Callah's tainted water had all been replaced, probably at some cost and inconvenience. But what the tactic implied was more disturbing than what the Broken Circle had actually accomplished; it insinuated that the rebels could wreak a much greater havoc if they so chose.
"Are you..." a woman with matted grey hair whispered, edging closer than the rest, her one good eye brightly alight. "Are you... friends of... of..."
Radstac finished her drink, set it down, waited. She herself would never live so long as to become a doddering husk like this creature. Radstac would not outlive her usefulness.
"Of... of... of..." The gibbering lips were pale and fine.
"Of whom?" Radstac barely managed not to growl it.
The good eye blinked solemnly. "Of the Minstrel." The crone clamped tight those thin lips after she'd said it, anxiety quivering her bony shoulders.
Behind her, the others huddling near were waiting for the answer.
The Minstrel was a folk legend, then, Radstac thought, shooting Deo a fast glance. He gave her a scarcely perceptible nod.
She studied the faces, noting that the entire room had gone quiet. At last she said, "Maybe we are friends of the Minstrel. But that doesn't mean we know him."
The patrons tried to absorb that. They had the same faces and demeanors one could find in any drinking establishment. Vaguely vacuous. Adult countenances reduced to the simplistic expressions of children. Emotions, too, were diminished in their complexity. It was why fights could start so easily when alcohol was liberally present. Anger was a hot and simple emotion, and it came readily to the surface when all the civilized checks were removed.
"Do you know anything about the uprising in Windal, then?" another asked, a small shrunken man who appeared to be accompanying the crone.
Windal. The name was familiar. Vaguely so. Some Isthmus city, presumably already conquered by the Felk. Rumors of an uprising there? It sounded like more of the inciting gossip from the Minstrel. In fact, hadn't she read of this very rumor in the report Aquint had first shown her?
"I don't know anything about that," Radstac said.
There was a small collective groan of disappointment.
Radstac hid an appreciative smile. She understood in that moment just how effectively and subtly the one called the Minstrel had spread dissent. These people were receiving no news whatsoever from beyond the borders of this city. So it was that a rousing story about an uprising in Windal couldn't be refuted. The Minstrel had no doubt plucked it entirely from his imagination, giving these downtrodden Callahans the very news they most wanted to hear—that someone somewhere was successfully resisting the Felk invaders.
"I do know," Radstac added, "that Governor Jesile and his whole garrison haven't been able to find the Minstrel. Or stop the Broken Circle from doing whatever they please."
They grinned at her for that. They slapped tables and applauded and ordered fresh drinks and congratulated each other for feats they themselves had nothing to do with. The tavern's owners looked pleased, too.
Deo was fiddling with the stringbox, snapping random chords. No one in their audience had questioned that someone so obviously mentally flawed could be so deft on the instrument. Deo made it look natural.
"Ish it time to play shome more?" he asked her in a giggly voice, his mouth slack and wet.
Radstac nodded. Deo started winding and plucking. It was a faster tempo, and she leapt on it, skimming the words off the tops of the musical undulations. Another drearily predictable tirade against Callah's interlopers. Aquint's hope was that these songs would attract members of the Broken Circle. After these tunes had circulated awhile, as they most certainly would, perhaps the rebels might approach her and Deo. Then they could make their arrests.
As Radstac sang, she was at the same time detached from her performance, thereby able to observe the audience closely. She watched them picking up the chorus, learning it, memorizing it, singing along with it. Yes, these silly songs would indeed circulate. But wouldn't they, in the course of being repeated and passed around, hopefully to be heard eventually by someone in the Broken Circle, wouldn't such songs inevitably incite certain thoughts and attitudes in these Callahans? Wouldn't they generate rebellious inclinations? Wouldn't they, despite Aquint's plan, actually do more damage to the Felk... and lend more aid to the rebels?
It wasn't her problem. She could go along with this charade of being an Internal Security agent for as long as necessary. At some point a means of escaping this city would present itself, and she and Deo would take it.
So she continued singing. And when the room turned very suddenly and very disconcertingly blue, she kept the song moving, digging her fingers into her legs and trying to control her pounding heartbeat. The urge, of course, was to get up and flee. Simply run. Actually outrun. For what was coming for her was terrible. A great terrible beast that hunted her footsteps.
Deo sensed that something was wrong, but he was the only one. He cut short the song and turned to her.
How blue he was...
Radstac reached for the water jug, but her hand was wavering beyond her control. She returned it to her lap. The audience was applauding and cheering once more. The matted-haired old woman was the nearest one.
She would have to do. Radstac caught her good eye, motioned her even closer, and said in a tight, aching, very earnest voice, "I shall need some mansid leaves. As quickly as possible."
* * *
The popular narcotic in Callah, it seemed, were phato blossoms. These were pink and delicate, and they were smoked in a pipe and produced effects not entirely unlike those one could get from alcohol. Radstac had no interest in the drug. It was mansid or nothing. And for a while it appeared she was going to have to settle for nothing.
