by Dave Duncan
Irona said, “Mm,” and put that information aside to discuss with the Office of Decency, the experts on Maleficence.
“When I got home last night, I found Sebrat House surrounded by grizzlies of the Palace Guard. Who ordered that?”
“Sounds like the sort of thing we might do,” Sazen said thoughtfully. “We weren’t good enough to protect Chosen Ledacos completely, though, so please be careful.”
“So my election was organized by the First and the Geographical Section, with Ledacos and me as joint puppets?”
The little man looked profoundly shocked. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, ma’am!”
Irona was amused. This Vult enterprise was the most important and dangerous assignment of her life so far, and already she was enjoying the thrill and the challenge. She was descending into a world of bats and spiders, the shadowy landscape patrolled by the Geographical Section. “Not an approved crime? Well, what can I do for you?”
“I feel the need for a change of air, ma’am. You will need a reliable secretary during your tenure, will you not?”
“Not just the governor and commander? You’re saying that even the Section’s resident spies have been corrupted by Eldritch?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, ma’am!”
In his world of keyholes and whispers, that sometimes meant yes, sometimes no.
“I don’t believe my nit-sized stipend will let me hire any staff at all.”
“I am confident that, at your meeting today, the First himself will offer you a substantial contribution from his discretionary funds to tide you over, plus a guarantee that Sebrat House will be preserved and guarded during your absence, and so on … ma’am.”
A bribe to uphold the law must be something new.
“I wasn’t aware that I had an audience with the First scheduled.”
Sazen’s remarkably outstanding ears did wiggle then. That happened, Irona had decided, whenever he felt pleased with himself. “At midmorning, ma’am. Sea Dragon will depart on the noon ebb, so we have taken the liberty of warning your majordomo that your baggage should be ready well before then. Once you are at sea, the malefactors will be unable to get at you.”
“I have promised my vote—”
“For Ledacos 692’s election as Seven? He will be a shoo-in now, ma’am.”
That was going too far, much too far! The Seventy prided themselves on being inscrutable and utterly independent. Having a minor clerk from the depths of the government dare to predict one of their decisions was intolerable.
“You seem remarkably sure of that!”
Sazen flashed his buckteeth at her. “But there was an attempt on his life! That hasn’t happened for eighty-nine years, not since—”
“I suppose,” Irona barked, “that there can be no doubt that the evil magic peddlers were truly responsible for Honorable Ledacos’s sudden indisposition? It was not, perhaps, sleight of hand by the Section to make certain I would be elected? And now him also?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, ma’am!” The little man frowned. “I cannot recall anyone ever being elected by diarrhea.”
Sea Dragon was one of the navy’s newest biremes, powered by a crew of two hundred. She led a flotilla of three, the others being her sister ships Sea Dog and Sea Demon. Irona felt flattered that she inspired so much hard work by twelve hundred male biceps. Sea Danger and Sea Death were to follow later in case reinforcements were needed. The Navy Board was not noted for imagination when it came to names.
It was good to go to sea again, to feel the salty wind in her hair, to sleep, often, on beaches and listen to the cry of gulls and the rush of surf on shingle.
In addition to Governor-Elect Irona, Dragon also carried Vlyplatin, Sazen Hostin, and the new marine commander of the Vult station, Quebrada Bericha, ranking as both general and commodore. He was probably little older than Irona herself, but he weighed twice as much and looked as if he might wrestle walruses for recreation. He had coarse features and no detectable sense of humor. She knew at a glance that she was going to have trouble with him.
During the five-week voyage, though, he was rarely in evidence. He rowed like a common marine all day, every day, just for the exercise, albeit wearing his bronze helmet so everyone would notice. When Sea Dragon beached, as happened roughly every second night, he went for an hour’s run or swim. On nights when the flotilla pulled into a port to top up its stores—six hundred hardworking men went through incredible quantities of food and fresh water—the local magistrates always invited the visiting Chosen to a hastily prepared banquet. Then Bericha had to accompany her, but he did so unwillingly and displayed few social graces.
The goddess sent calm seas appropriate for galley travel, and Irona enjoyed herself thoroughly. She had Sazen Hostin to entertain her by day with long and detailed histories of the Empire’s struggle against Maleficence. Vult was the limit of imperial power, a permanent blockade to the importation of evil.
By night she had Vlyplatin Lavice for company, whether in a tent or the guest suite in a succession of mansions. At first Vly seemed convinced that with enough effort they could produce nine babies in one month. Gradually, though, as the voyage continued, a change came over him; his mood darkened and even his lovemaking faltered, which had never happened since they had become lovers that epic night of the Naval Ball in 703. He wouldn’t say what troubled him, but she suspected he was starting to learn just what they were in for and blamed himself for it.
Irona’s Vult mission would be a total failure in her own eyes if she didn’t produce a baby there.
On what she expected to be the third-last day of the voyage, Irona paraded along the catwalk between the upper ranks of rowers. She had waited for a water break, when the men were given a chance to rest on their oars and enjoy a drink. That many of them used the opportunity to do another sort of watering did not bother her; they were all facing outboard and nobody shouted rude things at a Chosen. She reached the bow and came back, stopping at Quebrada Bericha’s cushion.
