The Dagger's Path

by Glenda Larke

  Perie, I would like you a whole lot better if you weren’t so–so cold in your bloodthirstiness… Aloud, she said, “Prime Valerian Fox may be one of your pitch-men. If so, don’t make a fuss; just quietly tell me and I shall signal the Pontifect. He mustn’t have any warning that we know him for what he is. That’s important, Perie. No guards will be pouncing on the Prime. At least, not yet. You understand?”

  “Not really. But my da once said some men are too powerful to be challenged. Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes, I suppose I do.” The sick feeling she’d had in her stomach roiled.

  “That’s wrong. But I’ll do what you say.”

  She stifled a sigh, which was something she seemed to do a lot when she was talking to Peregrine.

  Perie watched from behind the banners and remembered another time, back when Ma and Da had been alive. A windy day, it’d been, on the town green. An older lad had given him the string of his kite to hold. He hadn’t known what to expect, but now recalled how he’d felt: thrilled by the thrum of the string as it pulsed and quivered like a living thing, afraid that he might not have the strength to hold on, overwhelmed with a sense of responsibility, yet taut with excitement. That was how he felt now, as he waited–with a difference.

  Now those feelings were all held under a coating of ice, and he gloried in the change. That’s part of my witchery.

  He didn’t want that ice ever to melt because then he’d feel again what he’d felt when he’d seen Da’s feet still in his boots…

  On his way to Vavala, he’d grown used to pitch-men, their internal tarry darkness, the way they scared and filled him with a fog of dread, reminding him more of unthinking savage animals than reasoning men. But he could handle that, because the fear was encased under the ice, neatly imprisoned so it couldn’t grab him by the throat.

  He watched the guests arrive at the Pontifect’s palace, and marvelled at the richness of clothes, the plumpness of overfed bodies, the painted faces, the glitter of jewels. There were ordinary people too, of course. Shrine keepers, even. One of them, a tall woman with skin like crumpled silk, walked over and stared at him through the gap between the banners. Then she winked and walked on.

  “Nothing yet?” Gerelda asked.

  “No. I don’t understand why some of them want to wear those fancy clothes, though. Aren’t they uncomfortable?”

  Gerelda looked down at her plain garb. Her one concession to the occasion had been to shine her boots to a spotless sheen. “I’m sure they are. But then, they wouldn’t understand why I prefer comfort.”

  “Well, it’s more sensible too. You couldn’t fight wearing a dress like that woman in blue over there. And you couldn’t run in shoes like that man in the black and red stripes.”

  She laid a hand on his arm. “Secretary Barden has just signalled Fox is coming.” She’d been keeping an eye on the secretary where he was standing in the entry hall, looking out towards the main entrance.

  Perie felt the man’s presence and winced. “Pitch-man,” he whispered. “The tall man in the centre. Is that Fox?”

  She nodded.

  As the Prime walked past, he felt his composure slipping away. The man did not remind him of an animal at all. Fox was a force, saturating the air around him with raw power.

  If he looks at me I’ll die.

  Gerelda gave the prearranged signal to the captain of the Guard, who would pass it on to the Pontifect. Then she glanced back down at him. “Are you all right?”

  No, he wasn’t. He tried to explain. “He’s more than a pitch-man. He’s a… a… hole so black there’s no end to it. Like looking into a well and not seeing the bottom.”

  She looked at him askance, dubious, not understanding any more than he did.

  “Wait,” he said. “There’s another one coming. In the Prime’s retinue.”

  “Can you tell who?”

  The fellow was the most insignificant of all, clad in a servant’s garb, scurrying on behind with his head down.

  This time Gerelda stepped out from behind the banners and spoke to the captain.

  It was all done very neatly. One moment the man was following the Prime’s party, the next he was cut off by a group of men dressed as palace servants suddenly appearing from behind banners and tapestries. He was whisked away without anyone from the Prime’s party being aware he was gone.

  Perie should have felt satisfied. Instead, there was a lump in his chest that wouldn’t go away.

