Also, clearly someone who didn’t have a resource you could readily plunder. Because you would still need his personal expertise. And you wouldn’t have that if you stripped his lands bare.
The result was . . . interesting. People actually began to relax around him. They didn’t fear him. They didn’t suspect him of double dealing. They didn’t suspect him of scheming to get what they had.
Because clearly, if he was the sort of man who was grateful to have a manor riddled with vermin, if he was the sort of man who put up with smoky chimneys and smelly privies, and did so with a self-deprecating charm, then he was absolutely no threat to anyone else’s ambitions.
So when the Court was dismissed for everyone to go back to their chambers to bathe and change for dinner, he felt a little—a very, very little—less tension.
For now.
Because this was the Court of the Emperor, and the situation could turn in an instant.
12
“So . . . if it’s half past breakfast here, it will be luncheon there?” Delia asked. It didn’t make any sense. Wasn’t it always the same time everywhere? “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Jonaton sighed, and picked up an apple from the breakfast table, and placed it in front of her. “The world is shaped like—well, a ball, not an apple, but this will do. The sun goes around it like this.” He picked up another apple and moved it around the apple in front of her in a circle. Then he picked up a knife—
“If you carve a line into my table, I will put that apple somewhere very unpleasant,” Isla said, giving him the side-eye.
He moved the second apple a little farther away from the first and put the knife between them in a straight line. “So, the sun directly overhead means that it is noon here—” he pointed to the place on the first apple where the knife touched it. “But what would it be here?” He moved his finger to a spot on the apple in front of where the knife was.
She tried to envision it. It was hard, but eventually it dawned on her. “Uh. Morning?” she hazarded.
He nodded. “And here?” He moved it to behind the knife.
“Afternoon?”
“And that’s how mages discovered the world is round and the sun goes around it, because nothing else makes any sense,” Jonaton confirmed. “When we were able to create Gates that went a very long way, we began to realize that when we stepped through them, although we thought no time had elapsed, if we were going east or west, the time was either later or earlier than it was on the other side of the Gate.”
“But why do days and nights happen, then?” she asked.
“A very good question. And the answer is that the sun travels east to west, really slowly, so for us on the world, we get night and day.” He cocked his head at her. “Didn’t you learn this in school?”
“I didn’t go to school,” she confessed. “I had a tutor, and all he taught me was how to read and write and figure. This wasn’t in any of the books I ever read.”
“Well, all right. I suppose this is something that only mages and people doing things all over the Empire really have to reckon with,” he admitted. “It isn’t as if most people go through very long-range Gates all that often.” He handed her the first apple, and took the second, and began carving off bits to eat. “Anyway, what we call Absolute Noon is when the sun is directly over the Capital City. So, if it’s breakfast here, it’s halfway to luncheon where Kordas is, so you see the difficulty.”
He didn’t say the difficulty of what, because someone might be scrying on them, but now she knew this was why it was going to be hard to communicate with Kordas. Isla’s Mindspeech was only one-way, and wouldn’t reach that far in any event. Yes, both Kordas and Isla were mages and could mutually scry each other, but they had to establish a time, and they had to be sure neither of them was being scryed on.
“But this means the people on the Regatta boats lose two whole candlemarks of daylight going to the Capital,” she said. Which was a reasonable thing to say, and if anyone was scrying them, would give a reason for why they were discussing time changes.
Jonaton shrugged, pursed up his mouth, and in an ever-so-slightly-prissy way said, “And that is a small price to pay to serve the Emperor.” Then added in a more normal tone, “It’s also why people get up long before dawn to line up at the Gates for the barge parade. You’ve got a choice, really. If you’re an early riser, you get into place soonest, you have a good chance your barge will make the crossing in the early morning, and you get home before too much of the day is gone. Remember, you get those two candlemarks back when you get home. Or if you are counting on an early rush of boats, you wait until late afternoon, you cross before sunset at the Capital, and you’re back home in time for supper.”
“And if you don’t give a shit, like me, you get up, you stock your boat with beer, you get in line, and you get home when you get home,” said Hakkon, taking the apple out of Jonaton’s hand and eating it, seeds and all.
“Hey!” Jonaton objected. Hakkon reached past him, grabbed another pair of apples from the bowl, kissed one, and gave it to him.
Jonaton took it, the scowl on his face turning to a smile at the kiss.
“Did you know the world is round?” Delia demanded of Hakkon.
“Is it?” he responded.
“Of course you know. I’ve told you often enough!” Jonaton scolded.
Hakkon shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “Does that make the wheat ripen faster? Does it keep my horse from throwing a shoe? No? Then it doesn’t make any difference to me, and there’s no reason for me to think about it.”
Delia turned back to Jonaton. “Then why do the seasons happen?” she demanded. “Why do the days get longer, then shorter, then longer again? How—”
“Oh, you make my head ache with your questions,” Jonaton replied. “Some of us think it’s because the sun bobs up and down a little, like north to south, so when it’s bobbed furthest away from somewhere on the world, it’s colder. That’s the Dancing Sun concept. Ask Ponu. Better yet, ask Koto. He’s the star-minded one, and he loves it when he gets to show off what he knows.”
