A Gathering of Fools

by James Evans

  “Very well, Rincon,” she said, finally acknowledging his hand signals with one of her own, “let’s step next door. Philip, be a dear and help me up.” Philip, lord of a considerable manor to the east of Esterengel and enormously wealthy, stood quickly and held out his hand to help Lady Camille clamber to her feet.

  “Thank you. Keep things going, I’ll only be a few minutes.”

  She straightened up and focussed on Rincon.

  “Lead the way, my good man, lead the way.” She followed Rincon across the floor, exchanging brief words with several of her guests on the way, then passed into her private office as he held the door open.

  He followed her into the room then closed the door quietly behind them, dulling the sounds of the party. Lady Camille sat down at her desk and focussed her will to cause several more lamps to begin to glow. When she was happy with the brightness of the room she sat back and waved Rincon into the seat opposite.

  “You look very serious, Albert,” she said, scratching at her ear with a long finger before folding her hands on the desk, “I think you had better tell me what is worrying you.”

  “Thank you, my lady. This note arrived maybe half an hour ago from Administrator Nison in Heberon.”

  Rincon passed over the note then waited while Lady Camille read and absorbed its contents.

  “Nison’s reports are generally very dull,” said Rincon, “but he is a highly effective administrator and not, I think, given to wild surmising or overreaction.”

  Lady Camille stared at him over the top of the note, her eyes slightly dulled by alcohol. Then she took a few deep breaths and pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “You’re happy that the note is genuine and its contents believable?”

  Rincon nodded.

  “It was sealed with Nison’s personal seal and yes, I think that the contents are believable, much though we might prefer them to be otherwise. I think it very likely that Nison impressed a very great sense of urgency on the courier, who left Heberon late yesterday afternoon and must have ridden like the wind to have arrived here so soon.”

  Lady Camille read the note again, then put it down on the desk and closed her eyes.

  “This was not the sort of news I had wanted to receive during a party, Rincon, especially after spending a couple of hours getting into the spirit.” She sighed and opened her eyes.

  Rincon said nothing. It wasn’t the sort of news anyone in the Imperial Government would want to receive at any time. They sat in silence for some moments before Lady Camille spoke again.

  “You were right, of course, this couldn’t wait till morning, although the gods alone know what we’ll need to do to make this right. I certainly don’t.”

  Rincon looked across the desk at her.

  “I gave this matter some thought on my way over, my lady. I believe we need to send word to the capital.”

  Lady Camille looked at him, then stood and walked to the side table to pour herself a glass of heavily watered wine. She raised the jug toward him but he still had his glass from the party. She walked back over to her chair and sat down, sipping her drink.

  “Right, yes, send word to the capital. And to the Governor of Malteron prison - that was where the Traitor was imprisoned, wasn’t it? - to find out how this happened. I’ll see someone hang for this and it might as well be him. If he put Marrinek on an ill-maintained ship…”

  “Yes, my lady, although a summer storm might overwhelm even the most seaworthy of vessels.”

  “Pah! Storms, maintenance problems, bad navigation. Who knows? It might just as well have been sea monsters or pirates or ship-worm. Maybe Marrinek conjured a giant squid to pull the ship under the waves and release him!”

  She was angry now that the alcoholic haze had cleared enough for her to appreciate the situation. She picked up the note, read it again, then threw it back down on the desk in disgust.

  “His Majesty will be spectacularly displeased. Actually, that might be an understatement.”

  She sipped at her drink, then drained the glass and set it back on the desk.

  “Right. Summon the Council, Rincon, I want them here first thing in the morning. Tell them nothing about this - I don’t want anyone to know what’s happened, although the news will leak as soon as we begin discussing things tomorrow. Who else knows?”

  “Only you and I, so far. I don’t believe either the courier or Krant, the junior clerk who brought me the message, know what it contains, although Krant will be able to work it out if rumours start to fly.”

  “Good. Is Krant trustworthy?”

  “I believe so, my lady, although he is very junior and only moderately talented. Smart and reasonably competent, he probably has a long career ahead of him if he can learn to control his whining. He was the only clerk in the building when the courier arrived, working through the night to make up for some, ah, failings earlier in the week.”

  Lady Camille paused, thinking hard about her next move.

  “Send the courier back to Heberon with instructions for Nison to scour the countryside and to search the coast, just in case they’ve missed a corpse; that’ll keep them busy and might actually be useful.”

  “And Krant?”

  “Yes, Krant. We need to keep him busy as well. Roust him out and use him to draft all the messages we send on this topic. Keep him close, for the moment. Don’t let him out of the building and leave the other clerks in the dark.” She stood up and walked around the desk to stand before a six-foot square map of the province and surrounding areas which hung on the wall. She stared at it thoughtfully, her chin cupped in her hand.

  Prepared by the Guild of Cartographers, it was the most detailed and the most accurate map in the city but she was painfully aware that it was vague in places and wildly inaccurate in others, especially to the west beyond the Empire’s borders. Each year the Guild sent her a new map and each year’s map was a little more useful and a little less decorative. The area was so large, though, that in many places the map showed little more than forest or plains or swamp and she was sure that even those vague descriptions were not all correct.

