by Glen Cook
“There’re other theories out there. The point is, you don’t want to be seen. Having blond hair will get you dragged in for questioning, guaranteed.”
Else nodded. Typical luck. All he was supposed to do in Sonsa was get off the boat and go somewhere else.
“If you hadn’t interrogated Vivia Infanti’s master you could’ve gotten away without anybody suspecting anything. But you tried to kill a member of the Brotherhood.”
Else grunted. “I wasn’t thinking strategically. Tactically, I thought I needed to find out what was going on.”
“You’re in luck. They don’t know who they’re looking for. But they are looking hard. Word from inside is, the wizard is in a tizzy because nobody should have lived through that explosion.”
“Didn’t you tell me that Sonsa is supernaturally pacified?”
“Obviously, I was jabbering out the wrong orifice.”
“What do Sonsans think?”
The dwarf chuckled. “I don’t know many people who’d be upset if a few Brothers from the local barracks got themselves dead. They don’t have much power here, and little influence except with the Fermi, but they do make themselves thoroughly obnoxious to Devedians and Dainschaus.”
“Do they have the kind of power that lets them grab people off the streets? Without Sonsa blowing up?”
“The Durandanti and Scoviletti don’t want to alienate them. Because then the Brotherhood might line up with the other family.”
“And the Brotherhood squeezes every ounce of advantage out of that, right?”
“Of course. They’re not stupid. They don’t understand how much they’re disliked, though.”
“Uhm?”
“They’re too powerful. But they’re powerful only because the situation here is repeated in every city in Firaldia. There’s no unifying national nobility. There’s just the Church. And the Empire meddling from outside. In Brothe there are five families dancing the power dance, with the Patriarchy itself the big prize. Without the Brotherhood of War behind him, particularly the Special Office, Sublime never would’ve gotten elected. He’s beholden to them. His aggressive policies are their policies. I’ve kept telling al-Qarn. But al-Qarn won’t listen.”
“Gordimer is a great warrior. But as a ruler and planner he has shortcomings. Unfortunately, if Dreanger’s fortunes were left to Kaif Karim Kaseem al-Bakr, we’d all do nothing but say prayers while crusaders harvest us like hay. You know Sonsa. How long before the novelty wears off?”
“Most people will forget by tomorrow night. The rest will give up before the weekend. Unless the Brothers offer a big reward. That would bring the sharks out.”
“So I’ll just wait them out. Do they have sheep here? Or cattle? Or anything that isn’t a pig? I ate salt pork all the way from Runch. Despite an indulgence from the kaif, I feel unclean.”
Stewpo was no fool. “You think I’m an idiot, Sha-lug? You want to test my loyalty by studying my diet? You’ve been here twenty-some hours. You’re not on a Brotherhood rack yet. In addition, you need to know that you’ve been badly misled. The Founding Family of al-Prama were self-deluded maniacs addicted to narcotics. But religion isn’t the issue. Not for me. For me, it’s what the crusaders have done to Suriet.”
Suriet was the Melhaic name for the region everyone else called the Holy Lands.
The early crusader armies plundered the temples and towns of non-Chaldareans. As well as those of those Chaldareans who failed to acknowledge the ascendancy of the Brothen Patriarchy. Those were the times when the Brotherhood made its name and wealth.
In olden times, before the Praman Conquest, the Wells of Ihrian belonged to the Eastern Empire, where a less virulent strain of the Chaldarean faith held sway. It was tolerant. Followers of other religions were not molested as long as they met their legal obligations to the Emperor. That did not change much after the Conquest except that several Chaldarean subcults became part of the minority mix.
When westerners arrived to liberate the holy wells they considered even their religious cousins as subhuman resources there to be squeezed for wealth.
Else said, “Trust is the first casualty of our trade. My apologies. Though I’d still love to get next to a leg of lamb.”
“I understand. I’m not entirely comfortable with you, either. Satisfy my curiosity. How did you survive an attack that shredded your companions?”
