Satomi would have been happier if her words had been more of a lie. The only part of it that was false for certain was the part about this being in the note. Satomi had every confidence—every fear—that the rest of it was true, if not written down anywhere.
The other two Primes had seated themselves again, as well. Satomi went on. “Topping the list, of course, was Lady Chaha of Kalistyi. Her religious beliefs mean she will be open to Shimi’s arguments.”
“But what can they
do
?” Koika broke in, putting her interlaced hands on the table and leaning forward. “If we can’t suspend Arinei, then they can’t suspend any of us. We’re at a deadlock, in terms of authority.”
“Here in Starfall, yes.” Satomi wished for the first time that her chief ally among the Primes had been someone more politically savvy than the Earth Prime. Koika was intelligent, but she spent much of her time monitoring and modifying the weather patterns of the land, and other matters that had little to do with people. When humans came into Koika’s sphere, it was through questions of physical survival. “But we must worry about the world outside our domain.”
Rana knew where she was going. “The Lords all have advisers,” she reminded Koika.
“I know that,” the Earth Prime snapped, nettled by the older Prime’s patronizing tone.
“So think about what Arinei can do through that,” Rana said. “If Lady Chaha’s Fire adviser happens to be on our side, then Arinei and Shimi will likely convince the Lady to abandon her for someone else. Someone allied to them. If the advisers agree and the Lords don’t, then those advisers can work on convincing them.”
“Soon enough,” Satomi said, taking up the thread when Rana faltered, “we find ourselves locked out of the governance of those domains. Our influence wanes. What percentage of our income does the Fire Ray contribute?” No need to answer that one out loud; Koika, as the Prime of the Ray tied with Air for the smallest contribution, was well aware of how much money the Fire Ray possessed. “Without that income, we’re crippled. Soon the ordinary witches will become dissatisfied with us. Under those conditions, questions of morality and ideology give way to practicality. We’ll find ourselves facing a true revolution for the control of Starfall.”
Koika, as always, thought in brutally practical terms. “Why not just assassinate us?”
Rana’s knobbly hands began visibly trembling at the question. Satomi, though, had thought of it already. “There’s no guarantee they won’t try that, too.”
It would be hard. The Primes were always guarded, and by now they had made doubly sure those guards were trustworthy. No witch was likely to catch one of them unaware enough to take them down with a spell, and an outsider wouldn’t stand a chance. Other witches, though, would be far more vulnerable. And assassinating their allies could do almost as much damage as killing the Primes themselves.
Koika slumped back in her chair, shaking her head. “So what do we
do
? I don’t know politics; that was always Arinei’s job. How do we fight this kind of war?”
Satomi looked from the Earth Prime to the Water Prime. Rana did not meet her gaze. There would be no relying on her. Harsh as it was to say, Rana was too old; you had only to look at her lined face to see that she was not prepared to face these kinds of challenges. She was a good Prime, but not for times like these.
Which left only Satomi to answer Koika’s question.
She lifted her chin and made her voice as level, pragmatic, and confident as she could. “Well. If this is a war—and we must consider it as such, now—then we must think like generals. We must disrupt their communications, counteract their offensives—and send spies among them, if we can.”
* * *
Most of the women gathered in the room came from the Void Head. They, more than anyone else, were inclined to ask questions of theory, about how spells worked and why. Inventing new ones was outside their purview—that was a religious matter, driven by faith, not research—but they could and did modify existing spells, adapting them to new purposes.
And also counteracting them. Mirei was the only woman in the world capable of canceling spells outright, with the power of the Void, but centuries of women had worked on the matter of how to oppose spells, and thereby negate their effect.
“We have several tasks at hand,” Satomi said to the assembled group. Mostly Void Heads, but not all; there was always the occasional witch who engaged in this study as a hobby. And Satomi saw distinct value in getting women of different Rays to cooperate. If she could not cancel the fragmentation plaguing them, she could counteract it. “Hyoka, I leave it to you to decide how best to divide your time and effort.”
The Key of the Void Head nodded. She had collected this group, along with Kimeko, the Heart Key; Hyoka knew who was qualified, while Kimeko knew who was loyal. Or at least likely to be. Of Hyoka’s loyalty, Satomi had no doubt; the woman was a theorist down to her bones, and she saw Mirei’s existence as a fascinating and so far inscrutable puzzle. If she could have recombined all the other pairs on the spot, just for more examples to study, she probably would have.
Satomi passed a sheaf of paper to Hyoka. “First, the ritual of suspension. As it currently exists, it requires the participation of four Primes. The ritual of reinstation, however, requires only three. This suggests to me that it may be possible to work the suspension with three. I want to know if it can be done, and if so, how.”
A few of the listening witches shifted at her words, but no one looked surprised. They’d known, when Hyoka recruited them, that they were here to work against Shimi, Arinei, and all the other witches in revolt. And they’d just come from the public session where Koika and Rana had demoted their errant Keys.
“Second,” Satomi went on, “the ritual that creates a Prime. It instills the participant with certain authorities and abilities that are exclusive—only one woman can have them for a given Ray at a time. I want to know what the effect would be of performing this ritual when the previous recipient of those qualities has been suspended of them, but not removed from her position. What metaphysical repercussions is that likely to create?”
More rustling, although much of it was coming from women who looked avidly curious instead of offended. Hyoka had chosen the group well; Satomi was offering them theoretical challenges the likes of which they did not often get to handle. They would do it, just to see if it could be done.
Arinei should have feared these women, not me
, Satomi thought wryly.
They’re the ones who want to experiment
.