  Lady Camille found Heberon on the south coast and traced the route to Catshed to the north-west. The roads around in this area were poor, as were most of the people. There were few towns and no cities of any size.

  “Where would he go, where would he go?” muttered Lady Camille, staring at the map. She didn’t believe for one moment that the Traitor would stay in Catshed. The map showed a small walled settlement hardly big enough for two inns and a cooler and far too close to the Empire for a fugitive.

  “Where would you go, Rincon, if you escaped just west of Heberon but wanted to get as far from the Empire as possible?”

  Rincon walked to her side and stared at the map.

  “The note says he went there, to Catshed,” he said, pointing, “which is at the end of the Scla mountain range. To the north of the mountains on the other side of the river is what’s left of the former kingdom of Sclareme but there’s nothing there now. I can’t imagine he would go that way,” said Rincon.

  “And if he heads east, he quickly arrives back in the Empire. If he had wanted to return home he wouldn’t have gone to Catshed at all,” said Lady Camille, “so let’s rule out east as well.”

  “He could go upstream,” said Rincon, “follow the river or take passage on a trading boat and head for the kingdoms to the north of the Toothnail mountains. Plenty of work up there for a man of Marrinek’s talents.”

  “Plenty,” agreed Lady Camille, “and they’re a tough people but somehow I don’t think so.”

  She traced the line of the river Guiln southward from Catshed until it hit the Vensi, the mighty river that drained snow melt from the Scla mountains into the Tardean Sea, striking the coast at the city of Vensille.

  “Vensille,” whispered Lady Camille, tapping at a city marked at the extreme south western edge of the map, “from Catshed, the easiest settlement to reach of any size is Vensille. He could j
ust float down the river, maybe take a barge all the way to the coast and lose himself in the biggest city within, what, three hundred miles?”

  “Maybe more, my lady,” said Rincon, nodding, “the city has grown markedly in recent decades.”

  She found Vensille on the south coast, not all that far from the Imperial town of Heberon or, for that matter, the prison island of Ankeron West. Not that the prison was mapped, of course. The island was shown, some thirty miles off the coast, but it was unnamed and she was able to identify it only because she knew what was there.

  She traced the links between Heberon, Catshed and Vensille, running her elegantly shaped nail across the map’s surface. The cross-border roads were poor in this area but she knew that traders regularly travelled between the towns and not always by sea. She squatted down so that she could squint at Vensille but it was little more than a generic walled city on the river. Then she stood up.

  “Yes, Vensille,” she said with more confidence than was truly justified, “if I were Marrinek, in Catshed after escaping from an Imperial prison transport, I would head to Vensille.”

  Rincon looked doubtful.

  “Is that not too obvious, my lady? Might he not have chosen to go upriver, to try his luck in the northern kingdoms?”

  Camille shook her head. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced she was right.

  “No, Vensille. It’s a large trading city, easily reached from his last known position and convenient for further flight. From there he could take a ship to anywhere around the Tardean Sea or beyond.”

  “I suppose he could even settle there,” conceded Rincon, “maybe make charms for a living, or serve in the Watch or something.”

  He stopped talking under Lady Camille’s highly sceptical gaze.

  “I agree, my lady, that those aren’t likely outcomes, but they are not impossible.”

  “Maybe not, but either way, his future employment doesn’t need to concern us. What’s important is that we know where he is,” she paused, then corrected herself, “or rather, we know where he is likely to be, having deduced it from a series of logical analyses.”

  “Vensille or Catshed, he is still in Duke Rhenveldt’s territory,” observed Rincon.

  There was a pause for a few moments as Lady Camille stared again at the map.

  “Do you wish me to do anything about your party, my lady?”

  “Hmm, what? No, let them be. But find Philip, Lord Adraude, and bring him in here while he is still sober.” Rincon nodded and disappeared through the door, returning a few minutes later with Lord Adraude.

  “Thank you, Rincon. Find Krant; I think we’ll send him to Vensille; you can begin the preparations. Be back here before the next bell.” Rincon nodded and slipped out through the door.

  “Take a seat, Philip,” said Lady Camille, waving him toward a chair before turning away from the wall map and taking her own seat behind the desk.

  “How many troops do you have under your command at the moment?”

  Lord Adraude looked surprised but he saw the serious look on Lady Camille’s face and decided that this was probably not the time for jests.

  “Here in Esterengel, my lady, we have around four thousand soldiers, mostly foot but also a few companies of cavalry. Across the rest of the province, another few thousand but those are spread widely and it would take time to gather them. The nobles have more, of course, but getting control of them would be tricky.” Lord Adraude looked at the map, then back to Lady Camille.

  “You have something in mind?”

  Lady Camille ignored the question.

  “What of the Specialists, Lord Adraude? Where are they now and do we have access to them?”

  Lord Adraude hesitated, his mouth open, as he considered the question.

  “Specialists, my lady? You mean the Shock Corps?”

  She nodded.

  “No, we don’t have access to them. They were Marrinek’s troops and when he fell the regiment was broken and dispersed. Several, those most closely associated with the Traitor, disappeared. Others were sent to regional units but most are with the Imperial armies in the east. There are none in the west, that I know of.”

