The Viscount Connection

by Jessica London

  The doors swung open before them, and, as the Secret Service men filed up behind the General, assassins’ heads poked up from behind stones and debris, and crossbows trained themselves on the Salimaners.

  The General raised his weapon, not even bothering to look down the sights before he fired, sending the bold skimming through the foul Erodite air, the tip lacing itself with acidic raindrops before slamming through the skull of an assassin, the glancing the ear of a second, and finally slamming to a stop, quivering, in the eye of a third. His lips opened.

  “Run.” The single word hissed with hate through the air, shivering through bones and quivering in ears. And, as if they were one, they did. They turned, let their black cloaks flap in the whistling wind, let their crossbows drop, let their hearts flee. No-one dared to stand against him, not while that tongue still writhed in his mouth.

  The men started to file out of the hall now, their cloaks gathered around them, their crossbows by their sides, and Sethlon, his two knights, and Pouchii behind them. The lord still had his sword out, glittering in the misty rain, and Pouchii still had his gun hanging weightily from his side.

  Not a single assassin dared to show his face as they headed down into the back alleys, through the quiet streets and out of downtown Erodium. The main street was very quiet too, and even the Market of Death had shut down for the day. Clearly the news of the fall of the assassin King had travelled fast. Not that Pouchii was surprised. It struck him as the sort of place where secrets are impossible to keep.

  Before long they were almost marching up to the glass and steel façade of the airport arrivals hall, which rose rather hopefully out of the lashing winds and greying cobbled streets. They passed through the doors, and even the little man who had tried to make them fall for that old assassin’s trick of the innocent guide melted into the shadows as they approached. Again, they passed through another doorway, and out onto the runway.

  “Do you have your own jumpcraft?” Sethlon asked, bluntly.

  “No,” The General replied. “We came on the public service craft to Erodium. It only operates once a month, though. They don’t have the people wanting to come here.”

  “Can’t imagine why.” Pouchii muttered.

  “Well, then.” Sethlon turned to the silver sliver of a craft that stood before them. “I suppose I can offer you a lift.”

  “I think you better had.” The General frowned. “After all, I have a rather interesting message to pass onto you. And we still haven’t talked the case through, yet.”

  “What case?” Sethlon replied, in what seemed to Pouchii to be a bit of an obviously overprotective style.

  “The Viscount connection.” The General turned and mounted the steps to Sethlon’s craft, leaving the lord gasping at the bottom at the impoliteness of the man’s mannerism. By the time the other Secret Service men had entered the craft after him, Sethlon was positively out of breath with rage.

  As Sethlon, Pouchii and the two knights ascended the steps, the pilot emerged from his cockpit, and shouted across, over they hissing rain.

  “My Lord; are we leaving already?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank Rosium! This rain does nothing for my poor old bones.”

  “Make a course for Saliman.” Sethlon ignored the man. “And make it fast.”

  “Change that to the airport just to the North of the city,” The General appeared at the top of the steps, his hood hanging back from his bare scalp for the first time since they had met him. “You don’t want to land in the city at present.”

  “Why?” Sethlon turned back to him, as the pilot climbed back into his cockpit.

  “So many questions.” He frowned. “I’ll tell you shortly. But first we need to discuss what happened to your viscount and how it’s connected to the present… climate.”

  They followed him onto the craft. Now the seats were almost full, and Pouchii and Sethlon had to squeeze in at the front, next to The General. The two knights sidled into seats much further back. And then the DCI turned to the SSS commander.

  “So how much do you know about Takka’s death?”

  “More than you might think.” He fastened a safety belt around himself. “There was an SSS mission tasked with his security.”

  “Didn’t do very well, did it?” Sethlon sounded bitter.

  “Well, it had its failings.” The General looked rather uncomfortable. “But it meant that we did have a man watching over him on that fateful last carriage ride.”

  “The one between the palace and Takka’s house?” The engines started to fire up as Pouchii spoke.

  “That’s it. And they shadowed it as he rode down towards West Saliman, in the wrong direction, which was why there weren’t that many of our agents looking out for him – he went the wrong way, and most of our people lost him.”

  “Except this one man?” The craft started to rumple over the runway.

  “That’s right. He followed Takka down a side road, and watched as a group of men in black cloaks surrounded the carriage and killed the guards. He guessed, correctly, that they were assassins, so he thought he’d be more useful as a witness alive than as a brave and heroic corpse.”

  “So after the guards were killed, did he see Takka die?”

  “No.” The General shouted over the noise of the engines as they went horizontal and were slammed back into their seats, the safety belts straining. “He saw the assassins order Takka to take off his suit, and then bundled him, practically naked, into a second waiting carriage, as one of the bodies of the guards was forced into the suit and had obsidite smeared all over his face. And then he saw them dump the body in the open sewer by the side of the road, to be found and then given on to your Srant fellow a few weeks later.”

