Traitor Savant (Second Seal of the Duelists) Read online

  Traitor Savant

  Second Seal of the Duelists

  Jasmine Giacomo

  Dedication

  For Sensei Todd

  Acknowledgements

  To my editing team at Red Adept, I offer the thanks of a grateful empire. They, along with my beta readers, supporters, and impatiently waiting fantasy fans, are the spices in my seerwine.

  Maps

  Pronunciation Guide

  Bantayan, Dunfarroghan and Shawnash

  All Bantayan terms are pronounced with the basic Latin sounds, with one addition. The “ng” phoneme is always pronounced like the end of the word “sing”, never with a distinct “g” sound. Thus, Balanganam is pronounced as if it rhymes with “a song o’ Tom.”

  Terms in Dunfarroghan and Shawnash are pronounced with the basic Latin sounds.

  Waarden and Raqtaaq

  The Waarden tongue is the official language of the Second Waarden Empire, and all citizens are required to learn it. Though most Waarden would cringe at the idea of their superiority being diluted, their language has been softened from its rough beginnings by the empire’s long inclusion of other cultures and tongues.

  The double A, so common in Waarden and present in its very name, bears a long ahh sound, used in “par,” while single A’s have the short, broad sound found in the word “cat.” The letter J sounds like a Y, as in “yell.” Words ending in “-e” have an extra syllable for that letter, formed of the sound “eh.” Katje’s name is pronounced CAT-yeh, and Lotte is LOT-eh.

  Much to the chagrin of the proud yet defeated Raqtaaq, their language makes as frequent use of the double-A as does the language of their Waarden conquerors. It performs the same sound as well, the long ahh, so that Raqtaaq is pronounced “rack-TOCK.” Their tongue also employs the “ng” blend mentioned in the Bantayan section above. Qivinga is pronounced “ki-VING-ah,” and rhymes with the British or Southern (American) pronunciation of “singer”.

  Akrestan

  Akrestan terms are pronounced like the Greek terms that inspired them, with vowel pairs always being pronounced as two separate sounds.

  Prologue

  “Trust me. You do trust me, don’t you?”

  The woman smiled. “Of course I trust you. Do you think I’d have come this far with you if I didn’t?”

  “No. You’re far too smart for that. We both face our own risks.”

  “Exactly. Where does the effort stand now?”

  “That’s why I wanted to see you tonight. It’s time.”

  Her pupils dilated. “Then you have my support.”

  He merely nodded. “I know.”

  The Telling

  “Will you drink with me, Bayan?”

  Bayan stared at the offered golden goblet and swallowed hard. He was not worried about consuming its contents; he’d drunk the rare and valuable seerwine back in Balanganam at every festivity, for that was the coveted beverage’s source. No, what gave him pause was that the proffered goblet rested in the hand of His Imperial Majesty, Jaap voorde Helderaard, ruler of the Second Waarden Empire.

  He’s come to campus because of the seerwine. It was fermented from the cutting I brought north from my father’s farm, Bayan reminded himself, looking around the Hall of Seals. The central, circular dais beneath his feet supported a small table, which held a few dark blue glass bottles and a collection of golden goblets. A dozen dignitaries from the campus and its housing area for non-magical students, Peace Village, completed the crowd. I’m just here as an honorary guest.

  Bayan accepted the golden goblet, murmuring his thanks to the tall young emperor. He sent silent thanks to Bhattara, god of the Balanganese, for the fact that his Waarden teacher in primary school had hailed from Helderaard Province, instilling in Bayan the most respected Waarden accent in the empire. As he held the goblet’s gleaming stem, the elemental seal tattoo on the back of his hand caught his eye. It matched the lowest seal hanging on the wall across the room. Another season or two, and it’ll have a brother on my other hand. I hope.

  The emperor took another sip of Bayan’s seerwine. “How does it feel to have a holiday named after you? Bayan Lualhati Day. I’ve already instructed Lady Iyanu to prepare a special feast at the Kheerzaal come next spring. Kiwani’s mother has such a way with feasts. You’ll see. I’m insisting that the Academy release you into my care for the day as my guest of honor.”

