Called to account, p.19
Called to Account, page 19
Even before all that, before she had run off with Faustinus, she had been popular at court. She had been a favorite of Edwin’s mother, Queen Rohesia, and his older sister, Princess Elwyn. But Elwyn had left her family and now lived outside Albus Magnus with her husband. And there was no telling if Rohesia still cared about what she owed to Moira and Faustinus and all their agents.
Rohesia might bear a grudge, in fact, for some of the things that had happened in between the various acts of heroism and self-sacrifice. Lily had slept with Elwyn. Rossana had slept with Edwin. Callista had slept with both of them. From a certain point of view, it might seem as if Moira and her Emissariae had done more harm than good where the Sigor family was concerned.
And now the crown, book, and sword were missing. If Shyama and Tatiana could make the connection between the disappearance of the Gramiren treasure and creation of the Verrus Bank, then the Sigors could, too. All those years of friendship might mean nothing if Queen Rohesia and her son decided not to take a generous view of the situation. Moira could be charged with treason, now that she thought of it. She was a Myrcian subject by birth, after all.
Hours after nightfall, they reached the top of the pass. A small village nestled there, with a little fort marking the Myrcian border. At a corral outside a wretched, foul-smelling tavern, Shyama paid for new horses. All three of the beasts they had been riding fell over the moment the spell sustaining them lifted, and Moira suspected they would not last the night.
Snow started falling as they headed down the pass, and in places the road was slick with ice and treacherous, but Shyama and Tatiana refused to slacken their pace. At one point, high above a half-frozen stream, Moira’s horse lost its footing, and as she teetered on the edge, facing down into the dark abyss, it looked as if she and the poor animal were about to fall to their deaths. But Tatiana turned in her saddle and shouted a levitation spell, stopping them in mid-air and hauling them back over the edge. In seconds, Moira and the horse were safely back on the path, and they all carried on as if nothing had happened.
Hours later, they reached the bottom of the pass, where they changed horses at another Myrcian fort. It might have been close to dawn, but the snow was coming down so thick now that everything still looked gloomy and dark. Tatiana used a spell to call over a dove that had taken refuge from the storm under the eaves of the fort’s stable, and then sent it off into the howling wind.
“We need to let them know you’re coming,” she told Moira.
Surprisingly, instead of continuing south from the fort, in the direction of Formacaster, they made a sharp left turn, to the east, following an old, snow-covered road along the southern foothills of the grim Sothebeorg range.
“Oh, Earstien,” thought Moira. “I know where they’re taking me.” And it was much, much worse than going to Wealdan Castle. She was going to Diernemynster.
The snow stopped soon afterward, though the wind still howled down at them from the mountains. Even so, the sky slowly brightened, and after another hour or so, the clouds began to part, and Moira could see the sun, straight ahead.
At last, they reached a tiny valley, a mere notch in the towering wall of stone to their left, where a little stream called the Ledrith flowed down. They turned here and rode up, following the stream, and rounded a bend to find themselves at a snowy meadow, dotted here and there with little frozen pools and ponds. Ahead, the valley rose steeply, and a well-tended road followed it up.
A solitary figure waited for them in the meadow, swaddled in a massive robe and sitting in the lee of a miserable-looking horse for some minimal shelter from the wind. As they approached, the figure stood and threw back its hood, revealing a short, sturdy, weathered woman with braided gray hair that still showed, here and there, streaks of its former blonde color.
“Oh, shit. Of course,” sighed Moira under her breath.
It was Astrid of Haydon, right hand of the Freagast, and the woman who had decreed Moira’s banishment from Diernemynster for the crime of killing Daryna.
“Prefect Countess Moira Lepida Faustina,” Astrid said. “You return sooner than I ever expected. But forgive me, have you gone back to calling yourself Moira Darrow? I cannot say I was surprised to learn that you were divorcing that...man.”
“I’m touched by your concern,” said Moira.
