“Is he still alive?” Desh asked.
The man nodded. “I put him to sleep. He will wake again soon.”
“Good,” Desh said. “Now put your clothes on. Both of you.”
The woman hopped out from under the sheets and walked to a heap of linens near the end of the bed. She sorted through them, tossing a shirt and breeches to the naked man. She pulled a sleeveless silk shirt over her head. It hung just above her knees and she cinched it with a gold chain at her waist.
Once they were both dressed, Desh looked at the woman. “Thorn,” he said. “Go to Torto. Tell him I sent you on my behalf. Learn everything you can from him. Everyone knows Torto is my father’s lackey, so you must not be seen by anyone else. You understand?”
She nodded, wordless.
The man came and stood next to Desh, lifting his hand to touch Desh’s cheek. “What if this is a trap, my love? What if your father means to kill you?”
Desh gripped the man’s wrist, pulling his hand away from his cheek. “It may well be. But I am not afraid of him, Talon. He had Torto summon me because he has no other choice. He needs to see where I lie. He has struck a vicious blow at the heart of Manderlas, but not a fatal one. If he cannot convince me to stand with him, then he may have built himself a room with no doorways.”
He let go of Talon, and the man rubbed his wrist, looking at Desh. He seemed about to say more, but Desh saw it and said, “I can handle my father, Talon. Trust me. I need you to gather the others.”
Talon pursed his lips and nodded. Then he knelt above the unconscious guard. “What of him?”
“Get him somewhere safe. Question him. See if he has anything useful to offer. Ur-Tesa is a mere pawn in all of this, and a good man besides, so I doubt he’ll be of much use. But no one else must know that Torto has summoned for me. Discretion above all else.”
Talon made no comment on that. He simply knelt, lifting the man over his shoulders like a sack of flour.
After they were gone, Desh stood for a time in silence. His face rested in his palm, and with his other hand, he absently rubbed the small golden talisman hanging from his neck. “It has finally begun,” he said to himself.
He stood in silence for a moment more, then he hurried from his chambers. I followed him. Soon, I realized where he was heading. The library. The ovates lifted their heads when he burst in, and then quickly bowed, averting their eyes when they realized it was Desh. “Prelate Deshanyo,” one of them said with deference, “is something wrong?”
“I need you to leave the library.”
They all raised their heads in alarm.
“But prelate-” the eldest ovate said.
“Now,” Desh said, interrupting him, steel in his voice.
The ovates moved quickly after that, packing away the old texts and powering down the data codex. As they were readying to leave, Desh said, “If anyone asks, tell them the library is being used for a private meeting. Can I count on your discretion?”
“Yes, Prelate Deshanyo,” said the eldest ovate. “You can trust us.”
“Excellent. May Nindaranna shine forever in your favor.”
* * *
When they were gone, Desh sat near the library’s data codex. He did not turn it on. He just stared at the codex monitor, contemplating something. He probably wanted to talk to someone. But who?
We had distributed monitors like this one in key places across the city as a means for the people of Manderlas to access authorized information from our archives, and to communicate with each other without traveling across the whole city.
Siddart had conceptualized the monitor design and fashioned it from a combination of existing resources and specialty parts manufactured using our three dimensional printer. A silicone chip in the monitor administered precise electromagnetic pulses that coaxed the tens of thousands of tiny magnetized metal shavings inside to form images and symbols. The input keys were shaped from smooth glass and inscribed with both the native cuneiform alphabet and the letters of the universal tongue, which we had slowly, steadily introduced to the people.
The tech was an anachronism by Forsaran standards, but it was an elegant solution that took full advantage of the real-time opportunities and limitations here on Eaiph. And even if we had the resources to build something more advanced, we might not have. We were very careful not to expose people to too much of our underlying technology all at once.
We were especially circumspect about the field, how we accessed it, what it gave us. But Desh was one of the council of clerics, and he knew about it. He’d never been in the field, of course, but even though he didn’t fully understand what the field was and how it worked, he knew it gave us powers that no one else had.
If he wanted to send a message to someone, one of these ‘others’ he had spoken of to Talon and Thorn, the codex was the way to do it. Perhaps he hesitated because he was worried that we could intercept it. He might have even suspected that we were watching and listening to him right now.
I decided if there was any moment to get his undivided attention, this was it.
I turned the data codex on. When he saw the device light up, he stood up from his chair. He knew that the ovates had turned it off before they left. There was surprise in his eyes, and maybe a touch of fear. He looked down at it, considering. Then he crossed the room, shut and locked the library doors on either end, and came back to the codex.
Fear flashed across his face.
