by Glen Cook
Then the earth shook violently.
“What in the hell?”
That was Turking, suddenly terrified.
“Earthquake,” Anna suggested.
Piper Hecht had heard that sound toward the end of the siege of Arn Bedu. But that explosion, of a ton of firepowder under a tower, had not lasted so long, nor had shaken the mountain so vigorously.
“That’s southwest of here,” Delari said.
“Maybe the magazines at Krulik and Sneigon.” The Krulik and Sneigon Special Manufactory produced the firepowder and firepowder weaponry employed by the Patriarchal armies. Its destruction would be a huge disaster.
“Not a good thing,” Cloven Februaren said. “You’d have to start from scratch. Unless somebody had a few eggs hidden in other baskets.”
The three men moved out into the weather. Illuminated smoke rose into the overcast. “That’s not the Devedian quarter,” Hecht said, which was where Krulik and Sneigon were located. “That’s closer. And not big enough to be Krulik and Sneigon.”
“I’ll take a closer look.” The Ninth Unknown turned sideways and disappeared.
Anna and the children saw him go.
“Hush!” Hecht snapped. His lifeguards were closing in. Madouc himself appeared. Hecht asked him, “Any idea what just happened?”
“Your guess would be as good as mine, sir. But I suspect that a firepowder magazine wandered too close to a spark.”
Interesting. Everyone assumed the explosion was accidental. What if it was not?
A flash shone while Hecht wondered how someone outside the military supply chain might have gotten hold of that much firepowder. The rumble did not arrive for several seconds. Hecht immediately guessed that to have been one standard twenty-four-pound firepowder keg.
Cloven Februaren said, “You have more resources than you’re ready to admit, boy.”
Hecht jumped. The old man had returned. Without startling Madouc. Though Madouc was always suspicious of the old man in brown.
“Uh …”
“My sentiments, too. The bang. It was at the Bruglioni citadel. They must have had their cellars filled with firepowder. Everything fell straight down, into the cellars, then on down into the catacombs.”
The light was not good. But Hecht would have sworn the old man was distressed.
Februaren said, “No one in there could’ve survived. It’s worse than the hippodrome collapse.”
Principaté Delari stirred. Having been responsible for that. He had used a keg of firepowder to attack the monster of the catacombs in exactly the worst possible place.
“What shall we do?” Hecht asked.
Madouc suggested, “Staying out of the way would be appreciated by the city authorities.”
Delari agreed. “Good point. They’re irritated enough, having to put up with Patriarchal troops. Sit still. Let them work. They’re competent. If they want help, let them ask.”
Hecht nodded. Reluctantly. He had grown accustomed to doing what he thought was right, without consulting anyone.
Anna took hold of his left bicep. “Why don’t we go inside? Life could get exciting out here.”
The instant he was out of sight of the lifeguards Cloven Februaren turned sideways.
“How does he do that?” Anna asked.
All three children babbled, Vali loudest. “Maybe what is he doing would be more interesting.”
“Dreaming the Construct,” Heris said. “And that’s all you need to know now. And you’re not to repeat that to anyone.”
Hecht glanced at Principaté Delari. He had seen no evidence that Delari could, or did, “dream the Construct.” Why not? If it was so easy that Heris could learn?
Delari said, “We still have dinner to finish. Further discussion can wait.”
***
The gathering in the quiet room differed only in that Anna was present. Always before she had been asked to stay away. Heris arrived last, bringing coffee. Her great talent. Brewing the rare and incalculably expensive beverage.
Muniero Delari shut the door. Lined with stone, it was immensely heavy. He said, “Anna, you’re a remarkable person. As near perfect for our Piper as a woman could be.”
“But?”
“Yes. Right. I do have a but. I’d rather you weren’t here. What you don’t know can’t hurt the rest of us. But my grandfather says your ignorance could be a more deadly threat to you and the children. And the four of you have become important to us.”
This was new. Hecht sipped his coffee quietly, occasionally glancing at Cloven Februaren. The ancient had been away only minutes. He seemed content to sip coffee and look smug.
