“When will the meeting be?” she asked.
“I don’t know what kind of mediator Master Quillon is. I used to think he wasn’t assertive enough to pull a meeting together. But now—” He shrugged.
Fervently, he listened while she described her session with King Joyse, the Tor, and Adept Havelock. Unfortunately, it changed nothing. “You know,” he commented after a while, “all this would do us a lot more good if we had any idea why we’re so important.”
“I don’t think so.” She felt sour and imperfectly resigned. “It doesn’t cheer me up to believe King Joyse is really our friend only he can’t risk doing anything about it. What good are friends who treat you just like your enemies do?”
He nodded slowly without agreeing with her. “The important thing is, it’s hope. He certainly sounds like he has reasons for what he’s doing.” Geraden’s mood seemed to improve as hers deteriorated. “And if he has reasons, we can at least hope they’re good ones.”
“On the other hand,” she countered, “look at the way he’s treating the Tor.”
That made Geraden scowl. “You heard King Joyse say he ‘defies prediction.’ There’s probably a danger he’ll do something to mess up one of the King’s plans. So King Joyse is trying to keep him under control.”
A moment later, he added in a black tone, “I don’t like plans that hurt the Tor.”
“Neither do I,” said Terisa.
After a while, he remarked with more humor, “It’s too bad nobody much cares what we think of their plans.”
Damn you, Geraden, she thought, you’re starting to cheer up again. I don’t understand it.
***
In spite of his improved humor, however, he didn’t smile when one of the younger Apts knocked on the door and announced that the Congery wanted him. When the Apt used the words “at once,” Geraden’s eyes widened slightly.
“That was fast,” he muttered to Terisa. “Master Eremis knows how to get action.”
The young Apt avoided looking at Geraden. “The lady Terisa isn’t invited.”
“The lady Terisa,” she snapped, “is coming anyway.”
The Apt didn’t look at her, either.
Geraden tried to give her one of Artagel’s combative grins; but its failure only made him appear sick. “Let’s go get it over with.”
Together, they followed the young Apt through Orison down to the laborium.
Until her knuckles began to ache, she didn’t realize that she was clenching her fists.
Although she was warmly dressed, she felt the chill as soon as she crossed the disused ballroom and descended into the domain of the Masters. Castellan Lebbick’s new curtain wall defended the breach the champion had made, but didn’t seal it. Because of the strong wind outside, there was a noticeable breeze in the passages. As a result, the atmosphere was cold enough to make her wish she had brought a coat.
If Geraden noticed the cold, he didn’t show it. His manner was distracted. As he entered the laborium, he grew tense. He had spent all his adult life – and a good part of his adolescence – trying to earn a place for himself in these halls and passages, and now his failure threatened to become so dramatic that it would be considered treason.
For his sake as well as her own, Terisa was getting angrier.
The young Apt led her and Geraden to a part of the laborium where she had never been before – to the room the Masters had used for their gatherings ever since the champion had destroyed their meeting chamber.
This room was small by comparison, but still more than large enough. It was a long rectangle; and something in the color or cut of its cold, gray stone, in the worn but uneven floor, in the number of black iron brackets set into the walls created the impression that it had originally served as a storeroom for the instruments of torture. It was the kind of place where ways of inflicting pain might wait while they weren’t needed: racks and iron maidens being taken to and from the interrogation chamber might have rubbed those hollows in the floor; thumb-screws and flails might have hung in the brackets. A few of the brackets had been adapted to hold lamps, but the rest were empty. The empty ones seemed especially grim.
The Masters were already gathered.
They sat in heavy iron-pegged chairs which lined the two long walls, roughly half of them on either side facing each other as if they had deliberately set out to form a gauntlet. Because of the length of the room, however, a sizable space at each end was unused. The doors were there, several strides from the nearest seats.
Two guards on strict duty held the door through which Terisa and Geraden entered the chamber. Neither man acknowledged the Apt’s glum nod.
As the door closed behind her, she scanned the room. At first, the only face she recognized was that of Master Barsonage. Since she had last seen him, the former mediator seemed to have developed a nervous tick: one of his thick, stiff eyebrows twitched involuntarily. Under the pressure of the Congery’s mistakes and indecision, his face had taken on a jaundiced hue. She saw no hope there.
Looking for Master Quillon, her eye was caught by Castellan Lebbick.
When she saw him, her throat suddenly went dry.
He had Nyle with him.
Geraden’s brother sat beside the Castellan at the far end of one row of chairs. He wore a brown worsted cloak over his clothes. Inside it, his arms bunched across his chest, holding the cloak shut. His head hung at a dejected angle. He didn’t look up at Terisa and Geraden.
Geraden was frozen with shock. All expression had been wiped from his face. The spark that animated his features most of the time was gone – hidden or extinguished – and he seemed smaller, as if he were shrinking in on himself. He stared blankly at Nyle while two bright spots of color slowly spread in his cheeks. She had never seen him look so lost. The glazing of his eyes made her irrationally afraid that he was having a heart attack.
“The lady Terisa was not invited,” said one of the Masters loudly.
“But she is welcome,” rasped Castellan Lebbick. “Isn’t she, Master Quillon.”
The rabbity mediator rose to his feet, gazing brightly at everything and nobody. Wrinkling his nose, he answered, “As welcome as you are, Castellan.”
Castellan Lebbick grinned like a snarl.
Master Eremis was sitting on the other side of the Castellan. “Oh, I insist,” he said at once. “If Castellan Lebbick and Nyle are permitted, it is only fair to permit the lady Terisa also.” His expression was difficult to read. For no clear reason, he looked pleased.
“Why is he here?” Geraden asked. He sounded like a sleepwalker.
Everyone understood to whom Geraden was referring. Master Quillon started to reply, but Castellan Lebbick spoke first. Still grinning, he said, “Master Eremis claims he’s going to support the accusations against you.”
“Nyle!” Terisa cried softly.
All the Masters were staring at her, but none of them seemed to have faces. She didn’t know who they were.
Geraden moved to the nearest chair and sat down as if he were crumbling.
Nyle tightened his grip on his cloak. He didn’t raise his head.
“Castellan Lebbick,” Master Quillon said as if he were thinking about something else, “this is the meeting of the Congery, not a congregation of your guards. You have no authority here. You are permitted only because you refuse to let Nyle among us without you. Please be quiet.”
The Castellan accepted this admonition without retort, but also without acquiescence.
“My lady,” the mediator continued in the same tone, “will you sit down so that we may begin?”
Terisa wrestled with an impulse to start shouting. Abruptly, she turned and took a seat beside Geraden.
He looked so stunned that she whispered, “What is Nyle going to say about you?”