by David Weber
“You said you were told Madam Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband were dead, Sir. That means it was the official position of our diplomats when your diplomats asked about it. There’s only one person out here who’d have the authority to order someone in an official negotiating position to lie about that…and only a complete idiot would lie about it without mul Gurthak’s signing off on it.”
“And it has a sort of shakira stink about it, too,” Fifty Maisyl said, his expression grim. “I’m not related to any Mythalans by blood or marriage, but I don’t have to be to know how frigging arrogant and manipulative they are. Their magisters and magistrons are the most egotistical and condescending bastards in the multiverse, and like Cothar says, anybody who isn’t shakira himself is dirt as far as they’re concerned. Hells, their Book of the Shakira says that in so many words! And it also teaches them that no shakira is under any obligation to deal honestly or honorably with any non-shakira. Anyone outside their own caste is their mortal enemy—potentially, at least—so it’s actually their duty to lie if that helps the shakira, individually or as a group, with their ‘soul growth.’ Most of the shakira I’ve run into really believe that, too.”
“They’re not all that way,” Cothar objected in the voice of a man making himself be fair. “Magister Halythan wasn’t!”
“No,” Maisyl agreed. “But that was the reason so many people loved him so much—because he wasn’t like the rest of the shakira. Because he was one of the most powerful magisters Mythal ever produced, one of the highest of all the shakira, and he’d turned his back on them and walked away from them!”
“I take it these ‘shakira’ aren’t universally beloved?” Velvelig asked dryly.
“No one but a fool trusts a shakira behind him, Sir,” Ulthar said. “By the same token, though, I’ve tried to bear in mind that just because a group of people has a particular reputation, that doesn’t mean everyone who belongs to it deserves the same reputation.”
“That’s very commendable, Fifty,” Velvelig said, “but in this case, it could be a fast way to get you and your friends killed. I don’t know anything about your shakira, but I grew up next door to the Uromathian Empire. Any septman who takes a Uromathian’s word for anything is too stupid to come in out of the snow. Besides, if this mul Gurthak’s the senior officer for this cluster fuck your people’ve produced out here, then I think you’re right that he has to’ve approved the way it’s being conducted. And even if he didn’t do that, if he’s as unscrupulous as you seem to be suggesting, he’s not going to let anything his subordinates might have done splash on him. At the very least, he’ll do his damnedest to sweep any unpleasant little revelations under the rug, and the easiest way for him to do that would be to sweep you under right with them.”
“That may be so, Sir, but we’ve got to find someone we can trust,” Ulthar said, his expression grim. “It takes seven weeks to get a message from here to New Andara. That means my message to my wife won’t get there for another nineteen days. After that, it’d take another six weeks for any message from Duke Garth Showma to come back as far as Mahritha. And that’s for hummers—it’ll take twice that long for him or the Commandery to send an actual investigating team clear out here.”
“I see.”
Velvelig looked at Company-Captain Silkash and Master-Armsman Karuk, and his expression was at least as grim as Ulthar’s. They weren’t accustomed to thinking in communication delays that long, but the Arcanans didn’t have Voices. If Ulthar and the others were right to suspect this mul Gurthak was behind all this, giving him the next best thing to five months to tidy up any inconvenient witnesses before he had to face an inquiry would be a very bad idea.
“All right,” he said after a moment. “I realize I’m not in your chain of command and that I’m an enemy officer, but I think you boys are in a hell of the mess, and my boys are in it right with you. Mind you, if you hadn’t done what you’ve done, I’m pretty sure all my officers and men would’ve been ‘disappeared’ sooner or later by either your Two Thousand Harshu or mul Gurthak, so don’t think I’m ungrateful. But the fact remains that we’re in the same quicksand and sinking fast, so do you want my advice?”
“Yes, Sir,” Ulthar made himself say firmly. Rather more firmly than he actually felt, to be honest.
