Trial of Intentions (91 page)

In the simplest terms, looking back at the past from the present is a folding of time and place. However, it is said of ThousandFold that she can do more than take the mind a'gallivanting. But likewise send the body, too.

It is also said the steel can deliver what has been called a “consequence of time and place” on those it is used against. Such a consequence has never been documented, so most historians don't agree on the meaning of this.

What is known with more certainty is that calling the steel's influence has a consequence for the bearer. Time may yield her grip to he who invokes the steel's influence, but time requires payment. The cost, while not entirely known, is thought to be drawn from the days of the bearer. Though, it is also recorded that at one time, a member of the Inimicae carried the steel, and felt no such effects when, in the Craven Season, he raised the ThousandFold in the war against the Soundless.

Braethen looked up, his head swimming with information. In addition to what the text said about the steel itself, he shivered at the mention of the Inimicae. He'd never seen the name written down. Not even in Ogea's texts. He'd heard it spoken, once. Deep one evening when his father and Ogea had been hard at a bottle.

In some ways, it diminished the rest of the passage, giving it a fablelike quality. Back when he'd been a scrivener to his father, it wouldn't have been a source he'd quote when documenting primaries for a text going overland to a college's annals.

As he was thinking it through, a muted noise came from behind the hidden door. This time, Braethen was sure it was no trick in his ears. Someone had descended into the vault of books. He looked back at the entrance, thinking through his options. He considered tucking the book into his cloak and taking it with him—he needed to read and understand this volume. But it would be wrong to steal it. And really, it had answered his fundamental questions already. Though it likely explained other uses of the steel. Uses that would come in handy.

As Braethen struggled with the ethics of stealing something that seemed necessary, he heard several tiny pops, like glass shattering, beyond the door to the secret library chamber. He stood quietly, placed a hand on his sword, and crept toward the entrance. At the wall, he put an ear to the seam of the doorjamb and listened. Slowly, a quiet sound grew into a low roar. Moments later, he heard a crackling and noted the scent of smoke.

He threw open the door and saw the vault of books consumed in flames. He ached for the loss of wisdom burning in the lick and sputter of fire. The blaze climbed the stacks and blackened the walls and ceiling.

The heat became too intense for him to stand in the doorway, and he backed away. If he closed the door, he might wait out the fire and be fine, assuming the smoke didn't seep in and fill the room, suffocating him. His mind raced, trying to latch onto the best course, when he heard footsteps distantly beyond the roar of fire. That's when he put it together.
Pop. Pop.
Someone had tossed glass oil lamps into the bookshelves. The old parchment had been perfect tinder.

Maybe whoever did this isn't trying to kill me at all; maybe this is just vandalism on the past.

It made a disheartening kind of sense. The League wanted to put the past away. And in this vault of books resided legends and writings that represented the kind of folklore the League meant to quash.

This was a violation of everything he'd ever loved, a mistreatment of the values his father had taught him to observe and respect.

Without thinking, he raised the Blade of Seasons and started toward the fire. The heat became suffocating, but he was blind with anger and helplessness … until … he felt again that strange, nearly imperceptible shiver.

Suddenly he was standing at the foot of the stairs in the library vault. Disoriented and nauseous, he fell against the wall. It took him a moment to realize that the flames were gone, though he could still see them in his mind. Then he heard again the sound of the door opening on the library's main floor.

I've remembered this room as it was moments ago.
He spared a quick glance at the Thousand-Fold Steel.

Then he whirled to look up the stairs. Realization bloomed in his mind. Though he didn't know how he'd done it, he'd stepped back in time. Just a few minutes. Just ahead of the vandal's cowardly act. Quietly he stole into the nook where the last turn of the stair came onto the basement floor. And waited.

He remained there, unmoving, until the intrusive sound of secretive footfalls came down the last few stone steps. A cloaked man stepped into the basement carrying four handlamps, each filled to the brim with oil. The intruder deliberately placed three on the last step, and prepared to throw the first into the shelves to his left.

