by Sales, Ian
The Bailiff was back. “Ma’am, I’m sorry,” he said. “But Baron Kanban is not here.”
“Not here? This is a prison. How can he not be here?”
“He was released some twelve weeks ago.”
“No.” Finesz shook her head. “Something is wrong. I wouldn’t drive out all this way without checking first, and according to the OPI data-pool, the baron is still imprisoned in the House of Rectitude.”
She turned away from the Bailiff and gazed angrily at Assaun. It was not his fault, she knew that, but she needed to direct her confusion and rage somewhere. The Bailiff—ranting at him would not be appropriate. For all his fancy uniform, he was no more than a glorified constable.
She had suspected this, had said as much to Mubariz during one dull day aboard Lantern. Possibly more than once, on more than one day. So, if Norioko was not here, where would he be? She could try his townhouse, she supposed. She knew it well, had spent many nights there many years ago. And—she smiled at the memory—no, it most certainly was not a “palace”. Not that she would let that fact prevent her from teasing the man about it. Few enough nobles could afford accommodation in Toshi anyway.
“Very well.” She gestured away the Bailiff and climbed into the staff car. Once Assaun was back in the driver’s seat, she told him, “So much for that. Back to Toshi, then.”
As the vehicle, rocking queasily on its chargers, backed out of the bailey, Finesz turned to the caster embedded in the central console of the staff car’s rear-seat. She opened a circuit and requested a connection to Norioko’s residence. Moments later, a face appeared in the caster’s tiny glass. A man, a decade older than herself, bald, a red birthmark splashed across his crown; and a proletarian servant from the escutcheon on his collar. Finesz did not recognise him and she knew many of Norioko’s servants.
“This is Inspector Finesz. I would like to speak with Baron Kanban.”
“Ma’am, he is not in.”
“But he has been in?”
The servant stared at her, clearly not knowing how to reply.
She added, “He’s been living in his house?”
“Yes, ma’am. Where else would he live?”
Finesz sighed. “Do you know where the baron is?”
“Now?”
“Of course now. Where is he?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Is there anyone there who might?”
The servant shook his head. “No, ma’am. Only me and the domestics.”
“Very well.”
Finesz severed the connection and sat back. So, not at home. Where could he be? She stared out at the window. They were passing through the holiday village once again. His office, perhaps? No. As far as the Office of the Procurator Imperial knew, he was still incarcerated in the House of Rectitude.
Someone must know where he was.
She sighed. So much for her rescue. She’d hoped that breaking Norioko free might persuade him to overlook her disobedience on Darrus. He was sure to have harsh words with her over that. Despite all that had happened since then.
A name came to mind. An old friend—more than a friend, if truth be told. She had stayed in touch with him after joining the OPI. They had fed each other morsels of useful information, a mutually beneficial arrangement. He had perhaps had the better of the deal. As a high noble in the Electorate’s bureaucracy, intelligence on the OPI’s doings were of more use to him than his political gossip had been to her. But she had kept the relationship alive because she had foreseen a time when it might prove useful.
Such as today.
She switched on the caster a second time and asked for a connection to Viscount Stikker at his office in Congress. A male yeoman secretary answered and Finesz told him she had important OPI business with the viscount.
“Dear me, girl,” Stikker said once his face had appeared in the glass. He screwed up his eyes and peered at her. “I thought you more discreet than this.”
“It’s an emergency, Emin. I’m trying to find Gyome.”
“You’ve lost your boss? That was a trifle careless. Last I heard, he was being held at the Bailiffs’ pleasure.”
“He’s not there now. Someone sprung him twelve weeks ago.”
Stikker frowned thoughtfully. “Did they now? News to me.” His gaze narrowed. “Where have you been for the past year? Should I even ask?”
“Away.” Finesz smiled, but there was no humour in it. “Gyome sent me off on what he thought was a pointless errand. But I learnt somewhat more than he expected.”
Stikker raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
She thought about it for a moment. “You should probably know about it, too. Remember where we used to meet? When I was being ‘discreet’? I’ll be there in two hours. You should hear this, Emin. It’s important.”
“How important, Sliva?”
“Very important.”
The viscount stared at her ruminatively. Abruptly, he nodded. “I’ll be there. I hope it’s worth it, girl.”
The staff car took the banked curve of the exit from Imperial Boulevard to Congress at speed. Finesz reached out for the strap beside her, but the vehicle had already settled back onto an even keel. She peered out of the window at the city below her, its throng of buildings, shoulder to shoulder, constrained by the valley walls and cut by shuffling narrow streets and winding alleys. Such a physical contrast to the quaint and torpid village on the way to the House of Rectitude.
But perhaps not so very different to Congress. The road began to ascend towards a meeting with the hill-top across which Congress’s building-of-many-parts sprawled. At the north end of the complex, an open area allowed visitors to disembark from their vehicles. There was nowhere to park—all visitors were assumed to have drivers.
Assaun pulled the staff car up to the courtyard fronting the building’s entrance and Finesz scrambled out with a curt, “I’ll call when I need you to pick me up.”
