Lance of Earth and Sky (The Chaos Knight Book Two) (7 page)

Renard seemed not to hear him. “I have another coat and trousers in the back that
may
work, quickly stitched. Appalling as it is to consider you going before the emperor in such a state,” he said. “I told them I'd have nothing to do with it, but they went and got a bloody decree. I made Emiran swear my name would never be connected with this debacle or I'd ensure the tailors' guild blacklisted him for life.” His birdlike eyes turned to Calphille and he gasped dramatically. “And they said absolutely nothing about you, my dear.” He didn't wait for her to answer, but clapped his hands and shouted, “Giselle!”

A harried face poked into the colonnaded doorway at the rear of the salon just as Renard drew breath to shout again. He took Calphille gently by the elbow and steered her toward the face. “Take miss—” a look, and Calphille gave her name, “Calphille to the arbor room and fit her up with a gown from the Countess Bel'Maritai's collection.” He tilted his head conspiratorially toward Vidarian. “Silly waif won't know it's gone, and anyway she's on ‘holiday’ what with all the commotion.” Calphille shot a startled glance at Vidarian, but let herself be escorted down the hallway.

When Renard turned back to Vidarian, it was not unlike meeting the eyes of one of the elemental goddesses. “First—a bath, a thorough one. It's prepared in the water chamber, just up the hall.” He turned immediately to Isri without waiting to see if Vidarian would comply, and opened the velvet cloak with long, clever fingers. “A terrible shame to hide such beautiful plumage,” he murmured, brushing one of Isri's primaries when she nodded permission to his proffered hand. Vidarian revised his estimation of the man at the look of kindness and apology he now directed at her. “But the common folk can be barbarians.”

Ruby gave a venomous mutter about “uncommon” folk, the first she'd spoken since their landing. Vidarian couldn't help but agree, though he snuck off to the ordered bath before he could risk Renard's attention again.

Two hours later, Vidarian, Calphille, and Isri were ensconced in separate chambers. Renard had moved like a whirlwind and left Vidarian with three of the best-fitting sets of clothing he'd ever owned, and yet another warning that they had never met. Vidarian had assured him of total secrecy, and another under-steward had come to direct him to his chambers.

The rooms were, of course, palatial, with the water chamber alone easily twice the size of his cabin on the lost
Empress Quest
. In the sleeping room, the velvet-curtained bed was the largest he had ever seen, and the dark, heavy furniture, resplendent with silver-work, was surely worth more than the
Quest
herself had been at the market's height a decade ago.

All of this washed over Vidarian, barely noticed. He was here to see the emperor, and his door was unguarded. The under-steward had left him in the room, wary of the pup, whose spines still emitted the odd spark of electricity, without any instruction. And the pup, in the way of young things, had promptly curled up on the cool stone floor of the water chamber and fallen asleep.

Vidarian eased out into the marble-tiled corridor and closed the door behind him as quietly as he could. He listened for any sign that the pup had awakened, but there was only silence. Quietly he turned, rehearsing a story about searching for the kitchens in hunger—not entirely untrue—in case he should meet a servant.

But after nearly an hour of wandering through hallways—some indoor, some open to the outside and the balmy, flower-scented evening air—he realized that suspicious servants were the least of his problems. The palace was massive, sprawling, and utterly indecipherable.

He was about to turn back to his chambers—assuming he could even find them, which was a big assumption—when Ruby spoke again, after more hours of silence.

*
Left, left, right.
*

“What?” he said, startled into answering her aloud. He looked around, relieved that they were alone.

*
Left around this corner, left again at the end of the hallway, then right, across the courtyard.
*

“Are you just guessing?” Vidarian was genuinely hungry now, and on the edge of irritation. Ruby offered no answer, so he followed the directions. He was sure he'd been down these corridors before—but the courtyard she directed him to was a new one.

*
Down the stairs, third door, down the hallway.
*

“How do you know this?” he said quietly, looking around again for observers.

*
I don't know.
* A hint of real worry colored her voice, but beneath it the strange tone he'd heard from her before, distant and diffuse.

