‘It might prove to be politically inconvenient,’ Dolmant said. ‘At least you were able to control your tongue, brother.’
‘Not to worry, Dolmant,’ Emban said expansively. ‘I’ll keep an eye on your friends here, and as soon as I suspect that one of them is starting to have difficulty controlling his tongue, I’ll order him to that monastery at Zemba down in Cammoria where the brothers all take vows of silence.’
‘All right then,’ Vanion said, ‘let’s get started, gentlemen. We have a number of friendly Patriarchs to round up, and Kalten, I want you to go start practising forgery. The names you’ll be substituting on those arrest warrants will have to be in the handwriting of the Earl of Lenda.’ He paused thoughtfully, looking at his blond subordinate. ‘You’d better take Sparhawk with you,’ he added.
‘I can manage, My Lord.’
Vanion shook his head. ‘No, Kalten,’ he disagreed, ‘I don’t think so. I’ve seen your attempts at spelling before.’
‘Bad?’ Darellon asked him.
‘Terrible, my friend. Once he wrote down a six-letter word, and he didn’t manage to get a single letter right.’
‘Some words are difficult to spell, Vanion.’
‘His own name?’
‘But you can’t do this!’ the Patriarch of Cardos protested shrilly as Sparhawk and Kalten dragged him from his house a few days later. ‘You can’t arrest a Patriarch of the Church for anything while the Hierocracy’s in session.’
‘But the Hierocracy’s not in session just now, Your Grace,’ Sparhawk pointed out. ‘They’re in recess during the period of official mourning.’
‘I still cannot be tried by a civil court. I demand that you present these specious charges before an ecclesiastical court.’
‘Take him outside,’ Sparhawk curtly instructed the black-armoured Sir Perraine.
The Patriarch of Cardos was dragged from the room.
‘Why the delay?’ Kalten asked.
‘Two things. Our prisoner didn’t really seem all that surprised at the charges, did he?’
‘Now that you mention it, no.’
‘I think maybe Lenda missed a few names when he was drawing up that list.’
‘That’s always possible. What was the other thing?’
‘Let’s send a message to Annias. He knows that we can’t touch him as long as he stays inside the Basilica, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right then, let’s imprison him there and curtail his freedom of movement – for its irritation value if nothing else. We still owe him for that poisoned cook.’
‘How do you plan to do that?’
‘Watch – and follow my lead.’
‘Don’t I always?’
They went out to the courtyard of the Patriarch’s luxurious house, a house built, Sparhawk was sure, on the backs of the Elenian taxpayers. ‘My colleague and I have considered your request for an ecclesiastical hearing, Your Grace,’ the big Pandion said to the prisoner. ‘We find that your argument has merit.’ He began to leaf through his sheaf of warrants.
‘You’ll deliver me to the Basilica for a hearing there then?’ the Patriarch asked.
‘Hmm?’ Sparhawk said absently, still reading.
‘I said, are you going to take me to the Basilica and present these absurd charges there?’
‘Ah, I don’t think so, Your Grace. That would really be inconvenient.’ Sparhawk pulled out the warrant for the arrest of the Primate of Cimmura and showed it to Kalten.
‘That’s the one, all right,’ Kalten said. ‘That’s the fellow we want.’
Sparhawk rolled up the warrant and tapped it against his cheek. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do, Your Grace,’ he said. ‘We’re going to take you to the Alcione chapterhouse and confine you there. These charges originated in the kingdom of Elenia, and any ecclesiastical proceedings would have to be conducted by the head of the Church in that kingdom. Since Primate Annias is acting for the Patriarch of Cimmura during His Grace’s incapacity, that makes him the man who would preside over this hearing. Strange how things work out, isn’t it? Since Primate Annias is the one in authority in this matter, we’ll freely turn you over to him. All he has to do is to come out of the Basilica, go to the Alcione chapterhouse and order us to turn you over to him.’ He glanced at a red-tunicked officer being guarded by the bleak-looking Sir Perraine. ‘The captain of your guard here will serve as an excellent messenger. Why don’t you have a word with him and explain the situation? Then we’ll send him to the Basilica to tell Annias about it. Tell him to ask the good Primate to come and visit us. We’ll be overjoyed to see him on neutral ground, won’t we, Kalten?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ Kalten replied fervently.
