Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Robert Brady

  “Didn’t you do that yesterday?” Lupus asked him, pulling out a chair at the table. An Uman servant appeared from a corner of the sitting room and entered the dining room. There was a tiny cooking brazier here and she stirred a stand of coals. When it glowed red she placed a copper kettle over it.

  “Yeah, but if you don’t check on Xinto regularly, you won’t know when he’s escaped,” Karel said.

  He jumped up into a chair by Lupus, one reserved for him when he came here. Lupus had re-engineered it personally with a false back. He pulled on the top corner of it, and it bent at the middle to the level of the arms, resting across them and making a padded seat for Karel.

  The thing looked like all of the other chairs. If he marked it, then sometimes Lupus would remove the mark to another chair and chuckle when Karel picked the wrong one. Karel wouldn’t have found that funny if it wasn’t the exact kind of thing he would do.

  “When he escapes?” Lupus repeated.

  “Yeah,” Karel said. Suddenly he was hungry. The Uman at the kitchenette fished underneath the counter where the cooking coals were smoldering.

  “You can’t keep a man like that a captive for long, not with your facilities,” Karel said. “Wizards and foreigners you don’t like—yeah. A Bounty Hunter, on the other hand? I was actually surprised to see him there this morning."

  Black Lupus grunted. “Maybe we need to beef up the security, then?” he said.

  Steam had already begun to drift out of the copper tea kettle’s spout. Lupus had designed some of these to whistle when they were ready. Karel had always thought that clever and actually sold them in other countries.

  Karel could point to a lot of things like that. There were people he’d met in Volkhydro who swore a younger Rancor Mordetur had taught them the secret of the carpenter’s plane, who sold it as fast as they could produce it. There were Eldadorian merchants selling little vials of alcohol to soldiers throughout Fovea, alongside vials of witch hazel extract, which they used to treat wounds.

  Now the Emperor was producing steam plants, and these plants were turning out clean water and compressed air cylinders. Those cylinders were attached to what the Emperor called ‘nail guns’ and, using these, a worker could drive 100 nails before another worker with a hammer could drive three.

  His own Scitai would buy these cylinders and were using them to power a crossbow that could fire one bolt after another. It was the most guarded secret the Scitai had, but when perfected, woe be to those who thought to oppress them!

  “I don’t think feeding your guards more beef will help you,” Karel said.

  It wasn’t what Black Lupus meant and Karel knew it, but it was just too funny to not understand him and see him try to explain himself.

  Lupus sighed. “We need to make the security stronger,” he said. “You understand that?”

  Karel nodded. “I agree,” he said. “I’m doing what I can, but the people who are best at this are the Bounty Hunter’s guild, and frankly that’s not going to help you with Xinto.

  Xinto was a Bounty Hunter. In fact, he was the Bounty Hunter who’d set the whole guild on Lupus about fourteen years ago. That had resulted in a lot of assaults on Lupus, and a lot of dead Bounty Hunters.

  Lupus had come to terms with the guild, but not with Xinto—not until now.

  The Uman servant served them tea in ceramic cups. Lupus preferred the blackest of black teas, the ones loaded with what he called ‘caffeine.’ Too much of it would fill Karel with nervous energy. A Scitai’s metabolism ran faster than a Man’s already, so Karel had to be careful drinking it.

  The smell of eggs and ham cooking filled the room of a sudden as the Uman servant broke them over a pan on the brazier, replacing the tea kettle.

  “You need a solution to keep your man a captive while I work,” Karel said.

  Lupus sipped his tea and Karel imitated him. It burned the end of his tongue and made him shudder. The Man smacked his lips and sighed.

  “We can keep him under constant observation,” Lupus asserted.

  “That should help,” Karel said. “You should have someone watch the watcher, as well. If the one closest should catch an escape beginning, you don’t want him to have to leave to find someone to tell you.”

  Lupus nodded. They sat quiet for a while as breakfast cooked.

  “Where is your Empress?” Karel asked him, finally.

