by Glen Cook
The literate were as mistrusted as those who had congress with the Night. Either could destroy you with arcane knowledge.
Hecht said, "Bring me up-to-date. Can fon Dreasser protect himself?"
Titus Consent was a tall youth, slim, dark of mien, usually cheerful. He was talented in the extreme and thoroughly competent. He was not obviously Devedian. He handled rampant prejudice mainly by refusing to acknowledge it. He was a solid family man. Early on he had told Hecht that he had been raised from infancy to become a sort of savior for the Deves of the western diaspora.
He said, "We haven't had time to find out. I can tell you that it would be smart to get some arrears money to the garrisons out that way. Blatantly obvious, but every time we pry back pay out of the Patriarch we win more friends among the men with the sharp iron."
That sort of thinking had gotten Hecht exiled from Dreanger when he was Else Tage. Else Tage had been popular with the soldiers.
"Any chance we can find some money?"
"We talked to the Fiducian, Joceran Cuito." Cuito was director of the Patriarchal treasury. He was a Direcian archbishop who was in line to join the Collegium. On merit, and because he had Peter of Navaya as a sponsor. "He means to employ a battery of limited, secured loans."
Sublime was inclined to avoid securing his loans with anything more substantial than a signature. But ink was no longer enough for Brothe's moneylenders.
"Property?" The Church was the biggest landowner in Firaldia. Since earliest Old Brothen times land had been the critical measure of wealth. Only land could provide a stream of income.
"Fiducian Cuito would rather pawn art treasures and rare books from the Krois Palace. He won't say why, but he's sure the Church is going to receive a substantial windfall before long."
"Then something's going on under the table. And Sublime's kept it inside his inner circle."
"Exactly."
"Considering the time of year and general economy, I'd say they're going to steal something. Or sell something. Big. They've already sold all the seats in the Collegium that they can. And all the livings that anybody will pay for." A thought. "Could it be a fat bequest?"
"I don't know of anyone with one foot in the grave and the inclination to bribe the guardians at Heaven's gates."
"Would they hurry somebody off to the Promised Land early?" Sublime had not yet been accused of murder for profit. But his predecessors had.
"We don't have access to their records. We haven't heard of any pending legacies."
"Keep an eye on it." Hecht settled in to listen to other reports, not just about Clearenza. He had some responsibilities regarding the ongoing effort to suppress diehard Praman partisans in Calzir.
Calzir would never reclaim its independence. If Sublime recalled his garrisons the Grail Empire and Navaya would flood the vacuum. Making Sublime's two biggest competitors even stronger.
Fate conspired to thwart Sublime at every turn. But he refused to see the stumbling blocks as an expression of God's will.
Few men took their own reverses as God's will. Instead, they worked hard to adjust God's will to reflect their own.
Sublime probably spent a lot of time asking God why it all had to be so hard.
Moving close, Titus Consent asked, "Can I see you privately after we're done?"
"Absolutely. I need a word with you, too. Colonel Smolens, are you confident enough to take over if I take a few days off?"
Smolens showed surprise, then curiosity. "I know my way around, now."
"Your biggest problem would likely be having to deal with our masters. None of them are the least bit reasonable."
"No problem, Captain-General. I can pretend they're my extended family." Buhle Smolens was perfectly formal. He demonstrated the ideal military courtesy, uphill and down, always. He had brought his family to Brothe. Nobody had met them yet. Smolens mentioned them only in passing. His eldest son supposedly wanted a subaltern's position, if one came open.
Smolens had several interesting ideas for installing a more professional attitude in the Patriarchal armies. His big fault was his conviction concerning the earthly and moral supremacy of the Episcopal vein of the Chaldarean faith. Though he did not buy the doctrine of Patriarchal Infallibility.
Hard to do with Sublime V in front of you every day.
Tabill Talab was troubled. He wasted no time once Hecht recognized him. "I'm having a problem no one else seems to notice. I feel a bleak future closing in. For everyone."
