Princeps: A Novel in the Imager Portfolio

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “This is the east side of the square … I think.” Vaelora looked around, then gestured. “It has to be. There’s the old southeast tower of the palace. All the rest of it … well … not quite.”

  Following her outstretched arm, at first, all Quaeryt could see was black stone and more black stone, out of which rose the one tower. Then he looked more intently before he made out a section of wall joining the tower, but the wall looked blackened. He frowned. It wasn’t blackened. The stones were black. He wanted to shake his head.

  Exactly from what did you think all the black stone buildings were constructed?

  “The tower stands out because the stone there is much older and something happened to it long ago. Grandmere told me that once when I was little, but I don’t remember exactly why that was.”

  Quaeryt dropped his eyes to what remained of the square, and looking more intently, some fifty yards away, he could make out the black stone corner and slate roof of a building not entirely covered by lava—except that he was only a few yards below the top of the uncovered roof. Slowly, he eased the mare forward, but the heat didn’t seem as intense as it had in other places in the city. Was that because the ash and lava had struck the palace and the square first and the later molten rock had flowed around them?

  He turned in the saddle. “Squad Leader, if you’d have the scouts and a few others, as you see fit, ride back to the others and then guide them here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Quaeryt then dismounted and handed the mare’s reins to Vaelora.

  “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  The first thing Quaeryt did was walk along the irregular edge of the lava, trying to gauge where it was the coolest and where it was the hottest. He did not quite touch the stone, but it didn’t radiate much heat … anywhere. So he went back to the mare and took his water bottle, filled with watered lager, out of its holder and uncorked it. He walked along the stone again, flicking water at the rugged black surface, but the liquid remained. Only then did he touch the stone. While it was warm, it was not uncomfortably so, but he had no doubt that beneath the hard surface, there were places where the stone was far, far hotter.

  He returned to where the hardened lava was the lowest and, taking the staff, pressed one iron-capped end against the top of the stone. The warm rock did not yield. So he jumped up, careful to concentrate on lifting his bad leg, so much so that he almost lost his balance before straightening on the rough surface, but the staff helped. He began to walk toward the lava-swathed building, one step at a time, testing the rock before him with the staff.

  While he could sense greater warmth as the rock thickened as he climbed up the rock until he reached the uncovered stone corner of the building and the slate roof above it, the increase in heat was not that great. He bent over and lowered his hand to just above the solidified lava. It was warmer than he’d thought, almost warm enough to cook on. His boots were thick enough that they protected his feet.

  He’d hoped that there would have been somewhere that they could have used picks to chip away the lava down to the ash, but especially given the heat of the lava under the crust, he could see that the easiest way to enter the building would be through the wall, and that might well be difficult with the limited tools they had brought.

  He turned and walked back across the warm stone, very carefully. He could see that edges in places were sharp enough to slice through clothing and flesh.

  Vaelora looked at him, raising her eyebrows.

  “I think we can get in, but it won’t be easy.”

  Before that long the rest of the company and the wagon and cart arrived, and Quaeryt accompanied several burly rankers with picks across the hardened lava to the exposed section of wall, choosing the lowest black building stone that was completely free of lava. If Jhalyt’s hand-drawn map was accurate, and he was reading it correctly, behind the stone was a narrow chamber that had held file chests.

  “We’ll have to use the picks to chip out the mortar.” He pointed to the first ranker and stepped back. “You start.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The ranker took aim and swung, but the pick hit stone, rather than mortar, and rebounded. With a second swing, the ranker hit the mortar, but again the pick bounced away, leaving only the smallest scratch.

  “Let me try,” said Quaeryt. “If you’d stand back.” He aimed the pick at the thin line of mortar and swung. Right as the pick struck he imaged away some of the mortar, leaving a deep line between the two stones.

  “How…?”

  After another swing, and removing more mortar, he handed the pick back to the ranker from whom he had taken it. “You try it now.”

  Bit by bit, Quaeryt watched and quietly imaged away mortar, trying to draw strength from somewhere, as the rankers, with his unnoticed help, cut away the support for one stone and then another, until, after almost a glass, two sagged perceptibly. It took another half glass before they could pull the two free, only to reveal charred wooden lathe.

  Quaeryt nodded. “Now the next two stones.”

  It was close to midday before enough stones had been removed for a man to climb through—assuming that the lathe didn’t front more stonework.

  “Bring up a sledge!” As Quaeryt waited for the sledge, he realized two things. He didn’t have a headache, and that the lava around where the men worked seemed noticeably cooler. Had his efforts to draw strength from elsewhere worked? They must have, but why? Was that why the lava was cooler?

  He frowned. When he’d done imaging in the cold rain during the battles with the hill holders, on at least one occasion he’d been pelted with ice when he’d seen rain all around himself. They must be connected. But how?

  He’d have to think about that. He turned his attention to the ranker with the sledge. With the first crack in the lathing, a slight puff of warm air pushed the dust outward, but subsequent blows didn’t bring more hot air, nor did the air seem sour.

  That suggested to Quaeryt that the air inside wasn’t too hot. You hope.

