Wylan had not slept, which Divina would have noted with disapproval had she not also been awake, recalibrating the oscillograph for the third time since midnight.
The workshop occupied its usual state of organised hostility toward visitors. Workbenches lined three walls, and the fourth had been sacrificed to shelving that bore bottles, coiled tubing, and the taxidermied owl that Wylan insisted was load-bearing. The air held its permanent bouquet of reagent, machine oil, and something faintly sweet that was either burnt sugar or soldering flux.
A single candle burned on the bench in front of him, clamped into a vice; the Immolator lamps handled the actual lighting. This candle was a test subject.
Wylan lowered a brass cup over the flame, watching the gap between rim and wick narrow by degrees. The flame shrank and curled inward, retreating into itself as the available air thinned. Still burning, but diminished.
He lifted the cup and the flame recovered. He lowered it again, leaving a wider gap, and the flame dimmed but held. Wider still and it was barely affected.
He wrote in his notebook. Restriction of environment proportional to output loss. Fire not destroyed, suppressed. Remove restriction, fire returns to full capacity.
He underlined the last sentence twice.
Diminished, Seraphina had said. Without the sword.
He stared at the candle and thought about mirrors.
The breakfast table was a theatre of competing anxieties.
Maximilian’s chair was empty. He was upstairs with Aurora, which was where he had been most mornings since the trial, and the empty place setting Cedric had laid regardless was doing more diplomatic work than anyone at the table.
Laila occupied the head with the composure of a woman who had slept precisely enough to function and not a minute more. Wylan was dismantling a bread roll and thinking about containment ratios.
Isabella sat at the far end, her chair turned slightly away from the table. Her tea had gone cold without her permission or her notice.
Both deadlines expired today, and neither had the courtesy to demand their attention lightly.
“I have a proposal,” Wylan said, “before we meet Valère today.”
Laila regarded him with the expression she reserved for sentences that began promisingly and ended in explosions. “Go on.”
“I’ve been thinking about what Seraphina told us. Valère is diminished without Caliburn. We know from the oscillograph readings that Caliburn contains dragon fire. Dragon fire annihilates Umbral matter. I watched it dissolve a sample in under a second.”
“The Dungeon portal in the secret chamber is a threshold to the Umbra. If we could get Valère through it, he’d be in an environment that actively suppresses his power, and we’d still hold Caliburn on this side.”
Lambert was already leaning forward. “The Dungeon contained Caliburn for a decade and R?zvan for longer. You’re saying we could do the same to Valère.”
“You’re not killing him,” Isabella said. “You’re putting him somewhere he can’t reach it.”
“I’m saying the physics support it. Containment, not destruction. He’s immortal — we can’t kill him. But we could separate him from everything that makes him dangerous.”
“How do you get him into the chamber?” Isabella said. She had been quiet, but this was concrete. Not theology. “He’s not going to walk into a mirror.”
“We invite him to the estate. Tell him the sword is in the secret chamber, which it can be. He walks in—”
“He’s going to see a Dungeon portal, Wylan,” Laila said. “They’re not exactly subtle.”
“What if he didn’t?” Isabella leaned forward. “You could use illusion to disguise the portal entirely. He walks toward the sword and steps through before he realises what’s behind him.”
“That would require an illusion complex enough to fool someone who has been alive for seven centuries,” Laila said. “I could attempt it. I would not guarantee it.”
“It would only need to work once,” Wylan said. “The portal does the rest.”
“I don’t think so, Wylan. I am becoming rather tired of the de Vaillants using a pet Dungeon as a solution to mortal problems.” Laila’s voice was as subtle as an iceberg. “Look at what it did to your father.”
“I’m not suggesting we repeat Father’s mistakes.”
“Are you? Then Wylan, how is this different from Seraphina? Or does it only count when one of us stuffs a family member in there?”
Nobody spoke. Several people considered it.
Lambert had been quiet through the logistics, which was unusual enough to draw attention.
“Valère founded the Church. Whatever he has become, whatever his ambitions, whatever rot is at its core, my connection to Invictus is real. My prayers are answered and I am blessed with his boons.” Lambert’s hand found his prayer beads. “What we are discussing is imprisoning a man of no small divinity.” He paused. “I am not certain I could live with having done that to him.”
