Fernan VII: The Peacekeeper

  Something was wrong. The water had rumbled and sprayed, waves rippling violently outward from the center of the Convocation, but none of the spirits had surfaced, nor had the Lord of the Lyrion Sea been chosen.

  Fernan tensed, trying to figure out what had befallen the spirits beneath the waves. Lamante might have gotten up to any amount of mischief on her own, and Tauroneo has ample reason to hate me, if he knows anything about how the Commune treated his High Priestess, but I’m most worried about Camille Leclaire.

  Having attended exactly one of these Convocations, Fernan had little reason to hope. Flammare had seen himself chosen with heavy handed threats and recriminations, alongside the argument that he would be continuing Soleil’s tradition of tyranny and eradication. To be fair, maybe the spirits confused ‘acting like Soleil’ with keeping the Sun’s Peace.

  “You have met Soleil yourself, Fernan, so I need not inform you of his shortcomings,” Gézarde had told him before he departed Guerron. “But before his pact with Khali, the situation was far worse. Spirit fought spirit, cleaving through earth and sky, until Terramonde’s skin had been so mutilated that we risked waking him from his stone slumber. Soleil kept the peace between spirits, first with Khali at his side and then without her. The Sun’s Peace.”

  For Gézarde to know of it, to have experienced it himself, that must have been long ago indeed. Even Flammare’s intent to war with Glaciel had been framed in those terms, as though she had given up her right to the Sun’s Peace when she invaded Soleil’s seat, an aberrant threat rather than a spirit worthy of equal consideration. And he was wrong; his crusade of annihilation would have done more damage than Glaciel’s failed attempt.

  Worse, however ignoble Flammare’s methods to ascend the seat might have been, Fernan had taken a personal hand in setting an even more underhanded precedent. It wasn’t Flammare who first broke the peace, but me.

  You opened the door for me, little coal miner boy, he could hear Leclaire taunting him. You think you’re so moral, but that didn’t stop you from stabbing Flammare in the back to get your preferred Sun in the role, nor from leaving Laura to take the fall. Whatever was happening down there, Fernan was not above the blame, though none of the spirits save Lamante had any reason to know that.

  He could stay waiting up here, wait for everything to settle out, and plead his case to whomever ended up taking Levian’s seat in the aftermath. The victor could hardly be as bad as Levian himself, to be sure. And who was Fernan to interfere, after all the harm he’d done last time?

  All the harm to one human and one spirit, with hundreds of thousands of Hiverriens saved from a brutal war...

  Except they weren’t, were they? Killing Flammare had opened his seat up; framing Laura—not only monstrous on its face—had put her in position to help Volobrin win it. Wasting no time, Volobrin had led an army out of the Plumards across the southern flats, a full-scale invasion of Hiverre before Flammare’s body was cold. In a very real way, Fernan was to blame for that as well.

  Glaciel was holding her own against Volobrin, to be sure, making his Dominion of Sundéré fight for every inch of land across these past four years; such resistance from Hiverre would have crumbled against united opposition from Flammare and the other flame spirits.

  Probably. Possibly. Or perhaps they would be fighting still, holding together against impossible odds. Florette and I could have fought with them in the open, won other spirits to our side with honor instead of deception... Maybe. Glaciel seemed to feel that way, considering that Christophe boy she’d sent to help Florette in her name. But a tyrant Queen was hardly the arbiter of what was best for her people, even if they were also her descendants.

  For all the uncertainty Fernan felt, he couldn’t believe that the war Hiverre faced was anything close to what Flammare would have given them. Killing Flammare had to have been the right choice.

  Perhaps whoever is behind the trouble below has a similar justification. That was all the more likely if Leclaire were the cause.

  Gézarde hung in the air above, waiting for his moment to descend. But if not now, when?

  “What are you waiting for?” Fernan called up to him, fearing he already knew the answer.

  “It is not my nature to intervene in a clash between spirits. Had I my mountain to return to, I would be separated by miles of earth and flame.” Put that way, it was a wonder that Lamante had talked him into coming at all. “You would do well to follow, Montaigne. You barely survived one clash with the Torrent of the Deep.”

  Wait and hide, like you’ve done for the last thousand years. Fernan understood his trepidation, but the Sun had a duty.

