by Greg Keyes
“You let her?”
“I did.”
“Well, well. An improvement. But why is she still walking? She hasn’t a constitution for such things, as I do. I think it should have destroyed her mind.”
“I gave her an antidote,” Annaïg admitted.
He stared at her a moment, then made a slight tsking sound beneath his breath. His eyes—which had held her with a certain sparkle—dulled and shifted.
“Very well, then,” he said. “Bring that around. I’ve a mind to use it in seasoning the suspiration of hare and sulfur I’m preparing for Lord Irrel’s thirty-third course. A little something different for him. And perhaps, if you could, also make me a bit of remorse?”
“I’m not certain a horse can feel remorse, Chef.”
“Very well,” he said. “Kohnu was badly burned this morning distilling phlogiston. I shall send his brain over.”
“But if he’s still alive—”
“Healing him would take time and resources, and he wouldn’t be able to work for weeks. He’ll serve me better this way.”
She knew Kohnu. He was funny, always telling little self-effacing jokes and clowning about with the produce.
“Chef—” she began.
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not as if you have to kill him yourself,” he said. Then he left.
She sat back down, trembling.
“What am I doing?” she whispered. She needed Glim.
“What are you doing?” Mere-Glim asked the next night, at their weekly meeting. It took place in an old slurry filter, empty and forgotten a few yards below the pantry. From it Annaïg could hear what was going on in the kitchens—which at night was usually nothing—and Glim was only feet away from the tube that would take him back down into the sump, if anyone approached.
“I’m trying to figure out why we can’t leave,” she told him. “It’s got something to do with the way Umbriel uses souls, I’m pretty sure. At least it’s a place to start. But I can’t just experiment without producing anything, or Toel would start thinking I’m no longer useful. And if that happens, well—it’s over. Just ask poor Kohnu.”
“You’re doing what you have to do,” Glim said. “You can’t feel bad because of what Toel does.”
“He might have let Kohnu live if it wasn’t for me.”
“Might-have and mud are fine places to wallow,” Glim said.
“That’s easy for you to say,” Annaïg replied. “You haven’t gotten anyone killed.” She clenched her fists. “I’ve gotten a lot of people killed, Glim, not just Kohnu. Everyone in Qijne’s kitchen. And probably Attrebus.”
“Still no word from him?”
“No,” she said miserably. “I talked to him just before we tried to escape. He was in our path, Glim. I fear the worst.”
“You don’t know, though,” Glim said. “He might have lost Coo, or maybe he’s somewhere the enchantment doesn’t work.”
“Maybe.”
“But even if something happened to him, it’s not your fault.”
“If I knew more, had more to tell him—”
“You’ve done more than he could have ever expected,” Glim replied. “More than I’ve ever done.”
“Nonsense. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t understand half what I do about this horrible place. You found me, Glim. I couldn’t have found you. And all of those maps—I still don’t know why the skraws helped you with that.”
“Well,” Glim said, sighing, “I sort of promised them something.”
“What do you mean?”
He was silent for a moment. “Do you remember, back when we tried to escape, you said something about having invented a way of breathing underwater?”
“Sure. Why do you ask?”
He wiggled his hands in clear agitation.
“What?”
“The skraws,” he said at last. “Those who work in the sump, like me—none of them can naturally breathe underwater. They inhale vapors that allow them to, but the vapors are really bad for them. They live in agony and die young.” He looked up. “I was wondering if you could make them something else, something that won’t hurt them.”
She thought about that, and then found herself answering carefully.
“I could,” she said. “It’s easy for me to sneak the things I need to make an ounce or two of anything. But you would need more than that—a lot more than that—to make a difference. I would have to set up a generation vat. I don’t think I can do that without permission, but if I managed to, it would be noticed and I would be in big trouble.”
“Maybe you can get permission,” he said.
“If I bring up the skraws, Toel will wonder why I know anything about them and why I care. He considers caring a weakness, and he already thinks I’m about as weak as they come. And he might find out about you.” She paused, and then went on even more cautiously. “Anyway—our goal is to bring Umbriel down, remember? Before it destroys our world?”
“The skraws don’t have anything to do with that,” he said. “They just work and die.”
“Are you—” She laughed suddenly.
“What?”
“After all that making fun of me and my causes. You’ve got one, haven’t you?”
“They—They sort of made me their leader.”
“Why?”
“I told them we might be able to make things better if we—umm—organized a little.”
“Organized? You’re leading a revolt?”
“I didn’t mean to,” he replied miserably. “I mean, they kind of got the idea from me when I stood up to an overseer, and then—well, I might have suggested that they make some maps for me.”
“Maps?”
“So I could find you. So we could escape.”
“Oh. And now that we’re stuck here—”
“They seem to expect me to follow through.”
“Well, I guess they do,” she said. “Will you?”
His pupils expanded and shrank, and then he nodded. “I think so,” he said. “It’s not right, how they live.”
