Among Thieves totk-1

by Douglas Hulick

  “Some worries are larger than others,” she said.

  I had to agree, but not when it came to Bronze Degan’s promise. I’d seen what that had entailed, and I was still amazed. My worry with him centered around whether he was still alive; whether Shadow was dead; whether my sister was in danger. I wasn’t worried about what I owed Degan; rather, I was comforted by the thought that he may still be out there, looking out for my interests.

  Solitude gestured at the chair across from her. “Please,” she said. I sat. “Tell me what you know about Ten Ways,” said Solitude once I was settled.

  “It’s a shit hole,” I said.

  “And?”

  “It’s surrounded by imperial troops.”

  “And?”

  “And there’s a Kin war going on there,” I said. “One you started.”

  Solitude didn’t even flinch. “Good. Why did I start it?”

  “You tell me.”

  She showed me a smile that would have made a razor seem dull. “It doesn’t work that way,” she said. “You spill what you know. Then I fill in the gaps.”

  “So you can keep back whatever you don’t want me to know?” I said. “No. If you want to hear my side, I get to hear yours. All of it.”

  Solitude settled back and folded her hands before her face. I heard a faint clicking. It took me a moment to realize she was tapping at her front teeth with a thumbnail.

  “Done,” she said. “But you still go first. I need to know what Nicco and Kells and Shadow think I’m after in Ten Ways. You’ve been their main source on that count. I need to hear your version before you start adjusting it to fit my facts.”

  I pulled out a seed and rolled it between my palms. The combination of sweat and warmth released a burned, musky-sweet scent from the ahrami. I bent down and breathed it in, an old friend in a strange room.

  This was the woman who had told me-in a dream, no less-to keep things close to my chest. I had to assume she played the same way. But there was a difference between being careful and being stupid, and holding out on a Gray Prince when she was willing to meet me halfway definitely fell into the stupid category. I doubt I’d get a better offer any time soon.

  “All right,” I said, still hunched over my hands. “You want to be the next Dark King. You needed the war in Ten Ways to pull Nicco and Kells in and get them reeling so you could take them down. From there, you’re going to move into their territories, and then the rest of Ildrecca after that.”

  Solitude didn’t move. “What about the other Princes?” she said. “They won’t much care for that kind of a move on my part.”

  “That’s why you want the book,” I said. “It’ll give you the power to roll over them if they decide to get in the way.”

  “Ah.” Tap, tap, tap-the sound of a nail on a tooth. “And this is what you’ve told them?”

  I put the seed in my mouth and clicked it against my own teeth. Tap, tap, tap. “More or less,” I said.

  Solitude smiled. At first, I thought it was in reaction to my imitation of her; then, she began to laugh.

  “I could kiss you, Drothe,” she said. “This is perfect!”

  “Um?” I said.

  “If Nicco, Kells, and Shadow think I’m after all of Ildrecca, they’ll try to stop me outside of the cordon. None of them truly wants Ten Ways, so they’ll pull back and try to keep me contained. That means the cordon will fall even easier.” A dark gleam entered her eyes. “And if the war doesn’t go past the cordon’s walls, then the empire will pull out, too. Once they’re done wrecking the place, of course.” She laughed again, clapping her hands together. “Oh, this is beautiful. I should be paying you to tell tales like this!”

  I sat up in my seat, suddenly feeling far less clever than I had a moment ago.

  “You mean this is all about Ten Ways?” I said. “The setups, the rumors, getting Nicco and Kells at each other’s throats-even drawing in the empire-is all so you can take Ten Ways? You don’t want to be the Dark King?”

  “Hell no!” said Solitude. “I have enough headaches without anyone becoming the next Dark King, let alone myself. No, I just want the cordon.”

  I asked the obvious question-the one she was waiting for. “Why?”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  No. “Yes.”

  “I thought you might.” Solitude smiled and leaned forward. “Because it didn’t always used to be called Ten Ways,” she said. “Because a long time ago, it was called Ten Wise Men.”

