The Floodgate (24 page)

“During our journey to Halarahh, you reminded me that I had missed the purification ritual. How did you know this?”

The brush stilled, prompting the foal to break off her song and stamp her tiny feet imperiously. Iago took up the rhythm again. “I spoke with the guard who admitted you the following day.”

Matteo conjured a mental image of the man’s face-tan as saddle leather, deeply seamed by lines and framed by thin wisps of graying hair. Though the man had been with the Jordaini College as long as Matteo could remember, he did not recall seeing him during his last visit. “That would be Jinkor. He is well?”

“He is dead,” the jordain said bitterly. “The man who killed him stands before you.”

Matteo slowly sat down on a bale of meadow grass. “How did this happen?”

“He was fond of haerlu wine. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“During my years at the college, I would occasionally bring him a bottle from the storehouse.” Iago shrugged “He would never take more than a single goblet at a time. So I was surprised when he uncorked the bottle and drank as if he intended to see the bottom before he came up for air. I assumed he had troubles to drown and I sat with him in case he needed a friendly ear.”

“That was good of you.”

“Good intentions,” Iago said with dismissive scorn. “Jinkor spoke, all right. When his mind held more wine than good sense, he forgot the pill that Kiva made him swallow.”

Matteo jolted. “Kiva?”

“Oh, yes. It seems she has been watching the jordaini order for years. She needed sources of information and found one in Jinkor, who, as it turns out, has more than one expensive habit. Kiva ensured his silence.”

Matteo had heard that wizards sometimes gave their servants potions that physically bound them to secrecy, but this method was far too extreme for the matter at hand. “Why would Kiva care about jordaini ritual?”

Iago glanced at Matteo. “You were getting in Kiva’s way. She wanted to do away with you.”

“She had ample opportunities! Why this?”

“Jinkor asked the same question. Kiva told him that killing you would set off an alarm. She could not destroy you outright, so she arranged for you to destroy yourself.”

Matteo considered his previous conversation with Iago. “So this is why you asked me if there was more than friendship between Tzigone and me.”

“Kiva knew how much you risked for that girl. She assumed that a human male could have only one interest in a female. Even some of her soldiers behaved in a manner that bolstered this opinion. You know how elf women are regarded.”

Matteo nodded. Elves were rare in Halruaa, where being non-human was virtually synonymous with being sub-human. A few people of mixed race became wizards, and a few elfblooded wizards had risen to the Council of Elders. The most common profession for half-elf women, however, was that of courtesan. If the soldiers serving Kiva approached her in this manner, how much bolder were the wizards with whom she dealt? He did not like Kiva’s assumptions about him, but he understood the path her thoughts must have taken. The jordaini were forbidden to marry, and he’d never heard of one siring a child, but he suspected that course, had he followed it, would indeed have destroyed him.

“Why couldn’t Kiva kill me outright? What ‘alarm’ would this set off?”

Iago set to work with a hoof pick. “What do you know of the Cabal?”

Matteo let out a bark of startled laughter. “Strange context Iago. Are you suggesting that a secret conspiracy has been formed to ensure my safety?”

The small jordain’s face closed. Matteo instantly regretted his sarcasm. “Your pardon, Iago. If there is something I should know, please tell me.”

The jordain shrugged. “It’s not uncommon for a jordaini student to pursue a personal obsession. With Andris, it was the Kilmaruu Paradox. Mine was the legend of the Cabal. Some of the stories seemed to sing in tune with what Jinkor implied, that’s all. It is nothing.” His tone left no doubt that the matter was closed.

“Kiva’s plan lacks logic,” Matteo said, returning to the previous matter. “Had I followed the path she anticipated, it would have been obvious that I had not undergone the ritual. The college records would confirm this. I would not be held blameless, but since I did not know the nature of this rite until today, neither would my actions be deliberate treason.”

“The college records would not confirm it,” Iago countered. “Nor would the records support your innocence. Jinkor told me that a peasant man, one close enough to you in age and build to pass as your double, rode into the college on your horse. This man wrote your mark on the records, and submitted to the ritual. The attending priest never knew the difference. Nor, I suspect, do the jordaini masters. Obviously, I was the first person in whom Jinkor confided.”