“My only concern,” said Astrid, “is what you might know about the whereabouts of Broderick Gramiren the younger and the treasures he stole from Wealdan Castle. I have long since given up hope of seeing any remorse from you for what you have done.”
She waved a hand around the valley and muttered a long, complicated incantation. Even with the limiter on, Moira could still feel the magysk barrier lifting—a barrier that would have prevented her from passing this point on the road up to Diernemynster. Moira had never been sure whether the banishment spells would have killed her if she tried to go up there, or if they would simply have stopped her in her tracks. She hadn’t ever intended to find out, one way or another. But now, here she was.
“I appreciate you coming down to do that personally, Astrid,” said Moira. She kept her voice steady, but she hadn’t been this scared since the war.
The older hillichmagnar gave her a nasty grin. “I would say that we will do our best to make you comfortable. But I think you know that would be a lie.”
Chapter 25
After Moira’s bed, the sagging old mattress at the Prefectus Arcus inn seemed almost impossible to sleep on. Hamon treated it as a penance, and considered getting rid of the blankets and the pillow, too. But then he tried it, found it horribly cold and uncomfortable, and decided he was taking things a bit too far. He stopped wearing the new outfits Faustinus had bought him, though, and wore only his thinnest, rattiest old clothes on the rare occasions he left his room.
His colleagues from the bank certainly thought he was going too far. Quintus visited twice to ask him to come back to work. Moira’s Emissariae girls tried, too. Gina usually stopped by in the mornings to tell him they all missed him. Callista slipped party invitations under his door around lunchtime.
Lily stopped by in the evenings and tried to make him feel guilty. “What do you think Moira is going to say when she gets back and finds out you haven’t done any work at all?”
He wasn’t sure he cared what Moira thought. The fatal moment had come the night after he’d discovered the message from the Sigors to Faustinus. He’d been thinking back to how Faustinus had tried to use a spell to calm him down and (presumably) win him over to Faustinus’s point of view. And suddenly he realized that he’d often felt precisely the same way when he had been in Moira’s presence, back in the early days of their acquaintanceship, when he hadn’t made up his mind whether to trust her or not.
She had used a spell on him, too. That was how she had convinced him to tell her where the Gramirens were and where the treasure was. That was how she had talked him into joining the bank. That was how she had gotten him into bed.
Thinking about it made him feel disgusted with himself and furious with her. He felt violated and used, and yet, when he thought about sex with her, he still found himself getting aroused. For a single afternoon, he seriously considered going back to Myrcia and becoming a monk again, but he couldn’t convince himself to do it. He didn’t think he could ever go back to being completely and devotedly celibate. Eventually, when he had gotten over what Moira and Faustinus had done, he would find someone new.
Early one morning, as he sat in bed, feeling sorry for himself and wondering exactly what he would say to Moira when she returned, there was a knock at the door. At first, he tried to ignore it, assuming this was Gina. She was awfully early.
Then the knock came again, and a low, male voice said, “Hamon Friel, I know you are in there.”
He opened the door to find a tall man in snow-crusted robes. The fellow had long, auburn hair tied back with a piece of twine, and he looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“I apologize for the intrusion,” he said, “but I was told I would find you here.” He gave a polite nod. “My name is Caedmon Aldred.”
Hamon gasped and took a few staggering steps backward.
“Caedmon...Aldred?” he repeated. His heart pounded and his legs shook. He had never met the famous hillichmagnar before, but he certainly knew the name. Everyone in Myrcia knew the name. Everyone knew Caedmon was a supporter of the House of Sigor.
Hamon found the bed and dropped into it, pulling a pillow over and holding it on his lap in a pathetic, desperate attempt to somehow shield himself from what he knew was coming. “Please don’t kill me,” he said.
Caedmon frowned. “Why would I kill you, Brother Hamon? I admit that a few weeks ago, I might have had some sharp words for you if I had found you. But for now, I fear a different and rather more urgent matter brings me to your door.”
Hamon released his grip on the pillow slightly. “What sort of urgent matter are you talking about?”