She continued to direct him, only once leading them astray—*
Strange, that wall wasn't there…
*

Finally they came to an underground room deep in the heart of the palace. This one
was
guarded, and Vidarian offered a hasty and mostly true explanation of his imperial summons to the two pikemen who flanked the plain stone door.

The two guards exchanged looks, and the one on the right opened the door and disappeared inside. Vidarian barely had time to prepare another explanation when he reappeared again. To his surprise, he beckoned Vidarian inside.

A low ceiling in the next hallway forced the guard to angle his pike, and he bore it carefully down a series of mazelike passages. Just when Vidarian was sure he was being escorted out of the building by some other exit, the guard stopped before a final door, flanked by two more guards.

One of the guards opened the door—this one wooden and heavily carved—and the bluish light that spilled from the chamber beyond blinded Vidarian for several long moments.

When his eyes adjusted, it took him another long interval to make sense of what he was seeing.

Nine men and women sat evenly spaced around a circular table of heavy polished stone. The blue light came from thick glass lenses that they all wore. All but one of them were murmuring continuously, though none of them, as far as he could tell, were saying the same thing. In the center of the table was a glittering sphere, a glass orb larger than a gryphon's head, also glowing with blue light and worked all over with holes laid out in geometric patterns. It reminded him of the amplifier, the glass device he'd used to magnify his fledgling elemental abilities against the Vkortha, so long ago.

The ninth figure, a young man sitting closest to the glowing sphere, wore a simple gold circlet at his brow.

“Welcome, Captain,” the emperor said, standing and pulling the blue lenses from his eyes with weary hands, “to Val Imris—and the Relay Room.”

A
t the emperor's words, a murmuring echo passed around the table. The remaining eight people continued to stare into the sphere at its center through their glowing lenses. Though they responded to speech, they didn't seem to realize anyone else was in the room—each still kept up a steady flow of words, all different, all indistinguishable to Vidarian's ears. The emperor smiled ruefully and lifted a finger to his lips, then approached Vidarian from the far side of the table.

Color and light, despite the dim hall, gleamed off of the emperor's embroidered silk robe as he drew closer to the doorway. Vidarian worked to keep his feet under him—the long journey, hunger, and now facing a man to whom his family had owed loyalty for generations. The young, chiseled face and dark eyes held authority weightlessly, and some distant, surreal part of Vidarian observed that his likeness on the coin of the realm was quite true to life.

A moment of panic surged through Vidarian's veins as he flailed after words, but to his surprise, the emperor's eyes went up over his shoulder, focused somewhere behind him.

Vidarian turned and recognized the shining black coiffure and grey eyes that looked back at him. He only just caught an eruption of hate and fury before they submerged beneath a portrait-perfect smile. Her eyes were now so welcoming, her greeting to the emperor so warm, that he wondered if hunger and shock had made him hallucinate. The light here
was
so damnably dim…

“Ah, Oneira,” the emperor was greeting her with equal satisfaction and warmth, “you're just in time. Captain Rulorat has arrived. You must dine with us.”

Vidarian fought between relief at the idea of a meal and distaste at sharing it with Oneira, whom, when last they met, was pursuing him and Ariadel through the dead of night with capture orders from the Alorean Import Company.

“Your majesty knows I would love nothing more,” Oneira said, her diction cultured to perfection, “but I had come to relieve you at the table.” In clasping the emperor's hands in greeting, she had accepted the blue glass lenses from him.

The emperor waved delicate hands, the flurry of his fingers light and controlled at the same time, like a sparrow's wings. “Easily remedied,” he said, and waved at one of the guards. “We'll fetch Alandrus. He'll not mind, and should gain practice besides.”

Oneira searched the emperor's eyes for a long moment, doubtless gauging whether she could risk resisting him again, but in the end she smiled, all lightness. “Of course, your majesty. As you wish.”

By all accounts the emperor had decided on that moment's whim to dine with Vidarian and Oneira, but in the short time it took them to adjourn to the dining room—the “sable room,” his majesty had mentioned offhandedly, one of fifteen imperial dining rooms in the palace—an elegantly dressed table for four awaited them.

Vidarian waited for the emperor and Oneira to take their seats, then placed himself to the left of the emperor, resting a hand on the chair and looking for his majesty's subtle nod of approval before setting himself down.

