The Water Road (7 page)

“You mean what are you to do with
the Azkiri, President,” Demaris said. “Contrary to your assertion, the majority
of the Council appears to disagree with the Kingdom about the threat posed by
those wanderers. This is not a problem for the alliance to solve.”

Antrey smiled, just slightly, at
the understated insults being traded back and forth. Unbiased observers knew
that the Kingdom of Telebria was enjoying a slow decline in power and
influence. Its citizens, not to mention its leaders and politicians, either
refused to acknowledge that fact or did not know how to address it. The Azkiri,
everyone knew, had been dealt with efficiently by the Guilds. There was no
reason the Telebrians could not do the same. Atilleo needed to make the
problem, one that extended beyond the Kingdom, into the kind of existential
threat posed by the Neldathi. To his credit, he refused to rise to the taunting
bait Demaris set out for him.

“Yes, President, what is your
proposal to the Council?” another member from the Arbor asked. “We can’t know
whether the alliance should commit to any action without knowing the action you
would have us take.”

Atilleo took a deep breath and
reset himself. “The only sensible solution to this problem, my brothers, one
that faces all our nations, is to follow the example upon which this alliance
was founded. The Council should appoint a quashal to put down the
insubordination of the Azkiri once and for all. He,” Atilleo paused and caught
himself, “or she, should be given all the authority necessary to complete that
task.”

“You have someone in mind,
president?”

“I do. I propose this Council
appoint General Glacco Birros, current commander of the Telebrian Expeditionary
Force in the Badlands, as quashal. He knows the area, he…”

Demaris, in a breach of diplomatic
protocol, cut off Atilleo before he could finish his argument. “Your proposal,
President, to deal with a problem faced only by the Kingdom of Telebria in its
own territory is to appoint a quashal who is, at this moment, a leader of the
Telebrian army that has, to this point, failed to solve the problem. Is that
correct?”

The answer was left unsaid as a
ripple of excited murmurs raced around the room in a way Antrey had never seen.
No quashal had been named since the Rising. To suggest such a drastic maneuver
was a sign of desperation on Atilleo’s part. This was his last session as president
of the Grand Council. He was apparently willing to use up whatever good favor
he had earned to see the gambit through.

Before the room erupted completely,
Galenna stood. “President, may I have the floor? I have an alternative proposal
that might resolve the issue.”

Atilleo looked torn between the
need for a respite from the attacks on him and the suspicion about what Galenna
might propose. After a moment, he nodded, and said, “Of course,” then stepped
from the speaker’s circle.

“Thank you, President,” Galenna
said as she stepped down into the circle. “I don’t think it is speaking rashly
to say that the mood of the Council is not in favor of the proposal that has
been made. However, we need not discover if I am correct. Instead, let me make
an offer, President, from my government to yours. The Guilds offers the Kingdom
of Telebria the assistance of our top regiment of rangers, those who led the
pacification of the Azkiri in our territory. The experience they have gained
will be invaluable to General Birros. To be clear, Guild troops will act merely
in a supporting and secondary role to the Telebrian Expeditionary Force. All I
ask of this Council are two things. First, that the Council witness the
agreement made between the Guilds and the Kingdom. Second, that the Council
allocate those funds necessary to transport the Guild troops to link up with
the Telebrian force.”

The chamber buzzed in reaction,
reflecting the surprise of the offer. Antrey was stunned. The Guilders had no
reason to assist the Telebrians that Antrey could fathom. She was sure there
was some goal embedded in the plan, however. The Guilders were so focused on
achieving results, rationally analyzing what worked and what did not, that
there must be a theory behind the offer.

Antrey was not the only one who was
suspicious. “That is a very generous offer,” Atilleo said. “But I do not
understand what benefit the Guilds hope to gain from it. What is it that you
expect in return?”

“Nothing, President, at this
point,” Galenna said. “We seek only to aid one of our allies, secure in the
knowledge that our graciousness won’t be forgotten.”

Atilleo nodded, improbably at a
loss for words.

“I put the proposal to the Council,
then,” Galenna said, turning her back on the dumbstruck Telebrian delegation.
“Is there an affirmation?”

“I affirm the proposal,” said
Demaris.

“President,” Galenna said, nodding
in Atilleo’s direction while she took her seat.

