by Phil Tucker
Asho forced down his disappointment. Tomorrow morning. Without Audsley's presence, they would need him to stay close and open the Portals from here on out. He'd not be able to spend time with his people, as he'd hoped. He wouldn't be able to ease them into their new life, help them adjust with kindness and a unique understanding. Bitter disappointment flooded him. He'd not be able to become one of them.
Alasha leaned forward. "One of my proposals, Lady Iskra, is meant to address our dependence on Ser Asho." She smiled humorlessly. "Our entire alliance and the future of our cause rests on his and your absent magister's shoulders. May I suggest having him train us Vothaks in the usage of the Portals?"
Iskra turned curiously to Asho. "Could you do so?"
"I don't know. Perhaps?" He felt a flutter of hope in his chest. If the Vothaks could work the Portals, then he might be able to devote his time to the Bythians. "Yes. I would be willing to try. But my lady, I must return to Starkadr."
"Yes, of course," said Iskra. "Ask Orishin for whatever you need. Please plan to attend our meeting this evening with Kolgrimr to better explain our request, and confer with Alasha later about attempting this training."
"As you wish, my lady." Asho bowed again and stepped back. Alasha watched him with a pleased, almost smug look.
Kanna stood up and bowed awkwardly once more, then followed him. The council began speaking about mining quotas before the door had even closed behind them.
Asho led Kanna in silence back down the hall to the stairwell. He stopped when he reached the top step, then half-turned to Kanna, unable to meet her eyes. "I'm sorry. I'd hoped to have more time with –" Your people? Our people? "With everyone, before being called away." He fought the urge to kick a loose rock down the stairs. "We're at war."
To his surprise, Kanna reached out and squeezed his shoulder. "Don't apologize, Asho. You have done exactly what you promised. You have brought us to a new world. You have given us a new beginning. That is more than any of us ever dreamed of."
Asho nodded, risking a glance at her face. Was that sympathy? Understanding? "You know, I had this foolish hope. This dream, if you will, that the two hundred we led out of Bythos today might one day become ten thousand. That we could all come here and escape the Empire." He laughed shakily. "Madness, I know."
"Not madness." Kanna moved past him and began to descend. "There are those back home who speak as you do."
"That's right." He followed. "My father mentioned them. Old friends of his looking to start a revolution."
"Yes. But their dreams are violent; they involve destruction and death. This –" Kanna stopped at the base of the steps, pointing out at the courtyard. "This is different. This is a clean escape. This is a new beginning."
Asho stepped down next to her. He tried to see the aspen trees with her eyes, to appreciate the washed-out light and their pale leaves as if seeing them for the first time. "Do you think more would come?"
Kanna nodded slowly. "Yes. Especially if Shabo and I were to return with you and promise them that you were speaking the truth."
Asho bit his lower lip. "This is a hard land. It might not be possible to bring thousands here. There's not enough food. But what of Agerastos? We could go there." He turned to her, heart pounding. "What do you think? I could ask the emperor. See if he would take in those of us who wish to leave."
Kanna continued to stare at the soft light that bathed the courtyard. "I would do anything to help my people, Asho. So, yes. I would return to Bythos with you to speak to the others. I would lead them anywhere if it meant escaping slavery, if it meant a chance to live underneath the sky."
"But what of Ascension?" He thought of his father. "What if they believe they are damning themselves by leaving?"
Kanna turned to him with a dangerous smile on her face. "Then they would be choosing to stay. And in choosing, they would no longer be slaves."
Asho smiled back. "I guess you're right. Then it's decided. I'll make my proposal to Lady Iskra and the emperor. And if they agree, we'll return and liberate as many of our people as wish to follow us home."
Kanna's smile widened, and in that moment she became beautiful, her expression losing its wariness and coldness and becoming animated and vivacious. "Yes. You can count on me."
For no reason at all, he thought of Kethe, and his joy, mercurial to begin with, washed away. He turned from Kanna's smile. "Then, let's fetch the others. We've not much time. Are you ready?"
