The Vondish Ambassador

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The sun seemed even brighter here than it had in Ashthasa, even though it was now well down the western sky and the walls of the houses and shops were a slightly darker shade of golden-yellow. Once again they had emerged in a public square, but this one was hard-packed earth, rather than being paved with stone, and appeared to have little in the way of city around it. A white marble palace loomed over them on one side, while the other three sides of the square mostly had just a few open-fronted shops shaded by brightly-colored awnings. A broad road led out of the square directly opposite the doors to the palace, and Emmis could see that it led, perhaps half a mile away across a valley, to a castle built of dark red stone, looking like something out of a picture book about the Small Kingdoms.

Well, that was reasonable enough, since they were presumably somewhere in the Small Kingdoms. Emmis could not see how they had any business anywhere other than Ethshar and the Small Kingdoms, and this definitely wasn’t Ethshar of the Spices.

“Semma!” Lar exclaimed, as they climbed up out of the fissure.

“Is that where we are?” Emmis asked, looking around. The crowd here was smaller than the ones that had gathered in Lumeth and Ashthasa, which seemed peculiar; wasn’t this the heart of an empire, where the others were little more than city-states?

“Yes!” Lar said, pointing. “That’s the Imperial Palace, where the Council meets, and over there is Semma Castle, where the Regent lives — and where I live.”

That was interesting; Emmis studied the castle. It didn’t look terribly appealing. He noticed it had a rather sprawling village clustered around it, where the palace only seemed to have this one square’s worth of homes and businesses near it. “I would have thought the Regent would live in the Imperial Palace,” he said.

Lar turned up a palm. “He doesn’t like being that close to the Imperial Council.”

That struck Emmis as slightly odd, but then, much of what Lar had told him about Lord Sterren seemed a little odd.

The gargoyles clambered up out of the fissure, and Ithinia lowered her flute and tucked it into her right sleeve. “We have come to address the Imperial Council!” she proclaimed.

The crowd murmured, and someone opened the palace door and slipped inside.

Lar bestirred himself and hurried to Ithinia’s side, with Emmis trotting after him. “They may not be in session,” the ambassador said.

“I know that,” the wizard replied.

“And the Regent may be in the castle, over there.”

Ithinia turned to glare at him. “Yes?”

“Should I go see if he’s there?”

“Your Excellency, I would think that an earthquake splitting open the market square and allowing a party of magicians to emerge would draw his attention, wherever he is.”

“Well...” Lar could not really argue with that, and subsided. Emmis thought the ambassador was just eager to get a good look at his home, now that he was unexpectedly back here.

The door of the palace opened again, and a youth in a black-and-silver tunic emerged and ran across the square, circling around the visitors and heading full-tilt toward Semma Castle.

“We could go inside,” Lar suggested. “The Council doesn’t make anyone wait out here in the sun.”

Ithinia turned to glare at him. “If I wanted you to play native guide, Your Excellency, I would have asked you.”

The palace doors opened again, but this time both valves swung wide, and a soldier in a red-and-gold uniform emerged. He saluted Ithinia and the other wizards, then cleared his throat.

“Lady Kalira, Chancellor and Vice-Regent of the Empire of Vond, welcomes you and invites you all to come inside and be made comfortable.” He spoke Ethsharitic with only a very slight accent, less than Lar’s.

“We have come to speak to the full Council,” Ithinia replied.

“The full Council is not here, honored visitor. A messenger has been sent to the Regent, but at present only Lady Kalira and three other Councillors are in attendance.”

Ithinia frowned, then turned to confer quietly with the other wizards. As they spoke, Emmis noticed the soldier staring at Lar. He had the expression of someone trying to figure out where he knew a face from.

He also noticed that Lord Ildirin did not look happy. Despite his vigor, Ildirin was a very old man, and they had been doing a great deal of standing around in the sun; Emmis thought he was probably exhausted.

One of the other wizards — Serem, was it? — pointed to Ildirin just then, and Ithinia nodded.

Then she turned back to the messenger and said, “We will accept the Chancellor’s invitation, with the understanding that our business here is not private, and that members of the public must be admitted.”

The soldier bowed. “This way, please,” he said, and turned to lead them in.

Almost the entire party from Ethshar — all of it but the two gargoyles, who took up posts on either side of the palace doors, and the four prisoners who had been left behind in Lumeth and Ashthasa — followed him, through a grand entrance hall and around a corner into a large and luxurious drawing room equipped with a goodly assortment of chairs, sofas, and settees.

“Please, make yourselves comfortable,” the soldier said. “Lady Kalira will be here shortly, and Lord Sterren should be on his way.”

