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…

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.

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

After dinner I dressed in comfortable clothes (my shirt from the Darssan and some trousers that fitted more closely than I would normally find comfortable, except they were perfect for sneaking around) and waited in the dark until I judged everyone had gone to sleep. Seeing in the dark is a matter of altering the shape of your eyes, more or less, and it can be…not dangerous, exactly, but if you walk into a well-lit room in that state, it blinds you for a while and it hurts like hell. So you have to be careful where you go. Fortunately, I was planning to go places that would be empty of people.

When the moon was finally hovering on the horizon, preparing to set, I slipped out of my room and headed down the hall toward Cederic’s room. I wanted to see where the hallway went. It turned out to end at another set of stairs, this one continuing up, so I followed it and found myself in a round room much like the God-Empress’s pavilion, but with a smoked glass dome for a roof and wind-blasted pillars supporting it, all of it overgrown by some kind of twining vine with fat, five-pointed leaves. The wind had died down somewhat from earlier and the night was cool and refreshing. I almost stepped out into the expanse when I saw that it was already occupied. I ducked back into the doorway—I wasn’t using the concealment pouvra because I didn’t want to get used to it and become careless—and watched for a bit. The person just stood looking out past the pillars, and it took me a while to discover that it was Vorantor. That made me intensely curious about what he was doing, because I was certain he wasn’t there just to admire the view, but I couldn’t exactly walk up to him and strike up a conversation. So after about ten minutes of watching him do nothing, I turned around and went back down the hallway to the other stairs.

I was tempted to stop in and talk to Audryn when I reached their hallway, but I realized in time that if I were caught wandering, and it got me in trouble, she would need to be able to say with conviction that she knew nothing about it. So I kept going. My first stop was the stairway leading to the God-Empress’s pavilion, with the landings that led to the upper levels of the mosaic chamber. As I wrote, there was too little contrast for me to see the design, and that was frustrating, having a failure right at the beginning of the night. I considered climbing back to the pavilion to look at the city from that height, but the memory of how long a climb that was deterred me. So I sat with my legs dangling over the edge of the highest balcony and thought about what to do next. Normally when I’m sneaking through a manor or a castle, I’m looking for the library, or maybe a secret room where the important books are kept, and after that I want to find the treasure room so I can buy the books I can’t steal, but I can’t read the books here, and the mages already have all of them. And I don’t have any need for the treasure, not to mention that if I’m caught with it, the God-Empress (I can’t call her Renatha in these pages, I just can’t) would probably do something fatal to me and everyone I know. Thinking about the God-Empress gave me an idea. It was still dangerous, but in a fun, let’s-see-what-I-can-get-away-with way, and if I was successful, it could benefit me in the long run. So I went to map the boundaries of the God-Empress’s territory.

A manor may belong to a person, but in practice, there are portions of that manor that are the personal rooms of the owner. Places that aren’t secret (though sometimes they’re that), but private. Those are the places a thief has to be especially careful of, because people take intrusions there as more of a violation. Though violating them can be effective, if you’re trying to frighten someone by, to take a hypothetical example, leaving notes in their bedroom that say (again hypothetically) THE WATCHER KNOWS WHAT YOU DID TO YOUR WIFE. Very effective.

I just wanted to know what the God-Empress called her own so I wouldn’t trespass accidentally. I knew some places where her territory wasn’t—the rooms where the Darssan mages were housed, and the Sais’ wing, and our dining hall and the two common areas we gathered in after dinner. Places like the mosaic chamber were probably outside that territory, since too many people use them—I could hear lots of noise coming from it when we passed it on the way to that audience with the God-Empress yesterday, like people passing through it, and I think it’s likely that when we arrived, it was cleared specifically so the Kilios didn’t have to encounter any of the unwashed masses. So I was imagining a map of the palace as I sneaked down to the ground floor. I may not have the most perfect memory for conversation, but I wouldn’t be much of a thief if I couldn’t keep the map of a building I’m infiltrating in my head. There were far too many blank spots, because the palace is huge, and having entered the way we did, I don’t have as good a sense of its footprint, but the whole point of exploring is to learn new things, isn’t it?

