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Sesskia’s Diary, part 54

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13 Lennitay

This will have to be my last entry. I still have no new book and no way of making one.

I told Cederic the details of my nighttime adventure this morning, and he nearly killed me. Which is to say, he became so expressionless it was hard to believe he was still alive. He said, “How were you going to explain your presence to those guards when they caught you?”

“But they didn’t catch me,” I said.

“Because your God-given reserves of good luck are not yet exhausted,” he said. “That concealment pouvra is by no means a guarantee of security. It does not make you invisible.”

“They didn’t know to guard against it,” I said, “and you yourself said it makes you want to look elsewhere. Besides, that’s not the important part.”

“The wagons,” he said. “I can only guess as to their purpose.”

“Which means you won’t tell me,” I said. At this point I was starting to be annoyed, because I felt proud of myself and I wanted him to at least acknowledge that I’d done well. He may not like that I’m a thief, but he ought to at least appreciate that I’m a good one.

“I believe we agreed once that you prefer knowing the truth to conjecture,” he said, and he smiled.

“That’s true, but I would like at least some idea of what general type of thing they might be,” I said.

We were in his room, standing by the windows, and he took my arm and drew me to the center of the room, away from potential eavesdroppers and anyone who might be capable of seeing through windows one hundred feet off the ground. “Weapons of war,” he said in a low voice, as if those precautions still weren’t enough.

“War?” I said, matching my voice to his. “But who does the God-Empress think she has to fight?”

“She is preparing to bring order out of chaos, when the disaster occurs,” Cederic said. “What concerns me is that if we succeed in preventing the disaster entirely, she will have a large army and no one to turn it on. Which means we may be giving her the means to build her empire.”

“But we can’t just let the worlds destroy each other!” I said.

“No, and it is a risk we will have to take,” he said. “You said there was no way for the wagons to exit the room where they were stored?”

“Not that I saw, but I admit I didn’t look very closely,” I said. “And I can’t imagine she doesn’t have a plan for that.”

Cederic frowned, and said, “This is good information to have, but at the moment I don’t see what we can do with it. I wish I could ask Denril if he has trained any masters in the th’an you showed me” (I’d sketched it out for him, and he said it would make two things move in tandem with each other, but couldn’t be more specific than that) “but I think that would be…unwise.”

“You seem to be working well together,” I said, which was both a lie and a leading question, but Cederic chose not to respond. He just shrugged and said, “He is still committed to his solution, and does not believe the Codex will tell him anything he does not already know. I have been planning what I will do against the day he is proven wrong.”

“Do you think there might be a problem?” I said.

“Possibly,” he said. “Denril has convinced the God-Empress of the truth of his position, and she is not someone who takes well to looking like a fool. He might be in danger. But I am not in a position to warn him of that.”

“So what should I do?” I said.

Cederic smiled and shook his head, and said, “Is there any way I can convince you to stay quietly in your bedchamber every night?”

“If I did that, we would never learn anything interesting,” I said, and he shook his head again as if in despair. That ended our conversation, and we went to breakfast together, me in a better mood despite my late night. I didn’t tell him about feeling like I recognized the th’an because I forgot. No, that’s not completely true. I did forget, yes, but I also feel awkward about making a big deal out of some nebulous feeling that might or might not matter.

I’m embarrassed I wrote that. So what if I feel awkward? For all I know, this is the information that gives us a clue about how my magic relates to Cederic’s. I’ll tell him about it tomorrow, awkward feelings be damned.

The rest of the day was uneventful

Hah. I should never tempt fate by writing things like that. I just received a note summoning me to attend on the God-Empress tomorrow after breakfast, which means seven o’clock, far too early for a meeting with a divine avatar. No details, nothing saying that she was going to have me beheaded and disemboweled for discovering her war wagons, just a polite little note stamped with her personal sigil, a falcon with some angular characters below its beak. I suppose that excuses me from th’an practice, which is actually a disappointment—I did my twelfth successful shriveling of glass, and tomorrow I was to have begun practicing with fire. Terrael will just have to contain his eagerness. I hope they send the wardrobe servants again—the last time, I just wore my own clothes, and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to wear for this private meeting with a mad God-Empress. I hate

Cederic just came to my door to say goodnight. He also handed me a small book and said, “I thought you might need this soon. It is of course not the same as making it yourself, but I hope it will do,” and was gone before I could say anything. It’s a blank book, machine-made but with a beautiful leather cover impressed with stylized leaves, dyed dark blue. I don’t know how he knew I needed one, but it’s such a lovely gift I don’t care. I can’t believe I ever hated him.
END OF BOOK SIX

Sesskia’s Diary, part 53

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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.

