The Road to Hell - eARC (15 page)

“Oh yes, I remember learning about that.” Andrin replied.

Most of what her tutors had taught her about Uromathia had focused on the Uromathian Empire and its current conflicts with Ternathia, but there’d been a few asides about how the handful of Uromathian kingdoms currently separate from the Empire had come to be. Now she searched her memory for the details of the long eastern Uromathian coast, where the ocean’s shallows were filled with floating fisheries and boat cities built by the fishing families who fed the Uromathian Empire.

“I’m sorry, Shamir, but I think I’ve scrambled some of my history lessons. Does Eniath control the Uromathian fishing industry?”

“Absolutely not,” Councilor Yamen replied for the first councilor. “The Uromathian Empire has a strong coastal-based fishing industry independent from Eniath. Some Eniathians do run traditional fish farms and transport their catches widely, but most Eniathian industry is in trade and banking. They’ve been able to maintain their independence from the Empire for so long largely because of their keen observation and involvement in the Sharona-wide economy. For the last eighty years, that’s translated into an equally deep involvement in
inter-multiverse
affairs and commerce, as well. I think we’ll find the heir to the Eniathian Crown to be a quick study at inter-universal politics.”

“There is one rather significant concern,” Councilor Dulan said. “Eniath is prosperous, but not excessively so. For that matter, some of the larger cities of the Uromathian Empire proper could probably match the wealth of the entire kingdom, or come very close to it, at any rate. That means the Eniathian royal house simply can’t afford the sort of security Ternathia can. I assess Prince Howan Fai’s personal guard to be both loyal and exceptionally competent. If the Prince hadn’t spotted our investigators himself, I expect the guard would have recognized the tails even with the frequent personnel changes.

“But even the best single guard is weak security. The prince must sleep, and the guard must sleep. That means the prince is vulnerable, if Chava should even begin to suspect what we have in mind. For that matter, his father’s security is almost equally weak, and Chava wouldn’t hesitate to use threats to the king to sway the prince. At the moment, they’re staying in the guest wing with many of the other Conclave attendees, and we can’t move their quarters or secure their persons without drawing exactly the sort of attention we’re trying to avoid.”

“Our best choice is to keep it secret.” Yamen agreed.

“But what about Howan Fai?” Andrin asked. “He has to be consulted.”

“No, Your Highness,” said Dulan. “I’m sorry for the bluntness, but that is exactly wrong. He has to
not
be consulted. For his safety, for his family’s safety, and for the good of Sharona, Prince Howan Fai Goutin can’t know he’s been selected until he’s pledging his troth to you in front of the Conclave. He wouldn’t thank you for risking his family’s health and safety for any advance messages either.”

“If he had a Voice with him or even just a Flicker as an attendant,” Jastyr mused thoughtfully, before adding, “but he doesn’t. So there’s no secure way to send Howan Fai anything.”

“Princes don’t have it any easier than princesses, do they?” Andrin said sadly. Jastyr gave her a slight nod of acknowledgement, but Taje raised an eyebrow and Dulan looked at her inquiringly. “Howan Fai will marry me because he’s a prince and that’s what princes do,” she explained. “Even Chava’s sons would do the same if their Emperor ordered it.”

“Of course they would, Your Highness, but the marriage afterwards is what will make all the difference,” Taje said.

“I’d rather not need to have Imperial Guardsmen defend you from your own consort, Your Highness,” Dulan added. “So please don’t suggest choosing any of Chava’s boys.”

“So they really are as bad as I’ve heard?” she asked.

“Probably worse than you’ve heard, Highness.” Yalen said, “There are certain details unlikely to be repeated for a young lady’s ears. Certain things I wish hadn’t needed to be said to my ears either.”

“Likewise.” Taje and Dulan agreed.

“Your Highness!” Jastyr pushed her papers aside and glared at Andrin with an expression the crown princess was not used to seeing on councilor’s faces. The Privy Voice was angry and very clearly not engaged in any secondary Voicelinks at this particular moment. “Your Highness can
not
be implying you feel sorry for the Crown Prince of Eniath who’s looking like he’s about to make the match of a lifetime!”