Braethen stepped out and thrust the Blade of Seasons through the man's back, reaching for the lamp the man held, to keep it from crashing to the floor.

A look of awful surprise showed in the vandal's eyes as he crumpled, looking up into his killer's face.

“Courtesy of the Sodality,” Braethen said, his anger still burning inside him.

With his boot, he pushed the man's cloak aside to reveal the emblem of the League. A caustic laugh burst from Braethen's throat. But then he was remembering the vague warning he'd just read about the consequences of using the Thousand-Fold Steel.

Time requires payment.…

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

Pall Stones

The real gearworks of war are families. Not our siege engines. Not our steel. It's arms and legs traded for safety and honor.

—Spoken by Nojel Rroath, the second gearmaster of Ir-Caul, during the Age of Disdain—a court record held in the private library of Thalia Relothian

S
treamers of grey smoke ascended into a clear sky above Ir-Caul. They rose from the forge chimneys of countless blacksmiths. Sutter turned in a full circle, trying to decide which plume to follow. Finding a smithy would be easy enough; finding someone who would talk to him would be trickier. Relothian had given Sutter leave to find proof of his accusations about his court and army.

Sutter got moving, and passed several shops prominently displaying the insignia of the Relothian lion hung from pennants or nailed to exteriors—king's men. He sought a man who shaped iron for the king, but took somewhat less pride in doing so.

A few hours after meridian, he came upon a small forge tucked into a deep alcove of a vacant alley. A crude piece of iron fashioned in the shape of a lion lay fallen in a spray of dirty straw. Sutter wandered in.

The smithy was dark, taking little light from the shadowy lane. A weak lantern, hanging from a rusted nail, burned dimly above a work area where an anvil and bed of coals and bucket of foul water stood like a trinity of low, earthy gods. The tools he saw looked as though they'd been mended many times. And to the side, three forges burned hot. Behind it all, back in deeper shadows, Sutter saw what looked like animal stalls. It made him think this had been a stable before the wiry smith had turned it into a place for iron. Several low carts loaded with ingots made it plain.

“You got coin? Or are you lost?” the smith said, glancing up once at Sutter as he shoveled some ore into a forge.

“I have a few questions—”

“You got coin? Or are you lost?” the thin blacksmith repeated, and grinned to himself.

Sutter put a hand in his pocket. “A little.”

The smith made a noise in his throat as though his suspicions had been confirmed.

“You work for the king,” Sutter commented, and moved just inside the forge work area. He spied a handcart where rods of metal and a stack of ingots had been piled. He also caught a hint of a familiar smell.

“We all work for the king. Are you looking for a piece of metal or not?” The smith turned toward Sutter and leaned over his shovel. “You're not another set of boots, are you?”

“Boots?”

“A soldier, I mean. Never mind, now. I can see you're not a lion.” The man's smoke-dirty face creased with another smile, forming lines dark with soot.

Sutter ignored the observation. “You're not making weapons. And I don't see any farm tools—”

“Do you always say what's obvious?” the smith said, impatience edging his voice.

“How do you heat your forge?” Sutter asked, with some impatience of his own.

The man stood up straight, the way a man does when he's preparing for something.

“Who sent you here?”

Sutter pulled his severed blade from its sheath and held it up in the dimness. “I want to know what steel could do that.”

The smith sauntered up, inspected the Sedagin weapon, and ran a finger down the smooth cut. “I don't sell swords. Just the raw stuff to make 'em.”

It was a lie. Sutter could see it in the other's face. The man might mostly make ingots for other smiths, but he'd tried his hand at weapons. Sutter hadn't come for a new sword, though. He looked over the smith's shoulder into the shadowy depths of the forge. His eyes had adjusted enough now that he could see more clearly the repurposed animal stalls at the back. He looked at the blacksmith, whose large pores stood plugged with black dots. He then nudged past the man and stepped to the rear of the workshop.

