by Tim Stead
“But you killed them,” Mordo said. “Surely there is some…?”
“Not all of them,” Francis muttered. He drained his cup and held it out. Keron filled it again. “I want that lieutenant. I want to know who he was working for.”
He drank more wine and leaned back in the chair with his eyes closed. He could summon the lieutenant’s face easily enough. He would know the man if he saw him again. In fact, he had a pretty good idea where he could find him. There were two city regiments and the men who had helped him, had taken him to a healer to have his wound dressed, were from one. The dead men at the gate were from the other, and it was the second regiment whose commander he had killed with a crossbow bolt. He already had the sense that they bore a grudge over it. He would look among them for the guilty man.
But his leg hurt. He could barely walk with the help of a stick and he didn’t want to be seen about the city like that. The leg felt hot, too, and perhaps there was the beginning of a fever.
Francis thought of ice. Ice was rare in Afael, but when they’d taken Falini’s palace there had been the remnants of it in one of the cellars. He’d heard of it, of course, but to actually touch it, to feel that almost supernatural chill, had shocked him. He’d never known anything colder than a winter sea before. Ice had made his fingers numb and perhaps it could take away the pain in his leg.
The waves of pain in his leg became ripples, but it didn’t feel right. It was almost as though the pain was thinning and spreading up and down the limb as a dull ache. That wasn’t what he wanted.
He tried again. He thought about what he wanted – a healthy leg. But what did that feel like?
Almost without thinking about it he was there, feeling, almost seeing, the inside of his leg. He could sense the damage, the torn muscle, the broken blood vessels, the ripped nerves. He had never heard a leg described this way, even by a healer, but he saw what it was and how it could be fixed. The leg was trying to heal itself, but it was so slow. Scar tissue was forming, blood was finding new ways to flow, nerves were inching back as the void was swallowed by new muscle.
Faster. He pushed. The leg knew what it wanted to be. He saw that now. He helped it. He fed it. It was so simple and exactly what Mordo had described to him, but he had not known how to find it. Now he knew. It was like a fountain in the middle of a maze. You could describe the fountain, but the maze hid it until you took the right turning and there it was.
The leg healed. It shrugged off the wound as though it had never been there. He opened his eyes to see Keron leaning over him. The big man pulled back.
“Sorry, I thought you were asleep,” he said.
“No.” Francis sat up. He still had a cup of wine in his hand. He drained it. He smiled. “We have work to do,” he said. “Or I have.”
He stood up. There was no hint of pain in the leg. He flexed it, stretched, stamped. Nothing.
Mordo took the bottle of wine out of Keron’s hand and poured himself a generous cup. “It seems a little pain helps the learning process,” he said. He sipped at the wine and pulled a sour face like he always did.
“Today, perhaps, we can buy a wine more to your taste, Mordo,” Francis said. “I should be back by nightfall.”
*
For all his gifts Francis was finding the search tedious. It had taken a brisk twenty minute walk to get to the barracks from his rooms, and getting inside had been no problem. He had ducked down a nearby deserted alley and called his thief gift. Once invisible he had simply strolled past the guards.
To be fair the barracks were mostly deserted. A lot of the regiment’s men were on the city walls waiting for Kenton to attack, but Francis had a hunch that his quarry was hidden away out of common sight, and that probably meant he was here.
He had not realised that the place was so big, and he had no idea where anything was.
He wandered aimlessly, passing through long rooms filled with beds, wide rooms full of tables, store rooms full of food and weapons and oil and clothes. There seemed no end to it.
But these must be the common soldiers’ quarters. Officers would have their own rooms, wouldn’t they? It struck him that a common soldier’s life was a pauper’s existence. Even as an apprentice smith he had rented his own small room, lived his life his own way once the day’s work was done. This place spoke of conformity, of rules and punishments. There wasn’t a copper’s worth of privacy to be had.
The barracks had a large open space at its heart and Francis went there. He stood in the middle and turned slowly around. This place had not been designed, he was sure. It had grown over the years, a building here, a building there as people saw the need. He tried to guess where it had all started. The oldest building, the most venerable, would be where the senior officers made their homes – those that didn’t have houses out in the city.
There. An old stone building spread comfortably across the north side of the compound. It looked as though it had once been a pleasant house, but new neighbours trespassed upon its land and now pressed against both sides.
Francis walked over to the front door and, after listening for a moment, opened it and slipped inside. He expected guards, but the hallway behind the door was empty. He closed it quietly and listened. There were voices coming from somewhere deeper inside, perhaps up the stairs. He moved to the foot of the staircase and listened. Yes, they were above him.
He didn’t go up at once, but listened at a few of the downstairs doorways and opened them when he heard nothing. He found single chambers, a washroom, and a suite that he assumed must belong to a colonel or major. It had three rooms, but it was dark and empty. Everything on the lower floor seemed deserted.
He walked up the stairs keeping to the edge near the banister so that the treads would be less likely to creak. He paused again on the landing half way up. The voices were clearer now. He could hear two men talking, and the conversation seemed quite animated. He carried on, the voices drawing him across the landing at the top to a solid looking door that he guessed gave onto a room over the front entrance.
