Eyes of the Calculor (16 page)

"Papa, that's complete and absolute dog's drool. There were probably dozens of Southmoor terrorists swarming through the barracks. Why does everyone take the word of a few drunk or sleepy musketeers about there being a single assassin?"

The magistrate contemplated this for a moment, his chin resting on his fist.

"You may be right, but we still have a problem. The guard on this mansion is just six of the city militia."

"Our guards are awake and sober, unlike the musketeers—"

"Wake up to yourself, boy!" the magistrate shouted, suddenly losing patience with his son's smug confidence. "The musketeers were certainly awake as he shot his way out—and I still say there was only one assassin. I checked the records of the brother of that other girl you tumbled and sliced, Elsile Camderine. He went to Balesha five years ago."

"Balesha?"

"The fighting monks in the Kalgoorlie Empire."

"Oh, the mad monks, aye."

"They study all martial arts and weapons, and they pray and practice from dawn to midnight. 'Perfect blade, perfect edge, no handle' is carved above their gate. They consider themselves too dangerous to leave Balesha, except in pursuit of escapee monks. 'No handle,' Mattrel, they cannot be commanded or used. If one of them got loose . . . God in heaven, if one of them ever got loose . . ."

Mattrel did not display alarm easily, but his heart was now pounding and his hands were cold and clammy. His father was actually frightened. For the whole of his life Mattrel had never seen his father be anything but confident and all-powerful. Even the Over-mayor of the Confederation deferred to his judgment where law and order was concerned.

"Have any ever escaped?" asked Mattrel, rubbing his hands together nervously.

"Only one, but technically he had not completed his ordination requirements and after pressure from the local mayor they let him go. Your problem is that Martyne Camderine does not have to stay ahead of his monastic hunters for very long. Just long enough to tear a rib from your chest and plunge it into your heart."

"I d-don't believe it," stammered Mattrel. "Balesha is two thousand miles away."

"It is two months and a few days since you ravished those girls. Yes, there has certainly been time for word to reach Kalgoorlie, and for Martyne Disore to return."

Mattrel forced a grin onto his face. "I'm not afraid. I've killed two dozen men in the past five years."

"Might I remind you that Brother Martyne Camderine killed nineteen men in less than five minutes?"

Mattrel's bravado cracked, and he began shivering visibly. "Damn you, Pa," he muttered, shaking his head. "Very well, then. What can I do?"

"The Disore and Camderine families want a public admission, apology, and restitution from those who watched but did nothing while their daughters were attacked, and death for those who participated. We can make up some story that you were too frightened to stop your men but did not touch the girls. I'll have the others shot— if Camderine does not get to them first."

Mattrel folded his arms very tightly and shook his head.

"For a city magistrate you are ignoring quite a lot of legal fact, Papa. Restitution means my entire inheritance going to their estate upon your death. A public admission that I was even a passive accomplice will draw a sentence of castration. That means no heir to carry the family name."

His father smiled maliciously. "We could pair you with some girl before—"

"No! You must guard me."

"Guard you? After what happened in the barracks? If all those

musketeers could not stop Martyne Camderine, what good are six of the city militia going to do?"

"Then post a warrant for his arrest," cried Mattrel, the pitch of his voice now high with despair. "Set the entire city militia, the Constable's runners, and every musketeer posted to Griffith in search of him."

The magistrate smiled again. He had been slowly breaking down his son's bravado, and now it was the moment to strike.

"You will be bait, my son, and we shall catch a very vindictive and dangerous fox."

"What? No! Not when Camderine can hide and wait for years while I live as a prisoner. He may even want that. Just think: a guard killed occasionally, a scorpion in my bed, salts of nightwing slipped into my ale. One day I awake from a philter-induced sleep to find an ear missing, a finger lopped off—"

"Or worse," said the magistrate, verbalizing what Mattrel could not bring himself to say. "All right, then, there may be another way. Think! That's something you didn't do before you set your idiots onto those daughters of the upwardly mobile merchant class. Think! Why is Brother Camderine here?"