Else chuckled. “Now who’s testing who?”
STEWPO SHARED A MUTTON ROAST WITH ELSE. AFTERWARD, HE SIPPED A dark wine from the coastal vineyards. “Another interesting day.” His ticks were less prominent tonight.
“Tell me. Anything. They didn’t do well when they taught me patience.”
“I found a source of Ambonypsgan beans.”
“Excellent. I assume they reach Sonsa by the same routes and hands that bring the cotton across.”
Ambonypsga was a black highland kingdom south and east of Dreanger, the former separated from the latter by an inhospitable stony waste. Ambonypsga was strongly proto-Arianist Chaldarean with a minor admixture of pagan and Devedian tribes. Ambonypsga produced the finest coffee beans grown.
Else raised his left hand. “In answer to your question the other night, I’m alive because I wear an amulet that shields me from sorcery and the things of the night. You can’t see it. But you can see some burns. It got hot when it turned that killing spell.”
“I see. I do wish you’d try this wine. It’s a fine vintage.”
Else shook his head.
A bell tinkled softly. The dwarf jumped. He muttered, “At this time of night? There aren’t any more of you coming over, are there?”
“Not that I know of.”
The bell continued to demand a response.
“Go.” Else presumed there was no danger. The people looking for him would not ring bells, they would kick down doors.
STEWPO RETURNED LOOKING WORRIED. HE WAS ALL FIDGET AND TICK, NOW.
“What is it?” Else asked.
“There have been developments. They found your friend who fled before the attack. They think they know who they’re looking for, now, too. Someone named Sir Aelford daSkees. Because he’s the only passenger off Vivia Infanti who hasn’t been accounted for. Because you named names before you didn’t kill that Brother on the ship.”
“The kid can’t help it. He was born stupid.”
“There’s more. It’s more interesting.”
“I’m listening.”
“Vivia Infantf’s master complained publicly about the bad behavior and murderous intentions of the Special Office wizard he was forced to bring over from Runch. Here’s an interesting piece of trivia. Your captain is the brother of Don Aleano Durandanti.”
“Who would be a big name in that family. Right?”
“The top dog. And the way the Brotherhood started acting after this sorcerer showed up has everybody pissed off at them.” The dwarf rocked double time. “Even the Fermi are grumbling.”
“What happened?” Else scarcely noticed Stewpo’s ticks, now.
“The Durandanti foreclosed on the Brotherhood barracks. The Brotherhood took a major loan against it a while back. And they weren’t making payments.”
“You don’t seem disheartened.”
“The Brotherhood of War are the worst predators in Suriet. Their order is built on stolen wealth and the sale of slaves.”
Most Deves outside the Holy Lands, these days, were the descendants of peoples who had been sold around the shores of the Mother Sea.
“I understand,” Else said.
“Can you keep information from those who sent you, Sha-lug?”
“I shouldn’t. My reports are supposed to include anything al-Qarn might find interesting.”
“There are things that I’d rather al-Qarn didn’t know. Not Gordimer, particularly. But the other one. The wizard.”
“Er-Rashal? Why?”
“He’s a sorcerer. And we hear rumors about him. As a Devedian there are things I don’t want him to know. I
f you feel obligated to report everything you observe, then I won’t always be willing to help you.”
“I can fail to see those small matters that don’t pose any threat to my family, my people, my country, or my God.” This one dwarf could not be a threat to Dreanger.
“Good. Very good. So I’ll take a huge risk and assume that a Sha-lug’s word is as precious as the Sha-lug want the world to believe.”
Else growled a soft imprecation. Hell. The dwarf was making fun. And the truth was, al-Prama saw nothing wrong with deceiving unbelievers.
“You need to remember that Gledius Stewpo is no Sha-lug. Gledius Stewpo is a Devedian patriot helping his people by assisting the enemies of their enemies.”
“I understand that.”
The Deves of the diaspora kept quiet but those who survived in the Holy Lands professed it publicly. They wanted all invaders evicted from Suriet. Their Suriet.
