The Seer: Chapter Seventeen

    Maris wandered the coast and its many harbor towns, spending some of the money that Innel delivered monthly to her, listening to the news of the approaching coronation. When it arrived in midsummer, festivals unfolded across the land, turning into boisterous and inebriated revelries that Maris knew were mere echoes of the extravaganzas occurring in the capital.

    It had been over half a century since a monarch had been crowned. Despite her cynicism Maris found herself caught up in the optimism embedded in the celebrations. She wondered if the queen might bring more than a new face to her coins.

    But Maris did not enjoy the festivities for long, making camp in a deserted collection of lightly wooded hills at the edge of a beach, sleeping on the dunes. With the rise and fall of the surf, roar of the waves, scent of brine, and cry of gulls, she could feel the tug of the salt water and had very nearly decided to contract as crew and return to the ocean again.

    Of course, she already had a contract. With the crown. For which she had taken coin.

    She stayed.

    She felt the man riding along the beach toward her before she saw him. Young, trim, clean-shaven, his rust-red and black surcoat hemmed with a messenger’s white. Another horse followed along.

    He rode up to her. “Marisel dua mage?”

    She nodded affirmation, wondering how long he had been searching the countryside and beaches for her. From the way his throat tightened and his heart sped at her nod, she guessed this was the first time he had met one of her kind. No surprise, his reaction, in this land where a loathing for magic was as common as poverty. Odd, she had always thought, when the Shentarat glass plains in her homeland should have served as a more terrifying reminder. Perhaps rumor was more compelling than evidence.

    They were beautiful mounts, the horses. Large and brown, happy and healthy. It cheered Maris to draw herself up onto the saddle of this powerful animal that was well cared for and wanted no more from the day than the chance to run and to eat.

    “Nalas,” he answered as they rode north, when she asked his name.

    “And you are…?” she asked, prompting for more.

    “Confused,” he admitted with a rueful smile. At her look, he continued. “A half-year ago I was honor guard to the princess’s intended. His second, I suppose. Now he’s Lord Commander as well as Royal Consort, and all the other things he takes care of. So am I second? To which? I rather doubt I’m second as consort to the princess — the queen,” he quickly corrected, then shrugged. “Things have been a bit confused since the coronation. Forgive me for the lengthy explanation, High One –”

    “Don’t call me that.”

    He winced and fell silent. “My apologies,” he said at last.

    She nodded, the touch of regret at her sharp words tempered by the realization that this was probably why Innel had sent him, to be charming while escorting a potentially touchy mage to the capital. His manner was easy and kind and she found herself relaxing somewhat. Credit to the Lord Commander for thinking ahead.

    Her mood soured when they reached the crowded outskirts of the capital, the crowds thick, a morass of struggles and impulses, of maladies and miseries. She felt them pressing in, their ills palpable.

    She reached focus down through her horse’s legs and into the earth, borrowing his animal ease, finding some measure of calm in each hoof step. Solidifying her ethereal shield muffled somewhat the increasing splashes of pain and hunger but did not block them out altogether.

    Yarpin’s city gates were twisted wrought iron, stretching upward, cumulating in high, sharp pikes, as if to claim even the sky.

    What will Arunkel not eat?

    When last she had been here, the Grandmother Queen was a handful of years dead and Restarn had finally produced his heir. These events seemed to spark a frenzy in Restarn who had then set in motion another massive Anandynar expansion. As his armies spread across the land, stomping flat tribes and towns and city-states that had previously thought to rule themselves, Maris had gone deep into the countryside. Inspired by those with the temerity to resist Arun rule, she helped the many who needed her, applying skills she had herself only recently come to own.

    She found herself at a village deep in disputed territory and advised them on how to resist the avaricious Arun army, only to watch helplessly as the village elders decided they would instead pay the tribute the new rulers demanded, even though it was obvious it would smash them into poverty and starvation. Her warnings fell on deaf ears; they simply refused to fight.

    She moved on, giving what she could, but too many needed too much. She could not help them all.

    The ocean of suffering Iliban.

    When exhaustion finally drove her into retreat, she went back to Perripur, where unification fever had sparked to flame, the confederated states finally willing to put aside their differences to organize an army to against the encroaching Anandynars. A united Perripur would have been undefeatable.

