Chương 91: The Conclave

Nigel Marlowe moved down the hallway with a clipped briskness to his step, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and releasing a small breath at the sight of a junior aide rushing past him in the corridor—who only barely caught himself in time to dip his head and murmur, "Legate Marlowe," before disappearing around the corner. He would ask who that fellow was attached to later. That was no way for a functionary to conduct himself in the Conclave Spire, even when pressed for time.

Patting his hand twice against the lacquered folio tucked beneath his arm, Nigel continued forward, slowing only slightly as he approached a set of bronze-red double doors. Their surface was inset with a ring of circular sigils, each bearing the mark of a Covenant faction, arranged around a central carving of a rising flame. Two guards in pure white plate stood on either side, their helmed faces completely unreadable as Nigel stepped between them and pushed through the doors.

He entered the Tiered Conclave, a wide circular hall descending in ordered tiers toward a central speaking floor, each level lined with darkstone benches and narrow desks laid out in clean arcs. The walls rose in smooth, unbroken sweeps of bleached stone, broken only by tall vertical slits that admitted bands of filtered light, while thin seams of emberglass ran between the tiers, casting a steady luminescent glow that left no corner of the chamber in shadow.

Nigel's gaze snagged briefly on the raised dais on the speaking floor, where a single throne of slate-veined gray basalt had been placed. His eyes narrowed. What smoke-addled, cinder-brained sycophant thought it was a good idea to bring that here? He swept a glance across the chamber, but aside from himself, few had arrived so early. Of those already present, he could not pick out a single face likely to have made such an idiotic decision. He did not appear to be alone in feeling perturbed by it, though.

More than one of the early arrivals had cast the thing a look that hovered somewhere between distaste and unease. He had half a mind to summon an aide and have it removed on the spot, but that would place him squarely at the center of the matter, and he had no desire to attract the irritation of whichever fool had ordered it brought in to begin with. After all, they were almost guaranteed to be above him.

Ignoring the throne for the time being, he made his way toward one of the middle sections where some of his colleagues had already gathered. He sidestepped empty seats as he approached a pair of men in the formal, garnet Conclave robes. Both turned as he drew near.

"Legate Marlowe," one of them said, a balding man with spectacles too small for his face pinched high on the bridge of his nose, dipping his head in greeting.

"Legate Nesse," Nigel replied with a nod of his own.

"Legate Fankhut." The other man, a stringy fellow with a bristling moustache and a wild head of iron-gray hair only barely disciplined around the temples, inclined his head in return.

"Marlowe." Nigel set his folio on the desk before him and took his seat, straightening his collar and settling his sleeves.

"How have things been, Marlowe?" Nesse asked dryly.

"I can't help but notice a few extra shadows under your eyes." Nigel kept his expression neutral, letting his gaze drift over the chamber and the figures scattered through it, all while subtly maintaining watch on the entrance.

"You know as well as I do how I've been," he said.

"We are still dealing with the Marrowfen mess." He had spent far too much time thinking about that disaster over the past fortnight. The news of a Silent Lord's appearance, a city nearly obliterated, and the rumors of the Ashborn Ascendant's return were still spreading through the streets of Caer Virell. Personally, Nigel preferred not to dwell on any of it any longer than necessary. Particularly not that final name.

"Who isn't dealing with that mess?" A humorless snort left Fankhut.

"Half the reports on my desk this past week have come from panicked scribes and legates convinced a Silent Lord is secretly entrenching itself in their city. Minister Peished seems to think every minor irregularity must be inspected under a magnifying lens."

"Peished is a witless fool," Nesse muttered.

"He is, but his approach is preferable to complacency," Nigel said as he noted another official enter the hall with brisk steps. The entire Ember Conclave had been in upheaval since it came to light that the Boneward Concord and one of the Covenant's own member states had been covertly compromised by the forces of a Silent Lord without any of them realizing it.

As the Covenant's diplomatic and executive body, and the arm chiefly responsible for managing the steadily worsening relations with Marrowfen over the past year, the Conclave now found itself under no small amount of scrutiny over how the warning signs had gone unnoticed for so long. And there were some who were plainly asking whether they truly had gone unnoticed.

Suffice it to say, a great many eyes were presently fixed on the Ember Conclave and its ability to carry out the diplomatic and administrative burdens of the Covenant of Flame. Nigel continued speaking with his fellow legates as the chamber slowly filled, but though he never openly stared, he kept careful track of each new arrival, noting names, affiliations, and the order in which they entered.