The rest of the council looked thunderstruck. They’d only been listening to what she’d said. Jastyr, mostly silent and listening hard in the moments between her other commitments, had been alert to all the things the crown princess wasn’t saying.

“But he doesn’t even get asked!” Andrin tried to explain. “My parents had their marriage arranged, but father sent flowers every Vothday for a full year before the wedding and had a full garden planted at Hawkwing as a gift for my mother.”

“Wasn’t Empress Varena allergic to half the plants in that garden?” Yamen asked, confused.

“Yes, but that’s not the point,” protested Andrin.

“Your Highness,” Jastyr continued severely, “Whichever prince you choose, you’re going to have to trust him.”

“Trust? This isn’t about trust. I’m just trying to find a way to be polite, or chivalrous, or something.” Feeling every bit as young as her seventeen years, Andrin tried to find the words to explain her problem to the councilors.

Shamir Taje gently laid the list of names flat on the table in front of them and angled the single paper in front of Andrin.

“Your Highness,” he said softly, “Is there any man on this list better qualified to one day serve as Emperor Consort of Sharona than Howan Fai Goutin?”

“No.” Andrin bit her lip. “But my Uromathian is still not very good. He speaks some Ternathian, but this could go very, very poorly.”

“You’ll study. He’ll study.” Yamen shook her head, baffled. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

“I don’t want him to be forced into this.” Andrin tried again to explain.

“Any prince who’d feel forced by this honor, doesn’t deserve you.” Taje’s eye’s narrowed with quiet anger at the implication anyone would reject his princess.

“You’re my partisans.” Andrin couldn’t help but smile, but it was a thin faint smile.

“Your Highness,” Dulan said, “beside that fact, with which I very much agree, I do believe Prince Howan is already quite taken with you.”

“No.” Yamen lifted warning finger at the change in Andrin’s face. “Your Highness, don’t think it. There’s nothing wrong with having the special Talents thoroughly check him out. This wasn’t any torture chamber session. This prince, and every other we could reasonably consider, has simply had the most thorough background check we could arrange. If they’d known the position they were being considered for—believe us Your Highness!—the ones worth half the gold in their crowns would have volunteered to undergo
far
more than that.”

“The reality is, Your Highness,” Dulan continued, “that Howan Fai likes you. He might even love you, but this early in a relationship I’d call it deep affection instead. He knows the marital constraints you face and he’s a decent man, so he would never over the ordinary course of things even arrange to put himself back in your presence. In his mind, you’re meant for a higher marriage. But I have every confidence that he’ll be in all ways delighted when he learns he can not only marry you, but in a sense,
save
you from Emperor Chava by doing so.

“You’ve given him his very own romantic victory, and all he needs to do is say, ‘yes’ at the right moment.”

Andrin took a few moments to compose herself. It wasn’t every day the succession of an empire was decided, and she wanted to get it right. As Crown Princess and not yet Empress, she wasn’t really entitled to the “royal we” just yet, but under the circumstances—

“First Councilor, Privy Voice, Councilors Yamen and Dulan, thank you for your recommendations and advice on Our Imperial Marriage. With due consideration of all candidates, We have made Our decision and are ready to so inform the Conclave.”

Taje leaned forward and squeezed her hand. Andrin looked back at her friend and mentor, finally confident.

Chapter Nine

December 16

“I hope this works,” Therman Ulthar murmured from the corner of his mouth as he and Jaralt Sarma walked placidly across Fort Ghartoun’s parade ground towards the administrative block. Their breath plumed in the frigid air, smoke-white in the icy moonlight, and Sarma slapped his gloved hands together as if for warmth, flexing his fingers energetically, and smiled at the other commander of fifty.

“The good news is that if it doesn’t work, we probably won’t have a lot of time to regret it,” he pointed out in turn.

“Oh,
thank
you,” Ulthar replied, rolling his eyes.

