Sartor (25 page)

Everyone started talking, their eyes wide, their fingers
stiff and shoulders tense as they all struggled to keep their emotions to
whispers.

Atan listened in dismay, burdened by that constant awareness
that every decision she made shaped their future interactions, just as
everything she did would be remembered, and told and retold. If they lived.

She lifted a hand, and the whispering ceased.

“Then how about this? We divert as a group.”

Irza conceded with a regal nod, like one would do in court.
Lilah watched Hinder send her a long, stony glance, but Irza didn’t
notice. She was busy whispering to her sister.

Lilah turned toward Atan in time to catch a quick, private
grimace Hinder’s way that caused Hinder to grin just as quickly.

“We’ll manage,” the morvende said softly.

What?
Lilah thought. Once again the ground had
shifted. No, it was more like the world had shifted. She’d missed an
important cue and didn’t dare ask, because if Atan was not being obvious,
then that meant she didn’t want to call attention to whatever-it-was.

So Lilah sat there, feeling dismal and stupid, until she noticed
Merewen watching with the painful concentration of someone who is trying her
very best to make sense of a conversation in a foreign tongue of which she
knows a few words.

So I’m not the only one, then
.

o0o

Dejain made her way up to the command tower. When she
reached one of the landings with the right angle, she stepped up on tiptoe to
peer out the air-slit and saw that all Zydes’s windows were lit, giving
off a faintly bluish cast that indicated lots of magic.

She turned away and found herself face to face with Kessler.

She controlled the instinct to recoil, but shock was like a
dagger of ice as he stood there, still, hands at his sides, blocking her path. Though
she had magic and he had no visible weapons, he didn’t need any weapons
to be a danger. He was too near for her to speak any spell before he could
close his hands around her throat.

“Zydes didn’t tell anyone the brat is a surviving
Landis,” she said.

“No.”

“The field reports,” she said. “From the
Sartor attack a hundred years ago. I want to see—”

Another shock: “Hidden,” he said, his pale blue
gaze as always devoid of any expression.

But he wasn’t trying to kill her. “You sought
them out?”

“A week ago,” Kessler said. “And again. No
access.”

“Who took them? Where are they?” Dejain
considered this new wrinkle as her heart thumped wildly. “Not in the
Garden of the Twelve!”

He said, “Do you want to go there to find out?”

Horror gripped her at the idea of entering the center of
Norsunder, where
They
had created their own paradise—a place where
time and space responded only to the strongest will. And no one’s will
was as strong as that of the Host of Lords.

Not even Detlev’s, who had surrendered to them, four
thousand years ago.

“No,” she said.

Kessler smiled faintly, and then he said, “I believe
Vatiora has those reports.”

“Vatiora?”

But he said nothing more.

Dejain stepped aside, her heartbeat a fast drum of fear—and
he walked past, the sound of his footsteps diminishing rapidly. Vatiora was as
insane as she was powerful. She also had a reputation for making her victims
linger extraordinarily long.

Dejain shuddered and hurried on her way, hating the distances
she had to cover—but she dared not transfer, lest Zydes have mirror-wards
against transfer anywhere on her route. He was certainly capable of it.

When she reached the tower, she completed the transfer, and
Wend appeared. “Get the rest of my men,” he said.

“Not until the plan is complete,” she retorted.

He said, “We don’t have supplies for a long
search. Those brats have gone to ground, and my people need rest and food.”

She looked into that ugly face and knew two things: that he
would not report in more detail until he had his team, and second, that he was
up to something, and she did not know what it was.

Fighting the urge to scream and curse, she began the
transfer spells. One by one she brought his people in, until the last had
arrived and her head buzzed with magic reaction.

o0o

“Fog’s come down hard. Like night,” Pouldi
said, reappearing after a careful, scouting check on his hands and knees.

“And none of the enemy in sight or hearing,” Sin
added. “I think they went away.”

Hinder nodded.

“Then everyone take hands,” Atan said. “We’re
going to leave.”

