The Seer - eARC (58 page)

“Yes,” Innel said slowly. “It is.”

Keyretura laughed a little, now seeming even more amused. “Maybe your fortune-teller is right after all,” he said.

* * *

That night Innel awoke in the darkness of a moonless night to the sound of the door to his suite opening, a bit of light coming from the hallway lamps, then dark again as the outer door softly closed. No cause for worry; there was only one person his guards would allow inside.

Unless, of course, some treachery had occurred. Now that the king’s funeral was gloriously and expensively completed, some across the palace were acting incautiously and unpredictably. Had they really thought Restarn would come back from his illness and take control again?

Innel kept track of them all through his spies as best he could, letting a few plans continue unhindered as long as they did not come to completion. The current turmoil seemed to be pushing people to action, to increasingly blatant attempts to shake Cern’s position.

And consequently his own. He could not be too careful.

He rolled out of bed, dropped softly to his hands and knees, pulling the long knife he kept between the floor and his bed. He stood to a crouch, fast, blade ready.

“Innel.” Cern’s voice.

He sighed, set the knife down again, watching her shadowy form. She kicked off her slippers, stripped off her shirt, let it fall to the floor. Usually she at least toed it to the side. That said something. What?

He lit a lamp. “Your Majesty.”

“I’ve been walking, Innel. Outside, in the gardens. Thinking.”

Where she could be picked off like a low-flying duck, from any window, even with guards all around her. “I would so very much prefer that you think indoors, my lady,” he said.

She looked out to the gardens below. “I know.”

Cern had no succession list, despite his urging. If anything happened to her, the Ministers’ Council would very likely consult the old king’s list, and Innel was under no illusion that anyone on that list would keep him in his current position of Lord Commander.

He had been focusing so hard to shore up her reign, to keep the empire’s borders strong, to bring the mining towns back into line, that he had not given enough consideration to his own situation should Cern’s reign truly stumble.

Concerned for her safety, he had told her repeatedly, not mentioning his own. But she was no fool.

“You won’t be on the list, Innel,” she said, following his unspoken thoughts. “You couldn’t hold the Houses.”

“I understand that, my lady.”

It rankled, but he knew it to be so. He had worked harder to achieve his position than any of his Cohort brothers, and his father had been one of the king’s generals, but it was not enough. Never enough.

She turned to face him. “I’ve wanted to be free of him my whole life. Now I am. Why doesn’t it feel like it?” Something about her expression reminded him of her when she had been so much younger, a child. When he’d finally understood that he would devote his life to being the mate she needed.

And he had.

“The ladder is climbed one rung at a time,” he said, quoting his brother. He wondered a moment too late if she would remember this as well, and if that were a good plan. If she did, she didn’t show it.

“My father wanted to push the border south into Perripur. He always thought Kelerre should be ours. Did you know that?”

“I heard him say so, once.” A rare, late night chat with a handful of the near-adult Cohort, drinking and smoking with the king until first light.

“The mountain mines,” she said. “The tribes. The borders. So much defiance.” She shook her head. “We are in very deep now, Innel.”

“Transitions are difficult times,” he said, echoing Lismar. “We will take them all in hand. It will be settled. Soon.”

“These battles are costing us, Innel. It will cost us more yet to win them. If we even can. Perhaps we should stop spending so much to war against our own people. Let them withdraw if they want to.”

From anyone else, words of treason. Innel suddenly felt very tired. “My lady—”

“We could at least talk to the mining towns,” she said. “Find out what they would do with their independence if they had it.”

“Cern, that would be—you have no idea what kind of rebellion that would encourage.”

“No idea?” She turned on him. “Don’t you think I might have some idea, Innel? Some small glimmer of conception, after the many years I also spent in the Cohort, studying beside you and forty of the most cunning and unpleasant of the empire’s aristo whelps?”

“I only meant—”

“I know what you meant, but I will not be insulted. Yes, I know there is a cost to asking those questions. But what is the cost of continuing as we are now?”

“We cannot know.”

“No? She named the die roll, Innel. Every time. A hundred times.”