He heard a snort from behind him and glanced back at the noncom following them across the parade ground. Shield Fraysyr Hathnor was Sarma’s platoon clerk, and he was carrying the record crystal which had been carefully loaded with stacks of routine paperwork. None of it meant anything in particular, but if their calculations proved in error and more than the night orderly was on duty, that paperwork would be their excuse to get close enough to take out the extra bodies, hopefully before any alarm was raised.

He looked farther back, over Hathnor’s left shoulder towards the stables, and those blue eyes narrowed as he caught a brief flicker of movement. It was as much imagined as seen, something gliding smoothly across a patch of moonlight and back into the darkness beyond it. The moon was almost full, and the splotches of light breaking through the trees the fort’s builders had left unfelled to shade its interior were so bright they made the dark beyond them seem even blacker, denser, almost solid. He would have preferred an overcast, or even fog, but the visibility they had was bad enough to suit their purposes.

Probably.

“The truth is,” he said, glancing back at Sarma as they started up the steps to the admin block’s covered veranda, “I’ve been looking forward to this ever since that bastard got the Company massacred. I know the dragon shit we’re about to step into’ll only get deeper if we end up killing him, but I can’t help hoping Firsoma lets him be as stupid about this as he is about everything else. I mean, that would only be fair, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re a very strange man with a nasty sense of humor, Ulthar,” Sarma told him. “It’s one of the things I particularly like in you.”

* * *

Namir Velvelig’s eyes opened.

He woke up the way a septman in the presence of his enemies woke up, which was to say that, aside from his eyelids, not another muscle so much as twitched, and the regiment-captain kept it that way, listening to the deep breathing and snoring around him. The cell in which he and the other officers and senior noncoms of the PAAF garrison had been confined would have provided ample space for a third as many human bodies. There was room—barely—for each of them to have his own patch of floor at night, but anyone who rolled over in his sleep was going to awaken quickly when he was pushed off of whoever he’d rolled onto. On the other hand, there was something to be said for the congested conditions. This far back from the stove, the air temperature was frigid, to say the least, and no one had bothered to issue the prisoners any blankets. The warmth of crowded bodies could be welcome under those conditions.

Velvelig kept his own breathing deep and steady as he tried to decide what had awakened him. He couldn’t identify it at first, and his jaw tightened as he heard the catch and painful wheeze of Tobis Makree’s breath. The Healer had survived another beating the day before, but he wouldn’t survive many more. The Mulgethian was two inches taller than Velvelig, but he’d never been physically robust, and his Healing Talent’s sensitivity made him especially vulnerable to the malice and gloating cruelty behind Hadrign Thalmayr’s brutality. Velvelig wasn’t surprised by his increasing fragility. If anything, he was astounded that the Healer hadn’t already willed himself into the merciful escape of death.

He may not be as “robust” as a good Arpathian septman
, Velvelig thought,
but he’s tougher than an old boot inside
.

It would have been better if he wasn’t, the regiment-captain reflected bitterly. It wasn’t as if any of the Arcanans’ prisoners had any illusions about what was going to happen to them in the end. Especially not Makree or Golvar Silkash. Thalmayr had completely convinced himself that they’d been trying to torture him rather than to Heal his paralysis, and only the intense pleasure he took in beating, kicking, and stomping them had kept them alive—more or less—this long. And of course the Arcanan Healers couldn’t be bothered to waste the magical healing abilities which had restored the use of Thalmayr’s legs on his victims! There’d be no—

Velvelig’s dark thoughts jerked to a halt as the sound which must have awakened him repeated itself. Knuckles rapped on the brig’s sturdy outer door, and his stomach muscles tensed. Thalmayr usually waited at least one more day between beatings to allow his victims to recover a bit of endurance for the next one, but he took a special sadistic pleasure in dragging Silkash and especially Makree out of a deep, exhausted sleep to face his truncheon and his fists, his boots and the heated poker he’d taken to using over the last week or so. The regiment-captain turned his head slightly, looking through the bars at the guard room, wondering if this time Thalmayr had screwed up and sent less than four men to collect his prey. If he had, it might finally be time.…

The knock came again, and Velvelig’s eyes narrowed. It wasn’t the usual deliberately thunderous pounding Thalmayr’s toadies used to announce their status as Kraisan’s own minions. In fact, the three regular night guards went right on snoring.