He paid especially close attention to the representatives of the Cinder Council, as he was sure several of his more astute colleagues were doing as well. The order of arrival often revealed more than people thought. It could suggest who had been warned ahead of time, who possessed information others lacked, and who wished to be seen arriving at precisely the right moment. That alone could prove useful.

To begin with, this morning's assembly was highly irregular and departed from procedure to such a degree that Nigel would not have blamed certain ministers and legates for taking offense and refusing to attend at all.

It had been called on egregiously short notice, the Conclave's own speakers hadn't been left in control of it, and both the Cinder Council and the Ember Conclave had been instructed to share the gathering for the sake of expediency, despite the fact that such an arrangement ran contrary to both precedent and proper order. Ostensibly, today's assembly was meant to serve as a briefing on the situation in Marrowfen and the circumstances surrounding the reappearance of a Silent Lord.

But reports had already been arriving on their desks in a steady stream for long enough. No assembly like this would have been convened for that alone. In truth, this gathering was a result of certain anxious members of both Council and Conclave hounding the Pyric Oath with questions about the abrupt disappearance of their Keeper, and about why she had surfaced in Marrowfen while a war was still underway. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

At least, that was what this was supposed to be. But Nigel had heard whispers. Nothing substantial, nothing he would yet call reliable, but enough to suggest there might be more to this assembly than a mere accounting of recent events. Something a legate of his standing lacked the connections to uncover directly. Still, the names of those who arrived unusually early, and the degree of importance they seemed to attach to this assembly, offered their own hints.

Once you knew who was already aware of something, one could, by extension, infer what that something might be. Perhaps the first person of real note to arrive was the very subject their earlier conversation had circled around. Minister Alvayne Peished, flanked by two aides and carrying himself with the sort of brittle urgency Nigel had come to associate with him, entered the chamber with a scowl as he muttered words that likely carried to none but himself.

Not long after came Envoy Oriss Vale of Emberfast, the first proper representative of the Cinder Council to appear. She crossed the chamber at a measured pace, her unreadable gaze sweeping over the hall that so rarely hosted members of the Council within its tiers, before taking a seat near the lower rows without acknowledging anyone around her. The next notable arrival was another from the Council, though not an envoy.

Seatbearer Carter Ruun's heavy boots struck the stone like hammers as the broad-shouldered Chapter-Master stepped across the threshold, only to pause just inside the entrance, his gaze settling on the throne at the center. His mouth twisted into a look of flat disapproval, then he moved off to claim a seat of his own. Several others arrived not long after, including Envoy Voss Emsworth of Darnelle, Seatbearer and High Speaker Isren Kael, and the Cinder Envoy Meadow Hightalon.

Nigel noted that many—but not all—of those who had come early were precisely the sort of people one would not normally expect to attend a routine assembly, and that several of them were figures said to have some degree of familiarity with the Flamebearer. Had they truly learned something in advance? If he were to guess, whatever surprise awaited them today would come from the Flamebearer herself.

It seemed probable that she possessed material information about the events in Marrowfen beyond what had already been sent back to Caer Virell through Ashmark. If her intention in drawing both the Cinder Council and the Ember Conclave into the same chamber was to deliver that news personally, then he had no doubt it was significant. Could there have been confirmed signs of other Silent Lords? Had other cities been compromised in the same fashion as Marrowfen?

It couldn't be something related to another tribulation, could it? He turned the possibilities over in his mind, but no matter which conclusions he tested, none of them promised anything good. Worse, very few suggested any meaningful opportunities for his advancement. If that was the truth of it, there was little he could do except accept his lot. He had already risen to the rank of legate far faster than many thought he had any right to.

In the ranks of the Ember Conclave, where decorum and process were treated with almost sacred reverence, and where pride in traditions far older than the Covenant ran deep, an upstart like him had already turned enough heads. Turning more might not be wise. But he would never have reached his present station if he hadn't learned to seize every opening and press it as far as it would bear. He was clever enough to know when to pull back, but he would never stop pushing until he stood at the very edge of the drop.

He maintained a thread of casual exchange with Legates Nesse and Fankhut as more people filtered into the chamber, greeting additional colleagues as they took their seats nearby and folded themselves into the discussion. Before long, a good two-thirds of the hall had filled, perhaps three-quarters of them belonging to the Ember Conclave, and a low hum of conversation spread across the tiers.