Now he could hear them clearly.
“… more than one seat,” a man’s voice said. “After all, it’s the regiment that wields the power in Afael.”
“Both regiments,” another voice said. It was a voice that Francis recognised, but he couldn’t put a name to it.
“Both regiments,” the first voice agreed. “At least three seats each, and we want primacy in matters of war. Our voice must control the actions of Afael’s army.”
“That will be more difficult,” the second voice said. “The Johannists will never agree to it.”
“They will if Gayne and his gorilla aren’t there,” the first voice said.
“Then it’s a pity your men failed at the river gate,” said the second.
There. That was a clear admission of guilt if he’d ever heard one. But he knew one of these men, and the other was a soldier, so it seemed the coalition of his enemies was growing. Now he had to know who these people were. He dropped his thief gift, becoming visible again, and opened the door.
Inside the room he saw two men. They were sitting by a table with an open bottle of wine and full glasses. One was a major, obvious by his uniform, and the other was a member of Afael’s council, City Ward but, even seeing his face, Francis still couldn’t recall his name. They both turned to face him. The councillor looked shocked, the soldier angry.
“May I join you?” Francis asked.
“You’ve no right to be here,” the major said. “Get out.”
“I am a member of the high council of Afael, and you say I have no right to seek out plotters among our own soldiery? I disagree.”
The major was wearing a blade, and now he drew it. Francis ignored him and wandered over to a sideboard. He picked up a glass, polished it on his sleeve and helped himself to wine.
“Put that away,” he said. “I don’t want to kill you yet.”
The major was caught in an awkward position. He had to either strike or
put his sword away. Attacking Francis was an uncertain bet, but backing down was capitulation. He hesitated. Francis turned to face him.
“The men you sent to kill me at the gate failed,” he said. “You think you can do better?”
The major sheathed his blade, thrusting it back with a bold gesture. He picked up his own glass.
“I’ll hear you out,” he said.
Francis smiled. He found that he liked that the major was willing to play the game.
“You tried to have me killed. Why?”
The major shrugged. “This is about power. You have it. You stand in the way of anyone else who wants it.”
“I am a member of the council, nothing more,” Francis said.
“Don’t think I’m an idiot, Gayne,” the major said. “There’s been more than one attempt to kill you and nobody’s come back alive. Some of Falini’s men will swear that it was you went into the young duke’s house before they all died. You killed the son, and probably the old duke, too. You’re an assassin. You kill people who get in your way.”
“And I killed your colonel,” Francis said.
The major waved it away. “Fair fight,” he said. “He tried to kill you.”
That surprised Francis. He’d thought the killing of their commander would have set the regiment dead against him. Perhaps it was some sort of soldiers’ code, or merely a lie, but it didn’t seem like a lie.
“So,” he said. “You want seats on the council?”
The major seemed taken aback by the question. “Yes,” he said. “And we want…”
“No. You’ll never get control of yourselves. Your colonels will take orders from the council. That’s just how it is. If you want seats, I can give you two for each regiment on one condition.”
“And that is?”
“Your soldiers will choose them freely, and the same soldiers will not be allowed to vote in their wards. Those chosen will swear the oath.”
“But they could elect anybody,” the major protested.
“As is their right. Your colonels, of course, can sit as non-voting members whenever military matters are discussed and will be free to offer their advice. I am sure it will be heeded.”
“You can’t run a war like that,” the major said. “Decisions need to be made quickly, opportunities need to be seized, weaknesses defended.”
“Operational command will, of course, be in the hands of one man.”
“You?”
Francis smiled. “He will be chosen by the council,” he said. “I have no desire to command armies.” He turned to the City Ward councillor. “And you, what do you and yours want?”
The councillor stared at him, but said nothing.
“Power, was it? You wanted rid of me and the whole Johannist project?”
“It’s not practical,” the man said. “It’s too extreme. We need to move in smaller steps. You’re going to tear the city apart.”
“An honest opinion you could have shared in council,” Francis said. “But instead you chose to conspire with this man to have me killed. Tell me, are there others on the council that knew of this plot?”
The councillor from City Ward stared at him again. “No,” he said.
Francis smiled yet again. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “And we’re going to find out.”
“How? Do you have another dragon up your sleeve?”
“No, but I can improvise.”
He reached inside the man with his power, the same power he’d used to heal himself, and twisted. The councillor shrieked and fell onto the floor clutching his belly. The major jumped up and went for his sword again, but Francis sucked most of the life out of him and he gasped, dropped his blade and collapsed beside the councillor.
“You too, Major. Who in your regiment knows about this?” The Major rolled onto his back, gasping for air, so Francis fed him a little more strength. “I can do this for hours,” he said. “I’ll stop when I believe you.”
He stepped over the writhing bodies and picked up a piece of paper from the table. He found a pen and ink there, too. He sat down and poured himself another glass of wine.