“You can think of it this way, too,” Annaïg told him. “The more of them you’ve got looking for ways to sabotage things, the more likely you’ll find some way to stop Umbriel altogether. That connection with the ingenium you told me about, for instance. We need to know more about that.”
“Right,” he said, but he sounded a bit uneasy.
“Glim,” she said, taking his chin between her fingers.
“Yes?”
“I’m glad you care about these people. I’m glad you found a cause. And if there is any way to save the skraws, I’m all for it. But if it comes down to them or our world—if all of these people and the two of us thrown into the bargain have to die to stop this thing—that’s what we have to do. You know that, don’t you?”
He nodded, but there was an odd stiffness to it.
“Look,” she said. “The kitchens are highly competitive, right? If the skraws raise enough ruckus, the lords may start looking for an alternative to the vapors. I’ve got one, ready to go. I just need Toel to ask me for it—understand?”
“I understand,” Glim replied.
“We’ll start there. But meanwhile you have to keep gathering information, okay? I mean, if I solve the problem of getting us off of this rock, maybe we can take your friends with us. The more information I have, the more alternatives that gives us.”
“That makes sense,” Glim breathed. “I’ll see what I can do. But you—what about this woman who tried to kill you? What about Toel? If what you say is true, and if he thinks you’re weak—I don’t want to find you in the sump one day.”
“You have your situation to manage,” she said softly. “I have mine.”
She hugged him and watched him go, but she felt troubled afterward, wondering if she and Mere-Glim were really on the same side anymore.
THREE
A soft cough drew Colin from the papers massed on his desk. Intendant Marall stood a few feet from his table, hands clasped behind his b
ack.
Colin pushed his chair back and came to his feet.
“Intendant,” he acknowledged.
“Inspector,” Marall nodded. Then he just stood there.
“Can I help you, sir?” Colin asked after the moment drew uncomfortably long.
“I’m just wondering if you have anything to report.”
Colin blinked.
If I had anything to report I would have—he began thinking, but quashed it, lest it show on his face.
“Not much, really, sir,” Colin said. “Is there something wrong?”
“You received the latest interceptions.”
“I did, Intendant,” he replied. “I still can’t find any connection between the Thalmor and this—flying city.”
“And yet they must be up to something.”
“Oh, yes, sir, they’re up to plenty,” Colin said. “Thalmor agents continue to harass the refugee communities in Sentinel and Balfiera—there has been a series of murders in the latter we can pretty confidently assign to them. The pattern is typical—the victims were all of mixed blood or had associations considered by the Aldmeri Dominion to be unclean. It’s much worse in Valenwood—our supplies are no longer reliably getting to the rebels there. Sixty were caught and executed last week, along with four of our own men. There’s a leak we don’t know about, someplace. They know too much about our movements.”
“But in all of that—”
“Nothing. No Thalmor connections to the east at all.”
Marall looked sour. He took the other chair in Colin’s nook, slid it toward Colin’s desk, and sat down.
“Have you seen the reports concerning the flying city?”
“I haven’t, sir. Since being taken off the Attrebus case—”
“I’m sorry about that. The more so because you were right about everything. But you made Administrator Vel look foolish, and there you go. At least I managed to get you back on something—eh—important.”
“I appreciate that, sir.”
“I’m going to tell you a few things, Inspector, because I hope you may have some thoughts on them. But you understand you may not repeat them.”
“Of course, sir.”
“You’re aware, I imagine, of the stories in popular circulation concerning this—Umbriel.”
“I am. They are based, as I understand, on letters written by Prince Attrebus and sent to his biographers—before he vanished again.”
“Yes. They’ve rather captured the popular imagination. A flying city from Oblivion, populated by strange creatures, destroying all it passes over and creating an army of living dead from the corpses.”
“I’ve heard all of that.”
“Well, we’ve a good bit of information from our scouts now,” Marall said. “It’s all basically true. There are just a few new details. Umbriel—apparently the name of this thing—landed at Lilmoth and proceeded in a straight line toward, it appears, Vvardenfell. It is indeed accompanied by some sort of reanimated corpses, and those who die beneath it also rise again. But here’s the thing—the cities of Gideon and Stormhold were both overrun. Do you see what that means?”
“Neither lies between Lilmoth and Vvardenfell,” Colin answered after a moment’s thought.
“Correct. Apparently this army of the walking dead needn’t remain near its creator.”
“But do they continue to grow in numbers away from the island? Do they reproduce themselves?”
“That is unclear,” Marall replied. “What we do know is that a large force of them has entered Cyrodiil and seems to be making its way toward the Imperial City.”
“I see,” Colin said.
“Are you certain you’ve seen no evidence that they might be colluding with the Thalmor? If they strike from the east, and the Dominion from the west, or up the Niben, we could find ourselves in a very precarious state.”
“I’ve seen no evidence that the Thalmor are aware of these goings-on, much less that they are involved with them. Why—if I may ask, sir—why do you feel the Thalmor must be involved?”
“Well, if not them, someone.” He tugged at the slight beard under his chin. “You were educated concerning the Oblivion crisis, of course.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The received wisdom in the highest circles is that Tamriel can never be invaded from Oblivion again.”
