Lord of the Silent Kingdom

  Ghort said, “They’re always drunk. Somebody keeps filling them up with wine, then giving them reasons to be mad. The wine costs money. The bullshit is cheaper than air.”

  “You can’t claim they don’t already have reasons, can you?”

  “Sure, I can. They didn’t need to come here without no prospects. Don’t nobody here owe them nothing.”

  “You and Piper came here with no more prospects.”

  Which was true in Ghort’s case. “We didn’t expect nobody to give us nothing, though.”

  Anna rose. “Pella. Vali. Go get dinner started.” She made little use of hired help, now. There were too many secrets around. “You may be rounding up a few bad men, Pinkus, but people are still worried about mystery men and night stalkers who chop out people’s livers.”

  “There hasn’t been another killing.”

  “Not the point. There will be. And you know it. You’re catching common criminals. The real evil is laughing at you.”

  Hecht interjected, “That’s hardly kind. Even Principatè Delari says Pinkus is working miracles with half a kit of flawed tools. A remedy for that might be on the way, Pinkus, but I can’t tell you about it yet. We have to get Sublime’s go-ahead.”

  Anna snapped, “And Delari has been doing so good? He may be the great bull ape of the Collegium, but I notice that even him and his cronies have only slowed down whatever it is out there.”

  “She’s got that right, Pipe. There ain’t no concrete proof, but I’m pretty sure all we’ve managed is to chase him, or it, farther underground.”

  Hecht knew. Delari was unhappy about it, too. In the extreme. And, after a fruitless winter, was beginning to worry. Saying just what Ghort had.

  In a city teeming with refugees it was impossible even to guess how many people were disappearing. Or why.

  There were people willing to buy bodies, living and freshly dead. And others willing to supply them.

  “It’s almost … It’s like there’s another one of those bogon monsters. Here. A clever one. Historically, they haven’t done a good job avoiding people.”

  “Not a bogon,” Ghort countered. “Not possible. That would be something the Collegium can handle. It’s what they were created for.”

  More or less. Though it was now the senate of the Church, the consistory of its high priests, in pagan times the Collegium had been a parliament of sorcerers created to beat back the Instrumentalities of the Night.

  “That was then. They’re mostly hacks today.”

  “Then maybe it’s time to call in the Special Office.”

  Hecht did not say so, but the Special Office was involved already. He was not supposed to know. But he had recognized several faces amongst recent visitors to the Chiaro Palace. One was the man who had given him the courier wallet to take to Sonsa.

  Muniero Delari was not happy. He loathed the Special Office. He hated Witchfinders. He had little love for the Brotherhood as a whole. He blamed them for the death of his only son.

  “We don’t want to have to deal with that. They’re too powerful already.”

  “And getting more powerful fast,” Anna said. “Rumor says the top Witchfinders have come over from the Castella Anjela dolla Picolena. They want to take control of the Society for the Suppression of Heresy and Sacrilege.”

  Hecht said, “It does look that way. And it’s making a lot ot people unhappy.”

  Everyone in the Church, excepting the Brotherhood of War, were certain that the Brotherhood enjoyed too much power and influence already. The Brotherhood believed it ought to rule a Church Militant. A Church far more aggressive toward Unbelievers and the Instrumentalities of the Night. Honario Benedocto’s commitment was too feeble for them.

  Pella announced, “There’s food, people.”

  “I swear,” Anna grumbled, “I can’t teach him manners at knife point.”

  “He does fine in public,” Ghort said.

  “Kind of like you,” said Hecht.

  “A lot like me. I’m slick as a weasel when I got an audience. The lad must be my spiritual offspring.”

  Anna said, “He doesn’t tell as many tall tales.”

  “Give him time. He’s only a kid. So what’s on the table, Pella?”

  “Lamb pie. Piper always wants mutton something whenever he’s here. Like he was a Deve, or something.”

  “I just like mutton. And you don’t get it around here much.” He started to pull a seat away from Anna’s low dining table.

  The world began to shake.

  “What the hell?”

  “Earthquake!” Anna squealed.

