by A Van Wyck
“Indeed. One of the Emperor’s own cousins will act as ambassador – one hopes the Renali will see the honor in that. We expect the Chapters’ Council will want some independent representation. And, of course, we must also be given a voice at the proceedings.”
“Who have they chosen?” he asked, sensing from the angry spike in the speaker’s mood that this was the proverbial fly in the ointment.
But it was Cyrus who answered.
“Melando is the current favorite,” the old priest supplied in an even tone.
He frowned.
Melando?
The man was certainly qualified. He remembered Melando from his time on the border. Extremely devout, even back then, the dour man had gone on to head a mission in the Jade Isles. Thereafter he’d been reassigned to the Tamorian front line as the Imperial general’s advisor, which had better suited his natural talents. After the general’s untimely fall, Melando had taken command of the army, waging a brief but costly and ultimately successful campaign that had expanded the Empire’s territories. That was years ago now but he remembered the political uproar it had caused. The Emperor had almost been forced to step in. The time of the war prophets was centuries gone. Melando belonged to the old school of thought. It didn’t matter that the territory had subsequently been reclaimed by the Wendles before the Tamorian capitulation. Melando had shown his mettle – and his true colors.
The term fanatic sat uncomfortably when describing someone of your own faith.
Melando was exactly the wrong person for this kind of assignment. His idea of diplomacy was the heathen kowtowing under threat of being burned at the stake. His list of accomplishments was certainly great but he couldn’t possibly be prepared for an unprecedented and, above all, fragile political situation such as this.
“Yes, exactly,” Willionson agreed, reading the direction of his thoughts on his face.
“Do we have another option?” he enquired somewhat breathlessly. He could already imagine troops marching into Renali territory.
“Just the one,” Cyrus supplied. “Will, here,” he nodded at the speaker, “is of the opinion that he may be able to apply some of his influence towards replacing Keeper Melando.” Cyrus smiled. “But the reasons will have to be very compelling.”
Speaker Willion nodded agreement, beard bobbing on his barrel chest. “Melando might not be popular but he is respected. If I propose to replace him, I must offer up someone at least as renown and, even then, that person will have to be even better qualified for the task at hand.”
“We were thinking,” Cyrus said, “a respected scholar who’d made a study of foreign cultures, the Renali Kingdom in particular. Someone not only well liked but well known for keeping a cool head under pressure. Someone who is, perhaps, courageous enough to face down a foreign king and do so without precipitating a war.”
Sensing Cyrus’s gleeful anticipation and realizing what it must mean, he scowled at the emaciated priest, who merely grinned hugely and continued.
“Someone who, it may be pointed out to the committee, has a unique advantage around the negotiating table,” the old priest tapped at his balding head with a gnarled knuckle.
“I cannot make this a formal request,” the speaker cut in, “since, officially, we’re not having this discussion.” The man blinked across at him. “Sitter Cyrus assured me I could count on you.”
He cast the grinning healer a wry glance.
“Thanks.”
“There was no one else,” his old friend shrugged and, though Cyrus’s expression remained flippant, he could sense the regretful conviction there.
He kept the frown from his face. This was happening very fast. He wondered how long Cyrus and Willionson had been plotting this ‘accidental’ meeting. The Temple, for all its holy practice, was like its own little country and its politics were no less involved or divided than any other. With the added complication that – in a very real way – it controlled a much larger, more powerful country. It was a secret conviction of many of the Temple’s high-placed clergy that, while the Emperor might rule, it was the Temple that led. Often, they led headlong, without helpful information like how much resources the Empire had available to commit or what was in the best interest of the public. Right thinking people like Cyrus and Willion, with their feet firmly on the floor and fingers testing the wind, who snuck around in secret trying to minimize the damage, were – to his mind – the true embodiment of the faith. He counted himself among their number.
He sat back in his chair.
“Good,” the speaker continued, correctly taking his sigh for assent. “Then I’ll set things in motion. You should prepare,” the man said, levering himself to his feet.
