A Dubious Peace

by Olan Thorensen

  “How many people at Nollagen were killed?”

  “Not as many as we first feared. Yulan told me the Kolinkans obviously had no interest in the local people, which reinforces the idea that they were after me.”

  Maera made motions as if to spit to one side of the bed, but her mouth was too dry, and she coughed a dry hack. This time, he held the bowl of water to her lips. She sipped twice, raised her head slightly, and drank the bowl dry before laying her head back on the pillow.

  “I know it saved Caedelli lives for them to leave when they did, but part of me wishes they had pressed on toward Grastor, and the Seaborners could have killed them all.”

  She was looking at Yozef as she spoke, as if anticipating a mild rebuke. Instead, a hint of satisfaction crossed his face. She had known him long enough, and he was not particularly skilled at face-to-face deception.

  “What?” she asked.

  “A Fuomi frigate had been sent by Admiral Mermi to pick us up, instead of the sloop. Both ships were in Brudermyn when word came. As they sailed for Grastor, they saw the last Kolinkan sails disappear at the horizon. The frigate’s captain sent the sloop to follow them to be sure they were leaving, while the frigate stayed in case its help was needed. When I met the captain, I asked him to pursue and destroy as many ships as possible. He agreed and thought he could catch them before they reached home. We won’t know until he returns what the result was.”

  Yozef had been holding Maera’s hand again. He released it, walked to the window, stared out for a few seconds, then turned sharply back to Maera.

  “I told him to take prisoners from only one ship. Assuming the frigate catches up with them, between it and the sloop, they’ll likely be able to sink a good number of the Kolinkans, though not all since they’ll scatter. Even so, hundreds more of the Kolinkans will be killed.”

  “Good!” exclaimed Maera. “Too bad they won’t be able to sink them all.”

  Yozef knew his wife and most Caedelli would’ve been considered bloodthirsty back on Earth, but they were probably among the least such people on Anyar. That he shared her opinion about the fate of the surviving Kolinkans would have bothered him six years ago, but not now.

  “I also asked him to take the surrender of one of the Kolinka ships if it was possible and to give them a message to take to the Kolinka leadership. In so many words, I declared my intention to destroy the Kolinka kahsak.”

  Maera sighed. “Not that I don’t agree with that intention, but how are you planning to accomplish that?”

  “I’m not sure. I have to give it some more thought. I said it out of anger. After reflection, I may have to admit it might be beyond our ability.”

  Maera didn’t respond immediately, and they remained silent for another minute.

  “They’re never going to leave us alone, are they, Yozef? You’ve hoped Caedellium would be able to remain in peace if our defenses were too strong and we continued developing relationships with other realms. Maybe helping others against the Narthani, but not being directly involved. I’ve shared the same dream, but haven’t we just been deluding ourselves?”

  Yozef interpreted her expression and words as hoping he would disagree. He didn’t.

  Kolsko Manor, Orosz City

  Gwyned and Maghen watched the youngest children play on the floor while the older ones were within sight outside. Missing was Anarynd, currently in the nursery breastfeeding Anida, the only child still breastfeeding. Anarynd’s twins, Siston, and Alys, had all been weaned over the last several months. Before Maera found she was also pregnant, she and Anarynd had decided Anarynd was so near to having a new baby, it was best if she fed Anida until weaning, which was about to begin.

  They heard the main manor door open, small feet running toward the nursery, and the main door not closing.

  “Which ever one of you children who came in through the main door, go back and close it,” Gwyned called out. Instead, the sound of small feet continued in their direction, and Dwyna Kolsko-Puvey raced breathlessly into the kitchen.

  “Someone’s coming! A wagon and people on horses! I think it’s Hetman Tomis!”

  Gwyned and Maghen looked at each other.

  “Why would Hetman Orosz come here?” asked Gwyned. “Yozef and Maera aren’t here, and isn’t Mark supposed to be at the industry shops all day?”

  “That’s what he told me,” said Maghen.

  Gwyned suddenly shot to her feet, her expression changing from puzzlement to concern.

