Sur-Rak found her grandfather exactly where she expected to, staring out at the tree covered lands beyond Lercel on his third of the wall, the southern portion. She was supposed to be on shift in the mids soon, but getting information from him was more important.
“Grandfather,” she said, bowing and holding the position for two beats longer than she would for anyone else in the city before smoothly standing upright.
He didn’t bother to turn to look at her, and for a moment she wondered if he had resumed his old technique. However, she heard nothing irregular in his breathing patterns nor noticed any jitteriness to his limbs, both of which normally accompanied his trance-like state.
“It is clear you are planning something,” Sur-Rak went on when he didn’t speak, “and I would like to know what it is.” He continued staring silently outward, and she found herself feeling less assured about the way she had chosen to approach with each passing moment. He had been candid with her before, more so than with most she liked to believe, but the way he was standing now, so stiff and still. It was like he had erected a shroud between them, and she needed to say something to crack it. “Mother on the other hand would like to have you over for dinner. She worries over you and...uncle.” Sur-Rak tried to keep her tone neutral about her rival. “She thinks you need to live more for yourself and less for the city.” Her mother said the same things to Sur-Rak on multiple occasions, but Sur-Rak pointedly ignored her.
“I didn’t see her at the funeral.” he commented.
It was a good counter to her probing because it was true. Her mother hadn’t taken the murder of her elder sister well. The first few evenings she had drunk more wine than Sur-Rak had ever seen her consume, and the day of the ceremony she had refused to leave their home, refused even to come out of her room. Sur-Rak and her father had agreed that he should stay home to make sure she didn’t do anything rash, and thankfully she hadn’t, beyond having the help rearrange half of their furniture. Sur-Rak still wasn’t sure how her mother could be so ill-prepared for this moment in her life. The late Archon, Sur-Rak’s aunt, was practically famous for the number of assassination attempts she had survived, some said she even encouraged them. It was only reasonable that one day she would succumb to that which she courted.
“She was ill that morning,” Sur-Rak said, “and attending only threatened to make her more so.”
“And now she will never have the chance to see her again.” He made it sound a judgement and a dissaproving one at that.
Sur-Rak completely disagreed. “She will see her with the passing of every Gold Aspect, and maybe even feel her in the ris that will be laid upon the new Archon.”
Her grandfather wheezed derisively. “Those doctrines are worth less than the scrolls they are copied onto.”
Sur-Rak had never known her grandfather to be a particularly religious keshe, but neither had she known him to be antagonistic to the teachings of the temple. It seemed that the death of his daughter had hardened him more than she realized, and--much like with her own mother--Sur-Rak found understanding his rationale difficult. He still had two of his three children, a good number to live to adulthood in times such as these. Her own parents only had her, which is why she didn’t have time to waste disappointing them.
“You watch the distance,” Sur-Rak said, “when you could help Lercel survive the transition that is happening now. Why do you refuse to be involved?”
He glanced over his shoulder at her, an everyday gesture she had never seen him use before. “The election is an excuse for scavengers to preen and the council seats to feel important. They should just appoint someone right away, and be done with it.”
If Sur-Rak was the type to let herself grind her sharp teeth, she would have. “If you had accepted the position, you could have moved to do just that.”
He turned back to his view, a breeze below rustling through the trees. “I’m sure they found someone else in short order.”
“They have given interim to uncle,” she said. Sur-Rak watched him closely to see how he reacted. If--as she suspected--her uncle had orchestrated her grandfather’s refusal, it should show.
He didn’t say a word, giving her nothing in more than one way, and this time Sur-Rak did spend a brief stint with her jaw clamped together. Few could frustrate her the way her grandfather could, but that was why she needed him on her side--he had power.
“Uncle was the wrong choice,” she said, “and you know it.”
“I know you covet the position of Archon for yourself. Have ever since you were a child.”
“And who encouraged me to do so?”
“When you are older, Sur, not now. You are much more child than I thought if you have convinced yourself that you are prepared for such responsibility.”
“And uncle is? He is a cripple who couldn’t even father his own child. You believe the people will rally behind him, keshe or human?”
