Gonji: The Soul Within the Steel: The Deathwind Trilogy, Book Two (23 page)

Julian blustered, losing composure. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that she’s their holy woman. They’re already worried because their priests haven’t shown up as they’re supposed to, and she’s all they’ve got for leading their devotions. Arresting her would be the surest way of inciting rebellion. Better let me check out what’s going on first before you make any rash moves against city leaders.”

Gonji rose to go, hunched over in the cramped quarters. “I’ll let you know anything that might shed light on these events.”

Julian studied him closely. “All right. I’ll be waiting. Oh, samurai—no hard feelings about the castle business, eh? It was intended to enhance your cover, and I think it served its purpose. You should have seen the old guy—the Elder’s face—when I cut you there.” He pointed to Gonji’s ribs, and his meaning was clear: It was a brash warning against crossing him and a reminder of the outcome of their duel. Had he learned no respect at all for Gonji’s sword in the encounter? From his self-assured posturing it was clear that he hadn’t. All that had mattered to Julian was that he had been victorious.

Gonji grinned maliciously around clenched teeth but bowed curtly in assent.
You’ll get yours....
But the specter of doubt continued to flutter over the memory.

* * * *

Suddenly squeezing his thick fist, Klann crushed the brittle thing that had been a ripening apricot. He hurled it at the Llorm dragoon, then at once regained his dignity, clamping his fists at his sides, steeling himself. Someone’s breath hissed. The dragoon had flinched, turning his face and shutting his eyes, but with goodly discipline he had maintained parade rest. The king espied the people gathered in his chamber, sorely regretting his loss of temper.

General Gorkin stared at him wide-eyed, his wife at his side, nibbling at her lip. The dragoon resumed the professional soldier’s mask, while Captain Sianno regarded the floor’s gray tiles. Mord stood behind Sianno, the inscrutable golden mask bobbing smugly, arms folded. Leaning against the bedchamber arch: Thorvald, her eyes twitching expectantly. The buxom Genya’s nervous clatter of serving ware punctuated the strained silence.

Klann struggled with reason, impulse, and the chaotic council of the Brethren.

(take measures against them—now)

(caution, brother, have a care)

(investigate—move—but trust only in our judgment)

“It is as I have said, is it not?” Mord advanced. “They’ll resist you endlessly under that facade of placid religiosity.”

“And so what shall we do, Magician Most Sublime?” Klann grated, all joviality of the banquet night dashed by his confused indignance. “Destroy them all?”

Mord met his liege’s sarcasm with practiced equanimity. “Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary, sire. They need a lesson perhaps, that’s all.”

“A lesson,” the king echoed. He pointed at the crumbled fruit. “What is that? How was it done? You’re supposed to keep me one step ahead of such treachery. Is it magick?”

“Hardly, sire.” Mord walked over and bent to sift the strange substance. He clucked to himself. “No, not magick precisely but a very clever potion nonetheless. An arcane compound known to few but the rare adepts among us. Hmmm...there’s a witch who resides in the city. Perhaps she—”

Klann waved an arm. “Stop! We don’t want to know! Witches and goblins and demons and monsters—we care only about
people! Our
people. We’re full up with sorcery, Mord. What sorcery we’ve encountered has been either antagonistic to us or inept on our behalf.”

Mord bowed his head in a gesture of fealty. “Milord, may I remind you, at the risk of being impertinent—”

“No, don’t remind me!” Klann roared, cutting short the magician’s basso profundo. “Just—just see what you can do about counteracting this—this—blight. And proceed with your other...experiments.” But the king cared not to think on the foul business, and so he turned to Sianno. “And that is all you have to tell of these ambushed troops?”

“I fear so, sire,” the Llorm garrison commander answered.

“Slaughtered,” Klann said, his gaze remote, lost in the timeworn stone of the chamber wall. “And what of your Llorm patrols? Haven’t they been stationed so that one is never long out of sight of the others?”

Sianno nodded, his palms upturned in penitent bewilderment.

“Can there be a connection between the crop destruction and the ambush?”

“It
was
in the same area, milord. But I fear there’s more here than meets the eye. There’s disturbing talk among the populace of...things you’d care not to hear about, I think....” His voice dwindled to a mutter.

“Sorceries and legends,” Klann growled. Sianno only shrugged. “Do you suspect rebellious action? Are the people at large to blame?”

“It’s certainly possible.”

Klann ground out a Kunan curse and pounded his fists on the marble-topped table, startling the servant girl as she laid out his meal.

“We want
peace
with these people—don’t they understand? We’re tired of conflict. We can ill afford it. One winter’s respite from fighting—is that so much to ask? We’ll have peace here,” he said with grim resolution, “if we have to crush a few skulls to secure it! What do these people want of us? We feast their leaders, and then they claw at our backs like this.”

“They’re full of deceit, sire,” Mord observed.

“Find out what you can,” Klann said, sighing, restoring his composure again. “Bring me news. Threaten them. Cajole them. Coddle them—do whatever works! Tell them if they plan to starve us out,
their
children will shrivel before ours. We’ll brook no defiance. Tell them that. Shore up the city garrison, and extend the outreach for mercenaries. Send me the paymaster,” he said, turning to Gorkin. “We’re going to increase the free companions’ wage.” Then his vision clouded over, a tale from long ago played out before it, a story of lost Akryllon.

“One more thrust,” he mumbled. “Just one more thrust....”

“Sire,” came Mord’s booming voice, slashing through his reverie, “I am in need of more...assistants in my work. Shall I...procure them?”

