14 Lennitay (continued)

I walked around after a bit, admiring the courtyard. It was open to the outside on two sides, and the sunlight even at seven o’clock in the morning was blinding thanks to the white stone paving the paths that led away from the courtyard to some other part of the palace. Ahead of me, with respect to where I’d entered, was another archway that led to a short hallway identical to the one we’d come in by, but I couldn’t see very far thanks to the sunlight. I went to stand at its entrance, glancing at the guards for some hint, but they ignored me. That was when I became angry. I was so afraid of what the God-Empress might do that I’d forgotten how far I’ve come, how many dangers I’ve faced, and I was ashamed of my cowardice. The God-Empress might decide to have me killed no matter what I did, so I decided to hell with her, and set off down the hallway. When I think back on how defiant I was, it makes me feel sick.

This area, too, was completely empty of people. If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought the palace was abandoned, and I wondered how its population could disappear so thoroughly. I suppose the servants, not being otherworlder women with strange powers that fascinated the God-Empress, would take every opportunity to stay out of their mistress’s sight. I wandered the broad, frescoed halls, mentally keeping track of my route, until I reached an actual door. It was unlocked, so I pushed it open and found what I can only call a boudoir. The walls were invisible thanks to all the filmy draperies that shrouded the room, most of them moving lightly in an intangible breeze; the floor was so soft it was like walking on a pillow, every step throwing me a little off balance. Cushioned, backless chairs stood at random throughout the room, some of them canted due to the pillowy nature of the floor. Everything was in shades of red, from deepest maroon to lightest pink, and the God-Empress, who was reclining on a divan at the center of the room, was dressed in a thin shift of pale red—not pink, but pale red, there’s a difference—so sheer I could see her nipples. Not that I was looking. They were impossible to miss.

“You are late,” the God-Empress said, and here I should probably admit that I’m making up almost everything I write her saying in this conversation. Not the intent or meaning, and I’m not doing it to make myself sound impressive and clever. When we were in her pavilion, she spoke in very straightforward language, but every time I’ve met her privately, she’s used what sounds to me like formal or archaic words. Understanding her put a strain on my aeden-acquired language skills, and I found I couldn’t remember her exact words most of the time. So this conversation is more extrapolated even than most of what I write. I really do think there’s a pouvra for memory. If I ever have time, maybe that’s the one I’ll try to invent.

Anyway, she said, “You are late,” but she didn’t sound angry. I said, “I apologize, but your palace is too beautiful for me to rush through it. And I didn’t realize how constraining this dress would be.”

“You dislike my gift,” the God-Empress said.

“It’s beautiful. I meant only to indicate my ignorance of Castaviran clothing,” I said, trying not to panic. Insulting her before half a minute had passed was not a good beginning to this day.

“You chose well. It is an old-fashioned cut that shows you appreciate tradition,” she said. “I would have been displeased if you had appeared in the other.”

Already I was navigating the twisty maze that was her mind. Even my wardrobe was a test. “Thank you for the honor of the gift, which I do not deserve,” I said.

“Sit,” the God-Empress said, and I found a slightly canted chair and settled into it. “Drink,” she said, and a servant emerged from a door hidden by the draperies and handed me a squat golden cup with two handles; I drank, and discovered that it was lukewarm water, tasting slightly of minerals but welcome after the rapid walk I’d had. The room itself was comfortably cool, and I think I’ve mentioned that the palace has some kind of cooling kathana that I’ve been grateful for. Balaen is quite a bit more temperate than Castavir despite occupying much of the same territory. I wonder if Cederic knows why the same places in each world can have vastly different climates.

And yes, it did occur to me that the water might be poisoned, but there was nothing I could do about that. There’s only so much I can protect myself from, and refusing to drink on the slight chance that the water might kill me would only be trading the possibility of danger for the near-certainty that the God-Empress would have me executed for insulting her.

We sat and drank in silence, me mindful of the instruction not to speak unless spoken to. The God-Empress had a cup matching mine and drank with both hands on the handles, which gesture I mimicked. Eventually she set the cup down and said, “I will show you my city. You should know what it is you are going to defend.”

