Page 93 of Valdemar

And winter is coming. I’m very glad the Council Chamber has two fireplaces,Kordas thought. Windows would be good, too. His skin felt too tight on his flash-burned face and hands, and he did notice his own lack of eyebrows—somewhat like his son, and a score of others who were in the fight. Even now, he could still see negative images of lightning when he blinked.

“Defectors’ families?” Kordas asked briskly. Several of the Council members looked as if they had eaten something sour. Not everyone approved of Kordas’s clemency. But he was the King. And they’d put him on that throne. There wasn’t much they could do about it.

Restil, who had nominally been in charge of the entire operation of fetching them from the Adept’s city, consulted his notes. Wisely, he had delegated the travel-intensive parts to those in better shape than he was physically. He didn’t have crutches, but he was certainly firmly belly-bound under his uniform. “The last of the highborn have been settled on the farms you gave them on the southern border. That would be Lord Legenfall’s closest adherents, himself, their families, and the few servants that cared to stay with them, or volunteered to teach them how to farm.” Restil smiled slightly. “No one likes them, so everyone is keeping an eye on them. The volunteers are enjoying themselves, I’m told. They are there under the Crown’s auspices and very much enjoy being able to give Legenfall and his cronies a regular piece of their minds.”

Jonaton coughed. If anyone here looked the worst, it was probably him. Burns, lacerations, gouges, abrasions—he had a plaster for it. Clearly, he’d pushed himself far too hard, and Hakkon, beside him, wasn’t letting him dare overexert himself again. “I’m keeping an eye on them too. Would it ease the Council’s concerns if I told you that the words ‘shit for brains’ are used multiple times a day by their teachers?”

That evoked a chuckle among the assembled.

“What’s the status of the Wolf Crown?” Lord Marin asked.

“Dead as last year’s leaves,” Kordas replied with authority. “I’ve looked it over. The Tayledras and the Old Men looked it over. It’s not only magically inert, it’s so magically dead that it couldn’t even be re-enchanted. Magic just treats it as if it were a—” he shrugged, “—a spent flower? Something you just can’t fix. A twisted wheel, maybe. It can’t be fixed so that it’s useful anymore. All it’s fit for at most is to be melted down and reused.”

Lord Damberlin cleared his throat. “Might one suggest that it be melted down and never used at all?”

“I thought you didn’t have Mindspeech,” Kordas told him, which evoked another chuckle. “Silvermoon has our piece of it, and the other half is already at k’Vesla. He says they’ll melt it down, grind it to powder, and disperse the powder among all the clans to be disposed of.”

Lord Damberlin nodded. “I approve. And what of the newest Heralds?”

Within candlemarks of the Adept’s death, Companions had Chosen Lythe and Rothas. Common talk had it that being willing to sacrifice themselves had made them worthy, just as it had broken their curses. Kordas was of two minds about that, but the Companions weren’t talking. So they would probably never know the truth.

“Heralds Lythe Shadowdancer and Rothas Sunsinger have integrated well into the Heraldic Circle,” Beltran said with authority. “There is no trace of their curses. Well, other than the lifebond, if you consider a lifebond more of a curse than a blessing. On that, I have no opinion.” He shrugged. “They’re not unhappy, or we’d know about it.”

“So one completely unselfish act was the condition that lifted the curses?” Damberlin noted. “Yes, I can certainly see how that would have been difficult to contrive or arrange. If you know that doing something will break a curse, how can doing that thing be completely unselfish?”

“The Old Men, Koto in particular, are a bit annoyed that it wasn’t them that fixed the problem,” Jonaton put in, resting his jaw in a palm. “So don’t bring it up to them for at least four or five moons. Although I think they mostly wanted to see what would happen.”

“And when can we expect the delegation from our deceased foe’s city of Restin?” asked Lady Bastien pointedly. She was in charge of hosting that delegation, so she was getting a little anxious about it.