    But it never came to pass. Restarn proved too canny to tangle with his southern neighbor, keeping his forces well north of the border states.

    She was bitterly disappointed. A conflict with Arun would have taken Perripin attention from domestic squabbles, put it north, where it belonged. But lacking a credible Anandynar threat, the states were content to stay independent and bickering. As long as Restarn did not cross the border, they would not bother to resist him.

    While, above the border line, the Anandynar king simply took what he wanted.

    As their two horses passed through the gates, people surged out of their way, and they watched those who watched them. Here Maris’s foreign looks brought curiosity; it was Nalas’s uniform that attracted fearful, suspicious glares. The king’s soldiers — now the queen’s — had not been well-liked. That had not changed.

    Was Yarpin, she wondered, truly worse than the other Arun cities, like Munasee or Garaya? Or was she letting the disturbing memory of Keyretura color her assessment?

    It was worse, she decided: there was a keenness to Yarpin’s heaviness, as if somehow the avarice of the empire burned hottest here, using the potency of human suffering as fuel, producing a dark smoke of agony that spread outward in all directions.

    The actual stench was impressive as well, coming from the sewers and the corners of city walls that served as both trash heaps and scavenger piles.

    As they passed, a ragged woman stood to watch, one side of her face intact, the other melted, the monarchy’s sigil branded on her face atop where her other eye used to be.

    The king’s justice. The queen’s now, Maris supposed. Before she quite realized it she had sent a bit of herself into the woman’s body. Hunger, injury, pain. What had she expected? She withdrew quickly.

    At the edge of an alleyway three men crouched in a circle. One threw dice across the stones, his other hand tight around the arm of a small boy. As the dice came to rest he held up the boy’s arm with a triumphant yell, drawing the terrified child deeper into the alleyway, leaving little doubt as to his fate. A sense of sick despair came to her.

    She could make it otherwise. Dismount, follow them into the alley. Take the boy away from him. No one could stop her. But would she be anything more than his new captor? She could imagine the look of horror in his eyes as he realized what she was. To release him again only meant he would be back in someone else’s grasp before long. There was no winning that game.

    For a moment a man paced them, hopping along on one leg, hand trailing a brick wall for balance. Then he stopped, shook his cloak off to reveal a wrist stump, which he jerked up and toward them. Nalas looked straight ahead as if he had not seen it, though Maris suspected otherwise. The man wouldn’t have dared the gesture, Maris knew, if not for the messenger’s white that meant they were unlikely to stop. Maris had seen Arun soldiers dismount for milder offenses, and the offender had not even limped away.

    What had the man done to lose two limbs? Touched an expensive item in the marketplace, perhaps. Or hopped too slowly out of the way of some aristo out for a ride.

    Fingers extended, she reached her focus downward below the stones and dirt and basements under the buildings, deep beneath the layers of human remains and debris, farther past all touch of humankind, taking stability from the earth itself, bringing it back into her body and mind to keep the cacophony at bay.

    The more of Yarpin she saw, the better she remembered why she didn’t want to be here. It had not changed much since the last time.

    As their mounts ascended the steepening main road, eager to reach home, they passed merchant mansions. The lanes to either side widened. First the Lesser Houses, then the Greater Houses — estates of dual-color splendor, towers reaching high, sigils snapping in the ocean breeze.

 

---

 

    But beyond the glinting Yarpin palace dwarfed them all, rising beyond the palace walls. At the gates to the palace grounds they were waved through.

    What, she wondered again, was she doing here, atop this fine horse, contracted to the very monarchy she abhorred?

    It seemed that while Yarpin had not changed, she herself had. When she was done here, she promised herself, she would go home to Perripur.

    Of course, memory waited there as well. Perripin faces swam in her mind’s eye, those she had not been able to save, from her parents to friends to countless strangers. The few who had cursed her across the years were bad enough, but worse yet were the many who should have cursed her but who, instead, praised her with their last breath.

    Even working for the Arun monarchy was better than that.

 

---

 

    She was escorted through high-ceilinged halls lined with lavish tapestries depicting mining towns joyously celebrating beside Arun soldiers, or tribes expressing of gratitude for Anandynar rule. History was written by those who owned the looms.

    And now those she passed were well-fed and well-dressed. None missed limbs or were ill. She felt an ease come over her, and something like self-loathing followed close behind.

