Ventus - Karl Schroeder (good short books TXT) 📗

after all. And while Armiger might have lost his own head had he been standing a meter closer, he could have grown another one, given enough time. He had no rational reason to be upset. But he was. He was.

“Lavin’s an upstart,” said Matthias. “Young, bright, ambitious. He’s had subtle help from the queen throughout his career. And now he’s turned on her. I’d take him to be an opportunist, but Galas disagrees. She says he’s an arch-traditionalist.”

“Have you tried to use that against him?” asked Armiger.

Matthias nodded. “Had some success too. He detests dealing with morale issues. You can trip him up if you can scare his men. He’s a quick learner though—I’m afraid I taught him to press the way he is with the cannon. Never lets us sleep. You saw the result yourself.”

Armiger nodded.

Matthias was watching him. “I have to say, Armiger, that you’ve got steady nerves. I got that impression when we were following reports of your war in the northeast. You were doing a magnificent job. Then we heard you were dead, and you turn up here. Sounded to me like you ran. Why?”

“Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?” asked Armiger with a smile. “Because you think I’m a deserter?”

“No, not a deserter. A mercenary.” Matthias grimaced. “You show up here, offering your services to the queen… for how much?”

Armiger sat up straight. “First of all, if I were a mercenary you’d think Ravenon would have paid me. They didn’t pay me—at least not in money.”

“What do you mean? What did they pay you in?”

“Information. It was their mail and spy networks I was interested in using. I showed up here with nothing but the clothes on my back, you know that. And how am I expected to get away with my payment if Galas is paying me now?”

“Simple,” said Matthias. “You’ve cut a deal with Lavin.”

Armiger laughed harshly. “Your suspicion is well-founded and sound. You think I’m a Trojan horse, is that it?”

“A what horse?”

Armiger took a deep drink of his beer. “Lavin doesn’t need my help to take this palace, you know that,” he said. “Besides, I haven’t exactly offered my services to the queen as a military commander.”

“Oh? Then as what?”

“Priest. Confessor.” Armiger saw the expression on Matthias’ face and laughed. “Look, that man who had his head knocked off today—I’ve had it with that kind of thing. Why do you think I left the war in Ravenon? The Winds wiped out two divisions of my men. I stood by helpless and watched it happen. At the time I thought I didn’t care; but I did. And I do. So I’m not here to fight, Matthias, you needn’t worry about that.”

The old general sat back in his chair, nodding slowly. “You’re an odd one. And if you’d said anything other than what you just did, I wouldn’t have taken you seriously. Priest? Confessor? I don’t know about that. But I understand a man who lays down his sword. Men who don’t have that urge now and then make bad commanders. Galas tells me Lavin has no stomach for war either—but see how good he is at it.”

An adjutant knocked politely on the door. Matthias nodded and stood up.

“Now that I know where your heart lies, Armiger, I may just call up on your talents. After all, there’s no better man to end a war quickly and cleanly than one who hates war.”

*

Jordan surged to his feet with shout. He was not going to let this happen again.

He shook his head and forced himself to breathe deeply, and look around himself. He was in a small cell in the basement of Brendan Sheia’ home. A single window-slit let in the wan sunset, and a trickle of cold air that teased at him, making him shiver now that he had noticed it.

They had taken his possessions, including Calandria’s golden gauze. He was irrevocably visible to the Winds now.

The sights and sounds of Armiger’s experience began to recede. He willed them away entirely. It didn’t matter how compelling them were. It didn’t matter that he wanted to fall into Armiger like a refuge, the way he had on his long walk south from the disaster of the Heaven hooks. He wished so much that he could be somewhere else right now—be some_one_ else.

“Too bad,” he said angrily. Jordan was furious with Brendan Sheia—just furious enough, for now, not to be afraid. He was also angry with himself, though, and right now that was worse.

After all, there had been a moment in his life when he thought he was going to put aside all the habits of denial and retreat that he had despised in his father. When Emmy ran into the night, Jordan had lain in bed for long moments, waiting for someone else to act responsibly and follow her. He still remembered those few seconds; something had broken in him, setting him free. And so he thought afterwards that he would never fall back into those family patterns again.

He’d been fooling himself. He felt now as if he’d been a leaf in a river these past weeks. Calandria’s abduction, his terror of the visions, the whirlwind visit to the Boros where intrigue, murder and disguise were daily companions—these events had all given him excuses to feel helpless. He had let Calandria lead him, had accepted her stories; he had let Suneil lull him into complacency. He was a blank page on which others had signed their names, and that was just the way his father lived.