“Names?”
*
It didn’t take hours. Francis slipped out of the building forty minutes later with a list tucked into his pocket. It was remarkable how little resistance to torture most people had. Francis had no illusions about it. He would probably have talked sooner, himself. But he was coming to believe that power, in a way, was its own justification. If he could defend himself, if he could root out those that had plotted against him, then why not? He had no sympathy for them. He was serving the people of Afael as best he could, and he would do anything in that cause.
They were both dead, of course. He could hardly leave such people unpunished, and they had admitted their guilt. They would probably have warned the other conspirators anyway. He was relieved, he had to admit, that neither of them seemed to be working for Duke Kenton. He would have to deal with the Duke some other time, but for now he was happy to root out local problems.
It was like making a sword. If the ore held too many impurities then the blade would be flawed. In this case the people were the ore and the blade was going to be Afael’s new society. He couldn’t exactly buy his ore from another source as he would if he was making a real blade, so it was his duty to improve the ore, to eliminate the impurities, so to speak. He was the only one who could do it.
He paused on a street corner and took out the list. He didn’t know any of these people, and he supposed each of them would have a reason for doing what they did, and he would ask them before he punished them. That was only fair. For some it would be a misguided sense of loyalty, for others a desire for power, and some, he was sure would have acted simply because they disliked Francis and his plans. He put the list back in his pocket.
A man ran past him on the street. He looked up. There was an urgency about the way the man was running that tugged on Francis’s sense of danger. He looked around.
A squad of soldiers were running towards him from the direction of the barracks and he prepared to defend himself but, as they approached, he realised that they were not looking at him, not running at him.
They ran past, heading north towards the wall.
A second squad came up the street.
“What’s the alarm?” he called to them as they approached.
“An attack. Kenton’s attacking!” the sergeant called back as he passed.
Revenge would have to wait. Francis put his head down and ran after them.
38 Patrol
They set out just before dawn. Sithmaree hated getting up in the dark. It rendered the mirror almost useless. Candle light was too flattering by far. She preferred to see herself as others would see her, in the cold light of day. She was somewhat mollified that her dress today was to be practical. That meant hard wearing trousers, weapons, a jacket, high boots. It was what she wore out on the Great Plain and it didn’t need quite such attention to detail, but her hair was rebelling this morning and she spent more than a few minutes wrestling it into submission while Jidian waited patiently by the tent flap.
Outside the men of the patrol were waiting, too. They were led by a young lieutenant – Sithmaree recognised him as a distant relative of the duke’s – and cowed into obeying by a grizzled sergeant who looked like he’d seen more fights than sunsets. Apart from those two, there were ten men.
“Ready, then?” the lieutenant asked as they emerged.
Jidian nodded, Sithmaree gave the young man a look that should have melted him on the spot.
They set out across a paddock, now stripped of whatever stock it had once fed and growing high. They stayed on the west side, went through an open wooden gate and across a field that had recently been wheat but was now unburnt stubble. It seemed that the Afaelis in the city had been careful to gather in all the food they could before Kenton arrived.
From the wheat field Sithmaree could see the tops of the highest buildings on the west side
of the city, but from there they passed into light woodland and she lost her view.
The woodland reminded her a little of Wolfguard. The trees were very much younger here, but the light was similar. It reminded her how much she had preferred living at the Wolf’s place over Col Boran. It was odd, that, because at Col Boran she had a pleasant house and servants while at Narak’s place it had been a room, a comfortable one, admittedly, and Narak’s people to serve her. Perhaps she felt that way because it was at Wolfguard that she’d first spent time with Jidian. That had changed her life.
The wood thinned, and they came out onto a slope where many of the young trees had been felled and from here, at last, she could see the city of Afael.
Of all the cities she had visited Afael presented the least appealing façade. It had few towers, and only a scattering of grand buildings, all of which were private palaces. The rest of it was low and mostly wood framed buildings of timber and lath. It had, she supposed, a sort of charm, but it didn’t seem a proper city. There wasn’t even a castle.
“It doesn’t look like chaos to me,” Jidian said. He was right. Afael looked much as it had always looked. Wisps of smoke rose from chimneys across the city, the smells and sounds that drifted up to them seemed normal, and she could see armed men on the walls looking back at them. They looked relaxed.
“Perhaps Kenton has underestimated them,” Sithmaree said.
“That’s yet to be seen,” the Eagle said. “Kenton said there was a breach in the wall.” He turned to the lieutenant. “Is the breach this side?”
“No, my lord, it’s the other side of the river. We won’t be going near it today.”
“Too hot?”
The lieutenant looked a little sheepish. “Well, Duke Anjasari’s troops are stationed there. There might be…trouble.”
Jidian grinned at him. “There might be,” he agreed.
“Is that it, then?” Sithmaree asked. She wanted to see more of the city.
“We patrol down to the sea, my lady,” the lieutenant said. “Our job is to look upon the city and note any changes, anything that might be interesting to Duke Kenton. We inspect the harbour from the far headland, then we go home.”