Yet just as it had been before, that thrill was a sign of wrongness. A physical pleasure meant to distract his mind from identifying the lies before it. He backed away from the godless thought as if it was a sucking vortex.
There were plain truths: the gods were real, and Taim was just. Therefore, if Gladdic had won Collen because of his own righteousness, his own virtue, his loss of the basin could only be due to the fact that he had stepped off from the path.
"Tell me what I have done wrong!" He thrust his fists to the side. "Help me, Father! Help me return to your light!"
His voice died in the desert. The stars gave no answer.
Was he beyond all use? Nothing more than the dried husk of a fruit that had no sweetness left to it? Shakily, he drew his dagger and placed its blade against his neck. If he was of no more use to this world, then let him join the gods.
The knife parted his skin. He gasped at the pain. His eyes stung with tears, then cleared. And so did his mind. Taim couldn't give him the answer. To do so would be to strip mortals of all agency. If the gods merely handed you what you needed to correct your errors, then the journey back to the path was over before it began.
He dug his fingers into the dust. He had lost himself. In order to be filled with holiness, one first had to make of oneself a worthy container.
Feeling like a child, he cried again. This time, in joy. For he knew what he must do.
There were greater horrors in the world than what he had seen in the Collen Basin. He would stand against them. He would defeat them. He would save a people who had been damned for centuries.
And he would become pure.
4
Senator Alder gawked at him. The older man staggered back from the desk, arms bowed from his sides. Blood pumped from the hole Dante had cut into his heart. The senator blinked once, then twice, then collapsed on the floor.
Dante moved into the nether within his body, confirming he was dead. He turned to the desk, grabbed one of the ink-stained knives used to trim quills and cut coins of sealing wax from larger cylinders, and jammed the blade into the hole in the senator's chest. Blood washed over the knife.
Dante rifled through the pages on the desk until he found one bearing the senator's signature. The handwriting matched. He seated himself, took up a quill, and unstoppered a bottle of ink.
Years of scholarship had left him with keen penmanship. Additionally, in his early years in Narashtovik, he'd often been assigned the duty of copying manuscripts. In a sign of respect, he'd done his best to match the handwriting of the original author.
Within a few minutes, he had a passable imitation of the senator's hand. He composed a note, matching its rhythms to the man's speech and the writing to the letters on the desk. He signed the man's name, stepped into the brightly lit viewing room, and checked himself for blood. He didn't see so much as a drop, but summoned the nether to him to ensure he hadn't missed any. It floated around him in disinterest.
There were a few blots of ink on his right hand, however, which he wiped clean on his cloak. After a moment of thought, he entered the study and dabbed ink on the senator's hand.
This done, he flung open the outside door of the viewing room. "Help! The senator's hurt!"
Doors creaked open. Voices and footsteps rang through the stone corridors. Dante returned to the study and kneeled over Alder's body, drawing a wash of shadows to him and rendering them starkly visible. As three servants piled into the room, he poured the nether over the man's chest, making it writhe and flow.
A man in a blue vest made a choking noise, circling around the body. "What has happened?"
Dante didn't answer. Instead, he grimaced, summoning a second flock of shadows to join the first. The blood oozing from the wound came to a stop, but Alder remained as motionless as a fallen log. Dante crouched next to the senator, putting his hands on the man's chest. He summoned a third wave of shadows that soon disappeared.
"It's no use." Dante moved away and sat heavily in a chair, cradling his sweaty face in his now-bloody palms. "I'm sorry."
"Sire." The servant's voice was shaky. "Can you tell us what happened here?"
"We were discussing the war. After a while, he excused himself to his study and closed the door. He was in here for close to ten minutes when I heard a thud. When I called the senator's name, he didn't answer. I found him like this. I thought I could revive him."
The servants exchanged looks. One jogged from the room. The man in the blue vest made a search of the room, soon finding the letter. He read it, whispering the words out loud to himself.
"Sire," he said. "Have you read this?"
Dante swung up his head, frowning. "Read what?"
The letter was steeped in regret. The senator, as it turned out, had been bought off by Gladdic, the very man waging war on the basin. Dante's visit implied that the Colleners had discovered his treasonous pledge. Alder's suspicions had been confirmed when Dante made mention of their interrogations of Mallish prisoners of war.
Senator Alder had only seen one way out.
~
"Do you really think they believed it?"
Dante shrugged. "They let us leave, didn't they?"
Blays snorted. "Because they bought the story? Or because they feared that if they tried to hold you captive, you'd turn them into toads? And then turn their families into flies and make them eat the flies?"
"They don't know what to think, so they let us walk away. Over time, they'll convince themselves he was a traitor, and that I tried to undo his death. That's the only way they'll be able to absolve themselves of their guilt."
Blays considered the dusty horizon. "I think I'd feel better about humanity if it was because of the toads."
A day and a half later, they were back in Collen. Dante washed off the dust, ate a hot meal, then met with the Keeper. He laid out what he'd done, making no attempt to lie, minimize, or rationalize his actions.
Her jaw quivered with anger. "You were sent to convince the senator of his duty. Not to murder him!"