Kanna took hold of his arm. "Yes. I am."
Asho felt a slight thrill at her touch, followed by a sense of guilt. Not wanting to dwell on these roiling emotions, he stepped into the courtyard and out beneath the sky.
CHAPTER NINE
Iskra closed her eyes. Outside, in the central chamber beneath the Hold, everyone was awaiting her. Asho and the Vothaks were ready to open the Portal. Word had already been sent to the people of Agerastos, preparing them for her arrival. The guards were lined up, ready to escort her. The Vothaks would be accompanying them, along with Ser Tiron, Orishin and others. The hour had come. The moment was upon her. All she had to do was step out of this small, dusty library and set the wheels in motion.
This brief moment of silence, of calm, was suddenly precious to her, infinitely so. Without knowing that she needed it, she had descended to the Portal prepared to pass straight through into the cistern hidden beneath Agerastos, until the sight of the flowing black liquid heralded a desperate need for solitude and sent her into this side room. A moment to gather herself. To steel her nerves and prepare for what was to come.
Her eyes were still closed. She fought to calm her breath, silently repeating a Sigean mantra that she had been taught as a child. It failed to soothe her. Each step she took in her journey to save her son laid more responsibilities upon her shoulders, broadened the scope of the lives she was impacting, heightened the consequences of success or failure.
After a minute her breath was steady, the surface of her mind serene, the Sigean words repeating smoothly, calmly, but beneath it all, her emotions roiled. Most days, most hours, she simply moved from task to task, meeting, deciding, setting in motion the plans that were necessary for success. But every once in a while, especially when she had a rare moment alone, she felt the chaos that she was holding back only by sheer force of will threaten to cascade down upon her and drown her resolve in icy waters.
Had Enderl felt this way moments before launching his attack on Agerastos? Somehow she doubted it. Nothing but the hot-blooded joy of battle for Enderl. Thinking of her dead husband somehow made her feel at once smaller than him, but better; she was no beast of war, no howling drinker of blood. No, for her it was instead the small councils, crucial alliances, playing the odds, persuading friends, styming foes. She felt like a spider at the center of a web, carefully building it, strand by strand, laying out her scheme that might topple an empire, might lead to the deaths of thousands and the destruction of a faith centuries old.
Iskra opened her eyes. All of that for her son, Roddick. She recalled his face as she had last seen it, as he was being torn away from her: panicked, afraid, bewildered. Ser Wyland had asked her once if the life of one boy was worth this chaos and bloodshed.
To which her heart had one irrefutable answer: yes.
Calm certainty descended upon her, and Iskra turned and swept out into the central chamber. Voices engaged in low conversation went silent, and every eye turned toward her. She ignored them all, moving to stand beside Ser Tiron. She wished that she could take his arm. Instead, she nodded to Asho, who turned to the Portal, whispered something to Alasha, who then spoke a harsh series of syllables, and opened the way to Starkadr.
Iskra wasted no time. The advance guard filed through, and she came after, barely stumbling as she stepped out into the polished black grandeur of the Sin Casters' isle. She was almost accustomed to its alien architecture, and barely registered the corpses that littered the ground. Asho and Alasha were already at the Agerastian portal. She spoke, it opened, and onc
e again the advance guard passed through.
Iskra stepped up to the wild, surging forces of black magic that filled the arch, took a breath as if about to plunge into icy water, and stepped forward.
She felt a sweep of disorientation, the sense of impossible distances being compressed to a pinprick, and then she was on the other side, one slippered foot finding purchase on rough pumice. The first time she had emerged into Agerastos, she had stepped out onto a short platform barely a foot above dark waters, the vastness of the cistern silent with untold decades of abandonment, its pillars disappearing into the distance, the privacy total.
Everything had changed following her alliance with the emperor. The cistern's ceiling had been torn off, so that bright sunlight now poured down into the depths; the platform had been expanded by wooden extensions, the pillars had been removed, and a large ramp lay before her that led up to the street above. Agerastian guards were standing at attention, lining the entrance to the cistern, and a crowd of street folk pressed just beyond them, trying to catch a glimpse of her.
