f there was one thing that Delia was certain of, it was that Isla was seriously angry with her husband for agreeing to try to save the hostages and the Dolls. Delia could understand her point. These were more complications in a plan that was already far too complicated and dangerous, and it was a complication that was guaranteed to make the Emperor furious with them. At one stroke he’d be deprived of all of his servants and his hostages, and Delia very much doubted that the “who” of the question would be a secret much past the moment when he discovered that Valdemar had been stripped of its most valuable resources and that its Duke and his family had vanished with those resources.
On the other hand … if she was in his place, she didn’t think she’d be able to resist trying to save them either.
Well, Isla is like Father was. She’ll be angry, and she’ll give him a very long piece of her mind when they are back together and safe, but for now, what’s done is done, and she’ll change the Plan to adapt to it.
Isla took several long and deep breaths to calm herself, closing her eyes tightly and clenching and unclenching her hands on the tabletop. “My husband,” she said, opening her eyes, “is an idiot. Gallant, chivalrous, and an idiot.” She put the scrying glass flat on the table and stood up. “I need to go tell my maid to take the day off, then we’ll make our way back here by way of the kitchen. The mages are probably gathering by now to go build those Gates.”
Delia just nodded. The one thing that she was certain of was that Kordas wouldn’t intentionally do anything that would put the rest of them in jeopardy. Himself, certainly, but not the rest of them. So no matter what he’d said, he wouldn’t actually do anything until he was sure they were safely out of harm’s way.
Right?
She hurried after Isla, who, mindful of the fact that someone might be watching at this moment, took an intricate route back to her own rooms to wake her maid, who was to all intents and purposes as identical to her mistress as any bundle of bedclothes would be.
“I feel ever so much better, milady—” the girl said, when Isla woke her.
“You might feel better now, but that’s no reason to take chances with your health,” Isla told her sternly—in a voice that made Delia think she really wanted to use some of that attitude on absent Kordas. “You go back down to your bed, and have another sleep. And if you find you are feeling up to it, try laundering some of my underthings and laying them in the sun to bleach, or do some mending. I’m sure I have something that needs mending. That’s work enough for now.”
The maid thanked her, but Isla was already out of the room and heading to the kitchens to talk to the cook and look through the stores.
When they had finished deciding what needed to be brought in from the manor farm to supply meals for the next day or two, Isla left her with a scrap of used parchment to make her list for the farm steward. “I’ll be down in the cellars, checking the beer,” she said aloud. “We’re likely low, and by this time most of it will be strong. It’s just about the time of year when we should start thinking about brewing again.”
That’s a nice touch. What noble in the Capital ever thinks about brewing his own beer?
Isla gestured to her, and they both made their way down into the kitchen cellars … and from there, down into the old manor cellars.
From the soft murmur of voices ahead of them, Delia knew her sister was right. The mages were gathering, and she was just a little surprised at their eagerness to get to work on something that was bound to deplete their energy so badly. Not to mention something that was going to force them to camp. She very much doubted that any of them had ever slept out of doors in his life.
—or will it deplete their energies? I could be mistaken. If Jonaton is right, there is that energy source there. And if it self-renews, maybe they can draw on that to do their work.
That might explain the enthusiasm she saw when she and Isla entered the “Preserved Nuts” cellar. The gaggle of mages, all of them dressed for travel and sitting on packs, turned their heads at the sound of footfalls, obviously expecting Jonaton at any moment. They didn’t exactly look disappointed to see Lady Valdemar, but as they turned their heads to resume their conversation it was clear she was not who they wanted.
But a moment later, Jonaton did appear, and for once, wearing something so workmanlike and practical that Delia hardly recognized him, with his hair bound up in a tight knot on the nape of his neck.
Then again, he’s about to go camping in the wilderness. Probably even he recognizes this is not the time for flowing tresses, jewelry, and lace.
He carried two rucksacks, one in each hand, and right behind him were Ivar and Alberdina, also dressed for wilderness travel and geared up. Hakkon trailed behind them. Ivar had a pack so huge it made Delia’s eyes widen. It towered above him, and there were weapons tied all over the sides of it.
“Clear out of the way,” Jonaton said brusquely, and turned to Isla. “My lady? Your assistance?”
“Gladly,” Isla said.
