. They grew a lot of cabbage in this part of the empire. And onions.

Turning into the breeze, Mirian pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders and tried to figure out why she’d been feeling anxious all morning. “It’s like I can
almost
hear something. Something important.”

“Danika?”

It was possible, but she’d heard Lady Hagen’s voice on the breeze and this didn’t sound the same. “I don’t think so.” It sounded less…directed. “If there’s Pack in the empire, are there mages here, too?”

Tomas shrugged. “There’s mages all over. But Ryder says…said, Imperial mages aren’t much. First and second levels if that.”

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was nothing more than a mage without enough power to be understood. But flinching at a shadow, her reaction not her own, Mirian didn’t think so.

Midafternoon, Tomas stopped running so suddenly she nearly tripped over him. His head went up, nose into the breeze. His ears flattened, his hackles rose.

“Tomas?”

He growled, and took off running toward the northeast, angling away from the road.

“Tomas!”

Even running as fast as she could, she lost sight of him fairly quickly, but he was following his nose, so she followed the breeze.

The sun had nearly reached the horizon when she started to smell smoke.

Sweet, greasy, almost familiar smoke…

A moment later she could see multiple strands of dark gray rising over the trees, writhing against the sky.

Breathing through her mouth, she came out of a hollow, pushed through the masking trees, and stared down a long slope at a burned-out compound tucked against the side of a small valley. A fairly large cottage, a well, a garden, a low shed half open for wood and half closed in for livestock…all destroyed. Recently destroyed. The blackened shells of the buildings and a small dark pile in the center of the garden still smoldered. She couldn’t make out the details of the pile no matter how she squinted or how hard she rubbed her eyes.

She couldn’t see Tomas, although this had to have been what he’d caught scent of.

Heart pounding, she slowly walked forward until she wasn’t only looking at the destruction, she was in the midst of it.

Only two walls of the cottage stood, less of the shed, and it looked like they’d burned it down with the chickens inside. Even the wellhead had been destroyed, stones smashed away and tossed aside, the destruction more evidence of viciousness than even the fires.

Boots had pounded the garden hard, bootprints crossing and recrossing crushed seedlings and stained earth.

They’d killed the chickens in the shed. Why had they dragged the rest of the livestock here?

Even staring directly at the blackened pile, Mirian couldn’t figure out what the bodies had been although through the unmistakable smell of lamp oil, she thought she smelled pork. She thought, at first, it was her eyes, then she saw the foreleg slightly off to one side, far enough away from the heart of the fire its shape had survived in spite of how small it was.

After that, it wasn’t hard to pick out skulls, shoulders, bones cracked and black.

There were Pack in the empire. Small family groups. Children.

Fur stank when it burned.

She couldn’t smell fur.

Killed. Skinned. Dismembered. Burned.

She only hoped it had been in that order.

“They can’t have gone far.” Black against the burned wood, she hadn’t been able to see Tomas until he rose to his feet. She could hear a whine and a snarl both in his voice. “I wanted to track them, but I knew you were following and…” He dropped again to four feet, threw back his head and howled.

Mirian felt something break inside. She backed up, nearly tripped as her heels sank into a patch of softer earth, didn’t stop until she reached Tomas’ side. With his howl sounding inside her, replacing the horror with rage, she pointed at the pile of smoldering bodies and then pulled her clasped hands apart.

If water could be parted, so could earth.

When the last body had tumbled out sight into the cleft, she brought her hands together again.

Knelt and laid her palms flat against the ground.

The bare earth turned green and wildflowers bloomed, covering the grave in a thick carpet of color, covering the ruins in a tangle of vines.

Mirian glanced toward the sunset as she stood. “Don’t get so far ahead I can’t find you.”

Snarling, Tomas took off to the south.

He was out of sight almost immediately, but somehow she never lost his trail.

She caught up to him just after full dark on the outskirts of a village. Together, they watched six men strutting down the road. They carried pelts, and they were laughing. Talking. Bragging. Two of them planned to head straight home. The other four were going to the pub to celebrate.

It turned out it didn’t matter if they still had silver shot remaining. They had no chance to use their guns.

The breezes stole their screams away.

And Mirian buried the bodies too deep to ever be found.

I
T WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT when a sleepy page led Reiter to a room off another nondescript corridor, set the lamp he carried on the small shelf just inside the door, yawned, and said, “This is yours now, sir.”

Left alone, Reiter discovered everything he owned had already been brought over from the garrison and stored neatly—uniforms hung in the large wardrobe, small clothes folded in the drawers underneath, and his shaving kit set out on the washstand under the mirror. No musket. No pistol. No knife. Only the soldiers on guard carried weapons in the palace. He hoped his were still in the garrison armory.

After a day standing silent in a fluctuating cluster of distant relatives, sycophants, and courtiers—Tavert, the emperor’s mobile secretary had been the other person with him the entire day—Reiter was almost certain he’d rather have been court-martialed. Not to the point of execution, but a few years of hard labor had started to look good. If he’d been given Major Halyss’ old job, he was clearly missing something. But then, Major Halyss was Intelligence and he was Infantry, so that didn’t surprise him.

The room was about twice the size of his room back in the garrison’s officer quarters but shabbier, the furniture both worn and mismatched, probably salvaged when the rooms of those with higher rank were renovated. Besides the bed and wardrobe, there was a desk with a filled inkwell, three iron-nibbed pens and a pad of paper, and a fairly comfortable chair. The heavy brocade drapes covered a tiny window, the thick glass beaded with rain. Given the hour and the weather, he couldn’t tell what the window overlooked although he doubted he’d been given a room with a view. Too small to fit through, he supposed he should be thankful that if he couldn’t climb out, no one wandering the roof could climb in. On the wall across from the bed, a scuffed door led to a water closet so narrow his shoulders brushed the walls on either side.

Giving thanks the room was painted, not papered—in one day he’d seen enough appalling wallpaper to last the rest of his life—he wondered if this had been Major Halyss’ room. Probably not. Halyss’ birth no doubt rated him a repeating pattern of bright green fishermen.