  And it seems it must fall to his High Priest.

  “Burn a circle downward!” Fernan called out. “Block the water from flowing in and I can enter in your stead.”

  Gézarde hesitated, obviously confused at the request.

  “That’s what sages are for! To represent their patron spirits!” Or kill them, in the case of the two sages I knew best, but I would never do the same. The mountainfolk owed Gézarde and his children far too great a debt to even consider it. “Let me help!”

  With a flap of his wings, Gézarde called down a pillar of fire from the sky, burning so pale it was almost white. A sizzling splatter erupted from the water where the flame touched it, gradually settling to a dull roar once the circle reached the floor of the sea.

  Fernan wasted no time, jumping from the boat and throwing himself towards the fire. He spun his hands just in time to part it in front of himself, flying into the circle and diving downwards towards the spirits below.

  Where are the rest of them? was Fernan’s first thought. He recognized Glaciel, Corro, Corva, and Tauroneo, who were joined by a large frog spirit with a brown-green aura and a small pink pink spirit dancing around the edge of the circle.

  And, of course, Camille Leclaire.

  “Leclaire,” voted the imp, leaping over the frog’s head as she said it. “You must let me know when you plan to do this again. What fun!”

  Fun? Fernan felt his eyes flare outward, realizing for the first time what was really going on. It’s not an accident that all the other spirits are gone; Leclaire did this. “Camille, stop!” he yelled, landing on his feet with a wet thud.

  Glaciel was the first to respond to his presence. “You’re that boy who sank my castle, aren’t you? A sage, not a spirit.”

  Camille turned to face him, hair floating up behind her as if it were still underwater. “You don’t get a vote, Fernan Montaigne. Gézarde may join us, as is his right. But I’m afraid that the vote is already underway. If he can’t make it back in time, well... I suppose the vote will have to stand as it is.”

  She’s trying to steal it out from under them. Somehow, that was still a surprise. I got complacent after the Treaty of Charenton. She left Guerron alone, but made no such commitments with the spirits. Levian would only be the first of many, apparently.

  “You don’t want to win like this, Camille. Even if you pull it off, they’ll hate you forever. An exile, an—”

  “An abomination?” she smiled, her lips an icy blue. “They’ve already tarred my children with that particular brush, shunned me for doing my duty as a sage and serving justice to that violent monster. Why should I care what they think?”

  “Forever is a long time,” Fernan tried, remembering what Edith Costeau had said about immortality. “Is this who you want to be for the next eon? A usurper standing arm-in-arm with the Winter Queen, shunned by all as your children and grand-children die before you?”

  Her pupils narrowed into slits at that, which at least counted for something. Fernan had feared she would simply brush it off. “Needless to say, my vote is for Leclaire as well. Queen Glaciel, would you kindly remove this interloper?”

  Oh shit. Fernan sprang into the air seconds ahead of a spear of ice erupting from the ground.

  Camille frowned. “Nonlethally, if you please.”

  “Marie would have killed him for that insult.” Glaciel made no move to attack him further.

  “As would her descendant, I fear. Yet I am not the Fox-Queen, Empress of her domains though I might be. I do not wish for him to die today. ”

  Wow, thanks. The conversation distracted Fernan long enough for the pink imp to surprise him from behind, wrapping a tightly-bound rope around his neck. Where did she even get that? “This... is... wrong...” he choked out, not sure whether he was appealing to Camille or the spirits around her. “Supposed... to be... better... than... Levian.”

  His head felt light, but Fernan swore he saw the frog react to that, a hitch in his belly as expanded with his breath. Corva followed, raising her wings above her head. “This was not the deal we made, Leclaire.”

  “We didn’t make a deal, as such. I kept you here because I know you to be ancient and wise. You’ve suffered more than most after what happened to Eulus, and I want to make that right. You, in turn, could recognize that I have more to offer in my patron’s seat than out at the fringes.”

  “The Arbiter of the Waves must be chosen by the spirits, not stolen by a human,” the frog croaked, his voice a rush of mud and water. “Taking on Levian’s power does not need to mean taking on his cruelty. I never thought I would see you become like this, little Camille. I choose Rhan.”