Emmis was happy to take a seat and give his feet a rest; Lar settled beside him, then leaned over and asked, “How did Ithinia find out about...” He hesitated, glancing around to be sure no one was listening. “Did you tell her we wanted to prevent warlocks from coming to Vond?”

“No,” Emmis said. The settee suddenly seemed a bit crowded and much less comfortable.

“Did you ask her to do any of this?”

“No,” Emmis said. He twisted in his seat. “Didn’t you? You and Lord Ildirin were talking to her — I thought this was your idea.”

Lar shook his head. “No, we just asked her to help us locate and capture the assassins. Which she did. And we asked her questions about protective spells. But we didn’t ask for the Guild to help this way.”

“Did you ask her about...” It was Emmis’s turn to glance about. “...about the hum? The source?”

“No. She frightened me. I didn’t want to trust her that much.”

“She frightens me a little, too,” Emmis admitted.

“So what did you tell her?”

Emmis considered that, then said, “I didn’t really tell her much of anything. I asked her a question, and then she figured everything out.”

“Do you think that was magic?”

In fact, Emmis was fairly certain no magic had been used, that Ithinia was just smarter and better informed than she had any right to be, but he turned up a palm. “I don’t know,” he said.

“What was the question?”

Emmis shifted uneasily. “It was about something the theurgist told me in the Wizards’ Quarter,” he said. “Corinal said something about wizards guarding the Lumeth Towers, and I asked her why they do that.”

Lar cocked his head. “Did she tell you?”

“Not really,” Emmis lied.

A few days ago, he knew, he would have happily explained everything to his employer; even now, he wasn’t sure why he was holding anything back. The events of the last few days, though, had taught him that information was power — and that there was power in withholding information, as well. Knowledge, once shared, couldn’t be taken back. And partial information was dangerous. A few apparently harmless facts had sent the Lumethans into a panic and set assassins on the ambassador’s trail; a few words here and there had let him save the ambassador from those assassins. The magicians in the Wizards’ Quarter charged high fees for answers to questions they didn’t understand, while Ithinia seemed to have figured out half the World from being asked a question. Questions and answers, facts and mysteries, could lead in any number of unexpected directions.

Emmis was not sure what Lar would do with knowledge of the Towers’ origins and purpose, so he was not about to give it.

“Are the towers the source of the hum?” Lar asked.

“I don’t know,” Emmis said. “They might be. I didn’t mention the hum to Ithinia.” He hesitated, then added, “Whatever they are, the Wizards’ Guild doesn’t want anyone interfering with them — that’s why they’re doing all this, to protect the towers. I really, truly wouldn’t want to be anyone who threatened those things.”

“Ah,” Lar said. He looked thoughtfully in Ithinia’s direction.

Just then there was a small commotion at one side of the room and a woman entered, a tall woman with aristocratic features and dusky skin, wearing a gown of dark red embroidered in bright red and gold — though not embroidered terribly well, Emmis thought when she got close enough for him to see her clearly. She was escorted by two more soldiers, in red kilts and brown leather breastplates.

The Ethsharitic soldiers all stood ready at the sight of this pair, but the woman between them ignored that. “I am Lady Kalira,” she announced.

“I am Ithinia of the Isle,” the wizard replied, rising from her chair. “I am here as the chosen representative of the Wizards’ Guild.”

“You want to address the Imperial Council?” She spoke Ethsharitic with a thick accent.

“Yes.”

“I am sorry. Only four of the seven councillors are in Semma; the others are in other parts of the Empire, on business, and will not be back for some time. I have sent for the Regent, and he should be here shortly; are the five of us enough? I can send messengers to get the other three.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Ithinia said. “The five of you will suffice.”

Lady Kalira blinked, and leaned toward one of the soldiers. “G’dyas ’suffice’?” she murmured.

“Golishye,” the soldier muttered back.

She nodded. Then she smiled at Ithinia — not a very convincing smile, one obviously owing more to protocol than to any sort of warmth — and said, “Will you join us for dinner?”

Ithinia looked around the room, at the five other magicians, the Ethsharitic guardsmen, at Lar and Emmis, and finally at Lord Ildirin, who was sitting straight in his chair, but whose papery skin was red from the sun. “We would be delighted,” she said. “And perhaps something to drink, while preparations are made?”

“Drink? Of course,” Lady Kalira said. “I will see to it.” She turned, gesturing to her escorts, and the three of them marched back out the way they had entered.

Emmis watched them go. “Who is she, exactly?” he asked Lar quietly.