“All right,” Velvelig said again, and there might have been just a hint of a twinkle in those hard, dark eyes of his. “I don’t think you’re going to like some of it, but as I see it, if you fall back into the hands of Harshu or mul Gurthak before this Duke of yours can get some sort of investigation moving out here—an investigation with teeth and muscle—you’re dead.” He shrugged. “The truth is, you are mutineers, and you and your men did kill other members of your own Army. I know why you did it, and from what you’ve been saying, Duke Garth Showma would not only understand but probably approve. But with five or six months to work on it, the people responsible for this’ll have plenty of time to make sure you’re all neatly dead and buried by the time his investigators arrive, and there’ll be plenty of testimony—most of it honest testimony—to justify the court-martial’s sentence. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes, Sir,” Ulthar said quietly. “We’d hoped we could confine Thalmayr to his quarters and keep up the appearance that he was still in command until we’d at least had time to get our message to Five Hundred Klian. Now, though…”
He shrugged, and Velvelig nodded, forbearing to mention just how unlikely they’d been to get away with anything of the sort even if Thalmayr and the missing Senior Sword Kalcyr hadn’t stolen unicorns and disappeared into the night.
“We can always hope Thalmayr and the other two will never be heard from again,” he said instead. “Frankly, if they’re headed for your field army and they didn’t have time to grab supplies, that could damned well happen—it’s cold out there at night, and crossing Failcham without enough water could kill just about anyone—but I’m going to assume your light cavalry’s as good as ours. That means Kalcyr can probably keep them alive, and despite your damned dragons, I’m willing to bet there are posts along the way where Thalmayr can resupply and get medical care. And that means his version of what happened’s going to reach Two Thousand Harshu. I don’t think that’s going to make Harshu very happy, do you?”
Ulthar shook his head, and Velvelig smiled faintly.
“So you’re caught between Vaylar and Sankhar—I mean, you’re damned whichever way you jump. Maybe—maybe—Duke Garth Showma will eventually figure out what happened and see to it that whoever’s responsible pays for it, but you won’t be around to see it. I wouldn’t like that after the risk you’ve run for my people. And what I wouldn’t like even more, frankly, would be that my people and I would have to be swept under the rug right along with you. As I see it, that means we’re in this together. I mean really together.”
“What are you suggesting, Sir?” Ulthar asked, but his tone said he already suspected where Velvelig was headed.
“I’m suggesting that in the interests of survival, and of possibly getting the truth into the hands of someone who can actually do something to stop this insanity, your men and mine have to work together. We have to combine forces and abilities—Talents and Gifts—and figure out how less than two hundred men can avoid being run down and captured by your entire Army.”
“And how do we do that?” Ulthar’s voice was edged with bitterness, and Velvelig shrugged.
“I’m an Arpathian, and most of the boys I’ve got left are veterans. We’re used to wilderness and staying alive in it, and I’d bet you ‘Andaran Scouts’ are pretty damned good at that yourselves. I say we integrate our people—I mean really integrate, Fifty Ulthar, into one force—and head for the bush. Go ahead and send your message to Five Hundred Klian. Tell him what you’re doing and why and ask him to send his report up-chain to your Duke, as well. But after you’ve done that, your duty—your duty to your Army, if what you think is happening really is, and certainly to your own men—is to
stay alive until the Duke can organize some action in response. The only way you’re going to do that is to be someplace Harshu and mul Gurthak can’t find you.”
“You mean here in Thermyn,” Ulthar said.
“There are places in the Sky Bloods where two hundred men could hide from two hundred thousand men,” Velvelig said.
“But can they hide from aerial reconnaissance?” Sarma asked. The regiment-captain looked at him, and it was the fifty’s turn to shrug. “Don’t forget we have dragons, Sir. For that matter, we’ve got recon gryphons. They can search a lot of area in a very short time.”
“They wouldn’t even have to do that,” Maisyl pointed out. “All they’d have to do is trigger the recovery spells.”
“‘Recovery spells’?” Velvelig repeated, and the magistron nodded unhappily. None of the other Arcanans looked particularly happy either, the Sharonian noticed.
