Trial of Intentions (53 page)

Yenola nodded. “Get dressed.”

He slipped out of bed and dressed in the dark. From habit, he pulled on his sword belt and Sedagin glove. Then he looked back at the woman, suddenly more than a little curious. “Why are you telling me this?”

“A single staircase lies at the end of the corridor.” She sat up, the bedsheets slipping from her shoulders to reveal her breasts. In the dimness, her beauty still pulled at him. “Don't tell him I told you how to find him. And come back when you're done.” A thin smile rose on her lips, less carnal and more glad, he thought.

He nodded and got moving. He passed down the silent corridor of the keep, and found the narrow set of stairs. He climbed upward in the tight spiral through several floors of the castle, dragging his hand along the wall to guide him in the darkness. The steps didn't let out on intervening stories, but rather continued upward. Sutter followed them quietly, setting his feet lightly on the stone, until he reached a heavy door that brought an end to the narrow stairs. Sutter pulled the latch and pushed open the door.

He stepped out onto the fortress's smallest, highest rooftop. There resided a still, cool air at this castle peak, and a grand view of Ir-Caul. Sutter could see from this vantage that he'd underestimated the size of the city, and hadn't had a true sense of its garrison-like function.

Streets radiated in all directions and were dominated by large barracks and drill yards. It was a city built for war, peopled by warriors. At the far edge of his sight, he thought he saw several tracts of land where war machines he couldn't name sat in wait of use. It left him with a feeling like he'd had in Naltus Far, but here the underlying sense of hope was absent. Not that it was hopeless; only that the residents of Ir-Caul seemed to live for today's moment, with no expectation of another.

Sutter turned a slow circle, surveying the city's every quarter in the dark of predawn. His heart started to pound when he saw a figure lying huddled on a bedroll against the wall to his left.

He drew his sword as a precaution, and approached warily. He hadn't seen a single beggar or vagrant on the streets of Ir-Caul. But that was what the heap reminded him of, tucked into the nook of the wall and rooftop the way it was.

When he'd come within a few strides, the figure spoke. “Put away your weapon.”

He relaxed and sheathed his blade. It was, indeed, the king, sleeping on hard stone in the cold atop his own keep. Shortly, Relothian sat up, resting his back against the wall.

Sutter stared at the man a moment, then peered into the darkness at the stretch of plains beyond the city walls, expecting he might see a reason for the king being here. Seeing nothing but the occasional light of some window in the city below, he turned back to the man. “What you are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same. You've no reason to be wandering my castle alone. A proper king would be insulted.” The man didn't seem insulted.

“I couldn't sleep,” Sutter lied.

“Nor can I. Not on feathered mattresses beneath heavy linens, anyway.” The man pushed away the thin bedroll that lay across his lap. “And not by the warmth of a hearth.” He patted the stone beneath him. “I must have firmness beneath me, and cold air to chill my cheeks. When the comforts of my throne start to please me, I will hand them back and step down.”

Sutter thought he understood, but said nothing.

The king got up and walked to the edge of the rooftop. “A fighting man learns to sleep lightly, and appreciates a rough bed that keeps him from his dreams. I'll be ready when my enemy comes. So tell me what wakes
you
so early.”

Sutter didn't join the king at the rooftop's edge, but stood where he was, trying to decide how much he should share. “My dreams are bad. Maybe I should try a harder bed.”

The king laughed softly. “What dreams could a
Sedagin
have that frighten him?”

He didn't bother to explain his Sedagin gifts. Later, maybe. Instead, being in no mood to lie, and knowing how it would sound, he said, “Lately? Faces of soldiers who will soon die.”

Relothian turned toward him, wearing a scrutinizing look.

Sutter strode forward then, to see the king more clearly in the gloom. “What do you think the call to Convocation is for? What has it always been for? I'm no great warrior, and I don't know the problems of a king, but I won't leave Ir-Caul until you stop being a jack—”

“Take care,” the king said softly.

