BRYTE'S ASCENT (Arucadi Series Book 8)

by E. Rose Sabin

  Ahh! That music! This wine! Another glass won’t hurt. Never cared much for wine, but I never had any this good. Making me sleepy. I need to stay awake and alert. Lord Inver could come back any minute.

  I didn’t get any sleep last night. I can relax, at least. Enjoy the music and the wine. Pretend this is mine, all of it.

  It’s easy for Lina to criticize. She was born to wealth and luxury. I wasn’t. But it’s not what you’re born into that counts, it’s what you make of yourself.

  This is the kind of life I want. And I have the power to get it. Even to take it, if I have to.

  No, Lina, I won’t trust Lord Inver. I’m sure he doesn’t trust me, either. But he doesn’t have any idea what I’m capable of.

  CHAPTER SIX

  GIFTED

  Lina stopped Bryte as she was about to dress in her old clothes. “You aren’t going to wear those old things,” she said. “Put on the dress I fixed for you.”

  “I’d rather wear my own things,” Bryte objected. “Your dress doesn’t have pockets.”

  “I won’t have you looking like a tramp while you’re with me. If you have to have pockets, we’ll get you a dress with pockets. Is there a decent dress shop nearby?”

  “There’s lots of shops just one street away. We can walk there, easy.”

  They left the hotel, and Lina directed Bryte to take her to one of the better shops. “You do need good clothes,” she said. “We may have to gain entry into government buildings, and I don’t want anyone questioning our right to be there because of your appearance.”

  Bryte felt insulted, but the idea of new clothes from a fancy shop excited her. The shops of all kinds lining the street she took Lina to had in common only that they all charged prices for their goods that Bryte thought outrageous. They found a dress shop and went inside.

  Bryte let Lina choose for her. She could never have decided among all the lovely dresses offered for her inspection.

  Lina quickly selected four dresses, all finer than anything Bryte had ever imagined wearing, had Bryte try them on, and settled on a frock of mosaic blue silk crepe with contrasting trim. The skirt had a shirred panel on which were sewn two quite serviceable pockets, their fronts decorated with lovely hand embroidery. Lina also bought her a middy blouse of serviceable white broadcloth with two pockets in the front, and a pleated plaid skirt to wear it with. The outfit looked like those worn by schoolgirls of the second and third tiers. It was this outfit that Lina had her wear, ordering the saleswoman to wrap the clothes she’d had on along with the silk crepe dress.

  “Now you look like the guide you claim to be,” Lina said when they left the store. “You’re going to play that role now. Later you’ll probably need to go back to being my cousin, and for that you’ll wear the dress.”

  “So where do you want me to guide you?” Bryte asked, eager to be seen in her new clothes.

  “I have to get information,” Lina said. “Whom do you know who has extensive knowledge of Tirbat? Not of tourist destinations. Someone who knows how the city works, knows its officials, or at least knows how to contact them, and knows its secrets. Somebody who listens to rumors and knows which ones might be true and which are nonsense.”

  Bryte reviewed the people she knew—vendors in the bazaars, workers in the flats, beggars who plied their trade along the ramps leading from tier to tier. She could think of none who fit Lina’s criteria.

  “Any family members?” Lina prodded.

  “I don’t have a family.” Bryte thought with a pang of the father who refused to acknowledge her and the sister she’d never met. “My mother’s dead, and she’s all I had.”

  Lina’s nod was one of acknowledgement, not sympathy. “People you’ve done business with?”

  “They’re mostly all tourists,” Bryte said. “Except for Master Onigon.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A moneylender,” she said. “In the flats.”

  “You borrow money?” Lina voice held genuine surprise.

  “No. He keeps mine safe for me—what I earn and, well, whatever I get. He keeps good accounts.”

  “Is he knowledgeable?” Lina asked. “About the things I need to know?”

  “I’m not sure,” Bryte said. “We’ve never talked about the government. He’s very smart, though.”