“Tonight,” she said, “right after the meal, I want you at a council.”
He feigned ignorance. “About what, ma’am?”
“If you have to ask, I have more problems than I thought.” She went back aft, to the canopied area where she could sit in comfort and admire all those arms.
“You should have sent me to tell him,” Vly said accusingly.
“Oh, I enjoyed it!” In truth, the crew would have called him nasty names, which would have embarrassed her.
By evening, the weather was changing, the sky cloudy, rain spitting, a sign that they were drawing close to their objective. The marines pitched Irona’s tent on the only decent patch of grass in sight, between the shingle beach and the inland scrub. She had just finished her meal in her tent when Bericha loomed huge outside the doorway. He wore a simple smock and carried his helmet under his arm. She wondered if he slept in it.
She sent Sazen and Vly away. They both frowned at this dismissal, but she wanted no witnesses to the coming confrontation.
The commander-elect settled on the stool Vly had just vacated. It creaked ominously. He smiled, which made his face even more gruesome. “Now, ma’am, what’s worrying you?”
“Nothing except the weather, which we can’t do anything about. But we must agree on what will happen when we arrive at Vult. The fortress cannot be approached unseen, I am informed. So the garrison will know we are coming.”
He nodded. “But we outnumber them. They won’t give us any trouble.”
A promising draft text for an epitaph, that. “The fortress is reputed to be invincible. Better to avoid the use of force if possible, yes?”
“Of course,” he said, looking as if he didn’t agree at all. Peaceful transactions won no medals.
“And it is normal for the new governor to arrive in one galley, not three.”
“Ah!” He lea
ned back as far as he could on the stool and crossed one massive thigh over the other. “But my orders are to protect you, ma’am, so if you are going to suggest that I don’t go in with my full complement, then I will have to disagree.”
She was tempted to squelch him right there, but she would have to work with this muscle-bound dugong for the next year.
“What happens after, Commodore? You land your men on the beach and … ?”
“First I relieve General Gabulla of command and place him under arrest. Then I proceed to locate Governor Zajic and arrest him, also. And after that, I report to you, ma’am, that the post has been secured and you can disembark and take over.” He beamed reassuringly. Nothing to worry her pretty little head about.
“The only problem with that, Commander, is that you have no authority until I have read myself in as governor. Suppose this Gabulla man arrests you instead?”
Bericha colored. “That is an absurd suggestion, ma’am! I have my orders!”
“So do I,” she said. “Have your orders, I mean. I have a copy of them, and they clearly state that you are under my command unless and until your men come under attack. Only in the face of armed rebellion or breakdown of civil authority can you overrule me. Correct?”
He nodded, redder than ever.
“Then we’ll do it this way. Zajic and his men will be expecting Redkev, coming to take over as usual in their continuing dance. So you and I go in on Sea Dragon, leaving the other galleys out of sight. We will be taken at once to the governor, and I will read myself in. At that point you serve your warrants, legally and probably peacefully. They ought to be too surprised to object.”
He tried to bluster. “Absolutely not! Your safety is my primary directive.”
“It comes third in your list of priorities. Are we to have this same argument every day for two years, Commander, or is it understood that I can give you orders?”
He took some time to answer, perhaps trying to find words that he could later weasel out of, but in the end he just muttered, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Then we are agreed, and I hope that together we can give Vult two years of fair and honest government, while cutting off the flow of fixes into the Empire. Now if you would be so kind as to ask Sazen Hostin to come in, he can brief us on the geography of Vult and Eldritch.” Irona already knew it by heart, but she suspected that Bericha did not, and the questions he subsequently threw at Sazen confirmed that.
The next night, the last night before Vult, the flotilla anchored at Fueguino, a small town with a good harbor. Irona dined with the mayor, a local appointed by the Treaty Commission. He was a rough frontier man, the son of a former marine who had retired to the north after his service ended, probably to farm or fish. So the mayor was an imperial citizen, even if he spoke Benesh with an accent so impenetrable that she wished she had Zard 699 there to translate. He seemed honest enough, but she reserved judgment. There were many such people in the town, some of them former marines who had served in the Vult garrison.
One question she had was answered there, in Fueguino. She had wondered how much faith to put in the general belief that Eldritch’s only access to the Empire was by sea. Her first glimpse of the icy Rampart Range to the north settled her doubts. Nothing, human or not, was going to cross that. She had never dreamed that such mountains existed.
Fueguino was Vult’s market. Its fishing fleet and farmland kept the garrison fed, and it was the only town with which Vult had legitimate trade. If Eldritch’s export of fixes came through Vult, it likely continued by way of Fueguino. Irona’s writ ran there, also. In a pinch, she could hang the mayor by his chain of office.
The mayor’s guest room was tiny and homely, but comfortable enough for a woman who had been raised in a shed. And the down mattress was soft as a summer cloud, stuffed with local feathers, no doubt.
“This is your last chance,” Irona said as she slid naked into bed, “to father those triplets you promised in reasonably civilized surroundings. You can have three tries.”
Vly blew out the candle. The mattress billowed as he joined her. “I can’t. Not tonight.”
