Page 14

“His Majesty probably discovered a hangnail and can’t imagine what to do about it,” Stearanos snapped back, closing the little book.

“His Majesty places great value on you, Eminence,” James replied neutrally, still lurking in the dubious safety of the doorway.

“Oh, bring it here,” Stearanos said, snapping his fingers unnecessarily. Every time James used his title, it reminded him of the thief’s impudent promise to call him “Em” for short. James brought the thick envelope to him. It was the size of the man’s head. His Majesty never did anything by halves.

“Shall I remain to draft a reply, Eminence?”

“Might as well.” Despite the hugeness of the page enclosed, the letter itself was relatively short. The king seemed to be contemplating war, shockingly enough, and required that his favoritesorcerer return early from sabbatical. Something had transpired to create a new urgency.

The possibility of war was never a surprise in their conflict-ridden assemblage of kingdoms, but Stearanos had chosen this time for his sabbatical for a reason. They’d just finished a war, emerging from it if not precisely victorious, then at least with His Majesty’s collection of kingdoms intact. The collective stalemate had frustrated both sides, but their enemies had been silent for some time, in some sort of disarray or licking deeper wounds than His Majesty’s spies had been able to ferret out.

Briefly, in profound irritation, Stearanos contemplated refusing the summons. A bit of indulgence to imagine he could, but he occasionally fantasized about snapping the leash that chained him.

He’d rue the day he signed that contract with King Uhtric, except he hadn’t even been given that much of a choice. It had been signed for him, essentially selling him to the king in return for a vast sum that had paid for his upkeep and training several times over. The academy that had discovered and taught Stearanos had made their fortune on him, the owners even selling the place to retire and enjoy their wealth.

Not that any of it was a new story. The many magic academies around the world had refined their business to a fine art, using contracts based on a blood geas concocted centuries before. When the academies took on a pupil, usually purchased from families willing to take any price to rid themselves of a magical child already causing havoc, they used the child’s own blood to fuel a geas, tying the spell to their life force. Initially, the enchantment bound the pupil to their academy, ensuring their obedience to the authorities. Upon graduation, the geas was transferable by contract.

King Uhtric had preempted all other potential clients, usingthe wealth of his many acquired kingdoms, to buy Stearanos’s contract in full.

Any attempt to evade the stipulations of the contract began draining Stearanos to the point of death. Even contemplating refusing the summons nibbled at the edges of his vitality with hints of enervating weakness. There might be some inflection point, where his life force would have ebbed enough to weaken the binding power of the contract sufficiently for him to free himself of it, but that posed a circular problem in that he’d then be too weak to muster the magic to break the blood-borne enchantment.

In his early years, Stearanos had bent all his free time to research ways to break the contract, running countless calculations to find that inflection point. To no avail. The thing had been wrought with wicked cleverness. No sorcerer had ever broken it, though many had tried. His only way free was to earn his way out, which would take so long that Stearanos would be working still for the king’s son, possibly his grandson.

Though Stearanos had reduced his debt to the king by leaps over the years, the remainder towered over him like a mountain too high to climb, the air at the summit so thin it would kill him the moment he reached it.

He’d also tried, in his early years, to refuse the king’s gifts of jewels, clothing, the castle he lived in, even the annuity to pay the seventy-nine servants necessary to keep the thing running. But it turned out the contract forbade even that. As His Majesty’s favored sorcerer, Stearanos must maintain a minimum standard of living. Never mind that the meticulously defined minimum standard eclipsed the budget of a small kingdom.

His Eminence must reflect the status of his employer. All bond-servants should live so handsomely.

Pocketing the slim volume ofThe Adventures of the Beastly Bunny, so he could study it further for clues, he directed James to send the only reply he was allowed to, and mentally prepared for the ordeal of meeting with the king.

But first, he’d leave a reply to his thief, along with a few surprises. They might claim they wouldn’t visit again, but Stearanos would be a fool to take this criminal at their word.

Stearanos might be many things, but a fool wasn’t one of them.

The imperial palace towered against the sky, by design both impressive and intimidating. Not that Stearanos experienced anything but a sense of weariness at the sight. With the palace atop the highest hill and the city spilling down on all sides to the several bustling ports and harbors, the whole thing reminded him of a hastily decorated, multitiered cake, topped by a confection far more delicately wrought than the rest.

Already he regretted leaving his quiet home with his garden and its serene view of the sea. The city surrounding the seat of the king bustled with so many people that Stearanos had to stop habitually counting them all, lest he exhaust himself. He could consciously control the impulse; it just annoyed him to do it. Like suppressing an itch he shouldn’t scratch lest he make it worse.

“Eminence Stearanos!” His Majesty boomed from the throne at hearing the sorcerer’s name announced. “Welcome home. You’ve been missed.”

Stearanos set his teeth and assumed a polite, if stern, expression— one much remarked on in court circles—and managed to bow to the king, then nod to the richly dressed courtiers who broke into applause and cheers at the king’s greeting. He also set himself into a well-cultivated state of extended patience to endure the pageantry and speeches accompanying his return to the imperialpalace. He’d long since learned not to object to being treated as a hero, instead occupying his thoughts with more interesting musings while allowing the empty adulation to slide off him.

In this instance, he found himself pondering the mystery of his thief and, ridiculously, the saga of the bunny stealing carrots from a well-tended garden. James had interrupted him before Stearanos had reached the end of the lyrical and fetchingly absurd saga of the wily bunny and the frustrated gardener, so he had no idea how it ended. Who won their little war—the young rabbit or the old gardener? The book in his pocket seemed to burn against his hip and he nearly pulled it out half a dozen times while the king’s sycophants postured and praised. Only the awareness of how people would react to seeing the terrifying Eminence Stearanos with a children’s book stopped him.

“Attend me privately, Eminence,” the king declared for all the court to hear, a flexing of his authority to command the most powerful sorcerer in all the land, a completely redundant instruction as it was the entire reason Stearanos was there at all instead of in his comfortable library.

He followed the king, and was followed in turn by the king’s entourage, into the private council chambers above the throne room. Ringed with windows, the circular room commanded a view of King’s City in all directions, and the lands and seas beyond. In the center of the room sat a table with a relief map of the king’s currently owned realms, as well as the enemy lands beyond. The color coding differentiating the two categories changed over time with the vagaries of politics and war, an ebbing and flowing tide that lapped at the shores of the metaphorical island that was the current empire.

As the king settled himself in the high chair that allowed him to see the extent of the table and also tower over everyone else, accepting or rejecting the various obsequious offers fromhis entourage, Stearanos studied the map. No obvious changes had been made to the borders since he’d last seen it. They were as agreed upon following the various accords that served as the denouement to the last war, the tedious epilogues intended to end those tales but that simply served as prologues—or sneak peeks—into the next set of wars. An unending tale that changed only in specifics, reiterating the same plot with mind-numbing repetition.

Just once, Stearanos would love to see a true plot twist.

Finally, mug of wine in hand and feet comfortably propped on a padded stool, the king dismissed his attendants, leaving the two of them alone. Interesting. “There is news from the Southern Lands.”

“Oh?” Stearanos asked, not particularly curious, but playing his assigned role of coconspirator.

“The sorceress Oneira has retired,” the king announced portentously.