by Paul Kearney
“I must congratulate you,” the beast said in a man’s voice. “The operation proceeded even more smoothly than we had hoped.”
“That was the easy part. Maintaining the facade for the next week will be harder. I trust you are keeping your master well informed.”
“Of course. And he is mightily pleased. He wants Cear-Inaf kept alive, so that he may dispose of him at his leisure when he enters the city.”
“And the Queen? What of her? She cannot live, you know that.”
“Indeed. But Aurungzeb has this strange aversion to the execution of Royalty. He feels that kind of thing puts odd ideas into men’s minds.”
“It may be that she will simply disappear, then. She may escape and never be heard of again.”
“I think that would be best.”
“When does your master’s army move?”
“It has begun to march already. In less than a week, my dear Count, you will be the new governor of Torunna, answerable only to the Sultan himself. The war will be over.”
“The war will be over,” Fournier repeated thoughtfully. “Cear-Inaf is an upstart and a fool. He has done well, but even his much-vaunted generalship could not prevail against a hundred and fifty thousand. What I have done is spare Torunna a catastrophic defeat. I have saved thousands of lives.”
“Indubitably.” Was it his imagination, or was there a sardonic sneer to the voice which issued out of the homunculus?
“Go now,” he said sharply. “Tell your master I will hold Torunn for him. When the army arrives the gates shall be thrown open, and I shall see to it that the regulars are deployed elsewhere. There will be no resistance.”
“What of Cear-Inaf’s personal troops? Those tribesmen and the Fimbrians, not to mention the veterans from the dyke?”
“They are contained. They will be entirely neutralised within the next few days.”
The homunculus gathered itself up for flight, spreading its bat-like wings. “I certainly hope so, my dear Count. For your sake.” Then the creature paused in the act of springing into the air. “By the way, we have heard rumours that there is an agent of yours at work in the court. Is this true?”
“That is a rumour, nothing more. All my attempts to insert an agent close to Aurungzeb have failed. You may congratulate him on his security.”
“Thank you. The homunculus will return in two days, to monitor your progress. Until then, Count, fare well.” And the thing took off at last, and flapped its way out of the open window. Fournier watched it go, and when it had disappeared he took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat out of his mustache.
W HEN Corfe woke he thought that the nightmare which had plagued his unconsciousness was still about him, cackling in the darkness. He raised a hand to his face and felt agony shoot through his wrists as its chained fellow came with it. His hands were swollen to the point of uselessness. Another day in these manacles and he would lose them. His face, when he touched it gingerly, felt as though it did not belong to him. It was some misshapen caricature his fingers found strange to the touch. Despite himself, he groaned aloud.
“Corfe?” a voice said. “Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“What have they done? I’ve heard shooting.”
“They’re trying to take over the city, I should think.”
“They’ve been bringing in other prisoners all morning. Dozens of them. I hear the doors.”
Corfe found it hard to keep his thoughts together. His mind seemed wrapped in wool. “Fournier caught you,” he said muzzily.
“Yes, on the way in. I had two companions. Merduks. He killed them after the torture. They would not speak.” There was a sound like a sob. “I’m so sorry. I could not bear it.”
“The scroll. What was in it?”
“The entire Merduk campaign plan and order of battle.”
Corfe struggled to clear his mind, collect his thoughts. He fought against the urge to lay his head in the foul-smelling muck of the floor and go to sleep.
“The Merduk Queen—he said it was from her. Is that true?”
There was a silence. Finally Albrec said, “Yes.”
“Why? Why would she do such a thing?”
“She is—she is a Ramusian, from Aekir. She wanted revenge.”
“I honour her for it.”
“Yes, though nothing will come of it now. What is Fournier going to do?”
“I think he means to surrender the city to the Merduks. He has done some deal. I have been an arrogant fool, such a fool.”
Quiet descended upon the interior of the cell. Water was gurgling away somewhere, and they could hear the rush of the sewers below.
The sewers.
“Father,” Corfe said with sudden energy. “Go over the floor of this place. There must be a drain somewhere, a grating or something.”
“Corfe—”
“Do it!”
They began searching around in the fetid darkness with their hands, their fingers squelching into nameless things. Once, Corfe’s fastened upon the wriggling wetness of a rat. He listened for the sound of the water, finally found it and tore heaps of rotting straw from around the grating. His half-numb fingers searched out its dimensions: eighteen inches square, no more.
A yank on the metal of the bars, but it would not budge. It was firmly set in mortar. He searched his pockets with awkward, fevered haste, and found there a folded clasp knife. Willem had taken his poniard, but had been too busy pistol-whipping him to search his pockets.
“Bastards!” Corfe spat in triumph. He unfolded the knife with his clumsy hands and began scraping at the mortar which held the grating fast. It was already crumbling in places, loosened by the wetness of the floor. He levered up clods and splinters of the stuff, stabbing with the little knife. There was a crack, and the point broke off. He hardly paused, but worked on in the smothering darkness by touch. Every so often the coruscating lights in his head came back, and he had to pause and fight the dizzying sickness they brought. It took hours—or what seemed like hours—but at the end of that time he had picked out every trace of the mortar from around the grating. He put the broken knife carefully back in his pocket. Something warm and liquid was trickling down his temples. Sweat or blood, he knew not.
