by Anna Eluvae
"If I let you by," said Nemm. "It would be like driving the dagger into his back myself. The only difference being that my thrust would be weak and half-hearted, no offense. If I'm deciding I would rather see Lexari cast down, it would be better to do it properly."
"Are you saying you'll help me?" asked Dravus.
"Yes," said Nemm. "Now, let's build a better plan."
* * *
Lothaire was awakened from his slumber with a touch, as he always was. The Red Angel stared at him with dispassionate eyes. This too was as it usually went.
"I'm going to be king," said Wenaru Mottram. "Lexari has arranged it."
Lothaire stretched himself out. "How long was I out that time?" he asked.
"Five days," replied Wenaru.
"I need something to eat," replied Lothaire. He clutched at his stomach, which was clenched in pain.
"I give your body fat and muscle to feed itself from," said Wenaru. "If I gave you food there would be the issue of waste to deal with. You make a better prisoner when my upkeep is minimal."
"I'm in pain," said Lothaire. "A man isn't meant to not eat."
"I don't hold with what is meant or not meant," said Wenaru. "You're the one who called me a monster, as so many have before. You should know I care nothing for your pain."
"Why have you wakened me?" asked Lothaire. "I've told you all that I could about the Allunio. Before my capture I ensured that I would be useless when taken." This was always how Lothaire opened their talks. He had been brought out of his unnatural slumber by Wenaru twice early on, both times for questioning, both times with Lexari present, but the third time had seen Wenaru by himself. Every time after, the physician had been all alone, not seeking any information, but instead looking for someone to speak with in confidentiality. Lothaire asked the same question every time though. He was pretending that they were adversaries so that he could soften as their conversation went on. That was better than pretending at familiarity from the start. It was part of the rapport he was trying to build with Wenaru, though he couldn't tell whether it was working.
"I'm going to be king," said Wenaru. He ran his fingers through his hair. "He didn't ask me. He only presented me with the story of how my mother was raped by the Iron King and my father was a cuckold. How I had risen to my station through nepotism instead of merit. From anyone else it would have been an insult of the highest order."
"Not from the Sunhawk though," said Lothaire. He shook his head, grateful that Wenaru had offered him some mobility this time. He tried to ignore his aches and pains. "He who can do no wrong."
"We could have plotted it together," said Wenaru. "If we were trying to usurp the kingdom, all he would have had to do was to say it and I would have gone along with it. If we had sat down together and talked it over, decided to change my origin story … that's the way that he is."
"If that happened to me, I think I would come to the conclusion that I wasn't trusted," said Lothaire.
"No," said Wenaru. "Lexari allows me to touch him. Lexari gave me Charnel's link, along with others."
"Did he steal it from her?" asked Lothaire. Wenaru gave no response. "Do you know whether he stole it from her?" Again, Wenaru was silent. "Or did he appear to you one day with an artifact, claiming some story of how the power within it came into his possession?"
"It was hers," said Wenaru. "Who else could it have been from? She had left the castle only the day before. Did he think I wouldn't make the connection? Or did he think that I wouldn't question him?"
"Yet there is some part of you which believes that perhaps his story is true," said Lothaire. "You are almost willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, as you always are." It was a crack, one which Lothaire might be able to drive a wedge into.
"I killed for him," said Wenaru. "Because he asked me to."
"You killed my friends," said Lothaire. "My disciples." He couldn't quite keep the bitterness from his voice, even though he was meant to be slowly warming to Wenaru, building a rapport between the two of them.
"Before that," said Wenaru. "You knew, somehow. About the assassinations. You spoke to Wealdwood about them."
Lothaire nodded. It had only been conjecture, something that was halfway toward being a lie. The Iron Kingdom had spies in many places, spies which he'd inherited, but the stories they'd told were always incomplete. If Wenaru was going to tell the truth, it was unlikely that Lothaire would ever speak to another human again, but he had given up the chance at living long before now.
"All I had to do was introduce a flaw," said Wenaru. "I had worked on enough people with ailments to know what to do. I had decades of study behind him, mostly in the art of healing and the science of the human body. So many people with my domain understood breaking a person, tearing them apart, but that was easy in comparison to maintenance. It was beneath me. But I did it anyway."
"Who?" breathed Lothaire.
"Rivals," said Wenaru. "Not villains, not those who had pushed themselves to the extremes of wanton violence, just those who he could get me close to. Names that are lost to history now. Legends that faded away after an ignoble end." Wenaru went silent and laid his head against the cold stone wall of the dungeon cell. "Afterward, he would be so pleased with me. Smiling, like I had paid him back double for every ounce of faith he'd shown in me. Yet we never spoke of it. He would mourn these people, these friends. And eventually … I wanted to be a better person. So I stopped. And again, we never spoke of it, I was left to read his moods and wonder."
