No, not like that. I hoped the animals slaughtered for my supper weren’t tortured first. I wouldn’t torture animals. I wouldn’t encourage others to torture animals. That was it. That was one of my lines. Furniture was less delicate than flesh. If the cast worked on wood and steel, it was logical to assume it would work on living things.
The thing was, I was running out of casts to teach. I’d passed on everything Browne had taught me, everything I’d read in any book. I didn’t know what to do next.
“All right,” I said. “We’re good for today.”
They were surprised. “It’s early yet,” said Hep.
“It’s getting colder.” The Shields in the group wouldn’t have begun feeling too uncomfortable yet – Shields often failed to experience physical sensations as much as others – but not everyone in the group was a Shield. It would be too uncomfortable shortly.
And I was hoping to run back to the library and dig up another spell or two.
“Murdoch, could I talk to you for a few moments?”
Murdoch nodded and, after everyone was out of earshot, I said, “I have no more casts to teach them. Almost everyone is up to the same level.”
The numbers of casters had swelled to over sixty. Every week brought in at least one new caster, and I’d chosen to tutor them separately to avoid dragging the whole class down to the barest, easiest casts. But they were now all as good as they were going to get with my instruction. “Do you have any suggestions?
“We’ve exhausted my knowledge of casts, too. Beyond that, I have no idea.”
Huh. Well, maybe I should just admit it. If I had nothing more to teach, I shouldn’t waste anyone’s time pretending I did.
Maybe they’d let Taro and me go home. His students, most of them, were doing well with their own lessons.
Except healing. No one else seemed able to do that.
Murdoch looked beyond me and frowned. “Now what is that about?”
I turned. A staffer was trotting over, bearing correspondence. For me, apparently. And that just wasn’t good. Letters were usually delivered right to our room, whether we were there to receive them or not. That this was being brought straight to me meant it was unusual, and unusual always meant bad news.
I accepted the letter with thanks. The Emperor’s seal was on the back. “Ah, hell.” First the Triple S contacted us all out of the blue, and now the Emperor?
“Good day, then,” Murdoch said quickly. He gestured the staffer away with a jerk of his head, and they left me alone, giving me privacy.
Very considerate, but it just made me feel deserted. While most professional correspondence was directed to me, the Shield, the Emperor usually directed his correspondence to Taro.
It took me a while to track Taro down, but I eventually found him in a professor’s chamber playing a round of slim with one of his students, two staffers, and the professor.
They were using coins for stakes. Only the staffers would really be able to use the money, but Taro always kept some coins on him, just so he could take advantage of any opportunities to gamble.
Taro was winning. As usual.
He was enjoying himself, smiling and relaxed. And I got to be the one to shatter that. “I’m sorry to interrupt, everyone. Source Karish, I need to speak to you.”
He frowned, because he could read my tone despite my efforts to keep it bland. “I’m afraid I have to leave, all.” He gave some coins to each of the other players, settling accounts, and followed me back to our room. “What’s wrong?”
Only then did I show him the letter.
“What’s it say?”
“I haven’t read it yet.”
Taro opened the letter and was scowling in a moment. “He’s ordering us to Erstwhile. We’re to leave as soon as we get this letter.”
The bottom of my stomach dropped. “What the hell for?”
“He says there are tasks he needs us to perform. That’s all.”
Those tasks wouldn’t have anything to do with channelling. Gifford probably just wanted Taro for prestige or entertainment. That was the only reason monarchs wanted Pairs.
Or to send them off to the middle of nowhere to hunt down errant family members. I had hoped that was just a one off.
“Damn it.”
I didn’t relish the thought of informing the Premier Pair of our news, I enjoyed being outside their focus since our interview, but obviously it had to be done. We hunted them down and we were eventually shown to an office where only Sato and Zoffany waited. This time we were allowed to sit down. I gave Sato the letter.
He read it quickly and then went straight to the point. “Why would the Emperor want you in Erstwhile?”
“I have no idea,” Taro answered. “He hasn’t shown any interest in us for years.”
“Surely you can venture a guess why such an order might be made.”
“I’m afraid not.”
Sato spent several moments just looking at us.
Ridiculous. “For Zaire’s sake, you’ve already told us we’re rotten liars,” I snapped. “How can you think we’re lying well now?”
Zoffany snickered and Taro smirked.
Sato didn’t actually scowl, but he looked like he was tempted to. “I don’t like the idea that the Emperor has special plans for you.”
Neither did I.
“You mean something like sending us off on some kind of mission in another part of the world?” Taro asked.
“Exactly. If you are given any such orders, you will not fulfil them. You’ll come straight here. We’ll handle the Emperor.”
I sighed. “So we’re going.” Avoiding it had been an unrealistic hope, anyway.
“I don’t think refusing is an act of defiance that is in our best interests right now. And I think Source Karish here might be able to charm some people into supporting the Triple S, right there in the Imperial Council.”
The fury hit hard and I wanted to leap across the desk and throttle the man. All of Taro’s talents, and Sato wanted him to flirt?