“Thank you, Renatha,” I said, only barely remembering to use her name, and she stood up, which was a sign for servants to come rushing out of hidden doorways to dress her in tunic and robe and another tunic and a sash that went around her waist three times, all of it in shades of red and decorated with rubies, and a matching ruby-studded silver choker. The God-Empress is unusual in preferring faceted stones to cabochons, which is probably the only thing we have in common. That and being female. She was gloriously beautiful, and I felt dowdy next to her, which was probably the idea.

Once she was dressed, and her golden hair (which was freshly dyed) was piled on her head with ruby-studded hair clips, we left the room and went by a completely different route back to the courtyard, where the God-Empress went down one of the brightly-paved paths to where a strange-looking collenna waited, its thumping higher and more rapid than that of the loenerel. It was…I can’t even think of anything to compare it to. It reminded me a little of a tortoise’s shell, if tortoises were dusky rose; its base was circular, and two seats surrounded by a silver rail were perched in a depression on its back, which was about five feet high. The seats were shaded by a canopy of rose velvet fringed with silver, and the seats themselves were upholstered in the same colors. At the front (what I guessed was the front, which guess was later proven correct) was another seat, this one black lacquered wood, with a smallish bucket to the right of where the master would sit and a tray of brushes above it. The plate containing the th’an engraving was silver rather than brass, or it might have been steel, and I couldn’t see the th’an because a woman dressed in a master’s uniform, but in rose pink, was standing at attention near the collenna, blocking my view.

“Lift me,” the God-Empress said, and a pair of tall and muscular men actually put their hands on her and raised her to where she could step into the collenna. I was watching her settle herself when I felt those hands on me, and I squeaked, but managed not to fight them. My ascent was considerably less graceful than hers, but I eventually got my dress arranged around me and gripped the rail of the seat as the collenna lurched forward. I’m not afraid of heights, but there was something about the movement of the collenna, and being just far enough off the ground that falling would hurt, that made me nervous. Then again, it might have been the company.

to be continued…

BOOK SEVEN

14 Lennitay

My first entry in my beautiful new book, and I feel like I’m defiling it from what I have to write. I’m tired, but not from physical exertion, and I wish I were back in the Darssan, where I could sink into a hot pool and let the water soak away the tension that’s making my back and neck hurt. Of course, if I were back in the Darssan I wouldn’t have spent the day with the God-Empress, which is the reason for the tension. Having to constantly monitor my words and actions put me on edge, especially since for the first part of the day it didn’t seem I needed to. It wasn’t until later that I was reminded of the kind of person she is.

One of the wardrobe servants came for me in the dining hall, before I was half finished with my breakfast. He used a lot of polite words, but the gist of it was that it was going to take some time to attire me properly, and if I was late, he and his fellows would be punished. The God-Empress definitely enjoys manipulating people by threatening others. I think it gives her pleasure to know that it’s a form of persuasion that would never work on her, because she doesn’t give a damn what happens to other people. It works all too well on me, and I abandoned my half-eaten meal, exchanged despairing glances with Sovrin, and went back to my room. They didn’t strip me this time, but allowed me to take off my own clothes down to my undergarments (still wearing the breast band; I’ve become accustomed to it, and thank the true God for that) before presenting me with an actual choice between two of my dresses, one full-skirted with short sleeves and a fitted waist, the other tight through the hips and knees but flaring out a little below that, so my stride would be seriously constrained. Neither of them would be good for running in, and I had to leave both books behind, hidden more or less in plain sight (wrapped loosely in my discarded clothes), but I noted the loose seams of the second dress and decided I could tear them open if running did become necessary. Paranoid, remember? The servants seemed pleased by my choice, which in addition to being impractical was a shade of brown that wasn’t particularly flattering to me, and I remembered how the God-Empress didn’t like being outshined by anyone. And I certainly wouldn’t be doing any shining in that thing.

