The Road to Hell - eARC (12 page)

Not unless they had some reason to classify Istin as a potential threat, at any rate.

“No. I just did an internship at a cetacean embassy.” Istin waved off the suggestion. “They’ll have brought an interpreter with them. All the cetaceans hear just fine. It’s the listening I’m worried about. Just be glad there isn’t an orca,” he added darkly.

The Voice took his fist to the freight cars and began banging on each in succession until a weary young Cetacean Speaker climbed out of a car stacked high with dried cod. The young woman looked distinctly unwell and stepped gratefully off the train onto the platform.

“I am never, ever volunteering for one of these trips again!” She declared. “Just like being on a boat, my ass!” In spite of the green tinge to her own skin, the young woman turned back to her freight car and began hauling out stacks of dried fish to present to the dolphins and porpoises enjoying the afternoon sun in their cars.

“Trainsick?” Istin inquired.

“Yes!” She groaned. “And we were supposed to be in port and back in the ocean yesterday.”

“Oh?”

Kelahm gave the Voice a sidelong glance. Somehow he suspected Istin already knew what the cetacean train’s listed schedule had been.

“Yeah.” The Speaker sighed heavily. “I’m Forminara Pelgra, by the way.” She paused a bare moment for a formal introduction. “These are Nnnnmmmll, Llllooouooo, and Mmmmunnnll. But they’ll try talking to you even if you don’t get the pitch right. And don’t worry about memorizing the names, if you see them again, they’ll probably have picked other human names by then.”

“Those aren’t human names,” Istin pointed out.

Forminara shook her head. “I know, I know. But they like the sound of those letters, and they are human letters. There was this orca, and—”

“Never mind,” Istin interrupted. “I understand; I’ve met orca.”

One of the dolphins squealed something that sounded like laughter.

“Oh. And they’d like you to know my nickname is Sings Badly. It’s a joke.”

The dolphin’s musical response raised a blush on Forminara’s face.

“Okay, not totally a joke, but,” she added defensively, “I’m getting better.

“Say, have you seen any porters around here? We’re supposed to have a load of fresh fish at this stop, and there’s also supposed to be a politician they wanted to meet. Have you ever heard of a Darcel Kinlafia?”

* * *

Her husband knocked lightly on the wood frame doorway of the tidy office Shalassar Kolmayr-Brintal kept for herself at the Cetacean Institute. Once he wouldn’t have needed to draw her attention so overtly. But Shalassar was a Cetacean Ambassador and founder of the Cetacean Institute in Shurkhal—work that continued even as she grieved for the loss of their daughter—and Thaminar Kolmayr tried to shield her from the overflow of his own mourning while she was working. Even so she felt the pain that mirrored her own and sensed him searching for a light topic for their luncheon conversation.

“Should we support Darcel Kinlafia, do you think?”

Shalassar looked up from the piled correspondence on her desk. She’d forgotten for a moment that the lean, tough man who served as her rock was there in the room instead of pulsing support through their marriage bond from their seaside home.

Grief could black out her world like that. Still.

Thaminar knew her well. He lifted the net bag with their bowls of marinated grilled beef and expertly spiced vegetables and cracked the fitted lid to waft the welcome smells of comfort food. Her stomach growled in response, and Shalassar reluctantly moved back from the desk, her mind shifting away from the pain of their lost Shaylar and back to the present.

Lunch called and the lapping tide outside her window marked the never ending pulse of time passing by, whether she wished it to or not. She followed her husband to the break room for a late lunch, thinking about Darcel Kinlafia as the present political candidate instead of as Shaylar’s past colleague.

“Darcel has a chance to win, you think?” she asked him, settling into the comfortable chair at the break room table.

“Yes. The news reports say he’s well ahead. Not our district, but some of the letters, from—” He waved at the wall behind her indicating the green star flag hanging over the covered dock on the other side of her office, not visible at all from where they sat in the break room. “—are asking if they should vote for him.”

“Oh, them.”

The green star flag had been adopted by families who’d lost a child to Arcana, but this one was special. It was the very first green star flag, made to memorialize Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr. The other survey crew families had needed something too, so the flag had become the banner of a small group of families united by grief. But then, last month, the size of the group had exploded when all Sharona learned the war had been reignited by Arcanans attacking under cover of a truce
they’d
sought.

