Demsch twisted away from Thiellin, and the remaining guards surrounded him, swords pointed at his throat. He dropped his weapon and surrendered.
“Put the captain in the dungeon overnight, and then return him to his ship in the morning,” Parnden said. “Captain, my alliance with the First prevents me from hanging you, but I will communicate my displeasure to the Caleisbahn ambassador. You and your crew are banned from Betheljin henceforth.”
Major Demsch yanked Wineyll to her feet.
“The minstrel may stay, major,” Parnden said. “She’s here for a command performance, after all.”
“One I want to hear.” A youth sauntered into the room. Soft brown hairs scurled up a bare abdomen and chest. Sheer silk pantaloons draped around a silver codpiece, and jeweled metal bands circled his neck and wrists. The boy slouched onto the sofa, and Parnden, his fingers twined through the boy’s black curls, reclined beside him.
Trembling, Wineyll picked up a glass and swallowed the contents. The wine felt warm as it went down. She’d always been a good actress and had used that skill to project whichever emotion best suited her musical performances. Now, she amplified the vestiges of her fear as she retrieved her flute case and assembled the instrument. “What would you like to hear?”
“Horst, you choose,” Parnden said, kissing the youth’s shoulder.
The boy turned hard brown eyes on her. “Something joyful, to match the spirit of the evening, now that Lornk Korng is out of the way.”
“Play well for us tonight, my dear, and I’ll remand you to your Guild in the morning. Then you will take the first ship out of Betheljin and never return. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Wineyll lifted the flute and began with the happy march the Commissar had heard in the shop. Lornk hunkered by her feet, hiding a grin behind his knees.
* * *
Wineyll. Her name pushed at the small of his back as they wormed through the crowd and hurtled down alleys, then back into streets packed with fists and torches. Kelmair in the lead, his good hand was locked round her wrist; Samson’s grip was iron around his other arm as they plowed through clumped torsos and tangled legs. Wineyll. She was in this mess because of him. Beneath his feet, the tenor of the streets changed from cobbles to flat paving stone. Wineyll. Her name shoved harder as they approached the Commissar’s square, where the heads of the mob thickened into a single bubbled mass. Samson lost his grip, and bodies surged between them. Torches blotted the stars, singeing Ashel’s hair, filling his eyes with smoke. Pushing forward, Kelmair called for her people, and he thought of his. Wineyll. His wife and sister might well be dead. Wineyll. His Guild-sister, she was as much his family as they were, and she was here.
He plowed ahead, passing Kelmair, funneling his anger into his glare, into legs and arms that shoved bodies out of his way. Shouts crackled around him, but when people faced him, they dropped back. Kelmair moved into his wake, fingers locked on his belt, still calling for her sect. They pushed through into Commissar’s Square. Samson caught up, and Caleisbahnin gathered round them.
“Clear a path,” Ashel said, and the seamen shoved into the screaming horde. A few had climbed the ironwork; one shook his fist, mouth stretched open, his voice lost amid other shouts for the Commissar’s head. Yet as the Caleisbahnin pushed forward, the people—Buzzards, stevedores, liveried servants—fell silent. A woman, her face creased and dirty, pantaloons smudged and torn, touched his arm with a single finger. A hefty odor of stale legumes attacked his nose. “For Victory,” she said. The reek of the crowd mingled with hers—sour ale, vinegar and musk, smokeweed and bliss. Nostrils flaring, he yearned to turn round and leave the unwashed mob to their misery so he could drown his own. But the other odors gripped his throat and shook him, a scolding reminder that their desperation was akin to his. These were Vic’s people. Oreseekers, slaves, the desolate and the despised, and they stood here, just as she had stood in this square almost seven years ago, alone and terrified. He’d been blind to her need then. He could see her people’s need now.
