She ran toward Sabeer, five quick steps. She leaped.
The Auldek woman stepped back, more surprised than alarmed. She cocked the sword back, but for once she was not fast enough. Mena kicked her in the face with one foot and pushed off her chest with the other. That was the last contact between them before Elya caught her in midair, cradling Mena tight to her chest, lifting on powerful wingbeats. Mena buried her face in Elya’s plumage but only for a few seconds. That’s all she had for such things as comfort, relief.
She had lied. Calrach was not enough for today. She wanted more.
M oments later, in Elya’s saddle and racing over the plain toward the Auldek encampment, Mena clenched an oil lamp full of pitch. Behind her, she left a ruined camp, the tattered remains of her army fleeing into the night as the Auldek danced bloody joy behind them. At least some of them would make it into the dark. Some of them. That was all she hoped for them now, that within a few days some of them would stumble into Mein Tahalian alive. She intended to be with them, but first there was this to take care of.
The lamp’s wick glowed red in the night, too buffeted by the wind to actually flame. She flew under the flying pitch orbs, cut through just above the catapults, and saw the freketes and their riders circling in the air beyond them. She wanted them to see her, to pursue her, to witness what she was there to do. Dodging and weaving among them, she skimmed over the Auldek encampment, searching for the station Rialus had described.
When the traitor had told her about the station that held the Auldek’s histories, she had not at first understood why he thought it such important information. A library? Documents and tales from the past? Surely it had no military significance. That was what he thought he could buy his forgiveness with? She had sent him away angrily, on the verge of ordering him back to them once more. That would have been a death sentence, she knew, but she came close to delivering it.
Later, as she lay not sleeping in her tent, she had turned over the things he had said. If the Auldek really did not have any memory of their distant past, how important might those records be for them? She could not imagine not remembering her own life back to her first years of childhood. What would it mean to know that the greater portion of your existence survived only on pieces of parchment? The more she thought about it, the crueler it seemed to imagine destroying those documents. If she did so, the Auldek race would be, effectively, always less than a century old. Before that would be nothing, the tail that connected them to their past cut.
A frekete and rider appeared out of nowhere. Elya spun and dove to avoid him. She came out of the corkscrew so low that she touched her feet to the ground and ran for a moment, wings pulled tight, darting between two stations and circling around one of them. When a kwedeir leaped in front of her, she jumped over it. The beast snapped at her, but she rose above it, slapping it with her tail as she pulled away.
The innocuousness of the station surprised Mena. By the time she found it, she realized she had passed near it on several occasions. It was smaller than the rest. It sat dark along a lane of similarly dark stations. The sight of her and Elya’s reflection on the ice-laced glass panes caught her attention. Yes, that’s it. The gold cap at its peak, just like Rialus had said. She looped away from it, freketes behind her, and came back after she had put some distance between them.
She hovered as long as she dared, and then threw the lamp, straight down with all the force and precision she could manage. It twirled end over end, the wick appearing and disappearing. It smashed through the pane of glass. For a moment the inside of the chamber was alight with a wonderful radiance. Mena took in the stacks of shelves, the many volumes, the logs and legends and journals that kept the history of an entire race. It was, in a way, beautiful.
I killed Greduc. I killed Calrach. And I’ve killed the past.
The flames spread.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Terribly imprudent,” Sire Nathos said as he settled into the elaborate contraption that was his council seat. “I can’t wait to ask what you were intending. This will be interesting, Dagon. I’m sure of it.”
I was thinking about saving the world from the likes of the Santoth, Dagon thought, aware that in a few moments he would no longer be safe thinking thoughts he wanted kept private.
“And, Grau,” Nathos continued, “why would you act without our complete agreement? If you had not hatched your plot to assassinate the bitch and her brother, we would not be so exposed. I can recall nothing like it. Everything we have built is in jeopardy.”
Grau was not in a mood to be chastened. He answered in a gruff whisper, “We did what we had to. Nobody could have foreseen the outcome. Dagon, in my opinion, made the best of an unfortunate situation.”
One that you caused, in part, Dagon thought.
“You’re lucky that some of us have had greater success in our ventures,” Nathos said. By that, of course, he meant himself and his vintage. Why he should be so proud of that now Dagon was not sure, but he looked smug. As Nathos settled back and closed his eyes, a smile tickled the corners of his lips. You hardly seem troubled. Perhaps it’s you who isn’t taking things seriously enough.
Sire Revek called the session into order. “Before I set you to explaining yourself, Sire Dagon,” he said, “we should be sure the entire chamber knows just how the calamitous events in the Inner Sea developed and how you acted and why.”
Dagon started. He knew he would need to do some explaining, but he did not expect the chairman to begin with him. “Sire,” he said, “you have all read my testimony, and Grau’s. I delivered it when I arrived this morning and was told everyone would come here prepared. And, with respect, ‘calamitous’ is hardly the word to-”
“Silence!” Just a word from a frail, thin frame, but with it the chairman stopped him. Resonant echoes of it reverberated through the newly built council chamber on Orlo, the largest of the Outer Isles. Revek had barely more than whispered, but that was all that it took to get heard in here, especially when speaking from the center of the senior leaguemen’s circles. Behind his voice, the chairman sent waves of his disquiet resonating through the council chamber. The acoustic structure of the place was sublime, the airflow circulated the mist efficiently, and the sculpted seats in which they reclined seemed to enhance their capacity for subverbal communication. Revek’s voice, at least, filled the entirety of Dagon’s skull so completely that he felt himself crammed up against the bone. Such a chamber he had never experienced before. Nor had he ever found himself the focus of his brothers’ animus. Not what he expected would greet his arrival at the Outer Isles.
“Dagon, you must acknowledge the seriousness of this matter. Reports, testimonies: these are not enough. You single-handedly ended hundreds of years of league occupation of the Known World. You assassinated two monarchs, informed them of their pending deaths while they yet lived, then abandoned league property, ordered other property destroyed, set the vineyards of Prios aflame…” Revek sighed in exasperation at the unending extent of it. “The list of things you have to answer for is staggering. Because of it, I move that you provide us access.”
Dagon’s heart rate had been increasing. On the word access it skipped forward into an irregular, syncopated dance of its own choreography. “Access?”
“Just so. You will be probed. You did not see fit to consult us earlier, when you made decisions that affected us all. You will do so now. We will judge you accordingly, and with the wisdom of hindsight. Do any object? Or think this action unwarranted?”