“He is a master of the fourth seal, arcknight, and division leader, none of which you have achieved. Even if he was not, the citizens will follow whoever the council tells them to.”
“The people care about power, and he does not exude it, no matter how often he loses his temper.” She stood straighter. “As for the qualifications you prize, I will accomplish each of them soon enough.”
“In a few years, and perhaps after a dozen more you could be a worthy Archon,” he allowed, but there was no compliment in his voice. “To go after the seat now is arrogance and a pointless conversation, much like speaking with those council members.”
“What could be more important than discussing the future of Lercel?” And of your granddaughter, Sur-Rak wanted to add, but she didn’t give voice to those words.
“I am going after the true threat.” His bony fingers gripped the stone rim of the wall. “Sah-Sah.”
Sur-Rak frowned. Aquaros were peaceful as a rule, largely staying to their shattered islands, or moving so quickly when traveling few noticed their presence. Even with this new killing technique they possessed, she found it hard to believe that they would strike out, especially since--as far as her understanding went--it wouldn’t be useful against Death. Of course, the knights would know more about the combination of seals if her foolish uncle hadn’t ordered those with Tears ris immediately overwritten with Gold after the assassination. Yet another indication that he was unfit to take the role of Archon.
Her grandfather must know all those things but still planned to go. Was he fleeing from Lercel and the memories it contained? Sur-Rak had never known him to act cowardly, but she had also never known him to fail to do what was best for the city.
“You would leave the southern wall without your presence,” she tried, “when a newly erected hold of Death sits only a few miles distant from here?”
He glanced at her, and Sur-Rak couldn’t tell if he was surprised or not. He had left before the information was discussed, but the knight patrol divisions alerted the wall divisions then the inner division along with the council. So, in all likelihood he had probably been one of the first to know.
“We will destroy them on the way,” he said, as if it was of no concern, and perhaps for someone of his ability it wasn’t. “Death are as single-minded as ants, and we are well practiced at crushing them. But this new power…the council can sell their story of some squire murdering her, but I know it was Udaru. He had the skill, and with this Aspect forsaken technique, the means. I will find him and all who have ris like him, even if I need to sink every island they have.”
Sur-Rak had been probing his desires throughout their conversation, but it was only now she could sense a single, unmistakable want come to the fore: vengeance. Vengeance against a division leader who never should have been, and one Sur-Rak knew he had lobbied repeatedly against. She could guess that he felt responsible in that way, likely thinking that if he had only pushed harder his daughter would still be alive.
But chasing down the aquaros wouldn’t serve Lercel, and it would likely lead to his own demise. She could see her grandfather surviving against a Death hold and perhaps all of Sah’Sah, but not both. She needed a way to keep him here.
“Uncle proposed dismantling the Gargant, and the seats have agreed.”
He looked at her with mild surprise and even a touch of regret, she was sure. That he hadn’t expected.
Four Death invasions ago, her grandfather had ridden on the shoulder of the Gargant, helping his daughter, the newly raised Archon, destroy countless trespassers. Sur-Rak had been young then, only a single seal on her spine, and she had begged the story from them both many times. With her aunt now gone, her grandfather surely wouldn’t want such an important memory of her reduced to scrap.
“Don’t you see why you must stay?” she pressed. “What good is it for you to go if you come back to find us weakened beyond repair. Lercel needs you. Please, Grandfather.” Sur-Rak was not one to beg, not even to the extremely powerful members of her family, but she required him here--they all did.
“You are wrong,” he said, and it was an effort to keep her composure. “Help your uncle instead of trying to supplant him. That you can do, just as I can end a line of power that if left unchecked will one day destroy the knights. We each have our roles, and it is time you accepted yours, just as your uncle and I have accepted ours. Now leave me, Sur. I have much to prepare.”
Sur-Rak wanted to do just the opposite, but she did as was told, bowing and then walking away. Her grandfather was just placating her. In her current position she didn’t have the power to help her uncle, not in the way he obviously needed, which meant Sur-Rak had to continue her plan of gathering support from enough council seats. Sur-Rak didn’t let herself view many circumstances as a loss--every experience was an opportunity to grow and find advantage--yet she wished deeply that her grandfather would see reason.
