Storm Rising (41 page)

True enough as far as it goes. There is no point in going into detail about Imperial life. Could anyone from Valdemar—I assume he must be from Valdemar—ever understand the Empire?

He had hardly admitted any of that even to himself, and he was surprised that he had poured it all out to a total stranger.

But this—young man—with the look of a priest has appeared in my office, with a cat in his arms that paralyzes me with a look. A single thrown knife, and I would be dead, and with my life goes the organization of my troops. Perhaps that is why I am explaining all
of this. Perhaps it needed to be said so that I could acknowledge it to my self too.

The cat’s eyes were on his, gazing at him with such intensity he almost expected the beast to speak. The young man’s face bore a thoughtful expression; the pain was still there, but it was secondary to the sense of introspection.

Finally, the young man nodded and put the cat down for a moment. Once his hands were free, he drew something from his sleeve about the size of a dagger. He placed it on the desk.

It was a message-tube.

He picked up the cat again, and stepped back a pace as Tremane stared at the tube, perplexed. But the young man’s next words solved his perplexity.

“If you wish to open a dialogue with Valdemar and the Alliance,” he said quietly, “place your opening message in this. It will go where it needs to. I can assure you that the Queen and the Son of the Sun will see it, once it has been judged safe.”

That peculiar shivering came over Tremane again; his eyes suddenly refused to focus. And when he could see again, the boy and the cat were gone.

He shook his head violently; he could move again perfectly well. Had it all been a hallucination brought on by too much work and too little rest? Had he fallen asleep over his papers and dreamed the whole incident?

But when he looked down at his desktop, the message-tube was still there.

It was real. It happened. Someone from Valdemar magicked himself into my office, without the use of a Portal, and interrogated me.

Not only that, but he must have “passed” his verbal examination, for here was the way to end at least one of the conflicts facing him and his men.

Truce with the Alliance. Perhaps even membership in the Alliance?

Certainly the Allies were not suffering as Hardorn was. They had not originated the mage-storms, but
they had a defense against them, a defense that the Imperial forces did not have.

Should I? It could be a trap. Dare I risk it?

A howling buffet of wind shook the stone walls of his office; snow actually drifted down to the floor from the triply-shuttered and glazed windows. And midwinter was not even here yet—

—and the mage-storms were getting worse. It was only a matter of time before they changed something or someone
inside
the walls of Shonar. It could have already happened, perhaps they just hadn’t discovered it yet. What would he do if that happened? He didn’t know; he hadn’t been able to plan for it, though his new agents in the ranks told him that the men themselves had come up with an answer. If it was an animal, it would die, no questions asked. If it was one of their comrades, and he retained his mind, they would find a way to make him useful. If it was one of their comrades and he attacked them, they would cut him down like any of the other boggles.

I must risk it. There is too much at stake.

He picked up the message-tube and placed it carefully in a desk drawer; then he stood up and blew out his candle. There was also too much at stake to risk writing a document that important when he was half drunk with fatigue.

Tomorrow he would close himself in his office and send word that he was not to be disturbed unless it was an emergency. This might be the most important letter he would ever write in his life.

:I didn’t think you’d be so sick,:
Altra said apologetically from the foot of Karal’s bed, where he lay curled up around Karal’s feet, keeping them warm.
:I wouldn’t have brought you home so fast if I’d thought you were going to react this badly.:

“It’s all right,” Karal replied faintly, as he lay back against his pillows. “Once there’s nothing in my stomach things seem to settle down a bit more. The tea is helping. This is a nasty way to get a rest, though.”

Altra had not even allowed him a single breath
between Jumps, and his nausea had become a single overwhelming force that took over mind and body. The moment he reached his suite he had been forced to the bathroom, where he had clutched at the convenience and retched until he thought he was going to throw up his toenails. When he could stand without retching, he had dragged himself to the bellpull and summoned a “servant.” As before, the “servants” who tended to his needs, especially at night, were actually Heraldic students. That was why he tried so seldom to bother them—but this time he had no other choice. He couldn’t have gotten any farther than the chair he collapsed into if he’d been prodded with a hot poker.

The young man who had appeared had been seriously alarmed at his appearance, and had gotten Karal into bed before summoning a Healer.

“Stomach cold,” the Healer had decreed—although Karal could tell she was profoundly puzzled by his lack of other symptoms. She had left him with several packets of herbal tea and instructions to drink as much of it as he could; the young man had made some up immediately and left it at Karal’s bedside. He made up a snowpack to ease Karal’s headache, and had also left a stern admonition to pull the bell to call him if he felt
any
worsening of his condition, or if he needed so much as a dry cracker.

“I’ll be all right in a day or so, and meanwhile this gives me an excuse to be alone and think,” he told the Firecat.

:If you were anyone else, I’d be surprised you want to do anything except lie there.:
Altra curled up around his feet a little tighter, and his icy feet finally began to warm up. It felt very good, and the snowpack the young man had made for his head was finally doing something about the throbbing in his temples.

“Well, that’s the curse of being what you and Ulrich made me. I can’t stop thinking even when I’m miserable.” In fact, he was torn in so many directions that it was going to take some time to sort them all out.

I want to hate Tremane.
His need to hate the man warred with the reality of the man himself, making him
want to scream in frustration. It would have been so simple if the Grand Duke had been a liar, a fraud, a man who did generous things because it would put people into his debt. Unfortunately for simple solutions, Tremane was none of those things. Altra knew the Karsite equivalent of the Valdemaran “Truth Spell,” and he had held it on Tremane once his first spell successfully controlled the Grand Duke’s body. Tremane could not have spoken anything other than the truth as long as Altra held that spell active.

Which made things that much more difficult for Karal.

