by Glen Cook
"Delari and his pet aren't together anymore. I don't know why. They say the boy is playing night games with the new Patriarch, now."
Surprised, Hecht diverted himself by saying, "I heard that Principate Delari's town house fell into a sinkhole. Because of some kind of confrontation down in the catacombs."
"That's crap. One corner of the place did collapse. But it wasn't because of anything like what happened with the hippodrome. Delari must be preoccupied with something. He hardly ever shows himself."
Mounted, Hecht walked his horse slowly in the direction of Anna Mozilla's house. Allowing Madouc and his lifeguards to keep up. He felt mild despair about the attention his passing caused.
"Things have really changed here, Pipe. But they've stayed the same, too."
"Good to know, Pinkus. But try to be a little less clever. What does that mean?"
"Never mind me, Pipe. I'm a walking cliche factory."
"That doesn't take us to any point, either."
"You are a hard, cruel man, Piper Hecht."
"The tasteful constraints of my faith won't let me say what you are, though it features the stern of a horse with tail upraised for the drop."
Ghort laughed. Then he got busy talking about everything he thought Hecht ought to know about the current situation in the Mother City. A situation unlikely to spark conflagrations of optimism.
The refugees just kept coming. There was nothing for them to do.
Ghort chattered all the way across town, from the Teragi right down to the street outside Anna Mozilla's house. He went right on chattering at Titus Consent when the Captain-General broke away. Hecht was grateful for Ghort's effort. The man had told him more than he had thought.
Vali and Pella were in the open doorway to Anna's house, Pella practically jumping up and down. They had known he was coming. They had been out scouting. Hecht had seen them dashing through the crowds, speeding ahead with news that he was coming.
Vali stepped in front of Pella and gave Hecht a huge hug, startling him totally. She did not say anything, though.
Pella had plenty to say for both of them. Questions. Reports. Brags about how he was doing with his studies.
Forcing a word in edgewise, Hecht asked Madouc to see Titus safely home, then told Pella, "You've grown about a foot. And Vali, too." Vali looked like she was starting to bud. He was thrilled to see the changes.
Pella continued to jabber. Vali was more restrained but did keep the fingers of her left hand touching his arm. "Anna! Anna Mozilla! Are you in there? Can you come rescue me from these wild monkeys?"
He was nervous about this. How had Anna dealt with their separation? Would she invite him in?
Anna came to the doorway because he had not been able to push past the children. His worries were unfounded. She was pleased to see him. Her embrace enveloped him, swamping him with hungry promise. But she said, "You smell like you haven't had a bath for a year."
"And I was just up at the Chiaro Palace. Why didn't I use the baths when I had the chance?"
"I refuse to say what I'm thinking. Pella! Calm down. Your father will be here. Piper. The other one, Lila, is too scared to come out."
"It's all right. I remember being the same way when my father came home from the marshes. You don't know how long it'll last. And you don't know if there'll be a next time. The Sheard are cruel and cunning."
Anna gave him the oddest look, as though wondering if he had started believing his own made-up back story.
No. But the children needed to believe it. Children talked.
Anna led him to the kitchen. She had bathwater heating.
The precursors of a meal were cooking. Vali and Pella worked on that, Pella never easing up on the chatter. When his questions interested Anna, too, Hecht responded.
She asked few questions herself. But, "We heard a rumor about a giant worm attacking you beside the Dechear River."
"Sort of true. Whatever you heard would've been exaggerated. We destroyed it. Hardly anyone got hurt."
She gave him a hard look. "Principate Delari was there, too. Wasn't he?"
"He was," Hecht admitted. "I wonder if he exaggerated." Hecht had no answer.
By the time he was clean he was so warm and relaxed he was inclined to head for bed. "Oh, how marvelous it will be to fall asleep with no worries to keep me up. Knowing there won't be interruptions all night."
Anna said, "I don't know about that."
Pella and Vali snickered.
Anna said, "Pella, set the table. Vali, keep an eye on the sauce. She planned the meal, Piper. I'm just a consultant."
"But I saw her out…"
"A working consultant. It's her project. And Lila's."
