Traitor Savant (Second Seal of the Duelists) (14 page)

“I have a complaint.”

Kipri looked up from his desk. Sivuma stood before him. Bayan had just left after giving another talk to the newniks—the last lecture, in fact, before the next batch of the emperor’s rush-scheduled trainees arrived. As usual, Tammo had scoffed during the speech, and Sivutma had stayed after with an issue. Kipri adopted his best Neutral Philo expression and asked, “What can I help you with, Sivutma?”

She plopped a cloth bag onto his desk. “It’s not enough.”

“What is it?” Kipri began to open the bag, but Sivutma pressed his hands away.

“It’s sacred soil from a holy site in Nunaa. I brought it with me when I left my homeland, hoping that Tuq would still hear my prayers here, so far from home, if I prayed to him with it. But it’s not enough.”

“Not enough dirt?” Kipri asked, confused. Perhaps she was referring to her allotted time for prayer.

“
Exactly. Not enough dirt. I need you to arrange for more dirt for all the Raqtaaq students. We need a private place to lay it down, where it won’t—
can’t
—be disturbed. And we need enough for three of us to pray at the same time.”

Kipri
envisioned the layout of her proposed prayer room: an enclosed space, free from rain and wind; a wooden frame rising a hand above the floor, broad enough to allow three people to kneel and prostrate themselves side by side; and enough holy dirt to ensure that fingers curled in prayer would never touch the underfloor. “That’s a lot of dirt.”

“And she should get it,” said Bayan
from the doorway.

Kipri and Sivutma both turned.
“Did you forget something?” Kipri asked.

“
No, just looking for a friend. We have a hex meeting soon.”

At that, Kipri’s ears perked
. Tarin had hinted that she’d inform her hexmates about their romantic visits, but it didn’t sound to Kipri as if she had.

Bayan continued
, “I think Sivutma has a good point. The Raqtaaq students won’t feel completely at home here—well, possibly ever—but allowing them to practice their religion freely and properly would be a big step toward showing them we want them to play a full role in the empire.”

Sivutma’s eyebrows rose. Kipri’s did too, but not as far. “I’ll look into it
.”

Sivutma eyed Kipri.
“You don’t pray to Tuq, do you?”

“No. I don’t pray to anyone.” Kipri refrained from sharing that he blamed Tuq for what happened to his father,
and to himself. It wouldn’t help.

“What about you, Bayan?” Sivutma asked. “Do you pray? Do the imperials let you worship freely?”

Bayan grinned. “They can’t stop me. Bhattara’s home is in the blue arch of the sky. It’s everywhere, and so is he.” Bayan left, and Sivutma, pacified, followed soon after, taking her precious dirt with her.

Kipri jotted
a quick note to Philo regarding the holy dirt issue. He knew the Minister of Information would know how to move the soil from a holy site to the campus without stepping on too many defensive Raqtaaq toes. He also added a few paragraphs on the state of the campus since the shift in leadership. Philo’s network seemed to be spreading quickly; several students—and not just his newniks—seemed to take his wig as a sign that they could confide in him. Kipri duly passed on the tidbits he’d heard. He frowned as he penned a rumor that the groundsmaster had been seen whispering with the demoted Langlaren down in Peace Village. He knew the man was a good friend of Bayan’s. But that too was a matter for Philo to handle.

