by Sharon Green
A quick sweep which ranged across miles showed that no other of the enemy remained, and that was definitely that.
Thirty-four
"What do you mean, Captain Althers has disappeared?" Kambil demanded of the brawny, stolid guardsman who had come with the news. "He was supposed to be getting information for us, important information!"
"Don't know nothin' about it, Excellency," the guardsman repeated, just as he'd been repeating those same words ever since he got there. "All they told me was t'tell ya— oh, an' give ya this here batch a papers. Almos' forgot."
The brawny man reached into the scrip at his waist and awkwardly drew out a sheaf of papers which had obviously been stuffed into the scrip. He offered them as though they were so much straw to be thrown into a stall, and all Kambil could do was grab the papers with a curse. The man who bad been sent to give them the news about Althers knew nothing about the entire affair, so striking him dead would have done nothing more than set a bad precedent. Aside from how good it would have made Kambil feel.
"You go back to your superiors now and give them a message from the five of us," Kambil said as he worked to straighten the papers into some semblance of neatness. "Tell them that the next time someone like you is sent in place of one of them, being at a distance from us won't save them. I want Althers's replacement here tomorrow without fail, along with his two immediate commanding officers. Do you understand all that well enough to repeat it to the people who have to hear it?"
"Sure, Excellency, I'm real good at rememberin' stuff like that," the brawny man acknowledged with a nod. "I'll tell 'em just what you said."
Rather than bowing, the brawny man came to attention, threw his arm across his chest in a salute, then turned and marched out. Kambil felt the urge to close his eyes and scream, but that would have done as much good as trying to tell the fool of a guardsman what he'd done wrong.
"I can't understand why they sent that thing rather than coming to us themselves," Homin said once the door of the meeting room had closed behind the guardsman. "It really isn't their fault that Althers decided on an informal, permanent leave, after all, so why would they—''
"Chaos take them!" Kambil snarled, interrupting Homin with no more than a passing awareness of having done it. He'd glanced through the pages given him, bothered by what he didn't see, and then he'd come to the final message. "I don't believe this! No wonder Althers decided to disappear. He must have thought he would never survive the delivering of this message, and he was probably right!"
"Why?" Bron asked, clearly speaking for all of the others. "What does it say?"
"It says that the command sent after those five peasants has completely disappeared," Kambil replied, looking bleakly from one face to the next. "The group leader sent one of his men ahead to Quellin with orders to collect any messages sent to them, and to pass on the word that a definite trail left by the fugitives had been found. When the man returned to where the command should have been, he found them and all traces of them gone."
"Then they must still be following that trail," Selendi said with a frown. "What else could have happened to that many men?"
"Our erstwhile opponents happened to them," Kambil stated, having not the least doubt that he spoke the truth. "If the command was simply following a trail, they would have left signs for the man sent to Quellin. The absence of those signs leaves only the other possibility."
"But how could they have defeated a hundred men?" Bron demanded, and Kambil was able to feel how rattled the man was. "Even using our Blending entity, I'd hate to have to do the same thing! Tell me how they could have done it!"
"How am I supposed to know that?'' Kambil countered, feeling more than a bit unbalanced himself. "I'm just certain that they did, and now I have a more disturbing question than 'how.' Tell me what they intend to do next."
Bron parted his lips, but nothing in the way of words came out. His complexion had gone almost as pale as Selendi's and Homin's, and those two had nothing in the way of an answer either.
"So you see our most pressing dilemma," Kambil said, glancing at the ever-silent Delin. The man was just as disturbed as the rest of the^Five, but he'd been forbidden to speak unless spoken to. "Does anyone think it's possible that they'll be returning here? Or should I have said likely? Everything is possible, but how likely is their immediate return?"
"I'd say very likely," Selendi put forward when the two men remained as silent as Delin, stirring where she sat. "If it were me and I'd found a way to destroy a hundred men without leaving a sign of them, I'd turn right around and march back to the place I'd just run away from."
"I'm not sure I would," Homin ventured, giving Selendi a small shrug of apology for disagreeing with her. "I'd probably prefer to find a place of my own to get comfortable, and would spend my strength defending that place. After all, what is there here for them?''
"Do you mean aside from this palace and our places on the Fivefold Throne?" Bron said with heavy sarcasm. "Not a thing that I can think of. How about you, Kambil?"
"Let's not start to bicker among ourselves," Kambil said sharply, blaming himself for losing control to so great an extent. "The problem is that all of you are right, since your views depend on your own way of looking at things. The peasants are also individuals, and they may not find it possible to agree on a course of action. That would be completely to our benefit, but we can't count on it. We'll have to set up outposts along the road to the city, so that if the peasants do decide to return we'll know about it before they get here."
"And meanwhile we'll have to try to figure out what they did," Bron muttered, less emotional now after having been rebuked. "If we don't, we won't dare to face them."
"We'd be fools to face them anyway," Homin said with a headshake. "We can't afford to forget that they're stronger than we are, and not only because of whatever they just learned to do."
