Page 6 of Elvenbred

King Alliard gestured with his chin, “Pick up your sash, High Lord. Never forget that the difference between civilization and anarchy is three missed meals.” He glanced towards his aide-de-camp. “Captain, get a badge for the High Lord’s sash. Something big and massy that he can use for armor to protect his heart for when there is unrest.”

Haldeen studied the king. One was never quite sure when the Alliard joked.

“You were muttering a moment ago, Haldeen,” the king said, still staring down at the table. “You might as well go next. Your estate … closest to the wall where the Big One attacked.”

“Yes, my king,” Haldeen replied. “You’ve already heard the inventory depletion, the combat losses, and the effect of driving away the one attacking the wall. Umm ….”

Haldeen came to a stop, because the king was giving him a steely-eyed look. Not a glare, not yet, but … best weigh his words with absolute precision. This was where he’d planned to advise the king about the success of the new Machina, but the garrison officers had simply reported the facts, and he saw treacherous waters. He waited for the king’s pleasure before proceeding. He really did not want to get into how the Machina had been lost, not here, and certainly not in front of the others.

The king kept that measured gaze, and held his eyes. Haldeen had no idea what to expect. The lords sitting closest to him leaned away, while those further leaned in, the better to see. Council meetings rarely got more exciting than this … one lord deposed, then reinstated, and a second caught under Alliard’s famous cold stare. The king held his gaze, silent for ten heartbeats. Then ten more. Haldeen knew better to fidget or turn away under that gaze, but he felt the sweat run down his back, and the fear turn to nausea. Was he about to lose everything as Pilias so nearly had?

“Am I to understand,” the king said quietly, barely above a whisper, “that my Lord Gatekeeper remained in sight and at risk and in close proximity to an attack, and did not seek shelter as commanded? You are, for the time being, essential, and I do not care for being flouted.”

“Escape was fundamentally cut off, Majesty,” Haldeen said quickly. “It is a problem with my tower—which was built and designed by former Lord Haleysian Architect—that I intend to correct immediately. Using only material, and not magic, may I add.” He already had an idea; it would be undignified to slide down a pole in all his robes of state, but the city firefighters already used such poles to get from their sleeping quarters to their equipment, and it was exponentially faster than trying to run down that same spiral staircase. Already in the back of his mind, he was making improvements to the simple pole … a sort of casing around the pole that could slow descent, with a footrest and handholds ….

“Do so, and make the end design available to everyone, immediately,” the king replied. “I should be the only entity removing one of my lords from his position. Not some random Predator.”

Nervous titters all around the room; the king smiled grimly. Yes, a joke, and as close as the king ever got to humor. Under the laughter, Haldeen heard the lord whisper to his benchmate, “… moment Haldeen started explaining, he was losing. Had to have his duty explained to him by the king. That will leave a mark.”

He turned around to look at Haldeen, perfectly aware that the Lord Gatekeeper had heard every word. “Wouldn’t you agree, my Lord Technical.”

Haldeen, faced by a lord-by-birth, could only nod his head. No matter how high he rose, he remained a lord made, and there was always a lord born to remind him how easy the fall would be. The lord-by-birth, his point made, turned back to share a comment with his benchmate. Alliard could be touchy about talking to the back of someone’s head, and not even a lord-by-birth had immunity from that displeasure.

Haldeen mopped his sweaty brow. The king had turned to the next unfortunate … a garrison officer having to report on the depletion of the firelances, with the Makers next to him getting pinned under that stare for a high-estimate for the time needed to fabricate more. It appeared to Haldeen that the matter of the destroyed Machina would not be a subject for comment. At least not yet.

He relaxed a little, then thought back to the Lord Agronomer’s … correction, the High Lord Provisioner’s … report. Third mark of the afternoon. The same time as the attack on his side of the city, and the furthest away from the last of the farm stations. Haldeen’s eyes went to the map that King Alliard gestured towards as he grilled the garrison officers, measuring distances with his eyes.

The farm station, made of magic-fused stone, and well reinforced and shielded, had stood at the extreme edge of the city’s ability to support. The station had held out against previous attacks until reinforced by Machina and … Skydancers … and the farm station remained sufficiently important to commit the city’s precious reserves. Except, they hadn’t been sent north to the station. The king had deployed them to defend the city itself, to the south … on Haldeen’s side, on the opposite side of the city and furthest from the farming station … and when the Monster had seen the Skydancers, it had fled.

Haldeen stitched that thought together carefully. The Monster had fled once it saw the Skydancer. Once the Skydancers went south … they could not go north, and could not help the farm station. He felt the world drop below him. Perhaps the Monster didn’t flee. Perhaps it had accomplished its task. It had tied down the city’s reserves long enough for its mates, friends, whatever they were, to overwhelm the farm station. He closed his eyes and opened them again, blinking slowly. Has anyone else figured that out? How long until they do? Will they? In his memory, no one had ever even considered the idea that the Predators had any more intelligence than an animal. Should I say something?

