Chapter 54: The Chancellor Was Alive and Asked Me Not to Rescue Him

"He’s in the cellar of the river house, he’s been there six days, and he isn’t tied up."

We found Decimus Vanthel sitting in a chair with a blanket over his knees and a chessboard in front of him, the game half played.

He was playing himself. White winning.

"Majesty." He looked up without surprise. "You’ve arrived at the most inconvenient possible moment."

"Are you hurt?"

"I am sixty one years old and six days without sun." He moved a bishop. "It isn’t the same thing."

Zelina came down the steps behind me with her case and he saw her and smiled like somebody had brought him dessert.

"The Poison Queen. Here to check whether I’m drugged?"

"Here to check whether you’re you."

"Check."

She looked at his pupils, his pulse and his nails, and then smelled his breath without asking.

"Nothing," she said. "Not even something to sleep."

"No need," Decimus said. "The door has been open six days."

I looked at the stairs we’d just come down.

"Are you telling me you can leave?"

"I’m telling you I don’t." He moved a rook. "Sit down, Majesty. I owe you twenty years of conversation and I have few hours left that belong to me."

I sat across from the board, which is where I’ve wanted to sit for eleven weeks.

"Who is he?"

"Ansel Vosk." No ceremony at all. "Son of Halric Vosk, Towers overseer, dead in year six."

"Did you kill him?"

"I had him killed." Decimus moved a pawn. "And then I paid for the boy’s schooling for eleven years, because one thing doesn’t cancel the other, however much it seems to you that it should."

"Does he know?"

"He found out at fifteen." He looked up. "He came to my office at twenty one asking for work. I asked him why. He said he wanted to learn to do what I did."

"And you gave him the job?"

"I gave him twelve years." He moved the knight. "I taught him everything. The archive, the warehouse, the pensions, the payroll. He’s the best administrator I’ve known, Majesty, and I have known four empires’ worth."

"Why?"

"Because a man who wants revenge is predictable and can be positioned." Decimus sat back. "And because I killed his father and he had nobody. Pick your motive. Both are true and I’ve gone twenty years without deciding which weighs more."

"Did you teach him on purpose?"

"I taught him the way you teach a son you know will bury you." He moved a pawn. "Every day, twelve years, holding nothing back."

"That isn’t administration."

"No." He left his hand on the piece. "That’s the only thing I’ve done in twenty years that wasn’t on any page of the play."

"And when did it get away from you?"

"March." He lifted his hand. "The day he showed me an etched matrix, Majesty. I’d spent six years letting him try because I was certain it was impossible."

"And when it stopped being impossible?"

"When it stopped being impossible, I understood I’d taught a man to be me, and that he was thirty three and I was sixty one."

Zelina, behind me, hadn’t closed the case.

"And the ice?" she asked.

"The ice is the part where His Majesty has a problem." Decimus folded his hands. "Ansel has spent six years trying to etch a matrix. He managed it in March."

"That’s impossible," Saoirse said from the step.

"So your guild said, my lady." He didn’t turn to look at her. "Which is why your guild saw none of this coming."

"What does he need a matrix for?"

And there Decimus Vanthel made the longest pause I’ve seen him make in eleven weeks.

"For the second container," he said.

The cellar was eight degrees and it seemed like less.

"In the fifth year I needed a compatible body to store the module," he went on. "It took me two years to find one and I found a poor one, zero percent. An emperor who felt nothing."

"And it worked."

"It worked ten years, and it worked because storing was all I wanted." He moved the queen and left his hand on her. "Ansel doesn’t want to store. Ansel wants to install."

"In whom?"

"In himself." He lifted his hand off the board. "Six years building a compatible body with a hand etched matrix, because he was born incompatible, like ninety nine percent of the world."

"That can’t be done."

"That’s what I said in March." Decimus looked straight at me. "In April he showed me a matrix he’d etched himself and asked my permission to try. I refused."

"And in August he took your seal."

"In August he took my seal, brought me here and left the door open." He went back to the board. "Because he wants me alive on the day he manages it. That’s the one point where he and I are exactly the same man, Majesty. We both need witnesses who outlive us."

"And when he manages it?"

"When he manages it, there will be a man of thirty three with ninety six percent compatibility built by hand and twelve years of imperial archive in his head." Decimus folded his hands. "It took me twenty years to stage a play. He won’t need that long."

"And what will you be?"

"Act one." He shrugged. "I already am. He’s been writing over me for four months."

"The pensions," I said.

Decimus looked up.

"Eighty four of them," I said. "Who pays them now?"

"He does. He has since the fourth year." He straightened the blanket over his knees. "I signed the schedule every January and he did every other part of it. The lists, the transfers, the widows who move house and don’t tell anyone."

"Then he knows every one of those families."

"He knows them better than I did." Decimus moved a pawn. "That was the arrangement, Majesty. I kept the sin and he kept the ledger, and after twelve years the ledger is worth more."

"Number eighty four."

"The hero’s mother." He didn’t look up. "Three daughters. Yes, I know. I’ve known for twenty years."

"And you never used it."

"A thing you never use is not a weapon. It’s an asset." He set his hand flat on the board. "He was raised on my books. Ask yourself what he’ll do with an asset I was too old to spend."

"Let me get you out."

"No."

"Decimus, I don’t negotiate with dead men."

"Then learn today." He looked up, and for once there was no maneuver underneath. "Majesty, I’ve spent twenty years deciding other people’s fates from a chair higher than the visitor’s. This is the first time I’ve decided my own and I intend to do it myself."

Zelina shut the case without a sound and said nothing, which from her was respect.

He sat back and pointed at the board with his chin.

"It’s white to move, by the way. I’ve waited six days for somebody to move them."

I moved a pawn, because I couldn’t think of anything better to do with my hands.

Decimus Vanthel looked at the board and something went odd in his face.

"That one," he said.

"What about it?"

"He’d have moved that one." He looked up slowly. "Be careful, Majesty. You both learned to play watching me lose."