Trial of Intentions (98 page)

Roth looked back at Tuelin, the oldest of his advisors. “You're saying that our actions could bring an end to the League.”

“Public outcry, the might of armies beyond Van Steward's, they could all force a conflict we can't sustain. Yes, Your Leadership, the League itself hangs in the balance.” He repeated, “We must tread lightly.”

No one spoke for some time. Then Losol strode to the center of the makeshift circle in which they sat. “Roth,” he said, looking directly at him. Roth made a note of the familiarity his newest advisor assumed. He would later correct him. “I don't disagree that our next actions will have lasting consequences. But those actions should be decisive. We shouldn't have gathered Sheason to die this morning if we didn't intend to finish that work tonight.”

Roth smiled. His leader of war might be rough—and need to better understand his place—but he shared much of Roth's spirit.

“Take a seat,” Roth said, pointing for Losol to rejoin the others.

Losol's brows rose, but he complied. Then Roth stepped into the ring of his closest confidants, so he could pace. “I have ordered the bodies disposed of,” he began.

“But we should leave them. They will discourage others—”

“Losol,” Roth cut in. “It's decided. But I also agree that we mustn't lose our conviction. The right choice requires boldness once it is made. We have a few powerful detractors who may yet complicate things for us. We'll see to them.”

Roth then strode to Losol and reached down, drawing the man's sword from its sheath. He watched a look of worry and resentment cross the war leader's face.
Good,
he thought,
we will strike the proper balance yet, Losol.
Once he had the sword fully in hand, Roth held the blade straight out from his body, twisting it in the lamplight.

“But we must do so carefully. These aren't ordinary men who oppose us.” Roth smiled again, coming to the second part of his plan. “Tuelin, Losol, have you validated the existence of more of these Talendraal weapons?”

Roth listened as first Tuelin then Losol spoke of their unsuccessful efforts to locate any more of the apocryphal armaments known only to archivists and historians. He'd learned of the Talendraal from Tuelin when Roth had first conceived the Civilization Order. Opposing the Sheason would require more than a political document. And considerable League resources had been committed to determining if the Talendraal were anything more than an author's tale, and then following ciphers to try and recover the fabled weapons.

Over more than a decade, they'd succeeded only once. Roth stared at the culmination of that success as he turned it back and forth in his hand, catching light in the blade's edges. A weapon crafted deep inside the Bourne, as the histories told, to repel the effects of a Sheason's rendering of Will. Their search would continue. Such weapons would suit Roth's more far-reaching plans. But for a few hours, he needed to get out of his offices. He needed to see the streets where the people were.

*   *   *

Roth walked the Recityv working quarter. Their worst slum. His lieutenants assumed it was a political maneuver, to put him close to the people he purported to serve. He didn't bother to correct them. He'd long since learned that changing someone's opinion was usually a waste of energy. The truth was, he liked coming here. He liked strolling through the bars and hostels and workhouses of the cathedral district. It lit new fire in his belly for the League and its creed. He could help these people. He knew he could.

The Cathedral Quarter apparently hadn't been a place of fighting that day. So there were no body removal operations taking place. Part of him was glad of that. But it was still rather desolate. The music and activity that usually thronged here was softer tonight by half.

Citizens nodded in his direction. He held no delusion that they did so from anything but a baseless fear. He knew the art of pandering, of quick glances to evaluate pecking order: threat, rube, or competition. He'd once strolled the wharf slums in the city of his birth. A place like the Cathedral Quarter. He was at home.

He ducked into the cool environs of a local tavern, the Hemlock. This liquor hole doubled as a gambling pit. A rare place in this district for its lack of music. The bar had been situated against the back wall, putting everything in line-of-sight for the drink tenders. Tables had been inscribed with various patterns denoting games of chance. Late as it was, the Hemlock was light with patrons. Stalwart gamblers were in their routine chairs. A few men with billowy shirts dealt placards or gathered dice or spun wheels. Gambling had been provisioned as a taxable entertainment. Roth knew men would gamble anyway, were he to strictly outlaw it. This way, those who ran a profitable parlor sent seventy percent to League coffers. The arrangement strengthened the League and kept seedy men from profiteering.

