“There’s something I need to tell you,” Mari said. She rubbed her hands on the legs of her breeches to wipe away the dampness.
Vahineh kept staring at the patrons for so long Mari wondered whether she had been heard. As she was about to speak again, the other woman rested her gaze on Mari. Vahineh’s plain face flashed from moment to moment with fear and fatigue, grief and anger, followed at last by a forced blandness.
“What is it, Knight-Major?”
“I beg your pardon?” Mari narrowed her eyes at the controlled, cold formality in Vahineh’s tone.
“If it needs saying, best it were said quickly.”
I am one of the reasons your father is dead. Mari had never imagined having this conversation. Did not know how to start it. Until not long ago, she had thought Daniush was the only survivor to the Great House of Selassin. To sit here with the late Asrahn’s daughter left her unsettled. Part of her almost wished for somebody to fight, just so she could delay the inevitable.
“I wanted to express my sorrow at your loss, Pah-Vahineh.” She stumbled over the words. Tried to determine which ones to use next. “It was…I mean to say, the…passing of your—”
“You?” Vahineh’s face was still. “Timid? You can say the words, Knight-Major. Was it a tragedy? Was that what you were going to say? What about the word dead? My mother, my father, and my brother. Dead. If I can say it, surely a trained killer such as yourself should have no difficulty in spitting out the word.”
Mari felt as if her throat was going to close up. Her eyes drifted down to the shamshir Vahineh cradled in her lap. The princess’s hands were white knuckled around both sheath and hilt. It would not take much for Vahineh to draw and strike. Mari moved her hands far from her weapons, clutched them behind her chair. If Vahineh wanted to settle a blood debt, Mari would not prevent her.
“You were involved in my father’s death?” Vahineh stared down at the weapon in her hands.
“I was there,” Mari said calmly. What point now in misdirection, excuses, or reasons? “I failed in my duty to defend your father, even though I knew there was going to be an attempt on his life.”
“How do you justify that?”
“I’ll not trivialize it by trying.”
Vahineh glared at Mari, color rising. She wrung her hands on the shamshir so hard, Mari could hear the faint squeak of skin against the leather. Vahineh’s posture changed. Her shoulders seemed to hunch as the muscles tensed.
Vahineh stood as her gaze snapped toward the doors. A perfectly groomed young man of conspicuous beauty and bearing approached them. He was elegantly, almost conservatively, dressed, pearls pale against his earlobes. The young houreh gestured for Vahineh and Mari to join him as he strolled to the front door.
Mari was silent as Vahineh climbed into the waiting carriage. She was shocked to see the Stormbringer there. Femensetri leaned back in her chair, her booted feet propped up on the leather upholstery. The ancient Scholar Marshal nodded once to the princess as she helped her into the carriage. Mari remained outside as the door closed; the princess turned to look at Mari. Neither woman said anything.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” Corajidin asked with as much of a smile as he could manage. Her father closed the journal he had been writing in.
“Loyalty,” she replied.
“I am not certain I understand, though I welcome it.” There was a look of sorrow on her father’s face, which surprised Mari. He rested his elbows on the desk, surveyed his daughter with his chin rested on steepled fingers. “Would you like to share a meal with me?”
“Father…Armal is dead.” Was it you? she wanted to ask.
“What?” His confused expression answered her unvoiced question. “Poor Thufan. Did you…?”
“What do you take me for? Armal may have been many things, but he never gave me cause to kill him. Nor would he.”
“Then how?” he asked quietly.
“Farouk and some of his bravos,” Mari replied.
“Is Farouk with you?”
“Armal throttled the life from him,” Mari said with a wintry smile. “Though only after he staved in the skulls of the other amateurs Farouk took with him.”
“How did you happen to be there?”
The dangerous question. Incomplete lies were the answer, with enough truth to make them whole. “Armal was speaking with me yesterday. And again last night. He thought, given my defiance, he had information I’d find interesting.”
“And?”
