Blood Requiem

by Christopher Husberg

  And the fact that something had clearly happened to Cinzia, too, made him wonder.

  But he couldn’t tell her anything, not yet. He hardly had anything to tell her, anyway. A sensation? What did that mean? No use in bringing something up that had no meaning to begin with.

  If it happened again, he’d tell her.

  16

  House of Aldermen, Triah

  RICCAN CARRIERI WALKED THROUGH the large double doors and into the assembly chamber of the House of Aldermen. Gold trim adorned the doors and frame, both decorated with carvings of the first assembly that had taken place after the abdication of the King Who Gave Up His Crown.

  He walked down a long corridor that led to a dais, upon which rested a circular table at the center of the room. Granite platforms rose upward and outward from the stage in concentric tiered circles. To Carrieri’s surprise, the nine chairs around the center table were occupied. This was a full, not a qualified, assembly.

  Two councils comprised the governing body of Khale. The first, and most important, was the People’s Parliament, consisting of representatives from Triah and all of the provinces of Khale. The tiered platforms around the center table consisted of ninety-nine seats, occupied by nobles, merchants, and citizens alike, one for each member of the People’s Parliament.

  A qualified assembly required only the presence of two-thirds of the People’s Parliament; the status of the meeting was upgraded to full when the Minor Council joined them. Carrieri recognized the eight members of the Minor Council seated around the table.

  Traditionally, the Minor Council consisted of three seats reserved for the Triunity of the Denomination: the Oracle, the Holy Examiner, and the First Priestess, all present today. The Venerato and Authoritar of the Citadel occupied two more seats, while elected Triahn nobles occupied two others. The last seat of the Minor Council belonged to the Consular, elected from the People’s Parliament, who acted as head of both the Parliament and Minor Council.

  That, of course, left one seat at the table. Today, that seat was meant for Riccan Carrieri, elected Grand Marshal of the Khalic armed forces.

  The People’s Parliament was in full argumentative flow as Carrieri made the long walk across the marbled floor towards the round table at the center of the room. As he mounted the stage and took his seat, he looked around at the tiered platforms, rising up above the table at which he sat. Senators stood on the various tiers, shouting at one another, dressed in the traditional Khalic political togar—long, flowing violet robes, draped over one shoulder.

  Carrieri curled his lip. This was why he hated assemblies.

  The Consular’s hammer cracked against the table, echoing over the shouts in the room. Her clear, confident voice followed.

  “Order! I call this assembly to order!”

  Carrieri glanced at Karina Vestri, elected Consular. The shouting voices quieted almost immediately, and for a brief moment a hollow feeling sucked at Carrieri’s chest. There was a time when he’d felt pride at Karina’s ability to call the most powerful people in the world to order. There’d been a time when she would have caught his eye, given him the slightest of smiles.

  “We welcome Grand Marshal Riccan Carrieri to the full assembly,” the Consular continued, not meeting Carrieri’s eyes, “by our request. Thank you for coming, Grand Marshal.”

  Carrieri inclined his head. “I live to serve the great nation of Khale,” he said, taking his seat at the table.

  “I call for an immediate vote to action!” one of the senators shouted from the platforms. A dozen or so other voices murmured in consent.

  A vote to action. There were only two reasons to call a vote to action during a full assembly. One was to evict a sitting senator or councilperson, but if that had been the case Carrieri could not imagine why he would have been invited to this meeting.

  The other, of course, was a declaration of war.

  Roden could not possibly have attacked without Carrieri hearing about it. There had been rumors of the neighboring country gathering troops, but Carrieri had not heard of any movement, not yet. Unless, somehow, Roden’s maneuvers had slipped past his spies. Such a thing was not likely.

  The Consular glared up at the platforms in the general direction from which the voice had come. “You are out of order, Senator Nalo. The assembly will receive a full briefing before we make any such motion.”

  Carrieri heard soft grumbling from the platforms, but no formal dissent.

