Eka. Someone is you. I expect you know every hiding place in this rock pile.”
That caught Ekaterina off guard. She seemed fearful that her mother had penetrated some deep secret. Then she turned bland. “As you wish. No guarantee I can find him if he doesn’t want to be found, though.”
Mist smiled, nodded. “Anyone know what Wacht Mustflit means?” She hashed the pronunciation. No one noticed, nor did anyone do anything but shake heads.
There were plenty to shake. The Wind Tower was packed with a crowd that now included translators added to help Yasmid and her father get by. The one assigned to the Disciple grumbled plenty because he had so much nothing to do. Today’s Disciple was not entrancing. When he spoke at al he preached, without passion or energy, in a mumble.
He believed that minions of the Evil One had imprisoned him in the antechamber of Hel .
The mental experts said opium had damaged his mind too much. He would never recover.
“The Place.”
Mist looked at Ethrian, who stood over the shogi board, shivering without Eka there to support him or to intercede.
He spoke declaratively, though, in a tight voice. Everyone nearby shut up, hoping for more.
“Ethrian? I didn’t hear you clearly through the noise.”
“The Place of the Iron Statues. Wacht Musfliet is its name in…” Ethrian stopped, perplexed. In what language?
The Old Man made gurgling noises. He agreed but added nothing.
Ethrian went on, “That is a name. It does not mean Place of the Iron Statues. It means Stronghold Lonely. Or Fortress of Solitude.”
Al right. Mist understood. “Thank you, Ethrian. We should find that useful.” Though how she did not at that moment see.
Nepanthe practical y pounced on her son, drowning him in hugs of happy approval.
Mist felt the air move. Varthlokkur was beside her. “I arrived in time to hear him.”
“Good. Where is Eka?”
The question puzzled him.
“I sent her to find you.”
“She’s stil looking, then. I didn’t see her.” He pushed up for a better look at the map. “Good work, Scalza.”
“Scary good work,” Mist opined. The truth of her children had begun to leak through their clever masks.
Mist had carried them inside her for nine months. She could not harm them, however they threatened. Wel , she could do no physical harm. Injury of the emotional sort she had inflicted already.
Varthlokkur considered the map as if entranced. His face went through changes, as though il uminated by lanterns shaken by a vigorous wind. He started, muttered, “Whoa.
That was…” He recal ed that he had an audience. “Sorry. I had an attack of the reminiscences.”
Mist eased forward a foot, more directly into his line of sight. “And?”
“I’ve been there. A long time ago. I was someone else at the time. Probably Eldred the Wanderer…though that doesn’t feel quite right. It was after the Fal .” Mist waggled fingers at her mental specialists. This might rate a closer look.
The wizard mused, “That may have been when I first met Nepanthe.”
A patent impossibility, though no one chal enged him. That would have been centuries before she was born. Stil , it was no secret that Varthlokkur had discovered Nepanthe in prophetic visions ages before she was entered into the lists of the world.
The idea that he might have been in thral to Old Meddler once did nothing to comfort anyone now, himself included.
Mist asked, “Can you recal anything else about that?”
“Things are in there, a little rowdy, a little shy, rambling around just outside the firelight. I’l try to lure them in.”
“Have these two help.” She indicated her specialists. “And don’t waste time. I’m sure that the old devil being there isn’t good.”
“Probably not. But let’s don’t focus on the past so much that we miss what’s happening now.”
Ethrian had to be pried loose from his mother and probed while his mind remained connected to realities beyond the usual. Likewise, the Old Man required a closer look. He showed signs of having had memories broach, too.
She wished she had additional reliable mental experts. And she dared never forget that her empire was managed by fractious, powerful aristocrats who did not appreciate the fact that she was female.
...
Ekaterina took the opportunity of being unsupervised to snatch a few minutes with Radeachar. Her friendship for that thing was nothing like her feelings for Ethrian. This was rooted in empathy. The Unborn was far more of an outsider than she was—though her status in that realm had more substance in her own mind than in the quotidian world. The feedback she got suggested an unlikely family pet—as she imagined the devotion of a dog might be.
She had not interacted with an actual dog in years.
There were none in Fangdred. The supply situation would not support the luxury of unproductive mouths.
So. Radeachar was, by an order of magnitude, the most alien entity she had ever encountered, yet she was comfortable around it. Even Varthlokkur sometimes got the creeps. Never Ekaterina.
Him. She should give Radeachar that. Radeachar would have been “he” had he been produced by a normal pregnancy and regular infancy.
Radeachar liked being near her. It was a cunning monster, though. It understood that she could not be seen being close or she would suffer. She was too young to sustain the emotional burden of being a great dread.
Too, the thing could not become as devoted as it might prefer. Its abiding obligation was to the Empire Destroyer.
Varthlokkur had preserved it—him!—when the rest of the world just wanted the demonspawn to burn.
Was she under some compulsion to attach emotional y to crippled cousins?
When you zeroed in on strict fact, she and Radeachar were related. Her grandfather was his father, so he would be her uncle if she had her facts straight.
Sudden laughter ripped free.
A glow of pleasure il uminated Radeachar. He was pleased that she was cheerful even though he did not understand.
She brushed her fingertips across the membrane separating the bizarre embryo from the world, then kissed it, too. “Thank you. I feel much better, now.” Maybe because she had been reminded that her own situation was far from as awful as it could be.
More pleasure radiant from Radeachar.
She returned to the crowded workroom in the Wind Tower prepared to apologize because she had been unable to find Varthlokkur, discovered that her mission had been unnecessary. The wizard had found his way back on his own.
“Where have you been?” her mother demanded. Like she had some right.
Ekaterina accepted no such claim but offered only an insidiously insubordinate counter-chal enge. “I took a long journey to a far place, Empress. A philosophical pilgrimage. An expedition of epiphanic conceptual discovery.”
“Wait for it,” Scalza sneered, loud enough for half the crowd to hear. “We’re in for some vintage Eka.” He seemed eager to see how his mother handled that.
“You’re gonna get your turn, Worm. And you’re gonna love it. Did you realize that Radeachar is our uncle? He’s Mother’s little brother.”
Mist gawked. That was true but it had not occurred to her, ever.
A melodic tinkle of amusement escaped Ekaterina.