  Lupus sighed. “Probably with the children,” he said. “We sent Glynn Escaroth out to clean dumpsters this morning. It was Shela’s decision and she wanted to see to it. Glynn decided to mouth off to—she decided to voice her opinions too blatantly to Shela when they were in the carriage.”

  Karel nodded. “That won’t sit well with the Uman-Chi,” he said. “And rest assured, it will get back to them.”

  “I’m not real worried about the Uman-Chi,” Lupus said.

  The Uman servant flipped the eggs she was frying. The smell of some sort of spice filled the air. Lupus liked his eggs hot with flavor. The Scitai did as well, however perhaps not as hot as the Emperor.

  Karel shook his head. “You’d be well advised not to discount Angron Aurelias,” he said. “The man has nearly one thousand years behind him. I don’t care what your race you don’t live that long stupid.”

  “Noted,” Lupus said. “He’s pretty much concerned with being my ally right now, though. I don’t think he’s out to—”

  Karel was already shaking his head and Lupus stopped. He cocked an eyebrow and his scar twitched. He waited.

  Karel sighed. “You’re dealing with Uman-Chi. I’ll allow that you’ve been able to defeat them up to now. The sack of Outpost IX, the Battle of the Deceptions, the second attack on Thera. But you’re thinking in terms of actions, of years and of decades.

  “Uman-Chi think in terms of generations,” he said as the Uman servant delivered their breakfast to them. “They think in terms of centuries, they think your life and mine are the blink of an eye. If Angron Aurelias has conceded something to you now, or given you anything, it’s because he has a plan that maybe doesn’t even kick in until a decade after you die of old age.”

  “They tried that,” Lupus informed him. This came as a surprise to Karel. “The first year of my reign, just before the Battle of the Deceptions, they kidnapped my wife.”

  “I remember that,” Karel said.

  “They offered her back to me,” Lupus said, picking up a fork and knife. Karel did the same. “They said that all it would cost me is Vulpe.”

  “They wanted to foster your son,” Karel said. “I remember that, too. That’s about the same time you developed Eldadorian Fire.”

  Actually, Karel had developed Eldadorian Fire, truth be told. The Emperor had given them a basic formula, and Karel and a group of alchemists and distillers had gotten together and refined it into the most devastating weapon of its time. More deadly than magical fireballs or a Wizard’s lightening, Eldadorian Fire could even reduce stone to dust. Eldadorian Sea Wolves often carried it as a weapon.

  Tech Ships, the warships from Trenbon which used to rule the waves, would see the ships that bore Eldadorian Fire and surrender or flee. Pirates wouldn’t attack Eldadorian merchants for fear Sea Wolves would visit their home ports.

  Lupus nodded and took a bite of fried eggs and ham. He chewed and collected his thoughts.

  “I know Angron Aurelias is smart,” he said, finally, “and I understand he’s going to make some kind of plan, some kind of deep plan, that I can only guess at.

  “But Uman-Chi think in long terms, Silver Karel, and that’s their weakness, too,” Black Lupus said. “Sometimes they think so long, they’re still thinking when I run right past them. Sometimes they think they’ve planned so well they don’t even consider the idea that things changed while they were planning. That’s how I beat them in Outpost IX, that’s how I beat them at the Battle of the Deceptions, that’s how I beat them in Thera.”

  “And that’s how I’ll beat them now.”

  Karel nod
ded. He took a bite of ham. He didn’t care for fried eggs—the grease would make him slow. You had to be fast to keep up with Lupus the Conqueror.

  * * *

  The Uman servant excused herself and left the room where the Emperor and his Daff Kanaar ally spoke of battles and futures.

  Like all nobility, Rancor Mordetur couldn’t see the servants around him. He was grand and they small, and too tiny for him to see from the top of a throne.

  The Uman servant, a woman named Kakira, didn’t do much more than pull a piece of parchment from her sleeve and wipe the sweat from her forehead on it. She tucked the piece of paper into one of dozens of books on one of dozens of shelves in the Emperor’s sitting room. She then went about her duties as a loyal Eldadorian servant.

  Another would come and take the parchment. Another would deliver it to a Wizard. The Wizard would know what she was thinking when she imprinted the parchment. Then her message would be delivered.

