by Cory Herndon
“I doubt they have the mental capacity to succeed in such a job,” Melisk said. “They are just as likely to kill the goblin we send them to save.”
“What about the Gruul?” Teysa said. “Maybe we can negotiate there.”
“That is possible,” Melisk said. “There is a leader, one whose name has reached my ears over the last day, called Aun Yom. He is something of a rebel and is likely the one who raided our caravan and … killed Uncle.”
“Killed—No,” Teysa said. “We’ll find another way. Bring Pivlic up here and we’ll see about—”
There was a light knock on another door, the one that led to the hall connecting her to the rest of Pivlic’s place. Melisk strode to the door and slid aside the lookout panel. He pulled back as a wrinkled, leathery, black face filled the empty space with a toothy grin.
“My la—Baroness!” Pivlic said over Melisk’s shoulder. “You must let me in. I have urgent news!”
“Let him in, Melisk,” Teysa said, wishing she’d gotten around to cleaning up the soup. She unfurled a silk napkin and laid it over the bowl, then positioned herself on the other side of the table, standing as steadily as she could.
Melisk opened the door to reveal not just the imp, flapping impatiently in the air, but the old man Pivlic employed as his chief of security. Teysa had only seen him once, two nights ago, but she didn’t trust the way the fellow scanned the room in an instant. He was entirely too attentive. Probably a former wojek. He had the bearing of a real lawman—not one of those useless Haazda.
“Well?” Teysa said. “Are you coming in?”
“Yes,” the imp said. He prodded the old human, whose dark brown skin was nearly as wrinkled as Pivlic’s, to step forward, which the security chief did with obvious reluctance. “Go on, Kos. Tell her what you saw.”
“Kos?” Teysa asked, now alert. “Agrus Kos?”
The old man heaved a sigh when she repeated his name. “Yes,” he said, eyes still turned down to his feet like a truant schoolboy. “The very same.”
“My uncle told me he saw you arrest a mythical vampire, Kos,” Teysa said. “Is it true?”
“Your Uncle? I—Yes, I suppose it’s true,” Kos replied. “Except the ‘mythical’ part. That vampire was real.” He finally looked up to meet her eye to eye, and Teysa was struck by the depth of those eyes. Kos himself was an old man, but whatever he’d seen over the course of his life had rendered his eyes positively ancient. “It’s not something I like to talk about, Baroness.”
“Nor is it the reason you’re here, I’m sure,” Teysa said as Pivlic hopped impatiently from foot to foot. “What, pray tell, is?”
“There’s some trouble in the Husk,” Kos said. “I think the Gruul took a prisoner from your caravan. Is anyone missing?”
Teysa shot Melisk a glance. The attendant’s eyebrow arched, but otherwise he didn’t respond.
“As a matter of fact, Agrus Kos, there is someone missing,” Teysa said. “Tell me more.”
The Utvara Flats are not to be traveled lightly. The Husk is not to be traveled at all, but if you do for Krokt’s sake stick to the roads.
—M. Pivlichinos, Utvara: A Visitor’s Guide (10004 Z.C.)
2 CIZARM 10012 Z.C.
Deep beneath the towers of the Orzhov mansion district, the Obzedat was in conference. The Obzedat was always in conference, but today they conferred with vigor and argument.
“This had better work.”
“It will work.”
“You are on probation. If you fail in this, you will die.”
“I already died.”
“For good this time. We did not make this pact without trepidation, and you were trusted—”
“And that trust, my friends, had not been misplaced. You wanted a secret pact. It is secret. Our hot-tempered ally is content that things are going as they should. My niece is more than capable enough to manage, and she won’t get in the way when the agreement is fulfilled.”
“Her mind is not her own.”
“Untrue. She just doesn’t know what she doesn’t need to know.”
“The repercussions will extend to your entire family if we default on this agreement. The dragon drives a hard bargain, even with us.”
“I know. But think of the rewards that will extend to my family—all our families—when we succeed.”
“We will wait and see.”
