by Matt Wallace
Lexi says nothing to that, and hopes her face offers the same absence of information.
“That rogue Aegin disappeared. The documents disappeared. You disappeared. Only one of those things has since resurfaced.”
Lexi feigns sympathy. “I am sorry your carefully laid plans were so upset.”
“No matter,” Strinnix reassures her. “Your return gave us the opportunity to realize Shaheen’s full potential after all.”
“And what have you learned from her?”
The Ministry agent shrugs. “Nothing we did not already know. But gathering information was no longer her primary purpose.”
“Oh?”
Strinnix nods.
A new thought strikes Lexi. “You say ‘was’ her primary purpose.”
“I did,” the agent confirms. “She has accomplished it.”
“And that purpose was?”
“Why, bringing the two of us together, of course. I told her she simply had to wait for you to be ready. I assured her the weight you are carrying would inevitably crush you to earth.”
“You were right,” Shaheen says.
Strinnix smiles her mirthless smile anew. “Yes, dear. Thank you.”
“You know about Burr and the Ignobles,” Lexi concludes, though she can’t believe it herself.
“Of course, we do. The Protectorate Ministry has known the Ignobles are far more than bitter relics of a bygone age for some time now. We are fully aware of Burr’s little antique hideaway where she costume-plays a noble lady from that era.”
“But if you know, why—”
“Why don’t we arrest her? Because we do not know the breadth of the Ignoble organization. We also do not possess the names of everyone in it, let alone those regular citizens over whom they exude influence in the Crachian government. Arresting Burr at this point would create more problems than it would solve. Her removal would publicly disrupt the Spectrum due to her position on the Gen Franchise Council, and she would only be replaced at the head of the proverbial snake by someone whose identity we may not know.”
“But Burr could tell you all of these things you don’t know,” Lexi points out.
Strinnix feigns a small laugh that is as joyless as her smile. “Burr is a fanatic, Te-Gen. She is a misguided madwoman. I doubt she would allow us to take her alive, and even if we did, we have calculated the probability that her body would succumb to our interrogation methods before her mind did. And personally, I find such methods thoroughly unreliable. Even the most refined torture is still a blunt instrument.”
Lexi thinks of Burr, running through their interactions in her mind. She was always struck most by the Ignoble’s certainty, her pure, unwavering belief in her sacred rite of ascension by blood and the superiority of nobility.
Strinnix is correct about her.
“Besides, we do not need Burr in order to uncover her hidden co-conspirators and assets,” the agent says. “We have you now.”
“Burr is the only one I know about, the only one I’ve met,” Lexi says.
“For now.”
“Why would she tell me anything?”
“Because you are an integral part of her glorious mission to return nobility to power in Crache, Te-Gen.”
“I’m just a tool to her.”
“A hammer can drive a nail,” Strinnix replies. “It can also crack a skull. Circumstance is everything.”
Lexi doesn’t want to do either, yet she knows telling that to the Protectorate Ministry agent is futile and meaningless. “What would you have me do?”
“Continue to serve your purpose. You have proven so adept at bringing the populace of the Bottoms willingly into your embrace. Burr can see that. You’ve become her line to them. Tell her they’re ready to embrace the returning nobles as well, but that the idea is no longer sufficient to rally them. That they need faces and names to raise up as their new protectors.”
“She will never believe I’m willingly helping her plans come to fruition.”
“You discerned how to capture the hearts and minds of your flock by the sea. Do the same with Burr.”
“I can’t pacify her with a wheel of cheese. You said it yourself—she’s a madwoman.”
“Find out what her wheel of cheese is, then.”
“And if I can’t?”
Strinnix leans back in her chair, letting a brief yet oppressive silence settle over them before deigning to answer Lexi’s question. “You will be alone again,” she says. “All alone.”
Lexi is forced to swallow the rock quarry in her throat in order to respond.
