by Kim Wedlock
"Would you like me to send word to her sister?" Kienza asked delicately, but Rathen replied with a curt shake of his head and a poison to his voice that forbade any further words. It was their fault she had died, and their duty to inform the bereaved and face the blame they were due.
He reached his hand out towards Aria, who came to his side at once and clung graspingly to his leg. Her tears began again at her father's touch, but no one noticed. Shock and grief shrouded them each in a numb cloud.
Chapter 59
He couldn't grasp how, nor indeed why his magic had waited until the situation was done before asserting itself, but the sprawling and ragged beech and chestnut trees Salus tore through were suddenly not those of Greentop. He had no capacity to think on it, and he wasn't even sure he was grateful. But it was done, and at least it wasn't his accursed office. He needed to move, to storm out his rage, and Blackbrush was more than fit for purpose. None moving through those bleak, chilling woods would dare to get in his way, and doing so now, he was certain, would be fatal. It was almost a shame that none of those vile, opportunistic, non-human wretches dwelt within these woods.
A tree limb broken in a recent storm hung down in his way. He ripped it off and cast it aside without breaking his gait.
Once again, once again, he had let himself be taken for a fool! Professionalism dictated he prepare for the possibility of a trap, but when it was clear they weren't heading into the ruin after all, he'd panicked and reacted too quickly. He'd fallen for the bait. And he had run. He had run. He shouldn't have had to, he could have taken Koraaz out right then and there! But he hadn't, because he'd exhausted himself like some over-eager novice! That fact angered him just as much as the lost opportunity.
Koraaz had gotten away, and what damage they had done was negligible. Erran had only managed to take out the brainless duelist who'd gotten herself wrapped up in their games with too little sense to realise they were trouble. He resented that she'd been the one to fall, ultimately one of the most innocent among them; she had no part in their plan - but she had stood right beside them to oppose him all the same. And as regrettable as her death was, it served a purpose. The rest of them would be shaken. They would re-evaluate their position, and it would, at the very least, slow them down.
He lashed out against another unoffending branch, and ignored the streaks of blood the bark left across his palms.
He never thought he'd have to fight to convince his own people to let him protect them.
But it wasn't just rogue civilians, was it? No, no it wasn't just rogue civilians at all. Even the Crown was muddying the water, twisting things, allowing their own country to fall into war, allowing people to die, all so they could steal the throne of another! Why?! Doana had nothing that Turunda needed! Turunda's army rivalled theirs, they had no exceptional farmland, no valuable minerals, no wealth or strategic value - just wet, mountainous forests and oversized cats! And yet the Crown felt compelled to pursue it all while keeping the whole matter a secret, which could only mean that there was so much more going on than it seemed. But none of his people had found anything on it. Nothing. They were keeping their cards much too close, and he had no way of knowing how close they were to reaching their goal. It could already be too late.
Malson had suspected something long ago, but he'd never alluded to anything specific - and then, out of the blue, he'd clammed up and all mention of the matter vanished. And no one had been able to find anything on him, either - nothing but the fact that, from time to time, he donned a large, surreptitious cloak and ventured off into the trade district, which was also the only time he ever happened to lose his tail. Which meant that Malson knew he was being followed, and only took action to shake them off when he needed to. When it was most crucial that they be right behind him. That said nothing good about the tails, but it did at least confirm that he was up to something and being very careful about it. Perhaps even deliberately waiting for distractions to pull his surveillance spells away. Did that mean he knew about them? Or was it just chance that, in this time of nation-wide upheaval, there was always something worse happening, every single time?
He kicked at a frozen patch of woodruff. The stems made a satisfying snap.
All of them were working against him. Every single one of them. And now the Crown was ordering him to 'earn' their funding, shipping his people out to ridiculous places to keep them occupied and diverted, and then, no doubt, they would use that as an excuse to claim dereliction of duty and dissolve the Arana completely! It was sabotage, and Turunda - his sworn charge - was going to pay the price for it--
...Unless he stopped it. Unless he stepped in. Desperate times, desperate measures, and if his people could find no secrets within that house of mirrors, they were buried too deeply. It had happened before, centuries ago, under King Arish, and it had plunged Turunda into a costly and bloody civil war. He'd deliberately dug the records out of the archives a fortnight ago and compared the symptoms. Too much matched. But this time, the Arana stood in its way - and he was not about to let it happen again.
...But what if it was already too late?
The trees thinned out and the picturesque gardens of Arana House opened before him. He was in no mood to seek out the concealed tunnels. He cut across the grass and stormed in through the terrace doors instead. Servants, employed for appearance's sake, looked up in startlement, then recovered themselves and averted their eyes as they'd learned to do from others around them, and he proceeded unmolested up the stairs, a haze of fury and self-rebuke serrating his thoughts. It had been the perfect opportunity. Trap or not, the perfect opportunity. And it was his fault it had slipped through his fingers.
"Where have you been?!"
His eyes snapped up from the landing. Malson. At the top of the east wing's flight, glowering down upon him. Imperial. Undeserved superiority. Entitlement. Nothing more. Here at the bidding of his gilded masters while who knew what worked away in the background. A puppet who had learned to pull but a few of his own strings.