Lothaire leaned forward. "You still can be a better person. With or without Lexari."
"Who would believe it?" asked Wenaru. "Would you?"
Lothaire opened his mouth to speak, but the words wouldn't come. He had never abhorred lies; they were useful things. Telling a credible lie here, however, was beyond his ability.
"No," said Wenaru. "I wouldn't believe it either. I made an effort, but it was doomed to fail."
"I can help you," said Lothaire, trying his best to sound old and wise, as he'd done with his students. "If Lexari isn't the foundation on which to build your house, so be it, but all rocks are not —"
"You're only a sounding board," said Wenaru. "You know that you will never see the light of day again. You will never see any face but mine." He looked at Lothaire with cold eyes. "The last of the Allunio died yesterday. All your plans have crumbled. The next time I wake you, don't try to convince me of your superiority."
Lothaire opened his mouth to respond, but Wenaru's touch was already upon him.
* * *
"Ambush isn't going to work," said Nemm. "We don't know which domains he has. We don't know how strong those domains might be." They sat together in the forest, having found a place far from the road. Dravus was practicing his skill with sound by deadening their voices. In theory, it would be impossible for anyone to hear them. It was more paranoid than the situation warranted, given that Dravus would be able to hear everyone approach and these woods weren't crawling with patrols in the first place. "Even if you were able to break into his room, past any precautions that he has, he's going to have both the resilience provided by the highest standing the world has ever seen, and domain immunities stacked on top of each other. If you went for his throat with a blade of glass, it might be you'd find that he's immune to glass. Same for any of the common metals."
"I could have a knife forged," said Dravus. "One made of platinum, or something more exotic. Besides, we don't need to slit his throat. All we need to do is slip his hand into the artifact."
"I'm telling you, it's not going to work," said Nemm. "Attacking in the middle of the night is the obvious thing that anyone would try. He'll have laid defenses in place. Worse, he's a light sleeper. That comes from decades on the battlefield. He knows he's vulnerable while he's sleeping, just like I do."
"That will be our fall-back plan then," said Dravus. "You have a different suggestion?"
"The artifact," said Nemm. "Until you slip your hand inside, you don't know whether
it's going to give or take. We don't need to break into his room, past whatever traps and warnings he has in place, we only need to trick him into giving when he means to take."
"How?" asked Dravus. "All your same arguments apply. He knows the rules that the artifact operates under, just as you and I do. If you handed him an artifact … would he just put his hand into it without question?"
"No," said Nemm. "That's why we're going to have to make him believe that there's no doubt."
"We need a story that will convince him," replied Dravus. "He told me when we first met that thinking in stories was an occupational hazard. That's where he's weak. If we can get him in a public, with hundreds of people around who will all be ready to spread their own version of the story, he'll have to act like people expect him to act. We just have to manipulate it so that the pull of the story is too strong for him to resist."
"We also need to manipulate the artifact," said Nemm. She reached behind her back with one arm, pulling at a place where the plates of glass were more bulky. She pulled out one of the Harbinger artifacts, with its hexagonal hole and dull gray exterior. Aside from the pressure that it put on the mind, there was nothing that truly spoke of its power.
"You have one," said Dravus.
"We have almost twenty of them," said Nemm. "I was going to use this one to drain your traveling companions, if it came down to that."
"Or to drain me?" asked Dravus. "If I wasn't able to convince you?"
Nemm shrugged. "The thought crossed my mind, once I realized you had gotten power from somewhere." She paused. "It was the woman I gutted, wasn't it?"
"Faye," said Dravus.
"Really?" asked Nemm. "The same woman who spoke to you in Torland? I had no idea."
"She's part of why I have to do this," said Dravus. "Why I have to live up to the potential of the illustrati."
"Yet you said that you barely knew this woman," said Nemm. Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"I didn't know her," said Dravus. "She was asking the right questions though, even if I don't think she had all the answers."
"Questions like who to assassinate?" asked Nemm. "Whose throats to slit in order to obtain power?"
Dravus shrugged. "I can't defend them. I'm not going to try."
"Have you thought about what's going to happen after we murder Lexari?" asked Nemm.
"We don't necessarily have to murder him," said Dravus. "Just stop him."
"It's entirely possible that a new civil war follows from this," she replied. "Even if you're justified in thinking that he's not fit to rule. That's especially true given the turmoil this kingdom has been through of late. Is it worth it?"
"Lexari is hungry for power," said Dravus. "He's hungry for attention. When the constitution of Torland was being written, he wanted to inject himself into that affair, even though he had nothing to add. It's that impulse that's going to be terrible for this kingdom. The Iron King didn't seem to care about his people that much, not on the level of individuals, but I think the only thing that Lexari truly cares about is himself. It was much easier for me to see that once he tossed me aside. If he's in control of the kingdom, that means he'll be able to accelerate his bid for power. The artifact allows for a king to take from all his subjects, doesn't it?"