  I noticed that somewhere along the way I had chewed and swallowed my seed without noticing. I put another one in my mouth. “How long ago?” I said, starting to have a bad feeling.

  “Right around the time Stephen Dorminikos became emperor,” she said, “and before the beginning of the Endless Cycle.”

  “And why was the cordon called Ten Wise Men?”

  “I think you’re starting to suspect why,” said Solitude. I kept silent, and she shrugged. “It was called Ten Wise Men after the people Stephen Dorminikos granted it to. He gave it to his Paragons-ten of them to be exact-so they could conduct research for him, uninterrupted.”

  “And one of those Paragons was named Ioclaudia Neph,” I said.

  Solitude nodded. “Including Ioclaudia. Who wrote a journal as insurance against her life, for all the good it did her.”

  “Insurance?” I said. “Why would she need insurance if she was working for the emperor?”

  “Why does anyone need insurance when they work for someone of great power?”

  “To protect them against that power.”

  “Precisely. The emperor didn’t put them in Ten Wise Men to work on Imperial magic; he put them in there to work on soul magic. He put them in there to make him immortal.” Solitude leaned forward and stared me in the eye. “The Angels didn’t choose Stephen Dorminikos to serve as the Undying Emperor-he did. He charged his Paragons with finding a way to make him immortal, but it didn’t work. For some reason, reincarnation was the best they could manage. So they broke his soul into three pieces and somehow arranged for those pieces to follow one another in a constant cycle. That’s how Stephen Dorminikos Progenitor became Markino, Theodoi, and Lucien. The Angels had nothing to do with it.”

  My heart gave a flop, but I hardly noticed it. “And the Paragons?” I said, already knowing.

  “Dusted. Them and everyone else in Ten Wise Men-servants, apprentices, bakers, everyone. All on the same night. The emperor surrounded the cordon, sent in his troops, and when they were done, he had the place burned to the ground. It’s been rebuilt countless times since, and each time the name has changed slightly. But underneath it all, Ten Ways is still Ten Wise Men. And there are secrets buried there.”

  “Like Ioclaudia’s journal,” I said.

  “Like Ioclaudia’s journal,” agreed Solitude. “Hers is supposed to be the most complete, but there are notes, fragments of journals, ancient runes, and circles of power still down there. And I want to dig them all up, which means I need Ten Ways.”

  I stared at Solitude, trying to wrap my mind around what she had just told me. If what she said was true, then the Angels had had nothing to do with Stephen Dorminikos’s reincarnations. And if that was the case, then his whole foundation for sitting on the Undying Throne-being the chosen of the Angels, being an intermediary between Them and humanity, being guided in his rule by aspects of the divine-was all a construct, a hoax, a fucking con.

  I felt my world starting to shift, and I didn’t much care for it.

  “How?” I said, scrambling for purchase. “How could anyone possibly set something like this up? The religion, the cults, the sheer belief. It’s not possible!”

  “Of course it is,” said Solitude, her green eyes flashing. “How do you start a rumor on the street? You tell a few key people the tale you want spread, give them an incentive to talk, and step away. If done right, it’ll take on a life of its own. Look at what I did with Nicco and Kells in Ten Ways-that was small-time.

 
“Now, think about what an emperor can do, especially if he has years to prepare. He could lay the foundations for a cult, create a corps of fanatics, indoctrinate the bureaucracy so it would be waiting for him when he came back. Stephen’s Paragons didn’t come up with the Endless Cycle overnight, and he didn’t die the instant they worked the magic. There was time to plot, to lay groundwork, to make sure he would be reborn into an empire that was counting on his return as an article of faith. And when he did return?” Solitude spread her hands. “Everything was confirmed. The hardest part for Stephen was throwing down the First Regency when they decided they didn’t want to surrender power to him. After that, it was just a matter of meeting the expectations he had already set.”

  I rubbed at my temples. The pain was back, but I knew it wasn’t solely from my strained vision. “But why?” I said. “Why go through all of this just to keep the throne?”

  “Why did Stephen kill his uncle and become emperor in the first place?” said Solitude.