"I wasn't sent," Dante said. "I went. My job was to unite the basin. Now that he can't extort the other senators into withholding their votes, they'll pledge for war."
"He was an elected leader. There were other ways!"
"I know exactly who he was. The other senators wouldn't support us because Alder owned the farmland around the canals. I could have promised them that I'd dredge them canals of their own. That would have allowed them to vote for war, cementing their allegiance to Collen."
"Then why did you kill him?"
"He was trying to extort you while you're in the middle of a war for your survival. He was a snake, Keeper. Did Kaline deserve to be ruled by a man like that?"
The Keeper spoke through gritted teeth. "No. He abused his power. He served himself rather than his people."
"Then I did you a favor."
"They'll suspect it was you."
"Big deal. He was the type of person who would sell himself out to Gladdic. When we win the war against Mallon, and your people are delirious with freedom, you'll see how fast they forget their petty old grudges."
Dante believed his words, but he left the briefing feeling uneasy. To himself, he'd admit that he'd brought a barrel of anger into his dealings with Alder. Was that anger providing clarity of action? Or a reckless lack of regard for morals? Had he killed the senator to strengthen the basin? Or to punish the Keeper?
The evening of that same day, a rider arrived from Kaline. The senate had met. They would honor the Code of the Wasp. The towns were united.
The scouts confirmed the defeated Mallish army had crossed the border into their own land. Dante tried to send undead moths and rabbits to confirm their return to Bressel, but much as the loons had broken when they'd been brought too far away from each other, there were limits to how far his spies could roam. At twenty miles, their vision and hearing grew spotty. At forty, his connection to them was lost.
To ensure they weren't in danger of an immedi
ate sneak attack, he spent two days on the border, moths flapping this way and that. He didn't spy any massed Mallish soldiers, but he did get a feel for the hills, plains, and dotty pine forests between the two lands.
The king's road was the simplest path across the space, but an army could take any number of routes. There wasn't much favorable terrain for Colleners to make a strong stand on, either. Seeing it from above, Dante better understood why the basin had had such a hard time defending itself.
There were no armies, but he did find a walled fort a few miles across the border. Hidden in Londren Forest, it was practically big enough to be a castle—presumably, it stood as the first line of defense against Collenese attacks—but at the moment, it was staffed by no more than a few score soldiers. They weren't a threat to anything beyond the local highwaymen.
Needing eyes in Bressel, Naran used the loon to order his crew in the city to make a regular circuit of the pubs, ears sharp for news. At Collen, soldiers from the six towns arrived in droves, training and maneuvering on the plains below the butte. Hunting parties brought back deer and rabbits. Dante grew a new crop each day. They managed to set aside a fraction of the food, but if it came to a siege, they wouldn't last more than a week.
Other than growing food and consulting with Cord, Boggs, and the Keeper, Dante found himself with a good deal of free time. He spent some of it exploring the caverns where Gladdic had been sacrificing Colleners to his demons. Dante found little of physical interest, but it did provide him with plenty of traces, the stains of death left deep inside the nether.
To see them, he first had to get Blays to walk into the shadows and illuminate them with the light of Dante's torchstone. For whatever reason, exposing them to ether from inside the netherworld made them visible in the physical world.
If normal nether flitted around like songbirds, the traces sat about like stones. But they were drawn madly to blood. Dante spent hours watching them move. If you combined enough of them together—for Dante, it had taken as few as six—they would become a tiny Andrac. A demon thirsty for human blood.
What did that imply about the traces? Their nature and origin? Did everyone have a little bit of demon in them? Is that why, when you gathered people into a mob or a tribe where all those little bits came together, they were capable of pushing each other into horrendous acts?
Or was he confusing cause and effect? What if committing an evil act caused the body to produce a drop of tainted nether? It seemed possible to test the theory by killing a few evil men and comparing the size and density of their traces to those left by good-hearted people. The outcome of such a test could answer many questions about human nature.
Yet the test itself would be evil, depending on murder as it did. Dante had to content himself with writing down his theories and observations, along with his questions. If he couldn't answer them in his lifetime, perhaps later generations could build on his writings to reach answers of their own.
He was in the caverns meditating on these matters when he was summoned to the butte to meet with the Hand, the nickname Boggs had bestowed on the five-person governing council of Collen. Their meeting that day was held on the balcony of the shrine where Cord had received her warrior training.
It was another pleasant, sunny day, but Boggs looked ready to punch someone. "Our envoys are back."
Dante grabbed a seat next to Blays. "Both of them?"
"Don't take it for a good omen. Parth and the Strip are both spinnin' the same story: can't help us."
Blays blinked. "Neither one has any extra food? Was there a series of plagues that everyone forgot to tell us about?"
"They know this is about Mallon," Boggs said. "They also know that whenever they've helped us in the past, we've gone on to lose the war. And Mallon's gone on to make them pay."
The Keeper rubbed her bony knuckles. "They are wise to fear. During the Third Scour, when it looked as though we would finally break our chains, Parth sent spearmen to our aid. After Collen fell, Mallish pillagers marched through fifty miles of Parthian towns before they'd had their fill."
