She scowled at him. It was not an expression of anger so much as it was the face she made when trying to work things through in her mind. Had he not already gotten used to the expression he might well have worried whether or not she was going to have him executed.
“What of the City Guard. Have the issues you were having with them been handled?”
“Libari Welliso has taken command of the City Guard. From what I can see, he is the closest thing to an honest guardsman, and competent besides.” Which was true enough. The man had been responsible for arresting and holding the members of the City Guard who’d beaten Andover Lashk and ruined his hands. He’d done so despite numerous members of the Guard making comments and a few of his superiors protesting the action.
“Majesty, have we had any contact with Andover Lashk since he left for the Seven Forges?” said Merros.
“Every attempt that Desh has made to reach the boy has failed. We either assume he is dead or we wait to find out his fate when we meet with the Sa’ba Taalor to negotiate a peace.”
Merros nodded and pushed back a hard edge of guilt. Once upon a time he’d left one of his men behind in the Taalor Valley, Kallir Lundt, who had been ruined in a fight with the Pra-Moresh. He still had no idea if the man was alive, and if he was, what shape he might be in. He pushed the thought aside. Kallir Lundt had been promised safety by the Sa’ba Taalor. He had to hope they’d kept their word and if not, he would likely have a chance to seek revenge on the mercenary’s behalf. Not that he expected that particular notion to go well.
“I shall make a note of it.” And he did. There was a growing list of items to be discussed with whomever the Sa’ba Taalor chose as a representative. He wrote down Andover’s name and as an afterthought scribbled Kallir Lundt’s name beside it.
“How many days until this damned meeting?”
“We have to leave the morning after next if we intend to reach the meeting place on time.” He almost mumbled the words. Much to his annoyance, the Empress intended to be there for the parley. Neither he nor Desh Krohan had been able to dissuade her.
Desh Krohan claimed he had a plan for that, but would not say what it was as yet. Merros didn’t like plans that involved not being informed. They tended to make him nervous.
Nachia looked at him. Her expression made clear exactly where he could take his mumbling and his opinion of her choice to go along for the negotiations.
Brolley looked at his sister and shook his head. “You’re being an ass.”
“What?” Her voice took on a note that Merros had never heard. He’d never had a sibling, or he would have known that particular sound for the indication that long standing arguments had not been finished.
“You’re in charge of everything. Nachia. Everything. What if this is a ploy to get you where they can kill you?”
“What if it’s a genuine attempt at working out a peaceful ending? What then? What if it’s a test to see if I’m brave enough to face off against one of their kings? How can I be a leader of an Empire if I’m too scared to look their leaders in the eyes?”
Brolley reeled back with each question she asked. Merros could see him trying to come up with good counterarguments and failing.
“What if they decided the only way to end this is to have a proper duel, Nachia? You and that Tuskandru fellow, one-on-one to the death for the right to rule over your Empire?” Brolley’s words were just as harsh as his sister’s. “Do you suppose that will go as well as my encounter with Drask Silver Hand?”
Nachia looked at her brother sharply.
Brolley continued. “I know exactly how fortunate I was. They were trying for peace. Wollis March screamed that into my ear for hours on end while he prepared me for my last fight and my certain death.” Brolley stood up and pointed a thick finger at his sister. “I got a talking to from you on that too, as I recall. Several of them. So now it’s my turn. Listen to Merros. Listen to Desh. They are here to advise you. If they say you should not go, then stay here, where you will be safe. You. The leader of the entire Empire.”
Nachia’s voice was calm and cool and slapped at the air like a lash. “Pathra was not on a battlefield when he was murdered. We have already seen that I am not safe anywhere. We saw that when Pathra died with a slit throat and got thrown from the window of this very room.” She stabbed a finger in Merros’s direction. “Want to know why I agreed to move to Canhoon? Because I can’t stand knowing the room where I deal with the business of running this Empire is the same room where my cousin died.”
The silence in the room was complete, save for a few small breaths from Nachia. “I will attend to the parley. That is my decision. If you have doubts, then bring enough guards to make our position on my living through this event clear. And bring your best, Merros. I might have to choose a champion.”
Merros could think of no retort at that moment. Instead he gave a formal bow and left the room, leaving brother and sister to continue their debates in peace. It was best to know when to call a battle done. This one was finished.
Libari Welliso was a solid man, no two ways about that. He was older than Merros, but carried himself with the air of a man on a mission from the gods themselves. His uniform was in meticulous order and his sword’s pommel was as well worn as the hilt. He was a man used to combat, in other words, and that won him a great deal of respect from Merros.
The fact that he was handling the clean-up of the City Guard as well as he was also went a great distance in the general’s eyes.
Libari looked at the offices he was taking over with a clinical eye and nodded.
Merros could barely repress a grin. “Are they satisfactory then?” He already knew the answer.
