The Road to Hell - eARC

by David Weber

  Epilogue

  April 22

  The Seneschal of Othmaliz lowered his field glasses with a wide, satisfied smile and the flames blazing out in the harbor shrank once more to a patch no larger than the palm of a man’s hand. The blaze consuming the Imperial Grand Salon was much nearer to hand, though not so near as to pose a threat to him, and far brighter. The Grand Palace’s gas mains had contributed so nicely to the unfortunate disaster.

  The flames were really quite lovely, he thought smugly. It was a pity there’d been no opportunity to stretch out Zindel’s suffering, but one couldn’t have everything, and what he had was quite good enough, really.

  The Uromathian Emperor had been most helpful, even if he was a crass, boorish man without a proper sense of retribution. And Faroayn Raynarg fully intended to repay him. At the moment, of course, the entire Order of Bergahl was as horrified, shocked, and surprised as anyone else in Tajvana! They had no idea how this could have happened, how an attack could have slipped past the Calirath’s highly trained armsmen and security staffs! But, equally of course, they would be eager to aid in determining how this heinous crime could have been committed. So would the highly trained Imperial Uromathian Police. And in the course of their investigation, they would produce a dead “Arcanan agent” with secret orders written in the Arcanan language on his body, orders instructing him to murder the Imperial family of Sharona.

  The yammering pack of fools who were even now doubtless sobbing in anguish would be so grateful to the Uromathian for “saving” them, he’d end up ruling in his own right. Whereupon the Seneschal would have restored to him what was rightfully his. Chava Busar’s sons wouldn’t get to bed the imperial heiress or produce an imposter, but that didn’t concern the Seneschal in the least.

  He’d hated that nasty hulking cow. She and that damned bird. She’d thought it was funny, watching him sweat in fear of that vicious predator on her arm. Ternathian Imperial falcons were big, mean birds that could tear a man’s face off. There’d been no way to feed it to the sharks alive like its owner, but he could always hope it had at least been crisped in the explosion.

  He poured a celebratory glass of wine and sipped in genuine delight, visualizing the crown princess’ brief horror—but not, one could always hope, too brief horror—when she discovered what Chava’s shark Caller had summoned to meet her. He chuckled aloud at that thought and dipped up a spoonful of the prized Ylani caviar. He spread it on a crisp cracker, biting into the delicacy with gusto and sipping more wine. Ah, such simple joys were finally sweet, once more, without the bitterness of rancor and hatred on his tongue.

  He was mentally planning the move back into his quarters in the Grand Palace when the door crashed open. He jerked around and snarled at Acolyte Raka, who was stumbling into the room, white-faced and shaking. Water dripped from his clothes onto the thick carpets.

  “Your Eminence—”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted. “I told you I wasn’t to be disturbed!”

  Before he could snatch up something to throw at the intruder, the Acolyte gasped out, “I tried to stop them. I swear by Bergahl I did! They just tossed me into the ocean. I barely survived!”

  “What are you babbling about?”

  Before the shaking fool could answer, the door flew open again. Soundlessly.

  Other acolytes sauntered into the room. But, no, they weren’t acolytes. They wore the garb of his own Order, and they were strong, obviously capable men…yet he didn’t recognize a single face.

  Wineglass and caviar crashed to the floor as he whirled towards one of the chamber’s other doors, but he wasn’t fast enough. The men spread around the room blocking all exits—even the windows. He turned, tried to lunge for a weapon—

  —and froze in place.

  A blade protruded from his belly. A strange symbol was embossed on the pommel. Ever so slowly the Seneschal recognized it as a piece from the Arcanan replica weapon set he’d supplied. A rough twist tore it out of his gut and spilled more than wine on his fine rugs.

  * * *

  Drindel wanted more than anything in his life to run. The men with him were indubitably in Service to Uromathia, and they were worse than sharks. The Acolyte Raka, older in death than he’d seemed while alive, had at least stopped that awful neck bubbling.

