by Eric Ugland
“Minor difference,” I said.
“Distinct behaviors,” Yuri said. “Weres attack and feast as an animal does. Hence they are not as affected by the negative consequences of eating sapients as some other monsters. If these were weres, then we would find corpses. Remains.”
“Unless they are cleaning up after themselves,” Arno pointed out.
“And why would they do that?”
“To remain undetected.”
“I find it implausible at best.”
“Implausible, but we are grasping at pixies. It would not do well for us to remove a possibility, however remote.”
“True. But put that at the bottom of the list.”
“List, right!” I exclaimed. “I have a list of people who went missing — twenty-three of them. But all the people who went missing had someone who knew exactly where they went.”
“I am not sure I follow, your grace,” Arno said.
“I just think it’s odd that many people would all have a reason to leave.”
“Twenty-three is a rather high number,” Yuri said, taking a sip of coffee. “You have checked them?”
“Some. I don’t exactly know everyone on the list.”
“Good thing you tapped us, two hunting partners who are new to Coggeshall and know even fewer residents than you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “There is that.”
“Where would they eat the people?” Arno asked suddenly. “Somewhere in the holding? And why so many at once? There are too many questions we haven’t answered to be running off to speak to people we don’t know on a whim. We lack even guesses as of yet.”
“Croakers makes some sense, though,” Yuri said. “As much as I might loathe to admit it.”
“Yet The Master’s identity seems more important than whatever followers he might or might not have. Is it possible he has no followers?”
“I suppose there’s a chance he has no followers here,” I said, “but I know for sure that he has followers. And I would imagine they would have followed him here. Given the interactions I’ve had in the past, I’d believe those followers were the ones doing the work — not The Master. I think he’s hiding.”
“Which means he has a lair,” Yuri said. “He must operate from a lair somewhere inside these walls.”
“So we just mosey down hallways until we find something that looks like a lair?” I asked.
“Hardly a valuable use of our time,” Arno replied.
“No, but we do have quite a few people here,” I said. “I could just order the Legion to sweep the entire place.”
“See, I would assume you had already posited such an action and come up with a good reason not to do it.”
“I doubt it would work,” Yuri countered. “A creature such as this, which is clearly powerful and has shown success in both hiding and operating, is not going to be found by a soldier searching tunnels. Most certainly not by humans, either. No offense to humans, you’re just not native to the underground and do not know how to look in tunnels.”
“Do you?”
“I have more training in that regard, and experience. But still I am no equal to a dwarf or kobold.”
“We got plenty of kobolds,” I said. “We can send them.”
“I do not wish to disparage kobolds, but they are also easily fooled. Besides, I believe we are operating in too tight a timeline for that.”
“Perhaps,” Arno started, but then he shook his head. “No. Sorry.”
“What?” I asked.
“I was thinking about using magic to find The Master.”
“Perfect,” I said. “What do you need?”
“More than a name, that’s for sure. Do you have something he has touched? A piece of him? Knowledge of what he is? And yes, I know you have none of those, they are rhetorical questions I have already answered in my head, and that is why I said no and tried not to go into this pointless line of questioning.”
Yuri and I looked at Arno, then at each other with wide eyes.
“Apologies,” Arno said. “I am feeling some measure of frustration with this.”
“I think,” I said, “our best angle of attack right now, at least, is to track down the people who gave alibis for the ones who went missing. And seeing if more people are missing.”
Yuri nodded. “If The Master and his ilk were behind the disappearances, as you have suggested, then there is a reason for those disappearances. It is foolish for us to assume that need would vanish here. There would be people going missing right now, and those disappearances would need to be looked into.”
I reached into my knapsack and thought about paper. Paper landed in my hand, and I brought it out and slapped it on the table. I’m not sure where, exactly, I’d gotten the paper, but there it was. Thank the gods for my hoarding tendencies. Next I snatched a pencil from the knapsack and scribbled out copies of Nikolai’s notes, handing one to Yuri and one to Arno.
“That’s what I have so far,” I said.
“It is not much,” Arno said.
“Better than a poke in the eye, right?”
“Yes, well, that’s a rather low hurdle to clear.”
Something smacked me in the back of the head. It felt wet.
I turned around to see a citrus fruit zipping toward my face.
A quick tilt and the lime zoomed right on by.
Nathalie was shouting at me, another lime ready to go. Odd, I couldn’t hear anything though.
“Ah, apologies,” Arno said, and I heard a slight pop.
“Can you hear me now?” Nathalie snapped.
“Yes,” I said, rubbing the back of my head, bits of pith and fruit sticking to me.
“I need you downstairs,” she snapped, and then stomped out of the room.
“Well,” I said, “marching orders for me. You two start tracking those people down, see if you can find any holes. And keep your ears out for missing people.”
“Are there those we can trust?” Yuri asked. “Others who know of the real purpose behind this?”
“Ragnar,” I said. “Eliza. Emeline. Nikolai. That’s about it.”
