“If Paloran is a traitor, then we can arrest him. He’s here in the city; his house guards would be no match for the Tide.”
“It is not as simple as that. He is well-connected, his wealth and influence deeper than perhaps any other noble in the kingdom. He has a stranglehold on all the iron of the Claws. I can’t just remove him. If his people went wholeheartedly over to the Vengeance, if his allies turned on us, we would have to gut half the kingdom before we could regain control. For us, it would be nothing but an inconvenience, but thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, would die, and our economy would be in ruins.”
“So we just let him continue to support the Vengeance?” I ask incredulously.
“Of course not. But we need evidence if we want to arrest him without causing an uproar. We need proof. I think you can help me with this.”
“Father, what happened to Lady Calladan?” I ask abruptly. The question has been burning through me for weeks. He seems taken aback by the sudden question, and his expression doesn’t turn to anger or surprise, but sadness.
“She asked to be with her husband,” he says somberly. “I told her she could return as the Earless of Firdana and rule in her husband’s stead, that she was blameless for her husband’s treason. She refused to go. She demanded she be placed in the same cell.”
I study him as he speaks. He doesn’t stare at me, as he had the Earless of Firdana. He blinks, he rubs a hand over his face, he sighs. The tell I received from Calladan is nowhere to be found. Is he telling the truth? Was I mistaken that day in the High Court? Is Calladan the liar?
Father reaches out and draws me to his side, his body solid and strong. I feel safe, despite everything. Love radiates through his quiet embrace. This man is my father. How did I ever trust a traitor over my own father? How could I have believed a word he said after that nonsense about the Vengeance? I think about Lady Calladan in that dark and lightless cell and try to feel sorry for her.
“What can I do?” I ask.
“That Hoiran is guilty is beyond question. There were too many witnesses who corroborated that he and Markis were in constant correspondence, that they had business dealings far tighter than an earl from a different dukedom should. Several spoke of shipments of iron gone ‘missing,’ redirected to the Vengeance and his followers. Despite that, we need proof. Hoiran throws a massive banquet for the celebration of Summer’s Dawning. I want you to go and investigate.”
“What could I possibly find at a party? What am I supposed to do, ask him directly?”
“No, daughter,” Father chides, squeezing my shoulder. “I expect you to be creative. Solve the problem. How will you get time uninterrupted with the Duke’s personal effects? Your reputation with the nobility remains sterling, especially after discovering Markis meeting with the Vengeance himself. I haven’t been able to get anyone close to his estate.”
“Even members of the Deep?” I ask. Rather than showing any surprise, Father smiles broadly.
“I don’t know if you will be able to find anything in writing that shows Hoiran’s guilt,” he answers as if I haven’t spoken. “But his guilt is without question. So we may also need to… manufacture some evidence of our own.”
He hands me an envelope heavy with parchment.
“Perhaps, if you’re successful, we can talk more about the Deep when you return.”
A servant bustles out of a stairwell ahead down the hall, interrupting my mindless walk. He doesn’t glance left or right, but heads off with a purpose. For a blessed moment, the hall is empty. I can’t see any guards, and the corridors are quiet.
Now, a voice whispers in my mind.
I dart up the stairs, moving on the balls of my feet. I brace myself to run into someone, anyone, but the passages stay blissfully empty. Either the chase has concluded or it’s restricted completely to the first floor, for I pass unbothered. It isn’t difficult to find Paloran’s suite of rooms; I simply have to follow the opulence. The Duke’s rooms themselves are so lavish in their luxury I have to be quietly impressed. The man certainly understands what he wants from life.
A desk stands at the far end of the room, and I hurry over to look through Paloran’s personal correspondence. Certainly, if he’s a traitor, something will be here. I need proof of his guilt, because I have no desire to use the documents strapped to the inside of my thigh.
“You don’t have much time.”