The woman raised a cudgel and shouted, “For Victory!” Others echoed her, and the chant spread, rippling through the mob until it sounded in a single cry. “For Victory!” A bitter laugh slipped out. Vic had been Lornk’s slave, and he’d managed to twist her bondage into a rallying cry for freedom. “For Victory!” Lornk could convince a bird it was a cat. “For Victory!”
The chant his herald, the crowd parted for him. The palazzo’s gates were a latticework of fluted diamonds, the spaces in the iron grille big enough for a man’s head. More a show of wealth than defense. That task fell on the guards waiting there, swords sheathed, crossbows cocked but pointing at the ground. The rabble-rouser who perched halfway up the ironwork fell silent as Ashel approached. It was Michael, the coal-smuggler.
“This is Michael of Cairo,” Samson said. “Mike, this is—”
“I know who he is, Kinseller.” Michael’s scowl softened as he signed his condolences. “For your loss, Highness.”
“It’s just Ashel.” He turned to the Commissar’s guards. “Let me in. I have an invitation.”
Stepping forward, one spat, and a thick, black wad splattered the pavement. “Tell this rabble to clear the square, or we’ll clear it.”
There must be guards massing somewhere beyond the crowd, said Geram. He sat alone in the Manor garden. They’ll come up from behind the mob to disperse it.
A guttural howl burbled through the crowd. Kelmair pinched Ashel’s arm. “They were supposed to let us in!”
The guard chortled and spat again. Wineyll. Ashel stared at the line of crossbows and heard Wineyll’s cackling laugh echo through the Academy hallways, the way it always did after a prank. He hadn’t heard that sound of joyous mischief since her father died. He lunged through the bars, grabbed the guard’s jerkin, and yanked him against the grille. Kelmair plunged her dagger into his belly.
Michael scrambled up the ironwork, other Buzzards swarming after. Crossbows fired; gate-climbers tumbled back. Behind them, whistles blew, catapults thunked, and screams ripped the air. Topping the gate, Buzzards flung themselves over. Michael led some into the guardhouse, others charged the crossbow line.
Kelmair slammed into him, dragging him down as bolts zipped overhead, squelching into chests and faces. A coppery, musty stink mingled with screams. Michael sprang from the guardhouse, keys in a bloody hand. He snapped back the iron bolt, and the mob sprayed through the gate like the sea through a cleft. The Commissar’s guards fled.
The Caleisbahn seamen gathered around them; one shoved a sword pommel at Ashel. “Take this.”
“I’m not a swordsman.”
Kelmair grabbed the blade. “We need to go!” Burning rocks showered the crowd. Smoke swarmed the streets. Behind them in the square, catapults had been pulled from hiding places between buildings.
“They’ve trapped us,” Samson said.
“No, look how they run.” Michael pointed at the palace guards, retreating round the building, the mob pelting after them, cudgels and torches waving like banners. “Tonight, we triumph!” he cried. “For Victory!”
Wineyll’s flute song danced in Ashel’s mind as the palace grounds absorbed the horde. Wineyll. Not Vic. Victory would not come tonight, and they could not save Wineyll either. If they went inside, they’d be dead or imprisoned before morning.
“For Victory!” Michael cried again.
He gripped the Oreseeker’s arm. “Vic isn’t here. They’re driving you inside the gates.” Another volley of embers and rocks pelted the square, and more people rushed by them. “They’re driving us, Michael.”
“He’s right,” a Caleisbahnin said. “Thiellin never gave the signal, and all the streets are blocked.”
Michael looked around again, dread twisting his features. “Retreat!” He broke through the Caleisbahn guard, calling his people to follow. Ashel echoed him, using his singer’s voice to spread the order into the mob flowing like a river into t
he palace grounds. Few turned, and they shoved against the current, leading a thin line of allies past the gate and along the fence. The catapults thunked again. Fiery boulders struck the pavement, and a scatter of shrapnel stung bare skin with little smacks of fire. “Here,” Michael cried, pointing into a sewer. A wiry little woman, her skin as tough and yellow as bark, helped him pry open the grate. The woman jumped down, splashed a second later. Two Caleisbahnin went in. Michael looked at Ashel. “For Victory.”
