by Sonia Lyris
“I want to know who is loyal to the new queen.”
“Ah. That is not on the list.”
“No? You can’t tell a lie from the truth?”
“No better than someone with good eyes. No better than someone who knows the person well, that’s certain.”
It often played out this way, explaining the limits of her abilities to those who had such high hopes. The impoverished and destitute, for all their misery, asked for simple things. To ease the pain. To live another day.
“It is said that magic can help find magic.”
“Ah, you want something found?”
“Someone. Can you find a person?”
“In a house, perhaps,” she answered.
“Across the empire?”
“That is another matter. It would be like touching each stone in the Sennant river to find the single one made of iron instead of rock.”
“What if the person is a mage?”
Now she was on alert. To be hired to search for another of your kind was never a good sign.
“A Sensitive can find a mage in a small village if you give him time, but he must still know which village to search. Magic isn’t like a blocked sewer that you can find by stink. More like the wind—you see its effects where it ripples the high grasses or bends back the trees. If a mage has done magic somewhere, I may be able to sense it, like a footprint in mud. The mage may be long gone but I could point at where they once stood.”
“So if I were to tell you where someone was, could you”—he considered—“stop them from performing any magic?”
“You want me to fight another mage?” she asked, feeling her body and senses tighten.
“Perhaps.”
Maris tried to hold her anger in check, then wondered why she bothered. She let it course through her and out her hand, slamming her palm against the peach, breaking it open, the hard pit all that remained between herself and the table. Juice oozed around the squashed fruit. “Don’t you study history in that fine library of yours? When mages fight, everyone dies but the mages. How can you make the same mistakes, generation after generation, then—your cities flattened—bemoan your ill-fortune yet do it again? You are idiots, all of you.”
At least there was this advantage to being a mage: she could insult the powerful and merely be, ever so politely, asked to leave. She stood.
“Marisel—” Innel began, standing also. Apology or rebuke, she didn’t care.
“If you want to set mages against each other, find someone else.”
“Good,” Innel said.
“Good?” She glared up at him. “What’s good about it?”
“This is why I asked you to come. To help me understand. To advise. Stay, and I’ll take what you offer.”
Suddenly she saw that he hadn’t been reluctant to push her at all. He’d been probing her to see what she could and would do. She had missed the obvious. She was rusty at these games.
On edge, being here, she admitted to herself. Too much wealth bought with blood.
She could leave. Give aid to those with real need. The injured, the ill, the pregnant. But no; she could not face it again, not so soon.
And she had taken his coin.
Anger drained into weariness. She wondered if he guessed how much she craved this respite. She exhaled, felt herself become subdued. “So be it.”
He smiled at this, the smile of someone who had scored a point. “Join us for the evening meal, Marisel. The queen is”—a small pause—“wary of mages, but she’ll change her mind once she’s met you. Until then, perhaps a bath? A visit to the library? And . . .” He picked out another ripe peach, held it out to her.
Trap or no, she wanted the fruit. She took it.
The bath was hot, the scented soap lush with Perripin spices—no accident, that. Even so, she made long and delighted use of the luxury.
The peach tasted marvelous.
To her vague disgust, Maris found she had quickly become accustomed to soft beds and splendid food.
And then there was the library.
“Tea, Marisel?”
Innel poured from a cylinder, a stream of pink liquid mingling with steam as it filled a clear glass mug. It was not the spiced, bitter tea Arunkin drank—out of embarrassment for their wealth, went the Perripin joke—but a smoked fruit and bark tea, imported from Perripur, no doubt at some expense. A gesture not lost on her.
“I have some items once owned by the person I am looking for.” On the table between them he put a bundle wrapped in heavy black silk, tied with black cord. He slid it across to her.
She touched it. “You know something about magic, Lord Commander.”
“Less than I might,” he said with a twitch of a smile. “The old king was of the strong opinion that magic brings disaster to all it touches.”
“He was right in that.”
“That seems untrue to me, Marisel. You have prevented a number of disasters these last months.”
At his direction, Maris had been keeping watch on him and the queen and a few others, one of whom was unimportant to palace politics but even so had been attacked five times in five different ways over the months she had been here. The poor man was only a servant, bringing stacks of bedding into the palace from the laundry. Slow attacks, all of them. Plenty of time for Maris to warn Innel and have him calmly send soldiers to take care of the matter.
Clearly Innel was arranging these. It was the next step after fear, testing, and only mildly insulting.
In truth she was barely annoyed. He was paying her astonishingly well to eat magnificently, bathe often, and keep track of a few people.
And there was the library. Truly as astonishing a collection as Gallelon had promised.
One day, as Maris had come into the book-filled rooms, she found an elderly woman there, dressed in the gray and brown of House Nital. Yliae was her name, and she was warm and well-spoken, engaging Maris in a fascinating discussion of the architecture of stone bridges and the challenges of harvesting amardide forests. Hours slipped pleasantly by.
