Thinking of Telleridge reminded Tier of what the wizard had done to him. His magic was really gone—not that it was likely to do him much good in a situation like this. Alone, without witnesses, Tier sat on the bed and buried his head in his hands, seeing, once more, Telleridge’s hand closing on his arm.
Wizards weren’t supposed to be able to cast spells like that. They had to make potions and draw symbols—he’d seen them do it. Only Ravens were able to cast spells with words.
Telleridge had spoken in the Traveler tongue.
Tier straightened up and stared at one of the glowing braziers without seeing it. That ring. He had seen that ring before, the night he’d met Seraph.
Though it had been twenty years, he was certain he was not mistaken. He’d a knack for remembering things, and the ring Telleridge had worn had the same notch on the setting that the ring… what had his name been? Wresen. Wresen had been a wizard, too. A wizard following Seraph.
How had Telleridge known that Tier was Bard? Tier had supposed that his unknown visitor had told the wizard, if it hadn’t been the wizard himself. However, it sounded as if Tier being a Bard was the reason they’d taken him in the first place. No one except Seraph knew what he was—though she’d told him that any Raven would know.
They had been watching him. Myrceria had known that he had been a baker and a soldier. Had they been watching him and Seraph for twenty years? Were they watching Seraph now?
He sprang to his feet and paced. He had to get home. When an hour of fruitless thought left him still in the locked cell, he settled back on the bed and took up the lute absently. All he could do was be ready for an opportunity to escape as it presented itself.
He noticed the tune that he’d begun fingering with wry amusement. Almost defiantly he plucked out the chorus with quick-fingered precision.
A year and a day,
A year and a day,
And the beggar’ll be king
For a year and a day.
In the song, in order to stop a decade-long drought, desperate priests decided that the ultimate sacrifice had to be made—the most important person in the nation had to be sacrificed: the king. Unwilling to die, the king refused, but proposed the priests take one of the beggars from the street. The king would step down from office for a year and let the beggar be king. The priests argued that a year was not long enough—so they made the beggar king for a year and a day. The drought ended with the final, willing sacrifice of the young man who’d proved more worthy than the real king.
Just as the Secret Path’s Traveler king, Tier, would die at the end of his reign.
He thought of one of the bindings Telleridge had put on him. The young men, the Passerines, didn’t know he would die—otherwise there would be no reason to forbid him to speak of it with them.
No doubt then his death would serve a purpose greater than mimicking an old song. Would it appease the gods like the beggar king’s sacrifice in the story? But then why hide it from the young men? What would a wizard want with his death?
Magic and death, he remembered Seraph telling him once. Magic and death are a very powerful combination. The better the mage knows the victim, the stronger the magic he can work. The mage’s pet cat works better than a stray. A friend better than an enemy… a friend for a year and a day.
He had to get word to Seraph. He had to warn her to protect the children.
His fingers picked out the chords to an old war song. Myrceria, he thought, I will work on Myrceria.
Phoran held the bundle of parchment triumphantly as he marched alone through the halls of the palace toward his study. They’d look for him in his rooms first, he thought. No one but the old librarian knew about the study. They’d find him eventually, but not until he was ready for them.
It had been impulse, really. When the old fool, Douver, set down the papers the Council of Septs had for him to sign, Phoran had just picked them up, tucked them under his arm, and announced to the almost empty room that he would take them under advisement.
He’d turned on his heel and walked out, slipping through a complex system of secret passages—some of which were so well known they might be corridors and others he rather thought he might be the only one who knew. He’d given no one a chance to follow him.
For most of his life, he’d signed what they told him to. At least his uncle had done him the courtesy of explaining what he’d signed—though he remembered not caring much about most of it.
But the empty room had been an insult. When the Emperor signed the proposals into law twice a year, there should be people present, and would have been, if anyone thought that the Emperor would do anything but sign what he was told.
He entered the library through a secondary door, passed unnoticed among the bins of parchment and shelves of books in the back corner of the room, and unlocked the door of his study. It was a small room, but it locked from the inside as well as the outside, which was all that he required.
He settled himself into his chair and thought. It was all very well to decide to be emperor in fact as well as name, but he didn’t really have the support he needed. The Sept of Gorrish fancied himself defacto ruler, and the Septs who followed him, Telleridge, and the like, would do their best to fight any sign of independence.
Really, he’d best sign the damn things and get it over with.
Instead he uncorked his inkwell, trimmed his pens, and began to read. The first three parchments he signed—complex trade agreements between various Septs, and nothing the Emperor should interfere with. But, almost involuntarily, he made mental notes of the names involved and the alliances the new laws revealed.
The fourth parchment was another of the increasingly punitive laws aimed at the Travelers. He signed that one, too. Most Travelers were thieves, his uncle had said, though not without a certain amount of sympathy. Having no land they could settle on, because no Sept would have allowed such a thing, they were forced to earn their bread as best they could.
Hours passed. Occasionally, Phoran would sneak out to the library to retrieve maps or books. But he signed the parchments one by one—setting only a few aside for further review.
Two he found that might serve his point. They were regional matters that most of the council would not care unduly about; each was signed by only a few more than half the council with no protests.
The first act would give the Sept of Holla exclusive fishing rights in Lake Azalan. Phoran had checked his maps and found Lake Azalan to be a small body of water in the Sept of Holla’s lands. The law was so odd—the Septs usually had effective exclusive rights to any fully enclosed body of water—that Phoran knew there was a story behind the ruling. The second concerned a small section of land awarded to the Sept of Jenne for his “services to the Empire.”
He pored over the simple words to mine them for clues and regretted the indifference that had kept him from the council the past few years, because he no longer knew all of the different alliances. Geography helped—all of Holla’s signatures were from Septs in the Northeast, Holla’s neighbors. All except one of his neighbors. The one, thought Phoran with sudden comprehension, who had been sending fishermen into his neighbor’s lake.
That one would work—Holla had little influence in the council. But he’d rather come down on the side of justice.
The second one was frustrating because the land in question was so small that he couldn’t find out much about it.
He looked up from a map and the Memory was there.
He hadn’t realized how long he’d been in his study. He’d trimmed the lamps absently as he’d needed, and there was no window to tell him that the sun had set.