“Not a long list,” Arno said.
“No, uh — Priscilla. She’s one of Eliza’s people, but she’s in the know. And considering how many people Eliza knows—”
“I will find her,” Yuri said, getting to his feet.
“Best if you two stick together,” I said. “I don’t want one of you nabbed.”
“Yes, your grace,” Yuri said, with the sort of tone that made it quite clear he did not agree.
Then I headed after Nathalie.
72
Nathalie Glaton glared at me as I walked down the stairs.
I grinned.
Her facial expression didn’t change. It was a little scary to see the rage seethe through her.
“You needed me?” I asked, trying to sound innocent.
“This way,” she said sharply, and led me to the throne room.
She shut the large doors behind me. They boomed a little. I had the feeling she’d tried to slam them, but they were huge and made of stone, so slamming didn’t really work.
“Am I in charge of the guards here?” she asked.
I’d been spoken to in that tone before. Many times, in fact. So I knew immediately that there was no correct answer.
“Yes,” I said, prepared for the tongue lashing that was about to come. I wished I knew what I’d done wrong.
“Then why the fuck do I have to find out about a fiend incursion from someone else?” She snapped.
I blinked a few times, surprised to hear her curse.
“I am the captain of the guard, and therefore head of security and head of the Coggeshall military, correct?” she asked.
“I think so, yes.”
“You think? You are the duke. You are the one who decides these things, Montana.”
“Okay, well, yeah. I said you were those things, and—”
“Have I failed you?”
“No, not real
ly.”
“Not really?”
That was the wrong thing to say.
“How?” she asked. “How have I failed you, oh glorious leader?”
“You haven’t.”
“You said—”
“I’m taking it back.”
“You cannot take it back--“
“Sure I can. I’m the duke.”
“That’s not a duchal power, your fucking grace.”
“You’ve been spending too much time with Nikolai.”
“I have spent no time with Nikolai. I spend all my time with my soldiers and my guards, trying to make sure this damn holding is secure. Despite your best intentions otherwise.”
“Whoa there, I’ll grant you I maybe need to loop you into things more, but I’m not making this place less secure.”
“How many people have you added to our rolls in the last month?”
“I don’t know.”
“And that’s the problem. We have thousands more here.”
“You want me to turn away refugees?”
“I did not say that—”
“You implied as much. Bringing people in does not make us less safe; it makes us more safe. Safer. I meant safer.”
“It makes you feel better, but it does nothing for our security. We have more souls to watch over with more disparate motivations. More reasons to bring new problems to bear for us. I do not wish to seem cruel, but—”
“Sounds a bit like it.”
“How dare you!”
“Excuse me? I dare because I’m sick of people saying that me helping people is also hurting people. It’s not a fucking zero fucking sum fucking game.”
“I disagree. Fundamentally, bringing new people into our walls who have not been vetted, who have not agreed to abide by our principals—”
“Fuck off right there. You can go if you want to believe that. I’m not going down that path. Not everyone who comes into Coggeshall has to agree with me—”
“Then you open yourself up to being killed by any of them. You were nearly assassinated tonight.”
“Bullshit. That was last night.”
“See! You make light of an event that should have shut the entire city down! A group is trying to take your life — that is not something I take lightly, nor should you!”
“There are at least three groups I know of trying to kill me. And there’s probably more out there—”
“More information I should know, your grace.”
“It’s not important. No one is going to kill me.”
“That type of thinking is dangerous, Montana of Coggeshall. Everyone is killed, either by time or something else.”
“Sure, but not today.”
“Tomorrow then?”
“Maybe. But we will not make Coggeshall a jail just to keep me safe.”
“Coggeshall does not exist without you. Not yet.”
“Coggeshall won’t exist with me sitting in this throne room surrounded by stone and soldiers.”
“Yes, it will.”
“The fuck it will. It exists because we are out there fighting to make Coggeshall into something. Sitting around here trying to make sure everyone agrees with us about everything will just drive us mad and not accomplish shit.”
“Did you think that any of those who claimed to be refugees were, instead, planted operatives from Osterstadt? Sent here to kill you?”
“I considered that,” I said, which was mostly true, since I thought of it after they were already in Coggeshall.
“Did you think they might be here to kill everyone else? Coggeshall does not exist without your followers, either.”
“I’d like to think everyone in Coggeshall is smart enough to realize that doing that will bring my wrath upon them. It’s one thing to go after me, another to go after my people.”
“Yet your people are the vulnerable ones.”
“Which means it’s not as important to protect me as it is to protect them.”
“Then you should tell me when devils break into MountainHome!”
“Yes, I should have.”
“Yes! And...” She’d run out of steam.
“I made the call to get the Legion first,” I said, “and I didn’t think about you. I messed up the chain of command. My mistake.”
Nathalie nodded.
“It was a mistake,” she said. “I understand that time was of the essence, that you probably had to engage quickly. But after the fight—”
“I should have sent someone to you,” I said.
