"We cling to our illusions because they are kinder than the reality we know surrounds us, yet wish did not."-from The Mirrors in the Mind, by Rahn-Sun fa Neyaid, 318th Year of the Shranese Federation Day 324 of the 495th Year of the Shranese Federation Mari groaned with relief as Farzhi, the ma.s.seur, worked the kinks from her muscles. Her hands ached somewhat from a long practice session, the skin of her forefingers and thumbs slightly redder where the sharkskin hilt of her practice sword had rubbed.

Farzhi rubbed Mari's skin with a warm towel scented with lavender oil. She lay with her face buried in the pillow for a moment, her thoughts hazy. She could hear him potter about her room. The clink of oil bottles. The rustle as he gathered his towels and the lengths of damp cloth he had used to clean and treat her skin. The clack of wooden boxed containing the unguents he used to soothe her muscles.

It was with some regret Mari slid from the couch to slip back into her tunic and kilt. She took a small purse from a porcelain bowl on a nearby table and handed it to the smiling ma.s.seur.

Farzhi handed Mari a sealed letter. Mari looked at the wiry little man for a few moments before she opened it.

It was from Vahineh.

Mari's sense of bliss faded as rapidly as she read.

It was later in the afternoon when Mari opened the door to her chambers to find her father standing there. She stopped in her tracks. He stared at her blankly, his eyes somewhat glazed. The skin of his neck looked abraded, as if he had been scratching at it. There were angry red lesions on the backs of his hands.

"Father?" She reached out to take him by the elbow. "You're not well!"

It took a handful of heartbeats for him to respond. He gestured vaguely to her weapon bag slung across her shoulders, though his eyes seemed not to track where he pointed. "Are you going somewhere?"

You need to rest. Where's Yasha or Wolfram?"

"There are those who seek to do us harm, Mariam," he murmured. The reek of stale sweat was on his clothes, the sugar sweet of lotus milk on his breath. "Now is not a good time for you-"

She gestured at the Anlki standing behind her father. "Why did you bring him here?"

"What the Asrahn-Elect orders, we obey." The Anlki shrugged with equanimity.

"Take him back to his chambers, please."

"What?" her father looked at her through narrowed eyes. "No! I am well enough, Mariam."

"I've an appointment-"

"With that filthy Nasarat!" her father snarled. He raised his hand to her, as he had done when she was a child. "Have you not shamed me enough?"

"What are you talking about?" Mari took her father's hand and brought it down. "I've somebody who wants to contract me to be her weapons master."

He looked at her blearily. There was a fine line of saliva on his lips, bubbles glistening. He touched her cheek with a trembling hand. "A teacher? But you said you wanted to help your House in its great endeavor. You asked to work more closely with me? Don't you remember? I talked to you..."

"No, you didn't." Mari pointed down the corridor in the direction of Belam's rooms. "It's good enough for my brother to be part of whatever it is you're doing, but not me."

Corajidin eyed the guards in the corridor. He stepped aside so Mari could walk past him, then fell into step beside her, gesturing for his Anlki to keep their distance. Daughter and father walked slowly in an uncomfortable silence. Mari caught her father watching her from the corner of her eye. Truth be told, Mari was glad he had not revealed all his plans. She was certain there were things she truly did not want to know about her father, compromises he had made that she would never agree with.

"Where are you going?" Corajidin asked again as they strolled down the stairs toward the reception area of the apartments. Mari looked at him, surprised he had forgotten so soon. She would need to speak to Wolfram about his medicines. How could her father master the country if he could not master his own memories? He paused on the stairs as they entered the foyer. He pointed. "Who is that?"

Mari followed her father's gesture. Surrounded by four Anlki, a cowed-looking young woman stood in the foyer. She carried a shamshir in the sash around her waist, the scabbard's lacquer cracked in places. In disguise, Vahineh had hennaed and tied her shorter hair into a high ponytail as was the custom of those warriors-errant who dwelled in the marshlands. The pigment she had used on her skin had made it much darker than Vahineh's usual light olive. By her side was a slender man, face ruddy and seamed like dried mud, wiry hair streaked with white. The hem of his long kilt was stained, and his grubby feet were encased in straw sandals. Qamran, the Knight-Colonel of the Feya.s.sin, likewise disguised.

"The woman is my new student. Bahale is a cousin of the Family Bey," Mari lied. "Her companion is one of her retainers. Bahale was recommended to me as a woman who, though poor, shows promise. I believe she's thinking of going to Masripur, to join one of the nahdi companies there."

"Mariam, while I applaud you wanting to do something of your own, teaching is so-" Her father grimaced with distaste.