Sutter stared back, his impatience growing. “If a boy will cross kingdoms and borders to share a message in the name of a Sheason you hate, maybe you could spare a few days to hear what the regent has to say.”

“You have no idea what you're asking,” the king replied, a restrained anger in his voice. “Look there.” The king pointed west.

Sutter looked into the distance, seeing nothing but a dark line of mountains beneath a starry sky.

“I'm at war with Nallan. A realm that takes what it wants. Kills without remorse or honor.” The king looked south, and continued. “For years we have entreated nations to join us. I've sent countless letters, emissaries. And still we fight alone.” He grew quiet for a time, his gaze turning east then again to the west.

“The forges will be lit soon.” He gestured out over the city. “Smoke will fill the sky with hope. We were losing this war when I took the throne. Our men carried badly crafted blades. Their armor and shields were laughable. And the gears for war, siege weapons”—he shook his head—“we had few. That's why I am called the smith king. My first order was to bring several hundred blacksmiths to Ir-Caul to build forges and start smelting proper steel. That was twenty years ago.”

Sutter remembered the countless rising plumes of smoke he'd seen the day before.

“But these last few seasons, my men are falling in greater numbers. Nallan pushes closer. Something is wrong. I can feel it in my bones. None of my entreaties to seat-holders have been answered. I may have to finally allow the League a garrison here.” He turned back to Sutter. “So don't speak to me of Convocation. Your own people don't support it. It's a mockery of allegiance, just as it was in the past. Kings and nobles vying for power and influence, toying at politics. You know the Sedagin don't support it, either.” He laughed.

Sutter impulsively reached inside his cloak. The king quickly grasped his arm in an ironlike grip. “I won't play games with you, boy. What do you hide?”

He ripped his hand free and dug into an inner pocket. He pulled forth the Draethmorte's sigil and held it up in front of the king's face. “You must listen to me.”

Sutter's voice rang out in the stillness, echoing down from the top of Relothian's castle. A few moments later, the silence returned, heavier than before.

The king cupped the pendant with one hand, staring at it with disbelief. “I've never seen this, except in the paintings that hang from my walls. It's profane. How did you come by it?”

Carefully, he shared the story of Tahn's fight at Tillinghast. He added as much detail as he could remember from Tahn's account. Then he told about the battle at Naltus, and the loss of the Covenant Tongue. But he didn't repeat what Vendanj had said about the pendant
: The people there have forgotten who they are. Make them remember. The glyph will help.

When he'd finished speaking, the king gave Sutter an unreadable look, leaving Sutter to wonder if he'd made a mistake in confiding so much.

The king never moved, never spoke.

“There are more sacrifices than I care to think about behind this piece of metal,” Sutter said. “I've seen Velle, fought Bar'dyn, and looked over a field of dead so wide I couldn't see its end. The Quiet are coming.” He stopped, unsure if he should say what he really thought about Relothian's army. In the end, Sutter decided to just say what he felt. “And to tell you the truth, I'm not sure even if you join Convocation … it will be enough.”

Sutter put the pendant back inside his inner pocket, the king's eyes fixed on him as he did so.

“We'll talk more.” The king left Sutter standing on the keep's uppermost rooftop in the light of daybreak as smithy fires began to lift their smoke into the morning sky.

 

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Gearsmithing

Build your gears first as toys for children. You capture the inventiveness of play without the encumbrance of adult consequences.

—Gearsmith instruction received by all Alon'Itol smiths

T
he door to the gear house opened, and Mira stared into the face of a short man with an almost entirely bald pate. Beyond him, she could see the broad workshop had no windows—this was not a place King Relothian or his generals wanted casual gawkers to see. But lamps kept it brightly lit, and the sweet smells of freshly cut wood and wet hemp drifted on the air.

“Oh my gears,” the little man said. “You're the Far girl everyone's talking about. Superb. Superb. Come in.”

The man stepped back, let Mira pass, then shut the door and dropped a cross brace that fell into a kind of locking mechanism she hadn't seen before. The brace was thick, solid iron, and no clever thief was going to raise it from outside.