I looked at Taro. His expression had settled into a mask. That happened sometimes, when he was angry enough.
“You will also be in a perfect position to gather information straight from Gifford himself and relay that information to us.”
I cleared my throat so I could sound calm when I spoke. “I was under the impression there are already people observing the activities in Erstwhile and providing you with information.”
“They aren’t part of the inner circle. You’re being invited into it.”
Fiona’s brother, Tarce, was there, representing her interests to the Council. He had sent Fiona letters on a regular basis, but I’d never read any of them and Fiona hadn’t said much about them.
It would be nice to confirm he was all right, after all of the horrible rumours.
“Any questions?”
Are you insane?
Sato didn’t give us much time to think of anything. “Excellent. We’ll put some supplies together and you can leave tomorrow morning.”
We were dismissed.
We sort of stumbled out of the room and into the corridor. I felt numb. I felt like I’d been sentenced with execution. The Emperor was killing people, and we were supposed to carry out some secret task on behalf of the Triple S right in front of him.
I couldn’t panic. I needed to manage it. I closed my eyes and pulled in a long, slow breath.
It didn’t help.
“That’s better.” Taro put an arm around my shoulders and a slight sensation of relaxation trickled into my chest. “You’ll think of a way to keep us from getting killed.”
“I’ll think of a way?”
“You’re the intelligent one, remember?”
“Prat.”
Taro kissed my temple.
“We’re not vanishing on Aryne again,” I said. “We’re telling her where we’re going.”
“Of course.”
After dinner, we waited until we assumed everyone might be asleep, an
d snuck out of the building. There was no reaction from anyone that we could perceive. We had done this several times before, gone to see Aryne at the Academy at night, and no one had interfered with us.
I didn’t believe for a moment that they didn’t know what we were doing, but for some reason we all maintained the fiction that when Taro and I went to bed, we stayed there. Taro and I never spoke to anyone of our visits with Aryne, and we did everyone a favour by not going in the middle of the day.
Getting through the door posed no difficulty. Taro’s students hadn’t been the only ones to benefit from their lessons. As Taro had challenged them, he had become accustomed to, among other things, moving increasingly small portions of soil. This meant he could shift the ground beneath the iron door just enough to pop it from its frame and push it open.
Every time we did this, the door was fixed by the next morning.
The streets were full of drunks and clouded people who paid no attention to us. I liked this. Taro flagged down a hab with a driver who didn’t resent giving us a free ride. That was pleasant, too.
We got off a few streets away from the Source Academy grounds, and walked the rest of the way undisturbed. Once we reached the gate of the Source Academy, Taro dislocated it with ease. This gate was also fixed every time we came to it.
I had no idea whether there was anyone guarding the grounds of the Academy. I didn’t remember there being any guards while I was a student at the Shield Academy, but everything was different now.
If there were guards, they never interfered with us.
I picked up some pebbles – these didn’t just develop in the area, students scattered them about for this very purpose – and threw them at Aryne’s window. After only a few moments, the window was pulled open, and Aryne’s head poked out. Without a sound or any hesitation, she climbed out the window.
I pulled in a quick breath. It was still horrible to watch her scale the wall, despite her skill and obvious comfort. She dropped down from a little further up than I liked, but she was unharmed.
“So,” said Aryne, “What’s the bad news?”
“Why do you assume it’s bad news?” I asked.
“You both look grim.”
“We’re being sent to Erstwhile,” Taro told her.
Aryne scowled. “Why?”
“We don’t know. We were summoned by the Emperor. He didn’t provide an explanation.”
“For how long?”
“We don’t know that, either.”
Aryne huffed. “I don’t like it.”
“Believe me, neither do we.”
Aryne loudly sighed, and then we spent a few moments standing in silence.
“I’m sorry,” said Taro.
“Not your fault,” Aryne muttered.
“I’m still sorry.” He kissed her forehead.
She hugged him, and then it was my turn.
I felt awful about leaving her behind. Worse than I had the first time. I didn’t know what to say so I said something meaningless. “Please carry our farewells to Steeler. And the two of you, be careful.”
Aryne rolled her eyes.
I had to watch her climb back up to her window, worried that she would slip at any moment.
Chapter Eleven
Close to ten weeks of hard riding – the change from winter to spring enabling us to pick up the pace a little – brought us to a place I’d hoped never to see again.
Erstwhile had a new wall around it, one that hadn’t been there the last time I had visited. A high stone wall, and an ugly one. It was a dull, grim gray. Meant to intimidate.
So, once we were in there, how hard would it be to leave?
I wanted to go home.
There were Imperial Guards at the gatehouse. We’d been hoping to sneak in unnoticed and take a look around before we announced our presence to the Emperor. They saw us as soon as we saw them. If we left to look for other entrances through the wall, we would look suspicious. Besides, any other entrances would probably be guarded, too.