For once,
Kipri found himself glad that all he had to deal with were a few displaced teenagers.

~~~

Bayan tapped his toe against the cold house door, in the pattern Treinfhir had given him. The heavy stone swung open, and Bayan held out a plate laden with buttered yams, herbed fish, and a cold Akrestoi grain salad called
kymolo
. Treinfhir took it eagerly and nodded Bayan an invitation to enter.

“Better eat that quickly if you want any of it to be warm,” Bayan advised. “It’s getting colder out, and the walk from the kitchens
can’t get any shorter if I’m to avoid notice.”

“Aye, I thank y
e.” Treinfhir grunted. He sat at the small table in the corner and stuffed the first few bites of fish into his mouth without chewing.

Bayan watched the man eat. He’d gained a lot of weight since Bayan had rescued him, and his movements were no longer those of an injured man
. His healing had taken more than a score of days, since Bayan had to rely on conventional medicines he’d acquired by trading with Taban. Eward had trimmed Treinfhir’s hair several days ago, too. The outlander could have blended into any busy market, barring his accent. But he had yet to utter a word about his captor or the reason for his imprisonment.

“This is ve
rra good, with the honey.” Treinfhir indicated the yams on his plate. “Your cooks, they’re Dunfarroghan, aye?”

“I think two of them are.
Dervheil and Ruari.”

“They marrit yet?”

“Yes, they’re married. They cook too well not to be.”

Treinfhir laughed
, spewing a few oily grains onto the table. “Aye, for certain. My wife, she is a goddess in the kitchen. I worship at the table of her bounty.” It sounded to Bayan like Treinfhir intended to go on praising his wife’s culinary skills for some time, but the outlander’s voice died, leaving him staring mutely at the half-eaten feast before him.

Bayan leaned against th
e wall next to the small table. “I know. Nothing in the world can compare to a home-cooked meal.”

Treinfhir took a deep breath and
cleared his throat. “Aye, lad. Sure an’ they doona serve ennathing with bitter melon on this campus?”

“
Not yet. But things are changing.” Bayan thought of Sivutma’s request for prayer dirt. If she got it, maybe he could petition for a recipe or two from home to pass on to the campus kitchens.

“
Ach
. Change.” The wiry man looked up at Bayan. “I’ll tell you what change has done for me, lad. It showed me the world, introduced me to many different peoples. I visited faraway hills, saw a deadly sea. I shared bread and ideas with princes and lords. I even saw the imperial family once. And none of it was worth a gods-damned thing, because my family’s life was at stake. If I could go back, I’d kill those men as their boat ground against the gravel on my shore. Kill them before they laid hands on my youngest. Before they threatened evil upon me woman. I’d pull them intae the sea and hold them there, and give their bodies tae my beasts as a reward for ridding the world of a little more evil.”

Bayan heard the helpless anger in
Treinfhir’s voice, the loss, the sense of being adrift in the world without anyone to anchor him. Between the emotions rose a series of facts about Treinfhir’s past. Facts that had no business seeming familiar to Bayan. An eerie tingle shot down Bayan’s spine and clawed its way across his scalp.

Bayan knew this man. Against all odds, and his own memory, he had met Treinfhir before. He had never thought to meet him again.
“I thought you were dead.”

“Eh?” The man
speared another slice of yam.

“At the Kheerzaal. I thought my Earth avatar crushed you.”

Treinfhir’s fork paused. A long silence stretched between the two former combatants. “Thought you looked familiar.”

Heart racing, Bayan tried to think what he should do.
He sat across from the anima caster who had tried to assassinate the emperor last spring. Though all of Treinfhir’s Aklaa conspirators had been executed, somehow the Tuathi magic user had not only survived, but somehow escaped the capital.

The man
sat in a cold house, so he shouldn’t be able to cast any magic, but then he shouldn’t have been able to throw spells within the Kheerzaal either. Or anywhere within the empire’s borders. Despite his shock and revulsion, Bayan heard the ring of truth in Treinfhir’s stories: his family held hostage against Treinfhir’s cooperation with the Aklaa rebels.

Treinfhir waited. Bayan finally asked one of the dozen questions that swarmed his mind. “How did you get here, then?”

“I canna say. I was hurt, near dead, after that battle. The imperial duelists whisked me into a dungeon. Someone in a white robe healed me, and guards asked me questions in loud voices. I stayed quiet, for me family’s sake. The longer I held out, I told meself, the better me family’s chances of survival. But that verra night, some men disguised as palace guards came and stole me away. They left another body in my cell, hanging from the ceiling beam. Days later, I first clapped eyes on the maze of stone. I dinna see anything else until you found me.”

“Not even
those who took you?”

“No faces. My new captor was verra careful.”

Bayan furrowed his brow in thought. It didn’t make any sense to capture an imprisoned man, only to imprison him again. The Aklaa rebels had all been killed—only their “neutral” Karkhedonian ally, Lord Isos, had evaded capture, and he had vanished from the empire’s eyes and ears. Yet Treinfhir’s captor had clearly been working against the emperor. Who had taken him? And what did they have to do with the Duelist Academy?

“You’ve trusted me with a little of your story, even if you didn’t mean to. I respect that. I’d like to learn more, if I could. Anything you tell me might help me figure out why the person who captured you took Kiwani, too.”