  Kakira went about her duties and, once in a while, she remembered the sweet young man who’d been her brother, who’d fallen to the Sarandi when Lupus’ Daff Kanaar allies had decided to raid up and down the Llorando River, as payback for some slight against an Eldadorian queen.

  * * *

  Jerod awoke in the morning in a decent bed, in a decent room, where he could put his pack and armor down and be reasonably sure they would be there when he woke up in the morning.

  Galnesh Eldador had been a scum hole once, but not now. There were cities in Volkhydro he liked less than this one.

  He washed himself in clean water. A rare luxury of these Eldadorian cities—the water moved through the ground in pipes, running from towers built throughout the city into peoples’ rooms and hotel bathrooms like this one. Clean water—if he looked into a bowl of it, he saw nothing but the bowl. Some steel and wood edifice within the city walls took water from Tren Bay and turned it fresh. The magic required must have taxed a hundred wizards.

  From there he went to the common room, where mutton turned on a spit. At this time of year, just before the spring, vegetables of any kind became scarce and expensive. Mutton and warm ale or fresh water made up the simple fare of common folk in Eldador.

  “Might I join you?” a woman asked.

  He looked up from his place at the board—an actual rough-cut board set on hand-turned wooden legs, benches running alongside. He recognized the woman as the Uman-Chi whom he’d met the night before. He felt his scar twitch in irritation.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “You don’t care what I say, anyway.”

  “I apologize for not waiting, Sirrah,” she said. “But mine need is urgent.”

  “Were you followed?”

  “Sirrah?”

  “Were you followed?”

  He didn’t like stupid people, and he didn’t respond well in the morning. The woman sat daintily, showing those phony manners that Uman-Chi saved for their inferiors, meaning everyone not their own.

  “I feel certain I was not,” she said. “I would know if anyone were interested in me now, and no one is.”

  “Would you know if the one following you were protected, perhaps by a sorceress?”

  The Uman-Chi girl—Glynn Escaroth, had she said?—frowned beneath the hood of her cloak. He didn’t need to know any more. His head rose just in time to catch the hem of a cloak as a man stepped out the tavern door.

  “War’s beard,” he swore, and leapt up from the table, his body twisting like a dancer’s as he leapt between spilled food and angry people. He slipped out the door, his sword already drawn.

  To his left, nothing. To his right, that same cloak, flared out from the hem, its owner taking long, fast steps towards the palace.

  He sprinted after the fleeing cloak, peripherally aware of the girl who followed him. So be it. He didn’t have time to stop her and he could think of worse things than having an Uman-Chi at his back, even one interested enough in him to get him killed by the Emperor.

  Hard-soled boots like those he wore worked great for the outdoors and horrible for sneaking up on someone. He ran without dropping his heels but didn’t get within twenty feet of his quarry before the one he chased turned around. He recognized an Uman in light Wolf Soldier armor—a leather breast guard, and sword on his hip, tied down.

  Jerod knew if he killed the man or attacked him on the street, then a swarm of Wolf Soldiers would be on top of them both. As the Uman fumbled for his sword, Jerod closed the distance to him and, without slowing down, took him by the right shoulder and spun him around in a half circle. He heaved the Uman like a sack of grain down an alleyway, past one of the ‘dumpsters’ where Eldadorians liked to keep their great mass of garbage.

  Jerod turned on his left toe and sprinted after his victim. A few passersby took notice—no doubt one of them would make mention to the next Eldadorian guard he saw, but it wouldn’t be the sprint for aid a swordfight with a Wolf Soldier would bring.

  The Uman lay on his back, getting up from the ground. Jerod leapt and landed on his shoulder with his left heel, feeling the collarbone snap beneath him. The man groaned in pain, Jerod spun again and had his sword at the Wolf Soldier’s throat before he could cry out.

  “I have no trouble with killing you,” he said, spitting to one side. “I’ve killed Wolf Soldiers before.”

  Glynn marched regally down the alley, past the dumpster, her cloak billowing out behind her. She'd thrown her hood back so her hair trailed out green behind her shoulders, her face looking pale and stern, her ambiguous silver eyes seeming fixed on him and unfocused at the same time.

