Somehow, I kept my composure until we made it back to the palace and sequestered ourselves in Elana’s private office. Then, and only then, did I collapse into what had become my chair and cry. Again.
Ten days had passed since we had snuck into the palace. So much had happened in those ten days, I could hardly recall it, let alone recount it. I was still not certain how we had survived the changing of the guard.
There had been no need to summon the Order of the Truth-Seekers: they had been among the first to arrive, had done the most to drive off what remained of the Heart’s Guard and the soldiers of House Solirium. They had secured the throne room, and brought loyal – or, at least, militantly neutral – staff with them to tend to our surprisingly few wounds and clean the mess left by the corpses we had made. And, with shocking stealth and discretion, they had disappeared the Great Wizard Derrek Rowan into the Labyrinth with none the wiser.
Loyalists – or, at least, enemies of House Solirium and peoples who had once been close allies of the Traianum Dynasty – had come out of the woodwork to support Elana and her new regime. Hierophants and initiates of the Triumvirate mysteries and priests and paladins of the Sun Court had descended upon the palace in droves, somehow informed of Elana’s ascendancy through the power of the Rorgoth Throne. The Lesser Houses banded together against the Great Houses to support her, as well.
Still, it took us most of two days to fully secure the palace. Clemency was granted immediately to most of the staff, the cooks and cleaners and aids and artisans whose politics consisted almost exclusively of putting food on the tables they shared with their parents and children, some of whom had even served Elana’s father. Guards who had served Aemillian – it still felt strange, sometimes, to say or even think his name after a year of avoiding it so assiduously – were escorted outside the palace gates, replaced by the guards of those Houses that had helped secure the palace, and by a few dozen mercenaries and adventurers who appeared to offer their services.
At my urging – though it had met little resistance – we sent hierophants and mystagogues through the whole of the palace with censers of purifying incense and aspergillums of lustral waters to drive back, as much as we could in a short time, the miasma left behind by Aemillian’s work and presence. None had questioned it: the Traianum Dynasty had been infamous for its particular form of piety. Nor did palace staff wait to be told to strip the royal suites of the toppled emperor’s house colors and chosen decor. Complete redesign would take time, but there was much that could be accomplished short of that.
It was a mere handful days before Elana was able to claim the grand imperial suite that had, before Aemillian, been her parents’ rooms and theirs before them. Rennin was owed, and technically given, the room he had held as Captain of the Iron Guard, once before … though he did not sleep there. To my surprise and delight, I was given my own suite in the royal wing, one usually reserved for extended family of the emperor, with a view of both the palace gardens and the Great Crystal Lake.
Meanwhile, riots had raged in Vencar City for three days straight, and had erupted on the slightest pretense thereafter. Some of it was agitation by House Solirius and their allies; some of it was rank opportunism. Some of it, though, was more complicated. Again, we were uncertain how word of Aemillian’s fall had reached the streets so quickly, and how so many had heard that Derrek had been emperor, even if only for an hour. The people feared and hated the notion of another wizard emperor so much that it was a struggle to convince them that there would not be one.
On the fifth day, word came of the legions returning from Liddarn. Word of the legions brought the nobility in droves. Most of the Houses seemed to be looking to pledge their fealty before they could be accused of wrongdoing, but some were clearly hoping to take the freshly contested Throne for themselves. The Great House Shii – whom Derrek had, perhaps jokingly but perhaps not, suggested as a rival for the throne – fortunately seemed to be in the former group, and brought their own soldiers to help bring order to the city.
The day that Derrek woke, we had been preparing for the arrival of the legions who, rumor made clear, seemed to have been expecting to find a new Great Wizard on the throne, not the Lost Heir of the Traianum Dynasty. Elana and Rennin and I, and all of our advisors, feared that without that Great Wizard’s backing, the generals of the legions might decide one of their own was owed a chance at rule. It would hardly be the first time in the history of Vencar that the legions had made that decision.
Elana and Rennin waited for me to cry myself out in my corner. To them, Derrek’s treacheries were overwhelmingly political. Infuriating, yes, and even murderous if you counted the fates of Veralar Tann and Orland Borgon, but not … personal. For me it was more complicated. He had not, in fact, actually betrayed me. He had warned me that there were secrets he could not yet tell. Had given me opportunities to guess at them. Had promised to get me out alive, even if no one else survived. And somehow that made it all worse. To say nothing of the fact that Elana had not yet decided whether or not to let him live, leaving me in a very uncertain place with regard to everything. Finally, I had wrung myself out – again. I gathered my dignity, scrubbed my face dry with the hem of my chiton, and sat up to face them.