  As he strode through the throng, clearing a path direct to where Fritillary was sitting on the Pontifical throne at one end, Fox wore an expression she recognised. She hadn’t seen him since the ceremony of his consecration as Prime of Ardrone, but the subtleties of his anger were familiar: the grim line of his brow, the smooth flat look in his eyes that could have meant indifference in any other man. She knew what they signalled. He was planning her humiliation, or worse. He had been outmanoeuvred, and he would seek revenge.

  “I thought we were to have a quiet confidential conversation, your reverence,” he said as he arrived in front of her, making no effort to soften his tone. He meant to be heard. “Instead you’ve turned this into some sort of market-day carnival.”

  “Surely it is a cause for celebration when the Prime of Ardrone comes to pay his respects to the Pontifect of Va-faith?”

  “There is no respect, as I am sure you are aware.”

  Shock reverberated through the silence of the hall, visible on the faces of those listening, heard in their gasps.

  Fritillary smiled benignly, or so she hoped. “No matter what you think of me personally, you owe respect to the position I hold.” She held out her hand and followed the gesture with a sweet smile of forgiveness. “Respect, your eminence.”

  Fox hesitated long enough to be rude. Then he knelt on one knee and took her hand to kiss. His lips barely hovered over her knuckles. He didn’t wait for her to withdraw her hand, but dropped it and stood. “I can give no respect to a woman who sent a blasphemer to be the adviser of a young princess. I can give no respect to a woman whose rule as Pontifect has seen the revival of the primordial heresy and so many clerics dying of the Horned Death. I can give no respect to a woman who shows her preference for the Way of the Oak over that of the Way of the Flow and who favours both of those before the will of Va and the supremacy of Va-faith over the old ways.”

  Everyone in the hall was standing motionless, utterly silent.

  Then Fritillary rose abruptly to her feet, and there was a startled intake of breath across the room. As the throne was on a dais, Fox was forced to look up, while she appeared taller and more regal. In a trick of the acoustics, her voice carried, her words clear to all assembled.

  “I am merely a humble cleric, your eminence–a woman without eminence, in fact. Just one who serves Va with humility and acceptance. If you know the way to halt the spread of the Horned Death, then how is it that shrine keepers died in Ardrone under your personal ministrations? And if I truly discriminate against the Way of the Flow, why have I received no complaints from Lowmeer, where the Flow is central to their faith? But it is not meet that we argue in this august company. We shall adjourn to my private office to discuss these matters.”

  She looked out over the hall. At the far entrance door Gerelda Brantheld stood. When their gazes met, Gerelda placed her hand in the middle of her chest, confirming the captain’s warning a few moment’s earlier.

  Fritillary’s heart turned over. Leak on you, Valerian Fox, you whoreson. You are indeed one of Peregrine’s pitch-men.

  “Esteemed guests,” she continued, her voice calm, “refreshments will be served. Pray you, enjoy the hospitality of my household, while the Prime and I settle our differences.” She didn’t wait for Fox’s agreement or otherwise. She swept towards the doors to her workroom, shoulders back and chin up. Her guards opened the doors and she paused there, making a gesture with her hand to usher the Prime before her. He had not moved, but when she fixed him with her glare, he shrugged
and walked through the doors ahead of her. Members of his staff moved to follow him, but she signed the guards to shut the doors in their faces.

  “So,” she said coldly, “we can now drop all pretence, Fox. No need for you to be anything but the ambitious, conscienceless man that you are.”

  “What, no invitation to be seated?”

  She did not bother to reply to that, saying instead, “How long do you think the rulers of these lands will allow you to build an army?”

  “You will, I think, be hard pressed to prove I’m doing any such thing. These lancers amassing all over the Va-cherished Hemisphere are merely a spontaneous peasant uprising in answer to social problems and religious heresies. Why, even their particular weapon of choice, the lance, harks back to the famine riots of three hundred years ago.”

  “Don’t take me for a fool.”

  He shrugged. “I admit nothing. You are the one saying they are connected to me.” His lips curled up in a smile.