  “To save the empire,” I said. Or, at least, that was the popular story. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  “Exactly,” said Solitude. “He saved the empire, but he also knew that, no matter how good a foundation he laid, it would collapse someday. You know history-sooner or later, someone comes to the throne who undoes all the work of his predecessors. Have enough of them close enough together, and the empire falls.” Solitude held up a finger. “Unless.”

  “Unless he stays on the throne forever,” I said.

  “That’s the theory, anyhow. And so far, it’s been working.”

  “But what about the Angels?” I said. “Stephen’s been claiming to be their Chosen One since he came back. If They didn’t set him up to come back, why haven’t They cast him down?”

  Solitude shrugged. “How should I know? I’m no theologian. Whatever They think of this, it’s between Them and Stephen. For all we know, his creeping insanity is the punishment for blaspheming against Them, but I hope not. It’s too damn tame for me.”

  I rubbed at my temples some more and reached for my herb wallet. It wasn’t there. Of course. It had gone the way of my clothing seemingly so long ago. I pulled at one of the altered seams of Nestor’s doublet and felt it give a little. I wasn’t much longer for this outfit, either.

  “Pardon my asking,” I said, “but you have to understand when I say, where the hell are you getting all of this?”

  “You mean, assuming I’m not making it up, or crazy, or both?”

  “The thought occurs,” I said. “Even you have to admit this isn’t the kind of thing you find in any old history book.”

  “I have fragments of another journal,” said Solitude. “Mainly bits and pieces, but enough to get a basic picture of what happened. The rest I’ve pieced together from ancient histories I guarantee you’ve never heard of, heretical theologies, and other sources. As you can imagine, information on this… aspect… of imperial history isn’t thick on the ground. But it’s there, if you know where to look.”

  “And you know where to look,” I said, somewhat snidely.

  “As do you.”

  I fidgeted slightly. She was right-it was easy enough for me to find out if she was telling the truth. I had Ioclaudia’s journal; I could look it up. That alone made me more inclined to believe her, at least for the moment. The only problem was, if I started believing her, I would be buying into something far bigger than I had ever imagined.

  That made me nervous. And suspicious. I was getting answers, but not the one at the core of everything-not the Why.

  “What about Shadow?” I said. “How does he fit into all of this?”

  Solitude’s expression turned dark. “He doesn’t,” she said. “Or, at least, he didn’t until recently.”

  “When he found out about the journal?”

  Solitude didn’t answer.

  “You said you’d tell me all of it,” I reminded her.

  “When one of my people turned out to be a Long Nose,” she snarled. I raised an eyebrow. “If you say anything,” said Solitude sharply, “I’ll have Iron bend you into interesting, complicated shapes.”

  I held up my hands. “Professional appreciation only,” I said. Long Nosing against Solitude must have been a hell of a dodge. “How much does Shadow know?”

  “Shadow knows the journal exists, but I don’t think he’s aware of its full implications. For him, it’s a source of power, a potential guide to potent magic. I don’t think he knows the imperial connection, but even so, the journal is too tempting a prize to ignore, and a bad enough threat on its own. Shadow with imperial glimmer is something I’d rather not contemplate. But if he gets his hands on Ioclaudia’s notes and recognizes their true value…”

  “He’ll use them,” I said. I didn’t know Shadow well, but I’d seen enough in the meeting with Kells. He wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to put himself on par with the emperor. “He’d tear Ten Ways apart to get the rest of the journals, and then he’d do it-he’d start another Endless Cycle, only for himself.”

  “Giving us two undying emperors instead of one,” said Solitude. “One for the Lighters, and one for the Kin.”

  “Unlike you,” I said.

  Solitude’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “What the hell do you think I mean?” I said. “You tell me you want an ancient Paragon’s journal, you tell me it holds secrets untold about reincarnation, and then you tell me you want to dig up Ten Ways to find whatever else you can about the process? Even if you don’t want to become the next Dark King, you sure seem damn interested in finding out about not dying.”

