The Black Star (Book 3) Read online

  "What do you think?" Ast said once they were installed in it and the sun was dying to the west.

  "That I'm fifty kinds of tired," Dante said.

  "This is the valley where we saw the light touch down."

  "I know that."

  Ast went silent, profile illuminated by the gentle glow of the torchstone at its lowest. The man had a tendency to ask provocative questions, then lapse into patient silence once you got tired of being led around by the nose. There was something monkish to it. Either that or it was simply the ability to sit in one place for hours on end that becomes inculcated in men who spend most of their days in the wilderness. In a way, this "lead a horse to water" style reminded Dante of Cally. Except the old man had been far more mercurial, flitting from thought to thought like a strider on a stream. And significantly crankier. And not really patient in any way, shape or form, let alone in a monkish fashion. Even so, there were similarities between the two men.

  Or there would have been, actually, except that Cally was gone. Lost in service to the war for independence. And for all the power of the Council of Narashtovik, nothing could undo Arawn's summons to the hill below the stars.

  Dante sat in the cave entrance, watching the stars of the mortal world twinkle, but no lights came. After a while, he crawled back to the main chamber, which stank with the ripe odor of three travelers who haven't bathed in days.

  "We'll have another look around by daylight, then head back," Dante said. "Presuming we aren't devoured by nocturnal monsters."

  Ast nodded.

  Lew's forehead creased. "Did we see what we came to see?"

  "We saw the lights," Dante said. "But if they're telling us something, I don't know what it is. Or what more we can do."

  Dante punched his blankets into the least uncomfortable arrangement he could manage and put out the torchstone. He had nearly drifted off when a voice piped up in his ear.

  "Er, hello? Hello, Dante?"

  Dante jerked awake, heart pounding. Though he had created the object—the loon—now delivering a man's speech to him from a couple hundred miles away, he hadn't used his since the day he and Lew had left Narashtovik. After so much silence, the intrusion hit him with a moment of sheer terror, like turning around to discover you aren't alone.

  "I'm here, Nak," he said, failing to purge the annoyance from his voice.

  "Far superior to the alternative," his fellow councilman said. "How goes the hunt?"

  "It's turning up more questions than answers. Today we were assaulted by a creature I didn't believe in."

  "Well, that sounds tremendous. Your life is always so exciting. One of these days, you really must take me on one of your adventures."

  "A word of advice, then: prepare your order from the locksmith in advance. After we get home, you'll bar your room and never leave again." Dante glanced across the dark cave where the others slept on. "Is this important, Nak? Or did you just loon me to chat?"

  "Oh, it's nothing much." Nak sniffed and shuffled parchments. "We found Blays."

  "What?"

  Nak chuckled. "Thought that might get your attention."

  4

  Blays gazed dumbly across the table at the duke. So much work flushed away. Along with what might well be his best chance to crack the foundation of the empire. It was the sort of thing that made him want to give up—but it was important to remain mentally flexible, to acknowledge there were always other solutions. Such as the carving knife on the wooden block sitting between them.

  To occupy his hand, Blays reached for a cup of beer instead. "I'm afraid I don't understand, milord. Didn't you just agree this was a wonderful opportunity?"

  Dilliger nodded, a hint of pain to his smile. "I did, and it is. It's simply the wrong time."

  "Wrong time?"

  The duke raised an eyebrow, as if Blays were committing an error by asking a single question. Which he probably was. The rulebook for discussing money with blue bloods was thicker than the Cycle of Arawn.

  "I'm sure I'll kick myself for missing this," the duke said. "But if capital is currency, most of mine is ice. It froze just after I accepted your visit. I'd hoped it would melt before we met—but alas."

  Blays quirked his head, then nodded once. "I see. I hope that if a sudden wind thaws it, or you locate a new wellspring, you won't hesitate to contact me."

  "Should I? Then you won't seek other offers on the goods that have cost you a fortune or three?"