“And yet we have been.”
“Yes and no. Umbriel is apparently not entirely in our world.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It exists in a sort of pocket of Oblivion.”
“And yet it can affect our world, obviously.”
“Yes. But the consensus opinion of both the Synod and the College of Whispers—who never agree on anything—is that even given its strange nature, Umbriel could not have come into Tamriel even so much as it has without being asked.”
“Asked?”
“Summoned. Conjured. Facilitated. The sort of wizardry one naturally associates with the Thalmor.”
Colin nodded. “More than ever, then,” he said, “I think we’re looking in the wrong place. Once it becomes clear we’re being attacked, I have no doubt that the Dominion will take some advantage of it, but in my opinion that would be to consolidate their hold on Valenwood while our attention is elsewhere. They have a plan, a plan laid out in decades—I don’t see them rushing into some strange alliance with an Oblivion prince or what-have-you.”
“Who then?”
“Why not the An-Xileel?”
“The lizards?” Marall’s voice dripped with contempt. “They’re entirely parochial. Even if they could muster the sort of arcane knowledge this would require, why would they bother? They’re content in their swamps.”
“They invaded Morrowind.”
“For revenge. They stopped their advance decades ago, and haven’t showed the slightest interest in doing anything since then.”
“Except keeping the Empire from reclaiming their territory,” Colin pointed out.
“To my knowledge, we’ve never tried to invade Black Marsh. Who wants it?”
“I just think they might bear looking at,” Colin said. “After all, that’s where Umbriel first showed up.”
Marall looked unconvinced, but then he nodded. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll make the appropriate reports available to you, and send any requests for whatever else you may need through my office. You were right about the Attrebus thing, after all. But—keep your head low, yes? I don’t need this getting back to Vel.”
“Understood, sir.”
He watched Marall go, and then returned his gaze to the papers, but he wasn’t really seeing them.
The Intendant was probably right that the An-Xileel were not a threat. They were entirely nativistic in their views, interested only in purging the former colonial influences and returning Black Marsh to whatever state they imagined it had been in before it was ruled by foreign powers. And technically, of course, Umbriel had appeared somewhere out at sea, so one might just as well suspect the elusive Sload of having helped the flying city conjure its way into Tamriel. After all, they were supposed to be great sorcerers.
He turned it around a few ways and didn’t get anything, so he directed his thoughts to his other “case.” There wasn’t much there either. Despite her dramatic recruitment of him, he hadn’t heard from Arese, and since he didn’t have anything to tell her, he didn’t see any point in risking contact with her.
He got the intelligence from Black Marsh a few hours later. He started with the most recent stuff; both the College of Whispers and the Synod had collected intelligence remotely, but there were also a number of on-the-ground reports. A few had been relayed by riders, but most were also transmitted through sorcerous means. It was mostly information regarding the size and travel path of Umbriel, and the accounts of Stormhold and Gideon seemed somehow light. Feeling he was missing something, Colin turned to what little they had in the way of information regarding the An-Xileel.
He found something very interesting
indeed.
It had rained, and Talos Plaza was awash in reflected torch and lamplight. The air still smelled clean as Colin stepped through the puddles. A troupe of Khajiit acrobats was performing nearby, gracefully tumbling, forming unlikely structures with their feline bodies, juggling sparkling torches. A crowd clapped and tossed coins at their feet. He passed through a group of kids enthusiastically swinging at one another with wooden swords, and felt stiffness in this throat. He’d been like them once. He remembered playing such games. But he couldn’t remember at all how it felt.
A few steps to the right, and he stood in the near utter darkness of an alleyway. Here, a man could die—or kill—and those in the plaza with its light and merriment would never be the wiser.
She noticed him too late. If he’d meant to end her, he could have, and she knew it. For the first time since he’d met her, Arese’s controlled expression cracked, and he saw something that looked very much like fear. He could almost hear her heart pounding.
“Easy,” he said. “I needed to see you. I was afraid to send any sort of message.”
She took a step back, swallowed, and the mask went back on.
“How did you know I would come this way?” she asked.
“You usually do. You’re on your way to meet your sister at the pub, and you always cut through here.” He indicated the narrow lane with a slight twist of his head.
“You’ve been spying on me?”
“Not lately. Before. I wondered why you come through here rather than staying on the street.”
She vented a self-deprecating chuckle. “So I can hear if anyone is following me,” she replied. “No one ever is, and so I’ve gotten careless. What do you need?”
“I was looking at reports dealing with Black Marsh,” he told her. “They’ve been censored—by Minister Hierem’s office.”
“That’s not terribly surprising,” she said.
“How is that?”
“Hierem made a secret trip to Black Marsh last year, ostensibly to negotiate with the An-Xileel leaders. He would have had anything suggesting his presence there removed.”
“That explains the older reports,” Colin said. “But I’m talking about intelligence gathered recently, concerning the attacks from the flying city.”
