At the Queen_s command cc-1

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Quince opened his arms. "Perhaps my source on this was misinformed. Mark me, however, the day will come when the Queen turns to us to sustain her, when she has done nothing for us. We are the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of those Norisle cast aside. We owe the Queen nothing, yet we are fettered by her laws, enslaved by her nobles, impoverished by her merchants. And though there may be traitors among us, you all know in your heart of hearts, that someday, and someday soon, we too will need to fly the nest and extricate ourselves from her deadly talons."

  Many of the men grumbled and banged tankards on the tabletops. A few whistled and two invited Quince to join them at a table on the far side of the fireplace. The giant walked over to Nathaniel's table and swung onto the wall bench, jamming Nathaniel into a corner.

  "Good to see you again, Magehawk."

  Nathaniel squirmed a bit. "Be buying you an ale, will we, Makepeace?"

  "Your friend the reader will." The giant smiled and extended a hand. "Makepeace Bone."

  "Owen Strake." His hand and half his forearm disappeared in Makepeace's grip. "Thank you for your intervention."

  "Well, I was tired of his palaver. Easier to wrestle a wooly rhinocerbus to the ground than make sense of his talking." Makepeace gratefully accepted a tankard from Meg, drank, then licked foam from his lip. "Foul stuff this. His whiskey ain't much better."

  Nathaniel leaned left and Makepeace slid over a bit to give him room. "Where are you and your brothers trapping these days?"

  "Little north, little west."

  "Seen Pierre Ilsavont?"

  "He died two years ago. Planted yonder."

  "True."

  The giant leaned back, his voice a bass growl. "Did see some sign reminded me of him. He never did walk straight after that hip got busted up. It was just tracks though. Late spring, a piece west of here. What's your business with him?"

  "He owed me money."

  "That's a long line ain't moving fast."

  "Heard he might not be dead." Nathaniel drank from his tankard. "We figured we'd see if we could scare him up."

  Makepeace shook his head. "I hain't seen him. Trib said he seen Maurice a year back. Maurice weren't inclined to honor a debt."

  Owen glanced at Nathaniel. "Trib?"

  "His brother, Tribulation."

  Makepeace smiled. "My family is Virtuan stock."

  "I see."

  "Let me ask you something, Mister Strake. You read that book you're carrying?"

  "Parts of it."

  "Are you believing any?"

  "To be truthful, Mr. Bone, I've not read enough."

  The big man pursed his lips, then nodded. "Ain't many men admit to ignorance. Weren't how Quince was inclined."

  Nathaniel rolled his tankard between his hands. "Makes a man wonder why a man would be saying them sorts of things."

  "Oh, I don't know, Magehawk, seems fair obvious. Men, they come out here, they cut a town from the wilderness, they have an edge to them. The ones that come after, though, ain't leaders. They's followers. Sheep. Every now and again comes a wolf looking for sheep. If it weren't Quince, it would be some minister or a messiah. Down Oakland I hear a man dug up his own Bible and has been preaching it. Says Mystria is the promised land and that the Good Lord wants us to make a Celestial City in the heart of the Continent. He says every man should have a dozen wives and they should bear a dozen children and God will come again to bless them all."

  Nathaniel smiled. "You going?"

  "Cain't find me one wife, so I don't reckon there's a point to it."

  "Good." Nathaniel patted him on the shoulder. "Then you might want to help us with a errand tonight."

  The man nodded. "What's that?"

  Nathaniel chuckled. "We're going to rob us a grave."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  June 7, 1763

  Hattersburg

  Lindenvale, Mystria

  I t surprised Owen that Nathaniel's comment, delivered quietly, shocked neither Kamiskwa nor Makepeace. Both men nodded thoughtfully. Makepeace resumed drinking and Meg brought the others bowls of stew. She added a couple rounds of coarse-grain bread.

  Owen waited until she'd departed before he spitted Nathaniel with a hard stare. "You can't be serious."

  Nathaniel nodded, spooning stew into his mouth.

  "But that's disturbing sacred ground. You can't…"

  Nathaniel wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Didn't none of us like Pierre. He didn't like God none. And if he is in that grave, we'll just be opening up a hole for him to get some cool air down in the Inferno."

