by William King
“Yes.”
“You can see that it would not take much effort on any fair minded person’s part to put a somewhat sinister interpretation on these events.”
“I can think of other interpretations, such as the truth.”
“Ah, the truth. At long last we get to it. So tell me what is the truth of these matters?”
“Tamara and Jaderac were already at Morven. They had business with Ilmarec, were trying to win him over to the Sardean cause. They were not then the enemy. We were not at war with Sardea.”
“That has changed. What makes you think Malkior killed Kathea?”
He told me so, Rik wanted to say, but common sense kept him polite. “He was there. He had blood on him. He boasted of what he did.”
“To you. There are no other witnesses.”
“I am surprised that you cannot produce some. You seem to have them for everything else.”
“I am not sure I like your tone.”
“And I am not sure that I like yours. Perhaps we can both do our best to be polite under the circumstances.” Rik wondered if the Inquisitor was really as shocked as he looked. It was possible he was not used to being talked to in this fashion.
“Your patron is very powerful, and her influence shields you to a certain extent, but it is unwise to make me angry.”
Rik knew that was undoubtedly the case. He bit back a hasty retort and spread his hands apologetically. “I do not like being accused of being a Sardean spy. All my life I have been a loyal subject of the Queen. I swore an oath to serve her as a soldier.”
He sounded quite sincere, even to his own ears, and he suspected it was really the case. He was loyal to Asea and the army, and he supposed when push came to shove he was loyal to Talorea as well. If humans had to live under Terrarch rule then better there than Sardea, that was for sure.
Joran pushed his advantage. “What did you talk to Tamara about?”
“She wanted me to kill Asea. She offered me quite a lot of money to do so.”
“You admit you talked with an agent of a foreign power about assassinating a high noble of the realm.”
“It seemed like the best way of finding out what she wanted. As your spies have no doubt informed you, Lady Asea is still alive.”
“You are starting to be insolent again, young man.” Joran stressed the word man as if it were an insult. Rik paused and took a deep breath, calming himself, unwilling to be provoked further, to cede the advantage in this interrogation.
“I resent the insinuation that I might actually wish to do harm to my patron, the one who shields me, as you have pointed out, from your wrath.”
“Does Asea know of your discussions with Tamara?”
“Of course- who do you think told me to go ahead with the meeting?” That was something a Terrarch would have no trouble believing. Humans were notoriously incapable of independent thought as far as they were concerned.
“So you are saying that Lady Asea ordered you to make contact with an agent of a foreign power.”
“For purposes of finding out what that agent wanted.”
Joran looked at him. “How much did Tamara offer you to kill Asea?”
“As much as I was prepared to ask for. She told me the Queen-Empress herself would not be ungrateful.”
“Were you tempted?”
“I have no sympathy with the Sardean cause and would do nothing to further it.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“I was not tempted. Anyone can make promises. Asea has done more than talk.”
“I could have you burned at the stake simply for talking to Tamara. You know that?”
This was the crux of the matter, Rik thought. “You could have my life for many things. We both know that. You are an Inquisitor. I am a human.”
“No, youth, you are not. You are a Terrarch and must be tried as such. I have made my decision on that at least.”
Rik was taken off balance by this sudden switch, as he suspected the Inquisitor wanted him to be. Joran smiled. “Do not worry. You are not beyond my reach. If I decide you are guilty of treason, your action will stain a Terrarch house. Lady Asea’s actions have consequences for others beside you.”
“I expect she knows that.”
“Yes. I expect she does. You are free to go.”
“Inquisitor Joran thinks he’s being subtle,” said Asea. She sat by the fire, a book of ancient sorcery open on her lap.
“In what way?”
“He is making it very clear to all that you are my creature, Rik. I petitioned the Queen to make it so. Any disgrace that befalls you will be associated with me. He is forcing me to protect you in order to protect myself and my House. He thinks it will constrain my ability to manoeuvre.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“Yes. The process has already begun. I made the petition before Kathea was killed when you were still the hero of the hour. Now Kathea is dead and suspicion falls on you, and by implication on me. Recognising you as my ward emphasises this. There are many ways he could build a case against me, if that is what he wishes.”
“Do you think he does?”
“You have a lot to learn about politics.”
“Tell me something I do not know, Milady.”
“I am a power in the land, Rik. There are many beholden to me for favours, and some think I have influence on the Queen herself. Perhaps once I did.”
“I do not follow.”
“Inquisitor Joran is a very ambitious fellow. He is looking for leverage on me to further his own aims. I have no doubt that at some point down the road, some well prepared case will be shown to me, and I will be asked to do something for him in return for getting it dropped. It will probably be done in such a way that it will be easier to buy him off than to fight it.”
“That’s blackmail.”
“No, Rik. It’s politics.”
“What if he is sincere? What if he really decides he wants to bring you down?”
Asea laughed. “Others have tried in the past, Rik. I am still here.”
Rik hoped she was not the one being over-confident now.
Chapter Seven
“I take it you’ve heard the news?” said Jazeray, sticking his sleek head round the office door.
