Updated_PerilInTheOldCountry_SamHooker_EbookFormatting_Nook

by Peril in the Old Country (retail) (epub)

  “I know what will make you feel better,” said Flavia. “The truth.”

  Sloot was silent. He wanted to unburden himself, to be cleansed of all this deceit, to go back to the counting house and say the Loyalist Oath every morning to the paper flag on the wall of his tiny apartment. He drew in a very deep breath, and every word that came out with his exhalation was the truth. The unpolished, unedited, dash-out-the-door-to-get-the-paper-in-a-very-thin-robe-on-a-very-windy-day sort of truth, which left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

  Flavia was right. He did feel better, but then he started feeling woozy.

  “I’m so proud of you,” she said, smiling at him. She sounded as though she were speaking in echoes. Then everything went black again.

  ***

  Before any of this madness had upheaved Sloot’s life, he’d woken up alone every single morning. He missed that, and as Roman’s bug-eyed gaze came into focus, he wondered if he’d ever get to do it again.

  “How’d it go?”

  “How’d what go?”

  “Your meeting with Uncle, of course! Did my name come up?”

  Sloot froze. He’d given Roman up! Where was a good distraction when you needed one?

  “Not so fast,” he said, relieved for the inspiration and surprised that his brain was able to move so quickly upon waking, “you still owe me an explanation! You betrayed you know who back in you know where! What good could it possibly―”

  “Yes, yes,” said Roman, “I couldn’t tell you about that before, but it was all part of the plan! Now, I know how good Uncle is at getting things out of people, so don’t hold out on me.”

  “Why shouldn’t I? You’re holding out on me.”

  “Fair point,” Roman replied, “but horribly inconvenient for me. Look, I promise I’ll tell you everything, but I really need to hear yours first.”

  “Then we are at an impasse.”

  “Flip a coin for it?”

  “Ugh, fine,” said Sloot, “I’ll just go first.” He’d never won a coin toss in his life, and his luck of late hinted that he wasn’t about to start now. He told Roman about Flavia, the white room, the crying, everything—including how Roman had been Carpathian Intelligence all along, and how he betrayed Vlad in the end.

  “Sorry,” he said in the end.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Roman, who was grinning from ear to ear. “I’d counted on that happening. It was all part of the plan.”

  “Oh, well that’s— What?”

  ***

  Everyone knows about secret societies. They’re usually pretty good at keeping their esoteric rites under wraps, but people aren’t stupid. They tend to be observant when there’s no effort involved. Go around wearing fancy jewelry and giving people complicated handshakes, and the supporting cast standing in the background of your life will put two and two together. The only thing preserving the “secrets” of most societies is that people don’t tend to care, as long as they’re left to finish their drinks in peace.

  There are a few truly secret societies in the world, but you’ve never heard of them.

  The entire Carpathian Caper, which no one would ever call it other than Roman this one time, started nearly thirty years earlier when he’d overheard a pair of burly looking fellows discussing how best to be rid of a body.

  “Chop him into pieces,” suggested the taller of the two. “Dump the pieces in the river.”

  “That’d be fine,” said the other, “if we only had the one to do.”

  “We do only have the one to do.”

  “That’s true at the moment, but how many did we do last week?”

  “I dunno, twenty? Twenty-five? That was different though, we had the big hole.”

  “Yes we did, but the big hole’s full up now.”

  “Good thing we’ve only got the one body then.”

  “We’ve only got the one body now, but what happens if there are another twenty next week?”

  “That’s too many to chop up and throw in the river,” said the taller man. “Constables would wonder where the floating piles of meat were coming from.”

  “So what would we do with them?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Well, we usually throw them in the hole.”

  “But the hole’s full up now.”

  “Can’t throw them in the river, it’d be too many.”

  “Correct.”

  They both stared at the ground in a diligent abeyance, hoping perhaps that one of the cobbles had an answer written on it.

  Roman was crouched behind a barrel. He’d been in the middle of slinking away from an entirely unrelated bit of espionage when he’d come across these two. He was developing a cramp and hoping that something would stir the silence so that he could move undetected.

  “We can chop this one into pieces and dump it in the river, can’t we?”

  “I suppose,” said the shorter man, “but we’re going to have to figure something else out soon. The Serpents of the Earth are piling up a lot of bodies these days.”

  “We could talk to Mrs. Kni―”

  “Don’t say her name!”

  “We could talk to you know who about it, see if she’s got any ideas.”

  “She didn’t hire a savvy pair of entrepreneurs like us so she could solve our problems. We’re expected to deliver results, without a lot of fuss.”

  “I did some digging after that,” said Roman, “and it turns out that The Serpents of the Earth are the real deal.”

  “The real deal?”

  “In terms of secret societies, there are those who employ dark wizards to perform eldritch rites under blood moons and that sort of thing, and then there are those who just wear a lot of black and meet at the library to exchange moody poetry.”

  “I see,” said Sloot.

  “Of course, they mostly do their black masses in the library basement. Fairly rare, blood moons.”

  “Black masses? You mean with human sacrifices and the like?”