The problem was, he understood Tremane and Tremane’s motives. It was just as he had said to An’desha; he was cursed with being able to see all sides to an argument, and the validity of each and every side.

I would not have done what he did, but I have never been in the position he was. And I was not brought up to power, nor in the Empire. It is
my
reflex to take the moral path, and it is his to take the path of expediency.

The worst of it was that, given what Tremane had honestly thought was true and faced with Tremane’s situation, he could not in all candor say that he would not have made the same choice—and issued the same orders. By Tremane’s background, what he had done
was
probably incredibly moral, as well as expedient—eliminating a handful of people, to possibly prevent the deaths of many hundreds of his own men
and
of the citizens of Hardorn.

It is easy enough to justify yourself by saying that something is in self-defense, or is called for because someone else did something heinous.
He could not say that he would not have given in to that temptation.

He might never lose his dislike of Tremane’s attitudes, and he might never be able to forgive him, but he understood the man, and so he could not hate him for being what he was—which was the product of a world full of more duplicity and deceit than anything Karal had ever known. How could Tremane have expected anything else
but
an opponent who would
cheerfully sacrifice innocents to take out an enemy? He probably met opponents like that every day in the Emperor’s Court!

It was hardly fair.

I know. Life’s not fair.
He sighed.
And I’m putting off stating a decision I’ve already made.
“You took my message to An’desha?”

:As soon as you wrote it. He’ll scry as often as he can, and check the tube for a message. Just as you asked. If there’s anything there, he’ll send for you and you can send me to fetch the tube,:
Altra told him, blinking his eyes lazily.:
Don’t expect an immediate answer, though. It’s probably going to take a few days before he makes up his mind, but we both know he’s going to do it. He can’t afford to pass up this chance.:

A few days. Altra was probably right, but these few days were going to seem like an awfully long time.

:Excuse me,:
Altra said suddenly.
:I should be going.:

The Firecat stood up, and vanished, the weight of his body lifting magically from Karal’s feet and leaving behind only an impression in the blankets.

Now what on earth could have caused that?

“Altra? Altra?” Karal called in confusion. “What—”

Someone tapped on the outer door in the next room, and opened it. Light footsteps neared the door of his bedroom.

Natoli stood in the frame of the open door, one arm loaded with books, and the other holding the doorpost.

“Hello,” she said. “I thought you might be lonely. I figured I could keep you company as long as you’re sick. Just don’t pass it on to me, all right?”

He smiled. “I promise I won’t,” he said, knowing that was a promise he
could
keep. “I couldn’t tell the Healer, but it’s only Jumping Sickness. Nothing you can catch.”

“Oh, good,” she said, smiling, and sat down beside him. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.”

Those few days are going to pass awfully quickly.

*   *   *

Karal and An’desha were pretending to look over some papers before the Grand Council meeting, but that was only the excuse so that the two of them could have a word before they upset everything with the little burden Altra was going to deliver.

“You’re sure it’s all right, the message is safe?” Karal asked An’desha in an urgent whisper. “I mean—look, there’s Selenay
and
Solaris sitting together. One trap could eliminate them both!”

“I checked it, Altra checked it, and you checked it,” An’desha replied. “Really, Karal, given the propensity for nasty surprises that Ma’ar and his successive incarnations had, and all the information on them they left in my memory, you
can
trust me to find a mage-trap in a piece of paper! And anyway, Altra says that a mage-storm hit the Imperials again just before he went to get the tube. He doubts anything as delicate as a complicated trap would have survived.”

“All right,” Karal sighed, fiddling with his pens. “I’m just nervous.”

An’desha gave him an oblique look. “You should be. I have to go sit down or it’s going to look odd—we all agreed that it shouldn’t look as if
we
had anything to do with this when it happens. I’ll see you later.”

An’desha hurried to his own seat as the latecomers for the Grand Council meeting arrived. When Tremane had finally put something in the message-tube, Altra had gone to get it, but he had not given it to them immediately. He asked them to think first about how it was to be presented.

Karal had wondered about that phrasing, until it dawned on him that if Solaris had any idea that he had gone behind her back to open negotiations with Tremane, she would probably see to it that the overture never got any further than that first message. She would also flay him alive, but that was incidental to the bigger scheme of things.

For that matter, Selenay might feel the same as Solaris about being circumvented.

The only person who knew they were going to be investigating the Imperials was Talia, and she had no notion
that they intended to make contact. For all that the three of them were trusted, it was only to a point, and that point did
not
include haring off and sending messages to the enemy inviting him to come and play nicely.

That was when they all agreed that it would look as if
Altra
was the instigator. After they checked the message for any kind of trap, Altra would take it and present it himself to the Queen and the Son of the Sun at a Grand Council meeting, as if it had been
his
idea to contact Tremane. Solaris would no more question the reasoning and motives of a Firecat than Selenay would question a Companion. And she could hardly take a messenger of Vkandis to task for stepping outside his limits!

This was to be Solaris’ last meeting for some time. She had at least managed to establish to the other members of the Council that she trusted Karal, and that Karal would never act or speak contrary to her will—and if other people on the Council had a problem with her will, that was another story altogether, and would be dealt with by negotiation. Although many of them obviously still felt that he was too young for his job, the same people felt confident that since he
was
so young, he would hardly dare to say or do anything contrary to orders.

So in theory, this would be the last time for several weeks or even months that Solaris sat in the seat beside Selenay. In theory. He had the feeling that once Altra showed up, the plans would change abruptly.

The members of the Grand Council took their seats, the Council session opened, and everything seemed routine, right down to the fact that his hands and feet were numb with cold. Things proceeded at the usual orderly pace, up until the moment that Selenay asked if there was any new business.