Talab was the eternal pessimist, chosen to balance Titus Consent's overconfidence. "Do explain."
"I talk to our couriers. I talk to merchants. I talk to refugees. I ask for reports from our agents in the republics because their ships visit all the ports of the Mother Sea."
Hecht nodded. No point hurrying the man. Talab could get where he was going only along an engineered path.
"No matter where the reports originate, they always mention upswings in the activities of the Night. Not big stuff. Not yet. Just more sightings, more encounters, more malicious mischief getting more virulent."
"Only the minor spirits remain unbound."
"Unbound and unconstrained. But becoming more numerous. They're running from the ice, too."
"Which we expected. Right?"
"Yes, sir. But what hasn't been considered is the fact that the things of the Night have always been more common along the edges of the ice, where societies are more primitive. Out there some of the big ones are still running loose. When the ice advances, and establishes itself permanently in places like the high mountains, all the wildest surviving free shades are pushed into tamer country."
Hecht nodded. No one talked about it much-yet-but that was a logical and obvious development. "That's generally recognized. It's started already."
"Yes, sir, it has. What I don't hear discussed is what that means for the Night."
"Yes?" Talab might be headed where most people were afraid to go.
"When people get pressed together you get what we already have here in Brothe. Worse poverty. More violence that's deadlier. More organized criminal activity. More racism and prejudice. All because you have more people trying to live off the same limited resources.
"The same thing happens with the things of the Night. Only they start to combine into stronger entities. Not often willingly. They just keep getting bigger and stronger if they can devour their own kind. They get angrier, more hateful, and malicious. When they're strong enough, and big enough, they turn into the Night things from old scary stories."
"The ice will gift us with a new round of monster gods?"
"If it advances far enough. Possibly a crop as ugly as those who cursed the earth before modern religions hammered their deities into a more benign shape."
The God of the Pramans, the Chaldareans, the Devedians, and the Dainshaukin enjoyed the same lineage. The Dainshaukin saw Him fierce and psychotic and disinclined to be a nurturer or giver of rewards. He was a punisher, the Punisher, the source of all misfortune, and would happily do you in because He did not like your haircut.
Devedians had a better deal. Their vision of the Almighty visited miseries only when they were earned. He could be appeased without a human sacrifice.
"It isn't something we can do much about. Except keep our heads down and hope… What?"
Titus Consent said, "You're forgetting the soultaken."
"I haven't forgotten. They…" Hecht noted what had to be a warning glance from Talab to Consent, nearly invisible in its subtlety, reminding him that his staff had other loyalties.
The soultaken had been men from another age conscripted by their gods so they could open a pathway out of a northern sort of hell. The dead heroes preserved there could then storm forth and destroy what those gods feared most: the Godslayer. Someone who, by happenstance, had learned that even the greatest of the Instrumentalities of the Night could be rendered subject to the wrath of men.
Else Tage had slain a bogon, a baron of the Night, in Esther's Wood in
the Holy Lands, saving his war band from an attack initiated by a source he never identified. Later, he and the Devedians of Brothe destroyed one of the soultaken meant to silence him before knowledge he did not know he possessed became general.
The All-Father god of the pre-Chaldarean north himself perished trying to extinguish that knowledge. Prophecy fulfilled.
Piper Hecht remained largely unaware of the full implications of what he had done. The Devedians were not unaware. Their Elders knew who Piper Hecht used to be. They knew what he had done. They knew he had won a fierce reputation amongst the Instrumentalities of the Night, and that those forces would have exterminated him long since had they been better able to distinguish one mortal from another.
The biggest had to use something like the soultaken to find an individual.
Although a brilliant commander and leader, Piper Hecht, under whatever name, sailed through life in near ignorance of what he really was. He was feared by powers and people of which and whom he was unaware or was insufficiently suspicious.