The Patriarch of Cardos gave them a suspicious look, then quickly conferred with the captain of his guard detachment. He kept glancing at the rolled-up warrant in Sparhawk’s hand as he spoke.
‘Do you think he got the point?’ Kalten murmured.
‘I certainly hope so. I did everything but hit him over the head with it.’
The Patriarch of Cardos returned, his face stiff with anger.
‘Oh, one other thing, Captain,’ Sparhawk said to the church soldier, who was preparing to leave. ‘Would you be so good as to convey a personal message to the Primate of Cimmura for us? Tell him that Sir Sparhawk of the Pandion Order invites him to come out from under the dome of Basilica to play in the streets – where certain petty little restrictions won’t interfere with our fun.’
Kurik arrived that evening. He was travel-stained and looked weary. Berit escorted him into Dolmant’s study, and he sank into a chair. ‘I’d have been here a bit sooner,’ he apologized, ‘but I stopped off in Demos to see Aslade and the boys. She gets very cross when I ride through town and don’t stop.’
‘How is Aslade?’ Patriarch Dolmant asked.
‘Fatter,’ Kurik smiled, ‘and I think she’s getting a little silly as the years creep up on her. She was feeling nostalgic, so she took me up into the hayloft.’ His jaw set slightly. ‘I had a long talk with the boys about letting thistles grow in the hayfield later, though.’
‘Do you have any idea of what he’s talking about, Sparhawk?’ Dolmant asked in perplexity.
‘Yes, Your Grace.’
‘But you’re not going to explain it to me, are you?’
‘No, Your Grace, I don’t think so. How’s Ehlana?’ he asked his squire.
‘Difficult,’ Kurik grunted. ‘Unprincipled. Abrasive. Wilful. Overbearing. Demanding. Sneaky. Unforgiving – just your average, run-of-the-mill young queen. I like her, though. She reminds me of Flute for some reason.’
‘I wasn’t asking for a description, Kurik,’ Sparhawk said. ‘I was inquiring as to her health.’
‘She seems fine to me. If there was anything wrong with her, she wouldn’t be able to run that fast.’
‘Run?’
‘She seems to feel that she missed a great deal while she was asleep, so she’s trying to catch up. She’s had her nose in every corner of the palace by now. Lenda’s seriously contemplating suicide, I think, and the chambermaids are all in a state of despair. You can’t hide a speck of dust from her. She may not have the best kingdom in the world when she’s finished, but she’s certainly going to have the neatest.’ Kurik reached inside his leather vest. ‘Here,’ he said, pulling out a very thick packet of folded parchment. ‘She wrote you a letter. Give yourself time to read it, My Lord. It took her two days to write it.’
‘How’s the home guard idea working out?’ Kalten asked.
‘Quite well, actually. Just before I left, a battalion of church soldiers arrived outside the city. The battalion commander made the mistake of standing too near the gate when he demanded admittance. A couple of citizens dumped something on him.’
‘Burning pitch?’ Tynian surmised.
‘No, Sir Tynian,’ Kurik grinned. ‘The two fellows make their living draining and cleaning cesspools. The officer received the fruit of their
day’s labour – about a hogshead full. The colonel – or whatever he was under all of that – lost his head and ordered an assault on the gate. That’s when the rocks and burning pitch came into play. The soldiers set up camp not too far from the east wall to think things over, and late that night a score or so of Platime’s cut-throats climbed down ropes from the parapet and visited their camp. The soldiers didn’t have too many officers left the following morning. They milled around out there for a while, and then they went away. I think your queen’s quite safe, Sparhawk. As a group, soldiers aren’t very imaginative, and unconventional tactics tend to confuse them. Platime and Stragen are having the time of their lives, and the common people are beginning to take a certain pride in their city. They’re even sweeping the streets on the off chance that Ehlana might ride by on one of her morning inspections.’
‘Those idiots aren’t letting her out of the palace, are they?’ Sparhawk exclaimed angrily.
‘Who’s going to stop her? She’s safe, Sparhawk. Platime put the biggest woman I’ve ever seen to guarding her. The woman’s almost as big as Ulath, and she carries more weapons than a platoon.’
‘That would be Mirtai, the giantess,’ Talen said. ‘Queen Ehlana’s perfectly safe, Sparhawk. Mirtai’s an army all by herself.’
