The Water Road (4 page)

Another of the larger rooms was
Alban’s office itself, where he did most of his work. It was here that he took
the hastily scribbled notes he produced during Grand Council meetings and
transformed them into the official record. The office was dominated by an
immense wooden desk that sat in front of a large set of glass-and-steel doors.
The doors opened out onto a small balcony that looked out over one of the
courtyards. It was just big enough for Alban to drag a chair outside and work
when the weather was pleasant. Along one wall stood a locked cabinet, in which
Alban kept a few particularly important books and papers. Then, in the corner
next to the desk, Alban’s pikti was propped up, a souvenir from his time as a
Sentinel. Antrey took the paper and ink out of her bag and placed them neatly
on the desk. Alban was nothing if not well organized, and she knew the
importance of things being just as he expected them to be.

Then she walked into the third
large room in the office, the one that was Antrey’s favorite. It was Alban’s
professional library, with hundreds of books about the history and politics of
the Triumvirate, its member nations, the Neldathi, and other subjects.
Bookcases lined each wall, all of them stretching from floor to ceiling. There
was one small, high window on the outside wall. A smaller bookcase, custom
built to fit the space below it, ensured that no storage opportunity went to
waste. Every book Alban owned, save for the few in the locked cabinet, was kept
in this library. In the center of the room was the large, comfortable chair
where Alban would sit for hours reading. Short, round tables on either side of
the chair held small piles of books pulled from the shelves. In Alban’s
fashion, the stacks were neat and, in some way, precisely organized.

One of the hardest things Antrey
had done when she came to live and work with Alban was learn to read. Neldathi
society relies on oral traditions, with stories and histories passed down from
person to person. It was not that she lacked the basic skills to read when she
came to Tolenor, it was simply that it had never been necessary. Reading and
writing would be essential if she was to work with Alban, however. He had an
almost infinite patience with her as she learned. Once she made a breakthrough,
however, she became a voracious reader. The Speakers of Time in her clan had
always fascinated her as a child. Now she had a room full of books to tell her
stories from all over the land.

Alban did not continue Antrey’s
formal education once she learned to read and write. He encouraged her, if
possible, when she pursued things that interested her, but he did not go out of
his way to help her find new things to learn about. At least not on purpose.
What he did do, perhaps without thinking, was give her access to the treasure
trove that was his library. Part of her job was to keep the library neat,
clean, and organized. Although she would never dare to move any books that
Alban had set out, even just to glance at them and put them back, all the
others in the shelves she could review at her whim. While dusting the library,
she would carry a book in her free hand and read it. Not only did it make the
time pass quickly, it broadened and deepened her knowledge of the world around
her. If she wanted to know something specific, she would pull down a volume of
the
Encyclopedia Altreria
. More usually, she just picked a book at
random and opened it.

Antrey’s reading had taught her
about how the great Kingdom of Telebria had once been two separate kingdoms,
Greater and Lesser Telebria, that fought each other constantly. She learned
about how the land between the two great rivers that fed the Water Road, the
River Adon and the River Innis, was not a single nation but rather a
confederation of independent city-states. She learned about the lands to the
far west, where the Guilds ruled the land instead of a king or parliament. And
she learned about the Badlands, the dry, desolate, empty lands in the far north
and the Azkiri who roamed there.

To her surprise, Antrey was drawn
to military history and tales of the great wars. She was particularly
interested, naturally, in what the Neldathi simply called “the Rising,” which
led to the founding of the Triumvirate. She had read Xevai’s
History of the
Suppression of the Neldathi Uprising
several times. It explained how one of
the Neldathi clan leaders, Sirilo, brought several of the western clans
together under his leadership. They struck north across the Water Road and
unleashed a wave of violence and destruction. Sirilo sacked Innisport, the
great Guild city at the confluence of the rivers, and marched east, through the
Arbor and into Telebria. Altrerian forces, often
ad hoc
groups from
different states and cities without any real coordination, posed little
opposition and were unable to stop the Neldathi force.

