The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy (35 page)

“That wasn’t a day when anybody showed mercy,” I said.

“No. The cells were opened, both in the block I was in, which was for political prisoners, and in the other areas for common criminals.

“Two men shouted for silence, said they were Tovieti, and anyone who wished to join them would be taken care of.

“I’d never known any of the Tovieti, although I’m sure my father, and perhaps my brother, had. But I had nowhere to go, and so I said I’d go with them.

“When they found out who I was, they immediately detailed three men to get me out of the castle.

“I was hurried out through the courtyard, and everything was madness. I don’t know where you were.”

“In the far wing, getting ready to counterattack,” I said.

“I didn’t want to stay there. Men were doing things I didn’t want to see.” She shuddered. “There were women … sometimes girls younger than I was, being, being …”

“Never mind,” I said. “I know what was done. So you fled down into the streets of Polycittara.”

“And rode out that same night, just as the battle was at its fiercest. I wanted to stay in the city, wait for my father. Even if he was what he was, he was who he was. But they said no, that it appeared the emperor’s dogs, sorry Damastes, that slipped out, were winning.

“They took me to a farm somewhere outside the city, and we hid for three days.

“I heard of my father’s death then.”

She sat up in her blankets.

“I’ve heard that sometimes, when people have a whole line of shocks hit them, they turn cold. True?”

“True,” I said. “I think it’s a gift from the gods, to keep us from completely falling apart.”

“That’s what happened to me,” Cymea said. “I felt bad for the deaths, for the ending of the life I’d had, and worried, scared of the unknown.

“But I knew I was going to live, not only live, but become strong, and one day find vengeance.

“The Tovieti spirited me out of Kallio within the week, and I was passed from family to family. Something you … or Kutulu … no doubt already know is there are various levels in the sect. First are the believers, the storekeeper you buy from, the drover on the road, the farmer or the clerk, the quiet soldier in the ranks, people who accept the teachings, but practice them quietly, the ones the warders and the noblemen never know about. They’re our strength, our spies, our shelter, and our treasury. Then there are what we call the Gray Men, the ones who, either by choice or circumstances, are the people of action.”

“The stranglers,” I said, feeling anger in my voice.

“Yes. Or the ones who sell the contraband the men with the silk cords bring. Cell leaders frequently don’t have time for a double life, and so they become gray.

“The last group are what we call the Ones Who Are Sought, those the warders have found out, the ones who face prison or worse, the ones who can’t show their face by day in any familiar place.

“I was one of them, passed from home to home, from believer to believer, until I came to Khurram.

“To my new home.”

She looked at me and smiled, her smile just a bit on the wry side.

“You really won’t like this. I was taken in by the head of a lycee, whose school taught the sons and daughters of the rich men of Khurram, many of them vintners and merchants.”

I
didn’t
like that — a subtle poisoner from within.

“No one ever caught on to what he was doing?”

“Citizen Yarkand was very subtle in his teachings,” she said. “By the way, I’m giving away nothing in my tale that might expose my brothers or sisters. Yarkand is dead now, which is one reason I know something about boats.”

“Don’t worry about exposing anything,” I said. “I vow, right now, that anything you’ve ever told me, good, bad, or criminal, will never be used by me nor told to anyone else without your permission. On whatever god you want me to swear.”

“Your word’s enough,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. “But a question, if I may: What do the Tovieti teach their young?”

“The first is the Tovieti think there’s almost no limit to what someone should know who wants to learn. So it’s not like normal schooling, where the girls learn to read and sew and handle the accounts of a household, no more, and the boys get everything interesting.

“The Tovieti make no distinction between boys and girls. Anyone can learn anything. And another difference — no one’s held back from progressing if the boy in the next seat’s thick or unwilling. He’ll be dropped back to learn with younger students or even taken out of school, while anyone who’s still learning can go on and on.

“I was like a great sponge,” she said, a bit dreamily, “for I quickly realized I knew very little, that all my father had allowed to be taught was magic, magic, magic.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant. Let me try my question another way,” I said. “What do the Tovieti teach children about themselves?”