“Another fortnight. They set off today, but they’re traveling by cart and mule.” That was Beltran. “Herald Merissa is with them, and yes, they are still just as anxious to swear allegiance to Valdemar as they were when we showed up to bring back our defectors. Everything that was salvageable from the late Cloudfall’s hoard of books and artifacts—that wasn’tconfiscated or destroyed by the Tayledras, that is—has been loaded into two of those carts.”

“I don’t know why we let those Hawkbrothers paw through valuable objects like that and carry off the best stuff,” Hakkon grumbled.

“I can tell you all,” Kordas offered. “It’s because the two Adepts that Silvermoon managed to recruit from k’Treva and k’Lyonisse know better than any of us—even Jonaton—what’s too dangerous to touch. The Adept doubtless left it all trapped, so we negotiated in detail, balancing our favors with the Tayledras. Technically, it wasn’t our territory or theirs when these events unfolded.”

“And the locals want absolutely nothing to do with the Adept, ever,” Jonaton interjected. “They say the Adept put the worst amongst them into power, and then they crippled or killed a tenth of their number to consolidate that power. Then everyone supplied materials and labor for the Adept’s interests, willingly or not.

“And I know you wouldn’t expect it from me, but there are some sorts of knowledge we shouldn’t have,” Jonaton went on. “Some concepts are . . . poison is the only word. Once thought about, they sicken a mage’s joys, and undermine mercy, and the wickedness of them is, they’re so easy. They start out with big payoffs from small evils and ramp up from there. It’s a temptation where no thought of it had occurred before, or a shortcut that costs an innocent their peace. Some magic in our world is so malevolent, it wants to be known.”

Kordas could tell that just describing that was putting Jonaton into a sour mood, so he picked up smoothly from there. “The Tayledras are giving us what they find that’s probably useful for us, and recovering what was stolen from them. They are taking their lives in their hands to destroy a frightening amount of dangerous equipment, spell storers, and other objects. If something can’t be identified or destroyed, they’ll store it in a null state.” He shrugged. “Really, the only thing I’m interested in is the books they determined are safe for us to peruse. Some of them are spell research logs, centuries old, but they look like new.”

And I hope we can figure out what all those notations signed “M” are about.

The subject turned to the new ally city, Restin, which according to everything that Delia had discovered, had essentially been an eerily preserved, pre-Cataclysm place that had been avoided until a few brave souls had decided to re-colonize it over the last hundred years or so. It wasn’t anything special—it hadn’t been built by a Mother, for instance, and there was only a single structure within it that had signs of being mage-built. It was something like a step pyramid, and a chute ending in a jump was found built down one side of it, which the mages surmised was how the Red Things had been propelled into their Gates. That pyramid had been taken over by Cloudfall, naturally—in whatever form or appearance she’d taken. Cloudfall had, in fact, successfully passed herself off as male until just within the last year. There was a great deal of speculation why she had taken that route, but the easiest explanation was probably that the persona she built was so unlike a young teenage female Tayledras—being a middle-aged, male “Archmage”—she was confident that the Hawkbrothers would not guess who she was until she chose to reveal herself.

As for her “city,” it wasn’t one by Imperial standards. It only held about three thousand people.

Huh. “Only.” That’s bigger than Haven.

Kordas was not particularly happy about annexing them, but it was what they wanted and what his Council wanted, so annex them, they would.

It was a complication he wasn’t looking forward to. He would have to appoint a governor. He would have to send someone to be Herald-in-residence. And he didn’t really want to send one of his precious Heralds there. But there was a lot he had to do as King that he didn’t like, so he was putting the best face on things that he could.

The rest of the Council meeting was concerned with the mundane chores of running a “Kingdom,” and Kordas was grateful for that. There were a great many loose ends that would have to remain loose for a while, until things settled back down into a routine . . .

:And one of those loose ends is that you are meeting me at the canal that Pebble is digging,:Isla reminded him, with a knowing look. :Which as we both know is an excuse to get on our Companions and out of the Palace and get some damned fresh air for a change. I don’t care if it’s cold, we’re having a picnic. There was a hard frost last night and the leaves are turning and the last three falls there was a toad-strangling downpour right after they turned and everything was ruined so I want to enjoy this year.:

He glanced across the table at her, and winked.