  Lady Camille looked again at the map then back at Lord Adraude.

  “Hypothetically, if we needed to capture, say, Vensille, do you have enough troops?”

  Lord Adraude shifted nervously in his seat and grimaced. He put down his glass and leant forward, thinking hard.

  “Hypothetically? No. Vensille has strong walls and Duke Rhenveldt has, by all accounts, done an excellent job of making the city defensible. We would need to surround it on land, cut off the river and blockade the harbour. Even with all the soldiers in the province, including the levies and the nobles, we couldn’t storm the city while it was defended and without a naval blockade, a siege would be ineffective.”

  Lord Adraude fell silent, then said, “Are you planning to invade Vensille? There are surely easier targets if expansion is desirable. Maybe we could look at some of the northern kingdoms...” He fell silent again as Lady Camille shook her head.

  “Forget all that,” she said, “military action was something I wanted to rule out, not an option I wanted to pursue. Discovering that the military option isn’t an option at all merely forces us to look for other, more peaceful, more imaginative, solutions. It’s probably for the best.”

  “Might I ask, my lady, why you need options at all? I wasn’t aware of any particular threats or plans; your questions suggest you have something in mind, or that something is worrying you.”

  Lady Camille looked at him again, weighing her words. The effects of the alcohol were wearing off and she had the beginnings of a mild hangover. She sighed; she really ought to know better at her age but sometimes it was nice to relax and spend an evening drinking with friends as she had done in her youth.

  “Yes, Philip, something is worrying me. We will talk about it tomorrow at the Council meeting.”

  “Tomorrow? I don’t think there is a meeting scheduled until next week.”

  “Tomorrow. You’ll have a message later this evening. In the meantime, go home and get some sleep. Talk to nobody about this, not even your wife.”

  “I understand,” said Lord Adraude, although Lady Camille was quite certain that he did not since she had carefully and deliberately avoided giving him any useful information, “until tomorrow, my lady.”

  Lord Adraude stood, bowed, and left through the door, making his way through the continuing party and out of the Governor’s apartments.

  Lady Camille sat alone for a few minutes, then stood up and walked over to a solid cabinet on the opposite wall. The heavy doors were locked but there was no visible keyhole. Lady Camille found the chain around her neck and gently pulled the thin charm, about the size of her little finger, from its hiding place. She held the charm against first one door and then the other, focussing a little power into the charm as it rested against the wood. There was a clunk and the tall doors swung slowly open. A final touch of power and the charmed lamps within the cabinet began to glow, illuminating the contents.

  Lady Camille’s collection of charms was extensive and most of them were kept within this cabinet, protected both by the locked and hardened doors and a particularly unpleasant trap that would seriously inconvenience anyone attempting to gain entry by force. She selected two of the more discreet rings and slipped them onto her fingers. She never went anywhere without a selection of both defensive and offensive charms but this evening’s news had set her on edge and she felt the need to augment her not inconsiderable abilities.

  Her hand hovered over the sword but it would have seemed odd worn against her dress - she wasn’t ready yet to abandon all sense of style - and she selected instead a slim wand of polished wood which she slid into her hair. It was less powerful than the sword, true, but also much less obvious. Satisfied, she closed the door and used the charmed key to lock the doors.

  She sat down at her desk and drummed her fi
ngers on the surface as she thought about her next move. Then she opened a drawer, took out pen, ink and paper and began to write. After a few minutes, she stopped, satisfied that she had completely described the situation and her intended actions. She read through the short report once more, signed it and rolled it into a steel tube, sealing it with a brief focus of power and attuning the lock to the Emperor so that only he could open it; if anyone else tried to force the lock their power would now subtly alter the tube, recording their attempt and making obvious to the Emperor that someone had tried to access his personal mail.

  She laid the tube on the table as Rincon came back into the office. The sounds of the ongoing party were suddenly loud through the open door before being muffled almost to silence as the second man closed the door behind him. Rincon stopped in front of the desk.

  “This is Master Krant, my lady. The courier from Heberon has been given a bed in the guardhouse of the royal apartments and will be sent on his way at dawn. He is being watched by people I trust.”

  “Good. Welcome, Master Krant. You’ll find pen and paper at that desk.” Lady Camille gestured at second desk, located against the wall and at right angles to her own.

  Krant nodded and bowed nervously, “Yes, my lady.” He sat down at the desk and pulled a fresh piece of paper toward him then grabbed a pen from the pot. In his haste, he knocked over the pot, sending pens flying across the desk.

  “My apologies, my, my, my lady,” he stammered, grasping at the pens and stuffing them back into their pot. He returned the pot to its station, smoothed his paper and turned back to face Lady Camille.

  “Krant,” said Lady Camille. Krant looked up, face radiating enthusiasm and confusion borne of his sudden elevation from junior clerk to the Governor’s scribe.

  “You are here because you know that an urgent message from Heberon has been delivered. Are you aware of the contents of that message?”

  Krant shook his head then remembered who was asking the question.

  “No, my lady.”

  “You have heard of Abaythian Marrinek?” said Rincon.