Their dogma ignored the historical truth that they had been invaders themselves, in their time.
“I want you clear on the point. Before I show you what I’m considering showing you.”
The history of the Holy Lands was one of war and invasion again and again as one people after another tried to get control of the Wells of Ihrian.
Why had there been no empire, ever, based in the Holy Lands?
Else said, “We’re clear on where we stand. If you think that something needs to be kept between just us two, I’ll honor your wish.”
“Good. Because I’m afraid we Sonsan Devedians are going to need the assistance of a real warrior soon.”
Else grunted an interrogative.
“The Brotherhood aren’t accepting the inevitable. They aren’t walking away. They believe God is on their side. They won’t leave their barracks. They’re willing to fight. One Durandanti retainer has been killed already.”
“And this ties in with me keeping secrets from al-Qarn?”
“The inevitable next stage—while the Brotherhood is temporizing and hoping for help from somewhere else—will be to lay off blame for the crisis on foreigners and unbelievers.
“They always attack the Devedian quarter when they riot. In the republics the ruling families discourage bigotry because it’s bad for business. They depend on Devedian artisans and clerks. But the intolerance is still there in the mob.”
Devedians were important in many Praman cities, too. In Praman Direcia the Devedian minority formed a bureaucratic class that supported its Praman rulers enthusiastically.
Stewpo added, “This new Patriarch, though . . . He has no tolerance at all. He preaches against everyone. Even his own people when they fail to agree that he’s the Infallible Voice of God.”
“You think something is going to happen?”
“I think the Sonsan mob will try to run the Brotherhood out. The Three Families will sit on their hands. People will get hurt. The Brotherhood will claim that it’s all our fault. So the mob will turn on the easy victims. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood will work out an accommodation with the Three Families and nothing will change.”
“And you want what from me?”
“Professional advice. On how to defend ourselves. Preferably in a way that keeps the casualties down so the mob doesn’t get outraged because we did defend ourselves.”
“Good luck with that.” Else knew of no way to fight people without making them angrier than they already were. All you could do was hurt them until they were in so much pain that they let the anger go.
“So what’s the point of asking me not to pass information on to al-Qarn?” He had seen nothing unusual yet.
“Oh. I thought you understood. We’ll fight if we’re attacked.”
“Again, how does that concern al-Qarn?”
“Our methods might be of interest to the sorcerer.”
“Fighting back might not be the smartest thing to do.”
The dwarf shrugged. “So be it. Come with me.”
THE DEVEDIAN QUARTER WAS QUIET AND DARK. ELSE NOTICED PAIRS OF armed men in its shadows. There was a racket in the direction of the Sawn. At least one large fire illuminated the underbellies of dense, low clouds.
“Looks like rain,” Else told Stewpo.
“That would be good. It’d cool tempers.”
They traveled barely a quarter mile, which was a large fraction of the width of the Devedian quarter. The quarter was densely populated. It occupied very little ground. Deves had to bury their dead outside the wall, in unhallowed ground set aside by the Church.
The dwarf muttered, “There are spies everywhere.”
Two determined-looking youths challenged the dwarf quietly. Stewpo responded. One youth hurried ahead to open the door of what looked like a rich man’s home. It had no shops at street level.
The door opened on a narrow hallway illuminated by a single candle. The floor was worn hardwood. Four doors opened off on that central hallway. Each was shut.
At the end of the hall a door opened on a steep cellar stairway. The dwarf needed no guide.
Stewpo stopped at the bottom, said nothing until their guide climbed back up the narrow stairs. Then he opened what appeared to be a derelict clothes cupboard stuffed with castoffs, reached through the clothing, pushed sideways. The back panel moved slightly, then swung away to reveal a darkness behind the cupboard.
Stewpo said, “There isn’t anything lurking in this darkness.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” Else said. And, “Have you visited Suriet yourself?”
“No. Have you?”
“Yes. Nowhere is the night so dark as it is there.”
