She looked up suddenly from the scroll she was reading to find him standing there, staring. A smile curved her lips, and Tol’s throat went dry at the sight. He crossed the room to her and bowed.
They exchanged bland public greetings. “What brings you here this day, Lord Tolandruth?” she said, letting the scroll she was reading coil shut.
“A consultation with your imperial husband, lady,” he replied. “There’s some dispute about how best to employ Admiral Darpo’s squadron of warships.”
The flare of interest on her face faded. “Sounds deathly dull. Like everything else around here.”
When he politely inquired what she meant, he got an earful of her long-held rancor over her treatment by the other consorts.
“And all because I haven’t given Amaltar a child,” she fumed. “Doesn’t he have enough brats as it is?”
“It’s only an excuse,” Tol said. “An easy stick to beat you with because you’re an outsider.”
“Me? Outsider? I’ve lived my whole life in the Inner City! Not one of those other nags can say as much!”
He reminded her to keep her voice down, then added, “That’s not what I meant. You’re not like them, Val. You never have been. You’re a thinker and scholar, not a flighty court decoration.” He smiled. “How many books have you written?”
Her eyes flashed. “No one’s supposed to know that!”
“How many?”
“Four, counting the critique of Silvanesti poetry I finished last spring.”
Her pride was evident and he nodded. “That was a good one,” he said. “I liked it better than the history of the gnomes, or your biography of Ergothas II.”
“You read my books?”
He shrugged. “I needed to hear your voice, even written on a roll of foolscap.”
Valaran looked away, blinking. She muttered something about deceitful men.
Before he could ask what she meant, a herald arrived, telling Tol the emperor would see him now.
Reluctantly Tol started to take his leave of her, but Valaran caught his hand. The unexpected contact startled him.
“Thank you, Lord Tolandruth.”
The urge to sweep her into his arms was frighteningly strong. He had to settle for a brief caress of her hand.
The emperor’s council was contentious. The former Blood Fleet, now reconstituted under Admiral Darpo as the first squadron of the Ergothian Navy, had chased most of its former piratical comrades out of the Gulf of Ergoth. Trade was flowing across the bay in startling strength, and bulging coffers of tax money arrived daily from Lord Tremond in Thorngoth. Excited by the flow of gold, Ackal IV’s advisors wanted to send the fleet west to suppress the pirates prowling the seas between Sancrist Isle and Hylo.
“If I may speak, my lords!” Tol all but shouted over the wrangling warlords. It was poor manners, and a bad sign that he should have to shout at all. Ackal IV could not control these sessions. He sat in his father’s chair saying little, face gray, eyes squinted against his constant pain. Although propped up by his stiff court robes, he still leaned slightly to one side.
Tol repeated his request. Rymont, Valdid, and the rest slowly fell silent. “My thanks,” Tol said ironically. “I feel it would be a grave mistake to send the fleet out of the gulf.”
“Why?” Lord Rymont demanded.
Tol gestured to a heap of scrolls on the table. “From Tremond’s reports, it seems the pirates in the gulf have been suppressed, not wiped out. Send Admiral Darpo away, and they’ll fall upon the merchant shipping like a pack of starving wolves.”
“This fleet costs the imperial treasury 3,000 gold pieces a month,” Valdid complained.
“And how much in taxes did Lord Tremond send this last time?”
They knew the figure as well as he did. Twenty thousand crowns of gold and silver had just arrived in Daltigoth under heavy guard/Eight days earlier another twelve thousand had come, and before that, eight thousand. Tol admonished them not to endanger the stream of money by sending the fleet away.
Some were in favor of doing just that. The arguments went on until the light of the setting sun slanted into the council chamber at a sharp angle. Rymont, stubbornly insisting the fleet would secure even more money by making sea trade safe in the north and west, was arguing with Valdid, who’d come around to Tol’s point of view. The chamberlain noticed Ackal IV was nodding and broke off in mid-sentence. Rapping on the polished tabletop, he announced the council session was over.
The noise woke the emperor. He sagged back wearily, breath rattling in his chest. Oropash quietly offered to summon healers from the temple of Mishas, but Ackal IV waved the suggestion aside.
“It is only a congestion of the lungs,” he said hoarsely. “It will pass.” No one believed that. The “congestion” had lasted half a year.
He dismissed his advisors without asking for a final decision on the dispensation of the fleet. As the warlords, wizards, and officials rose to go, Ackal IV asked Tol to stay. Lord Rymont and his faction departed slowly, unhappy to concede the emperor’s ear to their rival.
When only Tol and Valdid remained, the emperor dismissed his chamberlain, too. Surprised, Valdid obeyed.
“Sit by me,” said Ackal IV, patting the arm of an adjacent chair. With a bow, Tol seated himself at the emperor’s right hand.
“You are right about the fleet,” Ackal said, letting his head rest against the padded wing of his chair. “Tomorrow I will issue orders confirming Admiral Darpo’s stay in the gulf.”
“I believe that to be the wisest course, Your Majesty.”
Tol waited. The emperor hadn’t asked him to stay to tell him about the fleet.
“I think I must be dying, Tolandruth.”
The announcement was not wholly unexpected. “Your Majesty has his choice of the finest healers in the empire. Can they not find the root of your strange illness?”
Ackal shook his head. “There is a broken strain in the dynasty, a thread of madness and decay. I fear it has found me this time.”
“Surely not, Majesty! You always enjoyed good health as crown prince. Why-”
Tol stopped, but his expression plainly showed he had more to say. Ackal urged him to speak freely.
“Majesty, there are those who would like your reign to be a brief one. Some… some are very close to the throne.”
Ackal laughed, provoking a fit of coughing. “Nazramin? He’s been undermining me ever since we were children.”
There were many safeguards in place, the emperor explained, to protect him from poison, and the palace was heavily warded against malign magic, more so than any other place in Ergoth.
Still, it was possible that a subtle chink could exist in the emperor’s magical armor, some tiny hole in his defenses that might allow a small spell to penetrate. Ackal IV admitted this himself.
Tol related how he’d found Nazramin at Mandes’s mansion late one night. The prince and the sorcerer were in cahoots, he said.
“Mandes is gone,” the emperor replied, waving a thin hand. “His influence is over and his spells dispersed. Oropash has seen to that personally.”
Oropash was a wizard of wide experience, but overly trusting. Although he knew little enough about magic, Tol was certain that a cunning rogue like Mandes could evade his counter-spells.
Even as they talked, Tol was waging a silent battle with himself over one question: should he give the nullstone to Ackal IV? If the emperor was indeed the target of malign magic, the Irda artifact would soak it up like blotting paper drinking in spilled ink.
If he loaned it to the emperor, it might save him, but would Tol ever get it back? Years ago, Yoralyn had warned him nullstones were so rare and so powerful that ruthless villains would raze entire cities to possess one. He had kept his secret a long time.
If Ackal IV took possession of it, knowledge of its existence would spread quickly. The emperor of Ergoth lived his life like a carp in a fishpond, under the eyes of hundreds every day. The secret would be a secret no longer.