The war was horrific, in every sense of the word, and to have it resume in the very midst of peace negotiations only made it worse. Even as a diplomat—or perhaps
because
she was a diplomat—Shalassar found she had trouble thinking of the Arcanans as humans, and then the families of fallen soldiers had written her about their lost soldiers and asked to use the flag. She could hardly say no. But still…

“I’d rather hoped they’d stop writing us,” she said.

Thaminar paused mid bite to give her a look she didn’t need the marriage bond to read.

“Okay. No, not really. I just hoped it would get easier, is all.” She sighed. “They’re really asking us who to vote for?”

“Not at all,” Thaminar said. “They’re asking
you
. And reading between the lines, they’ve already decided. They’re asking you to endorse him and want to make political contributions as Green Star Mothers. Most of the letters are only to you and not to me at all.”

“Well, I’m not the most famous grieving mother anymore.” She pointed out. None of the other extended family members of the lost portal exploration team were as famous in their own right as Ambassador Shalassar Kolmayr-Brintal. And none of Sharona’s slaughtered children had been well known as Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr.

Until now.

<
Janaki.>
Grief over the new losses slipped through Thaminar’s best efforts and she pulsed encouragement of her own back at him.

she pointed out.

Thaminar snorted. “No one’s going to be writing Emperor Zindel and Empress Varena expecting a reply or wanting to know if they’ve gotten their flag dimensions right. As if anyone would be going around policing grief!”

Shalassar’s wry return smile matched her husband’s. People had tried. None of their true friends were so crass, but the publicity-seeking social commentators who made their livings harassing public figures had reveled in it.

“Speaking of idiots,” Thaminar continued, “a rep from VBS stopped by again asking for a meeting off the record.”

“Not Krethva?” Shalassar gave him a look. Krethva wasn’t the only one to try to market Shalassar’s grief or to try to provoke her for shock value with snippy accusations of grieving in the wrong way. But she’d had the sharpest tongue and had inevitably become the one Shalassar publicly humiliated in a live Voicecast. She dreaded the moment when the woman found a way to return the public set down—not because she expected the reporter to be able to find words more painful than the hurt Shalassar already felt, but because she didn’t expect to be able to stay civil and coherent if Krethva managed to actually get a display of her grief and rage. Shalassar was half afraid she’d emerge from the interview with blood spattered everywhere and no memory of how it all got there other than a deep sense that Krethva has gotten what she deserved. And that Arcana deserved worse.

“No, not Krethva.” Thaminar broke into her red-tinted thoughts. “It was some other VBS Chava-ite. Any interest?”

Shalassar pressed away her emotions. “Sure, why not? Maybe I’ll finally be able to get the VBS to take a reasoned stance on respecting cetacean funeral rites.” She didn’t continue. Thaminar was well aware of her long-standing complaints about the string of Uromathian coastal villages who made toys out of whale bone. She suppressed a shudder. “So creepy.”

Thaminar speared another vegetable and ate it. The whales didn’t seem to care what happened to their remains after life left their bodies, but any market for cetacean body parts concerned the Cetacean Embassy. The Uromathians on Haimath Island also made memorials of their own ancestor’s remains, and Thaminar didn’t bring that up either. But his silence spoke volumes, and tight marriage bond or not, she already knew by heart the points he’d make.

He and Shalassar had feared they might outlive their daughter when she and Jathmar had become portal explorers, but they’d assumed that even in that horrific eventuality they’d have her remains brought home by the Portal Authority and properly buried. The flags were a thing Shalassar had invented because they had no normal way to mark their loss. And other families had had the same need.

Families of the Fallen Timbers portal exploration crew had started it by making their own flags, with Shalassar sending the first batch of them to her friends among the other families. The beginnings of a sob formed deep in her chest and she forced herself back to the last non-painful thing she could think of.

“I suppose we should tell people to support Darcel.”

Thaminar nodded. “He seemed like a decent enough young man. I hate to see anyone like that go into politics, but maybe he can do some good.”

They ate the rest of lunch without much more to say.

Back alone in her office, Shalassar sewed one more flag herself. She sealed the package and addressed it to Tajvana Palace. Empress Varena could display it in memory of Crown Prince Janaki Calirath or not, but Shalassar would give her the political prop if she needed it.

