“Wasn't asleep,” he mumbled, rubbing his face with the heel of his hand. “Was jus'...”
“Brooding?”
He glowered, and Lark flashed him a grin in return. “C'mon, don't make us wait.”
Reluctantly he moved to the fire, leaving the tectonic lever against the wall as if stuck there. Fiora gave him a gauging look as he settled, and after a moment he lifted his arm and let her shimmy over to rest against his side. It felt good to have her there, especially without the layers of overdress and armor, but he was still annoyed. He hadn't expected to be mediating between her and Dasira all the time.
Lark doled out a stew of winter vegetables and beans, and when Dasira commented on the lack of meat, Arik said, “You don't want what the wolves had. Traveler sausages—made from travelers.”
“Weren't that bad,” said Dasira. The other women stared at her.
“Right. Never accept meat products from a skinchanger,” Lark muttered, then threatened Arik with the ladle when he leered.
The conversation descended into the gutter after that, and Cob tried not to pay attention. It boggled him how similar these conversations were to the ones he had grimaced through in the Crimson camp. Women were supposed to balk and swoon at such topics, not laugh so hard they nearly choked.
His fellow men were no help. Ilshenrir just sat and listened, occasionally miming a drink from his empty cup. Meanwhile, Arik took the opportunity to flirt with everyone, even making eyes at Cob and the wraith. Cob's dourest glare could not stop him.
Finally, after even Ilshenrir managed to slide a carefully crafted innuendo into conversation, Cob gave up. “I'm goin' to bed,” he said, rising.
Fiora caught his arm, but instead of pulling him down, she pulled herself up. Her eyes glimmered in the low firelight. “I'll come with you.”
A rush of heat went through him, one that no amount of jokes and entendres could have sparked. “All right,” he said, hooking his arm around her waist and looking to the smaller chamber. “Um...we'll jus'...”
“I will ward the inner area from sound and sight,” said Ilshenrir blandly.
Reddening, Cob said, “Yeah, thanks,” then quickly pulled Fiora toward the inner chamber. She slipped him for just a moment to grab her pack, then followed, and as they got down and slid through the crack, he felt the others' eyes on his back.
Then the light dimmed and the sound of the flames muted to nothing. Glancing back, he saw a wavery obstruction in the opening, like a wall of water.
“He's so useful,” said Fiora in admiration. Then she looked up at him, and in the faint light he just made out her smile. He reached up to touch it, to trace the line of her lips, and felt the smile widen beneath his fingers.
“C'mon, let's make ourselves comfortable,” she murmured into his palm. “As much as we can be. Watch your head.”
The ceiling lowered as they scooted deeper in, from four feet to maybe three. She pulled the pack along, and when she started fumbling at the straps, he realized that as little as he could see, she saw much less. He took it away, undid the buckles, then unrolled the blanket that had been bound on top. It provided no padding, but at least kept the stone from grating on his shoulders as they tucked close.
“I'm mad at you,” he murmured as she tugged at his belt.
“I know. I'm sorry.”
“But y'keep doin' it. You and her.”
She sighed against his neck. “I can't help it. I don't trust her.”
“Then trust me, all right?”
“You keep letting her back in.”
“She hasn't hurt us.” After a moment, he amended, “You. She hasn't hurt any of you.”
Fiora fixed him with a look. “She tried to kill me outside the manor. She says it was an accident, but even now there's murder in her eyes. Don't pretend you can't see it. I'm allowed to defend myself.”
“Jus'.... Maybe you can jus' not talk to each other. I can't handle it, Fiora. The anger, the demands, the lies, the pikin' hog-crap—“
He stopped himself, sucking in a ragged breath. It was wrong to take out his frustrations on her. Even if he couldn't let his responsibilities lapse, he had to keep them separate from how he treated his friends.
“Cob?” said Fiora softly. “Are you all right?”
“'M fine,” he muttered. “Fantastic.”
“Because you're squeezing me pretty hard.”
He let go immediately, chagrined, but she pulled his arm back into place just as fast. “Don't,” she said. “It doesn't have to be all or nothing. It can be somewhere in the middle.”
