Trial of Intentions (101 page)

Stunned silence continued for several moments. And in that silence he recalled that he'd arrived at this demonstration because of the resonance he'd felt—and caused—between him and the Quiet man in the astronomy dome—two apparently different things, brought into phase.
The Quiet.

Tahn let the hush draw out a good long time before finishing in a soft, clear voice. “I didn't want to leave Aubade Grove. This is as close to a home as I've ever known. And I have friends here.” He looked over at Rithy. “But others said I needed to leave. They said I was in danger. That the Grove might be in danger, too, if I stayed … so, I left.”

Tahn focused on Savant Jermane, knowing that tonight this man's opinion mattered most.

“Since I've been gone, I've seen the Quiet. Not pageant wagon rhea-fols. Not authors or poets reciting their tales. I've seen living Quiet. Up close. Just as those before us saw them in the wars of the First and Second Promise.” A chill ran up his arms, and he knew what he should say next. “They're not beasts, my friends. They're not mindless. There's reason in their eyes. Intelligence. But they come in strength now…”

He didn't finish that part. It wasn't his intention to use fear here. “They're starting to push through the Veil.”

Tahn took a few long strides and pointed up at the gearworks orrery above them. “We're in the middle of a rare dual lunar eclipse. A syzygy of the sun, moon, and Aeshau Vaal. At the same time, another cycle of the sun is upon us. I believe this is why not long ago thousands of Quiet were able to march on the city of Naltus Far.”

In his mind Tahn was seeing the Soliel plain. He was seeing small ones in the hands of Velle. He was seeing graves being dug by the thousands.

“As I stand here, nations meet at Recityv in Convocation to try and build an alliance to meet this new threat. Prepare for war.” He began shaking his head. “But even if we could win such a war, how many would die? And if we lost…” Tahn left off again, thinking about the friends he had in the Scar. Thinking about the choices left to one who has run out of any real hope.

He turned a slow circle, looking at each savant. It wasn't good form in the discourse theaters to make nonscientific arguments—with the physicists anyway—but Tahn felt the need to do so. “There's a feeling about them sometimes … the Quiet,” he began, softly. The theater held a thick silence, listening. “It's the feeling you have when you find someone you love … who's taken their own life.”

Tahn turned and showed Rithy a look of apology. But he pushed on. “It's a heavy feeling. The helpless kind. You grieve for yourself, but you also grieve for the one who's gone, who couldn't find a reason to stay with us.” He looked up into the theater seats, still believing he might have saved Devin if he'd been attentive. “Many of you have known someone who did this. And you've felt that ache inside. That deep ache. The Quiet bring that feeling with them. And what they're doing will cause that feeling to widen across our cities and fields.”

Tahn nodded to himself, remembering Nanjesho. Remembering Alemdra and Devin.
My last god, thirty-seven wards of the Scar …
“The Quiet come with war in mind. And for those who don't fall in battle … the resonances of war that follow will often be quiet ones. But stronger than most of us have strength to suffer. It will be that deep ache. It will get inside people you know and love. It will get inside you. And you'll believe there's only one thing you can do.”

When he stopped speaking, the theater was not simply void of mutters and mumbles, attendees were sitting perfectly still. He thought he might have succeeded in helping them feel a small measure of what was coming. Of the urgency to find a way to prevent it. He chanced a look at Rithy, worried he might see tears and lose some resolve. She did have moist eyes, but the smile she flashed him gave Tahn a charge of determination. Good gods, he admired her.

Then Tahn raised his hands in emphasis, and declared what he believed. What he hoped. What he wanted of all this. “But if we can prove Resonance, understand it—then we can find a way to strengthen the Veil, and keep the Quiet from pushing into the Eastlands. Keep
us
from having to fight another war like those recorded in our annals. Keep that ache from getting into the people we care about!” He pointed at the historicals that still lay open before Savant Jermane. “This is why I've come back. This is why I've asked for this Succession of Arguments. The time is now!”

