A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (51 page)

Somewhere behind that rampart, the Imperial Family were being held hostage. And who knew how many other people were trapped in there? Or had died during the twenty weeks of this damned siege.

There was nothing for it. “We might as well,” she said brightly. She began to stride towards the barricade.

She was no more than twenty feet away when a voice yelled, “Halt!”

Finesz put a hand to the brim of her cap and peered up. “Who are you?” she called.

“I ask the questions!”

“This uniform says I do,” Finesz countered.

There was a moment of silence. How ingrained, wondered Finesz, was obedience to the black of the Office of the Procurator Imperial?

“Lieutenant Strasznik, Vonshuan Ducal Militia.”

More so than she had expected, then. “Well, Lieutenant Strasznik,” she replied, “please tell your commanding officer that Inspector Finesz of the Office of the Procurator Imperial wishes to speak with his grace, the Duke of Ahasz.”

“Sorry, ma’am. That won’t be possible.”

“Tell him it’s about Casimir Ormuz.”

That, she thought, should provoke a response.

And so it did. No more than five minutes later, the entrance to the guard-house to the left of the road opened and two figures stepped out. Finesz blinked and stared. They were not what she had been expecting. Both wore grey coveralls and cuirasses, and air-hoods over their heads. Underneath they must have worn some sort of hat because their crowns possessed a strangely unnatural roundness.

They marched up to her. The first spoke. His voice was muffled and distorted by the mouthpiece of his air-hood. “This way please, my lady. The duke will see you.”

The two masked militia troopers led Finesz through the guard-house and into the District. Assaun she had instructed to return to the staff car to await her return. A command car floated impatiently on its chargers behind the barricade, and Finesz was taken to this and told to climb in. She did so and was joined by the two troopers. After the rear hatch had been slammed shut and bolted, the vehicle jerked into motion. There was a narrow viewing slit by Finesz’s seat and she twisted to peer out of this. From what little she could see, the Imperial Household District appeared mostly untouched. There was that great berm across the entrance, of course, and the road behind it had been ripped up to provide the materials for its construction. But Glorina Park appeared untouched, and even the Knot—as they climbed and swooped and dived through it—had survived unscathed.

Then Finesz caught sight of the Imperial Palace.

“Dear Lords,” she whispered.

It was a ruin—the two great statues of Emperors Edkar I and Poer I were barely recognisable, the acres of balconies and carved screens Finesz remembered gone, rooms open to the air, fallen floors like cataracts of stone. The Palace’s entire facade seemed caught in the act of collapse. How many had died in there? How many still survived? Enough, Finesz realised, for this siege to still be in place.

The command car came to a sudden halt, and Finesz was bundled from the vehicle by the two masked troopers. She found herself standing on what had once been Palace Road. It was no longer a road. A deep trench, revetted with wood, zizagged its length. Glassy craters dotted the ground round and about. The formal gardens fronting the Imperial Palace were a field of mud. She stepped up to the trench and looked down into it. Troopers in dirt-smeared red lounged listlessly against blind trench-walls, or perched on sandbags, heads bent together, engaged in some game. Finesz saw a battle which had been ongoing for tens of weeks. Dark smears against the wood of the revetment could be mud or blood. There was no way to tell. She heard boots sloshing through water, deep hacking coughs, the abrupt clangs of weaponry being carelessly moved, the low murmur and occasional hoarse bellow of an army under orders. And the smell… Death, blood, burning earth and hot metal, the sewerage smell of foul water, the sharp and rancid odour of unwashed troopers. She put her hand to her mouth and felt great sadness. If only she had known —

“You there! Are you stupid, man? Get down!”

It was a moment before Finesz realised the voice had been directed at her. At that moment, a bolt from a cannon in the Palace fizzled overhead and hit the earth some twenty yards behind the road. She ducked at the explosion of earth and light, although she was not near enough for injury. Turning slowly about, knees still bent, she saw the person who had shouted at her. He stood on the back-slope of Palace Road, a muddy, cratered area that Finesz remembered as green meadow. He wore a red jacket with a great deal of gold frogging. But it was filthy. And dirt streaked his face, above his goatee and across his cheeks.

The Duke of Ahasz.

“Oh. You’re a woman,” Ahasz said. “You’ll be the one that demanded to see me.”

Still stooped, Finesz made her way down the slope from Palace Road, only straightening when she was no more than six feet from Ahasz. “Your grace,” she said.

