Call of the Colossus: An epic fantasy novel (The Mindstream Chronicles Book 2) (37 page)

“And considering your brother’s plight, sparked by your behavior, you might want to rethink your threats, Novice. I was tasked with issuing his punishment, which includes choosing the enforcer to carry it out.”

Jora swallowed. She’d assumed the Legion would discipline Finn. “What punishment?”

“For assaulting a Legion officer. Haven’t you heard? He was found guilty, of course. His sentence is fimbling of two fingers and ten lashes.” He leaned back in his chair with a cocksure smirk playing on his mouth. The nervous jitter in his voice was gone. “Fimbling means breaking a bone in each finger, but depending on the experience of the enforcer, he could end up with dislocated joints also. You have to hit the finger at the right angle, you see, otherwise
snap!
goes the knuckle.”

Her stomach spasmed, and a foul taste rushed up her throat. She swallowed it back down, suddenly feeling clammy.

“I could assign Gruesome the task. Oh, I know. His nickname sounds bad, but in a case like this, you would thank me for that. He hasn’t hit a joint in probably two years. The breaks will be clean and quick. On the other hand, I could assign Korlan. He needs to learn how to do it. With Grue to guide him, he might get it right on the first try, but it’s far more likely that he’ll–”

“Stop,” Jora said, squeezing her eyes shut. “Stop it.” How had she lost control of this conversation? She straightened, lifted her chin, and met his eyes squarely. “Finn isn’t above the law. He has to accept his due punishment, but no more. Any injury he sustains beyond his sentence will have consequences. Do I make myself clear?”

Milad raised his arm and pointed to the door. “Get the hell out of my office.”

Chapter 24

Jora ignored Korlan, bobbing along behind her, as she hurried through the corridors. The anger and frustration and pain of betrayal were burning in her like a red coal in the center of her chest. The last thing she wanted to do was to burst into tears before she was safely alone and have people try to stop her to ask what was wrong. After finally reaching her room, she slammed the door in Korlan’s face and collapsed face down onto the bed.

She spent the next two hours alternately crying into her pillow and beating it with her fists. The headache her anguish spurred only made her feel worse. She missed breakfast, but she didn’t care. She had no appetite. One friend was a traitor, the other was gone for good, and her brother was being used as a pawn to manipulate her. She had no one left. Adriel was a dear, but Jora couldn’t put her in jeopardy by telling her things she had no power to fight.

Someone knocked at the door.

Her initial reaction was to quiet her crying and pretend she wasn’t there, but it was likely her sobs had been heard through the walls and door. And then there was her jailer Korlan standing outside the door, like a flag to tell everyone she was there. She used the Mindstream to see who was outside her door. It was the princess.
Retar
’
s fists.
Slowly, reluctancly, Jora sat up and wiped her eyes. “Come in,” she said softly.

“Are you all right? I heard crying.” Princess Rivva came into the room and shut the door behind her. “Did they punish you again?”

“No, no,” Jora said. She gestured to the reclining chair as an invitation for the princess to sit. “It wasn’t anything like that. My brother’s about to be fimbled and whipped, and I can’t stop it.”

“He’ll be all right,” Rivva said, sitting in the chair. Her posture was relaxed and confident. “He’s strong and tough. He’ll make it through, just like you made it through your punishment. I can’t stop it either, but I’ll request mercy from the justice captain if you think it’ll help.”

“It won’t. The justice captain sent Korlan to kill Sundancer.”

Rivva’s eyes widened as she leaned forward. “No. That’s despicable. Why would he do such a thing?”

“Because of Arc. Because Milad’s afraid of me learning any more magic.” Jora threw up her hands. “He didn’t even think about the fact that I can read the book of tones anytime I want to and learn magic from that.”

“I’ll ask Elder Devarla to bring the matter before the elder council. With censure and instructions from them, Sundancer will be safe. Listen, one of the Legion captains is missing. He hasn’t been accounted for since yesterday and no one can find him. They searched his office and found the coins, which were eventually delivered to the mint. Might you know anything about that?”

Jora glanced at the princess’s wrist. Her silver bracelet was in place, the one that protected her from the curious eyes of the Truth Sayers. “Yes. That’s Captain Kyear. He’s the one who receives the money and takes it to the barbery where Behrendt picks it up.”

“With the captain missing and removed from the chain, they put someone else in his place, though I don’t know who. Papa wouldn’t tell me.”

All that effort to disrupt the delivery was wasted. Jora wouldn’t find out who replaced Kyear until the sergeant delivered next week’s payment. She let her face fall into her palms.

“Is he alive?”

Jora looked up and nodded. “Yes, he’s safe.”

Rivva’s shoulders relaxed with a hard exhale. “Good. Would any Truth Sayers be able to Observe you with him?”

“No, they can’t…” Jora remembered the sergeant. If the Truth Sayers Observed the sergeant, they would see her. “They can’t Observe Kyear until I release him, but there is someone else—the sergeant who brought the coins to Jolver. He saw me in Kyear’s office, but I was wearing a hat and street clothes. Unless someone looks at my face, they might assume I was the bereaved wife of a fallen soldier.”

Rivva nodded. “If you were planning anything else to disrupt the smuggling, please stop now.”

“Are we supposed to sit back and let it continue?”

Rivva stood and came to the bed, sitting on its edge. “As much as it pains me to say it, the smuggling doesn’t stop with Minister Quirza.”