In silence, except for the crunch of footfalls on gravel and
the occasional skittering of rocks, they slunk to the surface again, and pushed
past the shrubs into a world of soft, cold whiteness.

Hinder’s white head, pale skin, and his light-colored
tunic made him nearly invisible, though he was only three people in front of Atan.
On her right Lilah toiled, her breathing loud after the long upward climb, her
small, square hand warm and strong. On her left was Sin, her thin, strong
fingers cool and dry to the touch, the talons flexed away from Atan’s
flesh.

“Stay in line,” Sin murmured. “Pass it
down.”

Atan heard Lilah whisper to whoever was beyond her.

They kept moving.

And while the kids snaked slowly up a hill away from the
river, Dejain stood on the tower, fighting anger and nausea, her eyes closed—until
she heard a shout echo up from the courtyard directly below:

“Now!”

And she almost missed it.

She stared down into the torchlit courtyard. In the time it
takes for the heart to drum once, she marked the ring of waiting conspirators
facing Detlev.

Where did
he
come from?

Wend, Xoll, and a couple of his particular followers had
joined with Vatiora, whose hair and clothes still billowed, lifting slightly in
the weird, lightning-charged wind that came with long transfers directly from
Norsunder.

Dejain took an involuntary step back, but lunged forward in
recovery. She had to watch, for two things were now clear: that this was an
ambush that someone else had planned, and that Detlev was the intended prey.

Vatiora raised her hands, teeth bared in her death’s
head grin, the torchlight reflecting red and bright in her distended eyes. Dejain
felt the hum of building magic. Her skin roughened, and as the faint glow of
power flickered around Vatiora’s hands, Wend and three others closed in
together, two from the side and one forward, hands full of steel. Others in the
ring circled as backup.

Detlev took a single step, with deceptive slowness, then he
moved in a half-circle, his arms a blur. Blink. Three were down, Wend rolling
back and forth in helpless agony, Xoll and the other motionless, and only
Detlev still standing. The outer ring of fighters faded back.

Detlev raised his head.

Vatiora had inexplicably frozen, her chin up at a strained
angle. For a long moment, Dejain looked down into that narrow face, its furrows
carved by unmeasured years of insatiable cruelty, twin torches reflecting in
the wide, staring dark eyes, and then Detlev made a gesture, and Vatiora
staggered as though released from an invisible hold.

Then she screamed. A horrible, long scream, the sound
echoing in ear-flaying agony as her spell mirrored back onto her, and she was
consumed by fire. Real fire. Smoke rose. The stench of cooking flesh made
Dejain’s guts heave and her eyes water, but she dared not look away.

Light shimmered: transfer. Dejain realized belatedly that Zydes
had been standing on the edge of that crowd. None of the rest could escape by
magic, for they were all military.

Detlev stepped over Xoll, whose neck was obviously broken,
and reached down to Wend. The bigger man recoiled, but Detlev took his forearm
in a firm grip, put a foot against Wend’s ribcage, and yanked.

Wend let out a gasp and then flopped back, limp and sweaty. Dejain
had just enough time to realize that she was not witnessing further play with
the fallen but resetting of a dislocated shoulder, and then Detlev spoke at
last.

“Go get that wrapped up. You might also contemplate,
before you decide your next move, the observation that fools can give only foolish
advice.”

He looked up at two of Wend’s lurking people, pointed,
and they sprang to haul Wend up and take him off. The rest backed away farther,
some glancing down at the smear of soot and grease where Vatiora had stood, the
rest sending furtive glances back at Detlev, as one by one they retreated into
the barracks. The two dead trackers lay where they had fallen.

“Dejain.” Detlev lifted his head and nodded
toward the row of windows comprising the command office.

How
could
he have seen her? He had not looked up
once.

Dread, anticipation, and reaction made her joints go watery,
as if she really were twenty again, instead of just looking it. For a moment
she leaned against the wall, cold as it was, and forced herself to consider
that still-smoking smear on the court stones. The wretched smell lingered in
her hindbrain, if not in her nostrils, but she made herself acknowledge it. She
was much older than most of these people, and most of the time she was aware of
how time changed a person’s pleasures, goals, outlooks. But the truth
was, Detlev made her feel like a gawky adolescent.

