The Seer - eARC (60 page)

Keyretura. He had come to her home, broken her wards, violated her protections, and taken Dirina and Pas.

Despite how tired she’d been a moment before, how keen to end her journey, rest was nowhere in her plans. She would not stay a moment longer than she needed to.

How dare he?

He had taken Dirina and Pas.

She would find him.

She would make him sorry.

Chapter Thirty-three

Amarta was tired of being hot. In the heat of this tiny, enclosed wagon it was as warm as Perripur in summer’s midday sun. When a guard came to bring food and water and take the chamberpot, ducking as she stepped into the small space, Amarta begged her for an opening in the sides of the tarp.

“I’ll ask,” she said with a sympathetic look, wincing at the heat under heavy leathers, then she was gone.

Smaller and more secure than the Teva wagon in which she’d ridden to Kusan, there were no torn seams to peek out of as she was jostled on the road, not a thread out of place in the heavy covering to allow a small hole. She knew; she’d examined every inch of it.

She was still sore from Tayre’s questioning, and her fingers ached painfully under the splint and bandage. Even one-handed, she would have far preferred to ride than to be in here, day after day. She wasn’t being kept here to rest and heal, but to be isolated as around her the army marched. A captive.

And wretchedly hot in her stinking prison.

As she struggled to sit up, the wagon lurched to a stop, sending her flat again on the mattress, sharp pain shooting through so many parts of her.

Are you ever surprised?

All the time.

It didn’t matter that she could see the future if she didn’t happen to be looking.

Voices around her wagon indicated they had stopped to make camp. She wanted to be out of here, even if her every move was watched by a tencount of armed guards.

A gold coin on the hard straw mattress.

First, it seemed, she would have a visitor. As she watched, the tarp’s knots were untied and the flap opened, bringing with it the barest hint of evening breeze.

The Lord Commander ducked low, climbed inside, and sat on the tiny bench nailed to the side of this tiny wagon over her tiny straw-filled mattress. At his feet, in front of where she sat, he dropped a gold coin.

“Tell me about this.”

No words wasted to ask how she was, if she were still in pain, if she needed anything.

She picked up the coin, remembering a time when she would have been shocked to hold such a thing, with its image of the king’s face on one side and a horse and rider on the other. Then it would have meant something: food, warmth, and safety for her and her family.

Now all it meant to her was that someone wanted to own something and could afford to.

That’s what she was, she realized: an owned thing. No more than a slave. It put her in mind of Nidem and Ksava and Darad and the hundreds who lived underground in Kusan, rarely glimpsing the sun. But free.

“Well?” he demanded.

“It looks to me to be a gold souver, Lord Commander,” she said, tossing it back in front of him on the mattress.

He was silent a moment, looking around the small space, the water skin, the collection of clothes, and then back at her. “I understand you might be tempted to be impertinent with me, Seer, and I also understand why. But if you speak to me that way again, I will make sure you regret it.”

Amarta felt her face go hot. She swallowed an angry fear, looked away.

No, she told herself, focus on his words. His future.

She spoke. His returned look bordered on panic.

She blinked in surprise, trying to imagine what it would take to change the face in front of her to the one she’d just seen in vision.

“The coin,” he said forcefully. “What happens to it?”

She took it in hand again. “It travels a time, ser, then it is heated to liquid. I can’t follow it forward from there.”

He took the coin back from her with a dissatisfied sigh. Then: “You told me to look east. We have been days on the road in that direction.” That Amarta knew, she thought sourly, from the few moments she was allowed to go outside. “Tell me what I will find there.”

The smell of smoke. A man on his knees, one hand on a tree trunk, vomiting onto the ground. The scream of a horse, thrashing wildly, a spear through its neck.

Despite herself, she made a small sound, a soft cry.

“What?”

“A man is sick,” she said. “A striped horse screams. Something burns.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, Seer.”

“I see the
what
, Lord Commander. The why”—she shook her head—“is not always so obvious.”

“We have a contract. You have given me an oath, Seer.”

“I remember, ser.”

“See to it that you do.”

