Mage's Blood (74 page)

The Jhafi at court burst into raptures, while the Rimoni looked stunned.

When finally there was silence, Faroukh bowed again. ‘We are overjoyed, dear lady. Let me be first to give you obeisance as my future queen.’ He fell to his knees, placing his forehead on the floor. His fellow ambassador, a holy man, bowed. The Jhafi all prostrated themselves, while the Rimoni looked increasingly discomforted.

When Faroukh rose, he cried, ‘I show you the wisdom of great Salim,’ and made a resplendent gesture. One of his aides unfurled another banner and a murmur ran through the court.

It was a shihad banner, like the first, but bearing the name of Hytel, the stronghold of the Gorgio, in its centre. The sultan had anticipated Cera’s acceptance. ‘Let this banner go before you as you
conquer the north, and thereafter may you ride to war in Hebusalim. And after the victory: a wedding!’

Cera stood. ‘Thank you, my lords. But I must hear the will of my people before I commit to this path. My acceptance is not enough; I must have the agreement of those I rule.’

Their self-congratulatory smiles froze on their faces as Cera addressed the court. ‘My people, if there is any person present who wishes to speak against the Hytel shihad, or my acceptance of this marriage proposal, I invite you forward now, without fear of censure.’

There was a pause which stretched uneasily as Elena wrung her hands, unable to work out whether this had been a victory or a great defeat.
Gurvon would know
…
Damn this!
She could not read all the nuances; she could only watch as the silence stretched and people shuffled awkwardly.

At last Comte Inveglio stepped forth. ‘I have only this to say,’ he shouted. ‘Long live the Queen-Regent and death to the Gorgio!’ He went on his knees before Cera, and suddenly the whole court was doing the same. Cera stood in the middle of all of this, apparently lost for words.

‘Long live the Nesti! Long live Javon! Death to the Gorgio!’

Elena picked at her food, watching Cera from her alcove on the balcony above the feast-hall, where the queen-regent was hosting a celebratory banquet. She looked ill-at-ease seated beside Godspeaker Barra Xuok, who seldom smiled. Elena was also uncomfortable; she had not lost her fear that this evening would end in blood. She wanted nothing more than to pack Cera back into her warded tower again, away from potential assassins.

A tall robed figure stepped into her alcove. ‘Sal’Ahm.’

Elena rose quickly. ‘Sal’Ahm, Lord Faroukh. Are you permitted to address one of Shaitan’s spawn?’ she added wryly.

‘My faith is strong. I’m sure I can resist your wiles,’ the sultan’s uncle answered with a faintly ironic smile. ‘How may I address you?’

‘“Donna Elena” is fine. I expect you think I have some evil influence over the queen-regent and are wondering therefore how I have
let the events of this afternoon happen,’ she observed, gesturing to the chair beside her.

Faroukh sat and held out his goblet to a servant for refilling. The Godspeaker might not drink alcohol, but evidently Faroukh did. ‘I admit it has crossed my mind, Donna Elena.’

‘A plan never looks so good when your enemy approves of it, eh?’ She met his eye. ‘You’re very casual about talking to the likes of me.’

‘Donna Elena, I have met several magi of the Ordo Costruo. They are men and women who laboured for the people, turning Hebusalim into a garden. I have also met men like Tomas Betillon, who have betrayed agreements and done evil. Thinking men like me wonder how the magi can be servants of Shaitan and yet act in so many different ways.’

Elena gave a tight smile. ‘Your thinking does you credit, at least in my eyes.’

‘Were you expecting Salim’s offer? Do you approve of your queen-regent’s acceptance?’ he asked.

‘I think you would have given us that banner anyway,’ Elena replied carefully.

Faroukh shook his head. ‘Having made the offer publicly, a refusal would have ended all negotiations, and all hope of friendship. A sultan cannot be publicly refused, Donna Elena.’

Oh, Cera. You knew that, didn’t you? And they trapped you
. She held her tongue prudently.

‘Will you go to war under the shihad banner, Donna Elena?’ he enquired.

Elena met his eye. ‘If the queen-regent goes to war, I will be there, under the
Nesti
banner.’