Roth sauntered to the bar at the rear of the Hemlock. “So'Dell wine in a tankard,” he told the barkeep. He had no palate for ale or hard liquor, but wouldn't use a glass in a place like this.

With the mug in hand, he turned to survey the drinkers and chancers and the few women working the room for men with money.

Eventually, he would find a way to shut this down, too. But he reminded himself that things happen in due course. It was by degrees that a screw is turned and a knot tightened. His real hope was that the gradual strengthening of trade and commerce would naturally change the balance of activities in a place like the Hemlock.

Give men real work for real coin, and they lose the need to hope on a roll of dice. Let a woman decide for herself if her flower can be bought, and most will choose another way, many to be honest wives and raise honest sons.

As he relaxed into his drink, a man brushed his arm with a strange familiarity. “You're looking well, my boy.”

Roth turned, not perturbed by the prospect of a little bar banter. He nearly dropped his tankard when he looked into the eyes of Malen Staned. His father.

“What in hells are you doing here?” he asked, losing his composure.

“Released from debtor's prison. You remember. Got rather deep into it trying to escape the wharf in Wanship.” The old man winked.

“What I remember…” Roth motioned to his highest in command in this detachment. With the aid of his fellows, the leagueman cleared the Hemlock entirely, even the barkeep scampering out without a protest. “What I remember is you selling me to pay a gambling marker. I'm fortunate I wound up in the service of a leagueman.”

“You're all upside down. No one sold you.” His father showed him a patient smile.

Roth reached behind the bar and took the So'Dell wine bottle. He poured a glass and pushed it over to his father.

“No, son,” his da said, and pushed it back. The man proceeded to pour a cup of water from a decanter and take a long drink. “Love water that doesn't taste stale.”

“You say I wasn't sold?” Roth pressed. “I remember you making a deal—”

“No one tried to sell you, Roth.” His father shook his head, a hint of regret in his face. “I was going to prison, remember, after trying to turn your mother's nice things into some coin.” Malen's gaze seemed far away. “I hated doing that. We just had no other way.”

“But you lost them, didn't you?” In his mind's eye, Roth could see his mother's nice things even now.

“I was cheated, and nearly did a fool thing to get even. Nearly stole something that didn't belong to me.” His father turned to face Roth straight. “But I staightened up before doing that crime. Turns out, though, the city guard was going to pin it on me anyway. They were in on the theft. All I did was a quick negotiation to get you placed with the League.”

“In payment for being let off,” Roth finished.

“Didn't turn out that way, did it?” the man said. “I wound up in prison anyway. But you…” He looked Roth up and down. “I was right about the chance the League would give you, wasn't I?”

Roth smiled at that. “Yes, Da. You were right.” Then he looked at his father's shabby clothes and scraggly beard. “If you've come expecting money … I won't put coin in your pocket just to see it gambled away.” He nodded toward the empty tables of chance.

“I see,” the old man said, a disappointed look in his eyes. “Kind of forgotten how hard it was for me to take your mother's nice things to the river in the first place, haven't you? Or that you begged me to teach you the art of chance so you could put it to use on the wharf, running your rook and flimflam cheats.”

“And you said no,” Roth said, smiling at the memory.

His father smiled, too. Seeing the man again … it made Roth's heart thump in his chest. Much of the code he expected his men to live by had been born from the memory of this man.

His father took another drink from his cup. “The girl … she came back to Wanship.”

Roth nearly dropped his tankard. There was no ambiguity in his mind who the old man meant. Leona. The dockside prostitute his father had given mash soup to. The first—the only—girl Roth had ever loved.

He didn't believe in fate. Those were outmoded ways of thinking. But he
had
always believed he and Leona would be married. Even now he could imagine the feel of her, the sweet lilac scent of her hair.