  “What? Damn it, Fenouille, the whole point was—”

  “Rhan,” Corva echoed, apparently deciding the matter. As she finished speaking, a whistle of the wind through her wings, an echo sounded across the seafloor.

  A moment later, a great wave burst through Gézarde’s pillar of light at the surface, causing a cascade of water down the sides. Instead of a wall of flame holding the waves at bay, now it was a wall of flowing water, slowly pooling and rising on the seafloor.

  Fernan felt the cord around his neck slacken, and pulled it free. By the time he caught his breath, the pink imp was gone and the water was up to his knees. Corva had taken flight alongside her sage, while Tauroneo had encased Camille’s arms and legs in stone.

  Why couldn’t he have done that earlier? Fernan thought indignantly. He suspected he knew the answer, though. He was waiting to see how this all shook out. If Camille had prevailed, it wouldn’t have been wise to provoke her then and there. Nor would the bull necessarily have been able to stop her.

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  “You were quite correct, girl.” Glaciel stepped lightly above the rising water, ice forming beneath her every step. “I well knew Marie Renart. I fought with her. I conquered in her name. You are no Marie Renart, more alike to the oafish descendant you married.” She reached out and seized Camille’s hair, sending ripples of ice towards her head. “Levian borrowed ice from my domain to complement his power over water, and you held that power too. No more.”

  “Wait!” Camille’s eyes widened as she futilely tried to contest it, but she couldn’t even break free of Tauroneo’s stone bindings, let alone contest the Winter Queen.

  “Now, I take back what is mine.” Glaciel swelled in size, until she towered above the water’s surface, the rolling waves crashing against her shoulders. “For providing me that, and a dose of amusement, you have my gratitude.” She let out a chilling laugh, chiming with malice. “Now you can kill her, Tauroneo.”

  “It is not your place,” the frog croaked, sounding somewhat disquieted at the thought.. “Rhan must have that honor.”

  “Must she, Fenouille?” the bull rumbled, tightening the earthen manacles around Camille’s wrists. “It was the Sun’s Peace she broke. Gézarde must judge her.”

  “He would kill her just the same.” Glaciel shrugged her shoulders, a strangely human gesture from the frozen giantess. “It makes no difference.”

  Gézarde would spare her life if I asked him to. I think so, anyway. For that to even be an option, though, he had to get down here. Somehow even Rhan’s waves breaking through his fire hadn’t stirred him to do it. Moreover, once everyone arrived, would he even be willing to grant that clemency if Lamante poured poison in his ear?

  Considering what she’s done, I doubt any one of them would want to. Fernan could limp off, satisfied that Leclaire’s ambitions had been thwarted, and leave her to her fate. The fate I arranged for her, a punishment for crime I myself have exceeded. Unlike with Flammare, after all, no spirits had died for this.

  “Gézarde is absent,” Fernan found the strength to say, despite knowing it might weaken his patron’s influence. “It was the Sun who set the terms of the peace, but it fell to the spirits to live up to it. Your votes already thwarted Leclaire’s designs. Now let them spare her life.”

  The air shook with gales of icy wind, Glaciel’s laughter rebounding over the falling water. “She tried to seize Levian’s seat for herself after treacherously killing him, imposing herself above the will of the spirits.”

  “And you supported her in doing it.” Lamante was the first to ride over the waterfall, buoyed upward by Gézarde’s light. Not a good sign that he would think of her first. She put on a mask as she fell, changing into the form of—

  émile Leclaire? Fernan narrowed his eyebrows as he tried to think back. Was that her the whole time? He had disappeared after the duel, but...

  It doesn’t matter.

  Lamante used Emile’s form to land on top of the water, looking confused and annoyed that she hadn’t been able to create a platform out of ice.

  “Were you not attempting the very same thing when you invaded Guerron?” Fernan added, watching Gézarde descend from the sky after the mantis. To keep above the water, he began blasting fire from his feet. “Unlike you, Camille Leclaire did not take any lives in her callousness. Nor should any of you do the same. The Sun’s Peace isn’t just about peace between spirits, it means respecting humanity as well.”

