“Pike you. This is just another piking gang-war. You want their turf, they won't give it, so you pull us all into this whether we pick a side or not. I'm no Shadow follower but you won't find me giving them up to you blood-coated thugs. Nor will any Bahlaeran.”
Sarovy frowned. Thus far, Beltras was not wrong. The citizens served his soldiers like any other customer, but spoke no more than the standard pleasantries. Even the whores were said to be coldly businesslike. The attacks had ebbed but no one smiled, and no one came forward.
It aggravated him. Bad enough that he had to write his own writ of purpose, had to present it to the council with his own signature at the bottom because his commander could not be bothered. Bad enough that his finances were thin, the weekly pay-chest from headquarters barely enough to cover meals. Lieutenant Linciard wanted to stockpile supplies but there were no funds for that, and if the Bahlaerans did not turn over any goods or pass on any tips...
He clenched his hand around the eiyetakri. For all that he resented the intrusion of the arcane and the mystical, he wanted this challenge. He had been courting it since the raids on the cliff-coves. But to face it with so little, and with an enemy so vast and obscure, made it less of a spar and more of a massacre waiting to happen.
Perhaps this had been a bad choice.
“When you wish to speak, inform the guards. They will summon me no matter the mark,” he said finally. “I would not see you waste your lives when we could be working for the good of Imperial Bahlaer. Think of your families, if nothing else.”
With that, he turned away, aware of the target this made of his back. They could shoot through shadows, he knew, though perhaps not with the wards in place.
But no attack came.
Instead the medic snatched at his sleeve, and his keyed-up nerves almost made him smack her. “Take care, woman,” he said.
“I want to inspect them.”
Sarovy frowned at her. Medic Shuralla was a frowzy little dumpling of a woman, no taller than his collarbone and probably half again his age, but she stared up with a steely determination that reminded him of the Cray woman, and it made him uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, he said, “No. You can see from here that they have not been abused. I will not allow you in with them.”
“Then release them! You have no reason to hold them.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Bahlaeran law states that—“
“Imperial law supersedes. I am sorry, madam medic, but I will not discuss this further.”
“Captain, I must insist! In the name of—“
“Stop.” He had been turning away, but now he wheeled back to look her square in the eye. “Invoke no names, madam medic. I appreciate what you do for my men, but if you state your allegiance aloud, I will have to act according to the Empire's tenets. Do not force my hand.”
She blinked up at him, startlement melting to sadness. “Your tragedy, captain, is that you know you are wrong.”
He had no words for that—nothing coherent—but he did his best to be calm and stride through the doorway, up the stairs, without a sign of his anger. Her footsteps pattered after him, and it was all he could do not to shove her back down.
Summon the sentries, he thought to the faint tingle in his mind that was Scryer Mako. Aloud, he said, “Garrenson, Serinel, await replacement then dismissed.”
“Yessir,” they chorused as he left them behind.
The Scryer was awaiting him at the top of the steps, one brow raised. The rune-light of the assembly hall caught on the pins in her chestnut hair and the fine metallic embroidery that covered her peach-colored robe-dress, making her petite form glimmer as she moved out of his way. “Worthwhile?” she said, gloved fingers tapping an absent tempo atop her crossed arms.
“Perhaps,” said Sarovy, cutting across the assembly hall without pause. Now that the runes provided constant light, the place was cluttered with men talking or dicing or mending their gear, the bunkrooms too cramped to allow much of that. The great doors at the far end were open to allow in fresh air, and on the front steps he glimpsed men catching a quick smoke while they watched the kickball game in the courtyard.
He turned a blind eye to all such things, though he appreciated it when the men covered their dice or their cheroots at his passing. Back at the Crimson camp, gambling and rashi-use were fine-worthy offenses, but they boosted morale here and he needed that.
“Hoi, medic,” someone called out as he reached the opposite stairs, and he was relieved to see Medic Shuralla peel off to attend a man's concerns.
'Don't be too hard on her,' said Scryer Mako in his head. 'She's all alone here.'
Sarovy grunted. The other medics assigned to this post had stopped showing up after Blaze Company's first day in residence, and his scouts had reported their homes abandoned. They were Trifold cultists, he knew; Darilan Trevere had pointed it out to him, and he had seen the evidence at the Crimson camp. Harmless women—helpful, even—but still cultists.
Medic Shuralla's husband had been one of the victims of the shadow-monsters in the depths. She lived here now, sleeping in the infirmary and dedicating all her time to the men. Her presence pained him.
She was misguided. He knew he was right. The Light was his master, and though he had failed it in his former life, he would not do so again. He would tolerate her for as long as she was necessary, but then...
Then.
“Are you feeling all right?” said the Scryer as he stopped at his door. He twitched, not having heard her following.
“Yes, fine,” he said, and slotted his key in the lock. The office beyond was lit by runes that the Scryer herself maintained. She teased him with that—said she could plunge him into darkness at any time, with a spark in her eyes that made him wonder if it was truly a joke. Silent Circle mages were conflicted in their loyalties, and she was a Riddishwoman. Her people and his did not get along.