“You tried to kill me once,” she reminds Strinnix carefully. “You tried to abduct me in my home. You kidnapped my husband and sent him off to die on some mud-covered battlefield. Why in the names of all the forbidden gods would I be better served by you than Burr?”
“Fair points, all,” Strinnix admits. “As I said, Te-Gen, circumstance is everything. When those actions were undertaken, we viewed you as an enemy of Crache in pursuit and then possession of damaging state secrets.”
“And now?”
Strinnix shrugs. “You are a potential asset, and the Ministry has developed larger problems than knowledge of the Savage Legion and how its ranks are filled becoming public domain. There is a rebellion to the east, and in dealing with it we can ill afford to be undermined here in the Capitol by these deluded Ignoble creatures.”
Lexi actually believes that part. “So what’s to become of me after, assuming there is an after? And what of Brio, if he’s even still alive?”
“If he is still alive, we can arrange to have him returned to you. The Ministry will allow the two of you and your Gen to resume your capacity as pleaders… under our supervision, of course.”
“We would work for you?”
“Call it a collaboration.”
Both words taste equally foul in Lexi’s mouth.
“It’s better than the alternative,” Strinnix continues. “There is no end to your current scenario that does not involve Burr either murdering you or having you murdered. She cannot have a commoner leading the commoners she wishes to rule over. Even if the Ignobles did somehow succeed in deposing us, your popularity among the people would make you a threat to her.”
“This is like being asked to choose fire or the knife to remove a boil,” Lexi states plainly. “No offense intended, of course.”
“Why would I take offense? I am not the boil in that comparison, am I?”
Lexi can’t decide if that is meant to be humor.
She doesn’t trust Strinnix, and she will never forgive the Protectorate Ministry for what they’ve done to her Gen and her kithkin, but Lexi sees no alternative.
“I’ll do what I can,” she finally says. “It will probably get me killed far sooner than Burr intended, but I don’t see that I have a choice.”
Perhaps Strinnix is pleased, but she does not show it outwardly. “Very well then,” she says. “You will communicate with us through Shaheen. Burr and her people see her as nothing more than an urchin and a lackey, so they are not watching her as they are you.” Strinnix rises from the parlor chair. “I will let you retire for the evening, Te-Gen.”
Lexi watches, brow furrowed. “How will you leave without being seen?”
“Easily.”
Lexi is only more confused. “But Shaheen’s gambit… in the bazaar—”
“That was for your benefit,” the agent explains. “I wanted to remind you that the Ignobles are not the only ones who can manipulate matters to achieve their goals. The Protectorate Ministry was shaping Crache from the shadows long before these blood-obsessed throwbacks began scheming and plotting against us.”
Their endless games weary Lexi as much as they terrify her.
“I see. Good evening, then.”
Lexi rises and begins to walk to the parlor entrance to see the agent out.
“Te-Gen,” Strinnix bids her.
Lexi sighs. “What now?”
“I have a query unrelated to
the current state of these matters. It is one for my own edification.”
Lexi waits, girding herself for what she knows is coming. “Yes?”
“Agent Ginnix. Assigned to your case. Is she dead?”
There is no emotion in her voice, only a matter-of-factness that Lexi doesn’t believe for a moment.
She wants to lie to Strinnix, but after everything the pale woman has told her and considering the situation as it stands, Lexi can’t conjure a reason not to tell her the truth.
“Yes, she’s dead,” she admits.
Strinnix nods. Her expression remains unchanged. “I see. By Aegin Daian’s hand?”
“Yes.”
“And what is his status?”
A new knot forms in Lexi’s stomach. “He’s dead too.”
“How did he die?” Strinnix presses, her mood dipping only slightly.
Again, Lexi can think of no legitimate reason not to simply tell her the truth. She just does not want to say it. “Curiosity,” she answers.
To her surprise, Strinnix smiles. “I see,” she says. “We’ll leave it at that, then.”