  While they were enlarging the hole, Quaeryt walked back to where Vaelora waited under the hazy sky and took several long swallows of watered ale.

  “Do you know where the strong room is?” she asked.

  “The clerk said that it’s in the middle of the lowest level—underground, I think. He said that only the princeps and the governor had the keys.”

  Another half glass passed before the sweating rankers had a hole big enough for men to enter. Quaeryt let one of them lead, bearing a small lantern, and then followed them over the charred remnants of file chests that had only partly filled the corner storage room. Quaeryt tried to open one of the chests, but the top gave way, and when he tried to extract a sheet, it crumbled under his fingers. The door to the corridor opened, if grudgingly against the ash in the corridor beyond that was ankle deep. The corridor walls that had likely once been white plaster above oak or goldenwood paneling were closer to a dark brown, and the wood was blackened and cracked. Still, the ash wasn’t that deep.

  Quaeryt’s feeling of optimism died abruptly when he reached the stairs down to the street level. Halfway down, the ash covered everything.

  “We’ll need to shovel this up. You can put it in the hall that goes that way. We’ll need to go back and get men and picks and shovels and buckets.”

  Quaeryt turned and retraced his steps and climbed back into the early afternoon that was probably almost chill at the post to the south of the city, but which felt almost muggy outside the governor’s building.

  Eleryt was waiting. “Sir?”

  “The upper hall is clear, but the stairs are partly filled with ash. I’ll need to have them cleared. They need to rotate. No more than two quints for each man at a time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Another glass passed before Eleryt reported to Quaeryt, who had spent the time drinking from his and Vaelora’s water bottles and eating hard biscuits to regain his strength—and just waiting.

 
; “Sir, there’s a door blocking the steps below, and it’s got a massive lock on it, sir.”

  “That might be good,” said Quaeryt. “It might have kept the ash from filling the lowest level. I’ll have to take a look. Oh … and bring one of the sledges.”

  “There’s one inside, sir.”

  “Good.”

  Quaeryt made his way inside once more, down the corridor and down the ash-cleared steps to the solid, ironbound door and the massive lock.

  “If I could have the sledge…”

  One of the rankers handed it to him.

  He’d already decided how to approach the situation. He took a solid swing at the lock, and as he expected, the sledge had no effect. He took another swing, moving so his body shielded the others’ view of the lock, and after the heavy sledge rebounded, he imaged out two chunks of steel from the bottom of the lock hasp, but the lock remained frozen. He took a third swing, and the lock separated, the bottom dropping onto the stone and ash.

  “I thought the heat might have made the lock more brittle. We were lucky in that.”

  “… tried that…” murmured someone.

  Quaeryt wasn’t surprised that they’d tried without telling him, but he just stepped forward and slid the hasp out of the iron loop and lifted and slid the strap free. Even so, the door had warped, and it took two men with pry bars to wedge it free of the jamb. The stairs below were apparently clear, but totally dark.

  “Who has the lantern?”

  “Here, sir.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Quaeryt followed the ranker down the steps. The strong room was in the middle of the building, to the left of the bottom of the stairs, with an iron door and another iron lock.

  Quaeryt shook his head. The sledge trick wouldn’t work again.

  “Sir?”

  He turned to the nearest ranker behind him. “Would you inquire of the Lady Vaelora if she might happen to have a key or a straight piece of metal small enough to fit into a lock? Not too small a lock.”

  Although a puzzled expression crossed the man’s face, he replied, “Yes, sir.”

  While he waited for the ranker to return Quaeryt studied the lock. The keyhole was smaller than that of the upper level doorlock, and the metalwork was finer, but the hasp was every bit as thick, as were the iron loop and strap that the lock secured.

  Before that long, the ranker returned, breathing heavily, and extended a brass key.

  “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure, sir.”

  Quaeryt turned to the lock. The key Vaelora had provided was far smaller than that required by the lock, but that mattered little, since he was counterfeiting picking the lock. While he manipulated the key, Quaeryt tried to image away the insides of the lock … and he found that far harder than imaging away the bits of iron from the lock on the upper door, so much so that when he finally managed to open the lock—gutted of all interior workings—his head throbbed and his eyes watered.

  Why now? You didn’t have that trouble before.

  He removed the lock and stepped back, then swung the door open—only to find a narrow vestibule with a second locked door.

  He couldn’t help but sigh. Then he took a deep breath. “We’ll have to see what we can do with this lock.”

  Before he tried any more imaging, he tried to think about what had been different about what he’d done with the second lock, as opposed to the first. Both had been made of iron, and he’d imaged away parts of each. But why was the second so much harder…? Because you’re farther away from all the heat of the cooling lava?

  Belatedly, he realized that up the stairs he’d reached out for the heat. Down on the lower level, he hadn’t.

  Will that work down here?

  He had to try.

  As he manipulated the key, he concentrated on reaching out to the heat of the lava. While the imaging was easier than in the case of the previous lock, it was still far harder than it had been with the first lock, and light flashes blurred his vision when he stepped back to let others open the door.

