Trial of Intentions (36 page)

Tahn wasn't sure what could be said. He settled on, “She was a brilliant woman, Rithy. Succession can be hard.…” It sounded dumb, and he wished he'd kept quiet.

“I know,” she agreed. “Succession
can
be hard. Hard on the one arguing. And hard on those who are forced to watch.” She stopped, considering. “And when you fail…”

Tahn gave her a strong look. “I won't fail. I can't.”

“
Can't
because you have ironclad proof? Or
can't
because you have a just cause?” She gave a small, bitter laugh. “Because all sucessionists have the second of these.”

“You'll help me get the first,” he answered, and tried a smile.

Rithy ignored his attempt to lighten the mood. “The argument that killed her was Continuity, Gnomon. She tried to show the existence of an ever-present element that connected all things. Erymol. Do you remember?”

“Yes. You and I sat up nights. Late. Helping her with bits of math and astronomy.”

“I'm sure we were more of a nuisance to her than anything.” She paused, swallowed. “But I think she liked having us around.”

“I'm sure she did,” he agreed. “And I liked
being
around. She had a sense of humor. Something I think she'd want you to use more.”

Rithy had become silent again, staring away. “She left a note,” she finally said. “I've never been able to read it.”

It was the mention of the note that brought Tahn's two worlds into sudden, painful resonance. Wards of the Scar who walked into the barrens with their knife or to Gutter Ridge always had a note in their pocket when their bodies were found. The notes usually said much the same thing:
I'm sorry. I love you all. But I couldn't take another day in the Scar. I pray you have better luck finding your true home. I'll hope there's a next life, as the dead gods promised. If so, I'll see you there. Love …

So, the Scar had followed him to Aubade Grove. Rithy's mother's despair may have come from a different place. But it was her own Scar that had led her to surrender to the emptiness.

And like a ward of the Scar abandoning a friend—one they'd huddled with in a dry, wide place—Rithy's mom had abandoned her little girl. She'd done so even before she pulled the noose tight and let her body hang down.

Tahn leaned over and drew Rithy into an embrace. “I don't think they realize the pain they leave behind.” He shook his head.
Thirty-seven.
“I think they're too in the middle of their
own
pain to see anything else.” He drew back to make sure she saw him. “She loved you. I saw it from the outside. That's an objective observer's data, so you can trust it.” He gave her a better smile this time.

Rithy blew a weak gust of air from her nose in a mild laugh. “I know. And most of her life she was the best mother I could have wanted. But … Tahn?”

He raised his brows, waiting for her question.

“What makes you think it won't happen to you? You knew my mother. You know how strong she was.” She looked away toward where the Grove towers stood. “Even members of her college said, ‘Nanjesho is as solid as her math.'”

Tahn understood better now. Some of this was fear for him. That he might fall into the Succession sickness, as Rithy's mother had.

He gave her shoulder a squeeze and sat back, feeling a bit queasy from sitting up so long. “I don't. But I have to try. Not because I want to make a name for myself in the Grove. I don't care about that. It's what I told you before. War is coming. War on a scale I don't believe we've ever seen. The nations will try to meet it. But Rithy … I don't think we can win. And if we don't, what will be left won't be a place.…”
It'll be a great wide Scar.

She stared at him, her brow pinched in concentration and concern.

“In a numbers game,” he tapped his chest, “my life doesn't mean a damn compared to the thousands who'll die if the Veil falls.”

“You might do well with that argument in the College of Philosophy.” She smiled weakly.

Tahn didn't know what else to say, or how to say it. Mostly, he was eager to get out of this bed and get on with declaring his intentions. Start Succession. But godsdamn, just sitting up was proving to be too much for him. He lay flat again.

The room settled into a long silence. Sun fell across the bedcovers. Motes lazed in its rays.

This time Rithy took his hand. Her tears were bright in the sunlight. Like the motes. “Have you ever found a loved one who'd done such a thing? Who took her love away? Who robbed you of any more days to love her back?”