“That’s all I ask.”
* * * * *
“Well I certainly feel ridiculous,” Pivlic said. “This is no job for a successful and prominent merchant.”
“Hard for me to say at the moment, but I imagine you do look ridiculous,” Kos said. He gripped the reins of the hearty Utvaran dromad and gave the beast a mild kick to the flanks that brought it from a walk to a trot. Its hooves clopped along against the hard stone ground, and it snorted now and again. The dromad’s thick legs couldn’t possibly be getting tired yet, but he didn’t want to push it too hard. He scratched the dromad on the back of the neck, ruffling its bushy mane. “And I don’t know why it had to be the two of us either.” This was not entirely true, nor was it entirely true that Kos had to be coerced. Odds were, if Teysa Karlov had not sent them on this journey, he would have attempted it himself. He had the sneaking suspicion that the new baroness meant the Gruul harm, and while Kos was no longer the idealist he once was, he could not bring himself to allow a slaughter to happen that he could prevent. If they could retrieve the messenger themselves, the Gruul might be allowed to go about their lives. His conscience, what remained of it, demanded that he try.
“Oh, I know why, but I don’t have to like it. You haven’t been an Orzhov long enough, my friend. When the baroness asks, we go. It wasn’t like she was allowing me to open my doors anyway. Ow!” Pivlic said, and Kos felt him try to shift in the saddle without letting go of the old wojek’s waist but with no luck. “Must we go so fast?”
“I’m not an Orzhov. Why does everyone keep saying that I am? Besides, we’re barely moving,” Kos said, scanning the thoroughfare for the road that branched off into the flats, then up into the Husk in the direction of Trijiro’s camp. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
“You work for me, you’re Orzhov enough,” Pivlic said. He sighed. “I should be flying.”
“You’re the one who wanted the full suit,” Kos said. “At least you were able to have a new one made. Mine still smells like wet prospector. I think the former owner might have died in here.”
“If this is leading to a request for a raise—”
“Pivlic, for this, I’m getting a raise, and you’re setting me up with a real pension.”
“Ridiculous!” the imp said. “You already get paid most fairly, my friend, and—”
“Had you going there for a second, didn’t I?” Kos said. “Let’s say a bonus then.”
“For what?” Pivlic objected. “You are my employee!”
“I don’t know that riding into the Husk dromaback, with you for company, qualifies as keeping the Imp Wing secure,” Kos said.
“Actually,” the imp said, and there was a flash as he summoned Kos’s employment contract, now more than twelve years old. “You are not only responsible for the Imp Wing but for my own personal safety.”
“What?” Kos said and considered bringing the dromad to a halt. The beast was beginning to build up steam, muscles tense beneath the crusts of antigen fungus embedded in its hide, its thick, heavy tail now sticking straight out. He’d bought the beast from the Utvar Gruul, who were the main source of dromads, as the valley-raised dromads came with their own antigen fungus. “Where does it say that?”
“You should look more closely at what you sign,” Pivlic said. “But fear not. I have not abused your services before, I’m sure even you would agree, and I will personally see to it that you get a bonus. It may take a while for the paperwork to go through, you understand.” There was another flash and the contract vanished from the corner of Kos’s eye.
After a few moments of sil
ence, the gregarious imp could not help but resume the conversation. “Well, this is not how I expected to spend today.”
“I can’t believe either one of us is out here,” Kos said. “I must be out of my mind.”
“Admit it, you are bored,” Pivlic said. “I, on the other hand, am beholden to a higher power.”
“That girl?”
“That ‘girl’ has more power in her little finger—real power, power over beings that has nothing to do with magic—than I ever will have,” Pivlic said, “by right of her birth and of course by her position. She has the blood.”
“Orzhov blood?” Kos said. “Explains that leg of hers.”
“Yes,” Pivlic said. “But I would not recommend asking her about it.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Kos said.