Anna looked to Hecht for support. He said, “I don’t know where he’s going. But you don’t need to be scared.”
“Let’s jump right into the cold water,” Delari said. “Heris, in addition to being the top coffee artist in Brothe, is Piper’s older sister.”
Hecht started. Then realized that almost everything Anna needed to know piggybacked on that one statement. Anna knew pretty much everything else about Heris.
Anna said nothing for more than a minute. Finally, “You’re all related. Grade Drocker was Piper’s father. Which explains a lot. But …” She stared at Hecht, eyes wide. “You fired the shot that caused his death.”
“I didn’t know who he was. I’m still not sure what difference it would’ve made. He meant to kill me. He’d tried before. He got two of my friends instead. He didn’t know who I was, either. Till around the time I went into the City Regiment, when he did a turnaround and started sculpting my career.”
“And his father took over when he went.”
Muniero Delari made a slight bow toward Anna. “More coffee, Piper?”
“Always. You know I’m addicted.”
Cloven Februaren leaned nearer Anna and, in a stage whisper, said, “Here comes the really grim part.”
Delari scowled. “Can’t you be serious about anything? Two hundred years old. The most powerful sorcerer in the world. And any one of Anna’s children is more serious and responsible.”
“Being serious now, Muno. Putting on my stern face and acting my age.”
A flicker of smile cracked Delari’s scowl. “He had a point, Anna. Obliquely. You’ve just been included in some extremely dangerous knowledge. The only people who know all that are in this room. Others — er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen in Dreanger comes to mind — know Piper isn’t what he pretends to be. None of them know the whole truth. They can’t find it. The records have been destroyed.”
Februaren said, “The bush he’s beating around is, if anyone finds out it’ll be because somebody in this room right now tells somebody. And that wouldn’t be healthy.”
“Hey!” Hecht said. “Don’t you threaten …”
“Sun comes up in the east. Tides come in and go out. I’m stating facts. Cold facts.”
Delari said, “Anna, you’ve been whining because you haven’t been included in all of Piper’s life.” As Anna frowned at Heris. “Now that you’re included, you can’t walk away.”
The Ninth Unknown said, “You came to Brothe from Sonsa because your former husband’s secret employers insisted. Are you still reporting to al-Qarn?”
Hecht grew more nervous by the second. This could not end well.
“Not for almost two years. I’m sure those people wrote me off for being too close to Piper.”
“That’s good,” Februaren said. “The point’s been made. Piper, fill us in on your adventures.”
The old man and Principaté Delari hardly interrupted, though Hecht did not have a great deal to report that Februaren had not already picked up during his random visits. Both seemed particularly interested in Asgrimmur Grimmsson.
“What did you do with him?” Delari asked. “I’d certainly like to talk to him.”
“Me, too,” Februaren said. “A man who became an Instrumentality, then a man again. Interesting stuff.”
“He’s hidden in a room like this down under the Caste
lla. Hopefully not attracting attention. I didn’t know where else to put him. He wants us to help him free the Old Gods he trapped after he turned into a monster. The unintended consequence of that was the liberation of Kharoulke the Windwalker. As the world is becoming a paradise for his sort.”
“More coffee, Anna?” Heris asked.
“No. I’ve had enough. Of everything. I need some time alone.” Her world had become far more vast and dark in just a few minutes.
***
As he prepared for bed, Hecht overheard Vali ask Anna, “So did they finally tell you what’s going on?”
“Yes. And now I wish I’d minded my own business.”
“Devedians say, ‘Have no congress with sorcerers.’”
“Which makes them smarter than most of us think.”
***
The Captain-General visited the fallen Bruglioni citadel. Four lifeguards and Kait Rhuk’s fire team accompanied him.
The Bruglioni stronghold had covered several crowded acres. Surrounded by a curtain wall, it had included gardens and outbuildings as well as the fortress that served the family as home and headquarters.
That was all rubble in a hole, now.
Madouc whispered, “Sir, here comes Colonel Ghort, his own self.”
