by Glen Cook
"Put a stopper in it, Polo." Hecht had located the snipers, now. There were three of them. He didn't think Ghort's wayward bodyguards were among them. No doubt those two were headed north in a hurry, arguing about how to spend their bounties.
Hecht picked a moment when all three snipers would be rewinding their weapons, surged up to go to the attack. Polo grabbed his right arm, trying to keep him from exposing himself. Hecht lurched left, trying to break the servant's grip.
A bolt of darkness streaked down from the rooftop. Hecht saw the spellcaster in momentary silhouette. The bolt was the size and shape of a hammer handle, in infinite black. It would hit him in the chest. He flung his left hand up. His left wrist exploded in sudden, fiery agony.
The clot of darkness curved aside. It struck Polo's outstretched arm. The man shrieked.
It happened in a blink. Polo's arm withered into a leathery, desiccated black stick, a dead mockery of a human limb.
The mutilation was complete before Polo finished his first scream.
One of Ghort's men appeared behind the sorcerer-assassin. A veteran for sure. He wasted no time. He grabbed the assassin and flung him off the roof.
The would-be killer landed on his head. He died instantly, neck broken and skull crushed.
"Shit!" Ghort swore. "Now we'll never know what this was about. He'll be the only one who knew." His men dragged a prisoner into the square. "Can you make him stop howling?" He meant Polo. "That shrieking could get on my nerves."
Hecht said, "Find the soldiers who led us here. You know who they are and where they're from. Have them brought back. Bo Biogna would be the man to send." He massaged his left wrist. It had not been bad this time. "I want to talk to them." The amulet he wore, invisible since its installation by the Dreangean master sorcerer er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen, protected him well but at the cost of harsh pain. "Bring that corpse. Somebody in the Collegium may be able to get something out of it."
Ghort did not argue although, strictly speaking, the Captain-General of Patriarchal forces had no standing with the Brothen City Regiment. "What the hell just happened, Pipe? I mean, I'm fucking glad it did, but there ain't no way you shouldn't be all over looking like Polo's arm now." Ghort had Polo down, now, trying to examine his arm. Polo would not lie still. "That black bolt shoulda plugged you in the brisket. But it turned off. And got this poor bastard."
"I don't know. I'm glad it did. Though I'm sorry about Polo's arm."
"No shit. Hold still, goddamnit! Garnier! Arnoul! Get those damned horses under control! Aaron's Hairy Balls! They're worse than kids. You have to tell them everything."
Piper Hecht burst into laughter.
"What?"
"Grade Drocker said the same about you not that long ago."
"When? I was always a self-starter."
"When we were in the Connec. At Bishop Serifs's manor, besieging Antieux."
"That was different. You didn't want to stick your neck out around those Brotherhood of War assholes. They didn't care what you did, it was fucked up. You were always wrong just because you didn't belong to their crazy man club."
Pinkus Ghort always had an answer. It might not ring true or make sense, but he had one.
"The corpse," Hecht reminded gently.
"Izzy. Buchie. Search the dead guy. And don't pocket anything. It could kill you later." Softly, he said, "They wouldn't take nothing, no how. They're all guys from out in the sticks. So superstitious and scared of the Night it'll be a miracle if they keep it together now long enough to find the kind of priest who'll pretend to pull the imaginary supernatural leeches off them."
Ghort was exaggerating. That was a matter of course. But Hecht had run into people who were that afraid of the hidden world. People who could not draw a breath without praying and calculating how much attention that might draw from the Instrumentalities of the Night.
Brothe being the Holy Mother City of the Episcopal strain of Chaldareanism, its streets ever boasted floods of religious pilgrims. Many were the sort who held intimate discourse with their deity every waking moment. They wandered in a perpetual daze, babbling constantly.
God must find them annoying. They suffered more misfortunes than the less devout.
Ghort helped Polo onto his mount. Sensitive to the Night, the animal grew skittish. Men, forced to walk because their mounts were carrying a dead sorcerer, a wounded ambusher, or had run away, kept Polo's horse under control.
Polo was incoherent.