Lexi is grateful to watch the Ministry agent leave her parlor, uninterested in whatever circuitous route she plans to take from the tower. She has become accustomed to the line between unexpected guests and intruders in her home blurring beyond recognition.
“Do you need anything else tonight, Te-Gen?” Shaheen asks her, pleasantly.
Lexi stares into the girl’s eyes. They seem totally unaffected by the content of her conversation with Strinnix. “Please don’t speak to me anymore unless you absolutely have to.”
Shaheen seems to take no offense at the request. “As you wish,” she says, leaving Lexi alone in the parlor.
Lexi watches her go, thinking that whatever the Protectorate Ministry did to Shaheen, it was, if nothing else, very effective.
SHE NEEDS YOU MORE
THE LAST TIME EVIE INFILTRATED a Skrain encampment, it was alongside Mother Manai, and they were both clad in the heavy plates and mail of Skrain armor.
This time, she is wearing the hole-filled secondhand rags of a put-upon angler, stained with dried blood and guts and reeking of fish both alive and long dead. They also wore clothes several sizes too large for her.
She is more comfortable this time, at least.
No one pays any heed to the lowly congregation of fish purveyors as they ferry their baskets filled with the catch of the day. They entered the camp without incident, strolling past the posted sentries, only noted by one of them who gleefully snagged a medium-size tuna from the top of one of their loads.
Now the Sicclunan scouts and Evie find themselves lost in the bustle of the evening. Tents are still being erected. Latrines are being dug. Kitchens are being outfitted. Weapons, armor, and equipment are being cleaned and greased and stored. Siege towers are being constructed. Those not tasked with a particular errand are gathered around small campfires talking and eating and gambling as soldiers do.
Their plan is to dump their aromatic fare in the first empty tent they come across, after locating where the Skrain keep their prisoners. Until then, carrying their burdens and pretending to look hurried and late in delivering them is a better show to put on for the enemies surrounding them.
They manage another several dozen yards of winding through the sea of tents and wagons before it happens.
“You there!”
It is clear to all of their ears that the voice cutting through the din of the crowd is addressing their little coterie.
They stop walking. Evie turns calmly to take in the Skrain soldier decked out in full regalia, eyeing his lieutenant’s stripes. Chimot glances pointedly at her, and then down at the basket they carry between them. The majority of their weapons are concealed beneath several layers of steadily decaying fish.
Evie subtly shakes her head.
The Skrain lieutenant stalks over to her and smartly knocks the straw hat that was swallowing most of her head and part of her face.
Evie tenses, her grip on the basket’s handle tightening. She knows there is no chance of fighting their way out of the camp at this point. They’ve journeyed too far into the heart of the beast.
The lieutenant leans in until they are virtually nose-to-nose. He’s an ugly man with a permanently squinting right eye. “The senior staff has been waiting for these!” he barks into her face, his breath stinking of rice wine and garlic. He jabs a fingertip toward the fish.
Evie’s body immediately relaxes, and she drops her gaze subserviently. “Hai,” she replies meekly.
The lieutenant steps back, shouting at the rest of them, “Get this lot to the officer’s field kitchen for scaling on the double! And there better be a good amount of yellowtail in those baskets!”
Evie and Chimot both nod like eager puppies, prompting the other undercover scouts to do the same.
Evie reaches down and retrieves her borrowed hat from the ground, re-covering her head and face with it. By the time she has corrected her façade, the Skrain lieutenant is already seeking another target for his pompous ire and has marched away from them.
Evie and Chimot look at each other, the Sicclunan actually chuckling while Evie can only breathe a sigh of relief.
They trudge on through the rows between the tents and wagons and equipment. Even the non-military servants scurrying about the camp pay them no mind. The Skrain host is far too large for every lowly page and cook and stable worker to know one another.
“They’ll probably be keeping them in cages or pens, not tents,” Chimot suggests.
Evie agrees. “Maybe we should put some of the more sun-turned fish heads in a bowl and tell one of the officers that we’re to feed the prisoners and we’re lost.”
