by Cook, Glen
There were no flames over Gherig, now, but smoke continued to roll up.
It took Nassim a long time to collect his men and get them moving. They had been numbed by the collapse of Tel Moussa. Now they just wanted to mill around and waste time speculating.
They did not know that there had been a disaster at Gherig, too.
* * *
Az said, “General, I have a bad feeling.” He was staring at Gherig. False dawn was gathering behind him. Smoke obscured much of the western sky. “And it’s headed our way.”
“What?” Then, “That would be crazy. With all the rescue and salvage work they need to do? No.” He had considered a mass raid to hurt the crusaders one more time before he ran for Shamramdi.
“Crazy or not, General, they’re coming.”
Nassim felt it in the earth, now. Many horses were coming.
There would be no time to get away.
The Mountain slapped together a hasty plan, got his men into place barely in time.
The falcons he lined up across the road, in plain sight, with mounted men behind them. The falcons roared when the crusaders were close enough. Archers flung missiles in from both flanks, as did the horsemen from in front. Then Nassim led the latter in a charge. That struck but did not persist. Nassim drew back. His reloaded falcons spoke again. One, overcharged, exploded. Nassim then tried to repeat his charge but had no success. The enemy was too close in. The contest devolved into a melee.
The matter did not go well for the Mountain. The superior armor and training of the crusaders told. And all Nassim’s men ever wanted from the start was to get away to somewhere safe.
Nassim thought he would choke on the irony. Once the bodies were counted he would have dealt the foreigners their worst loss since the Battle of the Well of Days, but they would have won and he had lost Tel Moussa. And he was unable, even, to save himself to fight another day. For a number of crusaders got behind him and stole his chance to fly to Shamramdi.
His little knot of survivors, with two falcons, took the only remaining option.
They fled into the Idiam.
23. Antieux: The Widows
Socia shuffled in to join Bernardin and Brother Candle for the isolated breakfast that had become a morning custom. They would consider the demands of the coming day. Come evening they would share supper and assess the day just past.
Brother Candle liked the arrangement. It allowed him to temper the natural ferocity and impulsiveness of the others.
Escamerole bustled around, making sure there was tea and wine and breakfast ale. Socia slumped into her customary seat. The old man asked, “Out again last night?” He wished he could separate her from that crystal.
“No. Lumiere has the colic. I stayed up with him.”
“And you have the assizes today.”
She frowned his way.
“Only two cases,” Bernardin said. “One is Bishop LaVelle with the usual complaints.”
Socia forced a weary smile. “Thank the Good God for that.”
Brother Candle asked, “You didn’t go out? In any shape?”
“Master.” Socia jerked her head at Escamerole, delivering a basket of rolls so fresh they steamed.
Bernardin said, “I’m interested in the answer myself.”
The old man and Countess harkened to Bernardin’s tone. Socia said, “No. What’s happened?”
“The overnight watch reports include multiple sightings of a giant eagle.”
“It wasn’t me. I promise. I wish it was. I haven’t seen Kedle in ages. I don’t even know where she is anymore.”
“Deep in Arnhand, making a screaming nuisance of herself. So what could that have been last night?”
Socia and the old man shrugged. Brother Candle was troubled. “More attention from the Night.”
“No doubt,” Amberchelle said. “Why? I’ll find out what I can while you entertain the Bishop.” Then he snorted and reddened. “Sorry. Unintentional.” With apology wasted. Neither companion recognized the lower-class slang for male masturbation.
* * *
At the evening meal, Bernardin said, “I talked to everybody who saw the eagle. They did see it. Most didn’t know each other. They didn’t discuss it. Their descriptions were pretty much all the same and they all said that this bird was bigger than the one sometimes seen around the citadel. Several witnesses said its right wing tip was deformed.”
Brother Candle said, “I saw a mule today with a deformed right fore hoof. I’ve never seen a crippled horse or mule before.”
“An omen?” Socia asked.
Bernardin, smiling weakly, said, “No. A shape-changing Instrumentality with a deformed right hand.”
Brother Candle said, “That’s a wild leap.”
“I wasn’t serious. But … it could be. We’ve been up to our ears in strange stuff lately.”
“Scary,” Socia said. “But he’s right.”
“I don’t want him to be right. I’m supposed to have achieved Perfection. I can’t believe in…”
Bernardin said, “You know the saying, Master. All things are true inside the Night.”
While Socia said, “They’re minions of the Adversary.”
“Indeed. Are we become minions of minions?” He rolled back his left sleeve. The deadly tattoo had gained color. “It won’t pay off but I’ll see Radeus Pickleu again.”
“You never know,” Bernardin said. “You wouldn’t want to miss something because you didn’t think you’d find it. I’ll put out word to keep an eye out for critters with a deformed right front whatever.”
Socia shivered. “It’s cold.”
“It’s winter,” Brother Candle reminded her.
“I’m going to bed early. I’ll have Guillemette build me a nice fire, then I’ll get under the eiderdown and toast. And I’ll drown Lumiere if he keeps me up again.”
* * *
Socia did slide under her covers early and fell asleep instantly. She wakened around midnight, used the chamber pot, then could not get back to sleep. She could not stop worrying about Kedle.