Hakkon shrugged, as if to say, Don’t ask me, I don’t know and I don’t care.
She might have pestered Jonaton anyway, but Isla caught her eye, and when her sister rose, she rose. As she had expected, Isla drew her into that little alcove of a room and shut the door.
“As I expect you guessed, Kordas and I need to find a way to work out a time when we know neither of us can be scryed so that we can scry each other. Are you familiar with that little leather note-case that Beltran has on him?” Isla asked.
“I should,” she said, with a bit more sting to it than she’d intended. “I made it for Kordas and he gave it to Beltran.” That had been . . . well, a little embarrassing. She’d been hard in the throes of her first love of Kordas and she had put a lot of work into that case, embroidering the Crest of Valdemar into the soft glove-leather of the case, then hand-stitching the rest of the case herself. And Kordas had looked at it, said, “Thank you, Delia, this is exactly what I’ve needed for Beltran!” and given it to his Herald and secretary with a smile.
Humiliating. But what could I do without further humiliating myself?
Isla nodded. “Good. Then do you think you can place a note in that case by reverse-Fetching it?”
She groaned a little, because that was going to be another long-distance try, and . . . well, it would be as hard as personally pushing a wardrobe up the steps of a tower to the top by herself.
But then, what was everyone else doing? The equivalent, of course.
“I’ll try,” she said. “But I can’t promise it will work.”
“Good. Sit down,” Isla said, pulling a stool out from a niche in the wall. “Here’s the note.”
She handed Delia a small piece of vellum, not parchment—thicker, so Beltran should notice the
difference from the parchment he kept in the case. It was about the size of her palm. Written on it were the words, Valdemar dawn, husband.
It could not possibly be less incriminating. It could refer to anything. It could have been left in the notecase by accident, or picked up by accident. No one knew either Isla or Kordas were mages, and no one knew Delia had Fetching Gift.
“Will he know what time dawn is where he is?” she asked.
Isla nodded. Delia sighed, put her hands palm up on her lap with the scrap of vellum in them, closed her eyes, and concentrated with all her might on the inside of that notecase, the flap inside of the back cover, how the leather had some perforations in it because she had started to embroider that side as well with a red rose, the symbol of love, and had stopped herself and picked it all out again.
She felt the tension of Fetching building up inside her, and continued to let it build, and build, and build, until her head blazed with pain and she didn’t think she could hold this for one moment longer.
Then she released it, and immediately blacked out.
She came to with her head in Isla’s lap, and a headache behind her eyes that was at least as bad as the one she’d had after Fetching that wretched rock from the wilderness. She winced away at the light.
“I caught you before you fell,” said Isla. “That headache is all reaction-headache. Which is actually a good thing, since it means I have potions that I can give you that will put you to sleep until it ebbs.”
“Did it work?” she asked, around a mouth so dry it felt as if she hadn’t had anything to drink in a year.
“Well,” Isla said, “the note went somewhere. If it didn’t go to the right place, no harm. We’ll know tomorrow morning, I expect.”
Delia sighed and allowed herself to be helped to her feet. Isla helped her stagger to her room, where she dropped into bed and lay there, fully clothed until Isla returned with the promised potion.
Which tasted vile, with a bitter, fetid aftertaste no amount of honey would cover up.
And after a while, relief came, then sleep.
* * *
—
Delia woke, feeling weak, empty, and starving; by the light at the windows it was almost sundown, and she thought briefly about trying to stagger down to the kitchen to get something to eat, or better yet, call for a servant to get something for her.
But there was a tray covered by a linen napkin on a small table that had been moved to the bedside. Under the napkin were a hand-sized loaf of bread, butter, a cold chicken leg, an enormous dill pickle, a cherry tart, a pitcher of water, and a goblet with honeyed wine in it, as she discovered by taste. She ate the bread and butter and stripped every bit of meat from the chicken bones, ate the tart—and looked dubiously at the pickle. She didn’t much care for dill pickles. But Isla knew that, so it had to be there for a reason.
She bit into it, and discovered herself licking her fingers, having swiftly devoured it in moments. Something in her had craved something that was in it.
The wine was gone by now, but it wouldn’t have paired well with that pickle, and the water she poured for herself satisfied much better than more wine would have.
She decided she had just enough left in her to strip for bed and climb under the covers. Which she did, and was insensible until just before dawn.
* * *
—
Because she had gone to sleep much earlier than she usually did, she found herself awake at false-dawn, and was actually dressed when someone tapped softly on her door.
“Come,” she said, and recognized Isla’s familiar silhouette as her sister cracked open the door and looked in.
“Good, you’re awake. I suspected you’d be interested in whether or not your Gift worked,” she said. “It’s down to the cellars for us.”
Isla had a dim mage-light floating over her head, just enough light so they didn’t stumble. Down into the cellars they went, this time into a different one than the one they’d all been using for their Gate-magic.
