It seemed absurd that he had not guessed it before, the way people had talked. Insane, that he had failed to see the plain reality, thinking it little more than some religious turn of phrase. Yet there she was, brilliant and bright, and shedding her amaranthine glow on the chamber.
The crime of the Faceless was even darker than he had at first thought: the dark necromancer that Amut had defeated had attempted to strike at the very soul of the ship, and unmake the sacrifice that permitted it to fly.
“I was told, long ago,” he answered at last, “that the behemoths were made by the guilds, and that the societies upon them simply grew as a byproduct of the necessities of trade.”
“The guilds love their lies,” Belit answered. “Especially those that line their pockets.”
“Your version of the myth doesn’t exactly sound like the origins of a trade ship,” Elias acknowledged.
“Funny, that,” Belit said under her breath.
“And the white knights?” Elias asked, more quietly now. “The sword? There is much you haven’t told me.” As he spoke softly, they watched Aimee and Harkon walking a slow circuit around the core metadrive, whilst Vant stood on the platform, talking animatedly with Hephus while Viltas, Vallus, and Rachim spoke in hushed tones. Vallus briefly glanced their way, and Belit averted her gaze.
“That’s a different story, but yes, I did promise.” A wan smile curled at the corner of her mouth. “The officer aristocracy holds it as pure myth, but I know better. As it goes, long before the Faceless, a dark warrior menaced Iseult, and sought to poison her heart. The officers could not catch him, and he nearly slew the captain… but then–” a look of serenity crossed her face “–white knights came from the deep sky and killed him, before vanishing once more into the clouds. That is where the story ends for most, but not for me. I first heard it from my mother, and then again from my predecessor as commander of the Red Guard. According to our private traditions, one among these heroes remained behind for a brief time, to advise the captain of Iseult, and to train a group of warriors not merely to defend him, but to protect the ship, should our enemies return. This hero passed the secrets of the blade that you and I share down to the first commander of the Red Guard, and thus, teacher to student, they have been passed down ever since, along with the principles, the virtues, for which those secrets stand.”
Over the course of the story, Elias had felt his breathing nearly stop in his chest as he waited upon every word, his feverish mind working furiously over the implications of every sentence.
Belit seemed to have caught on. “Do you understand me now, Elias Leblanc, when I say that I do not believe you are the first to escape?”
Elias was quiet for longer than he thought was appropriate. His mouth tasted dry, and he felt a dizziness settling over him. His hand had started gripping Oath of Aurum’s hilt, and his mind was reeling. The memory of Roland’s ancient book flashed through his mind, as did certain things his former master had once said of his desire for the Axiom Diamond.
“With this jewel in our possession, there will be no foe beyond our reach, no enemy we cannot find.”
The grip of the sword was warm in his hand. “And the blade?” he asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“That I am sketchier on,” she said. “Save that it fits – identically – the description I was once given of another. I don’t know if you have come by the grandmaster’s blade by accident, or if it is simply a copy, but…”
Her words fell short as Aimee jogged up to them, her expression intense and animated. “We found something. I think both of you should see this.”
She led them past where Vant and the others were talking and towards the upraised, central metadrive core. The closer they walked to it, the more the feelings he’d first felt emanating from the ancient metadrive became almost overpowering. It took Elias a moment to adjust as they drew closer. More than the dizzying sensation of the emotions he felt in tune with its ambient mystic power, a confusion rose in him. This wasn’t the first time he’d stood in the presence of something ancient, built from the sacrifice of lives. He suspected, deep down, that the vast metadrives that powered the Eternal Order’s iron hulks were built off the sacrifice of many, many lives. He had never felt such grief and presence when standing before it.
Then again, he hadn’t been permitted to feel much at all, whilst he was still in the order’s thrall.
“Viltas was right,” Aimee said. “This chamber was meticulously scrubbed clean over and over in the years since. Very little evidence of the original ritual work remains, and we didn’t find anything other than an echo, but there is something more recent that bears observing.”
She led them around the edge of the chamber, to a place where Harkon knelt near the wall, his hand outstretched and pressed against the metallic surface.
When they reached him, Harkon drew back his hand, and a ripple passed across the surface of the metal as he spoke a single, soft word of magic.
Scratched into the base of the wall was a symbol that made Elias’s heart freeze and his throat go dry: a ring of nine stars, jaggedly etched, but clear to one who recognized what it stood for.
“I don’t understand,” Belit said after a moment. “That’s not a symbol I’m familiar with.”
Elias looked from left to right, suddenly terrified of what might happen if anyone other than the three around him heard what he was about to say. “I do,” he said. “It’s the symbol of the Eternal Order.”
He took a step back, swallowed. A panic was rising in his chest. “Hide it,” he murmured. “Please.”
Harkon gestured again with his hand, and spoke another word. The image was once more concealed by whatever magic had hidden it. “There are others,” he said, “marking every other corner in the room. I believe they were put there recently.”
The old portalmage fixed him with a look, thoughtful, intense, and unreadable. “Magister,” Elias said through a dry throat. “You cannot think–”
“I know you didn’t,” Harkon murmured. “Aside from the insanity of the gesture, I trust you. But it evokes troubling questions.”
