* * *
Arlyn
My arms and legs felt like heavy weights that took all my strength to move. Tried not to worry about Fenra and Elva, about how long it was taking her to come back, but my mind kept circling and circling, as if this was a problem I could solve. Not low, I told myself, just overtired. Had to rest. My mind continued to spin. My skin was tight, tingly. A fizz of energy swept through my body, as if my blood bubbled. As quickly as it came, the sizzle of energy left me, my body sagged. Let my right hand slip off my chest.
I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when Fenra’s touch on my forehead woke me. My head felt clearer. I tried to sit up, got black spots in my vision.
“Lie still,” she said. “You have not recovered enough for so much movement.”
“Where’s Elva?” I swallowed. It had taken me years to stop thinking about him, wondering if he was still alive, what he was doing, if he ever forgave me. Now I was worrying about him again. “Dead?” I forced the word out through clenched teeth.
“No.” She didn’t seem very happy about it, though. “I saw him walking with the guards, armed and free, laughing.” She spoke without looking at me, and I answered the question she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
“Absolutely not.” I spoke as firmly as I could manage. “Elva would never betray us—not even to punish me.” I hesitated, suddenly unsure. “Even if he could do it to me, he would never betray you.” There. On safe ground again.
“I am not a child, Arlyn. I know that ‘I want it to be so’ is not proof.”
“But this is. Elva has the same goal he’s always had, stopping the Godstone. If it looks like he’s changed sides, he’s only pretending.”
Still without looking at me, she shoved a warm meat pastry into my hands. My mouth began to water. “Medlyn always told me, ‘Plan for the possible.’ ”
“Then you’ll just have to take my word for it that this is impossible. I know him, no matter how much time has passed. His honor means too much to him. That won’t have changed.”
I bit into the pastry before she could press me. A small part of me whispered that I had changed, changed drastically. The same thing could have happened to Elva. I’d seen no signs of it, but it was certainly a possibility. “In any case,” I said aloud after swallowing, “we need a plan. Do we rescue Elva? Or do we keep our eyes on the Godstone?”
Her head came up, and she turned toward me, an apple in her hand. “If Metenari has the stone . . .”
I reached for a piece of dried apricot. “He doesn’t know how to use it. No matter where he looks, I never wrote that down. He still needs me for that.”
“Could Elvanyn be of any help to Metenari? Did you never give him any . . .”? She was paring an apple and waggled the hand that held the knife. “Any instruction?”
“What would be the point?”
She leaned back against the edge of the table, the knife forgotten. “It’s so unusual for a practitioner to have close friends outside of the practice, I thought it was possible . . .”
“You and I are close friends. When you only knew me as Arlyn, did you ever discuss the nature of practicing with me? Show me any forrans, recite any for me? No. You didn’t. Neither did I.”
“So we stay focused on the Godstone? We forget about Elvanyn?”
“Yes, we do, and no, we won’t. We’ll watch for him, just as he’ll be watching for us. He may even have been out in public in the hope that you would be somewhere around, that you would see him. We won’t count on him, though. He might not be in a position to help us without endangering himself.” She looked at me, a skeptical twist to her left eyebrow. “Trust me, he’ll be looking for us just as hard as we’ll be looking for him.”
“Can he manage that kind of role?”
“All he has to do is act like a soldier.”
* * *
This one’s so ignorant I don’t know what to do. This one thinks he discovered me through his hard work and his research and his cleverness, but it was more accident than intention, and now he’s posturing around as the great man, the powerful practitioner—he probably wants that inscribed on all the statues he’d like made for himself. But what now? Now that this one has me, what can he do? He left power with me, all the power needed to do whatever I like, but he took the knowledge with him. He has the forrans. Power without them will fail, just as forrans fail without power.
This one’s only just starting to realize that he doesn’t know what he needs to know. That’s how stupid this one is. I can’t work with this. I need him.
And he needs me.
Someone knows where he is. When I find him, I’ll know what to do.
Now that he’s alone, this one looks down at his hands. Or are they my hands? I’m not sure. “This can’t be good.”
* * *
Elvanyn
It took Elva a couple of days to realize that his discomfort didn’t entirely come from playing a dangerous role. The barrack room he’d been assigned was so familiar, and yet so different. The beds weren’t where they had been in his day, the walls were a different color. The kitchen was in the same place, but the stoves were self-contained in metal boxes, and the forest mural in the dining room had been painted over. He’d spent his first few years in the New Zone imagining what it would be like to be home. Somehow this didn’t feel as wonderful as he’d expected.
That wasn’t what was bothering him at the moment, however. All his experience told him he shouldn’t have been accepted so easily, even if this Metenari was nothing more than a gullible gasbag. He didn’t know what or how much the bulk of the Guard had been told, but he could guess. For now, the other soldiers recognized him as a soldier like themselves, even though he was a stranger to them. They treated him as they would have any recently recruited veteran, with reserve, testing his abilities and seeing how far he’d let them go before he pushed back.