The following week a man in Helata’s green and blue proved eager to talk with her about the various ships on which she’d sailed. He was happy to tell her stories of the far side of Arapur, which he had been to and she had not yet. More hours slipped by.
Gallelon was right. Some of the cleverest of the Iliban.
Of course Innel was arranging these visits. But she could hardly complain when week after week, she was kept engaged, engrossed, delighted.
One day Yliae offered to take Maris into the city by carriage to hunt rare books from small, private collections. Now Maris had begun to amass another small set of tomes, one that would be hard to transport when she left. It was a pleasant problem to have. Innel was working hard to keep her happy.
“Surely the old king had mages of his own,” she said to Innel.
His eyes flickered, ever so slightly. “If he did, he has them no longer.”
Maris had come across the old king as she had explored the palace. He lay in his bed, sick with something in his blood that should not be there. Something that, with some effort, she might be able to clean. “I could look in on him.”
Innel shook his head. “The queen wouldn’t allow it. And rightly so; if he gets better under your care, they’ll say you had no part in it, but if he gets worse, they’ll blame you.” He smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid Arunkin have a ways to go to accept your kind.”
“I don’t need to be in the room,” she said, suspecting he knew this. “Simply nearby. No one need ever know.”
“No,” he said firmly. “That is not where I want your attention.”
It was obvious that Innel knew perfectly well what was causing the old king’s illness. Whether it was Innel or the queen or someone else feeding Restarn something to keep him sick didn’t matter; Innel did not want him to get better.
So be it. Not her concern.
But Innel was watching her keenly now.
Very well; he was payi
ng her enough to have earned a bit of reassurance.
“The great halls are full of spiders, best left to do their work without interference,” she said, borrowing a saying from Perripur. Innel’s eyes narrowed slightly. He knew the saying, knew what it meant. Knew what she suspected.
“In Arunkel we honor spiders,” he said. “They ensure appropriate behavior from lesser insects.” By eating them, he meant. “You are wise, Marisel.”
Wise enough to know who provided her with sumptuous meals, insightful conversation, and a library that rivaled any she had ever seen before.
Thus reassured, Innel unrolled the black silk, revealing a pale blue and white seashell, a strip of blue cloth, and a few strands of brown hair.
Maris put her fingertips on the shell, sorting out her impressions, separating out the taste of human presence from the vast backdrop that was the shell’s many years prior in the ocean. She subtracted out the most recent and fleeting touches of whoever delivered these items to Innel. Few others had touched the shell since it had been parted from the great salt seas, so this did not take long. She let the impressions settle inside her, like tea leaves falling into patterns at the bottom of a cup. It was important not to rush, a lesson that Keyretura had drilled into her repeatedly.
One strong presence remained. An odd mix of terror and assurance and grief. “She is young,” Maris said. “Still a child. There is the taste of knowing about her that most do not have so early in life. Is this the one you seek?”
“Yes.” In his voice she heard the force of desire and a touch of surprise.
Well, that was unavoidable. Half her work to the wealthy was proving herself.
“Is there more?” he asked.
“Often tired. Hungry. Afraid. Cold.”
“When?”
“I can’t tell. Across many years.”
“And the cloth and hairs?”
Maris shook her head. “They tell me nothing.” Some parts of the body could say a great deal about the spirit who lived in them. A bone, even a bit of flesh. Maris saw no reason to tell him that.
“Can you find her?”
Maris focused on the man before her. “If she is where I happen to be looking, I will know her. But to find her in the world at large is another matter. You would do better to have your many informants search for her.”
“I am already doing that. I want you to search for her as well.”
“Perhaps you don’t understand my meaning. I would need to search tile by tile through the palace. Each brick of each building. Every step along the Great Road.”
“I understand. Start in Yarpin and expand outward. I don’t believe she is in-city, but she might be. I need to be sure.”
She looked at him in astonishment. “You cannot be serious. That could take a very long time.”
“How long?”
“Years. Decades. Centuries. I don’t know.”
He nodded, stood. “Then best you begin soon.”
“Finding her this way is impossible, Lord Commander. That’s certain.”
“It’s only impossible until someone does it. All I ask is that you try, Marisel.”
Maris walked the halls, tasting those in every room she passed, searching for the girl. She suspected it would be faster to knock on doors and ask if she were there, but she doubted Innel would appreciate such a direct approach.
It occurred to Maris to wonder if this were another test. But no; there was an intensity and urgency about Innel’s tone.
An absurd way to search, but so be it; as long as she took Innel’s coin and enjoyed the palace’s extravagances, she would uphold her end of the contract.
So she strolled along polished wood floors, trailed her fingers along painted walls, and sent bits of herself into each room, questing for the one taste that would match the owner of the shell. Despite not wearing the black robes, she gathered curious stares.
Not her problem. Innel could explain her as he wished. After enough hours, she would tire, and return to the library.
Weeks passed this way. She did not find the girl in the palace. But she found other interesting people.