‘A woman?’ Kalten asked incredulously.
‘I wouldn’t recommend calling her that to her face, Kalten,’ the boy said seriously. ‘She thinks of herself as a warrior, and nobody in his right mind argues with her. She wears men’s clothes most of the time, probably because she doesn’t want to be pestered by fellows who like their women large. She’s got knives attached to her in some of the most unexpected places. She’s even got a pair built into the soles of her shoes. Not much of those two knives stick out past her toes, but it’s enough. You really wouldn’t want her to kick you in certain tender places.’
‘Where did Platime ever come across a woman like that?’ Kalten asked him.
‘He bought her,’ Talen shrugged. ‘She was about fifteen at the time and hadn’t reached her full growth. She didn’t speak a word of Elene, I’ve been told. He tried to put her to work in a brothel, but after she’d crippled or killed a dozen or so potential customers, he changed his mind.’
‘Everybody speaks Elene,’ Kalten objected.
‘Not in the Tamul Empire, I understand. Mirtai’s a Tamul. That’s why she has such a strange name. I’m afraid of her, and I don’t say that about many people.’
‘It’s not only the giantess, Sparhawk,’ Kurik continued. ‘The common people know their neighbours, and they know everybody who has unreliable political opinions. The people are fanatically loyal to the queen now, and every one of them makes it his personal business to keep an eye on his neighbours. Platime’s rounded up just about everybody in town who’s the least bit suspect.’
‘Annias has a lot of underlings in Cimmura,’ Sparhawk fretted.
‘He used to, My Lord,’ Kurik corrected. “There were a number of messy object lessons, and if there’s anyone left in Cimmura who doesn’t love the queen, he’s being very careful to keep that fact to himself. Can I have something to eat? I’m famished.’
The funeral of Archprelate Cluvonus was suitably stupendous. Bells tolled for days, and the air inside the Basilica was tainted with incense and with chants and hymns solemnly delivered in archaic Elene, a language very few present could still comprehend. All clerics wore sober black in most situations, but such solemn occasions as this brought forth a rainbow of brightly-coloured vestments. The Patriarchs all wore crimson, and the Primates were robed in the colours of their kingdom of origin. Each of the nineteen cloistered orders of monks and nuns had its own special colour, and each colour had its own special significance. The nave of the Basilica was a riot of often conflicting colours, more closely resembling the site of a Cammorian country fair than a place where a solemn funeral was being conducted. Obscure little rituals and superstitious hold-overs from antiquity were religiously performed, although no one had the faintest notion of their significance. A sizeable number of priests and monks, whose sole duties in life were to perform those rituals and antiquated ceremonies, appeared briefly in public for the only times in their lives. One aged monk, whose sole purpose in life was to carry a black velvet cushion upon which rested a dented and very tarnished salt-cellar thrice around the Archprelate’s bier, became so excited that his heart fluttered and stopped, and a replacement for him had to be appointed on the spot. The replacement, a pimply-faced young novice of indifferent merit and questionable piety, wept with gratitude as he realized that his position in life was completely secure now, and that he would only be required actually to do any work once every generation or so.
The interminable funeral droned on and on, punctuated by prayers and hymns. At specified points, the congregation stood; at others, they knelt; and at still others they sat back down again. It was all very solemn, and not very much of it made any real sense.
The Primate Annias sat as near as he dared to the velvet rope separating the Patriarchs from the spectators on the north side of the vast nave, and he was surrounded by flunkies and sycophants. Since Sparhawk could not get close to him, the big Pandion settled instead for sitting in the south gallery directly opposite, where, surrounded by his friends, he could look directly into the grey-faced Churchman’s eyes. The gathering of the Patriarchs opposed to Annias inside the walls of the Pandion chapterhouse had proceeded according to plan, and the apprehension and imprisonment of six Patriarchs loyal to the Primate – or at least to his money – had also gone off without a hitch. Annias, his frustration clearly showing on his face, busied himself by scribbling notes to the Patriarch of Coombe, which were delivered by various members of a squad of youthful pages. For each note Annias dispatched to Makova, Sparhawk dispatched one to Dolmant. Sparhawk had a certain advantage in this. Annias actually had to write the notes. Sparhawk simply sent folded scraps of blank paper. It was a ploy to which Dolmant had rather surprisingly agreed.
