by Terah Edun
No matter what, Ciardis knew she couldn’t back down. But she also knew in her heart of hearts that Thanar wouldn’t either.
Rationally, she understood what he was saying. But the idea of going through with it, the toll it would take on their souls—okay, her soul—disturbed her.
When it seemed they were finally at a stalemate, he just shrugged and said, “You’ll understand soon enough.”
That only made Ciardis even more infuriated.
She responded with a flat, “We just died and came back ourselves. Can you really justify doing that to unwilling victims who have already made the ultimate sacrifice?”
“That is precisely it, my lady,” said one of the kith contingent. “We know what it means to sacrifice ourselves now. We know what we’re asking, and if the empire came to me with this proposition…I would agree because it’s the only way.”
Ciardis’s mouth thinned. “It seems to me that you aren’t giving the participants of this scheme any choice.”
“No, we aren’t. Because it’s already been made,” said the same kith in a bleak voice. “We want to live, and all of us, here in this room and afar, are willing to do what it takes to do so.”
Meanwhile, Thanar stared at her patiently and twirled his magic black ball in his hands. It got bigger with each second. As if it were sucking up her anger and anguish into a physical manifestation of itself.
She wasn’t foolish enough to think it was. But she did have the tiny, fleeting suspicion Thanar was enjoying this argument. That he saw her every line of reasoning as a great amusement because he couldn’t lose.
And so far, each time she had come up with an idea as to why he couldn’t go forward with his plan to reenact a half-mad Empress’s diabolical scheme, he countered with seemingly unshakeable conviction.
It was downright frustrating.
Getting more worn out by the minute, Ciardis looked over at Sebastian for help, but he was knee-deep in entrenchment plans with several military-looking advisors.
She had to admire his strength for a moment. He’d managed to turn a palace alight with fire and in turmoil into a well-oiled political machine in days.
It said something for his character.
Or rather…it says something about the absolute level of revulsion the court held for their former Emperor, she thought spitefully. They might have despised or feared Maradian, but it seems the conclave members weren’t as devoted to the memory of their former Emperor as I first surmised.
The nobles, merchants, and courtiers were just as ready to move on into a new imperial era as she and Sebastian were to forge it. If only that era didn’t require a certain prince heir to take the throne.
In the three days since Maradian had passed, Sebastian had successfully avoided taking the throne, but his time was running out.
He knew that. She knew that. The courtiers and the empire expected a new ruler to formally assume leadership.
And there was only one blood heir to do so.
He needed to perform the rituals that would cement his ties to the land, and only had a week from the death of the former Emperor to do so.
She knew that despite his involvement in the death of Maradian, or rather Sebastian’s willingness to look away from his uncle’s plight as Thanar murdered him in the open-air gardens, the nobles were more than willing to have him on the throne.
Particularly because their alternative is anarchy and chaos on a widespread scale, Ciardis thought wryly.
The throne of Algardis had not sat empty in a long while. Even symbolically. Usually the transition from heir to ruler was immediate, but Sebastian had thrown a wrench in those plans with his desire to do “research” before ascending the throne.
She still remembered the key courtiers’ look of apoplexy at the word research.
They hadn’t known what it meant.
Which was fair, because even Ciardis wasn’t sure what he meant.
And now Sebastian stood at the head of a conclave table putting together the plans for a war.
She felt no small amount of pride in her seeleverbindung bondmate.
She turned back to her other bondmate with a twitching eye, which was all anyone really needed to know about how she felt about Thanar right now.
He didn’t look the least bit repentant, and she had to wonder if it was even in his being to be repentant.
Probably not, she decided morosely as she glared at him. They settled back into an old-fashioned standoff.
The foxlike creature wisely decided that now was a good time to confer with his colleagues. He politely turned his back to give them as much of a semblance of privacy as he possibly could.
Which was good of him.
Finally Thanar stopped twirling the dark magic in his hands. His face didn’t change. His eyes were still dark pools. She searched them looking for hope. Instead, she found resolve.
Sighing, Ciardis whipped her curls out of her face with a hand as she muttered, “We need to move past this.”
Thanar took that as his cue.
“You know,” he said slowly, “we’ve been arguing in circles and haven’t even made it past the opening act.”
Ciardis’s stomach sank like a stone. “Opening act?” she echoed hollowly.
He nodded. “The fact we have to follow this ancient Empress’s actions and re-create the ley-lines trap with death magic is unchangeable. It won’t work otherwise.”
Ciardis pinned her lips firmly, managing to not bite his head off as she said, “Why not?”
“Aside from the security aspects of trusting the lot in this room, you know they’d sell their own mother for a better plot of land and a bigger title,” he said dismissively. “It’s elementary magic. If you’re working off someone else’s ritual, you don’t change the activation steps midway. It can’t be done.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Ciardis asked tenanciously.
Thanar gave her a flat look. “In the time you have left, I wouldn’t be making life more difficult than it actually is.”
