“And is there a reason you brought it here to show me?” the magister asked. “I certainly hope you are not planning to use it to take a life today . . . yours or anyone else’s.” Yaarike poured himself a cup from the ewer on the table, then without asking filled another cup for Viyeki and pushed it toward him. “Here. This cloudberry wine is a very old vintage. It is said there is a trace of kei-mi in every barrel.”
Viyeki had never tasted the witchwood extract and knew he might never have another chance. He took the cup and drank deep. The wine was tart, almost too sour, with a taste that lingered on his tongue for long moments, as arresting as a memory both strong and bittersweet. “Thank you, my lord.” But he would not let himself be distracted. “So you see, I find myself in a dilemma today, High Magister. Only you of all others can help me to resolve it.”
“And this dilemma is . . . ?”
“Two choices. One is to denounce someone who has been my teacher and guide much of my life, one whom I have loved like a grandfather.”
“A truly dreadful possibility. And your alternative?”
“To remain silent about a terrible crime—not just the murder of a beloved hero but an attack on truth and history itself. So it seems I am trapped between betraying my mentor or my queen.” He touched the dagger lying in his lap. “You can see that following my ancestor’s course seems the only honorable alternative to those two unthinkable acts.”
His master drank deeply, then carefully wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand. “I think you had better tell me what has led you to this perilous situation, High Foreman.”
“The death of General Suno’ku, Magister. And the collapse of the mountainside. I have come to believe that neither were accidents.”
Yaarike’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but he only signaled for Viyeki to continue.
He marveled at the calm in his own voice as he described the row of diggings he had found above the gate inside the mountain, all of them listed in the order’s records as abandoned projects, all of them exactly the same.
“And what do you guess the purpose of these diggings, as you call them, to have been?” Yaarike asked.
“To make the mountain fall.”
“And how would that be accomplished—and kept secret, no less?” He sounded as if he was challenging a bright pupil to think harder, not arguing against a foolish impossibility.
Now that he was committed to speaking what he had so long kept secret and silent, Viyeki felt as though his gut had been tied into a cruel knot. “The hard part would be the secrecy, because it would not be a simple or swift task. After all, it took nearly two score of our Builders working for days to bring down a much smaller weight of stone at Three Ravens Tower.”
“True enough. But who could undertake such a complicated and dangerous task here in Nakkiga without anyone knowing? And why hide it? The collapse of the mountainside saved our city and our people, after all.”
Every word from his master’s mouth pulled at the ends of the knot inside him, tightening it. “The deed was hidden because defense of our mountain was not its only purpose, I would guess. As to the other question, the person or persons responsible would need both knowledge of such things and the power make to make it happen and keep it secret from the people of Nakkiga.”
Yaarike nodded slowly. “That makes sense, at least. Please continue, Host Foreman. Tell me the rest of how this astounding trick could be accomplished from inside the mountain.”
“The set of tunnels in each digging would have been excavated by workmen who would not know what they were doing—tunnels leading down to a place where the rock of the mountain’s face was weakest. Then the workers would be sent away and the diggings declared useless. But each of those places also had a source of water close at hand. Could not someone repeatedly fill those new tunnels with water, which would then run down and into the cracks behind that weak spot in the mountain’s face? Even the youngest scholar in our order knows that once such water reached the end of its journey it would freeze because of the chill of the outside air. When the ice expanded, pushing the rock outward around it, more water could be poured in, beginning the process again. Eventually, enough of such careful, secret work could weaken the entire rock face until it split loose from the mountain’s surface and fell, destroying our enemies below and sealing the gates off from invaders for a long time. And only the most skillful of Builders could even hope to make such a thing happen at the proper time. Even so, it must have been very difficult.”
“I hear many interesting ideas in what you say, Viyeki-tza, but not much in the way of proof. And although it caused the tragedy of Suno’ku’s death, the collapse also saved our city—perhaps our entire race. It would be a hard thing to accuse an official of high family of such a strange and userful crime.”
“I know, Master. That is one of many reasons why I brought this.” He patted the blade in his lap. “Because with it I can solve that problem without bringing the official’s family or my own into disrepute.”
“Solve what problem, exactly?”
“The problem of not being able to let it go. I need to know, High Magister. I need to know what happened, and the truth about someone I admired beyond any other.”
His master looked from the knife in Viyeki’s hands to his own hands, graceful and strong, roughened by the handling of innumerable stones. “Let me then hasten you toward your solution.” Abruptly, Yaarike pulled open his heavy robes, exposing the thin tunic he wore beneath. “You are right in your suspicions, Viyeki-tza—all of them. It was my idea to bring the mountain down. And I also caused Suno’ku’s death, although that was not as I wished it. Now strike, then fold my hands around the blade so it will seem I pierced my own heart. Otherwise my clan will hound you, and you should not take the punishment for my mistakes.”
Viyeki shook his head. “No. This blade is not for you, Master—it is for me to end my own life. I cannot live in a world where one who means so much to me, who has shaped my being more than my own parents, could do such a thing.” His hand closed around the hilt and he lifted the needle-sharp dagger to his breast. “Just tell me why first, Master. Why did you kill the general? She seemed brave and honorable to me. Why did you hate her so?”
Yaarike seemed surprised. “I did not hate her. I said what I believed at her tomb—she was the best of us.”
“But you killed her!”
The Lord of Builders sighed. “Not by choice—I for one hoped she would escape to the Northmen’s side of the rockfall, but the collapse took longer to begin than we had guessed. Why do you suppose I tried to take on the role of legate—the role you infuriatingly stole back from me? I did not want to see you killed or made a prisoner of the mortals. If things went awry, I wanted you to replace me as leader of this order.”
But Viyeki was fixed on one word. “What do you mean, ‘we,’ Magister? Did you take Naji into your confidence when you would not trust me?”
Yaarike shook his head. “Ah, Viyeki, how can you be so clever and yet such a fool? Host Foreman Naji is of no importance. He knew nothing of any of this. I gave him the task of supervising the gate only because I wanted no blame to adhere to you if my plan went awry.”
“But you said we, Master. Who else planned this with you?”
“You spoke of the need for secrecy. That is what Lord Akhenabi brought to the conspiracy. Who better to undertake a task like that, to undermine the mountain under the very nose of a hundred Builders, than his Singers? They can walk the between-spaces when they must. They can be all but invisible.”