The Telastrian Song (10 page)

‘Perhaps you’d let me have a look about your manor, just to be sure.’

‘You mean your men haven’t been able to tell you anything useful?’

Dal Lupard smiled, but remained silent, as he was always sure to do when there was nothing to say.

‘I’ll return them to you later,’ dal Bragadin said. ‘Or perhaps not. I haven’t decided yet.’

‘I presume an invitation isn’t forthcoming then?’

‘Ordinarily it wouldn’t be my practice to refuse an Intelligencier’s request, but then again, you’re not really an Intelligencier anymore, as you said yourself. And even if you were it wouldn’t matter a damn, so my answer is go fuck yourself.’

‘Now, there’s no need for that,’ dal Lupard said.

‘I’m afraid there is,’ dal Bragadin said. ‘I won’t have one of the Tyrant’s bottom feeding lackeys fouling up this lovely little village. I’ll be back in an hour. If you’re still here, I’ll call you out and kill you. You’re a banneret, as you’ve reminded me—or what’s left of one—so I’ll offer you that courtesy. Don’t bother waiting for your thugs. They might not be following. Your breakfast’s getting cold. You have time to finish it.’

S
oren was excited
when his ship dropped anchor in the Ostsea, the roadstead by Ostenheim where all large ships had to wait until they could go into the harbour. When he’d fled, he never expected to see Ostenheim again, and from the moment that the old castle on the hill became visible, shortly followed by the great lighthouse out on the Breakers’ Isles, Soren had been glued to the bulwark, watching.

Returning was perhaps the most dangerous and stupid thing he had ever done, and he had done a great many dangerous and stupid things in his life. For all he knew the City Watch—or even worse, the Intelligenciers—could be waiting for him at the docks when he stepped ashore. It was unlikely, but a possibility nonetheless; it was dangerous to discount anything. However, it did nothing to dampen his enthusiasm at the prospect of being home.

The passengers didn’t have to wait for the ship to be given a berth inside the harbour, and could be rowed to the jetty in one of the ship’s boats if they chose. It was a decision that carried a degree of risk, as falling into the Ostsea while crossing from ship to boat could result in drowning, or attack by a shark. Nonetheless, Soren didn’t want to have to wait for the ship to be given a berth in the harbour, and felt that his adventures in the Spice Isles had adequately prepared him to face such dangers.

He waited as the boat was lowered into the water, looking into the harbour between the two huge, mismatched towers that guarded the entrance. There were so many familiar, comforting sights that it almost made him forget the reason for being there and the danger that brought with it. Although Amero could have sent men to kill Soren no matter where in the world he went, he had never been under so great a threat as he would be from the moment he stepped ashore.

Only one other passenger elected to be rowed ashore, as the sea was choppy and the climb down the side of the oceanman Soren had taken passage on was precarious. He had lost some of his fleet-footedness since his time on the
Typhon
, but he managed to make it down the ladder and into the boat without embarrassing himself.

As the boat’s crew pulled them ever closer to shore, Soren felt increasingly nervous. He had no idea what awaited him. There were so many things to worry about, he wouldn’t have time for anything else if he allowed himself to dwell on them.

D
espite his paranoid concerns
, the City Watch were not waiting for him. He paused on the dock and looked around, an uneasy feeling in his stomach. There was no way for anyone there to know he was coming. Only a fool or a madman would return, given Soren’s circumstances.

He had wrapped his sword in a blanket and concealed it as best he could in his travelling pack, and tucked Ranph’s box away in the bottom. He had peeked into the box once during the voyage, astonished at so much wealth in such a small object. He hadn’t seen anything like it before. All those little rough, clear stones waiting to be polished into expensive gems. It looked more like a box of crushed glass than the fortune it represented.

He didn’t want to wear his sword, at least until he had gotten a feel for the city. It would have told everyone that he was a banneret, and a banneret attracted more attention than an ordinary citizen. Soren wanted as little of that as possible.

Walking into the city felt like putting on an old and well broken-in pair of boots. There was something familiar about every street, sound and smell. After so long living among strange accents and foreign languages, the Ostian slang and lilt sounded musical to his ears.

Not much had changed at first glance, but Soren knew too much had happened for there not to be differences under the surface. The old aristocratic class had been all but wiped out; as Ranph had said, he was the last living elector count. The Duke of Ostenheim had always been selected from their ranks and voted on by them, but no one was under any illusion that Amero intended anything less than a hereditary monarchy. The buildings might look the same, and the accents may sound the same, but Soren was not foolish enough to think that Ostenheim hadn’t changed. He had to remember that it was now a hostile place, and this was not a welcomed homecoming.

