A hard question. She didn’t know the answer. She said, ‘There are armies and… armies. There are different levels of subjugation. You know what Rhodias is now. You know what . . . we did to it when we conquered. It is possible I can act so that Varena and the rest of the peninsula is not ruined the same way.’ She hesitated. ‘I might even stop them from coming. Somehow.’
He did not smile, or dismiss that. He said only, ‘Somehow. But then you would not return either, would you?’
She had thought of that, too. ‘Perhaps. I would pay that price, I suppose. Alchemist, if I knew all paths to what will be, I’d not have asked for counsel. Stay by me. You know what I am trying to save.’
He bowed then, but ignored the renewed request. ‘I do know, my lady. I was honoured, and remain so, that you summoned me.’
Ten days ago, that had been. She’d had him brought to her on the easy pretext that he was once more to offer his spells of the half-world to help ease the souls of the dead in the plague mound-and her father’s spirit, too, with the memorial day approaching. He had first come to the palace more than a year before, when the mound was raised.
She remembered him from that time: a man not young but measured and observant, a manner that reassured. No boasting, no promised miracles. His paganism meant little to her. The Antae had been pagans themselves, not so long ago, in the dark forests of Sauradia and the blood-sown fields beside.
It was said that Zoticus spoke with the spirits of the dead. That was why she had summoned him two summers ago. It had been a time of universal fear and pain: plague, a savage Inici incursion in the wake of it, a brief, bloody civil war when her father died. Healing had been desperately needed, and comfort wherever it could be found.
Gisel had invoked every form of aid she could those first days on the throne, to quiet the living and the dead. She had ordered this man to add his voice to those that were to calm the spirits in the burial mound behind the sanctuary. He had joined the cheiromancers, with their tall, inscribed hats and chicken entrails, in the yard one sundown after the clerics had spoken their prayers and had gone piously within. She didn’t know what he had done or said there, but it had been reported that he was the last to leave the yard under the risen moons.
She had thought of him again ten days ago, after Pharos had brought her tidings that were terrifying but not, in truth, entirely unexpected. The alchemist came, was admitted, bowed formally, stood leaning on his staff. They had been alone, save for Pharos.
She had worn her crown, which she rarely did in private. It had seemed important somehow. She was the queen. She was still the queen. She could remember her own first words; imagined, on the deck of the ship, that he could as well.
‘They are to kill me in the sanctuary,’ she had said, ‘on the day after Dykania, when we honour my father there. It is decided, by Eudric and Agila and Kerdas, the snake. All of them together, after all. I never thought they would join. They are to rule as a triumvirate, I am told, once I am gone. They will say I have been treating with the Inicii.’
‘A poor lie,’ Zoticus had said. He had been very calm, the blue eyes mild and alert above the grey beard. It could surprise no one in Varena, she knew, that there were threats on her life.
‘It is meant to be weak. A pretext, no more. You understand what will follow?’
‘You want me to hazard a guess? I’d say Eudric will have the others out of the way within a year.’
She shrugged. ‘Possibly. Don’t underestimate Kerdas, but it hardly matters.’
‘Ah,’ he had said then, softly. A shrewd man. ‘Valerius?’
‘Of course, Valerius. Valerius and Sarantium. With our people divided and brutalizing each other in civil war, what will stop him, think you?’