Mist & Dawn, page 26
In his room, he sank down on the chair in front of the window. The courtyard below was lit by the glow from the lamps under the archway that led to the next courtyard. A guard often stood there, but Kotori couldn’t see him.
Then he remembered the letter that had been stuck behind the door handle.
He went into the wardrobe and took it from the pocket of his cloak.
He folded out the paper inside. On it, Pertak had written a simple message.
I have some news you might find interesting.
That was all?
Couldn’t he have simply—no, Kotori had been on the astrology tower and Pertak wouldn’t have known that. He’d knocked on Kotori’s door, found he wasn’t there, so he had written this note.
Which, Kotori assumed, was about a pressing bit of news he’d found out.
Normally, Kotori would have waited to do something about a message like this until the next day, because it was late, but he’d asked Pertak for unusual things that people from the regions had reported to him. This was sure to be about that.
And it wasn’t that late, was it?
He checked the time.
Well, it was kind of late, well after his stargazing session had ended and after he had spoken to the queen.
But he knew he’d be unable to sleep with the knowledge that Pertak wanted to see him, and, knowing Pertak, he might be off on a trip the next morning.
So Kotori donned his cloak and went to see Pertak, anyway.
The courtyards and passages of the Citadel lay deserted.
The guards stood in their guard stations, looking exceedingly bored. They nodded politely when he passed, and one or two might have raised their eyebrows. Kotori was normally in bed long before this time.
Pertak lived in the block of houses on the mountain side of the Citadel. While the Citadel occupied a hilltop and was the highest point in the city, the range behind the city was taller. The area behind the Citadel, facing away from the river, was a kind of low saddle pass. A lot of the homes of well-of citizens were in this area that caught the sea breeze, but was not close enough to the ocean to suffer from the salty humidity.
Pertak was, like himself, not tied to a woman or family, and he lived alone in a small apartment on the top floor of a building that consisted of ten or twelve such housing units.
A few sparse lights burned in the stairwell, trailing coils of smoke into the air as Kotori trudged up.
He could hear very little of what went on behind the doors on each landing. The inhabitants would be asleep.
He listened at Pertak’s door, but couldn’t hear anything. What to do now? Pertak hadn’t said anything about a meeting time.
Then he knocked anyway.
It took a long time before some scuffling noises came from the other side. Then the door opened a crack.
“Who is there?” That was Pertak’s voice, muffled and confused.
“You left me a note.”
“Kotori? What are you doing here?”
“You left a note that you wanted to see me.”
“Whenever you had time. Tomorrow. I wasn’t in this much of a hurry. But come in, before the neighbours complain about talking in the stairwell.”
He opened the door further. He was wearing a long white nightgown. Well, that was embarrassing.
“I’m sorry if I woke you up.”
“It’s all right, I’m awake now.”
Kotori entered the apartment’s hall and followed Pertak into the living room.
The apartment was just the right size for one person, and Pertak kept it exceptionally tidy. He asked if Kotori wanted a drink, but Kotori said he wouldn’t stay long, just long enough to hear about the news.
So Pertak started. “It’s about your question asking if anyone in the regions had noticed anything unusual with rocks falling from the sky.”
It was as Kotori had thought. “So somebody did report about it.”
“I received a written report out of the border region of a strange streak of light falling from the sky. They’re close to the Chevakian border, and the Chevakians are known to experiment with weapons. It wouldn’t be the first time that they’re careless, and projectiles or patrols stray across the border. The village sent out a few people to look for Chevakian weapons, but the boys found a huge hole in the ground that was bigger than any Chevakian weapon can make. But what made them specifically contact me is that a few days after finding the hole, the boys came down with a horrible illness. Fortunately, both are recovering, but a couple of the farmer’s cows have died.”
“What sort of illness?”
“Their skin went red and then came out in blisters, and then they developed fever and illness of the bowels.”
“But they recovered?”
“That’s what the report says.”
He met Kotori’s eyes. They both knew that if this was a weapon of a type that used icefire, any improvement would only be temporary.
“Did anyone find fragments of the weapon?” Kotori asked.
“The report isn’t that detailed. It just says people noticed sounds like thunder and some farmers saw a flash in the sky and then the next day, they found the hole. If there had been an object, then I assume that would have made it into the report.”
That was true.
But also, the report didn’t specifically say that they’d checked for an object and hadn’t found one.
They would have checked, he was sure of that.
So this meant… that they had found something, but they didn’t want to use this report to notify the Citadel? After what he’d witnessed, on top of the astrology tower with his students, he didn’t believe the report. If he’d seen the object fall, and there was a hole in the ground, there would be fragments.
Pertak didn’t have more information, so Kotori left him to go back to bed and walked through the darkness back to the astrology tower. In the streets in the city, many of the oil lamps had burned out and the last stragglers had come home from the bars.