‘Why is that, Donna Elena? You are ferang. You do not belong here.’

Elena suspected her reply would be reported all the way up to Salim himself. ‘Because I love this people, this land and my princessa. I have made holy vows to serve the Nesti, and I will fulfil them. This is my home now, and anyone who wants to get to Queen-Regent Cera must come through me.’

Faroukh inclined his head. ‘Heard and understood, Donna Elena.’ He raised his goblet to her, then finished it in one swallow. ‘Thank you for your time. It has been a pleasure. Sal’Ahm on high.’

‘Sal’Ahm,’ Elena replied, and the sultan’s uncle rose, bowed and was gone.

Tomorrow there would be public announcements, displays of the banners of shihad, celebrations. But tonight stretched cold and lonely before her. Cera would doubtless continue to ignore her, and Lorenzo was far away.

Pontus and Norostein, on the continent of Yuros
Maicin 928
2 months until the Moontide

Mordai, 25 Maicin 928

There was no fanfare for the arrival of Belonius Vult back into Pontus after two nights on a windship above the ocean. He used Clairvoyance to send ahead his instructions:
Tell no one I am here, not even Korion. I need a skiff and crew, ready to leave for Norostein within an hour of my arrival
.

He’d been forced to leave the diplomatic mission in Hebusalim early – not that it mattered; the most important meetings had already taken place, with Meiros and Betillon, and the secret one with Emir Rashid. He had more pressing matters to attend to now: finding whoever had broken into his personal quarters.
Who dared?

It was incredible, that someone would have the nerve to take
him
on. And how had they known where to look? Had that guttersnipe
Gron Koll thought to rob his master – no, it surely wasn’t Koll. Someone tremendously powerful had blocked his counter-strike. He’d been on the verge of breaking through and at least learning the identity of the robbers, even from across the ocean, when his scrying-assault has been shattered. The strength of that blow still unnerved him. He had only ever felt that level of power wielded by Church Inquisitors.

The windskiff he’d requested was waiting for him when he landed and he was in the air again inside an hour. The skiff was lightweight and full-sailed, built for speed, and the two young magi piloting it were on extra money to get him to Norostein by Freyadai night. The wind whipped his hair as he sat beside the mast, staring ahead as the night turned slowly to day, his mind racing. He would be able to contact Fyrell tomorrow or the next day. How much he could tell him was debatable, but he needed someone there to get the investigation started discreetly. He wondered which files had been taken – all of them? Many were personally incriminating, but most were more damaging to people he currently wanted to protect. Whichever had been taken, it was imperative they were recovered.

Who the Hel has robbed me?

‘You did what?’ Ramon leapt to his feet and stared at him, his eyes bulging.

Alaron hung his head. ‘I needed to know,’ he said defensively. Once he’d realised that he’d probably signed all of their death warrants he knew he had to confess.

Ramon swore and cursed, but Cym just looked away, perhaps calculating how much time they had until someone worked out the Alaron Mercer file was missing and came looking for him. Either that, or she was deciding precisely how she would kill him.

‘For Kore’s sake, Alaron,’ Ramon shouted, ‘we all knew your graduation failing was a fix – anyone with half a brain could work that out! And
obviously
it had to be ratified by the governor! You didn’t need to steal the rukking file to know that!’

Alaron hung his head. There was no point arguing. Ramon was right.

‘So, when Vult gets back he’ll find two files missing: one, the Langstrit file, and two, the Alaron Mercer file. So it should take him, oh – about
two seconds
– to send a squad here. Kore’s cods – are you a complete rukking idiot?’ Ramon balled his fists furiously.

‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I’m really,
really
sorry. I didn’t think—’

‘No, you
never
think! You just
do
things, and then stare at the broken pieces with a gormless look on your face.’ Ramon was shaking with rage. ‘We’d just pulled off one of the thefts of the century, and for once – for
once
– you’d actually been really smart. And now you tell us you followed that up by doing the equivalent of painting our names and addresses on the walls as you left.’ Ramon threw his hands up in fury and stomped out, as if afraid of what violence he would commit if he stayed.