They piled my hair on my head and secured it with far too many pins, which is to say that it’s heavy enough it needed almost all the hairpins I’d been given to keep it up, and even then if I did end up running, it would probably fall down anyway. Then I was allowed to wear some of my new jewelry, so I chose a very nice necklace of gold filigree with dark red rubies and had to struggle not to laugh at the servants’ consternation at discovering my ears aren’t pierced. No need, when I would never wear earrings that might catch the light at the wrong time, but they were so upset I think if we hadn’t been pressed for time they’d have pierced my ears right then. They settled for bracelets of amber and gold I could quickly shed and shoes that pinched my toes but would come off as easily.

As I read over this, I realize that I do sound paranoid, but given my experiences today, I think everything I did and planned for was reasonable. If anything, I might have underestimated the correct level of paranoia. But everything in its time, and at this time in my account I was dressed properly and ready to be escorted to the God-Empress’s chambers.

The last time, I was taken through the palace by the woman who’d met us when we first arrived, and handed off to some kind of steward when we reached the public wing of the palace. This time, four soldiers dressed in the uniform I’d seen beneath the tower, complete with chicken falcon helmets, were standing outside my door when I left my room. Their appearance was so unexpected I nearly shut the door in their faces, which were as impassive as Cederic’s ever is, but I recovered in time and just waited for them to indicate what I should do. They turned to face the stairwell, spreading out a little, and I realized they wanted me to stand in their center, so I did. Then I had to hobble rapidly to keep up with their longer, unconstrained strides as they marched away. It felt exactly as if I were being marched to the gallows, assuming they have those here, and that was when I first began feeling tense. The shoes became uncomfortable after only a few flights of stairs, the dress made me feel as if I were going to trip and fall and tumble to the bottom, hopefully carrying some of those soldiers with me, and my mind insisted on coming up with scenarios in which this was a death march and I was cooperating far too readily. The soldiers didn’t speak, and I didn’t have anything to say, and we saw no one at any of the landings and halls we passed, and I think now that maybe they’d cleared the halls so no one could see us. I’m glad I didn’t think of that at the time, because that would have bolstered my death march theory, and while I like to think I’m disciplined enough not to panic in stressful situations, I can’t say that I might not have made excuses and tried to run. Which would likely have been fatal.

The route they took me by was different from the first; it went through the mosaic chamber, which was every bit as impressive now as it was when we first arrived, and that reminds me that I still haven’t gone to look at the floor in daylight. We went through one of the archways I’d never been able to explore, the one between the God-Empress subduing a dragon and the God-Empress laying the foundations for a vast city—funny, she’s giant-sized in that one, maybe my fantasy about Colosse being built by a giant wasn’t so absurd—and into a very different part of the palace. The mages’ wing is all narrow passages with low ceilings that seem more suited to catacombs than a palace (everywhere except the hall in the Sais’ wing) and old, pitted stone. This place had wide halls with arched ceilings painted blue and walls plastered with abstract frescos in cool colors, and arched doorways instead of doors. The hall we entered by terminated in a courtyard with a glass roof very high above, revealing a circle of cool blue sky that looked as if it hung above some temperate landscape not blasted by the heat of the sun, which heat I could feel coming off the breeze that swept through the courtyard from both sides. A fountain fifteen feet tall at the center of the courtyard kept it from being too hot, and the breeze carried a faint mist toward me that was beautifully cooling. My awkward dress was surprisingly comfortable; court brocades would have been awful in this heat.

My honor guard, or whatever they were, separated and went to stand at the four corners of the courtyard, still silent and impassive, leaving me clueless as to what to do next. So I went forward to the fountain and inhaled the cool, damp air coming off it. I thought about taking a drink, but decided it might be taboo, or poisoned, or something. Of course that only made me thirsty, but I clasped my hands together in front of me to keep them from being stupid and waited.

And waited.

to be continued…

Afterward

I can’t believe how much that nap helped. I slept for two hours, woke when Audryn came to call me to dinner, ate heartily, and felt completely refreshed. And then I wasn’t sleepy. Thank you, Cederic, for insisting that I rest, because what I found later—well, I’m still not sure what it means, but it’s all down to you that I found it.