The thoroughfare began to slope downward as they rode past the Vitar Yescu, around the cluster of stalls and huts that made up the bazaar, and out of the township proper. They veered east on the path to skirt the Cauldron, there was no need to draw any more attention to themselves. An old man and an imp, both armed with swords and fully loaded bam-sticks across their backs, did not make the most likely prospectors in any case. To go near the Cauldron was such unprospectorlike behavior that they’d be immediately spotted. Kos wasn’t sure that was such a bad thing at first—weren’t they helping the magelord out here?—until Pivlic reminded him that it was very unlikely the guard weirds, patrol drake, and heavily armored defenders that ringed the power station would think to check with Zomaj Hauc before taking out a couple of foolish trespassers. To reach their destination, the stretch of Husk known as the Huskvold, they’d first have to cross through the flats and past several different mining claims.
The dromad was strong and sturdy and seemed to take to the pair of strange riders easily enough. Kos was no riding expert, but in his twelve years in Utvara—and during the brief period of his wojek tenure that the Tenth had experimented with mounted dromaback patrols—he’d picked up enough to be capable, and he hoped the dromad sensed that. But capable rider or not, prospectors tended to get defensive when people got too close to their claims. The flats were a treasure trove waiting to be uncovered, but those who found specific access points under the surface guarded them as jealously as the Izzet protected their Cauldron. To say nothing of the Husk, which was almost as dangerous as the Gruul who inhabited it—filled with rusty, jagged sinkholes; chunks of towering metal that could topple in a strong wind; hideous subterranean monsters; and of course the kuga plague.
“What about them?” Kos asked, jerking a thumb over one shoulder at the pair of thrulls that bounded along a few paces behind them on Kos’s right side. “Why are they here?”
“The Grugg brothers are the Baroness’s personal servants, bodyguards, and all-around lackeys,” Pivlic said.
“Yes, but why are they here?” Kos said. “We can handle this.”
“That’s brave of you to say, my friend, but I for one admit I don’t mind their tagging along. And don’t worry about them—thrulls can survive more than you’d think. The baroness told me that this one here, Bephel, had his head blown off by a Gruul bamshot. Now look at him.”
Kos did look at Bephel, straining his neck to do so. Bephel was the one with the arrowhead skull and the viashinolike body, and he was indeed none the worse for wear. The other, Elbeph, was something like an ape crossed with a frog, hopping along on long arms and splayed hands while his dexterous feet picked at the teeth in his wide mouth.
“Just so long as they don’t draw too much attention,” Kos said. “Are they linked to the baroness somehow? Are they telepathic?”
“That I cannot say,” Pivlic said.
“Cannot say or don’t know?” Kos asked.
“I suspect there is something like what you describe, but the secrets of thrull control are not ones handed out, willy-nilly, to just any old faithful Orzhov servant,” Pivlic said. His face, however, said, Of course she can hear us. That’s why they’re here.
“All right,” Kos said. “Just wanted to know where we stand. Or ride, as the case may be.”
They made it past the first few mining claims without major incident—fortunately there was enough open space between them that they didn’t draw attention. After an hour of riding through the flats, however, the path grew narrower. Here, portions of the old surface had buckled, from heat or perhaps due to pressure released from the depths of the buried undercity. These ripples forced them to follow a trail that passed by a large mining operation guarded by a pair of ogre mercenaries in bulky miners’ suits and several helmeted and armored swords-for-hire who probably didn’t answer to any one guild. The mining rig itself was a contraption made from Izzet arcanery and Simic biomanalogical know-how, a half-living thing that aided the prospectors exploring the depths and also brought found loot and raw materials to the surface. The rig resembled a gigantic metal mosquito. The storage hut next to it reminded Kos of a giant egg sac.
As they drew closer, one of the ogres raised a halberd and roared.
“Intruder on the trail!”
Dromads were not known for their ability or willingness to walk backward. With the rough, rocky folds of the flats rising on either side of them, they had nowhere to go but forward. “Hold on, Pivlic. Gruggs! Follow us, and do not attack these miners! We’re only trying to get past them!”
