“What’s the point in rasping away at yourself with might-have-beens?” Karal retorted. “All you do is make yourself hurt more—”
:I know that. You know that. It is Altra who needs to hear that.:
They were practically on top of the wailing now, and Karal made out a white form curled into a ball of misery, wailing disconsolately into the night. Karal’s heart and his resolve to stay controlled broke at the same time.
“Altra
—he cried, flinging himself down in the grass beside the Firecat. He took the Cat into his arms exactly as Talia had taken him into her comforting embrace, and his tears started again. ”Altra, Altra, it wasn’t your fault.”
:I had to choose,:
the Cat cried in his mind.
:I had to choose, and I was sent for you, so I had to choose you.:
“And you almost saved both of us anyway,” Karal told him, holding his furred body tightly, as the Firecat shivered with more than physical cold. “You aren’t the Sunlord, Altra, you can’t know everything or be everywhere at once.
You did your best.
I
know
that.”
:But I couldn’t
—
save
—
him!:
The heartbreaking wail began again. Altra had no way to shed tears, so Karal did the crying for them both.
Florian stood vigil over them, a solid, comforting presence in the dark, until they were finally too tired to weep anymore.
In the end, Karal picked up the exhausted Firecat—who must have weighed nearly half what he himself did—and carried him to the
ekele,
with Florian walking beside them. Firesong was still awake, but he said nothing when he met them all at the entrance to his home, neither about the lateness of the hour nor Karal’s odd burden. He only gestured for Karal to follow and led the way to that peculiar room draped to resemble the interior of a tent.
And this was where Karal talked to Altra until the sun rose, telling him all the things he had tried to tell himself, and in so doing, seeing the truth in those things. That was where they finally slept, spent and exhausted—but neither one alone.
When Karal awoke, he knew by the sun that it was well into the afternoon. He’d slept far later than he had thought he would, and Altra was still curled against him. The Firecat woke as soon as he moved, though, and raised his head to look at him with shadowed blue eyes.
“Altra?” he said, quietly.
:I will be all right,:
the Firecat replied.
:The pain
—
it is bearable, now. We have things we must do; you especially, and he would not thank us for neglecting them.:
Karal rubbed at his eyes; they were sore and gummy, the lashes all stuck together. His nose and cheeks were tender from scrubbing at them. Odd how such little discomforts distracted a person from grief, but not enough to be more than one more burden.
He had awakened with a heaviness of soul that cast a gray shadow over everything. He knew that he ought to be hungry, but he had no appetite whatsoever.
He scratched Altra’s ears; the Firecat didn’t seem to mind being caressed like an ordinary cat. All of his things were here, piled into baskets at the sides of the fabric-draped room. Was this supposed to look like the inside of a Shin’a’in tent? Probably. So this would be An‘desha’s room, though he doubted An’desha used it much.
Now he wondered what it was about An’desha that Talia had wanted to talk about. If she hadn’t come to their suite, would things have fallen out any differently?
No matter. He should follow his own advice, and not torture himself with might-have-beens. The danger from the disruption-waves hadn’t gone, just because Ulrich was—
His eyes stung.
There was still work to do. He should get changed and do it.
“Altra, you ought to stay here and rest.” The fur under his hand felt harsh and brittle, and Altra looked in poor shape, as if the events of yesterday had completely depleted him. “I’ll be back after I find out what everyone else is doing.”
“Everyone else—the mages and the Prince, that is—is—are?—coming here,” Firesong said from the doorway. Karal’s head snapped up and he started; he hadn’t heard anything at all to indicate that Firesong was in the hallway. “With an unknown agent somewhere in the Palace, the others are reluctant to trust that he or she might not be somehow listening. The
ekele
is safe enough; I supervised every bit of the building myself, and before you arrived I checked for more such little gifts as were distributed yesterday.”