Sesskia’s Diary, part 52

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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.

Sesskia’s Diary, part 51

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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.

 

Sesskia’s Diary, part 50

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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…

Sesskia’s Diary, part 49

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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…

Sesskia’s Diary, part 48

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7 Lennitay

I’m being required to learn a single th’an and scribe it in fire. This is so much harder than it sounds, and since I just re-read that first sentence and realized it doesn’t sound easy, it’s probably damn near impossible. Fortunately for everyone’s peace of mind, Terrael was told off to teach me the th’an, and as impatient as he sometimes is with lack of progress, he’s got quite a lot of patience when it comes to teaching.

First, I had to study this th’an using just my eyes and my mind. For a very long time. It felt like hours, though Terrael told me when I bitched about it that it had only been twenty minutes. The th’an is shaped like a two-pronged fork (note: forks in Castavir have four tines instead of three) with the right-hand tine bent at the tip at a right angle away from the other. Terrael had me stare at it, following its lines in an exact order: tip of left tine down to base of handle, lift gaze, start again where right tine meets handle, right tine from there to bent tip. It sounds easy, but after a while all I could see was that shape, burned black on the inside of my eyelids.

After several hours (Terrael: forty-three minutes) I was allowed to begin writing the th’an with one of those fat inky writing tools. But I wasn’t allowed to just write it anywhere I wanted. Terrael drew a dotted-line version of it on a board—obviously if he just wrote it, it would activate and do no one any good—and put a square of glass over it. Then he made me draw the th’an, then erase the glass, then draw again, at least a million times (Terrael: two hundred twenty-three) until my hand ached. I still wasn’t very good, because the th’an never activated, but that was when Terrael judged I needed a rest. I sat, and rubbed my hand, and watched everyone else working on their part of the kathana. This was all happening in a domed, windowless room with slate set into the walls and a gold circle inset in the floor at the center of the room. It was obviously meant to imitate the Darssan, which made me want to laugh. Vorantor might have left the Darssan behind, but it’s clear he still feels inferior and is doing whatever he can to boost his importance.

At that moment, Vorantor was off to one side with some of “his” mages (I know, they’re all his mages now, technically, but knowing that “his” mages were willing to kill ours makes it impossible for me not to make the distinction) and they were going over the order of th’an again, since the order in which they’re scribed makes a difference to the kathana. I can’t stop watching him, and I’m not sure why. Possibly because I feel he’s dangerous, and I want to know exactly what kind of danger he poses. I’ve gone over that fragment of conversation many times, and all I can figure is that Vorantor is counting on Cederic’s honor to keep him from interfering with whatever Vorantor is planning. That could just be the kathana, or it could be something more sinister; I, being a professional paranoid, am counting on the latter. Why else would he be meeting with the God-Empress’s spymaster? Though come to that, shouldn’t the spymaster have primary allegiance to his mistress, and in that case, why would Vorantor be meeting with the man at all? Or is the spymaster a go-between for the God-Empress, and there’s some reason Vorantor can’t meet with her publicly? I’ve decided that I’ll need to explore further tomorrow night—still achy now from today’s work.

Anyway, I watched Vorantor for a while, until I was so angry I had to think about something else. He interacts a lot with Cederic during the day, comparing research—they’re each tackling a different aspect of the kathana—but every single damn time he manages to make himself sound like he’s indulging Cederic’s input, like Cederic is his inferior. And I know that’s technically true, I know Cederic chose to take a secondary role, but Vorantor is so smug about it! And I cannot believe I ever thought Cederic looked smug, now that I’ve seen what it looks like on Vorantor. Cederic, for his part, remains perfectly expressionless and deferential, and I can’t tell what he’s actually thinking. How he can still consider Vorantor his friend is beyond me. We don’t speak much these days, since his part of the research is separate from mine, and I miss that. He’s the only one who really understands my magic as more than just a useful tool, and I liked being able to compare th’an and pouvrin and feel as if we were learning about some structure that underlies both. Which might not be true, but it was an interesting thought exercise, and I wish we had time for more discussion. I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed spending time with him.

