True Power

by Gary Meehan

  Damon leaned forward. Was that . . . ? The guards yanked him back but not before he recognized the Endalay diamond, the ultimate reason for his capture by the True—that and a treacherous lieutenant, a violent fence and his own greed. How had they got hold of it? Damon suspected it didn’t involve a mutually beneficial transaction.

  “Is it time?” Gwyneth whispered to Tobrytan.

  “Almost.”

  She beckoned the lieutenant closer. Light reflected off the gold and shimmered across her face. The jewels caught in her eyes and sparkled. Tobrytan made to lift the crown. Gwyneth held up a warning finger. He backed off, frowning. Gwyneth took the crown herself. Before Tobrytan could intervene, she placed it on her head.

  In the distance the temple bells struck noon. Damon realized what was going to happen, why the coronation had been this day, this time. The sun aligned with the window above Gwyneth’s head and a column of light shone down upon her. It hit the diamond at the center of her crown and split into a thousand beams, dazzling the hall. For a moment it was as if God himself had inaugurated her.

  Damon tried to slip away after the ceremony, looking to take a flagon of wine to a dark corner of the palace, but Tobrytan collared him and marched him out of the throne room.

  “You speak Trávian?” said the general.

  “Sure,” said Damon. “Once you speak one Snow City language you speak them all. They’re all variants of Werlay with just the—”

  “Do I look like I want a linguistics lesson?”

  “Open-minded chap like you? Thought you’d be thrilled to acquire new knowledge.”

  Tobrytan gave Damon the glare of one for whom open-minded meant someone with the top of their skull sliced off and bundled him into an antechamber. Gwyneth was there, the crown still glittering on her head. A dark-haired serving girl whose face Damon couldn’t quite place was detaching the train from her gown. Sitting on the couch was another woman, with ash-blonde hair and a face that was attractive if weather-beaten. Two witches stood behind her, hands on their weapons, but if their presence made the woman nervous she didn’t show it.

  “Ask the ambassador what she wants,” said Gwyneth.

  “Ambassador?” said Damon, putting two and two together. “From Trávi? She didn’t bring her own translator?”

  Gwyneth gave a small shrug. “There was an incident.”

  Damon turned to the blonde woman and dredged up his memory of Trávian. It had been a while since he’d had cause to speak it. Well, yell it pleadingly. That fisherman had been really annoyed about his missing purse.

  “Greetings, Lady . . . ?”

  “Skúla.”

  “Greetings, Lady Skúla.” Damon looked to Gwyneth. “Lady Skúla,” he said, pointing at the ambassador.

  Gwyneth rolled her eyes. “Yes, we got that far.”

  “What brings you to New Statham?” Damon asked Skúla. “I have to warn you—the nightlife’s gone really downhill these past few months.”

  “I came to congratulate the queen on her accession.”

  “She likes your hat,” Damon paraphrased for Gwyneth.

  “And to discuss the military situation.”

  “Ah,” said Damon. “That’s a bit of a sore point.”

  Gwyneth had been furious at Sener’s defeat at the hands of Megan and the Hilites, and even more so at his refusal to attack again because of the upcoming winter. If it wasn’t for the continued sympathy for Sener and his late father among the True, she would have had him recalled to New Statham and executed. Instead the captain was skulking in the foothills of the Kartiks, preventing the Snow Cities raiding the Realm for supplies.

  “I have something that could help,” said Skúla.

  “What kind of something?”

  “A route into Hil.”

  Damon translated for Gwyneth and Tobrytan.

  “We’ve heard about the tunnels through the mountains,” said Tobrytan. “The Hilites have them well defended. And with the guns the Apostate captured . . .”

  “You don’t have to worry about the guns,” said Skúla in response to Damon’s translation. “They blew themselves up. Prone to doing that, I hear.” She shrugged. “Anyway, the route’s not through the tunnels. It’s by sea.”

  “Really? One end’s full of ice, the other end’s full of rocks.”

  “There’s little I can do about the ice, but I can get you around the rocks.”

  “You know a route through the Sarason Sea?”

  “It is ours.”

  Skúla held out a tightly rolled scroll.