  Pella’s jaw dropped. Nothing came out of his mouth. Vali shrieked, the first sound Hecht ever heard from her. She flung herself at Anna, buried herself in the woman’s skirts. Terrified.

  “I don’t think it’s a quake,” Ghort gasped. “It’s going on way too long.” The earth did go on shaking. A deep-throated, distant, ongoing roar, punctuated by screams, came from outside.

  “I don’t think so, either,” Hecht said. He was aware of no historical instance of an earthquake in Brothe.

  He headed for the front door.

  Anna barked, “You don’t want to go out there!”

  The racket outside suggested rising panic.

  Something fell in the kitchen.

  “I want to see …”

  “Every one of those idiots will expect you to know what’s happening. And what to do about it.”

  The woman might have a point. She knew her neighbors. “You check it out, then. I’ll see what happened in the kitchen.”

  Anna went outside. The kids followed her, too quick and elusive to be stayed.

  Ghort said, “We’re gonna got to go out there anyhow, Pipe. ‘Cause whatever that is, it’s big and it’s our job to get in the middle of it.”

  Pinkus Ghort was not psychic. Anyone able to walk and talk at the same time could have made that call.

  They had made themselves critical cogs in the Brothen machine.

  They got away without attracting attention. People were all focused on a vast, thick, dense boiling cloud rising to the north-northwest.

  “What the hell?” Ghort muttered, awed.

  “That doesn’t look like smoke.” But Hecht could not imagine how so much dust could be thrown up.

  The ground still trembled occasionally, but no longer continuously.

  Lightning crackled inside the roiling gray cloud.

  “Sorcery,” Ghort murmured. “I’ve never seen lightning with that greenish tint.”

  “I’m getting a bad feeling, Pinkus.”

  The lightning flashed more emphatically. The cloud lit up from inside, a flickering lilac glow that waxed and waned like a slow heartbeat. Thunder burped.

  “That’s got to be up by the hippodrome, Pipe. Maybe the part they’re working on fell down.”

  The racing stadium was fourteen hundred years old. In ancient times it had been the scene of gladiatorial contests and other blood games. Renovations had been under way since the close of the autumn racing season because a small collapse had taken place during the pounding excitement of a late-season chariot race featuring champions from Firaldian cities against several from the Eastern Empire.

  “It’d have to be a big part.”

  They were afoot, pushing upstream against a current of fugitives whose panicky reports made no sense.

  The lightning in the cloud grew more excited. The cloud itself was ferociously active but contained. It was not spreading. It did rise higher with every flash. The waxing/waning light sent glowing globs climbing the vast trunk, fading as they slowed.

  “It’s definitely dust,” Hecht said. “I can smell it already.”

  “Maybe we better not get any closer, then. That much stuff could drown you without water.”

  Particularly vicious lightning ripped through the cloud. And sustained itself.

  The cloud burst.

  “Shit! Look at that!”

  The cloud collapsed. Moments lat
er a churning flood swept around a turn a quarter mile ahead. It charged them faster than a man could run. Ghort swore. “Aaron’s Hairy Balls!”

  Hecht hoisted his shirt over his face, almost panicky.

  Ghort pulled him into a tenement doorway a moment before the flood arrived. Ghort pounded on the door. “City Regiment! Emergency! Open up!”

  To Hecht’s amazement, that worked. A stooped crone stared at them from behind a preteen boy armed with a broken board. Her cataracted eyes were open amazingly wide.

  “We ain’t spooks, Granny. Get your ass in there, Pipe! You want to drown in this shit?”

  Ghort slammed the door. Dust swirled in through cracks. Ghort brushed himself off enough to reveal his City Regiment officer’s jacket. Which he wore mostly because of the perks it could command.

  The boy recognized him. “It’s the Commandant his own self, Nana. Really.”

  The old woman remained suspicious. Which seemed a sound strategy to Hecht.

  Ghort told her, “Don’t open up again before the dust settles. It’ll choke you right now. Boy, is there any way to reach the roof from inside?” The tenement stood four stories tall.

