"You going to answer?" said Smoke. "Fur-cat got your tongues?" He grinned. "What do you think of our newest Cursed One?"
The twins looked at one another. Then, slowly, Cloud raised his hand. He pushed a thumb into the air. A moment later, Wind shrugged, and pointed at her brother: What he said.
"Yeah, me too. I like her." Smoke looked at Arrow. "I like her a lot." He grinned. "So if you don't ask her for a romantic walk behind the waterfall, I'm going to."
Arrow gaped. He couldn't be sure if his friend was joking or not – often the case with Smoke. Still, it was surprisingly shocking, to hear him voice an interest in Sword – even if it might be in jest.
"I really don't know what to say."
"Then it's settled. I ask her for the walk the minute she's back." Smoke suddenly grew white. He leaned hard on the table.
"You need to get into bed. Now."
"Yeah, you might be right."
But Arrow felt a hand tap his shoulder. Cloud held a palm to his ear as soon as he got his attention: the sign that someone wanted to talk to him via Ear.
"Who?" said Arrow.
Cloud raised the same hand so it was a bit over his head: Brother Scieran.
"Did he say what he wanted?"
Cloud shrugged, which could either mean, "I don't know," or "It's too complicated for charades."
"Just me?" he asked.
Wind shook her head. Made a circling gesture, parallel to the floor. All of us.
At the same time, Cloud pointed downward. Now.
"So much for getting any more rest," said Smoke.
They left the tent. The Ear usually stayed in his own tent, near to the edge of the lake.
As they approached, the waterfall grew louder. Smoke looked meaningfully at Arrow. Eyebrows – what was left of them – perked up.
"If you keep bothering me about this I'm going to ask her for a walk just to spite you."
"Maybe that's what I'm hoping for."
"No, not you." Cloud and Wind were already at the Ear's tent, pulling back the flaps. "That would be too complicated."
Smoke grinned at him.
And for a moment, the pain of losing his family was gone.
For a moment he was happy.
And he honestly didn't know if it was because of the family he still had… or the sudden prospect of walking behind the waterfall with Sword.
25
Armor trudged across the field. It was still fairly early, so only a few soldiers were at practice, banging swords clumsily as they swung tired arcs that would have seen them killed in a real battle.
I miss honest fighting.
It was a thought he never would have voiced, not even to Kataya.
Especially not now. Not in these dangerous times.
He had wanted to call Kataya, to pour out his heart to her, but had been afraid to do so. At this point, he suspected that saying too much – even with the discretion of an Ear protecting him – would be dangerous. To him and especially to her.
Gods, can I do this? Even for her?
He reached the building that allowed only the Blessed. Pressed his disc against the depression, twisted it, then stood back as the door opened.
This hall had been designed as a place of safety. A place for the Blessed to come and plan their service.
But what service do we do?
He pushed the thought away. Entered the hall.
And heard weeping.
The door shut behind him, and he walked quickly to the source of the sound.
It was Garden. She sat in a chair, but was bent nearly double, arms clutched across her stomach, head between her knees as she sobbed… sobbed… sobbed. Each wracking cry was an agony that tore at Armor's heart.
"Garden, what is it?" He touched her back. She kept crying. "Child, what has you in such despair?"
She finally looked up at him. The flower in her hair, the one she always wore that was both ornament and armament, was wilted and brown at the edges. And Garden herself seemed to have wilted somehow as well.
"What happened?" he asked.
"I…." Her mouth worked, up and down, up and down. No sound came. Then she managed: "I killed them."
Armor felt cold. "Who did you kill?"
"I killed them all, Armor. I killed them all."
He knelt beside her. "I want to help you, Garden."
"I killed them all."
"Who?"
Again, silence. Again, that strange working of her mouth, as though she were speaking in her mind but the words had no power to escape whatever walls she had erected there.
Perhaps that's best. Perhaps she shouldn't say what she did.
And that would be just one more thing to hide, wouldn't it? One more small shame pushed far away?
"They were all brought to the field outside the castle," said Garden. Now the words seemed to tumble from her lips, like she had no power to control or stop them. "You know the field? The big one where they say the Gods used to come to grow sow their very own wheat and grow berries on the tops of the mountains?"
Armor nodded. "I know it."
"They were all brought there. The field is so beautiful. I love going there. Loved. Loved going there. So green. So many plants." She touched the flower in her hair. "Even the thistles that grow there have great purple flowers atop them, did you know that?"
"Aye. My wife loves those."
"The soldiers brought them there. Pushed them into a circle. Then left. They all left. It was just them and me and Devar." She sobbed again. Her head fell between her knees. "Then Devar left, too, and it was just them and me. Just them and me. Them and me." She raised her eyes to Armor's and the cold he had felt now seemed to freeze his heart. "I made the plants kill them all. Every one of them."
"Who were they?" whispered Armor.
But Garden's eyes had moved beyond his. "There were hundreds. Hundreds. And they ran, and screamed, and bled. I tore them to pieces. The field wasn't green anymore." She looked at him again. "It's red now."
"Why?"
"I was ordered. The Chancellor –"
"Garden."