The former regent had obviously secreted Leona and her family away to start their lives afresh. Another beginning for her. Now here stood a man with several days of road stink on him, fresh from debtor's prison, telling him she'd returned to the city of her birth. Where her whoring had begun.

Perhaps I've been too hasty in my opinion of fate.

“Yes,” his father continued. “She and I had a very nice chat not long ago over a half-bad lamb pie. Told me some of your mischief, she did.” The man's smile fell off, then. He fixed Roth in the firm stare of the man he'd once been. A man Roth respected. A man who'd swabbed decks for honest pay, left the gambling tables alone, and honored the memory of Roth's mother. A man who'd fed broth to a door-to-door child-whore named Leona, rather than take her to bed.

“What did she say?” Roth asked, holding his father's hard stare.

“I hear about the poisoning of children. The murder of dissenters. The burning of churches. The execution of men and women who only want to serve.…” The old man's cheeks sunk with sorrow. “Tell me these are lies, Roth. Tell me she's a silly woman and not to be believed.”

Roth's silence proved answer enough.

“You're a coward, boy. A shame. You stand with the ability to extend a hand, and you ball that hand up and knock the rest down. If I were a younger man…”

Roth endured the tongue-lashing. “I don't think it's fair for you to say these things without knowing the whole story.” He gestured to a table for them to sit. A placard table. Like the one where his father had gambled away his mother's nice things.

“We used to play,” his father said, shuffling the plaques.

“Let's have us a game,” Roth invited. “Coin a hand.”

Malen Staned gave him a long look, his mouth finally showing a tired smile. “How about we play for pride, son. For the skill of it. Like when you were a boy.”

Before Roth could argue, the old man had dealt out three plaques to each of them. It was as he watched the man deal that the hard years of his father's life became most apparent—in his hands. Those hands hadn't begun to tremble yet, as happens to the aged. But they looked used, tired—knobby joints filled with the ache of latter years—moving more slowly, not bending quite so easily.

“Turn,” his father said.

It was the first game his father had ever taught him. Simple-minded. High plaque wins. No strategy. Pure better's chance. Extremely hard to calculate odds on it, too. But the simplicity and luck carried a meaning he imagined his father meant to bludgeon him with. He'd go along. Because they both knew how the game would end. How it always ended. They each laid their first plaque face up. Malen's crow beat Roth's sparrow.

“Again,” the old man said.

This time, Roth's hawk beat his father's arbor jay.

“Again,” his father said, a strange light now in his eyes. “And this for all.”

They turned their plaques, each showing a black mountain shrike. They began to laugh together. They'd both cheated, each turning the highest plaque in a deck. It was their way of getting comfortable again.

When the laughter subsided, they studied each other.

“I'm not going anywhere,” his father said. “I promised I'd come back to you. And so I have.”

“Tell me what else Leona said,” Roth replied. “And I'll tell you of all the good that's come of your quick thinking to get me placed in a League home.”

 

CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

Considerations

A good leader considers the most objectionable response when no one else will.

—The second entry in the private journal of the Randeur office—a thin volume added to by every Randeur and handed down to each successor—this from Randeur Sorbena Gernelle

I
n the westernmost room of the ninth floor of the Vault of Story, Thaelon sat by a corner window in the failing light of day. Word had come from the Maesteri, who'd delivered a few letters by Telling. He stared into the wood grain of the table beneath his hands and mourned the loss of Sheason assassinated a world away in the streets of Recityv. He'd sent them there. Some to live among the people and help where they could. And recently, an envoy to Ascendant Staned. An attempt at diplomacy, to reverse the crippling Civilization Order.

Dear silent gods.
Thaelon had killed them. Killed his little girl. Not by his own design, but the blood of their deaths was on his hands just the same. Hands he now turned over and over in the warm sunlight slanting through the window, as though he might discover a way to use them to change this black news.