The Road to Hell - eARC (10 page)

“I don’t like what we saw out of them when we first came aboard, though, Jasak,” the magister said more seriously after a moment.

“I don’t, either,” he admitted. “But, frankly, what concerns me more is that no one aboard this ship seems to’ve heard anything else.”

“Wouldn’t the Army keep as many details as possible secret?” she asked. “I mean, wouldn’t mul Gurthak be thinking about the security aspects of it?”

Jasak looked at her, one eyebrow raised, and she shrugged. Like Jasak—and with even more personal reason—she profoundly distrusted Commander of Two Thousand Nith mul Gurthak, the senior officer for the nine-universe chain from Esthiya through Mahritha. His position as governor made him responsible for dealing with the immediate repercussions of the disastrous first encounter between the Union of Arcana and Sharona, and Gadrial would have vastly preferred for that command to have belonged to some stiff-necked, conservative, autocratic, unimaginative,
honor-bound
Andaran—indeed, almost
any
Andaran—instead of mul Gurthak.

“First, there’s not a lot of reason to worry about ‘security’ as far as the Sharonians are concerned,” Jasak pointed out. “It’s not like they’re going to overhear any idle chatter this side of Hell’s Gate. Second, nobody’s ever managed to put together a security system that actually prevented at least some information leakage along the way. And third, if he didn’t make any effort to keep to the initial news from leaking, why the sudden silence about what’s happened
since
?”

“Since the Sharonian counterattack, you mean.” Gadrial’s voice was suddenly harsher, its timbre hammered flat by remembered, shattering grief.

“Exactly,” Jasak replied grimly. “The whole reason Otwal and Jugthar had to ‘reason’ with
Zukerayn
’s crew in the first place was how angry they were at the news about the way Thalmayr managed to get his arse reamed and”—he looked at her squarely—“get Magister Halathyn killed. If anyone was interested in keeping a lid on things, trying to throttle back any temptation towards hysteria, they should’ve kept
that
news under wraps. For that matter, the news that we’ve got negotiators sitting down face-to-face with the Sharonians would go a long way towards calming things down, I think. But nothing. Not a word. And the lack of any additional information’s only causing people to obsess over what they
have
heard about. Worse, it’s letting the inevitable initial consternation—and
anger
—set more and more deeply into their minds without anything to counterbalance it.”

“So you do think it’s deliberate?” she asked so quietly it was difficult to hear her over the wind and the steady sluicing sound of water around the ship’s hull.

“Yes.” Jasak’s voice was flat and he turned to look back along the ship’s length toward Shaylar and Jathmar’s deck chairs once more, thinking about the hard, hating looks the crew had directed towards the Sharonians. Thinking about the anger and the fear behind those looks. “I know I just said it’s hard to prevent rumors and partial information from leaking, but I’ll concede that it’s
possible
mul Gurthak’s sending security-locked hummer messages past us without any leakage. Possible he’s keeping the Commandery and the Union Council fully informed. Graholis, it’s even
possible
the negotiations’ve broken down and the Sharonians have started attacking again! But the fact that he isn’t doing a single thing to dispel
any
of the rumors fanning the uncertainty and panic…I just can’t convince myself that could be anything
but
deliberate, Gadrial.”

“You’re scaring me again, Jasak.”

“Sorry about that.” He smiled crookedly at her. “But what’s that old saying about misery seeking companions?” He inhaled deeply and looked out over the phosphorescent sea. “I don’t see any reason
I
should be the only one I’m scaring.”

* * *

At that very moment, almost twenty-four thousand miles away from
Zukerayn
’s decks, an exhausted hummer struck the perch of a palatial hummer cot on a private estate in Mythal. The winged messenger’s beak struck the button to sound the chime announcing its arrival, exactly as it had been programed to do, then settled back to await the result. Its brain was scarcely up to complex reasoning, and even if it had been, it had no way to know what information had been uploaded to the tiny
sarkolis
crystal embedded in its body. And because of those two things, it never occurred to it to wonder why a hummer bearing private dispatches from the Governor of Erthos had been sent to a private citizen who had no official connection whatsoever with the Union of Arcana’s military, government, or judiciary.