“The legions will be here in just a few days,” Rennin said. He sat in the corner to my right, perched inelegantly on his own chaise lounge, pretending politely not to have seen my despair. “Whatever we do, we need to do it very soon. Kill him, release him, banish him … I’m not pretending to know what’s right or even what’s expedient. I just know that we have to act.”
Elana was settled behind her private desk. She had a formal office, where she might see official advisors or dignitaries, elsewhere in the palace. This was a personal office, meant for meetings with family and the composition of informal letters and journals. That other desk was a mess of papers and reports and messages awaiting the emperor’s attention. This one was clear save for her elbows and, frequently, three bowls of wine.
“I’m torn between two very distinct political and practical realities,” said Elana. “The ugly truth is that, on the one hand, whatever he did or didn’t plan with the Usurper, it was his actions that put me on the throne; and, on the other hand, he is powerful enough that, if he ever decided that he chose wrongly, he could take it back on a whim. If we punish him for what happened to Orland and Veralar, or for maybe almost handing us over to his ex-boyfriend, we look paranoid and ungrateful. If word ever gets out that we only rule because a wizard changed his mind about who to betray, that will substantially weaken our rule.”
We had been over all this before. Elana’s two primary ethics – justice and loyalty – could not be reconciled when it came to the actions of Derrek Rowan. We were running out of time to make a decision.
“Khanaarre,” Elana said at last. “You have listened to us go back and forth this whole time. You’ve helped us clarify some points of fact over the last week, but you’ve never advocated for one course of action over another. What do you think we should do?”
I sighed. It had only been a matter of time before they asked me outright. I could, perhaps should, have asked for time to weigh the scales of justice, again. On one side of the balance was the fact that, as we had always feared, his allegiance had been a ruse from the very beginning. On the other side of the scales was the fact that, in the end, the promises he had kept had been the ones to Elana and to me, not to Aemillian. The scales could not hold such a question. And, in the end, I didn’t need them to.
“I don’t know what you should do,” I said flatly. “I only know what I want.”
“And what is that?” Rennin asked, as gently as he could.
“I want him,” I said plainly. “I want to plumb the secrets he promised me. I want to understand how we got here. I want to give him the chance to earn our forgiveness. I want to see the tower you promised him at the edge of the world.”
Elana grimaced.
“What about Rrii`aa,” she asked, “your betrothed?”
“I want her even more,” I said without hesitation, “and I may not be able to have both. But I want the chance.”
Elana looked to Rennin. Together, they nodded slowly.
“He is yours,” she said with an imperious gesture. “I release him into your custody. He knows too much to live, but he also knows too much to die. The Order of Truth-Seekers will keep our secrets, and if it gets out that we had him thrown into the Labyrinth for a week … well, we can spin that, somehow. Fuck.”
“Fuck, indeed,” Rennin agreed. “I say wake him up at your leisure, but make sure he’s ready to play very, very nicely with the generals and diplomats and noble houses until Elana’s throne is secure.”
“Oh,” I said with a gallows laugh, “you mean everything that he fled the last dynastic struggle and hid as a blacksmith in Georg to avoid?”
They laughed, too, and dismissed me to finalize their own plans for the next day.
I could have waited. He had already been unconscious for most two weeks, but I didn’t doubt that another night of sleep would serve him well. With the decision made, though, I wanted to set things in motion.
Also, I missed him. We had spent nearly every day together for more than a year. I had become entirely accustomed to having him around. That would almost certainly be changing, soon, unless Rrii`aa liked him quite a lot, and I wanted to have him back for at least a few days before she and the rest of the court-in-exile arrived.
Alone, I made my way back to the Citadel of the Truth-Seekers, and the Labyrinth that lay below it. Just seeing my master’s plans on paper, I had not been able to imagine the scale, and I would never have anticipated its beauty. The compound was a citadel only in the sense that it was the central temple of a wizard’s order. Architecturally it looked like a large Vencari estate, perhaps a little more fortified than most, just a little north and uphill of the imperial palace. The exterior walls were painted with geometric figures and portraits of great heroes and icons of gods who offered protection and dispensed justice. The interior was like the estate of any great family, save for its massive interior garden … and the fact that the garden was dotted with port-holes made to admit light and air to the prison chambers of Labyrinth, below.
