Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists) (10 page)

Bayan looked closely at it. “That heat’s not made by fire,” he said, both for Calder’s benefit and for his own. “What’s making the heat?”

Calder stepped behind Bayan and looked curiously over his shoulder.

Taban snorted. “Newniks. Wouldna know magic if it bit you on the arse. One of the Avatar Duelists comes down from level three—that’s one above me, on the hex level—and heats the stone block with his Flame avatar. It’s good Idling practice for him, and it keeps you poor newniks from freezing to death before you can learn to be useful.”

Bayan looked around the room at the other trainees. There were less than a score of them, though there were bunks for twice that.

“I thought the classes always started when there were thirty-six trainees,” Bayan said.

“They do. But the Headmaster never knows how many will be boys and how many will be girls. Also, the newnik classes drag on and on until the instructors are sure everyone is smart enough to pass. Or too stupid to pass no matter how long they wait. So it’s happened now and again that there will be two classes in here at the same time. Now quit pestering me, newniks, and go find somewhere to make your little nests and sleep. You’ll need it, and I’ve more important things to be doing.”

Taban left. Calder stared at the hot stone block beneath the open grate. “I canna decide whether it scares me or not,” he confessed in a whisper.

“Then it doesn’t scare you.” Bayan thought back to the vagary attack, and how his fear had completely consumed him. “When you’re scared, it’s all you can think about.”

Calder nodded. “Makes sense to me,” he said, though his voice was faint. “Besides, I need to live in here for the next while, don’t I?” He looked away from the hot block. “Where do you want to bunk?”

“With you.”

Calder turned to him, looking pleasantly surprised.

“I don’t know another soul in the empire proper. I’d rather stay around you—you can translate it all for me. I’ll pay you in food, of course.”

Calder gave him a quick, lopsided grin. “Now you’re speaking my language!”

“I… thought I always had been. Isn’t this Waarden?”

Calder jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow and darted past him toward an unused set of bunks. “I call top bunk!” he cried. Bayan set his new clothes and his duffel from home on the sturdy blue quilt on the lower bunk. He found a spot for the pitcher’s pot on the top shelf of a small bedside stand.

“Fine with me.” He started to put away his things. “Waarden beds are too high anyway.”

That earned him a few dark looks from the other trainees. Calder leaned over the edge of the upper bunk and murmured, “Hsst, a word of advice? Don’t ever insult anything wisp. They think they’re the kitten’s whiskers at everything.”

Bayan hadn’t considered that. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I did warn you I know nothing about imperial life.”

“Aye, you did at that, but I dinna think you meant it!” Calder shook his upside-down head in apparent disappointment.

Bayan turned back to his things, sorting out his own clothes onto the shelves next to his uniforms. He placed his shoes next to the edge of his bed, then bounced experimentally on the mattress. He still felt too high off the floor, but the bunk was better than most of the inn beds he’d slept in on the way there.

Well, Father, I made it here. Now I guess it’s just a matter of seeing which rank I achieve, or whether I blow off a limb and have to stir potions until I die.

Philo walked into his spacious office, resplendent in a pink sash over his creamy lace-laden robes, pink pearl ropes, and a black wig with a pink pearl net. He breathed deeply of the perfumed air, examined his manicured, beringed fingers against the dark green wood of his desk, and smiled. It was good to be home.

Three young eunuchs stood before his desk in a patch of sunlight from the high window, hands behind their backs. Kipri was on the near end. Beside him stood blond Cassander, sporting sleek braids that framed his round face, and on the far end, Gael managed to loom despite his sleight frame. He smiled at the sight of his last three assistants in Balanganam and was selfishly pleased to see that Cassander and Gael had not received permanent assignments before he and Kipri could return. They were still his assistants, until otherwise assigned.

He strode to his desk, opened a drawer, and fished out a large, black iron key.

“You lads always complain that I never take you anywhere nice. Besides Balanganam. Well, today, that is going to change. Before I begin creating any new maps, I must examine what already exists. And that means…”

“We need to visit the Cartography Archive,” Cassander said.

