"You lie to me," Salinor said, bemused. "Your scent doesn't."
"Perhaps it is your nose that requires a needed inspection," she said. "You must surely have better use of your time than mouthing such bootless words to one such as I."
He smiled. "The ways of your tongue rival that of the sleekest silver..." Then came a frown. "Are you perhaps hiding the son of f—"
"Please, Salinor." A voice interposed, flowing into the chamber like a tide of churning waters. Male, judging by the tones. Who was it? She knew not, but sensed a faint familiarity in that manner of slow yet precise speech.
She knew this voice.
Then…
A figure slid out from the corner of her perception, nearly sudden in his emergence. Dressed in black with red inlays. Salinor had seemingly long noticed the intruder; she hadn't. Bad. The man, she observed now... Ah.
"Master Geld," she said, speculating on the abrupt presence of the Odium Regent. The coronation had long been completed, as was the matter in relation to the King's room. Why then did he remain? She paused.
Mentation spinning.
Wouldn't he be aware of the agreed-upon decision regarding Kabal? He would! She nearly gasped at the clarity, though the slowness of it echoed with a certain embarrassing quality. The question was whether her former master was intimate enough to divulge that answer.
Geld stepped before her, an oddly intrusive presence. "You do not talk that way to a HighHeir... Lord Minister of Safety."
Lord Minister of Safety? The words resonated with no relevance in her archived recollections. Valor had no such titles or position. None. This left the potentiality of it being a creation of the Fray. What was it?
Surely, it justified the arrogance attributed to his nature.
Salinor sneered at the words, silver strands dangling over his ringed black eyes. "I pity the danger you invite into your forges. Your prisons. Yet know this, if a threat exists against Fray here, then without cease, I will end it all."
Geld clasped both hands behind him, his blackened coat lined with red threads at the back. Elegant, with a hint of compressed power. Ivory noted the butchness of his arms; they were clenched tightly.
Smiling with one of his usual Excubitors standing with him. He said, "Greet the Highness, Stephon. Greet his sister for me. Great Navani of the redCoats... as I heard you mention her name."
"A spy now," Salinor canted. "Fray remains docile to the things of Odium, but unlike Cintry..." His eyes beamed. "Never chase a Fray in their own home."
"Except," Geld leaned closer. "You are not in Whitehorn."
There was a tenseness in the air. Ivory felt it from the slow rising of internal emotions. She knew the silverAssurer was adept in such things. Who knew the outcome if a battle were to commence? No, not today.
"There has been too much death, Salinor," Ivory said, still rooted on the spot. Her eyes leveled softly on the giant of a man. Massive. Frays were not known to grow that much—perhaps he was of their six vassal clans. She observed the effects of the words—such was the way of dealing with casters. Very few words were all that was required.
He grunted, spared a glance at the sweating DarkCrowns of Valor, the guardsmen. Then he called for one. Stepping down the lowered steps, Salinor waved for a combatant, opening his arms for a shy handmaiden. Observably, the petite woman shuddered before the size of the Fray, her fingers digging into the edges of his armor's plating.
He was preparing for a brawl with one of Valor's own.
"Such an arrogant man," Geld muttered, eyes locked on the spectacle that was to unfold. Salinor had issued a challenge, one that none was quick to answer. Understandable, given he was, in the end, a BrightCrown, while they were darkCrowns.
She whipped around, startling the dazed Regent. Likely, the sudden surge unnerved him. Very few women of Valor took such initiatives. Now, however, was no moment for laws and customs. Kabal had to be saved.
A cheer rang from the coliseum. A DarkCrown had accepted the issued command. She cared little for it.
"And the end of it?"
Geld observed her. "Your grace," he said. "Your meanings are not hidden from me."
"They were not intended." The curtness flowed unrestricted; he would have to endure it. "Hurry then, don't keep me waiting."
He maintained silence, smiling tiredly. "What is spoken in the king's room..."
"Stays in the king's room," Ivory completed. "Yet the cause of my dismay is your apparent taste in gifts."
"Now I am to be blamed," Geld sighed. "Understand this was never my intention."