Kalten slipped into a seat on the other side of Tynian, scribbled a note of his own and passed it down to Sparhawk. ‘Good luk,’ the note read. ‘Fyve moor of are missing patriarks showd up at the bak gait of the chapterhowse a half our ago. They herd we were protekting our frends, and they maid a run for it. Forchunate, wot?’ Sparhawk winced slightly. Kalten’s grasp on the spelling of the Elene language was probably even looser than Vanion had feared. He showed the note to Talen. ‘How does this affect things?’ he whispered.
Talen squinted. ‘The number voting only changes by one,’ he whispered back. ‘We locked away six of Annias’s votes and got back five more of ours. We’ve got fifty-two now, he’s got fifty-nine, and there are still the nine neutrals. That’s a total of one hundred and twenty votes. It still takes seventy-two to win, but not even the nine votes would help him now. They’d only give him sixty-eight, which makes him four votes short.’
‘Give me the note,’ Sparhawk said. He scribbled the numbers under Kalten’s message and then added the two sentences, ‘I’d suggest that we suspend all negotiations with the neutrals at this point. We don’t need them now.’ He handed the note to Talen. ‘Take this to Dolmant,’ he instructed, ‘and it’s perfectly all right to grin just a bit while you’re on your way down to him.’
‘A vicious grin, Sparhawk? A smirk, maybe?’
‘Do your best.’ Sparhawk took another piece of paper, wrote the information on it and passed it among his armoured friends.
The Primate Annias was suddenly confronted by a group of Church Knights beaming at him from across the nave of the Basilica. His face darkened, and he began to gnaw nervously on one fingernail.
At long last the funeral ceremony wound to its conclusion. The throng in the nave rose to its feet to file along behind the body of Cluvonus to its resting place in the crypt beneath the floor of the Basilica. Sparhawk took Talen and dropped back to have a word with Kalten. ‘Where did you learn how to spell?’ he asked.
‘Spelling
is the sort of thing with which no gentleman ought to concern himself, Sparhawk,’ Kalten replied loftily. He looked around carefully to be sure he wouldn’t be heard. ‘Where is Wargun?’ he whispered.
‘I haven’t any idea,’ Sparhawk whispered back. ‘Maybe they had to sober him up. Wargun’s sense of direction isn’t too good when he’s been drinking.’
‘We’d better come up with an alternative plan, Sparhawk. The Hierocracy’s going back into session just as soon as Cluvonus gets laid away.’
‘We’ve got enough votes to hold Annias off.’
‘It’s only going to take about two ballots to prove that to him, my friend. He’ll start getting rash at that point, and we’re badly outnumbered here.’ Kalten looked at the heavy wooden beams lining the stairway down into the crypt. ‘Maybe I should set fire to the Basilica,’ he said.
‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘It would delay things, Sparhawk, and we need a delay very badly just about now.’
‘I don’t think we have to go that far. Let’s keep those five Patriarchs under wraps for now. Talen, without those five votes, where do we stand?’
‘One hundred and fifteen voting, Sparhawk. That means sixty-nine to win.’
‘That makes him one vote short again – even if he can buy the neutrals. He’ll probably hold off on any kind of confrontation if he thinks he’s that close. Kalten, take Perraine and go back to the chapterhouse and get those five Patriarchs. Put them in bits and pieces of armour to disguise them and then form up fifty or so knights to bring them here. Take them into an antechamber. We’ll let Dolmant decide when he needs them.’
‘Right.’ Kalten grinned wickedly. ‘We’ve beaten Annias, though, haven’t we, Sparhawk?’
‘It looks that way, but let’s not start celebrating until there’s someone else sitting on that throne. Now get moving.’
There were speeches when the still crimson-robed Hierocracy resumed its deliberations. The speeches were for the most part eulogies delivered by Patriarchs too unimportant to have participated in the formal services in the nave. The Patriarch Ortzel of Kadach, brother of the Baron Alstrom in Lamorkand, was particularly tedious. The session broke up early and resumed again the following morning. The Patriarchs who were opposed to Annias had gathered the previous evening and had selected Ortzel to be their standard-bearer. Sparhawk still had grave reservations about Ortzel, but he kept them to himself.