The voice that snapped out cut off whatever she had been about to say. Armor looked back in time to see Devar striding toward them. He looked furious. "Garden, you were given explicit orders not to talk about this. The Chancellor himself –"
"I killed them." The words spat out of her with such loathing, such intense hatred, that Armor stepped away from Garden. But whatever fueled the emotion, it seemed to strip the sobs and grief from her soul. She stood and walked to Devar, who looked enraged at her interruption. "I killed them," she whispered. "All those men, all those scholars, the Archivists." Then, louder, "But don't worry. I'll never tell a soul."
"See that you don't."
Garden left.
Devar watched her go, then turned to Armor. "What were you doing in the Archives?" he asked.
Armor considered lying. But knew he wouldn't get away with it; Devar had likely already spoken to Siren and Teeth and already knew exactly what he'd been doing there.
"I was trying to find out more about Sword."
"And exactly how does that fit into your mission to protect the Empire?"
Again, the only thing that sprang to Armor's lips was the simple truth: "I need to understand. I need to understand how she turned against the Empire. Why. And if I can turn her back."
Devar leaned in close, and Armor was shocked at the wrath in the young man's eyes. He knew that Devar was a close confidant of the Chancellor, that he was to be obeyed at all costs. More than that, he knew little. The young man was as big an enigma as Sword. Bigger.
So many secrets.
Now, Devar pointed at him. "Understand something, Armor," he said. His voice quivered with barely contained rage. "All you need to know is that you follow orders. And as long as you do, your wife will live."
A new feeling writhed inside Armor. Not the cold he had felt when Garden spoke. No, this was pure, unadulterated fear. "What do you mean?"<
br />
Devar grinned. The smile curved his face, making him look strangely old in the light of the glo-globes. "I mean that the Chancellor gave her her life. He saved her from the sickness that stole your daughter. But don't you think it possible that sickness might… return?"
Armor was spared having to answer by a sudden scream. It had the sound of a man, but with the raised tones of sheer terror.
Armor rushed to the door. He didn't look at Devar. Didn't want to. Couldn't. Was glad of this excuse to get away get away get away.
He threw the door open.
Gasped.
Garden had made good on her promise. She would never tell what she knew about the killings.
One of the trees that lined the exterior of the practice field had bent under the call of her Gift. A thick branch had wrapped itself around her neck, yanking her high off the ground. Several more branches had impaled her from all angles.
She was still moving. But as Armor watched, the movements turned to tremors. And the tremors to stillness.
He felt Devar behind him.
"Remember what I said," whispered Devar.
"I will."
Armor watched as several soldiers tried ineffectually to cut down the body, hacking at the tree with their swords.
Garden seemed to stare at him.
He closed his eyes.
"I will," he whispered again.
26
Arrow sighed and put down the scroll. Sword watched him as he stretched, his back crackling, and then rubbed his eyes.
"I can't find any more," he finally said.
Sword didn't know whether to take that as a good thing or a bad one.
The best scientists of the Acolytes of the Mind had pored over the scroll for hours, cleaning the ink as best they could, using solvents to tease out bits of text under the darkness. Then they let Arrow look at the scroll, his own beyond-perfect eyesight augmented by scope-glasses that allowed him even closer looks at the smudged lines and whorls.
And he found almost nothing. Nothing of interest, at least.
"The word 'Imperial' definitely appears a few times," he said, "but whether that's a definition of heritage or a statement of account paid, I can't tell." He rubbed his eyes. Looked at Sword with an expression that made her feel odd. Like he was peeling apart her soul and making some important decision based on what he found there.
He smiled at her. And for some reason she found herself very glad of that.
At the same time, she wondered idly what Devar was doing. Wondered if she could make him understand what was happening, as she had failed to make Armor understand. Could he be turned to the right side of this fight?
Could any of her friends?
"I did find one word that might indicate we know someone on this page." Arrow pointed at a spot that Sword thought looked just as black as the rest of the page. "It says 'scar' here, in one of the areas that lists physical descriptions." He looked at her pointedly. She felt like covering the scar that drew a nearly-invisible line from her eye to her mouth. "Did you get that in the kennels, or before?"
"I already told Brother Scieran: I don't think so, but I don't know," she said.
"You don't know?" Rune was standing just a bit behind her. "Gods' teeth, girl, how could you not know when someone hacked up your face?"
"I just don't." She glared at Rune. "It's not like they gave us mirrors to check our wounds."
"Wouldn't the blood pouring over your face be a clue?"
"I always had blood on my face. The hope was that it just wasn't mine."
Rune whistled. "Remind me not to get in a fight with you. Gift or no."
Sister Prasa broke in. Unlike Sword and Rune, who had just stopped in periodically to check on Arrow's progress; and Brother Scieran, who had disappeared for several hours to take a much-needed rest, she had stayed with Arrow the entire time he was working. "Wouldn't it be a bit odd for someone to include 'Imperial' as a description of a child they were clearly trying to make disappear?" she asked.
"Yes," said Brother Scieran.
"So it must be that 'Imperial' refers to an amount."
"Not necessarily."
