City of Bones (48 page)

The Elector twisted around to consult Constans, who was watching pensively. “It only makes sense,” the Warder said. “He was over a thousand years old.”

“I see. A great pity,” the Elector said slowly, sitting back on the couch. “He could have told us … everything.”

“Everything might have been too much to know,” Constans pointed out dryly. “All at one time, at any rate.”

The Elector was eyeing Khat again. “The embassy from the kris-men Enclave asked about any kris living in Charisat. They were very anxious to find someone in particular. It wouldn’t have been you, by any chance?”

Khat wasn’t far gone enough to admit that. Blank and innocent, he said, “I don’t think so.”

The Elector looked to Constans again.
He must do it by habit
, Khat realized. With Constans’s skill at soul-reading, he would be able to tell when people were telling the truth. Most people, anyway. It must disconcert the Patricians no end.

Smiling, Constans said, “Oh, I doubt they were searching for him. There must be other kris in the city. So many people come and go every day.”

Well, thank you very much, finally
, Khat thought, careful to let none of it show on his face.
Gratitude, my ass
.

Whether the Elector really believed Constans or simply accepted his judgment on the matter was impossible to guess. He said, “Yes, of course,” and gestured at one of the servants. “Tell the lictors he’s to be released.”

Khat could have fainted again, this time from relief. It had been a very strange experience, taken in all, but not too frightening.

But before the servant had taken two steps to the door, Constans said, “He is ill, however. If he receives no care he will be dead in three days.”

“Really?” The Elector frowned. If he noticed the look of pure hatred Khat was turning in Constans’s direction he gave no sign of it. “Send him to the palace physicians first, then.”

A servant brought Venge and the other lictors, and Khat was hauled away. Elen was waiting for him at the stairs down to the seventh level. “I told you it would be all right,” she said.

“You’re Master Warder?” Khat asked her, trying not to make it sound like an accusation.

“Yes.” She seemed none too pleased with it. “Constans arranged it. I could kill him. I’m sure it’s some sort of trick. What did he say to you?”

“He said I could leave,” Khat told her, thinking it was worth a try.

“He said you would see the palace physicians,” Venge corrected inexorably.

The physicians were not pleased. They thought he should recover completely from the fever before leaving the palace. The rooms the lictors took him to were on the seventh level, where the marble halls were under constant guard and the large windows that looked out on such a gorgeous view could not be climbed out of, even if Khat had felt up to the challenge. The place might be filled with air and light, but it was just as much a prison as the stinking chambers under the High Trade Authority. His only choice was to submit.

The physicians were too curious for Khat’s peace of mind, and the servants were either frightened or disdainful. The first thing they did was take his clothes away, and they were disappointed to discover that he wasn’t really that filthy, only from what the past couple of days had done. The robes they gave him in return were silk, but he was in no mood to appreciate it. Most of that first day passed in a dreamlike haze, but by morning he felt well enough to leave. The trouble was in convincing someone to seriously consider the idea.

The physicians said his recovery was not yet complete, and the long day stretched on. Khat’s only amusement was that two of the servants were foreigners from the Ilacre Cities, and under the delusion that he couldn’t understand their dialect of Menian; listening to what they assumed were private conversations lightened the heavy hours considerably.

The food, of course, was wonderful, and Khat had never been to a place where there was such a lack of concern over where the next dipper of water was coming from. Even in the Academia, where the Elector paid for it, everyone knew water cost coins. Here they didn’t seem aware of it at all.

It was, as he told Elen when she came to see him that afternoon, quite the nicest prison he had ever been in.

“It isn’t a prison,” she argued.

“They won’t let me leave,” he told her, stretched out on one of the soft cushioned couches. Being treated as a curiosity was better than being treated as garbage, but it weighed just as heavily on the nerves. The Elector could change his mind about releasing him, the lictors could decide to have some fun, a Patrician who equated kris with pirates could walk into the room and shoot him, anything could happen. Elen was the only one he could look to for real help, and it rankled to be dependent on her.

“It’s for your own good,” she said.

“That’s the worst kind of prison.”

Elen was there often in the next few days, probably more often than she should have been. Ostensibly it was to keep him company, but she also needed to talk, and at the moment he was all she had. She was finding her abrupt transition to Master Warder a fascinating but sometimes daunting experience. She had better luck dealing with the Elector than Riathen ever had, a fact she couldn’t seem to account for. The simple reason that she was both more personable and more open to considering alternatives than her predecessor was something she would come to realize eventually, Khat supposed. That she wasn’t playing power games with the Heirs or obsessively committed to furthering the influence of Warders no matter what the consequences probably helped as well.

She had arcane power, which she had always wanted, and she had temporal power, which she had been trained from birth to wield. She had also lost the man who had been a father to her for most of her life, and not only lost him but lost her faith in him. Every memory of Riathen concerned the Warder training that had been her whole world, and every one of those memories was tinged with the knowledge that he had subtly held her back, had manipulated her own fears to control her.

The Warders in her household treated her with cautious courtesy, not understanding her new power and perhaps distrusting her sudden elevation. Gandin Riat was the only one who was genuinely glad for her, but he had seen what the Inhabitant was capable of firsthand, and was the only one who had any real understanding of what had happened.

Khat listened to her, but under Elen’s calm surface she was vulnerable, and for some reason that annoyed him no end. He knew she needed him, and had to fight the urge to push her away. Not for the first time, he was glad to be dead to the Warders’ soul-reading.

But he wasn’t as good at concealing things from her as he thought, and one afternoon Elen said in frustration, “This is so typical of you.”

“What?”

“You risked your life to look for me when I went missing, and now you’ll barely talk to me.”