The prospectors were only doing what prospectors did. There was no reason to harm them, and Kos didn’t intend to let anyone harm them on his behalf either. He would defend himself if necessary, but talking was not likely to help matters, and a direct attack would be both unprovoked and extremely foolish. They had to get through and get through fast, with a minimum of violence.
Kos kicked the dromad in the flanks and charged.
* * * * *
“Melisk?” Teysa said. “Do you believe those two can find Hauc’s messenger?”
“Surely,” the attendant said. “I consulted the sources, and made offerings and prayers. It was the right call. How could it be any other way, Baroness?”
“Don’t patronize me, Melisk. We’re far beyond that,” Teysa said. “I wasn’t asking for oracular pronouncements, just some advice.”
“In that case, may I be honest?”
“Please do,” Teysa said. “I’m not Uncle.”
“We have few resources, and those two strike me as capable, at least the imp, and he vouches for the human as well. And you know, he did save the plane from Szadek’s return, or so it’s been said.”
“He’s so old, Melisk,” Teysa said. “He looked like he might drop dead before they even get to the Husk.”
“And the Grugg brothers are with them,” Melisk said. “If Pivlic and Kos fail, there’s always the more direct approach.”
Teysa pinched her forehead between her thumb and finger, belying just a fraction of the stress she felt herself under. The Cauldron had to be up and running soon, very soon, or there would never be enough infrastructure in place to declare Utvara independent within a year. That power, energy, water—all of it was necessary. And either the Selesnyan tree would finish the plague—and she had her doubts about that—or Dr. Nebun would come up with something. Surely it would work.
If only she could get rid of this headache. She sifted through the sheaves of parchment on her desk and decided sitting here waiting for news was probably not going to do her headache, or anything else, any good. Maybe she should check in with the doctor, too, as well as those who had spurned her summons.
“Melisk,” she said, “summon Phleeb from his guard post and seal up the mirror room. We’re going for a stroll.”
“A stroll?” Melisk said.
“Yes,” Teysa said. “It’s time I got to know a few more of the locals.”
“Certainly,” Melisk said, but a touch of annoyance crept into his voice. That annoyance was nothing compared to what flared in Teysa at that moment. She’d been dragged from her practice to this place, and she intended to make her fortune here. She’d go
tten over that. She would use her taj assassins, held in reserve until now, to wipe out these Gruul once Hauc’s courier turned up. To do otherwise risked the almost certain death of that messenger. The taj were thorough. And soon Hauc’s Cauldron would bring in enough power to make Utvara into a city. But she’d also been in close quarters with the attendant for weeks on end, first on the lokopede, now here. And for reasons she couldn’t quite place, she wanted to be out from under his steely gaze for a few hours. Maybe she just needed a break, but there was something in those black eyes that gave her pause, ever so briefly.
“On second thought,” Teysa said, “I’d appreciate it if you could organize this paperwork for me, and while you’re at it, have Phleeb poke through Pivlic’s stores and prepare something decent for us to eat tonight.”
“But Baroness—alone? Without even a guardian?”
“Yes, alone,” Teysa said. “I am the baroness here, yes? You have an objection?”
“No, but—” Melisk’s face again became an impassive mask. “Very well, Baroness. I would urge you to at least take the thrull.”
“No, no thrulls,” Teysa said. “I’m never going to get this place into shape if I’m never seen. People need to see that I’m involved and, more importantly, that I’m not relying on someone—you or the thrulls or anyone—to enforce my will. It will keep them honest, if nothing else. And if you demand any more explanation from me, I will begin looking for a new attendant.”
“That will not be necessary,” Melisk said. “But please, use caution. Your condition—”
Teysa’s headache flared briefly on the word “condition,” but she fought it away from her face. “It’s a town of what, three, four thousand people at the most? And three quarters of them are out there taking treasure from my property. I’m sure I’ll be fine. When you’re through with the paperwork, you can begin plans for assessing our cuts—with interest and back payments—on all that loot they’re finding on the flats.”
“When should we expect your return?”