  “Unless it’s . . . ”

  She waved to Maghen. “Let’s see who it is.”

  The main door was a quarter open, just enough for a five-year-old to slip through. They could hear horses, leather, and voices before they stepped onto the veranda. A carriage with Hetman Orosz’s markings stopped as the driver pulled on the reins. The two horses snorted and danced in place. Fifty yards back, a rider turned off the road at a gallop—Reimo Kivalian—urging his horse on as if trying to catch up with the carriage.

  Maghen recognized the carriage’s passengers, Tomis Orosz and Diera Beynom, but did not attach any significance to it. Gwyned did, and one hand went to her throat while the other gripped the veranda rail.

  “Maghen, please go tell Anarynd to hurry and come.”

  Her words spoken with a tight throat alerted Mark’s wife that this might not be a cordial visit.

  By the time Tomis and Diera climbed the stairs, Maghen had returned, with Anarynd right behind as she adjusted the top of her dress.

  Tomis held up both hands. “Before I say anything else, be assured the news is not the worst. We’ve gotten word that—”

  Twenty minutes later, the three women watched the visitors turn back onto the road toward Orosz City. Gwyned and Maghen stood, but Anarynd had sat down in a rocker before Tomis Orosz finished his second sentence. She held Anida close with both arms. Tears had started only in the last few minutes, taking the place of shock and terror.

  “He said they were all right,” said Gwyned, laying a hand on Anarynd’s shoulder.

  “I know. I know. It’s just . . . I just don’t know what I’d do if . . . ”

  “No if about it. Kivalian said he would arrange riders to get any news to us as fast as it comes by telegraph.”

  Anarynd nodded and relaxed her grip on Anida. Suddenly, she jerked in the chair.

  “Oh, Gwyned! They didn’t say anything about Carnigan! I didn’t think to ask. Oh, I’m so sorry. I was thinking only of Maera and Yozef!”

  “I’m sure he’s all right. The big oaf is indestructible.”

  Maghen had been around Gwyned enough to recognize her words held a hint of uncertainty.

  “I’ll go find Mark,” said Maghen. “They said they’d try and get word to him, but I think I just remembered the shop where he planned to spend the morning.”

  Music School, Orosz City

  Mark believed he knew where to find Heather. Younger children were taught at schools scattered around Orosz City, with children in the final years in newly constructed “high schools,” as the Paramount called them. Yozef never offered an explanation for why he didn’t refer to the other schools as “low schools,” but . . . well, he was Yozef Kolsko, so that was that.

  The most promising students of Orosz Province were funneled to the high school at the St. Wyan’s complex in one wing of a two-story building shared with the Music Institute, which was in another wing. A recently added wing included rooms that had more effective sound muffling than usual, so that the new music center did not interfere with other classes. Nevertheless, Mark heard faint instrumental and vocal music before entering the main door.

  He expected to find Heather in the practice hall with musicians, as he had on other visits, but today she was in a classroom setting. She stood at a blackboard, her words being followed with rapt attention by eleven people, male and female, of ages he estimated from early teens to forties. Covering the blackboard was music notation. At the base of the wall was a foot-wide, one-foot-tall step that allowe
d Heather to extend her five-foot height to write to the top of the blackboard.

  He waited until she noticed him. It didn’t take long—there weren’t that many Caedelli men his size who wore a wide-brimmed hat with a feathery plume extending from it. He had noticed that the Caedelli had no standard headgear, so he picked a hat he’d seen a cavalry officer wear in a Civil War movie.

  A young woman alerted Heather with a hand gesture at the door.

  “Ah . . . excuse me for a minute,” Heather said, laid down a piece of chalk, and walked over to Mark, one eyebrow raised.

  “Let’s step into the hall,” said Mark. He turned and walked ten feet down the hall to stand near a wall.

  “What’s up?” Heather said in English.

  Mark frowned.

  “Okay, okay, I’m supposed to always use Caedelli,” she said, switching languages. “Yozef’s not around to scold me, so I slipped. So what? He’s off on his visit to that island clan.”