Yes. Many times.

The sunlight suddenly seemed heavy. The bedsheets seemed heavy. His chest tightened with the sob he held back. He'd left her alone to face it. It hadn't been his choosing, but he'd left a friend behind to the empty house and memories of a mother who hadn't cared enough to live for her. Succession had meant more to Nanjesho. The math had meant more.

He could have told Rithy that those were false things. That an illness had gotten into Nanjesho. That was true. And Rithy, grown now and filled with better logic, knew that for herself. But the little girl he'd left behind hadn't known those things. And Tahn ached inside to think of how she'd suffered alone when he'd left her. Yes, she would have had adults showing her their concern. But everyone knows that when the heart fails, what's needed is a friend who doesn't falsely reassure, and can walk a road with you just because. Doing things because. That's what friends do when the heart fails.

Tahn knew the truth of it. He'd found his share of friends lying dead in the Scar.

He sat with this friend now. A lot of years later. And he mourned with her a mother who'd made her own death's rope.

And when Rithy, having let out something she'd held a long time, fell asleep lying against his bed, Tahn's heart continued to pound.

By every dead god, he would go hard at this Succession!

No more quiet endings to personal suffering.

No widening of the Scar.

He started to push through his sickness, needing to get to his purpose for coming here—Succession. He was eager for the argument—and perhaps discovery—he was about to make. He would prepare. The colleges of Aubade Grove and its savants would listen. He would argue until they did. He would prove a unifying principle that could strengthen the Veil.
Resonance
. Which would mean tens of thousands would never be asked to stand up and fight the Quiet.

And he would pray to those absent gods that this time Succession went differently than it had the last time he'd been in Aubade Grove. He'd pray that Rithy would stand with him, when she had every right to tell him to burn.

He understood the raw feeling of losing someone who made the choice to die. Calling for Succession on the topic of Continuity would tear that wound open again, for all of them, but especially for Rithy and Polaema.

But Tahn held on to the idea that if he succeeded, there would be fewer who died fighting the Quiet. And fewer loved ones who walked into their own personal Scar to do death to themselves.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The Child's Voice

We need a child to help us see past our own glaring self-interest.

—King Nevil Sadon, of Vohnce, on the establishment of representatives to his new government, ending the line of kings

F
rom his window in Solath Mahnus, Roth Staned surveyed the northwest quarter of Recityv. His office didn't sit as high as the regent's, and its windows faced but one direction—things he meant to change—but for now, in the twilight of day, high above the city streets, he breathed fresh air as he waited and considered.

“It's hardly the squalor of a slum, is it?” Roth asked, his tone rhetorical.

Nama Septas, his political advisor, shook her head, confused.

Roth leaned on the window ledge and drew another deep breath, smiling to himself. “I grew up in the port city of Wanship. Along the docks. Mornings were filled with the stink of the catch. Lazy fishermen gutted their take and tossed the guts into the harbor waters.”

Nama shriveled her nose.

“You always knew when the catch came in,” Roth added. “The shrill cry of gulls could be heard all across the wharf. Damn things grew bold enough to peck at the fish as men prepared the catch for market.”

Roth's lips twisted with disgust. And remembrance. “Even the fish blood was dull under Wanship's cloudy skies. All I wanted as a boy was to escape the wharf. Figured I'd wind up a shipwright, maybe work inland on timber or tar. Start off in the ship trade.”

His political advisor prepared her pipe. Cherry sage leaf. “How'd you manage to escape that career?” Nama paused. “There are days I could do with a tar career.”

Roth smiled. “The simple wit of fishermen and ever-grey of Wanship made me hungry to get the hells out of the company of dullards.” He held up a finger. “That's not fair. My father was no dullard. Just unlucky. Seaside slums are unlucky.”

Nama stopped puffing on her pipe, and turned to him. “Your father wasn't a leagueman, then? You're a family first.”

“Da was a deck-slopper, poor gambler, and young widower,” Roth said without any shame. “Knelt in front of me and told me we could survive. Told me he'd find his way back to me after exchanging me with a leagueman for a quick and dirty pardon.”