After I had only a few minutes for rest (Terrael: thirty-five minutes) he set me to work again, drawing over the shape repeatedly until I had sort of drifted off into a reverie about what we might have for dinner when something in front of me went pop and the glass pane shrank in on itself as if it were clear fabric someone had just grabbed in the middle and twisted. I admit I shrieked like a baby and jumped back a little, but then I was surrounded by mages congratulating me on my first th’an. Cederic explained that it was a binding that, when performed by me using my magic, would tie the kathana to both worlds and provide a link to the time before the worlds were separate. The time before the Codex was destroyed.

So now I just have to do it with fire.

It’s made me wonder what magic looked like before the worlds were separated. Each world’s magic is so different now—different from the other, I mean—so does that mean they were combined, once? And what would that even look like? I have trouble even comprehending how pouvrin work, let alone th’an, so imagining them together is beyond me. I doubt they could even occupy the same space. It’s something I could talk to Cederic about, assuming we ever had time to talk.

I’m so tired. After my success with th’an, I wanted to go straight to trying it with fire, but Terrael insisted I repeat my success at least a dozen times before moving on. I managed to do it twice more before my efforts became too wobbly and Cederic told me to stop for the day and have something to eat. He stayed behind with Vorantor when the rest of us went to the dining hall. I wonder what they talk about when we’re not there. I wonder if Vorantor ever rubs it in his face that he won. I wonder if Cederic ever thinks about punching him in his stupid smug face. I know I have.

Sleep now, work tomorrow, explore tomorrow night.

Sesskia’s Diary, part 47

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Later

I just had a wonderful chat with Sovrin and Audryn, who came to my room to see if I was all right. I developed a bit of a headache during my session with the God-Empress, which is unusual since normally pouvrin don’t cause me physical pain, except for when I maintain the see-in-dark pouvra for too long. It was gone by dinnertime, but I think Sovrin and Audryn wanted an excuse for some girl time, and we ended up talking and giggling until I was so tired I couldn’t stop yawning. But I saw my first kathana! Even if it was just a little summoning Sovrin and Audryn did on my floor to snatch some hand-sized fruit pies out of one of the palace kitchens for us to snack on. They pushed aside the red bearskin rug and chalked a circle on the floor—they are both really good at drawing nearly perfect circles—with single th’an at the four cardinal points and the four ordinal points. Then they chalked runes on their right palms, sat across from each other with those palms pressed together, and slowly pulled their hands apart to reveal a sort of window in the air that looked into the kitchen. Sovrin used her left hand to take hold of the window so Audryn could let go, then Audryn began chalking what I can only call instructions on the floor that made the view shift until we could see the pies. Then it was my job to reach through the window and grab as many as I could before we heard someone shouting, and I rolled out of the window and it snapped shut. Then we laughed like loons, and then we stuffed our faces.

Sovrin’s cheerful enough, but it was clear she’s still miserable about being separated from Marleya. It wasn’t a serious relationship yet, but they’d been friends a long time before becoming lovers—had grown up together, even—and losing something like that is hard, I think. And Audryn confessed, with many blushes, that she’s in love with Terrael. That left me horribly conflicted, though in the end I stuck with my policy of not interfering in other people’s business. The furthest I was willing to go was to suggest she take a chance on telling him. Audryn blushed even harder at that and insisted it was impossible, which I thought was because in Castavir the men are expected to speak first, but that’s not it, it’s that he’s her superior. Not that he is, anymore, now that the Darssan has been disbanded and there are no more working groups, but she can’t stop thinking of him as such. And she’s older than he is by a couple of years, though I still don’t understand why that’s a problem. It was one of those everyone-knows things cultures have that it takes outsiders a while to understand. I almost wished I had a lover to gossip about, since I was the odd one out, and I almost confessed that I’m still a virgin, but as intimate as the conversation became, I still felt awkward about saying that. Especially since I still know almost nothing about Castaviran sexual customs and taboos. For all I know, being a twenty-seven-year-old virgin is shocking on the level of eating puppies. (Though Castavirans might do that too. See how little I know?)