He had known it was a mistake to let Cern go off with the seer, but there was little he could do besides point out that the young woman was still recovering from questioning, that it might be best to let her heal. Cern had not been dissuaded in the least, simply directing her guards to carry the girl, blankets and all.

“Dice are simple,” he said. “An empire is not.”

She laughed humorlessly. “That much is clear. You don’t believe her, that if we fight to keep the empire whole, it will crumble into pieces. You spent so much time and coin to get her in hand, Innel, to bruise and break her, and now you ignore her advice?”

“What does she truly know? It is easy to make predictions,” he said, realizing he was echoing Keyretura.

Cern exhaled. “I don’t want to believe her, either. But it is not going well on the borders. Or in the mountains. What of Erakat? Garaya?”

“Garaya and Erakat will comply. I will make sure of it.”

A victory at Garaya would turn all this around. He thought of Sutarnan leading a force to take back the walled city, mere weeks from arriving. He wondered if he should have sent more troops.

“Are you sure? Innel, are you sure?”

Was he? He had better be. “Yes. I can quiet this unrest. I only need a bit more time.”

“I don’t know how much of that we have left,” she said softly. “I’ve been on the throne nearly two years. People are starting to wonder if things will ever be better than when I took it.”

He could not argue with that. Restarn’s passing had made people think fondly of past glories. That the old king had borrowed against the future to fund his expansions, that these debts were now coming due—no one wanted to hear about that.

“Innel,” she said, “maybe . . .”

He held his breath. His mind, unbidden, found many ways to finish that sentence.

Maybe she had promoted him too far, too fast. Maybe he should resign. Maybe . . .

He waited, keeping his musings from his face.

“Maybe now that he’s dead, things will be better.”

“I’m sure of it,” he said with relief.

After a long moment, Cern took his hand and drew him under the covers, silently pulling his arms around her as she curled into a half-ball. As she began to breathe evenly, he lay there, unmoving, feeling her warmth against the front of his body and wondering what he would do if it all came crashing down.

“I like what you’ve done there.” Mulack motioned with his wine goblet out the window of Innel’s office. Innel and the Eparch-heir of Murice had run through the polite conversation available to them. It hadn’t taken very long.

“Putar has returned from Sinetel,” Innel said, explaining.

Through the window, Execution Square looked like a huge cat’s cradle with the three traitors as hands. Returned from Sinetel as rebels, they had been allowed to keep their clothes on for the execution, a rare allowance, but now that Innel saw what Putar had in mind, he saw why. The hooks were embedded deep into the fleshiest parts of the three of them, simply going right through the cloth, as if to say that there was no hiding from the retribution of the empire.

Each hook was pulled taut by cables that moved freely around grooved tracks in vertical posts thoughtfully arranged around the square. Each was further hooked into another of the three traitors, such that each one who moved affected the barb in another’s flesh. Such movement could not really be avoided, not when the geared spikes mounted on the very same posts clicked forward into the skin of each sufferer, advancing with the bells of the hours.

From the looks of it, the three had stopped discussing the strategy of lessening their suffering by working together and were now screaming at each other.

Pain and impending penetration could do that to people.

“Ah, of course. I should have recognized his touch,” Mulack said.

“He has a knack,” Innel agreed. “As much as I enjoy your company, Mulack, I do have rather a lot to do. So—”

Mulack held out his cup for more wine.

Eparch-heir, Innel reminded himself, refilling the cup with as much courtesy as he could. Mulack drained it noisily, leaving his lips wet with the dark red wine, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his purple and cloud-white jacket, leaving tracks on the cuffs.

The message was neither subtle nor new: Mulack could easily afford to replace his expensive jacket every day of the year if he so chose. The only stains on Mulack’s clothes would be the ones he enjoyed.

Innel sat back, hoping his stare might inspire the man to come to the point.

Mulack’s gaze roamed languidly around the room. At last, adjusting his now-wine-stained jacket, he placed his dripping cup on Innel’s desk, rather closer than Innel liked to the detailed map of the Rift he’d been studying. Innel moved the map away.

