"I can do that," the poet said decisively, losing a great deal of his languid pose as his own imagination set to work. "I'm very good at questions. What about answers?"
"I'll give you more to work on when I have facts," Melles promised. "For right now, this will be enough. Get people talking, get their minds on something else besides my little jokes." He signaled that the man could go.
"Gossip and rumor, opiates of the dull, can for the clever be the stuff that dream are made of," the poet said sardonically, as he smiled, standing up as gracefully as he had sat down.
"My dreams, at any rate," Melles chuckled, watching the man's elegant way of walking—elegant, but not at all effeminate. It was rather like a wolf at the stalk, and he made up his mind to copy it.
The first of his seekers came back within hours with an accurate account of the Army pay records. As he had suspected, since every district governor was individually responsible for seeing to it that the units within his jurisdiction actually were paid (even though the pay actually came out of the military budget), there were several instances where pay was in arrears, sometimes significantly. As he went over the figures with his own accountant, the secretary he had sent to interview the Imperial Exchequer also returned.
That gave him his first move in the new game.
He waited until the next day, then descended on the major figures of the Imperial Civil Service, trailing a string of clerks all bearing stacks of paper. With great fanfare and a fine speech written by his pet poet, he "revealed" the terrible injustice that had been done to the loyal soldiers of the Empire.
"But it is not your fault," he continued, before anyone could get angry at having yet more work heaped on him. "You are doing the best you can in terrible circumstances!" He went on at some length, praising the overworked clerks for sticking at their jobs even when they had to wade through blizzards to get to their desks, shiver in the drafts when they arrived, and fight worse weather to go to a cold home with short rations once they returned at the end of a long day's work. "I have brought you the help of my own clerks to see you through this crisis," he said, as his men took over empty desks or any other flat space with a chair. "I am sure you do not want our brave soldiers to suffer, but I do not want you to suffer either!"
With that, he set off a frenzy of paper pushing to get every soldier's records and pay up to date. Some of the pay had to be made in goods rather than coin, but he made certain that the clerks arranged it so the goods in question were more valuable on the gray market than the actual pay they were substituting for.
It was all taken care of in a single morning; not too difficult, when he doubled the existing workforce and had all of them concentrate on the one task, putting all other work temporarily aside. He then formally went to the Commanders and promised to personally make up for the other deficiencies that had cropped up, usually in the way of resupply. He made a great show of embarrassment, as if he had only now discovered these problems. He didn't know if anyone believed him, but he made a point of assigning his own people to make certain that existing problems were corrected and further ones reported to him so that he could see that they were dealt with.
As he had hoped, although there was some suspicion that he was trying to buy the Army's favor, he began to get some grudging acceptance. This was especially true once the stories began to circulate of how he had uncovered all these problems personally.
Then his poet went to work, sending out his insidious little stories and questions, making the ordinary Imperial soldier wonder just what "supposed mistake" could have left Tremane's people out in the cold, so to speak. An added bonus came when he got word back that the rank-and-file had a few other, unanticipated questions. Such as—a question of whether the late pay was really just bureaucratic bungling, or if Certain Parties had ordered the pay held back as a form of punishment. After all, if Grand Duke Tremane and all his men could be abandoned, what was a little delay in paying out wages?
But the crowning touch to the entire plan finally went into effect when Melles' clerks found that correspondence between Charliss and Tremane. And he could not have manufactured a better final letter than the one that arrived for the Emperor's personal perusal just before the Portals went down and stayed down.
It was bad enough that Tremane had begged, over and over again, for critical supplies that were never sent, for more men, and especially for more mages. But it was the final letter that made Melles positively gleeful both from the standpoint of seeing his old enemy brought low, and for the strength of the "ammunition" it gave him.
For in that letter, which was accompanied by strategic maps, Tremane begged the Emperor to allow his men to retreat, vowing that he himself would remain behind and attempt to hold what had been taken with a corps of volunteers. He pleaded with the Emperor not to visit punishment upon men who had done nothing to deserve it, and to permit them to escape while it was still possible to hold Portals to the Empire open long enough for them to pass through.
And although Melles himself was no strategist, it was painfully obvious from the maps that Tremane's position was utterly untenable. No one, not even a military genius, could have saved the situation.
In a handwritten directive, the Emperor ordered his secretaries to make no response to this desperate plea, on the grounds that Tremane would have to solve the situation in order to prove his worth, thus condemning Tremane's forces with him. At that point, the best outcome for them was exile—and the worst was massacre.
He took that letter with the note in the margin to General Thayer, who in turn leaked the information to his own Commanders, who sent it on down the line. He managed to conceal his triumph in a show of distress so perfect he even fooled Thayer.
By this time the Army was outraged. The Emperor had betrayed them, betrayed the sacred bond that was supposed to bind the Emperor and the men who served him. The rumors of Melles the "baby killer" were forgotten in this new, and far more personal outrage, and even the lowest private began to recall how it was Melles who saw that the pay was put right, and Melles who made sure the supply wagons got through.