  Nathaniel's stressing the word is killed any argument. They already knew he wasn't in the grave, so they wouldn't be disturbing a body.

  Makepeace chuckled. "Cain't be buried deep. Found him start of March. Ground was still frozen. Seth Plant ain't never been much for digging deep-in the earth or his pockets. We'll have him up right quick."

  Neither that prospect nor the idea that they'd found Ilsavont so far from his grave gave Owen any comfort. He ate the stew and in thinking on how he would describe it, came up with the word peculiar. He didn't give himself too long to wonder what some of the vegetables floating around in the thick brown sauce actually were. He had no idea what the meat was and finally asked.

  Nathaniel shrugged. "Squirrel or coon."

  "Coon." Makepeace nodded toward the bar. "Out to the yard Gates' got a brining barrel. Got two-three in there. His wife does it up nice."

  The meat held up well, but most of the flavor had been boiled out of it. Not the same as beef, just a bit more dark, closer to rabbit. Very lean, but needed a touch of pepper. Owen looked about to see if any was available, then realized it would be even more rare than glass this far west.

  Nathaniel sopped up the last of the sauce with a piece of bread. "Needed onions. Done?"

  Owen pushed the half-finished stew away. "I suppose."

  Makepeace settled his hand on Nathaniel's neck. "Digging's going to be thirsty work. Another ale first."

  The four of them stole over the stone fence and into the small churchyard. They worked toward the western end. They started down a small slope, with Nathaniel and Kamiskwa drifting left, while Makepeace went right. About a dozen paces apart they stopped and looked at each other.

  Nathaniel pointed toward an oak tree. "It's over there. I was leaning up against that tree when I peed on his grave."

  Makepeace leaned on the shovel. "Trib and me was over by that stone there doing the same."

  "When?"

  "This spring."

  Nathaniel frowned. "We was the year before."

  "Graves don't move." Owen walked past them and toward the oak tree. "Was it this one here?"

  Kamiskwa nodded.

  Owen read the carving on the wooden cross. "Mercy Heath born 1762, died 1763."

  Makepeace grunted. "Girl caught the scarlet fever come new year. She weren't but three months old."

  "She wasn't here two years ago." Nathaniel headed for the stones Makepeace had pointed out. A cross had been stuck in the ground reading "Pierre Ilsavont, died 1761. God Rest His Soul."

  Owen folded his arms over his chest. "If he's resting, it's here."

  Nathaniel took the shovel from the giant. "How far down?"

  "Three feet, no more."

  Nathaniel nodded, then began to dig. The wooden shovel had a steel edge that should have made digging easier. From the first, however, Nathaniel hit rocks. He scraped them away from the hole, but with the fourth strike, he hit the edge of a flat stone at least as big around as a dinner plate.

  Owen crouched. "This earth's never been turned."

  "I'm of a mind to be thinking you're right." Nathaniel leaned on the shovel. "So, if he was buried, it weren't here."

  Owen pointed back toward the Church. "Perhaps the minister will have records. He must have kept them."

  "Circuit preacher." Makepeace shrugged. "Be two weeks afore he's back." "We don't need him." Nathaniel hung the shovel over his shoulders.
"I reckon, come morning, we should visit the gravedigger. Mayhap we help

  with the morning chores, he'll have time to tell us exactly where Pierre went after all."

  They returned to the inn. Kamiskwa slept in the stables. Owen and Nathaniel shared a bed. Makepeace stayed in the next room over. From the brief commotion coming through the wall Owen assumed that Makepeace took his share of that bed out of the middle, and roommates that complained found ample space on the floor.

  He desperately hoped Cotton Quince was among them.

  It took Owen a bit to fall asleep because questions about Quince's identity niggled. The man had a Mystrian name. He wore Mystrian clothes, but his manner suggested Norillian schooling. The Queen must have had agents throughout the colonies, but having one incite rebellion made no sense. Out here in the west the people had very little in the way of money or property. They couldn't mount a credible threat to Norisle. Even if the Queen sent troops in to smash a rebellion, she really had nothing to gain. There would be no treasure to be won.