The result of Sirilo’s success was
that the Altrerians realized they would need to unite in order to defeat him.
Traditional differences about government and culture were set aside in the face
of a common threat. Survival was critical, and not at all certain. Everything
else could be worked out later. As the alliance that would become the
Triumvirate came together, Sirilo’s army continued to pillage. The cities of
the Arbor joined together to form the Confederation, which less than a year
later joined with the Telebrians and the Guilders to form the Triumvirate.

The first act of the Grand Council
of the Triumvirate was to appoint someone to put down the Rising, someone with
authority over all the forces fighting from the different nations. Halbart, the
master of the Guild of Soldiers, was appointed, given the title Quashal, and
ordered to drive Sirilo back across the Water Road.

Over the next four years, Halbart
and Sirilo clashed across the land. Each side had victories, and at times it
seemed that a long stalemate was inevitable. In truth, Halbart had learned a
great deal about his unified army and how to use it in that time, particularly
in defeat. The Neldathi were superior in close combat due to their size and
strength. However, their tactics were simplistic and predictable and their
forces only loosely organized. Halbart learned that what his men lacked in
brute strength they made up for in speed, strategy, and discipline. They moved
more quickly, moved in larger numbers, and could attack in force in ways that
gave the Neldathi fits. Altrerian cavalry, in particular, proved vital as the
war went along.

As a result of Halbart’s refinement
of strategy, Sirilo found himself on the losing side of a string of significant
confrontations. His army’s strength had been drained by those clashes and
dissent in the ranks was growing. Facing him was a well-drilled enemy making
the most of its weaponry. Sirilo decided to consolidate his forces and make a
stand on the Plains of Terrell, in the Guildlands. The resulting battle, which
lasted from dawn until dusk and ranged across a battlefield that stretched for
miles, left thousands dead and wounded. It utterly crushed Sirilo and his army.
Its remnants slipped away under cover of night, back across the Water Road.

The people of the Triumvirate at
first breathed a deep sigh of relief and then launched into great celebration.
The Neldathi threat had been vanquished and the savages sent back to dwell in
their frozen mountains. Halbart knew better. He was certain that if Sirilo had
the winter to lick his wounds and reassemble his army, the Neldathi would
strike back in the spring. Rather than stop his advance, Halbart followed Sirilo
across the Water Road. The Altrerians trapped what was left to the Neldathi
host in the Hogarth Pass, where it was completely destroyed. Sirilo was taken
prisoner and, legend had it, was beheaded by Halbart personally. The uprising
was over. The Neldathi returned to their clans and began once again to fight
with one another. Halbart returned north a hero. The Triumvirate, having dealt
with the threat it was created to address, shifted into an alliance built to
maintain the newfound peace.

Antrey had read every book Alban
had about the Rising, most more than once. She knew the details of major
battles by heart and could, if asked, plot them out on a map. Tales of heroism,
particularly cleverness in battle, intrigued her. Antrey was always more
impressed with a general who outthought his adversary, rather than simply
beating him down with brute force. The books angered her, however, in their
portrayal of the Neldathi as nothing but savage, simple-minded, slow, lumbering
brutes. They were portrayed as little better than animals, distant relatives of
the great forest apes of the Arbor.