    At a room with doors higher than anyone could need, with windows that looked out into the gardens of red tulips, stood the man she had met in the Ill Wind, whom she now knew to be the Royal Consort and Lord Commander.

    “Marisel al Perripur,” he said, dismissing the scribes and soldiers who filled the room. “On behalf of my queen, Cern esse Arunkel, welcome to Yarpin palace.”

    He was impressive in his uniform, the black collar glinting with royal gold, mixed-metal buttons down the front atop rust-colored amardide fabric. Maris realized that she had not truly met him before. These were his colors, not the nondescript clothes he’d worn at their meeting at the Ill Wind. Had he dressed thus in that meeting, would she have agreed to this contract?

    “Please,” he said, inviting her to sit at a table with him.

    At the center of the table was a bowl of fruit. She picked out a green lilikoi, grown in southern Perripur, far distant. Such wealth.

    “Our gratitude, Marisel, for coming to us here.”

    So very polite. With a mage, respect first. Reason later.

    She had agreed to this obscene contract, she could say. She regretted it now and would return his money and go, she could say.

    Instead she bit into the lilikoi, sucking out the pulp through the hole she’d made with her teeth, as she had when she’d been a child. Tart and sweet, it brought her memories of bright, hot summers full of ease and childhood delights. Before Keyretura. “And so I am here,” she said, hearing the weight in her tone. “What do you want of me?”

    “What can you do?”

    “I have many skills,” she answered, putting the lilikoi aside to pick out a ripe peach. “Among them arithmetics, high-elevation farming, circular harp, and birthing babies. Shall I give you a complete list?”

    It smelled marvelous, the peach.

    “We can discuss something else, then. News of Perripur, perhaps?”

    This was how one caught an animal in a trap, with bait like the fruit she held in her hand. She frowned, put it back on the table. “Are you so badly in need of company that you must hire a mage to find it?”

    His smile froze for a moment. “I meant no insult.”

    She waved the apology away. “We’ll both be happier if you simply tell me what it is you want of me.”

    “I want to know who is loyal to the new queen.”

    “Ah. That is not on the list.”

    “No? You can’t tell a lie from the truth?”

    “No better than someone with good eyes. No better than someone who knows the person well, that’s certain.”

    It often played out this way, explaining the limits of her abilities to those who had such high hopes. The impoverished and destitute, for all their misery, asked for simple things. To ease the pain. To live another day.

    “It is said that magic can help find magic.”

    “Ah, you want something found?”

    “Someone. Can you find a person?”

    “In a house, perhaps,” she answered.

    “Across the empire?”

    “That is another matter. It would be like touching each stone in the Sennant river to find the single one made of iron instead of rock.”

    “What if the person is a mage?”

    Now she was on alert. To be hired to search for another of your kind was never a good sign.

    “A Sensitive can find a mage in a small village if you give him time, but he must still know which village to search. Magic isn’t like a blocked sewer that you can find by stink. More like the wind — you see its effects where it ripples the high grasses or bends back the trees. If a mage has done magic somewhere, I may be able to sense it, like a footprint in mud. The mage may be long gone but I could point at where they once stood.”

    “So if I were to tell you where someone was, could you” — he considered — “stop them from performing any magic?”

    “You want me to fight another mage?” she asked, feeling her body and senses tighten.

    “Perhaps.”

    Maris tried to hold her anger in check, then wondered why she bothered. She let it course through her and out her hand, slamming her palm against the peach, breaking it open, the hard pit all that remained between herself and the table. Juice oozed around the squashed fruit. “Don’t you study history in that fine library of yours? When mages fight, everyone dies but the mages. How can you make the same mistakes, generation after generation, then — your cities flattened — bemoan your ill-fortune yet do it again? You are idiots, all of you.”

    At least there was this advantage to being a mage: she could insult the powerful and merely be, ever so politely, asked to leave. She stood.

    “Marisel –” Innel began, standing also. Apology or rebuke, she didn’t care.

    “If you want to set mages against each other, find someone else.”

    “Good,” Innel said.

    “Good?” She glared up at him. “What’s good about it?”

    “This is why I asked you to come. To help me understand. To advise. Stay, and I’ll take what you offer.”