She jammed her cap onto her head, angry and worried, tugged at her sword to ensure it would not impede her and marched towards Congress’s entrance. The courtyard was cup-shaped and contained within smoothly sloping walls. These rose from the ground at the road’s edge to meet at the great lintel above the columned entrance. Once through this, Finesz found herself in a forest of great pillars, supporting a flat roof some forty feet above her head. It always put her in mind of an underground reservoir, the strange submarine air of this place, the burble and hiss of footsteps among the columns, the combers of sunlight washing across the ceiling from the entrance. People wove their way around and about the columns, stepping abruptly into view, then just as suddenly vanishing.
Beyond the entrance hall—which had no name, but succeeded in its design of humbling those entering Congress—led the Corridor of Power. The name had once been a joke, but had stuck through repeated use. Everywhere in Congress was, allegedly, accessible from the Corridor. At the far end, half a mile away, was Caucus Hall, where the Electorate met in session. And to either side, arches and side-passages gave access to the agencies and offices of the Electorate’s members. Finesz’s destination was around a quarter of a mile from the entrance, a small courtyard tucked away down a side-corridor.
As usual, the Corridor was busy, and Finesz wondered at these people marching back and forth on governmental business. Did they not know of Ahasz and his siege? The Imperial Household District was no more than two miles away, on the other side of the valley. The Emperor was trapped in his Palace and yet no one here seemed concerned. She watched a minor noble, with retinue fluttering about him, go striding past. She wanted to stop him, to shake him out of his complacency, to explain to him in loud and exact detail what Ahasz and his army were doing, what they intended, what it all meant.
She doubted it would have any effect.
She reached the side-passage and turned into it. Another hundred yards and she turned to pass through an archway, and found herself in an open space, some fi
fty feet on a side. A covered walkway fronted by slim pillars ringed the courtyard and, in the open air, stone benches formed a square about an ancient statue of a long-forgotten noble.
She spotted Viscount Stikker immediately. He sat, one leg crossed over the other, hands on his uppermost knee, basking like a reptile in a bright shaft of sunlight. As she approached, his eyes flickered open.
“Ah,” he said.
Finesz dropped her cap on the bench beside Stikker, but remained standing.
“Sliva,” he said.
She turned away and clasped her hands behind her back. Immediately, an image of the Admiral in a similar pose came to mind, so she dropped her hands and instead folded her arms tightly across her bosom.
“Emin,” she said. She turned about to look down at him. “How close is Ahasz to taking the Imperial Palace?”
“Ah,” the viscount replied, an eyebrow raised. “‘Very important’. I see.”
“Will the Emperor last another two weeks?”
“I should think so. It’s been half a year and Ahasz has not dug Him out yet. Why?”
“The Admiral will be here then. Unless she’s been held up on Geneza.”
Stikker looked down and removed some lint from his knee with a languid flick of the wrist. “Oh dear,” he said. “You’re caught up in all that, are you?”
She gestured vaguely. “Not through choice.” A small lie. “But you have about ten days before she gets here and boots Ahasz out of the District.”
“Geneza.”
“What?”
“You mentioned Geneza,” Stikker said.
“Her fleet went there to fight Ahasz’s fleet. And his other army. It’s all part of a plan. Or something.” She gestured away her imprecision. “I never really understood it, although Casimir made it all seem very simple.”
“Casimir?”
“Ah.” Finesz sat down beside her cap. “He’s…” She shook her head. “No, it’s no secret. He’s a clone of Ahasz, created by the knights sinister about twenty years ago. He’s the one the Admiral follows.”
She stared across the courtyard at a young couple sitting opposite. Yeomen by their clothing and lack of escutcheons. She couldn’t decide if they were in a relationship or simply friends. They sat close together, but did not touch. They spoke, but only occasionally looked at each other. Both wore congressional uniforms, dark grey suits with high-collared jackets and high black boots. His suit boasted trousers, hers a skirt.
“Sliva?”
Startled, she turned to Stikker, and realised abruptly that he had spoken earlier and she had not heard him. A memory of the moment just past—the young couple, the sun shining down, a still and silent peacefulness in the grey stone openness of the square—came to her.
“Yes?”
“You can’t lunge with the point like that and then ignore me, girl. You’re saying some twenty-year-old clone of the duke who is currently besieging the Imperial Palace is in charge of a fleet and army?”
“Uhm? Yes. Well, the Admiral says she follows him but I have my doubts.”
“How big is this fleet?”
She thought back over various conversations and briefings she’d had on Linna. “About twenty-six capital ships—battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers. And about twelve thousand men.”
“Regimentals?”
“Yes. Oh, and a thousand or so Imperial Marines, too.”
“You do realise, Silva, this clone of yours has the largest fleet and army seen in the Empire since the War with the Baal? And you know what happened then.”
“Ha.” Finesz shook her head, amused at the thought to which Stikker alluded. “No, that won’t happen. Casimir certainly won’t have it.”
“He’s principled?”
Finesz didn’t understand.
“This young clone: he has principles? He’s an idealist? That’s why he won’t try for the Throne himself?”