“That we are a secret order,” Cymea said. “That many men’s hands are turned against us, so we must never tell anyone about our sect or our secrets. We teach that this world is in monstrous disorder and that all governments must be brought down and the altars to the gods men now worship, destroyed.

“When all is ruined, when all is chaos, then whatever the new society should be will be clear, and we can build a truly free land, where no man is better or worse than his neighbor.

“When that day comes, then all evil shall fall away and the gods, who surely exist, will appear in a new form.”

“Do
you
believe this Golden Age can come about through death and destruction or, for that matter, any other way?” I asked gently.

She was silent for quite a long time.

“I wish I could,” she said, and her voice suggested I not pry further.

“Another question,” I said, changing the subject slightly. “What are the children taught about the stranglers, the Gray Men, the Ones Who Are Sought?”

“They’re considered the elite, most holy, sent against those who’ve offended our order as warriors. If things were different, they’d carry swords and wear armor like any soldier. But outnumbered as they are, as we are, all they can safely use are the yellow silk cords.”

I thought what a crock of shit
that
was, remembering them as roving bands of thieves, carrying nothing for politics and everything for loot.

“You believe that?”

“I did then, remembering what the emperor had done to my family. Now …”

“Never mind,” I said. “So you came to the lycee of Citizen Yarkand.”

“Yes,” Cymea said. “I became part of his household, and he and his wife told everyone I was his niece, that my mother, his sister, and her husband had died of the flux.

“Yarkand was a very good man. I wish I’d gone to stay with him when I was younger, no more than a babe, and then I’d think of him as my real father and probably love humankind better than I do.

“He taught me a lot of things. Book knowledge, everything his school offered. What the Tovieti believe, and he didn’t have to make his lessons subtle for me. But the most important thing I got from his was learning things don’t have to be black, white, good, bad, and the world isn’t always evil, and you don’t have to kill someone who doesn’t agree with you.”

She looked a bit surprised.

“Strange,” she said. “Maybe what he taught me, what I learned from a Tovieti, was what set the seed that makes me wonder now about the order that’s been so good to me. Odd. Very odd.”

She broke off.

“I do wish I had a glass of wine,” she said. “It’d make the storytelling easier.”

I extended the flagon of water beside us. She grimaced but drank. “Yarkand knew I was an Amboina and that I came from a family of great wizards, so I also got secret lessons in my craft. Magicians are a roving lot, always moving, learning new spells, new incantations, challenging other sages, so there was always someone, sometimes Tovieti, sometimes not, who’d be put up by Yarkand in exchange for teaching me for a day or week.

“I was very happy,” she said softly, “and knew it and also knew I’d never been so content at Lanvirn.

“Who knows what would’ve happened? Maybe I would’ve stayed in Khurram, been a competent wizard for my brothers and sister, probably a cell leader, for I’ve always been able to see things a bit more clearly, more quickly, than most.

“Who knows? But Yarkand grew sick, and no chirurgeon, no witch, no wizard, could help him. I was frantic, trying spells of my own, going to my teachers in magic, begging them to do something, anything.

“But nothing helped, and Yarkand died.

“This time, I wasn’t calm, cold, but raged against everything, against the gods, for they’d taken this man I loved. Now I wanted the yellow silk cord, but not to kill men, for they had nothing to do with Yarkand’s death. I wanted to kill the gods if I could.

“I knew how absurd that was, and that ended my rage or, anyway, buried it within.

“But I couldn’t stay at the lycee, even though Yarkand’s widow wanted me to.

“Next the Tovieti sent me to a roving family who had a small riverboat that traded up and down the Latane, selling mostly necessaries, stopping at any farm who flew the little flags we gave out. We also carried packages for our brothers and sisters, never asking what was in them, and had secret passengers, the Gray Men on the run from the warders.

“An old man, his wife, and their son, who would’ve been about your age, but who’d fallen onto a low dock when he was a boy, and never grew beyond ten or so. Everyone loved him, took care of him. They were my new family.