  “It’s not a good idea to decide when you can and when you can’t. You know that, Heather. Anyway . . . it is something about Yozef. That’s the reason I came looking for you. I wanted to be sure you heard it from me. Details are still sketchy, but word has come that his party was attacked by some force whose origin and numbers haven’t been reported yet.”

  Heather put both hands to the sides of her throat before he could continue.

  “Oh, my God, he’s not dead, is he?”

  “No. He and Maera are supposed to be all right, but that’s all the information so far. Maghen came to give me the news. Hetman Orosz and Diera Beynom went to their homes to convey the news. I then went to find Orosz. A little more information had come in with another telegraph message. They think it was one of the Iraquinik states that did it, and they were after Yozef. Orosz said he’d keep me informed, and he’s called for a special Senate session. I’ll pass along to you anything I hear.”

  “What about the other people? Carnigan and the others who went with them?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Well . . . let me know more as it comes in. You know . . . who, what, when, and where?”

  “I assume it happened in Seaborn Province. If I remember the schedule he showed me, today they were supposed to be dedicating the semaphore station between South Island and the mainland that they’d connected a couple of days ago.”

  “Christ, Mark. What happens to us if he gets killed?” Heather shivered. “I’m just starting to feel safe again, and then this.”

  “Don’t catastrophize. Our positions here are secure, and the message did say he was okay.”

  He saw no reason to share his similar thoughts. Would the projects and the plans go out the window if Joe wasn’t here to back them?

  CHAPTER 40

  SHOCK AND ANGER

  Orosz City

  Tomis Orosz sat in a chair behind an elevated podium facing rows of senators’ desks. He waited for most of the senators to be in the chamber before he called the session to order. Today’s emergency session gathered every senator already in Orosz City or those who could arrive within two days. Every province had at least one of its two senators present, including seven hetmen. When word first came of the attack, Tomis called the session to begin in two days—a compromise between the urgency of the situation and time for senators or hetmen to travel. Thus, on this day, thirty-three of the potential forty-two senators waited to hear Tomis’s update.

  He glanced to the long table situated to his left. Yozef was gradually getting the hetmen to accept that the Paramount duties were too heavy and complex for one person. Therefore, to facilitate necessary activity and to better serve every province, a committee would be established, each member to focus on a specific area. In other words . . . a “cabinet,” though Yozef referred to them as “advisers.” For today’s session, six adviser chairs were occupied. Denis Vegga represented the Caedellium army, with Reimo Kivalian sitting behind Vegga. Having a Fuomi commanding the military was a bridge too far for many Caedelli to accept. Arguably, Welman Stent and Harmon Swavebroke had ably commanded large mobile forces during the war. Privately, Kivalian advised that the Swavebroke hetman had a natural aptitude. However, it was not practical for a hetman to also be the chief military commander.

  Halwis Stritton sat to Vegga’s left as the Chief Adjudicator of Caedellium, a hybrid position Yozef conceived as a combination Chief Justice of the Caedellium Supreme Court and the Attorney General in charge of law enforcement. Yozef left it to the future whether the roles would eventually be divided into two positions. Stritton was from Norwyt, the Hewell Province capital. He was tall and wiry and was one of the most respected legal scholastics on Caedellium.

  At the left end sat two women—Diera Beynom as head of the Department of Medicine and Sissel Morgan as leader of the Department of Education. Gartherid Kennrick and Nylan Wantik filled the right end chairs. Gartherid and his wife, Isla Kennrick-Luwis, were co-leaders of what had been the MIU (Military Intelligence Unit) during the Narthani war and what now served as a combination of CIA/FBI in the United States or MI5/MI6 in the United Kingdom—and named the Department of Intelligence. Gartherid represented the department at most meetings, at Yozef’s insistence. Despite his intent to open up more opportunities for women, he decided that having too many women in the cabinet was, as with Kivalian, a step for which most Caedelli leaders were not yet ready.