The mages, packs and all, squeezed against the walls of the cellar, as Jonaton’s gaze flickered over to Delia. He pointed at her. “I want you along,” he said. “You’re a good anchor. Go to your room, pack everything you think you’ll need for three or four days. Hakkon?”
“I’ll fix her a bedroll and whatnot. Delia, just bring your personal things, I’ll take care of your camping gear.” The Seneschal turned on his heel and sprinted for whatever entrance he’d come by. Delia obeyed Isla’s silent head-jerk and ran to her room.
As she ran, she decided what she was going to pack; she still had a couple of the saddlebags from when she had first arrived here. They fit neatly in a chest-stool in her bedroom, and hadn’t been in the way, so she’d left them there.
Before her father had died, she’d sometimes gone off on rough, day-long rides with her pony, rides for which dresses and skirts were utterly inappropriate, and she still had a couple of changes of the soft, baggy canvas trews and heavy linen shirts she’d worn for that. Then a heavy woolen short cape in case it was colder there than here, a rain-cape, underthings, twice as many stockings as she thought she’d need, and she planned on sleeping in her clothing unless it got filthy, so no point in taking bedshifts. She got what was needful from her bathing room—she’d probably be cleaning herself sketchily in the lake. Extra boots, just in case the first pair got wet, because there was nothing worse than wet boots. She cast a glance around the room and decided that was enough. It all fit handily in two saddlebags. She changed into an outfit similar to what she’d packed, slung the bags over her shoulder, and ran back down again. She met Hakkon in the cellars and saw he had a pack much smaller than Ivar’s with him.
He handed it to her. “Bedroll and some useful odds and ends,” he said. “I’ll let Grim know that one of the boys is to train your foal for you while you’re gone.”
“Thank you, Hakkon,” she said with relief. That had been a worry. She hadn’t wanted Grim to think she was shirking.
By the time they reached the cellar, the Foothold Gate was open, Ivar and Alberdina were gone, and the mages were filing through as Jonaton waited impatiently. She formed up behind the last of the mages, without really thinking about it, stepped through and—
—it was darker than a cave. Darker than anything she had ever experienced before. An enormous darkness that stretched to infinity on all sides of her, and she felt as if she was falling, but she knew she wasn’t. And she felt as if she was being stretched in every possible direction. It didn’t hurt, but it didn’t feel good either!
There were things out there. Things she couldn’t see. They couldn’t see her, either, but she got the idea that they knew she was there, somewhere. And they wanted very badly to find her.
She tried to make herself small, but all she succeeded in doing was stretching herself in different directions, some of them impossible. And at the same time she couldn’t actually feel anything of her body, as if she was just some—thing, with no body at all, just a little cloud of Delia, a mist in the darkness, and if she wasn’t careful she’d blow apart, as a breeze blew apart a cloud of fog, and she’d never find herself and those things would breathe her in, or drink her up and—
—and she stepped down hard on moss-covered ground, stumbled over a stick, felt her elbow caught by someone, and was pulled out of the way just as Jonaton stepped through the Gate and it closed behind him. All there was now was a single cube of inscribed sandstone to mark where it had been.
One of the other mages caught Jonaton as he stumbled as she had done. He shook his head hard and made an inarticulate noise.
“That’s a rough one,” the mage said in sympathy.
“Well,” he replied, thickly. “Once we get the real Gates up, it won’t be so bad.”
“Oh, it could be much worse,” Ponu said cheerfully, materializing out of the group and taking him by the shoulder. “Come along, there’s work to be done. Delia, you come too. Ivar and Alberdina need your help making camp.”
But I’ve never camped before, she thought. It didn’t seem to matter, though. She was carried along by the press of bodies, through underbrush and waist-high grass already being trampled flat, over the top of a low hill.
And there it was, stretching out in a bowl of a valley.
Ivar hadn’t lied. The lake was the biggest she had ever seen, practically filling the valley, steel-blue under an extremely early-morning sky, the sun just barely peeking up over the horizon. And at the far distant shore, three narrow rivers. Did they lead into the lake or out of it?
Probably into it. All this water has to come from somewhere.
Back in Valdemar the sun was well above the horizon. It was, in fact, the usual time for breakfast if you weren’t too quick about waking. They must be at least as far from Valdemar as Valdemar was from the Capital.
“At least it isn’t going to rain,” someone said cheerfully, and gave her a little shove to send her down the slope.