“I— I'm jus' tired,” he said, and tried to lay back. As much as he wanted her, he wanted to be alone too. Away from everything.
She let him, but then slithered on top, and he pretended it was her slight weight on his chest that made his breath come short. Her curly hair tickled against his throat as she tucked her head under his chin. “We can sleep,” she murmured. “This is better than the floor though, if you don't mind.”
Her finger traced a line along his collarbone, and he swallowed thickly as the fire concentrated down below. “Yeah,” he rasped. “I don't mind.”
“Then I'll just get comfortable.”
He felt her sit up, and opened his eyes to find her lifting her tunic, rosy skin pale in the gloom.
They did not sleep.
*****
“He's so uptight, I don't know how she can stand it,” said Lark as the ward sealed.
“Not enough anymore,” Dasira muttered.
Grinning, the Shadow girl elbowed her. “You're so jealous. What did I say earlier?”
Dasira scowled over her cup of tea. Across the fire, Ilshenrir watched them like a carved owl; Arik was scraping the last of the stew from the small pot and groaning like a creature in pain. “I'm not jealous,” she said. “Arik, what is with you?”
“Too many vegetables,” said the skinchanger as he sank back with the spoon still hanging from his mouth. He patted his stomach through the chiton, then stretched long furry legs. “Must hunt later or I will be terrible, smelly company.”
“You already make everything smell like wet dog,” said Lark. Arik pouted. “But you,” she went on, pointing her cup at Dasira. “You have some explaining to do.”
“What now?”
“I didn't want to get into it back when you and Fiora were yelling at each other, but seriously, you're wolf-kin?”
All eyes on her, Dasira sighed and shrugged. “More snake, actually. The northwestern clans border the swamp, so there's also lizard and wader and toad-blood. But we're not skinchangers. I've fought some, but I'd never talked to one until Arik.”
“Too good an Imperial?”
“No, it's a family thing.”
Lark grimaced. “Nevermind then, I know how that is.”
Dasira smiled wryly, then leaned over to retrieve the cup Fiora had left behind. She'd been watching the girl since their acquaintance began, and every night Fiora sprinkled something from her pack into her tea. A glance showed her the familiar splay of tea-leaves plus mysterious red flecks.
“Are you snooping?” said Lark.
“No.”
“You're such a bad liar.” Lark leaned across her to grab for the cup, and though Dasira held it away, the Shadow girl just planted a hand on her shoulder and half-stood to grab at it again. Instinct prompted her to twist, trip, shove—impel her opponent toward the fire-pit and the hard edges of the cook-pot. She resisted, and let Lark snag the cup with a crow of victory.
“What is this?” she said as she settled back down. “You trying to tell the future?”
“No.”
“Then what? Come on, we all know you have it in for her.”
“I don't,” Dasira said through her teeth. “She has it in for me—and there's something going on with her. The Erestoia spire, the arrowhead...”
Lark frowned, toying with the cup. “I don't know what you think that means. So her goddess can't veil her...so what? Maybe she has her own ma
gic.”
“Unlikely,” Ilshenrir interjected. “All humans have the potential for magic, but a god's touch suppresses it. Perhaps to encourage dependence.”
Dasira eyed the wraith. “Is that so?”
In the firelight, his fine features were unreadable, inhuman. “A lack of such suppression is what draws followers to Daenivar of Nightmares. He teaches arcane secrets even my people do not know. We disdain him for this as much as for his rebirth as the Blood Goddess's 'son'.”
“So the gods do this on purpose?” said Lark.
“Perhaps. Magic is the manipulation of energy by a singular entity, either a wraith essence or a human soul. It requires full control over oneself—and a god's presence interferes with this. I do not know if it is intentional. As a former wraith, Daenivar may simply know how to keep his followers' channels clear.”
Dasira opened her mouth to ask what this meant for Fiora, but Lark spoke first: “So I could do magic? I'm a laywoman.”