"What choice, Father?" she asked. "My life was ruined when I allowed Vashne to die. I've tried to help you. I warned you about the plot against you, and you still don't trust me. What else am I to do, other than make my own way?"

"You can be my daughter." Corajidin kissed the top of her head. "When you have finished teaching this impoverished little marsh-child how to not kill herself with her own sword, come to my office."

"Pardon?" Mari eyed her father with suspicion.

"Be in my office at the Hour of the Serpent. I will tell you everything. Do not make me wait. There are so few people I can trust now."

Mari waited in her father's office. Her eyes drifted to the clock. It was still fifteen minutes before the Hour of Serpent. If Corajidin arrived early, that meant he did not trust her, wanted to catch her perhaps in the process of something inappropriate or rash. Late would mean he did not respect her enough to be on time, a terrible breach in sende. On time was a sign of both trust and respect.

As she waited, Mari thought back. She and the disguised Vahineh and Qamran had met in the high-ceilinged gymnasium in the villa. Rugs had covered the hard wooden floor, barred with bright beams of light that streamed through the tall, narrow windows. Dust had drifted there, brilliant motes that had flared and faded from light to darkness as they had traveled on the lazy air.

Under the guise of training the princess, Qamran had elaborated on what Vahineh intended.

"I want those who were responsible for my House's fate to suffer," Vahineh had gasped as she danced away from one of Mari's strikes. "Armal is dead, so there's nothing I can do to him. Thufan is near death? I can make what little of his life is left a misery."

In the spirit of contrition, Mari had provided Vahineh and Qamran with what she knew about Armal's death. Both of them had pressed Mari for more information on the murders of Vashne and Afareen, though there was little she had been able to tell them they did not already know. Questions had turned to Yasha's habits, where she spent her free time, anybody she a.s.sociated with of whom Vahineh was unaware. Again, Mari had proved to be a less than ideal source of intelligence.

"If you had no intention of helping, why did you even pretend contrition?" Qamran had snapped. "Though, I suppose that's what you-"

"Quit being the fool." Mari had slapped him lightly on the cheek. "Accept there are things I don't know. As for Yasha? I've never been concerned with what she does or who she does it with."

"Can you get me into her rooms?" Vahineh had asked as she leaned on her sword, breathing deeply. "And tell us a way we can leave the house unnoticed?"

"No." Mari had felt as if she walked on gla.s.s. "They're my father's rooms also. I'll not allow you to harm him, Vahineh. And Qamran? Don't think to try and coerce me. You know it will end badly for you."

Vahineh dropped her sword with a clatter. Mari frowned at the disrespect Vahineh showed her weapon and the sacred s.p.a.ce she trained in. "You're not going to help me?"

"To harm my family? No." Mari sheathed her sword and rested it across her shoulder. "Hasn't vengeance driven us to the brink already? Besides, there are plans in motion which-"

"Enough talk, Mari!" Vahineh cried. Her eyes were bright with tears, her skin flushed. "I thought a woman like you would see where she could make her wrongs right. Clearly, I misread you, or your respect for my father."

"Vahineh, you've no idea what you're talking about! There are those who are doing what they be-"

"I'm disappointed, though I shouldn't be surprised. Still, the Erebus will pay for what they've done." Vahineh picked her sword up. She wiped her nose on the shoulder of her tunic, a child for just a moment.

Mari had partially turned away when Vahineh attacked.

Mari reacted without thinking. She stepped inside the arc of Vahineh's sword. Punched the inside of her wrist. Vahineh's hand spasmed open. Quicker than a heartbeat, Mari's sheathed sword cracked against Vahineh's temple. The princess's eyes rolled back in her head as she fell to the ground.

There was a slither of metal on steel as Qamran's sword flew free. Mari leaped high over Qamran's blade, spinning like a top. She landed on her toes. Kicked. Her booted foot smashed into Qamran's face, driving him back. A chop to his wrist. His sword spun away. Mari pounced forward. The edge of her hand struck at Qamran's temple. Fists. Feet. Palms. Knees. Elbows. Shoulders. A flurry of blows back and forth. Qamran dropped his elbow in an attempt to break Mari's collarbone. She swayed at the waist and let the blow strike the muscle of her shoulder. Her own blow smashed into his throat. Qamran dropped to his knees, face purpling.

Mari bent down to ensure Vahineh was still alive. It took a few moments for Qamran to regain control of his breathing. Mari suspected he would have trouble talking for a little while, at least until the bruising subsided. Once the man had some semblance of control, Mari helped him to his feet.