Mutters flared. Some incredulous. Some with the sound of approval.

Then Jermane stood, bringing silence again to the discourse theater. He gave each of his fellow savants a long look before he spoke. “My friends, I don't believe we have definitive enough proof of Resonance that the College of Physics will adopt this new law of mechanics. Not yet. And on those grounds, I might end Succession here.”

He gave Tahn an unreadable expression, then looked up at the model of their own sun and planets that hung above the theater. The orrery had been dialed back—at Rithy's request of the clock keeper up on his perch—to show a conjunction that everyone in the theater knew. It was a subtle thing. But those who looked saw the Valediction Conjunction, an alignment that corresponded with a time of scientific persecution out of the Mal.

“However,” he said, still staring upward, “neither do I have good reason to do so. For while these evidences bear more scrutiny, they argue powerfully for Continuity. Or, as young Gnomon here calls it, Resonance.” He lowered his eyes to Tahn again. “The larger context you share is compelling, Gnomon. But don't let it cloud your arguments. Your task is to prove this Resonance on the merits of its science. Not the pressures of a world that needs a scientific answer. We could all recite those times when our efforts were put to bad use … and mistreated. Let us have none of that.”

Then he showed the barest of smiles. “Succession will continue in a few days' time with the College of Mathematics.”

Whispers and muttering resumed in a frenzied wave. Except for among the College of Astronomy. His fellow astronomers erupted with cheers that filled the entire theater. Polaema would, no doubt, scold them later, but Tahn was glad to hear it. He wanted to shout and dance a little himself. Join them. But that would have been rightly seen as gloating. So, he kept his composure. For now.

Physics researchers descended to their fellows, and began immediately to replicate the lodestone tests. Men and women whose robes bore the insignia of philosophy hurried out together. A few—who, Tahn noted, bore the insignia of the League on their robes—showed him a wary look as they exited the theater. Among them was Darius, who locked eyes with Tahn. The philosopher subtly shook his head, then gave a glittering smile of anticipation and swept through the exit.

The rest of the assembly sat staring from their seats, lost in their own thoughts, or meandering out in huddled groups, chatting amongst themselves. Tahn could hear the postulates and debates and excitement as they went. The Grove was alive with Succession.

Relief and joy flooded him like nothing he could remember, save maybe waking from his moment at Tillinghast.
Feels damn good to make an argument!

Rithy sauntered up beside him, watching those from her own college exit the discourse theater. “I told you this was the easy one.”

“You did?” He smiled.

“College of Mathematics is going to come hard at you with numbers.”

“I have you,” Tahn replied, and elbowed her gently.

“My math is strong, but there are many minds over there. And now they have a framework to attack. What's the plan?”

Tahn had an idea, one he'd had since he'd arrived here. It seemed ludicrous. But filled with the excitement of Succession, of being back in argument here in the Grove, he couldn't help but grin. “Tell me, Rithy, can you sing?”

 

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

Throne of Bones

Lore suggests that the first bone used to construct the Ir-Caul throne belonged to someone sent north during the Placing—Quiet or Inveterae isn't specified. Reports vary, though, as to why: some say so we remain watchful of our enemy; others suggest that at least some of those we fought were friends.

—Scrap from but a few surviving pages of an uncopied Ir-Caul record

K
ing Relothian shoved open the throne room doors and strode inside. Members of the Relothian House followed, Thalia chief among them. Other courtiers and attendants filed in. Mira entered beside Sutter and Yenola.

The king ascended the three wide steps to the top of the throne platform and turned. He did not speak, but scrutinized every face, as though cataloguing events and conversations in a new light. Presently, the general with the deeply scarred face came in, followed by ten men, all of whom bore a steady gaze. The last two soldiers to enter shut the wide doors behind them and took position as though to prevent anyone from leaving.

“Is this an inquest?” Thalia said sharply. “I hardly think you need to place a guard in your own keep. No one will enter a closed door without a summons.”

