Trial of Intentions (88 page)

He placed his own hand atop hers and gave her a warm smile. For a long moment their good-byes came in silence. She thought she could distantly hear the tumult of civil conflict in her city. But she'd have to navigate through it. There was one visit she needed to make, one thing she needed to retrieve.

She kissed Artixan's forehead, and moved to the rear of the room. She couldn't simply walk out the front gates of Solath Mahnus. She would need a less conspicuous exit. And as regent, she had some few secrets that she shared with no one. They weren't even listed on the documents in her office.

She moved to the far corner, where a high table stood with small statuary, some books, and an oil lamp. After quietly picking up the lamp, she crawled beneath the table and triggered a false panel in the wall. Beyond it lay a secret, narrow system of corridors connecting many of the chambers throughout Solath Mahnus. The air inside smelled of dry stone and rodent droppings. She lit the lamp and began to wind her way through the passageways.

In some places she had to duck low, even crawl, to pass. And more than once she slipped into a sideways shuffle to negotiate extremely tight sections of a corridor. Stairways between floors were rare; mostly she climbed very old ladders made from wood that creaked beneath her slight weight.

She pushed on through her weariness and pain, panting like a mongrel as she descended a last ladder that brought her to another false panel. On it, she traced a complicated set of numeric symbols in a pattern where each next symbol was separated by the sum of the previous two. The panel swung quietly open. As it did, she extinguished the lamp, and eased into deep shadows behind a great hedge of holly. She was outside. The cool, dry-earth smell, coupled with the sweet scent of holly berries, refreshed her. She put down the lamp, ducked low, and pushed her way through the hedge.

Distant shouts of anger made it clear the civil hostilities continued. She took them as a goad to hurry.

She made her way across a small garden to a narrow arch in the Wall of Remembrance. Even this would normally have been guarded. But tonight, all members of her guard were needed elsewhere. So she passed unnoticed into the broader streets of Recityv, just another older woman with her cowl up, trying to avoid trouble.

She slipped through the shadows of familiar buildings and down narrow byways. These were avenues for deliveries to merchant shops. They were alleys for straw-drift folk, who piled cast-off refuse into makeshift huts.

Tonight, some of these back alleys were open graves where those first to fall in the civil conflict had been dragged to clear the thoroughfares. Helaina slunk past dead men and women and more than a few small ones who lay still in the shadows. She stopped more than once and forced back sobs at the sight of loved ones who'd obviously been alive to take each other in an embrace before dying. All of it galvanized her resolve.
Fist in the glove.

She got quickly to the Sodality manor's rear entrance. The gate to the small courtyard was open.
Thank the deaf gods
. She slipped the letter beneath the door, then returned to the gate, where she selected a hand-sized rock and made a good throw at the door. It cracked loud, like a brash knock, and she scuttled up the alley. She was turning onto another small street when she heard the door fly open and the sound of voices.

With her chin tucked low, she hurried on, breathing through her mouth with the exertion. By alleyway, she came soon to the broad thoroughfare of Rel Mercantile, where all the merchant families kept residences and storehouses. The Merchant Quarter. Standing concealed just inside an alley, she spied men walking, hands on sword pommels, in regular shifts. They reminded her of trained guard dogs pacing back and forth. Only here, a handful of men—leaguemen, it appeared—walked long beats. Rel Mercantile stretched three hundred strides, at least.

After watching their patterns, Helaina timed her crossing to the Storalaith House, and got quickly to the delivery alley directly across from her. Tonight, she would be less formal. And she knew the trace lock to get her into her childhood home.

Inside, she drew back her hood and climbed a small set of stairs to the main floor. She headed directly for the kitchen. Unsurprisingly, two lanterns burned on the thick-block table, and seated between them was her father, reading over a set of ledgers.