He walked around, trying to soak up the atmosphere and think of somewhere to stay. As he walked, an odd feeling came over him. The streets were busy, and he passed many people. None paid him the slightest notice. Why would they? They were all strangers. Everyone in the city was a stranger to him. Other than a couple of masters at the Academy, there was not a single person in Ostenheim who would have a friendly word for him. He had no friends there, no family. The more he thought of it, the more he longed to be back in Venter—a country where he had only spent a few days.

It was because Alessandra was there. There was Ranph and his family too. There was a comfort in having someone with shared history nearby. After so long moving about, searching for Alessandra and then trying to stay ahead of Amero’s cutthroats, he had forgotten what it was like. He hadn’t realised how much he missed it.

With Amero dead, Soren would be able to put down deeper roots. Invest more of his money in one place and not have to worry about keeping enough back to start again somewhere else. A small manor house, a large enough manor farm to provide a good, stable income. A family too. Alessandra loved children. Berengarius had told him he wouldn’t be able to have children, but Soren hoped he was wrong. He was due some luck, and the old man had been uncertain about many things.

It was dangerous to dwell on dreams, though. It had led him to trouble before, tying himself up in knots about what could be while he lost sight of what
was
. He always had to be prepared for the worst. With that in mind, he had gone to the Austorgas’ branch in Voorn before leaving, and transferred the bulk of his wealth to Alessandra. He kept only what he would need to live on while in Ostenheim. He needed to know she would never go without if he didn’t make it back.

Familiar buildings, smells and sounds, and a city full of people who would step over his body without pause for thought if he fell dead in the street. Ostenheim wasn’t home, it was just somewhere he had spent twenty-odd years of his life. Home was Alessandra.

H
e knew
a number of decent inns around the city, and cost was of no concern. He didn’t need anything extravagant, just somewhere secure, with a clean bed and a good kitchen.

It was difficult to relax with a fortune in diamonds concealed in the bottom of his travel bag, but he was famished when he finally made his choice and took a room in an inn in Guilds, so Soren afforded himself the luxury of a hot meal before he did anything else. The inn he chose was unremarkable, but catered to a transient clientele of merchants and sell-swords. He kept his bag at his feet, but nervously watched everyone who came into the inn and ate so quickly he gave himself indigestion in the process. Soren knew he would be on edge until he had safely delivered Ranph’s package, and made that his first task.

The address Ranph gave him was for an apartment in the artisans’ district on the other side of the Eastway River. He didn’t want to have to carry his travel bag stuffed full of clothes to conceal the diamonds, and likewise he didn’t want to walk through the city carrying the box that contained them out in the open. It was too attractive a target for thieves, and while he knew he could fight them off it would attract too much attention.

He decanted the diamonds into two socks, which he then attached to the sleeve fastenings on his doublet. The socks hung down on the inside of his doublet, and the bulges they caused were hidden under his cloak. They made a faint rattling noise when he moved, but nothing that would draw notice.

Satisfied that he could pass by with a king’s ransom unnoticed, Soren set off for the address Ranph had given him. His initial instinct was to walk slowly and take in all of the sights and sounds of the city. He had missed the place, the familiarity and the comfort that it provided. He knew he needed to be careful not to let that lull him into a false sense of security. When he was in a strange and foreign place, it was his natural reaction to be on his guard; to be suspicious of everything. As a defensive response, it came to him without having to think about it. Here though, that response was gone; he needed to force himself over and over to set aside the emotional reaction to being somewhere so familiar and treat it like the dangerous place that it was.

He enjoyed a healthy dose of paranoia at the best of times, as his recent behaviour testified, a remnant of his youth when the wrong move could mean having what little you possessed stolen, or being beaten to death by street gangs looking for sport. His experience of higher society after joining the Academy had done little to dull this instinct. He had found that the only difference between the streets and high society was that more expensive weapons were used.

The address Ranph gave him was for an apartment building off a main street not far from the Amphitheatre, the city’s main competitive duelling site. He had spent many hours there over the years, watching the bannerets and dreaming of taking his place on its sandy floor. He walked past the building at the address twice, looping around the block to get a good sense of the building and its surroundings. Other than the Amphitheatre, Artisans was not a part of the city that he was particularly familiar with. If he needed to get away quickly, possibly pursued, he wanted to know where to go.