* * *

Campaign travel schedules were always hectic. Making them run smoothly was a formidable task, fit to challenge the best staff, even at the best of times. The New Farnalian winter harvest season, with the railways in high demand to transport food to the more frozen parts of Sharona, was
not
“the best of times” by any stretch of the imagination, and unplanned interruptions didn’t help at all. Unfortunately, they happened anyway, and at the moment, the backup engine with its bright “Elect Kinlafia Now” paint job was stalled somewhere behind the aquarium train stuck at the Whitterhoo platform.

The news crews who’d been running commentary stories about Darcel since the campaign began had a field day. One crew reported he was providing a gentlemanly right of way to the cetaceans. A competitor news organization claimed he was being pushed around by a few silly dolphins. They all showed the forlorn little engine alone, without any trailing cars, stuck behind a massive glass-sided aquarium train.

Few reports spared even a few moments for the field abutting the train track, shining with ripe winter wheat. The dolphins watched the harvest with interest while their long-suffering young interpreter attempted to explain why humans went to such lengths to eat plant roe when the oceans were so abundantly supplied with fully matured fish.

Chapter Seven

December 13

“Excuse me, Your Highness, but what are you doing at my desk?”

Her Imperial Highness, Crown Princess Andrin Calirath, started guiltily and dropped the page she’d been trying to read in the dim pre-morning light. Her elbow barked the edge of the desk and nearly toppled one of the stacks of paper filling the half dozen in-boxes of her father’s first councilor, Shamir Taje.

The man himself stood in the doorway to his offices in the Tajvana palace, and she felt a flash of guilt go through her. He wasn’t merely her father’s first councilor; he’d also been her tutor in many things related to the power and might of the imperial government back when she’d merely been studying to support her brother’s eventual reign.

“Did you need something?” Taje cradled his first cup of dark morning tea and blinked groggily at Andrin. “Why isn’t the lamp lit?”

Because I was trying to sneak a look at these papers without drawing any attention
, Andrin thought but did not say. Lazima chan Zindico, her personal guardsman, stood at the side of the room and waited quite politely for the crown princess to explain. She looked up at her old teacher’s tired face, feeling her face heat, and drew a deep breath.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Too much to worry about—I needed to see for myself.”

Taje looked at her, sleepy, and suddenly very old to her eyes. He’d see a young princess with a mess of Calirath black hair shot with gold strands, too tall for proper elegance, and with deep bags under her eyes, she thought, and brushed her hair back with one hand in an automatic attempt to smooth it.

Miss Balthar would have seen to making Andrin’s appearance sleek and regal if not actually beautiful and elegant…if Andrin had actually woken her staff for proper dressing before slipping off to check on the Privy Council’s work. She knew she really should have, but she’d been too impatient, too jumpy within her own skin, to worry about “should haves,” and she’d seen no reason anyone else should be dragged out of bed at such an unholy hour. Even Finena, her imperial peregrine falcon, was still back in the rooms resting with her night hood on—the poor bird would squawk enough to deafen a full wing of the Great Palace if she woke with Andrin missing from the room—although at least she hadn’t quite been foolish enough to go anywhere without an armed guard.

That much of the duty of a Calirath she’d not failed at this morning.

“Never mind, Shamir. I shouldn’t have come out here.” She rubbed her own eyes feeling the weight of the lost hours of sleep. “I’d hoped to see the list of marriage candidates, but it was probably foolish for me to come involve myself. I’m sure your council has everything well in hand.”

The concern didn’t leave the first councilor’s face. “Did you have some reason to think it wasn’t? Did you have a Glimpse?”

“No.” Andrin hastened to reassure him. “Just simple marriage jitters. It’s nothing, really. Please, forget I came.” At the deepening furrow in Shamir Taje’s brow, she added, “I just needed to be sure there’d be at least one good choice on the list.”

She lifted her eyes to the first councilor, hoping he would understand all the things she couldn’t articulate, sometimes even to herself. Janaki had trained to be her father’s heir all his life. Andrin hadn’t, and she felt horribly ill-prepared. At this particular moment she felt more like a little girl than a woman about to turn eighteen and make a dynastic marriage to secure the Empire of Sharona.

Taje nodded slowly and took a long sip from his cup, regarding the crown princess with more understanding—and sympathy—than she might have believed he could. But the list she was looking for, the list of all the eligible Uromathian princes from which she must select her future consort, wasn’t in the unprotected open on his desk.