Chapter Six

December 12

Fear was far from the public mind in Whitterhoo, a farm town with a train stop in south New Farnal on Sharona. Winter wheat was ready to be harvested, and one of their very own heroes was running for election. Things were a bit different for the “hero” turned neophyte politician in question, of course, and Darcel Kinlafia was only too well aware of how far outside of what his fiancée called his “comfort zone” he was. If he’d had a moment to think about it he would have said he owed it to his old Chalgyn Consortium crew to do exactly what he was doing now, but politics, he was discovering, could be more terrifying than any mere gun battle.

Fortunately, he was too busy to be scared at the moment.

Darcel shook the sweaty hand of the first constituent on the overflowing train platform and was rewarded with a beaming grin. He matched her enthusiasm, delighted to see the crowd had waited through the morning’s thunderstorm to see him. His home region in southern New Farnal still felt blessedly solid under his feet even days after the long steamship crossing from Tajvana, but the weather hadn’t given him a gentle welcome. The days broke warm and heated his supporters past comfort, and the rains battered his campaign events with squalls.

“Dearest Gods, it’s hot again.” Voice Istin Leddle wiped sweat from his forehead as he joined Darcel on the train platform.

“Good growing weather!” Darcel answered and put a tanned arm around his campaign coordinator. “He’s from Bernith.” He explained to the crowd. “They grow ice there this time of year.”

“That’s why we ship them wheat!” a man at the back of the crowd called out.

“You’ll get used to it.” Darcel patted Istin on the shoulder.

The young man smiled gamely but didn’t exactly agree as he used his gangly height to clear a path towards the rented auditorium. A few interns joined his efforts including one of the newest volunteers, Kelahm something. Darcel couldn’t quite remember his name.

Kelahm was brown-haired and brown-eyed just like Darcel himself, and rather below average height for a Ternathian. A late addition to the campaign, he always seemed to be exactly where he needed to be at any given moment, and he was always ready to help with any task, yet somehow he always faded into the background. It wasn’t that his personality was
colorless
, exactly. He was simply one of those people who seemed…muted, somehow. Darcel worked hard to avoid the trap of taking volunteers for granted, which seemed to afflict many politicians, and he felt obscurely guilty about the way Kelahm disappeared into the backdrop, even for him. It didn’t seem to offend
Kelahm
, but Darcel made a mental memo—again—to get to know the other man better.

A warm, much more memorable presence brushed his mind and Darcel felt his fiancé before he saw her. Alazon Yanamar, former Privy Voice to Emperor Zindel and the exquisite slender, dark-haired woman of his dreams, hopped out of the train car and stepped to his side. He didn’t know how she’d justified spending this week on the campaign trail with him. Precious few Voices in Sharona had her Talent; fewer still had developed the political sense she’d earned in her years working at the emperor’s side; and
none
of them had been Emperor Zindel’s Privy Voice.

Darcel’s heart thumped again in astonishment that this amazing woman was here with him. They were soul mates in the magical way two Talents could sometimes find themselves perfectly matched with one another, yet that was only part of what made her so amazing to him. He still found the notion of himself as a politician profoundly absurd in many ways, but that choice wasn’t up to him any longer. One way or the other, however preposterous it seemed, he had a political career to launch. Alazon had decided to help him do it, and to his amazement, Emperor Zindel had agreed to let her. As a Voice himself, Darcel knew how incredibly valuable someone with her strength of Talent—and the brainpower to go with it—was to any leader, far less the man who was about to become Emperor of Sharona, yet Zindel hadn’t even blinked when she informed him she intended to resign to help Darcel’s campaign. Of course, there was the little question of whether or not he intended to allow her to
remain
resigned after the elections, and Darcel strongly suspected that both Alazon and Ulantha Jastyr—her protégée and long-term assistant who’d “replaced” her as Privy Voice—knew her resignation was actually only a leave of absence. In fact, what he
truly
suspected was that Zindel himself had engineered the entire thing, although he knew, as only a Voice bonded to another Voice
could
know—that Alazon hadn’t realized it when she initially offered her resignation. She’d expected the emperor to fight her decision, not
support
it, and she still seemed a bit bemused that he hadn’t.

