Raven's Shadow (Raven #1)(62)

First Tier had thought that the boy might be one of Telleridge's wizards, especially with the thing that had followed him in. Then he'd been almost certain that he was one of the Passerines Myrceria had told him about. Now...

He cleared his throat. "Are you a member of the Secret Path?"

"If I'm not, does that mean you can't tell me the answer?"

The disingenuous answer made Tier laugh in spite of his generally lousy mood. The young man gave him a pleased smile.

"Actually, I've never heard of the Secret Path. Though, if you put any three nobles together, they'll start four secret societies of something."

Tier nodded his head slowly. "I'd been given the impression that the Path members had taken over this bit of the palace and made it their own. If you're not one, how did you find your way here?"

The boy shrugged. "The palace has enough rooms to house the whole city and then some. The first fifteen Emperors Phoran spent all their time building the place and the next ten tried to figure out what to do with all the rooms - mostly close them up. At least two of them, the eighth and the fourteenth - or the seventh and the thirteenth if you'd rather not give a number to the first Phoran - were fascinated by secret rooms and passages. By happy chance I stumbled upon the plans of Eight and actively sought Fourteen's. Once I had them, I hid them myself. At any rate, they give me ready access to most of the palace. Not that there's usually much to see."

"I see," said Tier, rather dazzled by all the eights who might have been sevens - there was a song in that somewhere. He hadn't really thought about how the Path had managed to secret off such a big chunk of building. He had a hard time wrapping his mind around a building so large that the Path could use a section for generations and not have it discovered.

"I'm not a lawyer," Tier said finally. "Nor do I know anything about the Septs. I don't see how I can help you."

The boy frowned. "I asked if there was someone who could help me find out more about the piece of land in question. Is there any reason that you would know something about the Sept of Gerant's lands?

"The Sept of Gerant?" exclaimed Tier, distracted from the question of who knew enough to send this boy after him.

"That's right," said the boy. "I don't know him by face, but it sounds as if you've met him."

"He'll not have been at court," murmured Tier, reading the rest of the document rapidly. "He's an old warrior, not fitted for wearing silks and such. The Sept of Jenne, hmm."

"I have this, if it helps," said the boy, and he pulled a small, faded map from a pocket. "I can show you where the land in question is - I just don't know what's so important about it."

The soft hand that handed Tier a map had a signet ring on it. Tier noticed and catalogued it, but he was thinking about the map so it took him a moment before he realized who was sitting on his bed beside him.

The Emperor?

His night had acquired a new level of strangeness. Tier glanced at the Memory. Was it some sort of body guard?

He forced his eyes back to the map. If the Emperor had wanted him to know who he was talking to, he would have introduced himself.

The boy tapped a spot on the old map. "That's where it is. It doesn't even connect to Jenne's lands."

Tier closed his eyes and thought back twenty years, trying to make the lines on the map correspond to the land he had known rather well at one time.

"Water rights," he said finally. "That's the headwaters of the creek that gives Gerant's people water. This piece of land belongs to the Sept of Jenne's father-in-law - or it did twenty years ago. The current Sept might be the son or grandson of the man I'm thinking of, but at any rate, the land's in Jenne's family's hands. It's pretty useless despite its size, because it's in the rainshadow of Brulles Mountain - won't grow anything but sagebrush. If Jenne had control of Brulles - that strip of map should be marked to show the mountain - he could hire a wizard to divert the flow of water and send it down the other side of the mountain, or find some way of diverting the small river that runs on the wrong side for their purposes."

"Hah," the boy exclaimed happily. "It's a payoff. That's the one I want, then. What can you tell me about Gerant's allies?"

Tier hesitated. "Gerant's a good man," he said.

The boy raised an eyebrow. "I'm not planning on hurting him. I..." Now it was his turn to hesitate.

"I suspect," said Tier softly, "that there's a law or two against a common man like me sharing a seat with the Emperor. If you've a need to be incognito, it might be better to take off that ring."

Phoran (doubtless the boy's name was Phoran - though Tier couldn't remember the number that went with the name) looked upset for a moment, glanced at the ring that was the Emperor's seal, then shrugged.

"I'll keep your advice in mind. Well enough. If you know that much, look here." He tapped the paper impatiently. "I need something I can use as a fulcrum to move the power structure in the Council of Septs so that I don't continue to be just a figurehead, and this document is it. It was in my twice-yearly stack of petitions to be signed into law. There aren't many signatures on this - only a few people who owed Jenne something. Like as not most of them didn't know what it was they were signing. You can't even tell that this land is Gerant's without this map."