Ilshenrir regarded her, lens-like eyes shifting as if to focus. “Yes. I see no interference.”
“Could Arik?”
“No. He has no soul, merely a tethered fragment of the Wolf spirit.”
“Das?”
“No.”
“Huh.” Lark's gaze trailed to where she'd dropped her pack and most of her furs, and in the lapse, Dasira opened her mouth to try her question again. Then Lark said, “So I could actually be a mage, instead of just wearing a robe and pretending?”
“Yes.”
“The shadows don't like magic, though.”
Silence stretched. Experimentally, Dasira opened her mouth again.
“Do you think you could teach me?” said Lark.
Ilshenrir gave a good facsimile of a smile. “I can at least show you how to empower your garment as a proper mage would. It will make the masquerade more believable.”
With a sound of glee, Lark scrambled up and tore through her pack for the orange robe. Arik seemed to take this as a sign to depart, for he rose and shucked his chiton, then shifted into wolf-form and padded out through the shimmer of the entry-ward.
As Lark planted herself next to Ilshenrir, robe in hand and expression intent, Dasira picked up the cup she'd left behind. Though she would have liked an answer, she already knew what the wraith would say.
Whatever trick Fiora had used in the Erestoia spire, it wasn't magic.
Chapter 6 – Balance of Power
Captain Sarovy descended the steps slowly, his lantern's light gilding the damp stone walls. At his back were Lancers Garrenson and Serinel, still assigned to his protective detail, and Medic Shuralla in her red-and-white striped coat. Down at the base of the stairs he recognized two Shields from Lieutenant Arlin's platoon, stolid in their red jackets and light mail. They saluted in advance of his approach, and he returned it, then passed them into the dim chamber beyond. Another lantern glowed there but could not penetrate all the shadows that cloaked the cells.
“You are temporarily relieved of duty,” he said. “Get yourselves something to eat and be back in a quarter mark.”
“Yessir,” the Shields chorused.
He did not look back as they left, confident that his Lancers would fall into position unordered. Instead he moved deeper into the chamber, lifting his lantern to light the cells.
There were miserably few; he supposed the Bahlaeran militia did not incarcerate many people, just fined and released them or else sent them to the debtors' prison. The first two were vacant, though the second only recently, since Shield Satherson had spent the night there sleeping off a drunk-and-disorderly. Sarovy had ordered another lantern hung above him for the duration, because he was not a part of the experiment. As he passed the empty cell, he wondered what he might have caught in the others.
Nothing, it seemed, for the runes on the walls remained untriggered, and the two militiamen Rynher and Beltras were still there. They wore street-clothes, their wives having visited during both days of their incarceration, but now on the morning of the third they just slumped tiredly on their pallet-platforms with matching expressions of defeat.
Sarovy sighed, annoyed by their continued presence. Neither had been much of an assassin, and their motive was clear: a witless, ill-targeted sense of vengeance. Scryer Mako had verified that, but then refused to scan their minds further on the grounds that she was not an Inquisitor and thus not legally permitted to inquisit.
Regardless, he had learned plenty from their wives. Beltras was childless, ireful—the instigator of the pair, though no great thinker; Rynher was a family man, moody and malleable. His wife was wroth over Beltras' influence on him, and both women bemoaned the massacre in the depths and the downturn of their lives since then. The scouts had been out to their homes to snoop and reported nothing; even had Sarovy been interested in torturing them, he already knew they had little to tell. It was exasperating.
He had hoped he could at least lure the Shadow Cult with them.
“We've got nothing to say,” grunted Beltras. “If you won't charge or release us, just pike off and let us rot.” A moment later, he added, “You should've left us in the depths.”
Perhaps, thought Sarovy, but even in his irritation he could not sustain the idea. Those swarming black creatures with their shiny eyes and bloody teeth... “No. I do not regret saving you. I would have saved all your comrades if I could. It was the Shadow's trap that slew them, the Shadows who have abandoned you here. I am only interested in them.”