  “Venerato Lothgarde, do you have the intelligence report?” the Consular asked, turning to a bald man about Carrieri’s age—forty-five summers—with spectacles and a trimmed circle beard. Kosarin Lothgarde, the Venerato of the Citadel. Carrieri also knew him as the head of the Triad, the ruling body of the Nazaniin assassins.

  Lothgarde nodded. “Authoritar Aqilla will give the report, madam.”

  All eyes turned to Sirana Aqilla, who stood up from her seat next to Lothgarde and walked around to a set of steps that led onto the table. Whenever someone addressed the entirety of the House of Councils, they stood upon the grand table.

  “Human–tiellan tension has reached a tipping point in Cineste,” Aqilla said. Her eyes were sharp and alert, her fiery red hair tied back in a loose bun. Carrieri dismissed many in the Parliament, and in the Minor Council itself, as incompetent or mildly stupid. Neither Aqilla nor Lothgarde fell into that category.

  “A tiellan force of almost a thousand left the city of Cineste yesterday. As near as we can tell, each of these tiellans called the city their home. This movement stems from a group of tiellans within the city who call themselves the Druids.”

  Murmurs filled the hall. While some seemed to have heard the news already, it was clearly the first word of it for others.

  It was certainly the first time for Carrieri.

  He envied the Nazaniin information network. He had tried time and time again to convince them to open their communication channels to him, but the group was maddeningly obstinate. They hoarded information like the dragons of legend hoarded gold.

  A gathering tiellan force, named after the most powerful mortal beings in history, was something Carrieri would have liked to hear about earlier. Between this and the Odenite Church moving south, rumored to be almost fifteen hundred strong, the historians might as well already start calling this the Age of Exodus.

  “The Cinestean City Watch met these Druids outside the city gates, slaughtering two hundred tiellans.”

  “Canta’s bones,” Carrieri whispered under his breath. He knew Drille Garastoni, the magistrate of Cineste, by reputation, and he could not imagine a worse man to handle human–tiellan relations. Garastoni was a Kamite sympathizer, advocating the re-enslavement of all tiellans.

  “A small group of tiellans retaliated,” Aqilla continued. “If my sources are correct, that force crushed the City Watch in a skirmish just outside the city walls.”

  With a collective gasp, the House of Councils erupted into chatter.

  Carrieri raised his hand. As the assembly’s guest, he had in theory as much governing power as the Consular. This was foreign territory, or at least it felt that way to him, and he had to be cautious.

  Fortunately, the Consular lent him her aid, even if she still refused to meet his eyes. She slammed her gavel on the table sharply, three times, and the prattle quieted.

  “Grand Marshal Carrieri, you have a comment?” she asked.

  “Some questions,” Carrieri said. “How large were the forces that engaged in this skirmish? What were the casualties?”

  “My sources estimate the City Watch fielded just over four hundred soldiers,” Aqilla said. “The tiellan numbers are less clear. Roughly a thousand left the city, but the force that engaged the City Watch seemed to have consisted of just over a hundred fighters. Casualties were minimal for the tiellans, but catastrophic for the City Watch. They lost nearly two hundred men and almost a hundred horses, either killed or taken by the tiellans.”

  Stunned silence permeated the hall.
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  Carrieri blinked. City Watchmen had never made particularly strong soldiers, but they were at least trained in battle. While tiellans were technically allowed to join the army, only a small portion of them actually did, and all of those were billeted in Triah.

  “My source tells me the tiellans fought fiercely, but they were obviously green,” Aqilla said. “The City Watch should have crushed them. But it appears the tiellans had a psimancer.” Aqilla paused, clearing her throat. “Probably more than one, if the reports are correct. Countless weapons flying through the air, dozens of bodies.”

  Carrieri frowned amidst further murmuring of the senators around him. Aqilla was hiding something. He would need to find out what.

  “Where have these tiellans gone?” Carrieri asked. “They left Cineste, defeated the guard force the magistrate so foolishly placed in their way… now what are they doing?”

  “They have moved east,” Aqilla said.