“It seems neither Thufan nor his son was entirely truthful.” Mari paused as her mind raced. Her father gazed at her, obviously impatient for her to continue. On her way back to the villa, she had wrestled with how much to tell her father, yet she owed Thufan nothing. Her father deserved to know the truth, as painful as it might be to hear. Her next few words might well break her or set her free. “They were holding Vahineh captive.”
Corajidin froze. Color drained from his face. She could see the weight of his thoughts in the slope of his shoulders. In the slackness of his jaw. Yet Erebus fa Corajidin was not a man so easily cowed. His look of sick horror was soon replaced by one of simmering rage. Color returned to his skin, as if the clouds had moved away from the sun. He clenched his hands into elegant fists, knuckles white.
“Can I trust nobody?” he muttered, frowning. Mari was surprised to see the furtive look in her father’s eyes. The way they narrowed. Flicked nervously from left to right, as if taunted by something glimpsed in his periphery. The tips of his fangs showed. Bubbles of spittle popped on his lip. “Where is she now?”
“Armal led me to a house on Treadstone Street, in the Ghyle.” Now she needed to divert without quite lying. Armal was dead, so there was no consequence to betraying him. She had no sympathy for Thufan. If her father knew Vahineh was alive and free, perhaps it would give him pause. “She’s gone.”
Her father slapped his hands on the surface of the table. The small sand-shaker and ink pot rattled in their stand. The bronze statue of Erebus glowered across the desk.
“Could Armal have been lying?”
Mari shrugged. “I thought you should know.”
She kissed her father on the cheek, bade him get some rest. His gray-hued skin was hot, flushed, damp. There were dark-red circles around his eyes, which had a glassy sheen to them. With a calm, almost too slow gait, she exited the room. The door closed behind her with a gentle click.
She had not walked far before she heard her father’s howl of rage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Is it a greater tragedy to achieve all one’s desires or to lose them all?”—Zienni proverb
Day 322 of the 495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation
Corajidin followed Brede into Wolfram’s chambers, his eyes narrowed in a combination of pain and wrath.
Once again the Anlūki were bid, politely, to remain outside the Angothic Witch’s chambers. This time, they listened. Inside the chamber Brede bent her knee, head bowed, to her master. The Asrahn-Elect glanced at Brede, wishing not for the first time Wolfram showed him the same level of deference the apprentice showed her master.
“What can you tell me about this Thrice-Awakened King?” Corajidin said through his hands as he rubbed his face.
“We’ve found no references to it anywhere,” Wolfram replied. “There is no such thing. A rahn is Awakened once and once only. Who would refuse such a calling, or such power—not once, but twice—to be offered it again? Nobody!”
Corajidin parted the fingers of his hands to stare at his witch. His knuckles ached, as if the fingers wanted to curl back into claws by themselves. He tried to blink away the blurriness of his vision. Why were those he depended on failing him? Or was it worse? Could their failures be part of something grander? He dropped his hands to his sides, fingers splayed against his embroidered silk jacket.
“Is Kasraman is ready to report?” Corajidin snapped. He hoped his son had good news.
“Yes,” Wolfram replied cauti
ously. “I contacted him as you asked.”
“Let us not wait, then.”
Wolfram gestured for Brede to rise and join them at a round table nearby that resembled an upturned shield, its bronze dish surface scored with bright scratches. It was filled halfway with chromatic metal filings. Entanglement Bowls had been common in the early years of the Awakened Empire, but many had been lost as the result of the internecine wars of the Avān families and Great Houses. While scholars and witches had the ability to communicate by casting their minds across thousands of kilometers, it was not so simple for others. For men like Corajidin, there were alternative methods of communicating across vast distances, all of them rare and precious. Before the Drear had become what it had and mystics were Lost to the lure of the powers in the shadows, a Seer’s Mirror had been the optimal choice. These days an Entanglement Bowl was the best choice. The Great House of Erebus had been without an Entanglement Bowl for centuries, until Wolfram and Brede had liberated this specimen from the ruins of the Rōmarq.
