by Bunch, Chris
I went back to our apartments, to our bedroom door, and tapped. There was no answer. I tried the door. It was locked. I knocked more loudly. Again, no response came. I could feel anger build once more. But there was nothing sensible to do.
So I went to my office and worked until nearly dawn, then lay on the field cot I kept there. I had sense enough to put this night’s paperwork in a separate place, knowing I’d best review it when calm. I managed to doze for perhaps an hour, then bugles woke me up. I went out on a balcony and watched guard mount in the courtyard below. The measured, never-changing routine of the army calmed me, knowing the same ceremony was being done at every barracks and post in Numantia. There was something larger than myself, than my petty problems, something I’d dedicated my life to.
I decided I’d spend the day with the troops, and hang paperwork and diplomacy. But not in the unshaven, rather disheveled state I was in. I had a spare field uniform in my campaign roll that always sat beside the door of whatever quarters I occupied, and I went to get it. I’d use the troop baths and have one of the men shave me. I didn’t worry about what the soldiers knew or thought — what had happened between my wife and myself would have gone through the regiment the instant the sentries I’d snapped at were relieved.
As I passed the door to our bedroom, I tried it and shook my head at my foolishness. But to my surprise the handle turned. I opened the door and went in. Marán sat at a window, her back to me. She wore a black silk wrap.
“May I enter?” I said formally.
“Please do.”
I closed the door behind me and stood in silence, not sure what I should say or do.
“Damastes,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you as well.”
“We shouldn’t fight.”
“No.”
“Not over a stupid painting that probably’d get broken going back to Nicias.”
I didn’t answer for an instant. Marán knew that wasn’t at all why we’d snarled. I considered correcting her, but thought better.
“No. That’s not something to fight over,” I agreed. “I’m sorry.”
“And I’m sorry, too. I didn’t sleep at all.”
“I didn’t, either,” I said, lying but little.
She stood, and let the wrap fall.
“Damastes, would you make love to me? Maybe that’d make me feel better about … about things.”
Without waiting for an answer, she came to me, and slowly began undressing me. When I was naked, I picked her up in my arms, and carried her to the bed.
Her passion was far greater than mine. Even when I was in her, part of my mind wondered if I should have said something else, if I should have insisted we talk about the real cause of our fight. A thought came and went that there was this wall called the Agramóntes between us, and sometimes I felt it was growing larger and thicker year by year. But I put the thought aside as foolishness and let the lovemaking take me.
• • •
Two days later, Kutulu and his staff arrived. They were surrounded by the soldiery of the Tenth Hussars, hard-bitten brawn from the frontiers. It was curious, and amusing, to see how carefully they guarded their charges.
Kutulu was as I’d last seen him: a small man, whose hair was now no more than a fringe around his polished pate, even though he was younger than I. But he still had the penetrating eyes of a police warden who never forgets a criminal’s face, or anyone else he’s had business with. Other than that, he was completely unremarkable, and would never be noticed in a crowd, which I’d learned is a prime virtue of a secret agent.
He was the emperor’s spymaster now and wielded great power. Those who spoke ill of the emperor, his programs, or his intentions were visited by police agents and warned. Generally that sufficed, but a few were unwise enough to persist in their criticisms and were hauled into court, actually a secret tribunal. The charge would be “conduct inimical to the interests of the empire,” and sentences ranged from a few days to a few years in prison. There already were two prisons especially built for these offenders, both located in the heart of the Latane River’s delta, and there were dark rumors about what happened in them.
Kutulu had a staff nearly as large as the entire Nician police force, although no one knew how many agents there actually were, since they never wore uniforms or stood for the counting. Some were commoners, some were criminals, some nobility.
Kutulu was now known as “The Serpent Who Never Sleeps,” and while I thought calling the quiet little man with the wary eyes a serpent rather romantic, the hours he spent serving his emperor suggested that possibly he did, in fact, never go to bed. If he did, it must have been alone, for as far as I knew he had no private life whatsoever.
He’d brought more than seventy-five men and women with him. Some looked like wardens, but most like average citizens or ruffians and whores. Many wore cloaks, hoods pulled up in spite of the heat, not wishing their faces to become familiar. Some were mounted, more rode in wagons. Most, city-bred, looked relieved to be in the safety of a city, behind stone walls, and no longer exposed to the unknown terrors of the open country.
I’d had quarters prepared for Kutulu and his force in my wing, across from the barracks the Lancers occupied.
“Good,” he said. “There’ll be few Kallians pass your sentries, so my agents can maintain their anonymity. But I’ll also need chambers close to the dungeons that no one will be permitted to enter except my people. Other rooms will be necessary for my records, rooms that will always be guarded, where my reports can be filed.
“Finally, are there any secret ways in and out of this castle?”
I knew of none, and if I’d found any I’d certainly have had them bricked up.
“A pity,” he said and sighed. “It would be nice to have some sort of rat hole my terriers — and the rats we collect, both of their own free will and by our pressures — to enter and leave from at any hour without notice being taken.”
He asked if I had a Square of Silence. Seer Sinait had cast such a spell in my office as soon as we arrived, to make sure no sorcerer could eavesdrop on my conferences.