Iskra didn't hesitate. With Ser Tiron by her side, Ser Asho ahead, she walked up the ramp and out onto the street. The scents of the city assaulted her, ranging from the sweet smell of cinnamon to the rank, cloying ordure of dung; from the herbal tang of pipe smoke to the sun-baked dustiness of the city itself. Large, colorful awnings sagged overhead from poles, while the second stories of the buildings looking down upon the street beetled out so that they almost formed a tunnel overhead.
This time the avenue had been cleared of carts, the vendors' shops were closed, and a clear passage had opened between the guards stationed every ten yards down the center of the street toward the distant square.
Voices called out to each other in Agerastian. She saw a profusion of faces, tanned like leather by the hot Agerastian sun, but she forced herself to gaze straight ahead in a manner befitting her station and strode forward, preceded and followed by her escort. Somewhere trumpets were playing, and the heat of the day was oppressive. It had been past dusk at the Hold; here it was barely midday.
They passed through the place where Ser Tiron had originally approached Captain Patash. The Agerastian captain turned to look back at her from the head of the escort, and, if he did not quite smile, at least there was a knowing look in his dark eyes. Iskra inclined her head and they marched on, down more streets, through squares, under the spreading canopy of beautiful plane trees and acacias, past vast rose-colored domes that were now dedicated to the worship of medusas, and finally out onto the imperial boulevard that shot straight as an arrow to the palace.
Iskra ignored the sweat that beaded her brow and trickled down the declivity of her spine. She walked as if in a dream, the vivid splashes of crimson and gold contrasting with the dusty umber and ocher. The sky was a light blue, the color of a robin's egg, and the sun a perfect sphere of gold that turned the waters of the harbor to their left into hammered silver.
They strode past the pillar at whose top stood a great statue of the emperor in his youth and went up to the first gate in the palace walls. This time, they were wide open in expectation. A thought flickered through her mind: she had never sought redress for the insults of that venal gate official who had sought to waylay her progress to the emperor. Never mind; it paid to be generous once in a while, even if only by accident.
The gardens within the palace walls were verdant and severely tended, the bushes pruned to geometry and the carp pools clear of all algae. Officials, nobles, and courtiers were standing on both sides of the white stone path that led to the second gate, and they bowed as she passed as if she were their own empress. The party went on through the second gate into a smaller garden; to their left was the palace wall, short on this side but dropping precipitously to the street on the far side, over which Tiron had leaped when she was arrested. Had that only been a short while ago? It felt like months already.
The third gate led into the palace proper, and the coolness of its halls was a welcome balm from the stifling heat outside. Their footsteps ringing on the mosaics, her escort now engorged with countless diplomats and palace officials, all of them led by the grand chamberlain, she and her retinue were led deeper into the palace complex until they reached a pair of grand bronze doors on whose front were emblazoned the heads of medusas. These doors were hauled open by six servants, her guards stepped aside, and Iskra at last stepped into the presence of the emperor.
She had entered this hall once before, as a beggar dressed in soiled traveling clothing, defiant and willing to wager that her offer outweighed the crime of bearing the name of Kyferin, the name of the island nation's greatest despoiler. Her wager had paid off, and this time she entered, if not as an equal, then as a valued guest.
The hall was packed, the order of assemblage carefully arranged by a political calculus beyond her comprehension: the most important notables arrayed closest to the emperor on his ivory divan, all the way down to the insignificant few at the far end of the hall.
The emperor pushed himself upright with difficulty. His ivory mask inlaid with swirls of gold glittered in the light of the white beeswax candles, each as long as Iskra's arm and imparting upon the white cotton robes and pillows a diffuse glow as if they were part of a dream.
There was one key difference, Iskra thought as she approached. Gone was the viper who had stood behind the emperor: Ylisa, his only child and adherent of Ascendancy. Her absence was a void, and she had not been replaced. The emperor was alone on his dais. His crippled form, almost that of a child, was a mockery of the muscled warrior who graced the pillar in the main square outside. Did that statue torment the emperor? she wondered. Did he hate the man he had once been?