"I want all of you to understand one thing very clearly," Kambil said, giving his groupmates a taste of his unbending resolve along with the words. "I did not go through all that trouble to gain the Throne just to lose it again to a bunch of peasants. And we don't have to face them again, not when everyone believes that we bested them the first time. If necessary we'll throw a thousand guardsmen in their path, and then we'll see how well they do. In the meanwhile, I don't want to hear another word about how strong they are or how afraid we are of them. Is that clear?"
The three nodded, with Delin simply sitting and staring as always. Kambil stared at the man in return, finding a good deal less pleasure in his awakened presence than he had. Delin often raged inwardly over his captivity, but there was also something disturbing inside him. It was probably the man's insanity, which meant Kambil could ignore it and concentrate on more important matters.
"Let's spend the rest of this morning thinking, and this afternoon we'll have a meeting and make suggestions," Kambil said after a brief pause. "And let's bear in mind that the peasants may have left the city by the west road, but they don't necessarily have to use it to return. I'll want lists of everything you can think of that we can do to protect ourselves, as well as suggestions as to how we can do it all without letting people know what's happening. If anyone finds out the details of what's going on, we'll have to eliminate them before they can tell anyone else."
Kambil began to leave the room as he spoke, and Bron and Selendi and Homin immediately walked along with him. Delin trailed along behind, of course, but Delin no longer mattered. What did matter was those peasants, and a way to make very sure that they stopped being a problem ever again....
Delin walked behind the others, his mind mulling over everything he'd heard. On the one hand he was delighted that Kambil was having difficulty, but on the other he, Delin, was in that difficulty with him. But at least they couldn't blame this on him, not that they wouldn't try. It would probably turn out that he'd done something that caused something else to happen and that something else caused this. In a distant way, of co
urse, but without the least doubt.
Delin snorted to himself, realizing he was in the process of losing every scrap of the small amount of respect he'd ever had for Kambil. Things around them got worse with every passing day, and all their supposed leader could do was send threatening messages. He should have sent that guardsman back with his throat opened, to show how displeased they were with the ploy the man's superiors had used. He should also have given orders to have those superiors put down, and then their replacements would have done the job properly right from the first.
But the high-and-mighty leader of the Seated Five was too softhearted to do what he should, so things would continue to go from bad to worse. Kambil had been just as frightened as the others had obviously been, and because of that he'd made a bad mistake. He'd told everyone what he wanted them to do, and he hadn't excluded Delin from the command. That meant he had to obey, and for the first time he truly looked forward to doing it. That tiny part of his mind ...
That tiny part of his mind was composed of all the strength and cunning and rebellion that his father had never allowed a very young Delin to show. It was smarter and even more ruthless than the rest of the man named Delin, and many years ago it had ... almost separated itself from him. At times it whispered to him, usually when things were going worst, telling him that it would make sure that everything turned out all right. It had whispered to him again only a few minutes ago, and this time it had sounded gleeful.
Kambil wanted lists of things they could do to protect themselves, and also wanted to keep people from knowing what was going on. Those two things were commands to Delin, and even as he trailed along behind everyone else, his inner companion explained how they would take advantage of those commands. Someone without Delin's experience in controlling his reactions might have laughed out loud, but Delin simply put his unending, simmering anger to the front of his mind and did his laughing behind it.
Soon, very soon, he would be able to take his revenge, and then—then!—
Hallina Mardimil was furious, and she made sure to let everyone around her know it—especially the fool of a man who now stood before her.
"How dare you come to me with nothing to show for all the gold I've spent?" she spat, sending her venom full force at the man she spoke to. "You can't tell me that that ingrate simply disappeared from the face of the world! He must have gone somewhere, and I want to know where that is."
"My own men have been coordinating the search with the groups assigned to the matter by the Five," the man, named Ravence, replied wearily. He was a short and pudgy man, but the look in his eyes was anything but soft. "We have our own sources of information to tell us about the things they're holding back on, and we've learned that your son and his friends were taken in temporarily by a bunch of supposed conspirators. They're firm believers in nonviolence, so the powers that be allow them to continue with their plotting—with suitable watchers keeping an eye on them. They—"
"I don't care about a handful of stupid peasants!" Hallina interrupted, her small amount of patience long since exhausted. "If my son is among them, why haven't you gotten him out and brought him to me?"
"I said he was with them temporarily," Ravence corrected, the look in his eyes sharpening. "He and the others left rather quickly, and the fact that they're gone entirely from Gan Garee has been confimed. And if you're dissatisfied with the way I'm handling this, Lady Hallina, do feel free to find someone else."
"Don't be insolent!" Hallina snapped, hating the need to associate with a peasant. But more than one person had assured her that Ravence was the best to be had, so she had to put up with his irritating presence. It was a pity that no one of her own class would even dream of doing such menial work....