"I could've killed you both," Mari murmured. "But I meant what I said. Enough blood has been shed, and I'm trying to prevent more. When the girl wakes, tell her any chance she had of me helping her is gone. Next time she wants to kill me, let her try it face-to-face. I want you both gone from here as soon as possible."

Mari led a red-faced Qamran, carrying Vahineh's limp form, to a secluded room where the girl could recover. She had left them there in order to meet with her father, trusting their disguises would protect them should anybody ask who they were.

The hour hand now rested over the coiled image of the serpent, its chimes melodic and understated. Mari calmed her nerves. Her father had not been early. The door to his office opened as the last chime to mark the hour faded from hearing.

Mari sat back in a high-backed chair, legs sprawled. She wanted nothing more than to bathe, then perhaps to attend one of the local salons where she could sip whiskey and relax in the company of duelists and poets. Perhaps the salon attached to Indris's apartments in the Barouq? Her mind wandered to more erotic pursuits while Corajidin droned on about the tedious minutiae of his day. Mari looked for any sign of the infirmity she had witnessed earlier, but her father seemed in better health than he had been in many days. The redness on his neck and the lesions on his hands had faded, as if they had been healing for days. Mari frowned to herself, wondering what her father had done. Wolfram's treatments had never been as effective as this.

The food arrived. Cracked crab, grilled fish, fluffy white rice, and a salad of leafy green vegetables. The scent of the food made Mari's mouth water: garlic, lemon, and melted b.u.t.ter. Sea salt, pepper, and the faint hint of vinegar and olive oil. The two ate in silence as Mari tried to mask her curiosity. Once the food was little more than scattered debris on the golden platters, Corajidin poured a full-bodied wine into their bowls. Mari sipped sparingly. Her father quaffed his with the gusto she remembered. What had happened in the past few hours to restore him to such vitality?

"You wanted to know what it is we are doing, Mari?" Corajidin sat with his legs crossed, entirely relaxed. "There has been good reason for all the unpleasantness. All the moral gray we have endured-"

"Are you trying to justify the way the kherife's men have apprehended people in the middle of the night? The persecutions of Seethe and Humans, even some Avn, here in Amnon?"

"Sacrifice is necessary for progress." Her father sipped his wine. "At first I struggled with what was happening. My agents interpreted my orders to meet their own agendas or exceeded my orders entirely. I was too sick to do more than control the wake of their damage, though I would have had it otherwise. Yet they were in the field and I was not. They did what they thought was necessary. A great many patriots died to remove Far-ad-din from power. Their actions, born out of love for their culture and heritage, must not be in vain."

"Father, I know Far-ad-din was removed from power because you wanted unrestricted access to the treasures in the Rmarq. Why lie to me? What are you-"

"We, Mari," her father corrected. Part of Mari shriveled inside. "There are many among the Hundred Families who believe we have been under the yoke of scholastic anachronisms for too long. Scholars! What are they but shepherds whose flock outgrew them centuries ago? Their beliefs are outdated. Take our reliance upon the power of the Font and Awakening. What are they but yokes the scholars placed around our necks in times long past? Their future was writ during the Scholar Wars, when they tried to oppress those who challenged their beliefs."

"The witches, you mean? An interesting, if self-serving, change of perspective. You've always been opportunistic. It was your hero, Sedefke, who led our Ancestors through their first Awakening. Are you saying you'll forgo it all to clutch at mediocrity like the leaders of foreign lands?"

"I see myself more as a pragmatist." He winced, his hand flying to his chest. Mari rose from her chair, but her father waved her down. "It is nothing. Wolfram warned me of some of the side effects of the medicine they gave me today."

"Father, please, you need to rest. And what do you mean 'they'?"

"Do not worry for me, Mariam." Corajidin's smile was almost as charming as it had once been. The color of his skin was better, though the lines that furrowed his brow and the corners of his eyes were steeped in shadows. His eyes were fever bright. "Wolfram has arranged for me to receive something which will allow me to function for a while longer. It is stronger, true, but it buys me time."

"What are you going to do?" she asked nervously.

"I am not mad, Mari," her father mused. "My illness has brought me a clarity I missed before. There are so many things I see so clearly now. My ambition to rule our people was only one step in a much grander reformation. A return to those times when we were truly great."

Mari leaned back in her chair, filled with a sense of pending dread. "I don't like what I'm hearing."