The Hawkbrother entered the room and sank down on his haunches beside the pallet that Karal and Altra shared. He studied Karal for a very long time without saying a word; Karal didn’t say anything either. He was too tired, and too grief-laden to play at verbal fencing with the Healing Adept. If Firesong wanted to know something, then he could damned well ask it.
“I think I understand, now,” Firesong said, out of the blue.
“What?” Still less was Karal ready to trade non sequiturs.
“What An’desha sees in you.” Firesong continued to sit on his heels, watching Karal measuringly.
Karal traded him back look for look. Firesong was baiting him, and he was not going to rise to it. Maybe the Hawkbrother meant well, trying to distract him from his sorrow, but he’d chosen a bad tactic to use.
“Talia wanted to talk with you and—” Firesong hesitated, then went gamely on. “She had already spoken with me. An‘desha is in the midst of a crisis, she thinks; he is afraid of setting his feelings free, and he is afraid of losing control of himself if he keeps examining those ‘Ma‘ar’ memories. Evidently they are the most powerful and the most seductive of all. Falconsbane was mad, purely and simply, but Ma’ar was as close to sane as anyone of his ilk is ever likely to be. He had reasons and rationalizations for everything he did, and I suppose that is what makes his memories so seductive.” Firesong shrugged. “An’desha is afraid of much, and I have lost patience with his timidity. Frankly, I do not think he is going to be of much use to us unless he can face what he has inside him without being afraid of it, and I know he will not be of much use—ah—to us, if he keeps shutting off how he feels.”
“That’s what you told Talia?” Karal asked.
“And now you,” Firesong confirmed. “Now, more than ever, we cannot afford to have anyone handicapped, and at the moment An’desha is like a hooded falcon.”
“Or a racehorse with hobbles and blinders.” Karal nodded. “Let me think about this.”
“Fair enough.” Firesong stood; today he had chosen to dress all in white, as if to represent the winter that drew nearer with every passing day. “I—I am not always this insensitive. If I had a choice, I would not have mentioned it until you were feeling better. It is a burden you could do without.”
“But we don’t have the time for sensitivity,” Karal acknowledged. “I understand.”
“You can bathe in the pools below,” the mercurial mage said then, changing the subject completely. “There is food in the kitchen. The others will be here shortly.”
And with that, he turned in a swirl of long sleeves and crystal-bead fringe, vanishing as silently as he had arrived.
Food. No, he still didn’t want to even think about food. Nor about all the times that Ulrich had teased him about how much he ate—
No, wait. This is all wrong. I
should
think about things like that.
He should remember as much as he could; there was good advice buried in nearly everything that Ulrich had told him, and now he was going to have to glean as much of it out of his memories as he could.
:He used to offer me cat-mint, you know, as a kind of joke, as if it would affect me as it does a real cat.:
Altra looked up at him from the pallet.
“And what did you do?” Karal asked obediently.
:Asked him to make it into tea, and serve it in a civilized fashion.:
Altra sighed.
:It was funny at the time.:
“It will be funny again,” Karal promised warmly. “I’ll bring
you
something to eat, if you like.”
:So Florian spilled my secret, did he?:
Altra actually snorted, and looked annoyed for a heartbeat.
:Ah, well, I couldn’t stay mystical and inscrutable forever, I suppose. Please bring me something that isn’t breadish or vegetablish.:
“I’ll be glad to, as soon as I have a quick bath.” At least Altra still had an appetite. That was something, anyway, a sign that the Firecat was on the way to recovering.
He found that he felt better after a bath and a change of clothing. It did help that there was nothing at all here to remind him of Ulrich. He didn’t think he would be able to maintain his own fragile stability if there had been.
He still had no appetite, though; rummaging around in the larder didn’t do anything to remove the lump of cold grief from his stomach. He confined himself to taking care of Altra; he found some fish that was so fresh it must have been caught that very morning, and decided that someone in the two-person household had seen Altra for what he really was. And while the Firecat didn’t precisely fall on the offering as if he was half-starved, he certainly polished every scrap off during the time it took Karal to change into clean clothing.