“You said you knew something about Casimir Ormuz.”

Up close, the duke looked tired, his eye-sockets dark and bruised, his cheeks drawn. His eyes, however, were bright. His gaze narrowed as he took in Finesz, her black uniform, the badges of rank on her epaulets, her short blonde hair. “You’re Finesz,” he said flatly. “One of them.”

Finesz blinked, surprised by the duke’s identification of her. “Ah, yes. Your grace. Sliva demar Finesz. Inspector, Enquiry branch. Ah, Office of the Procurator Imperial.”

“That I can see.”

He turned on his heel and marched towards the nearest entrance to the trench complex, a steep-walled cut in the slope some fifteen yards away. Finesz hurried to catch up.

“What do you want?” he snapped. “I’m somewhat busy at the moment.”

“I came to ask for your surrender.”

Ahasz stopped abruptly, catching Finesz by surprise. He laughed. It was the kind of laugh a person used when they had not experienced any cause for laughter for a long time. Reaching up, he dragged a hand across one eye, tears smearing the dirt across his cheek. “Thank you for that,” he said.

“I’m serious, your grace.” Finesz swung out an arm, indicating… well, indicating everything within view. “This has gone on long enough. You know you can’t win. And when the Admiral gets here, her attack will be short and brutal and victorious. Surrender now—you stand a better chance of survival.”

He shook his head. “No.” Turning to look up at her—she was head and shoulders taller, as she was with Ormuz—he asked, “She’ll be here soon, will she?”

“The Admiral?” Finesz was briefly overtaken with Ahasz’s resemblance in looks and manner to Ormuz, and could not respond. Shaking her head to dispel the confusion, she replied, “Ten days; two weeks, perhaps.”

“Ah, she won at Geneza, then.”

“I assume so. It never occurred to me she could lose.”

“True enough,” said the duke.

He turned away from her and started once again for the trenches. Finesz matched his stride. They entered the defile, and once between its walls the smell assaulted Finesz with renewed vigour. She lifted a hand to her mouth, but aborted the gesture halfway, not wanting to offend the duke. Soldiers gazed at her as she and Ahasz passed them. Some she recognised as regimentals—Housecarls and… Gold Watch? Others she took to be Vonshuan House Militia. Strangely, the only wounds she saw were minor—cuts, abrasions, bruises. She had expected more severe injuries. She pointed this out.

Ahasz turned to look at her—she could not interpret his expression. “I’m not a monster,” he said. “We control the railway line into the District and ship out our casualties on it.”

“So you could leave whenever you want? You’ve always been able to leave whenever you want?”

“I will not run away, inspector.”

The duke turned into an alcove in the trench-wall, stepping down into a short passage which led to a sturdy door of steel. It was ajar. He pushed it open and entered the room beyond. Finesz followed and found herself in an underground chamber, walled with the same slats of woods as the trench and ill lit by a pair of malfunctioning light-panels hung on opposite walls. Ahasz crossed to a desk. On it sat a notepad with a glass cracked across one corner and soiled switches. He gazed down at it, at some report displayed on its glass.

“You know what will happen when she gets here,” Finesz said. It had started as a question, but by halfway through, Finesz had known Ahasz was only too aware of the answer.

He looked up, stared at the wall a moment, then turned slowly to face her. “She’ll drop her troops into the District, there’ll be fierce fighting… and I suppose I’ll be beaten. But —” He held up a hand to forestall her—“I can’t give up now, inspector. I have to see this through to the end, even if it means my death. Because if I do not, then I’ll have achieved nothing. I’ll not have the lives of my men and women thrown away for nothing.”

“Noble sentiments, your grace. If you’ll, ah, forgive the pun.” Finesz swung out a hand, angry at the duke’s unwillingness to see reason. “But I see no achievements. You’ve dug up the Household District and destroyed the Imperial Palace. How many people have you killed? Not just your own soldiers, but those in the Palace, fighting for the Emperor? And civilians! You’ve turned the District into a battlefield. And for what? So you can sit on the Imperial Throne? Don’t you have enough power, enough riches, already? You’re one of the most powerful dukes in the Empire! You don’t even bother sitting in the Electorate because you don’t need to. What difference does it make if you’re emperor or not?”

There was a moment of silence.

Finesz thought, Dear Lords. What have I done?

“Have you quite finished?” Ahasz asked.