However, none in her family seemed willing to do that, which left it to her.
She paused on the steps that led down the inside of the wall and turned to look back at the him. Despite her grandfather’s claim of needing to make preparations, he was still staring south, and a dread certainty rose up in Sur-Rak that she would never see him again. It was a cold premonition, and it chilled her more than the Gold ris upon her skin.
Similar to when her aunt had finally been entombed in the Aspect, Sur-Rak etched the moment in her mind--taking in his lined face, sagging ears, and the intricate shield of Gold ris he used to keep the wind from buffeting him--and then she moved on.
_______________________
Sur-Rak was halfway through the mids when her shroud alerted her to a presence nearby. She turned to see that a tall keshe was walking beside her, a wide smile on his rather handsome face.
“Yuv-Vas, I didn’t realize I was paired with you today.”
“Of course you did,” he replied, sounding not the slightest bit put out by her lie. “That’s why you arrived late for our rounds.”
“I was visiting my grandfather on the wall. One could even call it knight’s business.”
“I’m sure you would, or say it in such a way that another would assume it was, just as you’ve done now. But that has nothing to do with the fact that you clearly based your plans on knowledge of our pairing this day. It is unfair of you to use my good graces so, and it is only a matter of time until they run out.”
Sur-Rak laughed slightly. Yuv was known for his heartfelt exaggerations.
“I seem to remember not long ago you waiting for me no matter how delayed I might be,” she said. “Something about it being good knight’s practice to guard the most precious thing at the Academy?”
Yuv-Ves used his ris on a man up ahead who was carrying a large sack of grain on each shoulder, hands of golden light appearing briefly to stop the human from toppling over. Yuv was fond of such things, which was part of what made him such a popular knight of the inner division. Many gave him friendly greetings as he passed, and the man ahead turned around, nodding in thanks as soon as he saw Yuv’s knight’s tabard.
Yuv-Ves returned the gesture, which he most certainly did not need to do to someone of a lower station and then picked back up with Sur-Rak. “How long will you hold our time together at that monument to parchment over me? We were children.”
“It was barely a year ago for me and only two for you,” she countered. “Besides, why would I willingly let a useful resource go?”
He winked at her. “Because holding so tightly to one will inevitably lead to you losing one of greater value.”
Sur-Rak granted him a reprieve for his well executed riposte. Yuv-Vas had filled out in his past year as a knight, but more than that he held himself with a confidence he never had before. At the Academy he had always been happy to exchange quips with her but had never stared her down so boldly when saying them, letting his eyes linger that extra beat to show that he considered himself her equal, or at least much nearer than he had seen himself before.
Sur-Rak found the change in him not altogether disagreeable. And she would need more than council seats on her side to be raised Archon and cement her rule once there.
“Have you heard of the most recent initiative from the council?” he asked. It was common for those in the inner division to talk of such things, and Yuv-Ves knew of her interests.
“I have not,” she said, fixing her attention wholly on him.
He chuckled at her clear attentiveness. “If only you had put this much effort into my graduation fete. I still say you have been crowned Archoness to my Archonite.”
“If you do not know the difference between meaningless frivolities and decisions that may be critical for Lercel’s survival, then I have been giving you too much credit of late.”
“Giving me credit?” Yuv-Ves said. He even tried poking her in the side, which she of course stopped with her shroud. “Why Sur-Rak, that almost sounds like a compliment. Careful, or you’ll be known around the division as a flatterer.”
“I am in no more danger of that happening than you are of distracting me. Now what is the news?”
He laughed, boosting a keshe child who had fallen back onto her small feet with another well placed hand of ris. “They are assembling an expedition, a sizable one of at least fifty followers. Applications are being accepted now, and apparently, Gul-Lan will personally be leading it.”
Gul-Lan. Sur-Rak remembered the human girl Tif claiming that he might endanger the Archon. But then it had been Tif herself, the aquaros Udaru, and a keshe boy in the room when the Archon had been murdered. Still, Gul-Lan had been kept in Lercel overlong for a patrol leader and to now be leaving in such a way…
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“For what purpose?” she asked. If applicants were being called for there must be information about the goal of the undertaking.