I’m the only Karsite representative, now,
he thought, as he examined his clothing.
Until Solaris sends someone else
—
it’s me or no one. I’d better look the part.
He chose one of his formal robes, and carefully arranged his sun-disk pendant over the front placket. He wished there was a mirror.
:You look very impressive,:
Altra observed from the bed.
You’ve grown since you came here. You’re a bit young for an envoy, but as old as some ruling nobles I’ve seen, even as old as some reigning monarchs. I’ve even heard of Sons of the Sun no older than you:
Karal tugged his tunic straight. “I’ll have to do,” he replied. “There isn’t anyone else for the moment.”
“You’ll do very well.” Once again, Firesong had appeared out of nowhere. He eyed Karal carefully and nodded with satisfaction. “No longer the retiring little secretary. Very good. Let’s go down, the others are waiting.”
:You’ll be fine,:
Altra murmured.
Well, he would, if appearance was all that counted. He only hoped he could be so confident of his abilities.
The subject, inevitably, was the attempt to uncover a presumed agent of the Empire.
“I’ve checked and rechecked the servants under Truth Spell,” Elspeth told them all as Firesong and Karal took their places in the circle. Beside her, Darkwind nursed a bandaged shoulder, and the male gryphon had a stitched-up cut in his right wing. “They’re all exactly what they seem to be, so it can’t be one of the regular servants.”
“It could be one of us, you know,” Karal put in reluctantly.
Prince Daren grimaced. “That had not escaped me. It could also be any of the other ambassadors and envoys, including those of long standing. Whoever this agent is, it is likeliest that he has been among us for a very long time, and he could be one of a number of foreigners we trust. It is a bit difficult to persuade
them
to be examined under Truth Spell.”
“Difficult?” Firesong put on his best sardonic look. “Only if you are not willing to risk an incident.”
“Selenay is not,” Daren replied flatly. “We have enough of an incident on our hands already, although mage-messages have come from Solaris this morning saying that she is aware of what happened and that it changes nothing.”
Only that Ulrich is gone ... and I promised to take care of him.
Karal tucked his head down so that his grief would not show until he got his face back under control again.
Altra must have gone to her with the news, before
he
fell apart. No wonder he looked so depleted.
“That leaves—what? Something like a hundred possible suspects?” Kerowyn hazarded. “And a good chance that whoever this is will do something again.”
Karal frowned. Perhaps associating with the engineers had put an edge on his reasoning ability, but he was certain he could narrow the field down more than that. “Wait a moment. It can’t be that many. It has to be someone who is
high
enough in rank that no one would question seeing him anywhere in the Palace, but low enough in rank—or
apparently
ineffectual enough—that no one would ever notice him. It also has to be someone who would have a reason to be in and out of people’s rooms at least once this year. If this is an agent of long standing, then surely the Empire is using him to gather information—so it has to be someone who has a reason to receive and send packages at intervals of more than once a year. He
couldn’t
have sent his information by magic-messengers before this year, remember? You had a guard against magic until then.” Once again, his own intellect had seduced him into concentrating on something besides grief. “That virtually eliminates all of the Palace servants.”
Kerowyn gnawed on her lower lip. “That does eliminate most of my suspects,” she admitted. “It could be one of the personal servants of one of our own nobles, though.”
“Yes, and it could be one of your nobles.” Darkwind was quick to point that out. “It would not be the first time that Selenay had had her own intrigue against her.”
“The weapon, though—it had a residue of magic that made me think it was targeted to a specific individual,” An’desha said shyly. “That would imply that your agent is a mage himself, or more likely, found a way to gain access to something personal from each of his targets to imprint the weapons with their intended victims.”
“Then planted them into the walls.” Kerowyn looked baffled. “Now you open it up to everyone in the Palace except the servants.”
Karal pondered his next words long and hard before speaking them.
How expendable am I? Realistically, very. And I have Altra, who will try to protect me. I think that I must do this.