by Rachel Aaron
“Really?” Whitefall said, his voice low. “How sure?”
“Absolutely,” Miranda said, drawing herself up. “You may call it treason, but we must follow our oaths to the Court and our spirits above all other obligations. Master Banage understands this better than any Spiritualist I’ve ever known.”
“I’m sure he does,” Whitefall said. “That’s why I’m sending you back to him with a compromise.”
Miranda blinked. “What?”
“A compromise,” Whitefall said, his stern face breaking into a smile. “I realize you Spiritualists don’t have much knowledge of the concept, but they can be very useful.”
“But you just said Master Banage was a traitor,” Miranda said, staring at him.
“He is,” Whitefall said. “But he doesn’t have to remain one. Listen, child, no one wanted things this way less than myself. Banage is a hard man. I thought if I laid things out in hard terms he would see reason, but all I managed was to divide the Court, which was the last thing I wanted.” He tightened his hand on her arm. “I don’t want Spiritualist defectors. I want the Spirit Court—the whole Court—fighting with us against a common enemy.”
He turned Miranda around to face him, looking down at her with a sad, serious expression. “I am not a proud man,” he said quietly. “I am not afraid to eat my own words if that’s what’s best for the Council. If the Spirit Court will agree to help us in this war, I swear that they will be kept in a purely supportive roll—no fighting, no risk to your spirits, no danger to your oaths. In addition, I am prepared to give Banage something he’s been angling at for a long time: a Council law making Enslavement illegal.”
“Illegal?” Miranda said.
Whitefall nodded. “Think of the possibilities. The Court will no longer have to deal with rogue wizards alone. You’ll be able to call on Council law to demand backup from local officials. The Court will have authority like it’s never had before. Plus, you will save your Spiritualists from a division that could doom your entire organization without compromising your ideals, and you’ll help me keep our necks out from under the Empress’s boot. Now”—he smiled—“is that a compromise that could interest you?”
Miranda bit her lip. It was a good offer, a potentially fantastic offer, but… “I’m not the person who can make that decision.”
“I know,” Whitefall said. “Sara says you owe us a debt. I’m calling it in. Take my compromise to Banage. I’ve tried sending him messages, but he won’t open his Tower for anything. That said, I’m betting he’ll open it for you. Make my case to your master and I’ll wipe your obligation to Sara and the Council clean. There is no downside for you in this, Spiritualist Lyonette. Even if Banage refuses, you’ll still be with him, and your debt to us will still be forgiven. What do you say?”
Miranda thought the words through carefully. “Just support?”
“Just support,” Whitefall said, nodding.
“All right,” Miranda said at last. “But I want everything in writing first.”
Whitefall smiled. “Very shrewd, but I expected no less.” He walked back over to his desk and drew out a thick stack of papers. “I had the clerks draw it up the moment Sara told me you were on your way.”
Miranda took the papers. The offer was all there, just as he’d said. Copied in triplicate, she noticed with a sigh, but what else could you expect from the Council?
“I’ll take this to Banage at once,” she said, tucking the papers under her arm. “But I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
“With Etmon, I never do,” Whitefall said, sitting down at his desk. “Nice meeting you, Spiritualist.”
Miranda bowed from the waist, turned on her heel, and left. The men in the waiting room sneered at her as she pushed past them, but Miranda didn’t even notice. Her head was reeling with everything that had happened. This morning she’d been preparing for the potential pitfalls of telling the story of the Shaper Mountain to Sara, now she was bringing the Council’s compromise to Master Banage with war looming over them, and there was still the issue of the demons, the stars, and the Shepherdess. She didn’t even know what crisis to focus on anymore but, pressing the papers hard against her chest, she knew where to begin. First she had to find Master Banage and explain everything. Once all the cards were on the table, he would know what to do.
That thought alone was enough to calm her mind as she marched down the stairs toward the citadel yard where Gin was waiting to take her home to the Tower.