  Bayan flushed and nodded. He’d only lived in the empire proper for a year and a half. He had no idea how to handle having a holiday named after him, even if that was the standard reward for the empire’s heroes. He wasn’t sure he was much of a hero, considering how close he’d come to letting it all burn. But no one, not even his hexmates, knew of his brief temptation to let the emperor die so Bayan could be free.

  “Speaking of your gentle jailers, you’ll be pleased to know that some changes are coming soon to the Duelist Academy, Bayan.”

  “What kind of changes?” He sipped, trying to decide if he liked the Waarden seerwine bouquet—hints of fruits and spices—better than the tart Balanganese way.

  Emperor Jaap smiled. “You’ll know them when you see them. I have it on good authority that these changes are necessary. Far be it from me to ignore the word of truth when I hear it.”

  Bayan wasn’t sure how to respond. It had been nearly a month since the first and last time he’d seen the emperor—that such a claim could be made by a lowly Balang who’d nearly got booted from the Academy seemed otherworldly—and he’d been a little busy saving the man’s life and the future of the empire during that encounter. But here the man stood, chatting amiably with Bayan as if they were long-time acquaintances. Maybe that was how Waarden royalty showed gratitude.

  A wiry man in maroon robes who stood no taller than Bayan stopped at the emperor’s elbow. He wasn’t Waarden, not with that stiff shock of black hair and sun-coppered skin. Yet the emperor turned to him with what seemed to be a kind of deference. “Are we ready, Maas?”

  “I have prepared an upstairs room, Sire.”

  “Excellent. Bayan, come and watch the seerpool with me.” Emperor Jaap left the dais with the shorter man. The instructors and dignitaries paused in their conversations and bowed.

  Bayan moved with alacrity, walking a step behind and to the right of the emperor, who trailed the short, wiry Maas. Bayan found himself trying to place the man’s origins among the many peoples of the Waarden Empire—neither Balang nor Pinam… Shawnash, perhaps, or maybe even a rare Nunaa—then caught himself and felt annoyance rise. It was the Waarden who insisted that everyone have a place, that everyone be labeled, identified, and categorized, with themselves at the top of the chart. And Bayan, though his homeland was technically an imperial province, wasn’t interested in embracing habits that smacked of so-called Waarden superiority.

  Maas turned from the wide, wood-paneled hallway and climbed one flight of stairs, then another, drawing the emperor and Bayan behind him. After several turns, they reached the topmost floor of the Hall of Seals. The maroon-robed man led the way into the only room on the level: a small, square, open area with double-arched windows on three of its walls, whose bright red shutters were all closed and latched.

  In the center of the room sat a heavy, thick-legged table supporting an irregularly shaped shallow tub of hammered copper. The tub was long enough to bathe in, but its water was only inches deep. Bayan paused with the emperor at one side of the table, while the other man continued to the west-facing windows. As he opened their shutters and folded them back, the afternoon sun streamed through, alighting on the pool of water. At the sight of the rippling light beams, a memory of home surfaced, bringing ric
h, aromatic smells and the sounds of laughing and singing with his brother, sisters, and friends. Bayan hunched against a sudden pang of homesickness.

  As the short man reached under the table, the emperor asked, “What do you see, Bayan?”

  Bayan looked down into the still water and saw words hammered into the bottom of the tub. “Gallenglaas… Laarwyck… Aklaa… those are provinces. This tub is a map,” he added, finally registering the irregular edges of the tub as the shape of the current borders of the empire. He wasn’t sure what the map had to do with a feastday Telling.

  “Indeed. I’m sure you’re familiar with the origin of the name ‘seerwine’?”

  “Yes, Sire.” The tradition was Balanganese, after all, even though the Waarden had co-opted it, as they did everything they liked.

  Maas’s head rose above the table’s surface again; he held a large blue glass carafe of seerwine and a black stone goblet.

  Emperor Jaap spoke. “Since we’re here to celebrate the maturation of the first seerwine ever produced in Helderaard, I thought it fitting to let an actual seer do a proper Telling. Have you ever seen one?”