The smith followed, coming to stand beside Sutter as he stared into two wide stalls heaping with piles of ore. “What's this?” he asked, pointing at each stall.

“You're a bit dense, aren't you? It's ore.” The other chuckled low.

Sutter pulled a coin from his pocket and threw it on the ground in front of the left stall. “Not like anything I've seen. Where did you get it?”

The smith eyed Sutter closely, then looked down at the silver gleaming dimly near a large pile of black rock. “You could've had that information free. But I won't turn down a donation.” The smith stepped forward, bent down, and picked up the coin. He wiped it and put it on his tongue, testing its authenticity. He then dropped it in a soiled pocket. “It comes down the Sotol River. It's hard ore. Harder than anything I've ever worked with. We calls this palontite. It's surely what cut your blade in two. You been fighting with lions?” He picked up a bit of palontite and tossed it to Sutter.

Sutter caught it. “Down the river from where?”

“The Pall,” the smith said with matter-of-factness. “No place else I know to get rock like that. Hard as every hell to smelt down, too.”

Looking around again, Sutter couldn't see or smell any charcoal or coke—things he'd learned about in Master Geddy's forge. “How do you do it?”

“Ah, that's the trick of it. Meet import number two.” The smith picked up a large piece of rock from the second stall. He handed it to Sutter. “Call it chohalis. Burns hotter than coal,” he explained. “Gets at the princely stuff inside that Pall rock.”

Sutter turned the dark ore over in his hands. “Where's
this
come from?”

“Same place,” the smith said. “Comes in loads on flat barges down the great river. One to burn the other. Works out fine. Takes several passes through the fires to burn it down to weapon steel. You'd think they'd pay me more for it, wouldn't you?” The man's ironic grin showed it wasn't a real question.

“You have miners in the Pall quarrying this for you?”

The smith became suspiciously dumb. A vacant expression told Sutter that he hadn't enough coin to buy this answer. He looked down at the rocks in his hands, turning them over several times. As he handled them close to one another, they drew more quickly together, almost like lodestones.

He looked up at the smith. “What just happened here?”

“Not to worry,” the man said. “When we smelt down the palontite, we refine that magnetic nuisance right out.”

On instinct Sutter asked, “When did your last load arrive?”

The seemingly harmless question took the smith by surprise, and he blurted, “Six days ago.”

Several conversations began to connect in Sutter's mind. He rushed to the opening of the man's nearest forge. He leaned in, waving smoke from the burning Pall ore into his face, taking deep whiffs, and nodded—he knew this smell.

He shot an angry look back at the smith, whose eyes showed shame. Then Sutter raced out into the Ir-Caul streets, burdened with new secrets. He had much to tell the king.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

The College of Physics

Summary: A glass rod is formed, cut in two, and one half walked to the far side of the room. The first half is rubbed with silk. Near the second half a piece of parchment is scraped with a knife, raising paper chaff into the air which is immediately drawn to the second half of the glass rod.

—From Tahn Junell's notes—a possible demonstration in his argument with the College of Physics, should it be needed

F
rom beyond its outer wall, the College of Physics discourse theater sounded like a beehive. Tahn might have guessed that everyone in Aubade Grove had packed into the hall to hear the first argument of Succession, except that was a physical impossibility. He stood with Rithy in the shadows of dusk, each of them holding a stack of books and carrying satchels with various items. They were waiting for Polaema to arrive so they could go in.

“You realize that this is the easy one,” Rithy commented.

“I thought the first one was the hardest.” He gave her a teasing grin.

“In some ways, yes.” She poked his chest. “Getting over the hump of the first one is a chore. But statistically, the chances of passing each successive college will diminish by a factor of about six hundred.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Algorithm. There's the simple percentage of the College of Astronomy versus whomever it's up against at the moment. Then, really, you have Astronomy versus the rest of the colleges, one in five. You'd be lucky if that were the end of it.”