Tower Keeper Blint turned to face the Merchant Prince, brandishing his rings as he did. “You do realize you just gave Banage back his greatest weapon?”
“A calculated risk,” Whitefall said, leaning back in his chair. “And the best choice, given our options. She certainly wasn’t going to turn against Banage, and you can’t force a Spiritualist to work. That left locking her up, which I don’t have the resources for at the moment, or sending her running home to sulk with her master. At least this way I can get an offer through that stone wall of his, and who knows, the old zealot just might take it.”
“He won’t,” Blint said. “Banage would die before he compromised his integrity.”
“We also thought he would die before he split his precious Court,” Sara said. “But he laid down the line and shed you Tower Keepers without so much as a look back, didn’t he? But you saw the girl’s eyes light up when Alber offered to outlaw Enslavement. The Court’s been after that apple for years. It might just be enough to convince Miranda that the Council’s position is in the right, and she can be very persuasive when she thinks she’s on the moral side of things.”
“It will take more than an apple and an earnest girl to talk Banage out of that Tower,” Blint said, his voice dripping with superiority. “The Rector Spiritualis is a slave to his pride. I don’t even know why you want him along. He’ll just get in our way.”
“With all due respect to you and your Tower Keepers, Blint,” Whitefall said in a tired voice, “you’d better hope Sara’s right. It’s no secret that Lyonette and Banage are the two strongest wizards in the Court. They are weapons we cannot afford to lay by, however much trouble they may be. If sending the girl doesn’t work, we’ll just have to try something else. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other people to mollify today.”
Blint opened his mouth, but he closed it again as Sara swept by to open the door. Duly dismissed, Blint stomped out. Sara followed right behind him, stepping out of the way as the pages showed in the royal ambassador from some country she couldn’t be bothered to remember.
As ordered, Sparrow was waiting in the hall for her. He was freshly washed and dressed, and his hair was pulled back in a long, blond snake of a braid over the shoulder of his impressively garish orange coat. He stood aside for Blint with a flourish as the Tower Keeper stomped down the stairs and then turned to Sara, smiling as he handed her a lit pipe.
“Thank the Powers,” she muttered, snatching the pipe from his hand and putting it to her mouth with a deep draw that she held for nearly half a minute. “At least something’s going right,” she said, letting the breath go at last. “Do you have it?”
“Of course.” Sparrow pulled a worn leather book from his sleeve. “Just as I told you.”
Sara snatched the book with greedy fingers, her eyes widening with delight as she flipped through the pages. “Not as good as the man himself,” she said. “But I’ll take what I can get.”
“You’re welcome,” Sparrow said pointedly as they started down the stairs.
Sara blew a line of smoke at him. “Did you manage to plant the point?”
“Not an hour ago,” Sparrow said. “Just before we entered the city.”
“And she didn’t notice?” Sara asked, taking in a fresh lungful of smoke.
Sparrow looked affronted. “Who do you think you’re dealing with?”
“Just checking,” Sara said. “I’ve been far too much in the company of idiots lately.”
“That’s the risk you take working with the
Council,” Sparrow said cheerfully. “Are you sure about this Miranda thing? I mean, I went through all that trouble to get her in debt to us, I’d hate to think we let her off the hook too easily.”
“I’m sure,” Sara said, flipping through Slorn’s book. “I got back from the desert this morning, but Alber’s weapon isn’t ready yet, and at this rate I don’t know when it will be. I need more wizards, and fast. Myron’s already drawn up plans for more spirit defense points than I can man, even with Blint’s deserters. That militaristic idiot doesn’t seem to understand that wizards are not interchangeable. There’s a huge power difference between a man like Blint and our Miranda. I’d hoped that by making Banage a traitor we could squeeze the Court enough to get what we needed, but it looks like all the true talent has stayed loyal so far.” She blew an angry line of smoke. “They’re worse than burned sugar, the way they stick together.”
“If you’re holding out for Miranda to turn, it’ll be a long wait,” Sparrow said. “Banage could say the sky was green and she would still back him.”