“Nobody on this ship knows the truth about you,” Aimee said, putting a hand on his shoulder. She turned her eyes back to the blank patch. “What worries me is why they’re there in the first place. What do they mark? Each is hidden behind a simple – but potent – illusion spell, and each marks a drive, while not actually containing any enchantment of its own. These things aren’t easy to damage. For all their finicky nature, it takes a lot of physical or magical force to actually damage one. Otherwise they could hardly last as long as they have.”
“You have to tell Hephus,” Belit said.
“I will,” Harkon said, then he looked at Elias again. “Is there precedence for this, among the order? It seems… odd, more overt, than they might do.”
Elias fought through the fog of fear churning in his brain to answer. He stuttered for a moment at first. “No,” he finally said. “That’s just it, this is… this is too direct. My former master, and cohorts, would ream any of their fellows for marking a target so obviously. They would use an innocuous symbol, previously decided on amidst those performing the task. Overtness and directness is for shock and awe, when they throw caution to the wind and rely on force.”
“An imitator?” Aimee asked.
“A poor one, if that,” Elias said. “But it is possible.”
He racked his mind, thinking of the order’s prior outreach operations, seeding enemy territories with friendly agents who might one day strike when it was warranted. He frowned.
“I will see that the chief engineer is informed,” Harkon said, rising. “These symbols bear no special enchantment of their own. So far as I can tell they are scratchings without mystic potency. Only the magic that conceals them is present, which is what concerns me.”
“Harkon,” Elias said as the old mage turned to go. “That’s not everything.”
The eyes of all three were on him now.
Belit’s expression was reserved, Aimee’s was worried. Harkon watched him with a steady, unblinking gaze.
“Since we came here I’ve seen visions of members of the order twice. Indistinct, reaching out to me. I don’t know why. I thought at first that it was paranoia, or latent memory, but now…” He shook his head. “Now I’m not so sure.”
And should the truth about me become known, he thought, everything you are striving for will crumble to dust.
Harkon looked at him for a moment, then asked a single question. “Waking visions?”
“Both times,” Elias confirmed. “And my sword, when it met the dead, it burned the enchantment from them. Left them burned-out corpses.”
The old portalmage frowned. “Aimee already told me about the former. As for the latter… tell me if you have another. But no others.” He glanced at Belit. “I presume she knows?”
“What your bodyguard was,” the tall woman said, “doesn’t interest me. Only what he is now, and what he may yet be.”
Elias closed his eyes. Nodded.
“On that we agree then, Belit,” Harkon Bright answered, then turned to his apprentice. “Come. It’s time to make a relevant report.”
Once more, the two glorified bodyguards stood alone. Elias watched as the two mages returned to the group and began a conversation that rapidly turned animated and agitated at once. You didn’t tell them everything, a little voice whispered in the back of his mind. About Yaresh. About Pentus. About the men that had tried to threaten and buy him.
No point, he answered his own little voice. A warning of potential mystic threat was relevant. The grudges or fears of others was not.
“For a man who dreads as much as you do,” Belit said, “you have good people in your corner. Less fear, junk ritter, and more mindfulness.”
“Thank you for speaking in my favor,” Elias said quietly. “But if the truth were to become known?”
“Less fear,” Belit said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “More mindfulness.”
From across the room, Harkon gestured for them to approach. “You said you were born near here,” Elias said, the memory rising as they did what they were bid. “Who was your mother?”
Belit laughed lightly. “An eccentric,” she said. “A dreamer and a bit of a mystic who loved lore and learning, but never thought much of turning either into power. One day she loved a man who lost her, and brought me into the world. Who she was isn’t as important,” she said, “as who she was to me.”
The memory of his own mother, distant and faint, passed through Elias’s mind. Noble and brave. Gentle and kind. This time something else emerged. In tune with his footfalls, he heard the echo of an old lullaby. It wasn’t until he reached the rest of the group that he realized he was actually humming the melody under his breath. “I can understand that,” he said.
“The guard will be doubled,” Hephus said. “And I will have my engineers look into it. Were they evenly spaced?”
“No,” Aimee said. “Randomly scratched. No unifying mathematical principles behind it, or mystic symbology. They could be marking the chamber’s exterior for attack. Perhaps readying to breach the core room.”
“It is possible,” Hephus admitted. “But the walls aren’t easy to breach.”
“Unless you’ve got a horde of the dead at your beck and call,” Rachim growled.
“You weren’t here when they were last a problem for us,” Viltas murmured. “And you’ve never seen a proper plague of them. Double the guard, and make sure there are sorcerers out there among them.”
This seemed to move the chief engineer. “It will be done, Lord Shipman,” he said. “Now if I may, your presence is beginning to distract and alarm my staff. The Lady runs best when her tenders are mindful of their duties.”
“That’s our cue to go,” Rachim said, with a wry smile. “Our welcome has been overstayed.”
The wall with all its plastered parchment notes stood out above Elias as they left, a wind from within the vast interior of the ship stirring the thousands of missives, prayers and devotions as feathers upon the breeze. How many were answered, he wondered. How many fell upon the deaf ears of a ship-soul consumed with keeping its people in the endless sky?