When her da heard her footsteps, he looked up over the top of his spectacles. His face appeared more careworn than just a few days ago when she'd come to retrieve her letter. As she looked back at him, the parade of expressions was almost comical: initial indignation at being interrupted, distaste at seeing her—given their last meeting—and then grateful relief as the realization set in: His daughter was alive.

“I wanted you to know,” she said. “I'm going away, leaving Recityv. But I wanted you to know I was alive.”

Gemen Storalaith didn't move for a long moment, the light of the lamps reflected in the glasses far down on his nose. Finally, his face softened a tad more. “I'm glad, sweet one.” He hadn't called her that in many, many years.

Then he added, “Where will you go?”

“I think it's safer for you if I don't say. I may have put you in some danger just coming here. That's enough.”

He'd already been nodding, following her logic immediately. “Smart thinking,” he said. She'd missed that, her father's turn of phrase whenever they got talking strategy over a thing, whether commerce or politics or rhetoric.
Smart thinking.

“Da?” She hesitated. She should get what she came for before upsetting the man.

His eyebrows rose, awaiting her request.

“I need to go back into the vault. There's something I left there long before taking the regent seat. I imagine it will help me while I'm away.” She then waited for an invitation, no longer feeling the right to simply enter. Though she would do so if it came to that. Ceremony had all but been abandoned in matters of state.

Again he nodded. “Need help getting in?” A grimace interrupted the man's softer look.
He's remembering Mendel.
She wondered if the pinch of it had to do with his son's death, or that Mendel had proved to be capable of murdering Gemen's only other child. Maybe both.

“I can manage,” she said, and angled past him into the hallway off the rear of the kitchen.

She navigated the several doors and their clever locks again to get to the granite vault. After closing the great stone door, she turned up the wick on the low-burning lamp, and looked around.

Tonight, as before, she was seeking one thing in particular. She crossed to the bookshelves, and moved to the far left, where a crank was set into a series of steel flywheels. With a childlike anticipation she hadn't felt in decades, she began turning the crank. It didn't move at first, and she smiled.

“I'm cranky,” she said, initiating the key to the voice lock. That pithy expression had been Mendel's idea, when their father had asked for a vocal phrase for the crank. Remembering it was bittersweet—she missed Mendel, the way he had been back then.

She tried again, pulling on the handle. The two leftmost bookshelves began to move. The one on the far left drew backward, and the shelf next to it began moving into its place. From behind the one on the right, another bookshelf started to move forward.

A very low, very quiet rumble sounded in the vault of goods. The shelf system moved on a special series of casters and tracks that were never allowed to fall into disrepair. Still, the low, toneless hum sounded like the voice of a lesser god announcing revelation. There were treasures secured in the shelves kept out of sight: valuable editions, Storalaith histories, ledgers of past transactions. There were too many to catalog or recall, spanning across no less than thirty shelves, which slowly came forward into the light of her lamp.

With a little tradesmanship, she'd long ago convinced her father to give her a shelf of her own. Books that she wanted kept safe, as much from the weathers of time as from malfeasant hands or just careless readers.

A few moments later, her own private collection cycled into view. She stopped cranking. The sudden silence seemed deafening, like the calm before important things take place.

Kneeling on the floor, fingering along the spines of the many tomes, she came to a very thin book with a cracked binding. She pulled it free and curled it into her lap. She knew its feel without having to strain in the weak light to read its cover. Just holding it gave her some small measure of hope for the trip they were about to make. And while feeling its aged leather beneath her aching, swollen fingers, she recalled how she'd come by these pages.

Helaina cherished scola—authors, readers, scriveners, even accountants—thoughtful entertainers and historians all. But to most merchants, books—much to the distaste of those who created and cared about them—had become a commodity.

The correlation between books and money adhered to the Merchant Rule of Reciprocity though—a rule most merchants failed to fully appreciate, which was why Helaina had fast surpassed her peers in financial acumen. The rule was simple: Buying was at least as important as selling. Helaina had devised a strategy of expending considerable amounts of Storalaith resources when the economy was at its worst.