    Suddenly she saw that he hadn’t been reluctant to push her at all. He’d been probing her to see what she could and would do. She had missed the obvious. She was rusty at these games.

    On edge, being here, she admitted to herself. Too much wealth bought with blood.

    She could leave. Give aid to those with real need. The injured, the ill, the pregnant. But no; she could not face it again, not so soon.

    And she had taken his coin.

    Anger drained into weariness. She wondered if he guessed how much she craved this respite. She exhaled, felt herself become subdued. “So be it.”

    He smiled at this, the smile of someone who had scored a point. “Join us for the evening meal, Marisel. The queen is –” a small pause. “wary of mages, but she’ll change her mind once she’s met you. Until then, perhaps a bath? A visit to the library? And…” he picked out another ripe peach, held it out to her.

    Trap or no, she wanted the fruit. She took it.

    The bath was hot, the scented soap lush with Perripin spices — no accident, that. Even so, she made long and delighted use of the luxury.

    The peach tasted marvelous.

 

---

 

    To her vague disgust, Maris found she had quickly become accustomed to soft beds and splendid food.

    And then there was the library.

    “Tea, Marisel?”

    Innel poured from a cylinder, a stream of pink liquid mingling with steam as it filled a clear glass mug. It was not the spiced, bitter tea Arunkin drank — out of embarrassment for their wealth, went the Perripin joke — but a smoked fruit and bark tea, imported from Perripur, no doubt at some expense. A gesture not lost on her.

    “I have some items once owned by the person I am looking for.” On the table between them he put a bundle wrapped in heavy black silk, tied with black cord. He slid it across to her.

    She touched it. “You know something about magic, Lord Commander.”

    “Less than I might,” he said with a twitch of a smile. “The old king was of the strong opinion that magic brings disaster to all it touches.”

    “He was right in that.”

    “That seems untrue to me, Marisel. You have prevented a number of disasters these last months.”

    At his direction, Maris had been keeping watch on him and the queen and a few others, one of whom was unimportant to palace politics but even so had been attacked five times in five different ways over the months she had been here. The poor man was only a servant, bringing stacks of bedding into the palace from the laundry. Slow attacks, all of them. Plenty of time to warn Innel and have him calmly send soldiers to take care of the matter.

 

---

 

    Clearly Innel was arranging these. It was the next step after fear, testing, and only mildly insulting.

    In truth she was barely annoyed. He was paying her astonishingly well to eat magnificently, bathe often, and keep track of a few people.

    And there was the library. Truly as astonishing a collection as Gallelon had promised.

    One day as Maris had come into the book-filled rooms she found an elderly woman there, dressed in the gray and brown of House Nital. Yliae was her name, and she was warm and well-spoken, engaging Maris in a fascinating discussion of the architecture of stone bridges and the challenges of harvesting amardide forests. Hours slipped pleasantly by.

    The following week a man in Helata’s green and blue proved eager to talk with her about the various ships on which she’d sailed. He was happy to tell her stories of the far side of Arapur, which he had been to and she had not yet. More hours slipped by.

    Gallelon was right. Some of the cleverest of the Iliban.

    Of course Innel was arranging these visits. But she could hardly complain when week after week, she was kept engaged, engrossed, delighted.

    One day Yliae offered to take Maris into the city by carriage to hunt rare books from small, private collections. Now Maris had begun to amass another small set of tomes, one that would be hard to transport when she left. It was a pleasant problem to have. Innel was working hard to keep her happy.

    “Surely the old king had mages of his own,” she said to Innel.

    His eyes flickered, ever so slightly. “If he did, he has them no longer.”

    Maris had come across the old king as she had explored the palace. He lay in his bed, sick with something in his blood that should not be there. Something that, with some effort, she might be able to clean. “I could look in on him.”

    Innel shook his head. “The queen wouldn’t allow it. And rightly so; if he gets better under your care, they’ll say you had no part in it, but if he gets worse, they’ll blame you.” He smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid Arunkin have a ways to go to accept your kind.”

    “I don’t need to be in the room,” she said, suspecting he knew this. “Simply nearby. No one need ever know.”

    “No,” he said firmly. “That is not where I want your attention.”

    It was obvious that Innel knew perfectly well what was causing the old king’s illness. Whether it was Innel or the queen or someone else feeding Restarn something to keep him sick didn’t matter; Innel did not want him to get better.

