Alta (41 page)

Kiron had expected Aket-ten to be foremost of those offering Kaleth comfort, but to his surprise, she was nowhere to be found. It was only when he heard the sound of light sandals on the stone, and looked out into the corridor, that he saw her. And she was not alone; there was a young woman with her—a woman several years Kiron’s senior, dressed in the kind of expensive linen gown and jewels, the elaborate wig and face paint, that a court lady would wear.

For one wild moment, he wondered if this was Kaleth’s mother—but a better look told him that if she had given birth to the twin princes, she would have had to do so as a toddler. And it was only when Aket-ten shoved the boys aside so that the young woman could get to Kaleth’s side, when he watched Kaleth’s face transform when he saw her, and saw him seek her embrace as a refuge from the world, that he realized that this wasn’t a sister either.

Aket-ten, with a look on her face that said that she was very satisfied with her work, shoved past the boys again to get to Kiron. She cleared her throat significantly; the boys started, and looked at her, and when she took Kiron’s elbow and steered him out into the corridor, they followed suit.

“Aket-ten,” said Gan incredulously, “Is that Marit-te-en?”

She nodded. “Toreth might have been indifferent to his betrothed, but Kaleth is not Toreth.” She sighed. “All things considered, maybe that wasn’t so bad. Anyway, I had the feeling when Marit didn’t turn up at the rites that either Kaleth was avoiding her, or that her people were keeping her from him. I went to her parents’ house to find out which; they couldn’t stop me from seeking her out, so when I found out that she was frantic with worry for him, I got her and brought her here.”

“Couldn’t stop. . . .” Gan snorted. “Now that’s an understatement. They wouldn’t dare snub the daughter of Lord Ya-tiren.”

Aket-ten shrugged. “If she says she’s visiting me, and it isn’t common knowledge that Kaleth is here, then I see no reason to enlighten anyone as to who she’s really seeing.”

“You did exactly the right thing,” Kiron told her warmly, and she flushed, and smiled a little, for the first time in sixty days.

“And so did you,” she replied. “I think he should stay here from now on and never go home. His parents are being horrid to him; they believe everything the Magi have been saying about Toreth, and they’re taking it out on Kaleth. The rest of the court is afraid to go anywhere near him; even if they don’t believe the Magi, they’re afraid to risk their anger.”

Kiron looked around at the others, who nodded or shrugged. “He’s our friend, too,” said Gan defiantly. “He should not only stay here as long as he wants, I think we ought to figure out something he can do to be part of the wing.”

“He can help me,” said Heklatis, coming out of the door with the empty potion cup in one hand. He hesitated a moment, the continued, “It is well known among the Magi of the Akkadians that great stress and turmoil can awaken things that slumbered within us and might otherwise not have been awakened.” He licked his lips. “And—there is another thought among my people, that in some ways twins are not only bound in mystical ways, but that in a sense they are one extraordinary person, and that if one dies, the other is given all that the other had. The two of them might not have individually had much in the way of magic, but now that his twin is gone—” Heklatis shook his head. “To make the story short, I sense that he might be a newly awakened Magus or Winged One. And of all things, I do not want the Magi to learn this. I can protect him until he knows enough to protect himself, but not if he is living elsewhere, out of my immediate reach.”

“It’s settled, then.” Kiron nodded. “And—” He hesitated; but there was something prompting the next words, which came out of his mouth without any notion of
his
that he was going to say them. “—we all know that he didn’t look much like his brother? Well, I say he should be someone else while he’s here.”

“Kaleth’s a common enough name,” offered Oset-re. “Or call him Kaleth-ke, which is even commoner.”

“Kaleth-ke, my apprentice Healer.” Heklatis nodded. “I’ll set this straight with Lord Khumun, and make this offer to Kaleth after he awakens. I do not believe that he will argue with the plan.”

“Me either,” Kiron said quietly, remembering the look that had been on Kaleth’s face before he made his offer of sanctuary. “Not in the least.”

