Lord of the Silent Kingdom (22 page)

Confusion was the natural state of combat. Hecht hoped to cause more of that on the other side than plagued his own. His men supposedly knew what to do even if they got turned around.

Hecht offered an encouraging word to each departing team leader. He did not want anyone getting killed.

He shuddered suddenly, touched by an unexpected chill. It was not the weather. Maybe it was his imagination.

Or maybe not. Sergeant Bechter murmured, “You felt that, sir?”

“Sergeant?”

“You shivered. It was a cold presence. I don’t know how else to put it. Like there’s something here.

Right behind you. Looking over your shoulder.”

“And there’s nothing there when you look.”

“Yes, sir.” That almost defined the Instrumentalities of the Night. “I’ve been feeling that a lot, lately.”

“As have I.” But that just puzzled him more. If there was something of the Night out there, close by, of the magnitude suggested by the creeps he and Bechter felt, his wrist ought to be hurting so bad that he would be thinking about cutting his amulet off.

“Stay alert,” Hecht told the men who would stay at the gate. “Let those guys tied up in the guardroom be your inspiration. Sergeant, let’s go.”

In the dark street, headed for the citadel, Hecht concluded that there was only one way his amulet would not function in the presence of the Instrumentalities of the Night. Because er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen, the man who had created it, did not want it to work.

Only Gordimer the Lion and the Rascal knew the amulet existed. Gordimer would not know how to get around it.

But why would the sorcerer want to kill Else Tage?

Hecht had not been able to work that out. He was sure er-Rashal had been trying from the moment he had left Dreanger. And possibly from even earlier.

Someone had raised that bogon in Esther’s Wood, near the Well of Calamity, beside the Plain of Judgment. He had slain it. And by doing so had demonstrated a hitherto unsuspected vulnerability of the Instrumentalities of the Night.

Death had stalked him ever since.

There was fighting at the citadel entrance. There were occasional pops inside, suggesting that the men were discharging their handheld firearms in spite of orders to save them for something supernatural.

Hecht understood why. Those weapons could bring an enemy down while he was still too far away to hurt you back.

One of his subalterns reported, “We surprised them, sir. But we had some bad luck. They surprised us back.”

“How?”

“There are Braunsknecht guards in there. We don’t know how many, but they aren’t staying neutral.”

“What about that, Titus? You didn’t know they were here?”

“I knew there were advisers. I told you. I thought there were only a few. That’s what people outside thought. We don’t have to take the citadel, though. The Duke is holed up in a sporting house. I’ve sent men to dig him out.”

Rapid popping inside signaled a counterattack by the defenders.

“Good.” Hecht gathered his officers. “We don’t push back unless Lieutenant Consent has his signals crossed. But we’ll hang on here till we have the Duke. Titus. Don’t wander off. Bechter. I need stuff to start a fire.” That ought to win Sublime a new crop of hatred.

A fresh chill made him shudder. He looked around. Spectators had begun to gather in the moonlight, at a distance. They twitched every time there was a pop inside the fortress. “Bechter. Break that crowd up before it gets tempted to turn into a mob.”

“Yes, sir.” Bechter grabbed several men who had nothing else to do.

Consent reported, “There’s word, sir. They’ve got him. They’re headed for the gate. We should think about going.”

“Excellent. You men. Get that fire started.” That would make it hard for the Duke’s men to come to his rescue.

Bechter fell in beside Hecht as they left the city. “Sir, there was a man in that crowd back there that we’ve seen before.”

“Uhm?”

“In Brothe. He’s a little under average height, average frame, hair well trimmed. Beard likewise. No hair on the cheeks. Head and chin both brown, so he’s probably not a native. Salted with gray. Gray eyes.

Forty to fifty years old. He looks pretty much like Grade Drocker did at the same age. Make that like Drocker would’ve looked if he didn’t get mutilated.”

“Really?” He would have to consult Principatè Delari about that.

He thought he had seen the man Bechter meant. Without noting any resemblance to Drocker. Whom he had not known unmutilated. He had had only a few glimpses of the sorcerer earlier. “Was he wearing brown?”

“Yes, sir. And every time I’ve noticed him it’s been right after that creepy feeling came on.”