Matteo rose slowly to his feet, his hands clenched into fists. It was bad enough that a jordain should submit to such a thing! The peasant who’d taken his place had no part in Halruaa’s laws of magic and power! “Do you know what became of this man?”

“No, but if you value his life, you should not seek him out,” Iago pointed out. “On the other hand, if you value yours, perhaps you should. There would be an inquiry if he died while answering questions, and perhaps the spell could be traced back to the spellcaster.”

“Are you suggesting that some might suspect me of arranging this travesty?”

“You were released from prison with ample time to ride back to the college, yet you came a day late. Another man rides in on your horse just in time. At whom, logically, will the fingers point?”

“Kiva, of course.”

“Therein lies the problem,” Iago said grimly. “Kiva is nowhere to be found. If a magehound examined you, he might find you innocent, and he might not.”

“That’s absurd!”

“Is it? Now that you know the nature of the purification ritual, would you return to the Jordaini College and willingly submit to it?”

“Would you?” Matteo countered.

Iago smiled thinly. “There you have it. A magehound’s magic would discover your rejection of jordaini rule. Guilt or innocence is often a matter of tone. The details are like pieces in a strategy game-they can be used by either side, to very different result.”

Matteo could not dispute this. “Does anyone else in the college know of this?”

“I don’t intend to tell anyone, if that’s your concern. Just …be careful.”

Matteo placed a hand on the jordain’s shoulder. “Thank you for telling me this. You are a good friend.”

“Just get me out of this stable and onto a horse’s back, and we’ll call the debt paid,” Iago said with a faint smile.

The stable lights flickered on, responding to the approach of twilight. “Lord Procopio will be in shortly,” Matteo said. “We’ll speak again as soon as I’ve news.”

He hurried to the wizard’s tower. Procopio received him at once with a grave face and without the formulaic courtesies demanded by Halruaan protocol. He ushered Matteo into his study and shut the door firmly behind him.

“You’re not going to like this,” he said bluntly. “I’ve no idea what to make of it.”

Matteo swallowed hard. Never had he heard Procopio make so bald an admission-the wizard prided himself in reading all things clearly. “Go on.”

The wizard’s hawk-black eyes bore into Matteo’s. “The ice building where you and the girl were attacked is owned by Ferris Grail, headmaster of the Jordaini College.”

Matteo hurried to the queen’s palace, his mind a whirl of confusion and anger. He had no reason to doubt Procopio. He fervently wished he did.

His belief in the jordaini order had long been eroding. Now it was crumbling under him. Zephyr had been turned by Kiva. Matteo had tried not to dwell overmuch on Andris’s disappearance, but as time passed and Andris did not surface, Matteo had to face the very real possibility that his friend had turned traitor. The possibility-he would not accept it as truth unless he saw Andris at Kiva’s side. Was it also possible that the headmaster of the Jordaini College might have employed thugs to silence a jordain’s search for truth?

He strode toward the heavy doors that separated Beatrix’s court from the rest of the palace, determined to receive the queen’s permission to leave the city. If she did not grant it, he would do as Tzigone had advised and leave anyway.

Several men and two women, all of them carrying crafters’ tools, waited by the outer door while the sentry loosed the magical wards. Judging from the clatter and bustle within Beatrix’s rooms, the sentry had been kept busy with the various comings and goings. There were three doors, all of them carefully locked and warded.

Again Matteo recalled a jordaini proverb:

Precaution is the grandchild of disaster. Such careful measures would not be taken to isolate the queen’s workshop from the rest of the palace unless the need was real and proven. However, King Zalathorm had dismissed the rumors about Matteo’s predecessor, and Matteo could not believe the king had lied.

He fell in with the laborers and nodded to the harried sentry as he passed. The man, recognizing Matteo, raised his fingertips to his forehead in a salute, then rolled his eyes to express his opinion of the goings-on. Matteo nodded in heartfelt agreement.