“Exactly so. Lord Minister Eshkin is in this morning, so we must get him to donate a few minutes and a second key to pass into the Archives. I will need all of your help, including his, in fact, if I am to get a proper map of Balanganam created for His Majesty.” After picking up a map case and a list of Balanganese landmarks, he swanned out the door, his crickets in tow. They walked along the pale marble hallway of the first floor in the Ministry of Ways building, stepping over its sigil—a crossroads—every few paces, on their way to the stairwell.

Lord Eshkin’s offices occupied half of the building’s uppermost floor. After negotiating past two secretaries, Philo finally stood before his employer.

Wateyo tes’Eshkin was a particularly tall man, considering the usual height of his Shawnash and Waarden ancestors. His skin was light for a nobleman, giving him the look of a healthy Waarden who had recently seen a lot of sun and happened to have straight black hair. He stood and nodded to Philo as he entered the room.

“Good morning, Philo. Still glad to be back home?”

“Yes, my lord, though a very large part of my heart—and, I confess, my stomach—still belongs to Balanganam, and I pray sints it always does.”

Eshkin smiled. “What do you need?”

Philo held up the heavy iron key. Eshkin’s expression went blank and slightly pale, then he frowned and cleared his throat. “You, ah, need a second key, do you?” Before Philo could answer, he pulled open a drawer in his desk, retrieved a similar key, and stepped toward his office door. “This should be entertaining.”

“What should be entertaining?” came a new voice, rich with amusement and curiosity.

Philo straightened in surprise and recognition and bent forward in a courtly bow, praying his assistants did the same without gawping.

His Imperial Majesty Jaap voorde Helderaard stepped through Lord Eshkin’s doorway. He was still a young ruler, with carefully styled curls and a blue and white robe opened to reveal a simple white tunic.

“My liege.” Eshkin sounded flustered. “I was just accompanying Surveyor Philo on a trip down to the Cartography Archive. Would you care to accompany us?”

“I believe I would.” The emperor smiled. “I think the last time I was down there was when Caspar and I stole a pair of keys and snuck in, looking for treasure maps. I even received just such a map years later as an anonymous gift, and for months I thought my brother was still…”

A short, awkward pause filled the room. Philo knew the tale of the imperial heir’s demise as well as any. Prince Caspar had sailed toward Karkhedon on a secret mission, but the Gyre had had other plans for him, sinking the ship and killing all souls on board. He had been sixteen years old, on the cusp of assuming more responsibility in his father’s vast realm. Instead, that burden fell to young Jaap, the boy who should never have been emperor.

“Ah, we were such naughty princes.” Emperor Jaap smiled again as if to cover the unease of the moment. “Lead the way, Wateyo, if you will.”

The group descended several curving flights of stairs into the building’s cool, dim sub-basement. Philo noticed his assistants glancing at each other and checking their distance from the emperor. He smiled at their efforts not to walk too close to the ruler, yet not fall so far behind as to appear lazy.

Wateyo turned a corner and halted at a heavy iron door, darkened with age and rust. He slipped his key into one of two sturdy locks on the door’s face. Philo inserted his own key as well, and together they twisted the locks open.

As Wateyo pushed open the creaking door, Philo accepted a frosted-glass lamp from Kipri, who’d had the forethought to light it while the door was being unlocked.

Inside the door, a vast archive spread across dozens of old wooden shelves and stone niches carved into the walls. Philo set the lamp on a nearby table, and his assistants lit several more.

“What are we looking for today?” Emperor Jaap rubbed his hands in anticipation.

“A sea chart from the Teresseren Empire, my liege, showing the coastline of Balanganam. I need it for reference and comparison, or perhaps contrast.”

“Ah, the Teresseren Empire,” Emperor Jaap began, as the group separated. Each individual took a lamp to illuminate the labels on the ends of the shelves. “In power from 1685 to 1911 I.C. One of my favorite periods in history. It’s the only time the Waarden were a sea power, but no one challenged our supremacy. The Tuathi did not sail, and the Raqtaaq were on the far side of the Shawnash peninsula, busy fighting with the Corona.” He shrugged. “Still, there’s a certain romance to an empire by the sea.”