Mattrel thought. "Because of his dead sister? Revenge? Murder? Ripping my balls off with his bare hands, roasting them until they're medium rare, then serving them up to his grieving parents on a platter of wild rice and parsley, probably with a slice of lemon and a nice carafe of white wine?"

"If he has any sense of taste it would be a '26 cabernet from the Hunter Valley vineyards, but that is not the point. You forgot about honor—not that this surprises me, of course. If Velesti, that walking vegetable, were to vanish he would seek to rescue her as a matter of honor. That would distract him from his vendetta against you."

"For a very short time."

"Ah, but I doubt that the other monks from Balesha are far behind him. They are unlikely allies for the likes of you, Mattrel, but you know the old saying: take friends wherever you can find them."

Mallis Molor was no stranger to housebreaking, and his means of entry were as novel as they were varied. The Disore mansion was well secured, but presented no particular problem for a professional in his class. He merely crept into the gardens by night, and while an accomplice distracted the guard dog he scaled a wall, lifted the tiles, and entered through the ceiling.

Not long after dawn a cart loaded with firewood came down the street and stopped before the servants' gate. For Hallis this was his cue. He cut out an edge of Velesti's bedroom ceiling, then lowered himself to the floor. The girl was in bed, asleep. He took a small phial from his pocket and poured the sickly sweet contents onto a cloth. She was lying on her stomach as Hallis seized her, clamping the cloth to her face and pinning her to the bed with his weight. Presently she ceased to struggle. Slowly he took the cloth away, but she continued to lie still. Her buttocks pressed up very pleasantly against his loins.

The plan was to put her in a sack and deliver her to the carters downstairs, using the laundry chute. In a few minutes she would be on the cart, along with a dozen sacks of ash from the basement, but in the meantime . . . The girl's body lay beneath Hallis's, and her scent and feel were very enticing. He knelt on the bed, pulling the covers back from her, then leaned forward as he ran his hands along her legs and began to draw her night smock up, exposing her thighs, her buttocks . . .

A knee crashed down between Hallis's shoulder blades as a hand grasped his chin and another pressed against the back of his head. With a single twist Hallis's neck was snapped.

■ e what?" demanded the magistrate as he sat in the semidarkness.

The shadowboy was actually a man of about thirty-five. He was blindfolded, and had been brought to the magistrate's mansion in a covered cart. Nobody else wanted to deliver the news.

"Hallis Molor was found in a bag of ash collected from the Disore mansion. His neck was broken. There was no girl in any of the other bags."

"Does anyone else know this?"

"Only Red Man. He dumped the body, then drove the cart here."

The magistrate thought quickly and cannily. He had lost a skirmish, not the war. Now was the time to regroup his resources and attack again. He beckoned to his steward and pointed to the sha-dowboy.

"Take him back to the wagon."

Once they had gone the magistrate sat back in his chair, lit his pipe and blew a long, gusty streamer of smoke. Martyne Camderine again, and this time showing that he could be subtle as well as blunt. The killer monk had to be lured into view, one way or another. He picked up a report. No blacksmith admitted building the armor, but six of them recognized individual bands and plates as recently pilfered from their workshops. Very resourceful, very clever, but not invulnerable, thought the magistrate. A shot to the head would have—

A blow to his own head interrupted the magistrate's train of thought. As the room swam back into focus the magistrate was aware of a sharp pain at the back of his skull and a gag in his mouth. He was bound to a chair and someone was moving about behind him.

"Who was the moderator when Reclor Disore died?" asked a chillingly soft whisper behind him. "Nod when you wish to tell me."

The magistrate shook his head. There was a soft touch at his elbow, and white fire danced through his nervous system.

"Fras Poros Stal was named as Reclor's second in the magistrate's report. Poros Stal was a targetry instructor at the Griffith Weapons Academy. Stal had been training Reclor, but Stal was also known to have shadowboy associations. The name of the moderator in your report does not exist in any record in any library, yet you initialed his name as approved. Who was the real moderator?"

The magistrate shook his head. Again the soft but expert touch at his elbow, and again cold, silent fire crackled through his body.