Nigel's eyes still flicked now and then toward the entrance, though with less focus than before, most of the arrivals he considered particularly noteworthy having already made their appearance. Then he paused at the next figure to enter. Almost at once, a thin hush settled over the chamber. A lean woman had stepped through the doors, with pale skin and long, ash-blonde hair tied back in a loose tail, several uneven strands fallen across her face.

Her features were sharp, a vivid scar cutting across her left eye and trailing down her cheek and neck, and her gray eyes were so drained of color that they seemed almost white as they passed over the gathered assembly in silent appraisal. Her clothes were nearly as muted as her gaze, and at her hip hung a single-edged blade that bore no ornament beyond a narrow band of pale metal wrapped around its hilt and linked by a fine chain to a cuff at her wrist. The mere sight of it sent a faint chill through Nigel.

The chamber remained quiet, even as the woman identified a seat apart from the others and crossed to it without the slightest regard for the attention following her. Nigel glanced at the expressions of several of his colleagues and found more than a few frowns on them. Allowing members of the Cinder Council into this chamber was irregular, but at least they possessed a formal basis for attending. This woman, however, belonged to neither the Council nor the Conclave.

By every ordinary measure, she had no standing to be here at all, and her presence alone could be seen as an insult to the Ember Conclave's authority. But who among them would dare say so aloud? That was Yria Wakeshade. Not a single person in this chamber could boast accomplishments that came even close to the weight carried by the name of a Marked One. Nigel did not take her presence as a personal insult, though he understood why some of his colleagues might.

What unsettled him, however, was the simple fact that Wakeshade was in Caer Virell at all. The last he had heard, she was in Halveth. While the attention fixed on Wakeshade didn't fade completely, conversation eventually returned in a more subdued murmur as the last arrivals filtered into the chamber. With the minutes dragging on, the mood grew steadily tighter. Then, at last, a palpable shift ran through the hall as the chamber doors opened once more.

This time, the figure who stepped through was the one they had all been waiting for. Clad in black armor etched with the wounded sun, a woman with dark vermillion hair trailing behind her strode toward the center of the chamber with a commanding presence. Sweat prickled at the back of Nigel's neck as the air seemed to warm. He watched as the woman came to a halt beside the throne, her eyes blazing behind the visor of her helm as she regarded it.

Then the throne—carved from a single mass of basalt—collapsed before all their eyes, splitting apart in a rush of heat as flames poured through it and reduced it to glowing slag in a matter of seconds. A scattering of startled gasps and mutters passed through the chamber. Nigel could barely stop himself from rolling his eyes at their shock. The Flamebearer lifted her head, her gaze sweeping across the gathered tiers, and a very real pressure settled over the room.

"I sit upon no throne," she said, her voice low. For a few moments, no one replied. Then Seatbearer Ruun let out a long, audible sigh that carried through the space.

"We know, Valecrest," he grumbled.

"No need to scorch the lot of us because a few scarbound fools thought otherwise. Let's get this over and done with." Her eyes shifted to him and lingered there. Finally, she inclined her head.

"Very well. However, before we begin, there is another speaker whom I asked to join me today. I ask that you all accept their attendance." A ripple of whispers and sharp looks spread through the tiers. Nigel's attention sharpened at once, and he leaned slightly forward. He had not expected matters to turn so quickly.

"Who is this speaker, Flamebearer?" Minister Stirgan asked. The Flamebearer turned toward him.

"It is—" A deathly stillness fell as the space beside her split open in utter silence, like cloth being parted by an invisible blade. Lined with flickering runes of mottled gray that writhed like hundreds of grasping hands, the tear widened just enough for a single foot to step through, followed by a woman bearing a halberd of marrow-bright steel. The woman paused.

"Shit, I was a second too early, wasn't I?" she said as her clear silver eyes darted over the gathering before shifting to the Flamebearer with a trace of chagrin. If her arrival and weapon had not already made clear who she was, the long silver-gray hair and the sigil-scars winding from her hands to her shoulders would have done so.

"Mournvale," the Flamebearer finished, glancing at her with visible irritation. The pressure in the chamber deepened. Veralyth Mournvale, the Ashborn Ascendant, stood beneath the weight of every gaze fixed upon her, then slowly raised one hand in a slightly awkward wave.

"Hello there." Nigel leaned farther forward in his seat, his eyes locked on her as his hand tightened unconsciously around the edge of the desk. She truly was back. That rogue. She owed him!