  "Sure, and while I'm at it I'll quit breathing, too." Blays forced a laugh. "I'll cut other brush. But cutting trails takes time. If your situation changes before mine, I would love to do business with you. Particularly after your hospitality."

  The duke raised a glass. "Flexibility is the mother of success."

  Blays lifted his beer and drank. Even though he was dying to leave then and there—not just to get started on seeking a deal with someone else, but because Dilliger's abrupt reversal made him suspicious his cover had been blown—protocol insisted he stay the night. Leaving right after dinner would signal Blays/Pendelles was only there for the duke's money. Which Dilliger surely understood. His staff, however, was another matter. Gossip was just about the only way servants had to express any power in the world. If Blays were to ride off in the night like a bandit, the manor's boys and maids would light up Setteven with talk of his crass avarice. The disaster he'd currently been flung into would be compounded many times over when word of his character caused the lords and ladies of the court to snub him out of hand.

  And so he was forced to endure another delicious feast and round after round of drinks. He swallowed his bile as well. The dinner was excellent, though he quickly forgot it. For his part, the duke seemed mildly regretful at having invited Blays out here knowing there was little chance anything would come of it. They drank fine wine on a balcony and spoke for hours about the courts, business, personal philosophy, and all the other subjects privileged men were supposed to enjoy.

  At last, Blays retired. He got up mid-morning, made his goodbyes with the duke, and headed out in his carriage. Autumn light drenched the grounds. The carriage wheels rattled along the ruts of the road. As Lord Pendelles, he preferred to keep his retinue light—a cost-saving/efficiency matter, when anyone asked—and so he traveled in the company of no more than a driver and a porter. Both were trustworthy, long-time employees of Lolligan, but Blays didn't speak a word about the trip.

  They rolled into the capital of Setteven as the light rolled away from the land. Gray towers fought for control of the city's hills, conical roofs painted pink by the sunset. The thick band of the river split Setteven in two. Entire stretches were so thoroughly bridged, docked, and reclaimed that the water wasn't visible at all. Setteven was among the oldest cities in Gask, and hadn't seen violence inside its walls for centuries, leaving a mixture of classical and modern architecture in its homes, churches, markets, and state buildings. Everyone would agree it was a jewel. And right then, Blays didn't give a shit.

  The driver navigated skillfully through the tangled, jostling streets, avoiding both the snarled thoroughfares and the more dangerous back ways. Soon enough, the carriage rocked to a stop outside a four-story corner manor on one of the city's most desirable hills. Blays kicked open the door, nearly braining the startled porter, and clomped inside.

  Before he'd made it past the tiled foyer, Taya materialized with her typical abruptness. The sword on her hip had been loosened from its scabbard. She eyed Blays and made an instant assessment.

  "He turned you down," she said.

  "How could you tell?" Blays peeled off his outer jacket and flung it over a couch. Outside, the air was thin and chilly, but the manor's many glass windows let it catch sun all day. "What if I were in mourning for the cat we ran over on the way in? Then you'd look pretty silly, leaping to conclusions."

  Taya shook her head. "You'd be upset, but you wouldn't be angry. This is about the duke."

  "Of course it's about the duke. When isn't it?"

  "Y
ou can be angry about him. Or you can explain what happened and we can fix it."

  Blays pinned her with a look of dirk-like sharpness. On most occasions, he enjoyed having Taya around. She was like a thin strip of steel: unobtrusive, but useful in a hundred different ways. Particularly in espionage and certain kinds of hidden wars fought far from fields of battle.

  In other ways, though, she was a right horror. She was all business. Not that she was humorless. Quite the opposite: her mockery was nearly as voluminous and every bit as edged as her knife collection. The problem was she had no time for any words unrelated to the task at hand. She had no appreciation for bitching. For the fact that sometimes you had to blow away the smoke before you could get close enough to the forge to work out new answers.

  "It came down to money," Blays said, getting to it. "Specifically, that he doesn't have any."

  "That wasn't a polite way to avoid saying he wasn't interested?"

