by Rachel Aaron
She finished in a great rush, panting as the weight of the secrets lifted from her chest. She paused, waiting for the questions that were sure to come, but Banage just sat back and motioned for her to continue.
Miranda nodded and moved on to her cell. She told him about her solo imprisonment, Sparrow’s offer and their escape from the Shapers, the journey home, and learning about the war. Finally, she told him about the meeting with Sara, Blint, and Whitefall. She handed him Whitefall’s written promise as she told him the details of the Merchant Prince’s compromise. Banage took the paper with a strangely closed look on his face, reading it over as Miranda’s long story finally came to an end.
When it was done, she leaned back, exhausted. Though in all her years with the Court, all the missions she’d done in its name, none had taken so long or so much to tell. With the windows blocked, it was impossible to tell how long she’d been speaking. It felt like hours. However long it was, Banage had not moved at all. He was still sitting on his desk, his stern face warped into a mask of itself by the strange light of the mantel and the bright white fire on the floor.
“I’m not surprised Slorn stayed,” he said at last. “How very like him to pit his stubbornness against a mountain.”
Miranda looked up. “You know him?”
“Some,” Banage said. “He’s hard to avoid when you involve yourself in the politics of spirits to any depth. He’s a good wizard, though, and a good man. You made the right choice to go with him.”
Miranda let out the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “Thank you, Master Banage.”
Banage nodded. “So,” he said. “The mysterious Shepherdess who commands all spirits. I’d heard snippets, hints, but you can never get a spirit to talk plainly about such things. To hear it from the Shaper Mountain is something indeed, though I suppose demons large enough to make Alric panic can get even Great Spirits talking about things they’d rather not.” He started chuckling, like this was some kind of joke, and looked over at Miranda. “You never bring good news, do you?”
“You never send me anywhere easy,” Miranda protested.
Banage smiled. “You would be wasted on easy things.”
“It seems nothing is easy anymore,” Miranda said with a deep sigh. “It feels like the world is falling apart. Enormous demons, the League in panic, spirits growing sleepier, the Shaper Mountain talking about the Shepherdess with her stars and favorites and how this world isn’t as it was. Two weeks ago, I didn’t even know for sure if the Shepherdess existed. Now I’m terrified that she’s not doing whatever it is she’s supposed to do. How can we do our job and protect the spirit world when we know so little?”
Banage shook his head. “As my spirits love to remind me, humans are creatures of blindness and ignorance. We must always remember that although we tend to see this world as ours, we are only tiny pieces of the larger whole and there is only so much we can change. The demons, for instance, we must leave to the League. We certainly cannot fight them, not without risking our spirits. Even if we were willing to face them, we would only be defeated. As for the rest, we can only do what we have always done. The Court will stand by its oaths and do what it can to protect the spirit world from whatever threatens it—wizard, star, or Shepherdess.”
“Master Banage,” Miranda said, her throat going dry. “With all these threats, I have to wonder, perhaps we should take the Merchant Prince’s compromise.”
The Rector’s head snapped to look at her.
“He promised it would only be defense,” Miranda said quickly, before she lost her courage. “Look around, we are alone. The Spirit Court is splitting in two. How can we stand firm when we are so divided?”
“We are not divided.” Banage’s voice cut the heavy air like a bitter, burning knife. “The true Court is here. Those who choose political ambition over their oaths are not Spiritualists.”
“But this is the Immortal Empress!” Miranda cried, her voice pleading. “If this were just a war between countries, I would not question your decision, but the Empress is different. Her first attack was terrifying enough to make the warring kingdoms forget their bickering and unite as a Council to face a common foe. But even united, it took everything we had to turn the Empress away. Now she’s coming to finish the kill, and everything we have might no longer be enough. I don’t like Blint, but I understand where he and every Spiritualist who went to the Council stands. They are fighting to defend their lives as they know them.”
“And there they betray their oaths,” Banage said. “Spiritualists do not fight for their own comfort, but for what is good and right for the spirit world.”
“How do we know the two aren’t the same?” Miranda countered. “Every child in the Council learns about the Empress’s invasion, and the terror trotted out more than any other are the stories of the Empress’s wizards. There are tales of them working together to control enormous spirits of fire and iron, monsters built only for war that fight until they’re torn apart. Those spirits died fighting for the Empress, and though I don’t know for sure what the empire wizards did to whip those poor spirits into such a frenzy, I’d wager Eli’s bounty that it wasn’t nice. Enslavement, or close to it. That is the enemy we face, and you’re saying we should just sit back and let her come? That it is politics to side with the Council and fight her? If anything of that sort went on here, we would mobilize the Court to stop it at once. Is it any different when it comes from across the sea?”
Miranda stopped, terrified she’d said too much. Master Banage’s expression was unreadable in the harsh light, but he didn’t look angry. When he spoke, his voice sounded tired.
“Your reasoning is sound as always, Miranda,” he said. “But no matter what, I can never allow this Court to go to war again beside the Council of Thrones.”