The Guards glared at us as we approached the gate, and I noticed that the male Guards weren’t all clean-shaven, as Guards tended to be. No beards, just slovenly. Two had uniforms that weren’t as well laundered as I would have expected, the red cotton stained and crinkled, and one had threads hanging out the hem of his cape. Their brown leather gauntlets and boots appeared unpolished, and their bronze breastplates were dull. Most shocking of all, one Guard had rust on her sword.
They weren’t as tall or as slim as I was used to seeing. One was positively portly – I couldn’t really see him running or fighting much – and a little old to be doing something as ignoble as gate duty. Either he’d messed up in some way or he’d never achieved much of a rank in the first place.
We dismounted.
“All right,” said one of the Guards. “Let’s see your coin.”
Taro frowned. “We’re a Pair.”
“So?”
Was he serious? “We were summoned by the Emperor,” I told him. “Are you really going to give us a hard time?”
“Prove it.”
I pulled out the Emperor’s letter and slapped it into his palm. “Look at the seal.”
He turned it over in his hand. “Seals can be faked.”
“Forging the Imperial seal is worth five lashes.”
“People break the law all the time.”
“So you’re suggesting,” Taro said in a flat tone, “that we’d forge the Imperial seal and then use it on an Imperial Guard.”
The Guard wasn’t too stupid to know his intelligence was being questioned and his face turned red. His fists clenched, too, and he crushed the letter. I wondered if he was too stupid to know he really shouldn’t hit the Source summoned by the Emperor.
“Just leave it!” one of his colleagues snapped. “Who cares, anyway? They don’t have any money.”
What did money have to do with anything? Had they started charging people to get into the city?
Taro snatched the letter back and we were allowed through the gate.
Once we were within the city, the number of people walking around just jumped at me. Erstwhile had never had a large population, because few people could afford to live there. Right then, it felt crowded. There were people of every level of income. There were a whole lot more Imperial Guards than I thought existed in the world, some of them as crisp and as strong as I was used to seeing, and some of them with less than pristine uniforms, hair, and skin.
And there were Pairs. I counted eight on our way to the palace. Some of them looked familiar, but I couldn’t put names to the faces.
We reached the palace. It had always had a wall, but this was a new one, constructed of the same gray stone as the city wall. It had a tall wide gate, and it was ugly, too. Black, solid, decorated – if one could call it that – with a bizarre collection of iron sharp angles and jagged dives that managed to look almost vicious and menacing.
“I think the person who designed this was drunk at the time,” Taro muttered.
“Or demented.”
We approached the four Imperial Guards at the gate. Taro gave the letter to the nearest Guard. “Source Shintaro Karish and Shield Dunleavy Mallorough.”
She looked at the seal and read the contents. Was she supposed to read it? What if the information was meant to be private?
“Bamni,” she said. “Take their horses. Lestin, take their bags.”
“That’s not necessary,” I objected, but Lestin ignored me and pulled the saddlebags off our horses.
“This way,” he said, and he strode up the drive from the gate to the palace. Of course we followed, though I would have been delighted to turn right around and disappear. The closer we got to the grand entrance of the palace, the harder my heart pounded. By the time I stepped through the threshold, it almost hurt to breathe.
“Ho!” Lestin shouted at a footman lingering at the back near the stairs. “Karish and Mallorough are finally here.”
Finally? Shidonee’s Gap
was half a continent away from Erstwhile. What had they expected?
“Wait here,” the footman ordered before disappearing through a door meant to blend in with the wall, with identical wainscoting, golden vines, and robin’s egg blue paint.
He’d been wearing a sword. Not common in a servant.
We waited. I tried to appear at ease.
We didn’t have to wait long. A short, dark-skinned man entered through the same door the footman had used. He wore two knives on his belt, bare, perhaps to show off the wicked curving blades. There was something menacing about the way he moved: very smooth in his gait and the swing of his arms. I felt he could get in anywhere he wanted, then get out again, and the only evidence that he’d been there would be the body bleeding on the floor.
So we were to have an armed escort. I couldn’t believe anyone would think we were in any way dangerous. Maybe the Emperor just liked the thought of the place being swarmed with people who were overqualified for their roles.
The … servant – was he a servant? … took the bags from the Guard and walked off without saying anything.
Like every other expensive residence I’d ever been in, the palace was a maze. Apparently wealthy people liked a lot of right angles.
We were taken up three flights of stairs and shown to a grand suite. A large sitting room – satin upholstery, velvet drapes, a large chandelier and too many paintings – appeared to be for receiving guests. Next to it was an enormous bedchamber with the biggest bed I’d ever seen.
The man tossed our bags on the bed and left, silently closing the door behind him.
“Bars on the windows,” Taro pointed out. “I didn’t see those anywhere the other times we’ve been here.”
Nor had I. Knowing it was useless, I walked over to the nearest window, opened it, and pulled on two of the bars.
They didn’t shift, of course, but I noticed something else. “I don’t know anything about this sort of thing, but it seems to me that these were put in recently.” Something about the holes drilled into the casement, they looked fresh. “It would be arrogant to think these were put here just for us, wouldn’t it?”
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