They had entered an area of tenements so closely crowded that two hors.e.m.e.n could not pa.s.s in opposite directions. The unpaved streets were slick and deep in a mix of manure and human ordure. It made sucking noises when the horses lifted their hooves. Water filled their hoofprints instantly.
The grooms in the regimental stables would have plenty to do once these animals returned. "Just Plain Joe will love you." Hooves and legs would need special attention to prevent disease.
"Ogier! Aubero! What the h.e.l.l is it with this romp through a s.h.i.t pile? Who told you to go this way?" Ghort tried to bully his way forward.
Half a minute later Hecht emerged into a small square. Those who had preceded him were looking round warily, weapons drawn.
"Something besides the s.h.i.t stinks," Ghort declared. "Ogier and Aubero have disappeared. Those a.s.sholes."
"I deduced as much when I saw your blade bare to the weather."
"Polo will rub the rust out. That"s what he gets paid for. That and for spying on all of us for Paludan Bruglioni."
Polo overheard. He did not protest. Ghort never showed any concern for his feelings.
Ghort gave orders. Men dismounted and moved out along the walls facing the square and its central cistern. The emptiness of the square was not a good omen. Ghort muttered, "I never should"ve taken those two into the lifeguard."
"Who?" Hecht asked.
"Ogier and Aubero. Twins, would you believe? From back home. They had a letter of introduction from my uncle Orisim. I should"ve listened to my gut instead of figuring I owed family."
A nasty b.u.mblebee whir silenced Ghort"s lament. Like Hecht, he dove aside. He had heard the distinctive thunk! thunk! of a crossbow. He splashed and rolled and got behind the only available cover, a wooden pillar scarcely seven inches wide. of a crossbow. He splashed and rolled and got behind the only available cover, a wooden pillar scarcely seven inches wide.
You see where that came from?"
"No." Piper Hecht had acquired similar shelter. Without getting filthy. His pillar was as thick as it was wide. A good thing, because one iron quarrel had bitten into the hard old wood already. "But your men are on to something."
Those Ghort had ordered forward rushed a doorway. They were professionals, all veterans of the Calziran Crusade and the fighting in the streets of al-Khazen.
Bolts continued to streak around and miss till one of Ghort"s men got hit in the foot by a ricochet. His man Polo, who had been Hecht"s servant at one time, crouched behind the Captain-General, wringing his hands and whining, not in terror but about the amount of work he was going to have to do after this was over.
"Put a stopper in it, Polo." Hecht had located the snipers, now. There were three of them. He didn"t think Ghort"s wayward bodyguards were among them. No doubt those two were headed north in a hurry, arguing about how to spend their bounties.
Hecht picked a moment when all three snipers would be rewinding their weapons, surged up to go to the attack. Polo grabbed his right arm, trying to keep him from exposing himself. Hecht lurched left, trying to break the servant"s grip.
A bolt of darkness streaked down from the rooftop. Hecht saw the spellcaster in momentary silhouette. The bolt was the size and shape of a hammer handle, in infinite black. It would hit him in the chest. He flung his left hand up. His left wrist exploded in sudden, fiery agony.
The clot of darkness curved aside. It struck Polo"s outstretched arm. The man shrieked.
It happened in a blink. Polo"s arm withered into a leathery, desiccated black stick, a dead mockery of a human limb.
The mutilation was complete before Polo finished his first scream.
One of Ghort"s men appeared behind the sorcerer-a.s.sa.s.sin. A veteran for sure. He wasted no time. He grabbed the a.s.sa.s.sin and flung him off the roof.
The would-be killer landed on his head. He died instantly, neck broken and skull crushed.
"s.h.i.t!" Ghort swore. "Now we"ll never know what this was about. He"ll be the only one who knew." His men dragged a prisoner into the square. "Can you make him stop howling?" He meant Polo. "That shrieking could get on my nerves."
Hecht said, "Find the soldiers who led us here. You know who they are and where they"re from. Have them brought back. Bo Biogna would be the man to send." He ma.s.saged his left wrist. It had not been bad this time. "I want to talk to them." The amulet he wore, invisible since its installation by the Dreangean master sorcerer er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen, protected him well but at the cost of harsh pain. "Bring that corpse. Somebody in the Collegium may be able to get something out of it."
Ghort did not argue although, strictly speaking, the Captain-General of Patriarchal forces had no standing with the Brothen City Regiment. "What the h.e.l.l just happened, Pipe? I mean, I"m f.u.c.king glad it did, but there ain"t no way you shouldn"t be all over looking like Polo"s arm now." Ghort had Polo down, now, trying to examine his arm. Polo would not lie still. "That black bolt shoulda plugged you in the brisket. But it turned off. And got this poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d."
"I don"t know. I"m glad it did. Though I"m sorry about Polo"s arm."
"No s.h.i.t. Hold still, G.o.dd.a.m.nit! Garnier! Arnoul! Get those d.a.m.ned horses under control! Aaron"s Hairy b.a.l.l.s! They"re worse than kids. You have to tell them everything."
Piper Hecht burst into laughter.
"What?"
