The Floodgate

Matteo could not dispute this. "Does anyone else in the college know of this?"

"I don't intend to tell anyone, if that's your concern. Just…be careful."

Matteo placed a hand on the jordain's shoulder. "Thank you for telling me this. You are a good friend."

"Just get me out of this stable and onto a horse's back, and we'll call the debt paid," Iago said with a faint smile.

The stable lights flickered on, responding to the approach of twilight. "Lord Procopio will be in shortly," Matteo said. "We'll speak again as soon as I've news."

He hurried to the wizard's tower. Procopio received him at once with a grave face and without the formulaic courtesies demanded by Halruaan protocol. He ushered Matteo into his study and shut the door firmly behind him.

"You're not going to like this," he said bluntly. "I've no idea what to make of it."

Matteo swallowed hard. Never had he heard Procopio make so bald an admission-the wizard prided himself in reading all things clearly. "Go on."

The wizard's hawk-black eyes bore into Matteo's. "The ice building where you and the girl were attacked is owned by Ferris Grail, headmaster of the Jordaini College."

Chapter Sixteen

Matteo hurried to the queen's palace, his mind a whirl of confusion and anger. He had no reason to doubt Procopio. He fervently wished he did.

His belief in the jordaini order had long been eroding. Now it was crumbling under him. Zephyr had been turned by Kiva. Matteo had tried not to dwell overmuch on Andris's disappearance, but as time passed and Andris did not surface, Matteo had to face the very real possibility that his friend had turned traitor. The possibility-he would not accept it as truth unless he saw Andris at Kiva's side. Was it also possible that the headmaster of the Jordaini College might have employed thugs to silence a jordain's search for truth?

He strode toward the heavy doors that separated Beatrix's court from the rest of the palace, determined to receive the queen's permission to leave the city. If she did not grant it, he would do as Tzigone had advised and leave anyway.

Several men and two women, all of them carrying crafters' tools, waited by the outer door while the sentry loosed the magical wards. Judging from the clatter and bustle within Beatrix's rooms, the sentry had been kept busy with the various comings and goings. There were three doors, all of them carefully locked and warded.

Again Matteo recalled a jordaini proverb:

Precaution is the grandchild of disaster. Such careful measures would not be taken to isolate the queen's workshop from the rest of the palace unless the need was real and proven. However, King Zalathorm had dismissed the rumors about Matteo's predecessor, and Matteo could not believe the king had lied.

He fell in with the laborers and nodded to the harried sentry as he passed. The man, recognizing Matteo, raised his fingertips to his forehead in a salute, then rolled his eyes to express his opinion of the goings-on. Matteo nodded in heartfelt agreement.

Inside the queen's workshop, chaos reigned. A smith's forge had been set up in a massive hearth. Hammers clattered as they beat metal into thin, smooth sheets. Metalworkers bent over a long table, shaping heated metal with tiny tools and painstaking care. Stout, hairy-footed halflings from nearby Luiren perched on stools and fitted tiny gears, their clever small hands darting with practiced ease. Off to one side of the room, a trio of artificers argued over a mechanical behir, a twenty-foot crocodilian with twice the number of legs nature usually allotted. As the debate grew more heated, one of the men kicked at the metal beast in frustration, harder than he might have had he not been so distracted by the argument. The ensuing clang rang out loud and long. He howled and limped around in a small circle as his comrades hooted with mirth.

Matteo looked around in growing bewilderment. At least two hundred workers toiled in the vast chamber, and he glimpsed more in the rooms beyond. The results of their labor-clockwork creatures of every size and description-ringed the room like sentinels. They were propped against walls, heaped in piles, stacked on shelves, suspended from the ceiling beams. These mechanical marvels ranged from a life-sized elephant to metallic hawks to monstrous beasts, including fanciful constructs for which there were no living counterparts. Metal renditions of creatures Matteo had never seen and could never begin to imagine stood ready for some unfathomable command.

Matteo went in search of the queen. He found Beatrix in a windowless room lit by a low-hanging chandelier ablaze with candles. The queen stood alone, studying a hideous metal creature with thin, batlike wings and a pointed snout filled with steel fangs. It looked vaguely reptilian but for the bristling mane that ran the length of its spine. Each hair was a metal filament, fine as silken thread.

"It is wondrous, my queen," he said softly, not wishing to startle the woman.

She did not start or turn toward him. "It is a darken-beast," she said in her flat, toneless voice. "The wizards of Thay fashion them from bits of dead flesh."

Matteo wasn't sure how to respond to this odd pronouncement "You use steel. This is a better way, Your Majesty."

Beatrix tipped her head negligently. Her elaborate white and silver wig sparkled in the light of the candles. "Flesh or steel. It matters not. They will both be plentiful on the battlefield."

She spoke with a certainty that chilled him. "Battlefield?"

When the queen did not answer, he took her by the forearms and turned her to face him. He captured her vacant stare and gazed intensely into her kohl-rimmed eyes.

"I hear the future in your voice. Diviners reading auguries in the flight of birds speak with less certainty. What battlefield?"

A flicker of life crept into Beatrix's brown orbs. "I do not know," she whispered. "War is coming. War goes wherever it wills."

Matteo did not dismiss her claim. The queen showed little interest in the world around her, but perhaps she heard things, sensed things others did not. At the moment, she seemed almost lucid.

"I must leave the city and learn more of this coming conflict."

She considered him for a long moment, as if weighing whether or not he might be able to do what he offered. Before she could speak, a loud shriek rose above the clamor in the main room. A fierce clatter followed, then a chorus of screams and a panicked rush for the door.

"By your leave," Matteo said hastily. Though protocol demanded it, he did not await the queen's dismissal. He whirled, drew his weapons, and ran into the main room.

The laborers were pushing toward the exits, trampling anyone who stumbled. One of the halflings lay battered and unmoving. Most of the clockwork creatures stood silent. A few paced unsteadily about, abandoned to their toddling first efforts by their panicked creators.

Matteo heard a metallic creak above him. He glanced up, then dived to one side.

A nightmare creature leaped to the floor from a pile of crates, landing with catlike grace despite the resounding clash of its impact. Its body resembled a suit of plate armor such as a northern warrior might wear. The creature held no weapons and needed none. Each of its four fingers ended in a curving steel talon. Long spikes covered its metal body, and its head suggested the unlikely offspring of an ogre and a shark. A piggish snout bristling with small spikes rose at the end of long, fang-filled jaws. The fangs were even more peculiar-sharp triangles that fit neatly and tightly, like the teeth of a giant piranha.

The clockwork knight snatched a dazed and moaning woman from the floor. It jerked her in close and crushed her to its spiked chest in a deadly embrace. The woman's shriek of agony ended abruptly, and the clockwork monster peeled her corpse away.