“You could live with handing him Caliburn?” Wylan said.
“I could live with a fair exchange. And I would contain Valère under different circumstances, but it feels like an error I cannot even quantify.”
“The alternative is handing him the sword,” Wylan said.
“And then Aurora lives,” Laila said.
The clocks in the hallway ticked in their habitual disagreement about what time it actually was. Isabella’s tea had gone cold.
Cedric appeared in the doorway with the timing of a man who had been listening from precisely the correct distance.
? No butler would ever confess to having eavesdropped. They had merely anticipated requirements with commendable efficiency.
“A messenger from Monsieur Espérant,” he said. “He enquires whether the family has reached a decision regarding the noon appointment.”
Four glances met, disagreed, and got nowhere.
“Tell him,” Laila said, and paused. “Tell him we are prepared to discuss terms.”
Cedric inclined his head and withdrew.
“So that’s it?” Isabella’s voice had an edge. “We’re giving him Caliburn?”
“My plan could still work,” Wylan said. “Once he comes to the estate, we just need to be ready—”
“I said we would discuss terms,” Laila said. “I did not say we would accept his.”
A moment later, Cedric returned. His expression had acquired the careful neutrality of a man delivering news he suspected would not be welcomed.
“The messenger is pleased to hear this, my lady. Monsieur Espérant invites you to meet with him at the Jardin des Muses, at midday precisely.”
“High noon,” Lambert said. His voice had dropped to the register he used when theology arrived uninvited. “He would choose Agony’s zenith. When a solar aspect is at the height of its power.”
“Or when a public park is busiest,” Wylan said, “and nobody can try anything without witnesses.”
The air above the butter dish thickened, took on a faint amber luminance, and resolved into a figure. A woman’s face, rendered in translucent gold, seated in a chair that existed somewhere else entirely. Her features were sharp and scholarly. She gave the impression of a librarian receiving a late book.
Everyone was on their feet in an instant, except Lambert, who had fallen out of his chair.
“I apologise for the intrusion, but your decision to meet the one you know as Espérant has forced my hand,” it said. “My name is Theodora Voltari, daughter of Elara and Nikolaos Voltari. Though I may be your cousin, I am representing the interests of Aeloria. You have just agreed to meet with Valère, and I would speak with you on her behalf, because you deserve to understand what that means before you sit down with him.”
Lambert righted himself with the dignity of a man pretending the floor had been his first choice all along.
“I have taken the liberty of using Aunt Saffron’s private room at the Amber Ballroom,” Theodora continued. “I am here now and would have you meet me. I am hoping you would regard it as adequate neutral territory.”
Laila regarded the projection with thin composure.
“First of all,” she said, “you say you represent Aeloria, who is an enemy to this House. Why should we trust you?”
The image made to open its mouth, but Laila didn’t let it.
“And second of all, how do you expect us to meet you all the way at the Amber Ballroom, which would be closed at this hour, and still make our rendez-vous with” — she paused, as though the sentence itself was objecting to its own conclusion — “Valère?”
“I was hoping our meetings would be mutually exclusive, but if timing is your chief concern, that I can solve.”
A portal opened on the far side of the breakfast nook, spilling amber light across the marmalade. Through it they could see the Amber Ballroom’s private room.
Laila stared at the portal for a moment. “Wylan, please tell me this isn’t an illusion and we’re not about to step into a trap.”
“I’ll go get Elariana,” Wylan said.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
They stepped through. The marmalade stayed behind.
Two nights ago, this room had hummed with warmth and cultivated intimacy, which Saffron charged handsomely for. In the thin morning light, it had the honesty of a stage seen from backstage. The velvet drapes had given up. The decanters stood empty. A faint ring on the table was a watermark of better evenings.
Theodora was already seated, in a position that gave her clear observation of all of them stepping into the room. Something Mother would do. Or Isabella.
In person, she was younger than the projection had suggested. Dark hair fell in loose curls past her shoulders, and she wore layered travelling clothes in deep burgundy and cream, bronze clasps at the cloak, and enough necklaces that each pendant had clearly been required to submit references.
