Aethersmith (Book 2) (44 page)

“Brannis Solaran,” Kyrus lied. He was getting good at it.

* * * * * * * *

Kyrus was in his office in the palace when Celia arrived,
per his orders. Kyrus had been going over the plans for his newest airship with
Sanbin, who had become his own private smith of late. The sword-maker would be
helping to construct a hull made of folded, runed metal, similar to the
construction of the dragon-tooth weapons they had made together; the process
looked to be easier and quicker using steel.

“Sanbin, if you would excuse us,” Kyrus told the smith.

Sanbin swiveled a neck that looked too thick for such a
movement, and saw the arrival of Brannis’s tag-along shadow. He gave a knowing
wink when he turned back to look Kyrus way. “I have plenty o’ work fer keepin’
me busy a while. No worry on that account.” He took up the sheaves of parchment
with Kyrus’s drawings and runes on them, and packed them in a neat bunch.

Kyrus waited for Sanbin to exit and Celia to take his place
across the desk from him. He studied her a moment as she stood there, wearing a
green dress with white fabric showing at the tight-laced bodice that hugged her
form. She was of a height with Abbiley, and built just like her, buxom and
curvy, not so painfully thin as Juliana seemed at times. Her hair was darker
but that was no hard thing for a sorceress to change. The face was smoother,
her teeth straighter and brighter.
They take the girls at the Academy aside,
and teach them all those vain tricks, though.
He could not honestly rule it
out.

The other matter could wait. He would not let such abuses of
magic pass, but it was a subject that required less delicate handling than the
one that was foremost on his mind. “I had a long talk with the warlock last
night,” Kyrus began noncommittally. He watched for signs of a reaction from
Celia, but saw nothing but earnest curiosity (possibly feigned, in the long
tradition of humoring long-winded superiors).

“And?” she prompted when Kyrus did not continue after a
pause she deemed a bit too long. Kyrus wanted to see her mannerisms in all
forms, looking at them in a new light, comparing them to his memory of Abbiley.

“We talked about a great many things, things I had quite
frankly never expected to hear from him. We talked about distant lands and
people in our pasts—his from much further ago than mine. At one point, I
mentioned a name and he suggested that I mention it to you.” Kyrus allowed
himself to wander just a bit, to make her impatient. It was working.

“What name? Brannis, I know you are important around here
now, but that does not mean you should fritter away at other people’s time. I
have work to be getting to, and a meeting I am going to be late for,” Celia
said.

“Abbiley,” Kyrus dropped the name in front of her, to see
what she would do with it.

“That forsworn bastard! What else did he tell you about my
dreams?” Celia demanded, her nose scrunched up in disgust. Her face was
reddening as well, Kyrus noted.

“Tell me? Nothing? I brought the name up, and he thought I
ought to mention it to you. Tell me, what does it mean to you?” Kyrus asked,
trying to keep his tone neutral and inquisitive, rather than the eager and
interrogational it was steering toward on its own.

“I started having recurring dreams after Raynesdark. I
figured I had just seen enough horrors there and in Illard’s Glen that I just
needed to see something mundane and comforting every night; my sleeping mind
was making it up for me, like some sort of cure for nightmares,” she explained.

“How does the name come in?”

“That is the name they called me by in the dreams: Abbiley
Tillman,” Celia stated simply, as if it were not germane to the heart of the
matter. She seemed not to realize how much it mattered to one heart.

I never told him her family name,
Kyrus realized.
Or
did I? Did I slip and let loose that key bit of information, and forget I had
done it? I know I had wanted to hold it back in case of such treachery as this
may be.

“Do you remember any details of these dreams? People, by any
chance?” Kyrus pressed. Celia gave him a funny look, growing suspicious of his
questions.

“Why are you so interested all of a sudden, Brannis?” she
asked.

“Just humor me, if you would.” Kyrus tried being reasonable,
to see if that would get him just a bit farther.

“I do not remember details very well,” she said. “I have a
brother, Neelan, or something. That is the only one that comes to mind. Is this
what you brought me here for, to ask after my dreams? They are just dreams,
Brannis.”