Mage-lights sprang to life as they entered, and lines of light began to glow dimly on the floor and the ceiling, a pattern that centered on a simple wooden table with chairs around it. Isla extinguished the light above her, and took a seat in one of those chairs. Delia took another beside her.
“I left my maid sleeping in my bed, after I gave her a headache and insisted she lie down,” Isla said, with a grimace. “I hate hurting her like that, but I needed something that wasn’t an illusion in that bed.”
“I doubt she’ll mind, since she’s getting to sleep late,” Delia pointed out. “Give her the rest of the day off or something. It’s not as if both of us are incapable of taking care of ourselves for a few candlemarks.”
“True,” Isla said, and patted her hand. “Well, this will be the first time you see scrying, won’t it?”
Delia nodded. Since most of her sister’s education as a mage had come at Kordas’s instruction, and her father had not had so much as a hedge-wizard of his own, she really hadn’t seen much magic except the antics of performers at the Midsummer and Midwinter festivities back home.
“Normally I would be doing a sort of scrying that only I can see and hear, but since you’re with me, I’ll make it so that you can see it too,” said her sister. “Kordas will probably do the same for Beltran.” She smiled a little. “I must say, I am very grateful that with this sort of spell, distance is irrelevant; it’s the link between the two parties that matters, or the link between the scryer and the destination.”
She picked up what might have been a mirror, except that it was made of opaque black glass, and propped it on a holder so they could both see it.
She tapped the surface of the table, and glowing lines forming a pair of circles with unfamiliar characters written between them appeared. She whispered a few sentences of words Delia could not make out, and the surface of the glass misted, as if fog was condensing on it.
Then the mist cleared away.
And there, as if they were looking through a window, was Kordas. He was seated at a table. A similar mirror was propped up before him; there was a strange, humanoid canvas thing like a dressmaker’s dummy standing to his right; and Beltran was standing to his left.
Delia’s eyes were immediately drawn to that strange—thing. It was almost faceless, nothing more than indentations in the canvas forming its bare head suggesting features. It appeared to be wearing nothing more than a tabard of scarlet with a purple wolf-head on it. There was a tiny five-pointed star inked on its forehead, between where its eyebrows would have been, if it had had eyebrows.
“Don’t be alarmed.” Kordas’s voice emerged from the mirror, thin and attenuated but perfectly understandable. “This is Star, a vrondi trapped by Imperial mages in a giant doll body. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them have replaced servants around here. It knows when we’re being scryed and can warn us if the mage assigned to keep track of us turns his attention to us.”
“He will not.” The whisper of a voice appeared to come out of that faceless doll. “He sleeps. Most of the mages sleep now, and the ones that are active are all over-watching the army in the south. This is the best time to communicate.”
Some of the tension eased out of Isla’s body. “I’d hoped as much. So you got the note Delia sent?”
“I have a bruise,” said Beltran, making a face. “She’s . . . very forceful. Just as well that I was loitering around the apartment they gave us, instead of out in public. I looked inside my coat to try and figure out what had hit me, took out the notecase, and saw it.”
Delia opened her mouth to apologize, but Kordas was already speaking. “I have a lot to tell you, and we need to be fast about it. So, let me begin.”
Delia quickly discovered that her brother-in-law was very good at summing things up in as few sentences as possible. Then again, he might well have spent many hours trying to condense eve
rything down last night. He told them what he had discovered about the Dolls, how all the Palace servants had been sent away to the war, how the Imperial mages had turned to Elemental magic rather than Abyssal for the most part, and how he thought he was giving a good impression of a man and his realm that were too inconsequential to matter.
And how he had promised the vrondi that he would add them to the escape.
And how he wanted to get the vrondi to bring the Imperial hostages as well.
Isla had frowned at the first, but she scowled at the second. “Kordas!” she exclaimed. “What are you thinking? You have no right to ‘save’ them by kidnapping them! They aren’t your children! I understand why you’d feel like this, but—!”
“I was thinking that they are children,” he said simply. “I was thinking that they are there through no fault of their own. I was thinking that even vipers can be tamed. And I was thinking about your brother.”
Isla pressed her lips tightly together and said nothing.
“I’m doing this, Isla,” he said, in tones that suggested that arguing with him was going to be like hitting one’s head against a rock. It would do no good, and the rock wouldn’t notice.
She sighed. “All right. How do you propose to do this?”
“If a Doll stands at a Gate and holds a talisman for our Gate to it, that will keep it open for as long as the Doll is there—” he began, but Star interrupted him with a hand on his shoulder.
“We are charged with replicating the Gate talismans,” it whispered. “You merely need to give this one a single talisman, and we can, in secret, replicate as many as are needed. We will not need separate talismans for the hostages. We will render them immobile and carry them across ourselves.”
Kordas looked taken aback for a moment, as if he was revising his plans.
“And before you leave us, Great Lord, this one will slip you a talisman for one of the Gates only Dolls use here in the Palace,” it continued. “Then you may return at your will, and pass your talisman to us.”
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