"Why not?" she asked, before she could catch herself.
Abraxis's flat eyes darkened. "It's not your place to ask that of anyone in this room, girl. Understood?"
"Yes, Lord."
"We're sending you to him," Matokin said, businesslike now, moving papers around on the desk. "You are free to divulge to Weisel anything you're able to. In fact, your orders are to supply him with whatever information you've accumulated in your time at the Academy. If Weisel asks about a spell, you answer him to the best of your ability."
"But that's not all there is to this posting," Abraxis said.
Once more Raven, braced herself. She would obey, whatever the order. Of course she would. She was loyal. To the empire. To her father.
"You will spy on our general," Matokin said. "You will become his confidant. You will become whatever else that we subsequently instruct you to become. You will inform us via one of our Far Speak wizards what information Weisel is seeking. These are your orders."
Raven stepped forward and took the scroll that Matokin held out. Her fingers very nearly brushed his. Her father had one last thing to say. "Go now and justify our confidence in you." Raven went. She would do just that.
BRYCK (3)
FOOT PATROLS MARCHED at unfailing intervals. So regular were they—even using the same routes—that one could mark the passing watches by the movements of the Felk occupiers through Callah's streets.
Bryck had surmised that these patrols were meant mostly to intimidate, rather than do any real policing. Everyone he'd met already seemed acutely aware of the Felk and their dominating presence and didn't need the reminders.
He had just bought himself a light but tasty meal. He had surreptitiously tapped a brass coin on the tabletop, thus receiving special service from the proprietor.
Legally only scrip could be used for all transactions within the city. Paper money. Paper. The Felk had issued it, and at the same time they had confiscated all the hard currency they could lay their hands on, presumably to help finance the war. The funny-looking pieces of imprinted colored paper were, the occupiers said, worth precisely the same as proper coins. The scrip was marked to indicate denominations. If the Felk took a copper, they issued a red note; if they took a bronze, a green note; and so forth.
Perhaps more than anything else about the occupation, people were having difficulty adjusting to transacting business with scrip. But these were just the impotent grumblings of a defeated people.
One of those patrols was passing, booted feet clomping in a synchronized rumble. The faces of the Felk soldiers were set, hard. The squad was twenty strong and well armed.
People immediately found somewhere else to be. Some shrank into doorways. All traffic halted till the soldiers were past.
Bryck, too, quietly stepped aside. He had been in Callah some days now. He knew its ways. He had also noticed the superficial differences from his home of U'delph, the variations in architecture and style of dress. Fortunately his traveler's clothes were neutral enough they didn't make him stand out.
Even his meal had been unusual—the curious variety of vegetables, the pungent tea he'd sipped only once. Everything was recognizable but also odd, exotic. The way familiar things were made strange in dreams.
On arrival he'd been ordered to report to the City Registry, where his horse had finally been conscripted. He was only surprised that he'd managed to hang on to the animal so long. The horse had been with him since he'd ridden from U'delph, seeking aid from neighboring Sook. Bryck wouldn't even have earned the privilege to ride if he hadn't trifled with those dice, manipulating their outcome with a little wizardry.
At the Registry he had exchanged the small number of coins he purposely kept in his pockets for local scrip, not protesting the trade. His larger cache of coins stayed secreted in his coat's lining. He had used the money to secure himself lodgings, which was where his vox-mellie was currently stored.
The Registry was a large municipal building of white-washed stone at the city center. Evidently it had
been the seat of the city's government before the Felk arrived. There Bryck had also surrendered the civilian travel pass that he'd been issued on entering Felk-controlled country. It was replaced with a temporary resident permit. Temporary, since as a traveling minstrel he wouldn't be here permanently.
"I will stay until winter," he'd said during his questioning; and that was how long the permit was good for.
He was surprised things had gone so easily, surprised that the Felk had the necessary bureaucracy in place to handle his peculiar status as a troubadour. He was certainly being allowed freedoms not enjoyed by others. Callah's residents, for instance, were required to stay inside the city limits. Those that worked the outlying farmlands were restricted to those areas, under penalty of arrest or even summary execution.