  “Were you there when Soleil made this declaration, boy?” Glaciel was shrinking down to better fit in the cavern, several ocean and river spirits following after her from above. “Who are you to ascribe motives to a dead spirit?”

  “You would not exist for millenia more yourself, Glaciel.” With the water rising so high, Tauroneo had slipped beneath the waves, but his voice could still be heard from below as the earth rumbled. “The Sun’s Peace was a peace between the spirits, between Soleil and Khali foremost of all. But humans were part of it, ensuring that no spirit would war against another’s stock of humans directly, lest they provoke an overt conflict. He saw the benefit of empowering humans to do such work; they could never mar Terramonde’s skin nor end spiritual lives in the same destructive fashion.”

  “He might have paid better attention to what befell Khali and Pantera, if he truly believed that. It might have been enough to avoid the same fate for himself.” With émile’s face, Lamante sounded exactly as Fernan had remembered him, even in the way she spoke. “We owe Leclaire nothing. Nor is she truly human anymore.”

  The various river spirits were arriving behind Lamante, signalling their assent. The more of them who return, the lower my chances.

  “Then consider Glaciel!” Fernan shouted, deliberately provoking the Queen of Winter. “Was she killed for her part in Soleil’s Convocation? No.”

  “Flammare wished it so,” rumbled the earthen bull from below. “But he was not given the chance.”

  Because Florette and I killed him...

  Fernan thought he had seen Flammare once, shortly after reckoning with Levian. His flaming metal wings had sung a song of agony and betrayal, halted only when his form shifted to that of Jerome, giving Fernan a look less angry than disappointed. Those phantoms would be sure to haunt him again after this, Camille’s voice joining the rest of them in judgement.

  “This usurpation cannot go unpunished.” A deep blue-green streak flitted across the cavern, Rhan gone as soon as they arrived. But they continued dipping in and out, never in a single place for long enough to take them in, bringing more and more small spirits together with every motion.

  “It won’t,” announced Fernan, suddenly struck by an idea that could cut through the vicious momentum that was building. “Camille Leclaire has already lost her grip on the magic of ice and winter.”

  “Insufficient.” Now the water was deep enough that Tauroneo’s words took on a strange muted quality.”

  Of course, but here’s the solution. “She will swear to honor the Sun’s Peace, as the elder spirits did. She must swear never to attend a Convocation ever again. She won’t have the chance to try this or anything like it again.”

  “And then we would let her walk away?” Rhan asked, incredulous.

  “This sets a precedent,” Fernan answered. “Spirits who kill other spirits break the Sun’s Peace, whatever the crimes of the victim. If Camille is no longer a human to be judged as such, then judge her as a spirit. Let her live, as you all would wish to live. What’s important is taking away her power over you, and we’ve done that already. Force her to swear those oaths, and you’ll cement it forever.”

  “It is no small thing to bind a spirit so.” Lamante tilted her head, looking utterly unnatural doing it with émil Leclaire’s body. “I would be amenable to such a solution, provided I can make her swear those vows myself.”

  Why would it matter to you? Fernan thought, but it didn’t really matter as long as she was willing to accept it. “Gézarde, Flame Under the Mountain, Sun in the Sky, I’m sure that you would agree.” If you don’t want to do anything actively, at least jump in when I set you up.

  “Indeed,” he offered, managing to sound hesitant as he pulsed with blinding light. “Rhan, spirits of the waves and waters, has there not been sufficient death? The binders of Avalon seek to rend the material world from the spirits by killing us, one by one. Soleil, Levian, and Pantera all died by human hands, by such means too was Khali sealed.”

  “We must stand together,” Tauroneo’s muffled voice agreed. “Make her swear her oaths, and let her live.”

  “Let her live,” Fenouille echoed.

  “And perhaps she’ll wish she hadn’t.” Lamante smiled, émil’s mouth stretching uncannily wide. “Spirits of the water, follow me, and watch me see this through.” She let out a faint laugh, then dove under the surface of the water.

  It wasn’t long before Rhan and the other spirits followed, leaving Fernan alone on the surface with Gézarde. Glaciel was already striding across the sea towards Hiverre, ice sprouting beneath her feet with every step.

  “Thank you,” Fernan told his patron earnestly. It took you a while to speak up, but it seems like you really were listening to what I was saying. That thought was even more comforting than the knowledge it had spared Camille’s life.