“You were a marker?” Nama's jaw fell. “Silent hells, I had no idea.”

Roth nodded with some satisfaction. “They didn't give Da a choice. In fact, it was my father's quick thinking to propose the swap.”

But it had taken a long time to get over his separation from his father. Roth missed him still. He'd loved his da the way a boy does. Or should. Leaving Wanship and his father behind hadn't been easy. But he'd believed the man would have approved.

“He knew,” Roth went on, “that the League would give me a better life.” He laughed out loud. “And by the time I was old enough to take the oath, I knew more about the politics of the League than most leaguemen ever will.”

Looking back at those days, he really only ever thought now about his father. And Leona.

He smiled again, the feel of it wistful on his face. The slums had taught him lessons worth remembering—about men, what they'd trade for. And Roth could yet recall the feelings of the boy he'd been, pinching purses in the street when he could, and lifting day-old haddock for meals his father wouldn't have mop-coins to buy. But the slums hadn't taught him a thing about a woman's heart, apparently.

“I don't eat fish anymore, though,” Roth said. He and Nama laughed together over that.

Then they fell into a quiet moment. Waiting. He'd summoned the winner of the Lesher Roon—a race run by Recityv youth to qualify one child to sit on the High Council and represent the interests of the young. It was an outdated practice. And one the regent had recently reinstituted, he guessed, to outbalance him in council votes.
Smart,
he thought. But he'd anticipated her and set plans in motion. He would see to the work of steering the Council, just as he was seeing to the steering of Convocation.

Nama spoke up through a haze of her smoke. “Securing Council votes is important. But remember Convocation. The regent will have supporters who won't be turned.”

Roth nodded. “We have the names of those invited—”

“I'm not talking about seat holders,” Nama said, squinting at him. “I'll remind you of our last Dissent in Judicature. Her old friend from the Scar showed up to make an argument. I'll lay odds he'll be there. He's an artful speechmaker. Scary as a church bell, too.”

“I have an idea for him,” Roth said, nodding.

A moment later the patter and stride of younger feet echoed lightly down the hall beyond his door. Roth turned when the knock came.

“Come in,” he said.

Two leaguemen escorted a boy of maybe ten years of age into his office. They looked for further orders, to which Roth waved a dismissive hand. The two retired immediately, and Nama joined them, shutting the door behind her.

“Our Child's Voice,” Roth said, looking down. “Come, lad, announce yourself.”

“I'm Dwayne,” the boy replied. “Dwayne Alusel.”

“Welcome, Dwayne. Would you like something to drink?” Roth crossed to his desk, where there sweated a cold pitcher of water, flavored with fresh lime.

“Yes, please.” The boy came forward tentatively.

Roth noted the boy's hesitation. “You've no need to be nervous here, Dwayne. I'm your friend. You have a new responsibility as the Child's Voice, and I imagine it's all rather sudden for you. But that's precisely why I've asked you here for a visit. I'll help you navigate the problems and discussions that you'll soon be asked to have an opinion about.”

The boy nodded and took the glass of lime water Roth extended to him. He sipped and looked around the Ascendant's office. “Why me?” he asked.

Roth smiled patiently. “Why not you? You won the race. And yes, I know there was some contention over who the true winner should be. But that's behind us.”

Dwayne shook his head. “No, I mean why was I spared the trader blocks in Galadell. Was it because I run fast? Were you drilling a winner for the Roon?”

Roth raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

“All the children were made to run. We raced constantly,” the boy said. “And then others were brought to race at Galadell. It's a trader's camp, you know. The new ones were brought from other camps. And when I won them all, they brought me here to run in the Lesher Roon.”

Then Roth understood. Someone had conspired to cull a fast runner and place him in the race with the idea of being able to control one of the council votes. That didn't sound like Helaina. It might be one of the less scrupulous merchant houses. But what troubled Roth more was the boy's story of trader camps.