“She is Lord Sterren’s second in command,” Lar explained. “She is head of the Imperial Council, and runs everything in the Empire that Sterren doesn’t want to bother with.”

“So is it Lord Sterren or this Council that’s actually in charge?”

Lar sighed. “The Council says it’s Lord Sterren. Lord Sterren says it’s the Council.”

Emmis turned to look at his employer. “You’re serious?”

“Yes.”

“I thought the custom in the Small Kingdoms was to fight over who got to rule, not over who didn’t have to.”

“It is. But the Emperor didn’t want to be bothered with all the details, so he named Lord Sterren his chancellor and let him run things. Lord Sterren said it was too much for him to do alone, so he made the Imperial Council. They were all chosen to be people who knew how to run things but who didn’t want to rule; Vond did not want to worry about being overthrown by the Council.”

“Oh.”

“When Vond went away, Lord Sterren named Lady Kalira as his successor and resigned as chancellor. The Council wanted someone else in charge, so they made Sterren Regent. Now they argue about who is in charge.” He turned up a palm. “They agree on almost everything else.”

“Why don’t they just resign?”

Lar sighed. “If the Regent resigns the Council will declare him guilty of treason. If any councillors resign without the Regent’s permission he won’t bother with calling them traitors, but he might hang them. So they stay.”

“It’s ridiculous. Can’t they find someone who wants to run the Empire?”

Lar looked at Emmis pityingly. “Would you want someone in charge who wants to be an emperor? They lived under Vond. They saw. No one wants that again.”

“But it wouldn’t be a warlock!”

“Does that matter?”

“Um.” Emmis didn’t have a good answer for that. After all, the overlord wasn’t a warlock, but his authority was still fairly complete. In theory he ruled because he had the consent of the city’s people, but in practice the people were never asked; the overlord could pretty much do anything he pleased. If he ever went mad, or turned out to be incompetent or evil, the other two overlords would remove him — that was the whole point of having a triumvirate rule the Hegemony, so that one bad ruler wouldn’t ruin the whole thing — but he could undoubtedly do a lot of damage before that happened.

The Empire of Vond didn’t have a triumvirate, or any pretense of popular consent.

“So you didn’t say anything to Ithinia about warlocks?” Lar asked, startling Emmis.

“No. But when I asked about the towers’ magic she figured out that since I’m working for you, the Empire must be concerned about magic, and the Empire’s only important magic was Vond’s warlockry, so she put it all together and decided that warlocks mustn’t be allowed in Lumeth or Vond.”

“Reasonable. She’s a smart woman.”

“She’s a wizard.”

“Wizards aren’t all smart, Emmis.”

“She’s a Guildmaster.”

“Well, yes, you have a point there.”

And that was when the door swung open and a line of servants carrying trays appeared, bringing an assortment of beverages. The two men put their conversation aside to join in the refreshments.

Emmis had just finished a mug of amazingly bad, unpleasantly warm beer when the door opened again and a young man, about his own age, wandered in.

He was dressed in black, with silver embellishments on his shoulders and cuffs — simple but elegant. His hair had been trimmed by someone who was very good at trimming hair, but it, too, was very simple. Back in Ethshar Emmis would have taken him for the son of a noble or wealthy family; here he wasn’t sure what to make of him.

Lar, however, had apparently recognized him instantly, and was bowing deeply. Hesitantly, Emmis bowed, as well.

“Who is he?” Emmis whispered.

“That’s Lord Sterren,” Lar hissed back.

Emmis blinked and almost fell; he jerked up awkwardly out of his bow.

“That’s the Regent?” he said. “But he isn’t any older than I am!”

It was only when the entire room fell silent and a dozen eyes turned to stare at him that Emmis realized he had spoken aloud. He felt himself redden, but he refused to look away or apologize; he had simply stated the obvious.

Lord Sterren looked at him, obviously amused.

“I’m Sterren,” he said, stepping over and holding out a hand. “And yes, I’d say we’re of an age, you and I. Who are you?” He spoke Ethsharitic like a native — in fact, Emmis thought he would have sounded right at home in Westgate or the Old Merchants’ Quarter.

Emmis took the hand in his own. “Emmis of Shiphaven,” he said. “I’m the ambassador’s aide.”

“Are you? Then you’re on my payroll?”

“I suppose I am. Ah... what’s the proper way to address you, my lord?”

“Whatever you like. ’My lord’ is fine. Care to earn your pay by introducing me around?”

Emmis bowed. “I would be honored.” He turned, looked at the gathered magicians and soldiers, then added, “If I can remember everyone myself, that is.”