She narrowed her eyes. She couldn’t dispute that.
However, she knew the circumstances now were much direr.
“During the Initiate Wars they faced terrible choices,” she finally said. “Choices between loyalty to your crown and a fight for your personal freedoms. But that’s just it. They were choices.”
He raised an eyebrow at her but didn’t interrupt.
“This,” Ciardis said, pointing at the table harshly to emphasize her point, “this is so much more than that. We will all die again if this goddess and her army aren’t stopped. Along with our children, and our lands will be forfeit. We can’t fight against this if we’re fighting each other for scraps.”
“I don’t disagree,” he said with a shrug as if to ask, What’s your point?
Ciardis said with exasperation dripping from her voice, “So all those people who would willingly stab you in the back need to come together. Rise above their petty differences and struggles for power.”
“Hmmm,” said Thanar. “Say that these nobles and merchants think so. Say that they are loyal to the cause. Loyalty and honor are not enough to fight back the persuasions of a god.”
She prepared to reject his words, but Thanar held up a commanding hand. “Let me finish.”
She shut her mouth.
“This god will not appeal to their greed or even to their pride. She won’t try to corrupt their morals. She will consume them. Those she doesn’t physically consume, she will mentally overtake. They will become her agents, unable and unwilling to deny Amani because their minds are owned by her.”
Ciardis froze. That sounded disturbingly familiar. “The brothers from Ameles, the shadow mage and…what was the other one?” she asked in a breathy voice.
Thanar nodded. “A necromancer.”
“So they were a test run?” she guessed.
“And quite the successful one,” Thanar said. “The bluttgott knows she can control human minds now, and she has had two year
s to perfect her technique in doing so.”
Ciardis bit the inside of her cheek, deep in thought.
“You weren’t there, though,” she said helplessly. More to herself than to him.
Thanar answered anyway. “I have my ways of finding out details…though your Emperor was quite careful to keep that particular escapade under wraps.”
Ciardis flinched. She remembered all too well what had happened. Terris had almost died and, well…she had somehow transported herself to the northern lands just after they killed the Shadow Mage.
She suddenly felt like her life had come full circle. Like everything she had ever done was all for this moment.
She raised her eyes and focused on the daemoni prince, who was laying out each piece of the puzzle for her and putting them together on the table. She could resent him for it, but being crafty was in his nature.
“You’ve been holding onto this knowledge for two years, haven’t you?” Ciardis spoke in accusation.
Her voice toward the end of that sentence was nearly a shout, and he deserved every decibel of rage.
19
Thanar shrugged, called up his ball of magic again to toss it into the air, and said, “I’ve been putting it together for two years. You forget that until yesterday, I didn’t have a direct line to the blutgott anymore.”
Ciardis’s gaze sharpened as she said, “And you’re saying you do now?”
She was wary of what Amani might have done to him after coaxing Thanar back over to her side. Granted, he had agreed to let her manipulate him to save those still left alive from further destruction, but a newly opened line of communication between the deity and the daemoni prince didn’t sit well with her…at all.
Thanar continued on, apparently oblivious to her darkening train of thought. “No, although she did leave the connection open should I choose to. I don’t, for the record, and I haven’t for quite some time. As such, it took some mental leaps and quite a bit of knowledge to figure out what plays our dear belated Emperor had been making behind the scenes—particularly in relation to dark forces with unseemly connections to destructive deities.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him fully. Then again, she wasn’t sure if it mattered so much now. At least the cards were finally falling. At least now they had an idea of what was coming and how.
Slowly Ciardis said, “And the ley line actors who were formerly dead. They are absolutely critical to this plan?”
“Crucially so,” Thanar said solemnly.
Ciardis sighed. “Great, well, just great.”
“You won’t think that when you find out who they are,” he said quickly.
“I was being sarcastic,” she snapped, glaring at him. “What do you mean by who?”
“They are a set group,” he said evasively.
Ciardis knew that whatever he was going to say next, she would like it even less.
Sebastian, who had been engrossed in his own discussions, apparently finally sensed that whatever discussion Ciardis and Thanar were having was about to come to a boil. Ciardis had the distinct impression the prince heir had been trying to give them room to talk, to let their meeting play out.
Especially in front of these conclave members, she realized. We need to show that we trust each other, and what better way to do that than to let the two talk off by themselves and even run point on coordination with one contingent while he deals with the other? Sebastian was quite smart, she decided.
Too bad they were about to ruin his good impression.
Taking his cue from them, the prince heir straightened from his leaning pose over the table and looked at them with eagle eyes.
From across the room, he asked them both, “More news?”
Ciardis was stiff. She glanced at Thanar out of the corner of her eye, but he didn’t say anything at first. After a moment, the daemoni prince tore his dark gaze from hers and looked at Sebastian. With a lazy grin he said gently, “Perhaps we should clear the room for a moment.”
Ciardis’s mouth went dry.
Thanar however didn’t wait for her to gather her wits again. He turned to the room-at-large and barked the same thing but much louder.