The Truth-Seekers were still not quite certain what to make of me, nor I of them. They clearly found the notion of an elf wizard as strange as anyone had, and seemed less inured to strangeness than most wizards. At the same time, they knew well the name of Maris Pello, and recalled clearly that he had been exiled without real proof of wrongdoing. And they seemed to know of me, already, as his apprentice. I found their austere robes, black linen with blackened breastplates, all trimmed in white and so much like the vestments of the Servants of the Inevitable, more than a little threatening. And I wondered if, for all that a Black Mask had made the Labyrinth they guarded, they did not hold even stronger opinions about Black Mask explorations and innovations than other wizards.
They, alone, of all who had helped drive Solirium and the Heart’s Guard from the palace, knew more than half the truth of what had happened between the prince, Aemillian, and Derrek Rowan. They knew that he had briefly held the throne, but that he had used its power to lay the foundations for Elana’s rule. They knew that he was my lover, and that he had been Aemillian’s. They had, it had been mentioned to me casually, both called upon the Great Wizards for aid in the years before Aemillian seized the throne, and lived in terror of what the Great Wizards might someday do that the Truth-Seekers could not counter.
Still, I had just come and gone in the company of the emperor and the Captain of the Iron Guard, and I had been here to check on Derrek almost every day this week. I was admitted to the Citadel without question, and politely escorted to the well-defended tower that gave access to the rock-cut tunnels of the Labyrinth below.
Derrek had been given the room at the center, of course. Even bearing the tokens that countered the Labyrinth’s obfuscations and magic-suppressing enchantments, my head was muzzy by the time we’d wended our way through the twisting halls to his door.
Bound in enchanted sleep, Derrek was precisely where we had left him. I thanked my guide, who nodded and closed the door behind himself, leaving us alone. With a sigh, I gently pulled the iron rings from his hands. His corona pulsed and flickered, as it had when we had put them on him, but otherwise showed no change. He looked so peaceful, at rest. Finally, I cast the counter to my sleep-spell – not the natural sleep I had hoped, we had discovered, but not the fairy tale nightmare I had feared, either.
He awoke quickly enough, drifting out of unconsciousness. He tensed, probably recalling where he was, or what he had done. He flinched when he saw me, but relaxed after a moment.
“So am I to live?” he said.
“Yes,” I said simply. That was, after all, the most important part.
He nodded, and sat up, swinging around to face me. He rubbed at his hands, noting the absence of the rings. He didn’t look away from me, but neither did he meet my eyes.
“You are being released to my custody,” I went on, trying to put a bit of humor in my voice. “We are all fairly upset with you.”
“Understandably,” he said, and sighed. “Deservedly, even. I didn’t mean to be holding the crown when he died, but then I had the Throne and there were things that needed to be done. So I did them. And there were things I meant to say and do after passing the crown to Elana. But I couldn’t, and that probably made a mess.”
I laughed, in spite of myself. In spite of everything.
“Yes,” I agreed. “That made a mess.”
“How long has it been?”
“The same ten days. Just a few more hours. Dreamer’s Day of the third week of the Wyvern, by Vencari reckoning. The legions you recalled will be here by Tohr’s Day. The court from Liddarn should be here two days after that. Elana needs you awake and diplomatic, supporting her claim to the throne.”
“And as my custodian, you’re responsible if I am not.”
I shrugged.
“Probably,” I admitted. Elana and I hadn’t discussed those details, yet, but he knew Vencari law better than I. “But that’s not the point.”
“I would say that my plan was always to leave Elana with the throne the same way I left Aemillian, but claiming to have had a plan would be a gross exaggeration.”
I winced.
“Derrek,” I said. “Please.”
He shook his head and looked away.
“Very well,” he said. “For you. And for her and Rennin, too, I guess, because the gods know that I owe you all at least that much.”
“Thank you,” I said. Then: “As a consolation prize, by the time we’ve dealt with the legions and the court, they should have gotten things sorted out with the estate my old master left me. The villa is a little run down, and it apparently comes with a handful of adopted cousins, but the house is mine, now. And you’ll be able to really meet Rrii`aa.”
He laughed.
“I’d like that,” he said.
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