by Cindy Dees
Lenora chuckled while a dagger of white-hot grief shot through Will’s gut. If only she were alive to do such a thing, he’d gladly let her catch him.
The matriarch turned back to the nulvari. “What does the oracle speak of?”
“These lands lie at a crossroads. Great events come together to create a crisis. A long quest nears completion, and it shall lead to death.”
Will jolted. Surely the prophets did not speak of his quest! He was done with all of that. He just wanted to get this stupid piece of wood unstuck from his chest and go home. No heroics for him, no sir.
Lenora asked sharply, “Has the governor gotten wind of this?”
Selea answered dryly, “I doubt the governor pays heed to any prophecy. He believes he has complete control of all that occurs on Haelos.”
The High Matriarch shook her head. “Arrogance has been the downfall of the great before, and it shall be again.” She led the way back to the common room. On the way down the dark stairs, Selea hung back a little, blocking Will from joining the matriarch ahead of them.
Will took the opportunity to whisper quickly to the nulvari, “You knew my father.”
“Did I?” Selea asked blandly. “I know a great many people.”
Urgently, sensing he had little time to banter with this elf, Will asked, “Where would you look if you sought a sleeping king?”
Selea stumbled and jerked himself upright with a quiet curse. “I’d look in his bed, boy.”
“Where would you tell the son of Tiberius De’Vir to look?”
“Any De’Vir would know to search in the heart of the Forest of Thorns for both king and crown. But the De’Vir’s are dead.” He moved away from Will rapidly, pulling up his hood as he hurried down the stairs, effectively concealing his face and race once more.
When they arrived in the common room, Will thanked Selea for his safe escort and got back a single terse nod and the distinct impression that the fellow would rather not have Will bow to him again in the elven fashion in this public venue. Likewise, the assassin gave him no more chance to mention his father or ask questions.
As quickly as he’d appeared to Will before, Selea slipped out into the night and disappeared. Probably was off to find himself one of the poor sods named on his writs and kill him. Could the Heart interfere in an Assassin’s Guild matter? Will was tempted to find out and tell Lenora of the writs he’d seen delivered earlier, except some small kernel of a wish to survive held him back.
* * *
Selea hurried through the night feeling as if a ghost breathed down his neck. Depths below, Tiberius’s boy was just like him. Impatient, aggressive, confident to a fault. Quick-witted, though. And eager. Perhaps Aurelius’s assessment of the lad was not so far wrong. The solinari thought there was a chance the lad could pick up the quest where his father had left off. Maybe even complete it. Still, the boy was barely off his mother’s apron strings.
Or was it merely that he had grown old? He passed a hand across his face. His reflexes were not what they once were. He had given thought to retiring more than once, lately.
Leland’s town house loomed and Selea knocked quietly upon the door. The guard recognized him on sight and let him in quickly.
“Is he awake?” Selea asked without preamble.
“Yes, sir. In his study.”
He didn’t need the man-at-arms to show him the way and told him so quietly. Selea passed through the comfortable home and wondered briefly what it would be like to live in one place for years on end. To put down roots. To surround himself with familiar and comfortable things—
—Bah. It was softness to think thus. He was not done for just yet.
He opened the study door to let himself in and his old friend glanced up from his desk. Leland leaned back in his chair, smiling broadly. It had taken Selea years, but he’d trained this human not to engage him in the fist-pumping and back-thumping hugs that his race seemed to favor. He supposed their excessively short life spans made them prone to those dramatic displays of emotion.
“Selea. What brings you to my home at this unholy hour?”
“I saw De’Vir’s boy.”
That made Leland jump out of his seat. “He’s here? In Dupree?”
“I just delivered him to the Heart. Something is wrong with him.”
“Wrong? How?”
Selea shrugged. “I’m no healer. But the boy’s sick. Looked like some sort of slow poison to me.”
“What kind?”
He shrugged. “I did not recognize its smell.”
Leland rolled his eyes. “If you do not know the poison, I doubt the Heart will do better. I would trust you over any healer in this land to recognize a poison and its source.”
It was true enough. The great assassins did not rely only on their blades to kill. The art of killing lay in using the best means to accomplish the end. Sometimes a contract must seem an accident, while others it must loudly proclaim itself to be an assassination. He shrugged at Leland. “Mayhap it is an actual sickness.”
“If so, the Heart will take care of it.”
“Not this, I think. It was complex. Powerful.” He hesitated and then added, “Old.”
“Old disease?”
He spread his gloved hands wide. “I merely report my impressions.”
“What would you have me do?”
“The lad is going to need special treatment. Expensive healing. He did not strike me as having the resources to finance his own cure.”
“Ahh, yes. The age-old dilemma of healing for the rich while the poor die in droves.”
“It is no dilemma!” Selea snapped. “It is merely the way of the world.”
“It is the way of the Empire,” Leland corrected.
Selea chose not to reply. The nulvari nation was closely aligned with the Empire, and he had spent his life in service to that same Empire. His honor-bound featly oath was given to an Imperial guild, and above all, nulvari valued their honor. Regardless of his personal opinion of the Empire, he was still its creature, no matter how reluctantly he might serve. Although that did not guarantee he always worked toward the Empire’s ends by the same means as it might wish of him.
