by Glen Cook
A fresh chill made him shudder. He looked around. Spectators had begun to gather in the moonlight, at a distance. They twitched every time there was a pop inside the fortress. "Bechter. Break that crowd up before it gets tempted to turn into a mob."
"Yes, sir." Bechter grabbed several men who had nothing else to do.
Consent reported, "There's word, sir. They've got him. They're headed for the gate. We should think about going."
"Excellent. You men. Get that fire started." That would make it hard for the Duke's men to come to his rescue.
Bechter fell in beside Hecht as they left the city. "Sir, there was a man in that crowd back there that we've seen before."
"Uhm?"
"In Brothe. He's a little under average height, average frame, hair well trimmed. Beard likewise. No hair on the cheeks. Head and chin both brown, so he's probably not a native. Salted with gray. Gray eyes. Forty to fifty years old. He looks pretty much like Grade Drocker did at the same age. Make that like Drocker would've looked if he didn't get mutilated."
"Really?" He would have to consult Principate Delari about that.
He thought he had seen the man Bechter meant. Without noting any resemblance to Drocker. Whom he had not known unmutilated. He had had only a few glimpses of the sorcerer earlier. "Was he wearing brown?"
"Yes, sir. And every time I've noticed him it's been right after that creepy feeling came on."
"Worth remembering. Keep an eye out once we're back in Brothe. I'll see if I can't get the Collegium after him."
The Patriarch himself came out for Piper Hecht's report on the Clearenza operation, though the Captain-General never spoke to him directly. By the time the Collegium assembled Sublime had accepted Germa fon Dreasser's ransom and the Duke was headed home. The soldiers were not pleased. They had received no share of the ransom. There had been casualties, though just a few and only two of those fatalities.
Hecht told Anna, "I can't fathom this man's mind. He doesn't understand people at all. Next week he'll tell my men to go break up one of those riots. And he won't be able to figure out why they just stand around watching."
"It's getting scary here, Piper."
Her tone got his attention. "Yes?"
"It isn't just the riots. I don't feel safe outside anymore. I don't like the kids going out. Not since that man was killed. I always feel like somebody is watching me. Even stalking me. The kids feel it, too."
"I'll talk to Pella. He understands the streets better than you or I do."
Anna was not impressed. He needed to make a better showing. "There's an advantage to being the Captain-General of the Armies of the Faith."
"Other than being able to fling around an overweight title?"
"Yes. I can tell people to do things. And they do them. Even if they think it's crazy to hold exercises in a neighborhood like this. They'll do what I say because they're afraid they won't get paid."
"And what does all that mean?"
"That I can come around here and turn the whole neighborhood over. And claim it's business. I'd be hunting heretics."
Heretics were about to become big business. There was a lot of talk about heresy in the Collegium, mostly among Sublime's cronies. Preparing minds for what they hoped would come.
"Bring that idiot Morcant Farfog. Maybe the boogeyman will get him."
Hecht had not met Bishop Farfog. He knew little about the man other than that he headed the Patriarchal Office for the Suppression of Sacrilege and Heresy, with the title of Chief Inquestor. Rumor had the monasteries emptying out as monks signed up to help.
What little Hecht knew about Farfog suggested that he was more foul than Bishop Serifs of Antieux had been.
Why did Sublime favor such men?
"Clever work in Clearenza," Principate Delari told Hecht, joining him in the baths. Osa Stile smirked from behind the Principate.
"Thank you, sir. Lieutenant Consent deserves most of the credit."
"And you used his information to sculpt a plan. You made the decision to go."
"Uh…"
"You took a chance. It paid off. Most men would have dithered like Tormond IV, never confident enough to jump. We suffer from an absence of decisiveness. Everyone wants a sure thing."
"We sure got a surprise when we discovered those Braunsknechts." Though the Imperials had gotten a big surprise themselves.
Delari chuckled.
Herren and Vernal seemed a little starstruck this morning. And unusually friendly. "Stop that!" Hecht told Vernal.