Hecht got the message. Though he never saw Bit's daughter.
As he settled in to work on the capon and sides, Hecht said, "Blessed Eis and Aaron, it feels good to be clean and wearing fresh clothing."
"Which, I see, hangs loosely. You lost weight."
"That happens. So now I'll get busy putting it back on."
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
"Hunh?"
"Prayer?"
"Oh. Got out of the habit out there. The only priests were Brotherhood of War types. Pella, unless Vali wants to do it, you go ahead."
Vali smirked. Pella managed a rather imaginative grace. Following the lead of his literary namesake, Hecht supposed.
Later, before the inevitable adult encounters, Anna whispered, "Vali is talking now. To Pella. To Lila all the time when she thinks I'm not listening. To me sometimes, when she's excited. She'll slip up with you, too. She feels secure enough, now. Did you find anything out over there?"
Piper Hecht had no worries about Vali Dumaine. But, "Nothing. No famous child disappeared anytime in the last few years. Titus's people found relatives of the Erika Xan who supposedly brought Vali to the sporting house in Sonsa. They knew nothing except that Erika Xan disappeared years ago."
His worries had faded mainly because Vali was getting older.
In the wee, paranoid dark hours in the camp, awash in the pervasive enmity of the Night, he had come to fear that Vali might be a planted living artifact. Like Osa Stile.
Anna Mozilla soon distracted him from all outside concerns.
21. Alten Weinberg: Hard News
Tension in the Imperial capital escalated daily. The Princess Apparent did not share it. She had no cock in the fight. Nor was she near the center.
The Empress had sent numerous knights and nobles to support King Peter against the Almanohides. All had volunteered. Most backed the Empress in her romance with Brothe. Her stay-behind supporters were afraid that those who were displeased by that romance might take advantage.
Katrin was frantic with fear for Jaime of Castauriga, who had summoned his full feudal levy to assist King Peter. Katrin had seen Jaime just once but had talked herself into an obsessive romantic love that set courtiers wondering, in whispers, about her sanity.
Helspeth was pleased by it all. In the sense that anything deflecting attention from herself was pleasing.
She was able to participate in life at court. Friends were not afraid to be seen with her, particularly Lady Hilda Daedal of Averange. Lady Hilda joked that Helspeth was more likely to be stained by her adventures than by any of the Princess Apparent's own.
Court gossip suggested that Lady Hilda was involved with three different gentlemen of the court. Each believed that rumors about her and the others were vicious lies retailed by Lady Hilda's enemies. "Men are fools," Hilda insisted. "They're stupider than puppies."
"Then why get involved with them?"
"I like variety. And I have fun manipulating them. If you weren't a princess you'd have a chance to understand. Might still, after you get yourself a husband and give him a couple of sons."
"I'm not going to marry. I've decided."
"So you say. And you might make it work. For a while. As long as Katrin is frazzled." Lady Hilda smirked. "I had a letter from my cousin." She did n
ot say which cousin. But her smirk expanded when Helspeth responded with an excited start.
The Empress was not the only Ege daughter with an obsession.
Lady Hilda's cousin Culp was a priest. He was secretary to Principate Barendt, living in the Chiaro Palace in Brothe. Cousin Culp was one of Hilda's game pieces. Helspeth feared there was a totally wicked side to their relationship. Maybe.
"Now you're trying to play with me."
"Only a little. Just making sure I figured it out right."
Helspeth frowned but said nothing.
"You aren't as obvious as Katrin."
"Katrin will get what she wants."
"If Jaime survives."
"So?"
"Your fixation is back in Brothe. And the Collegium is scared. Pacificus Sublime tried to do the Captain-General dirty by giving him an impossible job. He did it in record time, then came over… What's that goofy look, girl?"
"What? Excuse me?"
"You look like you think he'll be in your bed when you get back to your apartment."
"He might be. In my mind."
Helspeth felt the heat hit her cheeks. How could she have said that, out loud, in front of anyone? She was Princess Apparent of the Grail Empire. She was not supposed to have fantasies.
Lady Hilda broke out laughing. "One of you girls is human, then."