He got up to walk the speaker to the door, knowing Cyrus wouldn’t. He and the old priest were going to have words the moment Sitter Willionson was gone.
“One more thing,” the speaker forestalled, beard swinging in his direction. “You can be sure there will be elements, both at home and abroad, who will want this treaty to fail. You are also a student of history, Justin, so you know as well as I that public opinion is a sea with powerful tides. The citizenry live close to the goddess. The easiest way to start another war is for you to die over there.”
Willionson regarded him seriously.
“We’ll be sending a small contingent of masha’na along with you and that should help but they can’t protect you all the time. Do you have anyone unobtrusive who can guard your back at close quarters? Someone you can think of an excuse for keeping near to hand?”
He knew who he had to take. He couldn’t leave him. But it still took a moment of serious thought. The reasons for and against weighed heavily on him.
“Yes, I believe I do.”
CHAPTER 6 – ONE JOURNEY ENDS
Inquisitor Torvan Mattanuy stood at a high window of his office, which afforded a perfect view of the Temple’s Granary Gate. From this vantage, he looked down on winding paths, kempt lawns, shaped shrubs and airy colonnades among which priests, initiates and laborers wended like worms in a dung heap. The idyllic scene was maintained only because distance robbed it of sound.
He stood with his hands clasped sedately behind his back, to all outward appearances at peace with the world. But he was also listening intently. Behind him, his office door stood deliberately and invitingly open. He could have confirmed that fact if he wished by moving a finger’s worth to his left. The stained glass border of his window housed a pane so deeply red it was almost black and good as any mirror. But that would be too easy. So instead, he listened for the telltale footfalls of that fish eyed sow–
“Pretty,” commented a monotone by his shoulder.
With a supreme effort of will he confined his startlement to a spasm of fingers, safely hidden behind his back.
Allowing a calculated pause, he turned to regard the Imperial Advisor’s agent and covert carrier of clandestine messages.
Annochria was short and wide in that peculiar way that brought to mind stuffed sausage. Her cheeks ran down into her neck and seemed to pull her drooping lids after them. She stared with dead eyes out of his window and over the grounds below, her oddly elegant hands balanced like starlings on the rolling swell that was her stomach.
“You think so?” he asked, probing innocently.
She continued her study of the landscape outside. Someone else might have said something abstract about toil or humanity or faith. An artist might have commented on the lighting through the trees or the natural lines of the shrubs drawing the eye towards the marvelously carved gate. A cleaner might have remarked on a single dark red pane being polished to a sheen.
But what Annochria said, after a single lazy blink, was, “Yes.”
He treated her to an expression of gratified indulgence.
You don’t care a furry fart for the view, do you?
No, he suspected she had merely learned to identify things others might find moving, without being moved by them herself. Like a socially awkward child, l
earning to smile by rote instead of being overtaken by laughter.
“So,” he enthused. “Our little endeavor seems to have borne fruit.” He turned back to the window to see, in the distance, a sturdy carriage – more of a roofed wagon really, chimney and all – trundle into view. The inelegant contrivance was flanked by a dozen mounted men, which in itself was a rare sight even within the Temple grounds. Even at this distance the orange and umber robes of the masha’na were unmistakable as they led the carriage toward the Granary Gate and – eventually – out of the city, across country and over the mountains into Renali territory.
Annochria nodded slightly, her jowls momentarily expanding like a toad’s. “Keeper Justin Wisenpraal,” she stated without inflection.
“Not the first suspect that sprung to mind,” he admitted, “but Keeper Wisenpraal does fit the description. Clever, influential, quietly outspoken, overly kind to the colonies and fearless friend to the faceless masses.”
She nodded again. When she said nothing further, he prompted her.
“So what does your… master propose to do?”
“Nothing for now,” she said. “We wait.”
For the keeper to reach the Renali Kingdom.
“It is not certain,” he cautioned, “that Keeper Wisenpraal is any kind of leader, or even member, of this modernist movement you so fear.”