Antrey’s experience had been
different. Yes, Neldathi society was outwardly very simple. But her clan had
not been at constant war with any other, as one would expect from the portrayal
in the books. And while Antrey’s clan had never been warm to her personally,
she had seen enough of their interactions with each other to know how close and
supportive they were to others in the clan. That was the only reason she
sometimes regretted having been forced to leave, to be denied a chance to
partake in that warmth.

~~~~~

Later that night, Antrey was back
at the apartment, tidying up a few things in Alban’s study before going to bed.
She heard him come in downstairs, say a few words to Onwen, and then rush to
the third floor to kiss the girls goodnight. She had forgotten about him
completely when she turned around and, startled by his appearance in the
doorway, jumped and dropped a book on the floor.

“Antrey, I’m so sorry,” Alban said,
swooping in to pick the book up off the floor. He handed it to her. “I didn’t
mean to frighten you.”

Antrey smiled and shook her head.
“Not frightened, sir. Merely startled.”

“Long day?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

He smiled at her, shrugged his coat
off his shoulders, and laid it across the back of the chair by the window. “You
might have another long one tomorrow.”

“Why is that, sir?”

“You know that the opening session
of the Grand Council meeting will take place in a few days,” he said, collapsing
into the chair.

Antrey nodded.

“Tomorrow night there is a
gathering—I hesitate to call it an event—here in the compound to mark the
occasion. A social event. Members of the Grand Council will be there, along with
some of the more highly placed administrative personnel.”

“Yes, sir,” Antrey said. She
remembered Alban and Onwen going off to such things in the past, but knew
little about them.

“Well, my presence at such things
is required. Unless I were on my death bed, it would be a grave offense to the
Grand Council members if I didn’t make an appearance.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Trouble is that Onwen is ill, as
you may have noticed.”

“The coughing, sir, yes,” Antrey
said, fishing that detail from her memory. “Is it very bad?”

Alban shook his head. “Nothing a
little rest won’t fix, I’m sure. However, it does mean that she can’t go with
me to the reception tomorrow night. Would you like to go in her place?”

Antrey could feel her face flush,
with surprise more than embarrassment. “Sir?”

Alban stood up and walked over to
where she stood. “Why not? What you do for me is an important part of my work
for the Grand Council. They should have a chance to meet you for themselves,
firsthand. Besides, I am truly dismal in social settings like that if I’m left
to my own devices. It would mean much to me, Antrey, if you would come.”

She nodded. “Of course, sir,” she
said. What choice did she have?

“That settles it,” Alban said in a
booming, cheerful voice that put a smile on her face. “Off to bed with you
then. You will have much to do before tomorrow evening.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and nodded
quickly. “If you’ll excuse me, then.” As she said that, he stepped out of the
way and directed her towards the door. She stepped calmly onto the stairs,
before bounding up to her bedroom.

There were few things worse than a
Sentinel’s tavern, a dive populated by those off duty and retired. One of those
things was an empty Sentinel’s tavern. Strefer Quants knew that and had
accepted it as a hazard of her profession. It was, after all, her job to mingle
with the brave defenders of Tolenor’s rough streets, earn their trust, and pump
them for information. If that didn’t work, she was willing to hang around
places like The Battered Pikti long enough that the ale, the weariness that
comes after a long shift, and the thrill of talking to a pretty—or at least
young—face caused someone to let his guard down. She walked a fine line between
a trusted confidant and a scheming reporter who would do anything to get a good
story. It was not beyond her to burn bridges.

Strefer was long past the point
where she might actually fool some Sentinel into talking with her. At first she
had done well shuffling from tavern to tavern, talking up Sentinels like she
was some kind of obsessed fan. By this point, however, it simply wasn’t
possible to hide the fact that anything said to Strefer could wind up printed
in the
Daily Register
the next morning. Her job was to make sure that
whoever was doing the talking didn’t care about that.

It was places like this where she
did her best work, not sitting at her desk with pen in hand. The writing came
easily to her, probably too easily, and her editor knew that. So it was in The
Battered Pikti and a dozen other places like it across the city where she
proved her worth, doing the down-and-dirty work of developing a story, taking
some small kernel of information and crafting it into something people would
actually want to read.

Strefer’s official title, Associate
Tolenor Correspondent, made her role in the enterprise seem more important than
it was. The
Daily Register
, the widest circulation daily in Telebria,
had precisely two reporters in the city, making the “associate” correspondent