The mages trailed in single file down to the center of the cup of the crescent, and she followed them through more waist-high grass. Belatedly she wondered if there were any ticks or other obnoxious biting insects.
Too late, she thought with resignation. She hadn’t prepared with repellent, and she’d just have to hope that if there were such things, her trews tucked into her boots would keep them out. Ponu propelled Jonaton just ahead of her by his shoulder, although Jonaton didn’t seem in the least reluctant to go. The closer they got to that circle of land protruding into the water at the center of the crescent, the more she was able to make out some of what Ivar had talked about. Ruins, stone ruins—what looked like the wall of a round tower, and several buildings. Most of those weren’t even head-high, but it occurred to her that those ruined walls could make a great basis for shelters. And when she saw Alberdina and Ivar hard at work inside them, she was pleased to think that her untutored guess was correct.
She detoured and joined them, ignoring the mages who had clustered at the water’s edge, where there seemed to be those other remains that Ivar had spoken of—docks, a jetty, the sketchy remains of boats.
And she gaped at the number of packs clustered on the flattened grass in the center of the ruined tower. “But—”
“I’ve been back and forth a few times,” Ivar said cheerfully. “I’m used to playing pack-mule. Cousin, what do you want Delia to do?”
Alberdina rummaged in an open pack beside her and came up with a hand-scythe. Delia took it uncertainly. “Ever used one of those?” Alberdina asked.
“Gathering herbs?” she replied with hesitation.
“Go gather reeds along the shore and bring them back here. Reeds, not sedges. Sedges have edges; reeds are round.” Alberdina went back to her task, which was threading pieces of rope through grommets on the edge of what appeared to be a house-sized piece of canvas. Maybe larger. Ivar picked up a hand-axe with a hammer-like side balancing the axe-blade and headed out through the remains of the tower door, which was completely without a header, just two jambs and a sill.
She followed her orders and went down to the shore, avoiding the gathering of mages down by the jetty. Now that the sun was up, the lake water was more blue than steel, but with edges going to green, except where the jetty was. Bay came with her, wagging his tail solemnly when she looked at him. “Good boy,” she told him. He snorted and picked up his ears, tail wagging harder.
She took off her boots and waded in. The water was cold, but shallow enough here that she could see the sandy bottom, and little minnows darting through the plants—which were, as specified, round. She bent down and began cutting, stacking the cut reeds up along the dry shore as she worked. The water smelled clean, the cut reeds added a pleasant green scent, the sun was comfortable for now—but she decided that when she’d finished cutting as much reed as she could carry, she’d go back and get her hat from her pack. It didn’t make any sense to come all this way to help, only to be felled by sunstroke.
Bay kept watch while she worked, and she was quite comforted by his presence. After all … she already knew there were bears.
When she returned, Alberdina and Ivar were creating a sort of tent-shelter using the stone walls and the enormous piece of canvas. They’d spread the canvas over the top of the walls and were working their way around the base, pounding wooden pegs cut from branches into the ground with the hammer-ends of their hand-axes and tying off the pieces of rope fastened to the grommets in the canvas. “Spread the reeds about two knuckles deep around the edge of the tower inside,” said Alberdina. “Keep cutting and spreading until you’ve gone all the way around the edge.” Delia spread her reeds, got her hat, and went back to the lake edge to gather more.
By the time she’d finished about a quarter of the circle, Alberdina and Ivar were inside the new shelter, ducking their heads a little, lashing together a sort of rack made of branches, after pounding the uprights into the ground. They’d picked a place that was up against the tower wall that had a tumble of stones under it; obviously she didn’t need to put reeds there. By the time she’d finished the next quarter, the rack was finished and all the packs were stacked on it, up off the ground. Smaller bags were hung by their straps off the frame. Ivar was gone, and Alberdina was clearing away a spot where it looked like a fireplace had been built into the wall.
By the time she’d finished the third quarter, Ivar had come back with several armfuls of wood. Alberdina had started a fire and had metal grates on legs poised over it.
As Delia finished spreading her final armful of reeds around the edge of the ruin, Alberdina turned away from the fire and surveyed her work.
By this time she was fairly sweaty, her back hurt from all the stooping over, and she was tired. “Take a break,” Alberdina told her, then went to a pack on the very top of the rack and took what looked like a round, fist-sized loaf of bread out of it, and took a leather bottle off the side of the rack. She handed both to Delia, who eyed the bread dubiously. She was starving, and this didn’t look like much.