“I may have something—someone—who can heal De’Vir’s boy,” Leland announced, interrupting Selea’s grim train of thought.
“Who?”
“An arch-mage has wandered into my home. A young healer. If anyone has the power to cure the lad, it will be her. She sleeps now to restore her powers, but I will take her to the Heart in the morn.”
Selea nodded briskly, his errand accomplished.
“Is there any other news?” Leland asked.
It was kind of Hyland not to ask for specifics but rather to let him dictate what information he was at liberty to share. He answered carefully, “Ki’Raiden led the attack on Hickory Hollow where one Ty the cobbler resided.”
Leland sucked in a sharp breath at that. “That must be the Boki war party we’ve received reports of. Why do orcs move against our old friend after all this time?”
“The Boki hold their grudges as well as anyone.”
“It must be more than that,” Leland declared.
“Like what?” It was Selea’s turn to probe delicately for news.
Leland replied, “Mayhap their soothsayers are seeing the same portents that ours are. Something big is on the move. Powerful. Ancient forces step into the game.”
Selea nodded slowly. That was in line with what he was hearing. A deep game was in play now. Deep enough for him to activate his sleepers? To call in decades’ worth of favors? “What is De’Vir’s boy up to?” he blurted uncharacteristically.
“The way Aurelius describes it, the lad plans to take up where we left off.”
So. The boy truly had known what he asked when he’d whispered of a sleeping king. “Does he stand a chance of succeeding?”
Leland shrugged. “You tell me. You’ve met the boy. I have not.”
Selea weighed the thing, making quick mental
lists of the pluses and minuses of the boy’s character. Finally, slowly, he said, “He might. With the right help, he just might.”
Leland answered simply, “Then let us see to it he gets the help he needs.”
Selea nodded in a decision more momentous than Leland knew. It is time. The long years of waiting were over. It was both a relief and a fearful thing to know the moment of final action was upon him at last.
He took his leave quickly, slipping out into the night that was his true home to move the next piece in the game he now knew for certain to be afoot. How had the Boki found Tiberius after all these years? The possible answers were few and the likely answer obvious.
A deep game indeed …
* * *
High Matriarch Lenora called out, “Novice Rosana! Your young man has finally arrived.”
“Will!” a female voice squealed.
He barely had time to brace himself before Rosana flung herself at him as if she had not seen him in years. She was as slender and lithe as a doe in his arms, and a strange warmth passed through him at her open display of affection and concern. Mayhap it was his fever worsening.
“You look terrible,” she announced with her usual bluntness.
He grinned down at her. “And you are more beautiful than ever.”
She cast her gaze down at the floor as a pretty blush climbed her cheeks. Will stared at her downcast eyelashes. Never had he seen any so long and luxurious. She blinked. Time slowed and the moment stretched out in slow motion. Her eyes fluttered open as gently as a butterfly’s wings in the first light of morn. The room and its noise faded away, leaving the two of them alone in an otherworldly place where faint whispers of a natural magic older than time twined around them, invisibly drawing them to each other.
“Have I finally found a way to silence you?” he teased gently.
She looked up at him, her black eyes snapping with laughter, her mouth opening on a retort, but Lenora interrupted briskly, “Feed the boy and then show him to a bed. He looks like he could use some rest.”
Will flashed a grateful grin at the matriarch, then followed Rosana to the kitchen. She wore a dress tonight and not the sturdy traveling clothes of before. Her waist was tiny, her shoulders narrow. The only girl even close to his age back in the hollow was Helga Larsdotter. She was fully a hand taller and broader than Will and she’d been as strong as a lumberjack … not exactly a paragon of petite femininity.
As Rosana gestured for him to sit at the long trestle table while she ladled up a bowl of what smelled like mutton stew, he was stunned by the effect just gazing at her had upon his breathing. Or maybe it was just his illness worsening. Her mouth—a thoroughly lush affair—curved into a little smile, causing a dimple to wink merrily in her cheek. She was the most ravishing creature he’d ever laid eyes on.
“Any news of my family and your friends?” he asked.
“No.” She set the bowl of stew before him and he glanced up in time to catch tears spilling over onto her cheeks before she dashed them away. His own heart fell like a stone. The meal, so enticing a moment before, looked completely unappetizing of a sudden.
“No one?” he whispered. Not her colleagues? Not his parents? None of the other villagers from the hollow? No one?
“No one. I checked the death logs myself.” She sat down on the bench beside him. “Eat. You look like you need strength.”
For her, and only for her, he forced a spoonful of the hot stew down. Another. And another. How much he ended up eating he could not remember later. Enough to ease the gnawing ache in his gut at any rate.
“Better?” she asked eventually.
The meal had made the worst of his physical symptoms pass. But it had done nothing for the hurt in his heart. Not wishing to disappoint Rosana, however, he answered stoutly, “Better. I vow, my stomach near gnawed a hole through my spine before I got here.”
“What took you so long? I was sick with worry, what with the rioting and violence earlier.”
