Red Tide (79 page)

The Breaker wiped his bloody hands down the front of his shirt. “I warned you on the crossing from Olaire. I warned you the emperor wouldn't pull his punches. You should've listened. You should've picked your side like I told you to, but instead you had to go mooning round after a pair of tits.”

“Screw you.”

Kolloken stabbed a finger at his chest. “You think the emperor's not playing fair? You think the people back home are gonna thank him if he keeps his hits above the belt? He did what he had to. To protect Erin Elal. To win this Shroud-cursed war. So what's it going to be? You gonna tell the emira the truth and watch Erin Elal burn? 'Cause I reckon that'd be hard to stomach, even for a turncoat like you.”

“Turncoat,” Senar said, his voice empty. “Avallon destroyed the Guardians. He sent me to die through the Merigan portal. So you tell me, who betrayed whom?”

Kolloken's only response was a smile.

He knows he has me,
Senar thought. For all the Breaker's talk of turncoats, he knew Senar was caught on the horns, else he wouldn't have told him the things he had. What could the Guardian do with the knowledge? Confront Avallon? Like the emperor would care. Lash out at Kolloken? That would be naught but an empty gesture, petty in its impotence. The man would take the blow and laugh in his face.
And he'd be right to.
Petty or not, Senar felt an urge to plant his fist in the Breaker's smile, and he had to turn away to stop himself. He made himself walk slowly to the door, his head held high. As if by doing so he could disguise the completeness of his defeat.

Outside, he leaned against the wall. The passage seemed to be spinning. Why in the Matron's name had he come here? What had he hoped to achieve? He would have been better off living with the suspicion of Kolloken's crime than the certainty. Now he'd opened a door he could not shut.

His thoughts seethed. Somewhere downstairs, Avallon would be toasting the success of his schemes. But if he believed he could predict how Mazana would react to Uriel's death, he was wrong. He knew nothing about Fume or the Founder's Citadel. He knew nothing about Dardonna's knife and the power it gave. What reason did Mazana have not to use that power now? And there was no guarantee it would be the stone-skins who bore the brunt of her fury. For when the storm of her grief blew over, her suspicions would turn to the emperor, as Senar had said. Did he have it in him to allay her distrust? To look her in the eye and swear Avallon was blameless?

He wasn't that good at lying. He wasn't even sure he wanted to try.

The Guardian rubbed a hand across his face. He felt tugged in all directions. How could he go back to Mazana and offer her comfort? How could he pretend his conversation with Kolloken had never happened? Maybe he was better off not returning at all, but wouldn't that be just another form of betrayal? Who else did Mazana have to turn to if not Senar? Romany? The executioner? And if he left this place, where would he go? Back to Erin Elal? Back to the emperor?

He listened to the voices on the floor below. A female servant crossed an intersection to his left, not looking at Senar as she passed. He closed his eyes. Mazana or Avallon, Avallon or Mazana. The choice seemed no clearer now than it had ever been. The future offered two paths, but what did you do when you wanted to walk both, you wanted to walk neither?

The answer seemed obvious suddenly. You made your own path, of course. A new path entirely.

He opened his eyes again. In the room behind, Kolloken was whistling.

You mean you ain't done worse in your time?

Senar pictured Uriel sitting next to Mazana in Olaire, learning to use water-magic. The Guardian hadn't known the boy well. In truth, he'd never tried to get to know him, but that didn't mean he couldn't feel the sting of his death. Maybe in Kolloken's place he would have done the same; he didn't know. What he
did
know, though, was that he wouldn't have been whistling about it afterward. He wouldn't have blamed Mazana for what happened like he was the one who'd been wronged.

A coldness settled on him, and he pushed himself away from the wall.

Then he turned and went back into Kolloken's room, closing the door behind.

*   *   *

Cradling her glass of wine, Romany sat back on the bench in the courtyard of the Spider's Gilgamarian temple. The malirange trees about her gave off a heady scent that made her think of her own shrine in Mercerie. Beyond the temple's walls, the city was hushed. The same stillness had pervaded the corridors of the Alcazar earlier, making it easy for Romany to slip away. Doubtless no one had noticed she was missing. Would anyone notice, she wondered, if she never came back?