  “Oh no,” said Roman. “I mean yes, they do that kind, too, but they use the basement of the Great Cathedral for human sacrifices. Much better drainage.”

  Sloot shuddered.

  “The point is that the Serpents of the Earth are really bad people doing really bad things. They’re pretty good at keeping it under wraps, too.”

  “Then how do you know about it?”

  “Really? I’m the Spymaster of Salzstadt! You’d be a fool to work for me if I didn’t know what the Serpents get up to.”

  “You still haven’t explained why you betrayed Vlad,” said Sloot.

  “I’m coming to that,” said Roman. “Another eventuality in the spy game is getting caught. The helpful bit there is that most intelligence outfits engage in games of catch-and-release. You’ve got to do something really, really bad to find yourself hurtling toward the pavement from a very tall window.”

  “How bad?”

  “I mean, killing the Domnitor would do it. Sorry, sorry, long may he reign, and all that. Or maybe burning down the cathedral during the bristling service on the Feast of St. Bertha. There are a handful of swear words that would get it done, but I only know one of them, and I’m not telling. Just mouthing it out has been known to give every goblin within a mile a severe case of the ragies.”

  “It’s pronounced ‘rabies’.”

  “If only it were that,” said Roman. He shivered. “Anyway, I got caught by Uncle in the performance of a less-than-savory errand that I was running for one of Mrs. Knife’s lieutenants.”

  “Were you dropping body parts into the river?”

  “Nothing like that, but you know how pork chops are banned on the second Thursday of the month?”

  Sloot nodded.

  “The Serpents love flaunting that one, and I had a rowboat with secret compart
ments. Anyway, that was when Uncle figured out that I was in the game. They wanted dirt on the Serpents, I had a bit, and so I was on my merry way without much further ado. Things were good for a long time after that, but recently they’ve decided that they needed to crack down on foreign incursions.”

  “They were going to push you out of a window?”

  “I decided not to find out. That was where you came in. I knew they’d haul you in once you returned from Carpathia, and that you’d sing every truth you knew when they did. If I could get that truth to be that I’ve turned on Vlad the Invader, they might not think I’m such a threat!”

  “So you betrayed Vlad to stay out of trouble.”

  “Sort of, only I didn’t actually betray Vlad. Much.”

  “Myrtle and Greta are prisoners at Gildedhearth! Willie was worth a fortune to Vlad! You stole my hero’s potion and used it to unleash chaos in the castle!”

  “I actually had the potion made for Willie. I just thought you could use a little push to get things rolling with Myrtle, so I gave you the first sip.” Roman smiled and wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Oh.” Sloot started blushing. “Well, what about the rest of it?”

  “All of those things are true,” said Roman with a hang-dog look. “I wish there had been another way, but this was the only thing that I could see working!”

  “To do what?”

  “To lift the curse on the Carpathian army, and to crush the Serpents of the Earth. Blood and honor!”

  “But we’re about to be initiated!”

  “Is this your first acquaintance with the concept of an inside job? Much easier to get things done this way. Look, we’re running out of time. The wedding’s at sunset, and someone’s got to open the gates for Vlad.”

  That was why Roman wanted Greta to come to Carpathia! He must have known that Vlad would fall in love with her―excellent judge of character, indeed―and that Vlad would stop at nothing to rescue her, even if it meant single-handedly invading Salzstadt.

  “But how will any of this lift the curse on the Carpathian army?”

  “That’s still dozens of moves away,” said Roman. “I’m still putting it together, but it’s going to work. You wait and see.”

  Invader at the Gates

  “Someone’s got to open the gates for Vlad,” Roman had said. Sloot hadn’t bothered hoping that “someone” wouldn’t turn out to be him. That would have been lucky, which Sloot wasn’t.

  Sloot was close enough to the great north gate that he should have been able to see the spot where he touched it every morning, but there were far too many soldiers in the way for that now. He might have found that comforting once, but now that he knew a few more things about the way the world works, he knew that the city guard would only make that sort of display of force if it were necessary.

  “Who are you?”

  Guards liked asking questions, namely open-ended ones that are likely to catch one unawares and get the proverbial guts spilling.

  “Peril. Sloot Peril, of Uncle.” There, that sounded official. “What’s going on here, Sergeant?”

  “Official business,” said the guard, “and it’s Corporal. You got papers, Sloot Peril of Uncle?”

  The guard had a clipboard in one hand and a cudgel in the other. A pencil would have made more sense to the uninformed, but far less sense to the guards, most of whom had never bothered learning to read.

  According to Guards Union rule 713, “guards are fully within their rights to carry and brandish their cudgels at all times while on duty.” Guards are very proud of their union, and generally insist on exercising all of the rights granted to them by the rules to the fullest possible extent; therefore, with unwavering unanimity, all of the guards in Salzstadt have taken this to mean that they should carry and brandish their cudgels at all times.

  The clipboards were the result of a great deal of lobbying on the part of the Salzstadt Board of Tourism, who thought that it would make them seem less menacing when questioning tourists. To everyone’s great surprise, it worked.