She had chewed the final tiny rationed fragment of her last leaf two days ago. She had made efforts to replenish her supply, but all the likely places she visited had nothing to offer. Whatever drug dens there were in Callah had evidently been cleaned out during the Felk invasion. Legitimate narcotic trade had continued in the marketplaces awhile, but, she had learned, the supplies had dried up. There were no traders on the roads anymore. Nothing was getting into the city.
But addicts, Radstac knew, weathered all calamities. No matter what the circumstances, they could always find what they absolutely required.
Which meant that someone in Callah, some other user, had what she needed.
So various members of their audience, caught up in the spirit of revolutionary camaraderie, volunteered to help find her what she required. They scattered half-drunkenly out of the tavern, whistling and humming and muttering those songs she'd been singing.
Meanwhile, Radstac's world was blue.
She handled it. It was a very unsettling experience, but she had faced physical terrors on battlefields that would shrink most men and women just to hear of them. She remained in her chair and maintained a calm veneer, even as the lack of clarity engulfing everything around her deepened, so that the sense of things broke apart at a more profound level with nearly every passing moment.
She had certainly experienced this before. She came north habitually, traveling from the Southsoil to seek out the Isthmus's petty little wars, so to sell her sword to one side or the other. It never mattered who she fought for. She had survived many of those trifling skirmishes between Isthmus states.
What mattered was the procurement of her leaves. Fresh and potent. In quality, far beyond the dried specimens the trade caravans brought back home from the Isthmus. And while she was here, pursuing her mercenary livelihood, she enjoyed the awesome penetrating clarity that came from chewing mansid.
But she did not remain here on this Isthmus year-round. Eventually she would return home, taking with her as much of her drug as would last before losing its potency. And, just as inevitably, those supplies would be gone, and she would undergo this same withdrawal. And she would handle it. And survive it. And live her life in Dilloqi without the daily stimulus of mansid. Until
it was time to once more go north.
Radstac was aware, in an increasingly abstract way, that Deo was by her side trying to comfort her, while maintaining his imbecilic pretense. She was finding herself less and less able to understand words. She still recognized them individually, but whenever someone spoke to her, she could barely manage to put them into a coherent order.
Even so, she sat and waited and did not behave in the way pathetic wretches who couldn't handle their addictions behaved.
When her leaf was finally procured and delivered to the tavern, she couldn't hold her hands still enough to get it to her mouth to bite off a piece. Deo held it for her. Deo, by now, was a shifting, erratic, almost ethereal presence who she could not quite identify any longer.
She bit away a quarter of the leaf and knew by the ache that sang through her teeth that it was of the proper potency. After that it was just a matter of waiting for the blue to recede and the clarity to assert itself. It happened quickly enough.
Radstac, with much composure, thanked her deliverer and counted out the necessary Felk scrip from her pocket to cover it. Next to her Deo was pale. He tried to lead her out of the tavern. But there was still half a watch before they needed to think about curfew, so Radstac sang another passel of songs and Deo accompanied on the vox-mellifluous. Once again their audience became enthralled and enthused. The songs took hold.
* * *
Criers were calling the first notice. Curfew in a quarter of a watch. She and Deo were on the streets, heading to their lodgings. Evening had brought an unpleasant snap to the air. A damp wind was blowing in irregular irritating gusts.
Between them was silence. Strained on Deo's part, uncomfortable, embarrassed, concerned. Radstac merely said nothing. From her deliverer she had learned where she could likely obtain more leaves.
The streets were emptying rapidly and orderly. These Callahans knew the rules of occupation, and they obeyed them. If not for the Broken Circle, this would surely be the model of a conquered city.
On a deserted stretch, just a short distance from their destination, Deo, taut and uneasy, suddenly erupted in a tense whisper, "When we find the rebels, I'm going to join them."
Radstac looked at him sidelong and wordlessly. They didn't speak again until they were indoors, up on the third level, in their shabby room.
She hadn't taken too large a bite from her leaf. The mansid had stabilized her, but the clarity wasn't so intense as to be distracting.
"Why?" she finally asked.
Deo propped the stringbox in a corner. "Because it could make a difference against the Felk."
"Like assassinating General Weisel might have?"
"It might have. It would have." His fists bunched at his sides.
"I know," she said. Her tone was flat, but she had meant it to sound softer. Instead of trying again, she crossed to him, put hands to his shoulders. At first his lips were unresponsive; then they did respond.
Later, after curfew was official, there came a knock on their door. Later still, they learned of the audacious feat the Broken Circle enacted that night.
PRAULTH (3)
There was no waiting this time, no lapse while she brooded over her place in the greater scheme of this war and this turning point in history. She heard the solid decisive footfalls, turned, and there was Cultat's broad frame—broader still in armor—blocking the chamber's doorway.
"Thinker Praulth," he rumbled, red-and-gold-maned head in silhouette, "I wished to make our farewell a private one. Thank you for meeting me."
Praulth bowed; it was almost an involuntary action. It was an artifice on the premier's part. The man had a great control of language, of etiquette. By taking the humbler stance of thanking her, he was contrarily reaffirming his already more powerful position. A manipulator, this one. Surely a prerequisite for someone holding such a high political office.
It never occurred to Praulth that Cultat might be sincerely thankful.
