“Great changes for whom?”
Niko blinked at him. Then, perhaps because Viernan looked so doubtful, Niko came over and tried to drape an arm around his shoulders. “Viernan, really, I—”
Viernan sidestepped him with a black stare of affront.
Niko looked startled. After a moment, his eyebrows sank into a sullen glower. “You haven’t come to any of my dinners.”
Viernan regarded him in disbelief for a moment and then turned his gaze to Dore. “How much longer must I wait, Dore Madden? The rest of the world does not revolve around your obsessive quests for vengeance.”
Dore turned him a corrosive stare. “The Prophet shows your prince the eidola we’re making for M’Nador—proof of our fidelity to our mutual troth. I cannot say how long they will share each other’s wisdom.”
As long as it takes your Prophet to feed on what’s left of my monarch’s free will, Viernan thought, his eyes very dark.
“You know the kind of people who don’t come to my fêtes, Viernan?”
Viernan turned Niko a daggered look of disdain. “People with lives to lead?”
Niko drew himself tall. “People whom I suspect have been Called by the Fifth Vestal.”
Or visited by a Whisper Lord, which would seem to me quite preferable to attending one of your fêtes.
Had anyone else insinuated that he served Björn van Gelderan, Viernan would’ve taken it as a personal affront, but Niko van Amstel was too obtuse to notice that he’d offended anyone, so Viernan replied instead, “The Fifth Vestal remains a threat to all of us.”
“I know! It’s really a problem.” Niko swept a hand across his perfectly coiffed blonde hair and gave Viernan a concerned look fraught with superficiality. “This idea of oaths, for example…it’s so absurd. I mean, there were dozens of us in the catacombs, and the Fifth Vestal might’ve given each one of us a different task, or none at all, and none of us be the wiser as to what the others have been set to do, or not to do, and then…then—” he waved his hand in the air, “being made to work the Pattern of Life, being denied the right to choose to live on or die a natural death—not that I wouldn’t have chosen to work it, mind you, Viernan. Any Adept who hopes to gain his rings must work the Pattern—but it seems unjust for the Vestal to deny us the right to end our lives as we ourselves choose. It’s like he wanted to punish us by making us live through the years after the wars and see what became of our acts.”
Of course he did, you idiot. Viernan ground his teeth. Niko was upon the topic now like a dog to a bone. Huhktu knew the man would gnaw at it until he’d reduced all of its logic to irreconcilable bits.
“And then…this whole Calling issue all these centuries later, as if we’re to even remember what he demanded of us…” Niko shook his head and gazed doubtfully at Viernan. “What I mean to say, Viernan, is who does that? How could anyone possibly police that many oaths?”
Staring blankly at Niko, Viernan wondered if Cephrael had somehow already judged, condemned and sentenced him to Ivarnen, for surely this was some new level of hell.
“And then to just come Calling after three hundred years to see if you’ve done as he bade you…or not, I suppose.” Niko pushed hands into his pockets and toed at the clawed foot of a couch. “Or, what if you did what he told you to but you made a mistake? Mistakes happen, Viernan. In such a case, would you still be ripped to shreds?” He turned Viernan an earnest look, as if truly desiring his counsel. “You do see what I mean, don’t you? There’s just no sense to it.”
Viernan gazed at him in mute disbelief.
“But of course you must understand. You…” Niko paused, frowned. “Well…but, you haven’t been Called have you, Viernan? No, you wouldn’t say if you had been. Who would?” He toed at the sofa’s clawed foot again, hands shoved deeply into his pockets. “I mean, I might even have been Called. There’s no way to know, really. The only way to tell is by our allegiances.”
“To truly know a man, examine his enemies.”
The resonant voice coming from the doorway drew Viernan’s gaze, whereupon he saw the Prophet standing there with a piercing stare, as usual, fixed unerringly upon himself. Truly, the man was like a buzzard waiting resolutely for its prey to expire. Viernan was determined not to become that prey.
Prince Radov stood at the Prophet’s side holding an empty glass. He looked a little unsteady on his feet, but whenever did he not, these days? He staggered over to Viernan. “Bethamin has shown me some miraculous things today, Viernan. Really, you should take the tour the next time we come.”