Brede rested her fingertips on the edge of the Bowl. A wave pulsed across the gathered metal filings, and there was a slither-hiss as the thousands of metal splinters rubbed against each other. Corajidin watched as the Bowl took on a mother-of-pearl sheen; the fine hairs of his arms raised as disentropy washed across him. Brede uttered a few short words and the filings rippled again, swirled with a bright jangle as they rose ever higher in hills and valleys. At first it seemed as if a replica mountain were rising from an ocean of chrome. Part of the summit tumbled away, the low foothills crept back, deep vertical crevices, two ledges…until eventually the shape of a head came into focus, atop a robed torso with its arms folded.
“Good evening, Father.” Kasraman’s voice was the chime of metal on metal, his face and body rendered perfectly in a miniature chrome simulacrum.
“My son,” Corajidin replied. “You have made progress?”
“Yes and no.” Kasraman’s metal effigy bowed. “The Torque Spindle either has pieces missing or is damaged beyond my ability to repair with what I have here in the Rōmarq. Given we don’t have another Spindle to hand, I need to figure out why this one isn’t working properly.”
Corajidin growled as he clenched his fists in anger. “Was I mistaken to trust you with this? Will you fail me, betray me, too?”
His son paused for a moment before he answered, “No, Father. Why would you even ask? I do have good—”
“The Seethe made armies, populated towns, in weeks!” Corajidin shouted. His eyes felt so hot! Pain took root at the base of his skull. Started to spread its branches. “How am I supposed to have the armies I need to make our nation strong? Is it because you want me to die?”
Kasraman’s image shook its head with a metallic hiss. “We don’t have the Torque Mills of the Petal Empire. We knew there were no guarantees—”
“You know I do not have the time to wait!” Corajidin jabbed his finger into his son’s effigy, causing the metal filings to clatter away before they were reabsorbed. “Do you want my crown so badly, Kasraman, you would see me fail?”
“My rahn, if I may?” Wolfram kept his head bowed. “We’ll need to—”
Corajidin scrunched his eyes closed against the pain, the pressure, the voices in his head that threatened to burst his skull. Is this what his Ancestors were trying to tell him? Of the traitors in his midst?
There was a long pause. Corajidin caught the way Wolfram and Brede looked at each other. Even Kasraman’s chromatic figure seemed to scrutinize his father for longer than was comfortable.
“I am not being paranoid!” Corajidin held his hands up. He winced when he saw the shimmer-sweat on them. At the way they palsied. “Nor has my illness robbed me of my reason. There are forces within Shrīan which plot against me, and you have failed me at every turn! How am I to govern if I am unable to survive? How am I to lead if don’t have the strength to discourage opposition? Am I to become a Nomad? A Rahn-in-Shadows? A mockery to all I believe in so I may do what my people, what my country, needs of me?”
Wolfram reached out a hand to Corajidin. “You need to—”
“No!” Corajidin recoiled from Wolfram’s touch. “At first I thought my agents had executed my will to secure Amnon with too heavy a hand. Now I see what they have done in my name was not enough. We must redouble our efforts! Do you hear me, Kasraman? If you ever want to ascend to be the Rahn-Erebus, you will not fail me! I have other choices for my heir!”
“As you command, Father.” Kasraman bowed with a tinny hiss. “If I may continue? I did say there was some good news. I’ve finished excavating some of the deeper chambers. They led to a warren of smaller vaults, which we’ve only now managed to unlock. Not without significant cost in life—”
“The cost is immaterial, if it brings me closer to my goals.” Corajidin heard the flatness in his tone. Was this what he was becoming?