"We have very little time," Cultat said, striding inside, swinging shut the door behind him, "but enough, I think, to say what we will say."
"And what are we to say, Premier?" Praulth asked, her voice slightly edged. It was important she assert herself here.
The chamber was a small lounge in the same building where the Alliance conference had been held. It was expensively if indifferently furnished, and it smelled of disuse. Praulth was standing.
Cultat halted, rested his hand atop the sword at his belt; then began a slow circuit of the room, around the backs of the lush dusty furniture. A lone lamp burned. There was a painting on one wall of a nude woman sprawling on a leafy riverbank. Praulth hadn't noticed it until the premier passed before it.
"I would imagine," Cultat finally said, his tone now thoughtful, "that you will say your position in all these matters of war is unappreciated. Or underappreciated." The crags of his face shadowed his severe blue eyes.
Praulth gazed back at him, willing herself not to blink.
Cultat continued, "And I will say in reply that you are appreciated. Of course you are. When all this is done, I'll bestow some tawdry bauble on you and shower you with all the gaudy honors the Noble State of Petgrad has to offer, which won't mean much to you. As to what you'll say to that, I can't quite guess, since this grows increasingly speculative and abstract." He halted again. A wry smile moved under his beard. "But I'll wager I'm fairly accurate so far, yes?"
Praulth felt a tightness in her throat. She swallowed deliberately. "Without me you'd have nothing." It came hoarse and pained, but also audible and steady.
"We wouldn't have the Battle of Torran Flats."
"You wouldn't have my predictions about the Felk movements."
"True. We've had others—Petgradites, some who've studied wars with perhaps the same fervor you have, but not with the same total understanding. They've made their guesses, pored over the same maps you were receiving through Master Honnis in Febretree. They could not forecast with your success."
"No one can," Praulth said with a dire firmness.
"Again, true." Cultat didn't qualify the statement.
Her heart filled with pride, beating giddily. This was recognition. This was acknowledgment.
"But," Cultat added, "what do my words matter? Your place is in the chronicles that will make this war a history to be remembered above all others."
The Petgrad premier was still at the fringe of the chamber. Now he came toward the center, where Praulth stood beneath the lamp. His face, aged and robust all at once, came into glaring view. He came to a halt, looking down on her. Something had diluted the ruthlessness of his eyes. Perhaps fatigue. Perhaps wariness of the battle to come.
"Praulth," he said quite softly, "you are appreciated. You are necessary. You are crucial. I have sensed your discontent, and I respect it. How can I address it?"
Now she did blink. Repeatedly. She was taken aback. She turned her head. She hadn't expected this man—this man, this powerful man—to express such a keen awareness of her inner turmoils. How had he known? He was canny. That was how he'd sensed her thoughts. He needed her to be at her cooperative best before he took the assembling forces of the Alliance off to engage Dardas/Weisel on the Pegwithe Plains south of the city of Trael, which had of course fallen to the Felk.
His interest in her was self-serving. Yet his manner, the cast of his rugged features, made it seem sincere. He wanted from her what he wanted. It was nearly irrelevant that it was for a greater good, a much greater good. The defeat of the Felk. He was still manipulating her.
"I've been manipulated before, Premier," she said.
He wasn't fazed. He heaved a small weary chuckle. "Manipulated? Well, so have I, young Thinker. By my family, by the Noble Ministry, by the people of this state. Not once. Many times. It comes with the rank and the responsibility. Manipulation is a guiding force, if you're aware of it. And if you keep ahead of it. Can you keep ahead, Praulth?"
She thought of Xink. She thought of Honnis. She thought also of this premie
r. What exactly did she want from him anyway? What acknowledgment could he make that would satisfy her?
Praulth knew Cultat was departing this evening, a night ride with the Petgrad contingent. They would start making their way to the rendezvous site. The delegates who'd come to Petgrad had all returned or sent word to their home states and cities and villages for their forces to make for the gathering as well. There was no sure way to know precisely what numbers would finally assemble. Praulth of course would be kept scrupulously informed.
Using the intelligence provided by the Petgradite Far Speak scouts, she would oversee the first clash between the Alliance and the Felk. And if it went correctly, it would mean the end of this war.
Praulth lifted her chin. She met those blue eyes squarely.
"I want the rank of general," she said.
No flicker in the eyes. Nothing whatever to read on that astute intelligent face. What she was asking for could be considered a trifle or an outrageous demand. What, after all, did a title denote? But there was a sacredness about military conventions. They were almost fanatical, almost religious.
"Thinker Praulth" might not be remembered. But "General Praulth" stood a better chance, particularly since she intended to write this war's most definitive accounting.
Beneath a segmented breastplate Premier Cultat's hardy chest rose as he drew a deep breath. "I will see that the proper documents receive my approval before I leave," he said. Then he stepped past her, giving her his back as he strode from the chamber.
* * *
She was breathless and restless. Her and Xink's rooms were only a short distance away, but she turned in a random direction, following a wide street beneath the clouded night sky. It was cooler than when she'd arrived in Petgrad. It was coming into the heart of autumn, the season of fading, of dwindling. But this was her time of renewal. So it very much seemed.
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