It was the man behind her that rearranged the room’s priorities.
Ser Thornwood stood behind Theodora, every bit the image of the bodyguard to the Countess d’Aubigne before. Definitely dragon cultists, then.
Elariana entered, and Ser Thornwood noticed. The two professionals spent a brief, courteous moment assessing exactly how much damage the other could do, then occupied opposite walls. The distance between them was precisely calibrated and mutually agreed upon.
“You said you represent Aeloria,” Laila said. “Then let us begin there. Everything this family has suffered traces to her door. Why should her emissary arrive with counsel?”
“Because Aeloria has considerably more to lose from Valère’s success than you do,” Theodora said. “And she would rather you understood why before you sit down with him.”
“Perhaps we should begin with what you already know,” Theodora said. “Or think you know. What has Seraphina told you about Valère’s relationship with Aeloria?”
“That Aeloria collects people of power,” Lambert said. “Influence as hoard. Valère was a conjurer in Glorianna’s court. Aeloria acquired him.”
“Acquired.” Theodora tasted the word and found it wanting. “Seraphina has a vampire’s understanding of power, which is to say she thinks of it as something you take from people who have it and keep it somewhere cold. She is not wrong, exactly, but she is not seeing the whole of it.”
“Then what are we not seeing?” Laila asked.
“Aeloria has watched civilisations rise and calcify and shatter for longer than most gods have been worshipped. She has seen thousands of brilliant mortals. Generals, scholars, artists, tyrants. Most of them she found interesting in the way one finds a particularly well-crafted clock interesting. You admire the mechanism. You do not invest in it.”
“Valère was different. Not because he was powerful, though he was. Not because he was ambitious, though that too. Aeloria chose him because he was an architect. Not of buildings. Of systems. Of institutions. He understood that the way to reshape a world was not to conquer it but to redesign the structures it already ran on, and let the world reshape itself.”
“How generous of her,” Wylan said, “to find someone worth investing in.”
“It was, rather.” Theodora noticed the sarcasm and chose not to. “She gave him the gift of her fire. Her Brand. Immortality, and considerably more besides. And for a very long time, the returns were extraordinary.”
Wylan had gone very still. The oscillograph did this to him too, right before the readings became significant. “What changed?”
“He stopped building for her,” Theodora said, “and started building for himself.”
Wylan was quietly recalculating. Laila’s expression had not changed, which meant she was thinking faster than her face was willing to advertise. Lambert’s thumb moved across his prayer beads.
“That is a compelling narrative,” Lambert said. “An investment gone wrong. A gift misused. Aeloria as the wronged patron.” He let the framing settle on the table between them like a card played face up. “It is also precisely the story you would tell if you wanted us to distrust Valère on your employer’s behalf.”
“You think I am here to recruit you.”
“I think Aeloria has spent decades positioning herself in this city. Sun Queen. Patron of the faith. Influence threaded through the Church and half the noble houses in Pharelle.” Lambert gestured, economically, at the room around them. “Even Aunt Saffron’s establishment is apparently not beyond her reach. And I think her emissary arriving on the morning we commit to Valère, bearing a story about betrayed trust, is a coincidence that has dressed itself rather transparently.”
“Lambert,” Laila said quietly.
“No, let him finish,” Theodora said. “He is doing exactly what I would hope an Inquisitor would do.”
Lambert did not look away.
“Though I wonder,” Theodora continued, and the warmth left her voice, “whether the Inquisitor has ever turned that scrutiny on himself.” She had been waiting for precisely this moment. “You have been an agent of the Church your entire adult life. You have carried out its disposition. Its judgements. Its justice, such as it is. And now you sit here, questioning my motives.”
“And as I seek to amend my ways—”
“I am not questioning your sincerity. I am observing that none of you are in a position to question another’s justice. You have been maligned by the very institution you served, and the institution you served was designed by the man you are about to negotiate with.” She let that settle. “I do not say this to wound you. I say it because if you walk into that meeting believing you understand the moral landscape, you are going to discover that the ground was designed by someone else entirely.”