The visit hadn’t filled him with a lot of hope that he’d have an easy answer that would satisfy the queen. Not that, after twenty years of wondering and looking for answers, he’d expected something simple.
Well, after twenty years, he was finally forced to do something about it. So that he could show the king and queen that he was working on unravelling the mystery, while also covering up that he’d known about it for years. By taking himself out of the Citadel. It had finally come to this.
He took out his bag and packed most of his travel clothes in it. He took a clean notebook because he needed space to write. He hung his astrologer’s robe in the wardrobe, and packed his star map and his stones.
He put these next to the door. He went to sleep until the calls of the Citadel’s peacocks woke him up. Then he got dressed in his travel clothes, picked up his bag and slipped out of the Citadel before anyone could see him. He walked through the deserted streets where the only other people were the city’s drunks and vagrants and the merchants turning up early for the markets.
He would not be there to buy dried prunes.
He turned to the station.
Once he had left the city, he would send a message to the queen that he’d gone on a brief study trip. Because he “recognised the severity of the discovery”. Hopefully, most people in the Citadel would buy that explanation. If they could be made to believe that somehow, the astrologer didn’t look at the stars at night and had never seen this thing before.
If they were dumb enough to believe that.
The guards would. The king… probably, but the queen… no, she’d see him for the liar and coward he was. Not that she’d ever seen him differently, but now she would have proof.
CHAPTER 28
Lana stopped a few paces into the living room. The table looked magnificent, with fresh bread and jams and fruit and all the king’s favourite dishes, but the king himself was sorely lacking.
“Where is my husband?” she asked of the servant woman who stood at the door.
“I’m not sure, your highness,” she said.
“Then wouldn’t you go to find out?”
The woman’s face went red. “We were very busy. I assumed that he would come. He’s always keen to come by himself.”
It was true, at least within this apartment. He insisted on moving himself around. When Orik could no longer walk, courtesy of an old battle wound, they’d made the floor smooth and installed ramps so that he could move his wheelchair.
“Go and find out where my husband is. Please bring him here.”
Lana sat down at the table, but admitted to not feeling terribly hungry herself.
The tableware cupboard against the wall held two more plates for the children.
But Loriane was very busy practicing for a trip. Now that her music studies were finished—and she should be concentrating on other subjects—she wanted to spend more time with the orchestra she had formed with a group of people from the course. They’d given a few performances in the market hall in central Kadrish, while lamenting that Kadrish didn’t have formal performance venues, only crude stages for street fights, and the musicians baulked at using those blood-stained stages.
The group was now to have their first formal tour. Loriane had always wanted to perform in the City of Glass. Lana had taken her there on trips, to come to grips with a family heritage that not even she understood well.
But now King Selinor had officially invited the group, and yes, Lana understood how big a deal that was, but also, Loriane should be studying statecraft, because time was running out. To her argument that her father was not getting any younger, Loriane had said, as recently as this morning, that Lana had been wielding that argument for at least ten years.
That was also true, but Lana knew from her own experience, that holding power didn’t come naturally. It resulted from long years of experience doing many different things that increased your understanding of who the players were and how to outfox them if necessary.
She poured herself some tea and walked to the window.
The many domes and turrets of Kadrish basked in glorious sunlight. A riot of colour marked the fruit market that was on today.
“Your highness!”
Lana turned around. “Yes, what’s wrong?” It was the serving girl who had gone to get Orik, without Orik.
“The king… There is something funny going on with his face.”
Lana set down her tea with such force that it sloshed over the side. “Where is he?”
“In his bedroom.”
Lana strode out the door, left into the hallway and two doors down to Orik’s bedroom. The first thing she noticed was how stuffy the air in the room was.
Also, that Orik had moved quite a lot of furniture in here. He didn’t like it when people invaded his domain and questioned his independence.
It had been a very long time since she had last spent a night here. Her unwritten agreement with him had been for one child. She had given him two.
Orik sat in an arm chair by the window. Or maybe sat was not the right description for the way he half-hung sideways against the armrest.
She crossed the floor in a few steps and knelt before him.
“Orik!”
His hands were cold, the skin scabbed and paper-thin.
His eyes were droopy and desperately intense. Half his lip hung down. A drop of saliva was about to fall off. He tried to speak and his lips moved, but no sound came out.
“I’ll call the medic immediately.” She jumped to her feet and made for the door, her heart thudding.
“W—w—-wait.”
His voice sounded so feeble.
“I need to find the medic to look after you.”
“N—no p—point.”
He was struggling to get the words out.
“M—my mmm—mm—mouth d—doesn’t w—www—work.”
“That’s why you need the medic.”