“Over here, Father. Help me.”
Albrec bumped into him. “I have only one good hand.”
No matter. Three are better than two. Get a hold here.” He positioned the monk’s fingers for him. “Now, after three, pull like a good ’un.”
They heaved until Corfe thought his head would burst. A slight shift, a tiny grating sound, no more. He collapsed on to his side on the floor.
Several minutes passed, and then they tried again. This time Corfe was sure one corner of the grating had shifted, and when he felt over it he found that it was raised above the level of the floor flags some half an inch.
A strange, unearthly time of blinding pain and intense physical struggle, all in pitch blackness. They tugged on one corner of the grating after another, their fingers slipping on slime. Finally Corfe was able to get the chain of his manacles under one corner and pull back, feeling as though his hands were about to be wrenched off at the wrists.
A squeal of scraped metal, and he fell over on his back, the heavy grating jerking free to smash into his kneecap with dazzling pain. He lay on his back, gasping for air. “We—we did it, Father.”
They rested and listened in the blackness. No jailer approached, no alarm was raised.
“Are we going to go down there?” Albrec asked at last.
“We’re on the waterfront. The sewers here lead straight into the river. It shouldn’t be far—not more than a hundred yards. Come, Father Albrec. I’ll have you breathing clean air inside fifteen minutes. I’ll go first.”
The sound of rushing water seemed very loud as Corfe squeezed himself into the drain. He retched once at the smell, but nothing came up. His stomach had long since rid itself of the last vestiges of Fournier’s dinner.
His grip on the lip of the drain slipped and he scraped down through the short shaft and splashed into the sewer below. The current took him and buffeted him against rough brick walls. His head was under water. He could not breathe, was not even sure which way was up. His lungs shrieked for air. The tunnel was less than a yard wide; he braced himself against it, shearing the skin from his knuckles and knees. A moment’s gasp of air, and then he had slipped and was being hurtled along again. His head smacked against the tunnel wall. He felt like screaming.
And then he was in midair, flying effortlessly before crashing into water again after a fall of several yards through nothingness. Clean, cold air. He was out. He was in the river, and it was night outside. The water was brackish here, this close to the estuary. He choked on it, struggled manically to keep his head up, his manacled hands flailing. The current was taking him downstream, out to sea. But there was a tree here, leaning low over the water. He grasped at a trailing limb, missed, was slashed in the face by another and caught hold of a third, his grip slicing down the leaves. He pulled himself up it as though on a rope, and found mud under his feet. He waded ashore, shuddering with cold, and took a second to collect himself. Then he remembered Albrec, and floundered about on the muddy bank until he had found a long stick, all the while watching the surface of the racing river. He waited then for a long time, but saw nothing. It was too cold to remain. Either Albrec had drowned, or he had remained in the cell. He could not wait any longer. The lights of Torunn were bright and yellow and the city wall towered like a monolith barely two hundred yards away. Corfe had been washed ashore on a little patch of wasteland just within the city perimetre, not far from the southern barbican. It was too exposed here. He had to move on.
There were reed-beds here at the riverside, filled with old rubbish and stinking with the effluent of the sewers. He crept along in them as quietly as he could, and then stopped. Something was crashing about in front of him. A man.
“Lord God,” a voice whispered. “Oh, Lord—”
“Albrec!”
“Corfe?”
He moved forward again. The monk was caught in thigh-deep mud and looked like some glistening swamp denizen. Corfe hauled him out and then they lay there in the reeds for a while, utterly spent. Above them the clear sky was ablaze with stars from one horizon to the next.
“Come,” Corfe said at last. “We have to get away. We’ll die here else.”
Wordlessly, Albrec staggered to his feet and the two of them lurched off together like a pair of mud-daubed drunks.
“Where are we going?” the monk asked.
“To the only man of importance I think Fournier will have left alone. Your master, Macrobius.”
“What about the army?”
“Fournier will have it under control somehow. And he’ll have neutralised all my officers. Maybe the Queen too. I have to get these damned manacles off before my hands die. How much shooting did you hear when you were in there?”
“A lot of volleys. But they lasted a few minutes, not more.”
“There’s been no major battle then. They must have my men bottled up. The Merduks are probably on the march already. Hurry, Albrec! We don’t have time to waste.”
NINETEEN
A S the ladies-in-waiting quaked, terrified, the Queen twitched and snarled in her chair, the whites of her eyes flickering under closed lids. She had been like this for almost two hours, and they longed to cry out to someone for help, a doctor or apothecary to be sent. But ancient Grania, who had been at the palace longer than any of the rest and whose dark eyes were unclouded by any vestige of senility, told them to hush their useless mouths and pretend nothing untowards was happening, else the guards posted outside might take it into their heads to come in. So the little flock of ladies embroidered and knitted with absent fervour, stabbing fingertips with monotonous regularity while brimming over with hiccuping little sobs for the predicament they had found themselves in: and Grania glanced towards heaven and helped herself to the wine.