So when full dark came, and all the sensible people were in bed, I sneaked back down to the bottom of the tower. This time I was dressed in my own dark gray trousers, a close-fitting dark shirt, and a pair of soft-soled boots the wardrobe servants had brought me, and I felt prepared to do a little proper sneaking about.

The see-through pouvra confirmed that the door was still guarded by one man standing next to it and two others standing a short distance away. I took a few deep breaths, released them slowly, then filled my lungs, held my breath, and slid through the brass door as far from the guard as I could manage without inserting myself into the corridor wall.

The guard didn’t notice me; as I entered, he shifted his weight and looked off into the distance down the dark corridor. I didn’t stop moving or let out my breath; the last thing I needed was to give my position away by exhalation. My shoes made hardly any noise on the uncarpeted stone of the hallway, just a couple of scuffs no louder than the guards’ breathing. I slipped on between the two other guards and kept on walking, slowly, and didn’t breathe out until the shadows surrounded me. Behind me, one of the guards sneezed, and the other said something in response. I stopped to do the see-in-dark pouvra, then moved on down the hall.

It went on for several minutes. I think the passage goes the full length of the palace and beyond; there’s no exit on the far side, and I wasn’t certain how thick the walls were, so I didn’t dare go insubstantial and try to find a way out that way. But it was straight, and lightless, and boring, or would have been if I hadn’t been keenly aware of being somewhere I wasn’t allowed. Eventually I saw a light ahead, at enough of a distance that I could drop the see-in-dark pouvra before I was blinded. I concealed myself again and moved forward more cautiously.

That turned out to be unnecessary. There were no guards at this end of the passage, and the lights were th’an-powered, not torches as they’d been at the other end. I don’t know why the lights were there at all, since there was no one to take advantage of them. There were also no doors; the passage simply ended at a room maybe half the size of the mosaic chamber, and that comparison occurred to me because like that room, the walls were covered with mosaics. But that was all I had time for observation before my attention was drawn to the things filling the room.

They looked like metal wagons, really heavy iron wagons that could not possibly move despite each being mounted on four wheeled axles. None of them had yokes for horses or oxen, either. Each one carried a tapered cylinder I could barely wrap my arms around (that’s a guess, because of course I went up and hugged the mysterious metal things, I’m not insane) with a hole the size of my doubled fists at the narrow end and a funnel the same diameter at the fat end, with a blank brass plate fastened to the cylinder below it. I circled the nearest one and found it became more complicated at the rear: there was a metal stool permanently attached to the wagon behind the cylinder, and a metal tankard of some kind that looked as if it had been melted to the side of the cylinder, just below the funnel, and another brass plate whose shining gold surface looked incongruous next to the rough, blackened iron the rest of the wagon was made of, fastened where it would be at waist level to whoever sat on the stool. Engraved into the brass plate were several complicated-looking th’an, and this time I was certain I’d seen them before, or something. Something about the shape, maybe. It’s been bothering me since I returned from snooping around. I’ll have to remember to tell Cederic, see if he has any ideas. Or—I don’t know. I feel as though I take all my problems to him. Maybe he finds that annoying. I’ll have to think about it.

But first, the wagon. I thought about climbing onto the seat, decided against it—if anything were going to have a silent alarm attached to it, this thing would—and circled it again. Some kind of collenna, then, but what? A th’an could make the thing go, might make up for the heaviness of its construction, but to what end? The stool couldn’t be comfortable for long-distance travel, and I couldn’t see the point of the cylinder. It baffled me, so I stepped back and examined my surroundings more closely.

The mosaics were pale where the ones in the main chamber are robust, and it took me some time to work out what they depicted. It was immediately obvious that the craftsmanship here wasn’t nearly as fine as that of the mosaic chamber, more at the level of the person who’d put the God-Empress’s face on all the heroes. A closer look suggested that this artist was the same person who’d defaced (is that some kind of word play? Probably) those mosaics. Then the pictures came into focus, and I almost walked backwards into one of the wagons. They were pictures of Death.