The dwarf pushed into the darkness. Which proved to be hanging strips of black felt.
There was no light on the other side of the felt, though. Until Stewpo said something that must have been a password.
An ancient Deve in traditional costume, wearing a huge beard, appeared behind a tiny candle. He said nothing while Stewpo and Else eased past and pushed through another set of felt hangings into a large underground room.
Else suspected the whole neighborhood was rife with tunnels and underground rooms, escape routes and places to hide. He wondered what the Deves had done with the surplus earth.
These Deves had been getting ready for trouble for a long time.
The underground room contained an arsenal and seven wizened, shrunken old men. Stewpo said, “These are the Devedian Elders of Sonsa.”
Else noted forests of gray facial fur. These old men might not have seen the real world in a generation. One old man looked like he might have been around, criticizing and complaining, when the Creator was putting together his great, flawed clockwork piece of art.
Else considered them, pigeonholed them, shifted attention to the arsenal.
He was impressed. “There must be a lot of money in the Devedian quarter.” He saw fire-throwing weapons from the Eastern Empire and Lucidian crossbows of the sort any fool could use with almost no training. He saw weapons meant for use by specialist troops like grenadiers. He saw amphorae marked as containing deadly poisons suitable for use on arrowheads, spearheads, crossbow bolts, swords, and knives.
It all suggested a ferocious determination.
The Devedians of Sonsa had suffered all they were going to take.
“I’m here,” he said. “And I see that you’re serious. What do you expect me to do?”
“Nothing if we’re not attacked,” Stewpo said. “Everything if we are. You’ll be our general. You’ll be our hope. But no one who isn’t in this room now will ever know that a foreign soldier was involved.”
Else felt his arm being twisted figuratively.
“Let’s see what we have to work with.” They did have him at their mercy.
Five minutes later, Else told the elders, “What’ll happen is, you’ll get yourselves massacred. First time they roll a wizard in on you.” Sorcery, even in the hands of its masters, seldom operated on a large scale. In a large battle a single sorcerer was almost irrelevant because he could impact only a tiny f
raction of the struggle at a time. But on the close, intimate battleground of a house-to-house struggle, the ability of a sorcerer to crush resistance systematically could be terrifying.
Else asked, “Why do Chaldareans want to attack Devedians?”
One old gray shrub with eyes said, “They say we’re a worldwide conspiracy to bring on a permanent darkness.”
“I guess that explains why Devedians are everywhere. Never mind that you arrived as slaves. You don’t want to confuse true believers with facts.” Also, there had been two earlier Devedian diasporas, before the most recent, brought about by the crusades. Those came during the age of the Old Empire.
Stewpo demanded, “What are you driving at?”
“A mob breaks into the Devedian quarter. It runs into military weapons used by determined fighters. What happens next?”
“A lot of people get killed.”
“Confirming the universal suspicion that the Deves are up to no good and need to be wiped out before they overthrow the Church and corrupt every Chaldarean virgin.”
There was no point reasoning. These people wanted a fight. They did not intend to let good sense get in the way. “What’s this?” he asked, having just discovered an instrument of destruction that had no business existing outside Dreanger.
It was a firepowder weapon of smaller bore and longer tube than the falcon that had gone to Andesqueluz. A craftsman had been working on it only moments ago. The smell of hot iron still tainted the air.
The tube had been created by wrapping iron wire around a steel rod, then heating the metal and hammering it. “Is a sword smith doing this?” It was a stretch but a similar concept underlay the making of the best swords. And the best sword smiths in Praman Direcia were Devedian.
Would this be something he was supposed to report? The existence of the weapon? Or the fact that there were Deve agents inside er-Rashal’s secret workshops? Firepowder weapons had seen field use only rarely. Until the incident of the bogon they had attracted no attention because of their freedom from success.
Stewpo finally confessed, “It’s an experimental weapon. I don’t pretend to understand it. I’m told it’ll give us a way to deal with unfriendly sorcerers.”