  "You've heard the way he talks about bossen. Even if he didn't treasure it like his own blood, the business opportunity alone would make it worthwhile. Anyway, why would he invite me to his home if he had no interest in a deal?"

  "To get a closer look at you." She gazed at him as if to reinforce the possibility. "So do you think he's telling the truth about his finances?"

  Blays flapped his hands. "Do you?"

  "With a person like Dilliger, it's impossible to take the full measure of his debts, credits, holdings, investments, and estates. But the point is to bankrupt him. We wouldn't be attempting to do that if he weren't already close to the edge."

  "Well, dung. A great big pile of it. How are we supposed to take away his money when he hasn't got any of it?"

  She rubbed her chin. For most people this would be a gesture of thoughtfulness, but he'd seen Taya do the same when she was expecting a fight. He just now understood why: she was putting her hands in position to defend herself without making it obvious that she had her guard up.

  "It's not about money, it's about credit," she said. "So the question is how badly he's willing to spend what he doesn't have."

  He clucked his tongue. "We make him think he's in danger of losing it to somebody else. Are we close to any other deals?"

  "Why would we be? Dilliger was always the target."

  "We could try spreading a rumor. People love rumors."

  Taya shook her head, barely stirring her chin-length brown hair. "He's too well-connected. To take our deal, he'll have to liquidate assets. Secure loans. Do you really think he'll do all that without bothering to confirm with a friend in the palace that you're close to selling?"

  "Maybe if we got him really drunk first."

  "That would be perfectly suited to your skills."

  Blays rolled his eyes. "So we float a big rumor and tug it out to sea with a little fact. We've got a bit of bossen here, right? We sell it, let it hit the streets, and make it known we're close to dealing the rest."

  Taya dropped her hand from her chin. "As your ideas go, that's not a bad one. As long as we're hunting for buyers, we should explore alternative deals. The duke is only the biggest target. If we can't take a clear shot at him, there are others worthy of our arrows."

  "No way. Not unless it's the king himself."

  "Do you believe you're too stupid to ever come up with another plan to strike at the throne?"

  "That's not what I'm saying."

  "If so, then you would be happy to fire this arrow at a lesser mark."

  Blays glared down the stone corridor, wishing for a servant to interrupt them, but the manor was lightly staffed, and Taya had no doubt sent their people away as soon as she'd been alerted to the carriage's approach.

  He slapped the wall. "I'll see about selling the first batch. Start looking into alternate marks for the main load."

  "I'll get you invited to some parties, too. Grease the wheels of rumor."

  "Nothing for a couple days, all right? I'm still recovering from the duke's hospitality. And let me know if rabbit will be on the menu."

  Taya searched his face, then nodded. "We should think about bringing the goods into the city. If our hook snags the duke, we'll want to close the deal before he has second thoughts and wriggles free."

  "Bring it up to the norren side of Dollendun," he said. "I want to escort it through the human lands personally."

  "I was thinking the exact same thing."

  Business wrapped up, Blays headed to his quarters for a bath, some wine, and a couple hours to drop the mantle of Pendelles and be Blays again. The warm water coaxed the knots of travel from his muscles and the smell from the rest of him. Not for the first time, he was impressed by how deftly he and Taya had taken a leaden disaster and transmuted it into sparkling gold. She was an asset and a half, and one of the core reasons their underground campaign had seen such success—and still remained secret.

  He flicked water from the basin and sank until just the tip of his nose was clear of the surface. There was, of course, another solution to the duke's refusal to take the bait: to give up and go home.

  Because what was the point, really? They'd already bashed the Gaskan Empire into chunks. Freed an entire race of people. That act had been good. Righteous. Worth fighting and dying for. These men had already been beaten. Even if he was able to take revenge beyond his wildest dreams and kill them all with his own swords, they'd simply be replaced by relatives and power-seekers every bit as amoral and avaricious as those he'd killed. It was like diking the tide. There was always more ocean. The moment you stopped patching the dam, the roiling waters would flood right back.

  Even so. The last time he'd given up on everything, he'd become more like those men himself. Devoting himself to destroying them was a far better use of his time. Besides, Moddegan was a bastard. Someone had to do it.