Sardec tore his attention from the minutia of the supply lists: provisions, bullets, powder, all the myriad things that had to be accounted for with quartermaster’s requisitions, small foolscap boats floating down the endless river of paperwork.
“Heard what?”
“We’re getting ready to move out?”
“So soon in the season? Where are we going? Home?”
“We are not so lucky. It looks like we’re heading East. Scouts have just come in. Seems the Imperials can’t wait to get to grips with us. Their armies are already rolling over the border.”
“For certain?”
“The General believes it, and that’s what counts. The official letters of dispatch go out this afternoon but I thought you would appreciate getting the word as quickly as possible.”
“Any idea about numbers? Of the Imperials, I mean.”
“They say tens of thousands of thralls.”
“They are not afraid of the plague then?”
“Apparently not.”
“Maybe they know something we don’t.” Sardec had his suspicions about this ever since the Foragers had disrupted Jaderac’s ritual. The Sardeans were prepared to use any amount of dark sorcery to achieve their aims. It looked like it was going to be a difficult war, with plague and famine sweeping the land.
He supposed it had not been so different in his father’s day, save for the fact that then the enemy had not been other Terrarchs. During the conquest, the Exalted had presented a united front against the world. Now they fought proxy wars against each other through their human legions. It would only be a matter of time before it led to disaster.
Rulers were supposed to provide stability, certainty, prosperity. If they could not, loss of faith an
d rebellion inevitably followed. Terrarchs were supposed to be wiser than humans, able to take the long view, not be led astray by the clamour of mobs. His father had claimed that they were shepherds of their human charges, that they had a responsibility to them. It was only recently that Sardec had come to understand what he had meant and in some ways to share his feelings.
Jazeray said, “You’re looking thoughtful. I can tell by the blankness in your eyes. It reflects the emptiness in your skull.”
“I fear you judge me by yourself. I suppose it’s inevitable. We can only use our own experience as a guide.”
Jazeray laughed. “That sounded suspiciously like banter. You seem to be losing that famous stiffness of yours. Anyway, I had better go and let my Sergeant know what’s happening. Might as well have the troops ready for the off.”
“Your Sergeant knew about it before you did,” said Sardec.
“It never hurts to let them know we’re not completely in the dark.”
“Let me just sign these reports and I’ll join you.”
“We’re going where?” The Barbarian shouted. It was bloody typical. He had just got himself settled in this nice comfortable billet with a couple of jolly fat-bottomed whores and a decent supply of grog and tobacco and the army had to go and spoil it. It was enough to make a man sick. There were days when he really regretted leaving Segard, and this was one of them.
“We’re going East. Best get used to it,” said Weasel, looking as relaxed as he always did. He looked around the room where a dozen of the Foragers lay sprawled on their bedrolls. “Sergeant Hef asked me to spread the word. Seems like the Imperial hordes have crossed the border and are hot for blood.”
“Wankers,” said the Barbarian. “It’s bloody typical- I just got myself settled into a nice comfortable…”
“I know, I know,” said Weasel, looking like he’d heard all of this a thousand times before, intolerant bastard that he was. “Two or is it three plump lasses and a tavern with a good fire and a nice line in roasted rat, and now the army has got to go and spoil it all by giving us our marching orders. Who could have seen that coming?”
For a lanky thin bastard, Weasel did a pretty good impression of the Barbarian’s voice and manner or at least the other’s thought he did. They all laughed. The Barbarian glared around the room just to let them know he was not to be mocked, at least not by anybody but Weasel. They all looked away, abashed by his glare. They knew he could take any six of them, even though most of them were half his age. Actually he could take any ten of them on a good day and the way he felt now…
“You think we’ll be fighting any more dead men?” Toadface asked. Like all of the Foragers, he had grown heartily sick of the walking corpses. The Barbarian did not blame them. In his homeland. bodies remained decently in the ground when buried, and there was none of the need for burning you got in these devil-infested southern lands.
Weasel spread his huge long fingered hands and shrugged, pantomiming a total lack of knowledge.
Handsome Jan stopped admiring his profile in his shard of mirror long enough to say, “It seems like we’ve doing nothing else but deal with bloody sorcery since we crossed the Kharadrean border.”
“Since before that,” said Toadface, licking his lips with his long tongue. “Since the mountains and Achenar.”
The words filled the room with silence. None of them liked to remember that evil place and the Elder World demons that had filled it. They had all of them lost a bunch of friends to the spiders, and the Barbarian had come damn near to losing his life. He still carried the scars from where those huge claws had bitten into his flesh and it was not like he didn’t already have enough scars.
“I’m guessing we’ll see a deal more dark sorcery before this campaign is out,” said Weasel, always one to delight in bringing bad news. “The Sardeans are famous for it.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” said Toadface. “Like that bastard Jaderac up there in the graveyard, and that Nerghul thing that almost killed us all back in Morven. There are times when I think this whole bloody company is cursed.”
“Well, at least we’ve got the Inquisitor with us,” said Handsome Jan. “That fire of his put paid to the shadow-spawn.”
“I put paid to them with my blade,” said the Barbarian.