  “Hmm. It’s a place to start. Take me to see him.”

  Master Onigon’s greeting, “Good day, ladies. What can I do for you?” was formal, as if he didn’t recognize Bryte, though of course he did. Her new clothes didn’t make her look that different. He had a customer in the shop and was being cautious, as was his custom.

  When Lina answered, “I’m in need of information, and Bryte thought you might be able to provide it,” he hastily concluded his business with the customer and ushered the man outside, at the same time shooing out a couple of cats that had followed him to the door, ignoring others lurking in corners or under chairs. After watching through the dusty window to make certain the man left, Master Onigon confronted Lina, his single eye glittering dangerously.

  “Who are you and what is your business with Bryte?” he demanded.

  “I came here to ask questions, not answer them,” Lina said. “But as for my business with Bryte, I’ve hired her as a guide.”

  “It’s all right, Master Onigon,” Bryte said hastily. “She and … She’s just come to Tirbat, and she needs to be shown around the city.”

  “She give you those clothes?”

  “Those are in lieu of wages,” Lina said. “I needed her to look presentable. Are you the child’s guardian?”

  Bryte glared at Lina. Why did she—everybody—insist on calling her a child?

  “I have a business interest in her,” he said. “I do look out for her welfare.”

  That was news to Bryte. Taking care of her money probably could be described as looking out for her welfare, but she had a feeling that he meant something different from that.

  “I’m taking good care of her,” Lina said. “Now maybe you can answer my question. I’m trying to locate someone—anyone—with special abilities that might be termed magical. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  Master Onigon looked startled. “One moment,” he said, holding up a finger to command silence.

  He opened the door to his back room and beckoned them into it. After closing the door, he said to Lina, “Now, tell me why you asked that.”

  She was silent a moment while she gazed around the room. Then she nodded. “I see,” she said. “You’re gifted, and this room is warded. But why the secrecy?”

  Master Onigon, gifted? Bryte was so startled that she almost missed his reply.

  “Because it’s dangerous to be gifted here in Tirbat. That’s why …” He glanced at Bryte and did not finish.

  Lina supplied the rest of the sentence. “That’s why you never told Bryte that she was gifted.”

  “You told her? She knows?”

  “Of course. She needs training to use her power.”

  “No!” His shout and fierce scowl further amazed Bryte. She had never seen Master Onigon so upset, even when beggar children taunted him and called him “Master One-Eye-Gone.”

  “Why do you want her kept in ignorance?” Lina asked.

  “I told you, it’s dangerous to be gifted. I wanted to protect her.”

  “What’s the danger?”

  Master Onigon studied her, apparently unsure whether to confide in her. Bryte willed him to decide that he could, though she was afraid to say anything, sensing a delicate balance between him and Lina that a word from her could disturb.

  “You have not yet answered my question.” Master Onigon turned his desk chair to face her and sat on it, leaving his guests standing. “I asked you why you came here looking for information about the gifted.”

  As soon as he had sat down, the big tabby jumped into Master Onigon’s lap, circled to face Lina, and hissed.

  Lina ignored the cat. “I came to you on Bryte’s recommendation, be
cause she said you were knowledgeable about many things.”

  Master Onigon regarded her in silence for a moment, then slowly reached up and removed his eye patch. Bryte gasped. She saw not the empty socket she had expected but a lidless eye, its pupil a mere pinpoint within an impossibly bright yellow wide iris.

  He closed the eye Bryte had always thought of as his “good” one and gazed at Lina with this strange eye that, Bryte now understood, was definitely not blind, though what or how it saw, she could not imagine.

  Lina seemed equally startled; she endured the unnerving scrutiny in silence.

  “I see,” he said, stroking the tabby’s head soothingly. “I’ve always liked cats. Of all kinds.”

  The thin white cat had appeared beside his legs, its back arched and its claws extended. It emitted low growls.