The three Teva elders sat across the table from another three youngers, a woman and two men. Between them was a large skin on which was a drawn a map.

“Bury it all there, Elders? Are you sure?”

“Yes.” This from the elder woman in orange. “Every last bit.”

The door to the longhouse burst open. Two Teva entered, breathing hard.

“Jolon. Mara,” said the elder man. “What?”

“Arunkel comes in force. Their scouts crossed our border. The rest are only days away.”

“Ah,” said the woman in blue, drawing out the sound.

“They have sent an army, Elders,” said Mara.

The young man across from them stood, strode angrily to the end of the longhouse. “We knew this would come.”

“We knew this
might
come,” the elder woman in blue corrected.

“I said that we should not give refuge to so many. Our welcome should not be stretched so far.”

“You have said many things, Makan,” the elder man affirmed. “We heard you then. We do not need to hear you now.”

“Will they talk or attack?” asked the elder in orange of Jolon and Mara.

“If we go to them first,” said Jolon, “show respect—”

“Not too much,” Mara interjected.

Jolon nodded. “Not too much. Then, by their own laws, they must talk first.”

“You go. Take others”—a glance at Makan standing to the side—“those who will behave as you direct. Find out what the Arunkin have come for.”

From Makan a hot exhale. “We all know what they have come for. It was a mistake to treat with those greedy, filthy aristos. Every word they speak is an illness.”

“What choice did we have?” asked the young woman who had sat next to him, “The earth cracked open like an egg with a hard, bright yolk.”

Makan turned to face her. “Worth so much. What silence might we have bought with it, if we had not agreed to share it?”

“Silence is not bought with gold,” said the elder man. “And we waste time and breath here.”

“We knew not to trust them. Look how it turns us against each other,” Makan said.

The other young man was now standing, glaring at Makan across the room. “We are not turned against each other. You find argument where there is none—”

The sitting elder woman in orange clapped her hands sharply. “We grow old as you bicker like foals wishing to be stallions. The horse is running; there is no time for regret at having mounted.”

“We should have—” the young man began.

The woman in orange stood, staring at the young man. He fell silent. “You interrupt me, Nahma?”

The young man dropped his gaze to the floor. “Forgive me, Elder.”

“Make yourself useful, Makan,” said the elder man. “Have the farms take food and everything else of value to Hanatha.” Then, to Jolon and Mara: “You know the Arunkin best. Go and treat with them. Do what you must to make them leave.”

Jolon took a deep breath. “If they already know, Elder, what then?”

“Then our associates at the capital have made of us a sacrifice,” answered the elder in orange.

“Is this likely?” asked the woman in blue of her.

“The Arunkin change loyalties as often as they change their encrusted clothes. It is possible.”

“We have not fought the Arunkin for centuries,” Jolon said.

“Not openly,” added the woman in orange softly.

“Not openly,” the elder man agreed. “That path leads steeply uphill, to a treacherous cliff. We must turn away from it, if we can.”

“Find out what they know,” said the elder in blue. “Find out what they want. Find a way to make them leave. Nahma,” she said to the young man, “send a message to our associates at the capital. They hold the other end of the dangerous rope we have helped weave. That we both hold our ends tight, they must know. Perhaps they need reminding.”

“And the mage,” said the elder man. “It is time.”

A humorless laugh from Makan. “He’s going to want something, Elder.”

“We will find a willing foal.”

“That is not what he wants, Elders, and you know this.”

“He cannot have that,” said the elder woman in blue.

“First get him here,” said the elder man. “Then we will talk.”

Innel swung up onto his horse. He, Lismar, and Nalas rode forward from the camp. The scouts had reported back, so they now had a reasonable map of the area. He had sent more scout teams north and south to look around.

Mines. Foundries. They knew what to look for.

At a steep rise the view opened up to a valley sloping down and away into the distance. Smoke rose in thin streams from the walled town to the south. From here they could make out, though barely, the figures going in and out of the town.

Innel looked at the northern town, a collection of squared and circular dark wooden buildings, stacked like a scattering of children’s toys, around which were people and horses that seemed to watch them in return.