Beltras sneered. “You should've backed off when our captain told you to, you and your stupid scout. The depths aren't for anyone who cares to see daylight again. It's your piking fault they all died, my brother among them, and then you dare to come back here and fox up the Shadowland? Do you know how much trouble you're in?”
“Do tell.”
“Pike you. Find out for yourself.”
Sarovy stepped closer to the cell bars, trying to construct an argument that would bring them to his side. He did not want to execute them.
Then he noticed the stillness of the shadow beneath Rynher's bed-platform. All the other shadows had tilted with the movement of his lantern, but that one stayed steady, a pane of depthless black. A cultist spyhole that had somehow failed to trigger the mages' trap.
For a moment, he wished dearly for the days of the Jernizan campaign: a proper sword-on-sword war, not magic and monsters and a spontaneous need for espionage. But this was an opening of sorts. The cultists were listening.
He had to capitalize on it. He'd planned for the mages' trap to catch any attempted rescuers, or if it could not, to let the two men be snatched away and then follow the arcane tracers Scryer Mako had placed on them. Instead, the Shadows were showing the same caution he saw in the streets. The city had calmed itself, its riots subsiding, but he did not trust such lulls. He imagined agents circling, knives being sharpened.
A hand moving in opposition to his own.
This was evidence.
The rest of the garrison was warded wall-to-wall, including the stables and the practice yard. The men had settled into their shifts, though some complained it was difficult to sleep with the glow from the runes. Too bad. They were restless, yes; his lieutenants had already lashed several men for petty infractions born of the close quarters. But they were safe in here, and that gave him confidence.
And his enemy, his opposite, was paying attention.
“Can you tell me what this is?” he said, withdrawing a small object from his uniform jacket pocket. Dark glass and twisted metal, it glittered in the lantern-light: the misshapen trinket he had picked up at the verge of the ruins. His reminder. He had contemplated it often in the sleepless nights since the disaster, and had gleaned an inkling of its purpose from the way the shadows deepened in the spots unlit by ward-light. Deepened, but never opened.
Both prisoners leaned forward, surprise registering on their faces. “Don't wave that around unless you want to get eaten,” said Beltras. “It's an eiyetakri. They make 'em as toys
or offerings to the little shadows, the biting things like what got my fellows. Summons them, and sometimes the attention of the Kheri.”
“Kheri... The Shadow Cult.” Sarovy nodded. “How would I use it?”
The militiamen looked at him like he was mad, and behind him he heard Medic Shuralla shift uncomfortably. “Put it in a shadow, I guess,” said Beltras. “Then just...wait.”
“Then I would like it to be known that I have this.” Sarovy turned his stare to the darkness under Rynher's bed, holding up the eiyetakri so that whatever was beyond could see. “The time will come, no doubt, that we find ourselves with our teeth in each other's necks. I may endeavor to speak with you directly then. And you, of course, know where to find me.”
“Captain?” said the medic. Behind her, his bodyguards' ears were probably burning with his words, but those two were lancers. He trusted them.
“I meant what I told the council,” he continued. “I am here to root you out, to see that no more business transacts between you and the citizens of Bahlaer—but we do not have to do this by violence. It is the way of darkness to yield to light. Those who leave will not be pursued. Those who surrender cult materials will not be charged. However, I will meet any opposition with deadly force, and have presented a writ of purpose to your council to that effect. My mission is to make Bahlaer safe, stable and law-abiding, and anyone who stands in the way of that is my enemy.” Glancing to Rynher, he added, “I would think that you, as a husband and father, could support such a cause.”
Rynher looked away, while Beltras growled, “Stow your pretty words. You're not running for office. Who piking wants to be Imperial? All you've brought us is a boot to the neck.”
“Your...elected officials have retained their offices,” said Sarovy, using the words Scryer Mako had provided yet still puzzled by them. His people lived within strict military hierarchy, and while he could understand certain other methods of rule, it seemed ridiculous to let civilians choose who led them. “Conscription is the same here as in any Imperial province, curfews likewise. Our only demand is that you cease your worship of Dark and heretical powers and give your allegiance to the Emperor and the Light.”
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 17