“Yes,” she replied, thinking back over time she had spent with Ormuz and smiling at the memories. “You could say that.”
“Oh dear,” said Stikker. “Principles.” He closed his eyes, leaned back and turned his face up towards the sun. “People with principles: they’re the worst kind.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The Order of the Left Hand maintained a secret presence in Ministries. A small brass plaque identified the office as belonging to the Imperial Historical Research Institute. It was the only such place Lotsman, Tovar and Dai knew of, the only place where they were sure to find an Involute. In their guises as clerks, they had free access to the proletarian areas of Ministries.
The train on which they had travelled from the aerodrome entered a tunnel beneath Ministries, and after some hundred yards pulled into a station. They disembarked amid a crowd and followed it into the main tunnels running beneath the civil government’s offices.
They hurried along ill-lit tunnels, moving as if on an urgent errand, as if they knew where they going. They could not ask for directions because that was not in keeping with their disguises. Eventually, they reached a junction and found a small, and probably out-of-date, map to the government buildings above them. Tovar remembered from his research aboard Desert Runner that the Imperial Historical Research Institute was in the same building as the Imperial Tenancy Office, which was identified on the map.
Half an hour later, they were above ground, striding along a narrow alleyway between the rears of ministries, agencies and bureaux. Doors the length of the alley disgorged clerks and runners, many carrying locked cases. Reaching the rear of the Imperial Tenancy Office’s building, they entered. The office for which they were looking was located on the third floor. Even inside, the corridors were mean and undecorated, made of pale unpolished stone. They climbed a staircase which switched back between floors. On the correct floor, they chose a direction at random and marched until they spotted a door bearing “Imperial Historical Research Institute”.
Tovar pushed open the door warily and stepped inside. He found himself in a square room, divided in half by a chest-high wooden counter. There was no other furniture. Behind the counter, looking down on those who entered the room, was a woman with pinched features. Lotsman and Dai stepped up to join Tovar. They crossed to the counter.
“Yes?” snapped the woman. She gazed up and down at their clothes, but her face did not change expression.
“We’d like to speak to someone in charge,” Lotsman said.
“You have some research you want doing?”
Lotsman unpinned his escutcheon from his collar, stepped forward and presented it to the woman. “Please,” he said, “look it up.”
Clearly unhappy at having to fulfil the request, she took the coat of arms, directed her gaze at the counter top before her and began flicking switches.
Moments later, she looked up sharply. Her face had lost its pinched look. “There is an Involute in the office. He wants to see you.”
A panel swung open in the counter, a small door. Glancing at Dai and Lotsman, Tovar ducked his head and entered.
The door did not lead, as he had expected, to the other side of the counter. As he stepped over the threshold, he found himself at the top of a flight of six steps in a wooden tunnel which appeared to stretch for a length of ten feet. There was a door at the other end, and this opened as he hesitated on the threshold.
“Come on, hurry,” urged a voice.
Tovar hurried; and heard Dai clatter into the tunnel behind him, the sound of her heels drowning out Lotsman’s footfalls. At the far end of the wooden passage, Tovar stepped into a waiting room. Standing beside the door was the person who had spoken to him. He wore a clerk’s uniform too, but he held a mace and had the bearing of a soldier.
He gestured for the three to continue across the waiting room and through an open door. Which in turn led into a sumptuously appointed office.
There was a plush carpet of a maroon which drank in the light. A great desk of a polished ambe
r wood, with carved pilasters at its corners. Behind it sat a high wing-backed chair of aged green leather. To left and right stood tall bookcases with glass doors and shelves crammed with leather-bound books.
Sitting behind the desk in the chair was a portly figure in black. His head was silver, ovoid and featureless but for small round eyes of black glass.
A caster on the desk spoke: “The crew of Divine Providence. We had wondered what happened to you.”
“We were on Vengeful,” began Lotsman.
“The Admiral’s battlecruiser? Then you have much to tell us.” The Involute held up a hand. “But first, why are you here?”
“We were held prisoner by the Admiral,” put in Dai. “We only managed to escape during the battle.”
“Battle?” The Involute leaned forward but his mask hid any show of interest his features might have displayed. “So you didn’t run off and join your princeling?”
All three shook their heads vigorously.
“Then a thorough debriefing is required. But not here, I think.”
Tovar, Dai and Lotsman spent four hours waiting in a locked room in the institute in Ministries. Eventually they were visited by a proletarian woman also dressed as a government clerk. She brought with her a bag. It contained clothing. “You are to put these on,” she said, and then left.
Tovar checked the door after the woman had closed it behind her. It was locked. He turned back to see Lotsman digging through the contents of the bag. The pilot pulled out a bundle of clothing and shook them out. The garments appeared to be military uniforms—dark green coveralls, and dark green jackets with black frogging.
“Imperial Skirmishers?” asked Dai.
“No. Imperial Commando, I think,” replied Lotsman. He held up a forage cap, displaying the regimental crest above the bill. It depicted a globe on a stand, with a crown above. “Yes, Imperial Commando.” He grinned. “I don’t think we’ve ever played regimentals before. Should be fun.”