“Last night,” Mulack said, with the air of someone about to say something of consequence, “I was sitting on the crapper, thinking about you. Thinking, indeed, about the many conversations I’ve been hearing in which you are mentioned. It occurred to me that I must do something about it.”

“You needed to see me alone to tell me how well you wipe your ass? Congratulations, Eparch-heir. I’ll see if I can arrange a parade.”

A small laugh. “Listen to me or not, but I’ll be eparch in a few years, Innel, no matter what happens to you,
Lord Commander
.”

Innel very much wanted to wipe the smirk off Mulack’s face. Instead he forced himself to slowly exhale. “More wine?” he asked politely.

“Yes, I think so.”

Innel poured, focusing on this action to both clear his mind and his temper.

Mulack took his cup, his smallest finger uncurled and pointed at Innel. “I know we’ve had our differences across the years. But here it is, straight as an arrow: people are talking about you.”

“They always talk about me.”

“Yes, but it’s no longer about your uncommon rise to position or your pretty face. Now they are asking who else could be Lord Commander. People are losing faith in you, Innel.”

“
People
are, are they?” Innel said, hearing the edge in his voice. He could not count the times Mulack had said such things to him and Pohut as they came up in the Cohort. Mulack was very good at sowing doubt. “Why should I credit this, coming from you? Given our, as you say, differences?”

Mulack’s expression turned serious. “Surprising myself as much as anyone, Innel, I want to keep you here. I know the others who could take this position from you, and much as it makes me want to empty my stomach onto the floor right here and now to say it, good wine and all, you’re the better choice.”

“I suppose your reluctant support is better than the alternative.”

“Far better, I assure you.”

“Is there advice coming, Eparch-heir?”

A wide gesture. “Pah. Why bother? You’re not going to listen to me.”

“The advice of an enemy is gold. We’ve had our differences, Mulack, but gold is always welcome.”

At this Mulack laughed. “So it is. Smart move, the mage. No one knows for sure if he’s the real thing, so you’ve got everyone on edge. Amazing what a quality black robe will do, isn’t it?. I think Murice should start making them. Tell me, is this woman you’re having interrogated in the dungeons really the fortune-teller of rumor?”

Innel’s stomach clenched at this fast change of topic and how Amarta’s story had traveled. He forced himself to chuckle. “Good,” he said. “I was worried the story would seem too far-fetched. She’s a cousin of mine who has been saying some unflattering things about my dead father. We are—reconciling our differences.”

“Ah, that makes more sense.”

“So. Your advice, Mulack, Eparch-heir?”

Mulack leaned forward, his gaze steady. “Win something, Innel.”

Toward the evening of the second day since Innel had finished having the seer questioned, Srel opened the door to his office to let in Tokerae dele Etallan.

“Eparch-heir. What a pleasure. What can I—”

“There’s something you should know. I think it’s rather important.”

“Go on.”

Still standing, Tok set a gold souver firmly on the desk in front of Innel. Innel picked it up and examined it closely. He knew what to look for now. The horse’s teeth. The king’s eyes. But first to be sure Tok and he were talking about the same thing. “And . . . ?” he prompted.

Tok’s grimace gave Innel the distinct impression that Tok knew perfectly well what the problem was. The other man settled himself into the chair across from Innel and gave a long sigh. “You should have told me, Innel. We’ve been working on the same problem.”

“We have?”

“It’s not as if Etallan wouldn’t be the first House to be suspected, brother. We do know our metals.”

So Tok knew, and that meant Etallan knew. Who else knew?

“You do indeed. And so—” He gestured to the coin, raised his eyebrows.

“An excellent forgery. Good enough that we had no idea, until . . .” Another look. “I really shouldn’t tell you this. My eparch mother would be quite unhappy if she found out.”

“I wouldn’t want to get between you and your eparch, Tok.”

Tok waved this away. “Ah, well, there comes a time to take control away from them, doesn’t there? Something I think you already know.” He gave Innel a conspiratorial smile, which Innel found unsettling for its implications about the king. He kept his expression tidy. “You will keep my secret?” Tok asked.