In time, she'd become the wealthiest amongst them, because traders in goods and services wanted to deal only with Helaina.

With some of her wealth, Helaina had built a library, and followed soon with other libraries in other cities where her family did trade. She bought vacant storehouses in Vohnce and even in Balens and Kali-Firth. They were modest structures, housing at first just a few dozen books. But she hired troupers to give readings for children, and staffed these places with knowledgeable scriveners to aid those who still struggled to read. With time, the number of books in her libraries grew, as did those who came to read or listen.

She bought books by the lot, dealing with copyists, collectors, scrivener houses, authors themselves. And it all—well, most of it—went directly to her libraries. Rare items she often sold to show her father a profit. And occasionally, she held one back for herself. Like this book. She looked down through the dimness at the story she held in her lap.
The Pauper's Drum.

She remembered hearing the story of the pauper's drum as a young girl. Not at bedtime from her parents or in play with her friends. She'd seen it acted out on a pageant wagon long before the League began to discourage the fancies of myth performed by the troupes.

This book, though, had been written in the Mor tongue. She'd spent the better part of three years in lessons from Maesteri Belamae—himself a Ta'Opin Mor—learning the nuances of the three-part speech. Doing so had taught her of the gulf between interpretation and the words of the actual story.

On the pageant wagon, a sweet tale of music and innocence had drawn tears from mothers, reverence from fathers, and fascination from kids like herself. In the book, the drum was terrifying.

If she didn't miss her guess, this very book had been stolen from a private collection belonging to someone of importance in one of the Mor nations. Though there were times over the years that she wondered if the book had been offered to her for some other reason. If, perhaps, it was an overture of some kind, or an invitation, or a reminder.

Regardless, Helaina believed this book might be necessary to their safe reception when they entered Y'Tilat Mor. Perhaps personally carrying it back to them would convey something about her reverence for the tale and help with her request for the Refrains.
The Pauper's Drum,
Belamae had taught her, was sacred to the Mors.

Her joints were aching, and got her moving again. She cranked the shelves back to where they'd stood when she'd first entered, and spared one last look around, feeling nostalgic for her merchant days. Then, she took herself through the several locked doors and back to her father's kitchen, where he still sat, poring over numbers.

“Find what you needed?” he said, not yet looking up. He marked the page with his graphite to hold his place, and finally sat back.

“I did, thanks.” Helaina looked in the direction of the hall that led to the stairs and the upper living rooms. “Is Ma asleep?”

“I gave her a mild soporific to ease her nerves. She won't wake 'til morning.” He smiled regretfully.

She nodded, though she would have liked to see her mother and let her know she was all right. She didn't know if she'd be coming back.

Everything else done, she finally came to it. “Da?”

Again, her father's brow wrinkled as his eyebrows raised, awaiting her question.

“First, I'm sorry about Mendel. I didn't really get a chance to say it when … It happened fast. And my Emerit wanted to get me someplace safe.”

Gemen Storalaith swallowed audibly in the silence that stretched between them, and only shook his head.
A shame,
that gesture said.
A shame all around.

She smiled weakly. “I also notice that it looks like your trade has … shifted. House Storalaith was a knowledge broker, mostly. At least it was when I was here.”

Her da suddenly looked slightly less grief stricken, slightly more guarded.

“It's late, sweet one. Maybe we should leave the rest for another time.” He tried to go back to his ledger.

His trembling hands took up his graphite and rule, and he began to etch another line of text and figures onto the page.

Helaina pressed on, but with a gentle tone. “I guess my own law forced you to evolve the business. From the looks of the vault, I'd say information discovery. That sound accurate?”

The man said nothing. The scratch of his graphite seemed loud in the quiet kitchen. He paused long enough to take a draught from a glass of chilled milk.

“I'm not angry. And I'm not the regent anymore, even if I wanted to take exception to anything I saw.” She raised a conciliatory hand. “Please, I'm just asking.”