“Rubbish. I’ve known you to score four.” Not recently, of course, but he still managed three if sufficiently provoked during a long winter night.
“Good night, Irona.”
“Not yet it isn’t.” She cuddled closer and groped for that infallible apparatus he sported—except that what she found was small and limp and pathetic. Erectile dysfunction had never been Vly’s problem before. At times in their association she would have welcomed it.
He removed her hand. “Good night, Irona.”
“What’s wrong?” she whispered. “Tell me.” He had been surprised that she had not become pregnant right away, and she had explained that this was nothing to be alarmed about. Perhaps he was suffering from delusions of inadequacy.
“You just found out what’s wrong. Keep your hands to yourself, woman!”
“Forget about babies then. Just fuck me.”
No answer.
“I need it. Please, Vly?”
“Go to sleep,” he said.
The Vunuwer River flowed southward out of the Dread Lands into a wide delta of marsh and brush, infested with snakes and poisonous reptiles. Nothing remotely human lived there, so far as was known. Every squall of rain that came marching over the desolate landscape was welcome, because it brought some relief from the fog of gnats and the overpowering stench of rotting swamp. Blustery winds made even the nimble galleys hard to control, and sailing boats would have been hard put to traverse the twisting channel at all.
Admiral Bericha had abandoned his oarsman masquerade. Clad in a jangling armored apron, he had joined the civilians, coxswain, and steersman under the aft canopy, but his monosyllabic conversation did little to lift the prevailing gloom. Everyone aboard was facing at least one year’s miserable exile in this bleak and blighted land.
The only man aboard who might have welcomed the prospect was Vly, for he would have Irona all to himself for the next two years. But Vly had turned a lurid green color and hung on the rail like a dying man, barely speaking even in monosyllables.
Around midmorning, Vult itself came into sight, an isolated monolith of black rock shaped like some great sea lion asleep across the river’s path. Sea Demon and Sea Dog pulled in to the edge of the channel and dropped anchor. At noon they would follow, with their actions on arrival to be dictated by the reception Sea Dragon had encountered.
“I had not expected it to be so big,” Irona muttered as the great rock loomed ever larger.
“Well, it does not compare with the Mountain, of course.” Sazen had never been to Vult, but he always enjoyed being the expert. Knowing everything was his job, and he welcomed any chance to show it. “About a third as high. The habitable portions are at the top. I expect there will be transportation for you, ma’am; the rest of us will be glad of our Benesh leg muscles. The lower portions are still being, um, excavated, and are not safe. One day the worms will eat it all away and it will collapse into dust.”
“You chatter too much,” Bericha growled.
The spy ignored him. “I believe I can hear the falls already. The weir was built by Eboga 500, when he was governor here. That was long before he became First, of course.”
“They don’t banish senior Chosen here, you mean?” Irona asked sweetly.
“Usually not until they’re at least forty,” Sazen countered, slickly turning a perceived insult into a compliment. “Eboga was thirty. It is said that there was a chain of reefs and islets extending right across the delta, east and west from Vult Rock itself. He had the higher islets quarried for building stone, so he could dam up the channels and raise a weir across the width of the delta. The Two League Waterfall, he called it, and it bars access to the interior. No oceangoing vessels can navigate the Vunuwer above Vult.”
“Which means
that we can’t just bring in the army and sack Eldritch to stop their crap,” Bericha said.
No one commented on that. Eldritch had originally been Eldborg, named after its founder. It had fallen to the Shapeless in 490. At least three times the Empire had tried to retake Eldritch, meeting worse disaster every time.
Suddenly Irona’s arm was gripped in steel claws.
“Irona! Don’t!”
She turned to find Vly staring at her, eyes wide with horror, lips curled back, traces of foam on his teeth.
“Let me go!” she snapped. “What are you doing?” He had never behaved like this before.
“Don’t go there, Irona! Can’t you feel the evil? You mustn’t go on! Don’t you see what this is doing to me already?”
“To you? You’re breaking my arm, you idiot.”
Bericha stepped forward, broke Vly’s grip without effort, and threw him aside. He fell flat on the deck.
“Sorry about that, ma’am,” the commodore said happily. “Civilians, you know.” He meant weaklings.
Vly had rolled over and appeared to be sobbing. If guilt was his problem, there was nothing Irona could do to change it now.
“And there it is!” Sazen announced triumphantly.
He might mean the great rock itself, now fully revealed to their left, but more likely the Eboga Weir on the right. The channel the galley had been following opened up into a muddy lake, which extended from the base of the Vult rock far off to the east, winding along the base of the man-made wall. If not a thousand waterfalls, at least several dozen fed the lake, dropping about half a man’s height, far enough to dig out the mud and excavate a shallow basin.
“You see?” Sazen continued. “The galley can go no farther, and the tribes inland cannot enter the delta to trade.”
Irona did not believe the second statement. “Surely any reasonably agile man with a bag of fixes on his shoulder could jump over that wall? There are dry places where he could scramble back up again.” She could do it herself.
“There are good and toothy reasons not to swim in this water, ma’am—I believe they call it the moat. The garrison is supposed to patrol it in small boats.”