Melles, and not the Emperor. And in that moment, he had them.
That was the point where he got an odd invitation from General Thayer; an invitation to dinner, but not in the Palace. This was to be a private dinner, in an upper room of a very well-known and luxurious inn usually frequented by wealthy bachelors who didn't care to keep staff or cooks.
There were just a few things "wrong" with this invitation—the most obvious being that Melles was not and had never been part of the social circle that made use of this particular facility. The inn itself was suffering some of the privations of every other eatery; the fare now was far from the former standards, and in fact was inferior to anything he could get in Crag Castle. And it was halfway across the city; the mage-storms struck twice a day now, with the result that the weather was utterly unpredictable, and there were often "things" prowling the streets, animals and even humans changed by the Storms into misshapen creatures that bore little resemblance to what they had been. The once-rats were bad enough, but the other creatures required that one travel with an escort of heavily-armed men after dark.
He turned the invitation over and over in his hands, considering it. It could be a trap, of course, designed to get him where he would be vulnerable and eliminate him. But somehow, he didn't think so. To meet in a public tavern in so remote a place suggested a need for secrecy. The private salons of these large inns had separate, outside entrances, so that people could come and go without being seen. This had the earmarks of a conspiracy.
I had better go. If anyone is going to make an attempt on the Emperor—assuming that is why they want me—I had better be in a position to advise them.
It wasn't the best plan, but it was better than allowing them to make an attempt that would fail, and would alarm Charliss. The Emperor was already unstable, and it wouldn't take a great deal to set him off on a campaign to purge the Court.
&nb
sp; And if necessary, I can always turn them in myself, proving my loyalty to Charliss. That would be the court of last resort, however, if he could not persuade them to hold off until he was ready. Betraying them to Charliss would cost him so much difficulty once he was Emperor that such a move was not advisable unless there was no other possible course of action.
There was the possibility that this invitation was the setup for an assassination attempt on him, but he didn't think that they would be that stupid. An assassin himself, as they well knew, he would be a very difficult man to take down. Granted, a large number of men could overpower him, but as he had already proved, he was, despite all appearances, still perfectly capable of defending himself and killing or maiming several of them before they managed to kill him. Such an affair would be noisy and leave many witnesses who would have to be silenced or eliminated. He would have his own men with him, who would also have to be silenced or eliminated, and those men would have the superiors they reported to and families of their own who would miss them. It would turn into a nightmare of murder, and be impossible to cover up. They had to be aware of all of that.
With great reluctance, he called his valet and ordered clothing for the cold, arranged an armed Imperial escort to take care of the hobgoblins, alerted his personal bodyguard, and ordered a carriage-on-runners; nothing else could handle the icy streets now. People had to step up from their doorsteps to the street instead of down, for there was rock-hard, packed snow to the depth of the knee on most of the streets, snow that would not be gone until spring.
He was just glad that he had invested every bit of his mage-craft in shielding; mages who had not done so were in a state of near-collapse every time a Storm passed through. He barely noticed; he got a headache just before each Storm, a bit of disorientation during it, and a touch of nausea afterward. Nothing was bad enough to even interrupt his reading. But another Storm was due about the time he expected to be on the street, and anyone who was likely to be severely affected by the Storms could find himself in deadly danger in a situation of that nature. A person walking alone could collapse and freeze to death, he could be set upon and robbed, and a person riding in a conveyance could still freeze to death without his escort noticing.
He wondered how many marginally Talented mages had been caught and hurt or killed that way. If so, that simply cuts down on the number of idiots with mage-power, he reflected, as he pulled on a second set of gloves over his first set, and worked his feet into heavy sheepskin-lined boots. It was difficult to be both dressed for warmth and for elegance, and he opted, at least in his outermost garments, for the first.
The journey to the inn was something of an unpleasant ordeal, and he wondered at the number of people who still continued to make their daily trips from home to place of employment, went out shopping, or indeed, did anything that took them out of doors. The weather was hideous, as it was more often than not now. There was the usual blizzard blowing, driving snow deep into the fabric of one's clothing, making it impossible to see the linkmen bearing lanterns who lit the way for the driver, if they got more than a few paces ahead of the carriage. And yet there were other people out on the street, including some women, which amazed him. His escort changed places regularly, so that some rode while others walked.
When they were about a third of the way to his destination, a pack of hobgoblins attacked—hairy things that scrabbled through the snow on all fours, drooling and howling with hunger, their ribs clearly prominent even through their heavy brindled coats of fur. This time, it appeared that they were Changedogs, rather than Changechildren, which made it a bit easier on the escort; the men had a difficult time killing things that cried like babies and had human eyes or faces. It wasn't too difficult to beat the pack back, leaving a few bleeding, furcovered bodies in the snow. So far, Changed creatures were routinely less intelligent than the creatures they had been changed from, and Changedogs were probably the most stupid of them all; they kept charging straight ahead even when that tactic clearly did not work. The exception was Changerats, which were more cunning and vicious, and swarmed in packs of several hundred. There were laws about Changed animals and people now; if your pet or relative was Changed, the only way to keep it (or him) was to take it to an Imperial examiner who would verify that it was no danger to humans or livestock. There were few Changechildren being kept and sheltered by relatives. Most were actually killed by their own families the moment they Changed, for the horror stories circulating about the bloodbaths some of the Changed had wrought in their own households did not encourage compassion. A few who found themselves Changed had killed themselves. Most of the Changechildren who roamed the streets as hobgoblins had come from the streets—were beggars, thieves, and other street people who had no relatives to eliminate them and no interest in anything other than survival.