"What?"
"Your father had appetites. They say."
"He was a man. Men are that way."
Lady Hilda nodded but did not pursue the subject. She shifted to the mundane. The usual stuff of women at court.
Helspeth followed all the forms when she responded to her sister's invitation to visit her in her quarters.
"Get up. Get up, Ellie. There isn't anybody here to see. We don't have to play the game."
Helspeth did as she had been told, clinging to Ferris Renfrow's instruction about being pliant. She could not restrain a gasp when her sister moved into a stronger light, though. "Have you been eating right?"
Katrin had aged terribly. Katrin gave her an ugly look. "Being Empress isn't what I thought it would be. Father made it look easy. People did what he told them."
Helspeth said nothing. She did not know what to say.
"I wish I could call down the lightning. I'd rid myself of these vultures."
"I agree with you on that." Though maybe not on who ought to be stricken.
"And Jaime… Helspeth, you can't imagine how awful it is, worrying all day and most of the night, terrified about what might happen."
And Helspeth could not. She worried, but not with the self-consuming intensity Katrin showed. The worst disaster imaginable in Direcia was unlikely to affect her personally. Other than in the misery her sister might choose to pass along.
"I can't eat. I can't sleep. I can't focus on being Empress."
"Will it get any better after you know how it turns out?"
The question caused Katrin's hysteria to stumble. "What?"
Helspeth decided she had asked the question wrong. "Uh… I just wondered if you haven't gotten yourself so worked up that no matter what happens…"
Katrin's expression hardened. She heard criticism. She did not take criticism well.
Anger did distract her from her growing lack of control.
Helspeth reminded herself: stick to Ferris Renfrow's formula. Give Katrin no provocation.
It was hard. Her sister had grown so mercurial it was impossible to guess what might set her off. In the greater court that did not matter. If Katrin shrieked absurd orders the court pretended to carry them out. She would calm down eventually. If she had done something egregious she would become deeply contrite. Then the object of her fury could be trotted out and forgiven.
Helspeth wanted to believe Katrin was a victim of cruel mood swings, from near deadly paranoia to unpleasantly deep depression.
A cycle of crude humor steeped Alten Weinberg. What could young Jaime do to relieve Katrin's moodiness?
Katrin went through one of her changes. "We've had feelers from Salpeno about an alliance for you with Regard."
"No!"
"Ellie…"
"The man is a bastard. His mother is a whore!" Helspeth flared despite the damper on her emotions, though not half as loudly as she was inclined. She did not mention Sublime V's role in supplying Anne of Menand's feeble claim to legitimacy. Sublime was Katrin's hero.
Katrin soothed her irritation at Helspeth by being catty about Lady Hilda. Then, sipping brandy brought up from Helspeth's Plemenza, through the pass that Helspeth had suffered so for opening, the sisters relaxed, came closer, and began to relive the gentler, warmer days of their childhood. They had a good cry over Mushin.
Alten Weinberg entered a timeless summer of waiting. Nothing happened because everyone, of every political allegiance, was focused on the Almanohide campaign in Direcia. Every Brothen Episcopal family backing the Empress had someone gone to crusade with King Peter.
Most families in Arnhand and many in Santerin enjoyed the same purgatory. To a lesser extent, so did those of Firaldia, Ormienden, Grolsach, the lesser Brothen kingdoms and principalities, and even the Connec.
Helspeth guessed that similar tensions might grip the Praman world, at least in the Kaifate of al-Halambra.
The outcome in Direcia was more certain to shape the future than were either of Sublime's crusades.
Katrin told Helspeth, in a whisper no spy might overhear, "If God grants victory to Peter and Jaime, I swear by the Grail crown that I'll undertake my own crusade to free the Holy Lands."
Helspeth shuddered. The Night would be listening. The Night would amuse itself by pushing the Empress to ruin Episcopal Chaldarean humanity by launching another hopeless war in the east.
"Father had that dream," Katrin said. "Once he united Firaldia and brought it all into the Empire."
"What? Really? I never heard him say that."
"Really. Father Volker told me." And Father Volker was Johannes's confessor before assuming the same role with his successors.
