The Knave of Souls - Fantasy - Sequel to The Jack of Souls

Chapter 9

He'd seen beautiful Oliitians, with graceful frames, tea-brown skin and slanted almond eyes, but Ugo was not one of those. He had a blunt, protruding face like the end of a battering ram, and small eyes slanted beneath thick brows. An overly earnest and honest mien gave him a misleading air of simplicity or even dim-wittedness.

Ugo's placid eyes stared into Phix. "We do not live in Wastes. We live in mountains, and oceans. Ice Oceans and Ice Mountains."

"Ice is a synonym for Wastes in my language," Phix squawked. "Pity we were in such a hurry we had no time to find a ship bound for the deserts."

Viero crossed to the balcony and looked down from the top of the palace hill to the descending rings of curtain walls and the roofs of lesser palaces to the deep port below. Dozens of ships lay at anchor in the gray waters. Dozens more crowded the busy wharfs.

Gray. Brown. Gray. Gray.

It seemed all of Kingsport was built in muted, storm-cloud sandstone. Could they not have imported some Ostian Umber or Honey Geldi? Mio Luno! Between the clouds, the river, and the stone of the city he sensed a conspiracy to drown the spirit in gray! No wonder the Iberg Compact had yet to annex the place. Once conquered, who would garrison it? Who would stay? In place of the tapered columns and airy domes of his native Sanifi, Kingsport sulked behind double thick battlements and moats as if they'd built for siege. In a land haunted by such things as the Old Ones, it made a kind of grim sense.

Motion caught his eye from an adjacent spur of the palace. A small group of courtiers crowded a balcony, gossiping and pointing his direction.

He cursed and retreated into his chambers.

"Master?" Ugo stood.

"Peeking fools, Ugo. Nothing more. But I should be more careful until we have Her Majesty's sponsorship."

Ugo's thick brows bent, and he strode to the door of the balcony to assess the danger himself. He had to duck his head slightly even for Arkendian doors, which were taller than most on the continent. "Close the door, please, Ugo. There's no harm in their looking, but I'd just as soon we give them little to prattle of." As Ugo obliged, his physical opposite appeared in the doorway of the bedchamber. The magus waved Phix back, and this time Phix obliged by shutting himself back in the closet.

He wished to the moons they'd get on the interview. The suspense was excruciating.

Viero unfolded the royal summons, and studied the contents again for clues he might have missed. The script was bold, and clear, but a woman's, he deemed. The Queen had not trusted it to be delivered by a page or even one of her officers, but had sent it by none less than the famous Lady Anna, a woman as old as she, and her confidante since youth. He reasoned that if she had not trusted the summons to be delivered by anyone but Anna, then she would not have trusted it to be written for her by anyone else, either. And he was confident it was not the Lady Anna's hand, for he had seen her, and she was quiet and demure, not the author of this bold script.

You will be summoned this evening at dusk and escorted without your servant.

All of this secrecy suggested the meeting would be free of most of the queen's officers and advisors. Very possibly it would be a private audience, which was auspicious.

You will not receive N.

N. She meant the nexus he had surrendered to her: a white nexus, of the White Moon. The nexus was not his, technically, as he had taken it from the white magus he'd slain using his own nexus—a nexus of the Red Moon. The red nexus he had trusted to Phix in order to avoid confiscation and to maintain the illusion that he was in fact a White Magus, and willingly submitting to the queen's mercy.