Loathe. A threat. A man who dared the audacity of thinking he could hide his secrets within these walls. If he wasn't working with the Crown, he was working against them. Against him. Against Turunda.
A traitor.
There was no chance for alarm to flicker through the nobleman's eyes.
Salus closed the distance in an instant. His slender knife flashed. His left hand clasped firmly over the old man's mouth, and the blade plunged up through his chin with soundless precision. Youthful eyes screamed with desperate confusion. All trace of dominance evaporated in a single, sputtering heartbeat.
Slowly, warm lifeblood trickled and dampened his hand, and a deep-seated weight lifted like a feather from his mind. A smile spread across Salus's lips, malicious and ecstatic.
He withdrew his hold from his mouth. Blood lined Malson's lips; bubbles formed and burst as he tried to shape a question, but all that rasped out was a sickening, doomed gurgle. Salus ripped the knife free and stepped back as the Crown's liaison dropped to the floor with a heavy, satisfying thump.
His heart soared. Freedom.
But its flight clouded just as quickly as his eyes lifted to Teagan, standing several paces down the hall, staring at the dignitary lying lifeless between them. His expression was as empty as always, but an instinctive defence took a hammer to Salus's triumph and set a fresh strain of irritation crawling across his skin.
Beneath the dense silence of the foyer, he stepped over the body and the blood-sodden rug without sparing it another glance, and strode on, tall and powerful. The amateur's plots were stymied, and his secrets would be broken.
He didn't pause as they levelled, and drew his voice in cold. "We'll have our proof soon enough."
By sundown the following day, they did.
No one had ever seen a rage like it. A quiet rage, chillingly still, while a fire blazed in Salus's eyes and hitched his lip, betraying the cataclysmic fury corroding his thoughts inside his skull.
He'd st
ood behind the gate in silence while the breakers worked over Malson's coachman and two footmen, but not one had yielded a thing. Fortunately the Arana were capable of looking further than the end of their nose, but what they'd ultimately uncovered in a locked and hidden drawer in the desk of Malson's home study had shocked and insulted him deeper than he cared to reveal: notes written in code - a crude code that had been cracked within half an hour by comparing the recurring patterns even without a key - and vague, but not vague enough. As though he thought it would be enough to addle them.
And yet, even so, they'd doubted what the amateur had tried to hide, until a flicker of panic in the phidipan's eyes had confirmed the truth, and his attempt to flee from arrest sealed it.
A part of Salus was pleased, if frustrated, by the fact that David hadn't talked. He'd managed to withstand even Nolan's exquisite efforts as lead breaker, and that was no small thing, especially for a fresh promotion, and he'd died with his lips sealed. He was almost proud. And his silence was no bother, because three other names had been uncovered alongside his. While Oliver, the mage who had rejected promotion, was in no state to either plot nor answer questions, the two remaining traitors, phaeacians discarded to far-flung posts, were recalled, and between them were far more obliging.
Malson had indeed been working under ulterior motives, striving for a higher seat among the royal council, and had recruited the four of them to help him with promises of a better country. In their loyalty to Turunda, they'd believed him.
Which had been a lie. But while Annette had died before she'd hinted at the real truth, young Jora had not. At the edge of death he gave only a single, vague answer, but in his final moments seemed to find perverse enjoyment in the choler it set within the keliceran.
Salus had killed him himself.
He stood now, looking at the body tied to the old, torment-stained rack, head hanging forwards, bruised and bloodied face hidden by scraggly hair. But he could still see a trace of that defiant smile.
His own lips dipped further into their grimace, and he tossed the knife to the ground beside the steel contraption. He'd spoken to unnerve him, that was the sole reason he'd told him anything at all. And that meant that there were more involved than just those mentioned in the notes, otherwise who would there be to reap the benefits of that discourage and doubt? And he had no way of knowing who.
But all had been phidipan or lower, and if he couldn't weed out the traitors, he could harden the loyalty of the rest...
But there was one other glaring matter that needed seeing to first.
Nolan and the guard were quick to move aside as he stormed from the cell without a word, and the sound of fast, thundering footsteps boomed across the rounded stone walls in his wake. Ascending into the house, no one dared let themselves fall into his sight.
Teagan rose from behind the desk as he surged into the office, and watched in dismay as he began immediately rifling through the files in one of the grand bookcases. "Another?"
"No," Salus replied quietly, his voice low and coarse, "not just 'another', not 'another' at all." He moved further along the shelves, at first stuffing the folders back in place, then laying them impatiently along the top of others before discarding order completely, muttering furiously beneath his breath.
Concern coaxed Teagan slowly around the desk. "What is it?"
"Koraaz. He has help."
"From who?"
"One of us."
Teagan's eye widened in a shock that not even portian training could suppress. "What?"
"He has help. From one of us." He threw a handful of folders to the already work-loaded sofa beside the bookcase. "We pulled a tag number from Jora before he died, but it could have been false. Something to light a fire, to incite mistrust amongst us all."
"Then he's lying?"
