“No,” he replied. “Not directly, anyway.” He took several deep breaths, before observing, “You still come to watch the sunrise.” This was where they’d always come together, once she’d learned of his little ritual.
“Helps me remember.” But that was all she said about it. “We need to get you to a bed, and fill you with warm willow tea.”
Sounded good to Tahn. He nodded. The operation took the better part of an hour. She ran back to Aubade Grove and returned with a small flatbed wagon. She’d chosen to fetch him alone, keeping his return quiet for now. Climbing into the back of the wagon proved a minor miracle; the pain was excruciating and he had a hard time not vocalizing it. Which probably accounted for the glacial pace at which she drove them back to the Grove and up behind her modest home. And even at that, every small rock or rut they hit felt like a kidney jab made with bare knuckles. She carried him into her bedroom and gently laid him on her bed, returning promptly with warm, bitter-tasting tea.
Tahn downed the mug of bark broth without complaint, and had just eased back into the soft feather mattress when he heard the door in the outer room open again. The shuffle of feet came at a hurried pace. And for the second time in as many hours, he was staring up into the unbelieving face of a woman from his past.
“Gnomon,” said Savant Polaema. The creases of time and good humor tracked more deeply through the skin around her eyes and mouth than he remembered. But they still gave her the look of the mother he’d taken her for in his years here. “It’s good to see you again, my boy.”
Her voice washed over him, every bit the balm that the willow tea might be. Tahn smiled. “It’s good to be back,” he said. “It’s good to be anywhere, actually.”
“That’s a statement I’ll ask you to explain at some point,” Mother Polaema replied.
The savant of astronomy seemed to have her suspicions about him, even though she knew why he’d left the Grove. He caught sight of the subtle symbol woven into her overcloak over her left breast. Black thread on black wool, two convex lines, touching at the center, one bowing slightly up, the other slightly down. The lower one represented the horizon, the upper one suggested the vastness of the sky above. He’d earned the right to wear that symbol when he’d been here. Polaema sat at the side of his bed, Rithy looking over her shoulder.
Catching sight of the insignia of the College of Astronomy, Tahn looked up at Rithy, and noted for the first time the equally subtle insignia she wore for the College of Mathematics. Two gently curving lines standing vertically close together. At their tops, they bowed slightly away from one another; at their bottoms, they curled gently toward each another. Some said these lines represented letters from the Kamasal root, the left a flowing I to signify imaginary numbers, the right a delicately sweeping S to stand for summation. Theorists liked to say they were both I’s and that dually they suggested concrete numbers; that math could arrive at full proofs for any question.
“I can see you’re in pain,” said Mother Polaema. “But you look capable enough of fielding a few questions. Have I misjudged?”
“No,” Tahn answered. “I’m well enough to talk.”
“Good. Because your sudden appearance, in this condition no less, suggests many things. And before we share the news of your return with the other college savants, I’d like to have a sense of why you’re here. If only to control our general anxiety, you understand.” She showed a tentative smile.
“So, you’re asking me to explain my ‘anywhere’ remark already,” Tahn said, returning her smile. Pain still rippled through him, but damn, was he glad to be here. He felt surprisingly at peace, at home even.
“I suppose we are.” It was Rithy speaking. “Mind the truth, too. There were no footprints in the soil where I found you. It’s like you fell out of the sky.”
Tahn laughed aloud at that, and instantly regretted it, clutching at his chest and gut. He moaned for a few moments and finally relaxed. When he looked up again, the two women who’d been his closest friends were watching him with expectant concern.
He hadn’t known how he might answer until he opened his mouth to speak. Not really. And when he did, he told them most of it. About his years in the Hollows, and everything since being chased from there by the Quiet. He didn’t speak of his bowshot in the Saeculorum, or the details of what he saw at Tillinghast. And he didn’t go into his relationship with Mira. Beyond that, he trusted both Polaema and Rithy as he would Sutter. Talking to them came every bit as easily.