  “Here you are,” said Sloot, handing over his papers. The corporal gave an adequate performance in skimming them, and Sloot might have been convinced that he really had, if only they hadn’t been upside down.

  “Where’s the gold stamp?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The gold stamp,” said the corporal. “They told us that anybody from Uncle would have a gold stamp on their papers.”

  “Oh. They’ve done away with those,” said Sloot, surprising himself. He’d told a lie! To a guard! He worked for Uncle now, should he turn himself in? To himself?

  “Done away?”

  “Yes,” said Sloot. “Er, too flashy, you know? Hard to go undercover with a gold seal on your papers.”

  “Right.” The guard squinted at Sloot.

  “This bit says I’m with Uncle.” Sloot pointed to a paragraph in the middle of the page that read “The bearer of this document, if in possession of livestock or a creditor’s letter for purchase of same, is eligible to be prescribed one and a half times the standard measure of whiskey as a treatment for ennui, because we all know how boring it can be, staring at cattle all day.”

  “Sergeant!” shouted the guard, looking over his shoulder. Another guard walked over, clipboard and cudgel at the ready.

  “Yes, Corporal?”

  “This fella says he’s with Uncle, but he’s got no gold stamp.”

  “Is that so?” The sergeant held his clipboard up next to Sloot’s face at arm’s length, his eyes darting back and forth between them.

  “He says they don’t do the gold stamp anymore. Too flashy.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about that,” said the sergeant.

  “And you’re not likely to,” responded Sloot, who was pinching himself as hard as he could, trying to resist the urge to confess everything and throw himself at the sergeant’s mercy. “Look, I just need to go up on the wall for a moment, do I look like I could cause a fuss?”

  They both looked him over. The sergeant gave a little snort and a grin.

  “You carrying any weapons?”

  “Truth is my only weapon.”

  “So … yes?”

  “No, it’s only a metaphor.”

  The corporal blinked. He looked at his clipboard, blinked a few more times, then looked back at Sloot.

  “I don’t think those are allowed up there, you’ll need to leave it with me.”

  “It’s not … it’s a figure of speech,” said Sloot, “I’m not carrying any weapons. I won’t cause any trouble, trust me!”

  “What do you think, Sarge, can we trust him?”

  “I’m with Uncle,” said Sloot, “of course you can trust me.”

  “That checks out,” said the sergeant, looking at his clipboard. “All right, go ahead.”

  Sloot had never been atop the wall before, but it had never seemed so crowded from below. It was standing room only, and everyone was silently watching a lone figure dressed in red just outside the gates. Sloot politely edged his way between a pair of guards who were too enthralled with watching the solitary figure to notice. He looked down as well and gave a little gasp.

  “That’s Vlad,” he said to no one in particular.

  “The Invader!” said the guard on his left.

  “What does she want?” asked Sloot, knowing full well why she was there, but feeling the question would help him blend in.

  “She hasn’t said. Don’t worry, the Domnitor will sort it all out, long may he reign.”

  Vlad was standing in the clearing outside the gates, resplendent in her wicked suit of red enameled steel. The recurved horns on her helmet made Sloot’s neck hurt at the mere thought of trying to wear it, and the tower shield on her left arm was nearly as tall as she was.

  Sloot didn’t see a horse or anyone
else with her. Had she walked with all of that, all the way from Carpathia?

  There was a blaring of trumpets from farther down the wall, just over the main gate. All of the guards stood up in a very rigid way and saluted.

  “Pray attend Domnitor Olaf von Donnerhonig, Defender of the Old Country and Hero of the People! Long may he reign!”

  “Long may he reign!” said everyone atop the wall in a single voice.

  The Domnitor! He was there on the wall, not twenty feet from Sloot! Should he have brought a gift? No, that’s ridiculous. Oh dear, did Roman know that this would happen? Did he send Sloot there to assassinate the Domnitor?

  “Why have you come here?”

  It was a child’s voice. Sloot couldn’t see for all the steel-plated brutes in the way. Was the Domnitor letting his son address Vlad? A good tactic for embarrassment.

  “Wilhelm Hapsgalt,” said Vlad. The sunlight danced over the red enameled plates of her armor, casting red light over everything around her.

  “And what do you want with him?”

  “He has taken that which is most dear to me. Return Greta to me, and I will return to Carpathia with a clean blade!”

  The Domnitor’s son started mumbling with his retinue. It was hard for Sloot to make out most of it. Most of them seemed to think that “Greta” was a sword or something. Barbaric lunatics always named their swords, according to the state-approved textbooks, so it stood to reason.

  “Look, we don’t know what you’re after, but you should just go home. I’m not about to start taking things from the great families of Salzstadt and giving them to our enemies!”

  “I will cut a bloody swath through your city!” shouted Vlad. “Fires will consume your homes before the sun has set! The people of Carpathia will sup on blood red salt until their grandchildren’s grandchildren have grandchildren of their own!”

  “You see, this is why we can’t be friends! There’s no ‘please’ with you people, it’s straight to blood every time! Go home, you big bully, we’re finished here.”

  “I demand a war!”

  “Well of course you do. You’ve probably drunk one of those berserker potions I’ve heard so much about.”