Chapter 637: Stewards

The Hall of Wind was at the top of the third stack, and the only way into it was a bridge.

It was rope and pale wood and clear glass, swinging gently over a drop of several hundred feet onto black rock and white water. Ashe stopped at the near end of it, looked down once, and turned to Vane with an expression of deep personal betrayal.

"You knew," she said.

"I didn’t."

"Valerica knew."

"I suspected," said Valerica, already walking out onto it with her hands in her pockets. "It’s a Palace built on the wind, Ashe. They weren’t going to put the council chamber in a basement."

Ashe crossed it in the end with one hand clamped on Vane’s belt and her eyes fixed on the back of his neck, and when she reached the far side she let go, straightened her coat, and walked into the Hall of Wind with her chin up as though nothing at all had happened.

The hall was round and open to the sky. There was no roof at all, only a ring of white pillars and, high above, the curved glass panes of the tower turning slowly in the wind. In the center stood a long table of pale wood, and behind it sat three people.

Sarai Vell stood at the end of it. She had Anastasia’s letter in front of her.

"The Stewards of Aelstrom," she said. "Steward Cale. Steward Varo. Steward Mor."

Cale was old and white-bearded, with ink on his fingers and the tired eyes of a man who had spent his life adding up things that did not quite balance. Varo was perhaps forty, dark and sharp-featured, and she looked at Valerica as soon as they came in and did not stop looking. Mor was the youngest, broad and quiet, with a soldier’s hands folded on the table.

"Sit," said Cale.

There were two chairs. Valerica took one. Vane did not take the other. He stood behind her, and after a moment the others arranged themselves behind him, and Steward Cale looked at the five of them standing there and sighed through his beard.

"Very well," he said. "We have read the letter. It’s genuine. It changes a great deal. It does not change the arithmetic." He turned over a sheet of paper. "A hundred and ninety-one children. Nineteen of them gold or better at the gate. Food, lodging, teachers, healers, for ten years, for a hundred and seventy-two children whose Authorities, by our own measure, will never be worth the cost of teaching them. Aelstrom is not a rich Palace. Tell me how you’d have us pay it."

"I wouldn’t," said Valerica. "I’d have you invest it."

Cale raised his eyebrows.

"Your glass reads what a child is on the day it’s held up," Valerica said. "It’s very good at that. Better than the Empire’s rods. But it reads the day, not the child. It doesn’t know what they’ll be in ten years. It can’t."

"It’s usually right," said Steward Varo.

"Usually." Valerica folded her hands on the table. "On the way here I asked Envoy Vell a question. I asked how many of the Stewards of Aelstrom, in the last three hundred years, came through the Gate of Asking as children." She looked at Cale. "She said most of them."

Cale said nothing.

"And then I asked her how many of those were gold at the gate."

The hall was very quiet.

"She said one in four," Valerica said. "Steward Cale. What did your glass read?"

The old man looked at her for a long time. Then, slowly, he reached up and touched the disc at his own throat, as if to make sure it was still there.

"Clear," he said. "It read clear."

"And now you hold the purse of a Palace," said Valerica. "I’m not asking you to be generous. I’m asking you to be consistent."

Steward Mor, who had not yet spoken, put a hand over his mouth. Vane could not tell whether he was hiding a smile.

Steward Varo did not smile.

"You’re a Sol," she said. "Of the Imperial line. Your family helped write the statute those children were running from." Her voice was perfectly polite. "Forgive me if I find it strange to be lectured about low-born children by a Sol."

"Don’t forgive me," Valerica said. "I’d find it strange too." She did not look away. "My family wrote it. I’ve read every word of it, every amendment, every bureau circular for three hundred years. I know where it’s strong and I know where it’s weak. That’s why I’m useful to you, Steward. I’m not asking you to like me."

Varo looked at her a moment longer. Then she sat back, very slightly, which Vane understood was the closest she was going to come to conceding a point.

"It’s a good argument," said Cale at last. "I’ll grant you that. It still has to be paid for." He turned to Vane. "And that brings us to you."

"Me."

"The Palace has wanted you for four years, Usurper. You know that. The envoy told you. And now you’ve walked up to our gate with a hundred and ninety-one children and asked us to feed them." The old man’s tone was not unkind. It was the tone of a merchant naming a price he knows the buyer will not like. "Here’s the answer, then. We keep them. All of them, not just the nineteen, for ten years, under Aelstrom’s protection. And you give Aelstrom ten years in return. Your Authority, your rank, your name. In the Palace’s service."

Vane felt Ashe go still behind him. He felt Isole’s hand close, very briefly, on the back of his coat.

He did not need to think about it.

"No," he said.

Cale did not look surprised. "You’d let them go back to the table, then."

"No. I’d keep arguing." He looked at the three Stewards in turn. "I’m not for Aelstrom. I’m for them. If I swear ten years to you, then the next time someone in the west finds a child with frost on their hands, I’m here, standing in your hall, and they’re under an awning with a silver rod." He kept his voice level. "That’s not a price. That’s the same thing again."

"Then we have nothing further to discuss," said Steward Varo.

"Then we’ll discuss it again tomorrow," said Valerica.

"The answer will be the same."

"Then I’ll bring better arguments."

Cale opened his mouth to reply.

The wind stopped.

It happened all at once, everywhere. The glass panes high overhead stopped turning. The hum that ran through the whole city simply ceased. In the silence he could hear the sea crashing on the rocks hundreds of feet below, and his own heart, and Nyx, behind him, drawing one very sharp breath.

All three Stewards had risen to their feet.

When the voice came, it did not come from anywhere. It came from the air itself, from the still space between the pillars, and it was very old and very quiet and not at all unfriendly.

"Three days," it said. "I’d like to look at him first."

Then the wind came back. The panes began to turn. The hum returned to the stone under their feet, as if it had never left.

Steward Cale stood behind the table for a long moment with both hands flat on the wood. Then he sat down, slowly, and looked at Vane with an expression Vane could not read at all.

"Well," the old man said. "It seems you’ve been invited to the Ninth Spire."