  “They’re going to recruit the clans!” a senator shouted. “We need to stop them before they gather more power!”

  The Consular’s gavel cracked against the table. “Order!” Karina shouted. She looked up at Aqilla. “Do you have anything else for us, Authoritar?”

  “I do not, Madam Consular.”

  “Thank you. You may be seated.”

  Aqilla stepped down from the table and took her seat next to Lothgarde. Carrieri watched Lothgarde lean over to Aqilla and whisper something in her ear. The two were definitely hiding something—but chances were, at any given point in time, the Venerato and Authoritar were hiding a great many things at once. Carrieri would speak to them afterwards to discover whether this was actually of any importance.

  “We will now hear proposals on this topic,” Karina said. She glared up at the senators. “We will not entertain any calls to action. Not yet. We will hear knowledgeable suggestions from those closely related to the incidents outside of Cineste, and that is all.”

  Silence reigned for a moment. For all the anger and frustration the senators had shown, they were remarkably reluctant to offer any real solutions. Finally, one of them spoke up. Carrieri recognized Griggan Dai, a representative of the combined towns of northern Khale outside of Cineste.

  “I propose we do nothing,” Senator Dai said. He was immediately met by scoffs and hisses, but he continued over them, to his credit. “Nobody has spoken to the intentions of these tiellans,” he continued. “Perhaps they wanted to leave peacefully, and the City Watch stopped them. They might not cause any more trouble. We should track them, stay informed, but that is all.”

  Carrieri pursed his lips. Another senator was already responding, arguing that the tiellans couldn’t possibly have anything in mind other than human destruction, but Karina shut that line of argument down quickly, as Carrieri suspected she would.

  Carrieri met eyes with Senator Dai. Dai was a tiellan sympathizer; promoting an option that would protect them was not a surprising move. While Carrieri himself was no tiellan sympathizer, he would always side with reason. The idiot magistrate of Cineste had overreacted; it would do Khale no good if the senators overreacted too, provoking the tiellan group further.

  “We need to send Carrieri,” one of the senators shouted. Carrieri looked up, scowling. He hated having to sit down at this damned table. He could never tell who was bloody speaking on the tiers around him.

  “Carrieri will crush them,” another senator agreed.

  Carrieri rolled his eyes. “What good would it do to crush a movement of one thousand tiellans?” he asked. “Must each of you be reminded that they were the ones first attacked in Cineste? The loss of lives was Magistrate Garastoni’s fault, and no one else’s.”

  “We do not know they wouldn’t have attacked otherwise,” another senator said.

  Carrieri clenched his jaw. For the first time since he’d entered the assembly chamber, Karina Vestri met his eyes. They both raised a single eyebrow at one another, a glance they had exchanged dozens of times before.

  Senators can be such astounding morons.

  Carrieri looked away quickly, as did Karina. He had glanced at her more out of habit than anything else. Such things died long, slow deaths.

  “They’re preparing to take revenge on us,” another senator said.

  Bloody Oblivion. With a burst of energy, Carrieri stood and leapt onto the table, bypassing the stairs opposite him.

  “Enough,” he roared. The senators quieted immediately, thank the Goddess. Carrieri turned slowly, speaking to all of the senators in the room. “You act like children who cannot fathom anything beyond yourselves.”

  Silence met him. Carrieri reveled in it. It had been too long since he’d berated the fools that governed his nation. And, since they had invited him to the full assembly as their guest, he had full rights to do so.

  “If you want to send me north to take care of your tiellan situation, you will have to order me to do it, with the power of full assembly. No other action would make me abandon reason to go after whatever shadows frighten you.

  “Surely you are all aware of the threat of Roden. The empire is more unstable than ever now, and more unpredictable. They have been amassing power and could move against us at any moment. Do you truly want me to abandon Triah to waste time on a threat that is not even a threat?”

  Carrieri paused as he looked around him, at each raised platform.