Klann saw Sianno’s downcast look, and he knew they were sharing the same grim thought. What had become of the other conscripted citizens who were taken for Mord’s grisly experiments? But of course he knew. He knew, but his conscious mind refused to dwell on the result of the sorcerer’s terrible efforts at separating the Brethren. And there would be an accounting. Oh yes. There would come a time when they would come after their hostages, and then what? And
then
what? For this reason Vedun’s outrages must be borne stoically; tolerance must be stretched to its limits.

And the voices of the Brethren came to him again from within, crying out against this fatalistic madness, for once in unison in their pleas.
No, no, my Brethren, you must understand. It must be done. If you could know emergence, if you could breathe the air for yourselves, fill your lungs with life, you would yearn for separation as I do....

“Yes, take them,” he said in a tremulous voice, “take only as many as you need, and call them hostages. Tell them...tell them restoration will be made when we’ve learned we can trust them.” And these last words burst forth in a fast jumble as if muddling through them could make it all true.

And then the vivacious servant girl was speaking soothingly to him in German, and Gorkin’s wife and Thorvald were moving forward to hush her.

Genya could understand nothing of the Kunan tongue. She knew only that King Klann was perturbed by the news brought first by Sianno, then by the Llorm rider. She puzzled at the significance of the crumbling substance Klann had hurled at his cavalryman. And she knew that there was something wrong in Vedun.

She had to know what.

“Milord king, your meal grows tepid,” she said in the charged air of the receiving chamber, “and the wine will help sooth your ill humor. It’s a very fine vintage—”

“Hush, girl!” Thorvald commanded.

“Hold your tongue, scullion!” Lady Gorkin added.

Klann held up a halting hand, and the pair drew back. Genya saw a curious look in his eyes that vaguely alarmed her. There was a sardonic quality in his voice; alien, as if it were the voice of another.

“Do you know what’s happening, little minx? Your countrymen are undermining our desires. You know them better than anyone in this room. Tell us why they struggle against us.”

“It’s not like them to fight, sire,” she replied with affected ingenuousness, eager to pacify him now that she had the floor. “But what is it they’re supposed to have done?” Klann didn’t reply, and she grew uneasy to see the suspicion and cynicism creeping into his stare. “Perhaps if you sent me to the city I might...speak with them....”

But she knew the words were all wrong. She shrank before his cold gaze. Her abruptness and self-concern had shaken his trust.

“Leave us now,” he said curtly.

She scurried out with an awkward curtsy, feeling the angry stares of the women boring into her back, a chill coursing through her when she passed the masked magician, imagining herself a child again, skirting the terrifying black pit of her father’s open cellar.

* * * *

Mord experienced a mixed exhilaration and anxiety.

The unexpected ambush of the mercenary patrol he had sent to scout the deadly fog was a boon he hadn’t counted on. The apparent insurgent violence had had predictable effect on Klann, and it should have motivated him to a reprisal that would in turn have escalated the city’s desperation. Yet he stubbornly refused to squeeze his grip on these blasted cross-worshipers. He was determined to preserve peace at all costs.

I should have destroyed
all
the crops, he thought. No-no, that would too surely indicate earth magick. Patience. All in good time. Don’t arouse his suspicions. Just keep placating him with these spells of division. The fool—if I use enough of these people as subjects I’ll eventually have my way,
whatever
he does! But that’s not enough. Remember the compact with the League: this must be mutually destructive, an internecine clash. Such a fascinating game! And all to the glory of the League and the Dark Master....

He smiled beneath his mask, but then he remembered and his mirth was short-lived: The
presence.
That aura that had left its trace with the butchered patrol. The same being the mysterious key suggested but could not declare.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hell
, Gonji thought as he rode, swatting at the flies that buzzed madly in the humidity....

Why didn’t I just tell him I killed them in self-defense? Why did I bother perpetrating that stupid lie about finding them dead? Julian knows it’s a lie. Now what? Ride out, Gonji-san. Leave this place. You’re finished here. You’re going to die here in some stupid, ignoble way, that’s what. You’re on Julian’s death list for certain. An assassin’s bullet in the back, or—worse, maybe....

He scanned the lowering sky. Thunderheads now piled up over the Carpathians, smothering the sun. The day waxed threatening.
Ride out while you still
—

Wilf galloped toward him along the Street of Charity, pedestrians parting before his charge. He reined in beside Tora.

“You heard about Strom, what he found?” Wilf asked breathlessly.

“
Hai
, the little rodent,” Gonji spat. “So sorry, Wilfred-san, but your brother’s chatter has me in big trouble.”

“What do you mean?”

Gonji waved the question aside. “Ah, forget it. It may not even have been him. Enough people know. The dead brigands in the valley have returned to haunt me.”

“What will you do?”

Gonji blew out an exasperated breath and shook his head gravely. “Where does Tralayn live again?”

Wilf brightened. “Then you’re staying!”

“Well, we’ll see what the city has in mind anyway,
neh?
” He smiled. “You’re in better spirits now than you were earlier.”

“Look.” Wilf reached inside his tunic and produced the now repaired ceremonial sword which Julian had broken. He grinned broadly.

Gonji accepted it, drew it and examined the work. “Oh, very fine, Wilf! Very good work indeed. I am forever in your good father’s debt.” He re-sheathed it and stuffed it into the pouch that housed it.

“Still can’t say anything about that secret business at my house last night?” Wilf asked, removing his cap and mopping his beaded brow.

“Eh? Oh—
iye
, I’m not at liberty, I’m afraid. Anyway, you’d be surprised how little there is to tell, thanks to that devious Tralayn. Your father is full of secrets, though,
neh?
”

“Almost like a stranger to me these days,” Wilf agreed.

Gonji patted Tora’s withers. “Come on.”

“Where to?”