The Incorruptibles (18 page)

‘Then that’s enough Ia-damned talk of damnation.’

‘As ye say,’ Reeve murmured. A pause, then he declared, ‘I’ll be coming with ye.’

‘You should stay here. These folk need you.’

‘They’re loading the wagons in the morning and heading to Fort Brust, or so Velda informs me.’ He snorted. ‘She seemed to think it was my fault.’

‘Nothing you could do to stop that stretcher.’

‘Aye. So ye say.’ He waved a hand at the huddled folk warming their hands at their kinsman’s funeral pyre. ‘But these people will ne’er trust me again. So, I’ll ride with ye tomorrow.’

‘You said you reported to Fort Brust.’

‘Aye, ’tis true. But yer a centurion.’

Fisk nodded. ‘I’ll stamp some papers with the eagle before we leave.’

‘Thank ye.’

They clasped forearms as they had once before. And drank.

TWENTY-ONE

No one poured drinks. No one laughed. The Cornelian brood had stared hard at Fisk, waiting for him to begin his story. They had studied him and the wild-haired Northman he had brought with him through the snow to the
Cornelian
.

It had turned bitter cold, and the Big Rill had iced solid at the edges, making it hard for the lascar to ferry the men. Eventually, Skraeling turned the boat and lowered the swing stages in preparation for the winter, bringing the ponies into the hold. The season would be spent far from Passaseugo, out on the plains, beneath the White Mountains. Sharbo and the other hunters had ridden for miles east and found no sign of shoal aurochs, nor geese, nor deer.

Livia tried to smile, but it didn’t touch her eyes. Carnelia, sitting in a wide reading chair, was flipping her foot nonchalantly, and chewing a bit of hair. Secundus kept his arms crossed and looked grave. Beleth sat very still, with Samantha and Cimbri behind him.

Cornelius himself was sober and pale, dressed in a clean tunic unblemished by wine or whiskey stains. He tapped a forefinger on the triclinium’s table and said, ‘Now, if you please, Mr Fisk.’

Fisk told his story, speaking slowly and without embellishment. When he came to Broken Tooth, Reeve interrupted and took up the tale, and then Fisk finished it with the death of Banty and the
vaettir
bounding away with Isabelle.

When he was done, Fisk produced a sack, reached in gingerly, and withdrew a slightly desiccated, severed hand. It was grey and small and smelled of corruption. He placed it lightly on the table.

‘It’s Isabelle’s. Done in retribution for the stretcher out in the stateroom.’

There were gasps and choking sounds. But Beleth said, ‘And you are sure this is hers? And how do you know the creature hasn’t killed her and then dumped her body?’

Fisk was quiet for a while but his gaze, steady and grave, remained unblinking. ‘I don’t know that. Always a possibility, I reckon.’

Carnelia, looking wild around the eyes, leaned forward, peered at the hand, and began to cry. ‘It
is
hers.’

‘How can you be sure?’ Cornelius barked. ‘How?’

‘Just look at it. Think of her eating breakfast, or holding a glass, or writing. It’s
hers!
’

Cornelius cursed heavily. ‘You, Fisk. You are dismissed. We no longer require your services here. You are hereby ordered to return to Marcellus in New Damn—’

‘It occurs to me,’ interrupted Beleth, looking keenly at the severed hand, ‘that with a little help from our neighbours below,’ He put two fingers at either side of his head like horns before continuing, ‘Mr Fisk has provided us with the means of discovering Isabelle’s – or her corpse’s – whereabouts.’

Livia said, ‘Speak plain, engineer. What are you talking about?’

He sat back, a sly look spreading across his face like an oil-stain, and raised a finger. ‘There are three ways to summon and bind the infernal. One is to raise a
daemon
from Hell and bind it with wards to utilize its power. This is the simplest and safest. Relatively safest.’ He took the crystal decanter of port and poured himself a measure, grinning. ‘The second is to force a
daemon
into an object. Give the bound
inferi
a goal – in this case, locating Isabelle – before it can be released.’

‘Locating her? What happens when we – er, it – finds her?’

‘The binding no longer holds the creature and it is free.’

‘Not banished back to Hell?’

‘Unfortunately, no.’

‘What about the bearer of the item?’ I asked.

Beleth tsked. ‘Depends. It’s possible to fend off a
daemon
. But the bearer is inextricably linked to the object until its goal is acheived. And the object must be part of the person or thing that must be found.’

‘Fend off?’ Livia asked. ‘How would you go about that?’

‘First, you’d need a full engineer to perform the necessary wardwork. You’d require some knowledge of how and when the object would be reunited with the infernal vestment. Both of which are unlikely. But it is possible.’

Fisk stood up. ‘How long does it take?’

