95 - Louis
The town’s elder was a short man with a red face and sweat already darkening his collar. He’d been waiting at the road’s edge for some time, judging by the way he shifted his weight when the head of the column finally came into view.
Louis stood close enough to watch the greeting. Close enough to smell the livestock pens somewhere behind the walls. Arnold had not told him to move back, so he didn’t.
The elder bowed and launched into a prepared speech. He had a gift. A bolt of cloth, dyed purple, which he presented with both hands to one of the Diamond ranks standing beside Osera Mume’s carriage. The Diamond rank passed it to someone behind her without looking at it.
Osera Mume herself, the high priestess of Tash, was listening. Or appeared to be. Her expression gave nothing away.
The townspeople watched from behind the gate and atop the walls. It wasn’t every day that high-ranking Keepers of the Iron Ink passed through their town.
The elder finished speaking. There was a short silence.
Then he led the procession into town, and Louis understood they would stop there for the night.
He followed behind Arnold, a blue-robed Keeper who made a point of watching over him since they’d left the library.
The journey to Samarand was long. Not because they couldn’t move faster, but because they took the opportunity to inspect the order’s lands. Every settlement they passed was examined, audited, and the locals were asked for more detailed reports than what trickled to Kator.
Unlike the Hunter in Esmera, these were the core lands of the Magus, and nothing would go mismanaged. At least, Louis wanted to believe so.
He wasn’t naive. Through the shadows, he could sense everything towns wanted to hide from the Keepers. Things that said Keepers seemed more than happy to turn a blind eye to. Poverty, crime, and public facilities left in disrepair, all left under the rug to allow the high priestess a dignified welcome.
In the yard of the inn where the delegation was staying, Louis found a quiet corner as the evening settled in, a narrow space between the well and the stable wall where the shadows gathered early. He sat on a stone and watched the last of the daylight fade from the rooftops.
It lasted perhaps three minutes before he heard the soft drag of robes on packed earth.
Arnold positioned himself near the well, apparently very interested in its construction. He ran a hand along the stone rim. Peered down into it.
Louis looked away.
It didn't matter. None of it mattered yet. Everything before Samarand was preamble to his destiny. He could endure Arnold's orbit for however many more days remained.
What he couldn't afford was to arrive unprepared.
He'd heard enough about Samarand to build a rough shape of the place in his mind, though he suspected the reality would dismantle it. The seven temples, from the humble hospice to the pretentious hall of pillars where Peshan’s chosen would reside for the duration of the conclave.
A bucket clinked against the well's edge. Arnold, drawing water he had no use for.
Louis rested his elbows on his knees and watched a moth move against the stable lantern. Samarand. He would find her there.
He’d been waiting for this moment for so long. A few more days wouldn’t change a thing.
*
Louis’ back was drenched with sweat as he followed the delegation up the mountain pass. As the lowest-ranked member, he sometimes had trouble keeping up with the Keepers who kept the pace of a Platinum rank.
The road changed two hours past the last waypost. The packed earth gave way to stones, old and wide enough for three carts abreast, and the edges on either side dropped sharply into terraced slopes planted with grain. Then the valley opened, and he stopped thinking about crops.
The Kushtar Range was visible from days in any direction on a clear day if you were on high enough ground. Standing at the valley's mouth was different. The mountains didn't rise here. They simply were, on both sides, close enough that the afternoon sun had already vanished behind the western face. The air was cold and fresh.
Caravans moved in both directions along the road, their wagons heavy. Coming from the north, heaps of raw materials gathered and hunted deep in the mountains were making their way out into the world. From the south, supplies, food, and weapons came to support the efforts of those living in those depths.
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It had been a long time since Louis set foot here.
The settlement that served the valley's mouth was the largest in the region after Samarand. Warehouses first, then brokers' offices built beside them, then taverns and loan houses.
Osera Mume's Keepers moved through it without stopping.
Louis watched the valley's residents watch the Keepers pass. It was different from the reaction in the core lands. No rehearsed speeches, no gifts. The merchants saw them as potential clients or potential trouble.
The high priestess stopped the procession next to another caravan.
Loud.
The Paladins of Yshar marched under the sign of the open hand, their coats a dark grey that had seen worse than dust. They were fewer than Louis had expected. Forty, perhaps fifty, with a handful of wagons at the rear under heavy canvas.
