She trades in places where the republics think they own a monopoly.”
“A smuggler.”
“Technically. Her master would argue, though.”
“He’d sail up the Sawn to Sonsa?”
“Why not? If he ain’t carrying contraband?”
Hecht thought there might be a problem, anyway. If he took up his notion. He had been to Sonsa before.
Ghort said, “Unless the gods intervene, we can afford another day. If we use the Lumberer.”
“The what?”
“That’s the name of the boat. A joke. Like calling a big guy Tiny.”
Hecht understood without comprehending. It was a western thing. “Uhm. I wonder. Think we could pull it off?”
“What?”
“Sneaking out. To make the pickup ourselves.”
“Sure. But your excuse is gonna raise a stink like a year-old latrine.” Ghort smirked.
“But if we say we did it ourselves because we didn’t have the money to pay our men to, we shame them before the people.”
“If we pull it off.”
“Yes. We wouldn’t dare fail.” Hecht knew what he was proposing was not bright. But sometimes you bull ahead in full knowledge that you are doing something dumb.
“Goo! Hey! Back to the fun days when we didn’t have no responsibilities.”
“We could get things done right the first time.”
“Let’s do.” Ghort was not obsessive about being responsible. “Just cancel everything and go, Pipe.”
“I’m tempted.” He was. “I’ll think about that, too.”
***
THE VISIT TO THE BATHS, THE CONFERENCE WITH PlNKUS Ghort, and a visit to Polo in the Chiaro Palace hospital left the Captain-General two hours late for his daily staff conference. “I’m sorry.
The Clearenza situation has the Collegium in a snit.” They would know that he had been called in.
Five senior staffers waited in the master planning center at the Castella dollas Pontellas. They included Hecht’s new second in command, Colonel Buhle Smolens. Smolens had not been appointed by the Captain-General. Hecht did not know the man. He came from the Patriarchal garrison at Maleterra and was related to somebody Sublime owed money. He did, however, have a solid military reputation.
Clej Sedlakova was an observer for the Brotherhood. They insisted. The Captain-General was using their facilities.
Hecht could not operate without their approval and support.
Sedlakova was new, too, but there was no doubt he knew his way around a battlefield. He had lost his shield arm. His face bore two ugly scars, one down the right side and one across his forehead. The latter was permanently purple. He did not say much. Nor did he interfere.
The other three men had been with Hecht since he had taken over the City Regiment in the run-up to the Calziran Crusade. They were Hagan Brokke, a Krogusian who had
been a private soldier at the time of the first pirate attacks.
He had risen swiftly by demonstrating outstanding abilities. He was Hecht’s planning officer.
The others were Titus Consent and Tabill Talab, chief intelligence officer and lead quartermaster. Both were Devedian, which made folks like Clej Sedlakova uncomfortable. Consent was in his early twenties.
Sedlakova might be uncomfortable but he was implacably tolerant. Both Deves were exceptionally competent. And unobtrusive with their religion.
All five men were accompanied by assistants. Managing the Patriarch’s armed forces was not a minor enterprise.
Hagan Brokke said, “We’re working on that, sir.” He indicated a vast wall map of Firaldia. That was a permanent feature of the room. Every little county, dukedom, principality, city-state, kingdom, and republic was delineated. Political entities were identified by color, in a dozen shades. Isolated parts of the same entity were connected by black strings. Each entity was tagged with a numbered piece of paper.
That referenced a sheet listing significant local personalities, the number and sorts of soldiers available, quality of fortifications, and useful political, marital, and family alliance information.
Brokke said, “If we have to attempt the absurd we have garrisons here, here, and here that can support us. I’ve sent warning orders.”
“Excellent.”
Titus Consent said, “The Imperials will expect that. It shouldn’t worry them. They won’t expect anything to come of it. Our side talks loud but never actually does anything.”
“We might break that precedent this time.”