“Oh don't work yourself into a nervous fit,” she said, bustling in after him. “We're comrades, aren't we? Clan. Riddish respect the clan.”
“I would prefer that you not eavesdrop,” he said tightly as he moved to his desk.
“I can't help it. You're projecting.”
“Was there something you wanted?”
“We received an official communication while you were in council.”
He looked up sharply, hands poised over the ledger he had been about to open. “You should have told me immediately.”
“I know, I know.” Her tone was infuriatingly casual, and rather than give the explanation he expected, she drifted to his desk and started picking through the papers there. “I judged that it could wait until you were less occupied. You're always neck-deep in work.”
“Yes.”
“You may be a soldier, but the others at least use their free time to relax. I thought you were off-shift after the council meeting.”
“Our business cares little for shifts.”
“Nevertheless, you could catch up on your sleep. Try a little recreation. Or...” She pulled a page out from among the others and glanced at it, raising a brow. “Do some drawing, apparently. I hadn't taken you for an artist.”
He plucked it from her hand, trying to quell his annoyance. The page was covered in the facial sketches he found himself doing whenever his thoughts strayed. None were familiar, and those at the fringe of the page were distorted, squished, as if his half-aware mind had tried to cram the features in despite the space. They made him uneasy for no good reason.
“I started my career as a military surveyor and reconnaissance artist,” he said, sliding the page face-down among others. “The communication?”
“Oh, if you insist.”
“Yes.”
She perched on the edge of his desk as if it was the done thing, one hand braced on the wood, the other gesturing. “It's about our mages. Well, our mages other than me. Field Marshal Rackmar sent it care of his personal scryer.”
“And he said...?”
“They're sending us two more mages, which is the good news. The bad news is that they're to replace Presh and Voorkei, whom he wants recalled to the Crimson base-camp. Oh, and also that Corvishman, Weshker.”
“For what purpose? They have served well so far.”
She shrugged, the arcane medallions at her neckline glinting as they moved. “The scryer didn't explain. But if you wouldn't mind a guess...”
Sarovy nodded for her to continue.
“None of them are Imperials. Presh shouldn't even be here; he's a mage operating without a robe, which is illegal in Silent Circle jurisdiction. Not that I blame you for keeping him on. But with Voorkei being a Gejaran and the Inquisitor Archmagus' man... Well, I'd say the Field Marshal is trying to root out external influences. It's well known among the gossips that he and the Inquisitor Archmagus aren't friendly.”
Wonderful. Other people's politics impacting my staff. “Have you informed base-camp about your work with them? The assistance they have provided to your projects?”
“Tracking and overlays and such? Tantalizing tidbits only.”
“Then the Field Marshal does not understand their worth to me.” He regarded his quill-pen and ink and the stack of fresh pages, trying to draft a letter in his mind—something that would persuade his commander to leave the foreigners with him yet still assign the new mages. He would welcome them. He had never expected it, but they lightened many of his burdens.
“Or perhaps he does, and he dislikes it,” said the Scryer.
Sarovy cast a look at her. “What do you imply?”
She shrugged. “That he sees them as tools unsuited to your hands, for whatever reason. I wouldn't dare speculate on his thoughts.”
Her smile told him that was a lie, but he did not care to discuss their commander. “He sent no other word? No instructions?”
“None. I'm sorry. I know it bothers you.”
“It is as it is,” he said, and pulled a blank page from the stack. Smoothing it flat, he glanced at her sidelong and said, “If that is all?”
Lips pursed, she watched him with an expression he could not identify, then said, “I was trained for the Sapphire Eye's mage corps before I awakened to my mentalist talent, you know. Banned from my own land and army because your people don't like eavesdroppers in their ranks. But you... I don't understand you. You don't seem to care about that, or anything else. You just...work.”
Sarovy let his poised quill fall. It seemed he had to talk first. “And that troubles you?”
“There are so many barricades in your mind. I'm not here to rework your conditioning, I know. I shouldn't touch it at all except to repair what the inoculation damaged. But sometimes I just want to reach out and tear the walls down. I don't even recognize half of them, and from the way I've seen your mind shake, I wonder—“
“What?” he cut in harshly. “That I will fall apart without them? That they hold something back?”
She blinked, a hand rising absently toward her medallions. “That wasn't what I was going to say, but...do such thoughts occur to you often?”
Sarovy shook his head, irritated at himself for showing temper. “I know what they are. They prevent me from remembering my crime—the insubordination that exiled me here.”
“Memory edits don't look like that. I want to investigate them. I think it would—”
“No.”
“Light, why must you be so Trivestean in this when you're like them in nothing else?”
“I do not hold your origin over you, Scryer—“
“Exactly,” she said, snapping her fingers nearly in his face. He narrowed his eyes, but she went on, “You don't care. You don't care that I'm Riddish or that Shuralla is...you know, and you're fair to your Riddish soldiers—“
“Why would I not be?”
“—along with everyone else, the specialists and the foreigners and even the prisoners, and it really puts my hackles up—“
“Perhaps you are too sensitive.”
“—because I have never in my life met a fort-holder Trivestean who was not rabidly hostile toward everyone else, especially the Riddish. Your Trivestean archers are just like that—“
“Which is why they were exiled here. For bad behavior. I think you have met too many of the wrong kind of my kin.”