“I, ah, I believe I have. Your grace.”

He stalked towards her, his hand clutching the hilt of his sword. He was angry. His brows lowered, his jaw set. “It is not for you, inspector, to question me or my motives,” he said, voice low and harsh. “I have done what I have done, and I shall answer to one man for my actions. One man!

“But first, he has to beat me. And the battle’s far from won yet.” Ahasz returned to the desk. He reached out and stabbed at one of the switches on the notepad. He grunted at something he read and shook his head. Another jab at a switch. He turned back to Finesz. “Now I have to find somewhere to put you, you foolish woman.” He snorted. “What did you have to come here for?”

“To try reason,” Finesz replied equanimously. “I thought perhaps you’d respond to reason.”

“It’s too far gone for reason. It’s been too far gone for nearly half a year.”

“So you’ll battle it out to the end? Until there’s nothing left but rubble?”

Ahasz shrugged. “If that’s what it takes. Starting this was not a decision I took lightly, you know —”

“That much is obvious from all these trenches you’ve dug. Not to mention your troops. And the regimentals.”

“Don’t interrupt me.” He glared at her. “All this —” Another sweep of his arm. “All this—it doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant. I know what’s going to happen. It’s what I intended to happen. And neither you nor your little princeling clone can prevent it.” He strode across to the entrance, pushing past Finesz. As he swung the door open, he glanced back at her. “I’m flattered you thought it worth trying to reason with me, but you could never have succeeded. And I apologise for taking you prisoner, but —” He grinned. “It
is
a war, you know.”

“A prisoner?” This was one outcome Finesz had not considered. “Me? Why?”

“I cannot have you tell Flavia the disposition of my troops.”

“I’m no threat,” she protested. “I don’t even know what ‘disposition’ means!”

“You’ve seen enough, inspector. If Flavia’s coming, as you say she is, then you won’t be a prisoner for long.”

Standing in the centre of that underground room, with its wooden walls streaked with soil, its near-overpowering loamy odour, flickering shadows in the corners from the damaged light-panels… standing there, one hand to her sword, gazing at the Duke of Ahasz, Finesz realised with a cold and gelid sense of doom she had done something very foolish.

A trooper escorted Finesz from the duke’s room. He held a mace in one hand and brandished it apologetically. From his uniform, Finesz saw he was a Vonshuan household trooper.

“Where do you keep your prisoners?” she asked.

“The garrison stockade, ma’am. You’ll be safe there with the others.”

“Others?”

As they walked out of the defile and onto Palace Road’s back-slope, he explained, “We got a few regimentals from the Palace we caught. Even got a couple of knights too. Though you’ll not be in with them. Too bloody dangerous, they are, ma’am. We’ll bung you in with the officers. They’s a polite bunch, you’ll be all right.”

“For how long?”

He gazed at her, surprised. “Till it’s all over, ma’am.”

“And when will that be?”

The trooper laughed. “No good asking me. Mind, I don’t think even his grace knows. Happen it’ll happen when it happens.”

The rest of the walk was spent in silence. Finesz thought about running away, but she suspected the trooper would catch her easily enough. This torn and cratered ground was no good for running, either. A shaft of air hummed and burned some six feet above her head. She ducked quickly. And, of course, there was the danger of being hit by a blast from a cannon. The ground exploded ahead as the cannon bolt hit earth. Dirt fountained into the air, steam shot up and out, carrying a hot, wet smell of burnt soil to Finesz. She grimaced and looked away as earth rained back down onto the newly-formed crater, hissing and plinking as it did so.

“Is it always like this?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Regular bloody sound-and-light show it is. I don’t know why they bother. Isn’t no one daft enough to go wandering around back here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “We stay back there. In the trenches. Snug.”

Snug. It was not the word Finesz would have chosen. Not from what she had seen.

The kill-zone from the artillery in the Imperial Palace did not end abruptly but gradually. The craters were further apart, the ground less churned. Grass had managed to survive. On realising she no longer trudged through mud, Finesz stopped, looked down at her boots, and then looked back the way she had come. This was the verdant lea she remembered from previous visits to the Imperial Household District. She turned to her left. And there was Admiralty Fort, an obsidian cube. Ahead, the District garrison. Where she would be imprisoned. With her back to the ruined Palace, to the war-torn acreage behind Palace Road, to the trench complex… Looking only across the grass, it could almost be as if it had never happened.