He leaned back in the chair, his eyes wide. He exhaled, and leaned forward again.
He glanced up at the nearest light orb, hovering above his head. It was as if he looked right into my eyes.
“Orenpausha,” Desh said, speaking out loud. His face was grim.
He did not reply. His face was tense, waiting for me to say more.
One limitation of Sid’s monitor design was latency. My words formed much slower than the speed of thought that I was used to in the field. Normally, this would have frustrated me. But the delay enabled me to watch Desh closely. To measure his reactions. To anticipate his thoughts.
“You want me to betray him,” he said.
“My father has never been satisfied with his lot in life. Even at the height of his power, he always hungered for more. That ambition led him to places that most of our people could never have dreamed of. It made him a great man, in his own way. But he was weak one too. He has never been able to stomach loss, and when you magi came to our world, with power beyond even his wildest dreams, he felt that he lost everything. It changed him. Polluted him.”
“You’re right. I am my own man. I walk my own path.”
As I said that, I unlocked the door to the library, and Socha stepped inside. He stood, facing Desh, his hand on the hilt of his scimitar, his blind eye cold and menacing.
Desh met Socha’s gaze, but said nothing.
Socha pointed back at the codex.
Desh turned to see my words.
“And if I say no?”
He nodded. “Well, then,” he said, turning to Socha. “Lead the way.”
* * *
Getting to Ghis was not easy. He had summoned Desh, but he had left no explicit instructions on where he might be found. Socha intercepted Thorn after she questioned Torto, the cleric. Once Desh had convinced her to trust us, she told us that she had learned little. The priest was a sycophant, and he knew only the information Ghis wanted him to know.
So we scoured the city with other means, using every surveillance method at our disposable. But even with Reacher running continuous facial recognition on every feed we had, we came up with nothing. Manderlas had grown so large, so fast, that we simply did not have the resources. And any hope of success assumed Ghis was even on the island. For all we knew, he was hiding somewhere on the mainland, away from our prying eyes.
In the end, he found Desh. After several days of quiet inquiries, Desh had done everything he could to make it clear to Ghis that he was ready to talk. Another day went by with nothing. Then, earlier tonight, as Desh was walking home alone from the theater district after a performance of The Tragedy of Adea Aredagi, he made his way into the bazaar. As he browsed among the late-night vendors selling cured meats and smoked fish, ripened dates and barley wine, two men emerged from an alley on the north end of the square.
“That has to be them,” Sid said, pointing at the image feed in front of him. “Look at the way they’re staring at Desh.” Adjet, Xayes, Neka, and I stood behind him, watching the scene unfold on the monitor.
We had been waiting for this moment for days, and Desh came to the same conclusion that Sid did. He started walking right towards the two men. They turned silently, walking back the way they came, into the north alley.
They kept ahead of Desh, never letting him approach too close, but always staying in sight, wending through the residential streets, a world of shadows and quiet at this late hour. When Desh realized this, he gave up chasing them, and slowed down to a leisurely pace, forcing them to do the same so they did not lose him. After a time they started moving more west than north.
“It looks like they’re heading towards the north base of the ziggurat,” Xayes said.
“Temple Way,” said Neka in a scratchy voice. “Where every god has her house.” Her wounds had healed cleanly after several intervals in the nutrient baths, but she still sounded tired and spent in the wake of all we had lost.
I gave her a surprised look. The temple quarter edged right up to the north face of our ziggurat. It is the heart of worship in Manderlas, a place for devouts and pilgrims, not warlords.
Ghis had been beside us the whole time.
As Desh crossed from the residential streets into the temple quarter, the men separated, disappearing into the side streets, leaving Desh alone. He stood in the center of the darkened street, looking around.
“Follow those two,” I said, but as I did, the surveillance feeds went dark.
Sid swiped his hands across the console, trying to bring the feeds back. Xayes stood above him, hunched over, gesturing to different points on the schematic, trying to help. But nothing responded.
“Reach,” Sid said, keeping his voice level, “what just happened?”
“I am not yet sure,” our shipheart said, “but I cannot get those surveillance orbs back online.”
Sid cursed.
“Desh,” I said into the com, activating the transponder we’d implanted in his ear, “can you hear me? Are you okay?”
No response.
“Xander,” I said. “Do you still have eyes on Desh?”
Desh’s transponder was also a tracker, and Xander had been following him the whole time, staying well out of sight. I’d argued against his going, thinking we could handle this with surveillance, but Sid and Xayes had convinced us that if the rebels had learned how to build a bomb they might also have devised ways to stay hidden. Now, I was grateful to have been overruled.