Inside the queen’s workshop, chaos reigned. A smith’s forge had been set up in a massive hearth. Hammers clattered as they beat metal into thin, smooth sheets. Metalworkers bent over a long table, shaping heated metal with tiny tools and painstaking care. Stout, hairy-footed halflings from nearby Luiren perched on stools and fitted tiny gears, their clever small hands darting with practiced ease. Off to one side of the room, a trio of artificers argued over a mechanical behir, a twenty-foot crocodilian with twice the number of legs nature usually allotted. As the debate grew more heated, one of the men kicked at the metal beast in frustration, harder than he might have had he not been so distracted by the argument. The ensuing clang rang out loud and long. He howled and limped around in a small circle as his comrades hooted with mirth.

Matteo looked around in growing bewilderment. At least two hundred workers toiled in the vast chamber, and he glimpsed more in the rooms beyond. The results of their labor-clockwork creatures of every size and description-ringed the room like sentinels. They were propped against walls, heaped in piles, stacked on shelves, suspended from the ceiling beams. These mechanical marvels ranged from a life-sized elephant to metallic hawks to monstrous beasts, including fanciful constructs for which there were no living counterparts. Metal renditions of creatures Matteo had never seen and could never begin to imagine stood ready for some unfathomable command.

Matteo went in search of the queen. He found Beatrix in a windowless room lit by a low-hanging chandelier ablaze with candles. The queen stood alone, studying a hideous metal creature with thin, batlike wings and a pointed snout filled with steel fangs. It looked vaguely reptilian but for the bristling mane that ran the length of its spine. Each hair was a metal filament, fine as silken thread.

“It is wondrous, my queen,” he said softly, not wishing to startle the woman.

She did not start or turn toward him. “It is a darken-beast,” she said in her flat, toneless voice. “The wizards of Thay fashion them from bits of dead flesh.”

Matteo wasn’t sure how to respond to this odd pronouncement “You use steel. This is a better way, Your Majesty.”

Beatrix tipped her head negligently. Her elaborate white and silver wig sparkled in the light of the candles. “Flesh or steel. It matters not. They will both be plentiful on the battlefield.”

She spoke with a certainty that chilled him. “Battlefield?”

When the queen did not answer, he took her by the forearms and turned her to face him. He captured her vacant stare and gazed intensely into her kohl-rimmed eyes.

“I hear the future in your voice. Diviners reading auguries in the flight of birds speak with less certainty. What battlefield?”

A flicker of life crept into Beatrix’s brown orbs. “I do not know,” she whispered. “War is coming. War goes wherever it wills.”

Matteo did not dismiss her claim. The queen showed little interest in the world around her, but perhaps she heard things, sensed things others did not. At the moment, she seemed almost lucid.

“I must leave the city and learn more of this coming conflict.”

She considered him for a long moment, as if weighing whether or not he might be able to do what he offered. Before she could speak, a loud shriek rose above the clamor in the main room. A fierce clatter followed, then a chorus of screams and a panicked rush for the door.

“By your leave,” Matteo said hastily. Though protocol demanded it, he did not await the queen’s dismissal. He whirled, drew his weapons, and ran into the main room.

The laborers were pushing toward the exits, trampling anyone who stumbled. One of the halflings lay battered and unmoving. Most of the clockwork creatures stood silent. A few paced unsteadily about, abandoned to their toddling first efforts by their panicked creators.

Matteo heard a metallic creak above him. He glanced up, then dived to one side.

A nightmare creature leaped to the floor from a pile of crates, landing with catlike grace despite the resounding clash of its impact. Its body resembled a suit of plate armor such as a northern warrior might wear. The creature held no weapons and needed none. Each of its four fingers ended in a curving steel talon. Long spikes covered its metal body, and its head suggested the unlikely offspring of an ogre and a shark. A piggish snout bristling with small spikes rose at the end of long, fang-filled jaws. The fangs were even more peculiar-sharp triangles that fit neatly and tightly, like the teeth of a giant piranha.

The clockwork knight snatched a dazed and moaning woman from the floor. It jerked her in close and crushed her to its spiked chest in a deadly embrace. The woman’s shriek of agony ended abruptly, and the clockwork monster peeled her corpse away.

There had been no time for Matteo to intervene. He thrust aside a numbing wave of horror and guilt and forced himself to take stock of the battlefield. One thing was immediately apparent: His daggers would be of little use against this foe.