  Master Onigon laughed. “They sense a rival.” After replacing his eye patch, to Bryte’s relief, he scooped up the white cat in one hand, cradled the tabby against him with the other, and carried them both to the door, which Bryte opened for him, allowing him to dump the two cats unceremoniously into the outer office.

  “Now,” he said, returning to his chair and leaning his head against its back. “you will explain your need for information about the gifted.”

  Lina took a deep breath, recovering, Bryte guessed from the shock of seeing that eye. She said, “I came to Tirbat to locate a particular item, a net of power that, thrown over a person, renders that person helpless. But now I have a more urgent need—a need for an ally. A friend came with me, hoping to find a job in which he could use his special talents. Last night we had an encounter with a man who offered my friend a job and convinced him to go away with him. I don’t trust the man; I feel that my friend is in grave danger. I want to find him and free him from the influence of the man who hired him.”

  “Who was that man?” Tension was evident in Master Onigon’s voice, and his single eye fixed an unwavering gaze on Lina.

  Lina hesitated a moment, then said, “Lord Inver.”

  “Lord Inver.” As he repeated the name, Master Onigon slowly shook his head. “Lord Inver,” he said again, his one eye shut. “It’s worse than I feared.”

  “You know him?” Lina demanded eagerly.

  He opened his eye. “Oh, yes, I know him. And I’m afraid you will not see your friend again.”

  “Why do you say that?” Lina snapped.

  “Lord Inver is the reason you’ve had difficulty finding gifted here in Tirbat. He’s what I’ve been protecting Bryte from. I promised her mother—”

  “You knew my mother?” Startled, Bryte blurted out the question. “How? Why’d you never tell me? What did you promise her?”

  “To keep you safe,” he said. “And yes, of course I knew her. I tried to keep her safe, but I failed.”

  “Her mother was gifted, also?” Lina asked quickly.

  “Yes indeed, very gifted. That’s why she took refuge here in the flats and worked as a barmaid, though she was well educated and could have found an excellent position or married into a prominent family.”

  This was news to Bryte. She’d known that her mother was educated, but not the rest of Master Onigon’s revelation. Her mother had taught her a great deal and, had she not died so young, would probably have provided her with an education sufficient to escape from the flats. But was her father gifted? Had he known that her mother was?

  “Who was her father?” Lina asked, sparing Bryte the need to voice her own questions. “Was he gifted?”

  Master Onigon spat. “He was—still is—a high lord. He’s Minister of Commerce. The worm! Sorry, Bryte, but he is. No, he’s not gifted, but he is allied with Lord Inver. He dissolved his marriage with Bryte’s mother at Lord Inver’s insistence when they discovered she was gifted.” He turned to Bryte and at last addressed her directly. “When he learned of her pregnancy, I guess he had some decency, because he left your mother alone until you were nearly old enough to fend for yourself. Maybe he wanted to wait long enough to determine whether you were gifted. Your mother managed to convince him that you weren’t, thus saving you but at the cost of her own life.”

  “What do you mean?” Bryte said, suddenly feeling cold all over. “She died of a fever, didn’t she?”

  Master Onigon rubbed the stubble on his chin and didn’t answer.

  “Tell the girl the truth,” Lina snapped. “She can handle it.”

  “I hope you’re right.” To Bryte, he said, “She was poisoned. By order of Lord Inver.”

  “Poisoned.” Bryte exhaled, letting out a low whistle. “Why? I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Obviously you’re a foe of Lord Inver just as we are,” Lina said. “I think you’d best tell us the whole story.”

  “I didn’t want her to know,” he said, indicating Bryte with a nod of his head. “I considered it safer and better for her to be shielded from all this.”

  “Unpleasant truths always have a way of becoming known,” Lina stated.

