Stony silence answered him. Then, after a moment, heads nodded grudgingly, and the various factions adjourned to select their symbols and plot their next moves.
Achmed waited until the inner circle had dispersed, then rose from his seat, pushing his chair back into the table. Ashe, sitting beside him, with Tristan Steward to his left, ran a hand through his draconic red-gold hair, which gleamed with a metallic sheen in the torchlight, then put his forehead down on the table.
“Gods,” he groaned.
“No, I have no doubt these are mere mortals,” Achmed said. “Well, best of luck with it.”
“You’re leaving?” Ashe asked incredulously as the Bolg king gathered his belongings.
Achmed nodded. “I made an appointment with the master of the empress’s stable, and a bill of tender for the benison to sign before he collapses under the weight of all the stupidity being flung about here. I don’t want to keep the stablemaster waiting any longer than I already have.”
Ashe sighed. “Well, then, perhaps we can talk when you when you return.”
“I am not going to return. I have a cramp in my leg, a horse to buy, and a few hours of sleep to steal before I leave for Ylorc on the morrow.”
The Lord Cymrian sat up straight, thunderstruck. “You’re leaving? Before this is decided?”
Achmed took a breath. “It could be days, weeks, before a solution is reached here. I have some important things to attend to in Ylorc, and no time to wait around for these fools to sort out their petty differences.”
“I have to admit that I am amazed,” Ashe said, a tone of wonder mixing with the aggravation in his voice. “You, more than any single member of the Alliance save my paranoid uncle, are utterly distrustful of Sorbold — for good reason, given that it borders your lands. Don’t you feel at least some need to stay and see what comes to pass here?”
“I don’t think so. Whatever happens is going to be for ill,” Achmed said gravely. “Any outcome from this will be something with which we must deal, and prepare ourselves to survive. Watching it come about, being there at the moment it hatches, would only be deliberately dip the open wounds on my hands in salt water. While it’s pretty to think that something I might have to say would tip the scales, it won’t.”
“Well, there’s a positive outlook,” remarked Tristan Steward, rising from the table as well and smoothing out his trousers.
“Go get another glass of wine, Tristan,” Ashe said sharply. “Your comments at this colloquium have been bothersome, to the point of being embarrassing.”
Steward stared at the Lord Cymrian in shock that molded in a matter of seconds into fury, then glared at the Bolg king and departed.
“Stay, please,” Ashe said to Achmed when Tristan was out of earshot. “Your counsel may be of great benefit.”
“No. I came to listen, not to speak,” the Bolg king replied.
“But what are your thoughts? I want to hear them.”
Achmed rolled his eyes. “I am not your advisor, Ashe. If pressed to weigh in, if you will excuse the expression, I would lean in favor of stability, at least for my purposes, because there are many trade agreements and peace accords in place currently that would need renegotiating. They were a bother to enact in the first place, so multiplying that nuisance many times over might insure that it does, in fact, not happen again.
“More than that, a united Sorbold is worrisome enough. Sorbold in tatters would be worse; one can only imagine what would rise from a broken land where the army considers itself a faction in the decision-making process of selecting a new leader. If you did not shudder when that commander stood up and objected as if he were a head of state, you are a fool.”
“I did.”
“Well, you must understand, then, that no good is coming out of this. This dynasty didn’t end because everything was going well. These tables aren’t here because everyone is feasting a new monarch. Either the army will slaughter them all, or the merchants will have their thumbs on the scales, or the governors will break the empire by just going home. Whatever accord appears to be passed, whatever pleasantries exchanged, whatever support the losers in the contest demonstrate for the winners, this will end badly. It’s inevitable.” He turned to go, looking back only for a moment.
“If you must know, part of what I’m doing is to prepare for some instability on the border, and, in truth, I’d appreciate die details when it is settled, but I must go. I don’t have the stomach or the time to watch what comes to pass just so that I am able to say I was there and could do nothing to stop it.
“Now I must find the benison. Good night.”
24
Achmed was awake long before dawn broke.
He crept from the sleeping palace, stopping long enough to stare up at the towering minarets, the dry, imposing edifice, where the bells had thankfully abstained from ringing since the evening before. His head still vibrated from the cacophony of the funeral.
Quickly he made his way down to the livery. The gardens were glistening in the light of the setting moon, the sparse dew on the shrubs and flowers shining like spidery lace.
The stablemaster was there, as he had requested, overseeing the morning’s mucking and watering. The horse he had asked for was tacked and saddled, quartered beside his own. Achmed handed him the bill of tender, allowing his eyes to wander over the mount. The stablemaster has chosen generously; the mount was the one he would have selected himself. Achmed inhaled, pleased that, for once, his Firbolg blood had not been an excuse to be mistreated.
He withdrew from his pocket a platinum sun and gave it to the man for good measure, then led both horses away from the warm, heavy air of the stable into the cooler wind of dawn. It was the first time he remembered ever paying more than was asked; it was an interesting feeling.
