by Guy Antibes
Panix rose. “If you have no other duties for me, Marquessa, I’d like to leave. I only ask that you send a message to Corilla Westter that I have lost a certain Korvannan coin. She should know what I mean.”
He gave her a look she didn’t understand, but Lorna did perceive the discomfort Panix had in the company of her father. He nodded formally to the Marquessa and presented the hint of a nod towards her father.
“I’m sure there is much more to your story than what Lorna has described here. I would like to hear your version at some other more convenient time.”
“Of course, your grace.” Panix bowed again and left the Chamber.
“Marquessa,” Lorna began. “I can’t put Lord Blox in such a situation. I’m your spy in his midst. He wasn’t cooperative before, he likely won’t talk to me at all now.”
“I know. You aren’t my only observer in the foreign ministry. Keep doing as I ask and he will focus on you and ignore whoever else might be observing him. I don’t want Blox circumventing my wishes.” The Marquessa rose to leave. “I need to do some freshening up myself. Why don’t you two have an appropriate reunion? Foald, your daughter and Panix Gavid have performed an extraordinary service, more than I would have ever expected when I first sent them on their mission.”
What did the Marquessa expect? Lorna thought, as she left the palace with her father.
“What were the Marquessa’s expectations of our mission to South Pent?” she said as her father helped her into their carriage. She still wore her dirty trail clothes.
“She thought your poking around down there might stir something up. General Lettec resisted the use of his forces to quell the insurrection, but Lord Blox, on the other hand, counseled for immediate intervention. She really did need more input, but she thought perhaps you two would interview some victims and return with an idea of the size of the insurrection. If I had any idea you’d be in such danger, I wouldn’t have let you go.” He put his arm around his daughter.
Lorna bristled. “I’m a grown woman, father, past majority. I decided on my own to go.”
“Ronna won’t put you in such danger again.” Her father said it as if it were fact. Lorna distinctly felt otherwise. The rest of the way home, she kept to her own thoughts, thinking that’s what Panix would do.
~
Although Panix loathed reporting to Quill Vent, the KII would expect nothing less. The door cracked open as Panix knocked. He pushed the door open and called for Quill.
Panix heard a grunt. Walking in, he was immediately re-acquainted with the stink of the place. Quill slept in a chair.
Panix bent over and fell to the floor with a dizzy spell. His head was not appreciably better from all the battering his body received. He put Quill on top of a low table and turned it into floater and guided him up the stairs, releasing the spell after he rolled Quill onto his bed. No bedclothes were on the mattress.
Quill didn’t stir. There was a writing desk scattered with parchment, pen and ink. Panix wrote a farewell note to Quill and gave him a quick, but heavily edited, rundown of the events in South Pent so he wouldn’t look so stupid when Pentish authorities discussed the operation.
On the way out of his bedroom, Panix spied a pile of coins on Quill’s dresser. One of the coins had a message spell in it and he put it in his pocket. He went back to the missive and admitted to losing one to Sovad Mustak and taking another.
Back in his own house he sat in the dark. The day’s light pounded into his head, making the pain worse. He contemplated what to do. He decided to write a much more comprehensive report to Corilla Westter on his activities. After he read through his writing, Panix appended the report telling the KII leader that he could be found at his cabin retreat in western Pent and could be contacted via messaging coin.
Panix knew his magic could be used to obtain intelligence. He knew, however, that his abilities didn’t permit him to work as covertly as his old friend, Moshin, but he’d learned during his South Pent experience that there was information to be gleaned without necessarily working in the shadows since Quill certainly didn’t.
He thought back to Sovell’s… no, he called himself Sovad Mustak. Sovad introduced a new way of thinking, of reaching new solutions that weren’t bound by the means but by the needs. He began to write down what he remembered of the ‘Sovad’ approach and shook his head. What a waste of a mind. The man assassinated people for a living, but his mind was unbound by convention but perhaps that’s what made him good at what he did.
Panix shivered and gingerly touched his head. Sovad’s ‘creativity’ in defending his operation from Panix’s magic consisted of the simple act of bashing his head in. The sponginess seemed to be leaving, but the pain continued.
Thinking of Moshin, he wrote another note requesting that Moshin stop at his house on his way from Bentonnia to Gerell. He spoke the words of the messaging spell and saw the letter disappear. With his sabbatical ending prematurely, it appeared he faced a new career as a spy after all.
Panix grabbed the picture of his father from the back of his desk and drew in the familiar scene. He felt like he reconnected with his father every time he gazed upon the man’s face. Perhaps the Sovad approach might be put to good use finding who killed his father.
~~~
Chapter 16
Six uniformed men escorted Sovad into the Murgontian Cabinet room. Kliffid Wilton rose and asked Sovad to take a seat. All of the members of the pocket cabinet were in attendance. Uven Kyrod sat with a smug look on his face and Sovad thought that odd, considering Uven’s plan had just blown up in his face.
He looked around the room to see all eyes on him.
“To what do you attribute your stunning defeat, Mustak?” Uven started the inquisition.