He had meant his mention of fear to be a barb, to draw a reaction, but the sausage did not so much as blink.
“He could answer some questions,” she said at last.
And who would ask these questions? He glanced at her sidelong. His efforts at identifying her master’s confederates had led him all the way to the upper echelons of the Renali court before he’d lost the trail. His curiosity was piqued.
“Willionson suggested him for the role,” she continued. “Start there.” And so saying, she pivoted smoothly and breezed out of his office with nary a sound. He watched the door she disappeared through until long after she was gone.
You start wherever you like, he thought, making his way to a large cabinet in the corner of his office. Producing a key from his sleeve, he unlocked the heavy doors and let them swing outwards. He trailed his fingers along the spines of the leather folders within. Selecting one, he carried it to his desk, fingers working loose the twine that held it shut. It sighed open to reveal neatly stacked pages. The top one read, in his own hand, “The Butcher Murders”.
I’ll start where I left off.
* * *
The wagon bounced over the rocky trail. Imperial engineering hadn’t caught up this far east yet and the rougher terrain had slowed the caravan. Two dozen carts, carriages and wagons, carrying thrice as many people and all their supplies, traveled slowly. Especially when Ambassador Malconte was one of those passengers. Add to that the less than studiously maintained road and they were lucky to be crawling into Eathon after little more than a month on the road. Or Twohaven, as the locals called it. An apt name for a town that straddled the border between countries.
A month.
The skin crept on his back and his throat tightened in panic whenever he allowed himself to think of all the training he was missing. He could physically feel himself slipping further and further away from his goal of ever defeating Djenja. He still didn’t know how the keeper had convinced him to come along. No, that wasn’t true. He’d come because it was Justin and he wasn’t about to say ‘no’ the very first time the man ever asked anything of him.
Still… he wished it didn’t have to be now.
His horse tossed its head, causing him to grab at the saddle horn in fright. Someone, trundling along in the wagon behind him, laughed.
“Still not getting along, eh, Bumble?”
Holding on to the saddle, he clenched his teeth, counting to ten.
I miss Lokus.
The plodding mare twisted her head to roll a deceptively docile eye at him. He scowled in return, suspecting some vindictive, equine amusement. He should be grateful, everyone kept telling him. The Imperial stables didn’t open its doors for just anyone. Their little caravan had been supplied with a king’s ransom in horseflesh. But, he couldn’t help thinking, he would have done better with a priest’s donkey. Or maybe even one of the placid oxen he’d seen drawing carts in the city.
Finding that the exercise had failed to calm him, he did another ten-count.
It had taken their party most of that first morning to extricate themselves from the crowded streets of the city center, moving at a turgid crawl despite their escort clearing an avenue with shouts and the occasional pike shaft. In all the mayhem and confusion and press of bodies, his chest had contracted under an unseen pressure. In his mind he had seen and heard echoes of another crowded street, filled with unfriendly people, indifferent to whether or not they trampled a lost child underfoot.
Despite his telling himself he was a different person now and that anyone who tried to step on him would make the swift and brief acquaintance of his well trained foot, he had broken into a cold sweat. Weak and woozy, he’d only taken his first easy breath a bell after leaving the inner city walls behind. When he came to himself he’d been slightly surprised to find himself astride a horse, having no memory of having gotten on one. Knowledge that would have come in handy, since his first effort at a dismount had provided that evening’s entertainment.
Stiff and leg-locked, he hadn’t so much climbed from the saddle as flopped to the floor. His placid mare, instead of bolting – which would have mercifully robbed the scene of all humor, possibly at the cost of life or limb on his part – had wandered peaceably over to the water trough. With his numbed foot stuck in the stirrup. He’d gone moaning helplessly by the stunned onlookers as he was dragged across the stable yard. The inn’s chief ostler, an elderly man with a red-veined nose and disproportionately large ears, had laughed so hard his assistant had had to help him over to a mounting block, where he’d sat, wheezing, until his fit had subsided.