‘A matter of a day or so.’

‘What do I need to do?’

Miss Livia placed her hand on his arm. ‘Is this necessary? Can we not suborn some rank soldier to this task?’

Cornelius looked at his daughter, frowning. ‘This man is willing. He wishes to atone for his failure to recover Isabelle.’

‘No,’ Livia said, and her face looked contorted, as though two emotions warred within her. ‘He failed once in reclaiming Isabelle. What’s to say he won’t fail again?’

Cornelius, Secundus, and Carnelia looked back and forth between Fisk and Livia. Carnelia’s eyes widened as she understood. Secundus’ gaze softened, and he smiled sadly and then glanced at me. I shrugged my shoulders. What the hell was I supposed to do?

Fisk looked at Livia, and damned if the man’s eyes didn’t soften too. But he straightened his back and took a deep breath. He stood as tall as he could, undaunted in front of the nobility.

‘My name is Hieronymous Cantalus Fiscelion Iulii. I will recover Isabelle or die trying.’

Silence then, until Cornelius began guffawing. He reached for a decanter.

‘You’re telling us you are the son of the exiled Senator Cantalus?’ Cornelius asked.

Fisk nodded, once.

‘Well, why should you give a damn about this?’ Cornelius posed, drinking a large glass of port. Yet he was suddenly very interested in Fisk. ‘Your family is in disgrace, its name damaged beyond repair. You’re lucky the Emperor didn’t have the Praetorians dash your brains out on the ground when you were an infant.’

‘I barely remember Rume, and my father was an arsehole.’ He turned, his eyes fixed on Livia. ‘But I had a wife once, long ago. And a daughter. We lived out on the plains, in the shadow of the Whites. I—’ He stopped and swallowed. Livia’s hands trembled. She looked like she wanted to touch him. ‘I loved them. We had a life.’

The two stared at each other as though no one else was there.

‘We’d see the stretchers moving, but we never had no truck with them. They didn’t bother us. They were like phantoms slipping through the grasses and the trees down by the river. Until that Berith came. Until that red-haired son of a bitch came.’

Fisk’s Adam’s apple moved up and down painfully in his throat. We all watched him. Livia’s eyes were as large as pools and nearly as wet.

‘At first it was the dog. He killed it and strung it up for us to see.’ He breathed deep, his big, rawboned hands clenched.

I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for him to reveal all this in front of so many hostile listeners. But he kept on. ‘And then it was the livestock. The bastard took my goats and busted down my corral, setting my ponies loose. I’d chase them down, and he’d let me see him. Smiling big on the rise above the valley, all teeth, a gutted goat slung over his shoulder.

‘So I took up all my possessions, all the gold and silver I had taken with me when I fled my father, and I rode to New Damnation and bought this six-gun and my carbine from an engineer there. Came back home, ready to kill that son of a bitch.’

Secundus poured some port for Fisk but he waved it away and continued, all the while looking at Livia.

‘But he disappeared, for a year or more. And we went back to life as usual and didn’t spend any time counting our blessings.’ He passed a hand over his eyes, and a weariness settled on him like the snow that blanketed the
Cornelian
. His body shifted and the defiance in him that I knew so well, the hard core of the man that never relented, it was gone. And he just looked hurt, and tired, and full of loss in that infinitesimal shift of his body.

‘She was growing, shooting up like a weed, my Kallie. She had hair the colour of sun on wheat and a laugh like a bell. She loved the animals, feeding and watering them.

‘I was busting sod behind the mule when Lenora started screaming. And there was Berith, holding Kallie like a porcelain doll. She wasn’t crying. She was scared and amazed and confused, but she wasn’t crying. I took up my guns but that son of a bitch just stood there, out beyond the corrals, grinning like a devil and holding Kallie in his hands.

‘When I came near, he danced away. She started crying then.’

Now Fisk accepted the drink Secundus offered, and knocked it back.

‘Ain’t much left to say. He ran the way stretchers do, bounding all around. I chased him. For hours. Farther and farther away from the house while Kallie called out for me, crying. I could never get close enough to him to know I wouldn’t hit my baby girl when I shot.

‘He must have grown bored with the game. He disappeared. I never found her body.’ His eyes were too dry, his voice too steady. If only his voice could break, or if he could cry. Ia pity the man who grows so hard. ‘We tried to have another, but Lenora had trouble with Kallie to begin with, bleeding and the like—’

He looked dreadful, the hollows of his cheeks deep and his eyes sunken. Every cord on his neck stood out, and his arms were tense. His hair had frosted in the time since he had left to reclaim Isabelle; there was more white than black now.