G
iura was not accustomed
to being blindsided. It had happened before, but it was not a regular occurrence and one that he put a great deal of effort into avoiding. He sat in his office in the Grey Tower, the single mage lamp covered with a piece of cloth to dim its light. He wanted as little as possible intruding on his thoughts as he tried to order all the little pieces of information.

That there could be a mage in the city capable of curing stomach cramps, creating sparkling lights in the air or making small wooden animals move about a table on their own to amuse children would not have surprised or bothered him. He was confident that there were at least a half dozen men and women who were able to do so. Such skill was not particularly rare, and experience taught Giura that it wasn’t worth bothering with. If anything, it allowed the populace to see what magic could do and reminded them of the destruction and misery it had once wrought.

The skill to fix a broken arm came as something of a surprise. There were very few who Giura knew about that were capable of doing this. The skill and power to kill two grown men was shocking and terrifying; not just that level of ability, but also the fact that it had been acquired without Giura, or any other Intelligencier, noticing. What worried him even more was that he had nothing to go on other than two notebooks filled with gibberish.

The problem had formed into a great, amorphous spectre in his mind. He was so muddled up with it that he couldn’t see a way to pull it all apart and analyse it in a useful way. As pressing as the whole matter was, he knew the only way he would be able to deal with it was to approach it fresh again, and to do that he needed something that would let him take his mind off it for a few hours. He needed to get out and clear his head.

When not mage hunting, Giura found himself spending more and more time observing the various groups that were opposed to the Duke’s rule, so that was what he chose to do.

It was a complicated tale that brought him to this curious habit. State security was not one of his responsibilities, and it was not out of any sense of professional obligation that he did so.

In the aftermath of Amero’s accession to power, disorder had reigned. Some members of the Intelligenciers chose to flee the city, while others, thinking they were safe, remained and ended up on the headsman’s block. The result of all that for Giura was that a great deal of information that would usually not pass his way, did so.

One item was of particular interest to him, the investigation into the death of an elector count a couple of years before. Giura had looked into it at the time because he knew the murdered man. Feuds amongst the aristocracy were common and from time to time they ended with the death of one or the other—sometimes both. There was an investigation, but nothing came of it. Getting involved in aristocrats’ power squabbles was usually not worth the effort. The Intelligenciers were responsible for monitoring intrigues from outside the state, the practice of magic and plots directed against the incumbent duke. The vendettas of ambitious and grasping noblemen were of little concern to them.

There was nothing to suggest who was responsible for what was certainly a murder, rather than the unfortunate death in a house fire it looked like to the casual observer. Tragic though it was, life could be cruel and then it went on as normal. No one was ever pursued for the murder of Elector Count Rikard dal Bragadin.

There were a number of Intelligenciers that Giura now knew to have been on the Duke’s payroll long before he took the throne. He read the confession of a thug for hire, arrested for an unrelated incident. He had admitted to being one of a gang of assassins who broke into the Count’s town house to kill him before setting it on fire. Men will admit to many things under physical coercion, but to implicate the Duke was to invite further torture and thus less likely to be an untruth. The report was buried in with many others by one of Amero’s tame Intelligenciers, and it was pure chance that Giura happened upon it.

It was enough for him to dig deeper, revealing further incriminating evidence. There was no doubt in his mind that Amero had Rikard dal Bragadin murdered; one of the first steps on his path to the ducal throne. Giura owed dal Bragadin much. Everything. From the moment he accepted that there was no alternative explanation, Giura developed an overwhelming desire to see Amero dead. Violently and painfully, if possible.

G
iura wasn’t an arrogant man
, certainly not enough so to think he could kill the Duke of Ostia alone. Not if he hoped to survive the event. He had many useful skills and was in a position that could be useful to a plot, but he had no desire to throw his own life away foolishly as part of any conspiracy. He watched and waited for an opportunity that bore promise.

There were several such potential opportunities in the city, groups of disaffected citizens, dispossessed nobles, and disgruntled soldiers. Giura was watching as many as he could keep track of, and he did his best to keep the ones that looked competent from the attention of his colleagues, who made sport of such conspirators. He chose to take a look at the leader of the most promising group and see what he was up to, hoping it would clear his mind enough to apply it effectively to his other problem.