  Damon passed it to Tobrytan, who unrolled it and frowned. Damon and Gwyneth each peered over one of his shoulders. They were looking at the northern coastline of Werlavia, the far eastern end near Trávi. The Sarason Sea lay above it, its expanse pockmarked by numerous small islands. Those were only the large hazards: the Sarason was infamous for rocks, fierce winds and the occasional iceberg. Dashed lines appeared to show a way through.

  “We can supply larger, more-detailed maps,” said Skúla.

  Gwyneth turned to the serving girl. “Taite, leave us.”

  Taite: Damon recognized her now. Sener’s—what?—girlfriend? She gathered Gwyneth’s detached train in her arms and, barely able to see over the mound of fabric, tottered out of the room.

  “Offer the ambassador some wine,” Gwyneth said to Damon before stepping aside to engage in a low conversation with Tobrytan.

  “Percadian, if you have it,” Skúla said in reply to Damon’s translation.

  “An excellent choice,” said Damon. It wasn’t. Percadian was what people asked for when they wanted to pretend they knew about wine. They also didn’t have any: priests wouldn’t lower themselves to drinking the anemic dribble.

  Skúla accepted the glass off Damon. “Prita, taka.” Her attention wasn’t on him; it was on Gwyneth and Tobrytan. Damon recognized the expression: that of a pickpocket waiting for her opportunity. Or a professional eavesdropper.

  Tobrytan and Gwyneth finished their conference. “Why not simply let us over the Death Pass?” asked Tobrytan.

  “Because then everyone will know what we did,” said Skúla. “We’d prefer our cooperation to be kept private.”

  “How modest,” said Damon. “Won’t the other cities get suspicious when they notice you’re the only one left untouched?”

  “Not if you leave them untouched too. Do what you like with Hil though.”

  “All of Werlavia belongs to us,” said Gwyneth.

  “Please, Your Majesty. The cities have no worth to the Realm. Take your Savior, leave us in peace and we will do the same with you.”

  “We can march over the Kartiks in spring without your help or paying your price,” said Tobrytan.

  “Yes,” said Skúla, “but you can sail to Hil much sooner. And it might be best if you do. The rumors from Janik are the priests are about to declare for Queen Megan.”

  The sound of her sister’s name made Gwyneth flush even before Damon had finished translating. “She is no queen,” she snapped.

  “I apologize, Your Majesty,” said Skúla, with an ingratiating smile that suggested she was only lying through half her teeth. “But if the priests move their army to the Kartiks it may make it even harder for you to cross the mountains.”

  Gwyneth stiffened and turned to Tobrytan. “Prepare the fleet, general.”

  “We should study this more—”

  “You heard me. We have a Savior to rescue. And a false queen to slaughter.”

  By the time they joined it the party was in full swing, which as the True were involved meant everyone was drinking morosely and awaiting the next execution. Gwyneth, who had exchanged the crown for a simple tiara—if you could call a piece studded with enough diamonds to pay the entire army “simple”—glided from room to room, accepting the feigned congratulations of her new subjects. There had only been one assassination attempt so far: an old man, possibly a priest, had lunged at her with a pâté-smeared knife. Gwyneth’s bodyguards had cut hi
m down with brutal efficiency, leaving his body on the floor where it fell as a warning to others, or possibly as a bench should they get short on chairs. Gwyneth herself had taken the assault with remarkable equanimity. Had she taken something to calm her nerves or was she convinced she had God’s protection?

  “You’re really going to trust this Skúla?” Damon asked Tobrytan.

  The general looked grim, eyes scanning the crowd as if on the hunt for people to stop from having a good time. “If she has the means to deliver us the Savior.”

  “You know she speaks Stathian, don’t you?” said Damon. “I could tell by the way she was watching you and Gwyn—the queen.”

  “What of it?”

  “Maybe it’s not the only thing she’s keeping from you.”

  “We’ll send scout ships to test the route,” said Tobrytan. “Sandstrider scout ships.” He beckoned a soldier. “You, keep an eye on him. I’ve got an invasion to plan.”

  “Sir.”