When he’d finished speaking, he could see the amazement in their eyes. That, and a hundred more questions.
“But why here, why now?” his old mentor pressed.
“Over the past several days I’ve begun to remember my astronomy training. I remembered the focus here on inquiry and exploration, and the rigor of thought to solve problems.”
“And?” Mother Polaema questioned politely.
Tahn stared back at her, and finally gave her a lopsided grin. “Yes, there’s more,” he said. “But first a question. Rithy, did you ever make it into those sealed halls in the mathematics college?”
“Tahn?” Rithy said, impatient.
He was about to ask a hell of a thing. “I want to call for a Succession of Arguments.”
A look of deep concern stole over Mother Polaema and Rithy’s faces. But they didn’t say no. They stood, waiting to hear more. He began to feel the nausea rolling back in like a flash flood. He needed to get it out before he puked.
“If we can find a unifying principle for how the Veil works,” Tahn said, wincing a bit, “then we’ll understand how to strengthen it.”
He could see a question still in their eyes. An apprehension. Fear. He knew they were waiting for him to say he meant to make the same argument they’d made together just before he’d left Aubade Grove before. Which wasn’t the case. Not exactly. And they needed to understand why he’d ask for Succession.
Wincing again as his gut tightened, he hurried to finish, “Which will prevent the war that’s coming if we don’t … because the Veil is failing. And there’s not much time.”
Before he could explain further, the sickness from passing through Wendra’s Telling circled back on him with a vengeance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Bourne: Nocturne
The deep north of the Bourne is to the southern Bourne what the southern Bourne is to the Eastlands.
—Remark of a highwayman who’d given up trading human stock in favor of brewing
A gibbous moon shone bright on the frozen ground. Kett walked slowly, rehearsing what he would say to the praefect. Each exhaled breath plumed before him, illuminated briefly by moonlight before it dissipated to nothing. The scent of dead, winter-frozen grass hung in the air, and he could hear nothing save the crunch of his own steps over brittle twigs and small rocks.
In his many years, he’d made but a few friends. The idea of friendship simply held little value inside the Bourne. Expectations were simple, punishments severe. It required dogged determination and almost all of one’s time simply to survive.
And while he now had some allegiance among Inveterae houses, it was one of his few friendships that had him braving a walk in the deeps of evening.
Lost in his own thoughts, he vaguely noted a bare tree passing across the face of a low moon to his left. So few branches …
He stopped. Giving the tree his full attention, he saw it for what it was: a crucified Inveterae. A friend. Not the one he was on his way to see, but still a friend. Rough poles had been lashed together, and Taolen inexpertly nailed up.
Around Taolen’s neck hung a sign with a single word written in the Bar’dyn tongue: EXAMPLE.
The moon lent his friend’s bloody face a soft peace. He hoped those who crossed this way saw the admonition—Example—another way: as a rally cry for Inveterae to stand up against their persecutors, rather than the deterrent Quietgiven hoped it would be.
He offered a quick, silent appeal for Taolen’s conveyance to t
he gods, and started to go, when he heard a soft moan. His head snapped in the direction of the crucified.
“Taolen?” He took three quick strides to the base of the pole. “You’re alive.”
The other’s head rose slightly, then lolled forward again. In his arms were several cuts made with precision, following the blood veins under the skin. Most of these had been bandaged to stop the bleeding; it seemed the crucifier was slowly bleeding him out. One of Taolen’s eyes had been completely ruined. And little of the left side of his face remained. But with his one remaining eye, his friend looked down at him wearily. In a hoarse whisper, Taolen managed three words: “I said nothing.”
Then his eye closed, and he fell unconscious again. He’d be dead by morning.
Kett didn’t linger to ponder or mourn. The only right honor for Taolen, for Saleema, for the countless others who would fall, was resolve.
Up the path he continued, slow but confident, toward the distant light of the praefect’s tent. The wind stirred the fallow-smelling air—old earth, unseeded, unused—and rippled the tent flaps as Kett stopped before two sentries standing stock-still in the cold.