"I want to go in with a clear objective," said Nemm. "That's all."
"I do too," said Dravus. "So. We have an artifact. I think I can mimic the sounds that it makes, given a bit of time to practice." He focused on the domain of sound and let a single, solid tone into the air. It was more difficult than merely amplifying a sound that was already there, but he thought it was passable.
"We'll have to craft a story," said Nemm. "Something that Lexari will latch onto. He made this story about the two of you having a battle on the top of the castle. We'll connect to something like that, make the story a continuation." She sighed. "He talks about it like it actually happened. Listening to him tell it, I almost believe him. He never breaks character, not even in private. We could never have an honest discussion."
"I've heard it," said Dravus. "All we need to do, if we want to maneuver him into position, is find the right continuation of that story."
* * *
The crowning of a new king was always an extravagant affair, even when a country wasn't in turmoil. The people needed to be shown that the king was still in control of the country and still fit to rule them. The Iron Kingdom had appointed governors rather than dukes, but they still needed to be shown the new king and made to believe that there was a need to toe the line. This was all the more important when the former king had not left a clear line of succession behind, or when there had been a brief war between two factions competing for the throne.
Nemm oversaw the arrangements. It had been years since Lexari had organized anything; she was the one who paid attention to the ledgers. The skill of double-entry bookkeeping was virtually unknown among the illustrati, but it was the only way that the system of bards could actually work. There were accounts held in the banks of two dozen countries, across twelve separate systems of currency, with news traveling at the speed of sail. Compared to that nightmare of coordination, the coronation was child's play. As usual, the work went unnoticed.
She tested Lexari's defenses in the middle of the night, to see whether the easy path might still be open to them. She came to his door and slammed against it with an armored fist, hard enough to confirm that there were inches of metal behind it. If the door itself were merely reinforced, she might have been able to break it from its hinges with that strike, but there was no such luck.
Lexari threw the door aside seven seconds later, fully armored and holding a spear of light in his hand that illuminated the hallway around him. There was something fierce in the cast of his face, one she had only rarely seen on him. It was a curl of his lip, a tightening of the brow, as though he were about to crush some insect beneath his heel. The look was gone in an instant, from the very moment he recognized her.
"I've been poisoned," spat Nemm through clenched teeth. She staggered against the doorway and closed her eyes. She was ready with elaboration, but Lexari simply picked her up and threw her over his shoulder to take her down the hallway to the room that the Iron King had once occupied. Wenaru was still waking up when Nemm took his place in the massive bed. He tended to her with bleary eyes and a slack jaw.
"Nothing that will kill you," said Wenaru. "I can put you out —"
"No," said Nemm. "We need to be more careful with what we eat," she said. Her stomach clenched and she writhed in pain. The poison wasn't a lie; she had consumed a dose of mistletoe oil, enough that Wenaru would find something wrong, but an illness she could recover from within the day. "Even if the Allunio are gone …" she trailed off, more because the poison was working its way through her system than because she wanted them to imagine the threats.
"That story is supposed to be over," said Lexari with a frown. He turned to Wenaru. "We will take precautions. I suppose a coda is acceptable at the coronation. It would be the opportunity to strike, if there are elements within these castle walls aligned against us. The feast following the coronation will have to be watched closely."
"I'll handle it," said Nemm. She moaned again as her guts twisted, trying not to play it up too much. Wenaru still had his hand on her armor. He would be able to feel every twitch of her muscles, every contraction of her skin. "When will I be back on my feet?"
"I don't know," said Wenaru. "It depends on what you were dosed with." He narrowed his eyes. "I worry that this is a trial run of some sort. Perhaps … it's not too late to cancel."
"No," said Lexari. "You are rightful ruler."
Nemm caught the look shared between them; Wenaru had never been one to confide in her, especially not after Lothaire had done his talking. It didn't take a savant to understand that Wenaru had his own reservations.
* * *
Lexari insisted on two large chairs for the coronation. The first was naturally for Wenaru. The second was for a new
position to be created within the Iron Kingdom, the role of First Minister. In the days when the Iron King had occupied the throne, all of the various Ministries reported directly to him, with the ministers charged with carrying out his demands. The First Minister would serve as an intermediary step, a position appointed by the king to coordinate the ministers. To hear Lexari tell it, the Iron Kingdom had long suffered from one man at the top relying too heavily on his advisers, trying to engage personally in every matter of business. That the new First Minister would effectively usurp power from the king himself and serve as an adviser with unprecedented power went largely without comment. There was never any real question about whom Wenaru would appoint.