Yuv-Ves surprised her by shrugging. “That I do not know. Only roles have been listed so far, and they span from baker to latrine digger. I would assume a search for more gold, but the material taken from the Gargant makes that unnecessary in the immediate, and if that is the purpose, why send so many initially?”
Possibilities flitted through Sur-Rak’s mind, many of which she dismissed. A raiding party would require people with seals and little else, and there was an enemy approaching, so no need to go to them. No trade routes had been reestablished as far as she had heard, and even if they had, so many wouldn’t be needed for what sounded like an extended journey. However, it had always been a bit of a mystery why her uncle hadn’t sent Tif with Gul-Lan to go to the Blood Plains since that was the division leader’s territory. Had her uncle been planning this excursion since then? If so, the situation became much more worrisome. Sur-Rak expelled the frustration at not knowing the answer out through her nose, the same as if she was meditating.
“What?” Yuv-Ves asked, turning away from a cart of yellow squash he had been complimenting.
“If I wished to say, I would have,” she replied. Honestly, he should know her better than that by now.
“How silly of me,” he said with a chuckle. “So, I take it we will have a peaceful circuit today, up through the highs and round back to the mids.” When she didn’t answer, Yuv added, “You know we should eventually do a bit of training, or they’ll start thinking that I’m not doing my job preparing you to be a knight.”
“I’m ready to be a knight,” Sur-Rak said, her mind elsewhere.
Yuv smiled in that way he had. “If only it was me you needed to convince.”
They stayed on the wide thoroughfare, which ran from the southern wall entrance all the way up to the peak. Yuv-Ves continued helping those he deigned in need, while Sur-Rak stayed very much in her mind. Not long after reaching the highs though, she veered down a side street.
“And where might you be headed?” he asked, following along beside her.
“To the Museum,” she answered. This had been her plan from the start, but there had been no need to tell Yuv-Ves before now. The knight on duty had leeway to choose the path they took through Lercel, as long as they stayed within their assigned area, and the Grand Museum was within theirs, thus her plans for the day.
The structure was one of the longest in Lercel, taking up twenty blocks. It hugged the side of the mountain it was built on, wide so it could stay mostly a single level. It had large doors on either end and two in the middle, and it was the eastern door that they entered the building from.
The Grand Museum had been one of Sur-Rak favorite places to visit while studying at the Academy, in part because most students flocked to the Academy’s attached Archives to do their reading, and so it was easier to find a quiet nook away from things here. What's more, she found the treasures of the museum much more engaging. The long rows of intricately crafted weapons and armor on display spoke to a time long past, when keshe had wandered the land and knew nothing of the Aspects or this sacred mountain with its veins of life-sustaining gold. The discovery of both had irrevocably changed the course of history for her people, and from Sur-Rak’s very first visit to this place, she had been convinced another would happen in her lifetime.
The tools preserved here, though made with great care and skill, had become unnecessary relics--no normal weapon could pierce a shroud or be used as effectively as a strike of Gold ris. To Sur-Rak that made them the perfect reminder that a people, and a person, should never let themselves stop growing and learning. She had a pet theory that this was why Death was still so socially stunted and warlike, because they refused to let go of their base armaments as all four civilized cities had done. And when she was Archon, she would make them, by force if necessary. For too long they had filled the lands in-between, choking the tribes off from each other. They were a stagnating presence, and Sur-Rak would see them expunged.
This was the change she would bring to the world.
Between the long rows of glass cases that featured not only her people’s military history but also pottery, box-like clothing, masonry from early attempts at wall building, and even skeletons, there was a desk, which two custodial keshe sat behind.
Sur-Rak ignored them, walking up a spiral set of stairs to a balcony that wrapped around the length of the museum. Partway down one side, she came to a large alcove with plush chairs and low tables. Two keshe sat here as well, but they were much more important than the ones downstairs.
It was the fighting school seat who spoke first around her teacup, which was expected; Sur-Rak knew her to be a great proponent of striking first.