“N—nnn—no.”
“What no? There is something wrong with you.”
“O—old aaa—age. L—lll—lori—lori—ane. Get hhh—her.”
With a deep sense of dread, Lana realised what he wanted. Loriane to come to his room, with the book of primary laws, with the crown, to transfer power. And to the best of her knowledge, Loriane was in the harbour packing for her trip to Peria.
“I’ll do it.” Heaven help the poor guard who’d have to tell her that her trip to Peria was off.
She opened the door.
“A—nd K—kkkk—kkkkk”
“Kotori?”
He nodded.
Lana ran to the guard station. She told them to get a medic as well, even if she also knew that Orik was right: no medic would fix the effects of old age. They had all known for years that this was coming.
Then she ran to the king’s office, the place where she did most of her work, opened the cabinet in the corner with the key on the chain around her neck. She took out the book and the crown and put them on the desk.
The book contained the primary laws of Arania, of which there were many, but not by far enough. The laws did cover the simple, practical aspects of succession.
She turned to that section. She had read it before, but had always thought they’d have more time to study the details.
The king shall only transfer his rule to his chosen son—why had they never changed that?—when in the presence of the court astrologer and only if the omens of succession are favourable. Yes, she knew this. Kotori could sink the entire deal.
She’d hoped that Kotori would have dropped off the perch before Orik, being the older of the two. Then she could have appointed a younger, more reasonable astrologer.
But no.
After moving into the King’s quarters twenty years ago, she had disposed of many of the old guard. But Kotori was untouchable through the sheer number of people whose fortunes he had spoken at important points in their lives.
Now she would have to go and find that despicable man and the fate of her family would be in his hands.
She left the office again, ran down the hallway, down the king’s private stairs to the courtyard, across the garden and up into the astrology tower.
It was not a place where she came a lot. Kotori disliked her, and she disliked him, and they kept out of each other’s way. If ever the law called for an astrologer, she would send someone up here to get him.
But now she climbed the winding staircase into the tower. It was not just Kotori’s room at the top. There was a viewing platform where you could set up spyglasses and study the skies, but since they had extended the library, there was also a tower on top, and the view from up there was just as good, if not better.
Lana reached the door to the astrologer’s room.
She breathed in deeply and knocked.
There was no response, so she knocked again.
When there was still no response, she asked, “Kotori. I would like to speak to you. The king needs you.”
There was still no response, so she pushed the door.
To her surprise, it was open.
The room beyond was shrouded in semi darkness. Light came in through a small window, but because it was about to go dark and the window faced east, the light was already dim.
There was no one in the room. The bed was untouched, the cupboard was shut, a cloth lay on the table with a couple of dice on it. Wherever he was, it looked like he had only just walked out.
The library.
He’d be teaching.
So she went down the stairs again and crossed the short distance to the library.
It was quite busy in the main study area. She held a fleeting hope that she might find Loriane here, as she should be, but the students in the library were all much younger.
She didn’t see Kotori either. She asked a few students, but they hadn’t seen him.
“He sometimes meets people at the back of the library,” a student said. “There is another study nook there. He doesn’t like us sitting there because you’re meant to be quiet and he says he prefers to keep the noise to this part of the library.”
Lana walked in between the shelves made of heavy wood, groaning under the weight of thousands and thousands of books. Years and years of history. It was not for nothing that the library of Kadrish was one of the wonders of the world. It contained more books than anyone could ever read, big leather-bound tomes with golden letters on the spine, some books so old that they almost fell apart, and were written in languages few people could understand.
The shelves stood close together and were so tall that you needed to use a ladder on wheels to get to the top ones.
She knew the study nook the student referred to. It was a very old setting, with velvet-covered benches and a tabletop inlaid with mother-of-pearl that reflected the light from a flapping oil lamp that burned on a stand in the corner. The table was empty.
Lana walked past all the aisles, looking into the darkness of each, but there was no one.
Well, that was annoying. The one time she had a genuine need for the astrologer, he was nowhere to be found.
Lana went back to the student. “What sort of people does he meet in the back of the library?”
“I don’t know. Old people.”
“Do you recognise any of them?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
Lana left the library and stood at the entrance, wondering what to do now.
She spotted a guard go into the entrance of the king’s quarters in the presence of the court medic.
And a moment later, Loraine ran into the courtyard.
“Mother! What’s going on?”
“Your father has taken a bad turn.”
Her mouth fell open. A moment of unspoken horror passed between them.
“I tried to find the astrologer, but he seems to be out.”
“He’s probably gone to the markets.”
“The markets?”
“Kotori has a liking for dried prunes,” Loriane said. “Apparently last week he ate so many that he went to the latrines three times during a lesson. Wherever he walked, he left behind a waft of smelly air.”