Moragen, Lord Sanitation, and the lowest ranking of the lords appointed, gave him a jab in the ribs. “Buck up, old son,” he whispered cheerily, “the piece he took out of your behind will stop bleeding in a bit. Could be worse, you know.” Moragen grinned at him, the smile of someone happy the arrow had missed him. “I can tell him about that new valve you designed, if you like? It really makes the waste flow.”

Haldeen gave him a queasy look, while thinking furiously. Moragen had made his decision for him, and he had no desire to place himself under the king’s blade a second time today. Better to gather his data, and get proof, more evidence … something he could lay out line by line, show the patterns. They don’t see it because they don’t want to … because it would mean that we are truly going to lose … that the shrinking circle will continue … that there is no way out. Dumb Predators … we could mostly, almost handle. Smart ones, though …. He paused that line of thinking. “I wonder what changed?” he said aloud.

“Shhsss,” said Moragen. “I think I’m next. My turn in the barrel.”

The king turned his gaze on Moragen, who remained sober-faced as he gave the only good news in the entire session. To the fellow’s credit, he didn’t smirk, or look smug, and he did give Haldeen credit for that new valve. The king’s eyes flickered back to Haldeen for a moment but his gaze remained opaque. “One wonders,” the king said aloud, after Moragen had finished, “Why Lord Redamil Artificer did not supply this new valve.”

“Lord Haldeen offered one to us to test, Majesty,” said Moragen. “I ….” He made an elaborate shrug. “I guess Lord Redamil doesn’t have time for little things like valves for the sanitary system, but Lord Haldeen’s always trying to make things flow more smoothly.”

The Lord Exchequer gave a small cough. “And cost, Majesty. The prices for the Lord Artificer’s time have continued to escalate. Even simple jobs cost ten times what they did a few years back. We’re learning to make do as the cities look to themselves first. I daresay, my Lord Gatekeeper’s valve is good enough, and didn’t cost us the metals the Lord Artificer would have required.”

Haldeen almost choked. The reason he’d designed the valve in the first place was because his tower was at a choke-point in the system, and he got tired of smelling sewage. And it was much more unpleasant when there was the—thankfully rare—backup in the system. But here was Moragen, making himself an unexpected ally, and giving Haldeen a tiny nudge in the direction of the much more prestigious title of “Gatekeeper and Artificer.” He caught Moragen’s eye, and surreptitiously locked thumbs with the fellow for just a moment. I owe you, said the gesture, acknowledging the new relationship.

The king managed a smile that shared close kinship with his more usual frown …. “And my Lord Gatekeeper is once more taking up tasks outside his purview. Make sure you spare some time for your appointed job, Haldeen. You remember that one. Keeping the Gates working?” He did manage a ghost of grin. “Still, the sewage isn’t backing towards the King’s Tower anymore, so thank you both. And on that note, gentles all, we are concluded. Once around the table, and home for dinner?”

Haldeen sat in his place as the Council’s report concluded. The loss of the last outstation farm, the depletion of the firelances which would not be replaced soon, even his touchy Machina … they were getting weaker. Something needed to change.

He would do it. He would send the probe tonight, while the city slept and the draw on the population took much less of the city’s ambient magic.

Eight hours later, in the middle-watches of the night, he sat on the bench in the Gatekeepers’ Lab, and reviewed his wife’s calculations one final time. The fussy writing with the neat columns and balanced equations showed her mind at its strength, in the details, where precision mattered. Here their alliance lay, reduced to its essentials; he might be the thinker, the plotter, and the planner, while she produced the ever so precise numbers that made the Gate alignments possible. He felt alone tonight, and for a few moments, wished that he and she had found a way to be more than civil to each other. Andaleisia was not unattractive, and had an amusing laugh, and told a good story, and shared a passion for the calculations that made the Gates work. Perhaps in a different world ….

He shrugged the maudlin thoughts away, aware he was stalling.

He put the sheaf down, and stood facing the Gate, and the cages. He began the process of bringing the small Gate to life. Her best work had been in figuring out how to mesh a small short-range Gate, the one he’d been given to test temporary transit points, with the World Gate. His experiments verified that the World Gate remained intact when his city fell, but remained unpowered and forgotten by all … except him.

He used the control rod to shape the ambient magic around him, reciting the incantations and making meticulous passes with the tip of the wand to bring the runes and sigils to life in the precise order she had mapped out. He used a trickle of his own power, just enough to start the flow, and shape it, then drew in the ambient magical energy that lay all about. Sensitives would feel the magic move, and ambient alarms all over this part of the city would be chiming softly, but the sheer scale of what he was doing would keep his work from being pinpointed. The Gate took a lot of Power, and he was moving a lot of magic, but he was taking it in tiny sips from everywhere.