The office’s security was good enough he could probably have left even so important a document and all its related notes in plain view, but he had far too much concern for Andrin’s future—and Sharona’s—to do anything so careless. Even in an interior office in the Calirath Palace, with windows that opened only to the secure courtyard and hallways patrolled by the Imperial Guard, some horrible mistake might happen.

So he used the heavy oak cabinets that lined his office study and wore the key to their locks on a chain around his neck.

“One moment, Your Highness. I’ll show you the draft. It isn’t final, you understand. But I can show you what we have so far.”

He made a quick circuit of the room, dropping the window curtains and securing the door while Lazima chan Zindico moved deftly out of his way with the sure experience of a man who knew exactly which security moves to expect. Taje produced his key and opened the largest of the cabinets. For this project, the Privy Council had amassed great piles of notes…and all of them had either been carefully burned and stirred in the study’s fireplace or banded and filed here in the wall cabinet. He proffered a few sheaves, and the crown princess snatched them eagerly from his hands.

“This isn’t the complete list yet. There are likely a few more names we might add.”

Andrin wasn’t listening. Her eyes had stopped a third of the way down the second page: Howan Fai Goutin, Crown Prince of Eniath.

“Oh. Oh, good! I suppose there was no reason to worry at all.”

She handed the list back to the first councilor, who checked the sheet and smiled at her choice.

“We weren’t going to forget the Eniath prince, Your Highness,” he said gently.

“Well, no, I suppose not.” Andrin acknowledged, ducking her head just slightly. The motion conveyed sheepishness, but, Taje noted, the crown princess’s Calirath spine had stayed regally straight. Lady Merissa Vankhal would have approved. “I just wanted to be sure. There might have been concern about his family being too easily pressured by the Busar line, or maybe there were others that would look better on paper, or he could have already been married but not mentioned it when we spoke, I mean, I think he might have mentioned that, but—”

“He is certainly not already married.” Taje broke in to soothe the crown princess’s concerns. “The Privy Council will be reviewing all the details of these candidates to provide dossiers to you during this week before you meet once more with the Conclave to announce your choice.”

“To me?” The surprise in Andrin’s tone reminded him just how new his crown princess was to the heirship. She had the backbone to fight Uromathia on the Conclave floor, but demanding her due from the Winged Crown’s staff didn’t yet come naturally.

“Yes, Your Highness. We’ll be making our report to you. Nothing we may find will lessen the importance of your choice, but we hope to provide as much clarity on the candidates as we may.” An idea occurred to him. The crown princess’s schedule was absurdly busy, but perhaps a few things could be moved. “You’d be welcome to come to our deliberations if you’d like to hear the details.”

“Yes.” Andrin nodded, slowly. “I’d very much like to hear the details.”

Taje responded with a decisive nod of his own. “We’ve been working through lunch and some of the staff have been all but sleeping in my office. It’s a tight fit when we all get in here, but I think it would do the council well to get to know you better anyway. We are your council as well as your father’s.”

Andrin agreed wholeheartedly, and felt a touch of chagrin as she realized this was exactly the sort of thing Janaki would have done. She should have thought of it for herself, and a part of her scolded herself for failing to do so. But another part of her understood exactly why she hadn’t. Intellectually, she knew her brother was dead and gone, leaving her suddenly in the role of heir. She’d managed to accept that much, terrible though the shock had been, but all the other bits and pieces, like sitting in on Privy Council deliberations, still felt foreign and a touch like usurping her older brother’s prerogatives.

Andrin quashed the thought. That was a perspective Chava Busar would want her to have—a way of thinking that he could use to keep her ignorant and uninvolved in the workings of the empire—while one of his sons sat in Janaki’s place instead of Janaki’s blood. As Janaki’s sister, she owed it to him to become the kind of empress Sharona needed.

“I’d be very pleased to attend the Privy Council’s deliberations. And also—” Andrin caught the First Councilor’s eyes. “I apologize for sneaking into your office. I should simply have asked.”

Taje bowed. “To be sure. But perhaps the Privy Council should have thought to invite you. We still, myself included unfortunately, think of you too much as our Emperor’s young daughter and not enough as our future Empress.” He bowed again more deeply. “I, too, apologize.”

The First Councilor had a few minutes more to consider his crown princess’ face as she waited for her guardsman to clear the hallway. The extra security in place in Tajvana felt extreme compared to Ternathia, and yet it was necessary.