In the windows to her right were a host of female faces, their attention fixed not on Romany but on two nearby figures: the Spider and the high priestess of this temple, Lexal. A casual observer would not know who was the goddess and who the disciple, for the Spider's garb was typically unassuming, whereas Lexal's robe was spun from a radiant weave of damask, and she wore a gold circlet with a centerpiece of a redback spider made of duskstones. From the glances the woman cast Romany's way, it was plain she resented having another high priestess in her shrine. To be fair, though, she
had
provided Romany with a glass of Corinian honeywine. Not one of the finer vintages, alas, but perhaps it was just the priestess's mood souring the drink.

Uriel was dead. She hadn't spared the boy a thought when Hex unleashed his dreamworld on the Alcazar. If she'd taken Uriel with her when she made her break for safety, he might have escaped with her through the portal. Then again, how would she have got him through the portcullises that Hex conjured up to block the corridor?
I wouldn't. I would have been forced to leave him behind.
Hex would have used the boy to try to lure Romany back into his clutches. And what would she have done when faced with the choice of saving Uriel or saving herself?

The Spider finished speaking to Lexal. She approached Romany and sat on the bench beside her. “Why, High Prrriestess,” she said, “you look positively piqued. Was it something I said?”

“Not everything is about you, my Lady.”

“Among some of your fellow priestesses, such a statement would be considered blasphemy.”

“And where are those priestesses now?” The gods knew, Romany would have given anything to trade places with one of them just then. “If you'd wanted another lackey to stroke your ego, you wouldn't have brought me back from the dead.”

The goddess struggled to hold back a smile. And failed. “Am I to assume this ill temper is because of Uriel's demise?”

“What else?”

The Spider sighed. “Why is it that people get so insufferably emotional over the fate of a child? I will never understand it. There is a simple cure to such sentimentality, and it requires just a subtle change in perspective. Instead of brooding over today's doe-eyed boy, consider instead the small-minded tyrant he would doubtless have become.”

Romany shot her a look. Could the goddess really be so cold? Strange how after so many years in her service, the priestess didn't know her well enough to judge. How could Romany follow a goddess she did not understand? Why did she do it?
There is a simple cure to such sentimentality.
Romany wanted to believe the Spider was better than that, but what other reason could there be for the goddess's words? Was she teasing Romany? Over the death of a child? Such a wellspring of comedic possibility.

The Spider said, “Do you think Uriel is the only child who died today? Dozens will have passed away in Gilgamar alone. Will you mourn them too? You knew them only slightly less well than you knew Uriel.” She held Romany's gaze a moment longer, then gave a despairing shake of her head. “Have you ever heard of a goddess called the Healer from back in the Third Age? No? She must have woken one morning touched by the moon, for she decided to devote her days to soothing the ills of mankind. Thirty years she spent trying to set the world to rights. All around the globe she traveled. And do you know what she found when she got back to where she started?”

“Nothing had changed.”

“Nothing had changed,” the Spider agreed. “Well, that's not quite true. In some cases she had actually made things worse. In one notable instance two formerly peaceful nations had all but wiped each other out over the ambiguities in a treaty she had imposed on them.”

“So what is your answer to”—Romany struggled for the right words—“all this? To the iniquity and the suffering?”

“What makes you think there
is
an answer? Or that
I
would know it if there was? I'm only a goddess, after all.”

Yes, in retrospect the Spider was probably the last person Romany should be asking. To the goddess there was no such thing as right and wrong, just interesting and uninteresting; no good and evil, just useful and useless. And even if the Spider
had
given Romany an answer, why should the priestess have accepted it as true? What made the goddess's judgment any more valid than Romany's own? What were immortals, but beings who wielded more power than the unfortunate souls they made their playthings? Did that power give them a moral imperative?
No more than it does any tinpot dictator.
“So what happened to this goddess, this Healer?”