Delari chuckled again. "Everybody loves a winner."
"There's a problem, sir."
"I don't like the sound of that. What?"
"I thought it was my imagination till Sergeant Bechter mentioned having the same problem."
The Principate listened. Hecht described the creepy feelings he sometimes got and that Bechter sometimes saw a particular man when that feeling got to him.
"I may have seen this man myself, once or twice. Bechter says he looks a lot like Grade Drocker a few years before his misfortune. Though shorter."
Delari frowned. Drocker's passing still pained him.
Hecht preferred to avoid the subject, too. Because Drocker's unhealing wounds, that claimed him eventually, had been his fault.
"Sir, I'm just reporting hearsay. I didn't know Grade Drocker before his misfortune."
"What happened to my son still troubles me, Piper. A lot. You can't imagine how much. But talking around the sides of it doesn't help. Say what you mean if you have something to say."
"Yes, sir. Though there isn't anything else to say, now."
"How is your Anna doing?"
"She's worried." Hecht explained.
"We haven't learned anything more from the man who was butchered. No one claimed his body. Other than the usual sailors and embassy people, there aren't many Pramans around. The dead man doesn't seem to have any local connections. If we had anyone capable, I'd try raising his shade."
"Sir!" That lurked at the edge of the blackest of sins imaginable.
Osa Stile looked shaken, too.
Might Hagid bin Nassim have known Osa Stile, back in Dreanger?
Possibly. Hagid's father might have been in on the planning. But had Osa seen the corpse?
"Only thinking out loud. Tell Anna not to worry. We'll arrange for her to feel more comfortable." The old man might have been decreeing a new law of nature.
Chip by chip, glacially, another face emerged from the facade of the doddering Principate Muniero Delari. Was this the real Eleventh Unknown? Hecht was certain, now, that
Muniero Delari was the heavyweight sorcerer far peoples believed members of the Collegium to be.
"Herren, stop that!"
"You don't like it, Captain-General?"
"I like it altogether too much. Stop it."
Osa Stile snickered. So did both girls. But Herren desisted.
Delari made a tiny gesture. Osa's amusement stopped instantly.
Osa might not be as much in control as he wanted.
"There are two worlds, Piper. This is particularly true in the Church," Principate Delari said. They were under the Chiaro Palace, overlooking the huge map. Hecht saw no obvious changes. "But it's true everywhere, every when. There's the raucous old world of everyday passion, pain, and corruption. The one where we come of age, basically. Then there's the world few touch but which most are sure exists. That's the world of secret powers and secret masters. The silent kingdom. The silent kingdom shapes the raucous world without revealing itself. Just as surely as do the Instrumentalities of the Night, though with more direction and purpose. The silent kingdom hides in the secret spaces between mankind and the Night."
Hecht asked, "This is a common belief amongst men of talent?"
Delari peered at him intently, sniffing after the thought behind the question.
"Some of us have a foot in the world between. Knowing about it only because we've been shown. Others, like our Special Office brethren, are too ideolo
gical to contribute."
"And get shown for no obvious reason? Because of the murky motives of those already inside?"
The curtain had been opened enough for one day. The Principate changed topic. "Has the girl spoken yet?"
"Uh.. Vali?"
"Yes."
"Not where any adult can hear. She talks to Pella. Occasionally. Sometimes Pella deigns to tell us what's on her mind. Mainly, she's worried about what's going to happen to her. You find out anything about her?"
"No. There is a Vali Dumaine but she's Countess of Bleus. The wife of the Count who got into it with Anne of Menand. They don't have children. She's twenty-nine. Rumor says evil sorcery keeps her from conceiving. It also says Anne means to buy the Archbishop of Salpeno with the Dumaine honors."
"She's giving everything away."
"She's a determined woman."
"With everything to gain. I see that."
Hecht could not understand how one harlot could become so influential.
Delari mused, "She must be quite something in private."
"Curious?"
"Intellectually. I'd like to meet her."
"Uhm. But you can't hazard even a guess about where my Vali fits?"