“I presume you know that hillichmagnars can send messages to each other using animals—most often birds, for obvious reasons. I received a message from a friend at Diernemynster yesterday. Moira has been captured and is being taken there. She may already have arrived, and even now, they may be questioning her to learn the location of the Gramirens.”
“Moira?” He jumped up, tossing the pillow aside and advancing on his famous visitor. “Who captured her? What are they going to do to her?”
“There is no time to explain fully right now. I know Astrid would never stoop to dark magy, but others might not be so circumspect. We must assume that sooner or later, Moira will be forced to tell what she knows. Suffice it to say that if you care for Moira and wish to protect the Gramiren family, you will get dressed now, so that you and Legate Faustinus can—”
“Faustinus?” growled Hamon. “What does he have to do with this?”
Caedmon gave Hamon a testy look. “I cannot suppose you are ignorant of the fact that Moira and Faustinus were, for many years...involved with each other. Thus, when I received word that she had been captured, I rode straight to see him. He indicated,” Caedmon cleared his throat, “that you might...be interested in joining the rescue, due to the...,” an embarrassed cough, “high esteem in which you and Moira currently hold each other.”
Hamon stared at the hillichmagnar. “So, I’m supposed to help him rescue her?”
“Yes. Do you love her or not?”
Ten minutes earlier, that would have been an easy question to answer, and he would have answered it emphatically in the negative. But now that she was in danger, he knew he couldn’t sit around and wait to see if Faustinus could save her. He needed to be there, and the reason for that was....
“I suppose I do love her,” he said softly.
“That does not sound like the sort of ringing endorsement a young lady would expect in these circumstances,” said Caedmon, “but it will have to do. Now get packed.”
This took less than a minute, since he had so few clothes. When he was ready, they went downstairs to the stable yard, where Faustinus stood waiting with horses in the falling snow.
“Ah, Hamon,” he said, smiling, “I knew I could count on you.”
“Go to the Void,” snapped Hamon. “I’m not doing this for you.”
“Naturally,” said Faustinus, in an indulgent tone. Then he turned to Caedmon. “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to come along, as well?”
Caedmon shook his head. “I have stretched my vows of loyalty to Diernemynster and the Sigor Dynasty almost to the breaking point. In any case, I think you and Brother Hamon are more than capable of handling this without me.”
They left the Myrcian hillichmagnar at the inn and galloped down to the naval docks through the dark, snowy streets. There they boarded a sleek, low galley that whisked them across the straits in mere minutes.
BEFORE CARRYING HER up the Ledrith valley, Astrid had hit her with a powerful sleeping spell, so as Moira slowly woke, she had no idea exactly where she was. She had no idea how much time had passed.
She felt disoriented and off-balance, with an odd tingling sensation in her arms and legs. Something held her in place, but she couldn’t feel any chains or ropes. There was a strange, weightless feeling, too, like she was floating in the deep end of the big tepidarium at her neighborhood bathhouse back in Presidium.
With some difficulty, she opened her eyes. Initially, she saw only darkness and a faint, greenish glow around herself. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she saw flashes of reflected light on glass and metal. Next, she made out the floor, and she realized she really was floating and spinning slowly in place, three feet in the air. And finally, she saw the cabinets, and the bare stone walls, and the sword hanging over a shelf with six large, old books.
“I know where I am,” she thought. “I’m in the basement of the library.”
This was a very special room, a kind of dungeon, in fact, where artifacts of dark magy were brought. The cabinets on either side held cruel-looking knives and misshapen skulls and bits of ancient jewelry. Even if their terrible spells were contained here, Moira could still feel a sense of menace from them.
The sword on the wall had belonged to Kuhlbert the Magnificent, the Odelandic sorcerer who had been killed at the Battle of Oasestadt by a group of hillichmagnars from Diernemynster that had included Astrid, Caedmon, and Faustinus. Moira knew Caedmon regretted that killing now and believed Kuhlbert had not been the villain that history made him out to be.