  Wantik hailed from Stent Province and led the nascent Department of Industry, a smashup of treasury, commerce, and labor. He had been a wealthy merchant and trader in Preddi City. When the Narthani’s grip first began to tighten, Wantik presciently moved his family and wealth to Clitwyth, the Stent capital. The changes coming to the Caedellium economy would involve complexities related to industrialization, finances, and ensuring that no province or demographic group was left too far behind. Yozef admitted to himself, Maera, and a few others that he was unqualified in any of those areas. The best he could do was find candidates better able to advise and solve problems. A peripheral rationale, according to Synton, was to “Find someone to take the blame when things go to shit.”

  Yozef suspected he might have to eventually go to an outsider. He’d heard tales about the Harrasedics’ complex mercantile systems, but their confederation lay on the other side of Anyar. Maybe a Fuomi or someone from Landolin might also eventually fill the role. Yozef, in frustrated moments, wished Heather had been an economist or a banker. In fanciful moments, he wondered whether there might still be other plane survivors on Anyar, though how to find them had, as yet, escaped him.

  A clerk signaled from one of the doors that no senators lingered in the outer room. Tomis leaned to one side, picked up a cudgel, and struck a two-foot-diameter gong made of brass from captured Narthani cannon. He waited for most senators to take their seats before he would strike again, signaling the official opening of the session.

  The clans had accepted that the Paramount would act on issues involving foreign realms, with the input from advisers and a predetermined set of senators. The exact duties and prerogatives of both the Paramountcy and the Senate were still evolving, with Yozef taking advantage of the vacuum when he believed it didn’t threaten to erode his support. Formally, the Paramount would preside over the Senate session as the speaker. In practice, the speaker was usually a senator elected to serve when the Paramount was traveling or otherwise unable or unwilling to attend. Thus, Tomis Orosz usually presided over the sessions. There was no formal schedule, although the custom had developed that the Senate sat in session the third day of the second and fifth sixdays of each month. Between sessions, senators could be involved in meetings, review reports coming to the Paramount’s office, and send their own reports to their clan hetmen, who normally filled one of their clan’s two senate positions only when significant decisions were anticipated or when they were close enough to attend.

  Usually, a schedule determined the topics of future sessions and peripheral meetings. As yet unsettled was what to do if important decisions loomed,
and Yozef was out of touch or incapacitated. The Paramount’s physical presence in Seaborn Province during a crisis fell into that nebulous area. The report of the attempted assassination or capture of the Paramount by Kolinkans required giving the clans confidence both that the Paramount was safe and that a central office could respond in his absence. Precisely what the response might be and with what authority had yet to be tested. In theory, Tomis Orosz could issue orders as if he were the Paramount until Yozef returned. In practice, it had never occurred.

  Tomis struck the gong. Talking subsided, and eyes snapped to his chair. He waited until the last speech died down. He began at once—there were no preambles to a session.

  “More information is coming by the hour. The semaphore connection to Seaborn is functioning as hoped, but we all know the limitations in message length. Additional delays occur because when a message comes from Seaborn to the Pewitt side, it still has to be taken by horse sixty miles to the closest telegraph station. Hetman Pewitt tells us he has put in place teams of relay riders, so we are getting new information as fast as is currently possible. It’s not important now, but we should later consider expanding the telegraph network, including a line to the Pewitt end of the semaphore connection with Seaborn.

  “Although limited in length, messages are confirming that the Paramount is uninjured. However, his wife, Maera, was seriously wounded but is expected to recover.”

  Exclamations of anger erupted at the last news, the loudest coming from Welman Stent and Klyngo Adris. Tomis noted that Balwis Preddi never opened his mouth. The Preddi hetman had commandeered a train in Preddi City. When he’d reached a washed-out section of track, he had then commandeered a horse and ridden nonstop a hundred miles. He’d arrived only hours before the session—as was evident from his clothing. Although Balwis was silent, Tomis intuited that the man’s mind was tabulating everything he planned to do to any Kolinkan he got his hands on.