I shouldn’t sound so certain about that. It’s just that I’ve traveled in so many countries where Death is given a shape—not like Balaen, where we symbolize it by absences, things missing from places where they should be, like a gap in a hedge, or a hole in a sleeve, things like that. In fact, Balaen’s in the minority on that, because in most places the grieving want something on which to focus their grief, and it’s astonishing to me how often Death is given human form. To me that feels like bad luck, like drawing Death’s attention to the fact that humans are vulnerable to it. Anyway, I suppose the mosaics of dancing figures robed in white might have been anything. But my instincts tell me the chamber was a celebration of death, and it made me feel as if I’d entered my own grave.

I walked the perimeter of the room, growing increasingly afraid and counting wagons to stave off that fear. I reached three hundred before I couldn’t bear it anymore and bolted. Safely down the dark passage, out of sight of the lights in both directions, I squatted and put my head between my knees until my breathing returned to normal. Then I sneaked back through the guard post, still without any trouble—I’m afraid I’m going to grow too dependent on that pouvra—and went back to my room, where I curled up on my bed with all my clothes still on and shivered. Then I wrote all of this down, in very tiny writing because there are now only a couple of pages left in this book.

I’ll have to tell Cederic about this in the morning. He might understand what I saw. Whatever it was, the God-Empress thinks it’s important, and I would bet the hard money I don’t have that it’s dangerous to someone. That someone might even be me.

12 Lennitay

I haven’t had time to write for days, which considering how few pages are left in this book might be a good thing, if it keeps me from wasting space writing “same as before” all the time. I come back from dinner so exhausted that I fall into my bed unconscious and sleep for ten hours until it’s time to start again. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that Vorantor is not an advocate of the leisurely Darssan morning; he has an obnoxious belief that early rising is a virtue nigh unto Godliness, something I believe he learned from her actual Godliness, the God-Empress Renatha Torenz. So it’s up at 6 a.m. and off to work again, every morning, and even if I weren’t exhausted from practicing th’an and pouvrin, I still wouldn’t have the energy to poke around.

It’s afternoon now, and I got a reprieve in the form of Cederic, who stopped to look at my th’an (I still haven’t achieved the requisite twelve successes, two more and I’m ready to move on to fire), then looked at my face, then took the writing tool out of my hand and said, “Go take a nap. You’re exhausted.”

I started to protest, realized I wanted a nap, and thanked him. But when I was leaving, Vorantor appeared in front of me and said, “You’re not leaving us, are you?”

“I’m going to take a nap,” I said.

He said, “But that’s not fair to everyone else, is it? Should everyone be allowed to take a nap? You’re so close to success, Thalessi, you don’t want to give up now, do you?”

“Sesskia has been working harder than anyone else, Denril,” Cederic said, appearing as suddenly as Vorantor had, “and she will have no success if she pushes herself past breaking. I instructed her to rest.”

“Did you,” Vorantor said, and then the two of them faced each other in silence. Vorantor was glaring. Cederic was impassive as usual. They were fighting, but on no battleground I could see. Then Cederic raised an eyebrow at Vorantor, whose face flushed. Without looking at me, Cederic said, “Go and rest, Sesskia.”

“Yes, of course, you need rest,” Vorantor said, but it came out as a kind of stammer and his face went redder than before. I fled before their battle could go further. It’s comforting to know that Cederic can trounce Vorantor without a word, but it’s only just occurred to me to worry about what might happen if Vorantor ever pushed his authority to a point that Cederic might have to disobey. I don’t understand the details of the oath Cederic swore, but I’m certain he won’t let it stop him fighting Vorantor if Vorantor ordered me, or anyone, to do something evil or dangerous.

I’m going to nap now, and see how I feel afterward.