As to what was happening elsewhere on the Isthmus ... who knew? People were hungry for news, and when they couldn't find it, they invented it.
There was a mist on the autumn air this afternoon that was fast on its way to becoming rain. Were he still in Udelph, some distance south, this rain would be light. Here it promised to be unseasonably heavy.
The street was already wet, and the soldiers' boots left behind a neat pattern of prints, each foot falling cleanly atop the last.
Bryck moved. His thick greying hair was getting damp. He turned up his coat's collar and kept near the buildings, under their ornamental eaves.
He had learned the details of Callah's conquest since arriving. He didn't need to interrogate anyone; most wouldn't shut up about it once they got started, particularly in the taverns. Everybody had a personal tale of woe.
Did the Felk annihilate your city, slaughter your people? Bryck always asked silently, darkly. But that sort of bitterness was as useless as it was reflexive. He should feel a kinship with these Callahans. Shouldn't he? The Felk had conquered them. Felk was the enemy of Callah. Therefore ...
Wars had sides. If one was a participant in a war, one chose one side or the other.
Or, perhaps, a sole individual could be his own side. A lone front. A singular army. Yes. Perhaps.
Muck oozed up around his boots as he made for a particular alley.
Callah's conquest, he had learned, was orchestrated by a Lord Weisel, who was said to still be heading the Felk forces. That the Felk were using magic as an instrument of war was disquieting. Where, Bryck wondered, had all those potent magicians appeared from so suddenly? Rumor had it that a small contingent of the wizards was here in Callah, as part of the garrison, though nobody seemed to have actually seen any of these magicians. It might be they were secluded somewhere in the Registry building. Or they might not exist at all.
Bryck rapped his knuckles on the doorjamb. The tight alleyway smelled of spoiling meat. A drape of woven fiber hung across the doorway, allowing glimpses into the dim chamber beyond.
There was no response for some while, but he didn't knock again; instead, waited blandly as the rain started in earnest.
Finally feet scraped the floor beyond the doorway. A hand reached up to whisk aside the drapery. "You don't know enough to come in out of the rain?"
"I know enough not to enter uninvited."
"Then you're summoned. Come in." The little man moved back, and Bryck entered. Inside, things smelled much more pleasant—a scent like berries and milk, but mixed with a gentle wood smoke. Bryck inhaled the incense gratefully.
Slydis's workshop was designed to accommodate its master. That Slydis, three tenwinters old, stood no taller than a child meant that Bryck fairly towered above the furnishings. The scribe wasn't merely short, but stunted; limbs ill-proportioned to his somewhat stumpy trunk.
Bryck had once penned a play about little people. A comedy, naturally. In it the "all-dwarf" cast—normal-sized players—acted out their scenes amidst oversized backdrops and props.
Slydis's repute as a copyist was a good one. Bryck had made inquiries at several city market stalls that sold reading matter. He had visited t
his shop two days ago, offering half of what would add up to a handsome fee—in silver— for the completion of a special job. Slydis had accepted. People still preferred
to transact in coin, despite the prohibition.
Beneath me incense was a rich odor of ink and paper. The workshop shelves were heavy with materials. Slydis settled at a desk that stood only as high as Bryck's knee. The scribe's wispy hair and grey stubble made him look impossibly old as he set a lamp on a hook over the desk, the light cutting shadows from his features.
Bryck had taken a risk with this man. Transacting in coin was a crime in Callah. What he had asked this copyist to duplicate surely constituted a worse offense.
Slydis's permanently ink-black fingers carefully laid out the vellum under the lamplight. "Here we are. What do you think?"
Bryck crouched down for a look. This was a costly purchase, but it was immediately apparent that he'd paid for quality. Studying the imprint in the yellow wax closer only deepened his appreciation of the product. He pinched a corner of the paper. Even the texture felt correct.