People made mock of Pinkus Ghort’s rustic speech — which came and went according to a formula best know to Ghort his own self — and of his dress. But Hecht had heard no one but Ghort himself denigrate Pinkus Ghort’s intelligence.
Ghort said, “You musta hauled some major ass, getting down here from Alten Weinberg so fast, Pipe.”
“Promises to keep. What happened here?”
“Firepowder accident. Believe it or not, people survived that. Most of the servants. Gervase Saluda and Paludan Bruglioni, both. Though they’re both bad hurt. Paludan might not make it. Saluda was just leaving when it happened. Lintel came down and crushed his legs. He’ll probably never walk again. The rest of the family are still down there. Along with a fortune in rare wines. I’m told.” Ghort sounded more distressed about the wine than the trapped Bruglioni.
“They had a fine cellar when I worked here. You sure it was an accident?”
“It was pure stupidity. We have a witness who heard an idiot Bruglioni nephew brag that he was going to steal some firepowder and make his own fireworks. He was carrying an open lamp instead of a closed lantern.”
Hecht stared at the rubble. Dust still swirled in the hole. He tried exercising his cynical side. “Who’d profit if it wasn’t an accident?”
“Same folks as will anyway. Anybody in the Five Families who ain’t named Bruglioni. This should about do the family in.”
Kait Rhuk said, “Permission to interject, Captain-General?”
“Go ahead.”
“Colonel. Why would the Bruglioni have had enough firepowder to do this? Not to mention that — I think — legally, firepowder is supposed to be made exclusively for us. The Patriarch’s men.”
“Good point,” Hecht said.
Pinkus Ghort did not quite look Hecht in the eye. “The Collegium say they’re part of the Patriarchal armed forces, Pipe. Looking at it realistically, firepowder manufacturers are producing more than you’re buying. Your conquest of Artecipea took care of the saltpeter shortage. They’re turning a tidy profit on the extra production.” And, perhaps, certain individuals charged with enforcing the rules were getting a share.
Hecht glared toward the Devedian quarter, yet was more irked with himself than those people. This he should have foreseen.
There was nothing more likely to facilitate the redistribution of wealth than a new means of killing people. Though handling and employing firepowder effectively required skill.
Skilled firepowder handler Kait Rhuk asked, “How long before we see firepowder weaponry in the hands of our enemies?”
“Let me guess,” Hecht said. Loosing his sardonic side. “As long as it takes someone to work out a good formula for the stuff?”
Rhuk snorted. “If that was true we’d be up to our asses in bad guys with firepowder toys. The formula ain’t no secret. Every apothecary and chemist in Brothe knows it. What they don’t know is how to put them together. If it was me, I’d have somebody I really trusted permanently installed at Krulik and Sneigon. I’d babysit them day and night. I’d use somebody who’d cut a throat anytime the mood hit him. Somebody who ain’t weasel enough to get rich on the bribes he was gonna be offered.”
The Captain-General did not want to operate that way. But he saw the point. Men who wanted a fast profit, right now, would happily sell the most wonderfully murderous tools to the worst enemies of their own state or people, somehow oblivious to the fact that those weapons might bite back.
The Rhûn had a ferocious secret weapon. They called it nephron. It was a thick, heavy liquid that, once fired, could not be extinguished. It had to burn itself out. Rhûnish merchants would not sell the formula but willingly sold nephron itself, even to Sha-lug who used it against the Eastern Empire’s soldiers.
Human minds did not seem large enough to encompass an obligation to eschew profit if making it required providing a means to destroy one’s neighbor.
Pinkus Ghort said, “Hey, Pipe. You lost in there?”
“What?”
“You went away someplace inside your head. I was afraid you got lost.”
“It isn’t that vast a landscape, Pinkus. Pinkus, knowing you, you’ve found a source for the best wine in town. And you’ve found some way to get in touch with what’s going on in the underworld.”
Ghort gestured with both hands, as though playing with a balance scale — or pair of breasts. “Thus. So. I try. But, really, all I need to do is put on a show that’ll keep the senate happy.”