the
de facto
underling. Her boss, Tevis, was the Senior Tolenor
Correspondent, which meant he got the plum assignment of hanging around the
Triumvirate compound and keeping track of the Grand Council’s business. Strefer
was responsible for covering the rest of the city, in all its manifold diversity.
Tevis had the prestige position, but Stefer felt she did the real work. Tevis
had the prominent byline, but Strefer was the one who could find her way in and
out of any part of the city at any time of the day or night.

Strefer sat in a table in the back
corner of the tavern, surveying its run-down, dingy interior. The crowd looked
particularly thin tonight, but she wasn’t sure why. If something important was
happening in the streets of Tolenor, Strefer was one of the first people to
know about it. That was why she hung around in dumps like this in the first
place. She took a small sip of ale as the bartender shot her a long, accusing
look from across the room.

“What’s your problem?” she said
under her breath.

The crowd tonight consisted, in its
entirety, of four persons. Strefer was one. Another was a Telebrian trader who
was sitting at the bar. The other two were an older couple, apparently on
vacation, who were either very lost or very much in need of a drink. She wasn’t
keeping away paying customers, nor was she chasing away any who came through
the door. Why should the bartender care? Nonetheless, she knew the value of
staying in the good graces of servers, wenches, and anyone else who worked in
places like this. Maybe it would improve his mood if she bought a round for her
select company. She would bill it to the
Daily Register
, of course.

She was just about to call it a
night when the bell over the front door rang, announcing the arrival of another
customer. Stefer looked up from her ale to see Rurek, a burly Arborian Sentinel
who led a detachment that patrolled the northeast quadrant of the city. She
patted the bag slung over her shoulder to reassure herself that her pen and
paper were inside. Then she stood up, grabbed her mug, and made for the bar. She
timed her arrival to coincide with Rurek’s. He sat down at the bar and Strefer
sat down beside him. With one long drink, she emptied her mug.

“Bartender!” she said, loud enough
that her voice faintly echoed in the tavern. “Another for me and one for my
good friend Rurek here, if you please.” She almost retched due to the forced
camaraderie, but buying one drink for a Sentinel would cost less than buying a
round. Tevis would be pleased.

Rurek looked at her with weary
heavy eyes as she sat down. “Thanks, Strefer,” he said with a sigh. “I can
really use it tonight.”

“I can see that,” she said, trying
to be sympathetic. “What’s going on out there? Seems like every Sentinel in
town is on the streets tonight. Damned few of them in here, anyway.”

“Nothing special,” he said,
grabbing the mug from the bartender before it even touched the bar. He took a
long drink and set it down. “It’s just that the Grand Council session starts in
a few days. The city gets jammed with all those folks coming back to town, plus
all the others who want to sponge off them.” He paused for a drink. “Then
you’ve got that lot.” He nodded towards the vacationing couple. “For the life
of me, I can’t understand why anyone would come to this town for fun and games.
Much less when the Grand Council is in session.” In one more drink, his mug was
empty.

Strefer signaled to the bartender,
who quickly refilled the mug. “Come on, Rurek, this is a pretty impressive
place to see. Especially if you grew up somewhere else. I never saw anything
like it in the Guildlands when I was a kid.”

“True enough,” Rurek said, grasping
the mug. He took a more cautious drink.

“And it is sitting in the Bay of
Sins, don’t forget. Our ancestors used to come here by the hundreds of
thousands to wash away their transgressions. To seek blessings for the coming
season. That’s got to count for something.”

He looked at her, puzzled. “Where
did you learn all this history, Strefer?”

“What do you think I do for a
living, Rurek?” she shot back.

“I think you sit here in this
tavern and wait for people like me to slip up and talk about something
interesting, then you got write it down and ship it off to that Telebrian rag.”
He chuckled at his own joke. “That’s what I think.”

“Very funny,” she said. “My job is
to write about this place. This city. These people. What happens here. How can
I do that if I don’t know what has already happened here? Not just last night
or the week before that. Years ago. Centuries, even. I didn’t grow up here, so
I had to read up on all that stuff when I arrived. It’s fairly fresh in my
mind.”

Rurek nodded, conceding defeat. He
took another drink. “So why did you come here anyway, Strefer? I mean, you came
all the way here from…where was it?”

“Quantstown,” she said.

“Quantstown,” he repeated, “way
over on the other side of the continent at the far end of the Guildlands.” He
waved a hand generally in the direction of someplace far, far away. “Why come
all that way just to wind up working for a Telebrian newspaper? You don’t even
work for the Guild anymore.”

“That’s not technically true,”
Strefer said. She hadn’t touched her refilled mug. “I’ll always be a member of