Consent continued. “Couriers will alert our intelligence assets in the region, too.” He tended to talk that way.
“Good again.” Consent meant messages had been sent to the Devedian ghettoes.
There were Deves everywhere. Going unnoticed, they saw and heard most of the inner workings. And their elders, for the moment, were willing to feed information to Captain-General Piper Hecht.
Which was useful but embarrassing. Deves were little more popular than demons. They were too educated. Too prosperous. Too smart. You did not want to associate too intimately with that sort. They were the source of all the world’s evil — if there were no handy Pramans or Maysaleans, other loathsome Unbelievers or heretics, or the Instrumentalities of the Night, to blame. Being literate, Deves wrote things down. Often things you did not want retailed accurately later.
The literate were as mistrusted as those who had congress with the Night. Either could destroy you with arcane knowledge.
Hecht said, “Bring me up-to-date. Can fon Dreasser protect himself?”
Titus Consent was a tall youth, slim, dark of mien, usually cheerful. He was talented in the extreme and thoroughly competent. He was not obviously Devedian. He handled rampant prejudice mainly by refusing to acknowledge it. He was a solid family man. Early on he had told Hecht that he had been raised from infancy to become a sort of savior for the Deves of the western diaspora.
He said, “We haven’t had time to find out. I can tell you that it would be smart to get some arrears money to the garrisons out that way. Blatantly obvious, but every time we pry back pay out of the Patriarch we win more friends among the men with the sharp iron.”
That sort of thinking had gotten Hecht exiled from Dreanger when he was Else Tage. Else Tage had been popular with the soldiers.
“Any chance we can find some money?”
“We talked to the Fiducian, Joceran Cuito.” Cuito was director of the Patriarchal treasury. He was a Direcian archbishop who was in line to join the Collegium. On merit, and because he had Peter of Navaya as a sponsor. “He means to employ a battery of limited, secured loans.”
Sublime was inclined to avoid securing his loans with anything more substantial than a signature. But ink was no longer enough for Brothe’s moneylenders.
“Property?” The Church was the biggest landowner in Firaldia. Since earliest Old Brothen times land had been the critical measure of wealth. Only land could provide a stream of income.
“Fiducian Cuito would rather pawn art treasures and rare books from the Krois Palace. He won’t say why, but he’s sure the Church is going to receive a substantial windfall before long.”
“Then something’s going on under the table. And Sublime’s kept it inside his inner circle.”
“Exactly.”
“Considering the time of year and general economy, I’d say they’re going to steal something. Or sell something. Big. They’ve already sold all the seats in the Collegium that they can. And all the livings that anybody will pay for.” A thought. “Could it be a fat bequest?”
“I don’t know of anyone with one foot in the grave and the inclination to bribe the guardians at Heaven’s gates.”
“Would they hurry somebody off to the Promised Land early?” Sublime had not yet been accused of murder for profit. But his predecessors had.
“We don’t have access to their records. We haven’t heard of any pending legacies.”
“Keep an eye on it.” Hecht settled in t
o listen to other reports, not just about Clearenza. He had some responsibilities regarding the ongoing effort to suppress diehard Praman partisans in Calzir.
Calzir would never reclaim its independence. If Sublime recalled his garrisons the Grail Empire and Navaya would flood the vacuum. Making Sublime’s two biggest competitors even stronger.
Fate conspired to thwart Sublime at every turn. But he refused to see the stumbling blocks as an expression of God’s will.
Few men took their own reverses as God’s will. Instead, they worked hard to adjust God’s will to reflect their own.
Sublime probably spent a lot of time asking God why it all had to be so hard.
Moving close, Titus Consent asked, “Can I see you privately after we’re done?”
“Absolutely. I need a word with you, too. Colonel Smolens, are you confident enough to take over if I take a few days off?”
Smolens showed surprise, then curiosity. “I know my way around, now.”
“Your biggest problem would likely be having to deal with our masters. None of them are the least bit reasonable.”