Kasraman paused for a moment, a light-kissed doll of chrome filaments. “As you say, Father. In short, I believe I’ve found a Destiny Engine. It’s in pieces, but—”
“Have it shipped here immediately,” Corajidin snapped. The hunger turned his voice into something part growl, part purr. The illness made it rough. “I want to see it. I want to touch it…”
“As you command, Father.” Kasraman’s effigy bowed, metal filings ringing with the motion. “I do have one other thing you will be interested in. I searched through the old records I brought with me. There were journals of the Sēq who had served as our rajirs in…different times.”
“And?” Corajidin did not like the rebuke in his son’s tone. It had been generations since the Great House of Erebus had employed a rajir from the Sēq. Too many of them had died in service, under suspicious circumstances, and the Order had forbidden any Sēq from taking service with the Erebus ever again.
“And one of them made mention of a…condition…similar to yours.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it.” Wolfram studied Kasraman’s simulacrum though narrowed eyes. He did not sound pleased. Was it because Kasraman had possibly succeeded where Wolfram had so spectacularly failed to help Corajidin with his problem?
“What does this mean?” Corajidin asked.
“I think I can help you regain your mastery of Awakening without Sedefke, Ariskander, or the Destiny Engine.”
“What do you think, Wolfram?” Corajidin asked the witch when they were alone. Wolfram stood in the darkness by the window in Corajidin’s office, the moonlight edging him in muted blue-green. “Can my son succeed in helping me?”
The witch was silent for a moment, little more than a grim shade given Human form. “I’ve trained Pah-Kasraman well. He’s already a fine witch and will make a great rahn. Even so, I doubt—”
“He will be a rahn when I am ready for him to be rahn and not a moment earlier!” Corajidin felt a small panic burst in him. “Are you saying the answer is no? Is Kasraman lying to me?”
“I’m saying whatever he’s found isn’t something I’d pin my hopes on.” Wolfram stirred, features obscured by the gloom. “Stay the course. Ariskander has answers for us both.”
“His knowledge of how to unlock the Hall of Reflection? After your years of study, you still believe there is an answer to fixing your damaged body in some mythological Sēq treasure trove?”
“I know it!” the ancient witch snapped. “Don’t mock me, you who are currently less than half a rahn. The Dion am Moud exists, and it will benefit us both if we find it. For me, a new body rather than this travesty! For you, all the great treasures collected by the dynasties of three empires. Riches beyond imagining, all of it for the taking. Imagine how strong your Second Awakened Empire will be.”
There was a limit to how often Corajidin could chase the promises of tomorrow. How many times had Wolfram failed to make real the imaginings of his pipe dreams? Ariskander was a prize Corajidin had in his hands. He would not give it up until he had wrung everything he could from it. He might not need to kill Ariskander…it did not
change the fact he wanted to.
“You mentioned to me earlier that the witches had grown strong over the years of their exile?” Corajidin murmured. If he could not have an army, perhaps he needed to seek alternative options.
“I did.”
“You suggested once they could help with my…dilemma.”
“They can.”
“Then bring them to me.”
“As you wish.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Folly begins with rash action and ends with prolonged regret.”—from the Nilvedic Maxims
Day 322 of the 495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation
Indris and the others crouched in the shadows by the river. Thufan had been waiting by the door for several minutes when the band of Fenlings appeared. There was a score of the wild rat creatures, female and male, black and brown furred, garbed in the ill-fitting remnants of what had been ransacked here and there. They walked like Humans, though slightly hunched, and stood as tall as adolescent Avān. Their hands and feet were long, tipped with claws. They were large eyed and long nosed, the hair on their heads dyed in bright reds, yellows, and greens, upright as the bristles on an old horse brush.
At their forefront was a larger Fenling, almost the size of an Avān near adulthood. She wore a necklace of chisel teeth. Bracelets of Fenling claws rattled on her wrists. Her armor appeared to be in slightly better condition than that of her band, and her half helm boasted two curved horns and a plume of rainbow-hued feathers. She gave out a high-pitched squeal as she shook her spear and slender javelins over her head. Her band followed suit. The awful racket raised Indris’s hackles.
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