Chapter 61
Chulesh led the way back up to the balcony where Berilo had first embraced Arico. The old man was up there, hands spread on the guardrail as he looked down over the garden. After dismissing the servant, he gave Arico a searching look. “That was quick,” he commented dryly. “Either you’re a very fast reader indeed, or you skipped some parts.”
“I got the gist,” Arico said curtly. “Besides, you’ve read all those books, and you can’t lie to me, so I can just get it from you.”
Berilo spread his arms. “Anything you want to know is yours for the asking.”
Arico gave him a snide look. “All right. The books mentioned that the old Councils tried a few different methods to curb overpopulation, before the Rejoining even started. They don’t give any details though, and they don’t say why they stopped whatever it was they were doing. Do you know?”
Berilo shook his head. “Not precisely. None of those details are anywhere in Penntu patch, believe me. All I know is what is rumored about what happened back then. One of the stories say that before the Rejoining, it was common practice to keep stra’tchi patches at a one-to-three ratio, women to men. Any women above that number were put to the sword, to keep more children from being born. Another story describes a lottery system, where the right to bear children was decided by the toss of a die or the drawing of straws. There are other possibilities that may have been tried as well—each bloodier than the last.”
He sighed heavily. “All I know for sure is that whenever one of those systems failed, a great many people died. Entire patches were purged. I … realize how horrible the Ritual of Rejoining is, Arico. I’m not blind to just what it is I’ve done. At least this way the parents believe their children still live, though! Even if the chances they’ll see them again are miniscule, they can still have hope. None of the other methods did anything like that.”
Arico was silent for a while. When he had been much younger, Durhu had told him, just once, about changelings. How centuries ago, when stra’tchi parents had had a baby who was feeble or sickly, they would claim the baby wasn’t theirs. They would say that the Shemra had replaced their own child with this changeling baby, and they simply wouldn’t care for it. They would leave the child out in the open, to die of exposure. No one would rescue the baby, because they all believed it!
Was that kind of superstition better or worse than what was going on now? How could he judge what his own primitive ancestors had believed, if he hadn’t actually lived among them? Arico grimaced. For all he knew, all of this hesitation and doubt he’d been experiencing was just the Shemra at work. Perhaps they could sense his weakness, and had inflicted Berilo and his constant rationalizations upon Arico.
“Regardless of what really happened back then, I suspect the Rejoining won’t last much longer,” Berilo continued into the silence. Arico was dimly aware of the old man giving him a concerned look, as if trying to snap him out of it. “Either the truth will get out, and the stra’tchi will simply stop cooperating, or you will put an end to it,” he said nonchalantly.
That got through Arico’s musings. “Me?” He asked, blinking in surprise.
Berilo chuckled slightly. “You, Arico. You aren’t just the future of House Fisher, you know. You’ll be Lord Ascendant too, I’m sure of it. And you will do great things with that power.” Arico’s first reaction was incredulity. It must have shown on his face, because Berilo laughed again, a little louder.
“You’re insane,” he said, his disbelief turning to anger. “The whole Council wants me dead. We both know they’ll insist that I die, right alongside the… ‘Hauld’ at the Twin Suns. Even if you somehow convince them to spare me, there are a hundred other things standing in the way! Including the fact that I’d be replacing you! As if anything short of death itself could get you to give up power,” he added sardonically.
“You’re wrong,” Berilo said softly. “And you judge me too harshly. It’s true I am ambitious—it’s served me well over the years. However, isn’t it the greatest wish of any father to have sons not just capable of replacing him, but also surpassing him? Any good father, anyway,” he put in that condition sourly. Probably because of his own father—Arico had heard some depressing things about that relationship.
Shaking his head, Berilo went on slowly. “I loved Tenlor deeply, but I wasn’t blind to his faults. Despite all of his training, his experience, and his skill in battle, the only thing Tenlor could inspire in others was fear. Being feared is valuable in a leader, but it’s not enough. That’s why I’ve strived so hard to earn respect from the people as well. But you, Arico? You could be so much more than either of us! You could be a leader who isn’t just feared and respected, but is also loved by the people!”
Arico grimaced tightly. He didn’t want any of that. Being appreciated was all well and good, but Berilo seemed to think he’d end up being worshiped like some kind of god! “As if any of those qualities matter to the Council,” Arico said harshly, giving another reason why it could never work.
“The Council may not have a choice in the matter, actually,” Berilo went on, smiling slightly. “Don’t underestimate the effect you’ve had on this city, my son. You’ve spent months going from stra’tchi patch to stra’tchi patch, reaching out to people. Teaching them how to read, telling them about their past, and how to communicate with each other, independently of any navigators! You were raised among them, so you know how to get through to them. Even the Deathwatchers hold you in high esteem, and we both know how hard it is to impress them.”