"Grade Drocker said the same about you not that long ago."
"When? I was always a self-starter."
"When we were in the Connec. At Bishop Serifs"s manor, besieging Antieux."
"That was different. You didn"t want to stick your neck out around those Brotherhood of War a.s.sholes. They didn"t care what you did, it was f.u.c.ked up. You were always wrong just because you didn"t belong to their crazy man club."
Pinkus Ghort always had an answer. It might not ring true or make sense, but he had one.
"The corpse," Hecht reminded gently.
"Izzy. Buchie. Search the dead guy. And don"t pocket anything. It could kill you later." Softly, he said, "They wouldn"t take nothing, no how. They"re all guys from out in the sticks. So superst.i.tious and scared of the Night it"ll be a miracle if they keep it together now long enough to find the kind of priest who"ll pretend to pull the imaginary supernatural leeches off them."
Ghort was exaggerating. That was a matter of course. But Hecht had run into people who were that afraid of the hidden world. People who could not draw a breath without praying and calculating how much attention that might draw from the Instrumentalities of the Night.
Brothe being the Holy Mother City of the Episcopal strain of Chaldareanism, its streets ever boasted floods of religious pilgrims. Many were the sort who held intimate discourse with their deity every waking moment. They wandered in a perpetual daze, babbling constantly.
G.o.d must find them annoying. They suffered more misfortunes than the less devout.
Ghort helped Polo onto his mount. Sensitive to the Night, the animal grew skittish. Men, forced to walk because their mounts were carrying a dead sorcerer, a wounded ambusher, or had run away, kept Polo"s horse under control.
Polo was incoherent.
He needed a healing brother. Soon.
Pinkus Ghort did not dispute possession of the prisoners. "Just let me have one healthy one, Pipe. A trophy. So I don"t have to listen to Princ.i.p.ate Doneto bark."
"Take your pick. Take two if you want." Hecht was confident that nothing useful could be gained from any of the prisoners. "That"ll ease my budget." Working for Sublime, even indirectly, included an endless, thankless, continuous scramble for money. The Patriarch had no comprehension of economics. He could not be made to understand that he had to have income if he wanted to spend. He resented any effort to explain by those whose wages had to be paid and whose costs had to be underwritten.
Sublime was convinced that the Lord would provide. And that hired hands should be happy with what the Lord provided.
They were crossing the vast limestone sprawl of the Closed Ground, so-called since antiquity because the wings of the Chiaro Palace enfolded it completely. The Palace was three and four stories high, its limestone architecture cla.s.sically simple. The eastern face, in the direction of the Holy Lands, boasted balconies where the Patriarch and senior Princ.i.p.ates presented themselves on Holy Days. There were always scaffoldings somewhere around the marges of the Closed Ground. The Chiaro Palace was under continuous rehabilitation.
The Palace was built of stone from the same quarry as the pavements but the coloring did not match. The pavements had been in place for only three centuries. Parts of the Palace went back fifteen centuries. They showed the effects of all those years of weather and bad air. The stone was streaked brown, yellow, or pale pink.
The first foundations of the Chiaro Palace had been laid down before the Old Brothen Empire recognized itself as such.
Parts of Brothe were older, still. But Hecht was not impressed. His boyhood had pa.s.sed in a city where structures still in daily use were three times the age of the oldest in Brothe.
The rain continued, growing heavier. Thunder mouthed off north of the Teragi River. There was a pre-Chaldarean superst.i.tion about thunder"s location being some sort of omen. Hecht could not recall details. He was too wet and uncomfortable to focus on much but the ambush and getting into dry clothing.
His batman came out to help. "What"s all this, sir?" Redfearn Bechter was a pensioner of the Brotherhood of War. And, surely, still its agent.
"They ambushed us, Sergeant."
"Bad decision on their part. I know that one there."
"What?"
"Not personally. I"ve seen him before. He was with Duke Tormond of the Connec when he visited the Patriarch a few vcars ago."
Bechter had a scary knack for recalling names and faces. "Rainard. That"s his name. I remember thinking he was either too stupid or too smart for the job he was doing."
"And that was what?"
"He was one of the varlets managing their animals. But he didn"t do much work. He kept sneaking off to hang out in low places. So he was a shirker. Or a spy. I figure spy. A shirker wouldn"t get away with it for long."
"You listening, Pinkus?"
"Plenty. You want to keep him? I"ll take the other two."
"We do have better interrogators here."
"Let me know what you find out. Look, I came after you for a reason. The screaming high s.h.i.ts really do want to talk about Clearenza. Now."
Being Captain-General had its perquisites. A dozen varlets and stablemen came for the animals and prisoners and casualties. Ghort lied to them. "The guy with the bad arm is related to Princ.i.p.ate Bruglioni. See he gets treated like it."
Polo did come from the Bruglioni household, originally, and likely continued spying for them. But he was a hireling. Even so, invoking the name of one of the Five Families got results.
Ten minutes later, Hecht entered a room he found depressingly familiar. Each time he visited, it was to face irate members of the Collegium, the Princes of the Church. This looked like no exception. The dozen most powerful Princ.i.p.aees had gathered. A bitter squabble was under way, along the usual political lines. The one friendly face he saw belonged to Princ.i.p.ate Delari.