“As you all know, or should, I notified you repeatedly that this operation had little chance of succeeding. I did as instructed. My band of men had South Pent terrorized. A local Squire had been bribed to promote dissension and fear in order to lure the army from the passes, however, my sources in the Pentish army have now confirmed that General Lettec never considered occupying South Pent.”
“Now here you are.”
“Yes. We had the slimmest of chances and I didn’t anticipate that the Marquessa of Pent would send two of the few people who could recognize me, on an information-gathering mission. One was the daughter of Foald Baltac, who knew the area and knew me. The other was a magician in the employ of Baltac. I captured them, but between the formidable talents of the magician and the woman’s knowledge of the local topography, they escaped with the knowledge I worked for Murgontia. Now the Marquessa knows of our interest in Pent.”
“What you are saying is that our ploy might have worked if they hadn’t shown up?”
“No. I’m convinced that since the Marquessa sent the pair, that indicated she was unwilling to commit her troops.”
“Bah!” Wovin Yetter said. “What a waste. Sovad, you are a quitter. A failure. If I had my way, I’d execute you right now, right here.”
“Not so hasty, Wovin,” Uven said. “My son may need an expert assassin in Gerell. I suggest that we reassign Sovad to Gerellia under the direction of Nirov and execute our Gerellian plan.” Uven smiled at his use of the word ‘execute’.
The council didn’t overlook the subordinate position Sovad would have to swallow. An arrogant peacock, Nirov would never rise to his father’s seat, no matter how hard Uven pushed. But Sovad realized that if this was his punishment, he’d gladly accept it over his own death. Assassins had been terminated for less.
“You’re right. I don’t see an alternative.” Wilton slapped his hands on the table, looking down.
“This is all foolishness,” Pokkan, the foreign minister, said. “I think we should wait another season. We’ve alerted Pent to our intentions. The Gerellian military option is fraught with uncertainty and my own assessment is that it’s much too risky.”
Sovad could only listen to this madness in dismay. Pokkan was right, but he kne
w Uven wanted his son to rub Sovad’s nose in his failure. His own son, Divvid, had fallen under the spell of Wovir and was currently an intelligence attaché to Bollet’s 3rd Army, poised to enter Gerellia. Divvid hated his father for a number of valid and invalid reasons.
Kliffid nodded at Sovad. He accepted the Head Councilor’s dismissal. Pokkan made eye contact with Sovad as he walked out. The foreign minister wanted a private audience.
Half an hour later, Pokkan walked into his private office. The high ceilings and gauzy draperies were supposed to give the room a cool feel, but Sovad, sitting on an ornate settee, felt oppressive heat.
“We couldn’t have done worse if you had run yourself through with a sword,” Pokkan said. “Wovir still wanted your head. Now you go to work for that pompous idiot, Nirov. What do you think of possibly working on the same project with your son?”
“I’m not sure. He’s always avoided me. His mother pushed him into the Assassin’s Guild. I suspect she wanted another weapon to point at me.”
“That’s why he wants so badly to be in the army? So he won’t follow in your footsteps?”
“His feet will always be too small. He was an indifferent student at the Assassin’s School. The army wants him? He’s better off in that mindless bureaucracy than in the Guild.”
“Don’t be so flippant about the bureaucracy, Sovad. It’s what makes Murgontia work.”
Sovad knew when he needed to be silent. His personal opinion of the bureaucracy was the opposite of his only sponsor within the pocket cabinet.
“I can’t help you in Gerellia. You’re on your own. Screw up there and I won’t be able to restrain Wovir. Do you understand? I doubt if the Council will tolerate another failure. That’s two in a row, regardless of how shoddily they were planned. Best behavior and superb results. Anything less…” Pokkan drew his finger across his throat.
Sovad nodded, knowing that the other three in the cabinet already counted him as a dead man.
“Now about this magician and the woman. Are these people of interest?” Pokkan was the only real strategist within Kliffid’s pocket cabinet. Uven’s ego drove his every move, Wovir’s dedication to the military clouded his mind, and Kliffid loved the sound of his own voice.
“Perhaps not now. They worked as a team—probably better than they knew. Panix Gavid, the magician, somehow shook off the effects of two drugs. He threw some kind of light weapon at my men, blinding them. The woman knew the countryside so well, they were able to elude thirty men. I cast my net well, yet they slipped through. That was my real failure. They made it to Pent City and effectively cut off Baston Blox’s efforts to influence the withdrawal of the army from the passes.”
“So this is a highly powerful magician? I didn’t think any existed. Most magicians are merely another kind of technician, aren’t they?”
“Magicians have pretty specific talents. Panx Gavid is a gifted metallurgist, but I found he is very, very smart and talented like you wouldn’t believe, yet he is restrained. He doesn’t flaunt his magic, but his defenses when we had them cornered were superb. Never seen anything like it. He bonded the shutters closed, made them fireproof and as strong as iron. He put some kind of baffle over the chimney so we couldn’t smoke them out of the house.”
“Then how did you capture them?”
“I threatened to kill the woman’s personal mount in front of the house. I killed two others, so she could tell I was serious. She grew up with that horse and ran out of the house to save it.”
“Admirable, Sovad. Your resourcefulness never ceases to amaze. Write up a report, for my eyes, in the usual way. I will follow these two—if you don’t kill them first.”