“No problem, Captain-General. I can pretend they’re my extended family.” Buhle Smolens was perfectly formal. He demonstrated the ideal military courtesy, uphill and down, always. He had brought his family to Brothe. Nobody had met them yet. Smolens mentioned them only in passing. His eldest son supposedly wanted a subaltern’s position, if one came open.
Smolens had several interesting ideas for installing a more professional attitude in the Patriarchal armies.
His big fault was his conviction concerning the earthly and moral supremacy of the Episcopal vein of the Chaldarean faith. Though he did not buy the doctrine of Patriarchal Infallibility.
Hard to do with Sublime V in front of you every day.
Tabill Talab was troubled. He wasted no time once Hecht recognized him. “I’m having a problem no one else seems to notice. I feel a bleak future closing in. For everyone.”
Talab was the eternal pessimist, chosen to balance Titus Consent’s overconfidence. “Do explain.”
“I talk to our couriers. I talk to merchants. I talk to refugees. I ask for reports from our agents in the republics because their ships visit all the ports of the Mother Sea.”
Hecht nodded. No point hurrying the man. Talab could get where he was going only along an engineered path.
“No matter where the reports originate, they always mention upswings in the activities of the Night. Not big stuff. Not yet. Just more sightings, more encounters, more malicious mischief getting more virulent.”
“Only the minor spirits remain unbound.”
“Unbound and unconstrained. But becoming more numerous. They’re running from the ice, too.”
“Which we expected. Right?”
“Yes, sir. But what hasn’t been considered is the fact that the things of the Night have always been more common along the edges of the ice, where societies are more primitive. Out there some of the big ones are still running loose. When the ice advances, and establishes itself permanently in places like the high mountains, all the wildest surviving free shades are pushed into tamer country.”
Hecht nodded. No one talked about it much — yet — but that was a logical and obvious development.
“That’s generally recognized. It’s started already.”
“Yes, sir, it has. What I don’t hear discussed is what that means for the Night.”
“Yes?” Talab might be headed where most people were afraid to go.
“When people get pressed together you get what we already have here in Brothe. Worse poverty. More violence that’s deadlier. More organized criminal activity. More racism and prejudice. All because you have more people trying to live off the same limited resources.
“The same thing happens with the things of the Night. Only they start to combine into stronger entities.
Not often willingly. They just keep getting bigger and stronger if they can devour their own kind. They get angrier, more hateful, and malicious. When they’re strong enough, and big enough, they turn into the Night things from old scary stories.”
“The ice will gift us with a new round of monster gods?”
“If it advances far enough. Possibly a crop as ugly as those who cursed the earth before modern religions hammered their deities into a more benign shape.”
The God of the Pramans, the Chaldareans, the Devedians, and the Dainshaukin enjoyed the same lineage. The Dainshaukin saw Him fierce and psychotic and disinclined to be a nurturer or giver of rewards. He was a punisher, the Punisher, the source of all misfortune, and would happily do you in because He did not like your haircut.
Devedians had a better deal. Their vision of the Almighty visited miseries only when they were earned.
He could be appeased without a human sacrifice.
“It isn’t something we can do much about. Except keep our heads down and hope … What?”
Titus Consent said, “You’re forgetting the soultaken.”
“I haven’t forgotten. They …” Hecht noted what had to be a warning glance from Talab to Consent, nearly invisible in its subtlety, reminding him that his staff had other loyalties.
The soultaken had been men from another age conscripted by their gods so they could open a pathway out of a northern sort of hell. The dead heroes preserved there could then storm forth and destroy what those gods feared most: the Godslayer. Someone who, by happenstance, had learned that even the greatest of the Instrumentalities of the Night could be rendered subject to the wrath of men.
Else Tage had slain a bogon, a baron of the Night, in Esther’s Wood in the Holy Lands, saving his war band from an attack initiated by a source he never identified. Later, he and the Devedians of Brothe destroyed one of the soultaken meant to silence him before knowledge he did not know he possessed became general.