“I shall count the hours, my prince.”
Radov slapped a hand on Viernan’s shoulder and leaned heavily into him, breathing the rancid stench of drink into his face. “Bethamin and I have agreed that his eidola will rendezvous with our forces near the outpost of Ramala.”
Dore came over with his black eyes shining with a dreadful inhumanity. “To dispose of the drachwyr, our contact says you’ll need to rally M’Nador’s entire army there.”
“Impossible!” Viernan clucked. “If we withdraw our forces from the southern lines, we’ll lose Abu’Dhan.”
“You must have all of Radov’s forces there at the right moment to draw the Sundragons forth in force.” Dore rubbed his hands together. “It’s Abu’Dhan or Raku, Viernan. Your choice.”
Viernan spied him viperously. What if I choose to see you boiling in flame?
“Our contact advises a fortnight—surely no more than two—and then M’Nador must be ready to attack. The battle must commence while the Emir’s Mage is gone. My contact says this is the only window when the Sundragons may be effectively eliminated.”
Viernan scowled. Had it just been the army of thousands he had to muster and rout, he wouldn’t have fretted; but Inanna knew his prince wouldn’t agree to be carried to the battlefield in a litter, and it took more than a fortnight’s effort to sober up the Ruling Prince of M’Nador enough to sit his horse—assuming Viernan could pry his prince away from that whore, Absinthe, at all.
Radov swayed precariously. “If Dore says we have to withdraw our forces from Abu’Dhan, then do it, Viernan.”
Viernan turned him a forceful stare. Was Dore Madden running their war now? “My prince,” he managed a knifing smile, “the forces in the south are needed to hold the lines.” In actuality, the forces in Abu’Dhan were needed to hold a thousand Dannish troops, who were far more significant to Viernan’s aims than lines of boundary drawn on a map.
Radov waved airily with his glass. “Let the Saldarians hold the lines.”
Viernan gnashed aggravation between his teeth. “The Saldarians will not hold the lines, my prince. They’ll start their own little kingdom, making everything either subject or prey.” He trusted Saldarians about as much as he trusted zanthyrs and gypsies—which was to say not at all. He was fairly certain the blackguards were all in Dore’s pocket anyhow.
Radov belched again. “What do we care about Abu’Dhan? There’s nothing but dirt and rabble down there anyway.”
Viernan gave a rather sickly smile. “As my prince wishes.” He would have to take steps of his own, send one of his Shamshir’im wielders to oversee Khor Taran, for he assuredly wasn’t leaving the Dannish soldiers in the care of Saldarian mercenaries.
“My prince, you’ve seen the weapons the Prophet has promised us? You’re satisfied?”
“Quite, quite. But now I’m tired.” Radov’s face swerved perilously close to Viernan’s. “I would rest now. Let’s go.”
Viernan made an obsequious bow. “Your will, my prince,” and he gladly turned his back on the madhouse called Ivarnen to take his liege home.
Fourteen
“How a man wields his power over others is the truest test of his character.”
–The High Lord Marius di L'Arlesé of Agasan
Franco stared at the impossible while his mind struggled to accept what lay plainly before his eyes. “Is that what I think it is?”
The illusion of a massive globe
was hovering in the center of the pavilion tent.
Franco shoved a hand into his hair and lodged it there, stuck on his incredulity. “By Cephrael’s Great Book…” He spun a look to Devangshu, immediately ruled him out as the perpetrator, and looked around for the pirate.
Not surprisingly, Carian was grinning with proud culpability.
“Carian,” Franco grabbed his arm, “how in Tiern’aval did you come by a weldmap?”
The pirate extracted himself from Franco’s hold. “Told you I was more than just an improbable combination of irresistibly handsome flesh, Admiral.” He clapped Franco on the shoulder, gave him a wink and a grin, and motioned him further on into the pavilion.
Inside, a score of men were working feverishly upon…well, Franco wasn’t sure exactly what they were doing. Some were studying the weldmap’s glowing globe and making notes, while others were collaborating over various other maps and canvases hung around the tent. They all seemed quite industrious. He recognized many faces.