“Funny, that’s not how I remember it,” said Weasel.
“Well, I did my part, which is more than some here can say.” The Barbarian glared around, daring anyone to gainsay him, and as usual no one did.
“When do we move out?” Toadface asked.
“Day after tomorrow,” said Handsome Jan.
“No way,” said Weasel. “It’ll take weeks to get the provisions ready, and for the Terrarchs to make up their minds as to what to do.”
“Maybe the Sardeans will be here before then,” said Handsome Jan dubiously.
“Only if they come on dragon-back,” said Weasel. “It’s scores of leagues to the Eastern border, and the roads will be muddy as hell with the spring rains.”
“You don’t think they have enough dragons to move their entire army, do you?” the Barbarian asked. He didn’t mind fighting many things and he feared nothing, but the concept of roughhousing it with a dragon gave him pause.
“No. They’ll all be hibernating anyway, if our own are anything to go by.”
“Reckon there’ll be much plunder?” Handsome Jan asked.
Weasel shook his head. “Imperials will grab any they find on the way in, and Eastern Kharadrea is as poor as an honest magistrate anyway.”
“If the Imperials do have anything we can always take it from them,” said the Barbarian. He did not like to think that they might have to fight a battle without any prospect of loot. It was one of the few things that made a soldier’s life worthwhile.
“Nice that somebody is looking on the bright side,” said Weasel. “Now if I have answered all your questions, I am going to go and get a drink.”
“Smartest thing you’ve said all evening,” said the Barbarian. “I think I’ll join you.”
As ever Rena’s lush human beauty astonished Sardec. She looked lovely in the new green dress she had bought in the market. It had probably once belonged to some rich merchant’s wife. There were a lot of them selling clothing and jewellery to raise money for food on the black market. Times were hard all over.
She twirled around, raising the hem of the skirt slightly with her hands so that it swirled around with her. Her ankles were revealed, an effect which he found surprisingly erotic after all this time. He forced himself to clear such thoughts from his mind. This conversation was going to be hard enough as it was.
“What do you think?” she asked, a smile lighting her face.
“It looks fine, very nice.” Something in his tone must have told her something was wrong.
“What is it?” she asked.
“We got our marching orders today,” said Sardec, making his voice as grave as he could. “The Imperials are over the border. We are going to meet them.”
Her smile vanished and she slumped down on the bed. Her hands clutched the quilt crumpling it. “How long till we go?”
“I do not want you to go,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady.
“You do not want me?”
“It will be dangerous. There will be very little food. There is plague in the East, far worse than here.”
“I want to go with you. Don’t you want me to come?”
“Aren’t you listening, woman?” he said, exasperation and concern making his voice rougher than he would have wanted it to sound. “I said it will be dangerous.”
“I don’t care how dangerous it is.”
“I do. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“But you might be hurt, killed even.”
“I am a soldier of the Queen. It is my job.”
“And I am a whore. It is my job to follow the army.”
“You are not a whore to me,” he said, unable to say what she really was to him. If tr
uth be told there was no future to their relationship. She was a human, he was a Terrarch. There could be no marriage. Even putting aside all the problems of birth and class, there was the fact that he might live a thousand years if he did not fall in battle. She would be lucky to live past forty, the way the world was now.
“I want to go with you,” she said.
“I can’t allow you to do that,” he said. “If anything happened to you…”
“What?” There was imperiousness to her tone that no human should ever use to a Terrarch. He ignored it, trapped by his inability to express how he really felt, to take the risk of saying what she meant to him, of putting himself in her power, of risking ridicule not from the world, but from this one particular human being.
“I just do not want anything to happen to you,” he said lamely. He forced business-like briskness into his tone. “There is gold in the purse on the dresser, and script that can be drawn on any bank.”
“So it does come down to money. I am to be paid off,” she said unreasonably.
“I just want to make sure you are all right,” he said. “That you can pay for safe passage back to Talorea when the passes are open, and that you will have enough to live on once you get there.”
“This is cruel,” she said. He looked at her, not quite sure what she meant.
“I do not mean to be.”
She stared at him, meeting his gaze in a way that none of the soldiers under his command ever could. “No, I can see that you do not,” she said softly. “You just do not understand at all.”
“Understand what?”
“What you mean to me. What has happened between us. What you’ve done to my life.”
He stepped back a little, not wanting to face what she was saying, not really understanding what she meant anyway. She was a human, after all. He was a Terrarch. What claim could she possibly feel she had on him? Even as that thought crossed his mind, he realised that she did have one, based on the simple fact that he did care about what happened to her, more than he did for anyone else in the world.
He wanted to tell her that, but that would lead to other things, to her insisting that she come with him, on a march there was every chance that none of them would come back from. The Queen’s army were outnumbered, ill-equipped and facing an enemy that had no scruples about using the darkest of sorcery. Since Kathea’s death, they lacked local allies and many of the locals would rally to Khaldarus’s cause and fight for the Dark Empire simply because he was the only local claimant for the throne. And he’d heard other rumours, that if they won they were to continue marching on into the East, to invade Sardea itself, which would be suicidal.