“Every Arcanan soldier is tagged with a recovery spell when he enlists, Sir,” Maisyl said. “It’s intended to help us locate the wounded after a battle…or to recover the dead, anyway. I’m only a journeyman myself, but I could trigger any recovery spell within forty or fifty miles, and my PC would tell me exactly where I had to go to find it after I did. A full magistron like Five Hundred Vaynair, Two Thousand Harshu’s senior healer, could probably trigger recovery spells over as much as two or three hundred miles.”
Velvelig didn’t pretend even to himself that he understood how the process Maisyl had described worked, but he didn’t need to. It was enough to understand that the Arcanans around him literally couldn’t hide from their superiors.
“Isn’t there anything that could block or cut off those spells?” he asked.
“Nothing we’ve ever found.” Maisyl shrugged. “They’re designed to find helpless or unconscious men under the worst possible circumstances, Sir, and they do a damned good job of it.”
“Wonderful,” Master-Armsman Karuk muttered. Maisyl looked at him, and the graying Arpathian noncom grimaced. “There’s been plenty of times I’d’ve loved to have something like that, Master Maisyl. This isn’t one of them.”
“No, it isn’t,” Ulthar agreed. “And I hate to admit it, but it’s not something Jaralt and I thought about when we were having the brainstorm that led up to this.”
“Wait,” Sarma said. The others looked at him, and he held up one hand in a “give-me-time-to-think” gesture, his eyes unfocused in thought. Then he shook himself and looked at Maisyl.
“The recovery spells work through a portal, do they, Sorthar?” he asked intently.
“No. It’s about the only place they don’t work, but then, no spell can be cast across a portal.”
Velvelig didn’t allow himself to raise any eyebrows, but he filed that bit of information quietly away. Interesting that magic didn’t work across a portal threshold any better than a Talent did.
“So to trigger our recovery spells, they’d have to be in the same universe, right?”
“Yes, but what good does that do us? The Expeditionary Force’s in control of every universe between here and Mahritha. If they really want to find us, all they’d have to do is cross through into each of them in turn and activate the spells.”
“True.” Sarma nodded. “But I think there may be one universe this side of Mahritha the Expeditionary Force doesn’t control.”
Chapter Twelve
December 17th
In a quiet Ricathian corner of Sharona, Soolan chan Rahool stretched his toes and sucked coconut milk out of a freshly broken shell. The rough-barked tree at his back and the hopeful, grinning Minarti clan youngsters gamboling at the tree line reminded the simian ambassador just how much he loved his job. The chimpanzees shrieked in a high glee, making noises not unlike human toddlers. And he chuckled and laid his own coconut at his elbow, where it would be handy, to set about cracking open the pile of coconuts the Minarti clan grandmother had decided were snack for the day.
The thump of a round rock against a pointy rock made neat drinking holes in the hairy coconuts. He struck each one twice for easy sipping, fully aware that one of the older chimps minding the youngsters was watching him for quality control. Chan Rahool didn’t mind in the least.
He’d served two and a half years in the Ternathian Army almost a decade ago as a Voice. His superiors there had graciously marked his early discharge as “due to excess force capacity,” but chan Rahool liked to be honest with himself. He’d been released from service because he was an awful Voice and a poor fit for military service in general. His Voice range was barely more than line of sight at the best of times, his secondary talent as an Animal Speaker wasn’t all that useful to the Army, and the strictures of military life had simply made no sense to him.
But the simians didn’t care that they had to come all the way up to arms length to talk to him. And they appreciated that he preferred to wear a webbed belt suitable for hanging many bags of sugared nuts rather than a slimmer one matching uniform trousers and approved of by some uniform board at headquarters.
It amused chan Rahool even now that he owed the military for his dream job. Without the heavy shoulder muscles built from years of punitive exercise, chan Rahool’s limited Voice range would have again stunted any hope at a career.
Instead the embassy recruiter had asked that first wonderful interview question: “How do you feel about climbing trees?”
Chan Rahool’s answer, “Do I have to wear shoes?” won him the apprenticeship. Being willing to climb triple canopy jungle to visit orangutan nests earned him a career.