The old Telebrian returned to the
circle with slow, methodical steps. “The proposal has been affirmed. What is the
decision of the Grand Council? Shall it be agreed to or rejected?”

In a well-oiled procedure, Alban
called out the name of each member of the Council, writing down their vote as
he worked his way around the chamber. Atilleo was the last to record his vote.
The decision was unanimous.

“Very well,” Galenna said from her
seat. “I will contact the Guild of Soldiers and determine the cost of the
rangers’ transport to the Telebrians. I will report back to the Council as soon
as I have that information.” She turned around and said something to an
underling who promptly dashed out of the chamber.

Antrey was so taken by the events
unfolding in front of her that Alban had to poke her to get her attention.
“Antrey,” he said in a loud whisper, “go back to my office. On my desk there
should be a notebook bound in deep blue leather. It has notes about the
alliance’s finances. Bring it to me, please.”

“Yes, sir,” Antrey said, quietly
slipping from the chamber.

The sunlight pouring in from the balcony nearly
blinded her when she entered Alban’s office. She took a few moments to get her
bearings, but did not have enough time to close the drapes. She went directly
to Alban’s desk to look for the small blue leather notebook. It was stuck
between a pair of bookends, along with other similarly bound volumes of various
colors, on the corner of the desk.

She plucked the notebook from its spot and
started to turn back to return to the chamber, but a blast of sunlight caused her
to stop and gather herself. She turned away from the balcony, back towards
Alban’s desk. There, sitting open on top of Alban’s desk as if he had left it
in midsentence, was another book. Antrey did not recognize it, but assumed it
must have been what he was reading before the Grand Council session resumed
this afternoon.

Antrey’s curiosity about the book on the desk,
which she had never seen before, was piqued when she noticed that the glass
cabinet by Alban’s desk, where he kept the truly important volumes, was
unlocked and open. Inside was a small shelf, big enough to hold perhaps a half
dozen books. One was clearly missing.

It took all the effort Antrey could muster to
avoid examining the book. Aside from the fact that it was one of those few
volumes that was off limits to her, the Grand Council was still in session, and
she needed to return to the chamber quickly. She backed slowly away from the
desk, towards the corridor to the chamber. Then, with one last look at the desk
and the open pages, she turned and dashed back to Alban’s side.

The floor of what passed for
Strefer’s office was littered with scraps of paper and parchment. A few lines
here, an entire paragraph over there. In the middle of it all sat Strefer, legs
crossed underneath her. She had a headache, the kind that comes from working
entirely too hard with too little material. The words around her blurred in and
out of focus. She closed her eyes, shook her head, and took a deep breath.

“Let’s try this again,” she said to
the empty room.

Strefer was on the floor because,
once she began to spread her notes about, she quickly ran out of room on her
desk. “Desk” was too kind a term, actually, for what was merely a used end
table she had found in a secondhand store down the road. It did not match the
chair that sat behind it. It had only one drawer, though thankfully it did have
a lock on it. Even more thankfully, the key had made its way into the shop and
onto Strefer’s hands.

The advantage her tiny desk had,
along with the hard wooden chair that sat behind it, is that it fit in the room
at all. The
Daily Register
never intended to have a permanent
correspondent in Tolenor, much less two. When she came to work for Tevis, the
two-room arrangement of the office—one room for him, one room for the paper’s
numerous files—worked perfectly. Strefer assumed that in some way Tevis hoped
that banishing Strefer to the file room would drive her out of the place
altogether. Large wooden file cabinets lined each of the room’s four walls. If
it weren’t for the door to Tevis’s office, Strefer would be trapped back here.
Some days, she felt like the cabinets were moving, growing, and expanding in a
plot to play with her mind. She had not quite reached that point today. Not
yet.

So she sat on the floor with a
small pad of rough paper on her lap, pen in hand. Just as she was about to try
and string the scattered pages around her into something whole, the front door
opened with a loud thud. Strefer strained to see the clock on the wall.
“Council session over already?” she asked, knowing it must be Tevis.

Tevis started to walk into the room
but stopped before he walked over anything important. “Somebody had a crisis
arise. You know how they are,” he said, looking over the room. “Strefer, what
are you doing? You should be out on the street finding some news, right?”

