Miranda shook her head. “What did she say when you confronted her?”
“Nothing,” Banage said bitterly. “She said nothing. The Spirit Court would not listen to me and call for an investigation. They were too busy courting the Council. Everyone was then. So I went to her one last time and told her that if she didn’t show me how the Relay worked, I was leaving. Again, she refused, so I went. I took our son and went as far away as I could.”
“Wait,” Miranda said. “Son?”
It might have been her imagination, but Miranda thought she saw Banage wince. “Yes, I have a son.”
“But where is he?” she cried. “Why have I never heard of him?”
Banage turned back to the stone-blocked window. “He left. Many years ago.”
Miranda cringed at the edge in his voice and dutifully dropped the subject.
Banage continued as though nothing had happened. “I came back to Zarin only when they told me I’d been chosen to be the new Rector Spiritualis, and the first thing I did was try to use the Court’s sway to finally break open whatever Sara was hiding. But by that time the Council was the greatest power on the continent, and I could make no headway. To this day I don’t know what she’s got beneath the Council citadel, Relay or otherwise, but I understand Sara well enough now to know it can’t be good.” Banage shook his head. “As Rector, I have danced to the Council’s tune along with everyone else, waiting for my chance to force Sara to open up and accept the Court’s standards. When Whitefall asked for my help in the war, I thought I’d finally found it, but I was wrong.” He looked up. “Whitefall doesn’t want change. He wants warriors. I’ve been to war, Miranda, and I am poorer for it. I cannot, will not, order my Spiritualists into that suffering, especially not as ally to an organization that may well be worse than the enemy we’re fighting.”
“How can you say that?” Miranda said, horrified. “I’ll grant Sara’s pretty suspicious, and I’m positive she’s up to no good, but worse than the Empress?”
“Yes,” Banage said. “Weren’t you listening? I told you. I met one of the Empress’s war spirits. I saw firsthand the deep loyalty she commands. It’s not so different from the loyalty our spirits give us as Spiritualists. You can’t fake loyalty like that. Think about it, Miranda. On the one hand we the Council of Thrones, an organization of profit and power built by a merchant prince and a ruthless woman on a work of wizardry so suspect Spiritualists aren’t allowed near it. On the other, we have an Empress who commands the abject love and loyalty of the spirits. Put that way, it’s not a hard choice.”
Banage began to pace. “I gave Sara and Whitefall every chance to make good. I flat out told them I would fight if they would only open the Council to Spirit Court inspection, and I was met with nothing but excuses. Sara does not share our respect for the spirits, nor our duty toward them, and I am tired of playing her game. The more I see, the more I’m convinced that the future she and Whitefall are building isn’t one I want to live in. It may well be that the Empress’s coming is the dawn of a new age for the Spirit Court and the spirits.”
Miranda stared at her master, horrified. “What you’re saying is treason.”
“Is it?” Banage said. “I’ve sworn no oaths to Zarin. My only oaths are here, with the Court and the spirits, and I see no reason to take either to war for a government that cares nothing for them.”
Miranda licked her lips. She knew that calm tone in Master Banage’s voice. He’d already made up his mind. Made it up long ago, it seemed. She wasn’t happy at all with the idea of sitting back and letting the Empress conquer her homeland, but she wasn’t about to go against her master, not after everything he’d done for her and the spirits. Still…
“We must do something.”
“We will,” Banage said. “We’ll keep doing what we have done for the last four hundred years—protect the spirits and obey our oaths. Do I make myself clear, Spiritualist Lyonette?”
Miranda swallowed. “Yes, Master Banage.”
“Good,” he said, standing up. “For now, I want you to write up your experience inside the Shaper Mountain. When you’re finished, you have my permission to go through the archives for any information on this Shepherdess and the Great Spirits called stars.”
Miranda perked up considerably. “All the archives?”
“Yes,” Banage said. “The Shaper Mountain did not show you that vision by accident. Far more important than this war is what is happening at the top levels of the spirit world. I want you to find out whatever you can. The Court will not sit idle.”