The Seer

by Sonia Orin Lyris

The king’s accountants were fond of joking that children were one of Yarpin’s most lucrative exports.

1

Amarta took off her pack and looked around the room, feeling dazed as the future she had glimpsed moments ago became the present.

Thus Innel’s reports were more than factual; each started with a triumph, however minor, and ended with an uncertainty, the pattern intended to make the king eager to read the next dispatch

The thought sent a chill through him. For a split second, he found himself thinking he must find his brother and tell him.

Richard

The king thought he had sacrificed his brother to win her. At this thought Innel felt sickened, closely followed by the fear that if he looked deep into himself, he would find it was true.

turned back with a quick smile.

An intriguing notion, to see altered the near thousand-year tradition of loudly denouncing magic with one side of the mouth while hiring a mage with the other.

“You can have it when you want it, ser Royal Consort, or you can have it for less coin, but you cannot have both. Trust me, ser.”

Innel would start his own rumors to combat it, of course, far more outrageous. Pigs that snorted predictions, dogs that burped tomorrow’s weather. This would help confuse anyone looking for a kernel of truth. He hoped.

Or perhaps they remembered perfectly well, and these girls with their small pigs and dogs and buckets of bloody entrails were merely entertainment now that the coronation was over and life had returned to a bleak misery.

“Food and drink at regular intervals. Start with a large variety, then improve on the ones she chooses. I want to know every book she opens or touches.”

“There is no getting around the Charter Court,” Innel said, forcing a show of amusement at this dangerous idea. “I do not dispute this,” she said. “But perhaps some small change is possible? Rather than every sixteen years . . .” She paused, as if thinking the matter through. “Perhaps every twenty? Even every quarter of a century?”

Once Cern had been crowned, Innel had found even Restarn’s most loyal retainers surprisingly easy to buy off and quite willing to accept new assignments. Innel

“What do they say about him?” “That he guards the queen. That he is making the king whole and hale. That he selects children for the upcoming Cohort. That he’s been turning iron into gold—or the other way around, depending on who is speaking. Is seeking certain of the queen’s relations for execution. Or commendation. Again, depending on who you ask. Is enchanting the army. Is helping the queen conceive a child. The list goes on.”

“Your people are finally fighting back, but instead of turning on their rulers they turn on each other. Your country is wounding itself. What fools.”

a little, either; the entire royal garrison has been gutted, turned into an army

“You shock me with your naivete. Have you never met those who want more than they are given through largesse?

“You said I should charge more.”

“This one,” she whispered, holding up her left hand.

“Have you studied the battles in which the Teva lost?” “Apparently I was not to be burdened by those accounts, either.” “There are none,” she said, giving him a moment to consider. “There is a reason we brought sufficient force, Commander.” The thousands of soldiers and cavalry behind them, now making camp. It had seemed too much, by far, an excessive expedition, outrageously expensive, but Lismar had insisted. Looking across the small towns before him, he found himself wondering what she could possibly be thinking. What was her true agenda? Or maybe, being an Anandynar, she did not think much about cost. Well, satisfying Lismar was worth something, both practically and politically. Maybe even this much. In any case, they would end the affront to the crown, Teva or no, wherever it had originated. Mined gold. Forged currency. Theft on an empire-wide scale. He would not allow it. To Nalas he said: “Bring her.” Lismar snorted. “She can be useful, General.” Lismar raised her hands in mock surrender. “Evintine Three,” she said, “would eat a fistful of raw garlic before every battle, calling it his etheric shield. The Grandmother Queen slept with the severed paws of a mountain lion in her hands the night before a fight. Ramtor the Fearless kept the skulls of his enemies on long mahogany shelves and would kiss each forehead before dressing

Her real job, she was coming to understand, was to seem certain.

As she arrived at the kennels, she found herself comparing the dogs and the eparchs and finding the eparchs wanting. Once you had established an understanding with the dogs, they didn’t change their minds and try to renegotiate. Yes, they tested you, but they tested in the open, without subterfuge and endless posturing, and when they were sure of you, they stopped challenging. It had taken her time to understand all this, weeks of talking to the handlers, watching her father’s dogs in an attempt to make some sense of what he’d seen in the beasts. Then, to her astonishment, she had begun to. It was as if, as she sat outside the cages watching Chula and Tashu observe her, she had begun to take their measure in return. To understand their scent as they understood hers.

The runt of the litter, a tiny thing with black-tipped ears. When she’d taken the throne, she’d halted the practice of killing the smallest and weakest. Give them a chance, she’d said. Who knew what they might become?

Readiness comes from need, not before.”

but—what will you do?” Amarta looked around the room, took a deep breath. “I don’t know yet.” “How can you not know?” Nalas asked. “Can you not”—he waved a hand—“simply look to the future and see?” Amarta laughed a little, shook her head. “First I must choose. Like everyone else.”

That’s when I knew there was always going to be someone who—how do I explain—” “Someone with a bigger carriage.”

I am free to go.” At this he gave a small laugh. “Are you?