  Tobrytan stalked off. The soldier took his place by Damon’s side and stayed there, clinging to him like a child who had attached himself to the teacher on the first day of school.

  “Why don’t you go mingle?” said Damon.

  “Mingle?”

  “You know, talk to people, girls maybe? You can impress them with tales of bravery and brutality.”

  “I don’t want to impress girls.”

  “Well, it’s a cosmopolitan bunch. I’m sure we can find you a—”

  “I have a wife. Back in the empire.”

  Another one. Damon recalled Tobrytan also had a wife waiting for him. The Diannon Emperor liked to collect hostages, it would seem. “Miss her?”

  “No.”

  Damon indicated a courtier whose corset and low-cut dress weaponized her cleavage. “Then why not . . . ?”

  “I made a vow before God and the Saviors.”

  Damon beckoned the courtier over anyway. Her approach was reluctant at first, then more enthusiastic as she seemed to recognize him. “You were at the coronation, right?” she said. “Near the front?”

  The springs in her laboriously curled hair were beginning to unravel. Cracks in her make-up revealed a woman at least ten years older than she was pretending to be. The former mistress of some priest, angling for a way into the new regime, working out who was whom, where the power resided. You don’t want anything to do with this lot, Damon wanted to tell her; it’ll only lead to misery and death.

  He didn’t though. He forced his mouth into a disarming smile and nodded. He had only been so prominent because Tobrytan wanted to keep an eye on him. “I’m Damon. This is . . .”

  “Cole.”

  “And you are . . . ?”

  “Eleanor.”

  If his cup hadn’t been pewter, it would have shattered in Damon’s grip. The world blurred to gray. Conversation reduced to a ringing in his ears. His throat constricted, buffering his breath in his windpipe. The fatal leap played itself over in his mind again and again and again.

  A slap between the shoulder blades snapped everything back in focus. He spluttered as respiration resumed, took a steadying drink. He coughed it back up again.

  “Are you all right?” asked the courtier.

  He looked at the woman. Eleanor. Not Eleanor. Pull yourself together. It’s just a name. There must be hundreds of Eleanors out there. “Yes, yes. Probably just the sausages. Bad thing to eat in a war zone. You’re never quite sure what’s in them. Or who.”

  “What are you on about?”

  Damon wasn’t sure. His mouth was running away of its own accord. “Why don’t you . . . ? Why don’t you and Cole get better acquainted? I need to go find the . . . find the . . . privy.”

  He staggered away, not really sure what he was doing. Only when someone gave him a shove backward and he didn’t collide with armor did he realize he’d shaken off his guard. He looked to the sky. Still looking after me? I don’t deserve it. He could almost hear the countess’s voice in reply, haughty but with a hint of suppressed humor. I know.

  Damon composed himself, got his bearings. It wouldn’t be long before Cole realized what had happened. He hurried through the palace, fast as he dared, keeping his head down and his senses alert. It was the getaway of a felon fleeing the scene of a yet-to-be-discovered crime: the thief who had helped himself to a purse, the conman who had palmed a loaded die, the forger who had passed a dud coin—and he had been them all. He considered offering repentance if God would grant him this last escape, but he knew he didn’t mean it or, if he did, that he’d end up doing far worse in the future.

  Worse than what happened to Eleanor?

  After making his way through corridors littered with mats and blankets and strange utensils that looked like drunken exercises in pottery, he reached the east wing. There were no Sandstriders on duty this time: they were all at the party. For once a plan was coming together. He just hoped he had enough time to find the entrance to the tunnel.

  Someone lurched at him. Damon skipped out of the way. The Sandstrider grabbed at fresh air and toppled over.

  Damon bent over to examine him. “Are you hurt?” he asked in Andaluvian. The Sandstrider gave him the vacant smile of the truly hammered. “Guess not. If anyone asks, you didn’t see me.”

  “Which one?”

  Damon patted the Sandstrider’s shoulder and moved on.

  There, beyond that door. There should be a small chamber with an alcove or a chimney place against the far wall, some out-of-place brick or ugly ornament waiting to trigger counterweights. It was locked. Of course. He put an experimental shoulder to it. Not for budging.