Treinfhir shook his head. “I doona think it’s for the same reasons, lad. All he ever asked me were questions about my magic. How it worked. Why it worked at the Kheerzaal. Your Kiwani wouldn’t know the answers tae any of that.”

Who would want
to learn the gory details of anima magic? The thought was curious and distasteful at the same time. With a start, Bayan realized that he’d adopted the Waarden attitude toward anima magic. Back home in Balanganam, anima and elemental magic were both used by the Skycallers on their mountain peaks, and no stigma existed against one or the other.

“She woul
dn’t, you’re right,” Bayan said. “I can’t think of anyone else who would, either. Looks like you’re the only expert in the whole empire.”

Bayan m
ade his way back down to campus. His mind churned over Treinfhir’s words, then every little detail that had passed between them since the rescue. Afraid, angry, worried for Kiwani and everyone on campus, Bayan knew he couldn’t keep Treinfhir’s true identity to himself—too much could be at stake—and dangers might exist that he hadn’t even conceived of yet. There were only a few people he knew he could trust.

As the hex gathered in the sharp-sided valley for another
Savantism forcing session, Bayan waved his hexmates into a close huddle. He met each pair of eyes with a sober look. “Before we begin tonight, there’s something I need to tell you. The day we rescued Kiwani was not the first day we met Treinfhir.”

Tala crunched along behind
Doc Theo on the mountain path that wound up the slope to the east of the Temple. As they walked, she sang a simple warming song. It melted the snow ahead of him, so that the only thing crunching underfoot was the trail’s gravel. She couldn’t believe how easy it was to sing in Doc Theo’s presence. After only a few tutoring sessions, she felt more at ease around him than she did around Alton Bessia. His easy manner and encouragement helped her relax, and he never demanded performance before she felt ready.

She still hiccupped in class,
to the frustration of her quarton partners, but she could feel her panic slipping away, replaced by one beautiful, gleaming brick of confidence at a time. Doc Theo’s belief in her was a song the wind sang. It lay in the murmuring of plates and silverware at dinner, in the voices of students as they monotoned in the hallways between classes. Her secret kept her smiling despite the mockery and teasing of her peers, despite the pitying looks the altons gave her, as if she’d contracted a fatal disease and didn’t know it. The ignorance was theirs, for she had found the one thing she had lacked at the Temple: a true friend.

Tala and
Doc Theo reached a sheltered overlook and paused at its lip, gazing down on the snowless Temple grounds where the solo students had practiced their heat songs just as Tala did. Doc Theo didn’t seem comfortable inside the Temple’s bowl, preferring the open spaces on the trails around it. Some of the students said hurtful things about him in her hearing: he was going crazy, he killed a duelist student, he attacked the Academy’s headmaster. She hadn’t asked if any of the rumors were true. Though she trusted and admired him for his gentle manner, a part of her was afraid to learn the truth. He had been exiled to the Temple, after all.

T
here was one question she thought he might answer. “Doc Theo, why are you only a chanter? You don’t have hiccups when you sing, do you?”

He turned and grinned down at her, a puff of white breath bursting from his lips into the chill wind. “No hiccups, Tala. I just cain’t carry a tune in a wagon train, is all.”

“You’re tone deaf?”

“Completely and incurably.”

“Can I… Would you try a song for me?”

His eyebrows rose. “I hain’t tried to sing for years, Tala. Not sure I even know any magic songs anymore.”

“I can teach you those.” She felt excited to have something to give back.

He grinned and looked down at the dark gray pebbles beneath his heavy winter boots. “That’s a kindness. But I wouldn’t be able to do any of them justice.”

“It might make you feel more at home down there. You never seem to want to stay. I thought, if you knew what the singers were singing around you, you might not feel so… lost.”

Doc Theo
’s gaze rested on the Temple grounds below for so long that Tala began to fear she’d offended him. But when he spoke, there was a huskiness to his tone that hinted at a deep longing. “I’d like that, Tala. Very much. I’ve been a wanderer most of my life, but I’ve never felt as lost as I do right now.”

She rested her mittened hand on his arm. “Try this one, then.”
She sang a simple tune in the Akrestan major scale, and the air around them became warm and salty, swirling gently with the flavor of a tropical sea. Doc Theo breathed deeply of the saline breeze and smiled. She let the last note fade, and the warm air with it, then nodded in encouragement.

Doc Theo
opened his mouth and apparently tried to copy the notes she had sung, but in hearing them, she would never have guessed he attempted to sing the same tune. The first three notes were half-steps apart instead of thirds, and when he tried for the high note at the end, he shot right past it and nearly went falsetto. Thankfully, his notes weren’t representative of any other song spell, and nothing happened.

Seeing her wince,
Doc Theo apologized. “Think it’s better if I keep to my neutral pitch?”

She had to nod in agreement. “But I still think you should learn the songs, even if you can only hear them properly in your own head.”

“I’ll do that much, then,” he promised. “Better for everyone if the notes stay inside my skull.”