  “Yes, you’re right. The truth is more than merely unpleasant, however. You see, the Triumvirate guards its power very zealously. Several years ago Lord Inver convinced the Triumvirate that the gifted were a threat to that power. For one thing, the Triumvirate’s authority is bolstered by the state religion, the system of patron gods of each province, under the overall lordship of the supreme gods Dor and Dora, forming a hierarchy that sets the pattern for the political hierarchy. The Triumvirate is the supreme authority, the seventh tier, and under it, deriving their authority from it, are the twelve ministers who form the ministerial council, whose offices are on tier six.”

  “But what does that have to do with my mother being poisoned?” Bryte cried out. “And Lord Inver isn’t even on the ministerial council. His office is on the fifth tier.”

  “Just be patient and let me tell this in my own way. Your friend here needs to understand all this.”

  But Lina, too, was impatient. “I know how the government is organized,” she said.

  “Very well. The reason the gifted are perceived as a threat is that they worship the Power-Giver, or at least they revere him as something very close to a god. They pay no more than lip service, if that, to the provincial gods. Furthermore, they have their own communities, their own leaders. In most Communities of the Gifted all members have an equal say. A leader is chosen by the membership to serve for a limited time, after which the membership may either reelect or replace him or her with another. The Triumvirate would not care to see the general populace become enamored of that system.

  “There was at one time a large and healthy Community of the Gifted here in Tirbat, and many of the gifted held high offices. But some ministers on the council became jealous and felt that the gifted were a threat to their power. They looked for a way to reduce that threat. What they found was Lord Inver.”

  He paused and wiped away the sweat that beaded his brow. With a glance at Bryte as though to reassure himself that she understood his explanation, he continued, “At first he sought to allay the fears by pointing out that the gifted, too, had a hierarchical structure, with their seven levels of power. But that didn’t help because it was clear that within the gifted communities the leaders were not selected according to their level of giftedness, and that Adepts, who should have corresponded to the triumvirate, rarely held any office or were even active within the community, a fact which made the threat seem even more severe to the council. So Lord Inver proposed another way of removing the threat. He offered to sow dissension among the gifted and set them against each other so that the Community would be destroyed and many of the gifted would destroy each other.”

  “But that’s madness,” Lina said. “How could he do such a thing?”

  “Power corrupts, my dear. He offered power to those most gifted. He tempted them with the promise of ever increasing power, so that they could even dream of attaining the level of Adept.”

  “He couldn’t give them that much power.”

  “If he cou
ld, he didn’t. The government didn’t want a whole clutch of Adepts in the city. Because he tempted the most highly gifted to compete against each other in duels to the death, the number who gained power was kept low. That number could still be a threat, but Lord Inver had a way of resolving that problem. One by one, those few met with unfortunate ‘accidents’. He next set about destroying children who were discovered to be gifted, though I hope the Triumvirate was unaware of that nefarious activity.”

  Again he paused to gaze at Lina, who now listened intently, her impatience gone. “What I have told you is known to many, but I have other, more dangerous knowledge. I would rather not share it with Bryte.”

  “You can trust me, Master Onigon,” Bryte protested. “I can keep a secret.”

  “Not from Lord Inver, you couldn’t. Not if he knew you possessed it. No, I must protect you by keeping you unaware of this thing. I’m sorry, but I must ask you to go into the other room and wait there.”

  For appearance’s sake Bryte objected again, but then obeyed. He doesn’t know about my hearing. From the front room I’ll hear what he tells Lina.

  Master Onigon closed the door, leaving her alone with the two cats. The white cat rubbed against her legs and mewed softly, but the tabby sat on its haunches staring at the closed door and swishing its tail.

  “You don’t like being shut out of there anymore than I do,” she said, going to stand beside it. “At least I can do something about it.”

  Listening closely, she heard Master Onigon say, “You’ll understand why I cannot share with Bryte what I will share with you.” Then came the sound of a chair scraping across the floor, then paper rustling, a scratching sound she recognized as a pen scratching across the paper. Except for those sounds there was silence. No one spoke.

  In a burst of anger she understood He did know about her hearing. He was writing out his explanation.