The All-Father god of the pre-Chaldarean north himself perished trying to extinguish that knowledge.
Prophecy fulfilled.
Piper Hecht remained largely unaware of the full implications of what he had done. The Devedians were not unaware. Their Elders knew who Piper Hecht used to be. They knew what he had done. They knew he had won a fierce reputation amongst the Instrumentalities of the Night, and that those forces would have exterminated him long since had they been better able to distinguish one mortal from another.
The biggest had to use something like the soultaken to find an individual.
Although a brilliant commander and leader, Piper Hecht, under whatever name, sailed through life in near ignorance of what he really was. He was feared by powers and people of which and whom he was unaware or was insufficiently suspicious.
“What about them?” Hecht did know that he was woefully ignorant about all that. Other than that a string of murders had culminated in the emergence and passing of major Instrumentalities during the Calziran Crusade.
Hagan Brokke observed, “The soultaken were just a fore-taste of what’s coming, I think. The gods themselves have begun to take a real interest in mundane events.”
“Gods?” Clej Sedlakova demanded. “There is only one God!”
“Excuse me. For want of another label. High Demons, if you prefer. To borrow from the Dainshaukin.”
Those monotheists recognized a mind-boggling array of lesser supernatural entities arranged in several parallel and inimical hierarchies.
Hecht smiled. “I don’t much care.” No one took exception. Even Sedlakova was disinclined to insist on strict conformance to dogma. “I’ll think about it. Though that’s something more suited to the Collegium.
Colonel Smolens. To my earlier point. I’ll be out of touch. You’ll have to deal with whatever comes up. I shouldn’t be gone long.”
Smolens asked, “Do we know where you are? Do we admit that you’re not around?”
“If you’re pressed say I’m not available. You really won’t know where I am.” Though he would not bet against the Deves keeping track.
“How long?
At the most?” Titus Consent asked.
“As long as it takes to finish what I need to do.” Meaning do not get up to anything he should not. “Good.
Enjoy yourselves. Oh. You wanted a private word, Titus?”
Consent betrayed what might have been a glimmer of fear. He whispered, “Outside the Castella. I’ll walk with you.”
Hecht nodded. Not inside the keep of the Chaldarean religion’s most ferocious defenders? What a surprise.
Hecht waited till after they crossed to the shore and were headed downriver, toward the Memorium.
“More problems with the Elders?” The Seven, the Elders of the Brothen Deves, were a pain as big as the heads of the Five Families, or members of the Collegium. They could not leave Titus Consent alone to get on with his sacred work.
“Not yet. I’m sure there will be. That isn’t it. Yet.”
“Well?”
“Noë is almost to term.”
“Uhm.” Hecht knew Consent’s wife and sons by name but had yet to meet them. Deves did not mix with Chaldareans socially. “Congratulations.”
Consent stopped. He shuddered. Hecht halted, back to the jungle of monuments to Old Brothen emperors, generals, and dictators, and their triumphs. “What is it?”
“Noë and I have discussed this for months. We want you to be the baby’s godfather. And Principatè Delari to sponsor us. If he will.”
Hecht did not get it right away. He still had to get the hang of being Episcopal Chaldarean. “Godfather? I didn’t know Deves did that.”
“Not the Chaldarean way. My brother would do it. If I had one. Since I don’t, my uncles should get the job.”
Hecht finally caught on. “Are you talking about converting?”
“I am. If you’ll be the baby’s godfather. And if Principatè Delari will sponsor us. We’ve been studying in secret. We already know most of what we need to.”
Hecht was stunned. “But you’re the Elect.”
“They never asked me. I don’t want to be the Elect. It’s eaten me up for twenty years. I want out. I want to convert.”
“The Seven will explode! They won’t have anything to do with us anymore. They’ll blame us.” Selfishly, he added, We’ll be blinded.”