He paused long enough for them to raise an objection. None came. They knew him. It wasn’t his first visit to the praefect. He ducked through the tent flaps into the yellow glow of oil lamps that hadn’t warmed the air a bit.
“Why did I think you’d come tonight?” Lliothan asked. His words pushed plumes of breath into the lamplight.
Kett didn’t step into the tent proper—he hadn’t yet been invited. “Because you crucified Taolen.”
“Maybe.” Lliothan poured a viscous-looking drink from a bronze decanter. “Or maybe because the rumor is you’re to be initiated and given your own command, doing … very much what I do.”
“I’m no threat to you,” he replied immediately. “And I’m no martyr. They killed Saleema.”
Lliothan offered no consolation, but drank two draughts in quick succession, which Kett recognized as a salute of respect in the Bar’dyn ranks—one for body, one for spirit.
“You aren’t planning your own justice?” Lliothan’s question was rhetorical.
“Gotun women die every day,” Kett said. The words were hard to speak, but he could have no suspicion.
“They do,” Lliothan agreed. “So why do you come?”
The praefect still hadn’t offered full entry. Kett needed to get closer to make his appeal. Lliothan must see Kett’s eyes when he asked what he came here to ask. “May I come in?”
The Bar’dyn turned his back to him. “Come.”
He went in, passing the thick wool blanket laid over a mat of straw that served as a bed; a single three-leg stool; a lap desk that held a ledger for recording Inveterae movements, executions, events of interest; and a black oilcloth laid out with weapons and whetstones—a simple command tent, but efficient and mobile.
Kett passed all these things, and one more besides—a corner of the tent where the thick canvas walls showed splatters of blood, and the cold ground shone crimson in the sallow light of two small lamps.
He got around beside Lliothan, where he could be seen. He stood a moment, watching his old friend drink from his iron mug, his nostrils pushing more plumes of hot breath over the rim of his cup.
Finally, he asked the simple question. “Can I trust you?”
Lliothan didn’t turn to face him square on. “You’ll soon sit in command. I follow orders.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Kett replied. “In our youth, before we understood what it meant to be Gotun or Bar’dyn, we were friends. Do you remember?”
Lliothan drank again, and this time Kett could smell the copper scent of whatever the Bar’dyn had in his mug. The praefect still didn’t turn, still faced the rear of his tent, his countenance partly obscured in half shadows.
“Kett Valan, you are unique. But you’re also naïve. You, and all the Inveterae, live here in the south, wallowing in your abandonment. You curse the coarse ground which yields you little for your labor, and you distrust us.” He tapped his barrel chest. “But your understanding is narrow. The secrets of the Bourne, its afflictions and cruelty … and abominations, are far from you. Your discontent is not suffered well by those who live farther north.”
“Then tell me.” He came around to face Lliothan straight. “Teach me to be thankful for crucifixion and ignorance and laughable tribunals that leave only the option for treachery against my own kind.”
Lliothan glared back. “We are each of us in the Bourne,” the Bar’dyn said impassively. “We should not seek to leave unless we all go.”
“Does that include the men and women and children you make us tend in the camps?” He carefully meted out his ire—their old friendship would offer him only so much latitude.
“Inveterae tend the captives in the south because none of you would survive farther north or west.” Lliothan finished his drink, dropping the cup unceremoniously beside his feet.
Kett pushed gently. “What good are they to you? Especially the women and children. They can’t fight. And they know little about the politics or armies south of the Pall.”
Lliothan gave Kett the most piteous look he seemed capable of. “These are things you don’t want to know. Trust me. Soon enough, your eyes will be opened. Until then, let it alone.”
“Very well,” he said, nodding. “I will trust you.”
Lliothan’s pity changed to a grimace Kett recognized as mild mirth. “And in trusting me, you’d have my trust in return. You are, indeed, a politician, Kett Valan. I’m surprised you didn’t talk the flail right out of the Jinaal’s hand.”