My first step was to learn where all the alcoves off the mosaic chamber led. I didn’t get very far last night/this morning because, as I said, the palace is huge, but what I discovered was still a lot. I already knew that one alcove leads to the loenerel’s stopping place, and one leads to all the mages’ living and working quarters and, less directly, to the God-Empress’s cloud-kissing pavilion. The one directly to the right of the loenerel alcove goes to the public areas of the palace, waiting rooms and audience chambers and finally to the God-Empress’s real throne room. The actual, official throne is strangely plain, unadorned except for elaborate carvings, and it’s built to a scale that would accommodate someone fifteen feet tall. The God-Empress probably looks like a child sitting in it, kicking her feet because they wouldn’t reach the ground. The throne room makes up for the throne’s plainness by being lined with mirrors, all of them three feet wide (I used my arm span to measure) and as tall as that imaginary giant, framed in what was probably gilded wood (can’t see colors with the see-in-dark pouvra) decorated with scallops at top and bottom. The floor is marble tiles in contrasting colors, dark and light, and I had to be especially careful not to make any sound walking on them.

I wandered around in these rooms for a bit, admiring their scale and the beauty of the furnishings, which is more refined than my world goes in for. I was going to write that they were more sophisticated, which is true but gives the wrong impression; my world lacks things this world has, mainly with regard to what magic can do, but its cultural development doesn’t lag that far behind Castavir’s. So in my world, the wealthy go in for big, sturdy, unadorned furniture and architecture, which compared to Castavir’s looks rough, but closer examination just shows that it’s different. I don’t think I’m trying to make excuses for my world, either. But I suppose this is another thing that’s irrelevant.

to be continued…

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

Fortunately, I remembered I was the otherworlder before she had to repeat her instruction. I copied Cederic’s gesture, but said nothing, because I didn’t think she’d actually spoken to me. “You may stand,” the God-Empress said, so I stood and waited. She stared at me, tapping her forefinger against those perfect lips. Eventually, she said, “You appear to be Viravonian.”

“I am not, God-Empress, though I’ve been told there are similarities,” I said.

“And why do you suppose that is?” the God-Empress said.

“I can only guess, God-Empress,” I said, “but I know our worlds were once one, and some of those who in your world are Viravonians are probably in mine as well.” Vorantor was almost in my line of sight, and I saw him close his eyes as if I’d said something wrong, but I had no idea what. Now I know he thought I’d made a mistake in mentioning that our worlds had once been one, but the God-Empress disagreed, because she didn’t lose her temper or order me executed.

What she said was: “And you will prevent the worlds from destroying each other when they are reunited.”

I realized at this point that she was in the habit of asking questions phrased as statements. That was clever, forcing the addressee to own statements she probably didn’t intend to make. “I will assist the mages who will perform this task,” I said.

The God-Empress stood up and came down the stairs. She was taller than me, not by much, but enough that she could grab my chin and tilt my head up to look directly into my eyes. She stared at me, and I tried not to blink, and eventually she released me and went to Cederic and repeated the procedure. “Your eyes are the same,” she said. (I forgot to mention that about a third of the mages at the Darssan have green-gray eyes. Nobody seems to think it’s unusual, so I never remembered to ask about it. I’ve seen a few other people with those eyes in my travels, just not so many in one place.)

“It is a color that indicates a predisposition for magic,” Cederic said, not flinching. I have no idea whether this is true or not. I forgot to ask him, just like I forgot to ask him what Kilios means. I suppose it could be true. It was an explanation the God-Empress liked, because she went back up to her throne and gracefully settled herself on it.

“We welcome the mages of the Darssan,” she said in a louder, carrying voice, “and bid them put themselves under the supervision of the most high priest Denril Vorantor. We will hear their oaths now.”