“—and even that half-blood Serinel, he has that same flat look, the I-am-shooting-you-from-an-unassailable-distance-with-my-mind look.”
Sarovy snorted despite himself. “And I do not have that?”
“No. Even when you stared down Vrallek when he was trying to bully me, that wasn't your look. It was like you saw right through to his core but didn't hate it, just...recognized it. I have never seen another Trivestean be as patient as you.”
He opened his mouth to gainsay her, but then closed it. She wasn't wrong. His people lived as far apart from each other as they could, in plateau fortresses and tiny outposts and isolated cliff-homes, half because they preferred to be alone and half because they could not stop fighting. The Riddish, the beast-folk, each other; they had no capacity to relax. Even families infought viciously—part of the reason for compulsory youth service, which started at age seven and had prevented many a Trivestean parent from flinging their hostile offspring off a cliff. It was an affliction over the whole of the people, controlled only by their strict adherence to military rule and discipline.
While this made them fearsome combatants, they were impossible to control outside of their own tight ranks. Half of the complaints Sarovy fielded were about the Trivestean archers being abusive again.
He remembered being young and bloodthirsty like that, but it had been a long time.
“Perhaps I learned patience from my Riddish wife,” he said.
Scryer Mako stared at him. “You married cross-border?”
“Arranged, yes. Part of that last push to make us work together.”
“And how has that turned out?” she said, glancing significantly at his bare left hand.
“As one might expect. She was...not pleased by my fall from grace. Social status is your people's poison as hostility is mine, and so she turned from me in my exile.”
“You say even that like you don't care.”
Sarovy returned her gaze flatly, not wishing to excavate that old corpse. He had spent too many empty nights and written too many responseless letters to consider a lack of emotion unmerited.
“I do not see the point to this discussion,” he said instead. “If I have been...adjusted to be like this, then it is for the best and I would not have it amended. Now, shall we bicker about something else, or will you see to your duties?”
Her mouth curved into something not quite a smile, and after a moment she nodded and slid neatly from his desk. “I'll let you get back to beating order into the world, sir. But if you ever feel that you could do with some downtime...”
“I can rest when I'm dead.”
“Knowing you, not even then.”
He watched her strut away, having no rejoinder. Only when she pulled the door shut in her wake did it occur to him that she might have been coming on to him. It brought rusted memories of his wife to the fore: her flashing eyes and lush mouth always set in its fierce line, body tense as if she expected he would grapple with her. Turn bedding into battle.
It hadn't been like that. There had been love—or so he thought. But thirteen years had passed and he could barely remember the truth, so tangled in fantasy and rejection and self-recrimination now. All he saw was her figure silhouetted on the cliff as he left for the Palace, the sun bronzing her dark hair from behind, her features in shadow.
He tried to force such thoughts away, and picked up the quill-pen to start his letter, but when the ink began to form her face, he let it.
*****
“...And such is the plan,” concluded Garrison Commander Tonner, retaking his seat with little grace.
Across the council table, Enforcer Ardent took care to stay expressionless, She wished the Regency had released Cayer for this
, but they had sent him elsewhere for rehabilitation. That left Ardent to occupy the same chair that the Crimson commander did in his visits, and in the same orientation: facing the other four as if being interrogated.
Though she knew Bahlaer law would not allow her an official council seat, the setup still rankled. In Taradzur and all other Pajhrasthani and Yezadrani cities, the Shadow Folk were given respect equal to the priesthoods of the Sun and the Moon. By her reckoning, she should be seated beside the Trifold matriarch.
Perhaps she would have been, were she Cayer.
“Allow me to restate it,” she said slowly, watching her four supposed allies. “You want me to yield one of our storage facilities to the enemy in the hope that it will lure them into a trap, which you then wish me to spring with my own forces.”
Lord Governor Bahdran said, “It nearly worked last time, didn't it? And that was supposedly unintentional—though your people still owe mine for the militia deaths. With your resources and your allies, surely a real ambush will devastate these idiot Crimsons. And my forces will of course be prepared to mop up any you miss.”
“I am wary of calling them idiots,” said Ardent. “You do realize that their captain's goal is something we do regularly: withdraw from dangerous territory until the threat dies down. At the moment I see little downside to emptying our storage facilities and leaving.”
Beneath the ruddiness of good living, the Lord Governor blanched. “You wouldn't. Not after what they did to your Shadowland. The Crimson Army has overstepped its bounds and we must show them that we will not sit quietly! We must wipe out these occupiers and let it be known that we will suffer no more sanctions.”
“We do not like unnecessary bloodshed,” said Ardent. “They are Imperial soldiers, conditioned to die for their masters; they will not go down easily. And then there are the mages.”
“Which is why we need your aid,” said the Lord Governor, planting meaty, bejeweled hands flat on the table. “We had ways of compromising with the previous Crimson General, but he has been replaced, and this new General's first act was the destruction of your Shadowland. His second was assigning this garrison of murderers. Surely you see the necessity of retaliation. We can not allow ourselves to be walked on!”
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 18