Darcel hadn’t asked the emperor about any ulterior motives which might explain his willingness to deprive himself of the best Privy Voice in the multiverse, but it would have been entirely in keeping with things Zindel had already said to him. There were more reasons for his entry into politics than an old survey crew Voice’s needing a job when a lot of the resources formerly used on exploration were redirected towards war. Prince Janaki had told him he had important work to do for Sharona, but Darcel had found that difficult to believe. He still did, in many ways, but he’d been shaken to his marrow when he’d accidentally shared bits of one of Emperor Zindel’s Glimpses and seen himself at the side of a future Empress Andrin. He supposed he’d started down that road when he and Alazon pointed Andrin at the blessed ambiguity of the Unification Treaty’s stipulations, but the emperor’s Glimpse went far beyond that.

Alazon didn’t know everything about that, because he couldn’t share the details of that Glimpse with her—much as he loved her, they were both Voices, bound by the confidentiality oaths which went with their Talents—but she clearly understood that the threads of his and Andrin’s lives were somehow interwoven, and she was both immensely pragmatic and someone who’d seen imperial politics from their very heart for years. If he was to play a part on that sort of stage, he needed the stature and position from which to play it, which was why she’d insisted Darcel follow through and seek election. At the same time, she’d also insisted he couldn’t be directly tied to Emperor Zindel during the campaign, which was the real reason she’d resigned her position at the emperor’s right hand. Had she stayed Privy Voice, no one reporting on his candidacy would have let a mention of the campaign be complete without a reference to how close to the Winged Crown’s influence he would have to be, and that could definitely have been a two-edged sword in New Farnal.

New Farnal might have been populated and governed initially with significant assistance from the Ternathian Empire, but the public didn’t necessarily warm to monarchies now. Even a monarch as generally approved of as Emperor Zindel was still in the words of Darcel’s own mother, “An unelected genetic lottery winner. He could easily have been a despot, and Ternathia wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it without one hell of a war, and we’ve already got enough warfare going on as it is, don’t you agree?”

It was in the light of that sort of attitude that Alazon had decided to leave her position as Privy Voice to spend her days and nights with him on the campaign trail. The fact that Zindel undoubtedly expected her back didn’t change the fact that she hadn’t known that when she handed in her resignation, and Darcel was amazed still she’d been willing to risk her entire career for him.

he Sent.

The laugh lines around Alazon’s clear gray eyes crinkled in greeting and, possibly in response to his thought, she darted a gentle look towards the waiting voters. Darcel turned back towards the crowd with her hand in his.

The next constituent wore a pin supporting one of the other Voices running for the same seat as Darcel.

She offered her hand anyway, and he took it. He would have done that under any circumstances, but her grip was firm and her gaze met his forthrightly, and he found himself smiling at her. She clearly wasn’t going to be supporting him, but Voices were better than most at sizing up others’ motives, and whatever her motives for choosing a different candidate, she was open about it. And she was also refreshingly free of the sort of demonization of political opponents he’d already encountered entirely too often.

At least she wasn’t one of the conspiracy nut “Truthers” who were trying to deny anything had
really
happened out there on the frontier. Or who believed, if something
had
happened, that the Portal Authority—including one Darcel Kinlafia—had somehow provoked it. For that matter, she wasn’t even one of the depressingly large number of people who figured he was only one more political hack who’d vote for
anything
if given a large enough private campaign donation.