Carian held out a hand as he strode forward. “Behold, Admiral! The core of our rebellion.”
Franco nearly missed a step. He spun Carian a swift stare. This is the rebellion Niko was complaining about? The one Alshiba tasked him to take in hand?
“It begins here,” Devangshu said more sedately from Franco’s right. “We’re cataloguing which nodes Niko and the Guild control and determining the most strategic points to disrupt their network. Others are preparing lists of node owners who can be persuaded or bribed to let us use their nodes for travel. Nodefinders who don’t fit Niko’s profile can travel freely on our nodes. We aim to control more nodes than they do so as to assume a position as great or greater than the Guild’s.”
Carian clapped a hand on Franco’s shoulder again. “Think of it as assembling your armada, Admiral.”
Franco gave him a pained look. He wasn’t sure what to think about their ideas of rebellion, wasn’t sure how to tell Alshiba the truth of it. And then there was that weldmap…
He could hardly concentrate for the way it consumed his view. Seeing such miracles in T’khendar hadn’t surprised him, but to see them here…
He paused just short of the hovering globe, which towered over him at three times his height. Up close, the silver lines that formed the planet’s magnetic grid were infinitely complex, branching and crisscrossing in a dizzying display. Seeing it gave him an odd pain in his chest.
Franco walked beneath the glowing illusion towards a plinth supporting the weldmap itself. To the layman’s eye, the canvas appeared as a jumbled mess of black ink and crisscrossing lines. A flow of elae into the map itself would wake the design to a Nodefinder’s view, raising the sphere illusion on a scale similar to what he’d seen at the First Lord’s table in T’khendar.
But Carian’s map lay upon a thin piece of black marble with milky crystal obelisks attached at each corner, the entire contraption carved with patterns. The black marble base and its attached crystals was a fourth-strand talisman, a generator that woke the weldmap and projected its image in a broad illusion for all to see.
Franco looked back to Carian with wide eyes. “Where in Tiern’aval did you find a grid generator?”
The pirate was rolling himself a smoke. He glanced up beneath his brows. “D’varre wasn’t using it, so we took it off his hands.”
Franco’s face went slack. “You stole it from Rethynnea’s Guild Hall? Thirteen hells, Carian—when?”
Carian lit his smoke on a lamp and puffed a bluish cloud into the air. “The night of Niko’s fête.”
You know, Franco’s conscience sneered, that night he vanished with Devangshu to do something productive while you were alternately hiding from the Alorin Seat and letting Demetrio Consuevé poke you with the sharp end of his temper.
“It’s the Thief’s Code, Admiral.” The red-haired Nodefinder-thief Kardashian interrupted the snide chiding of Franco’s conscience as he came strolling up. “The ally of my enemy is fair game for the reaping. We relieved D’varre of a few things he wasn’t using.” He flashed a grin beneath bead-dark eyes and then touched a hand to one of the node points. The grid zoomed in on the node, revealing hundreds of new ley lines that connected that node with others nearby. He began studying them.
‘…now Rethynnea’s Guild is blaming me for all manner of things—as if I’m somehow responsible for their being robbed…’
Niko’s words took on all new context; pieces were starting to find their place in the puzzle, and Franco wasn’t at all sure he liked the picture they were forming.
In Kardashian’s wake came the truthreader Gannon Bair—tall, burly, heavily bearded, wearing a badge of resolve with the same constancy that he wore the kilt of his clan. Franco admitted he was reeling a bit just from seeing so many familiar faces…from realizing they were all serving the First Lord.
“Franco.” Gannon nodded sedately to him.
“Gannon.” Franco wondered how many other faces from the past were going to suddenly appear like ghosts summoned by his conscience to haunt him.
“Ah look,” Devangshu motioned to gain Gannon’s attention, “there is the royal cousin.” He nodded towards a man sitting in an armchair at the far end of the tent.
Gannon grunted. “Excellent.” He tucked his chin towards his chest and headed that way, looking very much the charging grizzly.
Franco hadn’t seen Fynnlar val Lorian since the night of Prince Ean’s banquet in Calgaryn—thirteen hells, it already felt like a lifetime ago. But what in Epiphany’s name was Fynnlar doing at the First Lord’s sa’reyth?