“They’re as pompous as I expected.” He gestured at the walls. There were numerous portraits of the men who’d held the office of City Guard General before him on the walls and the desk was slightly larger than a wagon designed to be drawn by horses. The room itself was only slightly larger than the average home, which meant it was impressive, but not quite as large as the rooms where the Imperial Family went to piss in private.
“You can do whatever you please to make it yours.”
“Seems a bit pointless to change things, doesn’t it?” Libari eyed him critically. He had blue eyes that seemed almost out of place in his deeply tanned flesh. Unlike so many of the officers Merros had known, this one was used to being out on the streets and walking among his charges.
“How do you mean?”
“If the city is to be abandoned.”
Merros nodded. “Heard about that?”
“It’s hard not to. One has to know where to listen, but yes, I heard about it.”
“It might be a temporary thing. It might be more permanent. No one knows yet, do they? We only know that Desh Krohan believes it must be done.”
Libari nodded. “That was all the reason I needed to send my family to Canhoon. We have relatives there to take care of them.”
“And yet you’re still here?”
“I’m a soldier first. I don’t abandon my duties.”
Oh yes, Merros liked the man. They were going to get along well. “How goes the cleaning of the ranks?”
The smile Libari offered would have dropped a Pra-Moresh to its knees in fear. “I had a very long list of offenses I wished to see handled. The list is much shorter now.”
Merros nodded and his smile came back. “I know exactly how you feel, Welliso.”
“I know you do. I watched your disciplinary actions.”
Merros felt himself nod again, his lips pressed into a hard line. “They were necessary.”
“Has it ever occurred to you how annoying we must be to the younger men?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I can’t speak for you, of course, but I have noticed a dreadful tendency to sound exactly like my father when I was younger. I’ve even caught myself saying, ‘When I was a cadet your age…’”
Merros slapped the man’s shoulder and laughed.
“I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
“Why me, General Merros? It’s not that I don’t appreciate the opportunity, of course, but why me? There are other officers, many with higher ranks.”
“There were other officers with higher ranks. They no longer have that advantage. And actually? You were chosen after a long discussion with Desh Krohan. You impressed his apprentice to the point that she spoke often of your proper behavior when you took care of the matters with Andover Lashk.”
That was obviously still a sore spot. “If he’d killed those boys it would have been easier. I keep having to lock them back up for begging.”
“There are laws against begging?”
Libari nodded. “We only enforce them in certain areas. The areas where a beggar can actually make enough coins to offend someone.”
“Perhaps we can find something to do with that problem after everything else has been cleared up.”
Libari nodded again, his hands locked together behind his broad back. “So, when does this evacuation take place properly?”
“Soon. And when it does I’ll need you and your guard handling a lot of the troubles.”
“Just so. And how long will we be expected to watch over the city after the evacuation?”
Merros nodded his head again. The man was not a dullard.
“Likely for at least a month. Assuming whatever this threat is doesn’t get resolved before then.”
“I expect a few men to quit their contracts.”
“I can bolster your ranks with soldiers.”
Libari smiled again, a tight and cold smile. “Are you quite certain they’ll stand for the demotion?”
There was a little flush of guilt at that. Merros was one of the many soldiers who tended to look down on the City Guard as secondary to real soldiers.
“They might not like it, but they’ll follow your orders.”
“Fair enough. If they fail to, I will treat them the same way I treat my men.”
“Which is?”
“Precisely the same way I’ve seen you discipline your own men.” He looked hard at Merros. “I don’t like using a lash either, but it has to be done to make certain the men understand the proper chain of command.”
“It’s your command, General Welliso. You’ll run it as you see fit.”
“That’s going to take some getting accustomed to.”
“The title?”
“Indeed.”
“You’ll manage. I’ve started adjusting already and it’s not even a year.”
Desh Krohan looked at the bodies and felt his skin shudder with disgust.
Necromancy. That was one form of sorcery he’d never wanted anything to do with. He’d studied it, to be sure, knew about the ways of the dark art and the advantages to be found from employing it, but that did not mean he had a fondness for the subject. It wasn't the soul or the fact that dead flesh was used, really, so much as it was simple messiness of the subject.
Bodies rot. Flesh falls apart. Bodies decay. And in the process there were a great number of sounds and odors he could deal without in his life.
When he was a young man, one of the sorcerers who’d instructed him, Theurasa Sallis, had shown him how to revive dead flesh into a mimicry of living substance. It was a lesson he had never forgotten. The nightmares he suffered afterwards had lingered for a very long time indeed. The long-remembered incident – and the need to put down what he had created – were among the reasons that necromancy was now a forbidden art in the Fellein Empire.
And yet he was looking at the results of what had to be necromancy, though it was not anything he was familiar with.
Merros Dulver stood next to him. There were a dozen others there as well, all of them looking on as Desh studied the creatures brought back from the trail to Old Canhoon by the soldiers who had defeated them.
Besides the unclean things there was the body of an older member of the Sa’ba Taalor. Older than any Desh had seen, and withered. His mount was much the same, but beyond that it was almost impossible to say much about them. They’d both been trampled by the things that had followed them, and their remains were little more than broken, torn piles of bone.