  Remarkably, few others had even noticed their entry. Drindel began to suspect the team he was with of boredom. Their Masker had covered their initial approach, but not even a Masker could pass a dozen men through the halls of the Seneschal’s residence without being seen. Their acolyte robes had gotten them through unchallenged, though, and the Masker could easily cover them once again if they left through the chamber’s windows and simply filtered through the ornate garden down to the shore of the strait. Drindel didn’t quite understand why Raka hadn’t raised the alarm or warned his fellow acolytes he might be pursued. Apparently it hadn’t occurred to him that they might be right on his heels. Perhaps he could be excused for not thinking that bit through, though. He hadn’t realized he was a dead man from the moment he’d stayed on the pleasure boat instead of joining the Talent-masked assault team who’d climbed the ropes up the side of the Peregrine and proceeded beyond the range of the Masker’s focused Talent, but he’d probably caught on pretty quickly when one of the other Uromathians kicked him over the side for the sharks.

  Who had somehow missed devouring him…among others.

  Drindel had been distracted in the slow transit back to dock. Monsters he didn’t know were devouring his sharks, and it had taken every bit of his ill-used Talent to conceal the failure from the Masker. Many, many sharks were fighting for their lives even now in that teaming deep-water channel of the Ylani Strait. He took up the field glasses from the dead Seneschal’s table and examined the surface of the water more closely. The flickering bits of charred boat debris didn’t interest him. Only the fins mattered. Drindel desperately wanted to know what was eating his sharks.

  The glasses weren’t good enough and the night was too dark. He couldn’t make out enough in the waves—not beyond the reach of the fires which were finally dying, at least—to guess at the fight under the surface. But the search effort was all wrong. In fact, one of the two destroyers had obviously abandoned the search entirely. It was headed back into port—at a speed which was dangerously high in such crowded waters—and Drindel’s heart skipped. He could only think of one reason an Imperial Ternathian destroyer wouldn’t still be scouring the water for survivors.

  We missed the princess. That was his first thought. They’re going to kill me, was the second.

  “Boy!”

  A gruff voice called him away from the ocean disaster. It was the Masker, and Drindel made himself set the glasses down as steadily as he could. They didn’t know the sharks hadn’t finished off all the Peregrine’s survivors—not yet, at least. They couldn’t know yet, and Drindel did his very best to calm his panic.

  “Sir,” he replied as respectfully as he knew how. He still didn’t know any names, and they’d refused the offer of his own. He regretted very much now that offer of his own name.

  The Masker set a fisherman’s wet bag in his nearly limp hands. He took it without thinking and checked the seals and closure out of pure reflex. The bag was intended to hold wet bait or a fresh catch, and his stomach clenched as he looked down at the Seneschal and realized what was in it. Obviously the others had been busy while he’d been staring out at the channel, but the outside of the bag—thank goodness—was dry.

  Drindel was the only member of the group not dressed as a Bergahldian. He was just in normal fisherfolk clothes—of good quality, of course; Maman wouldn’t supply him with anything less, but it was much the same as anything worn by the men who harvested the two seas to feed Tajvana.

  The others had covered up in acolyte robes after leaving the boat, which was why he was certain they’d planned to kill the Seneschal all along. The robes fitted them far too well to be a last minute improvisa
tion. Of course, no one had mentioned any of that to him, which suggested some very unpleasant possibilities, but it seemed their plans didn’t—yet—include anything that involved his own demise.

  As long as he didn’t piss them off, at least.

  Drindel weighed the bag containing Faroayn Raynarg’s heart in his hands, uncertain of his next move.

  “Go.” The Masker pushed him towards the back stair. “Feed it to your fish. It’s the sort of thing an Arcanan would do to counter their Healers.”

  Drindel stumbled the first step and then ran. Laughter followed him for a few steps, until his range from the Masker deadened all sound from the Seneschal’s office, but he didn’t care. Let them think he was just new to this sort of work, and that he’d had no experience of getting his own hands dirty. Let them laugh—that was fine with him! All Drindel wanted was to get far, far away, and hope no one ever remembered his name as having any connection to this.

  That Seneschal had been a powerful man, who’d been allied with Uromathia…and whose heart Drindel now carried in a fisherman’s bag.

  If he could become…inconvenient to the Emperor of Uromathia, then so could a Shark Caller who knew too much and whose sharks had failed in their task. Under the circumstances, all he wanted as to be somewhere else.

  Quickly.