She was worried about him? The warmth of the bracing meal spread well beyond his belly of a sudden.
“Something passing strange happened to me tonight.…” He felt foolish telling her a piece of wood was stuck to his chest and he was afraid to pull it off. Heat climbed his neck and spread across his face.
“You are hurt?” she asked in quick concern.
Better to just show her. He untied the neck closure of his shirt and exposed the disk of wood.
She leaned forward, interested. Stars above, she smelled of vanilla. “What is that?”
He shrugged, feigning a casualness he did not feel. “I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me.”
She scooted close to him. Her small hands were warm and soft against his chest, and abruptly his heart beat far too hard against his ribs. He yelped as she tried to wedge a fingernail under the edge of the disk to pry at it. Embarrassed, he mumbled, “I already tried that. It is stuck fast.”
“How did it get there?”
“I picked it up”—his face felt hot at the half-lie but he forged on—“and then I fell with it in my grasp. It just … stuck … to me.”
“Have you tried an alchemical solvent to release the glue that holds it in place?”
He hadn’t thought of something like that. Unfortunately, alchemical potions were hard to obtain. And even if a solvent was available, he had no coin to purchase such a thing. His face burned even hotter.
“We have solvents in the storeroom, upstairs. If you’re finished eating, we shall try one, yes?”
He followed her up a narrow servants’ stair, glad that his forest-trained eyesight adjusted quickly to darkness. Only a single candle on each landing lit the way, and lithe shadows of his escort danced upon the walls. She led him to the third floor and then down a dark hallway to a low, iron-banded portal.
“Hold the door open while I light a candle,” she murmured.
He stepped forward, close enough that her scent wrapped around him again, warm and delectable. The heat and nearness of her drugged him until he could hardly think as they slipped inside the storeroom.
She muttered over her shoulder, “Help me search the alchemy globes. We’re looking for a poison labeled ‘alchemical solvent.’ Try this shelf of contact poisons.”
The shelf at eye level held long, narrow boxes, each holding a row of round glass globes the size of plums cradled in a bed of straw. Some of the globes were cloudy, some clear; a few held brightly colored gases within. There must be thirty of them. He cast his gaze lower to other shelves holding various bottles and jars of pourable and drinkable poisons. He’d never dreamed the Heart had such riches!
As he examined labels where Rosana indicated, he was grateful for once to his mother for forcing him to learn to read despite his loud and frequent protestations that it was a worthless skill he would never use. His parents had taught him in secret and exhorted him never to let anyone know he could read. They said it would give him an advantage in life when people assumed he was not literate because he was a peasant. It wasn’t that reading and ciphering were illegal. They were merely too time-consuming for peasants to learn in the midst of their daily race to survive, and hence associated only with the wealthy and those who had attained rank within the Empire.
The labels contained both the name of the contents and the expiration date of each. He noticed that none of the solvents were more than a handful of months old. Alchemy must expire in about the same time frame as potions and scrolls, then. Their magics usually held for no more than a year or so. Unless, of course, they were stored in special—and rare—containers that could protect magic from draining away.
“Here it is!” Rosana exclaimed, carefully lifting a narrow bottle.
Will held the candle for her while she relocked the storeroom behind them. Then she blew out the light to conserve it. Something he’d expect of a frugal housewife but not an Imperial guild member.
“Is the Heart not as wealthy as the other guilds, then?” he asked.
<
br /> He made out the silhouette of Rosana’s shoulders shrugging ahead of him. “We do well enough. But if you had a choice between spending your gold on candles or on potions and scrolls to save lives, which would you pick?”
“I see your point.”
“Being a healer is not about wealth or power. Well,” she amended, “we are powerful but not in the way you might think.”
“In what way?”
“The Kaer heals common people. Births their babies. Mends broken limbs and cures diseases and infections that otherwise kill common people. And we do resurrections, of course. Who is the average peasant going to love more—an Empire that takes his bread and coin in taxes, or a House of Healing Heart that saves his life and asks only what he can afford to pay in return?”
Will chewed on her words as they neared the staircase. Her comments, although they made perfect sense, danced dangerously close to treason. But then, the gypsies had been hounded and harassed by the Empire since anyone could remember. She had reason to dislike the Empire. Still, he’d had no idea the Heart held such a powerful position until she pointed it out. He asked thoughtfully, “Does the Heart have need of force casters, perchance?”
“Why do you ask?” Rosana replied, startled.
He shrugged and hoped he looked casual.
“The Heart looks mainly for casters of spirit magic. Force is mostly a battle magic. Not sort of thing we use much around here. But maybe the Royal Order of the Sun could use it.”
“Who are they?”
She rounded on him in surprise. “You’ve never heard of the Royal Order of the Sun?”
“I grew up in the woods. We didn’t get many visitors.”
She shrugged. “The Royal Order is made up of guardians and knights who protect Heartstones and healers.”
Ahh. The Heart’s version of the Celestial Order of the Dragon. He asked curiously, “Who’d want to hurt healers?”
“Not many people. The Royal Order spends most of its time protecting stones.”