"About d.a.m.ned time!" Princ.i.p.ate Madisetti bellowed. "Where the h.e.l.l have you been? We sent for you hours ago."
And the Cologni Princ.i.p.ate wanted to know, "Why do you have to come here filthy, smelling like a dung heap?"
"We were ambushed. Four men. Three equipped with our own standard-issue crossbows. The fourth a sorcerer of some skill but very little luck. The corpse is downstairs. If you want to examine it. Who, other than Colonel Ghort and yourselves, knew that I"d been summoned?" Professionally, he had to admire the quickness with which the ambush had been put together. Though, certainly, the ambush team had been around, waiting for an opportunity, for some time.
It did not occur to Hecht that he might not have been the target. He thought he knew who was behind the attempt. He did not know why.
He watched the churchmen closely, not expecting anyone to betray himself. None were major suspects, anyway. Their crime, if any, would be the sin of talking too much.
Only Princ.i.p.ate Delari reacted strongly. His response was vast anger tightly reined. He had, to all intents, adopted Piper Hecht. This ambush was a direct a.s.sault on his family.
Piper Hecht had not plumbed the relationship deeply enough to understand. The man he had worked for from his earliest mercenary days, Grade Drocker, had become his mentor during the Calziran Crusade. Drocker was one of the top dozen men in the Brotherhood of War. And the warrior priest had been the illegitimate son of Princ.i.p.ate Muniero Delari. Who a.s.sumed the mentor role with a pa.s.sion following Drocker"s death.
Hecht did not understand but he did not scruple to exploit the situation.
"I"ll return shortly," Muniero Delari said. He was a sallow stick figure of a man in his seventies. He moved as easily as men thirty years younger. He left in a rush. The air seemed to go out with him.
The Madisetti Princ.i.p.ate, Donel Madisetti, presumed to pick up his attack. For reasons as obscure as Delari"s favor, the Madisetti family had developed an antipathy toward Hecht. The Bruglioni and Arniena families were firm supporters, though they disagreed with one another about Sublime V. The Cologni family waffled. More often than not, though, they opposed the Captain-General because he had worked for the Bruglioni before his elevation. And the Bruglioni may have been behind the a.s.sa.s.sination of Princ.i.p.ate-designate Rodrigo Cologni. Which had taken place before Hecht"s arrival in Brothe.
The relationships and balances between the Five Families seldom made sense to outsiders.
Strange bedfellows. Always. Piper Hecht now worked for Honario Benedocto, the Patriarch Sublime V. The Benedocto were sworn enemies of the Bruglioni. This decade. The Madisetti had marched shoulder to shoulder with the Benedocto for a generation.
The Captain-General was immune to most of the feuding. He was not supposed to be part of city politics, only Church politics. Though the former became the latter at every Patriarchal election.
He turned his back on Donel Madisetti. He addressed details of the ambush to Princ.i.p.ate Bronte Doneto, the Patriarch"s cousin. And one of Sublime"s few friends.
Doneto asked, "Why would these men want to kill you?"
Hecht shrugged. "That will become more clear once, we know who they are."
Doneto"s gaze shifted to Pinkus Ghort. Ghort said, "I don"t have any ideas."
"You"ll have to answer for the men who led you into the ambush." Meaning that, while Ghort was beholden to Bronte Doneto already, he was about to be pushed in a whole lot deeper.
"We"re on that already, Your Grace. They"ll be brought back. I"ll see that they talk." Ghort had sent for his man Bo Biogna. Biogna should be headed north before nightfall.
Hecht said, "I understand there"s a problem in Clearenza."
Doneto replied, "I doubt there"s a connection."
"I doubt it myself. There"d be no state interest at this point. Would there?"
"Just so. Donel. For Aaron"s sake, stop whining. You"re a grown man." He tossed that at the Madisetti Princ.i.p.ate. To Hecht, he said, "That bolt would have been better spent sped at another target."
Donel Madisetti shut up. Appalled. He did not expect to be chastised by an ally.
With Princ.i.p.ate Delari absent and Princ.i.p.ate Hugo Mongoz lapsed into a drooling nap, Princ.i.p.ate Doneto took charge. Though he was not the eldest.
Doneto was the sort who wanted to be in charge.
Most of the time he was not unpleasant about it.
Doneto said, "I sent Colonel Ghort to get you at the same time I alerted the crisis committee. They arrived first because they didn"t have to go out into the weather or fight anyone to get here." Doneto disdained most of the Princes of the Church. The world might be terrified of the Collegium and its supposed wizards, but Bronte Doneto knew most of his colleagues were incompetents appointed via nepotism or bribe.
There were powerful sorcerers amongst the brethren of the Collegium, however. Who was, and who was not, was a puzzle that interested outsiders constantly strove to solve. While the Princ.i.p.ates strove to stay masked.
Even Sublime, who had come out of the Collegium but whose qualifications mainly included family connections and being stone deaf and blind to the Instrumentalities of the Night, was kept in the dark.