“Good,” Kutulu said. “Let us go there, then. I have certain questions I need to ask.”
We went up the wide stairs toward the floor my offices were on. Halfway, he put a hand on my arm.
“Oh,” he said, rather shyly. “I sometimes forget my graces. It is nice to see you, my friend.”
I looked at him with a bit of astonishment. He’d told me, equally soberly, after I’d saved his life in an encounter with a demon guardian of the Tovieti, that I was his friend, but he had never used the word again. I became as embarrassed as he was, since I wasn’t sure just what the word meant to the small man. I muttered thanks and tried to make light of things, telling him once he saw what a mess Kallio was in he’d probably change his opinion.
“No,” he said. “I meant what I said. I know I am around one of the two people I trust absolutely.” The other was the man he’d taken for his god — the emperor.
“I am glad to be away from the capital,” he continued. “I’m afraid I like Nicias but little these days.”
“Why?”
“The emperor is like honey,” he said, “and there are too many flies buzzing around, trying to suck in as much as they can, and dirtying everything they touch. Sometimes I’m afraid the emperor pays far too much mind to these people, and not enough to those who supported him when it was a risk.”
I managed to cover my surprise — I’d never thought Kutulu would have the slightest criticism of the Emperor Tenedos, even one as mild as he’d voiced.
“I’m sure the emperor knows them for what they are,” I said. “Don’t forget that, like you, he’s got to use some fairly questionable tools to do what he must.”
Kutulu looked at me for a long time, then nodded jerkily. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “Of course. You must be right. I should never have doubted.” He attempted a smile, which his face found unfamili
ar. “As I said, you are a friend. Come, let us dispose of our business.”
In my office I set two chairs at the table the Square of Silence had been cast around and told him he could talk freely.
“Some of what I’m going to say comes from the emperor,” he began. “But I’ll have other questions as well.”
“To which I must respond correctly, or face possible prosecution.”
“What?” Kutulu was completely puzzled.
“Sorry. I was trying a small joke. You asked that question as if you were investigating me.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I’m afraid I concentrate too much on the task at hand.”
“Never mind.” Joking with Kutulu was like pissing into the wind — nothing much would get accomplished and the splatter was a bit embarrassing. Nevertheless, for some unknown reason, I sort of liked the little man, as much as it’s ever possible to like someone whose passion and life’s work is finding out yours, and everyone else’s, business.
“I’ll start with my own question. Are the Tovieti active in Kallio? I’ve seen nothing of them in your reports.”
I gaped. The Tovieti had been a terror cult first organized in Kait, one of the Disputed Lands. They had been established by an unknown, probably dead sorcerer and given the crystal demon Thak to worship and obey. They spread across Numantia, murdering as they went. Their goal was to bring all society to an end, so their own rule could triumph. Their believers would be given not only the lives of the nobility and rich, but their gold, land, and women as well. But Tenedos had slain Thak, and Kutulu and I and the army had wiped out the Tovieti with drum patrols and the noose more than nine years ago.
Some must have survived our purging and fled. But we’d obliterated all their leaders, as far as I knew, and I thought the order no more than a bad dream of the past.
“I’m not mad,” Kutulu said. “The Tovieti have risen again. Remember their emblem?”
I did — it had been chalked or scrawled on every wall in Sayana, Kait’s capital — a red circle, representing the Tovieti, red for their slain leaders, whom they considered martyrs, with a nest of hissing serpents rising from it. Kutulu nodded.
“We cut off many of the vipers’ heads. But there are still others.”
“But who do they serve? Thak is dead, or at least I thought he was.”
“No sorcerer, including the emperor himself, has been able to find the slightest trace of the demon,” Kutulu agreed. “But the Tovieti have changed.
“I’ve arrested a dozen or more in Nicias. When questioned, right until death, they insist they have no master. Thak’s death, and the deaths of those who were the organization’s high council, proved they were following the wrong star.
“Now all members hold the same rank and are organized in small cells. They are to kill the mighty when they can, still with the yellow silken cord if possible, and are permitted to steal what they can to share with the others of the brotherhood.
“They say perhaps one day a new leader will manifest himself, but he won’t be a demon, but a man, a man who’ll lead them well, and they’ll give up their bloody ways for peace, and all men and women shall be equal.” He grimaced. “There’s only a few, as far as I can tell. But they’re troublesome. They’ve strangled at least a dozen people I know of, and I’ll wager three times that number of killings have been done in other ways. I’ve been unable to find any central leadership to exterminate. Perhaps they’re telling the truth, although I’ve never known a pack of dogs to not have a leader.”
“This is all completely new,” I said. “You know what sort of wardens we have here in Kallio, and that they’re little better than door rattlers. As secret agents they make excellent chicken farmers. But I’ve heard no whisper of the Tovieti. Should I ask my seer to cast spells to see if she can find any evidence?”
“No. I doubt if she’d be successful,” Kutulu said. “I had the best sorcerers in Nicias attempt such castings with no result, including the Chare Brethren, which the emperor has turned into a real force instead of a bunch of fossils creaking on about the theory of magic.”