By evening meal, everyone knew of the keeper’s bumbling scribe. He didn’t know who’d come up with the nickname ‘Bumble’ but it had spread like wildfire, along with the tale of his now famous horsemanship. Not an auspicious start.
Growling, he started his count again.
Better make it a hundred, he thought. And do it in Renali.
The keeper had had to buy him a new pair of shoes when they’d stopped in Hawthorne this past week. His others had started peeling off his feet in surrender. He rode now only to give the blisters time to heal. He sat up tenderly, ready to make another grab for the saddle horn and glaring at the spot between the mare’s ears
The sun had just about managed to burn off the last of the morning’s dew from the reaching beech and long grasses when they left the tall greenery behind. Cleared fields sprawled. From over the slight rise peeked the local Temple steeple of Twohaven, nestled at the foot of Mount Meltwater. They would overnight in Twohaven, possibly stay for a day to rest the horses and then start for the pass in the morning. You couldn’t see Meltwater’s sister mountain from this angle but the narrow passage that ran between them was the most direct route to the kingdom. The Renali delegation had crossed further south, out of reach of the deadly spring avalanches, on their way to the Empire. But the ambassador, eager to begin his assignment in earnest, wouldn’t hear of going the long way around. He’d pointed out that, this close to summer, the sisters would most likely have shed most of their icy shawls, surely? Ferrick, the lead driver, had grumbled at this unnecessary risk but since Keeper Justin didn’t seem worried, neither was Marco.
Risking the distraction, he let his eyes wander over the caravan. Right up front, astride magnificent warhorses, their gold trimmed armor glinting in the sun, rode a triple handful of the Imperial Guard. The masha’na were nowhere in evidence. Being lighter armored than their military counterparts, the Temple warriors had elected to act as scouts and ranged far and wide around the caravan. Directly behind the Imperial Guard trundled the ambassador’s carriage. A mon
strous, six wheeled contraption, drawn by no less than eight prize horses and sporting enough gold inlay to keep a Free Isles family afloat for a year. Its position at the front of the caravan was a constant irritant to Captain Iolus, the Imperial Guard commander. But the ambassador insisted on the lead position, as befit his status – and security be damned.
Imperial Ambassador, Lord Harvain Malconte, First seat of high house Malconte, erstwhile Minister of Foreign Affairs, one-time chief Imperial treasurer and second cousin to the Emperor himself, was a round, clammy skinned man with a bright smile and cold eyes, prone to fits of pique. Captain Iolus was technically in command of the caravan and charged with the safety and security of the ambassador and his retinue. The ambassador understood this to mean that the captain and his Imperial Guard were at his personal disposal. The ambassador pretended not to notice the captain’s wooden expressions. Or hear the sound of the man’s teeth grinding.
In contrast, the captain got on swimmingly with the merchant chapters’ representative, Chapter Master Adrio Bulgaron. The man did not look like a merchant. If anything, he looked like a soldier himself, if long retired. The no-nonsense line of his mouth and steely beard added to the unbending demeanor.
He let his eyes rove. Like the private guards the man had brought from his own estate, Bulgaron wore a very fine but very practical sword and suit of armor. He hadn’t traveled in a carriage. Every evening, with military precision, his retainers erected his command tent, complete with carpet, folding bed, table and chairs, before setting up their tents around it, for all the world like they were a small army. The man rode everywhere, sitting stiffly astride his massive destrier, a creature that obviously had a bit of bear in its ancestry. He hadn’t known horses could growl until he’d walked too close to that beast’s tether. He scowled. Horses really didn’t like him.
They’d topped the rise and were climbing down toward Twohaven. Swallowing heavily, he tapped his heels tentatively to the mare’s sides. He tried again, a little harder, when nothing happened, adding the clucking sound he’d heard some of the drovers make. Reluctantly, the mare increased her pace. Of course, she didn’t slow when he tried reining her in and they ended up having to wait for the keeper’s carriage to catch up to them again.