Eventually we got to the point of laughing our heads off at really stupid things, like dust motes, and I made them leave so I could get some sleep. Tomorrow we begin combining aspects of the new kathana with my magic, and I have no idea what to expect, except that I’ll have to be polite to Vorantor, which means I can use all the sleep I can get.

Sesskia’s Diary, part 46

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6 Lennitay

I’m every bit as tired tonight as I was last night, though this time it’s because I spent half my day being ordered around by Vorantor, who’s not very good at not sounding like he’s ordering you around, and I resent him because I don’t like him, so I feel like I’m being bossed. The other half I spent performing like a trained seal for the God-Empress, who remains endlessly fascinated by my pouvrin and has no concept of how wearying they can become over time. This happened in the official throne room, which was even gaudier and more ornate than I’d imagined snooping around in it last night; the lamps that hang above are made of crystals that send sparkling light over everything, and she has mages to refresh them constantly because the th’an that power them run out quickly. She showed no sign of insanity and was pleasant and friendly, even informal, as if I were her younger cousin (I think I am younger; closer observation puts her age nearer forty than thirty, and let me just say that I hope I age that well, though if I have to become mad to get that wish, never mind) visiting from a strange land. Some of my tiredness is probably due to how tense I was the whole time, worried that I’d say something wrong or respond too slowly to a demand, but this time, at least, my manners were acceptable.

This was also the first time I’d seen mages other than Vorantor’s and the Darssan mages. It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be others, or that they would use magic for practical things. But I suppose the th’an on the collennas have to come from somewhere, and someone has to teach the masters how to draw them. And the God-Empress has to have an army to keep her empire intact, and since I know there are offensive and defensive kathanas, there must be mages attached to the army as well. I wonder how many mages there are in the Castaviran Empire. I wonder what the countries outside the empire are like. There are so many things I want to know, and no time to learn them all.

Speaking of wanting to know things, I caught Cederic early this morning (I doubt I’ve had more than three hours of sleep, so no exploring tonight) and told him what I’d heard. He didn’t even look a little surprised, though he did look sad, and he wouldn’t explain what the conversation meant even though he clearly understood it. He did tell me that based on my description, the stranger was probably Perce Aselfos, the God-Empress’s chief spy, and that he wouldn’t want to guess why Vorantor and Aselfos were meeting secretly, but I think he did have a guess that he didn’t want to share with me until he was certain.

On my other questions: Kilios is a title (thank you, Cederic, I figured that one out on my own) that identifies a mage who has mastered all known th’an and can perform all of a certain type of kathana without assistance. Cederic is the only living Kilios and has held that title for almost four years. (He sounded a little embarrassed at having to tell me this. He’s reluctant to talk about himself if it sounds at all like bragging.) It conveys all sorts of privileges, most of which Cederic doesn’t take advantage of, including one that says he takes precedence over every mage and Sai in Castavir, which is the reason for that odd ceremony I witnessed yesterday. Despite being “most high priest,” Vorantor has no authority over Cederic, wouldn’t have unless he were still Wrelan of the Darssan, but as the one with the most experience at preparing the kathana we’re here to do, he has to be in command. Ugh. So Cederic had to cede part of his rights, and Vorantor had to swear not to usurp any more of those rights than Cederic had given up. This all explains why Cederic was allowed to stay at the Darssan when the God-Empress put her support behind Vorantor’s theory; even the God-Empress can’t force the Kilios in matters magical, at least if she’s sane. I’m guessing Cederic has been using the distance between Colosse and the Darssan to keep well out of the God-Empress’s notice, because (as we learned) she only abides by this rule when she feels like it.

