The Seer - eARC (43 page)

Innel pushed away the ledger he’d been working on and the long lists and diagrams representing troop movements and supply lines. He set it atop the pile, watching the mage walk into the room.

The Cohort had been a rich study of those who intended to hold power. From early on, he and his brother had watched everyone keenly to understand the roles they intended to take, studying how to act in all ways like the aristos they could never become and the military leaders that they someday might.

Late into the night they would whisper, comparing the stance and mien of foreign dignitaries to Anandynars royals. Watching at dinners as House eparchs and governors ate and laughed with the king, noticing all the little ways that power played out—the grip of a goblet, the twitch of a mouth, the incline of a head, the changing measure of a gait. Face and posture, word and tone, the entirety of one’s physical presentation was a language that revealed thoughts and intentions, that showed how each person swam through the political surf of palace life.

Now he watched Keyretura, who briefly looked around the room for a chair. Innel had already moved the only other chair to the far side of the room. He wanted to see what the mage would do.

The way Keyretura moved was unlike anything Innel had ever seen. Smooth. Spare. Confidence in each step.

No, it was more than confidence; it was beyond that. Some would call it arrogance, but Innel recognized it as competence.

Keyretura took the chair Innel had placed so far away and turned it to face Innel. Then he stood, watching Innel, seeming content to stand there and wait until his point had been made.

Innel gave it a long moment to see if he would do anything else.

“Let me get that for you, High One,” he said at last, going to the chair and bringing it close to his desk. When Keytretura and he were both seated, he considered what he wanted of the mage.

He knew what Keyretura would see when he looked at him: bloodshot eyes, haggard expression, days’ worth of beard. Cern had not yet said anything about the shaving, but he must make time to do that.

Keyretura spoke. “You need rest.”

“I need a lot of things,” Innel said. “I need Sinetel to start producing ore instead of bodies. I need Lukata and Rott to stop sabotaging the rails and resume shipments to Houses Etallan and Nital. I need Garaya to stop whining about tax contracts they agreed to seven decades ago. And I need the girl’s head, since no one seems able to bring me her mouth.”

Innel had hesitated to tell Keyretura about the Seer and his now years-long search for her, but at this point there seemed little point to silence.

“Affairs of state will go better if it is not generally known that a mage is involved, especially a Perripin mage. The obvious politics I leave to you. As for the Botaros girl . . .” Keyretura paused.

“Yes?”

“The man you have pursuing her. The expensive one. I know him. If anyone can find her, it will be him.”

Tayre, he meant, who was overdue to report back on his plan to hire the girl, making Innel suspect it had not gone well.

“In three years he has yet to deliver any part of her but for some hairs. The others I’ve hired have done even less.”

“Have your searchers look south, to Perripur.”

Innel leaned forward in his chair, suddenly feeling more alert. “You know where she is?”

“If I knew where she was, she would be here. It only makes sense that she would go to Perripur, fleeing you.”

“Don’t you think she’ll reason similarly and then go somewhere else?”

“I don’t think she reasons at all. I think she simply has an unusual instinct for speculation.”

Speculation, not prediction. Well, Innel understood that; he had doubted her ability as well, once. Then he had become Royal Consort, Lord Commander, and Cern had been crowned.

“My expensive hound believes he can persuade her to come to me.”

“Perhaps he can. But if he can’t, you want her dead. Do I correctly understand your intent?”

“You do, but finding her—”

“Finding her is the harder part. If you can find her, I can take care of the rest.”

His confidence was heartening. A far cry from Maris’s objections and explanations.

“What about her ability?”

“No one is invincible. From what you’ve told me, she needs at least a little time to speculate, then act. I will not give her that time.”

“You would fight one of your own?”

A small smile. “She is not one of mine, Lord Commander. I have no reason to believe there is any magic in what she does at all. At best it is untrained potential.” He steepled his fingertips together. “But it does not matter; I have no intention of fighting. I will take her consciousness, then I will take her life. There is no struggle. It is quite simple.”

Keyretura’s words were like holding a well-made sword of good steel, straight and clean and ready. For the first time in the years since Botaros, Innel had the sense that this matter might truly be resolvable.