"I really do want to know."

This time the pain was in both elbows. The magistrate jerked so violently that the chair nearly toppled.

"You must give me a very good reason to stop hurting you."

The magistrate nodded. The gag was loosened slightly.

"If you try to call out I can draw this tight again in an instant. Who was the moderator?"

"There was a conspiracy, a Dragon Silver from Libris—"

The gag was drawn very tight, and soft hands fluttered over the magistrate's neck. When the brilliant, clear wash of pain had ebbed away he was in such fear of further suffering that he was quite incapable of lying. Again he nodded. The gag was loosened for a second time.

"Me, it was me! I was moderator. My son, Mattrel, my only son was on the field. I wanted the duel to be fair."

The gag was hitched tight. The severed head of Poros Stal was now placed on the table before him by a gloved hand. Suddenly the magistrate of the great and powerful city of Griffith realized that Martyne had known all along what had happened at the duel—except for the identity of the moderator who had stabbed Reclor's real second. The monk's gloved hands were just visible as they attached a baffle pipe to the barrel of a flintlock.

The magistrate frantically shook his head from side to side until a hand seized his hair. The baffle pipe pressed against the back of his head. He's just trying to frighten me, thought the magistrate, he wants —

A muffled shot obliterated the thought. The intruder walked softly from the room, then went on downstairs, where the magistrate's steward was sprawled dead beside a desk where an accounts book lay open. One entry recorded a large payment to PS for "Services." A quill lay across the book, and "PS" had been circled with red ink, along with "Service," and the amount. He walked out to the cart, released the brake and flicked the reins, then tipped his hat to the militiamen at the front gate as he turned into the street.

Rochester, the Rochestrian Commonwealth

Lengina had never entertained any real hopes of becoming Over-mayor of the Rochestrian Commonwealth, but a run of luck had placed her on the throne. In most Australican mayorates the position of mayor was hereditary, and her father had been Mayor of Ingle-wood. She had also been an only child, so when her father had died she found herself mayor of a small but prosperous state. The over-mayor at the time was a strong, healthy man, and seemed to have a long reign ahead of him until he died of a sudden and exceedingly mysterious illness.

A fierce struggle developed between two factions of the Commonwealth's mayors when nominations were called for the election of a successor. The mayors of Tandara and Seymour were the two groups' respective champions, but three of the four female mayors of the Commonwealth decided that their opinions were being ignored. In her first speech before the Commonwealth Council of Mayors, Mayor Lengina of Inglewood had spoken of the power of diversity and tolerance. She had gone on to introduce a variety of controversial legislation in her own mayorate, the most controversial of which banned the forced registration of aviads and prohibited the use of guns in legislative duels.

As occasionally happens in preferential voting, the fancied candidates got ten primary votes each, and Lengina got four. This forced the counting of secondary votes, of which the primary candidates got two each, while Lengina got twenty. Secondary votes had half the value of primaries, but Lengina had nearly all of the secondary votes. She suddenly found herself Overmayor of seven million souls, but presiding over a council in which twenty of the twenty-three other mayors had severe reservations about her ideals and plans for reforms.

It was not only the mayors who were unhappy about the young woman's appointment. Although also young, Highliber Dramoren was of the old school of librarians who believed that those in power were there because they knew better than anyone else and should

thus be allowed a free hand. This was not the sort of attitude that Overmayor Lengina liked to see in her most senior civil servant.

"You may be wondering why I sent for you," began Lengina as Dramoren went down on one knee before his monarch.

"I suspect that it involves the right of Dragon Librarians to duel with flintlocks, Overmayor," said Dramoren as he straightened. "Personally I think swords are elegant and humane weapons, but librarians have been shooting each other for centuries and old traditions die hard. The Dragon Librarian Service is the backbone of the Commonwealth; you cannot afford to compromise its loyalty."

"This same organization also had the highest incidence of deaths by dueling in the very same Commonwealth."

"They accepted the voluntary use of swords if—"

"As important as this matter might be, Highliber Dramoren, I am more concerned about another just now. You can probably guess what it is."