To my surprise, Cederic was telling the truth about the eye-color thing. It doesn’t mean you can instantly master any form of magic, or that you’re guaranteed to be better at magic than people who don’t have green-gray eyes (case in point: Terrael’s eyes are blue), but it means that you’re drawn to magic, that you have a desire to learn it. In Cederic’s case, he began practicing th’an when he was old enough to mimic other mages’ script, and in my case, once the magic woke up in me I couldn’t leave it alone. But Cederic’s being Kilios is due entirely to a lot of hard work, though I’m sure his being intelligent helped. I have no idea how I compare to the other mages of my world, assuming there are any—no, I have to believe I’m not the only one, if only because the alternative makes me feel a little ill. I almost hope the others are better than I am, because the idea of learning pouvrin directly from someone else…suppose it’s easier that way? Faster? It’s not really going to matter unless we can keep the worlds from coming back together, and then we have to find a way to send me home.

If I still want to return.

This is already far more of a home than I’ve ever had before, even in the years before Dad died and Mam became a drunk and Roda left and Bridie

It’s more a home than I’ve had in a long while. I have friends. I have value, even if only as a novelty. But if I stay here, the likelihood of me continuing my study as a mage is virtually nonexistent. Finding the concealment pouvra was sheer accident, and the madman who created it did so also by accident. I might be able to create my own, but that’s also a slim possibility I wouldn’t want to count on. And the idea of giving all that up makes me feel even more ill than the idea that I’m the only one of my kind in my own world the way I am here.

I’m not going to worry about that now. Retrieving the Codex Tiurindi is the most important thing now, as Cederic said, and even if my role in the kathana hasn’t been determined yet—that was most of why Vorantor was ordering me around this morning—I can already tell it will be important. And Vorantor’s mages have been tracking the process of the worlds coming together, and the news is not good. Cederic had predicted months; the mages are saying it might be more like eight weeks. So we all feel a sense of urgency that has everyone on edge. I think Vorantor doesn’t appreciate how lucky he is to have Cederic there; he keeps people calm just by being who he is, though he’s always perfectly deferential to Vorantor (ugh again) and redirects most requests to him.

Sesskia’s Diary, part 45

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5 Lennitay, way too early in the morning (continued)

The alcove to the right of that one, the alcove between it and the mages’ alcove, leads to a warren of more personal sleeping and living quarters, and a big dining room and a kitchen. And it was completely empty. All those bedrooms, unoccupied. The kitchen hadn’t been used in months, at least. I couldn’t tell if this was meant as guest quarters, or as living space for the royal family, but either way it was eerie. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, my instinct is that it’s guest quarters. The royal family has to be protected, and it’s easier to have them all in one place rather than splitting the guards’ efforts—and this definitely didn’t belong to the God-Empress. I don’t know why the palace would have an entire wing for guests and then not have any, but it likely has something to do with the God-Empress’s insanity. I can’t imagine anyone staying here unless she was a hostage. That thought makes me queasy, because every one of the mages is a hostage if the God-Empress decides it’s so.

By this time, it was getting very late, and I was starting to feel tired, so I decided to leave exploring the rest of the alcoves until another time. I have a much better idea of what the palace looks like, even if I didn’t find anything interesting. I don’t know whether to hope that the God-Empress’s quarters are beyond one of the two remaining alcoves or not. Easier if it is, but if not, what a challenge to try to sneak into it!

So I went back to my room, but when I reached the hallway, I decided to take one last look at the…I’m still not sure what it is. An observatory? It’s certainly high enough, though I wonder what anyone could see through that smoked glass. In any case, I figured Vorantor wouldn’t still be there, and I really wanted to see the view for myself.

I was still cautious, approaching it—an overconfident thief is a dead thief, another one of my mottoes—even though I heard nothing, not even snoring from the adjoining chambers. Now that those holes are closed up, my room seems completely soundproof, and these stone walls are thick enough to keep most noises contained. I’m not going to experiment by standing in my room and screaming, certainly. I was almost to the entry when I heard voices—not even voices, just a low cadenced hum that I’ve learned to recognize as what voices sound like at the edge of hearing. I took a look into the observatory and saw that Vorantor was still standing there, at the other side of the room, only this time he wasn’t alone. With my eyes more perfectly adjusted to the dark this time, I could see immediately that the second person was male, shorter than Vorantor, light-haired, and dressed in clothing that looked drab next to Vorantor’s rich robes. Everything about him screamed “thief.” I didn’t even have to think about it; I did the concealment pouvra and began sidling along the circumference of the room, trying to get close enough to make out their words.

