by Glen Cook
She started shivering. The night was not that cool.
"Maybe because the only married man who brought his wife was Titus." Other than Consent's whelps, Vali and Pella had been the only children, too. They had milked all the spoiling possible from celebrants in their cups, Pella selling the tragedy of the poor little mute girl. "Why wouldn't they fawn over you? They're all goats. And you were the most beautiful woman there. I'd have been worried about leaving you alone with the Principate. Poor little Armand."
"Piper!" But Anna liked it. She had seized the day, shipping a cargo of fine wine. "Where did you and the old man disappear to? Or is that too secret for girls?"
"We had coffee. Fresh roasted Ambonypsgan. Maybe he didn't want to share with the whole mob." Hecht shuddered suddenly.
"What?"
"Creepy feeling. Like something we might not want to meet just started following us around."
"The women in the square talk like that happens all the time. A lot of people won't go out after dark anymore."
Not an entirely remarkable state of affairs. Brothe was dangerous at the best of times. A glance outside revealed nothing unusual. The street was empty except for one man in tattered brown who staggered along without showing any interest in the coach.
Piper Hecht and Anna Mozilla moved in distinct circles when they were apart. His life was all studies of companies and regiments and how to feed, arm, pay, transport, and keep happy the troops who formed them. He had to outthink the ambitious warlords of the Grail Empire, his employer's lesser enemies, and Sublime himself. The latter was his biggest headache. He never saw the man. There was little reason to his decisions, which were subject to whimsical shifts. Too many, like letters of marque granted to Haiden Backe, originated deep inside a circle of cronies so intimate that even Sublime's cousin, Bronte Doneto, seldom knew what would happen next.
Hecht said, "I get the feeling that I keep disappointing Principate Delari. But I can't figure out how."
"You'll have to tell me more than you have. Unless it involves your super-secret Collegium business."
He described recent visits with Muniero Delari. Anna asked questions. Good questions.
"Obviously, there's more than a big map down there. Just having it buried like that, all secret, means you have to think that it's a powerful magic artifact. Or will be when they finish it. It sounds like they're still building it."
"We're home. Let me look around first." He still had that sense of a presence close by. Though his amulet remained dormant. "You kids need to get right to bed." That would not be a hard sell. Vali was groggy, all reserves exhausted, and would have to be carried. Pella was dragging.
Hecht saw nothing unusual. He paid the coachman, adding a generous gratuity. The man fawned. Times were hard.
The coach team clip-clopped away, on damp cobblestones. A light sprinkle had begun. Hecht entered the house last, backing in, like a rearguard covering a desperate retreat. There was no light outside once the coach and its lamps turned a corner, the driver in a hurry to get away.
Hecht made sure of the locks and shutters while Anna put the children to bed. Vali had to be carried.
In bed, still nervously alert, Hecht remarked, "What you said about the Principate's map. That's why I love you. I never thought of that." Could his blindness be the cause of Principate Delari's disappointment?
"Talk to me about that ambush, Piper. Were they after you?"
"I don't think so."
"What did you and the old man talk about? When you were having coffee."
"Rudenes Schneidel."
"Does he think you know something you're not telling?" Plainly, she thought he was holding out on her.
"Honey, I never heard of Rudenes Schneidel till a couple weeks ago."
"So maybe he never heard of Piper Hecht, either. Or you might know each other by different names. There's a lot of that going around."
Worth reflection, Hecht thought.
He was about to say he knew no one from Artecipea, nor had he heard of the High Athaphile or Artecipea before hearing that Schneidel called them home. He stopped as his mouth opened. He had had a thought about Vali. Which should have occurred to him long ago. One that meant a visit with the newest Episcopal Chaldarean before Consent's information sources dried up.
Anna continued. "There's been some fibbing about where people really come from, too. But forget that. It's time to find out if I drank too much to enjoy anything else."
The nightmare was so real it remained convincing after Hecht awakened. Anna demanded, "What was it? You're shaking."