“It’s travel-bread,” Alberdina told her. “It’s a lot more filling than it looks.”
And when she bit into it, she discovered it was very dense, and packed with dried fruit and seeds. It was, indeed, a lot more filling than she’d thought possible.
Meanwhile Alberdina had gone outside the shelter and given a shrill whistle, then shouted, “When you’re at a place you can stop, come eat!”
Delia had eaten the bread very quickly, and now was thirsty. “Is the lake water safe to drink?” she asked Alberdina.
“Yes,” the Healer said shortly, taking an armful of the solid little bread loaves out of the pack. “Drink what’s in the bottle, take it with you, and fill it at the cleanest spot you see.” She left the shelter again and came back empty-handed. “Floor this entire thing with reeds, then come to me for what you can do next.”
With a sigh, Delia did as she was told. This was going to be a very long day.
* * *
By nightfall, the following had happened.
Delia had floored the shelter with reeds. The mages had two sets of pillars erected. She had absolutely not expected them to be any sort of practical builders, but they were. They’d even brought cement with them, or someone had brought it in previously, and the mages had used it to cement rocks from the ruins into foundations into which the four curved pillars had been set, in pairs, looking very like the horns of the Foothold Gate back in the cellar. That was in the late afternoon; once finished, they spread their bedrolls on the reeds, heads facing the wall, toes facing the center, about two circles deep.
Alberdina had established a proper latrine, well away from the shore, with a screening of woven willow withies for privacy.
Ivar had shot and butchered a half-grown wild pig, and Alberdina had roasted it on a bed of hot rocks from the ruins. One of the mages had helped her make the bed—with magic, which had been amazing to watch, as the right-sized rocks levitated into place, forming a sort of pavement. Ivar had built a fire over the rocks, let it burn down to coals, brushed the ashes away, and spread pieces of pig over the rocks, turning them until done. So everyone had pork and salt and herbs from Alberdina’s pack with their travel bread.
Delia thought that she had never tasted anything so good.
Just at sunset they all had a short wash in the lake, then took to their bedrolls. The reeds, spread over the flattened grass that had grown up inside the ruined tower, made a passable mattress, at least enough to keep stones from sticking into her. She was asleep faster than she had thought she’d be able to manage.
In the morning, when she woke with the first light, she picked her way through the sleeping bodies to take care of business and have a better wash-up afterward. Then she had a look at those two proto-Gates.
One pair was on land, and was about as far apart as a pair of wagons side by side. The other was just on the edge of the water, so that boats that went through would slide right down into the water naturally, and had been positioned where the jetty had been. Deeper water, deep enough for the fully loaded barges. The wood they were made of was some of the oddest that Delia had ever seen, and she could not make up her mind what it was. It was darker than anything she had ever seen before, greenish in color, and much denser. It looked varnished, and practically brand new.
Was this something their mages had done when they’d been erecting the things? Or had the wood come from some place outside of Valdemar?
She heard footfalls behind her, and turned to see Jonaton approaching. “How—” she began.
“Are we getting horses and barges through? These will be the paired Gates like you see on the canals, where the horses are unhitched, put through a smaller Gate beside the barge Gate, and catch up with their barge on the other side. Obviously we can’t do that since we’re putting the barges straight into the lake from the canal on the other side,” he said, surveying the curved upright and laying a proprietary hand on it. “So each barge will get a strong push on the Empire side, come through here, and drop into the water, with a crewman aboard with a pole who’ll get it out of the way by poling it to the right or left. The horses will come through over there. We’ll either tow or pole the barge to the shore, and either tie it to a previous barge or hitch it back up to the horses to start a new barge string. We reckon on the horses pulling full ten-barge strings. And meanwhile people can be coming through the horse-Gate when there aren’t horses coming through.”
“I was going to ask about the wood,” she said.
“Oh.” He laughed. “These were either breasthooks or keels of the boats that were here. The rest rotted away, but whoever built these things impregnated the wood with copper salts, probably using alchemy rather than pure magic. There’s honestly no way of telling how old they are without a lot of magical shenanigans we don’t have the time or energy for. They’re not less than fifty years abandoned, and not more than five hundred. I’d guess it’s nearer to the five hundred mark than the fifty, but I can’t think about everything I want to, right now. I have to set things aside, for later. Urgency. Focus. It means I just have to let some things go.”