"Beyond stipulating that circumstantial evidence suggests that she does, no."
"But if the Brotherhood of War was interested… Sir! I just had an unpleasant thought. A connection I didn't see before."
"Yes?"
The old man reminded Hecht of the pensioner instructors at the Vibrant Spring School, waiting for him to state a conclusion he had had trouble reaching.
"Sir, the people holding Vali were conspiring with the Special Office. Who sent me to the House of the Ten Galleons in the first place."
"So you've just realized that they must know where the girl is?"
"I'm a little dim sometimes, sir. I'm a fighting soldier, remember."
"Can you take it another step? Or two?"
"Sir?"
"Have they decided that it's better for Vali to be with you, out of sight, safe from people whose loyalties are commercial? Did they set you up to spirit the girl out of Sonsa?"
"I couldn't guess, sir. My thinking tends to be more linear."
"I understand. It's one of your charms. Quite possibly the main reason that Bronte Doneto recommended you to his cousin. You're a sharp blade that looks like it can be used
with little danger of cutting both ways."
Hecht wished Gordimer the Lion believed that. "Maybe. But he also thinks he can manipulate me if he wants."
Delari grunted. "There's still another possibility, Piper. And it seems the most obvious and likely to me."
'Sir?"
'Did the girl just make up a story to win help getting out of an awful situation? Creating fictitious personal histories isn't exactly unheard of, Piper."
"Uh… I'll ask Pella about that."
"Good. Do. There's nothing new here. Just more of the same, worsening at a frightening rate. Will all the water in all the seas end up part of the ice? Will even Firaldia go under?"
Hecht thought Firaldia would drown in refugees first.
The great map did show that there would be no quick, direct confrontation over Clearenza. The passes to the heart of the Grail Empire were closed. A courier might make his way out of the continental heartland, but no armed force ould make the transit for months yet.
Hecht asked, "Do we know where Lothar and his sisters are?" Johannes Blackboots had preferred the Imperial cities of Firaldia, Plemenza in particular. He liked to stay close enough to tweak Sublime's nose when the mood took him.
"Hogwasser. In Lothar's case."
"Sir?"
"Sorry. Bad joke. Hochwasser. Means 'high water, literally, but generally translates as 'flood. The name goes back to antiquity. When it was called something else that meant the same thing."
Imperial times. Today it served as the headquarters for Hecht knew a little about Hochwasser because he claimed to have passed through during his journey south from Duarnenia. It was a military city, of sorts, and had been since old Imperial times. Today it served as the headquarters of the Grail Emperor's lifeguard, the Braunsknechts.
The concept of even that limited a standing force found little favor among the Imperial nobility. Anything that strengthened the Emperor necessarily weakened the noble class.
Delari said, "Lothar is at Hochwasser. Katrin is either there or at Grumbrag. There's some doubt about Helspeth." The Principal gestured at the grand map. "Don't let that lull you. If Lothar decides something needs doing he has people here who can make our lives miserable. Follow me."
Hecht did so, down to the main floor, passing monks and nuns engrossed in their work. One of the latter appeared to be extremely gravid.
Principate Delari approached a heavy wooden door. Ancient, bound in spell-wrought iron, it looked capable of withstanding assault from barbarian or Night. A shelf in the stone to its right bore several old-time brass lanterns of the sort once carried by Imperial night couriers. They even had an Imperial seal on the adjustable shutter that controlled the amount of light emitted. Delari chose one, checked its fuel level, lighted it from a candle at the end of the shelf. Tallow spills showed that a candle burned there all the time.
"Open the door, Piper."
The door was not locked, latched, or barred. Hecht pulled. It opened.
Cold, damp air greeted him. It smelled of raw sewage and very old death.
"The catacombs?"
"Exactly." Delari nodded. "They're real. Take a lantern yourself. Never come down here without one."
"I don't want to be down here at all. Not if half the stories are true."
"They aren't. But the reality can be worse. The light from these lanterns repels things of the Night."