"What about them?" Hecht did know that he was woefully ignorant about all that. Other than that a string of murders had culminated in the emergence and passing of major Instrumentalities during the Calziran Crusade.
Hagan Brokke observed, "The soultaken were just a foretaste of what's coming, I think. The gods themselves have begun to take a real interest in mundane events."
"Gods?" Clej Sedlakova demanded. "There is only one God!"
"Excuse me. For want of another label. High Demons, if you prefer. To borrow from the Dainshaukin."
Those monotheists recognized a mind-boggling array of lesser supernatural entities arranged in several parallel and inimical hierarchies.
Hecht smiled. "I don't much care." No one took exception. Even Sedlakova was disinclined to insist on strict conformance to dogma. "I'll think about it. Though that's something more suited to the Collegium. Colonel Smolens. To my earlier point. I'll be out of touch. You'll have to deal with whatever comes up. I shouldn't be gone long."
Smolens asked, "Do we know where you are? Do we admit that you're not around?"
"If you're pressed say I'm not available. You really won't know where I am." Though he would not bet against the Deves keeping track.
"How long? At the most?" Titus Consent asked.
"As long as it takes to finish what I need to do." Meaning do not get up to anything he should not. "Good. Enjoy yourselves. Oh. You wanted a private word, Titus?"
Consent betrayed what might have been a glimmer of fear. He whispered, "Outside the Castella. I'll walk with you."
Hecht nodded. Not inside the keep of the Chaldarean religion's most ferocious defenders? What a surprise.
Hecht waited till after they crossed to the shore and were headed downriver, toward the Memorium. "More problems with the Elders?" The Seven, the Elders of the Brothen Deves, were a pain as big as the heads of the Five Families, or members of the Collegium. They could not leave Titus Consent alone to get on with his sacred work.
"Not yet. I'm sure there will be. That isn't it. Yet."
"Well?"
"Noe is almost to term."
"Uhm." Hecht knew Consent's wife and sons by name but had yet to meet them. Deves did not mix with Chaldareans socially. "Congratulations."
Consent stopped. He shuddered. Hecht halted, back to the jungle of monuments to Old Brothen emperors, generals, and dictators, and their triumphs. "What is it?"
"Noe and I have discussed this for months. We want you to be the baby's godfather. And Principate Delari to sponsor us. If he will."
Hecht did not get it right away. He still had to get the hang of being Episcopal Chaldarean. "Godfather? I didn't know Deves did that."
"Not the Chaldarean way. My brother would do it. If I had one. Since I don't, my uncles should get the job."
Hecht finally caught on. "Are you talking about converting?"
"I am. If you'll be the baby's godfather. And if Principate Delari will sponsor us. We've been studying in secret. We already know most of what we need to."
Hecht was stunned. "But you're the Elect."
"They never asked me. I don't want to be the Elect. It's eaten me up for twenty years. I want out. I want to convert."
"The Seven will explode! They won't have anything to do with us anymore. They'll blame us." Selfishly, he added, We'll be blinded."
Consent was not offended. "That will come eventually anyway, Captain-General. The Elders are beginning to question the benefit of continuing an alliance put together for the Calziran Crusade. Nor does the Patriarch see any need to keep on getting along with Deves or Dainshaus."
"Shortsighted of him."
"Indeed. Our moneylenders are the main financiers of his adventures. The Seven won't lend Sublime a copper for a crusade against the Connec. We don't have that many people there. The Seven think it will be easier and cheaper to protect them by just fixing it so the Patriarch can't afford to hire soldiers.
"I think they have blinders on. Sublime isn't worried about money. Not nearly so much as he should be. He has something going, under the sheets. But the Elders won't hear that. Apparently, the Elect is supposed to be seen but not heard."
Hecht was lost. "You mean it? This conversion?"
"Of course. I don't want to be anything special. I just want to take care of my family and do my job. Which is perfect for me. I love it and I'm good at it."