Alaron buried his face in his hands, wondering almost in passing what his mother was making of all the shouting. Cym came and knelt beside his chair and put her hands over his. ‘Kore’s Blood, Alaron, but you’re such a fool,’ she murmured, a pitying look on her face. ‘What are we going to do now?’

He’d been thinking about that himself, all night long. And he was grateful she wasn’t screaming at him too. ‘Well, I think we have two choices,’ he started. ‘We could run far enough away that he can’t follow us, but I don’t think we’re capable of that. The other option is to solve this in the next few days. The maps say it’s five thousand miles from here to Hebusalim. Even Vult can’t make that sort of journey in less than a week. I reckon we’ve got until the first of Junesse, and then he’ll be here and I’ll be dead.’

‘That sounds right,’ she said, touching his cheek. ‘You really are an idiot, you know. But you’re interesting to be around. We need to make plans. I’ll go and pacify Ramon.’

He tried to thank her, but she just waved a hand and left him alone, his eyes full and his throat so tight he struggled to breathe, thinking,
I’m not too clever, but I’m lucky in my friends
.

They returned a few minutes later, Ramon still clench-fisted and simmering, Cym with a matronly look on her face. Alaron looked
at her gratefully. ‘Ramon, Cym, I’m really,
really
sorry. The only one he can pin the break-in to is me – it’s my fault, and I deserve the consequences. If I were you I would run and leave me to it.’

‘No, you wouldn’t,’ Cym said. ‘You’d stay and help, just like we’re going to. You’re an idiot, but you’re loyal to a fault.’

‘One of many faults,’ Ramon growled. He still looked ready to spit, but Cym put a warning hand on the Silacian’s shoulder. ‘Vult can’t get here for days,’ she said, ‘so we’ll solve it by then. Then we’ll hide you somehow until we work out what to do next. We’re not going to leave you in the lurch.’

‘However richly you deserve it,’ Ramon muttered. He glared at Alaron, and then forced a grim smile. ‘Well, instead of having the leisure to solve this in our own time, we’ve got about four days before a legendary pure-blood mage descends upon our sorry arses. So let’s get on with it.’

‘I mean it,’ Alaron insisted. ‘If you go, I’ll not—’

‘Yes, we got that,’ Ramon said sarcastically, ‘now shut up and concentrate. Realistically, we probably only had about a week to solve it anyway, before we all had to get on with our lives, so apart from having attracted the attention of the most powerful man in Noros, what’s changed, eh?’ He held out a hand. ‘Where’s that bloody arrest report?’

They spent some time poring over the Watch Report, penned in the flowing hand of Special Constable Darius Fyrell, bane of their college lives. Fyrell had left a detailed written report of the arrest, the skirmish that followed and the condition of the general, which was just as he was now: disoriented, with memories and self-identity gone. He did note marks on Langstrit’s hands and forearms, recently inflicted, as if he had been either tortured, engaged in combat or caught in a gnosis energy blast.

Fyrell had also listed what he found in the chapel:

General Langstrit, wearing commoner’s clothing and his periapt (emerald set on neck-chain).

A flask of gnosis-brewed truth serum, partially consumed and detectable upon the general’s breath.

A bowl of milk, mostly consumed, containing a fast-acting and lethal poison.

A dead wolf-hound, identified as JL’s favourite, recently deceased from ingestion of said poison.

A sheath of papers containing writings from the Scriptures, with possible encryption markings.

A scratching in the paint of the floor, reading ‘JL 824: Argundun my wife’.

The rest of the scroll-case contained the Scripture pages mentioned under item 5: sheets pulled from a Kore Scriptorium, with red markings under various letters. There were also several pages of notes in a different hand, probably Belonius Vult’s, which looked to be attempts to solve the encryption. Judging by the crossings-outs and increasingly ragged writing, it hadn’t been going well. The final page looked like it had been screwed up several times before Vult decided to keep it. It contained a complex chart of numbers and letters and lines drawing conclusions. The final line appeared to be his conclusion, a series of dotted lines, each containing a letter. Vult had got most of the way through, then stopped. What he had ‘solved’ read: