The Floodgate

Chapter Sixteen

Matteo hurried to the queen's palace, his mind a whirl of confusion and anger. He had no reason to doubt Procopio. He fervently wished he did.

His belief in the jordaini order had long been eroding. Now it was crumbling under him. Zephyr had been turned by Kiva. Matteo had tried not to dwell overmuch on Andris's disappearance, but as time passed and Andris did not surface, Matteo had to face the very real possibility that his friend had turned traitor. The possibility-he would not accept it as truth unless he saw Andris at Kiva's side. Was it also possible that the headmaster of the Jordaini College might have employed thugs to silence a jordain's search for truth?

He strode toward the heavy doors that separated Beatrix's court from the rest of the palace, determined to receive the queen's permission to leave the city. If she did not grant it, he would do as Tzigone had advised and leave anyway.

Several men and two women, all of them carrying crafters' tools, waited by the outer door while the sentry loosed the magical wards. Judging from the clatter and bustle within Beatrix's rooms, the sentry had been kept busy with the various comings and goings. There were three doors, all of them carefully locked and warded.

Again Matteo recalled a jordaini proverb:

Precaution is the grandchild of disaster. Such careful measures would not be taken to isolate the queen's workshop from the rest of the palace unless the need was real and proven. However, King Zalathorm had dismissed the rumors about Matteo's predecessor, and Matteo could not believe the king had lied.

He fell in with the laborers and nodded to the harried sentry as he passed. The man, recognizing Matteo, raised his fingertips to his forehead in a salute, then rolled his eyes to express his opinion of the goings-on. Matteo nodded in heartfelt agreement.

Inside the queen's workshop, chaos reigned. A smith's forge had been set up in a massive hearth. Hammers clattered as they beat metal into thin, smooth sheets. Metalworkers bent over a long table, shaping heated metal with tiny tools and painstaking care. Stout, hairy-footed halflings from nearby Luiren perched on stools and fitted tiny gears, their clever small hands darting with practiced ease. Off to one side of the room, a trio of artificers argued over a mechanical behir, a twenty-foot crocodilian with twice the number of legs nature usually allotted. As the debate grew more heated, one of the men kicked at the metal beast in frustration, harder than he might have had he not been so distracted by the argument. The ensuing clang rang out loud and long. He howled and limped around in a small circle as his comrades hooted with mirth.

Matteo looked around in growing bewilderment. At least two hundred workers toiled in the vast chamber, and he glimpsed more in the rooms beyond. The results of their labor-clockwork creatures of every size and description-ringed the room like sentinels. They were propped against walls, heaped in piles, stacked on shelves, suspended from the ceiling beams. These mechanical marvels ranged from a life-sized elephant to metallic hawks to monstrous beasts, including fanciful constructs for which there were no living counterparts. Metal renditions of creatures Matteo had never seen and could never begin to imagine stood ready for some unfathomable command.

Matteo went in search of the queen. He found Beatrix in a windowless room lit by a low-hanging chandelier ablaze with candles. The queen stood alone, studying a hideous metal creature with thin, batlike wings and a pointed snout filled with steel fangs. It looked vaguely reptilian but for the bristling mane that ran the length of its spine. Each hair was a metal filament, fine as silken thread.

"It is wondrous, my queen," he said softly, not wishing to startle the woman.

She did not start or turn toward him. "It is a darken-beast," she said in her flat, toneless voice. "The wizards of Thay fashion them from bits of dead flesh."

Matteo wasn't sure how to respond to this odd pronouncement "You use steel. This is a better way, Your Majesty."

Beatrix tipped her head negligently. Her elaborate white and silver wig sparkled in the light of the candles. "Flesh or steel. It matters not. They will both be plentiful on the battlefield."

She spoke with a certainty that chilled him. "Battlefield?"

When the queen did not answer, he took her by the forearms and turned her to face him. He captured her vacant stare and gazed intensely into her kohl-rimmed eyes.

"I hear the future in your voice. Diviners reading auguries in the flight of birds speak with less certainty. What battlefield?"

A flicker of life crept into Beatrix's brown orbs. "I do not know," she whispered. "War is coming. War goes wherever it wills."

Matteo did not dismiss her claim. The queen showed little interest in the world around her, but perhaps she heard things, sensed things others did not. At the moment, she seemed almost lucid.

"I must leave the city and learn more of this coming conflict."

She considered him for a long moment, as if weighing whether or not he might be able to do what he offered. Before she could speak, a loud shriek rose above the clamor in the main room. A fierce clatter followed, then a chorus of screams and a panicked rush for the door.

"By your leave," Matteo said hastily. Though protocol demanded it, he did not await the queen's dismissal. He whirled, drew his weapons, and ran into the main room.

The laborers were pushing toward the exits, trampling anyone who stumbled. One of the halflings lay battered and unmoving. Most of the clockwork creatures stood silent. A few paced unsteadily about, abandoned to their toddling first efforts by their panicked creators.

Matteo heard a metallic creak above him. He glanced up, then dived to one side.

A nightmare creature leaped to the floor from a pile of crates, landing with catlike grace despite the resounding clash of its impact. Its body resembled a suit of plate armor such as a northern warrior might wear. The creature held no weapons and needed none. Each of its four fingers ended in a curving steel talon. Long spikes covered its metal body, and its head suggested the unlikely offspring of an ogre and a shark. A piggish snout bristling with small spikes rose at the end of long, fang-filled jaws. The fangs were even more peculiar-sharp triangles that fit neatly and tightly, like the teeth of a giant piranha.

The clockwork knight snatched a dazed and moaning woman from the floor. It jerked her in close and crushed her to its spiked chest in a deadly embrace. The woman's shriek of agony ended abruptly, and the clockwork monster peeled her corpse away.

There had been no time for Matteo to intervene. He thrust aside a numbing wave of horror and guilt and forced himself to take stock of the battlefield. One thing was immediately apparent: His daggers would be of little use against this foe.

No better weapon lay near at hand. Remembering Tzigone's quick thinking in the icehouse, he glanced up.

A gigantic metal seabird hung from the ceiling, suspended by a pair of thick ropes connected to the tip of each massive wing. The trick Andris had played not long ago lent him inspiration.

Matteo mentally measured the distance from the floor to the avian construct, then noted the angle of the sun streaming through a window high on the walls. He seized the metal fist of an iron centaur and clenched its jointed fingers around one of his daggers. The highly polished metal of the weapon caught the sunlight and reflected it precisely toward one of the ropes.

Now, to stay alive long enough to let the sun do its work!

Matteo lifted his remaining dagger and lunged at the clockwork monster. He struck a ringing, futile blow and then leaped away. The construct dropped the dead woman and swiped at its new foe.

Matteo was gone, running lightly around behind the creature. He kicked its metal backside hard enough to leave a dent. The monster made a ponderous turn and began to stalk Matteo with a slow, heavy tread.

The jordain kept it moving, staying just beyond the reach of the construct's talons and the increasingly frenzied snapping of its piranhalike jaws. All the while, he watched the smoking, fraying rope high above. When the moment was right, he moved into position. Feigning a stumble, he dropped to one knee.

The clockwork beast lumbered in, its hands flexing in anticipation.

The rope snapped overhead, and the giant seabird creaked into motion. The monster's head snapped back, and its glowing red eyes flared suddenly at the sight of the massive wind slashing down toward it.

Matteo dropped flat and rolled aside. The metal bird swung like a pendulum, slamming into the clockwork creature and carrying it along. The enjoined machines crashed heavily into a stack of metal orcs. These came clattering down, rolling like logs off a badly stacked pile of lumber, burying the spiked metal warrior in a steel cairn. The seabird swung free of the mess. Its metal wingtip scraped the ground with a grating screech.

Matteo rose. Before he could take a relieved breath, the pile of metal orcs began to buckle and heave. The spiked warrior fought free and barreled toward Matteo like a gigantic hedgehog berserker.

The jordain looked about for a weapon or an escape. He noted a rope tied nearby to a metal ring on the floor, and his swift gaze followed it up to a metal pulley, then to the indescribable winged creature suspended from the other end of the rope. He seized the secured rope and began to climb it frantically. The clockwork monster leaped at him.

Matteo swung out as far as he could, trying to move beyond the reach of those deadly teeth. The metal jaws clashed shut-not on Matteo's legs but on the rope.

It snapped beneath him, and the winged creature tied to the other end began to plummet to the floor. As it fell, Matteo sailed up toward the ceiling. The bird-thing fell squarely on the clockwork warrior and buried it beneath a pile of crumbling metal.

Matteo clung to the rope until he was certain that the battle was over. He swung back and forth until he could reach the longer part of the rope. Wrapping his arms and legs around the main line, he tied his end securely to it, then slid down to the metal pile and climbed off to survey the damage.

Sheets of the monster's plate armor had broken loose and skidded across the floor. Gears rolled like spilled coins. Pinned beneath an enormous wing, the remains of the clockwork monster twitched like a hound beset by nightmares. Little sizzles and faint grinding noises came from its metallic innards, growing reassuringly fainter. The light in its glowing crimson eyes faded and, finally, flickered out.

Matteo scanned the room. No other clockwork devices stood ready to pick up the banner. A few people huddled at the far wall. He bade them tend the wounded and went to check on the queen. After an hour's search, he found her-not in the candlelit antechamber but in a secure room much deeper into the palace.

Beatrix was seated on a tapestry-covered settee, studying a drawing of yet another clockwork creature and busily employing a stylus.

"The problem is here," she murmured, making several tiny marks on the drawing. "The crystals inside distort the spell of activation. Magnetic stone would serve better, perhaps absorb the energy of the life-spell. Yes, we shall try that. Yes."

Matteo spun on his heel and stalked out, his own task still untended. He could not stay in the queen's presence another moment without letting his anger flow in a treasonous torrent. His oath to the queen still stood, but his sympathy for the woman was sorely shaken. How could anyone, however troubled, treat the results of her deeds with such blithe disregard?

He found the queen's steward standing at the doorway to the workroom, staring with bulging eyes at the mess.

"See to this," Matteo snapped. "I am leaving the city with tomorrow's dawn. The queen did not withhold her permission. I take that as assent."

The steward simply nodded, too overwhelmed by this disaster to pay much heed to the angry jordain. Matteo brushed past him and stormed into the king's council hall, shaking off the restraining hands of the heralds at the door. He strode directly to the throne and dropped to one knee before the king. He did not, however, lower his challenging and furious gaze.

Zalathorm raised a hand to warn off the guards, then directed a silent command at his seneschal. The man promptly began to herd courtiers from the room. The king and the counselor locked stares until the doors firmly shut behind the last man.

"Well?" Zalathorm inquired. The single word echoed ominously through the empty hall.

Matteo took a steadying breath. "Not long ago, you asked me if my ultimate loyalty is to Halruaa or to my patron. I had hoped that this dilemma would never arise. I deeply regret to inform you that one of Queen Beatrix's clockwork creatures has killed a craftswoman."

"That's impossible," the king said flatly.

"I was there. I saw it happen."

Zalathorm's hands gripped the arms of his throne until the knuckles turned white. "You would contradict your king?"

"My king was not there. I was."

The diviner nodded somberly. "Very well, jordain. Rise and tell me what you saw."

Matteo described the spiked warrior, and the other dangerous beasts that Beatrix had constructed. Zalathorm listened without comment until the jordain was finished. Abruptly he rose from his throne and strode toward the queen's palace.

They walked in silence down the long corridor that led to the queen's workshop. Matteo entered, and then stopped short.

The room was almost empty.

A few metal constructs remained, but only the more whimsical and least frightening creations. There was no sign of the spiked warrior or the enormous winged beast whose fall had crushed it. The dead woman and the wounded halfling were gone. A few artisans looked up from their tasks and dipped into surprised bows when they noted the king was among them, but Matteo did not recognize any of them.

"They were here," Matteo whispered. "I swear it, on my life and honor."

Zalathorm took his arm and led him from the room. "I do not doubt you," he said quietly, "but I wanted you to see with your own eyes that your most dire fears were ungrounded. What I am about to tell you must remain in strictest confidence."

Matteo nodded his assent.

"There is a protective shield around the heart of Halruaa. A very old, very powerful ward."

The jordain's brow furrowed. "A spell?"

"Not precisely," the king said carefully. "It is a powerful and mysterious force. I cannot explain it any better than that. When there is a threat against the heart of Halruaa, this power ensures that either the threat or those threatened are removed to a place of safety."

Matteo recalled the men in the icehouse melting away into magical haze. "What is the heart of Halruaa?"

Zalathorm was silent for a moment. "Removing a malfunctioning machine from the palace is the sort of manifestation I have come to expect. You need have no fear for your patron's safety."

"What about the safety of those around her?"

The king sighed. "Very well, I will admit that the queen's clockwork toys have grown too numerous and dangerous. I will see that this building frenzy is curtailed and have priests heal the wounded and restore the slain woman to her life and her loved ones. Will that content you?"

Matteo considered pressing for an answer to the "heart of Halruaa" question and decided to leave this for another time. "Almost, Your Majesty," he said. "Now that I have your assurances that the queen is safe, I request permission to leave Halarahh for an indeterminate period of time. I will need horses and supplies for my journey. I have tried for some time to bring this request to the queen and ask that she retain the jordain Iago, currently serving Procopio Septus. He will accompany me on my journey."

"Is that all?" the king inquired in a dry tone.

"Not quite. There is a jordain yet at the college-Themo, a fifth-form student. The queen has need of his service, as well. We will ride north and meet him at the travelers' rest on the road out of Orphamphal, but he must leave today, though he has not yet completed his training."

Zalathorm studied Matteo's face, then nodded slowly. "I cannot read your mind, jordain, but there is much urgency in your eyes and voice. Coming to me was not an easy thing, but you held service to Halruaa above all else. For this, all will be done as you have asked."