Not that he trusted any of this. He’d been given back his guns and his sword, but what better way to keep an eye on him than to surround him with forty other people and give him chores to do, errands to run, and watches to stand? Today, for example, he’d been sent into the City as bodyguard and muscle for Predax, one of Metenari’s senior apprentices, on a routine errand to the Red Court. Elva grinned when he knew no one was looking. The hard part would be pretending he didn’t know the way.
He found it odd, however, that—bodyguard or no bodyguard—Predax seemed happy, even relieved, to be going out.
After fifteen minutes or so, Elvanyn started to think differently about the seriousness of his assignment. He’d expected them to leave the palace on foot; in his day practitioners had always made themselves as accessible as possible. Today, however, people on the street ignored the young apprentice, their eyes lowering and their shoulders stiffening. Elva had walked these same streets countless times with Xandra Albainil. The way he remembered it, people passing in the old days would nod pleasantly to Xandra, as if they were acquainted. Today they pretended not to notice Predax at all.
Were they angry? Or afraid?
And Elva found the City itself was just enough changed to tickle at his nerves, keeping him checking their perimeter, watching the rooftops, and searching the shadows for enemies. He checked the lay of his pistols, and rested his wrist on the hilt of his sword.
“Is it my imagination or are these people avoiding us?” he finally asked when the fourth person he nodded to nodded back without meeting his eye.
Predax looked around without slackening his pace. “They seem normal to me.”
“So it’s normal for people to step out of your way without even acknowledging your presence? To be always looking in another direction when you look at them?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.” Maybe so, but the young man was clearly becoming uncomfortable.
Elva decided to try a different approach. “My friend, F
enra Lowens, said that practitioners help people.” He gestured around him with his right hand. “You doctor them, and invent new things for them. These people don’t act like you’re helping them.”
The boy’s face stiffened. “Well, Practitioner Lowens seems a fine person, but she’s a third-class practitioner, and that limits her, if you see what I mean. She normally lives in one of the outer Modes, where the mundanes still believe in the practice and respect it. Here in the City it’s not just a practitioner and a village elder, deciding between them how things will be done. Here,” he gestured around him, “they don’t believe in the practice any more. They call us scientists and think we invent things—like gaslights—and then keep them to ourselves until the Red Court forces us to share them.”
“And you’re not doing that.” Elva made it as much a statement as he could.
“No. Well, not exactly.” Predax looked up at a nearby rooftop, suddenly interested in the complicated tile work. “There’s always been tension between the two Courts,” he said finally. “The Red Court thinks it should be in charge—and, well, the White Court thinks the opposite.”
“That’s rather fair-minded of you,” Elva said. He’d expected an apprentice to be firmly on the side of the White Court.
“My mother was an advocate—well, still is, I suppose—and she taught us always to look at things from all sides.”
Elva nodded. “So what’s this tension like?”
“It’s hard to explain to someone from away,” the young apprentice began. “The Red Court puts a tax on everything that goes into the White Court—food, materials, that kind of thing. They decided that anyone practicing in the city now needs a permit.”
“Let me guess, practitioners retaliate by raising their fees and requiring their clients to get a different kind of permit.”
“And it’s easy for the Red Court to convince people that this is all the fault of greedy practitioners.” Predax shrugged. “I know it sounds petty, but it’s a little worse, every day.”
“And why don’t practitioners put a stop to it? Surely they’re powerful enough in themselves?”
“Well, sure, but the only way to really stop it is by a show of force, which will only turn the people against us even more.” Predax swallowed and looked up at the clouds as if he were checking for rain. “Though there’s a faction of the council that’s pressing for that kind of solution.” He shrugged and looked at Elva again. “So there’s this delicate balance of power between the two Courts.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Elva said. “Where I come from, people aren’t fond of too much government, as a general rule. They’re more likely to side with those opposing, and from what you say, that would be practitioners.”
“Mundanes are too easily led.” That sounded like the boy was repeating something someone else said, and Elva thought he could guess who. Predax confirmed it with his next words. “Practitioner Metenari says they always want innovation they’re not ready for, and then they resist every innovation we introduce, claiming they’re being forced against their wills. They claim they’d like to decide for themselves what kind of lights they want in their streets. They don’t listen, and no matter what we do, the Red Court puts us in the wrong.”
For a person whose mother was an advocate, Predax seemed a bit naïve. Elva wondered whether it was all an act, whether he was being tested. It would be easy to escape from this child. But it wouldn’t take long for Metenari to find him, if he wanted to, though Elvanyn wasn’t supposed to know that, not if he really was someone from another dimension. That was the nature of the test, if there was one. Given the opportunity, would Elvanyn run? Or would he keep to his new role? Was he trustworthy?
