Council of Blades (25 page)

The city's general air of sleepiness and disarray were what annoyed Lorenzo the most. Clad in bedraggled clothing, tired and filthy from long sleepless nights beside the road, he surveyed his native land from the hills up above, and gave an irritated snarl.

The Blade Kingdoms were each quite tiny when mea-sured on the scale of other lands. Each nation consisted of a single town, a few surrounding villages, and their supporting fields. Most could be crossed in less than a day's ride. Even so, the escape route taken by Miliana and her band had taken two weeks of vile, uncomfortable tedium. They each had only a single set of clothes, and those had been damp and muddy from their trip under the river gates. With no money, the group had been unable to afford food; dinner had been provided by Tekoriikii, who had scavenged rabbits, watermelons, and long poles threaded with dozens of dead, dried carp. While the bird seemed to enjoy the salty fish, no one else could bear to ever look a carp in the face again.

With brigands and rapacious refugees scouring the hills, Miliana and her friends had hidden in a cave for many long, boring days. Now bedraggled, scratched by brambles, and beset with chafing itches, they had all endured quite enough. Despite Lorenzo's protests, the footsore humans had shambled on to the promised haven of the Lomatran city walls.

Flying gaily overhead, Tekoriikii gave a screech of heartfelt joy and looped toward the sun. His companions glared up at him and muttered curses under their breath.

Miliana felt utterly exhausted; she had never walked a full day's march before in all her life. Footsore, unkempt, and smelling like a sea hag dragged backward through a sewer, she was quite ready to sell her soul for a decent bed and a massage. She watched, uncaring, as Lorenzo and Luccio exchanged conversation with the soldiers at Lomatra's gates, never even questioning why the gate commander offered her a horse.

The girl leaned upon Lorenzo for support. As she rode, Miliana nodded wearily, casting an eye up to a fine, half-timbered house that occupied the slope of a quiet hill.

"Where are we going? Is that an inn?"

"No… it's home." Lorenzo kept his shoulders hunched and kicked irritably at vagrant cobblestones. "My home. So now I have to crawl back in through the doors and beg for leave to stay."

"Oh?"

Miliana sensed a delicate situation in the offing, but was just too damned tired to care. She held Tekoriikii on the saddle bow before her and hugged him tight to keep him still. "What about Luccio? Does he have a house here too?"

Luccio answered with a polite cough, hiding his responding blush behind his hand.

"Yes. Ah-well… I suppose I am what is best called a 'boon companion.'"

"Meaning I have to convince my father to let him free-load from our kitchen once more." Lorenzo spared his own front door a bitter, reluctant glance. "All right, let's get this over with. He told me to bring home a princess-and now I'm bringing one…"

Pulling his ruined clothing into some semblance of shape, Lorenzo the artist, scion of the noble house of Utrelli, moved up to the thick wooden bars across the gatehouse door. An old man bearing a spiked wooden club scrabbled up from his comfortable chair behind the por-tal and waved the weapon back and forth above his head.

"Be off with you, ragamuffin! You'll get no charity here!"

"Oh, hush!" Miliana regarded the old man with a foul-tempered scowl. "Can't you see he's Lorenzo Utrelli?"

"He knows…" Lorenzo kicked at the gate in spite. "Open the gate, Alonzo, or I'll burn the damned thing down."

The old gatekeeper muttered; seething with dislike, he ripped open the locks and swung the heavy doors aside. Lorenzo led Miliana and Luccio in through the gate-house, biting his thumb at the gatekeeper as he passed.

Just to prove superiority, Tekoriikii strutted back and forth past the old man three times, clucking to himself as he shook out his fabulous tail.

In a courtyard formed by a hollow square of half-tim-bered walls, Lorenzo handed Miliana down from her horse. The girl shot an ill-tempered glance back to the gate.

"Is he always like that?"

"Nasty old…" Lorenzo tried to help Miliana bash her hat back into a presentable cone. "I tried to replace him with an automatic door-opening machine."

"What-because it was less expensive?"

"No, because it would have offered better conversa-tion." The young artist adjusted his rapier belt and head-ed for the stairs. "Come on up. Tekoriikii, leave him alone, you don't know where he's been!"

The group entered a darkly panelled, badly lit great hall that smelled of wood polish and fried onions. A pair of overfed maids took one look at Lorenzo, gave spiteful scowls, and stalked off without a word.

Lorenzo ignored the scene and busied himself opening up the curtains, trying to bring some illumination to the room as he spoke for the benefit of his friends.

"Welcome to House Utrelli. Contents: One father-heavy cavalryman, retired. One brainless dolt of a younger brother-light cavalryman, not retired. The bar-racks house three hundred Lanze Spezzate, four noble-men, five squires, and a gatekeeper with a club. An environment tailor-made to foster hostility and hate." He turned as the sound of silks whispered down a connect-ing hall. "The house also contains one sister: Name-unimportant. Profession-gold digger."

The door opened, revealing the sister in question-tall, haughty, and wearing a well-stuffed court gown.

She faced Lorenzo with a sweet, false smile and dropped her-self into a little bow.

"Brother scribbler."