  * * *

  When the door at the end of the corridor opened and Bok vos Hoven realized who was coming toward his cell, he slid onto the floor so quickly he left skin on the side of his bunk. That didn’t matter. His skin was no longer his own to worry over. He lay kissing the floor while a multitude of footsteps echoed their way down the long corridor that led to his cell.

  He wanted to offer an apology for having inconvenienced His Exalted Line Lord, Skollo vos Diffletak, by having been placed in a cell so far from the door, but that inconvenience was so minor beside all his other offenses, he didn’t even dare whisper it. That would only put His Exalted Line Lord to the additional effort of having to respond to it. So he lay with his belly on the floor and awaited his doom.

  Footsteps came to a halt beside his cell door. His Exalted Line Lord hadn’t arrived alone. Vos Hoven hadn’t expected him to, since no Line Lord ever traveled anywhere without a retinue of the Loyal ready and waiting to serve in whatever manner His Exalted Line Lordship required. On visits of great import, His Exalted Line Lord would travel with a retinue of a hundred or more retainers; the higher the status of the one visited, the greater the number of retainers.

  On a visit to view the unworthy, His Exalted Line Lord would travel with the minimum number required to ensure His Exalted Line Lordship’s personal comfort and preserve his public status as a man of great worth and importance. Vos Hoven had counted ten retainers—the absolute minimum necessary to preserve His Exalted Line Lordship’s dignity on an errand of little or no worth.

  Bok vos Hoven grieved that he’d forced His Exalted Line Lordship to interrupt his sacred schedule. He wasn’t worth even the ten retainers, let alone the man they served. A man who’d dandled the nephew who’d failed him so utterly on his knee, expecting great things of this new babe born to his line. Now that nephew had failed his mother, his father, his Line Lord, his line, and his entire caste so profoundly, he could not—ever again—so much as view their faces.

  “Vermin,” the voice of the man he’d once called uncle hissed down from His Exalted Line Lordship’s height.

  “L-Lord,” he cringed, barely whimpering the word in just enough of a whisper to let the man standing in judgment he’d been heard.

  “Do not degrade my title by uttering it with fouled lips!”

  Vos Hoven shook his head frantically, leaving bloody scrapes in his nose and cheeks. They wouldn’t have time to heal.

  “The officers sitting in judgment upon Jasak Olderhan have reached their verdict.”

  He held his breath. He hadn’t heard that the son of a jackal’s trial had gone to deliberations already. Now he waited, breathless, to hear the outcome. He’d entered that trial with only one purpose. Had he succeeded? Or failed, yet again?

  “The son of a demon has been acquitted. Never again profane our line with your worthless blood.”

  His Exalted Line Lordship turned on his heel and strode away. His retainers filed past Bok’s cell. One of them, he had no idea which, tossed something into the cell with him. It bounced with a metallic clang and skidded to a halt against his brow. The knife was so sharp it creased his scalp with a thin line of blood.

  When His Exalted Line Lordship and all ten retainers had retreated through the doorway at the end of that long corridor, Bok vos Hoven sat up.

  He picked up the knife. It was heartlessly plain: just a steel blade and a wooden handle. He wasn’t allowed the honor of dying with a beautiful knife in his hand. He hadn’t earned that honor, and he closed his eyes, so deeply shamed he could barely breathe.

  He took solace in the knowledge that His Exalted Line Lord would never rest until the man who’d just been acquitted had paid for his part in his Line’s disgrace. He took solace, as well, in knowing that the great plan he’d been a part of, that he’d failed so dismally, was still in place.

  The Mythlan officers in the field now were only a small portion of that great plan, which would reshape the Union of Arcana in ways no one living outside Mythal could even imagine, on this ordinary day. But Bok vos Hoven could. And because he could, he wept, for he’d denied himself the chance to birth that world he could see so clearly in his mind’s eye.

  I offer apology for all the failures I have committed against thee, Bok vos Hoven told the ancestors who would stand in judgment over him in just a few moments, and kissed the knife in his hands.

  Then slashed his throat.

  The pain and the death that rose to meet him were a relief. This death would free His Lordship for the great task at hand, and so Bok vos Hoven lay bleeding out on the stone floor…and smiled.