"No," he snarled, moving immediately to the next shelf up, "no he's not lying. A phidipan is helping him. It's the only way to explain how he's managed to stay ahead of us, and how he always loses tails so efficiently... This is my fault. I've surrounded myself with masters of deceit without assuring maximum loyalty..."
"But why would--"
"Because Malson got to them all, Teagan! He did this! I don't know what he's promised them, but they're on his side, and whatever he was plotting, Koraaz was a part of it! And Koraaz is still out there!"
"Why would Malson turn against the Crown?"
"Did he turn against the Crown?! The king himself is up to no good, I'm certain of that!" Suddenly the wild look in his eyes sharpened and focused, and they flicked ominously onto him. "Has a report come in from Kyrie yet?"
"Yes. Both were found dead near the Grey River. Geographical hazards, as predicted, nothing else..."
His eyes narrowed. "And?"
"And a report came in from Hower. Erran's body has been found. He was barely recognisable."
An ugly string of curses accompanied the files he ripped violently out from the shelves. "How many of Malson's actions were sanctioned by the king?!"
"The king? Why would they be? He was suspicious of the Crown, himself."
"Or was he just trying to bond with me? Lend himself some credence by taking my side occasionally? He wasn't a mindless official, but, curse it all, I've not been able to work out why he would even toy with the idea of defecting! He must have had orders, it's the only explanation..."
"Then Koraaz is working with the Crown, too?"
His blue eyes darkened. Once again, wildness gave way to quick and focused thought. "No. He has other motives. He's as much a pawn as Malson was, but that doesn't make him any less of a threat. Both sides are still undermining Turunda's safety. And its honour.
"The king wants the Arana suspended - or perhaps me removed from command - and he's starting by reducing our numbers. Why else order us to remote, dangerous and tactless places? And if he believed that Malson had picked a few things up from the Arana in his decades of service, he probably thought that Malson would be capable of circumventing my position and getting to the others, realigning them to himself, to the Crown and to the king. And Malson had believed it... But how far his success goes is in our hands. We can cripple it right here. Before Turunda can fall."
'Before everything I've given my whole being for can turn to dust...'
Teagan observed his frenzied search carefully. "What do you propose?"
"We secure their loyalty."
"...I...see... But phidipans make up fifty six percent of the Arana. At best, thirty percent of them will take to the conditioning. It doesn't seem--"
"Then we get rid of the rest of them. They've proven time and again that they can't be trusted! And this is the final straw! I want them gone - away from Koraaz and away from here, with nothing to learn and nothing to report, to anyone. And those who already know too much...we lock away."
"We will not have the room to imprison them all. And we risk thinning our numbers to the point of vulnerability."
"...Which is exactly what the Crown wants..." Again Salus pondered. He abandoned the bookshelves and his scouring of folders' numbers and began to pace. The glint forming in his eye was unsettling. "No, they won't all take to the training, but success rates will drastically improve and loyalty will no longer be a question. It's worth the risk."
"You wish to train all of them?"
"...Most of them. Those we can trust. The rest, we lock away. Or frame and leave the city guards to deal with. Or..." His stride paused, but the thought was left unspoken. Another was quick to stampede in and spur him towards the window. "And the military implants - there's no knowing who among those are involved..."
"We can't remove them, we'll be blind--"
"We'll handle it. Give them one final message, disinformation; make them believe there are changes happening, then abandon them." Salus leaned against the windowsill. He stared out over the city, wearied by the unrelenting snow but going about its business without complaint, and his eyes drew towards the north. The palace was out of sight, but clear as day
in his mind's eye. "But even with phidipans handled, the king remains a threat," he mumbled pensively. "We need answers...and I'm not leaving it to anyone else. I'll handle it myself. And plant one of our best portians onto the council to find out just how deep the conspiracy goes. The Crown is no stranger to plots or lies."
"...And what of this phidipan?"
His eyes slid from the city to the bookcase. "...I can make it work for us..." He strode back towards it and returned the operative profiles he'd strewn across the floor. "It needs thought. I have the number. I'll find who it is, and a way to turn it to our advantage. But for now, we leave it alone. We have other things to take care of." He took then to his desk, pushed aside the papers Teagan had been tending to in his stead, and began scrawling over fresh sheets, drafting recall missives and plans to enforce the transition with minimal disruption to the Arana's work.
Teagan watched him from beneath a storm cloud of apprehension, and stood by as the matter moved ahead, unable to find his voice to speak a word of protest or reason even as his heart screamed against the morality of an army of mindless assassins.
That awareness only added to the fright he knew he shouldn't have been capable of feeling.
Chapter 60
The deep howl of wind hummed through Turunda's forests like a monastic chant. Trees bowed in deference, stiff old limbs creaked with the strain, and what frosted leaves that had yet to snap off seemed to tinkle in ceaseless exuberance.
Clouds hung low above their frozen crowns, racing along on the frigid currents. No matter how far one travelled, no edge showed itself nor revealed a hint of the azure sky beyond. The world had been plunged into darkness; dim mornings crawled into dark afternoons, merging seamlessly into night until the next dawn arrived without announcement. Hours blended, the days became inseparable. The single assurance to the continued passage of time was the coming and going of snowfall.