As she fought the unease, she looked around the room. To a person, mage and kith and non-mage and scholar, no one looked offended. In fact, they all looked relieved.
Half of them are bone-tired, she surmised. And the other half just don’t want to be caught in the crossfire in a fight between the triumvirate’s members.
They’d been in the room almost since dawn, after all, and one of the trade mage gifts she’d received from Thanar told her that what had been eating at her all day, besides hunger, was that the sun was ready to set. They’d been cooped together for far too long.
Ciardis twitched her fingers. She was tempted to trap them all in here to hear whatever else Thanar had to say. If she had to suffer, so would they.
Sebastian said tentatively, Perhaps this conversation could be had mentally?
“Not a chance,” she snarled. “I don’t know what it is he has to say, but we’re not going to like it. And I can’t claw his eyes out in my mind.”
Thanar gave her a studied look of careful nonchalance, but she noticed he had stepped back from her since this conversation had started—and conveniently put a padded-back chair between them.
She snorted in derision. As if that would save him.
Sebastian studied them and the tense air in the room. No one else said a word. They clearly didn’t want to draw Ciardis’s ire or Thanar’s dark mood.
Finally Ciardis sighed and reluctantly concurred with Thanar. After all, it didn’t look like he was going to open his mouth and speak unless they were alone.
“For a moment, Prince Heir,” Ciardis said while looking over her shoulder at Sebastian.
But she was careful, very careful, to take a moment to look every key player in the room in the eye after she did so.
Then she calmly said, “Conclave members, don’t go anywhere. You’ll be right outside in the anteroom, which the soldiers will lock out of necessity, and we will be there forthwith to conclude this meeting.”
Sebastian silently made a slight gesture to his soldiers. They opened the back doors to allow a rush of ash-filled air into the stale room. Coughs were the only complaints Ciardis heard as the conclave members rushed out into the slightly larger room that served as both waiting chamber and entrance to the conclave seating area.
As soon as the doors closed, she rushed around the chair with fists raised.
She just wanted to thump Thanar on the chest once, or twice for good measure. She didn’t know why yet, but her instincts were telling her that she had good reason to, and Ciardis wasn’t one to ignore her instincts these days.
Fortunately for the daemoni prince, his reflexes were quite good and he dodged all her blows. Ciardis leaned back against a table in ire, but she refused to do any more until Thanar spit out whatever he was holding back.
When Sebastian finally came over, Ciardis relayed to him without emotion exactly what the kirasi kith had told her. Then what the daemoni prince had said after that. He needed to know the facts, straight as they were, if they were all going to make a decision. Emotions could play in later.
They took seats at the table, weary, as Sebastian absorbed this new information in silence.
Finally Sebastian looked at Thanar.
“And there’s more?” he asked.
“There’s more,” the daemoni prince confirmed with a wince and a tired stretch of his wings.
They’d all been in this room for far too long. For someone who flew regularly, it was even more confining.
Sebastian sighed and rubbed his face. “Am I going to like it even less than what you’ve already told us?”
“Probably,” the daemoni prince said diffidently.
“Out with it,” Ciardis finally said, her voice raw from arguing with him for almost an hour straight. She stood in a rush and paced.
Thanar and Sebasti
an didn’t bother watching her. Instead they stared tensely at the wall and the table respectively.
Thanar finally said, “We can’t just bring these people back. We need help to do so. As did the Empress in historic lore.”
“What kind of help?” Sebastian asked. “A payment?”
“No, not precisely,” Thanar said.
“Then what?” Ciardis said testily.
He shrugged, his dark wings and shoulders moving in sync. “A trade of sorts. One life for a ley line link that will be keyed to an individual.”
She opened and closed her mouth. “Life given and life brought is what you’re referring to?”
He gave her a dark smile. “Exactly, the actors themselves are important, of course. They can’t just be anyone.”
She sat with a heavy thump. “Of course they can’t.”
A quiet moment passed.
Even Sebastian was silent for a time as they all tried to catch up to everything Thanar had thrown at them in the intervening half hour.
For her part, Ciardis was trying to rein in her emotions.
She could feel Thanar’s quiet stubbornness bubbling under the surface. Experience had shown her that he would go off on his harebrained scheme whether she liked it or not.
Which was mildly funny.
“At least this time he informed me first,” she muttered to herself, half-frazzled.
“What was that?” Thanar asked in an inquisitive voice.
She looked up from where her face was currently resting in her hands in weariness and gave him a glare. For good measure, she slammed her hands down onto the table and said, “You are the most infuriating individual I’ve ever met.”
Thanar hesitated. Then he asked, “Does that include your mother?”
Ciardis didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response. Instead she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “All right, let’s say for a moment that I believe that your plan is the only way to accomplish a rout of the deity’s army.”
“It is,” said Thanar.
“And let’s say,” Ciardis continued in icy anger, “that the only way to use the ley lines to our advantage is to key them to our trusted compatriots.”