  “This is not wise,” she told him simply.

  “What wasn’t wise was you leading this,” and he emphasized his point by jabbing the Wolf Soldier with his sword, “right to me.”

  “He was following me, not you,” Glynn protested.

  “And yet, he left you the moment he saw me,” Jerod said. “Why do you think that is?”

  Glynn had no answer, which left him nothing else to do.

  “Stand back so you don’t get blood on you,” Jerod said, and raised his sword over the man’s heart with one hand.

  “No!” the Wolf Soldier and Glynn said together. Glynn followed it up with, “I can block the last hour of his memory. He will be drunk in a bar and not missed by the Emperor.”

  “And in a week he’ll remember,” Jerod said. He knew this Wizards’ trick.

  “And you will be a week farther from the Emperor than you would be now,” Glynn said. “Unless you can hide the body, and you cannot, the Empress will read the corpse and know you killed him, and then if ever she has met you—”

  “And we both know she has,” Jerod said. Glynn was right. A dead man needed to be kept away from the Emperor, and toting around a corpse wouldn’t get him quietly out of the city.

  “I am going to sing something to you, Jerod the Bold,” Glynn told him.

  “We are going to sing?”

  “I will sing, you will listen,” she told him, and in a moment, she sang to him, in his native Volkhydran.

  That surprised him—the song seemed familiar, but at the same time he knew he had never heard it before. The man at his sword point stared at the Uman-Chi as if he had no idea what she was doing.

  “The coming day?” he asked her.

  She smiled, a cryptic Uman-Chi smile, and took a step closer to him. She reached out toward the Uman, and he simply closed his eyes.

  “He will sleep, and mend,” she said. “When I am ready, he will awake inebriated in a tavern and fear for his poor judgment.

  “You, meanwhile, will go to the next Eldadorian hostel on the way to Steel City. You will wait there for a week and I will join you with three friends.”

  “I will, will I?” he asked her. Uman-Chi, they are so typical! They thought of the world as theirs to command.

  Jerod the Bold didn’t take commands.

  “Or I shall invoke my right as an Eldadorian Baroness, and I shall procure thee to the Emperor, Sirrah,” she said, and too
k another step forward. “Or didn’t you say you would rather not meet him?”

  Jerod the Bold wasn’t stupid, either. If nothing else, then she would get him out of the city and to somewhere safe.

  “Your word on it warrior,” she said, her face close to his. He looked into her silver-on-silver eyes, assuming she looked into his. “Your word, you will wait for me.”

  “I will wait a week, no longer,” he said. “After that, I will assume the Emperor was smarter than you thought.”

  She smiled. “Fair enough.”

  Chapter Fifteen:

  We Are the Young Americans

  As promised, Shela took Raven out to the Imperial stables and picked her out a sturdy mare for riding. She’d lent the girl a pair of leather trousers that no longer fit her and a yellow cotton blouse that tied up in the front. She already had proper riding boots from the Uman-Chi.

  Shela herself had would have preferred her leather skirt split up one side and her halter, but an Empress simply couldn’t be seen in public dressed that way. Instead she picked herself out soft black leather trousers like the ones she’d lent Raven and a red top with frills around the neckline and cuffs.

  Her Uman servants had decked her hair out with green and blue gemstones. She brought her children in tow, Nina watching them. The children both would want to ride, of course, however she planned to take Little Storm once around the city walls and she didn’t want to have to mind them.

  A smile split Raven’s pretty face and highlighted her naturally high cheekbones as she held the mare’s headstall in her hands. “She’s beautiful,” the girl gasped.

  “She’s Angadorian,” Shela informed her. “I’ve a friend in the Duchess of Angador and she does a wonderful job breeding these there. You’ll find no horse with a longer wind.”

  Raven knit her thin eyebrows and deciphered Shela’s words. Being able to learn languages quickly wasn’t a trait of her husband’s people, she surmised, although in fact these newcomers didn’t do too badly.

  “And you’re not going to make me ride her side-saddle?” Raven asked, a smile on her lips.