My instincts react even as my mind registers the words, the glass slivers woven into my dress leaping forth as I spin towards an unoccupied portion of the room. Or so I believed. Teldaran Hollenzar, or whoever he is, sits in a dumbwaiter of some sort. His hair is disheveled, his servant’s uniform askew, but it can be no one else.
“Who are you, imposter?” I demand, scowling.
“Men will be here soon, looking for me. They know I’ve come up this hoist. You have seconds at best.”
My mind barely registers the words, instead consumed by the dull roar of anger his sweating face ignites in my stomach. This boy is the reason Torlas deceived me, the reason I have to doubt my best friend. Whoever he is, I’m damn well ready for answers.
“Perhaps I’ll just join the hunt, and we can find out who you are and what you know…”
Just as I direct the blades of glass to hurtle through the air towards him, he disappears. Like a magician revealing his trick, the boy is there one instant and gone the next. I blink, the speeding ropes the only sign of how he possibly could have vanished so suddenly. He’s insane. What in the Creator’s name possessed him to let go like that? A resounding crash echoes up the thin shaft, and I wince. If he’s not dead, he’s close.
The seconds I stand dumbfounded prove costly. Guards pound up the stairs. I turn back to the Duke’s letters quickly, examining them as closely as I dare. All generic, all filled with platitudes and little else, nothing of note, nothing incriminating, notes between friends and business associates. The sounds of footfalls grow closer. I have to make a choice.
The packet of incriminating evidence rests in my hands. Is he truly guilty? The door slams open. I drop the letter amongst the others and storm towards the guards, who look terrified to see their princess angrily stomping through their master’s apartments.
“I was tracking the dust on his clothes,” I lie angrily. “He is back on the first floor, injured, crippled, I’m not sure, but we have to hurry. You, stay here and guard the Duke’s personal quarters. The rest of you, with me.”
I lead the charge back down the stairs. I didn’t find anything. Creator, I barely tried. But at least Paloran will pay for his treachery.
He deserved it.
He deserved it.
The litany keeps me walking as guilt trails along behind me like a leaden weight.
***
Torlas waits for me on the street. I’m tempted to tell him to go to hell, but his damnable beaten dog routine is strangely arresting. The carriage waits for us both, but I walk past, knowing he’ll follow. He orders the driver on and hurries to catch up. Part of me knows I should be more cautious, that my enemies would gladly take an unguarded opportunity to send my power back into the world. But I’m too angry to care.
“I’d like to have the opportunity to explain, completely, without interruption. If you still feel as you do when I’m finished, then at least we will understand each other,” Torlas says, glancing at me sidelong. I don’t respond, but merely continue to walk.
“His name is Jace, and he is a ward of the Historian,” he begins. I frown. Torlas speaks as if I should understand who that is, but I’ve never heard of the man. He seems to catch on to my confusion. “He’s an elder statesman who does scribing for most of the noble houses in the city and beyond. They call him the Historian because he’s always talking about compiling the true history of the world. The task is beyond him, as it is beyond anyone, but he still claims to be making the attempt. Honestly, if it was anyone but Reknor, I’d laugh in his face, but the man is sharp. Everyone who speaks with him feels out of their
depth, including my father.”
The former Duke Graevo’s likeness wavers into memory, his strong jaw, his hearty laugh, his bombastic attitude towards life. I smile to think of that man ever being out of his depth. No one celebrated on the day of his death. Had he not been traveling so far south, Uncle could have saved his life, but the sickness claimed him too quickly for any aid to reach him.
“Regardless, I met Jace under unusual circumstances. I might have hit him with a chair during a brawl at a coffee shop, which sounds absurd when I say it out loud, but… blast it. How do you describe friendship? He talks to me like I’m a person. I am a man with no peers, aside from the other seven dukes, and each desires my position far more than my companionship. Jace laughs, Iliana. By the Creator he laughs. We do things, not because we have to, not caring about what it looks like, but just because we want to. It’s so… liberating. I’ve never enjoyed life so much as with him. You and I both know the king wants him for more than just crashing the party. That look the king gave him at the Ball... I fear for him,” Torlas says, looking at me fully for the first time. I stop in the middle of the street to face him. “He’s my friend, Iliana, the only one I can claim aside from you. I would protect him with my life. I never wanted to deceive you.”
