'There was never need.'
Slowly Ilumene nodded. 'You can't control them; by your very design the players are beyond the playwright's power. What contingency plans can we prepare? We can't insert prophecies into the Menin history!'
'What am I?'
'A child,' Ilumene began hesitantly, aware the obvious answers would direct him, however foolish they sounded. 'A boy, a saviour, a mortal… a son.'
'A son and a saviour.'
'The Devoted are primed to worship a saviour,' he breathed, realisation dawning, 'while Styrax's only weakness is his son – but you can be both, and preserve the balance that way?'
He paused for a dozen heartbeats while he thought it through. Eventually he shook his head. 'No, this goes against every instinct I have. No general abandons a successful tactic for the untried, let alone one his forces are ill-suited for. Your disciples are all carefully positioned, your plans primed to bear fruit at specific times – how can we change now?
'Before offering battle a general must place himself beyond the possibility of defeat; it is a crucial precept of war. To throw away years of preparation flies in the face of everything I ever learned about warfare. And you have always told me to treat this as a campaign.'
Ruhen was quiet for a while, long enough for Ilumene to wonder whether he had overstepped the mark. Rojak had told him many stories of those servants of Azaer who had incurred the shadow's wrath. King Emin's secret scribes wandered the Land, collecting tales of hauntings and horror, and Ilumene knew that not all of them were people who had opposed Azaer – some had merely failed him. Their endings were the worst.
'Even the most perfect fruit may decay,' the child said at last. There was something in his voice that Ilumene had not heard before, and it made the hairs on his neck rise. With every passing day Ruhen grew faster and faster, growing into the powers he had possessed as a shadow, but it was in a very human manner. After countless centuries of incorporeal weakness, the shadow had grown impatient with its few months of helpless childhood. 'Consider the forces we play our games with. Corruption is inevitable. We must not fear it.'
Ilumene smiled. 'So speaks the festering remains of Rojak's soul.'
Ruhen nodded, shadows dancing in his eyes.
*
'Of all my curses, womanly and immortal, I reserve especial hatred for you.'
Nai jerked awake again. He could see no one in the dark valley, but that was not necessarily a good sign.
'Ah, Mistress Zhia?' he ventured in a croak, his throat dry.
'Don't give me 'Mistress Zhia', you stub-footed worm,' came her velvety growl in his left ear.
Nai flinched, half-falling off the ledge before his fingers found purchase on the stone. He turned all the way around, still seeing nothing more than black stone and the extinguished lantern beside him.
This time the voice sounded in his right ear. 'Your idiocy is boundless; redeem yourself soon or I will pull out your intestines and hang you with them.'
Nai was ready for it this time and managed not to shy away. In the alcoholic haze of his mind, the necromancer reflected that it would be frighteningly easy for her to carry out the threat.
'I'm here as you told me to be.'
'Did I tell you to announce it to the whole fucking valley?' Zhia snapped. 'Forgive me for omitting the order to stay sober and not be seen doing something supposedly impossible!'
Nai glanced around guiltily. He couldn't see the empty flagon; he must have knocked it off the ledge as he dozed.
At least 1 didn't attract any guardians, he thought with a small sense of relief. She really would have killed me then. A gust of wind whistled over his body and he pulled his leather coat tighter around himself. He didn't respond to Zhia's words, knowing anything he said would only further enrage her.
'I didn't show you this spot just so you could announce it to everyone present; for your sake I hope you didn't risk it for no good reason.'
'No Mistress,' Nai said quickly, glad for the chance to change the subject. The snarl of an infuriated vampire had done wonders to clear his head. 'There is news: Lord Styrax's men took the Fist this afternoon.'
'I know that,' she scoffed. 'He does like to show off. The foolish boy has been playing with daemons again; he got five of them to incarnate and smoked the garrison out. I felt it happen all the way back to Byora. Tell me what he's doing in the library.'
'The library?' Nai looked confused. 'Negotiating the surrender of the quarters, you know that.'
'So far from his troops, in a place where he can't use his greatest weapons? Don't be stupid. However wrecked it may be, the Litse Army in Ismess is far larger than the guard he brought – Styrax remains vulnerable all the time he is in here even if he does have his wyvern somewhere nearby. Is he planning on staying more than a day?'
'I believe so,' Nai said hesitantly. 'I overheard him talking to General Gaur earlier; I got the impression he had some research to do here. He was warning the general to keep an eye on Kohrad.'
'Anything more?'
'He gave me a project: to walk the perimeter of the valley and mark the places where I could feel energies in the air.'
There was silence for a few moments. Nai half-turned to look up at the cliffs behind him and was rewarded with an icy blast of wind whipping past his eyes.
'If you find any, be sure to tell me also.'
Nai nodded, though he was unsure what to make of the order. There was a trace of the vampire in the air: her delicate scent, so faint it could almost be a memory evoked by her voice. Zhia's understanding of magic far surpassed what Nai could learn in his lifetime – it might be that when he returned in the morning, this ledge would just like the rest of the valley. Perhaps magic could be driven a little way into the perimeter from outside; or perhaps energy simply surrounded her like a diving beetle's bubble of air.
'Is there anything else, Mistress?'
'You're the one making the report,' she said, drily.
'Ah yes, of course. Knight-Cardinal Certinse is giving the orders in Akell; he arrived a few weeks ago.'
'Specifically here, or passing through to Embere?'
'I do not know.'
Zhia paused. 'I hear he's got four or five legions with him; that's more than he'd need to take over Akell; Sourl doesn't have the guts to rebel against his superior. I can't believe he'd pull so many troops out of Narkang lands just for that, and that man is ambitious. More likely he has some grander plan that requires actual tangible control over the Order, rather than just official control. The best way to do that is with Raland's goldmines, and Telith Vener is in control there these days. He'll have accepted Certinse's authority over the Order when Certinse was in distant parts and Duke Nemarse ruled Raland, but not now.' She paused to think, but Nai could tell by her tone that Zhia was satisfied with her logic.
'Anything more?'
'There is some sort of magical link between the duchess's bodyguard, Sergeant Kayel, and our friend Major Amber.'
'Curious, I saw nothing of that through Lady Kinna's eyes.'
'It is very faint – it is like each carries an echo of the other in their shadow. You would only notice it in the presence of both.'
'Kayel and Amber,' Zhia mused. 'That's an interesting twist.'
'You know Kayel?'