She looked up from the floor with a
sigh. “Were that there be any news to be had, boss. All my regular sources are
dried up. The populace is in a rut. There’s just nothing interesting happening.
What we need,” she said, shaking a finger and pausing for thought, “is a
murder. A nice, juicy killing. Maybe something among the well-to-do? Those are
always good for business.”

“What this paper
really
needs,” Tevis said, walking back to his office, “is some local politics.
Everything in this town happens by decree from the Council and is administered
by their flunkies. We need a mayor,” he said. “Can you imagine how many
newspaper sales a mayor could generate?” He walked back in, paused for a
second, looked down, and held out his arms as if to take in the mess around
him. “And just what the hell are you trying to do?”

Strefer looked up at him. “I told
you, boss. I’m trying to find a story.”

“You are not making something up,
are you?” he asked, head cocked.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,”
Strefer said. She put the notebook down beside her and started to point out
various stacks and piles of paper. “These are all my extra notes. Story ideas
that didn’t go anywhere. Leads I didn’t have time to track down at the time
because something else came up.”

“And with all this, you plan to do
what, exactly?” Tevis was completely lost.

“Plan to do? Nothing, at this
point. Hope to do? I hope that something will pop out. Maybe some bit of gossip
that didn’t mean anything when I wrote it down, but does now. Maybe there will
be a few different things I collected at different times that, when I look at
them now, make some kind of sense. If I’m lucky, if you’re lucky, I’ll find a
story in here somewhere.”

Tevis shook his head. “You keep all
this stuff for how long?”

“These go back to when I first got
here,” Strefer said, tapping a small pile of oddly shaped papers stacked by her
left knee. “Why? Don’t you keep notes around?”

“Not really,” Tevis said, a little
hesitantly.

“Then what in the world is in all
these?” she asked, gesturing towards the filing cabinets.

Tevis shrugged. “Past editions.
Print records. You know, important things.”

Strefer struggled to keep her
disappointment hidden. Tevis was her boss. He was here when she first arrived.
He would probably be here whenever she left. It was difficult, as a Telebrian,
for him to accept a woman working for a newspaper at all. Strefer figured that
the best she could ever hope for from him was benign neglect. “Well, I was
taught to never throw away something that you hadn’t already put into a story.
You never know when you might make good use of it.”

“I cannot see how,” Tevis said,
leaning against one of the massive cabinets.

“That’s because you’re not formally
trained, boss,” Strefer said, before she could catch herself. Tevis had his job
for the same reasons that most Telebrians of his age had the jobs they did—he
had connections, in his case to the publisher of the
Daily Register
back
in Sermont. She tried to redeem herself. “I’m sorry, that didn’t come out
right. What I mean is that one of the things I learned as a Guild apprentice
was how to synthesize information from different sources. How to look at all
these little bits of information from all over and pull them together in a
coherent whole. I was quite good at it.”

“Were you?” Tevis had a look of
exasperation on his face.

Strefer nodded. “I won an award for
it. Best use of disparate sources in one story, or something like that.”

Tevis chuckled. “Bet your mother
kept the certificate,” he said.

“How could she? By that time, I
hadn’t seen my birth mother in years. Remember, Tevis, things work differently
in the Guilds.”

“Right, right,” he said, waving a
hand. “Forgive my ignorance. So, do you have anything?”

“Unfortunately not,” Strefer said
with a sigh. “I thought I might have something about absentee landlords in the
outskirts of the city, but that didn’t pan out.”

“Why not?” Tevis asked.

“They aren’t absentees,” Strefer said.
“Turns out that most of the men who own those hovels out there actually live in
the city. Not out in the outskirts, of course. But still, it wasn’t the angle I
thought it was.”

“You better come up with
something,” Tevis said, walking out of the room back to his office. “We have
columns to fill and I can only take up so much space writing about how the
Grand Council basically did nothing. Contribute something, please.”

“I hear you, boss,” Strefer said.
She stood up, surveyed the somewhat organized mess that surrounded her, and
checked the clock. She had about an hour before the Sentinels changed shifts,
probably another quarter of an hour before the off-duty Sentinels began to
drift into the taverns. Enough time for her to reassemble her archive and put
it away in the cabinet Tevis had given her for storage. Strefer sighed, bent to
begin picking up papers, and struggled to find the enthusiasm for another night
in the taverns.