"It's a fine job," Bryck said, straightening up. When he dropped a small bundle of Felk-issued colored scrip on the desk, the dwarfs eyes went narrow and his hand slapped down atop the forged civilian travel pass.
"Not paper. That wasn't our contract." He seemed on the verge of crumpling the vellum then and there.
But Bryck had already dug out the proper number of silver coins. He stooped and put the neat stack on the desk. "That's your payment. And here's another—a goldie. Prepayment for another job, if you're interested."
"Make me interested." The silvers were already in Slydis's tunic pocket. He was eyeing the gold coin lustfully.
Bryck pointed to the notes. "That. The paper money."
"If you want quality, paying with coin is—"
"I am paying in coin. What I want copied is that money."
Slydis stared up at Bryck a long time. At last he said, "By the sanity of the gods ... that is a diabolical notion."
Bryck told the little man he wanted to see a convincing facsimile of each denomination. If the work was as good as that which had gone into the travel pass, he would pay for more notes. Many more.
Bryck left the shop with the pass tucked away in his coat. The Felk had confiscated the one he'd been issued earlier. He had decided that having a replacement pass of his own would be prudent, in the event he wanted to leave Callah before the start of winter.
He permitted himself a small smile as he walked. One of the very first theatricals he had ever written was The Deceitful Doings and Derring-do of Dabran Del. (Back then he had thought alliteration inherently funny.) It was the sort of unremarkable early effort every artist cringed over, he imagined. Weak, forced, demonstrating more potential for talent than actual skill. Fortunately the play hadn't been performed in years and was by now probably mercifully lost. Bryck himself could remember few of its particulars.
In truth, all he really recollected was that the lead character had forged some crucial document—a certificate of marriage, he suddenly recalled—and that that simple piece of paper had by the play's end brought about the fall of an entire kingdom.
HE STILL MISSED Aaysue. Still missed his children. Their glaring absences were the central source of his internal pain, which was considerable ... which was excruciating at times. But he could temper his agony. He could alleviate its worst heat by applying cooling thoughts of vengeance to it.
The Felk occupiers were handling their captured city shrewdly, he judged. Women weren't being raped; people weren't being killed arbitrarily. Callah's citizens still had their livelihoods, still earned money—albeit the loathed paper variety. There were some food shortages, but not serious ones. The Felk, then, weren't behaving as barbarians.
It seemed improbable that these were the same people that had slaughtered and incinerated his home. U'delph's destruction was an act of evil mindless savagery. Bryck didn't relent an iota in his hatred of his
enemy, but the strange dichotomy in the behavior of the Felk was curious.
He was letting his beard grow. He'd felt only a slight alarm when he found it coming in almost entirely grey. It made him appear older than his—nearly—four tenwinters. Once vanity would have made him shave it, in an effort to still look young and vigorous, no matter that his years might say otherwise.
Actually, he thought as he approached a tavern, vox-mellie on his back, he was more physically fit now than he had been in a long time. He had lost a considerable amount of weight. In fact, he had initially decided to grow the beard to cover the recent gauntness of his once round face.
He wasn't living a coddled noble's life anymore. No rich foods, a minimum of drinking. Once he had been soft. Now he was toughened.
Bryck had scouted out the tavern and made his arrangements with the proprietor. He entered through the rear, stepping over a rivulet of slops and presenting himself to the one-eyed landlady whose remaining eye held a flinty intensity.
"Need a meal?" Animal blood flecked her apron.
"Not now. Later perhaps."
"Play good as y'did before, and there'll be a later. Ycan have a drink now, if you want."
"Hot wine."
"I'll bring it to your corner. Go there now. Play."
He wended his way through the tables. A fair number of people were gathered. It was a good venue for what he intended. The place was spacious enough to accommodate a crowd but still felt intimate. Bryck sat and, ignoring a tingling of stage nerves, started playing.
He deliberately sang songs he knew to be unfamiliar this far north. It was best that these people understand he was a foreigner.