Gannon drew up before the royal cousin, a rearing bear observing an offensive badger. “Fynnlar, what, pray, are you doing here?”
At the moment, Fynn was sitting sprawled in an armchair with a goblet in one hand. He looked up at Gannon’s address. “Oh, hello, Grumpiest Kilt-wearing Hallovian Horseperson. And how are you on this rainy afternoon?”
“Interested in why I’m finding you here, Fynnlar.”
“Can’t you see that I’m directing traffic?” Fynn waved his goblet at the Adepts moving hither and yon. “Do you have any idea how important my role is? How many collisions have been avoided?”
“How many?”
“Well…” Fynn frowned at him, “none so far. But that’s only because these Nodefinders of yours walk in unnaturally straight lines.”
“I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that they’re all sober,” said an entering Alyneri d’Giverny, who looked a little damp from the rain and was carrying an equally rain-spattered tray packed with silver-domed platters.
Fynn lifted a finger off his goblet to point at the Healer. “You know, I really think you could be onto something there, Your Grace. I’ve always found sobriety to be overrated myself, but you make a strong case for its having at least one redeeming virtue.” He pressed a fist to his chest to ease a belch along. “Providing, of course, that one cares to walk in straight lines, which as virtues go, is rather frivolous.”
Alyneri paused beside their group and nodded to Franco. “It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Rohre.”
Franco nodded in polite, if bewildered, reply. “Your Grace.”
She gave them all a soft smile and held up her tray. “Food for the troops.” She headed off again.
Franco watched her go bemusedly. She hardly seemed the same young woman he’d met in Calgaryn. Then again, he had no clue why these presences from Calgaryn were presenting themselves at the First Lord’s sa’reyth at all. Between the improbable weldmap dominating the pavilion and the many unexpected presences, the entire night was starting to feel rather surreal.
“And you…” Fynn’s comment drew Franco’s gaze blinking back to him. “You caused quite the ruckus in Cair Rethynnea, I’ll have you know. Thanks to that damnable zanthyr, I’m unable to talk about it without losing my dinner, or I’d have words for you, sir. Never mind that I haven’t seen my cousin since you dragged him off to that outlaw realm nobody’s supposed to be able to bloody t
ravel to.”
Franco stifled a wince. “I assure you, Fynnlar, that night in Rethynnea isn’t one of my fondest memories.”
“Fynnlar,” Gannon called the royal cousin’s gaze back to him, “why are you here instead of in Veneisea gaining Cassius of Rogue’s allegiance for our cause?”
Fynn leaned his head back against his chair and groaned dramatically. “Is it Tuesday again already?”
“Fynnlar.”
“All right, all right!” He glared indignantly at Gannon. “I already told you, Cassius has stipulations before he’ll meet with me. I’m working on them.”
“Yes, I can see you’re diligently upon the task.”
“Well, admittedly, I would be able to accomplish more if I was available on days other than Tuesdays, but my regular duties are quite formidable.”
Franco looked the royal cousin over. “What duties might those be, my lord?”
Fynn puffed up proudly. “I am the sole wine taster for He Who Wanders Around Startling People.”
Franco turned a mystified look to Carian, who mouthed in reply, Balaji.
Fynn sipped at his wine, swished the liquid around in his mouth, swallowed, and made smacking noises. “Balaji says I have a discerning palate.”
Alyneri commented as she passed back by, carrying a different tray, “You’re very good at discerning ways to keep from doing anything useful.”
“Now, you know perfectly well the necessary role I play in society, Your Grace,” Fynn called after her. He lifted an imploring look to Franco. “Surely you understand, Rohre. If all of the inebriates of the realm became upstanding citizens, think of the anarchy it would cause. Our economic stability is predicated on an indolent nobility. Why…entire ecosystems could collapse!”
Fynn grew impassioned and plugged his own finger into his chest. “We inebriates are a delicate breed, and growing rarer by the day! What, with industrious people like Her Grace going around, making mass conversions to the religion of productivity and forcing people into hard work on days other than Tuesdays—”
Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4) Page 23