Berilo took him by the shoulders. His voice gained intensity and excitement as he went on. “As for the Sustained, the rumors have gone all over the city a dozen times by now. How a crazed lunatic tried to poison everyone at the Aquunsaya—everyone in the city, really—and how you saved them all, risking your own life and losing your hands to do it! I didn’t try to quash those rumors, despite what my advisors wanted me to do. I wasn’t sure you were my son at the time, but some part of me wanted people to know what you’d done for them.”
So the rumors hadn’t just been spread by the Thornes after all. It figured: his father’s hubris had done more to bolster Arico’s reputation than anything Arico himself could have done. “Even so, the nobility will never accept me,” Arico put in. “Not after what I did at the Laentana, or after my association with the dwarves.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Berilo said confidently. “The Laentana grabbed people’s attention all over the city. It allowed the Clarion to convict and execute a deeply corrupt man. There’s also a growing number of younger Sustained nobles who disagree with the Council’s views. You’re something of an icon to them, despite your unfortunate upbringing,” he eyed Arico’s shoulder brand briefly. “It won’t take much to convince them that trading with the stra’tchi as equals would be preferable to the Tumultuous alternative.”
He gave a slow smile. “Before long the Council won’t have any choice but to accept you as one of them, or risk making enemies of every other noble family in Patchwork!” He paused for a moment. “If you’re worried about how to handle the Councilors themselves, don’t be. I’ll give you detailed information on all of them: enough to outmaneuver them whenever they start causing trouble.”
This was getting way out of hand. “Stop it!” Arico blurted out suddenly. “Just… stop it, Berilo. I’m not what you think! I don’t want to lead, or control, or rule anyone. I never have!”
“That’s just one more reason why you’d be good at it,” Berilo went on implacably. “People who want power just for its own sake rarely use it well. It’s the people who start out viewing power as just a means to an end: those are the people best suited to using it.”
“But I’m not like you, either!” Arico went on. “I could never oversee mass murder, like you have! I actually like living on a farm, tilling a field, and raising livestock. I like the simple life of a farming patch, where communities are close and friends are closer. I’ve never wanted to be any kind of noble, or wanted anything to do with them. Despite all of your creature comforts, and all the power that comes with being in charge, all that wealth and privilege only serves to separate you from each other. You weren’t raised as a stra’tchi—you don’t know what it’s like to have to rely on your neighbors for nothing more than survival!”
Arico paused to take a breath, and Berilo’s raised eyebrows were his only response at first. Either he found Arico’s outburst amusing, or was just surprised at being contradicted so forcefully. “You say that you’re not like me,” the old man finally said. “You say that you could never kill the undeserving, as I have. But you did kill those soldiers outside the dwarven keep, and then again outside the Fishbowl. You were responsible for the guard’s death, over in the Spire,” he glanced out the window at the white tower in the distance.
“Combat situations, every one,” Arico responded uncomfortably. “Every life I took was in the heat of battle, to protect myself and my people.” Again, Arico was frustratingly aware of just how untrue that was in some cases.
Berilo nodded. “As any soldier would do, yes. Boss Pratun of Tsobba patch might say differently, though. He betrayed you and the other patch leaders, didn’t he? You wanted him to pay for that with his life. As I understand it, you even offered to execute him yourself. That was hardly a combat situation.”
Arico felt his stomach twist. He hadn’t thought about Pratun in a while now. He remembered vividly how Pratun had begged for his life, and how Arico had in turn, coldy and calmly, said he would do whatever he could to make sure that the other patch leaders put him to death.
But there was no way the Lord Ascendant could have known that. Pratun had remained in his cell. He had died along with all the dwarves when the keep had been destroyed. “How… do you know that?” Arico asked as calmly as he could. “Pratun is dead and gone, as are anyone else who could have told you.”
“Oh, Boss Pratun is very much alive,” Berilo assured him gravely. “The Ascendants got him out at about the same time they took the Hauld and his bodyguard. He’s over there, in the Spire dungeons right now.” He waved a hand out the window for emphasis.
At first Arico thought he was bluffing; trying to make Arico feel vulnerable and exposed. But how else could he have known what Pratun had said, unless he really did have the man in custody?
This was catastrophic! Pratun knew the names of all eleven other patch leaders at that meeting, including Bloodeye! If he told the Council, all of them would die—along with anyone else the Council thought was complicit in their actions! At worst, they could decide to purge all eleven patches, killing… over a thousand people, to make sure that no one else would ever rise up against them.