  “You can’t possibly think that either Regal Vilmar or King Edwayn will let you get away with sitting on the Pontifect’s throne after an illegal invasion. In fact, the whole of the Va-cherished Hemisphere would be unhappy. The Pontifect must be seen to be impartial and peace-loving. What I’d like to know is why you would ever decide to serve A’Va.”

  “Now what makes you think that!” His laugh was one of genuine amusement. “A’Va? How childish you are! A’Va is surely a figment of men’s imaginations. I don’t serve anyone. Not even Va. It’s all illusion, don’t you know that?”

  He leaned towards her, and, utterly revolted, she took a step backwards. For a splintered moment she felt she was breathing in flames, and her lungs were filling with something sticky, tarry, dread-filled…

  She took another step away, and snapped back into normality. “How dare you, you filthy mudworm!”

  He’d tried to do something to her, but she was not quite sure what, just that it was vile. “Get out of my sight. Leave this palace with your lackeys, or I’ll kill you right now where you stand.”

  “You don’t have that power. No one has,” he said. “You don’t know the first thing about me, Fritillary. You never did.”

  With that, he turned, thrust open the doors and walked back into the audience hall. Once again the guests parted before him like the bow wave of a ship. His retainers fell in behind him, and he was gone.

  He betrayed himself.

  She’d pulled his strings and he’d danced, exactly as she’d intended. She should have been glad; instead, she was aghast.

  12

  The Task Assigned

  He mustn’t be afraid. Not until his job was done, and all the pitch-men were dead, along with Fox, because he was worse than all the rest put together. Maybe when they were all dead he could live again, reclaim something of what he’d had.

  He just wished he understood everything better. Right now, after all the guests had gone, and he was in the Pontifect’s workroom with her, he was still trying to make sense of everything. Her secretary, Barden, was there, and so was Proctor Brantheld. Barden was one of the oldest men he’d ever seen. He limped along with a stick when he walked, and when he stopped he looked as if he had to sit down or fall over. His face had as many wrinkles as lines on a map and his voice sounded like dry leaves blown by the wind.

  I’d hate to be that ancient…

  He looked from Barden to where the Pontifect and Proctor Brantheld sat and tried to follow their conversation, but it was mostly about things he didn’t understand, and people he didn’t know. He felt lost.

  Oh, Da, why did you have to die?

  He’d never been in a city as big as Vavala before; such a place had no need of itinerant scribes and petition writers. Scribes had shops here. He’d seen one. As for the Pontifical Palace–he’d never seen any building as large, let alone been inside one. Why would anyone build a house with rooms so huge? Even a fairground man on stilts would not be able to touch the ceilings! So ridiculously ornate, so monstrously huge–and so cold.

  His wildest imaginings had never included the idea that a lad like him would ever meet the Pontifect, surely the most powerful woman who’d ever lived, and yet here he was listening to her squabble with her agent lawyer. Right from their first meeting, he’d been disconcerted to discover that Fritillary Reedling looked so… so ordinary. Tall, greying, sombre, rather like someone’s great-aunt.

  She couldn’t really be ordinary, of course. She had a witchery for a start. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he did. And she had an air of command that made any thought of disobeying seem not only disloyal, but clay-brained. Which made it doubly odd that Agent Gerelda Brantheld was always arguing with her.

  Their present disagreement concerned what action should be taken on the pitch-men surrounding the city. Gerelda wanted the Vavala guards to fight them, but the Pontifect disagreed. In the end Gerelda turned to him, saying, “Perie, tell her reverence what you sense about Prime Valerian Fox. Why did he scare you so much?”

  “Because he’s rotten in here,” he replied. He tapped himself on the chest. He didn’t even have to think about that; he knew it. “So… so old inside. He’s not like us.”

  He wasn’t sure that they understood what he was trying to tell them, because even to his own ears his words sounded a little ridiculous, and Barden was pinched around the mouth as though he didn’t like the reference to being old. He struggled on, trying to explain. “You have a witchery,” he said to the Pontifect.

  She nodded. “Yes, that’s true. So do you. People with witchery always recognise one another.”