The silence did its own work. Wylan’s thumb had stopped moving on his notebook. Laila’s composure had acquired the stillness that usually meant she was not going to intervene.
Lambert was quiet. Whatever he had been preparing to say, it had been disarmed mid-assembly.
“I am not here to recruit you,” Theodora said, her tone professional again. “I am here because in a few hours you are going to sit across from Valère and negotiate with him as though this were a transaction. A sword for a cure. Clean and simple.” She leaned forward. “It is not clean. It is not simple. And if you walk into that meeting believing it is, you will give him everything he needs and count yourselves fortunate for the privilege.”
“Then what are you offering?” Wylan said. “If not alliance, not recruitment. What does Aeloria gain from warning us?”
“Time,” Theodora said. “Even an hour’s delay would serve her interests. But what I am giving you is context, and what you do with it is entirely your concern.”
“Context,” Laila repeated. “Then provide it.”
Theodora settled into the cadence of someone who had delivered this lecture before, though perhaps not to an audience perched on furniture that smelled faintly of hookah residue. “How much do you know about the history of Invictus?”
“More than most,” Lambert said carefully.
“Do you know what came before him?”
Lambert’s hand stilled. The question had the quality of an examination, and Lambert had spent enough years on the wrong side of seminary desks to recognise when someone was establishing the boundaries of his ignorance before filling them in.
“The Church teaches that Invictus is eternal and unchanging,” he said.
“The Church teaches what it was designed to teach.” The observation carried no malice. A physician noting a bone set wrong. “Agony has burned since the Orrery was forged. The Pendulum has swung since before mortals had language to describe it. But the god housed in Agony — the divine patron of solar power — has changed, more than once.”
“Changed how?” Wylan leaned forward. The experiment was producing results ahead of schedule.
“Hyperion was the god before Invictus. He was pastoral: radiant and generative, more concerned with harvests and the turning of seasons.”
“And how would you know all of this?” Wylan asked.
“Because Aeloria saw it all firsthand.”
The room went quiet. First-hand divine witnesses tended to revise the conversational agenda.
“So what, the god just changed one day?”
“No, the god changed because people’s belief in him changed. People are always borrowing old imagery and parading it as their own. Over time they forget the original and only remember the new face. When that happens, no more faith can sustain the old divinity. It creates a space — a place in which someone new can fill the role demanded of belief.”
“And you’re trying to tell me that Invictus was an invention of Valère?”
“No. Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, was a god of dominion for a people who required divine sanction for empire and expansion.”
Theodora reached into the satchel at her feet and produced a book.
It was old in the way that suggested it had been old for long enough to have stopped apologising for its condition. The leather had darkened unevenly, and the gilt on the spine had been worn to a suggestion by generations of handling. Wylan could smell it from across the table: parchment, dust, and the faint sweetness of preservation unguents that predated modern bookbinding by a comfortable margin.
“This is a history of Hyperion,” Theodora said, setting it on the table as though it might startle. “Not the Church’s history, which does not acknowledge him. Not the imperial history, which remembers only what replaced him. This is a record of who he was. What he valued. What the faithful lost when the temples were rededicated and the hymns rewritten.”
She slid it toward Lambert.
“I am not asking you to abandon your faith. I am asking you to understand what your faith was built on top of.”
“Valère studied the histories that the Church later buried,” Theodora said. “He understood that what empires had achieved through centuries of cultural drift — the slow overwriting of one god with another — a sufficiently brilliant architect could achieve by design. In a fraction of the time.”
“The Church,” Lambert said.
“The Church.” Theodora let the word do its own work for a moment. “Its seminaries, its doctrines, its hierarchy, its insistence that Reason is the highest expression of divine will — Valère built all of it. He designed it the way your brother designs his instruments. Every component serving a function. Every function serving a purpose.”
“The Enlightenment,” Laila said. Her voice had acquired the flatness it took on when a piece of intelligence was rearranging things she had considered settled. “The Gallian Enlightenment is his project.”
“The philosophy of Reason that shapes your academies, your governance, your conviction that rationality is the path to the divine — that was cultivated. Deliberately. By a man who understood that if you redesign how people believe in a god, you change the face of divinity.”