He was not certain he liked it. But he felt no despair at it, either.
Quickly he vaulted onto his mount and, leading the horse he had just purchased, trotted off into the gray haze of predawn to the cliff face that overlooked the camp of the Panjeri. The advent of sunrise was causing the sky behind him to lighten in anticipation of the dawn.
As he crested the last rise, Achmed reared to a halt.
The camp was gone.
As were the nomads.
His heart began to pound as his eyes scanned the vast expanse of the steppes to the west, searching the gray mist of the world below for signs of the Panjeri caravan, but it were nowhere to be seen.
A sense of panic, or something like it, began to settle on him, burning in his thin skin. He had finally found the artisans for whom he had searched for months, one in particular who seemed precisely what he needed, a sealed master who was diligent and uncompromising in her work, who would brook no nonsense from Shaene, and could stare a Bolg in the face without flinching.
Who could help turn the Lightcatcher from a schematic into an instrumentality.
And she was gone.
By the gods, no, I will not let this slip through my hands again, he thought angrily.
He spurred the horse to canter, doubling back to the base of the hill that led up to the summit where the glass windows were embedded into the peak of Night Mountain.
As before, a quartet of guards was stationed near the crypt.
“Where are the Panjeri?” Achmed shouted to them as the two horses danced in place. The four soldiers blinked, the words rousing them from a state of half-sleep in the drowsy coolness of dawn.
The soldiers shook their heads. One of them shouted back.
“The mail caravan came through in the night. They might have gone with it for part of the way; nomads often do. It heads west through the Rymshin Pass and then north to Sepulvarta. You might try there.”
Achmed raised a hand in acknowledgment and spurred the horses again.
Two days later, an hour’s ride through the Rymshin Pass brought him in sight of the western Krevensfield Plain. The sun had crested the horizon, bathing the world below the foothills in a haze of steam, the
green waves of highgrass, burned at the tips, waving in the wind as it swept through.
In the distance the guarded mail caravan, seven wagons escorted by two score and ten guards, was slowly winding its way, unhurried, north along the feeder road to the trans-Orlandan thoroughfare. They were headed to Sepulvarta, halfway through their four-week transcontinental cycle. Achmed was intimately acquainted with the schedule and workings of the mail caravan, because it was he who had established it.
Following closely behind the caravan were four crude wagons, gaily painted, each drawn by two teams of horses, with single riders traveling along at intervals alongside.
He had found the Panjeri.
Achmed considered for a moment the logistics of his approach to the caravan. The Krevensfield Plain was flat enough, unguarded enough, that even a single rider coming rapidly down from the foothills and across the steppes might be mistaken as a marauder, though surely the most foolish marauder even spawned. Having no desire to be brought down by an arrow from one of Tristan Steward’s caravan guards, he looked around quickly for something to signal his peaceable intentions.
A banner depicting the Sun and Sword of the now-dead empress was flying dispiritedly at the entrance to the pass, its companion flag missing from its pole. Achmed rode to the entranceway and seized the banner, affixing it to his own riding staff. He looked up for a moment, contemplating the dynasty he had heard declared dead the day before, and its symbols of the endless power of the sun, the enduring might of the sword.
Even these pass away, he thought. Perhaps better in life to take on symbols of less grandiose stature, so that in death one might not look as ridiculous.
He checked the reins on the horse he had purchased in Sorbold, then spurred his own, guiding it down the rocky pathway into the open arms of the Krevensfield Plain.
A shout went up simultaneously from the Orlandan guards in the rear of the mail caravan and the Panjeri riding alongside their wagons.
“Hie! South! A rider!”
The caravan continued to roll, picking up a half-gait of speed, as the southern flank of guards peeled off and formed a vanguard waiting to intercept the rider. The Panjeri caravan continued on as well.
Within the second wagon, an older woman grabbed the arm of the younger woman called Theophila, and shook it to get her attention.
“Theophila! Hie to the south! Isn’t that the King of the Bolg in pursuit?” she said in the strange pidgin dialect of the nomadic tribe.
“It is! I recognize his veils,” said another. “Look! He’s come for you, Theophila!”
The younger woman shaded her eyes with her hand, staring south to the foothills. A smile, something the Panjeri had almost never seen on her face, crept across the corners of her mouth, but she said nothing. The women began teasing her as the wagon slowed, and two of the caravan guards rode out to meet the approaching rider, who was flying the standard of the dead empress and leading a second horse.
“It’s not your skills as a glass-shairae that he covets, girl!”
“No, it’s your arse! You do have a lovely arse, Theophila.”
“Yes, but she’s been waggling it in Krentice’s face through this last project. Won’t he be jealous?”
“Of the Bolg king? Hardly.”
“Why not? He has the same sack in his pants that every man does–
“Yes! A coin purse!”
“Stop that, you peahens,” the older woman scolded. “Mind your manners.”
