Chapter 1095: An Account of the Past
Nightingale placed the ring on the corner of Roland’s desk without comment.
It was a small thing — two curved shards of aluminum fitted together so that a scroll of Soraya’s ultra-thin paper could ride in the channel between them. The identification letter embossed into the metal was C. Kingdom of Dawn. Roland had decided on the first letter of each country’s Pinyin spelling for security reasons; the standard Four Kingdoms characters were too legible to the wrong eyes.
“When did this come in?”
“Ten minutes ago. Honey’s run.” Nightingale settled into the chair across from him, one foot tucked beneath her. “You were on the phone.”
Roland unclipped the ring, unrolled the paper, and read.
The letter was long — Sean wrote with the careful thoroughness of a man who knows he’s communicating across a distance where follow-up questions cost days. Seven minutes to parse, to cross-reference against what he already knew of the Archduke Island situation, to fit the confession of Lorenzo’s butler against the record of the Ceremony Cube’s response to the enriched uranium sample. When he put it down, he took a moment before he spoke.
“I didn’t expect the church to come to us.”
Nightingale said nothing. She was watching him the way she watched everything — not waiting for a particular answer, just paying attention.
“They’ve lost Hermes,” Roland said. “They’ve lost the God’s Punishment Army. Whatever’s left of them can’t stage a recovery, and they know it.” He set the letter on the desk. “The man persecuting these particular fugitives isn’t Graycastle — it’s one of their own former bishops. The most dangerous kind of enemy. Knows all the same information.” He looked up. “Where do you think the last church remnants went, after they ran from the Holy City?”
“The ones who left the orphans behind.” Nightingale’s voice had an edge in it, brief and controlled. Her curiosity was genuine. “I’ve wondered.”
“If the letter’s accurate — ” Roland slid it across to her — “they’ve scattered. Farrina is the closest thing to a functioning leadership that’s left, and she’s been in Lorenzo’s hands since before Sean’s team reached Thorn Town.” He watched Nightingale read. “We’ll move on the Kingdom of Wolfheart. The Cube reacted to the uranium sample; whatever the murals depict, they’re not allegory. We need that artifact in Neverwinter.” A pause. “As for the acting pope — bring her back. Bring Joe back with her. I want to question them both directly.”
Nightingale folded the letter along its crease. “That’s what I expected you to say.”
“You don’t disapprove?”
“The church persecuted me,” she said. “It persecuted most of the witches I’ve known. I’m aware that you know that.” She set the letter down. “But I learned what Alice was actually trying to do. What the God’s Punishment Witches were for, what the church was built to accomplish, even if it became something monstrous along the way.” Something in her expression shifted — not softening exactly, more like a calculation reaching its endpoint. “Alice was wrong. She was cruel. She was — pathetic, in the end. But I don’t hate her anymore. And the church she built is already gone. There’s no one left to take revenge on even if I wanted to.”
Roland considered this. Then: “You hated men too? Before?”
Nightingale’s eyes cut to him with an expression he’d learned to read as amused contempt aimed slightly to his left. “Why do you sound alarmed?”
“I’m not alarmed —”
“My awakening wasn’t something I chose. I didn’t do anything wrong.” She was direct about it, no heat, just the flat presentation of facts that should have been obvious. “I couldn’t control it. Everybody around me acted like I was a disease. You push people away, and then you’re surprised when they stop wanting to be near you. Most of the witches went through some version of that.” She tilted her head. “Is that so hard to understand?”
“The dagger,” Roland said. “In my bedroom. That first night.”
“You were lucky.” She said it with the particular satisfaction of someone who has been saying this for years and still finds it accurate. “I didn’t hate people in general. I hated nobles specifically. Solid sample size for the hatred.” A corner of her mouth moved. “I sat down with you because of Anna. That’s the truth of it. I was trying to show Anna what nobles actually were — give her a demonstration she couldn’t argue with. Unfortunately —”
You were not the demonstration I’d planned, she didn’t say. The word unfortunately took all the weight.
“So the flirting was tactical.”
“Obviously.” She waved a hand. “Acting. I wanted Anna to see through you. And then you turned out to be —” She stopped. Found a more careful word. ”— different. From the model.” A beat. “So I adjusted.”
Adjusted. Roland turned this over with the particular feeling of a man discovering that a story he thought he knew has a different architecture. He said, glumly, “So I was just lucky.”
“Yes.” Nightingale patted his shoulder with the brisk authority of someone closing a topic. “But the important thing is that I stopped being wrong about you. After I learned about the Pure Witches. After I understood what Zero was. Those feelings were —” She considered the word. ”— childhood things. They burned off.”
Roland looked at her. “You really did come a long way.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I’m not —” He stopped. He wasn’t. He was something else, something harder to name, the feeling of being seen clearly by someone who had good reasons not to see clearly, and being found — not wanting, exactly, but sufficient. He was about to say something ill-considered when Nightingale leaned forward and looked at him the way she looked at things she was about to describe accurately.
“You weren’t sad a moment ago,” she said. “You’re sad now.”
Then she was gone — sliding sideways into the Mist, the fabric of ordinary visibility parting around her and closing without a seam. By the time Roland’s eyes found her again, she was horizontal on the recliner across the room, a piece of dried fish between her teeth, regarding him with the bright self-satisfaction of someone who has made an excellent exit.
He ground his teeth. He got to his feet. He was composing a speech — brief, precise, concerning the nature of royal dignity — when the telephone rang.
Barov. The voice of the Administrative Office, slightly too loud in the way of a man who has never fully trusted that the device works.
“Your Majesty. A visitor from the old king’s city. He insists on speaking with you personally. He won’t give any other reason.”
Roland glanced at Nightingale. She bit off a piece of dried fish and raised her eyebrows.
Barov cleared his throat with the import of a man about to announce something. “The great dramatist, Sir Kajen Fels.”
Roland’s brow furrowed. Again. He’d been clear in his last letter — clear enough that another visit should not have been necessary. He opened his mouth to say so.
“He does have a specific purpose, Your Majesty,” Barov said, very quickly, with the tone of a man who has learned to pre-empt this particular response. And then he described it.
Roland went quiet. The speech he’d been forming dissolved. Something else replaced it — the particular sharpening that happened when an unexpected thing arrived and turned out to fit exactly where nothing had fit before.
“Take him to the castle parlor,” Roland said. “I’ll be there.”