The rest of the journey was spent nervously watching for another pack of attackers. When they finally did arrive at the inn, it was fully dark, and in the interest of keeping his employees satisfied enough to keep their mouths shut, he distributed a generous purse among them so that they could entertain themselves in fine style in the common room while he met with Thayer and Thayer's guests in the private room above.
His men entered the common room at the side entrance; he entered the main entrance, stepping out of the screaming wind and snow into a sheltering foyer, softly lit and blessedly warm and attended by a discreet footman. Music played faintly somewhere; a full consort of wind and string instruments. The footman directed him up a staircase to the right to another foyer, this time attended by one of Thayer's personal servants, who took his snow-caked outer clothing and directed him inside the door behind him.
He was not at all surprised to see that besides Thayer, virtually every other important military leader in the area of the capital was there already, waiting, with an excellent supper (as yet untouched) set up on a sideboard. All eyes were on him as he entered, and the murmur of talk that had been going on stopped for a moment, then resumed.
He took his place beside Thayer, was introduced to those he did not know personally, and Thayer's servants proceeded to serve all of the guests. He watched them carefully, and noted that they only served him food from dishes that everyone shared, and only after stirring up the contents within his sight, so that there could be no "special" little spot that had been prepared for him with poison. He kept his approving smile to himself, and pretended not to notice. Dinner conversation was not precisely light, since a great deal of it had to do with the roving packs of hobgoblins and suggested means of eradicating them, but it had nothing whatsoever to do with politics. There was another peculiarity of Thayer's servants; they never handled knives themselves, deferring to Thayer for carving of meat, and they were unarmed. As for Thayer's guests, they were conspicuously unarmed. Everything that could have been done to reassure a professional killer that he was safe among them had been done.
So. it wasn't to be an assassination attempt after all. That meant it was a conspiracy.
And the moment that the meal was over, the dishes cleared away, the wine poured and more left in decanters on the table, and the servants sent off, the conspiracy was revealed.
They wanted to be rid of Charliss before he did any more damage, and they were perfectly willing to send him on to Godhood a little sooner.
He listened to them with great patience, making no comments, only nodding occasionally when they seemed to require it. They were understandably angry at many of the things that had been going on, and his revelations concerning Tremane had essentially been the trigger for all their pent-up frustrations. They were quite prepared to eliminate the Emperor themselves, and had a good, solid plan for doing so. He told them as much, and commended them for having a plan that took care of almost every aspect of the situation.
"Almost," he repeated with emphasis. "But I would be remiss if I did not point out the major flaw in your plan. And I do not blame you gentlemen for not considering the aspect I have in mind."
; "'Which is what, exactly?" asked General Thayer, who was acting as the primary spokesman.
"Magic." He held up a hand to forestall any objections. "I know that, given how your own mages are acting with the increasing severity and frequency of the mage-storms, that mages seem an insignificant aspect to you. Please believe me; they are not. You have determined that the spells binding the Imperial Guard to Charliss are broken and have not been replaced; that is good news, but those are not the only magics you need to worry about. Charliss himself is a powerful mage, and his power is augmented by an entire corps of lesser mages whose minds have been his for many years. They spend themselves to ensure his continued prosperity, and that is what you are not seeing in dealing with your own mages, who would do no such thing. Surely you gentlemen recall seeing Charliss' mages before—that group of rather blank-eyed individuals who trail about after him like so many adoring, mindless maidens trailing about after a handsome warrior?"
He looked around the table, and saw to his satisfaction that although there was disappointment in their faces, there was reluctant agreement there as well, and nods all around.
"At the moment, Charliss is only moderately inconvenienced by the Storms, as opposed to the vast majority of mages, who are prostrated by them." He steepled his fingers together thoughtfully, and considered his next words. "As a mage myself, let me explain to you, if I may, the true effect the Storms are having on mages—and that is primarily in our choice of actions. The choice for a mage at the moment is simple: Preserve all of your own power for shields, or work other magics and have each Storm that passes send you to your bed for hours, recovering." He saw more nods, as the Generals recognized the effects he had just described. "Because Charliss is using the power from his corps of mages, he can shield and work other magics, and not suffer. That is what makes him dangerous, still. You might well get past his guards, even past his personal bodyguards; you might get past the protections put in by his personal mages, but by then he will be alerted and you will never get an assassin past his own defenses."
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