9 Lennitay, very early, maybe just past midnight (continued)

Light came through the open door, blinding me, forcing my eyes shut. “Up there,” a deep voice said, and two people jingled past me, the second coming close enough that the wind of his passing ruffled my shirt. It took me a minute to recover from the see-in-dark pouvra to see who’d opened the door. At first, I thought I hadn’t recovered enough, because the man who stood in the doorway looked as if he was wearing a chicken on his head. I blinked a little harder and realized it was a helmet made to resemble a falcon, with wings folded to either side and head thrust forward, beak slightly open as if crying out. He was looking past me up the passage toward two other men wearing matching helmets, who were carefully searching in all directions for invisible thieves. Fortunately for me, they used their eyes and not their hands, and I pressed back so far into the wall that I might not have needed a pouvra to go through it.

“Nothing,” said one of the two men, and they both came back down to join their comrade at the door. All three wore, in addition to the chicken falcon helmets, short-sleeved shirts made of a fine steel mesh over long-sleeved black linen tunics, snugly-fitting black leather pants, hard black boots I would not like to be kicked with, and sword belts with sheaths for a longsword and a seven-inch-long knife.

“I told Prenz these hinges needed work,” the first man said, and all three went back inside and shut the door, and locked it. I stood there breathing peacefully for a while. Nothing guarding the treasure, but three men, possibly more, standing a very careful watch over whatever was beyond these doors? I retreated up the passage a long, long way, maybe two stories, then dropped the concealment pouvra and rubbed feeling back into my fingers and toes. Getting past those men would be difficult, because there was no way in hell I was going to try passing through living flesh. All my instincts told me it was a bad idea. Hard enough maintaining my identity against a stone wall; how much harder against another creature, whose instinct to remain complete was just as strong as mine? And if two of those men stood in front of those doors at all times…more reconnaissance was needed.

I went back down, feeling my way in the blackness because I didn’t want to be blinded again when I did the see-through pouvra, and carefully patted the wall with the tips of my fingers until I was certain I was facing the door. Then I did the see-through pouvra and took a look around. Only one man stood in front of the door; the other two were in position a little ways off down a long corridor the door opened onto. I couldn’t see where the light was coming from, but the corridor became dark just past where the other two men stood. They were all three of them very alert despite the hour, and after giving it some thought, I turned and went back up the sloping passage, finding my way in the dark to make it a bit of a challenge, until I reached the door I’d come in by, then I went silently back to my room. Which brings me to now.

I’ve been trying to think of what might be beyond that passage. The most logical explanation is that it leads to the God-Empress’s personal chambers. The only thing a ruler wants to guard more closely than her treasure is herself. And she might want to maintain a direct route to her treasure rooms, even if she doesn’t care enough about them to protect them more fully. But logic only applies if you assume the ruler is sane, which the God-Empress is not, in which case, who knows what’s beyond those doors? There could be any number of things she might want closely guarded, intrinsically valuable or not.

I really should just leave it alone. I’m in enough danger as it is. I certainly can’t tell Cederic what I’ve learned, because he would definitely tell me to leave it alone, and I’d feel bad about disregarding his wishes. The thing is, I’ve never regretted gaining knowledge, even when that knowledge has been personally painful. I have, on the other hand, regretted not knowing enough. The God-Empress has an unhealthy interest in me, and the more I know about her, the safer I’ll be. And that includes discovering as many of her secrets as I can.

I’m running out of pages in this book, and I don’t know how I’ll be able to make another. Maybe Cederic will let me scrounge paper out of the books, but that still leaves me with no leather for the cover and no thread and needle for the binding. I’ll have to find an alternative, I suppose.

9 Lennitay, very early, maybe just past midnight (continued)

I climbed up on the sill and reached for the brick, tugged on it a little to satisfy myself that it was solid, then sat on the sill with my back to the open air and thought about what to do next. The spymaster had come in this way, but was it just a convenient passthrough, or was there something important about it? It hadn’t exactly been easy to find. I went all the way to the top of the tower, where the passage just went right up to the roof (the underside of the observatory) as if it had once been open to the air and some giant, possibly the same one that had built Colosse, had slapped the observatory over it like capping it off. Then I came back down until I passed “my” window and reached the first of the single brass doors. It was unlocked. I opened it cautiously, then slipped inside.