Hecht sorted through the lanterns. They all seemed fully fueled. He took the heaviest on the theory that it would last the longest. He lighted it, tried to look ready. If go he must.
Delari chuckled. "Remember, down here, as in the world above, the worst monsters go on two legs and have mothers who love them."
Why would we want to be down here?"
"Sometimes a man needs to move around without being seen." That sounded too pat. "What about your mother?"
The Principate had moved into the tunnel, which was lined in stone set without mortar, using an Old Brothen technique. The question caught Hecht off guard. "Sir?"
"I was curious about your mother."
Hecht temporized, trying to recall anything he had told anyone about the woman. "I expect she'd agree with most mothers. Piper is a good boy. He didn't mean any harm. He couldn't possibly do anything bad. I didn't know her, though, sir. She died when I was quite young. Childbed fever."
"And your father?"
"He was a good Chaldarean. In Duarnenia that means he got to heaven early. I don't remember him at all. They say he came home just often enough to keep my mother pregnant."
Delari seemed amused. He did not pursue the subject. 'The catacombs here belong to us." He did not define "us."
"They're safe. Most of the time. There are wards. And watchers. Not much gets past. But you can't count on being safe. Always carry your own lantern."
The footing grew damper. The stone had been plastered at one time. The plaster had fallen into the muck underfoot.
The Principate said, "We're near the Teragi, but deeper down. We could visit the Castella or Krois. Or cross over to the north side, if we wanted. But that isn't something you need to know how to do yet."
Hecht muttered, "This is real silent kingdom country." He saw no evidence of life. No rats. No spiders. No vermin whatsoever.
"You're uncomfortable."
"I don't like tight places. Tight places underground are worse."
Delari chuckled.
Evidently he found everything humorous today.
Hecht asked, "Where are the vermin?"
"Cruel things roam down here. They don't care what they eat. Including you and me if they
could catch us."
"That's no help."
Delari chuckled yet again. "You're in the underworld now, Piper. Like in the old mythology."
"I'll keep an eye out for black rivers and blind boatmen."
"If he was down here for real he'd get knocked in the head and robbed of the passage money."
"You're so reassuring. Where are we going?"
"Nowhere in particular. I'm suffering from an inclination to share Collegium secrets." Delari turned left into a cross tunnel. That led to a huge chamber. The lanterns revealed no farther walls, only ranks of ancient colonnades marching off into the darkness. It looked like an abandoned cathedral at midnight. A cathedral abandoned for ages. Debris lay everywhere. The lantern light took on a blue-white hue. Everything appeared in shades of bluish gray. Dust was thick and cobwebs ubiquitous.
And there were bones. Bones great and small, everywhere. Ugly bones, some of them. Bones that Hecht did not find familiar. Perhaps bones not human. There was little odor of decay.
Delari said, "Flesh doesn't last long enough to putrefy down here."
Some larger bones had been broken, presumably to expose the marrow.
"Another silent kingdom."
"Not always. Though it is now. Bats sometimes establish colonies that don't last. Sometimes pagans celebrate demonic rituals. Which is an ironic twist. This is where the earliest Chaldareans got together to worship and to hide their dead. Now the demon worshipers use the far end, over there. And break into the crypts to get bodies to use in their wicked rites."
"Really? How do they do that?"
"Excuse me?"
"What do they do with the bodies? There was a story I heard when I was little. Overheard, actually, and only part of it, because I was supposed to be asleep. The storyteller claimed it came out of the Grand Marshes and every word was true. It was colorful. But he only got to the part where the three brothers who were the heroes were coming home with the mummies of some old-time sorcerers when I started sneezing. I got whipped and sent to bed and never did find out why they wanted the mummies in the first place."
Delari's frown was obvious, despite the lighting. "This was a story?"
"Up north we have traveling storytellers. Like jongleurs down here. Only they don't usually sing. And they don't tell love stories. They're really grim hero stories, mostly. They always claim the stories are true, but mostly you know better. This storyteller-I can't remember his name-was famous for scary stories. This one about stealing mummies sounded real."