“Nor will anyone
leave
until I have answers,” Relothian added. “You are accused, Thalia. But you ask me to dismiss the Far's account, since she's a foreigner and we have no cause to trust her.”

“What else makes sense?” Thalia raised her hands in question.

The king locked his gaze on his sister. “But the testimony of your own stable hand. How do you answer
his
account?”

Thalia laughed. “Is it a surprise that a stable hand living in a city that prides itself on combat and who, no doubt, finds himself underpaid, would lie to condemn me? My king, please, he rakes stable filth. He's half mad. I hired him out of kindness. Otherwise he would surely foul our streets with piss and become a menace. He was raving. Nothing more.”

Relothian let out a long breath, his face cast in thought. “And the boy?”

Thalia shook her head. “As I said before, brother, he's a child. He's lonely. Some of the children are fortunate enough to be adopted, but others perish from disease. He's created stories in his mind to avoid dealing with their deaths or his own abandonment. If you would have it, I'll make it my personal responsibility to set a new standard for our fatherless. We'll increase their care and attention. But, Jaales, matters of the court shouldn't be decided on the witness of a madman or a lonely child.”

Relothian looked over at Sutter, then back to his sister.

Thalia noted the exchange. “Nor the words of foreigners, however well-intentioned. If the Far stole onto the private grounds of House Relothian and overheard a conversation, then let us acknowledge first that she broke the law. Beyond that, she would have heard bits of a longer conversation your general and I were having about the war. Nothing more. I beg you, brother, be sensible. You're always cheerless when the men return. So am I. It's hard to look at the lines where fallen men no longer march. But don't let your melancholy become a hunt for traitors. The enemy is in the north and west, not here among us.” Her face became earnest, imploring. “I swear it.”

Relothian looked next at the man to Thalia's right. “What would you say, Jespan? You stand accused with my sister.”

“I've risked everything for you many times, sire. I hope that speaks for itself.” The general's tone never rose or became defensive. “And I think our time is better used considering how we'll defeat this latest Nallan army that marches south.”

The king then turned toward Sutter, whose patience had begun to wear thin. There were lies here, and this politeness with which they came angered him. Before the king could put new questions to him, he pulled his sundered Sedagin blade from its sheath, and walked directly to the foot of the throne platform. He shot a callous look at the king's family and advisors, then turned his attention on Jaales.

He didn't know what more he could say to convince the king that his court had been corrupted, or that he must join himself to Convocation's purpose. He wanted to ask the king why the evidence and testimonies he'd already heard weren't enough. But he didn't. Instead, he stared at the man, and thought about his own childhood. About the many roads that had taken him from the Hollows to Recityv to the Saeculorum and now here. As he did, he also recalled Thalia's last words on the parade yard:
Remember who sent them.
It made him think about the king's words when they'd first arrived here at Ir-Caul:
Only a fool uses the name Vendanj to beseech this throne.… But I wouldn't call him a friend.

Sutter touched the Draethmorte pendant in his pocket, and found he had a question after all. “What has Vendanj done to make you distrust us?”

A bitter frown drew Relothian's face into an awful look, as though he were remembering something he would like to have forgotten.

“Your Sheason served here some years ago,” the king said, his words coming like those of a reluctant storyteller. “A hundred kings have had Sheason as counselors. In my ignorance, I thought I needed one, too. I agreed to have Estem Salo appoint one to my court. So came Vendanj to Ir-Caul.…”

Relothian took a few steps backward, his eyes still distant with the look of remembrance.

“He's not a man of compromise,” the king continued. “I respect that about him. But his constant objections challenged my authority. Raised doubt in my other counselors about my choices.” Relothian pointed southward. “So I sent him away.”

The king paused, looking now at the throne directly on his right. He reached out a hand and caressed the chair of woven bones. Sutter had thought the seat gruesome when he'd first seen it; but now he believed he understood. Any king seated there would recall the blood of generations lost to preserve the kingdom it represented. And yet, Sutter realized, he'd not yet seen Relothian sit there.