  “My whole life has been committed to Khale, to protecting us from danger, but particularly against our greatest rival, Roden. I will not abandon that post now. Not unless you force me to do so. Will you force me?”

  “Do we have any forces in the north?” a senator finally asked. Carrieri turned, craning his head to see the woman who had spoken. He did not recognize her—she must be newly elected.

  “The Steel Regiment is the closest force. They are already in the area to keep the peace in the Eastmaw Mountains.” The mountain villages had been at each other’s throats recently, as they tended to be every decade or so. Carrieri had sent Publio Kyfer and his Steel Regiment to the area weeks ago—mainly because Carrieri could not stand Kyfer’s presence in Triah any longer. There were already rumors that Kyfer was in the running to replace Carrieri whenever he stepped down, or was killed, and Carrieri could not abide the idea that such a fool would succeed him.

  “We could send them after these tiellans,” the senator said. “An entire regiment would make quick work of them.”

  “It would,” Carrieri said slowly. The Steel Regiment consisted of roughly three thousand soldiers, as well as a Nazaniin cotir of their own. Even if the tiellans had a dozen psimancers, they could not hope to stand against such a force.

  The biggest problem, in Carrieri’s opinion, would be Publio Kyfer. But he could not express such a sentiment here, where Kyfer had a strong following.

  “Then we should send the Steel Regiment,” the senator continued. “Grand Marshal Carrieri can stay here where it is safe, and we will take care of the tiellan problem once and for all.”

  Carrieri bristled. Where it is safe. He kept his breathing even, however. One did not become the Grand Marshal of all Khalic forces by rising to meaningless provocations.

  “I do not think this Cinestean force is the extent of your ‘tiellan problem,’” Carrieri said. “The Steel Regiment would likely quell this group, but such a drastic action could provoke the tiellans to greater anger. We might face full rebellion throughout our nation.”

  “Better to quell them now,” the senator said, “than to wait and watch this threat grow beyond our power.”

  Carrieri and the senator held one another’s eyes for a moment. The woman was younger than Carrieri had first thought, certainly younger than he, with voluminous black hair and a cold, calculated gaze.

  “Is that a proposal, Senator Tristani?” Karina asked.

  The woman, Senator Tristani, looked around at her fellow senators, then nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said. “I propose we order the Steel Regiment to attack the tiellan force in the north
, annihilating them. We must deal with our problems quickly and decisively.”

  Someone swiftly seconded the proposal, accompanied by many other murmurs of agreement.

  Karina struck the table with her gavel. “We have a proposal before us, then. Is there any discussion on the proposal?”

  Carrieri stayed standing on the table, watching the senators discuss the issue. Many were for the proposal exactly as Tristani had said it, but others seemed more hesitant. In the end, thankfully, a hybrid approach passed. A message would be sent up to Publio Kyfer through his Nazaniin cotir, informing him of his orders to track and gain intelligence on the tiellan movement. If the tiellans threatened the lives or well-being of any Khalic citizens—or any humans, as Carrieri understood it—Kyfer would engage. Because only a regiment was involved, and because the opposing force was very small, no call to action was needed. But the action the assembly had decided upon, and the message it would send to the tiellans, was clear enough.

  Karina closed the assembly, and Riccan Carrieri strode out of the House of Aldermen. The Parliament could have come up with a worse solution, but this one was far from the best.

  * * *

  Outside the large double doors, Carrieri waited in the grand hallway that encircled the assembly chamber. After a few moments, he glimpsed the Venerato and Authoritar walking silently together away from the chamber.

  Carrieri caught up with them, falling in beside Kosarin Lothgarde.

  “Grand Marshal Carrieri,” Lothgarde said, inclining his head as they walked.

  “You are keeping something from the Parliament,” Carrieri said. “What is it?”

  Aqilla glanced at him. “We made a full report, Grand Marshal.”

  Lothgarde still stared straight forward.

  “I don’t care what you keep from the Parliament,” Carrieri said. “They are paranoid fools. But I do care what you keep from me. My duty is to protect you as much as them.”