  “You did well to stop her. A newborn spirit wielding such power could have been disastrous.” Gézarde flapped his wings, orienting himself to ascend back into the sky. “And yet she is a spirit still. We have suffered too many losses to impose another upon ourselves. We shall speak again in Guerron,” he said, then took to the skies.

  We shall, but that doesn’t mean I’m done here.

  Fernan flew back to the shore, landing near a piece of driftwood large enough to sit and wait a while. The green tint to the setting sun combined mingled with the blue of the water as Gézarde receded, the wind beginning to pick up.

  Still, Fernan waited.

  The last dregs of twilight had nearly faded by the time Camille emerged from the deep, aura looking sickly slender and not fully corporeal. She collapsed on the beach with a wet splat, rage and exhaustion and despair writ plain across her body.

  Fernan approached her cautiously, watching as his breath warmed the air around him. Camille, by contrast, scarcely seemed to be breathing at all. Glaciel must have taken more out of her than I thought. He bent down and offered his hand, prompting her to stir.

  “You—” Her aura crystalized to ice-cold blue, granting her a sense of life and fortitude. “You just threw the continent away, you honorless scourge.” Slowly, painfully, she pulled herself to her feet, still dripping in viridian and turquoise. “I signed your infernal treaty, granted you your little commune. I have left you alone, and in return you stab me in the back!?”

  “I was keeping the peace,” Fernan tried, before Camille’s invective forced him to step back.

  “What peace were you keeping? The same one between the spirits that you broke with your friend Florette?”

  Fernan’s eyes flared out. She wasn’t there for the White Night. We spoke before the Convocation, but I never told her anything about that plan. “How did you know that?”

  Camille snorted. “As if it weren’t obvious enough from the fact your patron just happened to replace Flammare, you’ve just confirmed it yourself.” Damn it. “Why should you punish me for doing something no different than what you did? You handed me the sword to cut off Levian’s head.”

  “That’s not the same. Levian was—”

  “A threat we needed to deal with, no matter the cost. A monster without peer, and I could have saved the Empire with his power! Turned to good ends; now, Rhan will waste it wallowing in the shallows. And as if that weren’t enough, now I lack the power to stop these rebels before they overrun the continent.”

  “What? The Blue Knights?” Fernan had heard about them, of course, but once he found out that they’d willingly brought Guy Valvert into their leadership, he’d ceased to fear them entirely. They might be trained killers, but from all he’d heard, Malin had a professional army, legions that could stand against the rebels.

  “And our mutual adversary Valvert. Do you know what I saw as I struggled through the water, the edge of my body melting away into the sea? Do you know what’s in store for your precious Commune?”

  “War?” Is that why she tried this? Did it make any difference? “What did you see?”

  Camille sighed, aura relaxing slightly as she firmed up her form. “The Avaline have been driven from Salhaute. Princess Mars launched an assault from the mountaintops as the knights rode up the road, firing pistols at the soldiers on the walls. By the time they got the airships into the sky, they were using cannons as well.”

  “They’re in Micheltaigne? Why would they—” Oh, Fernan realized as he thought back to Guy’s escape. That woman gave them shelter even though they didn’t care one whit about her safety. Avalon was little liked across the continent, but few had been brave enough to stand up to them directly. Camille had outmaneuvered Luce from Malin, and the Treaty of Charenton had liberated Lyrion in a limited sense, but Micheltaigne was a Territory, a garden of exploitation and cruelty, taken by overwhelming force.

  And somehow, Guy Valvert struck that blow. Even knowing that Camille was incapable of lying, Fernan could scarcely believe it. If it’s true, it’s only a matter of time before he tries to take Guerron back for himself. Without an army behind him, Guy had had no choice but to flee. Now...

  “Now they have a kingdom behind them, the only to rid itself of Avalon by force of arms, and thousands of disaffected knights waiting for any excuse to take back what they think is theirs. Hundreds of thousands of peasants confused by anything they can’t understand.” Camille whipped her arm, slashing a wave of water over the beach that left a deep, crisp gouge in the sand. “And they have the Red Knight, fighting right alongside them.”