All four places at the table—sable oak, matching the frame of a huge hunt scene in oils on the north wall, and the pedestals in lit alcoves bearing massive floral arrangements that filled the small room with fragrance—were set. Confirming that they would await another guest, the liveried servant who came bearing an effervescent pale wine filled four glasses, not three.

“To departed friends,” Oneira said, lifting her glass, and dropping an obscure look on Vidarian just before she did so.

“Indeed,” the emperor replied, lifting his own and then sipping from it. “To those who cannot join us—our poor Justinian included.” At that last, the look he gave Oneira was brotherly with sympathy.

“So it's true, then,” Vidarian said softly, more to himself than the table. Two faces turned toward him. “The Court of Directors,” he said, still absorbing the truth himself—realizing he had not wanted to believe. “We heard…” The words failed him.

“That they fell dead,” Oneira finished for him, and for the briefest of moments her eyes filled with water, but again she mastered herself so quickly as to make it seem an illusion. “The moment you opened the gate, according to the calculations of our scouts.”

Vidarian's head swam, and not just from the surprisingly potent wine. Had they known they would die? Is that why they tried to stop him from making it to the gate? But no—surely if Justinian himself had known the gate's opening would strike him down, he'd have killed Vidarian at the first opportunity, and there had been many such…

As he looked across the table, searching for an adequate reply, he realized three things in quick succession:

One: The same shift in healing magics that had caused Ruby's death must have disrupted the longevity magics of the directors.

Two: With the entire Court gone all at once, the Company must be in total chaos—

And three: Oneira had not just been Justinian's second. She had loved him, and likely he her.

*
It would explain how a director would be so foolish as to insist on a female second,
* Ruby said, soft with emotion, all trace of her usual cynicism gone.

Oneira's head jerked toward him, suspicion and confusion warring on her face.

Ruby's stone went so cold Vidarian could feel it through the leather pouch at his side. *
She can hear me?
* Vidarian was equally baffled. Ruby's “voice” had been pitched for him alone.

Before he could find a way to learn what Oneira had or hadn't heard, the door behind him opened. And before he could turn to discover the mysterious fourth guest, the emperor stood, a look of total stricken astonishment on his face. So trained were his features ordinarily that it took Vidarian several moments to recognize the expression for what it was: awe.

Remembering himself, Vidarian stood, and turned toward the door.

It was Calphille. But what a spell Renard had cast over her! The gown was green and black silk, tightly laced in the latest fashion, its shimmering skirts floating on voluminous petticoats. Her hair, which had been dark as shadowed leaves, now had a luster that took it from rich pine to spring bud, accented by tiny jeweled flowers that winked red and gold in the candlelight. The gown bared her shoulders, showing the chocolate smoothness of her skin dramatically, and powdered gold dust brought out the rich amber of her eyes. But eclipsing all of this was her wildness, which no cosseting could mask. If you were to wrap a tiger in finest silk, you would not notice the drape of the fabric; this was how Calphille shone through the countess's finery.

The emperor had shaken off his reverie, and now crossed the floor quickly to offer Calphille his arm. Her eyes widened as he approached, but Renard must have also briefly schooled her in etiquette, for she dropped a graceful curtsey that spoke more of a doe in flight than a courtier. As he walked her to her chair, the emperor's eyes never left her, nor indeed when he took his own place opposite her.

*
He's smitten!
* Ruby chirped, all of her sullenness lifted like evaporating fog. Vidarian hardly dared breathe; his obligation to Ruby, their macabre task, weighed all too heavily on his mind, and her long silences punctuated by dark moods he attributed solely to his failure thus far. But he could feel her attention now, oddly joyous, utterly on the emperor and Calphille—who, for her part, seemed equally in the emperor's thrall. She might drop her eyes demurely, but whenever the emperor spoke, her whole body oriented toward him like a leaf toward sunlight. *
An intriguing development!
*

Again, when Ruby spoke, Oneira looked around surreptitiously, a crease of confusion subtle between her eyebrows. There was no doubt in Vidarian's mind that she could hear Ruby—but why, or what it meant, he had no idea. She, too, seemed intrigued with the energy that crackled between Calphille and the emperor, and, to Vidarian's intense relief, utterly without jealousy. He could feel the iron claws of court politics closing around them: the emperor and Calphille, transfixed with each other, while Vidarian, Oneira—and Ruby!—thought only of what this new power dynamic would do to their own schemes.