Beyond them both, to the east, was the Rift, distance graying the line of black obsidian to a dark streak that stretched across the horizon.

Lismar pointed. “That is the Teva town, Ote. That”—a gesture to the rectangular walled town to the south—“Hanatha. Teva serfs, from what I gather, though their arrangement has never been entirely clear.”

“This?” Innel asked, bemused, looking over the valley, the town, the buildings. “This is the capital of Otevan?”

He had expected more. A great walled city, perhaps. A city-state of massive roads to support their famed shaota horses. Not two small towns with a few handfuls of buildings.

“Don’t be misled,” Lismar said. “The Teva have acquitted themselves well in battle many times.”

“Against other tribes.”

“Not only.”

“Even so”—he waved a hand at the whole area—“we have more soldiers than every man, woman, and child who could possibly reside here. If it comes to force, it will be a slaughter.”

“Have you examined the battle reports of the Southern Expansion in which my esteemed grandmother Nials esse Arunkel hired the Teva to repel the tribes encroaching on lands she’d granted to the Houses?”

“I was in the Cohort when you taught us about it, General. You may recall.”

“I do recall. You were an attentive student. Before the treaty was signed, the Teva fought against us with the cave tribes. Did you know this?”

“Against us? I have seen no such account.”

“It wasn’t recorded. My ancestor, Evintine Three, would not allow it. He thought it insulting to the crown.”

What idiocy. You could not learn about an enemy if you ignored the records of their victories. How many of the problems the empire faced today could be accounted for by suppressed accounts due to the sensitive pride of monarchs?

It would not happen under his watch, he resolved. No losses would be hidden from the war scribes, not one. Every account would be faithfully made and placed in the libraries, where it could be used to strengthen the empire’s military might.

“How do you know this, then?” he asked.

“Proscribed accounts did survive. My grandmother bought them on the black market.”

“She didn’t find the insult intolerable?”

“She knew the wisdom of examining defeat. Even so, she kept the accounts hidden, under mage-lock. I know she passed them to my brother. I’m surprised he never showed them to you. Perhaps he thought it best not to burden you with such things.”

A thinly veiled insult. He supposed he should not be surprised, given who she was.

Given who he was.

“There has not been time to sort through all his belongings.”

“Of course not, ser.”

“Hundreds of years ago, that. When was the last time the Teva fought a real battle?”

“When was the last time you did, Lord Commander?”

At that he turned in his saddle, facing her smirk and green eyes squarely. Arteni, he almost said, but stopped himself; she would respond that keeping order against a milling town was hardly a battle.

The old king’s sister, he reminded himself. First among generals.

“That’s why I have you, Lismar. To help find whoever is committing treason against the crown. To counsel me on resolving this matter. Do so.”

She looked past him to the towns. Her smirk faded. “Have you studied the battles in which the Teva lost?”

“Apparently I was not to be burdened by those accounts, either.”

“There are none,” she said, giving him a moment to consider. “There is a reason we brought sufficient force, Commander.”

The thousands of soldiers and cavalry behind them, now making camp. It had seemed too much, by far, an excessive expedition, outrageously expensive, but Lismar had insisted. Looking across the small towns before him, he found himself wondering what she could possibly be thinking. What was her true agenda?

Or maybe, being an Anandynar, she did not think much about cost.

Well, satisfying Lismar was worth something, both practically and politically. Maybe even this much.

In any case, they would end the affront to the crown, Teva or no, wherever it had originated.

Mined gold. Forged currency. Theft on an empire-wide scale. He would not allow it.

To Nalas he said: “Bring her.”

Lismar snorted.

“She can be useful, General.”

Lismar raised her hands in mock surrender. “Evintine Three,” she said, “would eat a fistful of raw garlic before every battle, calling it his etheric shield. The Grandmother Queen slept with the severed paws of a mountain lion in her hands the night before a fight. Ramtor the Fearless kept the skulls of his enemies on long mahogany shelves and would kiss each forehead before dressing in uniform and armor. Whatever gives you confidence, Lord Commander.”

Well, he reflected, at least there was no longer any need to keep the seer’s existence a secret; Lismar would make sure everyone knew.