He wasn’t sure which answer to that question he preferred.
It was only as they stepped out onto the broad platform before the vast interior of the hull that they noticed their elevator no longer waited for them, but was – in fact – returning. It came to a stop where it had disgorged them before, and the gilded doors opened, revealing a hurried messenger. “I am looking for Lord Rachim, and Harkon Bright.”
“You have found them,” Rachim said, stepping forward and sizing up the newcomer. “You’re one of Pentus’s men. What does the duke of the midlevels want?”
The messenger, catching his breath, composed his face into a broad flash of friendliness. “I am here, on behalf of his grace, to present Magister Bright, his host, and his entire crew with invitations to a Grand Ball, to be held in the Star-Dome three days hence. It is my master’s opinion that there has been too much chaos, pain, and suffering of late, and that if there is to be debate, it should at least take place in the midst of finery, joy, and light.”
It was not what Elias had been expecting.
Harkon, however, smiled, amused. “Tell your master,” he said, “that my crew and I will be happy to attend.”
At the surprised looks from those around him, the old portalmage’s smile deepened. “I hope you packed fine clothes.”
Chapter Twelve
What Kings and Captains Dread
Aimee stood in a side room off the main Council Hall, with all three candidates, Elias, Harkon, and their host. She stood still, her hands folded patiently behind her back, as Yaresh screamed.
The council had just had yet another vote, and it hadn’t gone as the lord of the muster wished.
“A tie,” he declared. “Unheard of. How could it be a tie? This is insane and impossible.”
“I assure you,” Harkon said, calm, level. “It is no deception. I took the count, took it again, and the functionaries – who do not care for me – checked also. It is a tie, three ways. There is no mistake.”
Yaresh looked like he’d just swallowed a mug of steaming bile. For a moment he fought for his voice, only to be interrupted by Diara before he could start ranting again. “Then we shall simply have to wait until another vote can be scheduled. The officers have their duties, and we must not keep them away from their tasks. The bridge crew will hold the wheelhouse in the meantime, as they have done.”
“Do not interrupt me, woman,” Yaresh snapped.
“Forgive me,” Diara said with practiced calm. “You were not saying anything of value.”
Yaresh’s face went white with rage. “I will not sit here and suffer disrespect from this craven mystic who has no grasp of the fundamental realities my people face!”
“That mystic is your fellow aspirant,” Rachim growled. “You’ll bloody behave yourself.”
A slight stirring drew Aimee’s attention to her left. At Yaresh’s last outburst, Elias had taken an involuntary – or was it? – step forward, and now stood watching the lord of the muster with a level, blank expression that was somehow terrifying to meet.
“I am content to wait, if that is what must be done,” Diara said. “Perhaps the good duke of the midlevels is right, and a night beneath the stars will ease the contentiousness between the officers.”
“Or,” Pentus said, flushed, and looking suddenly determined in a way that made Aimee nervous, “I could disrupt all of this with an announcement I’ve been considering for some time. I shall attempt the ancient Trials of Captaincy.”
Silence. Yaresh and Diara both stared in shock at the Duke of the Mid-Levels.
“That’s absurd,” Yaresh said. “No captain has done such in three hundred years.”
“But it isn’t without precedent, is it?” Pentus said, smiling. “I shall attempt them. There is no law stating t
hat I can’t, and we have need of someone, I think, whom Iseult herself deems worthy of her high seat, have we not?”
Before the other two could argue with him, the duke of the midlevels stepped out of the side room, and walked out to address the council. Aimee heard the announcement from a distance as Yaresh stormed after him.
“That’s the second time I’ve heard these trials referenced,” Aimee said. “Someone explain that to me, because I haven’t been brought up to speed on that one.”
To her surprise, it was Diara who spoke. “The council didn’t always choose the captain. Once – the last time being three hundred years ago – those who sat the chair were expected to complete a series of trials, with the ship herself believed to be a sort of mystic judge of it all. On at least one occasion these trials were completed by one who didn’t realize he was going through them. They have changed with time, but generally there were five.
“A prospective captain who would win by way of trials had to complete the following tasks: defend the ship from threats external; guide the ship by starlight alone; cross the ivory bridge in the midst of a storm; and show mercy to a hated foe. Those who completed the first four could then attempt the fifth: prove their worth by touching the heart of the core metadrive and come away unburnt.”
The Countess of Astronomers gave a wan smile. “Needless to say, few were ever able to succeed, so rather than see its finest sons and daughters killing themselves in the effort to earn the approval of Iseult, they instituted their current system of voting for their captain from amidst their own ranks.”
“I am surprised,” Harkon said, “that Yaresh so strenuously objected. Such prophetic position would surely impart the sort of gloss he wants.”
“I’m not,” Aimee said with a shake of her head. “Yaresh isn’t actually brave. He’s an angry brute who fears tests of genuine worth. For all his disdain of politics, they’re the only chance he has at winning.”
“Truly,” Diara murmured with a sardonic smile, “I am moved by your impartiality.”
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