“It’s her loyalty I’m counting on,” Sara said with a sad sigh. “Blint was right, you know. Banage will never back down now that Whitefall’s forced him to make his stand. He won’t budge an inch from that tower until I roll over. We’ve been playing this game for twenty years now, he and I, but not for much longer. I didn’t want it to be like this, but the Empress is the trump that forces all hands, even mine.”
“Well, that’s the problem with games,” Sparrow said. “Sooner or later, someone has to lose.”
Sara sighed again and tapped out her pipe. Sparrow just smiled and held the door for her as they started down the dark stairs toward her office in the Relay chamber.
Outside, at the edges of Zarin, another hundred soldiers arrived at the gates.
CHAPTER
13
Josef stomped after Duke Finley’s servant as they wound down through the ancient warren of Osera’s royal offices. But rather than stopping at one of the venerable old doors, the servant led Josef out past the stables to the little paved yard at the rear of the palace. A black carriage was waiting there for them, and the servant hurried forward to open the door.
Josef paused. This was all getting a little too suspicious—the sudden invitation, the backdoor exit, the unmarked carriage. Though, Josef reminded himself, suspicious as it was, he wasn’t exactly a soft target. If Finley wanted to try something, let him. At least it would be a straightforward fight. Grinning at the thought, Josef climbed into the carriage. It rocked under his weight as he pulled himself inside. The servant followed, shutting the door behind them. The moment the door closed, the carriage shot forward, clattering through the yard and out the iron gate.
The back gate of the palace faced east, toward the Unseen Sea. Here, on the side of the island farthest from the Council and the wealth it brought, the scars of the war with the Empress were still evident. The houses were still built in the old way, stone shacks never more than a single story tall, most without windows, only a chimney and a door covered with oil cloth to keep the weather out. The houses clustered together, leaning on each other for comfort, but between the clusters, breaking up the flow of buildings like rocks in a stream, were the craters.
Josef wasn’t born when the Empress’s fleet first attacked, but he knew those craters same as any Oseran. They were the legacy of the Empress’s war spirits, great monsters of stone and fire that came from the sky, striking the ground in enormous eruptions of burning rock. Even now, decades later, the ground was still black at the crater’s base, the bedrock itself scorched and broken where the Empress’s wizards had struck.
As they drove down the island’s eastern slope, the houses grew smaller and the craters more numerous. The road they followed was narrow and winding, changing from smoothly paved stone to gravel and finally to rutted, sandy dirt as it snaked down the mountain. Ahead of them, Josef could see the glitter of the Unseen Sea. He knew where they were headed now. Osera, steep and rocky as it was, was not without beaches. This road led to the only sheltered bay on the island’s eastern side, a protected curve of sand called the Rebuke, for it was here that the Council forces, led by his mother, had finally turned the Empress away.
The carriage bounced down the rutted road and came at last to a halt. Josef was out before the wheels stopped moving. Finley’s servant hurried after him only to find Josef standing at the bottom step of the carriage, staring at the water with a strange look on his face.
The Rebuke was a curving oval bay ringed in by steep cliffs to form a narrow mouth leading out to sea. This much at least was still as Josef remembered it, but everything else had changed. When he’d come here as a boy to swim, the Rebuke had been little more than a grassy hill leading down to a narrow strip of rocky sand wedged between a cleft in the sea cliffs. Now that scrubby hill was gone, replaced by a smoothly paved walkway wide enough to march ten men abreast circling the inside of the bay all the way to the cliffs. Squinting against the salty wind, Josef ignored the servant’s insistent tugging and walked out onto the stone. The paved area wasn’t just a flattening of the old hill; it wasn’t even just a walkway. It was a rampart, the flat top of a great wall that ran all the way along the bay’s inner curve, forming a third, manmade cliff to join the natural barriers on the bay’s north and south. Below the flat walkway he stood on was a steep, unclimbable slope of enormous, sharp, piled stone held together with sandy cement.