The books below the sword, however, were the Hexakraton, the greatest repository of dark magy on earth, written by Koarthak, the original dark hillichmagnar, whose rebellion against Earstien had almost destroyed the world.
Moira knew why Astrid had chosen to keep her there—in Astrid’s view, Moira was probably as bad as Koarthak. “Too bad I don’t have my fucking marriage license with me,” Moira thought. “Astrid could hang it on the wall here, right between the sword and the books.”
Hours passed, and Moira slipped in and out of consciousness. She wondered how long Astrid intended to hold her there. Then, at last, torches along the walls burst into flame, and Astrid walked down a set of rough stone steps into the chamber. She snapped her fingers, and Moira stopped revolving, facing her.
“I trust you appreciate your surroundings,” Astrid said.
“Yes, it’s very nice,” said Moira. “If you put down some carpets, maybe brought in some couches, you could throw parties here.”
“I had thought you might take the opportunity to reflect on the fate of those who defy the laws of Earstien and Diernemynster.” She stepped closer. “Where are the Gramirens hiding? And where are the things they stole?”
“Why do you care about any of this?” asked Moira. “You stood by for years and did nothing to help the Sigors. Now you want to help them kill young Broderick? I remember when you had moral objections to assassinations.”
“The situations are entirely different, you foolish girl. You and Faustinus killed Daryna Olekovna for no reason at all, except to satisfy the Empire’s greed. The Freagast was entirely justified in punishing you.”
“Where is Harald, by the way?” Moira had always gotten along with the Freagast, on the rare occasions she had been able to talk to him without Astrid present.
“The Freagast is too busy to be bothered with trifles like you,” said Astrid. “He is on his way to Rawdon, consulting with the Sigors and other leaders of the nation. He is trying to forge a lasting peace. He is concerned with grand strategy and the future of Myrcia. So, I am taking care of the details for him.”
“Details like killing Broderick Gramiren and his family?”
“The Gramirens and the Sigors are equally worthless, as far as I am concerned. But Harald wants the matter settled, and the Sigors happen to be in power in Formacaster. I have no wish to kill young Broderick, but I see no reason to go out of my way to prevent other people from doing so.”
“What do you think Caedmon would think if he heard you say that?”
“How dare you even mention his name!” said Astrid. “You have no idea how your transgressions have grieved him. Now, I will ask you one last time where Broderick is, and then I will turn you over to someone who is far more interested in learning the answer to that question than I am.”
“I don’t know where he is,” said Moira, “so it frankly doesn’t matter who you send in.”
“Fine, let your fate be on your own head, you stupid girl.”
Astrid stormed away, and the torches dimmed for a few minutes, before lighting up again as Tatiana Zielenska came down the steps.
“I want to begin,” she said, “by making it clear that I don’t really want to hurt you.” She wore long leather riding gloves and gauntlets, and as she spoke, she removed them, setting them aside on one of the cabinets.
“Oh, good,” said Moira. “I don’t want you to hurt me, either. Let me go, and we’ll both get what we want.”
“No one knows where you are,” said Tatiana. Her lip curled up in a furious sneer. “We wrapped you up in a sack and carried you in the back way. You could disappear completely, and no one but Shyama and Astrid and I would ever know what happened.” She reached up and ran a finger across Moira’s cheek, and then down, across her neck. “There are so many little valleys and caves up here in the mountains. I doubt you’d ever be found.”
In her work with the Prefecturate of Correspondence and Communications, Moira had been threatened many times, and her Emissariae had been threatened, too. She had developed what she thought was a fairly accurate sense of whether a given individual was likely to carry through on a threat or not.
Her instincts told her Tatiana was probably bluffing. But then again, the woman seemed a bit angrier about this than she had any reason to be. Angry people were unstable, and they could do things they would regret later on.
“You’re not going to kill me,” said Moira. Even if she couldn’t use a calming spell, she knew other, non-magysk ways of calming people down. “Let’s be reasonable about this, shall we?”
