Kordas felt a genuine tingle of joy at stealing on such a scale. He knew it was wrong in general to steal, but this was for lives. He told himself that whatever he plundered from the Empire for his people were resources that wouldn’t be available to the Empire against his people. Audacity will win the day, he thought, and had the City Armory unobtrusively carted out “for offsite inventory and storage relocation” with the proper stamps, and replaced with identical, but empty, crates. Tons of combat-ready Poomers, Spitters, and the ammunition for them streamed to Valdemar, with no one but he and the Dolls aware of it. Boatloads of pellets in their secured crates accompanied them. All the boats looked the same with their raincovers on, and nobody cared what Dolls shipped. Hundreds of Doll-operated barges plied the canals every day. And so, without Courts, Kings, or commoners noticing or caring, the Plundering of the City was underway.
Better to be hung for a big deed than a small one, he thought. And, if I leave the City with a bare minimum of weapons, they won’t have reserves to defend themselves with, and they might panic. Panic was a good, useful option in a Court. The only supplies he let go out as usual were things that were expected on specific dates, such as ammunition and pellets going to the War. If those didn’t arrive as expected, there would be furious consequences.
Tremors came and went all this time, and an urgent message came to Kordas from the Record Keeper while Kordas was deep down a storage bay: Foreseers were reporting new visions. The Imperial City, the Palace, all exploding in fire or consumed by lava. When, they weren’t certain, but the visions were reported from Foreseers at the far edges of the Empire, as well as locals.
These reports made Kordas feel the most apprehension of the whole operation, and he lit off via Gate to the Records Complex. Not everything a Foreseer predicts actually happens, but they can be good warnings to check things, and in my case—to check things that I have compromised. So long as his subterfuge with the official seals was between him and the Dolls, everything should be all right. But if the predictions were delivered to the Emperor in a timely manner, the Emperor would search on his own, and Kordas would surely be exposed. By stealing the martial supplies alone, Kordas had cemented himself as a traitor.
If anyone was left alive to come after me. If anyone knew I was behind it. If anyone could find me.
Kordas agonized over the decision as he read the dispatches. In his heart it felt very, very much like pulling a trigger to end a life. If the Emperor received the Foreseer reports, he might lock down the entire City. No one in or out.
“If any more reports like these come in, can you destroy them?” he asked the Records Keeper.
“No, my Lord. Many things we can delay, but these are urgent and must be delivered to the Emperor. That we cannot change.”
Kordas flew through his resourcefulness in his mind. Mis-labeling? Re-routing? Copying errors? Wait—“Can you hand over urgent dispatches to a human courier for delivery?”
The Records-Keeper answered quickly, “Yes, if they have a certification as an Imperial courier.”
“Then have all new dispatches delivered to my Herald, Beltran. Then it is his responsibility to see to it they reach the Emperor, and none of you are liable for what happens after they’re handed off to a courier.”
“That would not violate our directives.”
With a flick of his fingers, flames erupted at the corners of the Foreseer reports. “Oh no, look what I did.”
The Records Keeper nudged a trash receptacle toward Kordas, who dropped the burning papers into it. “We will have to report that sometime, my Lord. Delays or loss of official materials must be reported within one hundred days.”
Initially, the Plan was for Valdemar to escape the Empire, which has turned even worse since Father devised it. Then I twisted the Plan into getting the abused children out, and then the Dolls, and the truth prisoners, and supplies, and now I’ve found myself thinking about the innocents in the City, from blacksmiths to noodle-cooks. Father’s Plan is My Plan now, not The Plan. If the City will be annihilated, anything and anyone left here would be incinerated anyway, so—my conscience is clear about my secret sacking of the City. If the Emperor sees the Foreseer reports, though, he’ll be enraged with paranoia, unleash every hound he has—and he’ll discover the Plan. It’s all about what the Emperor reacts to.
He exhaled hard, because he could only come up with one solution.
It never stops. It only escalates.
* * *
—
Kordas resumed his performance the next morning. He stormed around Court abusing Isla and Hakkon to anyone who would listen. He channeled his very real anger at not being allowed to go home into feigned anger at them. In a few more days, anyone who saw him coming would hastily find something else they urgently needed to do.
Then he changed his tune again. He begged people to tell him how to win his wife back—or at the very least, get the Emperor to hear his petition to go home. He would bargain with anyone, which made him amusing again, as people gave him all sorts of absurd advice about his wife. No one, however, was willing to bargain with him for access to the Emperor. That was apparently one line they would not cross.
He kept that up for about six days more. Some of his desperation was real. It was perilously close to the day of the Regatta. He still had no good idea of how to protect the stubborn people who were intending, no matter what, to remain in Valdemar. The Record Keeper had been unable to give him any help either. In fact, the only other thing the Record Keeper had been able to advise him on was what to do about Merrin’s spies . . .
Which had been, quite simply, to take them prisoner and allow the Record Keeper to forge reports to Merrin from them. So the spies were cooling their heels securely locked in the never-used prison cells of the Valdemar manor. They were being treated well, and on the day after the Regatta, the spell-locked door would swing open. So that was all right.
But it didn’t help Kordas at all.
So now he was moping around, talking to no one, brooding. He displeased Star by disarranging his appearance so that he looked a bit unkempt. He pushed his food around his plate at public meals, and refused far, far more dishes than he accepted. This was actually all to the good, in his opinion; he had been afraid that even with moderate eating he was beginning to get soft around the waist. People snickered openly at him, but avoided him with alarm, because he would get maudlin and immediately turn the subject of conversation to Isla, pleading with them to give him advice, then interrupting that advice to grow teary-eyed and dissolve into a wet mess.
But the desperation and depression were both very real. He didn’t have to feign those. He didn’t have to feign pacing the gardens night and day, head down, as he went over every ploy he had thought of and discarded.
Put everyone remaining in Valdemar under a sleep spell, until they are awakened by those storming the place to investigate.