His words strike me like knives. What can a woman with no peer do for friendship? It’s easy to desire power; to wish for the wealth and benefits of the nobility. But the lofty heights of power are lonely. This friendship… I can’t understand. I don’t know what it’s like. How can I? How could I even find someone? Torlas is the closest thing to friendship I possess, but we never get to just… live. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. A kernel of jealousy ignites in my chest, ugly and black. I struggle to push it aside.
“You should never have lied to me,” I say, but there isn’t any venom in it.
“I won’t,” he says simply.
“Don’t,” I try to say, but my voice breaks.
“Iliana…” he says, stepping close.
My heart twists at the pain in his voice, an echo to the anguish in my heart.
When his hand comes up to my cheek, I lean into the touch, so foreign, so strange. It feels like the only contact I’ve had with anyone in the past few years has been violent. His hand is warm and gentle. His eyes meet mine, and the Islander’s words echo through the quiet recesses in my mind.
Love like that is rare.
As he leans in, fear claws at my belly, but it finds no purchase. Instead, my blood rises to meet him, my face tilting up and to the side, my heart taut and quivering. The first touch of our lips is feather-light, the mere brushing of one hopeful soul against another. He presses closer, and my fingers wind into his hair, drawing his face to mine, claiming his lips as my own. His arm slips around my waist, his lips parting, our breath intermingled.
I pull away, my hands coming to rest on either side of his face, my erratic breath matching the erratic beat of my heart. His eyes are shining, a combination of love and triumph. I lose myself in his gaze for a time, brief or long I cannot say. A spark of raucous laughter from a wandering group of men brings me back to myself and where we are. I turn and begin to walk again, tearing my eyes from his face and staring fixedly at the cobblestones. He walks beside me, his footsteps off kilter with mine, his steps slower but longer, mine short but swift. Even so, we walk in time.
***
Two long days are spent with task after bureaucratic task, with both Father and Uncle taking extensive time out of the palace on business for the crown. I’m anxious for a dozen reasons, most notably I’m practically bursting at the seams to tell someone about the Shaper I encountered at the party. She was exotic and beautiful, mysterious and foreign. Her symbol of power rose so prominently on her face that she must be careful how she uses the power in public lest her secret become common knowledge. She’s clearly adept at hiding that power; we would have heard about her long since otherwise.
Who is she? What does she care about? Why is she nothing but a performer and a common thief when she’s blessed by the Creator with unimaginable power? The nature of her power remains a mystery. I rattle off the list, counting through the altars in my head much as the priests taught me at temple. Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, Stone, Thought, Lightning, Roots, Beasts, Voice, Ore, Light, Force, and Time. The fourteen elements of the world, the forces and matter that make up existence, with the Unknown rounding out the number at 15. Which would allow her to fly? Force? Had she reversed the gravity of the world? But no one else was affected. Could she be so precise? The Unknown? But no one has discovered that power in millennia. Most believe the element was extinguished long ago, even the Temple. I settle on Force, but that seems wrong. The forces are metallic colors. Force is bronze, thought is silver…
The briefest flash of dark, mocking eyes and music tinged in silver light. Behind, a mosaic… crashing waves...
My head aches immediately like my brain is clamped in a vise, but I refuse to shy away from the pain. I force the memory to the front. A man, older than me, but not by much. His skin darker, his hair nearly black, his handsome face twisted into a smirk.
Put your shiny toy away, girl. You might hurt yourself.
The scribe. At the Liberation Ball. He was…
A faint symbol in silver gleams through the silk, beautiful and mesmerizing in its shape. My eyes trace the lines, intricate and weaving, and I start to feel dizzy. I tear my eyes away, meeting his dark gaze.