Her knights stopped, and she took the last steps by herself. The silence in the hall was a palpable thing, seeming to throb with the held breaths of nearly two hundred spectators. "Your Imperial Highness," she said, inclining her head and bending one knee in a slight curtsy. "It is an honor to return to your court."
She knew what effort it cost him to remain sitting upright. That he insisted on doing so was more of a compliment than anything he could say.
"Lady Kyferin," he whispered. "My withered heart rejoices at the sight of you. I trust that you are well?"
Iskra nodded once more. "The fires of ambition drive me ever onward toward our mutual goal, Your Highness." It would be impolitic to inquire as to his own state of being, given how obvious his precarious health had become. "You do me too much honor with this reception. I hope that my news will be the equal of your generosity."
"Not at all. Our alliance is one that shall shake the Ascendant Empire from its roots to its loftiest heights. You deserve all honors and more." At long last, he lay back down on the bed of pillows. "We have matters of great import to discuss. But, first, some rituals must be observed. Is that not the way of power, my lady? The greater one's authority, the more bound one becomes by tradition."
"That is something we seek to change, I believe." Iskra smiled. "However, not all rituals should be dispensed with. I would be pleased to observe."
"Not observe, but receive." The emperor nodded to his high chamberlain, who in turn gave a glare to someone behind Iskra. Then, stepping up, he gestured for Iskra to move forward and stand at the base of the dais, looking back into the crowd.
What followed was almost an hour of gifts delivered to her by a series of obviously powerful and influential nobles. Patrician Athash, the head of the Agerastian senate, was the first, and he spoke smooth words of welcome before his servants opened a cedar chest worked with gold clasps to reveal a ceremonial curved dagger so encrusted with jewels that she doubted it could be drawn. Others followed, ranging from senators to al-Vothak Ilina herself, the leader of the emperor's Sin Casters.
The treasures mounted, and each introduction and welcome was more unctuous and effusive than the last. Finally, the last personage deemed worthy of welcoming her bowed and stepped back, and the emperor clapped his hands once, signaling an end of s
ome sort.
"Let us repair to a more private chamber," he said. "There, we can discuss matters of state."
Eight servants rushed forward to lift his divan, and the high chamberlain, his bald pate gleaming with sweat, bowed and gestured for Iskra and her people to follow. They left a rising cloud of conversation behind them, and passed through a series of hallways until they entered a small, octagonal room dominated by a circular table across whose surface was carved a map of the Empire.
It was beautifully executed. Iskra stepped up to its edge and allowed her gaze to trace the path of Ascension from Bythos to Agerastos, from Zoe to Ennoia, from Nous to Sige, and finally to the floating isle of Aletheia.
The emperor's divan was lowered onto a hidden platform so that it rose to the table's edge; a score of servants hurried around the table, pulling out chairs and pouring wine, while others carried in silver platters of olives, sliced cheese, miniature puff pastries, candied slivers of meat, and other delicacies.
Iskra sat, smiling graciously to the young woman who attended her, with Tiron to her left and Asho to her right. Orishin remained standing behind her, while Vothak Alasha joined al-Vothak Ilina and two other magic users. A number of military men and women sat to the right of the emperor, while three senators sat to his left, Athash sitting in the center, and the chamberlain remained by the door.
"Time is our most precious commodity, so I shall set the example by not wasting any." The emperor's whisper cut through the subtle sounds of chairs scraping and drinks being poured, leaving a profound silence in its wake. "The Agerastian army has succeeded in breaching the defenses of the coastal city of Otran in Ennoia and invested it with their remaining forces. This occurred only a week before the forces of the Empire arrived, who has since settled in to lay siege to their former city. As of today, our forces have occupied the city for almost two weeks. Our scouts report that the Ennoian force grows daily, is led by several Virtues, and is in the process of building siege equipment."