“Yes,” Xander replied. “He’s on the move again, going quickly now.”
“Get after him. I don’t know how, but they just blacked out our surveillance. He may be in danger.”
“A group of men just emerged! They are bringing him into a temple.” He turned on his own image feed, and fortunately, it still worked. We watched as four men dragged Desh up a short flight of steps through a dark doorway. The crest of a fierce lion with the wings of a bat and the tail of a scorpion was carved above the doorway.
“The temple of Ne-uru-gal,” Neka whispered. “The god of the underworld.”
“I’m going in,” Xander said,
“Xander! Wait!”
“We need eyes inside, pausha. We can’t let Ghis away from us after what he’s done.”
* * *
Six days after the explosions, Desh stood alone in unmapped tunnels beneath the temple of Ne-uru-gal, god of death, king of the underworld, facing his father Ghis across an altar of carven wood and thick stones. Ghis, tall and proud, was flanked by more than a dozen acolytes, men and women both, bare, dark torsos covered with a scrawl of inscrutable tattoos that seemed to writhe in the firelight burning on the altar. Ghis wore a heavy, hooded cloak, but his face and eyes gleamed.
Father and son watched each other, gauging, measuring, saying nothing.
Thanks to Xander’s bravery and stealth, we watched them both from his vantage in the shadows, their confrontation projected on the large monitors in our command center in the ziggurat.
I wondered what Desh saw as he looked at his father in that moment, this older, leaner, grizzled version of himself, a man who had taken the lives of hundreds of people in one fell swoop, and countless more besides in the course of his lifetime, this man who had sired him.
Ghis was the first to speak, breaking the silence. “I was not sure you would come, my son.”
“You didn’t make it easy.”
“I had to be certain we could speak in private.”
“Then why are we here, in a temple right below the heart of the magi’s domain?”
“Do not fear, my son. Ne-uru-gal keeps us safe. He helped us make these tunnels and caverns. They are known to no one but us. The magi are not the only one with secrets.”
“You may have your secret tunnels, but it’s no secret what you’ve done. You hit them harder than they thought possible, a masterful, terrible surprise. But now, they are wounded and angry. If we do not act swiftly, then it will be over before it has truly begun.”
“You speak of ‘we’, as if we are allies,” Ghis said, “but you know as well as I do that you have stood on the river’s edge, waiting to see how the current runs, while we of the Nergugaltha have done the true work. Now, the current shifts in our favor, and here you are.”
“I’m not so sure the current runs the way you think, but what choice did you leave me with? Do you think the magi have any doubt about who is responsible for the explosions? They’ve already questioned me extensively.”
“And they have been watching you too, my son. Did you know that?”
“I assumed as much,” Desh said, cool and poised in the face of Ghis’s knowledge.
“When they
questioned you, what did you tell them?”
“The truth: That I have not seen you in months. That my existence has always been an inconvenient burden to you. That you blame me for my mother’s death, even though you couldn’t bother to be there for her when she most needed you, for the birth of your first and only son.”
Ghis stared at Desh, frowning, shadows flickering on his face in the firelight. The silence grew heavy.
A door opened in the darkness behind Ghis. People were moving back there, but the shadows were too thick for the surveillance orb Xander wore around his neck.
A woman emerged from the darkness, walking up to stand at Ghis’s left shoulder. Ghis tilted his head towards her. His hood hung open a little as he did so. There was a glint of metal in firelight, an earring maybe. She leaned close to him, whispering something. He nodded, and she disappeared back into the darkness.
“The messenger Torto sent to you,” Ghis said, his voice cold, “is missing.”
Desh did not cower, and he did not give us the sign to move. He was proving to be every bit the equal of his father. “You mean the guard?” he said. “Ur-Tesa? He’s dead, father.” A lie. “I made sure of it. You had the audacity to send him directly to my chambers in the ziggurat. Even now, the magi question every man and woman who may have ever spoken a word to anyone with a connection to you. If they found him, it would lead to Torto, which would lead back to you.”
“Torto is a fool. He is useless to them.”
Desh shook his head. “Your overconfidence has always been your greatest weakness, father.”
The acolytes behind Ghis grumbled and twitched with irritation to hear Desh speak ill of their lord.
I glanced over at Sid. “Ghis is closing the net. Are the guards ready?”
He nodded.
“Watch your tongue, boy,” one of the acolytes hissed, bringing my attention back to the image feed. The man lifted his muscled arm to point at Desh. “Or I will tear it from you.” He was easily the largest native human I’d ever seen. Smaller than me for sure, but a giant among the men and women around him, with great slabs of muscle wrapped across his shoulders, arms, and torso.
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