The world had begun to call Kedle “The Widow.” She and Socia were, collectively, “Death’s Brides,” or “The Deathwives,” depending on the region.
Socia worried because Kedle was unacquainted with failure. Each success lured her on toward something bigger and bloodier. Her luck could not last.
Socia climbed out of bed, went to her window. It was cloudy out but not so much so that she did not catch glimpses of a brilliant moon.
Concealed in a chest close by was a packet of lightweight clothing kept for those nights when she could not resist the need to see Kedle. She could carry it easily in her other form.
She had to have something to wear on the far end. Kedle’s killers were troubled enough by the unexplained appearances of their Countess. Her roaming around naked would be too much.
Socia took the packet out and set it by, ready, before ordering herself not to make the flight. It would take six hours to reach Kedle’s last known location, then she would have to work out where the Widow was now. That might be another hundred miles. It would be tomorrow afternoon before she could catch up.
No. Not practical. This Deathwife had to stay home and do work that needed doing here.
To soar where the clouds lay in fluffed and silvery drifts below her would be wonderful, though.
That Instrumentality had given her a unique and marvelous gift. Had any other human being ever been so blessed?
She did not think so. Not outside the legendary beings of antiquity.
She suspected that flight was not a wonder to creatures of the Night.
Socia stripped to the raw, positioned her crystal. That she would not take. She would be right back. She opened the window, swinging its two panes outward, sideways. Winter wasted not one instant before tasting her bare skin.
Shivering, Socia changed, then launched herself. Her feathers held the heat generated by her exertions.
She flapped lazily, le
t the wind carry her to one side. She banked right, looked for an updraft. How marvelous! How liberating! She could forget a thousand cares as the things of the earth dwindled below. How she wished she could show this to Brother Candle. But he was down there in the darkness, trapped in flesh that could never be anything but an old man tangled in a restless, sweating dream of a delicious devil.
The moon jabbed rays through a gap in scooting clouds, sweeping Antieux with patches of racing light that rippled across the rooftops and the gullies of alleys and streets …
Socia’s heart leapt into her throat.
She was a thousand feet up. Between her and the rooftops below a vast eagle was rising.
The moonlight swept onward. In the instant the eagle’s eyes would be adjusting Socia tipped over into a strike dive.
She closed most of the separation before the eagle discovered her. It thrashed out of her way, evading attack. But a strike was never her intent. She continued her plunge. The eagle lost track.
Socia changed into a naked young woman as fast as she could. She dressed, clumsily, shaking badly.
She watched the eagle from the darkness behind her window as it searched for her.
She squealed when Guillemette asked, “Are you all right, Countess?”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you come in. What are you doing here?”
“I came to build up the fire. I do that every night. I’ve never found you awake before.” Nor with the window open, her curious glance said.
“I had a bad dream. Then I couldn’t get back to sleep.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Once Guillemette finished building the fire, she shut and latched the window. “Good night, ma’am.”
* * *
“She would have caught me if she’d walked in five minutes earlier,” Socia said.
Brother Candle nodded. “A cautionary event, then.”
“For sure. It was looking for me, Master.”
“You thought fast and did what you had to do. Another cautionary event.”
Socia scowled. “Always lessons. Always learning.”
“And when you don’t pay attention you end up suffering through the same lessons again.”
“Stuff all that. I want to know what the hell was chasing me.”
Brother Candle said, “I’ll visit Radeus Pickleu again.”
“As soon as you finish stuffing your face.”
Brother Candle told Bernardin, “You would think that, after all my years educating her, I would have drummed some manners into the girl.”
Socia chose her response from the vocabulary of a day laborer, and added, “I’m as civilized as the world lets me be.”
“Or, we could say, the world is as civilized as you let it be.”
Socia stared, glared, growled, “There’s no winning with you, is there?”
“There won’t be breaking even if you observe normalcy’s rules.”
* * *
Bernardin had a soldier trail Brother Candle. The protection proved unnecessary. The Perfect found Pickleu’s home by asking. The physician welcomed him as an honored guest. “Come in, Master. Come in.”
“I hope I’m not intruding…”
“Not today. No patients. Somebody might break an arm later. We all thank you deeply for speaking to the Champion. It’s been peaceful since. How may we honor you?”
Brother Candle vaguely recalled having heard Bernardin called Champion at some point. “I’ve got another mysterious Instrumentality to identify. I hope to have better luck with this one.”
“Yet here you are at last resort. I hope I’m more use this time.”
“Yes. Well. So. Last time here I was not entirely forthcoming. As you no doubt realized.”
“My feelings suffered no permanent damage. It must be hard to trust the discretion of a man who never stops talking.”
“Indeed. I’ll be more honest this time.”
“Something has happened.”
“Yes indeed. Something entirely unexpected. The Countess may be in danger from this Instrumentality.”
Pickleu frowned, pursed his lips, made a little sweeping, bouncing hand gesture. “And this is a different one?”
“For certain.”
“All right. You have my word. Short of torture no one will hear any of this from me. But let me make sure the wife and the boy don’t hear something they should not.”