"It isn't insolent to expect common courtesy from people," the man dared to say, looking her straight in the eye. "I know that your sort detests all things common, but in this one instance you will comply, otherwise you'll have to find someone else. That means I'm not above getting up and walking out, so watch your tone when you speak to me. Now, do you want me to continue?"
What Hallina wanted was to see the man beaten before her eyes, but that couldn't be done right now. Once she no longer required his services it would be another story, but for now all she could do was nod without speaking.
"Very well," he said, obviously knowing that he'd gotten all the concessions he would out of her. "Once I knew that your son had definitely left the city, I sent men out along all the major roads to find out which direction he took. They were supposed to stop at both the first and second inns along the way, but the man I sent west got lucky rather quickly. The landlord in the first inn claimed to remember nothing, but one of the serving girls was glad to take my man's silver. Your son was there with two other men and two women, and they continued on the next morning."
"So now he's with two sluts," Hallina muttered, fury rising in her again. "I kept him pure for so long, and everything was marvelous between us. Then those sluts got their hooks into him, and now he prefers them to me! But once I catch up to them I'll make them all sorry, you wait and see if I don't."
"I now have four of my best people following their trail," Ravence continued. "They have remounts and pigeons with them, so they can travel fast and keep in touch. When they locate your son and his friends they'll send me that location, and then I'll pass it on to you. Is there anything else you want to know?"
"Not at the moment," Hallina replied, her heart beating excitedly at the thought of being able to give those five vicious children the location. She would throw it in their faces and then march out, and there would be nothing they could do to her after that. Her power and position rested on more than her kinship with three of the former Five, and that those children would eventually learn.
And after her ingrate of a son and his filthy friends were gone, when the Five were least expecting it, Hallina Mar-dimil would have her revenge against them....
Embisson Ruhl sat leaning on pillows in his bed, still aching from the latest forced trip to the palace. Those people were impossible, now insisting that he wasn't even allowed to call himself an ordinary lord. Just because those peasants were still on the loose, as though the whole thing really were his fault. This time he'd pointed out that he'd had his orders from Zolind Maylock, but they hadn't cared. Zolind was dead and so couldn't be punished, but he remained alive. It had also made no difference that his people were hot on the trail of the fugitives. As long as they remained at large, Embisson would, little by little, lose everything he had.
Or so they thought. A knock came at the door, a knock he'd been waiting for, and when he called out the order to enter, his caller did. Edmin Ruhl, Embisson's eldest son, closed the door behind himself then walked closer to the bed.
"How are you feeling today, Father?" Edmin asked, his concern most likely real. Embisson had been very close to Edmin while the boy grew up, finding in his first son a kindred spirit. They still enjoyed each other's company from time to time, and when Embisson's ills had first begun, Edmin had immediately shown up to help.
"The pain leaves me no more than slowly, and being dragged to the palace helps not at all," Embisson replied. "I certainly hope you've had more success than I have."
"I made the effort to see how your searchers were doing, and I've satisfied myself that they're overlooking nothing," Edmin said with a faint smile. "They'll find those fugitives if it's humanly possible, but in the interim I've done some finding myself. When you spread bribes lavishly in the right quarter, people fall all over themselves trying to earn more. In this case they earned more by supplying the identities of two of your attackers, and my people took the two last night."
"Those pigs would sell their own mothers for gold," Embisson said with all the disgust he felt, then he smiled at Edmin. "But you, my son, would make even the most exacting father proud. And you must have gotten an answer, otherwise you would not have come. Tell me who paid for all the pain I've had to suffer."<
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"The fools tried to insist that they had no idea of the identity of the person who hired them," Edmin said with a wider smile. "A masked agent hired and paid them, so how were they supposed to know who stood behind the agent? It took a while to make them admit that they'd followed the agent after he'd left, to find out who the man reported to. They had blackmail in mind, of course, and were almost ready to make their demands—of Lady Hallina Mardimil."
"Her!" Embisson blurted, scarcely believing his ears. "That stupid slut, how dare she!"
"I'd say she discovered that it was you who refused to include her 'son' as an entrant from the nobility," Edmin responded with a small-shrug. "You had no choice, of course, but obviously she refuses to see it like that."
"Anyone but an utter fool would understand how ridiculous she was to even suggest it," Embisson said, nearly huffing with outrage. "Just because she's always insisted to everyone that she bore the boy, that doesn't change the fact that it was one of her maids who was the child's real mother. When the girl died, Hallina took the infant away from its father, dismissed the man from her service, and raised the brat herself. There are a few of us who know that, so how was I supposed to pretend that the boy was anything but the peasant he is?"
"You couldn't have, but the woman is much too self-centered to allow anyone to cross her," Edmin said. "She obviously considers the action a humiliation, and made the effort to return pain for it. What would you like me to do now?"
"Make suitable arrangements to repay her for her gift to me," Embisson said, speaking the words Edmin clearly expected—and anticipated with enjoyment. "I want her to suffer just as I have, you understand, not escape retribution in death. I leave it to you to decide what her punishment ought to be—but there's something more important—and more dangerous—that I must also ask you to do."