Like the old king, whom she looked in on despite Innel’s objection. She dipped into his body as he lay there in the bed, sweating and coughing, then into the body of the slave who slept in his room, and the doctor who came to treat him. A taste of what the doctor brought to him told Maris that this was the source of his illness.
That did not surprise her. What did surprise her was that every time the doctor rubbed the ointment into his gums, right before she did, the old king’s body tightened and his heart sped.
He knew.
She thought of telling Innel but decided that it was best to stay out of the matter. He had made clear he didn’t want her attention on the old king.
So be it.
* * *
Maris knew she would eventually need to take her search outside to the palace grounds, then into the city at large, but as the weather turned cold and wet, she found herself far more interested in staying warm and dry inside.
So instead she took the search deeper, into kitchen corners, back rooms, servant dormitories, underground storage areas, tunnels that led to garrison and dungeon. She touched on each person, passing quickly over the ones she already knew, telling herself that she was being thorough, that the girl might have somehow slipped into the palace while she wasn’t looking. It was a weak justification.
The truth was that she had grown accustomed to being around those who were not suffering and in need. She delayed through autumn as the land slid into dark winter. With rains and then snows outside, she wandered the now-familiar palace halls, delving into basements, toilet rooms, deep closets. The deep, sealed tunnels. The spaces above and between floors.
Which was how she had come across a man and a woman sitting together in a small cellar room disguised as root storage on one side and a closet on the other. She knew them: the older woman was the Minister of Larder, the young man an administrator.
Both were afraid. Very afraid.
Usually she did not listen in on such things, wanting to stay as far from Arun politics as Innel’s coin would allow, but she was intrigued to find people where they should not be, where no room was supposed to be, and in such a state of agitation. She moved her consciousness fully into the room, curling bits of air on itself to give herself the equivalent of ears inside.
“We’ve waited long enough,” the man said urgently. “Restarn promised us—”
“It doesn’t matter what Restarn promised.”
A frustrated sound. “Yes. All right. But look at how the price of metals rises, Oleane. We could make a profit now, one that would fund everything. If Restarn were on the throne, we’d have some liberty in our operations, and privacy, too, but now—”
“No, no, no,” the woman called Oleane said, cutting him off. “Things are different now.”
“Damn it, I want what I was promised.”
“Keep your voice down, boy. My books are under audit. No more slop. We must be very careful. You must be very careful.”
“I am, I am.”
“You are not.” Her voice dropped. “It’s not Restarn any more. It’s not even Cern. It’s Innel you need to be concerned with. The sooner you get fixed with that, the better.”
“It doesn’t have to be Innel.”
“I don’t want to hear it. You stink of treason.”
“He’s sending the city into the sewer, Oleane. No one is following the old agreements. He has shaken the table, and game pieces are everywhere. The queen only watches. We must do something.”
“When things are settled, perhaps—”
“Old woman, if we wait for things to settle, you will be cold in your grave and I will be too old to act. Cern turns whatever way the wind blows, and now the wind is called Innel. Let’s change the wind’s name.”
“Hush!”
“There are others who think as I do, Oleane. Don’t hide behind your hands like a child, or
when the wind changes next you will be left behind.”
“Don’t threaten me. I’m old enough to be your grandmother.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. Best you leave these battles to those young enough to imagine what might yet be.”
“Idiot. Leave war to the young and you repeat the same mistakes we made when we were young. That’s why we have generals. Have you learned nothing in your short life?”
“Innel is not much older than I am. Look at what he has managed.”
“He was in the Cohort, you fool.”
“You are wise, Oleane. Will you be our general?”
“Ah.” The woman’s voice held a smile. “I see. You and your ‘others.’ Not a general among you.”
“Truly, we need you. Will you stand with us?”
“Innel is clever. His people are everywhere.”
“That could be a different name on your tongue soon, if you’re with us. Maybe even yours.”
“Don’t flatter me, boy. I know who could take over from Innel, and it isn’t me.”
The man’s whisper held sudden passion. “Then you could be the one to choose. We’ve waited long enough. This is the time, Oleane.”
“I’m not convinced. You can’t just—”
“We are ready. Are you with us or not?”
A pause. “Do you know what you’re suggesting, boy? How dangerous this is? Do you see who squirms in Execution Square this week?”
“I am not afraid. It is time to act. Yes or no.”
A longer pause. At last: “Yes.”
Maris chuckled at the drama, withdrew, wondering if she should relay this to Innel or not. As she walked the hallways, a window afforded her a view of the aforementioned square where two men hung by their feet, heads a hand’s width above the ground, coated with some sticky substance that Maris guessed was honey. They had lasted two days thus far, despite the rats, but she did not give them much longer.
Yes, she decided, she must tell Innel. While her contract did not require it, it seemed to her that to take his money meant to tell him when his life was in danger.
The woman named Oleane and the young man with her were spiders. They had made their choices.