She blinked. But, then again, there were things as old or older than that in the Empire. “What are you doing today?” she asked.
“Tying them to the power source, then turning four pieces of wood into two Gates. There will be a lot of—stuff—going on. Like we did with the Foothold Gate, but more, and with more mages. Then the rest of the mages except the Circle and I go home via the Foothold Gate while Ivar, Alberdina, and you stay here. And the third day I tune the two Gates with your help as an anchor, I open them, some more magic stuff goes on, and the fourth day, I spend flat on my back while Alberdina takes care of me, and Sai makes something about the size of Bay to feed me when I am up to it. And right now, you and I go back to the Foothold Gate and wait for breakfast and lunch to get pitched through.”
She laughed, thinking he’d made a joke.
When “breakfast and lunch” arrived, however, he held her over to one side of the rippling disk of weird light that suddenly irised open, and she discovered it was not a joke as baskets and bags came flying through it, piling up at the foot of the thing. She realized in a moment they were coming too quickly for Isla and Hakkon alone to be throwing them through; they must have some servants in on the Plan now.
It was over so quickly she scarcely believed it, and the Gate vanished the same way it had arrived. “Our turn to be pack mules—” Jonaton said.
“Nah, I’m here to help,” said Ivar, coming over the hill behind them. “Strong like mule, dumb like ox, hitch to plow when horse dies.”
* * *
Kordas woke too early, as usual. Star brought him breakfast, and he pondered what he was going to do with the hours stretching in front of him.
“Can I go out in the city?” he asked, finally. He’d never seen the Imperial City. The hostages weren’t allowed off the Palace grounds, and they weren’t allowed to roam too much within those grounds, either.
“There is no reason why not,” Star said, after a moment. “But why?”
“Curious. Bored. Want to see what a city-dweller looks like. I always imagined, when I was being schooled here, that they were mythical.” He got out of bed and headed for the bathing room.
“They are not mythical, but they are … fewer than they were twenty years ago,” Star said, sounding as if the Doll was choosing words very carefully indeed. “Twenty years ago, when the Great Emperor in his wisdom decided it was time to expand the border to the south, there were many, many poor. Now there are no poor. The Emperor, in his wisdom, said that it is the duty of the Empire to give employment and food and shelter to all the citizens of the Empire. So he did.”
Star paused. Kordas felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. It sounded oh, so reasonable and benevolent. And knowing the Emperor, there was a dark, dark side to this. “And what did our great and glorious Emperor do?” he asked hesitantly.
“He gave all of the poor of the city employment in his legions,” Star said—exactly as he had thought the Doll would answer. “Men and boys are soldiers. Women serve as the support, in all ways. There are three legions in the south now, and have been for two decades. They have nearly permanent camps, with everything a city needs. Horses need tending, food beasts need tending, waste must be removed. There is everything from cooks to blacksmiths. And he allowed for childbearing, even planned for it. By now, the legions are well into their second generations born and bred to the conquests of the south. It is very efficient.”
“I’m sure it is.” He licked lips gone dry. “Is there anyone still actually living in the City?”
“Craftsmen, tradesmen, merchants,” Star replied. “And laborers to tend to the City itself. They have not yet been replaced by Dolls, because most of the Dolls are needed here, in the Palace. There are only so many mages to make Dolls, and Dolls need replacing when they are damaged.”
And the fact that there are just enough mages to replace broken Dolls, rather than continuing to replace people with Dolls, is the only reason why those folks haven’t been sent to the south as well. The thought was inescapable.
“I need some perspective. I’d like to see the City,” he said. “Do I ride, or do I walk?”
“A great Lord never walks except within the Palace,” Star said firmly. “We will go to the Gate Room. A horse will be ready for you when we reach the Courtyard. This one will be your guide.”
The waiting horse, held by yet another Doll at the base of the shallow stairs leading to the huge bronze doors, was one of his own Sweetfoot palfreys. She looked to be about eight years old, and, as far as he could tell, was healthy and well-tended. Just to be sure, he checked her coat, her ribs, her feet, and under her saddle for saddle-sores before he mounted. She was fine, and a good weight, her hooves were well-shod and properly tended, and she showed nothing in her behavior that she’d been mistreated.
Of course that didn’t mean she’d been treated well. He suspected that to the vast majority of the courtiers here, a horse was nothing more than a thing that took you from one place to another. Like a sort of Doll.