Despite the tension in his belly and the quickening of his pulse, the regiment-captain felt his lip curl in disdain. He’d learned very little about the Arcanans’ military, aside from the fact that Fort Ghartoun’s current tenants were quick with a boot or a fist or the butt of an arbalest, but he knew damned well they weren’t from the same unit as the prisoners he’d held in custody while the fort had belonged to the Portal Authority Armed Forces. Those had been elite troopers, with a deeply ingrained sense of discipline—both as a unit and personally—who’d maintained their military bearing and dignity even in captivity. None of
them
would have kicked back in chairs around the coal burning stove’s welcome warmth and dozed off on duty! And if they had, their officers and noncoms would have sorted them out quickly enough.

But any military unit took its cue from its CO, he reminded himself. He was still convinced that whoever had trained those original prisoners of his, it
hadn’t
been Hadrign Thalmayr. No, the slovenly attitude he saw in the guard room’s current watch was more Thalmayr’s speed.

Whoever was knocking, knocked again—harder—and Velvelig found himself wondering if the real reason the guards dispatched to haul Silkash and Makree back and forth pounded so hard on their nocturnal visits had more to do with the difficulty of awakening their sleeping fellows than a desire to terrify their victims.

Not that they weren’t entirely capable of accomplishing both goals at once, of course.

Somebody’s snoring hitched, then ended in a raucous, questioning sound, and one of the slumbering Arcanans shoved himself upright in his chair. The knocking sound came yet again, and the roused guard shook himself, then reached out with one foot and thumped one of his companions on the leg. He growled something that sounded unpleasant, and the second Arcanan heaved up out of his chair, stretched his arms high overhead in a spine-popping yawn, and ambled towards the front door.

* * *

Trooper Zhandru Mysa blinked sleep-scratchy eyes and jerked his camo-pattern tunic straight while Thankhar Zoa and Shield Foswail Tohsar, the guard detail’s senior man, climbed out of their own chairs. Shartahk only knew who’d be banging on the door at this time of night, and the odds were that it was going to be bad news for Tohsar’s section. Not that it was likely to be too bad, but a man never knew. At least Fifty Varkan wasn’t like that prick Sarma or that holier-than-thou pain in the arse Ulthar! Or any of those other Andaran Scout bastards. Of course, even Fifty Varkan would have a little something to say if he had to take official cognizance of someone who’d been catching a few winks on duty. Which was why it was only prudent to let Zoa and Tohsar stretch themselves into a suitable facsimile of awakeness before he opened the door.

He glanced over his shoulder to be certain they had, then shot back the locking bar and pulled the door open with a certain briskness, just in case it really was an officer on the other side.

It wasn’t, and his mouth tightened at the unpleasant sight of one of the very Andaran Scouts he’d been thinking about.

“Yes?” he half-growled in a deliberately surly tone. He probably should have shown at least a little respect for a senior sword, but it wasn’t like the other man was an officer. And it wasn’t like anyone was going to pay a lot of attention to complaints from someone whose unit had fucked up as thoroughly as the 2nd Andaran Scouts had managed to do when the Sharonians took the Mahritha-Hell’s Gate portal away from them.

“What d’you want?” he continued, holding the door half open—there was no point letting any more of the guard room’s precious warmth leak out of it than he had to—and glowering around it at the newcomer.

“Funny you should ask,” Sword Evarl Harnak said pleasantly…and kicked the door as hard as he could.

Harnak’s stocky build and powerful shoulders and arms fooled some people into thinking he was shorter than he was. In point of fact, he stood two inches over six feet and weighed a good two hundred and fifty pounds, very little of it fat. When
he
kicked a door, that door opened…rapidly and with a significant degree of force.