  … hope there’s not another lock …

  There wasn’t … not exactly. But there were five locked chests in the strong room and a much smaller unlocked casket. Quaeryt lifted the lid of the casket and found it half filled with silvers. He closed it quickly, but held on to it.

  “We’ll need to carry these up to the wagon and cart.” He offered a grin. “Be careful of them. Your pay’s likely to come from there.”

  The squad leader swallowed, and Quaeryt judged that he’d never been in the presence of so much coin.

  Eleryt was waiting outside the structure when Quaeryt emerged.

  “We got the strong room open. They’re bringing up the chests. They’re all locked. There are five of them, and they’re heavy. I took a quick look at the other rooms that weren’t filled with ash, but there’s nothing there but file chests and no sign of other valuables.” That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be some elsewhere in the building, but any looter will have to dig through a lot of ash on the main floor.

  The captain stiffened.

  “Call it payroll and supply duty, Captain,” Quaeryt said with an ironic smile. “We’ll need every coin in it for supplies and pay.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Quaeryt walked slowly toward Vaelora, who stood waiting in the limited shade offered by the single wagon. She held a water bottle.

  “Are you all right?” asked Vaelora. “You look like something the Namer dragged in.” She handed him the bottle.

  Quaeryt put it under one arm and handed her the casket. “Be careful. It’s filled with silvers. It didn’t have a lock. The five big chests did.” He took a long swallow of watered lager before replying. “It took some work to get into the strong room. I broke one lock with a sledge and picked the other two with the key you provided.” He pulled it from his jacket pocket and extended it to her. “It was very useful.”

  “Especially since it was designed for my jewelry chest in Solis.” The hint of a smile crossed her lips. “You’re still pale. You need to drink more.”

  “Yes, dear.” He wasn’t about to argue. His head still throbbed, and he could barely hold the light trigger shields.

  “You also need to eat.” A biscuit followed her words.

  “How many of those did you bring?” He took the offering and bit into it.

  “As many as I could pry out of the cook. I had the feeling you’d need them. I was right.”

  “You were indeed,” he mumbled through the biscuit crumbs. “Anyway, we did what we could. The chests might see us through for a while.”

  “For a while. It takes so much…” She shook her head. “You know as well as anyone.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  Two quints later, the chests had been secured in the wagon and cart, and the company prepared to head back to the post. After Vaelora and Quaeryt mounted, he glanced at the square opening in the wall of the governor’s building. In all likelihood, in time, the upper floor would be stripped, but not for a while, but with what was likely contained in the chests, given their weight, he didn’t want to leave any rankers behind.

  His eyes flicked to where the sun hung just over the jagged peaks nearly to the horizon on the far side of the vast valley that stretched westward from Extela almost as far as the eye could see—and where the most fertile lands lay.

  Even so, obtaining the governor’s treasury, hard as it had seemed, was likely to be far less difficult than getting enough food for the city, the post, and the regiment would be.

  “Dearest … what is it?” asked Vaelora as she eased the gelding forward and the column began the ride back southward to the post.

  “I was thinking that this was the easiest part. It doesn’t deal with people.”

  She nodded.

  23

  The company returned to the post just before sunset on Meredi … and without further incident—other than more of the poor begging for food. The chests were stored in the commander’s stron
g room. Quaeryt had reluctantly “unlocked” one to assure himself that it actually contained golds, and it did, more than five thousand at a quick estimation, although he and Jhalyt would have to count out the coin to the last copper before he could have the clerk set up the ledgers. He left the other four locked, since he had no keys to them and did not wish to break the locks and thus subject others to unnecessary temptation. The strong room was certainly not as secure as the governor’s had been, but far more accessible, reflected Quaeryt.

  By Jeudi morning, the remnants of his headache had vanished, especially after breakfast, when he met with Commander Zhrensyl in his study. No sooner had Quaeryt seated himself across the table desk from the commander than the older man asked, “And how might I help you?”

  “What happened to the Civic Patrol? There was one, wasn’t there?”

  “Yes, sir. Their headquarters was on the south side of the governor’s square.”

  Now under ash and lava. “What about the patrollers … or the patrol chief?”

  Zhrensyl shrugged. “The chief lived in the northwest. I imagine he’s among those no longer with us. There are probably patrollers around, but…”

  “You made no attempt to organize them?”

  “That’s not my responsibility, sir, and I didn’t have the men. When Commander Huosyt came, he couldn’t even find any patrollers”

  Quaeryt managed not to snap at the older man. After several other questions that established that Zhrensyl felt he had no responsibility beyond the post itself, Quaeryt decided not to frustrate himself further and asked, “What can you tell me about the High Holders to the west?”

  “Not so much as the governor could have, sir.”

  “Who purchases grain and food for the post?”

  Zhrensyl frowned momentarily, as if the change in questions puzzled him.

  Quaeryt waited.

  “That’d be Major Heireg, sir. He’s in charge of supply and the quartermasters.”

  “Then I’ll be talking to him after we finish here. Now…” Quaeryt paused, trying to conceal the fact that he wasn’t terribly impressed with the commander. “In your mind, who are the strongest and most powerful High Holders closest to Extela?”