In the square, the shreds of the mob scrambled among the twisted, bloody, screaming remains of Lornk’s rebellion. Elesendar, what we’ve done. Nodding at the others, Ashel jumped down.
Center Alignment
The mattress ticking shifted, and Geram blinked awake. His arm swept across warm sheets until his fingers found smooth skin.
“Go back to sleep.” Elekia nuzzled his ear. Her weight left the bed, and silk rustled over her shoulders.
“Where are you going?”
“Not to worry.”
The dismissal rankled, and he rolled out of bed and found his trousers. “I do worry. What is it, Majesty?”
“I thought we dispense with titles in my bedchamber?”
“Elekia is frank; the Ruler inscrutable, Majesty.”
She chuckled. “Cheeky love.”
“Where are you going?” He pulled his shirt on and faced toward the noise of cinching laces. Her thoughts were baffled as snugly as if she were meeting with the Senate, but he sensed the store of secrets she kept, the lifetime of machinations that had driven Ashel away. His awareness swung to the prince, scrubbing sewage-stained trousers in someone’s dingy hovel in the Roost. Ashel muttered Geram’s name, repeating it over and over.
Leather rasped as Elekia slid bare feet into shoes. Outside, a breeze rustled through shrubbery. A gizzard hooted in the garden. “Put your boots on, lieutenant.”
* * *
The pinpricks resolved into darkness. The air damp, it smelled of mildew and earth. A candle flared, and Geram released Elekia’s vision.
“You may keep using my eyes.”
Cheeks heating, he faced away and took her sight again.
Elekia walked in front of him and grasped his shoulder. “Don’t you like what I see when I look at you?”
He watched himself grimace. Even that expression was suffused in an unnatural glow. Was it real, this lens of love through which she saw him? She shared her bed but not her secrets. “Where are we?”
“Tell me Ashel’s sleeping.”
“What if he’s not?”
“Just tell me he is.” She kissed him softly. If he could see her, she would shine like the sun. He shoved Ashel’s awareness away and wrapped her in his arms. Breath hot on his cheeks, she pushed him against the wall and tugged at his laces. Heat soaked into his skin, and his mouth pulled her into him as she took him into her.
Stop, stop, please stop. Ashel’s protest scored his conscience, but Elekia threw back her head and he followed the line of her throat with his tongue. Geram’s sense of the prince steamed away, and his desire to bond with this woman swelled and burst, showering every nerve with bliss. She collapsed against him, and they clung together, panting.
“Elesendar forgive me for stealing these moments while we can,” she breathed.
He stroked her face, kissing her lightly, wishing the moments could stretch into a life. Gingerly, he felt for Ashel, but he’d vanished. With drink or bliss or something equally strong, the prince had shut him out. Shoulders hunched, he relaced his pants. “Where are we, Elekia?”
She snorted softly. “The woman is frank, the queen inscrutable—so you ask the woman. We’re in the eastern Kiareinoll.”
“This is the Device Lornk and Ashel used to go to Traine?”
“And through which I believe the Kragnashians took Vic and Bethniel. The Center is meeting us here.”
Mortification choked him as he imagined the creature materializing while they were rutting in the corner.
“No worries of it popping in on us, love. This is the signal.” She placed a stone in his fingers, let him weigh it, feel its shape, before she took it back. There were scratching noises near the Device, then a faint buzz. A moment later, the buzz changed frequency, and she announced the Kragnashian was coming. Her hand wrapped around his, and they stood with backs to the wall. Taking her sight once again, he watched a bright shimmering resolve into the same creature to whom Ashel had sung. The horns on its tail gleamed in the dim light of Elekia’s candle. Lifting its stole out of the dust, it flowed away from the Device.
Elekia stepped forward and clapped out a greeting.
The Center’s wing covers chittered. “What deal would you make now?”