“It seems the rumors of your plotting are actually true, Sur-Rak. Why else would you and this fine knight come speak with two council seats?”
Striking first indeed. Sur-Rak could have pointed out that there were other rational reasons why the four of them might meet, but Sur-Rak preferred the direct approach as well. She placed her arms behind her and didn’t let herself appear shaken in the slightest. Any show of weakness and the fighting school seat would keep attacking.
“Your assessment is correct. I plan to challenge my uncle for the position of Archon. Though skilled, he is too volatile to take up such a role and does not have the balance of education that I possess.”
The fighting seat opened her mouth as if sensing a vulnerable gap.
“However,” Sur-Rak pressed on, denying the keshe a chance, “I know my personal opinions will not convince you to give me your votes. What will are the unique services I can offer each of you.” She faced the fighting council seat specifically. “If you support me I will teach you my technique, which I know you and yours have desired since I first unveiled it.”
“Will you now…?” the fighting seat said, relaxing back into her chair. “Who’s to say that we haven’t already uncovered it and are currently teaching it to our students?”
“The way you are sitting in faux-repose,” Sur-Rak answered, “and how you are playing with the gold rings on your neck. You are…impatient.”
The fighting seat’s fingers froze, and then the keshe laughed, sharing a look with the museum seat. “Das players, hmm. They can have such an…intrusive eye for detail.” She looked back at Sur-Rak. “Your terms are acceptable. Precisely how do you perform your tracking strike?”
“Come over here, please,” Sur-Rak said, walking over to the railing. “I wish this to be for your ears and your ears alone.”
“Very well,” the fighting seat said. She stood on lithe legs and prowled toward Sur-Rak, no longer attempting to hide her eagerness.
When the two of them were situated beside the waist-high stonework, with no others nearby, Sur-Rak pitched her voice low.
“The key is the second seal.” As she knew the statement would, this raised two incredulous eyebrows on the older keshe’s face. People thought Sur-Rak a master of the first seal, and she was quite skilled in its use, but her true genius lie within the strands of the shroud. So many viewed the second seal as only a means of protection, or something not worth considering until the fourth seal. In so doing, they missed out on the beautiful complexities of the barrier. Most had no idea that it could be used to block more than just physical attacks or ris, but sound or smell. Sur-Rak was also still experimenting with using it as a filter to see other ris types, but none of those little tricks were what she was sharing today.
“It was because of how early my grandfather convinced my mother to give me the second seal,” Sur-Rak explained. “Over time it became like a secondary skin to me, a way I could experience the world around me.”
“And?” the fighting seat said, her impatience bleeding into her voice. “After five years, I want specifics, not a story.”
“Of course,” Sur-Rak said, nodding. She had no reason to antagonize the keshe, at least not until after she had what she needed from her. “I began to realize that I could affect what entered my shroud and what exited.”
“Exited?” the fighting seat said, and the keshe’s ears actually twitched in excitement.
“Yes,” Sur-Rak said. She didn’t bother explaining it was her voice she had first realized she could keep to herself if she wished, along with another person if they stood close, precisely as they were now.
“I learned I could affect my ris shots as they left my shroud. For example.” Sur-Rak did a strike to the side but as her Gold ris met her shroud, she rotated the barrier slightly down, which--with a brief flare at their connecting point--sent her shot into the floor where the golden light disintegrated against the stone, kicking some dust into the air.
“What was that?” the keshe said, stabbing her finger to the side. “I watched you during Recruitment, and I never saw your shroud flare in such an obvious way.” Her voice dropped to a hiss. “If you think to fool me, I promise you will not only lose my support but any other seats you manage to convince.”
“As you well know,” Sur-Rak said, letting the harsh words slide off her like ris from her barrier, “I’ve kept the specifics of this technique hidden up until now. One way I did so was by only using it on bright days when observers were far away, both of which were fortunately the case on the day of Recruitment. I’m also able to dim my shroud some, making it harder to see.”
The fighting seat didn’t seem happy with this explanation and snapped, “Show me.”