None of them noticed when the black furred shape with ruby eyes crept back into the chamber through the smoke hood and took up its accustomed place in the centre of a huge web that quivered sootily in the shadows of the rafters. The Queen sighed, and sagged in her chair. Then she rubbed her eyes and stood up, putting a hand to the hollow of her back. For several seconds she looked what she was: a tyred woman in her sixth decade. As the ladies-in-waiting chattered around her she took the goblet of wine that the silent Grania offered and drained it at a draught.
“I am getting too old for this sort of thing,” she said to the aged woman who had once been her wet nurse.
“We all are,” the crone retorted drily. And to the brightly plumaged chatterers about her she snapped: “Oh shut up, all of you.”
“No,” Odelia said, “Keep talking. That is an order. Let the guards hear us gossiping away. Were we too silent, they would be the more suspicious.”
“How bad is it?” Grania asked the Queen as the surrounding women talked desperately of the weather, the price of silk, all the while trying to spare an ear for the Queen’s words.
“Bad enough. They have massacred many of his Cathedrallers. The poor fools charged massed arquebusiers with nothing more than sabres.”
“And his Fimbrians?”
“Strangely supine. But something tells me that their commander, Formio, is not letting the grass grow under his feet. The rest of the city is under curfew. Fournier has installed himself in the East Wing. So sure of himself is he that he has only fifty or sixty men around him. The rest patrol the city. There are fires down by the dockyards, but I don’t know what they signify. Arach’s vision is limited, and sometimes hard to decipher.”
“Sit, lady. You are exhausted.”
“How can I sit?” Odelia exploded. “I do not even know if he is alive or dead!” She passed a hand over her face. “Pardon me. I am tyred. I was blind: I should have foreseen this.”
“No-one else did,” Grania said bluntly. “Do not torment yourself because you are no soothsayer.”
The Queen sank back down upon her chair. “He cannot be dead, Grania. He must not be dead.” And she buried her face in her hands and wept.
I T was a long, weary way from the waterfront to the Pontifical palace, and it took Corfe and Albrec most of the remainder of the night to traverse it. Fournier’s patrols were easy to dodge. They spent as much time gawking at the wonders of the great city as they did keeping an eye out for curfew-breakers. They were, when it came down to it, untutored men of the country awed by the size and sprawl of the capital. Eavesdropping on their conversations as they trooped past, Corfe realised that some of them did not even know why they were here, except that it was some kind of emergency engendered by the Merduk war.
Halted at the gates of the abbey by watchful Knights Militant, Corfe and Albrec were eyed with astonished disbelief when they demanded to see Macrobius. They were still fettered, and liberally plastered with mud and sewer filth. But something in Corfe’s eye made one of the gate guards dash off at once to fetch Monsignor Alembord. The portly Inceptine looked none too pleased to be dragged out of his bed, but there was no denying that he recognised the bedraggled pair straight away. They were ushered inside the gates amid much whispering and brought to a little reception chamber where Corfe demanded a blacksmith or armourer to cut off their manacles. Alembord waddled away, looking thoroughly confused. He was almost entirely unaware of the coup that had taken place: Fournier’s men had left the abbey alone, as Corfe had suspected they would.
The yawning armourer arrived soon after with a wooden box full of the tools of his trade. The fetters were cut from the two prisoners’ wrists, and Corfe had to clench his teeth against the agony of returning circulation in his hands. They were swollen to twice their normal size and where the iron
had encircled his wrists, deep slices had been carved out of the puffed flesh. He let them bleed freely, hoping it would wash some of the filth out of them.
Basins of clean, hot water, and fresh clothes were found for the two men. The clothes turned out to be spare Inceptine habits, and thus it was dressed as a monk that Corfe finally found himself ushered into Macrobius’s private suite. It still wanted an hour until dawn.
Private though the suite might nominally be, it was crowded with anxious clerics and alarmed Knights Militant. They and Macrobius listened in grim silence as Corfe related the events of the past thirty-six hours, Albrec narrating his own part in the storey. As he and Corfe had agreed, however, no mention was made of the spy at the Merduk court.
When they had finished, Macrobius, who had listened without a word, said simply: “What would you have me do?”
“How many armed men can the abbey muster?” Corfe asked.
“Monsignor Alembord?”
“Some sixty to seventy, Holiness.”
“Good,” Corfe said. “Then you must sally out at dawn with all of them, and go to City Square. Call a meeting, raise the rooftops—create a commotion that will get people out on to the streets. Fournier does not have enough men to clamp down on the entire city, and he will not be able to cow the population if they can be raised against him. Get the people on to the streets, Holiness.”
“And you, Corfe, what will you do?”
“I’m going to try and get through to my men. If you can make enough of a commotion, Fournier will have to take troops away from their containment and then there will be a good chance I can break them out. After that, he will be defeated, I promise you.”