But the empty room had been an insult. When the Emperor signed the proposals into law twice a year, there should be people present, and would have been, if anyone thought that the Emperor would do anything but sign what he was told.
He entered the library through a secondary door, passed unnoticed among the bins of parchment and shelves of books in the back corner of the room, and unlocked the door of his study. It was a small room, but it locked from the inside as well as the outside, which was all that he required.
He settled himself into his chair and thought. It was all very well to decide to be emperor in fact as well as name, but he didn’t really have the support he needed. The Sept of Gorrish fancied himself defacto ruler, and the Septs who followed him, Telleridge, and the like, would do their best to fight any sign of independence.
Really, he’d best sign the damn things and get it over with.
Instead he uncorked his inkwell, trimmed his pens, and began to read. The first three parchments he signed—complex trade agreements between various Septs, and nothing the Emperor should interfere with. But, almost involuntarily, he made mental notes of the names involved and the alliances the new laws revealed.
The fourth parchment was another of the increasingly punitive laws aimed at the Travelers. He signed that one, too. Most Travelers were thieves, his uncle had said, though not without a certain amount of sympathy. Having no land they could settle on, because no Sept would have allowed such a thing, they were forced to earn their bread as best they could.
Hours passed. Occasionally, Phoran would sneak out to the library to retrieve maps or books. But he signed the parchments one by one—setting only a few aside for further review.
Two he found that might serve his point. They were regional matters that most of the council would not care unduly about; each was signed by only a few more than half the council with no protests.
The first act would give the Sept of Holla exclusive fishing rights in Lake Azalan. Phoran had checked his maps and found Lake Azalan to be a small body of water in the Sept of Holla’s lands. The law was so odd—the Septs usually had effective exclusive rights to any fully enclosed body of water—that Phoran knew there was a story behind the ruling. The second concerned a small section of land awarded to the Sept of Jenne for his “services to the Empire.”
He pored over the simple words to mine them for clues and regretted the indifference that had kept him from the council the past few years, because he no longer knew all of the different alliances. Geography helped—all of Holla’s signatures were from Septs in the Northeast, Holla’s neighbors. All except one of his neighbors. The one, thought Phoran with sudden comprehension, who had been sending fishermen into his neighbor’s lake.
That one would work—Holla had little influence in the council. But he’d rather come down on the side of justice.
The second one was frustrating because the land in question was so small that he couldn’t find out much about it.
He looked up from a map and the Memory was there.
He hadn’t realized how long he’d been in his study. He’d trimmed the lamps absently as he’d needed, and there was no window to tell him that the sun had set.
Slowly Phoran set his pen down and shed the heavy state robes so he could bare his arm. The hope that had cloaked him for most of the day evaporated at the touch of cold, cold lips on his skin.
It hurt, and he looked away as it fed.
“By the taking of your blood, I owe you one answer. Choose your question.”
Tired beyond reason and still trembling with the remnants of pain, Phoran laughed harshly and said, “Do you know someone who could help me understand what’s so special about a small slice of the Sept of Gerant’s lands that the council would gift it to the Sept of Jenne?”
The Memory turned and drifted toward the door.
“I thought you owed me an answer,” said Phoran without heat. That would have taken too much passion, and he’d already, really, given up on his plans. He would not hurt an innocent man just because his petition was convenient for his purposes, and he was beginning to believe that the library did not contain the information he needed to refuse to sign Jenne’s petition.
He’d already begun to go back to comparing two well-drawn maps to a third, less clear, but more detailed when the Memory said, “Come.”
Phoran looked up and saw it waiting for him. It took him a moment to remember exactly what he’d asked.
“You know someone who could help?”
It didn’t answer.
Phoran stared at it and tried to think. If anyone saw him… He glanced at the parchments and maps scattered around and gathered the ones that might prove helpful.
CHAPTER 9
They came for him shortly after Myrceria left.
Tier set the lute down, and stood up when the door opened to admit five men in black robes like the one Telleridge had worn. Their hoods were pulled down over their faces and they walked in as if they each had a predetermined place to stand. Tier had the oddest feeling that they did not see him at all.
They took up positions around him. One after the other they began chanting, a low, droning, off-pitch sound that he could not decipher because the words they used belonged to no language he’d ever heard. Magic, he knew, but he was helpless to stop them because of Telleridge’s command.
As one, they raised their hands above their heads and clapped…
He awoke lying on the floor, naked and sweating. The memory of pain lent nausea to the cacophony of tingling body parts. He sat up, frantically trying to remember what had happened after the wizards had clapped their hands, but the thought of the sound made his ears ring.
They had taken his memories. Even so, there were things that he knew, as if the events he couldn’t remember had left a visceral residue on his body. He’d been violated, not physically raped but something that was a near kin.
He sat up straight and held his head like a wolf scenting a hare. He remembered that, remembered someone telling him… remembered Telleridge telling him that he would not know what had happened.
Owls had very good memories.