“Here we are.” Wateyo indicated a few shelves marked with the Teresseren name and crest, a curling wave. Philo eased between them and lifted his lamp to read the cramped and faded ink from centuries past. Finally, he came to a thick roll of parchment sheets wrapped in sturdy leather stamped
Westzeekarten: Pinamuyoc en Balanganam
. He eased the roll from its slot and took it to the table.

“Gloves, if you please, everyone.” Philo fetched a box and bowl from a lower shelf on the table. He pulled off his rings and placed them in the bowl, then took a pair of smooth cloth gloves from the box. Kipri took up the bowl, added a small brass ring, and held it out for the others to place their rings in as well.

Philo pulled on his gloves. “When you were last here, Your Majesty, did you remember to wear clean gloves so as not to damage your treasure maps?”

“I confess,” Emperor Jaap replied, dropping a few rings into the bowl, “I may have overlooked that requirement.”

Focusing on unrolling the sheets as smoothly and gently as possible, Philo nearly jumped out of his skin at the metallic clatter of rings across the stone floor. “Kipri, if you please, I’d prefer not to shred these priceless historic maps to bits while in the throes of a fatal heart seizure.”

“M-my apologies, Philo, Your Majesty—” Kipri knelt to retrieve the rings, vanishing from Philo’s sight below the table. Lord Eshkin knelt to assist him, holding one of the lamps.
Jumpy little boy,
Philo thought
. The emperor must have breathed on him
.

When Kipri put the ring bowl aside, again filled with rings, and everyone wore clean gloves, Philo instructed his three assistants to begin turning the maps over, like enormous pages, until he found the ones he needed. He had expected Lord Eshkin to take the fourth corner, but Emperor Jaap stepped forward and offered to help instead. That seemed to make Kipri yet more nervous, though Cassander and Gael seemed to have adjusted to the emperor’s easy demeanor.

Slowly, they flipped the maps from one side of the table to the other. Occasionally, Emperor Jaap commented on one feature or another as it related to imperial history. Halfway through the stack, the maps switched from representing Pinamuyoc to depicting Balanganam. Philo leaned in, examining the seaside town names and consulting his list.

The next map was a full-coastline map, exactly what Philo had been hoping to find. At the bottom, he recognized the broad flood delta of the Mambajao River near Pangusay.

“This is what I need, though we should check the other maps as well.” Philo opened his scroll case and separated a large sheet of blank rice paper from its brothers. His assistants helped him smooth it atop the Teresseren map.

Fetching a charcoal pencil from its case, Philo leaned over the top edge of the map and instructed, “If you please, press the paper firmly, and try not to tear it. I just need a tracing, and then we shall be done.”

Time passed, and Philo labored over faint shoreline details in the bright lamplight. Soon, feet shifted under the table, and quiet murmurs passed among his young helpers. What felt to him to be a rather quick and dirty tracing job must have seemed like an endless task to them.
Perhaps all the tracing they’ll shortly be performing for me will disabuse them of that notion.

Eventually, the tracing was complete. Philo put away his pencil, rolled the rice paper with exquisite care, and tucked it in his map case.

There were no other full maps of the Balanganese coast, so Philo and the others rolled up the portfolio case. After placing it back in its home on the shelf, Philo pulled off his gloves.

“Thank you all most kindly for your assistance. I hope our little expedition didn’t delay your schedule, Your Majesty.”

Emperor Jaap gave an embarrassed smile. “Not at all. I just needed the company of adults for a while. I spent the early morning hours with my sons, and let me tell you, incontinent, drooling pink babes are not as cute as the girls pretend. Neither are toddlers who can only articulate the first half of ten words, and everything else is
ungh!
And I get a kick in the shins for not knowing which
ungh
stands for what. So let me thank you all for your full sentences and emotional restraint. I should excuse myself now, though; the Minister of Means is expecting my approval on his financial allocation reports. Philo, I look forward to your finished maps.”