Helspeth sighed, defeated. Katrin would not hear a word against Volker or his master, Bishop Hrobjart. Nor could she pray for guidance in mellowing Katrin's bloodthirsty ideology. God might be the Almighty but He was Born of the Night.
The sisters enjoyed weeks of intimacy unmatched since their father's passing. Brandy helped. A lot. The obsession of the court with Direcia quieted the usual politics. Helspeth did not miss the whining, backbiting, and name-calling. She did enjoy the time with her sister, just being sisters. Though she found the adult Katrin's powerful, obsessive, driving emotions frightening and her ignorance appalling.
Grand Duke Hilandle was in a fine mood, graciously gifting everyone he appreciated, for whatever reason. Helspeth faked a smile and wondered, for the hundredth time, why Hilandle was not in Direcia, commanding those Imperials who had chosen to reinforce King Peter. Lord Admiral Vondo fon Tyre was not suited to the task.
Hilandle began telling a hitherto unbored embassy from the Eastern Empire about the monster in the Jagos. Wonder of wonders, he credited the Princess Apparent with having engineered the beast's defeat. Then he produced the grasper he had lopped off the monster in his own encounter. The emissaries of the Eastern Emperor pretended to be impressed.
Those men were not interested in the Grand Duke's adventures. Rumors had leaked out. They had come to assess the likelihood that the Empress really would back another crusade in the east. Earlier crusades had not benefited the Eastern Empire. Especially those that originated in the Grail Empire. Those earlier crusaders had traveled overland, of necessity passing through the Eastern Empire. They had been more terrible than any locust plague.
These days the eastern emperors, however mad they might be in their beliefs, policies, and social notions, made sure the locusts of the west would not scourge their empire again.
"Time to find out what those not beholden to us think," Katrin said. Shakily. Because of too much brandy, not the uncertainty that ruled her secretly. She
wanted to sit down with the strangely dressed easterners, whose beliefs seemed almost as bizarre as those of the Connecten dualists. She wanted what she could not have here, even with her confessor. She wanted to talk on into the night, as young people do, playing with ideas as though they were counters in some timeless game.
The chieftain of the eastern embassy seemed older than the world itself. He wore a huge, brushy black and gray beard. Katrin paid him little mind. She was almost flirtatious with his younger associates. Helspeth followed Katrin's lead, as much as her nature allowed.
There was no point, she thought. Katrin was amusing herself at the easterners' expense. They pretended to be good Chaldareans but were only slightly less damned than the Praman Unbeliever. They refused to recognize the divine supremacy of the Principate of Principates, the Patriarch of Brothe.
Fifteen minutes into the audience Helspeth knew the easterners were playing the Empress more than she thought she was playing them. The encounter consisted entirely of posturing and lying. She tried to suggest that the visitors be left to the droning mercies of the Grand Duke. She failed. They played well to Katrin's need for approval.
For the first time since her coronation Katrin was having a good time, Direcia forgotten.
The Direcian situation had not forgotten her.
An obsequious courtier came at Katrin like a bowing, pulling crossbow bolt, clearly the harbinger of great news. While having no idea what that news might be.
As her sister fell into a chair, crying, Helspeth spied Ferris Renfrow weaving through the parasites of the court at Alten Weinberg. He looked like he had just stepped off the battlefield. He was filthy. Heavily bearded. His clothing in tatters. Under a mail hauberk in worse shape than a shirt ripped and torn by squabbling dogs. He had been leaking blood recently. He was pallid. He approached in a controlled stumble.
Where had he been? Helspeth had not seen him since last winter. Nor had anyone. Mainly to their pleasure. Many creatures of the court considered Ferris Renfrow a tutelary, not just a man whose labors on behalf of the Grail Empire had been appreciated by no one other than Johannes Blackboots.
At Helspeth's urging, Katrin brushed aside her tears. She recognized the spymaster and beckoned him. "Hurry!" she insisted. 'Tell me! What news? How awful is it? Must we go into mourning? Are we in danger from the Unbeliever? Why aren't the bells ringing?"