    So be it. Not her concern.

    But Innel was watching her keenly now.

    Very well; he was paying her enough to have earned a bit of reassurance.

    “The great halls are full of spiders, best left to do their work without interference,” she said, borrowing a saying from Perripur. Innel’s eyes narrowed slightly. He knew the saying, knew what it meant. Knew what she suspected.

    “In Arunkel we honor spiders,” he said. “They ensure appropriate behavior from lesser insects.” By eating them, he meant. “You are wise, Marisel.”

    Wise enough to know who provided her with sumptuous meals, insightful conversation, and a library that rivaled any she had ever seen before.

    Thus reassured, Innel unrolled the black silk, revealing a pale blue and white seashell, a strip of blue cloth, and a few strands of brown hair.

    Maris put her fingertips on the shell, sorting out her impressions, separating out the taste of human presence from the vast backdrop that was the shell’s many years prior in the ocean. She subtracted out the most recent and fleeting touches of whoever delivered these items to Innel. Few others had touched the shell since it had been parted from the great salt seas, so this did not take long. She let the impressions settle inside her, like tea leaves falling into patterns at the bottom of a cup. It was important not to rush, a lesson that Keyretura had drilled into her repeatedly.

    One strong presence remained. An odd mix of terror and assurance and grief. “She is young,” Maris said. “Still a child. There is the taste of knowing about her that most do not have so early in life. Is this the one you seek?”

    “Yes.” In his voice she heard the force of desire and a touch of surprise.

    Well, that was unavoidable. Half her work to the wealthy was proving herself.

    “Is there more?” he asked.

    “Often tired. Hungry. Afraid. Cold.”

    “When?”

    “I can’t tell. Across many years.”

    “And the cloth and hairs?”

    Maris shook her head. “They tell me nothing.” Some parts of the body could say a great deal about the spirit who lived in them. A bone, even a bit of flesh. Maris saw no reason to tell him that.

    “Can you find her?”

    Maris focused on the man before her. “If she is where I happen to be looking, I will know her. But to find her in the world at large is another matter. You would do better to have your many informants search for her.”

    “I am already doing that. I want you to search for her as well.”

    “Perhaps you don’t understand my meaning. I would need to search tile by tile through the palace. Each brick of each building. Every step along the Great Road.”

    “I understand. Start in Yarpin and expand outward. I don’t believe she is in-city, but she might be. I need to be sure.”

    She looked at him in astonishment. “You cannot be serious. That could take a very long time.”

    “How long?”

    “Years. Decades. Centuries. I don’t know.”

    He nodded, stood. “Then best you begin soon.”

    “Finding her this way is impossible, Lord Commander. That’s certain.”

    “It’s only impossible until someone does it. All I ask is that you try, Marisel.”

 

---

 

    Maris walked the halls, tasting those in every room she passed, searching for the girl. She suspected it would be faster to knock on doors and ask if she were there, but she doubted Innel would appreciate such a direct approach.

    It occurred to Maris to wonder if this were another test. But no; there was an intensity and urgency about Innel’s tone.

    An absurd way to search, but so be it; as long as she took Innel’s coin and enjoyed the palace’s extravagances, she would uphold her end of the contract.

    So she strolled along polished wood floors, trailed her fingers along painted walls, and sent bits of herself into each room, questing for the one taste that would match the owner of the shell. Despite not wearing the black robes, she gathered curious stares.

    Not her problem. Innel could explain her as he wished. After enough hours, she would tire, and return to the library.

    Weeks passed this way. She did not find the girl in the palace. But she found other interesting people.

    Like the old king, whom she looked in on despite Innel’s objection. She dipped into his body as he lay there in the bed, sweating and coughing, then into the body of the slave who slept in his room, and the doctor who came to treat him. A taste of what the doctor brought to him told Maris that this was the source of his illness.

    That did not surprise her. What did surprised her was that every time the doctor rubbed the ointment into his gums, right before she did, the old king’s body tightened and his heart sped.

    He knew.

    She thought of telling Innel but decided that it was best to stay out of the matter. He had made clear he didn’t want her attention on the old king.

    So be it.

 

---

 

    Maris knew she would eventually need to take her search outside to the palace grounds, then into the city at large, but as the weather turned cold and wet, she found herself far more interested in staying warm and dry inside.