He needed a healing brother. Soon.
Pinkus Ghort did not dispute possession of the prisoners. "Just let me have one healthy one, Pipe. A trophy. So I don't have to listen to Principate Doneto bark."
"Take your pick. Take two if you want." Hecht was confident that nothing useful could be gained from any of the prisoners. "That'll ease my budget." Working for Sublime, even indirectly, included an endless, thankless, continuous scramble for money. The Patriarch had no comprehension of economics. He could not be made to understand that he had to have income if he wanted to spend. He resented any effort to explain by those whose wages had to be paid and whose costs had to be underwritten.
Sublime was convinced that the Lord would provide. And that hired hands should be happy with what the Lord provided.
They were crossing the vast limestone sprawl of the Closed Ground, so-called since antiquity because the wings of the Chiaro Palace enfolded it completely. The Palace was three and four stories high, its limestone architecture classically simple. The eastern face, in the direction of the Holy Lands, boasted balconies where the Patriarch and senior Principates presented themselves on Holy Days. There were always scaffoldings somewhere around the marges of the Closed Ground. The Chiaro Palace was under continuous rehabilitation.
The Palace was built of stone from the same quarry as the pavements but the coloring did not match. The pavements had been in place for only three centuries. Parts of the Palace went back fifteen centuries. They showed the effects of all those years of weather and bad air. The stone was streaked brown, yellow, or pale pink.
The first foundations of the Chiaro Palace had been laid down before the Old Brothen Empire recognized itself as such.
Parts of Brothe were older, still. But Hecht was not impressed. His boyhood had passed in a city where structures still in daily use were three times the age of the oldest in Brothe.
The rain continued, growing heavier. Thunder mouthed off north of the Teragi River. There was a pre-Chaldarean superstition about thunder's location being some sort of omen. Hecht could not recall details. He was too wet and uncomfortable to focus on much but the ambush and getting into dry clothing.
His batman came out to help. "What's all this, sir?" Redfearn Bechter was a pensioner of the Brotherhood of War. And, surely, still its agent.
"They ambushed us, Sergeant."
"Bad decision on their part. I know that one there."
"What?"
"Not personally. I've seen him before. He was with Duke Tormond of the Connec when he visited the Patriarch a few vcars ago."
Bechter had a scary knack for recalling names and faces. "Rainard. That's his name. I remember thinking he was either too stupid or too smart for the job he was doing."
"And that was what?"
"He was one of the varlets managing their animals. But he didn't do much work. He kept sneaking off to hang out in low places. So he was a shirker. Or a spy. I figure spy. A shirker wouldn't get away with it for long."
"You listening, Pinkus?"
"Plenty. You want to keep him? I'll take the other two."
"We do have better interrogators here."
"Let me know what you find out. Look, I came after you for a reason. The screaming high shits really do want to talk about Clearenza. Now."
Being Captain-General had its perquisites. A dozen varlets and stablemen came for the animals and prisoners and casualties. Ghort lied to them. "The guy with the bad arm is related to Principate Bruglioni. See he gets treated like it."
Polo did come from the Bruglioni household, originally, and likely continued spying for them. But he was a hireling. Even so, invoking the name of one of the Five Families got results.
Ten minutes later, Hecht entered a room he found depressingly familiar. Each time he visited, it was to face irate members of the Collegium, the Princes of the Church. This looked like no exception. The dozen most powerful Principaees had gathered. A bitter squabble was under way, along the usual political lines. The one friendly face he saw belonged to Principate Delari.
"About damned time!" Principate Madisetti bellowed. "Where the hell have you been? We sent for you hours ago."
And the Cologni Principate wanted to know, "Why do you have to come here filthy, smelling like a dung heap?"
"We were ambushed. Four men. Three equipped with our own standard-issue crossbows. The fourth a sorcerer of some skill but very little luck. The corpse is downstairs. If you want to examine it. Who, other than Colonel Ghort and yourselves, knew that I'd been summoned?" Professionally, he had to admire the quickness with which the ambush had been put together. Though, certainly, the ambush team had been around, waiting for an opportunity, for some time.