Lambert had gone quiet, the way he did during prayer. Prayer usually involved less visible discomfort.
“You are describing my seminary,” Lambert said. “My ordination. The doctrine I was trained in.”
“Yes.”
“The theology of Reason that I have preached from Valère’s pulpits.”
“Also yes.”
“And you are telling me that the entire edifice was constructed, from its foundations, to serve as a mechanism for one man’s apotheosis.”
Theodora’s expression split the difference between sympathy and professional respect. “The Church generates belief. Belief shapes the divine. Valère designed a Church whose theology progressively redefines Invictus in his own image — rational, enlightened, the embodiment of Reason itself. And when an entire nation no longer thinks of Invictus as a god of dominion, but a god of Reason, Valère will attempt apotheosis.”
“So he’s going to step into the role of Invictus?” Wylan said.
“No. He replaces him. The way Invictus replaced Hyperion. Valère does not intend to become Invictus.”
“Then what’s he waiting for?” Wylan said.
“Well, Caliburn for one. But also, once a god is forged, they are not easily undone. The house of Agony must be vacated before it can be filled anew.”
Lambert’s hand had closed around the prayer beads with the grip of a man holding a rope over a long drop.
“I have knelt in places where no church stood,” he said. “In dungeons. In catacombs. In rooms that predated the institution you are describing. And Invictus answered. Not a doctrine. Not an architecture. A god, responding to a man on his knees, with a directness that no mechanism mediates.”
“Of course,” Theodora said. “Gods answer prayer. That is what gods do. The question is not whether there is divinity in Agony. The question is what it is becoming, and who is steering the transformation.”
Lambert opened his mouth and closed it again. He had apparently prepared a defence of his faith’s authenticity and discovered the prosecution was not interested in contesting it.
“Your connection is genuine,” Theodora continued. “The architecture it operates within was built to serve a purpose you were never told about. These are not in conflict. A river is real. The canal that redirects it was designed by an engineer.”
That, Wylan reflected, was considerably worse than if she had simply told Lambert his god was fictitious. Lambert could live on fictions.
“Which brings us to the sword,” Theodora said, and several spines around the table straightened in unison.
“We are listening,” Laila said.
“Caliburn was forged with Aeloria’s fire, but it is first and foremost empowered with Valère’s own Brand. It was stolen from him, and I confess I do not know how it came to be sealed in your family’s Dungeon.” She spread her hands, a small concession. “I was content to let it stay there.”
So she’s not omniscient, Wylan noted. Good to know.
“Without the sword, Valère remains diminished. With it, he is considerably closer to his goals. You are not just negotiating over a relic, but whether to return the keystone to an arch that was taken apart intentionally.”
“We are negotiating,” Laila said with steel, “over my granddaughter’s life. A position, I might add, your — what, employer? Keeper? — imposed in the first place.”
Theodora grimaced notably at that. “Unfortunately, Caliburn matters rather more than a cure for a two-year-old’s affliction. However sincerely that cure is offered.”
“So the cure is a bargain,” Wylan said. “From his perspective. He is purchasing the instrument of his own apotheosis for the price of one child’s health.”
“The most lopsided transaction in Gallian history,” Theodora said, “and he will present it as magnanimity.”
? The Gallian Treasury had a term for transactions in which one party received everything and the other received gratitude: ‘philanthropy.’
Isabella had been waiting for the conversation to arrive at ground level.
“Will Aeloria remove the curse from Aurora?” she asked.
The silence that followed had opinions.
“Aeloria is...” She paused. Wylan watched her audition and reject several diplomatic constructions in rapid succession. “Dragons are proud. Immensely powerful, ancient beyond mortal reckoning, and proud. The condition your niece carries is, from Aeloria’s perspective, a gift. An echo of her own fire. To ask her to extinguish it would be to ask her to undo something she considers an extension of herself.”
“She won’t do it, then,” Laila said.
Theodora did not confirm this. She also did not deny it, which confirmed it rather more efficiently.
“Sounds like we have an appointment to keep,” Isabella said.