“I will find her,” Innel said. “Then, perhaps, I will have you do this thing.” He glanced back at the stack of books on his desk. Another thought occurred to him. “Do you know anything about accounts and ledgers?”

“Of course.”

“There is something not quite right with these,” He said, indicating the stack. “Would you consider taking a look?”

“Audits are far more effective when all involved know a mage is conducting them. I suggest you obtain for me a list of the names of everyone who has helped assemble and most particularly those who have signed the books you want examined, making sure everyone knows who is examining them.”

It was an excellent suggestion. Now Innel understood why the Perripin hired mages as advisers. “I shall do so.”

“In the meantime,” said Keyretura, “have them sent to my rooms.”

“Your slave misses you, Sire,” Innel said, bringing a chair close to the bedside.

Between being busy and not really wanting to see him, Innel had been coming less often to visit the old king. Today he had finally summoned both time and resolve.

“What now?” the king asked with a wheeze. “Your pizzle too small? Have your mage thicken it for you while you sleep, which I’m assuming is alone, since I hear nothing about my daughter’s growing belly.”

How could a man ill and bedridden for nearly two years continue to be so offensive? Should he not be made meek by this extended illness?

No. This was Restarn esse Arunkel, chosen by the Grandmother Queen to rule instead of her own children, whom she had found wanting. He was made in the same mold as his formidable grandmother, and mere illness would not make him compliant.

Perhaps it had even made him less so, having nothing left to lose.

“I have questions, Sire,” Innel said, finding it impossible to keep his resolution to stop using the honorific.

“Bring me my dogs.”

“Naulen, perhaps. Your dogs are ill-mannered and upset the queen.”

“She’s easily upset. I should have had her beaten more often. Go on, boy, amuse me with your questions.”

Well, then; no sense in being polite. Or drawing this out.

“I had Sinetel in hand. Months of the expected ore shipments. Now the numbers are short again and they claim not to know why. Also Erakat, Lukata, Rott. I can’t send force everywhere to keep order. What should we do?”

“Ah, Erakat. Grandmother’s eighth consort came from there, did you know? His family still owns a large estate. Breeds dichus, very fine ones indeed. A little delicate, but fast and mean. Maybe they could send me a couple to replace the ones you stole.”

Innel ignored this. “Garaya is short on taxes. The governor wants us to send force.”

“They have you dancing to the tune of their farts, boy. Stop letting them drag you about by your balls.”

It would be so easy to hit this thin, weak old man.

Just once, in repayment for the countless times he and his brother had been hit. Just once.

No, tempting as it was.

“I sent soldiers to the mining towns, Sire. They resumed shipments, then—”

“Then it all turned to shit or you wouldn’t be here whining about it. Halfwit! It’s not about your soldiers. It’s about you.”

Innel found he was breathing heavily. “What do you mean?”

“If it were me sending the army, ore would be flowing into the city like water, and Garaya wouldn’t be showing you their puckered asses instead of the coin they owe. They don’t respect you, Innel.”

Innel reminded himself that testing and needling was what Restarn was best at. Finding weaknesses. Eroding confidence.

But it put him keenly in mind of his outsider origins.

No. He was the Royal Consort. Lord Commander. His lack of bloodline no longer mattered.

“What do you suggest I do, exactly?”

“Show them you’ll stop at nothing. I thought you knew this. Why do you think I selected you from the Cohort?”

“You didn’t select me. Cern—”

“My daughter is a poorly trained dog. You think you’d stand where you do now without my hand directing the matter? Are you really such a fool?”

Innel left his chair, kicked it to the floor.

“Next time, Innel, bring Naulen,” Restarn said.

Innel swallowed hard, struggling to contain his temper. “What about Garaya?”

“Pah. Garaya is a pragmatic old whore. She opens her legs to the strongest. She spread for my grandmother and if you make a brave show with drums and fanfare over the backs of a few thousand men, she’ll bend over and spread for you, too.”

“Shall I send him in?” Srel asked.

It was increasingly difficult for Innel to go anywhere unnoticed. He had given up meeting his informant Rutif in the basement root cellar. Now the man came to see him at his offices, in the open.

“First take them somewhere else.”