Ternathia’s Combined Simian Embassies tried hard to be a traditional government organization with hierarchy charts and field position rotations. Chan Rahool found it amusing. His fellow ambassadors were all much like him in their love of outdoor places and a relaxed life with minimal oversight.
Chan Rahool honored his former noncoms’ efforts to instill a sense of organizational pride by actually reading all the silly instructions that came from CSE and composing much shorter summaries for his fellow ambassadors. He liked to distill and emphasize the parts that truly mattered. To make sure they got read, he packaged the letters with bottles of his local moonshine.
He’d learned that from the military too. There’d been a supply corps armsman who’d always found a way to incentivize attention when he really needed something.
Chan Rahool’s current clan, the Minarti chimpanzees, preferred their alcohol as fermented fruit but they tolerated his preference for the liquid form and would even supply him with arm loads of suitable fresh fruit in exchange for a ration of bottles in the dry months between the wet seasons.
That private exchange might have been why chan Rahool was always able to reach his assigned clans. So he wasn’t at all surprised when a big chimp, quite a bit more mature than the youngsters he habitually shared coconut with, knuckle-walked up to the official embassy cabin and sat down on the veranda.
Chan Rahool didn’t make a habit of feeding the youngsters there, but for the adults he tried to keep drinking in the house or on the porch. The fragility of glass was sometimes a difficult concept, and he didn’t want shards scattered in the roots and rocks where they’d be hard for him to clean up properly.
With a grin, chan Rahool began distributing snacks. The young chimps caught the thrown pieces of coconut, and chan Rahool ambled back to do his ambassadorial duty.
* * *
The gray dappling the older simian’s back fur distracted chan Rahool momentarily from the sheer mass of muscle underneath it. Then the simian turned and displayed even more muscle and a weapon belt and chan Rahool’s eyes widened. He was no chimp. The silverback gorilla’s smug expression shocked chan Rahool so much, that he opened the door and invited him in before he quite placed where he’d last seen a look like that.
It certainly wasn’t on any simian in the Minarti clan. No, that was the look a veteran infantry armsman had given him once when he’d had a few too many and decided he was tough enough to out wrestle anyth
ing. Chan Rahool was significantly stronger now, but he was also far too sober to want to wrestle a silverback…especially a silverback who chose to wear a sharpened eight inch tusk at his belt.
What kind of animal even had an eight inch tusk? Chan Rahool mentally labeled the silverback as Tusk immediately. The simian undoubtedly had a name of his own, but he was unlikely to bother to tell it to chan Rahool what it was.
Tusk walked straight through chan Rahool’s home and opened the back door to admit two more silvers and a smaller decidedly elderly female nearly white with age. White-hair entered with a pronounced, regal assurance and assembled her guard—that was what they had to be—around her as she took possession of the house.
Chan Rahool was quite certain that three such powerful males wouldn’t have come to a place pitiful enough to be granted to the CSE for a cabin to fight for territory, and the grandmother of the matrilineal Minarti chimps had assured him that he was considered a youngster for the purposes of male hierarchy and wanted more shoulder mass before he could begin challenging to attract a female. He hoped that would apply to gorillas as well.
“Good morning Ma’am,” chan Rahool said. It didn’t seem like a bad start. Chimps were usually peaceable, happy creatures with the straightforwardness of a toddler…once he figured out what they wanted. Gorillas, well, chan Rahool had never worked with gorillas. He reached out a hand to touch White-hair’s closest knuckle to begin to translate her thoughts.
Tusk made a discouraging noise and batted chan Rahool’s hand back.
Chan Rahool almost fell over. White-hair pushed the picture at him again, a bit more gently but with added details of pink and blue kittens painted on the outer rim of the bowl that chan Rahool recognized as one of the mismatched dishes from his own kitchen.
Somehow he got the sense that she was doing the pictorial equivalent of speaking loudly with exaggerated enunciation. What he strongly suspected might be the most senior simian ever to speak with a CSE representative had come to visit him. And she’d already decided he was an idiot.