And he couldn’t overlook that there could be more to this. He’d made a point to Metenari that he was only concerned about Fenra, that everything he’d done had been for her sake. Did the practitioner think that Elva would be a lure to draw her out into the open? To capture her? Personally, he didn’t think that Fenra or Arlyn Albainil, providing she’d been able to revive him, were stupid enough to fall for that kind of trap, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be on the lookout for him, just as he was for them.
Another twenty minutes brought them to the outer guard gate of the Red Court, where Elva experienced firsthand the tensions that Predax had described to him. Like the White Court, the Red was another city within the City, built onto, torn down, and rebuilt as things changed, as nobles came and went. In theory, the Red was made up of noble families, of which each head was a member of the council—or “court,” as they called it. Every few years a vote would take place, and the leadership of the court would change, and someone new would become “first Courtier.”
He and Predax were waved through the outer gates, guarded for the first time in Elva’s experience, with no difficulty, but were stopped at the inner gate.
“Name and business?”
Predax sucked in his breath, posture rigid, but answered calmly enough. “Apprentice Practitioner Predax, White Court cour—”
“We don’t have a messenger on the list for today.” The man didn’t look at any list that Elva could see.
“I’m not a messenger, I’m the regular courier. I was here the day before yesterday.”
Elva could have told Predax that tone wouldn’t help. The boy should have known it himself. The only way to handle this type was to act as though you were enjoying yourself, pleased to receive the interest and attention, thrilled to answer all the questions they could ask.
If they saw they weren’t annoying you, they would stop trying.
Elva might actually have had some fun, if he had been the one answering the questions. As it was, this treatment made his skin prickle. This was malicious, and intended to intimidate. The White Court should have sent a practitioner, he thought, not an apprentice. These guards might still have been surly, but they would also have been civil.
“Ah, yes, here you are. Building seven. Here’s your badge.”
“You mean building three,” Predax said.
The guard stayed stone-faced. “I can give you a badge for seven today, or you can come back another day.”
“Oh, very well.” Predax accepted his badge with a twisted mouth. Elva reached out for his own badge.
“Not you, sir, unless you leave your weapons.” The tone at least was respectful, guard to guard.
And never see them again. “Why don’t one of you gentlemen accompany us? Then you could—”
Predax tugged at his sleeve. “Never mind,” the boy said, “you can wait here. I’ll be perfectly safe.”
Elva prepared himself for some rough handling from the guards. The hard look in their eyes clearly showed animosity. He was surprised, therefore, when after showing him the corner they wanted him to sit in, they turned their attention to the people still waiting to enter, and ignored him.
Obviously they thought this the most annoying thing they could do to him. Elva smiled to himself as he clasped his hands behind his head and stretched out his feet. Amateurs, he thought, as he began whistling a tune popular in the Dundalk Territory. The guards looked over at him from time to time, but were otherwise too busy to bother him any further. He had a fine view of the inner courtyard from here, and watched as people, some in uniforms, came and went about their business. Two young people stopped to talk to each other, eventually sitting down on the lip of a large fountain. No water was flowing, but one young woman scooped up a water lily and presented it to the other.
Finally Predax came back, carrying what looked like a map case. The guards examined its seals with care, made the young apprentice remove his jacket and roll up his sleeves. Finally satisfied that Predax wasn’t hiding anything stolen under his clothes, the guards allowed them to leave.
“Are you always treated like this?” he asked Predax once they passed through the outer gate into the public streets.
> “Oh, yes.” Predax’s grin was a good effort, but Elva could see the stiffness of forced muscles. “This way they can feel important. It’s harmless.”
The young apprentice did his best to sound certain, but in Elva’s experience there was very little distance between insult and injury. Still, with his errand finished, the boy was more relaxed. Elva decided to take advantage.
“I’m new here. May I ask a question? About Practitioner Metenari? Does he seem himself to you?” he said. “He’s a little different than when I met him before, with Practitioner Lowens.”
“What do you mean?” Predax hesitated, suddenly tense. “He’s tired, of course. He’s just finished the first part of a very complicated project.”
“Ah, well then. There’s always that bit of a letdown when you’ve been working on something for a long time and you finally succeed, isn’t there?” Elva reminded himself he wasn’t supposed to know what was going on. Just a gunslinger, he thought with an inner smile. Not from these parts.
“You’re right.” The boy relaxed. “It’s like passing an exam after you’ve been studying hard for weeks. You feel a little empty, like you don’t know what to do now. Yes, that might account for it.”
“Account for what, if you don’t mind my asking?” People unfamiliar with practitioners might be surprised by Predax’s willingness to talk, but in fact this behavior had been the foundation of Elva’s friendship with Xandra Albainil. Practicing was a lonely profession, for all that in the White Court everyone knew everyone else. There had always been a few who lived apart by choice, like Fenra. In his day many practitioners still traveled often, visiting other Modes, going about their business—obscure and esoteric as it was. Nowadays practitioners like Metenari—and even Fenra’s beloved Medlyn Tierell—seemed to stay in the City and surround themselves with apprentices.
The Godstone Page 19
