Grand Conspiracy: Second Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts

Sethvir said, bleak. ‘Cerebeld can send, and hear in reply the prompt of a master he believes to be god-sent. His presence this afternoon carried more than just chilling conviction. He did not lie when he claimed to speak as the word of true Light on Athera.’

      ‘A misfortune to raise armies and provoke vicious bloodshed, if Cerebeld should acquire a circle of gifted collaborators.’ The shade of the Sorcerer concluded that thought with uncharacteristic brevity. ‘Then you fear as I do?’

      The sparrows took flight, a flurried storm of small wings, and the beggar looked up, his gaze soft as rubbed antique turquoise. ‘I fear any landfall, even for provisions, will jeopardize Arithon’s safety. Time becomes his deadly enemy, for Cerebeld is no fool. He will certainly go on to appoint his hierarchy and successors by the criterion of his own precedence. He’ll have no one admitted to the inner circle of his priesthood who cannot discern the unfailing, true word of the man he has named Blessed Prince.’

      The posed possibility of instantaneous communication between the far-flung factions of the Alliance bespoke dire odds for the future. Sethvir’s broadscale awareness tracked events well beyond the flight of his game flock of sparrows, who wheeled and alit upon the snow-frosted roof of the cupola set at the center of the circular plaza.

      ‘We’re not going to get the reprieve that we’d hoped for, to gain insight against Desh-thiere’s curse. Nor will those restless free wraiths left on Marak hold their peace if they bridge themselves passage while we’re torn to shreds by the dangerous momentum of a holy war.’ The vortex that marked Luhaine’s presence surmised, morose, ‘You’ll return to keep vigil at Althain Tower?’

      ‘That seems for the best. Warning of this new development can be sent most easily from there.’ Sethvir arose, dusted crumbs from his sleeves, and adjusted the fall of the blanket that mantled the wind-snagged, white aureole of his hair. His unseen colleague kept pace at his shoulder, and while yet another party of armed searchers plodded by, Sethvir paid them as little heed as the previous ones.

      ‘I’ll require a diversion, if you wouldn’t mind,’ Althain’s Warden requested. ‘One that won’t draw lasting notice.’

      Luhaine whisked ahead in derision. ‘Be glad it’s I, and not Kharadmon, at your side to mask your departure.’

      ‘A pity,’ Sethvir disagreed, tracking pigeon-toed prints toward the center of the plaza. His grin came and went like the moon through the cloudy mass of his beard as he stepped over the barrier chain on the stair to the raised platform where the minions of Light dispensed shadowbanes to the poor every noon. ‘Cerebeld and his ilk were all raised on sour milk, to have matured with no sense of humor. Kharadmon’s style would quite likely bait them to a fatal fit of apoplexy.’

      He ducked through the railing rather than trouble to round the staged landing. There, a forlorn figure with the threadbare hem of the blanket trailing, he paused beneath the pillared cupola. The stone underneath the raised dais was far older, laid down in past ages by the great centaur masons. Their work had framed the focus for a power circle neither time nor mortal building could erase.

      Standing in the brittle, cold breeze with the blanket slipped to his shoulders, Sethvir heard the imprinted echoes of their song. The notes twined a descant like spun silver through the actinic static that marked the flow of earth’s lane force. He clasped stockinged hands, closed his eyes, and lapsed into what looked like innocuous contemplation.

      Luhaine, nearby, could sense changing resonance thrum through the focus like a sounding board. He judged his moment with fussy precision, and incited two lurking mongrels to chase someone’s cat down an alleyway. A twist of false sound made them appear to turn on each other and engage in a snarling fight.

      Shutters clapped open. Outraged citizens cursed the racket and hurled basins of water to quash the yapping disturbance, while the flared pulse of light raised for Sethvir’s departure came and went in an eyeblink. Unremarked in the pale swirl of snow, the Warden of Althain tapped the lane-fired energies of a star at the zenith and left Lysaer’s royal city of Avenor.

      One by one, the sparrows that had comprised the energies of his ward of concealment blurred and faded from the onionskin roof of the cupola. They vanished away into thin air, leaving no trace and no track behind them.

       Midwinter 5654

      Twins

      While deep winter’s blizzards howled in whiteout gusts over the northern passes, the soporific perfume of citrus rode the southland breeze that rustled glossy leaves of the merchant’s gardens in the Shandian trade port of Innish. Yet tonight, other scents warred with the fragrance wafted through the cracked window of Fiark’s cramped garret office; his twin sister, Feylind, leaned on the sill in her slops. Her presence admitted the distinct bite of ship’s tar and a robust, smoky fug carried out of the seedier shoreside taverns.

      ‘That’s a ripe crock o’ bilge, and you know it.’ Arms folded over her breasts in black temper, Feylind bore into her argument. ‘To Sithaer you don’t know the names of his contacts, and the place he makes landfall also.’

      Fiark tallied the last line in the ledger and fastidiously blotted his pen nib. Unfazed by rank language and accusations, he laced his hands above his head and stretched the kinks from his back. Clean fingers and unstained lace cuffs gave sharp contrast to his sister’s chapped hands and the sweat-stained string of the turk’s-head bracelets worn for luck by most blue-water sailors.

      ‘Whose contacts?’ he inquired, his disinterested reference to her nameless subject no less than a jabbing provocation.

      ‘Well, damn you for a spoon-fed liar!’ Feylind sprang off the windowsill, her long, yellow braid wisped silver at the ends from overexposure to strong sunlight. ‘For that, I should plow a fist through your jaw ’til your teeth greet the nape of your neck! You never kept secrets before this.’

      ‘Before this, there weren’t sword-bearing fanatics lining up to swear undying service against Darkness.’ Fiark regarded her, his hands clasped at the brass-buckled cuffs of his knee breeches, and his eyes tranquil blue in sincerity. ‘I see sunwheel talismans sprouting like mushrooms for each galley lost to a clan raid. The knowledge you ask for holds fatal stakes, and Prince Arithon swore his oath for your safety. You can’t reward the gift of his care without staying mindful that danger dogs every rumored move that he makes.’

      His sister returned a spectacular, balked scowl, fists cocked on the belt which hung her man-sized cutlass. ‘Damn him to slow death on Dharkaron’s Black Spear! I was eight years old at the time of that pledge, and besides, his word was given to our mother!’

      ‘He’s still in the right.’ Fiark laughed in the irresistible way that made shreds of her need to stay angry. ‘You’re no whit less wild now that you’re grown, and anyway, eighteen’s not considered your majority. Not by the tenets of old charter law, which Prince Arithon is charged to uphold by crown obligation.’

      ‘You talk like a foppish, mealymouthed lawyer. And dress like one, too,’ Feylind grumbled. She paced, her agitation intractable as a caged lioness, while the clomp of her seaboots across the bare floor raised a bellowed complaint from the downstairs tenant.

      Fiark closed the boards of the ledger and locked its bronze hasp fastening. ‘You know, you’re disturbing honest folks’ sleep.’ When his sister refused to abstain from her racket, he returned her spirited sniping. ‘Also, on the subject of clothing, you’re nobody’s walking example. You’d have trouble courting a draft ox, done up as you are like a sailhand on course for a tavern bash.’

      His sister regarded the toes of her boots, her grin wicked, and her laugh deep and rich with enjoyment. ‘I need the brass caps to fend off randy suitors.’ For effect and demonstration, she stamped on the floor, which intimidated the disgruntled downstairs tenant back to meek suffering and silence.

      ‘You won’t be excused by changing the subject, forbye.’ Feylind cast herself into the battered