There was some shuffling behind me, and one by one my friends came forward, bent their knees briefly, and said something I couldn’t understand, they spoke so quietly. It made me furious on Cederic’s behalf. He’d already lost the Darssan, lost his research, and now he’d lost what little was left to him. Kilios or no, this couldn’t be anything but a slap in the face.

Or so I thought. When everyone had gone back to their places behind us, the God-Empress said, “Kilios, will you make common cause with Denril Vorantor and turn your skills to his needs?”

“I will, God-Empress,” Cederic said, his voice entirely neutral.

“Denril Vorantor, make your oath,” the God-Empress said, and damn if Vorantor didn’t cross the pavilion and prostrate himself in front of Cederic, and say, “I accept what you offer and swear to heed your words, Kilios,” and Cederic laid his right hand over Vorantor’s and said, “I give you my skills and will follow where you lead.” The whole thing sounded bizarre; who was making promises to whom? I still have to ask Cederic about that, that and the Kilios thing and about a million other questions, but I keep forgetting.

I wasn’t finished being confused by that when the God-Empress said, “Otherworlder, will you give me the freedom of your name?”

I didn’t have time to indulge my outrage at her asking such a personal thing of me, God-Empress or no. “I, uh…yes?” I said. “My name is Sesskia.”

“And you may call me Renatha,” said the God-Empress, which provoked a reaction from everyone except, naturally, Cederic.

Remembering what Cederic said about gifts, I said, “Thank you, God—Renatha, it is a generous gift I do not deserve,” and she smiled more widely. I think it was a test.

“You will join me presently, and we will learn more of your magic,” the God-Empress said, and that was some kind of signal that the audience was over. Cederic stood, and we all filed out of the pavilion and back down the stairs. Vorantor and his mages didn’t follow us, which was fortunate because as soon as we were back in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, everyone started talking at once, and Cederic had to shush them.

“This changes nothing,” he said. “You will turn your efforts toward assisting Sai Vorantor, because now we have a common goal. Summoning the Codex Tiurindi is of paramount importance. It does not matter to whom you owe allegiance.”

“We owe our allegiance to you, Sai Aleynten,” Terrael said.

“That may be, but I have sworn to aid Sai Vorantor, and I instruct you to do as he says,” said Cederic. “That should satisfy the demands of honor.”

“I don’t like it,” said Jaemis. He’s short and wide and looks more like a wrestler than a mage, but his skill at transmutation kathanas is unmatched by any of his peers.

“Liking it is not the issue,” Cederic said. “And remember that you may be watched at any time. Say nothing that will draw unwanted attention. Now, dinner will be served in two hours, so I suggest you use this time to rest so you will be refreshed for the morning’s work.”

Everyone grumbled, but they all went to their rooms. Cederic and I went back to the Sais’ wing, but he followed me into my room and said, “That was unexpected. Sharing one’s name with the God-Empress means a sort of kinship. You may be unable to avoid being called often to her presence.”

That frightened me. “What can I do?” I said.

“What you always do. Listen. Speak carefully. Be honest when you can and lie well when you cannot. And at worst, you can slip away from her and we will find another solution,” Cederic said.

“Staying hidden from her forever seems impractical,” I said.

He smiled. “This palace has places no one but a ghost can enter,” he said, “and I daresay you can become a ghost when you want.”

“That’s less encouraging than you think it is,” I said.

“We will worry about it when we come to it,” he said. “I will see you at dinner. And please, Sesskia, if you must wander, do it when no one will be watching.”

Which I did. Dinner was uneventful; the God-Empress, naturally, didn’t dine with us, and the dining room seemed reserved for the use of the mages. I sat with Terrael, Audryn, and Sovrin, and Cederic ate with Vorantor and acted exactly as if they were friends. I don’t think I could be friends with anyone who behaved the way Vorantor had. Fortunately no one was asking me to be friends with him.

to be continued…