    So instead she took the search deeper, into kitchen corners, back rooms, servant dormitories, underground storage areas, tunnels that led to garrison and dungeon. She touched on each person, passing quickly over the ones she already knew, telling herself that she was being thorough, that the girl might have somehow slipped into the palace while she wasn’t looking. It was a weak justification.

    The truth was that she had grown accustomed to being around those who were not suffering and in need. She delayed through autumn as the land slid into dark winter. With rains and then snows outside, she wandered the now-familiar palace halls, delving into basements, toilet rooms, deep closets. The deep, sealed tunnels. The spaces above and between floors.

    Which was how she had come across a man and a woman sitting together a small cellar room disguised as root storage on one side and a closet on the other. She knew them: the older woman was the minister of finance, the young man an administrator.

    Both were afraid. Very afraid.

    Usually she did not listen in on such things, wanting to stay as far from Arun politics as Innel’s coin would allow, but she was intrigued to find people where they should not be, where no room was supposed to be, and in such a state of agitation. She moved her consciousness fully into the room, curling bits of air on itself to give herself the equivalent of ears inside.

 

---

 

    “We’ve waited long enough,” the man said urgently. “Restarn promised us –”

    “It doesn’t matter what Restarn promised.”

    A frustrated sound. “Yes. All right. But look at how the price of metals rises, Oleane. We could make a profit now, one that would fund everything. If Restarn were on the throne, we’d have some liberty in our operations, and privacy, too, but now –”

    “No, no, no,” the woman called Oleane said, cutting him off. “Things are different now.”

    “Damn it, I want what I was promised.”

    “Keep your voice down, boy. My books are under audit. No more slop. We must be very careful. You must be very careful.”

    “I am, I am.”

    “You are not.” Her voice dropped. “It’s not Restarn any more. It’s not even Cern. It’s Innel you need to be concerned with. The sooner you get fixed with that, the better.”

    “It doesn’t have to be Innel.”

    “I don’t want to hear it. You stink of treason.”

    “He’s sending the city into the sewer, Oleane. No one is following the old agreements. He has shaken the table, and game pieces are everywhere. The queen only watches. We must to do something.”

    “When things are settled, perhaps –”

    “Old woman, if we wait for things to settle, you will be cold in your grave and I will be too old to act. Cern turns whatever way the wind blows, and now the wind is called Innel. Let’s change the wind’s name.”

    “Hush!”

    “There are others who think as I do, Oleane. Don’t hide behind your hands like a child, or when the wind changes next you will be left behind.”

    “Don’t threaten me. I’m old enough to be your grandmother.”

    “Maybe that’s the problem. Best you leave these battles to those young enough imagine what might yet be.”

    “Idiot. Leave war to the young and you repeat the same mistakes we made when we were young. That’s why we have generals. Have you learned nothing in your short life?”

    “Innel is not much older than I am. Look at what he has managed.”

    “He was in the Cohort, you fool.”

    “You are wise, Oleane. Will you be our general?”

    “Ah.” The woman’s voice held a smile. “I see. You and your ‘others.’ Not a general among you.”

    “Truly, we need you. Will you stand with us?”

    “Innel is clever. His people are everywhere.”

    “That could be a different name on your tongue soon, if you’re with us. Maybe even yours.”

    “Don’t flatter me, boy. I know who could take over from Innel, and it isn’t me.”

    The man’s whisper held sudden passion. “Then you could be the one to choose. We’ve waited long enough. This is the time, Oleane.”

    “I’m not convinced. You can’t just –”

    “We are ready. Are you with us or not?”

    A pause. “Do you know what you’re suggesting, boy? How dangerous this is? Do you see who squirms in Execution Square this week?”

    “I am not afraid. It is time to act. Yes or no.”

    A longer pause. At last: “Yes.”

    Maris chuckled at the drama, withdrew, wondering if she should relay this to Innel or not. As she walked the hallways, a window afforded her a view of the aforementioned square where two men hung by their feet, heads a hand’s width above the ground, coated with some sticky substance that Maris guessed was honey. They had lasted two days thus far, despite the rats, but she did not give them much longer.

    Yes, she decided, she must tell Innel. While her contract did not require it, it seemed to her that to take his money meant to tell him when his life was in danger.