"Nightmare. Haven't had it for a long time."
"The one about your mother?"
Hecht frowned. He did not believe Anna was psychic. She made no such claims. But she surprised him sometimes.
"It started there. Same as always." The same as memories he had had when he had cried himself to sleep in the Vibrant Spring School, back when they took the new slave boy in. He doubted he would recognize his mother today, even as she had been then, if she walked up and boxed his ears.
"Must be awful, being little and having no family."
"You make your own family there. Or you don't survive. That's the whole point." The Sha-lug schools produced hard men who disdained anyone who was not Sha-lug.
Piper Hecht feared he had softened during his sojourn amongst the Infidel, but his core remained adamantine Sha-lug. The Sha-lug were still his brothers, his family.
"It started out?"
"Huh? Oh. Yeah. Then it turned dark. There was a monster I couldn't see but I knew what it was. If I could catch it I could kill it. But I couldn't catch it. It kept doing awful things to people I cared about. And getting closer and closer to ambushing me. Meaning I wasn't really the hunter."
"That's ugly, Piper, but it sounds like standard dream fare."
Hecht grunted. He agreed. But… "It had more than a dream flavor. Like my mind was trying to create images it could understand."
"Think you can lay down and go back to sleep?"
"Probably not. But I'll try."
Sleep came more swiftly than he expected, though that sense of the nearness of horror never went all the way away.
Anna let him sleep in. She wakened him, though, when neighbors came looking for someone who could act in an official capacity. "They don't know where else to turn," she told him as he pulled himself together.
Grumbling, he stumbled out into the cold to see the body some children had found. Pella and Vali ducked around Anna, tagged along, though not so close that Hecht would notice and send them home.
Hecht stiffened when he saw the corpse. Not because of the atrocities he had suffered but because he knew the man. Who had no business being anywhere within a thousand miles of the Mother City.
"You know him, Your Honor?"
"Sorry. No. It's the wounds."
One gawker said, "This ain't the first one that's been chewed up like that."
Another agreed. "And this one, he's got a foreign look to him."
Hecht nodded. The dead man looked like someone pretending to be Brothen without knowing the nuances.
Alive, he had been Hagid, son of Nassim Alizarin al-Jebal, a soldier in Else Tage's company. He had been placed there by his father, for seasoning in the field. Nassim Alizarin, called the Mountain, was a crony of Gordimer the Lion. A classmate from his old school. Nassim had sent Hagid out with the unstated understanding that the boy would come home if everyone else had to die to make it so.
Back in the house, with the kids still outside, Hecht told Anna, "He was a good kid. He tried hard. But he started fifteen years behind the rest of the company. I can't imagine him ever leaving al-Qarn once I got him home alive."
"You're sure it isn't somebody who looks like the boy?"
"I'm sure!" He was angry. "Here's another mystery I don't have time to solve. And I can't hand it off to anyone else."
"We'll see."
"Honey! Before you get any ideas, go look at what happened to�
��"
Pella burst in. "Anna, you shoulda seen! Part of his skin was gone and his stomach was cut open. They said they pulled out his heart and his liver."
Hecht's glower shut him off. "I want you to remember that there's someone out there who does that to people."
Pella was suitably cowed. For maybe thirty seconds.
"At least Vali has sense enough to be scared," Anna said as the children raced off to the kitchen. "I'd better keep an eye on them." But the children, excited, returned eating seed cakes and scattering crumbs. "They're hopeless!" Anna' complained. "Freke will quit on me." Freke (pronounced Freck-ie) Blagowidow was Anna's part-time maid and housekeeper. A desperate refugee, she would not quit no matter what.
"I'll talk to Herrin and Vernal next time I visit the baths."
"Oh, no. This is my house. You won't bring any of your toys in here."
Hecht leapt into the squabble happily. It distracted Anna from thoughts of Hagid.