Before Chimot can comment on that plan, she is interrupted by an oncoming commotion that rounds the bend in the row behind them. A rush of heightened activity begins surging around them, throngs of Skrain soldiers all moving as one in the same direction, which seems to be toward the center of the sprawling tent city. Evie and the Sicclunans have to tighten their formation around their baskets to keep from getting swept along by the crowd.
“Is it payday?!” Chimot asks over the cacophony surrounding them.
Evie just shakes her head, a sinister feeling swirling somewhere between her chest and stomach.
“It looks like they’re all gathering,” Chimot continues. “That means big sections of the camp will be cleared out. It’ll make it easier to search.”
Again, Evie shakes her head.
She could not explain why if Chimot asked, but the strong impulse to track the source of all this excitement fills her with inexplicable dread in that moment.
“Come on!” she orders them, practically dragging Chimot forward by her end of the basket.
The Sicclunan scout shouts some form of protest, but Evie can’t hear. The force of her pulling on the basket and the need to maintain their cover is enough to keep Chimot moving, and that means the rest of the Sicclunans follow.
It takes several minutes of muscling their way through packed bodies, many clad in steel armor. Evie finally reaches the choke point of the throng, where the surge forward has stopped. They are now all contracting excitedly around a central point.
The swollen crowd is too thick to permit them to see what is happening at the epicenter of its focus.
“Wait here!” Chimot instructs the disguised Sicclunans.
She and Evie drop their basket and discreetly make their way up onto the top of a supply wagon. The vantage is not exactly inconspicuous, but it allows them to see above the helmeted heads of the Skrain. Besides which, everyone’s attention appears to be focused forward.
A crude arena has been constructed in the center of the monstrous military encampment. Wooden panels that look as though they were stripped from the sides of wagons are arranged in an expansive octagonal wall that encloses a space just large enough for two people to move freely about. Tall, blazing torches have been staked into the
ground along the makeshift fencing every few feet. They have even raked the ground inside flat and bare to facilitate whatever activity that patch of earth is about to support.
Skrain soldiers armored in various states of completeness are lined up a dozen deep behind the walls. They are enjoying a riotous celebration, chewing on hunks of cooked venison, biting the heads off smoked fish, and downing copious amounts of wine. Many of the soldiers have paired off (or formed small groups) to lustfully grope and tongue each other.
It takes some time, and even portions of the Skrain in attendance begin to shift restlessly, but finally a section of cheers erupts on either side of the arena walls.
As Evie and Chimot look on, two women are hurled from those opposite sides into the center of the ominous, fire-lit circle. They both land roughly on their hands and knees, but quickly and forcefully arise to face each other.
They are Sirach and Mother Manai.
Seized by outrage and instinct, Evie takes a step forward, reaching under her stinking borrowed shirt for the dagger she has secreted there.
Chimot is quick to halt her.
“We can do nothing while they’re both in the middle of all of that, with a thousand eyes on them.”
She is right, of course. Evie looks on helplessly as her friends turn to take in their audience.
Sirach and Mother Manai have been stripped of their armor and weapons, and apparently their clothing. They are each draped in what looks more like cloth sacks than garments, and not clean sacks either. Their feet are bare. They have both sustained a decent beating. Whether in battle or interrogation or simply for fun, Evie can’t know. Each woman wears cuts on her lips and bruises on her cheeks and temples. They appear to be no worse for the wear, however.
The spike that ordinarily compensates for Mother’s lost hand has also been confiscated. The stump of her wrist is bare. Evie has never seen Mother without some type of weapon adorning that limb. The older woman has always been very particular about exposing it in mixed company. What remains from the cut that took her hand is withered and gnarled and petrified.
Evie is outraged all over again that the Skrain have deprived Mother Manai of the leather hood she used to cover her stump, exposing it without her consent. That seems to Evie the grossest violation of all somehow.