“Bronte Doneto is who you need to keep happy. Him and the old men of the Church. Not the old men of the city.”
Ghort shrugged. “Pretty much the same crew.”
“They’re wearing you down. Aren’t they?”
Ghort shrugged again. “How can you tell?”
“You don’t even bother to talk bad about them.”
“A man gets addicted to eating regular.”
Hecht faked a laugh. “What are you going to do about this?” He gestured at the hole where the Bruglioni citadel had stood.
“I reckon I could get a shovel and start filling it in. But I don’t suppose that’s what you mean.”
“No.” Smiling. Attitude was a big part of what made Pinkus Ghort Pinkus Ghort.
“I’ll get some of the old farts from the Collegium to come exercise their talents. Give them a chance to show off. Them antiques have egos like you wouldn’t believe. When they figure out it was really an accident, then I’ll grab my shovel. It they decide somebody did it, I’ll hunt the asshole down and drag him in begging me not to turn him over to the Bruglioni.”
“Good for you, Pinkus. You want to come by Principaté Delari’s town house some evening, I brought you half a dozen bottles of white wine from Alten Weinberg.”
“Hey. That was thoughtful.”
“It was, wasn’t it? I’m warning you, though. It’s different stuff.”
“Good. I hear you had an interview with the Empress her own self.”
“I did. She offered me a job.”
“Shit. That’s some shit. I guess you said no.”
“I said no. I’m not ready to break in a new set of crazy old men who are out to sabotage me.”
“I smell rank cynicism, Pipe. You promised you’d work on that.”
“I do. Every day, right after my prayers.”
“That don’t exactly boost my confidence. Did I ever catch you praying? I don’t remember if I did.”
“You’d have to be sneaky and fast. I try to keep it between me and God.”
Ghort chuckled. “I don’t even bother anymore. My god is on a five-century bender and don’t have time for mortal trivia.”
Hecht understood Ghort’s attitude but could not, himself, thumb his nose at the Deity
. Whichever One He might be. He asked, “What’s your boss up to?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where’ll he stand when Boniface goes? I’m hoping he doesn’t put you and me in a difficult position.”
“You mean to enforce the Viscesment Agreement.”
“I swore an oath.”
“And the City Regiment, in our myriad, wondrous forms, will be blessed with breaking up the riots.”
“They get to be too much for you, Krois or the Castella can whoop and six thousand veteran Patriarchals will be here overnight. Fifteen thousand in a week. There’s only going to be one next Patriarch.”
“Easy, Pipe. No need to get all intense.”
“Just want to make my point.”
“Consider it made. But you won’t make yourself popular.”
“I have to do the right thing.”
“I give up. It won’t matter a hundred years from now, anyway.”
There was room to debate that. Hecht saw no point. It was hard enough to get Ghort to worry about next week.
Ghort said, “Tell me about your god-killing adventures in the Connec. And Alten Weinberg. What was that like?”
“The interview with the Empress was as interesting as it got. The wedding was just long, boring, and hot. And way overdone.”
“No shit? Is Katrin still as good-looking as she was when we saw her in Plemenza?”
“Time hasn’t been kind. The Grail Throne is a cruel taskmaster.”
“She made it hard on herself, changing sides in the Imperial squabble with the Church.”
“Definitely part of it. Jaime won’t help, either.”
“Not the big, handsome hero, eh?”
“Not so big. Definitely handsome, in a southern kind of way. And he did show good at Los Naves de los Fantas. They say. But he doesn’t have a much finer character than our onetime friend, Bishop Serifs.”
“Not good.”
“And Katrin won’t see it.”
Ghort stared down into the hole. “You see something moving there, Pipe?”
“Where?”
Ghort pointed.
Squinting, Hecht could just make out … “Rhuk! Front!”
Kait Rhuk shoved gawkers aside, rolled his falcon to the lip of the sinkhole. Lifeguards closed in. Hecht snarled, “You men! Stand back! Rhuk. Your eyes are better than mine or Colonel Ghort’s. Something is moving down there where that furniture is all tangled up. Get a sight on it.”