“Rashan told you that?” Kyrus asked, filling time as his
brain absorbed the blow it had just taken.

Neelan really is her brother’s name. I never gave that
up. I hardly remembered it before she said the name but that was it. Perhaps it
was too much to hope for her to remember me, if it has truly only been since
Raynesdark.

“I did not need to be told whether my dreams were really
dreams. I had asked him in case some magic might have been at work. I had
assumed two things, both of which turned out to be wrong. First that he would
be of some use in telling me what might be happening in my head; the second,
that he could be discreet about it.”

“I will not keep you any longer from your other
engagements.” Kyrus tried not to stumble over the words. He needed time—time he
was not going to have with Celia in his office—to sort through his thoughts.

I do not know how, but Rashan managed to arrange for
Abbiley’s twin to be set right before me. Whatever scheme he is playing at, it
seems he might really have found her.

“Good. Caladris is a bit more jovial than Rashan, but he
still dislikes being kept waiting.” Celia seemed relieved for the change of
topic, and being given leave to depart. She turned for the door.

“You are working for Caladris now?” Kyrus called after her.
He had not delved into the matter of the enspelled maidservant, but he now had
a better candidate, it seemed, for that particular conversation.

“You were my last assignment for Rashan for the time being.
Now that Juliana is safely married off, he does not have to worry that you will
ruin the wedding,” she said, then grinned impishly back at Kyrus. “So he loaned
me out to Caladris as an assistant. It ought to help my career … assuming I can
actually get to my meetings with him on time.”

“Fine. Be on your way, then. Just tell the old man to stop
by and see me this evening. I do not expect he will object, and as he is Inner
Circle, I have no authority as such, but you can tell him it is an order, if it
comes to that,” Kyrus told her.

Celia was a trifling sorceress, resourceful and clever, but
lacking real power. She certainly had not cast the intricate spell he had seen
on that maid. Caladris likely knew who had, though, even if he had not done so
himself. The high likelihood of the latter gave Kyrus latitude to bully
Brannis’s uncle a bit.

“I will try
not
to let him think it is an order, if
you do not mind. You play a dangerous game provoking him, you know. You might
be able to get away with such transgressions now, Sir Dragon-Source, but the
rest of us have hides to keep intact.” She smiled at him again, flirtatiously
he thought this time, and strode off to her meeting with his uncle.

Dangerous game? You have no idea, Abbiley.

* * * * * * * *

“This had best be worth my time, Brannis. I had planned to
dine with your aunt for the first time this season,” Caladris huffed as sat
down across from Kyrus.

Kyrus had taken one of the small sitting rooms that were scattered
throughout the residential portion of the palace for their meeting. He wanted
it to be more cordial than an interrogation from across his desk; there was
always the chance that Kyrus’s guess about Caladris’s guilt was wrong.

“How is Aunt Fia?” Kyrus asked, proud that the name of
Brannis’s perpetually ailing aunt Fiadora came so readily to mind that he could
mention it casually without having to wrack his brain.

“Awful as always, of course. The cough gets worse by the
season,” Caladris grumbled. Fiadora was his second wife, and if matters kept
their course, he would be looking for a third by the next winter. “You did not
call me here for that, though. Of all the audacity, I might add! Celia had to
tell me that you had ‘ordered’ me to attend you, as if you had any authority to
do so!”

“Then why did you come?” Kyrus asked, pouring a glass of
wine for Caladris and another for himself.

Rashan’s temperance efforts … ha!
Kyrus snickered
mentally.

“Curiosity, I must say. A character flaw, I know, but one to
which I am nonetheless a slave,” Caladris admitted.

Oh, is it to be one of
these
conversations?
Kyrus wondered.
Celia must have noticed that “Brannis” had freed her
lady-servant and told him.

“So out with it, then,” Caladris said. “What is so important
that you are issuing commands to the Inner Circle?”

“I had business with Celia earlier today, and visited her
home to find her. She was not there, and the maid who answered her door seemed
to have been under a peculiar charm,” Kyrus began. “Celia is not well known for
her expertise in … well, anything magical, so far as I can tell. She has a
sharp wit but a Source as dull as a horseshoe.”