The Great Palace had been occupied by the Order of Bergahl for over two hundred years. Outwardly, the turrets, walls, and towers appeared unchanged to the point of disrepair. Inside, the changes were random—likely chosen for modern opulence with little thought for either architectural cohesion or imperial security. Hundreds of years of excess hadn’t been and couldn’t be put to rights in an instant…and there was always the possibility that the present Seneschal or one of his predecessors might have made changes which had nothing at all to do with modernization and quite a lot to do with less savory considerations. At the moment, however, Taje was more concerned with his princess’ emotions than any questions about her physical security.

“Your Majesty,” he asked, “are you reassured, truly?”

Andrin looked at him and allowed her expression—for a rare moment—to show her deep concern. “I don’t know if I can be reassured, Shamir.”

“It’s a good solid choice. One that can and will hold the new empire together.”

“Yes,” his crown princess agreed. “And I should probably be grateful there’s just one Howan Fai Goutin. Imagine if there were three good Uromathian princes and I had to roll a die to pick between them. This is how it is though, isn’t it? You dance with a decent seeming prince once, politics force the situation, and then you need to marry and hope he’s up to the task.”

“He should be, but we’ll study his background. And there may be others we can find if there’s a significant problem with him.” The first councilor spoke firmly, his tone confident and reassuring, but Andrin’s lifted eyebrow showed he hadn’t quite pulled it off. Well, he’d already known she was no one’s fool, and the truth was there weren’t any others
to
find, really. A few more Uromathian princes existed with less firm ties to Emperor Chava than the man’s own sons, but if something were to happen to Howan Fai Goutin, the council would be looking to Howan’s brothers, not to some other family.

“I don’t need everything coated in honey, Shamir. In fact I think I’ll do better if I can hear from the outset if we find any problems,” the crown princess said, straightening her shoulders. He bowed in response and secured the precious list before chan Zindico opened the door.

A quartet of night shift guardsmen in thick protective suits wearing braces of throwing knives in addition to their usual gear stepped to the side of the hallway as Andrin came through the door, and the first councilor frowned in surprise.

“Is this a new security measure?”

Chan Zindico shook his head. “No, My Lord, just a practice session. We’ve been doing these exercises down in the training salles for weeks, but the guard commander decided we should move them to some of the actual hallways we defend.”

At the first councilor’s startled look, the armsman added, “But only at night. We wouldn’t want to skewer one of the staff. And our practice blades aren’t poisoned, so it wouldn’t be much of a wound anyway. Thrown blades of the type the Order of Bergahl use in their knife dances aren’t much of a threat without the poison.

“And the commander’s added a few more effective weapons to the training in case local troublemakers decide to be creative.” Chan Zindico gestured down to the cross hall away from the direction they needed to go. Something black and feathery shot across the perpendicular hallway.;, it was followed almost immediately by a yelp.

“They aren’t our usual tools,” he said, “but we need to be ready to defend against them.”

“I see.” Shamir Taje rubbed his head, looking distinctly like he could use a second cup of morning tea. “I just wish your definitions of night aligned more closely with mine, Master Armsman chan Zindico.” He cast a look at the steadily brightening morning light now spilling in through the window.

“Dawn does some interesting things to shadows in the halls and makes the deflections more challenging, My Lord,” the guardsman said, but he also inclined his head in acknowledgement of the first councilor’s point.

“So of course you lot had to try it then.” Taje shook his head. “You might try just dodging.”

“Sometimes, yes, My Lord.”

Chan Zindico, the first councilor noticed, didn’t point out that none of the guards would be ducking if they thought doing so would let a missile through to any member of the imperial family they’d sworn to protect.

Andrin took in that reminder also. She wasn’t the only one in danger if Emperor Chava learned about their subterfuge, and after they announced her marriage, the threat to her father’s guards and her own would only increase.

On that sobering thought, Andrin and chan Zindico returned to her suite to face the coming day.

* * *

A pair of men had been following Howan Fai Goutin for a day and a half. The Crown Prince of Eniath was certain of that. Well, almost. He was only almost certain because the men kept changing. And there were whole hours at a time when he was very nearly certain that no one but his own personal guardsman, Munn Lii, was consistently with him.

Last night Howan Fai had decided it was all in his imagination, born of spending too much time in close proximity to the Uromathian Emperor. Chava VII had no fresh reasons—that Howan Fai knew of—to attack him or any representative of Eniath, but history abounded with enough old reasons to make anyone uneasy, whether Chava had something actively in mind or not.