Sur-Rak did so, lightening the golden lines that surrounded her in a sphere until they were only at half their normal brightness. Sur-Rak knew from experience that they wouldn’t protect her as well in that state, but that hardly mattered in a situation such as this. One day she hoped to make them vanish entirely while still defending her.
“I have seen your strikes change direction mid-air,” the fighting seat said, still sounding unconvinced, “at a distance your shroud could not possibly affect. How do you explain those alterations in trajectory?”
“Well spotted,” Sur-Rak admitted. “This is only the first half of my manipulation. The second…”
The fighting seat’s lips pressed together. “You will tell me once I vote your way.”
Sur-Rak smiled, pleased to be working with someone who didn’t need everything spelled out for a change. “Correct.”
The older keshe’s barrier wobbled slightly, causing the council seat to frown. “How are you turning your shroud?”
Sur-Rak contemplated this question carefully. Unlike most of the other council members, the fighting school seat was a retired arcknight. “Your fourth seal may actually complicate things, as you don’t want to change the shape of your barrier but instead spin the whole of it.” Sur-Rak extended her hands until the tips of her fingers were touching her shroud. “What helped me was this, imagining that my nails were dug in and moving it.” She demonstrated by tilting her arms, the shroud shifting with her. “It is a lie of the mind, of course,” Sur-Rak said, lowering her arms and recreating the same movement of the shroud, “but it is how I began, so it may work for you as well.”
“How long did it take you to master?”
“I was not tracking my progress at that time because in some ways I didn’t know I was making any. My best guess? At least a year, perhaps two.”
The fighting seat smiled, the first time since joining Sur-Rak. “A challenge then. I will have it by the time you are confirmed as Archon, and you will show me and me alone the rest.”
Sur-Rak nodded to the keshe, not needing to fake her shared delight. “It will be my pleasure.”
The fighting seat strode away, down the long viewing balcony, almost certainly to begin training just as intensive as that found in any of the schools she oversaw.
Her first hurdle done, Sur-Rak made her way back over to the where the other council member and Yuv-Ves were amiably having tea, the young knight having taken the chair the fighting seat had vacated.
The museum seat was a wide keshe with strong legs from walking his robust middle around the great length of this museum. Sur-Rak had heard him say at more than one summer party that he walked so much so he could eat and drink as he desired and not the other way around.
“I hope you don’t plan to entice me with fancy hand movements,” he said to her when she neared. “I’ve never had much use for ris beyond it being a convenient way to dust hard to reach places.”
“Of course not,” Sur-Rak said, ignoring the gibe. She was confident that the museum seat would be her easiest win yet and so didn’t hesitate in laying out her plan. “To you I offer the Gargant. We are in agreement regarding its near-sacred status, and I will have its deconstruction halted immediately. I will even work with you to draft a ruling that it remain protected for all time should you wish it.”
He surprised her by not looking overjoyed to have a supporter for a matter he professed to care deeply about. Instead, he looked contemplative.
“As much as it pains me to admit, the Gargant is lost to us. By the time you have the power to do anything, the gold from it will be earmarked for the populace and promises made. To take it back would be to invite ill feelings, if not violence, from many, many individuals. If it was traced back to me, I do not doubt that the Museum would be vandalized. Such a risk I cannot take.”
Sur-Rak had prepared counter arguments to his poorly made points as he spoke, propped up as they were by guesses of the future and unreasonable fear, but through her seals she sensed the barest touch of a different desire from him. She couldn’t put her finger on precisely what it was, but she had more tools at her disposal than her ris.
“I prefer transparent negotiations and am unlikely to agree to things when made to wait on them,” she said.
The museum seat pursed lips that Sur-Rak found overthick for a keshe. “I have a son.”
In response, she clicked her fingernails together--they weren’t as long as Del-Shi’s, but they were still sharp. “You are bold to ask for such a match…” His family wasn’t even one of the lower founding nobility. “Dangerously so.”
The museum seat sat back, threading his fingers over his belly. “So are you to strive for such a position at so young an age.” He smiled, revealing sharp teeth gone dull from too many sweets. “Let us be daring you and I.”