Tanner, certainly, would try to push that agenda. Berilo had been quite clear on Tanner’s motivations and actions. “Has he been interrogated yet?” Arico asked with some difficulty.
“Only lightly. I wanted to know everything I could about you, before you arrived. His other secrets, such as the names of your movement friends for example, are still his alone.”
“What are you waiting for, then?” Arico bit out. “With what he knows, you could cripple the entire movement! Or if you want to keep your hands clean, why not just hand him over to the Council, and let them destroy your enemies for you?!”
Berilo sighed. “You still don’t understand, Arico. These people may be my enemies, but I don’t want them destroyed. By Aquun, they’re citizens of Patchwork—my own people! At the very least I want to make peace with them, or bring them back into the fold if I can.”
He wrung his hands and looked over at Arico, frustration mounting in his voice. “I didn’t wipe out the dwarves, and I don’t want to destroy these people either. That’s why I’ve kept Pratun away from the Council. I don’t trust my ‘faithful’ Councilors to show any restraint in this matter. If they get their hands on him, they’ll paint the city red trying to root out any opposition to their rule. Hundreds, perhaps thousands will die without any attempt made to make peace. I won’t let that happen.”
At least they had that much in common. Arico breathed a sigh of relief. Berilo only wanted to keep the peace so he could maintain power, but at least he was willing to preserve his people’s lives in the process.
“So what will you do with him, then?” Arico asked curiously. “Send him home with a warning never to tell anyone?”
Berilo shook his head again. “No, he’ll stay where he is for now. In the long term, his fate will be up to you. If you want, tomorrow after the Twin Suns, you can send him home.”
Arico growled. “You still think of me as your heir—that someday I’ll take your place and rule the city—but you’re wrong. I have nothing in common with these Sustained lords and ladies. I couldn’t rule them even if I wanted to!” He snorted. “And if you were hoping I could at least have an heir of my own, you’re out of luck there, too. Hazra and I are in the same boat when it comes to having kids. Too bad for you, I guess.” He glared at the old man for a few moments.
Berilo only gave him a slight smile. “I think you have more in common with the nobility than you’re willing to admit. From what I’ve heard, you almost married one. Or had you forgotten about Lady Nouma Hooper?” He leaned forward, looking over the rail down into the foyer on the first level, and then casually pointed.
There, just inside the main door and chatting animatedly with several noblewomen from different houses, was Nouma!
A black fog seemed to cloud over Arico’s vision for a moment, and he started trembling with rage. “By the Many—how dare you bring her into this?” He snapped, again barely remembering to stay quiet. “She’s innocent—we can both agree on that. She has nothing to do with either the movement or the Council!”
“Calm yourself, Arico,” Berilo gently pulled him away from the rail and back out of sight. “Yes, she is innocent, but I didn’t ‘bring her into this’ as you say. She chose to get involved.” He looked out the window again, briefly. “Let’s take a walk, shall we?”
-.-
Outside under the sun, the Lord Ascendant did need some guards. They stayed a bit back though, on his insistence. Arico trailed him angrily, still fuming that Nouma was here of all places! Thankfully she hadn’t seen them when they’d left the manor, and now that they were headed to the Spire, it was looking less and less likely she’d stumble on him by accident.
He should have known this would happen. His participation in the movement had swept up everyone else he knew, affecting them all, including Jaas. Why shouldn’t it strike people he’d once known, as well? Celebrity or infamy. Regardless of who you asked, it seemed they both had the same effect on his loved ones: chaos.
“After your little stunt at the Laentana, there was a mad scramble for information about you,” Berilo explained as they went on. “Everyone and their mother wanted to know everything about you, including myself. I found out that one of your previous names was Timot Brower, from Exxos patch, and I put out a call for information about that name. Nouma was one of the first to respond. We’ve had quite a few conversations since then. She never really got along with Hazra, but she has become quite popular with the other noblewomen. She’s at the manor most days now, chatting and socializing with her friends.” So that was how he’d tangled her up in his webs. It was typical, really.
“She told me a great deal about you as well,” Berilo said as Arico glared at the back of his head. “Or rather, who you were pretending to be. I was surprised to hear it, though. Since her family had no real power or influence with the Council at the time, I couldn’t figure out why you had been ordered to infiltrate her life. It didn’t make sense for the Hauld to waste a resource as valuable as you on someone as unimportant as her.” Berilo looked back at him for a moment. “Unless… it wasn’t his idea.”