Dante leaned his elbows on the table. "I presume our envoys spoke to their official leadership. What about the black market?"
"Our people looked into that. Not worth the cost in coin or in political capital. We try to run an end-around on their decrees by stuffing the purses of their criminal element, and they're apt to shun us completely—or even join the other side."
"Making an enemy is worse than starving to death?"
"That pits us against Mallish swords, Parthian spears, and Alebolgian bows. We wouldn't live long enough to starve."
Blays swore. "Why don't we relocate Collen to the middle of Parth? Then they'd have to feed us and protect us."
"Is there anyone else we can go to?" Dante said.
Boggs pulled a face. "It's Mallon to the west, mountains to the east, and assholes to the south."
"That leaves the north!" Cord motioned across the plains. "What about Narashtovik?"
Dante made a series of calculations. "Wagons wouldn't make it. Both the Riverway and Hollus Pass are in Mallish territory."
"What about boats?"
"You want to send boats around the continent during the winter storms? I thought the idea was to get food to Collen, not the bottom of the sea."
Blays got to his feet, pacing around the balcony. "We can't ship it in from afar. We can't buy it from a-near. We can't grow enough on our own. What else do we do? Send everyone out to dig for beetles? Beseech the gods for a rain of bread?"
"We could send Naran back to the Plagued Islands. If we could convince a few Harvesters to come help us, it could be enough."
"There's an idea. Assuming that the Kandeans are willing to send their sorcerers to a distant land for no reason, and that Naran's crew is willing to pretend the seas aren't full of winter typhoons."
Dante shook his head. "Is that really the best we've got?"
"We could always go to Mallon for help. Maybe they'll be sporting about it." Blays drew back his head. "Wait, why don't we do that?"
"Well, first of all, because they'll kill us."
"That fort you saw in Londren Forest. You said it's huge, but there's hardly anyone there. Suppose they've kept it stocked?"
"I don't know," Dante said. "But I know how to find out."
Two days later, the Hand and a small contingent of soldiers and scouts came to a stop in the eastern fringes of the Londren. Technically, they were within Collen's borders, but Dante doubted if Mallon recognized those any longer.
It was already dusk, which suited Dante's purposes. A Collenese soldier lit a lantern to make camp by, drawing several oversized moths to whirl around the flame. Dante killed two of them with pins of nether, then thought about bats and killed all four. A pulse of shadows reanimated them to his command. He sent them flapping up through the canopy, headed west across the forest.
Along the way, one of them winked out, eaten by a bat or an owl. The other three made it to the fort. Torches and lanterns burned within it, illuminating the sentries on the walls. The yard within was quiet.
There, three wooden buildings were elevated on low stilts to discourage the entry of rats, mice, and other vermin. Granaries. They were windowless, but the door frames were warped enough for the moths to slip through the cracks.
"They're stuffed," Dante said to the camp. "I'm looking at several tons of barley and wheat."
He withdrew the moths and made a circuit of the fort, relaying its fortifications, troops, and civilian count to Cord and Boggs. Getting a good look from above, he sketched out a map.
"A garrison of forty men?" the Keeper croaked. "I'm no tactician, but I'd think we could overrun them with what we've brought here."
Dante made a quick count of their troops. "We could. But we don't have the wagons to get the grain out."
"Should we summon them?"
Dante lifted his eyebrows at Cord. "Your call, General."
"Speaking of wagons," Blays said. "Let
's not put them before the horse. Do we know for sure that Mallon is going to make a second attack?"
"The only thing we know for sure is that we won the last battle and Mallon hates to lose."
"But it's possible the war's already over and we just don't know it yet."
"It's possible. And it's also possible that King Charles himself will bake us an apology-cake to make up for his silly little invasion."
"Let me put it another way." He gave Dante a slap in the face. "There, I've slapped you. What's your natural response?"
Dante glared. "To punch you back. Twice."
"Exactly. Mallon might be back either way, but that's no more than a guess. But if we ride into their border fort, slaughter everyone there, and rob all their stuff, we can guarantee their army will be here before the snows are."
"You have a point."
The Keeper stood from her seat on a bench. "If we don't do this, and they come for us, we will starve. Mallon hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt. We know their history too well for that. We must secure our survival even if that means guaranteeing war."
"Cord," Dante said. "You need to think long and hard about whether this is a risk you're willing to take."
"There's nothing to think about!" Cord drew her sword, pointing it toward the darkening sky. "Mallon has stolen from us for centuries. Taking this from them won't begin to repay their debt—but it will show our honor far and wide."
"To who?"
"To those who doubt us! To the gods themselves! Since when did honor need an audience?"
She'd acquitted herself so well during the fighting that Dante had nearly forgotten about her Collenese mores. Most of which involved dancing in showers of Mallish blood.
"It doesn't have to be a fight," Dante said. "I could open a tunnel under the walls and up through the granaries."
"Right," Blays said. "Then all we have to do is pray their front-line soldiers are too stupid to miss the enormous caravan waiting to be loaded up outside."
"It can be a long tunnel. With a few days, I could make it a mile long."
The Cycle of Galand Box Set Page 94