“I will consider him as consort. Nothing more.”
The fat keshe lifted hands as if such matters were out of his control. “Then there is little I can do for you. Hur-Rek-Sar plans to elevate the new squires as soon as he is confirmed as the Archon. If my son cannot be with you, he will at least be one of them.”
Of course her uncle would wait to gift the gold until he was confirmed, ensuring that every purchased vote acted the way he needed.
Sur-Rak felt the hair down the back of her neck rise, but at the same time knew that such frustration was unnecessary. There were many things she cared more about than who was officially recognized as her mate, so why not agree? If she did, only two more votes separated her from becoming the Archon--votes it would be much easier to obtain with three already behind her.
And yet Sur-Rak didn’t immediately say yes, her mind searching for an alternative much more thoroughly then she would have expected it to. It landed on something she had heard in passing a few weeks ago that might potentially serve her purposes.
“There was a theft at the Academy, was there not?”
He eyed her skeptically at the change in subject. “So my sources tell. A book was taken from their inner chamber.”
Sur-Rak leaned forward, not needing to feign her interest. “I had not heard that.” She’d never read anything from the Academy's inner room and few books in general since the majority of keshe histories and writing were done on scrolls.
The museum seat shrugged. “Only those who knew where to listen did. The academy seat kept things quiet, even dismissing some students blamed for the loss. They probably hoped the inner division would find it in short order, but with how much you’ve been chasing after that human girl, I doubt they’ll ever see it again.”
Sur-Rak hadn’t heard of the theft through the division but her quiet neighbor Mem-Lis whose father worked at the Academy. So, the museum seat was likely correct in his assessment.
“Do you know what book it was?”
“One of legends, apparently, so of little academic use. But written in part by the first Archon’s mother, so still of great value.”
That was precisely what Sur-Rak had hoped to hear. “I see. Then would I be correct in assuming that you would be pleased to find such a book in your possession?”
It had been the obvious direction of the conversation, but he narrowed his gaze at her nonetheless. “Why not offer this deal to the academy seat instead of me? It is their book after all.”
“The academy seat has long been a friend of my uncle’s, and so no use to me,” Sur’Rak said, dismissing the suggestion. “If you do not wish to keep the book, I’m sure you could find something of the Academy’s to trade it for.”
“Putting it to use will not be a problem. However…” He gave her a flat look. “You do not have the authority to authorize such a search.”
“Of course not,” she said, “but you have my word I will do the very day I am installed as Archon.”
“‘You cannot pay for that which you wish today with the labors of the morrow,’” he said to her, quoting an old keshe proverb.
Sur-Rak chose speaking instead of biting his nose off. “Are you sure you wouldn’t better serve Lercel as the merchant seat?”
He smiled. “You are not the first to make that observation.”
“Very well, I will find this book before the election.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Will you now?”
“Yes, and I will require as many details as you have about the object in order to search effectively.”
“I do not have such facts easily on hand. I will have them sent to your home once they are located.”
Sur-Rak did her best not to let her revulsion show. How did a person who acted as the caretaker for the majority of the most treasured objects in Lercel not know exactly where everything in their domain resided? They should be the living embodiment of the principles of their field, not this rotund, forgetful keshe. It seemed that the das seat was not the only council member she would be replacing once she became Archon. After all, leaving him in his position had been no part of their dealings.
“Very well, but do so quickly. There is no time to waste in our endeavor.”
“As you say,” the museum seat said, inclining his head slightly toward her. The move gave Sur-Rak a measure of triumph, much more so than his words. That was because he currently outranked her, but the show of respect he had just given indicated that he didn’t always believe that would be true.
Invigorated, Sur-Rak turned to see Yuv-Vas helping one of the museum workers replace a large tapestry. The knight was using his ris to hang the piece on installed wall hooks, and as she watched, Sur-Rak noted how deftly he controlled the temporary golden shaped hands. She didn’t think she’d block such a move if he tried to touch her that way.
Sauntering over to him, she tallied her victories while planning her future: either she would locate the book, or she might end her campaign with two mates.
There were certainly worse fates.