“Yes. It would also be wise for us to sit down and actually come to an agreement for how the military and guard will be organized in Coggeshall. Establish chains of command. And, if I might be so bold, perhaps look at reorganizing our military side into something that makes more sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are currently Coggeshall guard, Coggeshall soldiers, Thingmen, the kobold army, the Legion, and you. As well as your hirð. That many groups is difficult. Fraught with confusion.”
“Who’s in charge of crime and investigation?”
She just shrugged and looked at me with a smug smile.
“The Guard?” she asked. “Ostensibly, that would be the guard. Most cities wrap that in. But most cities don’t have any other military units. You currently control a Legion. Or part of one. And you’ve started building a separate group of kobold fighters. Am I in charge of either of them, or do they report to you? Also, speaking of reports, before we continue this, the Legion says that they have swept the public areas and found no more fiends inside from that breach.”
“Good,” I said. “Good. It was a minor breach, just—”
“I am aware of what occurred,” she said sharply, as if even the reminder annoyed her. “Once I knew something had happened, I made sure I understood the full event, your grace.”
“Sorry ab—”
“I know,” she interrupted. “There is no need to continue apologizing. We still have plenty of Fiends’ Night to get through.”
“Right.”
“And considering the way you are dressed, is there something you should tell me about what’s going on?”
I looked down at the poorly-fitting plate overtop of my mail hauberk, and used that moment to decide if I wanted to tell Nathalie about The Master. Naturally, a large part of me wanted to tell her, because then I could leverage the guard to watch for The Master and his underlings. And yet, at the same time, something like this was only going to reinforce Nathalie’s feelings on new people, and I didn’t want that. I wanted Coggeshall to be a welcoming and safe place for anyone and everyone, and if I had to fight harder to make it so, then so be it. And there was the nagging feeling in the back of my skull that I needed to keep things quiet, secret. The more people who knew, well, the easier it’d be for The Master to realize we knew.
“You know,” I said, “Just feeling a little unarmored the past few events. I’d just prefer to be ready for a fight instead of having to improvise.”
“And the spoon?” she asked, pointing to the utensil tucked into my belt.
“Tactical tasting.”
She frowned. “Of course, your grace.”
“Ah, there’s the sass I know and love.”
She rolled her eyes.
“How are we doing other than, you know—”
“All your added issues?”
“Sure, let’s call them that.”
“We are well enough. The cells are getting crowded, but that was to be expected. There is a certain amount of madness people experience tonight, and we just have to deal with it. I have had no guard problems so far. Everyone has been ready for their shift — no injuries, no real fights.”
“What about the people who had that run in with the devil?”
“You would need to speak more with the healers for details, but as I am aware, it seemed best to sedate them for the remainder of Fiends’ Night.”
“Ever think that’s what we should all do for Fiends’ Night?�
�
“Sedate everyone? No. I mean, I’m sure some do that, but to force it on a whole holding? No.”
“Nikolai seemed to do that,” I said, glancing over her shoulder at the door to Nikolai’s office. “He really hit the sauce hard.”
“My brother would do that for Fiends’ Night as well. Some find that is the best way to handle what goes on.”
“And you?”
“I have tried various methods. I even spent one night in a devil-hunting party.”
“How did that go?”
“Poorly. Winged devils dropping out of the night, shrugging off our arrows and attacks. They grabbed some of us and just disappeared. Five of our group were taken. Three were killed there in front of us. And the remaining ten of us ran for a friend’s home. It was foolish, youthful exuberance. It led me to be much more careful of my activities on Fiends’ Night.”
“Did you just think you were that badass?”
“Partially. There are also celestial bounties on devils. That is why some fools venture out.”
“I killed a devil. I didn’t see anything about a bounty.”
“You likely will when the sun rises again. The celestials will not come onto this plane today, not when there are so many of their enemies about. It would quickly become a bloodbath, and all the regular folk would wind up crushed between the two great armies. Likely.”
“Well then. Hopefully, I’ve got a nice bounty to look forward to.”
“Largely depends on the devil, your grace. However, if there is nothing else you need from me, I am due to make rounds.”
“Uh, no, thank you. Go on. And again — I’m sorry I messed up.”
“Your grace,” she said, and gave a slight bow of her head. She spun on her heel, and headed out.
I stood there a moment, just taking a few breaths. Always good to calm down after being yelled at. No need to go take it out on someone else just because my blood was up.
73
I peeked my head inside Nikolai’s office, thinking I’d sneak in and put his notebook back.
But the room was empty.
“Shit,” I said. “Hopefully he doesn’t try to take any notes.”
I seriously considered rearranging his office while he was out, or hiding a glitter of prinkies inside. But if Nikolai was out getting reloaded, that would be a bad idea. Hell, sober Nikolai hated prinkies. Drunk Nikolai would probably find new and terrible ways to torture the cute little fuckers.