A Captain-General was seldom alone. Especially since the attempts on Hecht's life. He wanted to vanish into the confusion of the Mother City, to sneak off to the Dreangerean embassy or the hideout of a spy from the Kaifate of al-Minphet, but the opportunity never arose.
Principate Delari asked, "Did you collect this body, too?"
"I did, sir. I thought you'd want to examine it."
"We're developing quite a collection. Though we've started releasing those from the other night. People are claiming them. We buried the ones that attacked you. Nobody wanted them."
Hecht was surprised. "People are claiming them?"
"They were all city residents. Disgruntled Brothens who wanted to bash whoever was in charge for being in charge when they're disgruntled. If you follow."
Hecht did not and said so.
"There's an upwelling of revolutionary sentiment out there. Which doesn't seem to have caught any official attention yet."
Hecht understood that. 'The Deves haven't bothered to warn us?"
"Say, rather, that a man in my position can't logically trust the cooperation and faithful support of people who follow false gods."
Hecht considered reminding the Principate that Aaron of Chaldar never declared his god a deity different from that of the Devedians. What Aaron and the Founders set forth bore only passing resemblance to its Episcopal descendant.
"Were there Deves among the dead?"
"No. Mostly unemployed Episcopals, according to relatives-who had fallen in with a crowd that blames Sublime for all the world's ills."
"Interesting. After centuries of being told that the Holy Father is infallible. Would the ambush be part of a broader conspiracy?"
"My sense is that it was, yes, but it was just slapped together, on the spur of the moment, by drunks in a winehouse egging each other on. They didn't mean it to go as far as it did. It wouldn't have if the Brotherhood hadn't been there."
"No half measures there. For them it's all black and white."
"A certain kind of man likes everything inscribed in absolutes. He gravitates to the Brotherhood naturally."
Pinkus Ghort had inherited the problem of the dead. He had arrested none of the claimants of the corpses. He hoped to find out who was connected to whom, and how.
"Maybe Pinkus organized it so he can keep his job. No, sir. I'm joking. It doesn't look like the Five Families see much point to maintaining the City Regiment."
"Oh. I have trouble recognizing it when you aren't being serious."
"You aren't unique, sir."
"Yes. So. Let's go examine your corpse."
Hecht stayed out of the old man's way. Delari muttered to himself. Hecht worried that the body might betray its origins.
The Principate observed, "A Calziran, presumably. A Praman, certainly. His one true God didn't protect him from this horror, though."
"Sir?"
"We have a problem, Piper. Of a sort I've only read about."
"Sir?"
"There's a necromancer among us. A sorcerer who kills people in order to effect his sorcery. And he's thrown it in our faces. He's daring us to come after him. Possibly to draw us out."
"Really?" Hecht did not want to believe it. Firaldia was civilized. That sort of thing had not happened since the black heart emperors of the Old Empire had indulged their egos. "If some human monster did this for sorcerous reasons, wouldn't that mean that there are Night things around strong enough to need rough handling?"
"It does. We should've anticipated this. It could become a real crisis."
"What can I do?"
They were headed for Principate Delari's apartment now.
"Nothing. Pretend you haven't noticed. This animal won't watch his back if he thinks he hasn't gotten our attention."
"All right."
"You seem rattled."
"I am. This is outside my experience. Outside my imagination."
"Then loosen your mind up. Because horror and madness is coming."
"Sir?"
"I'm not supposed to know. Sublime's party lumps me with Hugo Mongoz. Failing to realize that Mongoz is more than he seems, too."
Hecht stirred impatiently. Which made Delari smile. "In that case, you get to enjoy a short lecture before I give you the bad news."
Piper set his expression in stone. The Principate could ramble endlessly if so inclined.
"Don't throw yourself on your sword, Piper. I'll keep it short. Here in the Chiaro Palace we not only fall into pro-and anti-Benedocto parties-siding with the high bidder- we also form factions according to our talents for manipulating the Instrumentalities of the Night. And our inclinations to use those talents. So while Doneto and I are at odds over Sublime's idiot ambitions, we're in lockstep about harnessing the powers of the Collegium."