"Once Ariskander and Daniush are dead," her father said quietly, "my path to the Asrahn's throne will be virtually unopposed. I will be the Asrahn of Shran and a candidate of my choosing will no doubt be elected as Speaker for the People. Imperialists will control both crown and the state, and there will be little impediment to-"

"The Magistratum won't simply bow to your will," Mari retorted. "The Officers Marshal, like Femensetri-"

"Are all roles that will be open for election at the a.s.sembly." Corajidin waved away her objection. He turned his bright gaze down to the a.s.sortment of scrolls and tablets on his desk. He sorted through them, tidied them into piles without, as far as Mari could tell, reading them. She noted how her father's hands still trembled. His fingernails were jagged, as if he had been biting them. "Wolfram has shown me what his allies are capable of, how powerful the witches have become in the secrecy of their exile."

"Father, what happens if you can't overcome what ails you?" Mari asked desperately. With an abrupt gesture she scattered the scrolls and tablets from the desk. "This...all this, none of it will matter if you're dead! Please, stop whatever it is you and Wolfram are planning and concentrate on getting well."

"I asked Wolfram to gather his witches. He has introduced me to some of his allies," her father whispered. Mari frowned at the fear in her father's voice. "It was Majadis and Devandai, Wolfram's allies, who gave me the potion that has helped me with my illness. A taste only, to show me their power. They say it is distilled from the power of the Font itself. It will keep me alive, Mariam. Vital, after a fashion. Do you understand what that means?"

Mari tasted something sour in her mouth. The Scholar Wars had happened for a reason-the scholars had known the witches were too dangerous, too indiscriminate in their power, to remain loose. The witches had wanted to sit on the throne of Shran themselves, rather than serve it. Wolfram was dire enough, yet in his desperation her father had opened the doors to more of Wolfram's ilk. Witches were rumored to have made dark bargains with darker forces for their powers. What would they want from Erebus fa Corajidin for their help?

"Father, don't you risk too much, too soon? Surely you don't expect the Great Houses and the Hundred to sit idly by while you resurrect the abuses of the past, even if you believe it's in a good cause?"

"Have no doubt those who decide to impede the future will have no place in it. It makes me happier than I can say to know you are part of this now."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

"Ambition can make stones of us all. Heartless, with neither compa.s.sion nor mercy, we roll only in one direction."-from the Maxims of the Poet Masters, 156th Year of the Awakened Empire Day 325 of the 495th Year of the Shranese Federation Corajidin looked on while Yashamin buried her head in paperwork. She was angry that he had decided to spend the night watching over Thufan and catching up on the myriad duties he had forgone in his illness rather than in her arms. Resigned to her husband's attention being elsewhere, Yashamin had joined him on the couch and tersely discussed all that must be attended to.

Yashamin ignored Corajidin as he dressed. She kept her back to him, fingers stained with ink, as he enfolded her in his arms. Her ink brush continued to move across the page while she responded to the mountain of correspondence that arrived daily. He leaned down to smile into her hair. His lips lingered in a long kiss there, breathing in her scent. Even her perspiration smelled good.

He bade her a quiet farewell, though she maintained her disapproving silence as he left the room. He would make amends when he returned from the Rmarq.

Belamandris waited for him in the courtyard, along with the twenty best warriors of the Anlki. Belamandris was resplendent in his armor coat of ruby scales and cuira.s.s of polished black kirion. Tragedy's scabbard gleamed like lacquered blood. His Anlki were little more than shades in their black-scaled hauberks and suede over-robes. They stood guard by a plain-looking carriage and two large covered wagons. The Spools on each of the contrivances spun slowly, the mother-of-pearl nimbus a flare in the gloom.

Wolfram lurched down the stairs, Brede in his wake. The old man looked his years. He leaned heavily on his staff, his knuckles white. The witch's skin was sallow where it could be seen through the mat of hair that hung from his high brow or above his long beard and mustache. The calipers supporting his legs creaked more than usual, as if the rickety old witch was about to collapse at any time. Corajidin had demanded Wolfram do whatever he could to heal Thufan. It seemed the witch's efforts to satisfy his demands had taken their toll.

"Thank you," Corajidin whispered so the others would not hear.

"He lives." Wolfram's beautiful voice sounded brittle. "Though he'll thank neither you nor me for the gift."

"What did you-"

"Whatever was necessary," Wolfram said flatly. Brede a.s.sisted her infirm master into one of the wagons, where they both sat, pale and drawn.

Corajidin cast a quick glance at the sky. It was still dark, though there was a smoldering glow on the eastern horizon. Many of the workers of Amnon would have risen from their beds, bakers, butchers, fishers, caravaneers, and drovers, ready to labor for another in a long line of days. Some would see the wagon and the carriages slowly ply the city streets, yet none would ever think the Asrahn-Elect would travel so plainly. Corajidin hoped to have returned to Amnon before any were the wiser.