“Third, our message papers.” She held one up; it was the top sheet off a stack she had brought for them to tinker with. “I want to know everything you can figure out to do to one of these. Intercepting messages, sending false messages, preventing them from working, finding out where the people using them are. Destroying them at a distance, even. Anything that would make them less useful to others.” This was a more dangerous inquiry; the first two were things only the Primes could do, with limited applications. This, however, could seriously disrupt
everyone’s
communications, if it fell into the hands of the other side. Witches all over the land depended on these sheets to send information. They were easier to manage when traveling than mirror-sendings, they didn’t require the writer to know the location of the recipient the way sending objects did, and even nonwitches could use them, if they knew the proper musical trigger. It would severely hamper the dissidents, if the papers became unreliable. But what could be done to others, could be done to Satomi’s people as well. Satomi made a mental note to tell Hyoka only to place the most reliable women on that project.
She didn’t let that worry show. “These projects take precedence over whatever other work you may have been doing,” she said. “I know some of you have been working on the study of Mirei’s new magic, but until she returns to Starfall”—
Which had better be soon
, she thought savagely—“then there is little you can do on that matter. Hyoka, make up a list for me of any work that needs to be reassigned to other women.” And she would just have to hope she could find people to cover it. Enough witches had slipped out of Starfall that they were decidedly short-handed. The corridors felt half empty when she walked down them.
Gazing out over the women, sitting at their tables, many with books and paper already laid out before them, Satomi had the sudden, disquieting feeling that this was the first stages of an army.
I hope it doesn’t come to that
, she thought.
But I’m afraid that it may
.
Satomi looked up from the sheet of paper Hyoka had given her. The Key stood on the other side of her desk, tension forming a skin over her excitement that did not completely hide it. Hyoka knew full well what she had just handed to her Prime, but the part of her that loved theoretical puzzles could not help but be giddy over what she and her assistants had put together, so soon after being given their task.
“This isn’t what I asked you to research,” Satomi said.
“I know, Aken. That is, you didn’t ask for this
specifically
. But I was thinking about the questions you
did
ask—not the questions themselves, but why you asked them. What purpose you’re trying to reach by those paths. And whether there might be another way to approach it, one you didn’t think of, but which might accomplish the same end.” Hyoka nodded at the paper, and bounced on the balls of her feet as she did so. “This is what we found.”
Satomi’s eyes dropped back to the tidy notation there. Too arcane for her to fully understand it at a glance—Hyoka had not given her the proposed ritual, as that hadn’t been worked out yet; instead, she had a thicket of metaphysical logic to read—but she grasped enough to know that this would not exactly accomplish what she had in mind. It would get her there, yes, but with a number of side effects she was not entirely sure she wanted.
Her silence made Hyoka garrulous. “I went looking back to the accounts of how the Prime offices were instituted,” she said. “To examine the things you asked—how to suspend a Prime with three, or what would happen if you put in a new one without fully removing her predecessor—you have to look at how things began, to answer questions like that. And, well, we’ve all been thinking so much about our traditional practices, thanks to Mirei. So I went back and looked, and then I started to think about this as a solution. It
should
work.”
“Removing
all
the Primes,” Satomi said, her voice flat with skepticism.
“And then reinstituting the ones you want to keep.”
One had to admire the sheer brass of it. Even while reeling at the potential problems. “You would have to raise the Primes without any other Primes playing a part in it, though—at least the first one.”
“Which is where the histories come in. They had to do that in the first place.” Hyoka twisted her hands together, now looking a little more nervous, a little less elated. “I’m not
quite
sure yet how they did it. The records aren’t clear. But we know it can be done—it must be possible—because it
was
done.”
Against her will, Satomi found herself plotting out the order and the timing, looking for ways the dissidents might be able to interfere. Disband the entire circle of Primes: Arinei would lose her authority. Then raise new Primes. They were traditionally taken from the ranks of the Keys; had any Prime ever
not
been a Key first? Something for Hyoka to research. If the Primes had to be Keys, then she, Koika, and Rana would have to demote some of their people to make room. But no, that didn’t work; you needed a Prime’s authority to make someone a Key. They could not make themselves Keys while also Primes, and once they weren’t Primes, they wouldn’t be able to do it then, either.
So it would
have
to be possible to make ordinary witches Primes, or this wouldn’t work. Reinstate herself, and Koika, and Rana, and then choose successors for the other two. Naji for Shimi, and for Arinei… well, it would have to be Onomita, as she was the only Fire Key remaining at Starfall. Satomi would need to talk to her about the note she’d read, then—or else change
her
memory, too. Could Onomita handle that responsibility, dropped on her so suddenly? Or should they look to the unranked witches for possible successors? Was there anyone ready to take up that burden?
As for how the others might interfere, she saw remarkably few opportunities, at least at the moment. They could prevent the disbanding from happening, perhaps, which would return them all to stalemate. They could try to slip in their own replacements, before the Primes could reinstate themselves—but that would require them knowing they were about to be disbanded, and having the rituals necessary to raise new Primes out of nothing. With luck—and good security—Satomi could see to it that this would take them completely by surprise. They wouldn’t have time to put in their own people.
Three Primes reinstated, two Primes replaced. Then strip the rebellious Keys of their authority and replace them, and find a new Air Heart to replace Naji.
It
could
work.
Assuming that Hyoka could turn theory into application, and Satomi had the nerve to try such a radical move.
She handed the sheet back to Hyoka. “Look into it. Tell me what you find out. Keep this under the
strictest
security; your people are not to speak to anyone other than each other, you, or me.”