“That was when I gained real knowledge, knowledge of what people really do and say, not what books pretend. Also, using my notebooks, I practiced my spells, and discovered the Amboina blood ran clear in my veins, for I was able to advance far more quickly than a girl my age should have.

“The war was raging in Maisir, and we prayed for the emperor’s destruction, believing with him down in the dirt, we might have a chance to bring about our better world.”

She looked into the fire.

“It didn’t happen that way, of course. I’m not sure why. Maybe Numantia lost too many good men, and some of those were Tovieti. Maybe when the Maisirians ravened through Urey and then came on to Nicias, something went out of our sect, some of our pride and confidence was shattered. I don’t know.

“We hid in a backwater when we saw soldiers, either Numantian or Maisirian. Then there was peace, and so long as we avoided the Peace Guardians, life went back to normal.

“When I was fifteen, I had that love affair I told you about. He was twenty-two.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Exactly,” Cymea said. “Worse, his family was wealthy, considered among the lords of the district we’d chosen to trade in for a time.

“But I didn’t know, didn’t think, but knew this was the love of my life, and we’d be together for always, somehow a rich man’s son would be happy with a bargee’s child, for that’s all he knew of me, and somehow the Tovieti would understand, or perhaps he’d join us. Oh, I had all kinds of girlish dreams.

“And then I found out what he really was. Probably now I realize he was no more than a spoiled brat saying anything I wanted to hear so he could fuck me, no worse than a lot of boy-men I’ve seen.”

Her voice had held rising anger, and she broke off. She took a couple of deep breaths, then grinned.

“Don’t I just sound like a wise woman of vast experience?

“Anyway. He took a nasty way of ending our affair, and I thought he was a monster then and couldn’t stand the hurt, and again I fled. But this time I knew where I was going. I went to a witch, really a very powerful wizard who’d turned away from the world to live a quieter life in a Delta backwater. We used to buy special things for her when we were in any kind of a city, and she cast spells for us in return.

“She’d been a Tovieti, left the order ten years before. I studied with her for a year, learned a lot, and began helping the poor people around me with potions or, as often as not, just advice I thought obvious. There’s a lot like me, not cell leaders, not holding any kind of official position, but still leaders of our movement. I learned we avoided creating such hierarchy after the disastrous rising, when Thak still ruled us, and the survivors blamed our leaders for that arrogance.

“Anyway, some of these respected Tovieti came to me last year and said I was wasting myself in that swamp, that the order needed me, momentous events were about to happen, that the emperor we thought was dead had returned and was trying to recover his throne.

“The only task a Tovieti should have was stopping him, seeing that he was dead.

“I listened and obeyed and went with them, working as a wizard, and as adviser, when I thought I saw something that wasn’t being done right or wasn’t noticed. I usually remembered how young I am and how older people generally aren’t going to listen to someone my age, so I found the soft way, the calm way, was the only way for my ideas to be accepted.

“I guess I did well, for I was listened to and given a certain amount of respect. There were emergencies, when there was no time for subtlety, and I felt like an army officer, some kind of bully.

“But people still listened to and obeyed me. Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t get arrogant, become overly full of myself. Maybe being cast down so utterly back then, from being a noble Amboina to a child in a cell facing rape and worse kept my head from swelling.

“Then an agent, hidden in the upper echelons of the Grand Council, said they were going to bring you back — and make you general of their armies. Somehow they’d discovered you’d changed your mind and weren’t the emperor’s puppet any longer.

“At first, we decided you must be killed as someone almost as dangerous as Tenedos, even though you’d turned away from him, and there were plans being made to deal with you.

“Then you escaped from the Councilors’ prison, and killed Herne, another one high on our list of monsters.

“Some Tovieti elders in Nicias thought it might be interesting to help you, to keep you running loose to see what trouble you could stir up, since we had no use for either the Council or Tenedos.”

“So I was no more than another die,” I said, not terribly happy finally learning the reason I’d been helped when I was a fugitive in Nicias, “this one with beveled edges, so it’d bounce and roll every which way, to be cast into the game?”