Something in Arico’s expression must have confirmed his theory, because Berilo nodded again. “So Nouma was someone special to you after all. Interesting.”
He pulled open the side door to the Spire, about a third of the way around from the main entrance, and went inside. The guards stayed behind, trusting the Ascendants inside to protect their master. Arico felt a slight sense of relief. Regardless of this Nouma situation, he could at least kill two fish with one spear-throw. Pratun was here, presumably in one of the cells in the basement. When he brought down the Spire, Pratun and all the knowledge he’d been carrying would be extinguished as well. There would be no danger to the Deathwatchers or the other potential rebel patches after that.
In fact, they were headed to the basement now. “She’s a lovely girl,” Berilo droned on, as they made their way through the circular passage towards the stairs heading down. “Not the person I would have chosen for you of course, but I can see why you were attracted to her. She was smart enough to run her own family until she married. She’s a powerful navigator like you, which means she comes from an excellent bloodline. She definitely has spirit, and she’s strong and healthy. She is a few years too old for you, though. You were seventeen when you were together, and she was what? Twenty-two?” He shrugged. “Well, you were young. It’s understandable that you would aim low.”
“You sound like you’re describing a horse instead of a person,” Arico said sourly. “What, did you check her teeth as well?”
Berilo gave him a humorless smile. “It’s true, matchmaking among nobles can be a bit impersonal,” he admitted. “It’s an unfortunate reality of life among the rich. People can be seen as a commodity first and humans second. I’ve grown used to it over the years, and so will you. Speaking of her son, do you know how old he is?” He asked offhandedly.
Arico shrugged. “I don’t know. Twelve, maybe thirteen? I’ve never actually met him. I didn’t want to get too close, for fear of disrupting her life.”
Berilo paused in front of the basement door and looked over at him. “He’s fifteen, actually. Had his birthday a few weeks ago—Nouma told me all about it.” He cocked his head slightly. “You said that you couldn’t father children. How sure are you about that?”
For a moment, Arico had to roll that sentence around in his head.
Berilo’s implication was clear. Arico had stayed away from Nouma for years at first, hesitant to even ask about her. When he’d finally looked closer, into her husband’s business and life, he’d just assumed about her son. But if the boy really was fifteen years old, well… Arico had been gone from her life almost sixteen. “No,” he heard himself say automatically. “No, she would have told me. It’s not possible.”
Berilo nodded somberly. “You may be right. The boy may be Lord Hooper’s son, as his mother has claimed since the beginning. The timing is close enough for either option to be true, but she also told me about her life with ‘Timot’. How he’d claimed his father had disowned him, and thrown him out of the house. She said she tried to find his father, and that’s how she discovered you’d been lying to her.”
“When she confronted me, I just left. I couldn’t tell her the truth—not without endangering her forever,” Arico said faintly.
“That’s understandable,” Berilo said, and his tone seemed quite genuine. “Did she ever tell you why she went looking for your fake father, though? What prompted it, after you told her how the two of you didn’t get along?” After a moment, Arico shook his head.
“It could have been mere curiosity, of course,” Berilo went on. “Nothing more than a desire to understand her illicit lover a little better. Or it might have been something more. Perhaps a young woman in love, finding out she’s with child, and then spontaneously deciding to reach out and mend her lover’s relationship with his father, so that the baby might know his grandfather. Especially since her own parents had already passed, and she didn’t have any other close relatives to share with her baby.”
He paused for a moment. “I never asked her—nor would I. It’s her secret to keep, after all. Ultimately, the only person who knows for sure is Lady Nouma herself. Other than your friend Cartwright, that is.”
His voice had gotten fainter and fainter as he’d gone along. Or perhaps Arico’s mind had just been farther and farther away. Then suddenly he realized who he’d been talking to. Arico shook his head to clear it, and grimaced. “It doesn’t matter,” he said firmly. “Even if the boy is… mine, it doesn’t change anything. He’s happy where he is, and clearly a lot safer. She obviously understands that, and I’ll respect her wishes.”
Berilo raised his hands placatingly, before opening the door into the basement detention area. “That’s your decision, certainly. In any case, it would be problematic to bring these theories to light right now. Especially for her.” He shrugged. “There are many other young women in the city I would consider to be acceptable daughter-in-law material anyway.”
He led the way down to one of the closed rooms on the left. “I suspect you’re as particular in your choices as I am. Still, if none of them suit you,” he opened the cell door, “perhaps you’d be interested in someone a little more exotic?” There was a figure in the middle of the cell, tied to a chair and tightly gagged. Arico’s breath caught when he got a look at the prisoner’s face.
It was Jaas.