  And these days, wearing his freewheeling merchant's mask was the closest he got to happiness.

  A good night's sleep refreshed him better than any rationalizations. He attacked the next few days with vigor and purpose, making inquiries, dropping hints, extending coy proposals regarding his most valuable goods. There was significant interest, but he needed the right match. The buyer needed to meet two qualifications. First, to be so filthy, stinking rich that Dilliger could believe them capable of buying all Pendelles' bossen. And second, to be intriguing enough for Blays to want to destroy them should the gambit fail to draw the duke into the action.

  He spent a week tearing around Setteven and the chateaus surrounding it, wining and dining with the kingdom's most outrageously wealthy and highest-placed nobles. It was taxing, rubbing shoulders and trading quips with these tedious clowns, but at least the food was good. Between that and a lack of time to practice with his sword (Pendelles was a gentlemen, not a steel-slinger), he was starting to get a bit thick around his middle.

  As he made contacts, Taya dug into their circumstances, assessing wealth, vulnerability, and entanglements with the throne. Blays wasn't sure how she managed this, given that much of what she discovered were literal state secrets, but suspected she was tapping into a Galladese spy network the lakeland merchants had embedded in the capital over the course of years. Maybe even generations. Even if he'd asked, she wasn't the type to answer.

  Together, they settled on their mark: Lady Carraday of Rollen, an estate overseeing the iron mines in the hills south of the city. Blays made contact with her man in the palace, who in turn relayed the proposal to Carraday, who sat on the query for several days before replying that yes, she would agree to receive Lord Pendelles five days hence. Blays rolled his eyes at the delays and spent the intervening days casually feeding rumors into the great gossip machine of the palace.

  The mines at Rollen had been active for centuries and may well have been responsible for Old Gask's ongoing expansion into the Gaskan Empire, churning out more hard iron than Gallador, Narashtovik, the Western Fringe, and the Norren Territories had been able to keep up with. The hills no longer produced as they had in their heyday, but even now, hundred
s of years and dozens of wars later, they continued to provide their heirs with one of the empire's greatest fortunes.

  Carraday was not the ideal target. Her relations with Moddegan were actually quite tepid. But her holdings were so vital to the operations of Gask that if Blays were able to hamstring them, even temporarily, the entire kingdom would be left limping.

  On the appointed date, he rode south with his driver and porter. Carraday lived even further from the capital than Dilliger, and though the carriage departed at dawn, it didn't arrive until dusk. Rollen was more of a fort than a chateau: though the structure's ancient center had been embellished with fanciful cornices, pillared decks, and so on, it remained your typical great big glob of impenetrable stone. A thing meant to keep the barbarians away from the silver. Carraday's ancestors had been flush enough to have rebuilt it at any point over the centuries. The fact they'd stuck with the brutally practical told Blays a little something about the woman he was about to attempt to do business with. And that her nickname—the Iron Maiden—was more than a reference to the source of her wealth.

  Inside, he was shown to a sitting room and served the customary tea by a man who let slip that he was Carraday's nephew and thus capable of representing her; by high Gaskan tradition, guests were supposed to be poured tea by a significant member of the household. Blays thanked him and sat.

  Most other nobles would have stretched such a visit over two or three days, if not a full week, but Lady Carraday summoned Blays to dinner within an hour of his arrival. They dined in a tower with a view of the south, the hills outlined by moonlight.

  Carraday had been married thrice, two divorces bookending a widowing, but she wasn't yet fifty and remained handsome. A wavy strand of dark hair looped over her forehead. She wore a thin steel necklace, a simple blue dress with a high collar, and the casual command of someone used to being listened to.

  "To your liking?" she said.

  "It's food," Blays said, upping the gaiety a bit without pushing it into insincerity; he'd found it easiest to make Pendelles an exaggeration of himself instead of a whole new creature. "Thus it's to my liking by default. This particular meal, however, would exceed my standards even if they were as lofty as the Dundens."