It hadn’t occurred to me, because I am occasionally stupid, that none of these tower rooms would have windows because they were all on the inside. I had to stop to do the see-in-dark pouvra, and then I was stunned at what I saw: shelves and chests and wardrobes piled high with every imaginable type of fur, all tanned and clean and ready to be turned into clothing. I’ve said before that my expert appraiser’s eye is hampered by my not knowing the value of things in Castavir, so I’ll put everything (and there was much, much more) in my own terms, and to the right buyer, this room would be worth a fortune. Furs aren’t as popular as they once were in Balaen, at least they aren’t as much a symbol of nobility as they used to be, but they’re still the province of the wealthy, and though they’re not as portable a form of wealth as you might like, they’re still valuable. I petted a mink and took a better look around. Definitely a fortune. There were five other exits from the room, all of which led to smaller rooms, all of those rooms filled with ingots of precious metals like bricks for a mad God-Empress’s palace. I released the concealment pouvra and wandered through them in a daze, because I’d never seen that much wealth accumulated in one place. Eventually I had to shut the doors and move on, before my twitching fingers could collect a souvenir.

The part of me that is a master thief would like to describe, in loving detail, the contents of the God-Empress Renatha’s treasury—because that’s what the tower was, seventeen rooms of jewels and precious metals and art and things I couldn’t even put a value on because we don’t care about them in my world. There were coffers of jewels (I love jewels, they’re so portable and everyone wants them) and strings of silver and gold chains and paintings whose frames alone were probably worth a coffer of jewels, and it was so damn hard not to take something, especially now that I know I like jewelry for myself and not just for what it can buy me. But aside from the practicalities, which is that someone like me isn’t likely to have a lot of personal wealth in any form, I wouldn’t put it past the God-Empress to know down to the last two-carat diamond exactly how much treasure she has, and to be able to figure out who walked off with whatever’s missing. Really, this place was not well protected and it wasn’t guarded at all. Unless….

It was at that point that my imagination started running wild about the possibility of th’an that sounded a silent alarm and soldiers with large swords and muskets and mages who could do who knew what kind of martial kathanas, and my heart pounded a little faster for a few beats before I reminded myself that I’d been there for a while, and I’d handled some of the treasure, and if there were silent alarms and martial kathanas, I’d have found out about them by now. Even so, I didn’t linger in any more of the treasure rooms.

I looked through, but did not enter, those brass double doors I’d passed before, and saw only a short hall that made a sharp right turn about five feet from the door. I was planning to come back up and see where it led after I reached the base of the tower, but I changed my mind when I found what was there. More exploration for another time.

But now, the base of the tower. Actually, it wasn’t the base of the tower but the base of the palace below the tower, all seven stories to the ground instead of just the three of the round tower below the observatory. At the end of the curving, descending passage was another brass double door, but this one looked beaten, as if someone had tried to break it down once. It was also locked, as I learned when I pushed on it a little, and then I very nearly became a dead thief for my carelessness, because the person on the other side of the door immediately unlocked it and flung it open. I’d skipped backward a few steps when the door began to open, and I worked the concealment pouvra and pressed myself against the wall, grateful for the pouvra’s protection even though it made it hard for me to feel my fingertips and my toes.

to be continued…

9 Lennitay, very early, maybe just past midnight

More research today. I mean yesterday. Still not enough successes for Master Terrael, so I’m still working on the glass instead of with fire. Though we took a small break in the middle of the morning for me to demonstrate some of the pouvrin, mainly fire and water. I’m getting better at juggling water, which is fun, and this time I did splash Terrael in the face. Just a little. He laughed with everyone else.

I don’t know how much longer it will take before they can do the kathana. I have this horrible feeling they’re waiting on me, which makes me work even harder but makes my work less effective. The mages in charge of tracking what they call “the convergence” (presumably because it sounds less awful than “unavoidable catastrophic destruction”) have stopped saying how long until it gets here, which makes me even more nervous. But, again, that makes me less capable, and my hands start to shake, and then I have to sit in a corner and watch everyone else until I regain control.