"I'm confused."
"I'm sorry. My fault for not being clear. You have no idea how stressful this is. This is the biggest thing I'm ever likely to face."
"Tabill Talab. How will he respond? His father…"
"Is one of the Seven. Yes. That does worry me. But you're going to lose him before long, anyway."
Not good, Hecht thought. Not good at all. The Devedian connection had made him look good.
Honed by three decades lived in a city and land that had been old in the wiles of conspiracy before the beginning of time, Hecht started sniffing for a whiff of what Consent was really up to.
They resumed moving because Titus was too nervous to stand still.
An arrow, presumably from a longbow, removed Hecht's hat. The shaft came from amongst the monuments. It missed Consent by a scant inch, too. It ricocheted off the pavements into the cold brown of the Teragi River. Bystanders yelled and scattered. Ten thousand pigeons took wing in a flapping roar.
"You see where that came from?" Hecht demanded.
"No." They crouched at the pediments of a small memorial arch. Consent held a dagger with a long, slim blade. Hecht had not realized that the Deve carried any weapon. He carried a short sword himself, more emblematic of his office than useful in a fight. "Only generally, that way. Because of where it went."
"Yeah. Who's Galinis Andul?" Hecht tapped the inscription beside his head, so ancient that it was almost illegible.
Startled, Consent said, "The man who designed the arch. Those guys grabbed the chance to make their names last. The memorial proclamation is up top. This one looks like it predates the Old Empire. Meaning it was moved here by Arember the Hairy."
Hecht wanted to ease Consent's tension, not listen to a lecture. "Work from cover to cover and flank him from the left. I'll move in from the right."
He did not expect to find the sniper. There had been no second shaft. Not that a lone archer could expect to take out a distant target who was alert.
And the would-be assassin was gone. No one had seen an archer. There was no physical evidence. A sorcerer of exceptional weight might have found a trail. Hecht did not have one handy.
His amulet had not warned him. The assassin would be nothing but a skilled archer.
"It was a pretty good shot," Hecht admitted. "At least a hundred fifty yards. On a breezy day. From in here where the wind would swirl."
"Yes." There was no admiration in Consent's tone. "Who was he after? Or would it matter, as long as he got someone from Central Staff?"
"Sure you want to convert?"
"
Yes."
"If there's a plot, wouldn't Deves be more likely to ferret it out?"
"No. The underworld doesn't intersect with the Devedian."
"That archer wouldn't belong to the underworld. He's a soldier after fast money." Nor did he swallow Consent's protest. Thieves had a cautiously close relationship with the men who purchased the goods they appropriated in their struggle to redistribute Brothen wealth. But Hecht seldom challenged known falsehoods. People became defensive. They clammed up. He believed in paying rope out and watching.
Consent would understand. He and Talab did the watching.
Hecht said, "We're accomplishing nothing." He brushed his left forearm. Yes. The amulet was there. Which reaffirmed that there was no sorcery active nearby.
Someone was keeping track of him somehow, though.
Hecht and Pinkus Ghort were at the waterfront, waiting to board Lumberer. Hecht asked, "What are you into on the side, Pinkus?"
"Huh?"
"If I didn't have your word for this being a fast coaster I'd suspect her of being a smuggler." The crewmen looked shifty.
"I'm not involved in anything. But do note that smuggling and trading are a matter of viewpoint."
"No doubt every smuggler ever born makes that argument. And princes send them to the galleys anyway."
"You're probably right. You always are. So what? They're handy people to know. What the hell is this?" A couple of black crow Brotherhood types were headed their way, on horseback, in a hurry. They slowed to an easier pace when they saw that Hecht and Ghort had not yet shoved off.
"Seems like everybody knows where to find me, these days."
"You told Bechter?"
"I did."
Hecht did not recognize either rider. A handsome man with salt-and-pepper hair and beard dismounted. "Captain-General?"