  Perhaps Quince was a Ryngian agent. Despite centuries of animosity between the two nations, there were those among the Norillian nobility that envied the Tharyngians. Their revolution, in which a despotic King had been overthrown in favor of the Laureates, promised rule by reason instead of whim. Many Norillians, especially those of means, disliked the influence of the Church at court. Since the Ryngian revolution had broken the Church's power in that nation, Ryngian sympathies grew up in places where they could inspire treason.

  But what would the Ryngians gain by sparking a revolt in the west? Suggesting independence was not a way to gain political control over the region. It could be that the Ryngians intended to stir up unrest to force Norisle to deploy troops to the colonies. If a revolt succeeded, the Ryngians might even offer themselves as an alternate patron to a fledgling state. If they could stop Ungarakii raiding and provided other benefits the Queen did not, the westernmost colonies might even switch sides.

  Is it what Makepeace suggested? Quince is just out here building his own empire? Aside from the fact that such a plan was pure foolishness and would never succeed, there was nothing to suggest that wasn't exactly what was going on. There doubtlessly were countless men who viewed the Mystrian continent as a place where dreams of avarice could be fulfilled.

  There, Owen decided, was the flaw in Nathaniel's view of Mystria. If men were left to their own devices, they would seek to expand their own freedoms at the expense of others. Nathaniel pointed out that they'd do that no matter what society existed. Hypocrisy ran rampant within society-Owen accepted that as fact-but at least society limited it. When it got out of hand, society punished it. Without that pressure, however, a man could do anything he wanted and others-sheep-would follow. He'd seen soldiers follow inept officers into the mouth of cannon-fire without running or turning back, even though their sacrifice was meaningless and slaughter inevitable.

  Imagine the power a man would wield if his followers thought God smiled upon them.

  As unsettling as that thought should have been, Owen didn't have the energy to wrestle with it. He resolved to consider it when next writing in his journal. That brought him to thoughts of Bethany briefly, and then his wife at length, therefore he slept peacefully and with a smile on his face.

  Seth Plant lived two miles upriver-they'd actually passed his farm on the trip down into Hattersburg. The four of them got out before dawn and reached his cabin about the same time his cock crowed. Nathaniel was of a mind to just barge in, but Makepeace advocated a more peaceful approach. He ambled into the side yard and started splitting and stacking wood.

  Seth came out of his log cabin quickly enough. Owen found him to be an unremarkable man in size and intelligence. He neither smiled nor paled when he saw the four of them. He greeted them as if their presence was an everyday thing.

  "Plenty of work to be done, plenty of work." Seth waved them after him as he grabbed a milking stool and a pail. He had to stoop to go through the makeshift barn door; Makepeace wouldn't have fit at all.

  "Mr. Plant."

  Seth poked his head back out of the barn. "You're a formal one, are you?"

  Owen nodded. "We have a question for you."

  Seth took another look at them and the split wood. Realization washed over his face, slowly, and in several waves. "So you didn't just have a hankering to split wood?"

  "No, sir." Owen smiled. "I am Captain Owen Strake of The Queen's Own Wurm Guards. I've come to ask you what you did with the body of Pierre Ilsavont."

  Seth dropped the pail. "I-I buried it. Right there in the church yard."

  Nathaniel posted a hand on the doorjamb right beside Seth's head. "Now that ain't likely, is it, being as how his grave has moved. I don't reckon you wanted to bury him once, much less twice."

  Seth moaned and slumped in the doorway. "Don't be telling the Reverend. I never should have done it, but I had no choice."

  "We ain't telling nobody 'cepting the Queen, and she'll be sending you a medal."

  The man's expression brightened. "You gotta understand. 1761, very cold. Ground froze hard. Wasn't till late summer I could get down five feet. East side of some ravines never did get clear of snow. Now Pierre goes out, gets himself frozen solid. Two trappers brought him in. Reverend weren't around, so I just had them tuck the body up against the Church. Snow drifted on up over."