Darcel smiled at the open adversary, waved her in the direction of the complimentary buffet, and turned to the next member of this town’s League of Women Talents.

Alazon supplied with a light mental laugh.
<‘This town’ is Whitterhoo.>

Darcel sent a mental grin back. Alazon’s mind fitted his own so comfortably he had to keep a tight focus to avoid acting a like a love struck puppy in front of the crowd of would be voters. There was no hiding that he adored her and that the feeling was mutual, but they were both expert Talents, well able to keep their mental communication private even from the other Voices in the crowd if they stayed focused. And there were always other Voices in the crowd.

His life as a political candidate now included a steady stream of professional news Voicecasters, sometimes following him individually and sometimes simply appearing among the prospective voters. The best of them had a Talent control that exceeded his own and kept complete mental silence until they pounced. The small town reporters like the two from rival news organizations covering this particular stop, on the other hand, leaked like toddlers trying to keep a secret.

Slight shifts in the nearest Voicecaster’s level of excitement warned Darcel he expected something interesting to happen.

The next woman in the newly formed line was a grey-haired lady with a self-important if not exactly regal bearing. She held his hand and professed her eagerness to see him take a seat in the new Imperial House of Talents.

“Lady Durthia,” Darcel repeated the woman’s name back to her and thanked her for the support using one of the standard polite phrases he could now murmur in his sleep. People seemed to appreciate him cycling through six or seven different ways of saying the same thing rather than repeating the same precise lines again and again. Politics. He kept his sigh strictly internal.

The woman leaked irritation at him. In his surprise at having an emotion projected at him, he didn’t catch what she actually said.

“I appreciate your support, Lady Durthia.” Darcel answered a beat too late, echoing a suggested response from Alazon.

Only the Talented were eligible to vote for members of the new empire’s House of Talents, since—like its equivalent in the Ternathian Parliament—it was to be the only part of government authorized to introduce legislation binding exclusively on the Talented population. Since that was the case, Darcel fully expected most of the crowd to be Talented. What he
hadn’t
expected was an untrained if very weak projective. She squeezed his hand once, and immediately Darcel had no doubt that, for all her smiles and gentle words, she quite viscerally despised him. And that she also hadn’t realized she’d just pushed that angry mental outburst at him.

Not everyone with a Talent trained and used it. This woman should have at least applied a basic effort to learn control but clearly hadn’t.

He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her. Politeness for the grey in the woman’s hair was all that stopped Darcel, a child of New Farnalian university professors, from chastising her on the spot for wasting that shriveled remnant of a very rare Talent.

Alazon chided him silently.

She’d felt the projection also, but only because she and Darcel shared the lifemate bond unique to Voices.

“Lady Durthia.” Alazon leaned across and said out loud, “Thank you for the kind words. Darcel appreciates your support.”

He waved a cordial goodbye at the projective and turned to Alazon during a brief pause in the receiving line.

He sent with a pulse of pure bafflement.

Lady Durthia fluttered an affected wave at the two of them as she flitted off into the crowd turned campaign stop party. Her beaming face looked as if meeting Darcel had been the best thing in the known multiverses.

Alazon answered the wave and subtly nudged his attention back towards the next woman.

Darcel welcomed the next person in line, relieved when she proved to be a soft-spoken Animal Speaker serving as Whitterhoo’s veterinarian for all the pets in town. She was also planning to vote for him. A light handshake and a few words exchanged seemed to leave that woman just as happy as Durthia had appeared to be. The line moved on.

Darcel waited for Alazon to continue the mental explanation. Something in the feel of the pause told him she was organizing complex thoughts before sharing them.

With so many years as Emperor Zindel’s Privy Voice and effective political chief of staff, Alazon held an intuitive grasp of political interactions. Darcel still had to think things through and ask questions to make sure he understood.

he Asked.

Startled by her response, Darcel failed to avoid a bear hug from an overly friendly man accompanying the next league member.