Page 75 of Into the West

“Palace,” interrupted Silvermoon. “You’re going to be a King, you should have a palace.”

Kordas felt himself blushing. “Oh, it’s very high class to be a king,” he replied, with mockery in his voice, though he was mocking only himself. “But it’s very crass to call yourself a ‘king’ and even crasser when you are ‘king’ of a place no bigger than a small duchy.”

Silvermoon snorted. “Just wait,” was all he said. “But yes. We’ll be completing the building with hidden entrances to these tunnels where you can hide, or escape, as you choose. And if you are attacked in force, you can put every single person you brought down here, as well as some of your animal stock. They won’t be comfortable, but they won’t be miserable either, and they will be safe.”

Silvermoon stopped talking and held up a hand. Kordas listened, and heard a voice he recognized, echoing from the tunnel to their left. Delia!

“. . . and it’s no fair that you haven’t offered Sai some of those mushrooms yet,” she was saying. “Oh, what he can do with mushrooms is—”

Delia and a hertasi stepped through the doorway and stopped. Kordas recognized the little lizard as Jelavan by his blue tunic with bronze feathers picked out along one shoulder.

They both stopped stock still. Jelavan recovered first, and nodded his head respectfully. “Oh! Welcome, Baron! I take it that Silvermoon is showing you our own little kingdom.”

“I hope we’re not trespassing,” Kordas replied.

“No, no, nothing of the sort! Most people just don’t like coming down here because it’s very disorienting until you learn the code!” He pointed to the keystones in each arch. “Blue is east, green is west, red is south and yellow is north. Then you pay attention to the patterns in the brickwork—” He began rattling off a long series of things Kordas was supposed to be looking for, then stopped, probably because Kordas couldn’t keep the dismay off his face. “Or, of course, you can just keep going in one direction until you come to a staircase or sky-blue ramp. They will always bring you to the surface.”

“That’s probably my best plan, should I have to come down here,” Kordas agreed.

“We have everything a creature could need here,” Jelavan said proudly. “We have storehouses, we grow mushrooms, there are workshops of all sorts, we make pottery and metalwork and cook and weave and sew and make jewelry and embroider, and work leather. We always make more room than we will actually need, just in case we have to take in another clan. We have a system for disposing of waste, as I believe you had in your manor back in the Duchy. We have lots of private quarters—oh! You need to avoid anything with a door with a hertasi sigil carved into it. That’s someone’s home. Or at least, you need to avoid those places until we’re all gone.”

“I’m not looking forward to that day,” Kordas told him candidly. “I find I am really enjoying the company of your people. And the Hawkbrothers too, of course!”

Silvermoon struck a subtle pose. “How could you not? We are vastly good company at even the worst of times, and at the best of times, we are a delight. But let’s continue our tours. Delia, Jelavan, would you like to join us?”

Kordas refrained from objecting. It wouldn’t do to hurt Delia’s feelings, though being down here in very close proximity to her was not something he was particularly comfortable with.

But to his surprise, after a moment of thought, Delia shook her head. “Silvermoon is going to show you boring, important things. I want to see the fun things.” And she giggled.

He smiled at that. Now that’s what I want to hear. He still felt a lot of guilt for dragging her out into the wilderness, when at her age, instead of being one of the linchpins of a scouting expedition into dangerous lands, learning how to fight, learning survival techniques, she should have been teaching her foal, being courted, maybe. Certainly she would be introduced to suitable potential partners at parties and celebrations. And of course, at this time of year, there would have been a fortnight of celebration and feasting, she might have been making herself a new gown—or sitting beside the fire and reading, maybe with Sydney-You-Asshole purring at her feet—

No, not that last. Unlikely to say the least. Another cat, or a dog, but never Sydney.

Still, this mad plan of his had stolen experiences from her that she would never have. Were the ones she’d had instead worth it?

Well, it looks like this one is.

“Come see the workshops, then!” Jelavan scampered off down the west tunnel, with Delia at his heels.

Delia is—running. To keep up with the hertasi, not telling them to slow down for her. Would you look at that.

“And what would you like to see?” Silvermoon asked.

Kordas sighed. “What I want to see is those workshops. What I need to see is the forge and anything else connected with tools, defensive weapons, and their making; I assume there is one down here?”

“More than one,” Silvermoon assured him, and led him eastward. “And we will be able to speak freely. The route I have in mind is proofed against spying, and will remain so for many years to come. Not forever, though. Sometimes it is wiser for us to leave a spell or enchantment going, to fade on its own. If no known magic-eater is in the territory, we might even attract some if we leave it loud.” He shrugged. “It’s a kind of dance, and we are obliged to negotiate with the land as well as cleanse it.”

Kordas understood about half of the terms Silvermoon used when speaking about magic. Kordas was not bad, not bad at all, when it came to his magic, and had very good control atop that. The concepts that Silvermoon spoke casually of—the ones in practice! and not theoretical—would have changed the Empire forever, if they were known. “Like the wyrsa? Why would anyone want to attract them?”

“A few good reasons. They may not have been nature-born, but they are a fact of the ecology now, and if they go, so does something else. Additionally, our task is to put order to magic in the Pelagirs, wherever we find what we can call by that term. Not all forest in this region is considered Pelagirs. “Clean” forest appears here and there and isn’t encroached upon, for reasons we don’t even know yet. Like little islands of cleanliness in a sea of corruption. Ideally, that is what we’ll turn this region into, and what it becomes then, well, my new friend, only fortune-tellers and story-tellers know. But until then, magic-eaters like the wyrsa are like mowers to grass, for us. They home in on aberrant magical creatures and effects, and trim them down. They maintain a level of stability that makes our work last, and prevents the Pelagirs from encroaching right on back.”

It was an intentionally convoluted answer, but Kordas understood why. When one makes the story convoluted, it portrays that the speaker thinks in a convoluted way. It expresses that they think everything mentioned is connected. Silvermoon explains like that to also give me an empathic personal expression of the subject, and its meaning to him. It creates sympathy for the strangeness. He’s masterful.

“It makes sense that out here, you would want to use every resource you could for your holy cause—whether you control them or not. But isn’t just leaving them alone a way of controlling their future, too?” Kordas was taking a risk in being so direct in what had the appearance, so far, of just pleasant conversation, but had been diplomatic dueling since “We are obliged to negotiate” was said.

That is a Tayledras declaration of verbal dueling. Everything spoken after that moment has been aimed for dominance and respect.

Silvermoon stopped walking. Without turning around, he answered. “You have more on your mind than forges. It’s understandable.” He then led Kordas only three more turns before entering what could only be termed an open-air cafe with a guard post built into it. Or—a cafe garrisoned by armed chefs. Everyone was friendly and before Silvermoon even got to the rear entry, smiling and waving a bit, he’d been handed three baskets of fresh food, which he brought along. As if he had already planned for us to be here now. Silvermoon knew how to create a frame of reference for negotiation: We know all, we can lead you where we want to, we see all, you are surrounded, we run this show, and I’m the one who asks the questions here. You are at an utter disadvantage.