Matteo bowed. "Thank you, Your Majesty."

"Don't thank me," the king said with a grim smile. "Don't the jordaini have a proverb claiming that virtue never goes unpunished?"

"I have never heard that proverb, but most seem to be of jordaini origin."

"Blame it on the jordaini, in other words?"

"Perhaps, sire," said Matteo dryly, "that is our true function."

To his surprise, the king chuckled and clapped him on the back. "Mystra speed you, lad. I look forward to speaking with you again, when your business in the north is completed."

Matteo bowed again, and watched as Zalathorm strode down the hall that separated the king's palace from the queen's. He turned and sprinted to the royal stables and rode quickly to Basel Indoulur's tower. A pretty, dark-eyed apprentice greeted him at the door and went to fetch Tzigone for him.

His friend came to the door wearing her sky-blue robe, liberally dusted with soot. Her face was likewise blackened, and her hair stood up about her head in spikes, lending her the look of a swarthy hedgehog.

"Don't ask," she advised.

"I'm leaving the city by dawn tomorrow. Before I go, there are things I must tell you."

Tzigone took his arm and drew him into the garden. They took refuge in a rose-draped arbor, a retreat that sheltered a tiny pond and a bench piled with bright silk cushions. As soon as they were seated, Matteo reached into his bag and produced the medallion Dhamari Exchelsor had entrusted to him.

Before he could explain its origin, Tzigone's eyes grew enormous. "That was my mother's," she whispered.

Her grubby fingers closed around the token, and she turned it over and over in her hands. "I can't feel any magic in it," she said absently. "I seem to remember there was. Every time we had to flee, my mother would touch it, and her face would become very still, as if she were listening, Sometimes she let me touch it, but all I could feel was her. Why is that, do you think?"

"Perhaps children become very attuned to their parents," Matteo suggested. "Magical items sometimes hold something of their possessor's aura. No doubt that is what you perceived."

Tzigone looked down. "I'm holding the talisman now. I can't feel anything."

The silence between them was long and heavy. Finally Tzigone lifted agonized eyes to Matteo's face. He nodded, answering the question she could not ask.

Tzigone squeezed her eyes shut, and her face went very still as she sought some reservoir of strength deep within. Several moments passed before she won command of her emotions.

"How did you come by this?" she said in a small voice.

"Dhamari Exchelsor gave it to me. I meant to give it to you when last we met, but did not have the chance."

"How did he get it?"

"Kiva brought it to Dhamari like a trophy and gloated over Keturah's capture. They were apprentices together, you see, and Keturah was their master. They were conspirators in the miscast spell that prompted Keturah to banish Kiva from her tower. Clearly Kiva held a grudge against your mother. Possibly she resented Dhamari because he did not receive the same treatment."

"What was he like?" she asked grudgingly.

"A quiet man, modest in his ways and habits. He spoke of your mother with great pleasure and deep sadness."

The girl sniffed, unimpressed.

"You should meet with him."

Her head came up sharply. "So you said before. Dhamari offers to give a wizard's bastard a home, a name, a wizard's lineage, a tower, and a fortune. Ever wonder why?"

"You are Keturah's daughter. Perhaps that is reason enough."

"That's what worries me. Why would my mother flee from this Dhamari if he is a good man?"

Matteo told her about Keturah's fascination with dark creatures. He told her about the greenmage's fate and the starsnakes that gathered to attack, against their nature. Disbelieving tears spilled unheeded down Tzigone's dirty face as she listened, leaving muddy tracks in the soot. Matteo expected her to reject the notion that her mother could have become so twisted through the practice of dangerous magic, but after a moment she nodded.

"It is… possible."

"So you will see Dhamari?"

"Why should this wizard-or any other, for that matter-trouble himself about me?"

Matteo hesitated, wishing he could tell her of Basel Indoulur's vow to claim paternity if need be. But that would not only violate the wizard's confidence, it would also undo the very thing Basel wished to achieve. Tzigone would never accept such a costly gift.

He brushed a sooty tear from her cheek. "Given the options before you, yes, I think you should see Dhamari and give serious consideration to his offer."

"I'll think about it."

They spoke briefly about the clockwork creatures, and Matteo's destination. When they rose to leave, she lifted one hand to trace a brief, graceful farewell dance-a wizard's convention as common as rain in summer. Then she spun and slipped away, like the thief she had been.

This small, familiar rite set Matteo back on his heels. For the first time, he understood that the training Tzigone was undertaking was not a whim but a true path. She was wizard born, wizard blood.

Because of who he was-a jordaini bounded about by proverbs and prohibitions-he could not follow where she went.