Josef looked over his shoulder. “When did they build this?”
The servant, not at all pleased by this delay, answered in a clipped voice. “Construction on the storm wall was finished five years ago, sir. It is the duke’s greatest project.”
Josef looked down at the solid stone beneath his feet. Not bad. Considering the gentle hill that had been here before, the wall of sharp rock and the wide rampart running along its top were certainly defensive improvements. Leaning into the wind, he looked over the wall’s edge. Down below, the narrow beach had been widened as well, the sand combed and relayed to create a wide space between the surf and the wall. A tiny stair, steep as a ladder and barely wide enough for one man, cut down between the sharp rocks at the wall’s midway mark, the only access Josef could see to the wide wooden docks that crowded the new beach. The docks themselves were large and freshly built, the tar still gleaming on the jutting joints that pushed out into the bay’s blue water, but they were nothing compared to the ships.
Oseran runners filled the blue bay in long, precise lines, the fresh-cut wood of their narrow, high-running hulls gleaming white in the afternoon sun. Josef whistled appreciatively. Runners were the pride of Oseran shipbuilding and notoriously hard to make. It was no easy task getting hardwood long and straight enough to bear the carving needed to make a runner’s long, curving keel, but that difficult shape was what let a runner weave through shallows and move faster on open water than any other ship on the sea. Back when Oserans had been pirates, the runners had been the reason they were feared. There had to be near a hundred of them bobbing in the water below, more than Josef had ever seen in one place, and every one of them new.
“Finley had this built?” he said, trying not to sound as impressed as he felt.
“Yes, your majesty,” the servant said with barely disguised disgust. “Some members of the royal family cherish their position and strive to serve Osera’s interests.”
“I bet,” Josef said. “All right, take me to him.”
The servant bowed and turned toward the large tower that dominated the storm wall’s northern half. Josef followed him, squinting up against the bright sunlight. The tower was square and solid, four stories tall with foot-thick walls and made of imported granite twice as strong as Osera’s native stone. The door was solid iron, as were the stairs that wound up the tower’s core. They passed an armory filled with racks of crossbows and crates of bolts, a small but well-equipped mess and sleeping barracks, and a nicely appointed officer’s lounge. There were soldiers everywhere, navy off
icers mostly in their distinctive tight coats, but there were palace guards as well, standing watch in their chain and quilted surcoats with their short swords ready on their hips.
The top floor of the tower was separated from the others by a heavy door. Finley’s servant stopped and knocked, a rapid double tap. The response was instant.
“Enter!” The heavy door did little to muffle Duke Finely’s booming voice.
The servant opened the door and stepped aside with a sweep of his arm. Josef looked back down the winding stair, checking for emergency exits, just in case. There was only one, the way they’d come, but he was certain he could overpower the soldiers if it came to that, so he set his face in a scowl and marched into the room.
The top of the tower was unlike the other floors. Instead of smaller partitions, it was one open room, a great loft with a high ceiling going all the way up to the tower’s pointed peak. There were tables here, including a large desk at the tower’s center, all done in the same style as the rest of the tower’s furnishings. But where the other floors were dark and sheltered by the tower’s thick walls, this room was bright with sunlight streaming in through enormous, panoramic windows that ringed the room on all sides. The windows were set with thick glass, high-quality stuff, showing the view without so much as a single distorting wobble. And what a view it was. Josef could see the entire sweep of the bay below, the wide ocean spread out in front of him, the tops of the high cliffs to his right and left, and the eastern slums behind him running almost all the way to the weathered walls of the palace at the peak of the mountain.
Finley was standing beside the window that looked due east, talking into his palm while an older man in somber civilian clothes stood beside him, watching intently. He glanced at Josef as the prince entered, and then turned away, continuing his low speech into his palm where Josef couldn’t see him. Josef glowered at that, but before he could say anything, Finley finished speaking and held out his hand to the man beside him. The older man moved forward, taking what looked like a small, blue marble from Finley and placing it carefully into a padded box.