the Guild of Writers. I’m just outside of their jurisdiction while I’m in
Tolenor.”

“Whatever,” he said, going back to
his mug. “Whatever.”

“To get back to your question,” she
said, redirecting the conversation, “I came here because of all the stories I
had heard about this place while I was growing up. See, I grew up in the Guild
of Writers like I am, but I had a couple of good friends in the Guild of
Historians. I spent as much time with them as I did with the Writers. They told
me all the old stories of the Water Road and the Bay of Sins. They didn’t know
so much about Tolenor, since they weren’t all that interested in modern
history. So when I was old enough to make my own way in the world, I decided to
come here. I could ask you the same question, you know. Why leave the Arbor and
come here?”

He shrugged. “I wanted to be a
Sentinel. Simple as that. I wanted to join the defense of the Triumvirate. Help
keep the peace. To be a gentleman and a warrior. They don’t ask you where you
want to go once you join, of course. I really wanted stay at one of the forts
down on the Water Road. Everybody does at least one rotation there. Eventually
I wound up here.”

“Fair enough,” Strefer said.
“That’s where I’m lucky, I guess. The Guild doesn’t tell me where to go, so
long as I’m not actually in the Guildlands. They don’t think it’s necessary to
have someone in Tolenor full time. They do send someone to sit in the Grand
Council sessions, but that’s not what interests me, anyway. The Telebrians are
more interested in what goes on here on a day-to-day basis. It’s so much
closer, I guess. For the time being, I’ll gladly work for the
Daily Register
.”

Rurek finished his second mug and
chuckled.

“What now?” Strefer asked.

“You don’t really believe that, do
you, Strefer?” He looked at her with a mocking half smile.

“Believe what?”

“That the Telebrians care what goes
on in Tolenor day in, day out any more than the Guilders or the Arborians do?
What they care about is blood, lust, violence, sex, and deviancy. They want to
know about the Grand Council, of course. But beyond that, it’s entertainment,
not information. Do you really think they care about the poor bastards who live
here? The ones who barely make it living from day to day? Ask yourself this: if
they really did care about that, wouldn’t they be more interested in solutions
to the problems around here? Like actually having someone running the city, for
one, instead of the Grand Council acting like absent parents for half of the
year.” The rant was interrupted by a refill from the bartender. Rurek paused
for another drink. “Maybe I’m a cynic, but I suspect the motives of your
readers are not that pure.”

What Rurek said to her hurt because
there was a good probability it was true. “I can’t make the people in Sermont
read about things they aren’t interested in, can I? It is a business. I write
what the people want to read so that they buy the damned newspaper. I recognize
that.” She took a long shallow drink from her mug, hoping to elicit some
sympathy from Rurek.

“All right,” he said, adopting a
softer tone. “I didn’t mean to imply anything about you, Strefer. You do good
work most of the time. At least the stuff you print is true, more or less. I
don’t like to read it sometimes, but that’s not your problem. That’s more than
I can say for some of your colleagues.”

She smiled. “I’ll take that faint
praise as an apology, Rurek. Thank you.” She tipped her mug towards him.

Tolenor had no proper newspaper of
its own, in spite of its size and importance. There were several tabloids
published by the large print houses on the island’s southern coast, but they
were not, in any sense, accurate when it came to their reporting. And they
relied on the seedier side of island life for content even more than she did.
For real news of the city, readers had to rely on the newspapers published
outside the city, like the
Daily Register
.

“With that settled, how about
giving me something juicy to pass on to my readers, huh?” Strefer asked.

Rurek laughed, fully and loudly.
“You really don’t give up, do you? Sorry. I wish I could help you, I really do.
There’s just nothing going on right now. A couple of my guys broke up an
attempted rape today. Some halfbreed. Aside from that, it’s just been the
run-of-the-mill stuff.” He finished his drink and sat up straight on his stool.
“You know, it amazes me sometimes. This city was built to be the home of the
Triumvirate, where the people of three nations gather to work together. So what
happens every year when the Grand Council session starts? You get idiots from
all over deciding that they need to settle all the old rivalries on the
streets. It’s ironic.”

Strefer nodded. “That’s a good
angle. I like that.” She couldn’t make a whole story out of it, but she filed
it away for later reference.

“Thank you,” he said. “Just don’t
quote me on that, all right?”

“Deal,” she said. She finished her ale
and dropped a few coins on the bar. “I guess I better get going, if that’s all
you’ve got for me tonight. Looks like I’ll have to go out on the streets and do
some real reporting.”

“For a change,” Rurek said with a
chuckle.

“For a change,” Strefer said as she
walked out into the crisp night air.