    The woman named Oleane and the young man with her were spiders. They had made their choices.

    She went to find the Lord Commander.

 

---

 

    The winter passed more comfortably than Maris would have thought possible so far north. Stoves and fireplaces were always warm.

    And the library. She could live in it for a hundred years and still not exhaust her interest.

    As for the search, as long as she continued to report various corruptions and treasonous plots to Innel, he seemed happy for her to put off leaving the palace grounds. When the ice began to melt and spring came, though, he reminded her, ever so gently, that he still needed the girl.

    So Maris took the search out of the palace with its warm halls onto the palace grounds, searching laundry and garrison, pig and goat pens. At the kennels and stables, she took her time with the dichu, the large Arunkel dogs, their black and tan brindled faces looking up at her eagerly, tails wagging, ears forward. Then the horses, strong and happy and eager to run. It was a pleasure to her.

    The girl was not there, though.

    When she could put it off no longer, she left the place grounds. Above, a clear night sky showed the constellation of archer chasing the world-snake, a battle that surely would satisfy no one. She brushed herself with a touch of shadow and illusion, enough that anyone who looked at her would see someone paler, in poorer clothes, less interesting than a Perripin woman wandering alone at night in Yarpin.

    As she walked past the Great Houses, she trailed her fingers across walls and iron gates, her attention raking through those within to see if they were the owner of the small seashell. When she had passed across every resident of the Eight Great Houses, she moved downhill and to the Lesser Houses.

    None of this took as long as Maris had hoped. There were simply not that many girls, and none of them the one the Lord Commander sought. Reluctantly she expanded her search outward, lane by lane. Merchant houses. Inns. Public houses. Storefronts. Apartments.

    And who was this girl on whom Innel was sufficiently intent to hire a mage at exorbitant cost to execute a fruitless search? She felt a twinge of sympathy for her, not wishing Innel’s attention on anyone but spiders.

    It seemed too much coincidence, the many rumors on the streets about fortune-tellers. Not only rumors, either — as the weather turned mild, girl children and young women flocked to street corners, shouting and calling, promising to reveal the future for a pittance and indeed a much lower price than the charlatan girl down the lane.

    Some used stones or ointments or bits of metal to aid with the prophecy. One even insisted on first obtaining a drop of blood from the inquirer; a clever trick to get the quarry invested, to stretch credibility before a word of supposed prophecy had even been spoken.

    Even so, Innel was too smart to believe such foolishness, and she could not imagine these tales at the heart of his motivation. More likely he had created the rumors himself to serve some intrigue or another. Perhaps the girl was some runaway aristo child, or the daughter of an enemy who could provide him some leverage once he had her in hand.

    As she walked the streets and watched the displays, Maris found herself saddened at how credulous people could be. Accounts of prophecy swept villages and cities as would a catchy tune, belief cresting and crashing with rumor, only to rise again years later when people forgot. They were good at forgetting, Iliban were.

    Or perhaps they remembered perfectly well, and these girls with their small pigs and dogs and buckets of bloody entrails were merely entertainment now that the coronation was over and life had returned to a bleak misery.

    In any case, if the new queen’s Royal Consort and Lord Commander wanted the girl, one way or another, with or without Maris’s help, he would have her.

    At last the search took her into the poorest sections, down-city. Now when she slipped her awareness into the inhabitants of the apartment buildings, she found sluggish blood, chronic illness, searing pain. When she found such need, she might sometimes take a moment. Open a slow channel here, shift the balance of blood there. Smooth the working of an organ, remove a pinpoint tumor. Small things, things that surely she had the time to do as she went by.

    Her search slowed. She tired more quickly. It left her aching, body and spirit, sparking images she thought buried, memories of those who had trusted her when they had nothing left. For them, she decided, she could give a little more, especially when so little was desperately needed.

    One night she sat, her back to a dilapidated wall, working on twins, a boy and a girl, who had eaten some corrupted food. She eased the tightening of their throats, shifted the fire in their veins, and watched as they slept to be sure they kept breathing. Hours later, when she was confident they would live, she stood slowly, stretching her stiffness, walking back to the palace where she lay on top of her soft palace bed.

    When at last she drifted off, the faces of the dead accompanied her into dream.