It wasn’t until that moment that Khat understood himself what was wrong. Slowly, he said, “You’re Master Warder now, Elen.”

“Yes.” She had heard the words, but not the meaning behind them. “I don’t know how long I’ll hold on to it. As long as I can, I suppose. I’ve never been much of a courtier.” She was trying to make it all sound as if it meant nothing, but under the false lightness her voice was bitter. “The only thing I have is my power, and that was handed to me by the Remnant.”

Khat was hardly hearing her now, too occupied with his own revelation. Well, maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe she need never know. He said, “Aren’t you ever happy with anything?”

“Well, you’re a fine one to say that.”

Sagai and Arad-edelk came up the next day and with Elen’s help managed to see him, Sagai to make sure he was all right and Arad to hear the story of the Remnant from his point of view. Arad had heard it from Elen, but she hadn’t taken as much notice of the details of the Doorway’s construction as he would’ve liked. Khat was glad to see them, no matter how briefly, but it only reinforced his feeling that everyone was off having fun while he was trapped here.

By the fourth day Khat finally persuaded his keepers to give him back most of his own clothes. The things they considered too hopelessly worn to return they replaced with tough plain stuff suitable for the Waste, and that was more reassuring than anything else. It meant that as far as the lower echelon of the palace was concerned, he really was going to be released at some point. The next day Elen came to tell him that the physicians had pronounced him fit to leave the palace, and Khat had never been more relieved in his life.

On the way out, she said, as if making a sudden decision, “There’s something I’d like to ask you.” They went out to one of the stepped terraces that cut into the lower level of the palace, empty in the afternoon heat, its vine-covered arbor casting alternating bars of light and shadow across the tiles.

Elen leaned against the low wall and was silent for a time, her preoccupied gaze on the court below, tapping her fingers on the stone. Khat didn’t interrupt her thoughts; they were far enough out of the palace that he didn’t feel trapped, and he suspected he should be in no hurry to have this conversation. Finally Elen said, “Would you … consider staying here? I know Sagai’s heart is already in Kenniliar, but … there’s going to be a new study of the Tersalten Flat Remnant by the Academia, and the Warders are to be involved. I’ve been working it all out with Arad and Ecazar. I would appreciate your help.”

Khat looked away, toward the view of Patrician manses and the green squares of their courtyards. It was unfairly tempting. The Academia might even be persuaded to accept him for a time, with Elen’s patronage. And he was sure that Arad would help. Arad’s world was centered on two things: the Ancients and the scholarly politics of the Academia. He might have noticed Khat was krismen, but it didn’t make enough of an impact on his world to make any difference to him, and he would see Khat only as an ally in the latter cause. But Khat could too easily see the problems it would cause for the scholar. And Elen.

Especially Elen.

The other Warders in her household had reacted badly enough when she had worked with him to find the relics. As Master Warder she would have more latitude, but she would have to get along with those men in her household, and his regular presence would make that impossible. But that was really the least important reason.

If his silence rattled Elen she didn’t show it, but he knew from experience that the worse the crisis, the calmer she became. She turned to look at him then, resting one hip on the wall and saying more directly, “I think we’re friends now, and I suppose I’m not asking for anything more than that. But… I’d like the chance to find out if there might be something more than that.”

Khat had been propositioned by city people more times than he could remember, but he had never been courted, and never had a request for his company held so much respect for his own feelings. For an instant he almost considered it. He shook his head. “You need me like you needed Kythen Seul, Elen.”

She smiled a little. “I don’t think you’re quite as much of a liability as that.” She watched him, taking the refusal as calmly as she had made the offer. “Can you tell me why?”

He could, but didn’t want to. He made himself meet her eyes, and it wasn’t only the sun’s muted glare through the vines that made it difficult. “You said once that you trusted me. Do you still trust me, after I lied to you about Constans?”

Elen didn’t like being reminded of it, and dropped her gaze briefly. “I could forgive you that. After all, you were right.” She hesitated, as the truth began to occur to her. “Do you still trust me?”

Khat didn’t answer, torn between wanting to make her understand and not wanting to hurt her. It would have been easy to lie, to invent an excuse, but she didn’t need any more friends to do that to her.

He told her the truth. “You’re Master Warder now, Elen.”

A breeze came over the balustrade, bringing a blast of smothering heat from the sun-drenched pavement, and the smell of incense and flowers. A group of Patricians with their entourages went by on the walkway just below, perceivable only as chattering voices, soft whipping of robes in the wind, and the jingle of bronze rings on parasols.

Elen had heard the meaning beneath the words this time. She said, “I see.”

Her voice was still calm, but the pain was there. Defensive, he said, “I don’t tell Sagai everything, either.”

“Yes,” Elen agreed. “But he expects it, and he’s more understanding than I am.”

“It isn’t you,” he said. “It’s me. I wish I could trust you.”

“I know.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m Master Warder now; that’s probably the last dose of honesty I’ll get.” She pushed herself away from the wall. “I’ll walk you down to the Fourth Tier.”

They went most of the way in silence, though towards the end it was companionable silence. He had told her the truth, and maybe that was what she needed now, however hard it was to hear.

When they reached the Fourth Tier he kissed her good-bye, and she didn’t gasp or change color, though one of the vigils at the tier gate dropped his rifle. She only looked up at him, said, “Good luck,” and that was that.

Khat reached the Academia without trouble and found Sagai, who had had a glorious time studying the Survivor text with Arad-edelk, but was ready now to go home. It was too late in the day to get passage on a caravan, so they spent the night at Arad’s house, but by morning they were at the docks, and ready to leave the dust of the city behind them.