Blast it. I encountered the Master of Thought himself. Not only that, but he used his power against me. He covered over the memory of our meeting so completely it has taken me years, dozens of inexplicable moments of anger and recognition that made no sense at the time. My head throbs as more and more pieces of the memory fall into place. I have no idea how, but I get the feeling the scribe intended for me to uncover this memory, some day. He could have destroyed it utterly, burned it out so I would have no recollection of our meeting. Instead...
“Perhaps, when you’re older, you can come visit, neh?” he says, reaching out and patting me gently on the head. “I will be there. In the heart of the Coin. Until then...”
Oh, I’ll be paying him a visit. Of that there can be no doubt. A scribe in Coin. What is with the Creator’s chosen hiding themselves in anonymity? These people are Shapers. They have the strength to change the very fabric of society, to alter the motions of the world, to take their personal destiny into their own hands. And what are they doing with that power? A scribe and a street performer.
The thought sends a tremor of disquiet through the dark corners of my mind. The known Shapers of the world are all fewer in number than they should be. The Mason and the Vengeance. The Sealord and the Healing Hand. Me. A mere five of the fourteen Shapers have risen following the necessary death toll of the Liberation from the Shaper’s Council. Why have no others risen? Where are they? Father and Uncle are always watching, always waiting, looking for signs another Shaper has discovered their power. They have so far been unsuccessful.
Perhaps the Shapers exist after all, and are not unaware of their strength. Perhaps the Shapers of the world do not wish to be found. Perhaps they fear they will share the fate of their predecessors. If I could find them, I would tell them how welcome they would be. How much their power would be appreciated, how blessed they are to be chosen by the Creator himself. Our kingdom reveres the chosen. We do not harm them.
***
I preside over High Court the day of Paloran’s arrest, because both Father and Uncle are busy. The last petitioner is a wealthy landowner in Firdana demanding repayment for the loss of sheep he incurred in order to feed the contingent of the Tide who came to bring me back to the capital. He claims more than a dozen were commandeered for an impromptu feast, and they only took from his best breeding stock, the fattest and plumpest and the healthiest. I wearily agreed to reimburse the man for half his lost stock, for the Tide often step outside the boundaries of decency. He leaves with a sour face and a begrudging acceptance of my ruling.<
br />
Duke Hoiran Paloran was arrested earlier this morning. Incriminating documents were intercepted, signed by his own hand, each more than enough to reveal his connection to the Vengeance, his systematic subversion of rare metals and iron, and his clear intention to seize the throne after the Vengeance deposed the ‘tyrant’ king. His trial is set for a month hence, and no one protests his guilt aside from his wife.
The High Court is tense, frightened, the few members of the nobility in attendance often shooting me furtive and uncomfortable glances. Clearly, they’ve heard of Paloran’s treason. I can’t wait to call the court concluded and be on my way. A messenger’s arrival, demanding my presence before Father, is a blessed relief. This trip to the war room begins with a nod from Father and a hug from Uncle, my feet fluttering through the air as he spins me in a wide circle. I laugh, feeling for a brief moment like the little girl he once sent flying into the sky, terrified, only to be caught by his steady hands. His presence is reassuring, his strength so immense that nothing can possibly hurt me so long as he protects me.
He sets me down with a grin, stepping back and taking a seat next to Father at the table. A third chair is set for me. I settle across from them, the two most powerful men in the entire world. Between them they’ve walked for more than three hundred years on this earth, though neither appears a day over thirty. Some part of me notices for the first time how comfortable they are with one another. They combined their strength to uproot and overthrow a system of government which had lasted more than five millennia. I’m lucky beyond imagination to have them as mentors and role models. I’m seated at a table of strategy with these men who have literally shaped—Shaped—the world.
“How are the nobles taking Paloran’s fall?” Uncle rumbles without preamble.
The Crux of Eternity: Eternal Dream, Book 1 (The Eternal Dream Saga) Page 51