Sovad hesitated. “Fine,” he said without emotion.
“For someone who so thoroughly defeated you, I don’t see any hatred or animosity. Don’t you wish revenge?”
“To kill in cold blood is an assignment. The responsibility rests on those who have issued the orders. Revenge? I would never kill for revenge. It would be murder.
“There is something about the magician that is unique in my experience. I think he will become something as unique in his way, as I have become in mine.”
~~~
Chapter 17
Panix collared Harlan Gannoc, walking out of the Baltac Works gate. “If you buy me dinner at the Summer’s Wilt, I’ll tell you all about my little adventure down in South Pent.”
“I’m all ears.” Harlan gave Panix a grin.
Panix took them to the same table that Moshin chose when he recruited him and told Harlan the story.
“Amazing use of your talents.”
“I wouldn’t have survived without Lorna. I learned I can’t do it all by myself, and that’s why you’re here. I can’t ask Lorna to work with me, but I’d like you to help me develop a new way of thinking about espionage.”
Harlan gave Panix an incredulous look. “I’m no spy.”
“Neither am I, but we both have talents that we can apply to the obstacles spies confront. Moshin wrote in his book that a lot of spying is just solving problems. As I said, I think I have a new way of looking at problem solving and I could use your help.”
After a few minutes Harlan said, “What can I do?”
“Quit. I’m going to my cabin. I’d like you to come with me. I’ve got plenty of money to pay for your time if I can’t get the KII to add you to their payroll.”
“The thought of quitting is quite tempting. Fennel has made Baltac’s a dismal place to work. He’s even got my boss tightening the creative noose around my neck.” Harlan shook his head. “I’m in.” He winked at Panix and looked even more excited that he usually did.
“Great. We’ll leave in three or four days. That should give us both enough time to prepare,” Panix said as he shook Harlan’s hand.
~
Panix and Harlan rode down from the highlands of Pent, through the long broad plains that led down to Gerellia. The house sat at a lower altitude from most of Pent being so close to the Gerellian border. He hadn’t been there much since Merra left him. It was to have been their retreat and he was afraid he’d still feel her presence.
They could buy what they wanted in Hortwell, a good-sized town, a couple of leagues away, so they didn’t need to bring in many supplies, just a pack animal and a floater apiece. A spring underneath the property allowed Panix to install a water pump inside the cabin. The tiny lake close by seemed to have plenty of fish.
After putting away their provisions, the pair walked out on the front porch and sat on a bench. The wind whispered in the trees and made ripples on the pond. Panix listened to the babbling of the stream that fed the little body of water and still wished he sat next to a faithful Merra. He quickly banished that thought and smiled as he thought that Harlan made a very poor substitute for a beautiful woman. Lorna flashed through his mind. Perhaps this place might soothe her spirit as it did his, when he could banish the image of Merra at the Academy. He no longer desired the Merra at Pent City.
“This is a great place!” Harlan said.
Panix nodded. He looked out at his land as he thought about his training with Quill Vent. He needed to figure out what kind of things they needed to study in order to create some innovations.
After a while, Panix led Harlan back inside. Four books and a notebook sat on his kitchen table. They were the closest books Panix could find on the art of intelligence gathering. Moshin wrote one of them and the others described the process of gathering political information as used throughout Dornnan history. The notebook contained his scribblings on the Sovad approach. He still didn’t quite understand what they needed to know.
“Harlan, I need you to read these before we begin. I have something to do tomorrow so that will give you some time without interruption.”
~
The next day, Panix woke early with a splitting headache. His injury didn’t appear to be healing as quickly as it should. He rode into Hortwell, seeking their healer. The town looked different than most o
f the towns in Pent. Where Pentish towns were mostly stone, Hortwell used more wood and reminded him a bit more of Riverwood in South Pent. Houses of poorer citizens were topped with thatched roofs. Even the style of the architecture allowed for larger windows and, for the wealthier, internal courtyards. Panix liked the mixture of Pentish and Gerellian architectural influences in the houses and thought it a harmonious combination. His goal to integrate magic and technology should fit together like that.
Thatch crowned the healer’s house. Panix noticed the white board hanging below the healer’s sign. This meant the house was open for business. He walked into an empty room early in the morning.
Panix rang a little bell that hung from the wall. A woman of middle age walked in wearing the healer’s white robe.
“Can I help you?” She looked at Panix. “A serious head wound. Come into the back.” She showed him into her examination room. Panix hadn’t been to many healers in his life. Once, he’d had food poisoning on a camping trip in military school and he was treated for a few broken bones during his childhood. His experience at the Academy didn’t help his anxiety.
“Lay down here,” she said. “I’m Sorah, your name?”
“Panix. Panix Gavid, I worked in the city of Pent.”
“Corlee’s brother, right? You look like the male version of her.” Light came into the healer’s eyes. “I went to the Academy a few years ago for some advanced training and met your sister. She said you worked in Pent City. You’ve got that stone house outside of Hortwell, don’t you?” The healer looked at the wound and put her hand to her heart and then put her hand on his head closing her eyes. “Where did you get this injury?”