"Will Mari be joining us?" Belamandris asked as he walked his father to the carriage. He opened the door and gestured for his father to climb aboard.

"Not for this."

Belamandris gave the order for the troop to move out. The young warrior-poet swung into the carriage as he pulled the door closed behind him. It was a quiet ride through winding streets to the north of the city. They took the Kondyan Viaduct across the inlets to the skydock, with the looming shadows of the skyjammers in port. Corajidin saw the lamp-lit shape of a smaller wind-skiff, a crescent moon of polished wood and bright metal bobbing at the end of mooring lines in the stiffening breeze. A Spool rotated slowly halfway along the keel, flickering with gelid light. The Anlki carried chests of various sizes under Brede's watchful eye. One chest was larger than the rest, almost two meters in length and so broad it took six men to carry it.

Belamandris took the helm of the wind-skiff and ordered the lamps extinguished. With a deft hand he steered the vessel from the dock, then out across the Marble Sea. They flew, a shadow among the gulls and kestrels, over the choppy waters and far out of the way of fishing vessels and the merchant galleys that had docked overnight in deeper waters.

Dawn came as they soared across the sun-and-shadow quilt of the Rmarq. In the distance the half-buried ruins were little more than a charcoal smudge, but within minutes stone towers stood out among the trees, circular windows like forlorn eyes in black stone faces. Small plumes of smoke drifted upward, to be snagged on the morning breeze. They flew over supply tents and makeshift barracks, coming to a small dock where a handful of skiffs and a privateer galley were moored amid tall weeds and water lilies. Rough wooden crates lined the stone finger of the pier, which was stained with mold and tide shadows. The sharp strikes of hammers, picks, and mattocks echoed below. Leaning over the bow, Corajidin inhaled the pungent scent of damp vegetation, wood smoke, rampant honeysuckle, and the musk of Fenling bodies. Belamandris guided the vessel to a courtyard near to where Ariskander and Daniush were held.

Corajidin paid careful attention as he and the others were escorted by Brede to where the rituals would take place. He felt overly sensitive to everything around him: the pressure of the damp air against his skin; the p.r.i.c.kle of sweat on his scalp, a single drop trickling behind his right ear; the grainy residue of time that clung to slick black stone; the constant throb that pulsed through the soles of his feet. The air was redolent of cypress trees. Paspalum stalks nodded their seeded heads in the sultry breeze. At the edge of hearing was the distant toll-tick-grind of vast, unseen engines, which none of Kasraman's people had ever been able to find. Those who had gone looking had not returned, as was the case in so many other areas of the city.

The group came to a wide circular plaza, surrounded by a round, columned building of reflective black stone. Corajidin's breath caught in his throat as he looked at the tall columns, smeared with the debris of the ages yet almost whole for the millennia they had stood. Windows, some still with panes or jagged shards of orange, yellow, and red gla.s.s, stared down impa.s.sively, their threat vague yet present nonetheless.

In the center of the plaza, within a filigree-domed gazebo of green-tinted bronze, was a device made from wheels within wheels within wheels of tarnished black metal. A pitted amber orb slowly spun at its center. Corajidin would have had difficulty encircling the orb with his arms. The various wheels that surrounded it, fourteen in all, were marked with hard, angular glyphs and studded with smaller spheres of metal. Some of the small spheres also had wheels circling them, likewise dotted with one, two, or sometimes three other small orbs. Stars fell in the metal: white, blue, orange, red, and even black, a rain of radiant specks of dust.

"The Star Clock," Wolfram said covetously. Brede likewise looked on the artifact with awe. "As far as we know, it's the only one of its kind, made in the latter years of the Haiyt Empire of the Time Masters."

"What does it do?" Corajidin was tempted to touch it, though a powerful sense of self-preservation stayed his hand. He was disturbed by the thought of the minds that could conceive such a device, let alone engineer it.

"If only we knew, my rahn," Brede murmured. "The Rm didn't leave much by way of writings for us. When they disappeared, they took all they knew with them. We've pieced together what we know, but it isn't much."

Brede led them past hard-eyed guards, then into a chamber whose lofty ceiling vanished into what appeared to be dark, roiling murk above. It was the same place where Kasraman had studied and cataloged their treasures. Much of what had been found had already been crated and shipped, either to Corajidin's palace in Erebesq or to the villa in Amnon. Kasraman himself would be en route to Erebesq even now aboard one of their few wind-ships, the dismantled Torque Spindle in his care.