  The boy said, “Follow me, Commandant.”

  Hecht raised an eyebrow. Ghort had the title but nobody used it. Strange as it might sound, this looked like a case of hero worship.

  Disturbing thought.

  The roof did raise them above the worst of the dust. But did them no good when it came to betraying the source of the dust.

  The boy chattered away. He had followed Ghort’s career. He wanted to be a regular city soldier when he grew up.

  Hecht shook his head and tried to discover the source of the dust. He could see nothing but a sinking, flattening dome of gray that hid the city immediately north. The high points of Krois, the Castella, the Chiaro Palace, various obelisks in the Memorium, distant hills, and so forth could just be distinguished beyond.

  “It was the hippodrome,” Hecht guessed. “But how?”

  “Sorcery.”

  ***

  IT WAS THE HIPPODROME. AND MORE. AS GHORT AND Hecht discovered after the dust subsided enough to let them approach the scene of the disaster.

  “Sorcery,” Ghort said again, looking down into the vast hole full of rubble that had swallowed the racing stadium.

  “Sorcery,” Hecht agreed. He would rather have blamed the collapse on time and failure of strength in the catacombs helow, but had seen what he had seen earlier.

  “Ever see anything like this?”

  “Never.” And, as an afterthought, “You were there every time I’ve ever had any run-in with the things of the Night.”

  “Hey! Don’t go blaming it on me.”

  “This is probably something you should handle.” Some of Ghort’s soldiers were there already, standing around looking dazed. Along with hundreds of gawkers. “We don’t want a lot of people getting hurt.”

  “Too late for that, Pipe. There’s gonna be plenty of bodies in that mess, you can bet.” Looking down into the pit.

  No doubt. Craftsmen would have been doing renovations. And there were always squatters hiding in the great stadium.

  Hecht could see corpses and parts of corpses already. “There may be survivors down there, too, Pinkus.

  You get to it. I’ll muster my troops and send them over to help.”

  There was a brilliant flash beneath the rubble. Crackling, muted thunder followed. Then the earth shifted.

  They retreated. The pavements where they had stood tilted, slowly slid into the pit. On the far side the last surviving wall of the hippodrome sank majestically into the earth. More dust roared up, less dense than before. A breeze from the south pushed it away from Hecht and Ghort. “Later,” Hecht said. “And be careful.”

  “Careful is my new family name. You see anything around here worth stealing?”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m thinking my guys might have to worry more about looters than rescue and cleanup.”

  Hecht granted agreement, then headed for the Castella.

  Hecht found his staff in place, at work, when he entered the suite provided by the Brotherhood. “Have you all heard what’s happened?”

  “Some kind of disaster,” Colonel Smolens said. “I sent people out to investigate. So did the Brothers.”

  “A disaster. Yes. The hippodrome fell down. Because the catacombs caved in. Sorcery was involved. I saw it happening. It’s a huge mess. I expect we’ll need to help keep order.”

  Everyone asked questions at once.

  “That’s all I know. Except that there’ll be casualties. Call out the soldiers. Assemble them in the Closed Ground. Weapons and kit. Do we have enough messengers?”

  “We can borrow from the Brotherhood. They’ve got a lot of extra mouths around here lately.”

  “Good. Go. Titus. Who owns the hippodrome?”

  “The Church. Why?”

  “That’s what I thought. Meaning the Church will have to clean up and rebuild.”

  “Sir?”

  “If Sublime has to do that, he’ll have less to invest in us and his ambitions.”

  “Oh. My. Are you talking about sabotage? A scheme to disarm Sublime?”

  “No. We know people who are ruthless enough. But not smart enough to recognize the opportunity.

  Actually, I think the disaster could be the by-product of something much darker.”

  Everyone stopped work and turned.

  “The sorcery involved was huge. You won’t believe the eyewitnesses.”

  Hecht, with Titus Consent in tow, went to review the troops. The few seemed lost in the expanse of the Closed Ground. Colonel Smolens reported, “This is all we could pull together. So far.”

  Hecht guessed he was looking at a hundred twenty men. Something we’ll have to work on.”