“Worth remembering. Keep an eye out once we’re back in Brothe. I’ll see if I can’t get the Collegium after him.”

The Patriarch himself came out for Piper Hecht’s report on the Clearenza operation, though the Captain-General never spoke to him directly. By the time the Collegium assembled Sublime had accepted Germa fon Dreasser’s ransom and the Duke was headed home. The soldiers were not pleased. They had received no share of the ransom. There had been casualties, though just a few and only two of those fatalities.

Hecht told Anna, “I can’t fathom this man’s mind. He doesn’t understand people at all. Next week he’ll tell my men to go break up one of those riots. And he won’t be able to figure out why they just stand around watching.”

“It’s getting scary here, Piper.”

Her tone got his attention. “Yes?”

“It isn’t just the riots. I don’t feel safe outside anymore. I don’t like the kids going out. Not since that man was killed. I always feel like somebody is watching me. Even stalking me. The kids feel it, too.”

“I’ll talk to Pella. He understands the streets better than you or I do.”

Anna was not impressed. He needed to make a better showing. “There’s an advantage to being the Captain-General of the Armies of the Faith.”

“Other than being able to fling around an overweight title?”

“Yes. I can tell people to do things. And they do them. Even if they think it’s crazy to hold exercises in a neighborhood like this. They’ll do what I say because they’re afraid they won’t get paid.”

“And what does all that mean?”

“That I can come around here and turn the whole neighborhood over. And claim it’s business. I’d be hunting heretics.”

Heretics were about to become big business. There was a lot of talk about heresy in the Collegium, mostly among Sublime’s cronies. Preparing minds for what they hoped would come.

“Bring that idiot Morcant Farfog. Maybe the boogeyman will get him.”

Hecht had not met Bishop Farfog. He knew little about the man other than that he headed the Patriarchal Office for the Suppression of Sacrilege and Heresy, with the title of Chief Inquestor. Rumor had the monasteries emptying out as monks signed up to help.

What little Hecht knew about Farfog suggested that he was more foul than Bishop Serifs of Antieux had been.

Why did Sublime favor such men?

“Clever work in Clearenza,” Principatè Delari told Hecht, joining him in the baths. Osa Stile smirked from behind the Principatè.

“Thank you, sir. Lieutenant Consent deserves most of the credit.”

“And you used his information to sculpt a plan. You made the decision to go.”

“Uh …”

“You took a chance. It paid off. Most men would have dithered like Tormond IV, never confident enough to jump. We suffer from an absence of decisiveness. Everyone wants a sure thing.”

“We sure got a surprise when we discovered those Braunsknechts.” Though the Imperials had gotten a big surprise themselves.

Delari chuckled.

Herren and Vernal seemed a little starstruck this morning. And unusually friendly. “Stop that!” Hecht told Vernal.

Delari chuckled again. “Everybody loves a winner.”

“There’s a problem, sir.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. What?”

“I thought it was my imagination till Sergeant Bechter mentioned having the same problem.”

The Principatè listened. Hecht described the creepy feelings he sometimes got and that Bechter sometimes saw a particular man when that feeling got to him.

“I may have seen this man myself, once or twice. Bechter says he looks a lot like Grade Drocker a few years before his misfortune. Though shorter.”

Delari frowned. Drocker’s passing still pained him.

Hecht preferred to avoid the subject, too. Because Drocker’s unhealing wounds, that claimed him eventually, had been his fault.

“Sir, I’m just reporting hearsay. I didn’t know Grade Drocker before his misfortune.”

“What happened to my son still troubles me, Piper. A lot. You can’t imagine how much. But talking around the sides of it doesn’t help. Say what you mean if you have something to say.”

“Yes, sir. Though there isn’t anything else to say, now.”

“How is your Anna doing?”

“She’s worried.” Hecht explained.

“We haven’t learned anything more from the man who was butchered. No one claimed his body. Other than the usual sailors and embassy people, there aren’t many Pramans around. The dead man doesn’t seem to have any local connections. If we had anyone capable, I’d try raising his shade.”

“Sir!” That lurked at the edge of the blackest of sins imaginable.

Osa Stile looked shaken, too.

Might Hagid bin Nassim have known Osa Stile, back in Dreanger?

Possibly. Hagid’s father might have been in on the planning. But had Osa seen the corpse?