  Solitude came out of her chair so fast, the tinkling of the charms on her dress formed a single multitonal note.

  “Is that what you think?” she demanded. “That I want to shatter my soul so I can keep coming back to life? That I want to live as a fraction of myself for the rest of eternity?”

  “Why else?” I said, prodding on purpose. “What’s the point in finding the journal and taking over Ten Ways if you aren’t going to use them? If you aren’t going to reincarnate yourself?”

  “Because knowing about something doesn’t mean you have to use it in the same way!” she shouted. “Because magic can work both ways!”

  I sat, staring at her, absorbing what she had said and what she had let slip.

  “Shit! ” said Solitude, kicking the table. It teetered and fell over with a crash. The marble top shattered, scattering itself across the floor. Iron immediately opened the door and stuck his head in. Solitude shooed him away with a gesture.

  “This isn’t how I wanted to broach the subject with you,” she said. “Not until I knew where you stood.”

  “It’s the emperor, isn’t it?” I said, ignoring her complaint. “It’s not about you or Shadow or the Kin-it’s about him. You want to throw down the fucking emperor!”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head ruefully. “Rebellion is easy. It’s been done more times than I can count. I want to kill him. Permanently. Forever. I want to figure out how the first Paragons made him immortal, and I want to undo it.”

  “You’re insane,” I said.

  “You have it backward,” said Solitude. “It’s the emperor who’s insane. All three incarnations of Stephen Dorminikos-Markino, Theodoi, and Lucien-are slowly going crazy.”

  “That’s not exactly a revelation,” I said. “Everyone knows each of them gets loose in the head as they get older. It’s always been that way. That’s why the next incarnation, or a Regent, is ready to step in and take over when the sitting incarnation passes fifty.”

  “But it’s not harmless,” said Solitude, “and it hasn’t always been this way. The emperors have only begun to slip in the last two hundred and fifty years. Before Theodoi the Sixth, there weren’t regular Regency courts, nor was the heir required to stay within a day’s ride of Ildrecca. But after Theodoi went mad at the end of that reign, things began to change. The insanity has been creeping forward over time, coming on faster and running de
eper every cycle.”

  I thought about what Solitude was saying, what I had read in the histories, what Lyconnis had told me about the Fourth Regency. If you looked at the history of the empire, as Solitude said, there was a pattern. The Regencies had become more common over time, and the various incarnations were less willing to leave the city than they used to be, both before and during their reigns. Hell, stories were that Markino, Theodoi, and Lucien had even spent time together, back in the early days. That never happened now, though, not in public, and likely never in private, either.

  “Before long,” continued Solitude, “we won’t be talking about paranoid or obsessive old men on the throne who drool when they talk. We’ll be talking about three active, alert, clever men, each of whom has convinced himself that the other two are out to destroy him. I’m talking about paranoia, dementia, and God complexes, with an entire imperial structure in place to back the whole thing up. Each incarnation is at his predecessor’s, or successor’s, throat now more than they ever were during the first five centuries of the empire. It’s only a matter of time before they begin to fight one another openly.”

  “Imperial civil war?” I said incredulously.

  Solitude nodded. “A civil war with three emperors, each one returning from the dead, each one hungry for vengeance, each one able to raise and lead an army, again and again and again.”

  “But the empire has survived crises in the past,” I said, though not with as much conviction as I would have liked. “The Reign of the Pretenders, the Bastards’ Revolt, the betrayal of the White Sashes under Silverhawk-the Imperial Court kept going through all of it, without any version of Stephen on the throne. Who says they won’t be able to handle a bent-headed emperor?”

  Solitude crossed her arms. “Think about it,” she said. “Even a ‘bent-headed’ emperor is still the emperor.”

  And people obeyed the emperor. Or, at least, they obeyed one version of him. But with three imperial camps to choose from, it would be chaos-unending chaos.

  The world that had been shifting beneath me until now began to crumble. I could sense a tidal wave of events building beyond the horizon. When it hit, it would overrun everything and everyone in its path. Only a fool would be standing there, trying to build a dike when the wave broke.