"Sister bloodsucker." Lorenzo looked at the girl with absolute, unfeigned dislike. "These are my friends.

This is Princess Miliana. We've all just escaped the fall of Sumbria."

"Why, how very nice for them!" Lorenzo's sister sim-pered, keeping her malicious face locked into its perfect smile. "And so why have you brought them here?"

"Why do you think?" Lorenzo ignored the girl and began wrenching open doors. "Where's father?"

"Father has left word that he is not at home."

"Meaning that he is home and just doesn't want to see me." Lorenzo pulled open a broom cupboard and stuck his head inside. "Father?"

A muffled reply drifted through the wall; thrusting into the room came a massive, powerful old man.

Although fully seven decades old, he towered over his own son by some six inches in height and fifty pounds of muscle mass.

Franco Utrelli, once a cavalier of the realm and now father to a nitwit inventor of a son, took one look at Lorenzo and let his nose wrinkle to a hidden smell.

"Oh, it's you." Lorenzo's father looked as though he had just trodden in something nasty. "Unless you've got a princess-get out."

"Father, it's an emergency! And anyway-I have a princess." Lorenzo flicked a glance at a man behind his father who could have been his father's younger clone. "Hello, Alberto. Father, Sumbria has fallen to Colletro. The whole city just passed into Svarezi's hands."

"Good riddance to 'em, too!" The senior Utrelli tried to wave Lorenzo from the room. "Always cluttering things up with do-good intentions and too-clever-by-half plans…"

"Father-we've been allies for a hundred years!"

"And look where it's gotten us! It's turned our young fighting men into a race of worthless nancies." Old Utrelli senior prodded a finger at the dandified Luccio. "In my day, men were men. Soldiers and commanders… like your brother here. Now there's a fine figure of a man. Not some damned paintbrush-swizzling, tinker-brained, gnome-headed, leveling little freak!"

Lorenzo's younger brother puffed out his muscular chest in pride. Lorenzo sneered and jabbed at the crea-ture in unremitting spite.

"He's exactly what's wrong with the entire system of social class! He has the brains of a golem and the educa-tion of a goblin; yet we're told that the lower orders have to listen to every word the damned fool says! If we're ever going to have true justice, we need to run governments through meritocracy. Set up a way to have the ruling done by those most fit to-"

"The nobility are most fit to rule!"

"No one has given the common folk a chance to try, so how can we possibly…"

Lorenzo's father stuck his fingers in his ears.

"I'm not listening!" He began to sing loudly and tone-lessly, instantly attracting Tekoriikii's attention. "Not lis-tening! Not listening!"

Lorenzo's sister tried to intrude with her sweet, gen-teel smile.

"Now, Lorenzo, you know how father feels about your proposition to overthrow the ruling classes."

"What would you know about it? The only thing you ever overthrew was your own virtue."

Lorenzo's brother stirred into action with an "I say, steady on…" The family argument settled into full swing. Watched by an innocent and confused Tekoriikii, who flicked his head from side to side and up and down like a frog at a gnat con-vention, all four members of the Utrelli family, their two maids, and their gatekeeper all crowded into a circle and began a wild melee of words. Invective flew like an arrow storm, accompanied by hand gestures, stamping feet, and wild bellows of rage. Miliana watched in growing fury, slow-ly cramming her ruined hat deeper down over her brows.

"Shut up!"

Miliana's voice snapped like a lightning bolt, bringing an amazed halt to the family wars.

"Shut up! I order you to shut up!"

Lorenzo's sister blinked at her in shock, then opened her mouth to speak. She took one look at Miliana and blanched as the princess bunched a fist.

Short, begrimed and bespectacled, Miliana kept the Utrelli family rooted to the spot as she snapped out orders like a leader born.

Her first command sent Lorenzo's brother scuttling away.

"You! Go return my horse to the city gate. You maids-go get a room for me and then pile some straw in a cor-ner as a nest for the bird. He wants a box of salt biscuits, a bucket of nuts-and get me a bottle of new white wine." Filthy, tired, and angry, the princess kicked Lorenzo's brother on his way. "Move it! The rest of you-I want baths for me, for Luccio, and for Lorenzo, a change of clothes and a meal-and someone get me a map of the Blade Kingdoms, now!"

Trying to preserve her air of cynical gentility, Lorenzo's sister faced Miliana with lowered lashes.

"And is there nothing else?"

"I'll work on it." Miliana marked the door to the bath-house and hitched up her filthy skirts. "I get the bath first. Just find me a decent dress and some towels."

The sister gazed down her nose at Miliana with a sneer.

"And what, my dear, should you be called?"

"I should be called when I've finished my bath." Miliana ruthlessly pushed the larger girl aside. "After that, you can call a meeting of your Blade Council, and call your troops to arms."

Miliana departed in a slap of bare, muddy feet. Lorenzo's sister kept a smile frozen on her face as she swiveled furious eyes upon Lorenzo.

"And who, exactly, is she?"

"She's serious." Lorenzo managed to pull off one mildewed boot, releasing a shower of stones across the floor. "Don't bother her until she's had her bath."