“No one knows. Unsurprrrisingly, her experiences left her disillusioned. One day she just disappeared. And she has never shown her face since.”

“Misery loves solitude,” Romany said, looking at the goddess pointedly.

The Spider seemed not to notice. She stretched out her legs. “I believe congratulations are in order for the way you outwitted that dreamweaver. Hex, wasn't it? For a while there, I thought he had you.”

“You were watching? You saw his dreamworld, then?”

“Yes, I wonder what sort of childhood
he
had.”

“Is he actually dead? Has Shroud taken his soul?”

“Somehow I suspect the Lord of the Dead might pass on that one.”

Romany sat up straighter. “You mean he could steal someone else's body and come back?” His old body had already been burned, the ashes scattered.

“Like you've done, you mean? It is possible.”

The priestess couldn't tell if the Spider was telling the truth or just goading her. “Let me try you with something easier, then. Did Hex interfere with Jambar's readings before he killed him?”

“It seems likely.”

“And planted the idea of the emperor's treachery?”

The Spider shook her head. “There is no way Hex could have known the configuration of bones needed to cast suspicion on Avallon. Most likely he disrupted
all
of Jambar's readings and left the shaman blind.”

“So Jambar just made up the bit about the emperor attacking Mazana?”

The goddess shrugged. “Perhaps he really did see that happen in one of the futures. Or perhaps he foresaw Avallon's treachery, but was wrong about the form it would take.”

“Did the emperor intend all along to kill Uriel?”

“If the stone-skins attacked, yes. Oh, he couldn't have known for sure that Mazana would bring the boy to Gilgamar. But he must have thought it likely, just as he'd have thought it likely he wouldn't be able to turn the emira to his cause. Uriel was his plan B in case he failed to persuade her. And all things considered, you'd have to say he played his hand rrrather well. He assassinated the Augeran commander and put an end to an alliance between the stone-skins and the Rubyholters. He lured the new subcommander into a hasty strike at Gilgamar, thus drawing the League—probably—into the war on Erin Elal's side.”

“But if not for me, Avallon would have died in that strike—he and everyone else in the Alcazar.”

The Spider's mouth quirked. “Yes, there is an irony in that, don't you think? I send you to eliminate Mazana, and instead you save her from the stone-skins. Odd, isn't it? In the Forest of Sighs, you had no trouble dispatching seventeen of Shroud's disciples—”

“Eighteen.”

“Yet here you seem unable to dispose of even one simple target.”

The priestess sniffed. “As I recall, you left the timing of Mazana's death to me.”

“So I've interrupted you in your work, have I? Are you heading back now to finish the job?”

It was a thought. At this moment, death might be a blessing to the emira.

Romany swirled the wine in her glass, but did not drink it. A dragon's trumpeting came from the south. With the city so still, it sounded like the beast was just on the other side of the cloister wall. One of the watching priestesses started at the sound and bumped her head on a window frame.

“How much of the stone-skin fleet survived the dragons?” Romany asked. “How many ships will make it to port?”

“A handful, no more. Their water-mages pushed themselves hard to get here when they did. Not many will have enough power left to outpace the dragons.”

“Will the stone-skins feel their loss? Have we hurt them enough to make a difference?”

“Harrrdly. After our discussions in Olaire, I made a start at extending my web across the Southern Wastes to Augera. From what I can make out, the stone-skins have been preparing this invasion for decades. This fleet is but a small part of their power, easily replaced. Next time they come, they'll come hard and in greater numbers.”

“They'll come here? To Gilgamar?”

“Not for a while. Erin Elal will be their first target.”

“Can they be beaten?”

“No.”

Romany's mouth was dry. As simple as that? The Spider hadn't paused to consider her answer, hadn't qualified it in any way. And while the goddess wouldn't claim to be an expert on military matters, she had doubtless seen enough conflicts—had
started
enough of them—to be able to judge their course with a degree of authority. “Even if the Sabian League allies with Erin Elal?”