  “The thing that’s wrong with pitch-men? I can feel that wrong thing the same way as I feel your witchery. Only your witchery isn’t bad. It just… is. But pitch-men feel wrong. Horrible and sticky inside, like a big tar-pit. Prime Fox is worse than a pitch-man. It’s like he–he makes the pitch.”

  They were all silent. He thought even the Pontifect paled, as if his words had reminded her of something.

  Gerelda said softly, “Consign Fox to a choiceless grave; the good-for-nothing scum of a man can’t be A’Va, can he?”

  “If A’Va exists,” Barden said in his measured, slow way of speaking, “then surely he must always have existed, by definition. Valerian Fox’s birth, however, is well documented, as are his boyhood and university days. He is forty-eight years old, the son of the Ardronese ambassador to Lowmeer at the time, Harrier Fox. Valerian’s mother was a Lowmian noblewoman. She died not long after he was born.”

  “I’ve known him from our university days,” the Pontifect added, “when he was in his twenties.”

  “Fox did mean to kill you today,” Gerelda told her, frustration making her snappish. “Perie identified a servant as a pitch-man, so I asked the guards to refuse him entry. He’s being questioned now, but from first reports he seems more confused and, well, stupid than anything else. Either that, or he’s a good play-actor. He was trailing behind Fox’s party as though he belonged to them, but when the guards intervened, Fox’s secretary said they didn’t know him. It’s my belief that was a lie and he would have killed you if he’d been given the chance.”

  “Possibly.” The Pontifect smiled at him. “And if so, I am indeed grateful to you and your witchery, Peregrine Clary. Gerelda, even if Fox planned my assassination, I think he had a second reason for wanting to come. He wanted to see if he could contaminate me with his, well, with his pitch, for want of a better word.”

  “And failed, I assume. Why would he want to reveal himself to you like that?”

  “Maybe he thought he had a chance of success. A chance worth taking. After all, he must have known Saker escaped his nullification and would therefore have immediately come to me with what he knew. Fox wasn’t saying much about himself that I didn’t already know or guess.” She shrugged. “Still, it was good of him to clarify it. One thing we should bear in mind is that as far as we know, no one with a witchery has ever joined the lancers. That is worth remembering.”

 
Gerelda stared at her, frowning, with a peculiar expression on her face, half disbelief, half worry.

  “We tell ourselves,” the Pontifect continued, “that we are Va-cherished. But this contamination spreads, whether it is the Horned Death or Peregrine’s pitch. In the meanwhile, Fox is goading us into acting before we know the nature of what we’re fighting.”

  “You think the Horned Death and the pitch are the same thing?” Gerelda asked.

  Peregrine shivered.

  “No. They may have the same cause, though,” the Pontifect said. “One kills, and the other makes such fools of the infected that they will leave their families to fight for a cause that doesn’t really exist.”

  Gerelda fell silent. Barden, who was sitting beside her, rested his hands and chin on top of the walking stick he’d propped between his knees, as if he was too tired to hold his head up.

  “Remember this,” the Pontifect continued. “Clerics died of the Horned Death in Ustgrind, or so we are told. The whole of the Institute of Advanced Studies was wiped out, that’s for certain. The Lowmian Prime sent that news; Saker confirmed they were all reported dead, and the cause was given as the Horned Death. Shrine keepers in the heart of Shenat hill country in Ardrone also died of the Death, or so we are told. That news came from Prime Fox. They certainly died of something.”

  When no one said anything, the Pontifect continued, “Anything told to me by Fox, I want confirmed. So I had agents check. No one could be found who actually saw a shrine keeper with the symptoms of the Death while they were still alive. Not one. As for the Institute in Lowmeer–it was closed to the public, so no one, not even Saker, actually saw the suffering of the clerics. Afterwards, the building and the bodies were burned.”

  “You’re saying they died of something else? Murdered, perhaps?”

  The Pontifect shrugged. “All I’m saying is that we have no evidence one way or the other. You’re a lawyer, Gerelda. You know the value of evidence–look for it.”