  An “actual seer.” Bayan struggled to keep his features smooth atop the disdain flashing through him. “Actual seers” were Balanganese, or Pinamuyoc. Maas was neither and bore a distinctly Waarden name. Bayan frowned at himself. Labeling again. Had he really become so Waarden during his time at the Duelist Academy? The irony towered in his mind.

  The emperor still waited for a reply. Bayan cleared his throat. “Yes, Sire. It’s a popular…” he refrained from using the term party trick, “…event on Balanganese feastdays.”

  “Excellent. Maas is the finest Kheerzaal seer I have. Let’s see what he has to say, shall we?”

  Bayan looked at Maas, who had poured himself a brimming goblet of seerwine and stared at it with a parched air. Bayan thought he could hear the man’s stomach growl. Back home, the Tellings were done first thing on a feastday morning so the seer could participate in the feasting with everyone else, but it seemed Maas hadn’t eaten in a day or two.

  The wiry fellow downed the entire contents of the goblet in a few large gulps, then closed his eyes and thrust the goblet toward the emperor with an imperious gesture. Bayan raised his eyebrows, but emperor Jaap took the goblet without comment.

  While they waited for the seerwine to take effect, Bayan’s mind flickered to his hexmates, who hadn’t been invited to the seerwine party: Calder, his best friend, a skinny blond Dunfarroghan with a wicked wit and a cheek scarred by flame; Eward, the empire’s shyest Waarden; redheaded Tarin, who hated that her rare hair color drew all eyes; and Kiwani, a sleek Shawnash who had been raised as high nobility only to learn she wasn’t.

  They’d spent their first year on campus struggling to get along as they learned the basic elemental magic fighting moves the Academy taught. After the battle at the Kheerzaal two score days ago, Bayan and his friends had truly become a hex, forged in battle, acting as one. Their new Avatar training was proceeding apace, and everyone was doing well… except for Kiwani.

  Learning that she was not, in fact, her parents’ biological daughter—that they had lied to her all her life—had caused Kiwani such emotional trauma that it had nearly destroyed her ability to perform magic. Her current level of control was, ironically, no better than Bayan’s had been when he had first begun learning magic and been mocked by Kiwani for his failures.

  Thanks to a clumsy assassin, the two of them had lived long enough to achieve an understanding. Bayan offered her the only piece of advice he had, and Kiwani had taken it, going to visit Sint Esme for advice at her tree. She hadn’t liked the sint’s advice, and said she would never follow it. Trapped in magic limbo during her workout classes, Kiwani seemed to be doing nothing more than waiting to wash out as a potioneer.

  “The breeze foretells the future,” Maas intoned. His eyes stared past Bayan’s head at the domed wall behind him.

  Bayan turned and saw the water-distorted reflection of the map tub flickering brightly on the wall. Small ripples moved across its surface, making bright, living arcs. Within the tub, the same ripples were too small to see.

  “Gallenglaas speaks.” The seer pointed to a sudden, strong ripple spreading from the western shore of the Godsmaw, covering the whole of the empire. “And Balanganam answers.”

  Bayan checked the Balanganese section of the reflection. Sure enough, the ripples reflected from its edges. But of course they did. That was just the way ripples worked. He held in a sigh. The seers in his small home town of Pangusay were far more dramatic than this vaunted employee of the Kheerzaal. Tellings were supposed to be entertaining, but apparently the Waarden hadn’t borrowed that part of the tradition, let alone taught it to their prospective pseudo-Balang seers.

  “The heart of the empire shudders,” Maas continued, gazing neutrally as a wave of miniscule wind-ripples crossed over Helderaard. A stronger wind swirled in through the open shutters, rippling the entire surface of the map from east to west. “Cohesion is lost. Chaos rings out—a secret pattern emerges—the body fails, but the soul lives on—the empire’s loss is the world’s gain!”

  With a breathless gasp, Maas fell onto his elbows on the table beside the edge of the copper tub. His action triggered a small wave, and at the eastern end, a single drop of water splashed up out of the pool and landed on the table.