It was shameful—but if he wallowed in his misery, he would just be playing the lost boy again. When Galas’ mother died, the future queen had foresworn playing roles dictated by others. There was a lesson in that.

He had been in this cell for a day now. Someone had slid some food under the door that morning; otherwise, he might have been completely alone in the building.

This Boros domicile was not so grand as the manor house the Hooks had destroyed. It stood in the Rhiene high street, squeezed between two even grander mansions. There were no grounds, only a cobbled courtyard in front with a high wall and a gate. The building was tall, he knew, but he wasn’t sure how many storeys it was since his only view of it had been upsidedown as he was yanked off the horse yesterday evening. Four, five storeys? It didn’t matter, there was only one cellar and he was in it.

In the stories he used to read, bad people always had dungeons in their castles. Emmy had scared him for years by spinning tales of a secret level underneath Castor’s manor. There was no such thing there, of course, any more than there was here. He was in some kind of disused storage room. They’d tossed a cot, a blanket and a bucket in after him, and let him set them up himself, in his own dungeon style.

Jordan wasn’t quite sure what Brendan Sheia meant to do to him. Certainly the man had power, maybe enough to make an innocent traveller disappear without investigation.

He shivered again. First on the agenda was to find a way to block that draft.

They’d left him his cloak, so he bundled that up and stepped on a jutting stone in the wall to stuff it in the window. As he did so he heard footsteps passing in the hall outside.

“Hey, let me out!” he shouted.

“Quiet in there.” The footsteps receded.

“I didn’t do a damn thing, you stupid bastards!” He jumped down and gave the door a sound kick.

It felt good, and the crash was satisfactorily loud, so he kicked again. Tamsin would have a suitable insult for an occasion like this, he was sure. All he could think of was the one she’d used earlier today: “Trotting swine!”

He went to kick again but the door suddenly swung wide with a shriek of rusty hinges, and in its place was a huge scowling man with a long stick in his hand.

Before Jordan could react the man butted him in the stomach. Pain exploded in his belly, and he went down.

He curled up instinctively and thus avoided the worst of the kicks that followed. Then the man spat on him and left.

“Bastards,” whimpered Jordan, as he unwrapped shaking hands from his head. “Bastards bastards bastards,” all of them, Calandria, Armiger and Axel, Suneil and the whole stinking Boros clan. “Bastards.”

—And then he was in the flow of Vision, hearing the burr of Armiger’s voice in his own chest, and an overlay of chorusing identities in the walls, in the sullenly firm door and the very earth under his shoulder. It was like he’d fallen in a snake pit, with a thousand heads rising hissing all about him. Jordan grabbed his head and doubled up again with a cry.

He concentrated. This is my hand; he brought it up to his eyes. This is my sight. I am here, not in the palace, not in the walls: here.

Jordan rolled to his knees, gasping. The powers whispered and danced around him, but he had carved out a bubble for himself in their center. He could see and hear, and act. With some difficulty, he got to his feet.

Cold air lapped at his throat. He almost laughed. “You’re cruel,” he said to the Winds. “Now you’re going to listen to me for a change.”

He sat on the cot and wrapped the cloak around his shoulders. There was no need to take deep breaths to enter the visionary trance now; he closed his eyes and summoned it.

First he had to know where he was. He could see the mansion around him in translucent outline. The basement was indeed extensive, and he was next to a place with convoluted shelves that must be a wine cellar. There were several stairs leading up, and he instinctively chose the narrow servants’ way as his goal. That led from the back of the wine cellar, predictably enough.

There was a cistern down here, and a long room with a high arched ceiling. Castor’s manor had an exercise room and archery range in the basement, which was probably what this was. All these rooms opened off the same corridor as Jordan’s cell. In addition there were several side halls that ran to lockers of various sizes.

The problem with this way of seeing was that it didn’t seem to show people. Jordan knew there was a dog on the main floor, almost exactly above his head; he could see it. The rest of the rooms on that level were visible too, though in a jumble of perspective as if he were standing at the base of a huge glass model. He had to sort out what he was seeing, and if he had not had ample experience reading architects’ plans at Castor’s, he might not have been able to sort out hall from room, chimney from garderobe.

It only took a few minutes to work out the shortest route from here to the tradesman’s entrance. Night was falling; in a few hours the area would be quiet. Then he could make his escape—provided the next parts of his plan worked.

He needed to see more than just the outlines of the place. When the Heaven hooks descended on the Boros manor, Jordan’s vision had briefly expanded to include distant places. He had been able to see what was happening inside the manor, even though he was hundred of meters away. Try as he might, however, he had ben unable to repeat that experience.

There was something else he could try. Jordan focussed his mind on one name, and hurled it into