Years ago, when I first learned the basics of the see-in-dark pouvra, I tried adapting it to enhance my hearing, but I was never successful. I can’t believe there isn’t a pouvra for that, so I haven’t given up on finding it, but I don’t think I’ve ever wanted it more than I did just then. The trouble with sneaking up on a thief is that she’s, well, a thief—and if she’s any good, she’ll be constantly on the lookout for people doing to her what she’d do to them. The closer I got, the less convinced I was that the stranger was a thief, simply because he lacked the alertness I’d have in his position. But…well, whatever he is, stealth and cunning are definitely some of his tools of the trade, even if he’s never hung by his fingertips off a third-story window ledge while his bare toes grope for purchase on the irregular bricks of a castle wall.

I went as close as I dared and was frustrated to discover that the conversation was nearly over. I suppose it would have been too much for me to coincidentally enter just as they started talking about a key piece of information that only mattered to me. As it was, it left me with more questions instead. The stranger said, “An upset for you, I think.”

Vorantor said, “Cederic pledged his honor, so I’m not worried about him. And he’s never been interested in glory. Everything will go on as it has.”

The stranger said, “No matter what you have to do to ensure that.”

“Exactly,” Vorantor said. “Something I believe you understand.”

The stranger just nodded, then to my surprise walked past Vorantor to the edge of the observatory, where a low wall kept people from simply stepping off and falling, I assumed, to their deaths, slung his leg over the wall and dropped. Vorantor didn’t react, and I heard neither scream nor fatal thud, so I concluded that he was the kind of thief I’d originally thought, and I confirmed this later—well, I don’t want to put this out of order when I’m almost done. A minute after the stranger made his dramatic exit, Vorantor turned and left the observatory, passing very close to me without noticing anything amiss. This is why I don’t wear scent. People forget that there are all sorts of ways to notice a hidden someone that have nothing to do with eyes. I could smell Vorantor just fine; he uses a nice-smelling woody cologne, which is probably the only nice thing about him. I gave him plenty of time to reach his room, then went forward, still concealed, and leaned way out over the wall to see where the stranger had gone.

The observatory is at the top of a very fat tower about fifty feet tall, with narrow windows marking out the layout of the interior. Based on the way the windows are arranged, the tower has three stories, and its base is set in one corner of what I’ve come to think of as the “main” palace, which is itself another four stories from the ground. So the observatory is fairly high up, based on those stairs about half a story above the Sais’ wing, though not as high as the God-Empress’s pavilion. From my angle, dangling over the wall, it was immediately obvious that someone had built a staircase from the base of the observatory to the nearest window, which was about ten feet down and three feet to the right of where I was. I say “staircase,” but it was more a series of jutting blocks that offered hand- and footholds so you could reach the window without much—all right, not much effort for someone like me, and a crippling fear of heights would make it almost impossible, and the window wouldn’t admit anyone much larger than the stranger, who wasn’t much taller and broader than I am. But it would be a good way for someone to meet someone else in the observatory without walking past a lot of Sais, who might want to know what that someone was doing there. None of my exploration had led to that tower, which made it even more interesting; it was something somebody wanted kept secret.

I pulled myself back up and went to my room, not even pausing at Cederic’s door. I know he knows th’an he’s never showed me, and that there are all sorts of them that have offensive capabilities, and I’m certain he’d try to take the head off anyone who entered his room at night. And now I’ve written everything down, and I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open long enough to make a list of what I need to do in the morning:

  1. Tell Cederic about Vorantor’s well-after-midnight conversation.
  2. Ask him about Kilios. And the eye-color thing. And what happened between him and Vorantor in the God-Empress’s pavilion.
  3. Figure out what’s directly below us in this tower. Yes, I could take the staircase to the window, but allowing myself to be outlined against the sky for a possible enemy to take a swipe at seems like a bad idea. Besides, I don’t want to give away the fact that I know about the staircase if I can help it. It could turn out to be an escape route.
  4. Begin work on the kathana to summon the Codex Tiurindi. As much as I dislike Vorantor, and find working for him distasteful, I’m a little excited to finally witness a kathana that I’m not the focus of.

Sleep, finally.