And if they weren’t so pretty, and if it was possible, and if there were enough mages, the Emperor probably would have replaced horses with Dolls too, by now. Now there’s a funny thought. If vrondi are captured and made into Dolls, what about all the other Unseen entities? What would they be made into? Hold up now. That’s me thinking like myself, not like Imperial Mages. I would explore and experiment, but they probably aren’t allowed to. The Empire has a streak of brutal, unchanging efficiency to it, and primary research takes time, effort, resources, and risks. Especially since my parents’ time, the Empire does not pursue new things, it strips them away.
The palfrey picked up her feet daintily and ambled off in the direction of the iron gates that stood in the wall around the Palace. Star kept up with no problem.
The City was … strange. For a place as big as it was, it was echoingly empty. No building was the height of the Palace, of course; the Palace loomed over everything, inescapable, the symbol of how the Empire controlled everything. He didn’t see much that was over three stories tall, and the buildings themselves were a mix of so many different materials and styles that it made his head swim. There were canals, as he expected; in times past, canals were not just practical, they were seen as a symbol of prosperity and prestige, and to his surprise, the canals here had a steady flow, sometimes as brisk as a horse’s canter. They were paired with canals flowing in the opposite direction. The streets, though, were arrow-straight, and paved with something like a sheet of solid stone—except that his horse’s hooves, and the hooves of the other beasts on the streets, made very little sound on it. And it seemed to have some give to it.
There were few horses or vehicles, few people afoot, and all of them seemed to be going someplace in a very great hurry. Buildings showed dark windows, like empty eyes. There were shops, usually attended by a single person, brightly lit, and generally with one customer or none. But there were also craftsmen in workshops, with goods showing in stalls to the side, and the workshops open so that you could see them working, and all of them seemed very busy, even frantically busy. Many—far too many—of them were weapons-makers, including ones making Spitters.
But as he approached one of those workshops, he discovered that there were also large versions of Spitters, something he had never seen before, things about as long as his arm and thick as his thigh. He caught sight of some of them being loaded onto a wagon, and stared.
“Poomers,” said Star, seeing where he was looking. “That is the largest practical size of Spitter. Anything larger, and defects in the castings often make them explode in the field, which is considered a waste of metal and soldiers. Each discharge requires seven pellets. Poomers rarely fire bolts. They fire wooden sabots packed with metal shot and weighted chains.”
That would be horrifying to face. Kordas had seen the effects of shot, versus bolts, on waterfowl. A ground-braced Poomer, firing shot, would shred anything at medium distance, and the chain-shot? It could probably fell a twenty-year-old tree if it struck dead-on, and the shrapnel from the tree would explode outward. He visibly shuddered.
“Pellets are made in the Palace, in the Fabrication Annex,” Star continued. “In case of accident, the Palace proper would not be harmed badly. The Annex is exclusively staffed by Dolls.”
“I’d like to see that. Is anything else made there?” he asked.
Star shook its head. “Clothing, Dolls, and pellets, is all. Dolls and pellets require mage-craft, and of course, we must be able to supply the Emperor and his courtiers with clothing on demand. The fabric comes from the City. Most things come from the City, to the Receiving Annex.”
They turned a corner, and spread out before him was something he would never have expected.
An immense market-garden, full of vegetables and fruits.
“The Palace gardens only supply the needs of the Palace,” Star explained. “These gardens and others like them supply the needs of the City. When the poor were sent to the south, their homes were torn down, and the open land turned into the gardens. It is very efficient.”
The rest of the tour took place in silence. And now Kordas realized where a lot of the smoke and stink was coming from. Metal smelting facilities, tanneries, dyers, fullers, butchers …almost everything needed to supply the Palace, and to supply the people who still lived in the City, was made in the City. When they crossed a narrow river, though, Kordas thought he was going to choke. It was an open sewer.
“Oh gods big and small, that reeks. Where are we getting our water from?” he gagged.
“It is from a series of wells, and it is treated and purified for the Palace,” Star said. “I do not know where the people of the City get theirs.”
He hoped for their sake it was also from wells, and not from the canals, or that … sewer. Wells far away from the dreck that flowed under the bridge that took them back to the Palace.
The City proved to be achingly empty, though he suspected that some of those who were not “the poor” had seen the way the wind was blowing, and found a way to make their livings elsewhere, before the Emperor decided that they, too, should be sent to the southern border and the endlessly hungry war machine.