It did not occur to Hecht that he might not have been the target. He thought he knew who was behind the attempt. He did not know why.
He watched the churchmen closely, not expecting anyone to betray himself. None were major suspects, anyway. Their crime, if any, would be the sin of talking too much.
Only Principate Delari reacted strongly. His response was vast anger tightly reined. He had, to all intents, adopted Piper Hecht. This ambush was a direct assault on his family.
Piper Hecht had not plumbed the relationship deeply enough to understand. The man he had worked for from his earliest mercenary days, Grade Drocker, had become his mentor during the Calziran Crusade. Drocker was one of the top dozen men in the Brotherhood of War. And the warrior priest had been the illegitimate son of Principate Muniero Delari. Who assumed the mentor role with a passion following Drocker's death.
Hecht did not understand but he did not scruple to exploit the situation.
"I'll return shortly," Muniero Delari said. He was a sallow stick figure of a man in his seventies. He moved as easily as men thirty years younger. He left in a rush. The air seemed to go out with him.
The Madisetti Principate, Donel Madisetti, presumed to pick up his attack. For reasons as obscure as Delari's favor, the Madisetti family had developed an antipathy toward Hecht. The Bruglioni and Arniena families were firm supporters, though they disagreed with one another about Sublime V. The Cologni family waffled. More often than not, though, they opposed the Captain-General because he had worked for the Bruglioni before his elevation. And the Bruglioni may have been behind the assassination of Principate-designate Rodrigo Cologni. Which had taken place before Hecht's arrival in Brothe.
The relationships and balances between the Five Families seldom made sense to outsiders.
Strange bedfellows. Always. Piper Hecht now worked for Honario Benedocto, the Patriarch Sublime V. The Benedocto were sworn enemies of the Bruglioni. This decade. The Madisetti had marched shoulder to shoulder with the Benedocto for a generation.
The Captain-General was immune to most of the feuding. He was not supposed to be part of city politics, only Church politics. Though the former became the latter at every Patriarchal election.
He turned his back on Donel Madisetti. He addressed details of the ambush to Principate Bronte Doneto, the Patriarch's cousin. And one of Sublime's few friends.
Doneto asked, "Why would these men want to kill you?"
Hecht shrugged. "That will become more clear once, we know who they are."
Doneto's gaze shifted to Pinkus Ghort. Ghort said, "I don't have any ideas."
"You'll have to answer for the men who led you into the ambush." Meaning that, while Ghort was beholden to Bronte Doneto already, he was about to be pushed in a whole lot deeper.
"We're on that already, Your Grace. They'll be brought back. I'll see that they talk." Ghort had sent for his man Bo Biogna. Biogna should be headed north before nightfall.
Hecht said, "I understand there's a problem in Clearenza."
Doneto replied, "I doubt there's a connection."
"I doubt it myself. There'd be no state interest at this point. Would there?"
"Just so. Donel. For Aaron's sake, stop whining. You're a grown man." He tossed that at the Madisetti Principate. To Hecht, he said, "That bolt would have been better spent sped at another target."
Donel Madisetti shut up. Appalled. He did not expect to be chastised by an ally.
With Principate Delari absent and Principate Hugo Mongoz lapsed into a drooling nap, Principate Doneto took charge. Though he was not the eldest.
Doneto was the sort who wanted to be in charge.
Most of the time he was not unpleasant about it.
Doneto said, "I sent Colonel Ghort to get you at the same time I alerted the crisis committee. They arrived first because they didn't have to go out into the weather or fight anyone to get here." Doneto disdained most of the Princes of the Church. The world might be terrified of the Collegium and its supposed wizards, but Bronte Doneto knew most of his colleagues were incompetents appointed via nepotism or bribe.
There were powerful sorcerers amongst the brethren of the Collegium, however. Who was, and who was not, was a puzzle that interested outsiders constantly strove to solve. While the Principates strove to stay masked.
Even Sublime, who had come out of the Collegium but whose qualifications mainly included family connections and being stone deaf and blind to the Instrumentalities of the Night, was kept in the dark.