“Why not?” Miranda demanded, frustration rising.
Banage looked up, his dark eyes catching hers with a look that killed her anger in one shot.
“May I tell you a story?”
Caught off guard, Miranda nodded.
Banage got up from his desk and walked over to the window, looking out at the lid of solid stone that covered it.
“I fought in the first war against the Empress,” he said. “I’ve told you about it before.”
Miranda nodded again, though, since Banage had his back to her, it scarcely mattered.
“I fought with the fledgling Council,” Banage said, his voice soft. “With Sara.” He looked over his shoulder. “We were younger than you are now, a year out of our apprenticeships, and newly married.”
“Married?” Miranda could scarcely form the word. She could scarcely believe what she was hearing. “You were married? To Sara?”
“Are married,” Banage corrected her, turning back to the window. “We never formalized our separation. I think we each believe we’ll eventually bring the other around to our way of thinking.”
“But… Sara?” Miranda shook her head. “How? Why?”
“I was young,” Banage said. “Sara is a genius and very charismatic in her own way. I’d like to say she’s changed over the years, but she’s always been high-handed, single-minded, and cruel. However, she was also ambitious in a way I’d never seen. She wanted to do things with magic I’d never even imagined. When the Empress attacked, the lands we now call the Council were in chaos. No one had ever seen anything like the fleet that was pounding Osera’s shore. In her desperation, the young Oseran queen threw away centuries of isolationism and begged for help. Zarin was the first to respond, and Sara went with them.”
He took a deep breath. “I’d known for some time that Sara was drifting away from the Spirit Court, doing her own work with money from the Whitefall family. When she said she was following Whitefall to war without even asking permission from the Rector, the Tower Keepers, who did not yet understand the threat of the Empress and had no interest in risking themselves for Oseran pirates, threatened to strip her of her rings and kick her out of the Court. And
they would have, but I volunteered to go with her as the Court’s eyes on the front. That was how I ended up at her side when the Empress’s forces made their second, largest attack on Osera.”
“The project she was working on for Whitefall,” Miranda said, wide-eyed. “Was that the Relay?”
“It was,” Banage said, his voice strangely strained. “The Relay was the only way we kept ahead of the Empress’s forces. By this time, rumors of the Empress’s army were beginning to catch up with its actual size. More and more countries, seeing that this could well spread to their lands if left unchecked, began sending their armies to the coast. But they were a rabble, a hodgepodge of men who’d spent centuries fighting each other. Only the Relay could coordinate them into a force capable of meeting the Empress’s fleet, and Alber Whitefall knew it.
“But that came later,” Banage said, waving his hand. “Before the other countries joined in, Queen Theresa’s ships with their ever-burning fire were all that held the Empire at bay. The event I want to tell you about happened late at night the second day of the attack. I’d left Sara with Whitefall and gone to help the Oserans repel a charge. The Oseran clingfire were simple spirits, easy to direct. I had made a cliff out over the bay and was using my fire spirit to guide the clingfire throwers and sink the incoming ships. But then my stone spirit was hit by one of the Empress’s war spirits, and I fell.”
“You fought a war spirit?” Miranda said, breathless.
“Not at first.” Banage’s voice grew raw. “I fell nearly fifty feet into the sea. My stone spirit shattered beyond repair trying to break my fall. I would have died there, if not for him. As it was, my fire spirit went out when I hit the water. I managed to swim to shore, but I was disoriented. I’d never lost a spirit before, and now I’d just lost two. I did not know what to do with the enormous emptiness that is left when the connection vanishes.”
He stopped for a moment and sat very still. Miranda held her breath, afraid to make a sound. At last, Banage continued.
“When I made it to the beach, the Oseran guard was fighting the siege spirit, or trying to. Swords did nothing. The spirit killed a dozen men as I watched, and then it turned to me.”
Banage lowered his head. “I was terrified and enraged. I knew I was about to die. That I would be crushed, and all my remaining spirits crushed with me. So I did the only thing I could think of. I opened my soul and took control of the siege spirit.”
Miranda’s breath caught in her throat. “You Enslaved it?”
“I tried to,” Banage said, his voice very low. “Desperation is no excuse. I tried to take control of the spirit to save my life in violation of all my oaths. Tried, and failed.”
Miranda looked away, scrambling to get her feelings under control. The thought of Master Banage Enslaving anything nearly made her sick. He was the Spirit Court, the embodiment of everything it stood for, and yet.
“Failed?” she said. “How could you fail? You are the strongest wizard I’ve ever met.”
“Strength has nothing to do with it,” Banage said, shaking his head. “The problem was with the spirit itself. No matter how hard I pushed, it would not bend to my will. It did stop, however. I think it was confused. But then it looked at me. Not looked, exactly, for it had no head to speak of, but I knew it was studying me. And then it spoke.”
Miranda swallowed. “What did it say?”