The leader’s apartment was in Artisans, the ground floor of one of the tall, terraced buildings that lined the streets. Giura ducked into a back alley and climbed a drainpipe to the roof of the building opposite the apartment. He intended to sit there for an hour or two, watching the comings and goings.

As he settled into his spot, he was amused by the thought that the greatest asset any of these clandestine groups had was Amero himself. The Duke only saw threat in the bigger fish. The arrogant bastard didn’t consider anyone other than an aristocrat, and a high born one at that, to be of any danger to him and most of them were already dead or imprisoned. The merchants, criminals, and various other common classes of citizen were so far beneath him that they couldn’t possibly be a danger. That he had injured and alienated as many of them as he had of the aristocracy—far more in fact, as there were far more of them to injure—seemed to escape him completely.

The orders that came down from on high were to hunt down and imprison any member of the aristocracy that was not an open and vocal supporter of Amero’s regime, or anyone with even a tenuous right to be nominated for election to the ducal throne. There were slim pickings these days though; almost everyone that had not been captured or killed had long since fled the city. A few of the more misguided and romantic may have remained behind, professing loyalty to Amero in public while plotting and arranging clandestine meetings under the cover of darkness. Every few months one such fool was discovered and publicly executed.

The group that most interested Giura was headed by a man Amero thought he had disgraced so badly and struck so low, he could never rise up again. General Kastor had won his rank in the south, his fame in the east, and his title deep in Amero’s mire of deceit. He had lost it all at the battle of Hohnbach, although Giura knew that it was not his fault. Despite his faults of fidelity, Kastor was a skilled military commander. What particularly interested Giura about Kastor and his cabal was that his men were soldiers, battle hardened all. They were not an intellectual group of idealists or a romantic bunch of aristocratic fools. They knew what it was to kill and had faced true danger. They were men who could make their will into reality, and didn’t shy away from the sight of blood. Those were qualities Giura thought particularly useful. He remained in the shadows—something he was very adept at—assisting them where he could. When the time was right and they were ready, he might reveal himself to them, and directly help. He might not even do that. He didn’t care who killed Amero, so long as he died. If Giura could best serve that result by remaining unknown, that was what he would do.

There was little activity at Kastor’s apartment that night, and Giura was finding it difficult not to think of sorcerers, magic, notebooks and dead ends. It had been quiet the last few times Giura had visited, and he was beginning to worry that they were losing their impetus. There was only so long an army could prepare and bide its time before it fell apart. If Kastor waited too long, Giura was concerned his soldiers would start to lose their faith in him or their interest in his cause.

Kastor’s public disgrace was so complete it said something about his character and ability that anyone would still support him. It had to be hard for men who were not present in the command tent at Hohnbach to believe that it was actually Amero who was responsible for the disaster, and not Kastor. Amero was a skilled swordsman—perhaps the finest who had ever lived, as he had proved on countless occasions in the arena—but his skills did not extend to the command of large numbers of men on the battlefield. With the war almost won, he had gone north to take credit for driving home the final victory. Cocky and overconfident, he had assumed command, ignored Kastor’s advice and delivered Ostenheim its worst defeat of the Ruripathian war, worse even than Sharnhome. Giura had seen signed orders and dispatches—long since destroyed by the Intelligenciers by order of secret ducal decree—that proved the fault lay with the Duke.

He might have been lacking command skill, but not duplicity. The blame landed at Kastor’s feet and he became a figure of hate for all the orphans, sonless mothers and widowed wives in the city. Amero proved he was as proficient with propaganda as he was with a sword. Kastor was stripped of his titles, disgraced and thrown in the gutter. There were those, however, who remembered Kastor in better days. The old soldiers whose loyalty died hard and whose use to Amero had ceased with the end of the war. Unemployed, unwanted and with nothing else to do, they rallied to their old general’s banner once more.

Giura had been watching them for some time. Their hatred of the Duke was intense and genuine. Giura knew all of them; their faces, their names, their training and their military experience. He knew where they lived, who their parents were and if they had children. When an unfamiliar man Giura had seen walk down the street twice already reappeared and stopped at Kastor’s door, his attention was firmly grabbed.

He only caught a fleeting glimpse of the face. It was young, but with old eyes. No more than twenty-five, this man had seen more than his years warranted. He was let in with only short delay. It was interesting, and a shame Giura couldn’t hear what was being said inside. However, it gave him something to do other than worry about the possibility that there was a mage in the city, potentially the most powerful she had known in the better part of a thousand years.