Tier’s lips drew back in a snarl. Hatred was a foreign emotion to him. He’d fought for years against an enemy he was told to hate, but he’d never found anything in his heart but agrim determination to persevere. The Fahlarn were not wicked, just wrongly ambitious. He had seen people do terrible things because of stupidity, ignorance, anger, but he’d never met evil before.
Now he was befouled by it.
Staggering to his feet, he looked for his clothing. When he was clothed he could feel less vulnerable. They’d taken his memories and his magic, but surely they would leave him clothes.
A cursory search of the room turned up a tunic and pants, though not his own. They were looser in fit than he was used to and darker colored: Traveler clothes for their pet Traveler. Nevertheless, he pulled them on quickly.
Instinctively he looked for something he could use to clean himself, and noticed there was no water in the room. Even as he regretted the lack, he knew that it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d left him in the bathing room—the filth that coated him could not be cleaned that way.
His gaze fell upon the lute.
No matter how fine the instrument, a lute always needed tuning. He sat down beside it and cradled it to him.
There were eight courses on this instrument, two strings per course except for the highest note, and this lute hadn’t been properly tuned in a while. As he settled into the familiar chore, the shaky, frightened feeling in his stomach began to settle.
He tightened pegs by slight movements, because there were no extra strings sitting around if he broke one. As the lute started to come up to tune, he noticed that the man who’d set the fretting had had an ear as good as his own—perhaps he’d been a Bard, too.
He tried a simple refrain and knew in a rush of relief that this was what he’d needed. For a long time he just played bits of this and that, le
tting the music salve the hurt that had been done to him.
At last his fingers hit upon a tune that his ears enjoyed, a piece his grandfather had written to welcome the coming of spring. He closed his eyes and let the music fill him until everything else was distant, where it could no longer harm him. He took a deep breath that filled his lungs with the scent of lilacs.
Magic.
He opened his eyes, stilled his hands, and took another breath. The scent had faded, but he could still smell the sweet flowers until his sinuses closed. His eyes watered and he sneezed twice; Lilacs always made him sneeze.
Perhaps, he thought, they don’t know as much about Traveler magic as they think they do.
There was a scuffle outside his door, as if someone fumbled with a key.
“Drat,” said a young man’s voice. “Drat, drat. This key is supposed to open any door in the palace. Wait, ah. A turnkey box.” There was some more rustling and a jangle of keys rattling together. The door of his cell creaked open.
“Er, hallo?” A rather pudgy young face peered around the edge of the door.
“Hello,” Tier said mildly, though his body was tense and ready to act.
“Look, I hope I didn’t wake you or… your light was still on so I thought…” The young man stumbled to a halt.
“Come in,” invited Tier genially. Keys, he thought, lowering his eyelids. This boy would be no—
He rolled to his feet abruptly. “What in the name of the seven flaming hells is that?”
The boy looked over his shoulder at the dark, nebulous shape behind him for a moment.
“You can see it?” he asked, sounding unhappy. “Most people can’t. It’s… ah… it calls itself a Memory—as if that’s a name. I haven’t figured it out exactly myself. It doesn’t usually linger like this.”
As the thing moved into the room, Tier took a step back from the overwhelming presence it carried with it. He sat back on his bed and tried to look peaceful.
“I’m sorry,” the boy apologized.
Tier turned his attention back to him with an effort, and noticed for the first time the quality of the clothes he was wearing. Velvet embroidered in heavy metal threads that looked as if they were really gold.
“Look,” said the boy again. “I don’t know why you’re here. These aren’t the regular holding cells. But for some reason”—he gave an odd, short laugh—“I think you might help me with a problem I’ve been looking into.”
And the boy took a piece of parchment he’d been holding and thrust it at Tier. He sat beside him on the bed, started to point at something and then stopped.
“Do you read?” he asked. “Not to be offensive, you understand, but you’re dressed like—”
“I can read Common,” said Tier. He’d learned under the Sept of Gerant, making him one of the double handful of people who could read in Redern.
Since the Memory, whatever that was, had decided to stay on the far side of the cell, Tier allowed himself to look more closely at the writing on the parchment.
“Look here,” said the boy, sounding more authoritative. “This is nominally just a simple award for a job well done. Except that usually properties that belong to one Sept aren’t gifted to another—certainly not with a vague ‘for services to the Empire.’ See?”
Tier looked at what he held with disbelief. It appeared to be a law document of some sort.
First Tier had thought that the boy might be one of Telleridge’s wizards, especially with the thing that had followed him in. Then he’d been almost certain that he was one of the Passerines Myrceria had told him about. Now…
He cleared his throat. “Are you a member of the Secret Path?”
“If I’m not, does that mean you can’t tell me the answer?”
The disingenuous answer made Tier laugh in spite of his generally lousy mood. The young man gave him a pleased smile.
“Actually, I’ve never heard of the Secret Path. Though, if you put any three nobles together, they’ll start four secret societies of something.”
Tier nodded his head slowly. “I’d been given the impression that the Path members had taken over this bit of the palace and made it their own. If you’re not one, how did you find your way here?”