"I thought. You and Principate Doneto don't squabble nearly as much as you should."
That thin old man smile again. "Good. You didn't ask for it. So you shall receive. Sublime wants to punish Duke Germa fon Dreasser and Clearenza after all. He's heard that Lothar is sick and not expected to recover. The Imperial court is distracted by succession concerns."
Hecht kept his opinion behind his teeth. Even Principate Delari operated under serious misapprehensions about the Imperial court. Other than Pinkus Ghort, nobody Hecht knew took Ferris Renfrow seriously. In Delari's case it was obvious why. Osa Stile would have put a swarm of bugs in the old man's ears. And would report everything Delari
learned as soon as he learned it.
Ferris Renfrow would know about Sublime's shift in attitude toward Clearenza before official word came out here.
"Would it do me any good to protest the stupidity of it all?"
"If you argue with Sublime he just gets more stubborn."
"I know the type. My sister… Sir?"
"Piper? Oh. Nothing. Just surprised. You never talk about vour family."
"I don't think about them much. And wouldn't mention them at all around anybody I didn't trust." He hoped he sounded suitably mysterious. He dared not stop not being who he really was.
They reached the Principate's apartment. The old man halted a few steps inside. "You need to get to work. You'll get your orders in the morning. I'll start sniffing around for this necromancer."
Hecht glimpsed Osa Stile. The boy had a talent for lurking. If there were a curtain or tapestry nearby Osa Stile might be closer than you hoped.
Hecht said, "Don't count Lothar out. He's always sick. But he always comes through."
Delari frowned. He did not want to hear that any more than Sublime did. Probably not for the same reasons.
Hecht ran into Pinkus Ghort before he left the Palace. Ghort said, "I see you've heard. My boss would be interested to know how."
"How come you know?" Not asking what Ghort meant.
"My boss is a crony of your boss. And I have friends who get on the eary with anything he says. He talks to himself you know. When he thinks he's alone."
"As long as he doesn't answer."
"But he does. He really does.
It's kind of spooky."
"Must be because of all that time he spent locked up with you and me in Plemenza."
Ghort chuckled.
"So what did you want?"
"To let you in on what was coming."
"Thank you, then. I appreciate the thought."
"And to ask about last night. Bad?"
"Worse than you think." Hecht explained about the dead man found near Anna's house.
"Crap. Sounds like big-time shit. Black fairy-tale stuff."
"Don't talk it up. We don't want this monster to find out that we've caught on."
"No problem, buddy. I'm staying far away from that shit. This other stuff with people who want to stir up shit, though. I'm all over that. If I don't see you before you go off to your war, good fucking luck."
"I'll need it." He was being paid well not to think but to execute the Patriarch's will, however ill-conceived. If the man distracted himself from his ambitions in the Holy Lands, then the diversionary insanities needed to be nurtured.
Hecht often wondered about Sublime's mental state. He did not know the man. Had been in his presence rarely. Might have exchanged words with him once, on demand. Did not think Sublime would recognize him without an introduction, though he was the Church's top soldier.
He did not expect a more intimate relationship to develop. Orders would be relayed by Bronte Doneto or another of Sublime's cronies, mostly relatives less public than Principate Doneto.
Titus Consent seemed glum. Hecht asked, "Second thoughts?"
"Not exactly."
"Really? Then you know yourself better than I know me. Isn't every Devedian in Brothe trying to make you miserable?"
Consent donned a strange expression. "Sir, who is the last Deve you know of who converted?"
Hecht could not recall one. "A lot must have. Once upon a time there weren't any Pramans or Chaldareans."
That's true. The Founders converted. Some of the Founders Those who weren't Devedian to start. Those who started out Devedian never considered themselves anything else."
"Your point being?"
"That conversion may not be unknown, but it's rare. Brothen Deves can't remember the last time it happened here. So they're sure that it hasn't happened this time, either."
