Like an evil gift to the browbeaten citizenry of the Duchy of Stonehold, a fable was slapped together that the infamous witch queen, Sena Iilool, had somehow managed to raise Caliph Howl from the dead. With fearless leader restored, rehearsed cheering had no doubt been queued. The tyrant lived on.
What had really happened, Taelin found impossible to tell. Details trickled rather than flowed from this reclusive northern country. But portraying the High King as a resurrected being and his witch as some kind of demiurge? Taelin understood this was the oldest and simplest kind of control: presentment of government as god. And that was why she was here. That was why she had come north. She remembered one magazine article in particular that had startled her into action:
There are those who worship Miss Iilool. In fact, the temple of what some term to be a fad-religion with partisan3 popularity has sprung up on Incense Street at the corner of …
Well, that had sealed it. Something had to be done to stop this kind of blasphemous lunacy: people worshiping people.
Despite the cancellation of Taelin’s wedding and the very private transgression that had caused it—a mistake which still echoed painfully in her heart—her family’s temple had, in the end, not taken her back. But her sins didn’t make her any less of a believer, so she had formed a new church, her own church, and begun down a different road. She had focused her ire on the god-myth in Isca and tracked Sena Iilool’s inexplicable ten-month circuit of the Atlath Continent through the papers. Taelin had planned her arrival in Stonehold to coincide with Sena’s return.
Taelin lifted her eyes from the billboard and found her goal in the darkness, an impressive and ornate house on the edge of the hill. It stood in black counterpoint to the fog. The silhouette of the House of Mywr’Din was tall and grim, much different than styles found in Pandragor. This was her uncle’s house. Taelin trudged the final thirty yards through the swirling snow, lifted the door’s heavy knocker and let it fall.
It bounced loudly against the brass plate. A few moments later the mascaron swung back, a young man’s face appeared in its place and bid her welcome to Isca City.
1P: Great Cloud Rift.
2Pandragonian charm against evil spirits.
3Not everyone would have wanted
CHAPTER
2
High King Caliph Howl tapped his fingers on a sheaf of paper. It was one hundred twenty-three pages of fresh print that had nothing to do with the parlor full of cigars and music that twittered just the other side of a twelve- foot cherry wood door. The evening of entertainment was not for him. It was for Nuj Ig’nos and the other diplomats.
The papers puffed slightly at the edges every time Caliph’s fingers struck them; the desk lamp imposed a sharp, ice-bright rink of light onto sentences filled with names and commerce and promises and threats. He was supposed to be thinking up enigmatic calculations that would transform the stack of Pandragonian demands into something that would serve the Duchy of Stonehold rather than undermine it. But after an hour he felt the hot itch of pressure at the back of his neck. Despite the coolness of the room, heat coursed over his shoulders, under his arms, up into his face.
He pawed at his chin. The cup of warm milk and honey on his desk—gone cold—had failed to help.
Finally, he opened a drawer and raked through staplers and gadgetry for a bottle of artificially flavored tablets. After eating two, he tossed the bottle back into the drawer and kicked it shut. The gurgling pain in his stomach subsided.
Maybe there was no way to satisfy the Pandragonian demands. Apart from turning over the throne and making Stonehold an unincorporated, organized territory of the empire, something like the tragedy that had befallen Bablemum, nothing was going to make Nuj Ig’nos happy.
A soft, persistent knocking resonated from the room’s official entrance.
Caliph picked up the stack of papers, tapped its edge on the leather surface of his desk and took it across the room to the trash. The trash consisted of a black envelope. It would bear the document’s name and date until it merited resurrection. Caliph sealed it and placed it in a wire basket.
He smiled wanly as the knocking persisted. Only one man knocked in such a fashion. Caliph strode from the bookshelves, over the patterned carpet and cracked the door. A volcanic glow immediately widened and burst across the threshold.
A thin figure bowed from the waist, shadow streaming into the room. Alani’s head, as always, was shorn and his powder-white goatee was diplomat-perfect. Slender liver-spotted hands folded reverently across his black vest. Stuffing the vest, pleats of white silk had been stamped with an asymmetrical brooch of featureless silver.
Caliph stepped back and made a theatrical gesture with his arm. The spymaster straightened and walked in.
As the door shut, Caliph started talking. “The accord is a sham.”
Alani’s voice, like whisky, came with a warm ripple of corrosion. “Of course it is.”
“And this conference in Sandren we’re supposed to go to … is starting to feel like a trap,” continued Caliph. He returned slowly to the cold oasis of light on his desk.
“This came for you.” Alani handed him an envelope.
“You’ve read it?”
“Yes.”
Caliph unsheathed the note and snapped it open.
“‘King Howl,’” he read aloud. “‘We feel compelled to make it abundantly clear that your speech on the fifteenth is of critical importance. Do not deviate from the clear and narrow dialogue that will lead to warm relations with the Six Kingdoms.’”
It was not signed. Caliph snarled at the page. The Pandragonians were far from subtle.
“Do you still plan to go?” asked Alani.
“Of course.”
Alani reached into his vest. “Good.” He drew out a pipe. “Understanding their motives, you can’t fault them for being unhappy over the reunification. They’d rather you were dead … and all of Stonehold splintered.”
“Well, I’m not dead,” said Caliph. But the assertion forced him to reflect.
It had been what? Twenty months since his failure in the skies over Burt? He wouldn’t allow himself to relive the full tragedy of the war in front of Alani, but he felt it. Enough sour, cold regret to pucker his insides.
Alani waited quietly, patiently. He had once waited for two days for a man’s head to cross in front of a three- foot pane of glass. Caliph pondered this little-known fact as he watched the emotionless lines in his spymaster’s face.
Finally Caliph said, “Metholinate has to be a factor.” He moved around behind his desk and leaned against a windowsill that supported enormous slabs of glass.
Alani made a grunt. “They don’t want gas for Iycestoke, or Pandragor…”
“No,” said Caliph. “They have solvitriol power and bariothermic. They just want to own us outright. They’ll keep our trade agreements intact but they’ll be inside the government then. They’ll be here, in the north. For the first time. And you know what that means?
“They’ll control how we use or don’t use solvitriol tech.”
Alani snicked his tongue against his teeth several times. “Are you sure? Are you sure that’s what this is about?”
The way Alani asked, Caliph felt as though a drop of melt water had fallen from the great casement behind him and trickled down his neck. “You think it’s something different? Why?”