 

From the very moment when Kaleth joined the wing, although conditions outside their little group grew harder and bleaker with every passing day, within the group, something had changed for the better. Within the group, there was a sense that they had become more than a team; that they had become something of a family—with Heklatis standing in as “father,” perhaps, and a family in which there was little quarreling. It was just as well that this was so, because outside the compound, things were not going so well.

As the winter progressed, the physical damage done by the earthshake was finally all repaired—but the mental and emotional damage only worsened. Kiron felt it every moment he was outside the compound, and he wasn’t even a Winged One. He could hardly imagine how difficult it must be for those who were sensitive to such things.

The people of Alta were afraid.

They were afraid that the next earthshake would also come without warning, and they were right to be afraid, because the Magi were still raiding the Temple of the Twins and the Winged Ones for their victims, and even (so the rumor went) casting speculative eyes on the Temple of All Gods and the Healers. All over the city, people were trying to concoct ways to protect themselves when the next shake came. Some solutions were better, some worse, but all of them had one thing in common. They were expensive.

So, the choice was, far too often, between protecting your family from earthshake, or eating. And even if you had made the choice for the former, there was no telling if your solution would work until the next shake came. So the fear never really left anyone. It was worse at night, when children cried as they were put to bed, for fear that the walls would come down on them in the darkness. Even adults stayed wakeful, with the result that a good proportion of the population went about their daily business looking tired, with dark-circled eyes.

They were afraid of the Magi, though the Eye of Light (thank the gods!) did not open a second time on the Rings. Still, the lesson had been clear and was still visible—challenge the Magi and pay, obstruct the Magi and pay, threaten the Magi and pay. There were plenty of rumors about how many people had been incinerated by the Eye; that only increased the fear. So far as Kiron was aware, no one had actually confirmed any deaths—but as Heklatis had said, would anyone dare?

They were afraid of each other. Though no laws were decreed making dissent and expression of dissent into an actual crime, enough people were accused of being traitors and, if not hauled up before a magistrate and jailed, certainly set upon by their fellow citizens, that no one dared speak out. It was bad enough to be accused of being “unpatriotic,” but if you weren’t careful, you could also be accused of being an agent of Tia, sent to foment discontent and discord. And that
was
a crime. There was a note of hysteria in much patriotic fervor now, as if the “patriot” was trying much too hard to keep from being added to someone’s list. The only sure way to be safe was to be among the Great Ones’ chosen friends or others of rank and privilege. Thus far, no one had dared to accuse any of the nobles.

Yet.

Lord Ya-tiren kept away from the court; this did not excite any suspicion, for he had until now been in the habit of devoting himself to the two pursuits of managing his estate and his scholarship. He had eyes and ears in the court, though, and that was how Kiron knew that if nerves were on edge in the city, they were grated raw in the court. If people were uneasy around their neighbors in the city, then they eyed each other with the brittle certainty that they were going to betray each other at the first opportunity in the court.

The ordinary citizens were sure that the nobles were safe from accusations. The nobles were just as certain that accusations within the court were just a matter of time. If the Heir could be rebuked and disgraced, no one was safe.

Toreth’s name was never spoken, and if Kaleth’s parents missed him, they were making no show of it. He did send one message that he was staying with friends elsewhere, though he did not specify where. He did make arrangements for messages to be sent back to him. No message ever came, nor did his parents send anyone to search for him.

“I am useless to them now,” Kaleth noted dully. “When we were the Heirs, it was different; they were the parents of the Princes, and basked in the reflected glory, I suppose. Now, I am nothing but a spare son, and a tainted one at that.”

Kiron ground his teeth in anger when he heard that. He could not imagine parents using and discarding their children so callously. It only made him the more determined to give Kaleth a kind of second family here.

But Marit-te-en was at the compound nearly every other day, and she was their second, and much closer source for what was going on in the halls of the Great Ones. Unlike Kaleth and Toreth, she and her sister were identical, had the habit of always dressing alike, and thus it was a trivial thing for Marit to slip away, leaving her sister to play the roles of both twins.