What frightened her most was how he could have smoked out
that ambush from an entire world away.

It wasn’t mere trickery, it was eternal vigilance. Habit
made one unheeding, Kessler had told her early on in their alliance.

Kessler. Where was he?

She saw no one as she made her way down to the command
rooms, though she knew that word had to be ricocheting through the fortress
faster than a cross-bolt. Three dead, one wounded. Two had been trained
assassins, and Detlev hadn’t even used a weapon, just his hands, nor a
spell. He hadn’t touched Vatiora, but she’d reacted as though held
in some invisible grip.
Mental
grip.

This was more evidence that he was, after all, one of
Them
.

She reached the door. Hesitated.

Heard his voice: “Come in. The wards are gone.”

And how long had
that
taken? Zydes had laid wards
over the wards; she’d felt them from a distance the one time she had come
in this wing without his sanction.

But Detlev stood in the middle of the room, the glowglobes
illuminating him from the side. He looked neat and calm in his customary gray
tunic and dark trousers, a man just over medium height, maybe in his thirties—but
then They controlled the aging process from within. Brown hair, hazel eyes. He
never dressed flash, like the Black Knives or some of the other war-branch
commanders. In fact, you rarely saw him with a weapon at all. Yet here he was
after that ambush, not the least bit sweaty or disheveled.

She stepped in, her tongue working in her dry mouth. Excuses—explanations—denials
winged through her mind like the bats on the rocky heights.

Detlev said, “What do you want?”

The bats squeaked and were gone, leaving her brain empty and
hollow.

Questions she had expected, but not that one.

Her lips shaped the word: “What?”

Get some control!
she commanded herself, and she drew
in her breath. Reaching for the motivation behind the question, she said, “I
was not part of—”

Detlev lifted a hand. “Everyone is conspiring. Part of
the sport. Vatiora’s recent gamble was only a feint for someone else, whom
I will have to address presently. First I wish to stabilize the problems here. Now
I ask you again, what do you want?”

Why don’t you just read my mind?
she thought.

But she didn’t speak it—nor did she meet that
steady gaze as she wondered if the question was a trick. Maybe he expected her
to reveal herself by thinking one thing and saying something else. Everybody
did that.

“Power,” she said. Her inner voice said,
Order
.

“To win.” Inside,
And no one, ever, can take
me by surprise again
.

Memory flooded her brain, too strong to suppress: the
village after the Brotherhood of Blood had sacked it, burning all the houses;
the helpless worry caused by rumors of imminent war; seeking magic to learn to
defend herself, because she knew she would always be too small for steel, and
after her long, arduous search the mage cautioning her that learning magic took
years and years, and she would be expected to sit in some cave somewhere, and
watch caterpillars turn into butterflies.

Light magic. Sartor had fallen, yet they hadn’t
changed their ways. That was not power, it was weak, sentimental foolishness. So
she had to find her way to the magic of power, of strength...

She blinked away the memory. Detlev was still waiting. She
wondered if he’d somehow read her memory, and hatred burned inside her. If
he had, there was no way to withstand that. She said, “Is that enough, or
do you want specifics?”

“No.” As usual, he was utterly unreadable. “As
I said, everyone is plotting. So am I. Understand this: I have no interest in
anyone’s plans, except as they concern me. Then I interfere.”

‘Interfere.’
That was not how she’d
characterize what she’d just seen. She recognized how the lack of threat
in his choice of words, or in his tone, was so very much more sinister than
rants and raves and overt threats could ever be.

She nodded.

“Then I leave you in charge here. Zydes will be back
before long. Do what you want with him. Kessler Sonscarna is to take orders
from you.”

No, he won’t
. She nearly said it, but managed
not to speak. Detlev could place her in command, but she’d have to hold
that command herself. He clearly wasn’t going to stay around to back her
up.