Mysa squawked in astonishment—and anguish—as the heavy panel smashed into him like a misplaced wrecking ball. He flew backward, one kneecap shattered, then slammed into the sturdy logs of the guardroom’s rear wall. The back of his skull whacked into them with stunning force, and he oozed down into a slovenly, half-conscious puddle.

The door continued its backward arc after hitting him until it slammed into the wall itself, and Sword Tohsar’s and Trooper Zoa’s mouths dropped open in shock. Astonishment and the rags of sleep held them motionless for perhaps three heartbeats. By the time they started to stir, five men in the uniform of the 2nd Andaran Scouts had stormed into the guardroom, drawn short swords in hand.

“What the fu—?!” Tohsar began furiously, only to stop abruptly as the cold, disagreeably sharp point of one of those swords made contact with the base of his throat. The hand holding that sword belonged to Evarl Harnak.

“I never much liked you anyway,” Harnak told him pleasantly. “Are you going to be reasonable about this, or do I get to cut your throat after all?”

* * *

Namir Velvelig sat up.

There didn’t seem to be much point in pretending to be asleep. Not after all that racket, and not when it had awakened eight of the other nine men in his cell almost as abruptly as the door had floored the idiot who’d gotten in its way. The regiment-captain had no idea what was going on, but he felt an undeniable glow as he contemplated the semiconscious idiot in question. It looked as if his nose, at least, was broken, and Velvelig wouldn’t be surprised if he’d lost a tooth or two along the way. That was an interesting thought. Could the Arcanan Healers actually regrow missing teeth? If they couldn’t, someone was going to need a good set of false ones.

He climbed slowly to his feet, stepping over Makree, who’d been so badly battered he’d actually slept through the hullabaloo. The others got out of his way, pushing back to give him space as he faced the bars and watched what was happening beyond them.

He recognized all the newcomers. They were the ones for whom he’d conceived a special hatred over the last hideous weeks, for every one of them had been left at Fort Ghartoun to be cared for by Velvelig’s Healers, and those Healers had given them the very best treatment they possibly could. Unlike Thalmayr, the rest of them had realized what was happening, too. That made their betrayal, the fact that none of them had so much as protested Thalmayr’s brutality, even worse than the callous approval the rest of the Arcanan garrison showed for that same brutality. Now he glared at their senior noncom—Evarl Harnak, as nearly as he could pronounce the outlandish name the man had given when he arrived at Fort Ghartoun as a prisoner—while his fellows finished shoving the two regular guards who were still on their feet into a corner of the guard room. They stripped their captives of the swords and daggers Arcanans carried as personal weapons instead of revolvers, and Velvelig’s eyebrows rose infinitesimally—the equivalent of a shouted astonishment for an Arpathian—as the guards were turned around and their wrists were fastened together with yet another of the Arcanans’ preposterous bits of casual magic.

* * *

Harnak finished securing Tohsar’s wrists with the binding spell from his utility crystal, then looked at Trooper Marsal Hyndahr and twitched his head at the moaning heap in the corner.

“Drag his arse over here with the others,” he said, and Hyndahr nodded with a certain grim delight.

Hyndahr had a special bone to pick with Hadrign Thalmayr, who’d reduced him to trooper from sword for “insubordination.” The insubordination in question had consisted of agreeing with another noncom in a private conversation that Hundred Olderhan’s proposal for withdrawing from the swamp portal rather than digging in to defend it had sounded like a good idea. It had been no more than one seasoned veteran talking to another one in the face of potential combat which would involve their squads, quietly, without involving anyone else, but Thalmayr—who’d already been pissed off by the way Hundred Olderhan had made him back down when he tried to put the Hundred’s
shardonai
in irons—had overheard it. Not simply overheard it, but taken it as a personal criticism directed at him and decided to vent his spleen at Hundred Olderhan by taking out his spite on one of the hundred’s men. Given the way Thalmayr had proceeded to get the entire company cut to pieces shortly afterward, it seemed self-evident that Hundred Olderhan—and Hyndahr—had been exactly right. Which, of course, had only prompted Thalmayr to assign him to every shit detail he could find since he’d been given command of the Fort Ghartoun garrison.