The two dichu dogs to which he referred were sprawled in front of the fire, taking up, it seemed, as much floor space as they possibly could. Innel had not yet had time to do anything with them besides keep them away from Cern.

Srel gave the large creatures an uncertain look. One of the dogs slowly thumped her tail a few times then returned to a gentle snoring.

“Yes, ser. Where did you have in mind?”

The two dichu made people almost as nervous as Keyretura did, but interviews went better without the dogs present. “Her Majesty didn’t recognize them before,” he said. “She probably won’t now. Take them back to the kennels. Then send in Rutif.”

It took a few minutes to rouse the sleeping beasts and put them on leads, but then the dogs were gone and Rutif stood before him instead. The man listed slightly to the side of his shorter leg, a gap-tooth smile on his face. He gave a short bow.

“Lord Commander. I have something for you.” From outside the room, Rutif drew a small figure inside. A boy, perhaps nine, dressed in overlarge clothes with sleeves and cuffs rolled back, and matted, greasy hair. Someone had tried, though not very hard, to make him presentable.

The boy looked around the room, gaping, eyes wide, then dropped to all fours, his forehead on the wood. A full, formal bow.

Innel snorted, gestured to the man to get him up. The boy fearfully resisted, seeming to prefer the floor. Finally Rutif grabbed a fist full of the boy’s oversized shirt and yanked him to his feet, shaking him.

“What is this?” Innel asked Rutif, feeling the press of the books and maps and ledgers that demanded his attention.

“You’ll want to hear this, ser. He walked here from Varo. Tell him what you saw, boy.” Another shake of the child. He released him to stumble forward toward Innel.

“Your Majesty—” began the boy, grinning a wide, uncomprehending smile.

“No,” Innel said sharply. “That is what you call your monarch, your queen, which I clearly am not. Your queen: Cern esse Arunkel. Surely you know this?”

The boy gave a sheepish look followed by a shrug.

“That he doesn’t know,” Rutif admitted, “Tell him what you do know, boy.”

“If he’s not the king, who is he?” the boy asked Rutif, whose hand flicked out to slap the boy’s head. The boy yelped.

“Where you came from in Varo. What you told me.”

“What should I call him, then, if not ‘Your Majesty’?”

“Lord Commander, you call him,” said Rutif. “Tell him about the goats.”

Innel lifted a finger, about to signal Nalas to remove both of them.

“The goats!” the boy said, turning back to Innel. “The wagon stank, Lord Mander. Like a shithouse, you know, because it was. A goat shithouse!” he laughed.

Again Rutif flicked.

“Ow!”

“Just tell him, boy.”

“I was hiding behind a tree, watching. One of the goats escaped out of the wagon when they weren’t looking. He ate some nettles. Then he pooped gold.”

Innel lowered his finger. “Gold? From a goat’s ass?”

The boy nodded vigorously.

Across the room, Nalas was visibly suppressing laughter. Innel gave him a hard look, then turned the look on Rutif. “You waste my time with this.”

Rutif held up his hands, as if to beg a moment. “So I thought as well, Lord Commander, but no—the boy is a loyal citizen. Allow me to give you proof.” He held out his hand and in a showy gesture slowly fanned opened his fingers to reveal a lump of pale ore perhaps a finger’s width thick.

Rutif and the boy watched Innel as he walked around his desk and took the item from Rutif’s palm, examining it closely.

“It’s clean,” the boy said unnecessarily.

It was also, without question, gold.

Someone in Varo had goats who were eating gold ore. Or perhaps being fed it in an effort to quietly take it somewhere else.

“You did well to bring me this,” he said. “Where in Varo, boy?”

“Outside Seele,” the child said, the smile suddenly gone from his face.

“You walked all the way from Seele to Yarpin?”

“Yes, Lord Mander.”

“Alone?”

The boy’s mouth twisted downward along with his gaze. He nodded.

“Where are your parents?”

A shrug. “I don’t know. My village was burning, so I left.”

“Who burned it?”

“Didn’t see. Too busy running away.”

The answer was too quick. An obvious lie. The boy was scared. He might not know who ruled his empire, but he knew the colors of the Arunkel military.