  Seth looked down at his hands. "So one night me and Ef Park was having a dram. You know he got a new still a while back, makes the sweetest whiskey. And it were cold. And I told him that the trappers had two dogs they tied to Pierre's ankles to drag him in. No shroud, nothing, just him froze solid. And Ef said he had two dogs, he wanted to see it for himself.

  "So we drank more, then got his dogs, and got Pierre and hitched him up. But the dogs, they wouldn't go. So Ef climbs right up there on Pierre's chest like he's a sled. And them dogs took off through the woods. Headed down into Fall's Ravine, got skewed around. We cut the dogs loose and the body just rode the snow crust down."

  "Can you take us to that spot?"

  "I can, but I ain't gonna." Seth's shoulders slumped. "I ain't slept good since that night. Ain't drunk much neither. Went looking for him spring of this year, after I planted Mercy. Didn't see no sign of him. When he thawed, animals ate him. Cain't say I am sorry about that."

  Nathaniel frowned. "You're sure it was him?"

  "When they first brought him in, we poured boiling water on the face. Bit of his nose went away. But it was him, no doubt."

  Makepeace punched a barn slat, shattering it. "Damn you, Plant."

  The little man cowered. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

  "To think I wasted good ale on an empty grave."

  Nathaniel scratched at his chin. "It was Gates' ale."

  "You have a point."

  Nathaniel slipped an arm over Seth's shoulders. "Well, you don't want to go and tell people we was asking questions."

  "No, no, I won't, I promise."

  "And you're going to do us a favor." Nathaniel nodded to Owen. "Captain Strake is going to write a message and you'll be taking it to Doctor Frost in Temperance."

  "Oh, I can't go. I have Bessie here needs milking every day."

  Kamiskwa unsheathed his musket.

  "Now I'm thinking, Seth Plant, that the Gateses would be more than happy to watch your cow for her output for a month."

  "I can't get to Temperance and back in a month."

  Nathaniel cuffed him hard. "You let a man ride a frozen corpse through the woods. You tied dogs to it and you lost it. Can't ain't a word you want to be using right now."

  "But, Nathaniel, that's too far."

  "Well, then, we'll wait here for the preacher to come by on his circuit."

  Seth looked from the musket to the cow, and then at all the stern faces surrounding him. "I guess I can catch a boat to the coast and another to Temperance."

  "Good man." Nathaniel turned him toward the barn and gave him a shove. "Milk your cow. We'll be waiting.
"

  Owen composed his messages quickly-a coded one for Prince Vlad, and a cover letter for the Frosts. In the Prince's note he outlined the mystery, reiterating everything from the identification of the wendigo down through discovering that the body never got buried. He described Ilsavont as "Mister Frozen Corpse." He wasn't sure what the Prince would make of that, and he hoped he didn't assume Owen had gone mad. The letter to Doctor Frost talked about trapping and mercantile issues. He referred to Ilsavont by name and suggested the letter could be communicated to the Prince. With any luck at all, the Prince would make the necessary connections, especially if Msitazi got to Prince Vlad before Plant delivered this note to the Frosts.

  With the messages sealed up tight they gave Seth his instructions. Nathaniel made him repeat them back twice, then told him to get moving. Seth protested that he wanted to start in the morning, but Nathaniel remained adamant. "If I don't see your feet on the road now, we're finding dogs and Makepeace will ride you to Kebeton."

  The big man smiled. "Always liked Kebeton."

  Seth groaned and acquiesced. The four of them watched him leading his cow down to Hattersburg.

  Nathaniel sighed. "Well, we cain't go back to town. Not sure what that idiot will tell them, but best to give them time to forget."

  Owen opened his hands. "Everything points west. Du Malphias is out there somewhere. We don't know what he's doing, but we know whatever it is, it's going to be bad."

  "I reckon you're right. Something terrible bad."

  Owen nodded. Seth's story about Ilsavont confirmed the man had died. It just wasn't possible to thaw him out and have him live. Or was it? The Shedashee had magick he'd never seen before.

  He looked at Kamiskwa. "It is possible to bring a man back from the dead?"

  "A wise man knows nothing is impossible." The Altashee's eyes tightened. "There are stories of great warriors wrestling demons. Maybe one could have been used to make Ilsavont move again."