“Only thinking out loud. Tell Anna not to worry. We’ll arrange for her to feel more comfortable.” The old man might have been decreeing a new law of nature.

Chip by chip, glacially, another face emerged from the facade of the doddering Principatè Muniero Delari. Was this the real Eleventh Unknown? Hecht was certain, now, that Muniero Delari
was
the heavyweight sorcerer far peoples believed members of the Collegium to be.

“Herren, stop that!”

“You don’t like it, Captain-General?”

“I like it altogether too much. Stop it.”

Osa Stile snickered. So did both girls. But Herren desisted.

Delari made a tiny gesture. Osa’s amusement stopped instantly.

Osa might not be as much in control as he wanted.

“There are two worlds, Piper. This is particularly true in the Church,” Principatè Delari said. They were under the Chiaro Palace, overlooking the huge map. Hecht saw no obvious changes. “But it’s true everywhere, every when. There’s the raucous old world of everyday passion, pain, and corruption. The one where we come of age, basically. Then there’s the world few touch but which most are sure exists.

That’s the world of secret powers and secret masters. The silent kingdom. The silent kingdom shapes the raucous world without revealing itself. Just as surely as do the Instrumentalities of the Night, though with more direction and purpose. The silent kingdom hides in the secret spaces between mankind and the Night.”

Hecht asked, “This is a common belief amongst men of talent?”

Delari peered at him intently, sniffing after the thought behind the question.

“Some of us have a foot in the world between. Knowing about it only because we’ve been shown.

Others, like our Special Office brethren, are too ideological to contribute.”

“And get shown for no obvious reason? Because of the murky motives of those already inside?”

The curtain had been opened enough for one day. The Principatè changed topic. “Has the girl spoken yet?”

“Uh.. Vali?”

“Yes.”

“Not where any adult can hear. She talks to Pella. Occasionally. Sometimes Pella deigns to tell us what’s on her mind. Mainly, she’s worried about what’s going to happen to her. You find out anything about her?”

“No. There is a Vali Dumaine but she’s Countess of Bleus. The wife of the Count who got into it with Anne of Menand. They don’t have children. She’s twenty-nine. Rumor says evil sorcery keeps her from conceiving. It also says Anne means to buy the Archbishop of Salpeno with the Dumaine honors.”

“She’s giving everything away.”

“She’s a determined woman.”

“With everything to gain. I see that.”

Hecht could not understand how one harlot could become so influential.

Delari mused, “She must be quite something in private.”

“Curious?”

“Intellectually. I’d like to meet her.”

“Uhm. But you can’t hazard even a guess about where my Vali fits?”

“Beyond stipulating that circumstantial evidence suggests that she does, no.”

“But if the Brotherhood of War was interested … Sir! I just had an unpleasant thought. A connection I didn’t see before.”

“Yes?”

The old man reminded Hecht of the pensioner instructors at the Vibrant Spring School, waiting for him to state a conclusion he had had trouble reaching.

“Sir, the people holding Vali were conspiring with the Special Office. Who sent me to the House of the Ten Galleons in the first place.”

“So you’ve just realized that they must know where the girl is?”

“I’m a little dim sometimes, sir. I’m a fighting soldier, remember.”

“Can you take it another step? Or two?”

“Sir?”

“Have they decided that it’s better for Vali to be with you, out of sight, safe from people whose loyalties are commercial? Did they set you up to spirit the girl out of Sonsa?”

“I couldn’t guess, sir. My thinking tends to be more linear.”

“I understand. It’s one of your charms. Quite possibly the main reason that Bronte Doneto recommended you to his cousin. You’re a sharp blade that looks like it can be used with little danger of cutting both ways.”

Hecht wished Gordimer the Lion believed that. “Maybe. But he also thinks he can manipulate me if he wants.”

Delari grunted. “There’s still another possibility, Piper. And it seems the most obvious and likely to me.”

‘Sir?”

‘Did the girl just make up a story to win help getting out of an awful situation? Creating fictitious personal histories isn’t exactly unheard of, Piper.”

“Uh … I’ll ask Pella about that.”

“Good. Do. There’s nothing new here. Just more of the same, worsening at a frightening rate. Will all the water in all the seas end up part of the ice? Will even Firaldia go under?”