“Oh, look who has grown snobbish now that his own Source can
re-light the sun on a moonless night. She is clever and resourceful; that has
always been more useful than a strong Source. You yourself showed that well
enough getting Rashan’s attention,” Caladris spoke quickly, as if it were a
line of logic that he had practiced before a mirror prior to meeting with
Kyrus.

“That is neither germane nor entirely accurate. I became far
more useful to Rashan once I unshackled my Source. Celia, though, is just a
pawn here; someone else tampered with her servant’s mind,” Kyrus said, steering
them back to the matter at hand.

“Is that really all that you brought me here for, Brannis?”
Caladris sounded exasperated. “I had truly hoped that was a pretense for a more
interesting conversation. I thought that maybe you were beginning to grasp the
subtler side of politics. Alas, the claws of the knighthood are sunk deep in
you: ‘Do what is right, and you shall never sleep light.’ Awful rhyme, childish
sentiment.”

“So you admit that you were a party to this mind-control
magic?” Kyrus asked, surprised to have gotten even a tacit admission so
quickly.

“Admit? Admit what?” Caladris asked in return. “That I do my
job, do it well, and do not sleep any the worse for it, despite what your
knightly comrades would have you believe? I am tempted to leave you to ferment
on the subject a while, and be about my evening, but I think I have some duty
to see this righted.”

“I did not entirely follow that. Are you going to undo the
damage you have done to the girl?” Kyrus wondered aloud.

“Damage? Nonsense, the girl is fine, I am sure. This sort of
magic is used all over. It is subtle; you cannot see it with all the aether
used about the palace unless you know what to look for. Now that you do, pay
attention to the chambermaids, porters, rat-catchers, and the like. We cannot
find trustworthy, honest, loyal folk for every position needed to run the
Empire. The magic keeps them from spreading secrets they were not meant to
hear, or bringing violence against their betters.”

Kyrus sat mutely for a time, letting all he had just heard
process itself in his head. He thought back to something that Denrik Zayne had
said to him once.
“… your people suffer for the rule of the powerful
houses—noble and sorcerous alike—and I intend to see them free to live as
Megrenn do …”

“You are beginning to understand,” Caladris spoke after a
time. “There are measures in place to see that events do not pass beyond our
control. It is
we
who are in charge of the Empire: Rashan, myself … even
you, I suppose. The warlock suspects some conspiracy against him, and I feel in
my bones that he has the right of it. There are a scant few who are loyal to
him; most just serve the Empire, and would turn on him at the first hint of
vulnerability. He has never been well liked. He was always too brutal, too
ruthless, too focused on twisting emperors to do what
he
wished. Only a
few of us stand well and truly behind him. You would do well to count yourself
among them. Do not let our methods put into question our rightness or our
conviction. If there ever comes a time when we must choose sides over the
course of the Empire, remember that House Solaran is on Rashan’s side.”

“I will remember,” Kyrus answered flatly. He was not sure he
understood, but he had just seen a glimpse behind the curtain of the puppet
show. Colorful cloth characters had turned out to be filthy, drunken old men,
playing at civility for an audience.

“Oh, get over it, Brannis! Mind wards are simple and
harmless—a mild unpleasantness that keeps the world running. You ought to
understand that, being a soldier. By the winds, the world is full of necessary
unpleasantness, the sorts of things that you are glad someone else did, but
would rather not either do or see: butchering calves, cleaning and dressing
battle wounds, the … the … the whole process of childbirth.” Caladris found
himself rambling, and paused a few breaths to compose himself. “Just content
yourself that the proper controls are in place, and keep your eyes wide in the
aether as you walk the palace. You will see more now that you know what to look
for.”

“I will,” Kyrus promised. Caladris drained his wineglass and
took his leave, allowing Kyrus time to mull his revelations.

The emperor?
Kyrus realized after sitting, pondering,
for a time he had not tried to count.
Could they be controlling the
soon-to-be emperor the same way?
Kyrus was not certain just then that the
conspiracy that Maruk Solaran, Gravis Archon, and Stalia Gardarus died for was
not being replaced with another just as sinister.