Frankly, as he came to know Marit, Kiron was coming to sense that there had been one flaw in Toreth’s personality at least. How could someone as intelligent as Toreth not have warmed up to his betrothed? Everyone agreed that Nofret-te-en was as personable as Marit, and Marit was brave, warm-hearted, and if not as clever and quick as Aket-ten, she had her own sort of wisdom. According to Gan and Oset-re, as well as both Marit and Kaleth, the girls were as alike in personality as they were in appearance. Granted, they were nearer to Ari’s age than they were to Kaleth’s, but still—

If I had never met Aket-ten,
Kiron thought, and more than once,
I would be coaxing Marit to bring her sister here. . . .

It was Marit who opened to them the state of things at court, for Marit and her sister were ladies-in-waiting to the (to Kiron) heretofore unknown half of the Great Ones, the twin wives.

“There are two councils now,” Marit said one evening, as they all huddled around braziers in Kaleth’s room, on one of the coldest and longest nights of the year. “Though we do not think the original council is aware of the—” she wrinkled her brow in thought, “—I suppose I could call it the ‘shadow council,’ for it works in the shadows. The Great Ladies joke about it, actually. They seem to think it very funny that the council that everyone sees is the one without power, and all decisions are being made by the council no one knows about except for those who are on it.”

Kaleth’s mouth twisted as if he were tasting something very sour. “Let me guess. The shadow council is all Magi.”

Marit nodded. “Still,” she said, sounding less dismayed than Kiron would have expected, “It is not all bad.”

“I cannot imagine how—” Gan began.

“Ah,” Marit interrupted, with a wan smile, “You see, the Great Ladies, not trusting servants, call upon their own ladies-in-waiting to serve at these meetings. I have seen them, as has Nofret. They may show one face in public, but the Magi hate each other as much as they hate rivals outside the Tower of Wisdom. More so, perhaps, in some ways. They are constantly seeking to topple one another. That is probably the only thing that keeps them from becoming all-powerful.”

“Well, that’s something, at least,” Can said, scratching his head. “But are you sure of that?”

Marit smiled mirthlessly. “They are not only at each others’ throats, they are making real efforts to slay one another. Just today, Nofret told me, someone attempted to poison Magus Kephru with the wine served at the shadow council meeting. If he had not taken the precaution of testing it first, whoever it was would have succeeded. And no one but another Magus could place poison in a single cup when all were served from the same jar.

“Oh,” Gan replied, rather nonplussed. “That is—interesting.”

“But not useful, at least, not to us,” Heklatis opined. “I would not trust any of them as an ally, and that is the only possible use any of them could be to us.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kiron said thoughtfully. “Any-thing bad that happens to any of them is likely to be placed first at the doorstep of the nearest rival, and then every other Magus, and only third at an outsider.”

“You have a point.” Oset-re sucked on his lower lip. “The problem is, they each have a half century or more of experience in active deceit and treachery to call upon, whereas we—” he shrugged. “Experience and treachery will overcome youth and idealism with no effort whatsoever.”

Kiron shook his head. “But we have some of that experience available to us.”

“Not unless you are far older than you look!” said Gan.

Kiron sighed. “Perhaps, having grown up with education available to you, you think too lightly of it.
I
do not. Scrolls, Gan. Volumes of wisdom available to all of us at any time. You have studied more of them than I. What do our texts, the words of our great generals, say to do when an enemy has superior resources?”

“Run away?” Gan suggested brightly.

“Move to a theater where he no longer commands those resources,” Kaleth said immediately. “Find ways to deny him those resources.”

Kiron turned to Aket-ten and Heklatis. “This is where I ask you if you have an answer to that question I asked you some time ago.”

He didn’t actually expect an answer; he really just wanted them to say “no,” or that they were still working on it, so that he could explain to the rest what his idea was—an idea even more urgent now that Toreth was no longer with them.

But to his shock and amazement, the two looked at each other for a long moment. And then Aket-ten answered, soberly, “I believe that we do.”