The object of their teasing put her hand into the pocket of her trousers, and fingered the coins she had taken from the eyes of the empress and the Crown Prince after the clergy and other mourners had left and sealed the tomb high up in the desolate mountaintop. She ran her thumb over the rough metal surfaces, still feeling regret and the sting in her abdomen of misjudging the width of the hole she had opened in the stained-glass window. It was this entranceway she had been sealing when the Bolg king had first seen her.
“Let them twitter,” she said. “I pay them no mind, anyway.”
She watched with interest as the caravan guards exchanged a few words with the rider, then tugged on the reins, peeling their mounts back to the caravan line. The Bolg king, swathed in veils as she had seen him on the rise of the mount of windows, tossed his Sorbold standard on the ground and eased his horse forward, leading a second one, an expensive, beautiful gelded bay. He came to a halt before the wagon in which she was seated and shielded his strange eyes, staring directly into her own as she rose to a stand.
“Have you considered my offer?”
She squinted in the sun. “To work for tools?”
“Yes. Any hand tools you can design, they will be made for you.”
She thought for a moment. “And the two hundred thousand gold suns?”
Achmed blinked, his voice skipping slightly as he answered. “That was for the entire retinue of Panjeri.”
“No, it was for hiring what Panjeri you needed. It was you who said you needed but one.” She put her hands on her hips. “Are you reneging on your offer?”
“No,” the Bolg king said quickly. He smiled as an afterthought occurred. “It is a fair price to purchase the unlimited time of a sealed Panjeri master.”
It was now Theophila’s turn to experience a skipping of voice. “Wait,” she said, “Unlimited time? I did not agree to that.”
“Indeed you did. I told you I would not have you unless you were committed to finish the project, and you rather stoutly informed me that you never leave any aspect of your work unfinished. For all you know, my project is to line every crag in the Teeth with intricate windows depicting the geography of the entire world, from each mountain’s roots to it summit. Are you reneging on your acceptance of my offer?”
Theophila squared her chin defiantly.
“No,” she snarled.
Achmed smiled slightly. “Good. Then bid your clan goodbye, assure them you will be well treated and well paid, and come with me.”
The woman turned to the Panjeri, who were staring at her in confusion, spoke a few quick words, listening to the reply of an older man in the same wagon as she, the one that Achmed had determined to be the leader of the nomads based on his actions the day before. She turned back to the Bolg king.
“The leader wants your assurances that you will treat me with kindness.” Her voice held a hint of irony, perhaps at the knowledge of how much kindness she herself tended to show.
Achmed sat up straighter in the saddle, then dismounted and walked to the wagon, where he stood beneath Theophila, looking up at her.
“I treat no one with kindness,” he said quietly. “You may question both my dearest friends and direst enemies, and they shall both tell you the same thing. But you will be safe, well fed, well protected, and well outfitted. Beyond that, I promise nothing.”
The woman stood silent, considering his words. Behind her the Panjeri began whispering to one another in their strange tongue. Achmed grew annoyed. He put out his gloved hand to her.
“Come with me,” he said bluntly.
The words, his own, born of impatience, echoed in his mind. He had spoken very similar words centuries before, a lifetime ago, on the other side of Time, in the air of a world now gone, to another woman who was trying his patience.
Come with us if you want to live.
Theophila stared down at him; Achmed could see the instant when the decision was finalized in her eyes. She gathered her things, took his hand, and jumped down from the wagon, ignoring the stares and bewildered mutterings of the Panjeri, then followed him back to the horses and mounted the one he had brought for her.
The mail caravan guards, seeing that the Firbolg king’s business was completed, passed the word up along the line, preparing to resume their journey. The caravan leader waited long enough for the two strange people to begin to ride, then called to his own wagon drivers.
“Move on, lads. We have to catch up with the sun.”
25
It took the better part of
a day for the various factions to sort through their own pecking orders enough to choose a symbol to represent their interests.
Ashe spent that time cloistered with Rial and Tristan Steward, comparing their observations and setting an agreed standard for participation in the remainder of the colloquium.
“This nation is sorting out some of the most grievous decisions ever to face a realm,” he said quietly to the Lord Roland over their sparse noonmeal served in the cavernous dining hall of the palace; a good number of the cooks and servants had fled after the funeral, fearing the unknown, but trusting in their anonymity, assuming if a friendly regime took Jierna Tal, they would be rehired, since no one would recognize them anyway. “Whatever system replaces Leitha, I mean to see that it maintains its status as a friend to the Alliance. And while privately I agree with you in principle, Tristan, that Sorbold is stronger and an easier nation to deal with as a whole, not as a conglomeration of independent states, it is not for us to decide, or deride, what they choose to become in this new incarnation of their realm. Not to mention that strong neighbors aren’t always good things.”
The Lord Roland fixed a demeaning stare on his sovereign and childhood friend.
“When we were lads, I remember you saying once that there were leaders, and there were politicians,” he said in a surly tone, “distinguishable by whether they looked inward or outward to find the courage of their convictions. I am sorry to see which one you have turned out to be.”