Several different people had examined the remains, which had then been sealed away. Why? Because no one knew exactly how to handle them. The idea had been to hand them over to Desh Krohan to study and he’d certainly meant to, but there had been no chance.
And now there was no choice. They had to understand what the things were, not merely what they had been.
Desh reached out and touched one of the shields that had been warped and crushed into a new shape along with the bodies of soldiers. The Imperial Crest was clear on the malformed metal.
“So, what happened to them?” Welliso was the man’s name. He seemed a decent enough sort. Certainly Tega thought well enough of him, and that was enough to garner him a bit of respect from Desh. His apprentice had a perceptive mind. If not, she’d have never become his apprentice.
“Well, they died, obviously.” Desh looked at a corpse with a major’s rank still evidence on the breastplate of his armor. “This one. I saw him when the fighting started with Tuskandru.” His lip curled downward. “Wallford. Hradi’s dog.”
Merros started. He was not fond of the tone in Desh’s voice. Still he was wise enough to keep his tongue.
“This is necromancy. Sorcery as dark as any that exists. But it is not a form of necromancy I am familiar with.” Desh touched Wallford’s dead face – which had been stretched and crumpled along with his helmet. The end result was not pleasant to view – and several of the people in the room gasped as the corpse’s distended face twitched and the mouth opened and closed spasmodically.
“By all the gods…” He didn’t look up to find the voice.
“Durst,” Merros’s voice warned the man speaking.
Desh looked up to see one of the soldiers, Taurn Durst, with his sword half drawn. He looked at the man for a long second and the man looked back, deeply afraid.
“The sword will do you no good. They’re already dead. They’ve been dead. The only reason they stopped moving before is because whatever is controlling them told them to stop.”
Durst looked at him and shook his head. “The soldiers hacked them to bits.”
“The soldiers cut them, but they’ve been in here for a month or more and they’re still moving. If they were alive and locked in a cellar for thirty odd days they’d be dead and rotting. These are rotting and they are dead but they are also moving. And they aren’t rotting fast enough by half.”
Desh plucked a deeply wounded, severed hand from the table in front of him and showed it to the solider. The fingers clutched at the air.
Durst grew several shades paler and staggered back, his hand reaching for a token of one of the churches.
And in that moment Desh smiled.
“Thank you, Durst. You’re absolutely right.”
“I… What?” The man looked to Merros for help and the general looked to Desh and then back to him and shrugged. “What did I do?”
Desh put the hand on the table and walked over to the stocky man. With the same hand that had held the dead, squirming flesh he clapped the general’s aide on the shoulder.
“You’re absolutely right! We need priests!”
Merros looked at him as if he’d grown a tree out of his eyebrow. “We what?”
“The Sa’ba Taalor have a close relationship with their gods. We need people who can speak on behalf of our gods. Durst here is going to go out running and bring back a priest from each of our churches.” He looked to Durst. “Aren’t you?”
Durst looked to Desh and then to Merros, his eyes growing wider.
Merros sighed. “Go find priests, Durst. Make sure they’re ready to travel.”
“Where are they going, General?”
Merros shook his head and scowled at Desh. Desh offered his best smile in return. “I believe the First Advisor wants them to come with us to meet with the
enemy.”
Desh straightened up and smiled. “There we have it. They’ll travel with us and we’ll ask them questions and get some answers. It’ll be a wonderful and enlightening experience, to be sure.”
He turned to leave the room. “Oh. And burn these things. Burn them down to ash. When you’re done, take the ashes to the river and scatter them in the water past the city. Whatever metal is left should be brought back down here for me to study.”
Merros looked to his men and nodded.
A moment later he walked into the narrow corridor leading from the long-disused holding cells where one of the previous Emperors had kept his favorite playthings and caught up with Desh.
“What are you thinking?”
“You said it yourself, Merros. We need to understand the Sa’ba Taalor better. We also need to understand the part their gods play in all of this.”
“So how will priests from around here help with that?”
“They won’t. But maybe having priests along with us will make them think our gods are ready to fight against their gods.”
Merros nodded his head. He could see the logic well enough.
“They’re not going to be happy about going along, I’d wager.”
“That would be a problem the priests can take up with their gods.”
Fourteen
How does one recover from being physically changed? Andover looked at his face, at the strange slash across his cheek, and then flexed his jaw. His mouths opened. Both of them. Rather than panicking, he considered the matter clinically. How does one recover? One does not. One adapts.
He looked down at his hands and at the scars where his old hands had once been attached to his body.
One adapts.
He sighed and heard the sound come mostly from his throat, but also from the smaller mouth, the “Great Scar” that moved and existed where before there had only been skin.
Andover did not understand all of the workings of the human body and he was exactly wise enough to know that he faced a mystery along those lines. His second mouth was a good deal smaller, and it could be hidden, he supposed, if he simply did not open his mouth. Mouths. That was going to take getting used to.
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