  Damon searched the belongings of the absent Sandstriders. He turned up a knife whose tip had snapped off and a hooked spike whose purpose he felt better off not knowing and set about tackling the lock. Pins and tumblers appeared to succumb to his ministrations then snapped back, like a coquette teasing a potential seducer. He didn’t allow himself to be discouraged but kept on probing away, learning every part of the lock, decoding its secret.

  Shouting from the far end of the corridor. Approaching boots. Drawn weapons. Damon forced himself not to look back, to concentrate on his task at the same steady pace. Almost there. The final pin slipped into place. Adrenalin took over. He twisted the knife. Too hard. It jammed. He breathed in through his nose, exhaled through his mouth. The soldiers were close enough to make out their words. Not very nice words. He rotated the knife, slowly but firmly.

  The lock gave way. The door swung inwards on rusty hinges. The room beyond was bare. Dust motes swam in the hazy light streaming through the windows, excited by the breeze he’d introduced. Damon pushed himself off his knees and took a step forward.

  A boot connected with the back of his knees and sent him sprawling on to the floorboards. “Going somewhere?” demanded Tobrytan.

  “Me?” said Damon. “No.”

  “You are now.”

  eighteen

  Damon rubbed his forehead after he’d banged it on yet another low-hanging beam, this one in the ship’s mess. Everything on board was cramped and half the size it should be. It was as if he had stumbled into a child’s playroom, albeit a child with the kind of friends you didn’t want to invite to tea.

  He’d been condemned to be part of the witches’ invasion fleet, ostensibly as a translator but in reality as a punishment. They had given him his own cabin, at least, instead of making him share a hammock-space with the rest of the crew, but it was a cabin that bolted on the outside.

  The line behind Damon grumbled. The cook glowered, steam from his kitchen making sweat roll down his face and into the bubbling pot in front of him. In the best maritime tradition, he was covered in scabs that could be crumbled up and used as seasoning in emergencies.

  “You want some?”

  Head still throbbing, Damon held out his bowl. Unidentifiable stew splatted into it. This didn’t bode well. First night out and they were already on the slop; what was it going to be like months from now when they w
ere tracking Werlavia’s desolate eastern coast? He began to miss the sausages from the coronation party.

  Damon took his dinner over to the benches, where soldiers sat eating with little enthusiasm. They had ditched their armor and were dressed in a variety of shifts and tunics, yellowed from years of sweat. Bared arms displayed a variety of scars, tattoos and coiled muscles. There was history written there. A monotonous history dominated by violence, but a history nonetheless.

  He shuffled to an empty space, keeping his head down like a wary tortoise. “Mind if I . . . ?”

  “Yes.”

  “Someone’s seat?”

  “Not yours.”

  Tough crowd. Remaining standing, Damon hunched over his bowl and tried some of the stew. It was enough to put anyone in a bad mood. He abandoned it on the bench behind him.

  “I’m Damon, by the way.”

  “We know.”

  “Any of you fellows play dice?”

  “Not with you.”

  “That’s a shame. Hoping someone could teach me. I know the basics, but I always seem to lose.”

  “Go away.”

  “Before I do, anyone got change for one of these?” Damon held up one of the sovereigns he’d lifted from the High Priest’s office. Tobrytan hadn’t bothered to search him before throwing him on board.

  One of the soldiers made to grab the coin. Damon palmed it and showed an empty hand. The soldier rammed a fist in his stomach. Damon crumpled to the deck, gasping for breath. Gold flashed as the coin rolled across the planks and spun to a halt. The soldier pocketed it.

  “Let’s call that the—”

  A boot smacked into Damon’s chest. He curled up, wrapping his arms over his head. More boots joined in. Pain thudded the length of his body. There was a crack, then excruciating agony. One of his ribs breaking. He hardly felt any of the subsequent kicks.

  The beating stopped. It didn’t lessen the pain, merely transformed it into a constant throbbing complete with stabbing sensation in his chest every time he breathed. Damon peered around the arms he still had clasped around his head. His attackers had resumed their seats and were continuing with dinner. No one paid any notice to the bruised, bloodied lump of flesh coiled up on the floor.