He glanced about, as if looking for eavesdroppers, then said, almost whispering, “Have you any evidence, or even suspicions, of any Maisirian activity?”
“None,” I said, shocked — until I remembered Tenedos’s words.
“The emperor wants to know if any of these vanished Kallian officials might have fled through the Disputed Lands and found shelter with King Bairan.”
“No. Maybe a few tried,” I said. “But I would find it hard to believe any official or magician who had more than a rag to wrap about his loins would have been able to convince the Men of the Hills to give him safe conduct to the Maisirian border.”
“As would I. I believe that those who survived the war have gone to ground or fled into other provinces of Numantia. But that is not what the emperor believes.” He shook his head. “Great men proclaim the truth, and we lesser beings can do little but try to make what we see fit into that vision.
“Very well. Let me see what I can discover.”
• • •
The Time of Heat ended, and the Time of Rains began, at first with drizzles, then the full gush of the monsoon. It was still hot, but the gray, dank days matched the dirty business that had begun.
Without fanfare, Kutulu and his agents went to work. Strange people came and went at all hours, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups. Where they went, what they did, I didn’t know, nor did I ask.
Others on Kutulu’s staff were equally busy. I had to have the dungeon guard room moved up a level and thick carpeting installed on the floors. The screams from his torture chambers carried far.
I liked all this but little, but this is the way my country performs its investigations and enforces its laws. Prince Reufern seemed delighted and importuned Kutulu to visit the interrogation rooms. Kutulu refused, saying any interference from outsiders might destroy the pattern he was trying to create and reduce the flow of information his clerks were recording.
I had the comfort that my duties involved no such evil and that my magistrate’s patrols were abroad, doing their best to provide justice in the broken land.
• • •
The man stumbled through the city’s gates at midday, through the rain that blew in sheets across the sky. He still wore tatters of his uniform and to the sentries appeared quite mad. He was a horseman of Two Column, Leopard Troop, Seventeenth Ureyan Lancers.
He was rushed to the castle infirmary, and identified as Horseman Gabran. He’d ridden out with Legate Ili’s justice patrol that morning, and his hysterical babblings made the watch officer send for me at once. He raved about snakes, huge snakes, people that became snakes, and they’d tried to kill him, but he’d run, run. Suddenly he became quiet, his eyes owl-like.
“They killed all of us,” he said calmly. “All of the horses, all of the men. They tried to kill me, too. But I was too quick for them. I went into the fields, and then across a river. They couldn’t track me.
“Now they’ll come here. Now they’ll come after me. But I’m safe now, aren’t I? Aren’t I? Aren’t I!” and his voice rose to a scream. Two men held him, and a third forced a potion through his clenched lips. Again he quieted.
“That’s to make me sleep, isn’t it? That’s all right. I can sleep. They’ll not find me, when I’m asleep. Or if they do, I won’t care. No. I won’t care. I won’t …” He collapsed, as much fainting as from the draft.
I ran out of the infirmary, shouting for the alert troop, for Domina Bikaner to attend me in the Lancers’ ready room, and for a runner to summon Kutulu and Seer Sinait and tell them to make ready to travel. Sorcery would be needed if there was anything to Gabran’s tale, and I planned to move fast, far faster than the Kallians believed possible.
Bikaner came at a run, buckling on his saber. His adjutant, Captain Restenneth, had told him about Gabran, and he’d served long enough with me to be able to tell what I planned.
“Legate Ili a
nd his column went out at dawn with orders to hold court here,” he said, tapping a spot on the ready room map. The village was called Nevern, and it sat in the foothills two hours ride from Polycittara.
“Very well,” I said. “I’ll have the ready troop …”
“Tiger, sir.”
“Tiger Troop, and turn out my Red Lancers. I’ll also have one company of the Hussars ready to ride in ten, no fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll take personal command — ”
“No,” I said flatly. “This one’s mine. But you can ride along if you wish.”
“Yessir. Thank you, sir.”
Kutulu hurried into the room as Bikaner ran out. I briefly explained what I thought had happened. “We lack information,” he said.
“We do,” I agreed. “And if we wait for details there’ll be nobody left to deal with. Are you riding with me or no?”
“I’ll come.”
“Good. I’ll get you a mount.” Karjan was waiting. My combat harness was beside him, and he wore helmet, breastplate, and greaves.
“Lucan’s bein’ saddled, sir.”
“Very well. Take this man to the stables and get him mounted on a fast, dependable horse. Have another horse saddled for Seer Sinait. Go!”
Karjan ran out, followed by the warden. Captain Lasta clattered in, buckling on his gear. I gave him instructions as I fastened on my own weaponry.
“Sir? One question?”
“Go ahead, Captain.”
“Supposing it’s a trap? Supposing they’ve laid an ambush?”
I considered. No. They wouldn’t be expecting a response this quickly. They’d think we’d wait until the morrow, when we’d have a full day, for no one chanced traveling the roads of Kallio near dark.
“Isa have mercy on them if they do. For we won’t.”
• • •
Seer Sinait was waiting in the courtyard, her robes rucked up so she could mount, holding a canvas roll with her magical implements. The troops formed up as I outlined what little I knew, their warrants shouting orders and instructions.