Warriors, all of them.
Their head came forward to meet Osera Mume. The high priest of the god of war. It seemed that, like the Magus, the Vanguard hadn’t made the journey to the conclave.
“The Architects are three days ahead of us,” the high priest of Yshar informed them. “The Vigils have not been spotted yet.”
Osera nodded. “Thank you, Garrick.”
Of the three remaining orders, the Hands and the Wardens were headquartered deeper into the Kushtar range, while the Arbiters were based directly in Samarand. They wouldn’t meet them until they arrived.
Louis didn’t look at the priests. He was watching the road behind them.
It curved out of sight into the deeper valley, toward the mountain passes, toward whatever lay north. His target had come this way. Had passed through this valley, probably through this exact place of commerce, and had continued.
Arnold appeared at his shoulder. “We’re getting closer. The high priestess wants you to hold your temper."
Louis kept his voice flat. "She said that? When?"
Arnold looked at him sideways. "Does it matter how I received the instruction?"
It did. If Arnold had volunteered the warning on his own initiative, it was caution. If it came from Osera directly, she was already watching him. Those were different problems.
"No," Louis said. "I know. It’s not like I stand a chance. Not yet.”
"Not ever."
"Not yet," Louis repeated.
Arnold snorted. The two processions were sorting themselves beside the road, the Paladins stepping aside, a few of the grey-coated figures accepting water from the Keepers' stores.
Louis watched until the followers of Yshar departed and disappeared above the next pass. He looked at the road ahead, at the mountain walls closing in on either side. He felt the cold that was already settling into his collar.
He clenched his fist.
A few more days.
*
The delegation moved in loose formation, the Keepers spreading out where the road allowed. Osera Mume's carriages had been left at the settlement. The mountain tracks didn't permit wheels. She walked now among her Diamond ranks, unhurried. Louis kept his distance behind Arnold and watched the ground in front of his feet, doing his best to keep up. He tried not to think about how much further it was.
Day after day, valley after valley, they traveled through the mountains.
“Why did we not teleport?” he’d asked Arnold, only for the older Keeper to laugh at him.
“Do you think teleportation is so easy and cheap? What are a few days of travel to us?”
He had nothing to answer.
In a valley like any other, he spotted ruins on the side of the road. A scatter of stone foundations half-buried in scrub, a collapsed archway still holding its shape through some stubbornness of weight and angle. Old enough that the cut marks on the stone were smoothed over. A chimney breast standing alone in the grass with nothing left around it. Somebody had built a life there. Several somebodies.
He didn't stop walking. He looked at the chimney until the trail curved and took it from his sight.
There was a village deep in the Kushtar range, two weeks northeast of here on a road that didn't appear on most maps, where the chimneys had still been standing when he left. Some of them. The legate's men had worked quickly, but fire had its limits.
He'd been younger then. Louis’ steps slowed. He forced his facial muscles to relax. No waves. He had to be in the right mind space when he saw her again. He couldn’t afford to act out.
This trip was where it started. Not where it ended.
Arnold was four paces ahead and to his left. Close, as he had been for the last six days. Watching him.
Samarand was close enough now that Louis could feel it pulling at him.
He would find her in the hall of pillars. He would watch her face.
He clenched the strap of his pack and breathed through his nose and let the cold fill his chest.
The legate was old. Whatever power she had accumulated in the years since made her even harder to kill.
This was a problem he didn’t know how to solve yet.
But since meeting Alexandra, he had hope. The Magus and the Legate were enemies, and he’d agreed to help him. If it didn’t work out, he could rely on the newest heroine when the time came. He’d carefully cultivated their friendship with that one goal in mind.
Louis shook his head. Some thoughts were better kept buried, lest they leak through the surface. Then he registered, a moment too late, that Osera Mume had turned her head.
She was looking at him.
Her expression was the same one she'd worn through every village greeting, every audit, and every procession. Composed, distant, and entirely unreadable. The look lasted perhaps two seconds. Then she faced forward again and said something to the Diamond rank beside her, quiet enough that it dissolved in the wind.
Louis looked away, at the trail ahead.
Samarand was only two weeks away.