More liveried servants entered the dining room, bearing glass cylinders of a frothy exotic fruit aperitif that did little to wash the unpleasant taste of politics from his tongue. Delicate cakes of fried shredded root vegetable followed, swimming in a pale cream redolent with far island spice. Though Vidarian prided himself on esoteric knowledge of foodstuffs from across the five seas, he could recognize only the basics of what came before them.

Over a larger plate of poached tigerfish with tiny succulent tomatoes and an exquisite brown-butter eldergrass sauté, the emperor at last yielded Vidarian a polite opening. “In these strange times, I can only summon the empire's wisest, and hope that their counsel can see us through.”

“I had wondered, your majesty, what counsel or service I might provide you.” Vidarian forced his words into a genteel slowness, though he burned with the urge to demand of the emperor the reason for his summoning.

To his surprise, the emperor turned to Oneira, who smiled but did not take the proffered invitation. “I was hoping you would have those answers,” the emperor said, setting aside his fork and resting his hands on the table in a clear signal of frank conversation. “With this war with Qui—”

“War?” Vidarian breathed, completely unaware of having interrupted the most powerful man on the continent.

“Yes,” the emperor blinked, overlooking Vidarian's misstep, “and with my Sky Knights in such a shamble—”

Vidarian must have looked even more baffled, for Oneira, of all people, offered rescue, of a sort. “He has been on the farthest fringes since the Opening,” she demurred, ostensibly speaking to Calphille, who already knew full well, rather than give the impression of correcting the emperor. “In the wild, where little hint of the consequences of his actions have permeated.”

Heat crept up Vidarian's neck as he thought of their work to subdue the seridi as “little hint,” but it would be worse than useless to contradict her. And was it true?
War?
With Qui? The rich meal rolled in his stomach at the thought. The great land nation to the south had always disputed the border provinces…

“Bloody savages,” the emperor said, a cultured agony and affront twisting his lip, and Vidarian struggled not to boggle at his rough words. “Lurking, always, at our southern border, and when they realized the time was right, seized Isrinvale, and are halfway through Lehria, according to the latest relays.”

Now Vidarian's head swam. Even Ruby's stone radiated a deep, chilled shock. “And the Sky Knights…?” Caladan's affront took on new color, and Vidarian regretted his obtuseness. He should have convinced the gryphons to land so he could gather news outside the capital. Surely the Knights were attempting to stem the tide of the Qui invasion—

“A shambles,” the emperor repeated, and his dark eyes lifted to rest heavily on Vidarian. The burden in them seared through to the depths of his soul, but there was resolution there, too, and strength. He found himself pulled up by that gaze, and would never again wonder how such a young man could wield so much power. “And that is where I require your assistance. With my Sky Knights all but disabled, I rely much more on my skyships, and not only do I lack for captains that can show the necessary sharp thinking of captaining an entirely new
class
of ship, I require your unique knowledge of elemental magic to figure out what in the sacred names of all four goddesses is going on. We're dealing with towns turned upside down, waking relics, shapechangers…”

“The Company has provided the emperor with materials,” Oneira began modestly. She went on about rare books the Company had obtained, but at the word “shapeshifter,” Calphille had gasped, and Vidarian looked up at her, giving the slightest shake of his head. Now was certainly not the time to introduce that particular aspect of Calphille's family to the emperor.

*
Will there ever be a good time?
* Ruby giggled, and Vidarian thought sharp thoughts at her, warning her of Oneira's strange “hearing.” For a blessing, she seemed not at all aware of Vidarian's thoughts, and he aimed to keep it that way. Ruby settled down, but still radiated damnable amusement at the whole thing, and now Vidarian understood why: it would be up to him to explain to the emperor that he was enamored of a shapeshifter, which the royal court—and perhaps even the emperor himself—would never accept as fully human.