Kett then did something that in the presence of any other Bar’dyn would have meant instant death: He laughed. The sound of it fell coldly in the praefect’s tent. And Kett realized with horror—in his friend’s own grimacing smile—that Lliothan’s teeth were slick with blood. In that moment, he also knew what the cuts on Taolen’s arms were for.
When the mirth faded between them, Lliothan turned back into the lamplight. “What brings you to me in the dark? A request, no doubt.”
Kett had a moment to consider just how much to share. Lliothan’s guardianship extended across several mountain ranges and broad valleys, and east to the Mourning Vale. He held considerable influence. Kett must guard what he told him.
“I came tonight—before I’m given to the Quiet—because I want to ask two favors. And I want your answers to me as your friend, not your commander.” He looked around the tent again, reassuring himself they were alone.
Lliothan said nothing, waiting.
“First, there may come a day when I ask you to help me—if only in looking another direction.” Kett lent as much gravity as he could to what he said next. “Should that day come … I ask for your devotion.”
Lliothan’s expression didn’t change. If anything, he seemed that much more indifferent. “What is your second favor?”
Kett looked down at the praefect’s dropped mug. He hated having to ask this. But the path ahead had many turns. And in one possible future, he would need a friend inside the Quietgiven ranks.
He stepped even closer. So close, he caught the scent of carrion on Lliothan’s breath. But he didn’t step away. “The Jinaal killed Saleema so that I would know the price of betrayal. All I have left are Marckol and Neliera.…”
The praefect’s eyes narrowed, as though he guessed what Kett would have of him.
He steeled himself to say it. “If they’re seized, Lliothan, I want you to be their executioner. They’ve seen you; I’ve spoken of you; and they will be less afraid when death comes if it’s by your hand. I ask you to make it quick and painless. And by the gods, take them in the flesh; don’t allow the Jinaal to render their spirits.” Anger and sadness mixed in his words. “Will you swear it?”
The Bar’dyn’s heavy features moved in a way he hadn’t seen before. The thick, fibrous skin stretched over the great bones of Lliothan’s face as he held Kett’s questioning gaze.
The silent tent, reeking of blood and spent oil and cold earth, seemed to lock them together in a pact that chilled Kett’s heart.
The praefect bent, bringing his massive face in line with Kett’s. “Kett Valan, you live this side of the Veil, but you are not in the Bourne. Nor has the Bourne gotten inside you.”
Kett shook his head. “You’re wrong. What I do … what I have done … We’re not so different, you and I.”
The Bar’dyn’s grimacing smile came again. “Tell me about this.”
“I won’t have to. You’ll see it for yourself. I intend to take you into my service after I’m given.”
The praefect picked up his mug, poured another cup of the viscous, copper-smelling fluid, and gave it to Kett to drink. “We are sworn.”
He drank of Taolen’s blood, securing the help he might later need, and slid further into the taint he hoped to escape.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Chilled Milk
Information trumps all.
—Pulled from an informal survey conducted of street-sellers by the Chair of Commerce, Recityv, regarding the types of goods being sold by Merchant Houses
The Merchant District had a scent of its own, one Helaina had missed more than she realized. It was the musky smell of sheer fabric used for provocative garments; it was the papery aroma of books considered apocryphal but not scandalous; it was the alchemical smell of brass molded into survey instruments and given a polish that gleamed by lamplight.
She’d grown up on these streets, learning the difference between a pressed coin and metal plug, between alloys and single-metal currencies. Much of this she’d learned from her father, before she broke his heart.
But she let that memory alone for now, and reveled in the excitement of night commerce. It had a particular flavor distinct from the other classes of merchant activity. Lowest of these was the handstalls drawn up in makeshift fashion alongside the roads beyond the city wall. Those overland merchants often traded in “double goods”—meaning you were the second owner of something stolen. And if not stolen, then the items you were browsing were banned by law or crudely made, and able to be had for a few thin plugs.
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