  By this time they had reached the atmosphere, and the craft steadied as the pilot started to set their course towards Saliman.

  “But that was weeks before they body was found.” Pouchii was angry now. “Why in Rosium’s name didn’t you tell someone like me or any policeman about this then, before the body had been found, or when we still reckoned it might be Takka’s corpse? And surely he could have followed the second carriage and found out where they were taking Takka, so we could rescue him now?”

  “One simple reason. There was a crest on the carriage. The royal crest crossed with a golden panther.” And then the craft jumped, and they jerked into weightlessness, belts straining and Sethlon gasping beside them.

  Now they were flying it was impossible to talk. The stopping and starting rhythm of the craft filled Pouchii’s bones to the core with juddering exhilaration, so he sat back and basked in it. As he did so, his mind blurred through what the General had told him almost as quickly as they were moving.

  So Takka had left the palace and headed towards West Saliman. Quite why still puzzled Pouchii; his house was miles away in North Saliman, and there was no reason for him to be visiting anyone who didn’t live in the North or East Saliman districts – the others simply weren’t posh enough to have warrant a visit from the viscount at that time of night.

  But anyway, Takka had arrived at some side-street, and the assassins had been waiting for him. They had slaughtered the bodyguards and dressed the body that had been found in Takka’s clothes to make it look like it was a straight forward assassination. They had even dowsed his face in obsidite so that it wouldn’t be easy to identify. And then they had loaded the viscount into a carriage. A carriage inscribed with the crest of the Queen’s husband, Napoleon Von Frederick.

  So it was a royal abduction, then. Or so it seemed. Rosium only knew where Takka was now. He might even be dead by now. Or have cracked under torture. And Pouchii wasn’t entirely sure what the protocol for arresting royals was. But they had solved it. Rarien wasn’t going to be best pleased. If anything they had created a much larger mess than there had been beforehand.

  Of course, Srant’s murmured last words made at least some sense now. “M…Von…Fshh…” Marquess Von Frederick. Pouchii remembered
something he’d read in the papers a while back now. The Von Fredericks had held the Marquessate of Brézé for centuries (nine generations or so), and the present Marquess had also managed to convince the Queen to make him Viceroy of Saliman’s Windian colonies, which had annoyed the other old Saliman families rather a lot. Apparently the seat was more traditionally held by one of the Harolds, as part of their role as Earl Penstemon, so a much lower ranking Marquess getting the appointment had been seen as a downright insult. There had been an interesting cartoon in the paper of the Queen “giving him a viceroyalty”.

  And motive was there as well. Takka had been actively blocking the royal attempt to get the government to vote itself out of existence, at least according to Lord Cavidir when Pouchii had spoken to him what seemed like weeks ago, but was only a few days, at that party where he had met Sethlon. If that was the case, then Von Frederick, who many suspected was controlling the queen, would not have wanted the hugely influential viscount messing up his plan for absolute monarchy.

  With all the parts starting to slowly slot into place, Pouchii let a small smile out, particularly after he’d looked either side of him. Sethlon looked as if he was about to throw up, and The General never seemed to look happy. It was probably the cloak. Having to wear black all the time is quite depressing. No wonder Erodium was the way it was. If only all the assassins could decide to wear something like pink instead.

  And then, before Pouchii could voice his new idea for solving the four universes assassination problems, the jumpcraft stopped jumping, and soared back through the atmosphere of Saliman. Sethlon sighed with relief.

  There was a brief clunk as they landed, and then the doors hissed open. Sethlon took in a deep gulp of fresh air, but found himself choking. It was tinged with smoke.

  Standing, the DCI crossed to the door, even as the SSS operatives started to stand behind him. He remembered that the General had told the pilot to land away from the city, which would explain why they were sitting in the middle of some poor farmer’s field, and gazing out at the white walls of Saliman, rising, towering towards the sky. But today they were stained with black smoke, and flickered with fire. The screams and gunshots reached his ears, even this many miles away, and the glint of steel filled the very essence of everything.

  As Sethlon and the General joined him on the steps, there was a great jangling of harnesses, and two knights came riding out of the fields, bedecked in red and grey tabards. Sethlon assessed the situation with a glance and hailed them with a shout.

  “Glory be to Saliman! What do the men of Earl Cavidir of Zelnozeepadi do in this sodden field?”

  “And since when did strangers have so little respect for the Cavidir knights that they demanded their business?” The leading knight addressed him with a rather haughty accent. Far North Saliman, or thereabouts, thought Pouchii, as Sethlon realised he was still wearing his black hooded cloak. As he responded he through it off, revealing his shimmering armour and tabard beneath, emblazoned with the Sethlon crest; a golden spire on a black field.

  “And since when did the knights of Cavidir speak thus to a Duke of Saliman?”

  “Since they started supporting the queen in her endeavours.” One knight spoke, drily.