"But you just said –"
Brother Scieran held up a hand. "I agreed that it would be odd. Not that it would be impossible." He frowned at the scroll, as though trying to pull out its secrets by an act of will… or simple faith. "We have a friend at the palace. And we have had others in the past. What if one of them insured there was a clue? A trail to find an alternate heir when and if the time was ever right?"
"You mentioned that before," said Sword. "What friend do you have at the palace?"
Brother Scieran smiled. A tight smile. "That's a good question."
"You're not going to tell me?"
"I would if I could – but I don't know."
Sword frowned. "What do you mean, 'you don't know'?"
Brother Scieran looked at Sister Prasa. She shrugged. He looked back at Sword. "There are only perhaps three people in the world who know this – outside of this room. There is someone in the palace who provides us information from time to time. But I've never been able to find out who it is, or how he knows what he knows."
"How do you even get information from this person?" said Sword. "And how do you know he's trustworthy? He could be the Chancellor, for all you know, getting you to do what he wants with information he controls."
"Perhaps," said Brother Scieran. "But I don't think so. He's been giving us information for over a decade. Slipping us tips that have kept us from getting killed, helping us in a thousand small ways. There's a place in Center where I used to be stationed, working with the poor and the orphaned, and while I was cleaning the cathedral there one night I found a note telling me that the man the Cursed One had targeted for assassination was going to be guarded by three times the men we expected. And the information turned out to be right."
"Saved my butt," said Rune. "That was one of my first jobs, and I'd have been toast without that help."
"Just so," said Brother Scieran. "The information always goes to the same cathedral. I know from some of the information he's given that our source is from the palace, that he is well-placed, but beyond that…." He spread his hands. "I choose not to look askance at a gift from the Gods."
Sister Prasa turned to him. "Still, our question remains. Why would a friend leave clues about the heir, but fail to tell us? Wouldn't it be easier to simply let us know where an heir was?"
Brother Scieran nodded. "Yes. But perhaps this friend," he said, pointing to the scroll, "didn't know us yet. Perhaps he wanted to hide the heir in a safe place, and wanted to make sure she could be found in case something happened to him. And perhaps something did happen to him then, right after he did this." He shrugged. "Or perhaps he did it because he was unsure what he should do, and was simply covering as many possibilities as he could."
"That's a lot of perhaps-ing to base a revolution on," said Rune.
"But there's also Father Akiro," said Brother Scieran. "Don't forget him. He looked into Sword's past, and told me that if we searched it out, we would find something very important."
"That could mean she has the secret to a new, delicious recipe for berry soup," said Rune.
Brother Scieran sighed. "I know. I know it's all just a lot of conjecture. But it's all we have. And remember, too, that things haven't gone as we expected. No riots have occurred, the banks and exchanges have – according to all reports – opened and continued business as usual."
"And how is that possible?" said Sister Prasa. "We've got Ears in every state, and not a one of them has reported anything like the panic you would expect if the Empire's records went up in flame."
"I've been thinking about that, too," said Brother Scieran. "A few hours' sleep does wonders for one's thought processes." He held out his fingers, splayed wide, ticking off points with them. "Let's look at what we know. First fact: the Empire is headed by the Emperor, or better said the Chancellor, but its life-blood is the bure
aucracy. Second fact: the entire reason for the existence of the bureaucracy is to maintain financial, family, and landholder records that give stability to the Emperor's rule. Third: the destruction of these records would cause the bureaucracy to come to a screaming halt, followed quickly by widespread panic. Fourth: this has not happened. Ergo, five: the records must not have been destroyed."
"But they were," said Sword. "We were there, we saw it happen." And, she thought, we killed Scholar for this scroll.
"No, we saw the records at the Imperial Archive destroyed," said Brother Scieran. "But what if there were duplicates? Or what if the ones at the Archive were themselves the copies? You yourselves noted that the Archive was very poorly guarded for a place of such import. So what if it based its poor state of readiness not just on faith that no one would want to cast the Empire into anarchy… but on an underlying understanding that its destruction would matter little in the great scheme of things?" He spread his hands wide. "As appears to be the case."
"Tell them about the other thing," said Sister Prasa.
"The other thing?" said Rune.
"Why is there always an other thing," sighed Arrow.
"The Imperial Army," said Sister Prasa.
"What about it?" said Sword.
"It's… mobilizing?"
"Was that a question? It sounded like you were telling us something, but it also sounded like a question." Rune frowned as she said it, shimmered, and then said, "And I'm not sure the answer he gives," she said, pointing to Brother Scieran, "helps much."
"We don't really understand what's happening," said Brother Scieran. "The armed units are in motion – many of them for the first time in scores, if not hundreds of years. But they're not moving as one would expect. According to reports from the Ears, they're moving half the units toward skybridges and air-docks that lead to neighboring States – Center, Fear –"
"And Faith," added Sister Prasa with a grimness that Sword hadn't yet seen in her.
"Yes. No Imperial Army group has set foot on Faith since the last time we were hunted. Since the last time an Emperor sought to install himself not only as leader of the political world, but as the head of the spiritual one as well."
The Sword Chronicles: Child of the Empire Page 30