He drank his wine in cooling stages between bawdy ballads and mawkish verses. The tavern's patrons drank likewise, and ordered and ate their suppers, thereby bringing a satisfied glint to the proprietress's intact eye.
His fingers moved with a nimbleness they hadn't possessed even a half-lune ago. He had become, in his own humble estimation, a reasonably respectable musician— certainly a finer one than he'd been before this adventure. Back in Udelph, back during his lighthearted days of carousing and gambling and penning the occasional theatrical, music-making had been merely a hobby, a stunt to make himself the life of the party. And so many parties there had been, so carefree and uncomplicated was his life, what with his nobility, wealth, fame, a loving wife, a cheerful passel of children.
He had played past his allotted time. It would be curfew in another watch. He now picked out the doleful melody of "Lament for the Unnamed Dead," moving the winder with dirge-like slowness, intoning the sad simple words, feeling nothing more than a vague melancholy. It had been some while now since he had actually wept, for Aaysue and the children, for all he'd lost. His tears had gone cold.
The last notes played to a nearly silent room. Bryck blinked, having almost forgotten about his audience. Dimly lit faces regarded him. Here and there in the crowd he saw the shine of tears.
He lifted off the stringbox and waved over the landlady. Money had accumulated over time in the empty jar he'd set on the floor at his feet. Paper only, he saw, no coins. He recalled the Felk soldier, a conscripted Callahan, who at the city's border checkpoint had offered a coin (itself an illegal act!) for the music Bryck had played.
He counted out the notes from the jar where the landlady could see.
"Y'might've ended with something a mite more jolly," she muttered, but still seemed pleased with her take. She'd brought him his meal. He ate.
He waited, and they came to him slowly, the patrons. First, a few congratulators; then, the ones with questions.
"You're a real bard, then? A ... traveler?"
"Yes." He finished his food. Someone bought him a fresh mug of wine without asking if he wanted another. They pulled chairs near him. They leaned in. He was in a semicircle of ten, twelve, more. The vox-mellifluous stood propped beside him. Some had left the tavern when he'd finished playing. Everybody else was now gathered near.
; "Have you any ... news?"
It was a man with the soot of a forge embedded in the age-lines of his face who asked. None in Bryck's audience was young. All were roughly his age or older. In Callah there were only such semi-elders, and children, and the infirm and crippled. All able bodies had been drafted into the military.
The man's question touched off many others, all at once. All wanted word about this place or that, cities and hamlets both nearby Callah and far away. They went so far as to ask urgently after specific individuals who lived in these places, some of which Bryck had never heard of. He lifted a hand and waited.
When he had quiet, he darted his eyes right and left, adding to the sense of secretiveness that had come over the scene. His questioners huddled closer.
"I've come from the south," he said, and they hung on his syllables. These Callahans were the first of the Felk conquests. They effectively knew nothing about the current state of the war. Or little enough that Bryck's inventions wouldn't immediately be decried as lies.
So he told them of the uprising against the Felk in the captured city of Windal, not far to the southeast.
The one-eyed landlady quietly took a seat to hear. Everyone behaved as he'd hoped, much like the gullible ensemble of Chicanery by Moonlight behaved when Gleed the wandering fortune-teller declared that their village had been built atop the belly of a slumbering giant. It was one of his more popular plays.
Bryck left while there was still time to get indoors before curfew.
DARDAS (3)
DARDAS FELT THE cold. It was Weisel's body he was wearing, yes, but this chill came from deep within, and it had nothing to do with the cooling autumn weather of the Isthmus.
"Hurry with it," he said, intending the command to be stony but hearing a tiny thread of unease in it. That was nothing, of course, to the unease he actually did feel, and justifiably so.
He was, after all, dying. Or rather being returned to the death from which he'd been resurrected.
It was unavoidable, inevitable. So Matokin had explained it, some while ago. Matokin, naturally, was the first person Dardas had seen upon waking from his own death inside the fleshy vessel of Lord Weisel.
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