‘I left one morning to hunt and when I returned, she … she was swinging from the rafters. Without Kallie—’ He unclenched his hands and finally looked away from Livia, staring at his palms. ‘I wasn’t enough to make life worthwhile.’

He balled his fists again and stood seething. A more dangerous and pitiable man I’ve never seen.

‘So I will take this Ia-damned hand and do whatever the summoner wants me to do, whatever stain it might leave on my immortal soul. And I’ll hunt for Isabelle until I’m dead. Or she is.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Can’t back out of this, Livia.’

‘It’s an old wound, Fisk. Can’t you—?’ She looked at him, her eyes welling, and the rest of the room fell away, her father, her siblings, the engineer. Everyone and everything. And it was just the two of them. ‘If you go, I go with you.’

‘No.’

‘If you can go and bind yourself to that—’ She gestured toward the severed hand that remained on the table. The grey thing pointed an accusing finger at Fisk. ‘Then I can come too, and there’s no man or woman who will stop me.’ She looked around the room with such a fierce stare not even her father dared speak. ‘And Isabelle will need me when we find her.’

No one said anything.

The silence drew out and I could see Secundus frowning. I almost felt pity for the boy, who now had to put duty to family before his own inclinations. Cornelius looked at his daughter with surprisingly moist eyes, wanting to say something but not finding the words.

Eventually Lupina entered carrying a half-bottle of whiskey – winter rations were in effect – and filled small glasses for everyone.

‘What happened to your father after he left Rume, Hieronymous?’ Cornelius asked, voice catching. He looked a bit embarrassed at the hitch in his throat, so he busied his hands trimming a cigar and lighting it from a match.

Fisk shifted again, slumped, and then sat heavily in one of the cushioned chairs in the small stateroom. ‘He got rich, trading with the Medierans, living in New Cartena.’ Fisk looked washed-out, exhausted. ‘After his exile, he didn’t care much for Ruman influence.’

‘Why should he? He managed to flee Rume with three talents of gold.’ Cornelius gave a sallow grin. ‘The Emperor was absolutely
furious.
’

‘Sounds like you enjoyed the scene.’

‘Of course. Every senator in Rume loves it when Tamberlaine gets egg on his face, the old goat.’

‘How’s that?’

Secundus said, ‘While the Emperor is feared and obeyed, there’s not a senator, knight, or man in the cursus honorem who hasn’t found himself poorer due to Imperial edicts.’

Carnelia sniped, ‘He’s a greedy old lech, Tamberlaine. Thank Ia he adopted Marcus Claudius, who’s reputed to be as temperate as he is handsome.’

‘Marcus Claudius is a gibbering moron,’ Cornelius said. ‘He can fuck and get children on highborn and servants, but not much else. Another reason this damned abduction complicates things. If I could return Isabelle to the Medieran Embassy at Passasuego, we could spend the remainder of my governorship in Harbor Town or some other cultured city, raking in taxes, and then I could arrange your marriage to him, Carnelia.’

She gasped and clapped her hands, her earlier frustration at being a pawn in Ruman familial games now forgotten. ‘Oh, really, Tata?’

‘Shut up, both of you,’ Livia said, her eyes blazing. ‘This is no time for your frivolities. With Isabelle lost, we are at the brink of war. I’m sorry your whiskey-sodden brain can’t keep that hard reality front and centre.’

‘I say, Livia, you can spend your days running mad among the colonists due to your special circumstance—’

Carnelia gasped. Secundus looked pained. Beleth and Samantha carefully inspected their glasses of alcohol. ‘My sullied name, you mean?’ Livia asked. There was no shrillness, no rise and fall of outraged inflection. Her voice was deathly quiet. But it was as though one of the Gallish double doors to the hurricane deck had blown open and a spill of snow had frozen the room.

Cornelius harrumphed and cleared his throat. ‘Your special
circumstance
. But don’t presume to stop the normal flow of—’

‘Father,’ she said, her voice clear. ‘Despite all the love I bear you, stop speaking now. I was once a useful political piece for you to play on the board. You did, even though I begged you not to. And now I am no longer a useful piece for you. My name has been sullied irrevocably. In the forum and the senate hall and the finest tricliniums in Rume, when they speak my name they whisper – matron macula. I will never marry again. I will never be able to appear in any public familial function for fear of shaming the Cornelian name. And why? Because as a strategist, you played me poorly! So do not refer to my downfall as a
special circumstance
or I swear to Ia and all the old gods that I will chop off your other foot and feed it to the dogs.’

Carnelia clasped her hands to her throat as if choking back some dire exclamation. Cornelius sat back in his chair, his jaw loose and quavering. Before, his whiskers had seemed fierce, but now he looked an unkempt old man. Secundus scowled at his sister and crossed his arms. I tried to keep very still and not draw any attention to myself.