I KNOW THAT! Ivory stilled the impatience, her skin crawling with anticipation. She said, "Is that your truth, Great Regent of Odium? One whose sudden rise to power is perhaps the most bizarre out of the witnessed events." Make him guilty. "Any moss-clear DeadEye will be able to speculate on the reasons for your sudden appointment."
"You intend to mean this position came at the cost of destabilizing Valor?"
Ivory bit down on her tongue and said, "As I said, any DeadEye will be able to speculate this."
Geld was furious. She saw it now, from the knitting of those brows, the dark red hair that seemed to blaze with an imaginary hue. All of it. She had struck a chord—intentional, yes, but hateful.
Oh, how she hated the things she did now.
"I AM VALOR TOO!" Geld screamed, his voice drowning in the collective rumbles of the battling men. Salinor had pinned the DarkCrown to the ground, his skin still clean of the necessary sweat. The DarkCrown, on the other hand, drenched the earth with his.
Ivory placed both palms over the other, gently atop her stomach. "I cannot begin to imagine the intentions or reasons as to why you do the things you do. You must admit, however, how odd this looks. The emergence of this conformist of an Aspirant. By your hands, evidently. And with that came chaos to Valor."
A stray lamp shone across Geld's face—darkened red hair, the hue of dried blood. That and the few strands of lustrous white mixed within. All of it gave the impression of a wild kindling. Likely, this was a mirror of the internal state of the man.
I have to do this, she thought. He needs to feel guilty in order to reveal what I must know.
It was the only way.
Geld's shoulders eased.
Did it work?
He said, "Correction, your grace, I did not bring Kabal here..."
Silence.
"He chose to come. In fact, he had approached me," Geld muttered, turning a glance towards the 'friendly' wrestling. "As you know, I have visited the Free Cities. And in Bolt, Hightown, the boy met me, supposedly on a walk outside the Whitekeep. There, he recounted his belief in your majesty. Your power. Your existence and what it means to Valor. He wanted me to bring him here."
Had Kabal told me this?
"Of course, naturally, I had refused this. I'm not a fool to accept the words of some Aspirant, be it from the Theocracy or not. Yet he was adamant. Phrasing it as his calling, likely inspired by some religious patron." Geld leaned close. "HE-WAS-ADAMANT."
Her heart thumped.
"See?" Geld said. "I did not bring him here as you have said; he wanted to come. Begged for it. And I? A master who has not seen his student in years was without a gift. So I made a bargain: he was to become, per se, your personal jester. To—"
"Make me smile."
"Yes," Geld said, his eyes dull with a coldness. "So this admission of blame is not mine. If anything, I am merely a victim of a failed attempt."
Ivory maintained composure. There had to be a reason...
Resist the formation of an impression.
She asked after a breath. "That being what it is, you have not yet answered my question."
"Have I not?" Geld muttered. "Then hear this: Argon of Valor has gone to conduct the supposed execution... Himself."
A chill assaulted her senses.
"By now, he should already be in Stone Bastion, in those prisons." Geld folded his arms. "Although I do not understand the reasons of the Aspirant, I know that he dies now for them." He scoffed. "Perhaps you should feed this data to your DeadEyes; maybe then you would know the reasons for these actions."
Ivory heard nothing. No tones, no sounds, not even the hammering of bodies down in the coliseum. All had faded back into the depths of nothing, swallowed by the churning tides of horror. Too much... All of it.
Kabal was dying.
Now, in Stone Bastion, Argon was committing a terrible sin. He shouldn't! Why should he?
She attempted composure, feeling the innate chaos that refused such methods. Her palms were shaking, her legs trapped in an unknown solidity.
She took a breath; it felt cold in her heart.
Nothing was coming.
I can't let that happen.
It shouldn't happen.
She was trembling.
Geld frowned. "Your grace... what is wron—"
And Ivory dashed away from the chamber, the wind distant upon her senses. There was nothing. No sound, no thoughts, just the recursive plays of imagined scenes. There, Argon, blade in hand, piercing deep into the body of that man.