All he needs is enough people here to keep the Palace supplied and the legions supplied with specialist items, and to provide cheering crowds whenever he makes a parade. And he doesn’t need a parade all that often. He has afternoon Court and appearance dinners when he chooses, after all. Fawning courtiers, people jockeying to get his attention, whenever he chooses.
He turned the horse’s head back toward the Palace a lot sooner than he had expected to. He had seen enough for new plans to form already, and the sooner he could get some unwatched thinking-time in, the better. There was a truth emerging from all of this, and it seemed to be the greatest exploitable flaw of the Empire. Kordas’s heart pounded, because it felt as if nobody in the Emperor’s City realized it existed. None of them.
They fixate upon conquest, power, and betrayal.
What is trusted is dismissed from their attention.
To save time, Kordas left the horse at the nearest usable Gate with one of the Dolls, who would take it back to the stables. A simple statement by Star just kept nagging at him. When they were back in his apartment, and Star had uncovered the Valdemar badge on its hand, signifying it was safe to speak, he finally decided on exactly how he wanted to ask the question that was bothering him.
“You said ‘there are only so many mages,’ but this entire place is practically alive with magic,” he stated. “How does everything get done?”
“There are very few things that require a mage to actually do them in person. Instead, a mage, or several working together, long ago made constructs—machines—that merely require a power source. Like the Gates. The Palace mages are here for life, what could be termed ‘tenured.’ As such, they have settled upon a minimum amount of work, to maximize their leisure, and exist in what you might term a voluntary imprisonment.”
“So their lives are spent casting the same spells, day after day?”
“Essentially, yes. They charge items that are then sent by chutes and relays to the Fabrication Annex, and those items are expended operating the manufactory constructs there. The Palace mages produce a surplus of such charged items, which are simply stored in boxes. As for other mages, two are designated as research mages, but, as they must prioritize what the Court wishes, they most often spend their days inventing entertainments. Since Dolls were invented by them, and found to be so versatile, they have done little else of note.”
All right. Now I ask the prize question. “My knowledge of magic tells me that you need a mage to make a Gate talisman that tells a Gate where to send you,” he stated. “But all talismans come from the Palace. How is that even possible?”
“Because there is a construct that makes talismans,” Star replied, its head tilted to one side as if it was surprised he did not know this. “One puts in a metal model, with the destination imbued into it. The construct creates a paper copy that can be easily destroyed, so that people cannot clandestinely use it a second time to go somewhere without permission. The construct can make hundreds, even thousands at need.”
He felt his jaw drop open.
“Who operates these constructs?” he finally asked. Because if the answer is what I think it is—
“We do,” Star said simply. “We are trusted, and do not tire. We can make several thousand in a candlemark. This is how the Emperor gives out talismans to travel about the Empire. There are also universal talismans, which respond to vocal commands, that allow Dolls and courtiers to travel about the Palace. These take much longer, however.” Star tilted its head to the side. “This one supposes that the universal talismans would also take the wearer outside the Palace to anywhere in the Empire, but this one does not know this for certain, as such talismans are surrendered when a courtier leaves the Palace at the end of a visit.”
And there it was. The answer. The answer to how he could get thousands of talismans to Valdemar, talismans that would carry thousands of people and barges to the new lands. How thousands of Dolls could get their talismans and come, too, and it would look like everyday business. His mind raced. “What could be made—ordered by just a Duke, without anyone in the Palace noticing, because they don’t notice what’s not a danger or an aberration—or maybe I should say, what would be below their notice? Could—”
Star tilted its head again, and answered before he could voice the question.
“Yes, my Lord. We can make talismans for your escape, once we have a model. The models are merely the talismans of old, the ones mages would produce one at a time of metal blanks. We can make as many paper copies as you need for your Plan.”
“But how to deliver them around, without drawing attention or suspicion? There would be stacks of them as high as Chargers …” He trailed off.
“If I may remind you, my Lord, Dolls make deliveries unnoticed by anyone who would endanger you or your Plan. Also, Dolls are repaired by other Dolls, and need not be stuffed solely with wool.”
He wasn’t certain whether to laugh or cry. In the end, he did neither. And by the time he recovered himself, the lights had changed to tell him it was time to go down to luncheon, and begin another round of the Fourth Game.