When he finally regained his breath and lifted his head, blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth. Those nearby gasped, the murmurs of concern rippling outward through the ranks of notables. Thura wiped the blood away with a linen napkin.
“Your Majesty!” Mandes said, taking advantage of the silence. “Permit me to say these claptrap machines are not worthy of your attention! Leave such mechanical trivialities to the gnomes. The Emperor of Ergoth can rely upon the swords of his brave warriors and the magic of his loyal sorcerer!”
If Mandes hoped to win the sympathy of the assembled warlords with his remarks, he failed. Even the dullest soldier present could see the value of Elicarno’s invention, and many of them had been on the receiving end of Mandes’s spells and potions. Not a word was spoken in his support. Mandes’s eyes kept darting to Prince Nazramin, but he was engaged in a murmured flirtation with the ladies seated on either side of him.
Elicarno bristled. “Claptrap? Trivialities? Bold words from a weaver of mists and concocter of poisons!”
Pale blue eyes narrowing, Mandes raised a hand, fingers spread, a conjuration forming on his lips. Tol grasped the engineer’s arm, as though to restrain him from further heated words, but in fact to grant him the secret protection of the millstone. However, the agitated expostulations of Chamberlain Valdid reminded Mandes where he was, and he ceased his spellcasting.
Instead, he drew himself up haughtily and stated, “You slander me, Master Elicarno. I demand an apology!”
Elicarno’s reply was brief and pungent. Courtiers gasped to hear profanity spoken in the emperor’s presence, but the warlords guffawed. More heated words would have followed, but Ackal IV, looking wan, called for silence. Although he shivered visibly, sweat had formed a sickly sheen on his forehead.
“Neither of you is a Rider,” he said hoarsely. “Dueling is forbidden to the common born.”
Sorcerer and engineer continued to exchange fulminating looks, but their anger turned to surprise with the emperor’s next words.
“Still, I see no reason why your skills cannot be tested against each other. We shall have a contest, a match of magic versus mechanics.”
Excited whispers buzzed through the assembly. Valdid, hovering at the emperor’s elbow, asked, “Is that wise, sire?”
“Let them test their strength with their creations, not by shedding each other’s blood. The empire needs both magic and machines to be strong. Let the champion of each try conclusions against the other.”
Ackal IV pushed himself to his feet. The assemblage of courtiers and warriors likewise rose.
“The contest shall take place on the Field of Corij, two days hence, at five marks past dawn.”
Elicarno and Mandes bowed their heads, signifying their acceptance.
Leaning heavily on his chief wife, Ackal IV told Valdid the celebration should continue, though he was retiring. Everyone waited in respectful silence as they withdrew.
When Ackal IV reached the top of the palace steps after a slow, painful climb, Tol shouted, “Long live the emperor! Long live Ackal IV!”
Thousands of throats took up his cry. The emperor turned and acknowledged their salute with a brief lift of one hand, then he and Thura vanished into the palace. Tol had hoped to speak with Valaran at some point, but when their ailing husband withdrew, protocol demanded the imperial consorts retire as well. With a swirl of crimson silk, Valaran entered the shadowed palace.
Freed of the presence of imperial dignity, the feast immediately grew louder and more raucous.
Mandes slipped away as Egrin, the Dom-shu sisters, and Tol’s officers came forward to meet Elicarno. Miya in particular seemed quite taken with the hand catapult. She and Elicarno spent the rest of the party talking earnestly together. Tol remarked to Kiya that he’d not known Miya was so interested in machines. Kiya said it wasn’t engines that held Miya’s attention so much as the engineer.
Tol invited Elicarno to stay with them at the villa, citing Mandes’s treachery. He wouldn’t put it past the sorcerer to make an attempt on the engineer’s life before the contest.
Elicarno agreed. He’d long suspected Mandes had been behind the strange, crippling arthritis that had afflicted his old master practically overnight. The illness struck just after Master Wurdgell had argued with a prominent courtier over a fee the courtier refused to pay. The courtier, Elicarno explained, was known to be one of Mandes’s clients.
Midnight had come and gone when Tol and his party finally left the continuing celebration. They recovered their weapons at the Inner City gate while they waited for their horses to be brought. As he and his apprentices had no horses, Elicarno accepted Miya’s offer to ride double with her.
Elicarno told his apprentices to return to the workshop and prepare for the coming contest.
“What should we prepare, Master?” asked the eldest.
“Everything. Tools, timber, the portable forge, ingots of iron and bronze. I want to be on the Field of Corij one mark after dawn!”
The trip back to the Quarry District passed in silence, surrounded as they were by the celebrations ringing through the streets of Daltigoth.
Nazramin rose from the tangle of bedclothes. The chamber was stifling. His head swam from too much wine and his throat was dry as dust.
Pulling on a robe, he slipped out, stubbing his toe on a table leg before reaching the door. The resultant shower of curses did not wake the two women snoring softly on the bed behind him. He couldn’t remember their names. They were the sisters-daughters? — of an ambitious courtier and had sought him out at the feast, eager to curry favor.
He’d found them amusing enough at first but loathed the sight of them now. He’d have the servants throw them out at daybreak.
In the antechamber, he went to a small table that held a pitcher of cider, several cups, and a tray of breads and sweets. Servants replaced the food on the tray regularly, knowing better than to allow their master to discover anything stale or less than perfectly presented on the tray.
The tart cider stung his throat as he gulped it down. He was about to refill his cup when he noticed a strange shadow moving on the wall in front of him. Spinning, he flung the cup at the fireplace.
The brass cup clanged against the stone hearth. Mandes easily ducked the awkward throw.
“How dare you come here unbidden!” Nazramin snarled. “Get out!”
“Please, Your Highness! Be not hasty!” said the sorcerer, holding up his gloved hands in a placating gesture. “We have common cause against these upstarts, Tol and Elicarno! If you will lend me a few men, Highness, I could chastise them properly!”
“I’d sooner throw my men off a cliff. Master Tol has taken the engineer under his protection. He’ll be vigilant. Armed assassins won’t get within bowshot of either of them.”
Nazramin drank greedily from the heavy brass pitcher, cider trickling down his cheeks. Sated at last, he slanted a dangerous glare at Mandes.
“You are not welcome here, Mist-Maker. Get out.”
“We are allies,” Mandes insisted.
“You are my hireling, not my equal!”
Hefting the brass pitcher in one hand, Nazramin advanced. The flickering firelight was the room’s only illumination, but it plainly showed the violence in the prince’s eyes. Mandes sidled out of reach, beseeching his former patron to listen to him.
Without warning, Nazramin relaxed. He dropped the pitcher carelessly to the floor. Cider dregs splashed onto the intricately woven wool and silk carpet.
“The peasant was at your house last night, did you know?” he said. “He came there to kill you.”
Mandes nodded. He’d been told as much.
The prince snorted. “He would have slain you tonight, in front of the entire coronation party, had not Elicarno diverted him. You should be grateful to Master Soot-and-Gears. He saved your cowardly carcass.”
“No one spoke up for me at all,” Mandes muttered.
Another snort. “You’re hardly well loved, sorcerer.”
“After all I’ve done for those lords and ladies-the troubles I’ve handled for them-and they just sat there, gawking, while I was threatened! Even the emperor failed me.”