“ ‘Loyalty to the Empress,’ ” Banage quoted, tilting his head back. “ ‘Always and forever, I will be loyal.’ And then it turned and walked into the ocean, back toward the ships where the Empire wizards waited.”
“It left?” Miranda said. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Banage admitted. “I have asked myself the same question over and over. But one thing was certain. That spirit was not Enslaved. There was no fear in it, no panic. It was bound through a loyalty so deep, so intense, so primal that even with my panicked strength I could not break its will to be faithful to its mistress. A mistress who wasn’t even there.”
Banage ran his hand through his graying hair. “After that, I knew no peace. I kept wondering what kind of person this Empress was to command such loyalty. As Whitefall’s forces grew and the war began to turn around, I saw several of the Empress’s war spirits go down. Every one of them fell fighting to the last inch, and every time I saw it happen, I wondered why? But the war was over before I could find out. The Empress’s ships retreated as quickly as they’d come, and Whitefall, ever the opportunist, used fear of her return to found the Council of Thrones with himself at the head and Sara’s Relay holding it all together.”
Banage looked down at his glowing spirits. “It was around that time that Sara quit the Spirit Court of her own volition,” he said. “I was furious, of course, but she was within her rights. She’d freed her spirits and received the Rector’s approval, done everything properly. I was promoted to Tower Keeper after the war, but Sara was still my wife, and I stayed in Zarin to be with her. But as she spent more and more time in the caverns she’d built beneath the Council Citadel, I began to wonder. Sara gave me Relay points several times during the war, and afterward I went down to the Relay tank rooms often to see her. Even so, she would never let me near the heart of the Relay that lay at the bottom of the large tank she still uses as an office, nor would she ever agree to tell me exactly how the Relay worked. Every time I asked we would fight, and eventually I became suspicious.”
Miranda bit her lip. “What did you do?”
“There was nothing I could do,” Banage said. “Sara wasn’t a Spiritualist, and the Spirit Court had no jurisdiction within Whitefall’s rapidly growing Council. I also had no proof she was doing anything wrong, but I knew. Why else would she refuse to show me?”
“There could have been a reason,” Miranda said softly.
“Do you honestly believe that?” Banage said, turning to face her. “You’ve worked with her, you’ve seen how ruthless she can be. If you were in my position then, would you have come to a different conclusion?”
Miranda shook her head. “What did she say when you confronted her?”
“Nothing,” Banage said bitterly. “She said nothing. The Spirit Court would not listen to me and call for an investigation. They were too busy courting the Council. Everyone was then. So I went to her one last time and told her that if she didn’t show me how the Relay worked, I was leaving. Again, she refused, so I went. I took our son and went as far away as I could.”
“Wait,” Miranda said. “Son?”
It might have been her imagination, but Miranda thought she saw Banage wince. “Yes, I have a son.”
“But where is he?” she cried. “Why have I never heard of him?”
Banage turned back to the stone-blocked window. “He left. Many years ago.”
Miranda cringed at the edge in his voice and dutifully dropped the subject.
Banage continued as though nothing had happened. “I came back to Zarin only when they told me I’d been chosen to be the new Rector Spiritualis, and the first thing I did was try to use the Court’s sway to finally break open whatever Sara was hiding. But by that time the Council was the greatest power on the continent, and I could make no headway. To this day I don’t know what she’s got beneath the Council citadel, Relay or otherwise, but I understand Sara well enough now to know it can’t be good.” Banage shook his head. “As Rector, I have danced to the Council’s tune along with everyone else, waiting for my chance to force Sara to open up and accept the Court’s standards. When Whitefall asked for my help in the war, I thought I’d finally found it, but I was wrong.” He looked up. “Whitefall doesn’t want change. He wants warriors. I’ve been to war, Miranda, and I am poorer for it. I cannot, will not, order my Spiritualists into that suffering, especially not as ally to an organization that may well be worse than the enemy we’re fighting.”
“How can you say that?” Miranda said, horrified. “I’ll grant Sara’s pretty suspicious, and I’m positive she’s up to no good, but worse than the E
mpress?”
“Yes,” Banage said. “Weren’t you listening? I told you. I met one of the Empress’s war spirits. I saw firsthand the deep loyalty she commands. It’s not so different from the loyalty our spirits give us as Spiritualists. You can’t fake loyalty like that. Think about it, Miranda. On the one hand we the Council of Thrones, an organization of profit and power built by a merchant prince and a ruthless woman on a work of wizardry so suspect Spiritualists aren’t allowed near it. On the other, we have an Empress who commands the abject love and loyalty of the spirits. Put that way, it’s not a hard choice.”
Banage began to pace. “I gave Sara and Whitefall every chance to make good. I flat out told them I would fight if they would only open the Council to Spirit Court inspection, and I was met with nothing but excuses. Sara does not share our respect for the spirits, nor our duty toward them, and I am tired of playing her game. The more I see, the more I’m convinced that the future she and Whitefall are building isn’t one I want to live in. It may well be that the Empress’s coming is the dawn of a new age for the Spirit Court and the spirits.”