Jora slumped her shoulders. Something in the back of her mind had told her the king knew about the smuggling, but she’d tried to ignore it, hoping she was wrong. She couldn’t deny it any longer. “He never asked me to investigate the smuggling,did he?”

Rivva took one of Jora’s hands. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I thought that by having you report to me what you learned, I could use the information to pressure Quirza to stop. I never meant to put you in danger. He didn’t say as much, but I’m certain my father feels trapped in this whole thing. The smuggling money helps pay for food and supplies for the soldiers. When I asked why he didn’t start selling the godfruit openly, establish trade agreements with our enemies, he said everything has reached a sort of equilibrium. Barad Selegal has fairly well dropped out of the conflict, but they allow Arynd Ban to launch boats from their shores or send ground forces across their northern border. Mangend and Arynd Ban don’t attack up our coast, don’t try to take Jolver, don’t send too many soldiers at once… It’s like he’s worked out an agreement of sorts with the leaders of the other countries to keep the war going without anyone winning.”

“An agreement?” Jora couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Not a formal one, perhaps, but one they’ve settled into. One that’s perpetuated by us smuggling just enough godfruit to keep them coming back but not so much that they’re overconfident of victory. I don’t understand the nuances of war. To be honest, I’d hoped the war would end before I inherited the throne.” She snorted with a twist of irony in her lips. “I actually thought my father was working toward that end.” She looked like she was about to say something else when someone knocked on the door, interrupting the conversation.

Jora realized that not only was she late for her lesson, but she’d not read the last assignment.

“Who—oh! I’m so sorry,” Bastin said. “I didn’t realize you were here, Princess Rivva. Please forgive my intrusion.”

Rivva stood. “It’s quite all right. I believe our business here is finished for now.” She looked questioningly at Jora. “I think we need to consider our options and meet in a day or two.”

“I agree,” Jora said, standing. “Thank you for coming by, Rivva.”

Bastin bowed as the princess swept past. “Good day, Princess.”

Rivva paused in the hallway. “You are?”

“Bastin, Your Highness.”

“Good day, Bastin.”

Once Rivva had left, Bastin fanned herself with one hand. “You’re friends with the princess? God’s challenger! Why didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have barged in like that if I’d known she might be visiting.”

“You couldn’t tell by the royal guard standing outside my door?” Jora asked with a dim smile.

“There were no guards in the hallway, though there were four waiting at the bottom of the stairs. I figured whichever royal was here would be talking to an elder.”

“Surprise.”

Bastin smacked her tongue in dismissive contempt. “Let’s go to the library. Get your book.”

“Um, I’m sorry, Bastin. I haven’t read my last assignment yet.”

The disciple gave her an annoyed look. “What have you been doing all this time?”

“Working on a project for Princess Rivva,” she said.

“What project?”

“If you must know, you’re welcome to ask her. I’ve been instructed to keep the details to myself.”

Bastin smacked her tongue again. “Well, aren’t you important?”

“I’m the Gatekeeper. Now, did you want to go over my reading assignment together, or leave me to read on my own?”

Bastin pressed her lips together so hard, they turned white. “Fine,” she blurted. “Read. And be sure you do this time, else I’ll report you to Adept Fer.” With that, Bastin left her to pace alone in her room and think.

Arc had been right. Her plan to disrupt the smuggling by removing the money was ill-conceived, but she couldn’t accept that the answer was letting the war rage on. The vision of her brother Tosh, dying to a sword through the back, would forever haunt her. She’d lost two cousins, three uncles, and a grandfather to the war, not to mention countless more distant relatives, friends, and neighbors. The first boy she’d ever kissed had died earlier in the year. Her best friend, Tearna, lost two brothers and a cousin in the past five years. And what of the men still fighting whose loved ones waited fearfully for news of their deaths? There had to be a way to stop the war with or without the king’s help.

Now that Rivva knew, maybe she could convince her father to at least consider alternatives. If King Yaphet needed Jora to go as Gatekeeper to foreign lands and negotiate a truce, she would. True, she knew nothing about being a diplomat, but she had a responsibility to use the power entrusted to her for good. She could travel through enemy lands unseen, even kidnap a king or queen if necessary to force the laying down of arms for a time.

As much as she wanted to seek an audience with King Yaphet and offer her aid, she had to give Rivva time to do things her way. For now, she needed to sit tight and let a solution present itself, and if she came up with an idea, she would take action then. In the meantime, she had a brother to worry about.

She settled on her reclining chair, opened the Mindstream, and found Finn’s thread. He was in a cell at the jail, a dank and smelly cage not unlike the one she’d waited in for ten days before her trial. Moving backward through his stream, she discovered that he’d had his court-martial the day before. Milad hadn’t lied; Finn had been found guilty and sentenced to fimbling and ten lashes. How long he would sit in jail before Milad would get around to issuing his punishment was still a question, but for now he was safe.

She breathed her relief and closed the Mindstream, then let her mind drift back to the larger problem: how to stop a hundred-year-old war.

At first Jora paced, then she sat on the reclining chair, chewing and picking at the ragged cuticles on her fingers while she thought. There had to be a way to stop the war without starving the soldiers. Why were the soldiers on the Isle of Shess if not to guard the Tree of the Fallen God? And if they only needed to guard the Tree, Jora could manage with a few more allies and the rest of the Colossus. The soldiers could go home. Then nobody would get the godfruit or everyone would. It was as simple as that.