Captain Chimalli had not slept well. He’d sought Dr. Venkat in the hospital, and found her with blood-soaked hands, too busy to do more than shoot him an angry, delaying look. He lay alone on his hard, simple bed in his hard, simple room, and thought about the morning. Sleep must have come eventually, but he remembered only the first blue threat of sunrise.
He stood on the summit of the 667 Sansilva pyramid, the hub around which his world revolved, waiting as the King in Red drank coffee. His boss, sort of. There were many councils in Dresediel Lex, many overlapping guilds of Craftsmen and Concerns, and laws emerged from their grinding gears. But there was only one King in Red. “We’re ready, sir. Airborne on your command.”
“Thank you, Captain,” the skeleton said, and finished his coffee, and set down his newspaper. “How do you think the papers will report what we do today?”
“Sir. I think they will report whatever’s in their interest to report.”
“You mean I should tighten my grip, I should control them.”
“No, sir. I mean that we all do what’s in our interest, most of the time.”
“Even the people in Chakal Square?”
“I suppose so, sir. On some level.”
“I have many interests. What if they compete?”
He thought about that for a moment. “One wins. That is the one which was more in your interest. Or else it wouldn’t have won. Sir.”
“You live in a deterministic universe, Captain.”
“With respect, you don’t pay me for philosophy.”
“Is it in my interest to attack Chakal Square this morning?”
“You seem to think so.”
“And yet I could stop it all now. I could order the men to stand down. I could extend an amnesty to any who left the square by nightfall, and order Lieutenant Zoh to reveal his face, and stand trial for the girl’s murder, as an act of good faith. I could end this peacefully.”
Talking with a Deathless King played strange tricks on the mind. Without all the subtle facial cues fleshy humans gave—cues even a Warden’s mask offered if one knew how to look—one could not tell when a person was sincere. Every word might be a trap laid by a man with a perfect poker face. Fortunately, with Deathless Kings, every word tended to be a trap, so there was little risk of guessing wrong. “Will you?”
The King in Red examined the stain at the bottom of his mug. “I suppose not,” he said. “Let’s go. I’ve ordered Lieutenant Zoh to lead the raid. Seems appropriate, don’t you think?”
Chimalli said nothing.
“Come, Captain. We have a long day ahead. No sense starting all morose.”
The King in Red dug in the pocket of his robe for a second, finding at last a toothpick that, when he shook it three times, became a brass-shod staff taller than he was. Walking jauntily with staff in hand, he passed through the crystal dome, raised his hands to the newly risen sun, and called for his ride.
* * *
Elayne woke and sat, and watched the people of Chakal Square ready themselves. Around her the circle members opened their eyes. “Is that it?” Tay asked.
“No. When the fire comes, I’ll need you: living dreams, in living minds. If you want to go, you can.”
He looked back toward the fountain, toward Temoc’s camp, toward Chel. “I’ll stay. If it will help.”
“It will,” she said.
The crowd thinned. Those that remained fanned out to fill the space.
She had warned them. And the King in Red had warned her. No aid and comfort to the enemy. Save the Skittersill if you must, but leave the people to me. And she said yes.
To break her vow was to break her power. Technically, she had done neither.
One hell of a risk to run on a technicality. Many hells, even.
Temoc walked among his people, wreathed with gods, offering blessings. Where he touched, the light of his scars lingered. Chel followed him.
Elayne said yes, because she did not want to fight the King in Red. Because the Craft was the way of peace, truth, freedom. So she believed. If the system is broken, do what you can from within to fix it. What else was there?
The argument tasted like sand in her mouth. She said yes for those reasons, and also because she could not defeat the King in Red in his own city.
She tested once more the reins of obligation with which she held the Aberforth and Duncan contract. She never could have made that signature stick without Kopil’s support. If she hadn’t agreed to work with him.
Yet the deal tied her hands. Once, young and fresh with illusions of independence and power after heady victory in the Wars, she’d let another bind her to his will. She fought free, beat him at his own game, cast him into the outer darkness of academia, but years had come and gone and here she sat, bound again by her own tongue.
We gain strength from ties, she thought. That’s the Craftswoman’s way. Web yourself to others with bonds and debts, mortgage your life for power, and use that power to make nations dance.
Until one day you are called to dance yourself.
Reviewing the dream map of Skittersill she’d carved in stone, she frowned, and drew breath, and centered herself.
A drum beat in the distance. She looked north, and saw the war approach.