It’s interesting to watch Cederic and compare him to Vorantor. Vorantor bustles a lot. He likes to draw people’s attention to what he’s doing, even if what he’s doing is complimenting someone else’s work. Which he does, frequently—gives compliments, I mean. But he’s the sort of person who thinks he’s being a leader because he read somewhere that’s what leaders do.

Cederic, on the other hand, is always quiet and rarely makes comments, but when he does, everyone stops to listen, even people who aren’t involved in whatever he’s talking about. And he does a lot more listening than Vorantor does, and listens with his whole attention—I know this from experience. So when he does give praise, you can see it really matters to the person he’s giving it to. They may listen to Vorantor, because he does most of the talking, but they pay attention to Cederic, especially when he doesn’t say a word. Even Vorantor’s mages give him a kind of respect Vorantor can’t command. It makes me feel proud on behalf of him and the Darssan contingent, even though we’re so much smaller.

I don’t know why I’m going on about this. The exploring I did was far more exciting than writing about stupid Vorantor. Though I have to write about him a little, because I decided I need to spy on him a little more closely, just in case he has any more clandestine meetings. I haven’t told Cederic, because he would definitely object—he still believes Vorantor is his friend, and I know he hates that I sneak around the palace at night. But I think Vorantor is more dangerous than he seems, and I won’t be satisfied until I know why he met with Aselfos. Fortunately, he has a routine he rarely deviates from, in the evenings: he eats dinner with Cederic and some of the other Sais, then all of them go to their common room, which is around the corner from the dining hall, where they sit and talk and have after-dinner drinks. (Our common room is larger, and the conversation is more lively, and there’s more use of th’an for amusement.) Vorantor always retires early, no later than nine o’clock, and goes to sit in the observatory for half an hour, then retires to his room, where he reads for another half hour before going to sleep. I know the last part because I sat concealed in his room last night, watching him. He’s really very dull. He didn’t sneak out later, and he didn’t meet with anyone in the observatory. But his meeting with Aselfos didn’t sound, even what little I heard of it, like a chance encounter or a one-time event, so I’m certain he’ll meet with the man again. Unfortunately, I can’t just follow him around, concealed, waiting for it to happen, so I’ll need to make a better plan. Last night was just to confirm his pattern, so I didn’t spend much time watching him before I got down to my real exploring.

This time, I used the concealment pouvra immediately and went down the stairs, counting, so I could keep track of where I was with regard to the tower. There are no doors off the Sais’ stairwell, which descends in a series of landings in a sort of tall chimney, and by the time I reached the bottom, I’d determined I was at the floor above the base of the tower. So then I started looking around for a way into the tower, or failing that, a flight of stairs that would take me one story lower where an entrance might reasonably be found.

Part of me wanted something mysterious, so I was a little disappointed when access to the tower was as easy as following the hall off the stairs to a junction and then turning right. That led me to a short double door made of brass that filled the width of the hallway. I used the see-through pouvra to verify that no one was standing immediately behind it, learned that it opened on a hall that curved downward immediately to the right, and went through it—the conventional way, since the walk-through-walls pouvra still makes me nervous.

The curving hallway actually went in both directions, with a gentle slope that suggested it followed the contours of the tower, and wasn’t so dim that I needed the see-in-dark pouvra. I went uphill for a bit and soon found one of the narrow windows on my left, which let in the light of the moon. It looked out over the palace rather than Colosse, which told me that “my” window, or the one that would give me access to the “staircase” to the observatory, was on the opposite side of the tower from here. I continued walking, occasionally passing doors on my right that I itched to explore, but first I wanted to see if I had an exit from this place. All the doors were made of brass like the first, but single rather than double. Once I passed a brass double door on my left that I guessed led to another level of the palace, and I really wanted to explore that one, but I kept going, and my persistence paid off when I reached the final window, looked out, and saw a jutting brick just inches from the top of the window frame.

to be continued…