Doneto said, "My cousin is worried about Clearenza because he worries about everything. Too much. For him it's all personal. And an insult to God and all the Holy Founders. All blasphemy, heresy, or something."
Hecht had worked for Principate Doneto for a year. Doneto liked to think that Hecht worked' for him still. Undercover. The Bruglioni and Arniena families, likewise, thought they had a claim on the Captain-General's loyalty incause he had worked for them, too. Hecht felt he owed them nothing. He did not say so. Their silent patronage was useful.
He asked, "Is there some military cause for alarm? Or am I just here because His Holiness is in a snit?" He needed to show a little respect here. These men had known Honario Benedocto since childhood.
Doneto nodded. "There is. The Grail Emperor is probably behind fon Dreasser's defection. With an eye to extending his influence into the Aco floodplain."
"Is that more of a problem now than the last time fon Dreasser switched allegiances?"
For a moment the Patriarch's cousin seemed unwilling to share secrets. Then he shrugged. 'This puts another Imperial stronghold at our backs."
"So. His Holiness still wants to plunder the Connec."
The Empire had neutralized a parade of Patriarchs by forcing them to concentrate on protecting the Patriarchal States. The spate of cooperation during the Calziran Crusade was an anomaly. That truce lasted only till the last Praman kingdom on the Firaldian peninsula fell.
"I'm afraid so."
"Not good, Principate." Clearenza was ideally sited for interdicting traffic on both the central north-south military road and the east-west highway skirting the foothills of the Jago Mountains and the Ownvidian Knot. Nor would it be a long ride to interfere with barge traffic on the Aco River, or traffic on the eastern military road, which swung inland to cross the most downriver bridge spanning the Aco. "Especially if Clearenza's neighbors harbor grievances of their own."
Principate Doneto appeared slightly embarrassed. Principate Madisetti sneered.
Hecht asked, "His Holiness owes them money, too?"
"All of them," Madisetti growled.
"I don't want to seem defeatist. But if His Holiness won't pay his debts, yet keeps on spending, how can he not expect difficulties? Won't he listen to Your Graces?"
"No," Donel Madisetti admitted. "Votin
g for that man may have been the biggest mistake I ever made."
Interesting. This was the sort of news Gordimer the Lion hoped to glean when he sent his best captain over here. Though he meant to distance a potential threat as well.
Captain Else Tage had been too popular with the Sha-lug.
Principate Doneto grumbled, "Sometimes I wish Honario wasn't family. But he does have a flair for intrigue. He has something going in the Connec. He says it will take care of his debts." Doneto did not sound convinced. "And Lothar Ege's obstruction…" He stopped. Secrets escaped even the deepest heart of the Chiaro Palace.
Hecht wished Principate Delari had not gone down to question the prisoners.
Principate Delari had a taste for boys. His current favorite was Armand. Armand was an agent of Ferris Renfrow. And of Dreanger. Gordimer had presented the boy to Renfrow during one of the Imperial spymaster's visits to al-Qarn. Armand's real name was Osa Stile. He had been trained and rendered permanently youthful by er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen.
The old man shared everything with his lover. Who, most observers assumed, was too self-absorbed and scatterbrained to care the slightest about things political, religious, or military. Armand just wanted to be spoiled with sweet scents, rich foods, and pretty clothes.
Piper Hecht saw the boy seldom and was glad of it. What had been done to Osa Stile was too terrible. The slavery of the Sha-lug should not be that cruel.
Osa gave every indication of enjoying his life.
Er-Rashal had known what he was doing when he chose the boy.
Principate Delari returned, still angry. "They knew nothing. Of course. They were hirelings. Two belonged to the City Regiment, Colonel Ghort. The deathmage and his brother were outsiders."
Pinkus Ghort showed color in throat and cheeks, anger and embarrassment alike. "Who paid them? Who recruited them? Would the two who got away know anything more?"
"Unlikely," Delari said. "But we do know where they're headed, now. The Knight of Wands. An inn in a town named Alicea. The entire team was supposed to reassemble there."