“I seek answers to the questions you have refused to answer. I asked you here so we could speak freely, without concern for what our retainers may hear.”
“The Slayer is here. The Slayer will hear.”
“You have violated the terms of our previous agreements, and if you do not provide the answers I seek, I will advise the world that the Center has reneged on its bargains.”
“Ask.”
“When the One and my offspring came to Direiellene, why did you not take them?”
“You had paid for their safe passage to Relm.”
“Yet you did not provide them with safe passage. They were lost and nearly died in your lands.”
The Center made some humming noises that did not translate in Elekia’s mind. “They passed safely into Relm. We did not renege on our agreement.”
“The terms stipulated my daughters would remain safe until Latha was secure.”
“You have defeated the Stonecutters; the Weavers’ land is secure.”
“The throne of Latha is not secure; it cannot be secure while its Heir is missing.”
“The People did not take the Fulcrum,” said the Center.
“Fulcrum?”
“The Dealmaker’s offspring.”
“Why do you call her that?”
“Events turn about the Fulcrum. The People did not take the Fulcrum.”
“Did you take the One?”
The Center hummed, its wings extruding from beneath its carapace. “The One was taken by one of the People, but the People did not take the One.”
“So there is not unity among the People?”
“Each lineage has its own aims. Some are misaligned and do not point to the Center.”
“And what is the Center’s aim?”
“What is the Dealmaker’s aim?”
“To secure the future. What is the People’s aim?”
“To secure the past.”
They talked in riddles for some time. Elekia tirelessly clapped questions, rounding the Center’s queries like a seasnake circles its prey. At last the Center admitted, “The Fulcrum returned with the One.”
“Returned? Where?”
“The One is a maker of history, but the outcome is uncertain.”
“Do you confirm the One and Fulcrum have traveled to the past?”
“Yes.”
“And this uncertain outcome—does that mean history can be changed?”
“Yes.”
“And if history changes, will the present change as well?”
“The outcome is uncertain. Past, present, and future are in flux because the Fulcrum returned to the past in the wake of the One. Events turn about the Fulcrum.”
“Is there anything we can do to secure the past, present, and future?”
“The past is what it was up to this moment. Each breath of the future is open to new possibilities as we approach the Concordance.”
“That is the event Lornk told Ashel about,” Geram interjected.
Elekia scowled and waved him to silence while she asked the Center to explain its meaning. It spun more riddles while Elekia paced, asking more questions. At last she said to Geram, “I believe it means that Vic and Bethniel have returned to the past, but they
are, in essence, moving forward through time on a parallel track with us. Each day passing for them is a day passing for us. If only we had some way to speak to them!” She clapped that question to the Center.
“To communicate may be possible. To bring them back to this time is also possible. The One was not meant to return so soon.”
“What do you mean?”
For once, the Center gave a clear answer. “The One of prior history was years older than the One that was taken. The One that was taken was transported with an offspring; the One of prior history transported alone.”
“Offspring!” The queen whirled, beaded braids clattering. “Do you know anything about an offspring?”
Geram felt the wake of her motion and the heat of her stare. “Ashel and Vic . . . married.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was private.”
“Did they declare?”
Wincing, he nodded.
“Then it wasn’t private.” As if she’d slammed down a window, her thoughts went mute. He had to strain to Hear her reply to the Center. “You can bring my daughters back? How?”
“Your offspring can be returned to you. First you must help the People.”
Something shifted—the air became both denser and colder, and Geram sensed doubt, fury, and fear in equal measure. Stepping toward the warmth of her body, he laced his fingers through hers. She squeezed his hand, then clapped a response.
“What would you ask me to do?”
“The People must have the Dealmaker’s allegiance.”
“My allegiance? As a wizard?”
“Your allegiance as Center of the Weavers.”
Elekia stilled. Taking her sight, he found it fixed on the stone floor, her thoughts a maelstrom, and his skin prickled as he recalled Lornk’s story about the strange realm he and Sashal had visited.
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