  “It is dangerous to talk thus of the queen in her own land.” Sethlon cautioned, as the General frantically signalled at him to stop.

  “And it’s dangerous to talk favourably of her in the present climate.” The man spurred his horse forwards a little, while letting his sword slip from its scabbard.

  “You must excuse my lord,” The General butted in before Sethlon could open his mouth again. “He has yet to hear of what has occurred in Saliman this past day.”

  “Let me guess,” Pouchii glanced towards the smoke spiralling from Salimans fortifications. “Someone let slip to the common people of South Saliman that Viscount Takka had vanished, probably murdered, and that the queen was probably responsible, so they all rose up and attacked her palaces.”

  “Almost exactly right.” The General nodded. “Except the bits about the queen ordering her troops to fire on the masses of the people, rather than trying to placate them. And the moments when most of the aristocracy turned against her and fled the city.”

  “Including Earl Cavidir.” The knight spoke, referring to the aristocrat Pouchii had interviewed along with Carlos, the Earl of Saliman, all that time ago in the Earl’s Palace.

  “Who else?” Sethlon spoke quickly.

  “Well, Earl Harold has joined us, as has Duke Von Kruges, the banker lord, Duke Von Stike, and Viscount Lurkin.” The man rattled out the names very quickly. It didn’t sound good. That was hardly a quarter of Salimans nobility.

  “And the rest are loyal to the queen?” Sethlon winced.

  “No – another four have joined Earl Von Kanstien on Eldrich in direct rebellion, including the Von Strankts. They’re mustering an army to take the throne for the Earl.”

  “Kanstien always was impetuous.” Sethlon tutted. “He’d probably make a worse monarch than the present one. Which presumably leaves about four nobles in the queen’s hand.”

  “More like five,” The knight counted them out on his gauntleted hand. “Duke Catchbridge, Duke Forik, Duke Petine, the Earl of Saliman, and her husband, Marquess Von Frederick.” The last one made Sethlon, the General, and Pouchii all glance at each other. The killer. Or at least the one who had ordered the killing.

  “And what about my sister, Hestia?” Sethlon seemed to be thinking about something.

  “I believe she is at present encamped with Earl Cavidir.” The knight told him. The General nodded in ascent.

  “Then Lord Sethlon shall through his full support behind the Earl’s cause.” Sethlon stepped down from the jumpcraft and started giving orders. “Assemble my knights and liegemen. Order the factory workers who have stood against the queen in this rebellion to come to me, and they shall have arms. And send word to the queen of my allegiance. Fear is always a good thing.” And then he turned back to the knights. “Take me to Cavidir. We have much to discuss.”

  Pouchii turned back to the General, with a shrug.

  “I suppose I’m meant to follow him, then.”

  “I have special orders concerning you, Pouchii,” The SSS man answered. “The SSS needs you to complete your little investigation into Takka’s disappearance – you are to come to Cavidir’s new group at once.”

  “And what if I don’t want to?” The DCI fumbled with the butt of his gun. Clearly he still had a bit of a reputation, as The General looked rather disconcerted.

  “Believe me, you’ll want to after I tell you what they did to Rarien.” He carried on, regardless.

  “What?”

  “The queen blamed him for letting Takka’s possible death slip out. Of course it wasn’t him, it was your Sergeant Graider’s shoddy detective work, but she blamed him none the less, so he was executed early this morning. His head is on a spike, by all accounts, above East Gate.”

  “The queen has started executing people? Politians?”

  “Which is why most of the nobility has disaffected. It takes the threat of death looming over their shoulders to get them to do anything usually.”

  “And Graider?”

  “I believe he has joined the crowds of protesters in the main city. Quite a few troops and policemen have joined them. Which is why the queen is having such a hard time trying to restore order.”

  “And the SSS is backing who?”

  “We are instructed to protect the democratic institution of Saliman, regardless of the victor of this conflict.”

  “Well, if Kanstien and the queen both want monarchies, then doesn’t that put you on Cavidir’s side?”

  “You could say that. But for now, let us get to democracy’s headquarters. I think Sethlon and the committee will want a word.”

  They walked down the ramp, and onto the solid turf of Saliman. As they did so, horses were led out into the field by armed men in black and gold livery. Sethlon colours, Po
uchii thought. Sethlon called them over, and told them to mount up. Pouchii swung up onto a rather proud looking horse, and dug his heels in as they began to canter off, moving as a pack, swinging and sweeping through Salimans fields. Across the plains, the city still smouldered.

  As the column of riders reached a main road, Pouchii glanced down towards the gate in the wall so many hundred metres in front of him. Even from this distance he could see one, wait, two heads adorning the entranceway.

  “Looks like someone else has fallen out of the queen’s favour.” The General proclaimed grimly. “Rosium save their soul.” The Sethlon men crossed themselves, and the Cavidir knights glanced uneasily at one another. All men hoped it was not someone whom they knew. Pouchii thought of Graider, and prayed.