Pickleu gone, Brother Candle considered the small room. It was perfectly comfortable and reflected Pickleu’s personality. It was busy and cluttered.
Pickleu returned with two pieces of Firaldian glassware, probably blown in Clearenza, simple cylinders in glass of mixed colors. “Rhaita was just making lemon water. She’ll do her marketing while we talk. The boy is out working somewhere. So say on.”
Brother Candle provided a more detailed report on the visit from the girl, to which a dreamy-eyed Pickleu said, “I wish she would come see me. So. She blessed you with deadly tattoos. And put strange fish into Amberchelle’s flesh.”
“Yes.”
“What do they do?”
“We have no idea.”
“And the Countess? It stands to reason the demon’s gift to her stands behind this visit.”
“In a way.” Brother Candle explained the power of the crystal and Socia’s use of it.
“Ah,” Pickleu said. “I do believe I’d like that even more than seeing my little friend learn to stand up all over again.”
Brother Candle had not withheld the fact that his own little friend retained its renewed vigor—when he thought about the demon girl.
“A marvelous gift,” Pickleu said. “The crystal.”
“You said before that you might have heard of something like it.”
“I was wrong. I don’t know of anything that bestows the ability to change shape. The Countess hasn’t shown much imagination using it, has she? She’s treating it like a toy.”
Brother Candle nodded.
“I understand that she is an impulsive sort. That she still has little feel for the weight of station that came with her marriage.”
“She is trying.”
“So. What has you so excited? A new Instrumentality in the mix?”
Brother Candle related the facts as they had been given to him.
“She was chased by an eagle several times her own size.”
“With a deformed wing.” The Perfect was sure that was important.
“Right wing tip. Yes. Uhm. Not many Instrumentalities are known for their deformities. Some pantheons have a smith figure with a bad leg. Said to harken to a time when a tribe’s smith was so important its people broke his leg, then let it knit badly, so he couldn’t run away. The Devedian experience makes me suspect that those smiths were outsider slaves. Otherwise, most gods and goddesses resemble your visitor. Young and ferociously beautiful. Or middle-aged and endlessly randy.”
Brother Candle sighed. He sipped lemon water. Pickleu’s spouse had garnished that with a touch of honey.
Pickleu said, “The northern pantheon has several handicapped gods. A Beyish, Bayish, Boyish, something like that, was blind because of a cruel practical joke. Zaw, or Zer, the god of war, was missing a hand that got bitten off by a monster. Which he killed with the mystic spear, Heartsplitter, using his off hand. And the top god only had one eye. Sacrifice was big with the Shining Ones. He traded the eye for…”
“Which hand?”
Pickleu shrugged. “I don’t know. Right hand sounds logical, doesn’t it?”
“It does. Is that the extent of it, then?”
“My expertise is entirely relative. As you should know by now.”
“And you know no better source?”
“Certainly. But I don’t think you can tap it.”
“That would be?”
“The Collegium. In Brothe. Several Principatés are as conversant with the old religions as they are with their own.”
“I see. So, once again I return to the Countess no wiser.”
“Here�
��s a thought. Have her fly to Brothe and take the shape of a member of the Collegium. She could ask those who have access to the right information.”
* * *
“Take someone’s else’s shape?” Socia asked. “He actually suggested that?”
“He did. And he was dead serious.”
“Can I do that?”
“I don’t know. I never thought of it.”
“Nor did I,” Bernardin said. “I expect on account of the old stories. Shape-shifters turn into animals. Especially wolves. Not into other people. An evil sorcerer who wants to disguise himself as somebody else always uses a glamour.”
“A glamour would be easier for your garden-variety sorcerer. He’d only need to make somebody think he sees who he wants them to see. In real life you would need to mimic mannerisms and speech patterns.”
“I get it,” Socia said. “And, suddenly, I realize that we haven’t put any serious thought into what we’ve been given. Or to what she thought we should do with it.”
Brother Candle chuckled darkly. “So the next stage in my life is, I become a sixty-nine-year-old professional assassin.”
Bernardin cocked his head. “Something is going on. I’ll be back as soon as I find out.”
Socia and the Perfect exchanged looks. The old man said, “I didn’t hear anything.”
“Nor did I.”
Neither mentioned it but both had noticed. Bernardin was growing brighter and more alert, quicker, and sharper in his senses. And Brother Candle felt younger. Not a day over sixty-one.
* * *
Bernardin returned accompanied by an exhausted, filthy soldier no more than sixteen years old. “And here she is herself, lad. Tell her what you told me.”
The boy tried to make his obeisance. Brother Candle feared he would collapse and be unable to get back up. Socia said, “Never mind all that foolishness. Talk to me, Aaron d’Fitac.”
The boy glowed. His Countess knew him. “I ride with the Widow. We were in a big fight. The biggest yet, near the ruins of old Vetercus. We were up against Anne of Menand’s best.”
Brother Candle’s spirit sank. The way the boy approached his story hinted that Kedle had found the end of her string.
“And?” Socia croaked.
“We killed most of them. The Widow told us to take no prisoners because it might be the fight that broke them. We took none amongst the nobles and knights.”