The boy shrugged. “The palace has enough rooms to house the whole city and then some. The first fifteen Emperors Phoran spent all their time building the place and the next ten tried to figure out what to do with all the rooms—mostly close them up. At least two of them, the eighth and the fourteenth—or the seventh and the thirteenth if you’d rather not give a number to the first Phoran—were fascinated by secret rooms and passages. By happy chance I stumbled upon the plans of Eight and actively sought Fourteen’s. Once I had them, I hid them myself. At any rate, they give me ready access to most of the palace. Not that there’s usually much to see.”
“I see,” said Tier, rather dazzled by all the eights who might have been sevens—there was a song in that somewhere. He hadn’t really thought about how the Path had managed to secret off such a big chunk of building. He had a hard time wrapping his mind around a building so large that the Path could use a section for generations and not have it discovered.
“I’m not a lawyer,” Tier said finally. “Nor do I know anything about the Septs. I don’t see how I can help you.”
The boy frowned. “I asked if there was someone who could help me find out more about the piece of land in question. Is there any reason that you would know something about the Sept of Gerant’s lands?
“The Sept of Gerant?” exclaimed Tier, distracted from the question of who knew enough to send this boy after him.
“That’s right,” said the boy. “I don’t know him by face, but it sounds as if you’ve met him.”
“He’ll not have been at court,” murmured Tier, reading the rest of the document rapidly. “He’s an old warrior, not fitted for wearing silks and such. The Sept of Jenne, hmm.”
“I have this, if it helps,” said the boy, and he pulled a small, faded map from a pocket. “I can show you where the land in question is—I just don’t know what’s so important about it.”
The soft hand that handed Tier a map had a signet ring on it. Tier noticed and catalogued it, but he was thinking about the map so it took him a moment before he realized who was sitting on his bed beside him.
The Emperor?
His night had acquired a new level of strangeness. Tier glanced at the Memory. Was it some sort of body guard?
He forced his eyes back to the map. If the Emperor had wanted him to know who he was talking to, he would have introduced himself.
The boy tapped a spot on the old map. “That’s where it is. It doesn’t even connect to Jenne’s lands.”
Tier closed his eyes and thought back twenty years, trying to make the lines on the map correspond to the land he had known rather well at one time.
“Water rights,” he said finally. “That’s the headwaters of the creek that gives Gerant’s people water. This piece of land belongs to the Sept of Jenne’s father-in-law—or it did twenty years ago. The current Sept might be the son or grandson of the man I’m thinking of, but at any rate, the land’s in Jenne’s family’s hands. It’s pretty useless despite its size, because it’s in the rainshadow of Brulles Mountain—won’t grow anything but sagebrush. If Jenne had control of Brulles—that strip of map should be marked to show the mountain—he could hire a wizard to divert the flow of water and send it down the other side of the mountain, or find some way of diverting the small river that runs on the wrong side for their purposes.”
“Hah,” the boy exclaimed happily. “It’s a payoff. That’s the one I want, then. What can you tell me about Gerant’s allies?”
Tier hesitated. “Gerant’s a good man,” he said.
The boy raised an eyebrow. “I’m not planning on hurting him. I…” Now it was his turn to hesitate.
“I suspect,” said Tier softly, “that there’s a law or two against a common man like me sharing a seat with
the Emperor. If you’ve a need to be incognito, it might be better to take off that ring.”
Phoran (doubtless the boy’s name was Phoran—though Tier couldn’t remember the number that went with the name) looked upset for a moment, glanced at the ring that was the Emperor’s seal, then shrugged.
“I’ll keep your advice in mind. Well enough. If you know that much, look here.” He tapped the paper impatiently. “I need something I can use as a fulcrum to move the power structure in the Council of Septs so that I don’t continue to be just a figurehead, and this document is it. It was in my twice-yearly stack of petitions to be signed into law. There aren’t many signatures on this—only a few people who owed Jenne something. Like as not most of them didn’t know what it was they were signing. You can’t even tell that this land is Gerant’s without this map.”
“Right,” said Tier. He hadn’t realized that the boy was a figurehead, but then he hadn’t concerned himself with any news outside of Redern since he’d left Gerant’s services several years before the last Phoran died. “Twenty-sixth,” he said aloud.
“Only if you don’t count the first Phoran,” said Phoran, not the least discomposed. “I like to, though my father didn’t. Are you still with me?”
“Right,” Tier nodded. “You have a bill, obviously a favor, but not for a Sept who is very powerful. So if you decide to decline to sign it, you’re not going to make a slew of enemies. Who could object to your refusal to grant one Sept’s lands to another without better reason than you’ve been given? And I’ll put up my right arm that Gerant is no traitor or mischief maker that will embarrass you on this. He’s true as oak. So you refuse to sign it, and the rest of the council either supports you, or makes it look like they think the council should have the right to take land from whatever Sept they want without giving an adequate reason.”
“That’s it,” said the boy, gathering up his map and document. “And I have a toehold into ruling on my own. So, you have done me a favor.” Carefully he folded the parchment so it fit into his pocket with the map. “I owe you an equal favor. Before I determine how best to repay you, tell me what you are doing here, what this Path that I’m not a member of is, and what the two have to do with each other.”
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