  Bayan waited to see if Maas would continue, but he only moved his lips in silent repetition as his dark, curly hair shadowed his face. Emperor Jaap waved in a pair of imperial servants from the doorway—Bayan, distracted by Maas’s performance, hadn’t noticed their approach. The two men escorted Maas toward the stairs, and the emperor turned to Bayan.

  “What did you think?”

  Bayan opted for truth. “If seers didn’t predict death and destruction every once in a while, they’d be out of a job. The only ones who really know the future of the empire are the sints, and I hear they’re not inclined to share.”

  The emperor smiled and opened his mouth to reply, but Maas stirred in the grip of the departing servants and called over his shoulder in a hoarse voice. “The sints will not help you escape, Bayan Lualhati. Your fate is the empire’s fate. The sints will not help you escape.”

  Startled and unnerved, Bayan sought the emperor’s blue gaze. Jaap’s brow was just as furrowed as his.

  A soft sound at the open window caught Bayan’s attention. A large black bird paced on the sill, claws clacking on the enameled wood. Its dark eye reflected sunlight as it cocked its head at the room’s occupants.

  “Kah!”

  New Expectations

  Kiwani twisted her fingers together in the warm light of the circular hex house’s central fire pit. Her announcement would not be welcome amongst her hexmates, but last night she hadn’t slept at all, and somehow her sleep-deprived mind had finally grasped the real meaning of Sint Esme’s words. She felt as if she were behind on some invisible schedule, having passed nearly two seasons—fifty-seven holidays— by the calendar before solving what, in retrospect, seemed less a puzzle and more a semantic detail.

  “I can’t stay here any longer. My magic’s worse than Bayan’s was when he first started tossing elemental magic around last year, and I’m afraid that, in my condition, trying to become Savant with you under Bayan’s tutelage could kill me. I need to find myself if I’m ever to balance my emotions and make my magic safe around you, and now I finally know where to look.” She let go of Tarin’s and Bayan’s hands, slipping out of her circle of friends.

  “Barmy sints,” Calder said. His eyes held caution and worry. “You’re certain you can trust anything a ball of light has to say? Why don’t you talk to Instructor Wekshi again? Maybe you don’t really have to leave.”

  A smile tugged at Kiwani’s lips. “Thank you, Calder. But this is the only option that feels right. Instructor Wekshi seemed more inclined to top me out than help me learn. Her job is to teach competent students. I don’t think she knows how to help
the incompetent ones.” Because there are no incompetent duelists in the Waarden Empire. There are only potioneers.

  “When will you be back?” Eward stepped around the fire pit to give her a farewell hug.

  “If I’m not back by Sint Rolf’s Day, you can send out the guards.”

  “That long?” Tarin’s eyes looked pained.

  “Sint Esme told me I must approach humbly. I’m taking that to mean I can’t arrive in an imperial carriage. I’ll walk to Wisnuk Bay and hitch rides when I can.”

  “We’ll walk you to the roundabout,” Bayan offered.

  Kiwani felt a shot of alarm pulse through her at his mention of the traditional farewell for students who left campus to take their first job at a duel den. “I’m not topping out. Don’t keep eyes on me all the way to the edge of campus as if you won’t ever see me again! You will. I promise.”

  “Trying to boot her for good, Bayan?” Tarin teased. “I thought you two called a truce seasons ago.”

  Bayan squeezed Kiwani’s hand. “You’d better promise to come back. We need you.”

  Calder pushed in, separating her hand from Bayan’s, and wrapped his arms around both their shoulders. “Aye, and if you should see a wandering duelist out and about, be sure to drag him back with you. We need a sixth!”

  Kiwani laughingly promised to do her best. After another round of farewells that became as emotional as the hexmates dared to allow for fear of causing the walls to sprout, she left the small building, and the others followed her onto the balcony. Its rail extended in both directions, fronting other small huts. Her hexmates leaned against it, calling well-wishes and hopes for a safe journey. Some of the other hex houses on Earth level were decorated with potted flowers or bright paint. Kiwani’s hex had magicked theirs so that its walls resembled a Balanganese forest. Below the smooth brass balcony railing lay a row of six similar huts—the Water level. Four more hut rows named for the other elements climbed the terraced hill above.