“I'm Gear Master Mick. You're Mira,” the man announced with bright enthusiasm. “You're a Far. And I design gear. You've come to see my work, no doubt. Superb. Superb.”

It was, in fact, why she'd come. In part, anyway. She had other questions, but she imagined she might find answers to some of those in the gearsmith's work.

“If it's not an inconvenience.” Mira was already examining a table laid out with models of siege engines unknown to her.

He shook his head, rather more violently than was necessary, and limped to the table she'd been surveying. On one end lay heaps of freshly cut wood in a variety of lengths and thicknesses. At a glance, it could have been mistaken for a stack of child's blocks. Near it, spools of hemp twine stood on vertical rods poking up from the table. Carving knives and chisels and hammers and nails and iron couplings and other tools lay near the raw materials. But most of the table showcased scale models of things that looked like trebuchets, ballistas, mangonels, battering rams, assault ladders.
Like
them, but not quite the same. Without spending more time examining them, she couldn't say what was different. But she could see that they'd all been
modified
.

“Oh, lots of ideas,” he began. “Maybe one in a hundred I can make work.”

Closer to Mira, countless designs for swords, daggers, axes, hammers, flails, spears, shields, helmets, armor, and more had all been rendered in miniature. She noticed that the man wore a leather belt with pouches all across the front, filled with various wood-carving knives.

“You're a busy man,” she observed.

“And why not,” he replied. “Wars don't fight themselves.”

He fingered a counterweight on an elaborate trebuchet and launched a small stone at her. Mira caught it, fingering the ore. “Your forges. They're casting iron to build all this.” She slipped the rock into her pocket, and pointed to the table.

“Oh my gears, no. They're building
proven
engines. This is all … guesswork.” His smile suggested playful deceit.

Some of this had been battle-tested, no doubt. But she didn't get the feeling the gearsmith took delight in war, so much as invention. He exuded a kind of energy that made her sure he never sat idle.

“You're at war, then,” she said, fixing on a strange model that appeared as though it might shoot multiple arrows at once.

His silence seemed an answer. He moved around to the other side of the table and turned a wooden crank on the model she'd been eyeing. On one side, the device had a few wooden wheels with interlocking teeth that began turning when he started to rotate the crank. A clever mechanism drew back a string across two pulleys. The string itself had been threaded through two further endpoints. It created a straight line of the string where it would fit the nooks of six arrows resting in shallow grooves. When the tension on the string reached a certain point, the mechanism let go, and the six arrows sailed simultaneously across the table of models.

The gearsmith kept cranking, and she watched as another set of arrows was fed up in a rotation of six trays. Over the space of seconds thirty-six toothpick-sized arrows sailed over the table and onto the floor.

“That one works?” she asked.

“Superbly,” the gearsmith admitted, beaming. “The battle version flings twelve arrow sets, and has ten trays. One man to feed the arrows. The other to crank.”

“Who are you fighting?” Mira picked up one of the model-sized arrows, inspecting its nock. The design was ingenious; rather than containing a single groove, it appeared more like a crown, so that a string could easily catch it no matter how it was laid in the machine.

“Nallan, of course. Who else?” The gearsmith bustled over to the raw materials. He picked up a length of wood, and began carving as if he'd just that moment had a new idea.

Mira put down the small arrow and looked out over the rest of the gear house. “How long have you been at war?”

“Goes back longer than
my
life,” the gearsmith said. “Generations, to be sure. Nallan … not nice people. Not nice ideas.” He nodded at his own statement.

“Then I'd say you don't appear to be having a lot of success,” Mira observed. “Being at war for so long, I mean.”

The man looked up, momentarily ceasing to carve. Seeing the slightly more sober look in his eyes, an odd question occurred to her. “Are you trying to win?”

He stared back at her, his thumb running crosswise over the edge of his sharp whittling knife in a bit of a nervous tick. “I think what I wonder more is who's running the damned thing.” A sheepish look rose instantly in his face. “Oh, there I've gone a'cursin' in front of company, and a lady Far, no less. Sorry for that.”