  “Sir?” Consent asked.

  “Responding to the unexpected more quickly.”

  Colonel Smolens observed, “They’ll come as soon as they get the word. We need a signal. A horn, maybe.”

  Hecht grunted. The slow response was his fault. He had not wanted his married soldiers living separate from their families. He had suffered too much of that when he was Sha-lug. The trouble with the horn notion was that the city was loo big.

  Titus Consent said, “Company coming. Looks like Principatè Doneto.”

  Doneto, Donel Madisetti, and several lesser lights of the Collegium. Doneto demanded, “What are you doing, Captain-General?”

  “Assembling my troops in order to help keep public order around the collapse.”

  It would be dark soon. The looters would bloom by moonlight.

  “Admirable,” Doneto said. “Exactly the responsible sort of action we expect of you, Captain-General.

  But I have to change your plans.”

  “Sir?” Insanity. The Brothen people would be outraged if the Church did nothing. Loving Mother Church with her infinite charity.

  Principatè Doneto did one of those disconcerting mindreading tricks Collegium sorts enjoyed so much.

  “We won’t deliberately withhold assistance, Captain-General.” He jerked his head sideways. He wanted a private word.

  Hecht joined him. “Sir?”

  “There’s an uprising coming tonight. Possibly connected to what happened at the hippodrome.”

  “There hasn’t been much disorder since Colonel Ghort got aggressive.”

  “A change of strategy by those who would misbehave, I expect.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Back up the Palace guard. The mob is supposed to hit us here.”

  Principatè Doneto was an accomplished liar, hard to read. But Hecht thought he was being sincere but not entirely forthcoming. “This is what His Holiness wants?”

  “Desperately.”

  Oh? The response suggested some special interest by the Patriarch’s cousin.

  Men continued to assemble. Smolens and the staff kept order while Hecht conferred with Doneto. The Drumm br
others arrived filthy, sweaty, and minus their tunics. The elder, gasping, reported, “There’s a huge mob in the Memorium, sir. They chased us. Because of our uniforms. We almost didn’t get away.”

  The mob could be heard outside, getting louder.

  The Chiaro Palace had been built at the height of the Old Brothen Empire, when the frontiers were a thousand miles away and whole legions quartered in the city, capable of suppressing disorder instantly.

  There had been no need to make the Palace defensible. A bastion of bureaucracy, it remained untouched during even the ferocious Imperial civil wars.

  Whoever crowned himself Emperor needed the tax rolls and a means of extorting money from the citizenry.

  The mob poured into the Closed Ground. Brothens had been accustomed to do so for two score generations. These pilgrims were drunk. Some carried torches. Weapons were makeshift, cudgels, bricks, tools, knives, and, rarely, a rusty keepsake military sword purloined by an ancestor.

  “Looks like mainly refugees,” Titus Consent told Hecht. “I’ve heard several languages already that aren’t native to Firaldia.

  “They don’t seem eager for a confrontation, though.”

  Some sobering up was taking place out there.

  Someone whose job it was to stir trouble threw a stone. Hecht told his staff, “I don’t want anyone doing anything unless they actually break in. They’ll go home if they just stand around long enough for their heads to start hurting.”

  Voices exhorted the mob. It was not necessary to understand to get the gist.

  Hecht said, “They’ll be too tired and hungover to become o bnoxious if we don’t respond.”

  Captain-General Piper Hecht’s Patriarchal soldiers were combat veterans. He was able to cherry-pick the very best available. Having seen the elephant up close and smelled her foul breath, his men were not eager for a bloodletting contest.

  The Palace guards did not suffer a comparable level of basic sense.

  “That damned fool will get us all killed,” Colonel Smolens said, indicating a guard officer who was headed out with three uniformed footmen.

  “Must think the livery makes him invulnerable,” Hecht said. “Principatè Doneto, how about you … Where did he go?” Doneto, Madisetti, and the others had vanished. “Doneto could have ordered him back.” He could not. He might be Captain-General but there were a thousand exceptions to his being in charge.