Luccio departed for the pantry, slapping his hands together in glee. Lorenzo crawled off to find himself a tin bath and a mug of beer. Watching the entire household whir like a hornet's nest, then depart, Lorenzo's sister drew in a magnificent breath of protest, only to find her audience had flown.

Exasperated, the girl stamped her foot in rage. With a toss of her head and a heave of her breast, she stormed irritably from the room. … Leaving Tekoriikii in full possession of the floor. The bird looked about himself in curiosity, spied a string of pearls dangling about Lorenzo's sister's receding neck, and waddled off in swift pursuit, naked avarice gleaming in his eye.

Approaching nervously in the shadow of the hippogriff aerie atop Sumbria's highest tower, the Colletran chief of staff faced Ugo Svarezi with a bow. Behind the adminis-trative head of Svarezi's new army, terrified technicians tried to hide from the bite of the first winter storm.

Forever clad in his black velvet brigantine, Svarezi ignored the interlopers and stared at the tower above him. His cold, chiseled face showed neither hatred nor joy, merely a desire for absolute, soulless efficiency.

With the winter months blooming bitter cold, the hip-pogriffs were restless. Svarezi ordered boilers stoked beneath the aeries, warming the floors to a springtime heat. Normally, the creatures bred in spring, the mares raising their young across the summer season, but this year, Svarezi wanted every mount upon the wing. He would breed his beasts through winter, and have the fledglings weaned before the summer campaigns began.

"My lord? My lord-the dockside artisans… their report i-is quite important…"

Svarezi turned and his expression chilled the artisans' blood stone cold.

The prince walked toward them slowly, the wind whip-ping through his coarse black hair.

"I require forty warships in twenty days. That is all."

The dockside guildmasters wrung their hands; already their crews were working like men possessed.

Svarezi kept their wives and children under guard within his walls-to "remove the distractions they might offer to proper work."

The master of Sumbria's caulker's guild crept forward by a pace.

"Sire-the numbers required-it is far too-"

"It is what I have ordered." Svarezi placed a hand on the man's shoulder and walked with him to the battle-ments. "In twenty days, we will have a fleet." The cold eyes met level with the guildsman's own.

"We will have a fleet."

"S-sire, it is too much. You require too many hulls!"

"Then use river barges as a base." Svarezi turned aside without a care. "Commandeer them from Sumbrian docks… or take them from puny Kirenzia…wherever seems convenient."

Behind the old guildsman, his colleagues paled. One man stole forward with sweat starting from his brow.

"But the sea and river trade, sire! The barges are essential to bring produce to the cities! How will the har-vest be brought in once summer-"

"Harvest is harvest; now is now." Svarezi never even spared the man a glance. "By harvest time, we will have the loot of whole cities to buy the goods we need."

Walking his underlings to the wall overlooking the port, Svarezi gazed over the dockyard and its pathetic scattering of half-built battle craft.

"I will draft three thousand peasants as your labor force; in winter, no one needs to till a field."

"We will lose men, sire. The land grows cold."

"Yes-we will lose at least half-but we will have a fleet in twenty days."

Svarezi pushed the old man forward; with a detached expression, he watched him fall, screaming, onto the rocks a hundred feet below.

"I believe you can be motivated into far, far greater speed."

Without a glance behind him, Svarezi marched into the lower stable rooms and gazed about the cluttered aerie floor.

The lean black hippogriff Shaatra had found herself a prime position. Sleek flanks gleaming, she turned around and around widening her nest; twigs and straw had been bound together with painstaking skill, and the bottom had been lined with astonishing flame-red plumes. Crooning softly to herself in age-old songs, the hippogriff prepared the cradle for her first-ever clutch of young.

Svarezi took one look at the nest, strode across the floor and kicked the little structure to the winds.

"Not you! I have need of you. Find another year for warming shells."

The warlord crushed tufts of fine black down beneath his heel as he snarled out for the grooms.

"Keep this beast out in the cold! And don't let it stare at the accursed stallions!"

Shaatra stood gaping in numb horror at the ruins of her nest. With a piercing scream of pure despair, she flung herself on Svarezi's unguarded back. Her beak tore sparks from the human's armor, spraying blood across the walls. With a vengeful, sobbing cry she whirled about to gouge him with her claws.

Bleeding great sheets of blood all down his back, Svarezi unhurriedly linked his armored hands. He swiveled heavily as the hippogriff came on, and crashed his fists clean across her brow.

The bird screamed and staggered, her head snapping sideways in shock. Svarezi struck her again and then again, hammering down blows until the beast collapsed at his feet. Careless of his wounds, he reached for a train-ing staff and beat the creature methodically up and down its hide, crashing blows into the moaning animal as it weakly tried to crawl aside.

Finally, he left Shaatra to her pain. Tossing aside the bloody staff, he turned to the grooms.

"I care nothing for their love. Only for their fear." He met the staring eyes of his underlings with a blank, cold expression. "Life is nothing but a contest of unremitting power."

With that, the warlord of Sumbria and Colletro left the tower. Behind him, Shaatra whimpered and reached out for a fallen fragment of her nest. Black talons closed upon a crumpled orange plume, and the hippogriff wept silent, bitter tears.