Irona 700 (25 page)

That was barely more than a personal bodyguard. Irona wondered if Ledacos had suggested her for this impossible job. On the surface he was her friend and colleague, but any debt he had owed her for his first election to the Seven had long ago been paid off and forgotten. Some day they would be rivals for the top office, and neither could ever forget that.

She even thought briefly of refusing. It seemed that all the threads of her life—her profession, her son, her lover, even her performance as a tutor and a judge—had become hopelessly knotted. She needed time to get them untangled, but if she let down the system by refusing, she might find herself shut out of the inner circle forever.

“They can't be ready before sunset,” the First said, “so we'll run it by the Seventy tonight, and you can sail at dawn.”

“And my commission?”

“Carte blanche. The report hints that these Gren, as they're called, may be open to peaceful trading. Promise them the world now and we'll hang their hides on the wall next year. In other words, do or say whatever it takes.”

“You cannot,” remarked Ledacos 692, “do much damage with less than two hundred men.”

The others, all at least twenty years older than he, frowned at his unseemly levity. Irona smiled with a confidence she was very far from feeling.

“Just watch me,” she said.

Irona left the room graciously enough, but she was practically running by the time she reached the stairs. Sazen Hostin was caring for his dying mother. Daun was moving house, and his wife was close to term with their third child. It looked as if she would have to make this journey without her usual support.

She stuck her head in the door of the Geographical Section. “I want to be briefed on Achelone in my office an hour before the Seventy meet.”

The clerk on duty began to say they were ready for that now, but she was already gone.

Likewise at her own office. “Find a tutor called Fagatele Fiucha and have him come to Sebrat House right away. I am going home to pack, leaving town at dawn.”

At home, she found Veer Machin morosely trying to clean up the shambles that one hateful child had made of his studio. It had never been tidy since the day he moved in, but disorder was a long way from deliberate devastation. Veer's emotions ran very deep, yet he never let them escape his control. A lesser man might have given way to rage and hurt; Veer would suppress those feelings until they emerged in a portrait. There was one such portrait prominently displayed on an easel in the center of the room now. Irona had never seen it before, but she knew it was no spur-of-the-moment creation; it must have taken many days of work.

The first thing she said was, “When did you make that?”

He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “About a year ago. After the dead-cat-in-the-bed incident.”

It was an incredible three-quarter likeness of Podakan. The background was dark, inchoate, and menacing, but the brilliantly lit child in the foreground was more lifelike than any other artist could ever hope to achieve. The image almost seemed to lean out of the panel to her. It captured Pod's angelic good looks perfectly, but his smile was predatory, pure serpentine evil. His teeth were not portrayed as pointed, yet they were fangs. So that was how her lover saw her son? She had never seen him that way herself, or had never admitted to herself that she did.

“Didn't show you,” Veer said. “Didn't think you'd like it.”

“I hate it. But it's horribly, horribly true to life!” She tore her eyes away from it to explain why she had come home some hours earlier than usual. “I have to go out of town.”

What she had been dreading since she learned that news herself was that Veer would say it didn't matter, because he was leaving too. He didn't.

“Sorry. How long?”

She could breathe easy again. “Six, eight weeks.”

He pouted. “I may strangle …” He gestured at the portrait. “Before you get back.”

“I'm going to take him with me. I can't trust him out of my sight now.”

“Watch you don't strangle him yourself then.” Veer dropped the spatula he had been holding and closed in on her. “I will miss you.” Then he administered one of his all-consuming panacean embraces that banished all the troubles of the world except the hours to wait until bedtime.

Irona's next priority had to be the terror himself, who had been locked in his room all morning. He had been staring out through the bars on the window, but looked around as she entered, and she searched in vain for any sign of guilt or apprehension in his expression. He was big, more like a teenager than a ten-year-old. He stayed where he was while she went to sit on the bed.

“Well? Are you ready to tell Citizen Machin that you're sorry?”

“You always tell me not to tell lies.”

“Why aren't you sorry for what you did?”

Pause. He was still young enough that she could see him considering whether to continue denying that he'd done the damage. But he said, “'Cos I don't like him.”

“Why? He's a very kind, clever man. He would be your friend if you would let him.”

“He hates me.”

“Not surprising, considering how you treat him. He'll be in charge of the house for the next eight or nine weeks. I'm going away to the mainland.”

That did produce a hint of alarm. He was old enough to know that she was his only defender. “Why?”

“To try to stop a war.”

“Why can't I come with you?”

“Because I can't trust you to do as you're told.”

“I promise I'll behave.”

“You've told me that a hundred times before.”

“But this time I really mean it.” He probably did—just then.

She pretended to think about it. “I'd have to find a grown-up to look after you. Would you do what he says, always?”

Podakan solemnly nodded.

“I don't want a nod. I want a promise.”

“I promise.”

“Promise what?”

“I promise to behave and do as I'm told while we're away.”

Fair enough. “I'm hoping to hire a new tutor for you. His name is Fagatele Fiucha. If he can't come, then I'll take Tidore.”

A former bosun, Tidore was her chief house guard and slave master, and Podakan probably hated him more than anyone. He snarled, but didn't withdraw his promise.

“Where to, Y'r Honor?” the commodore asked.

The query was a formality, because he knew perfectly well where
Scamper
was heading as the crew swept oar blades through the surface of a mirror-smooth bay. What he meant was that the little flotilla had now officially left port and was Irona's to command. The sun was barely up, dazzling bright in the northeast.

“Sodore and Achelone, Commodore, if you please.”

The commodore was Irona's old colleague, Mandalagan Furnas, who had been with her at Vult and on the voyage home. He was one of Benign's senior military men now, and the fact that his left arm was in a sling explained why he had been available for this makeshift expedition, instead of away up north, helping to loot Genodesa. His misfortune, her good luck.

Beside them on the steersman's deck were the steersman himself, plus Podakan and Fagatele Fiucha, who was a thin, balding man, with a disagreeably smarmy manner. Irona had taken a dislike to him on sight and was quite sure that Podakan had too, but the tutor came with good references and had assured her that he could straighten out “the lad” in a matter of weeks. She had been desperate enough to agree to his outrageous fees.

He and Podakan were currently attached, wrist to wrist, by a length of silver chain. Fiucha had explained that he was a strong swimmer and would make sure “the lad” did not drown if he fell overboard. Irona was fairly certain that Podakan would be able to pull his handcuff off whenever he wanted, because it had been intended for much larger troublemakers than he, although no larger troublemaker could make any larger trouble than her dear little boy could. If Fiucha kept referring to him as “the lad,” he might find that out sooner rather than later. At the moment, though, Pod was totally entranced by being on a galley and watching the bare-chested rowers at work.

And she was already starting to relax with a long voyage ahead of her and no responsibilities other than keeping a careful eye on Podakan, which she had to do all the time anyway and would until he legally came of age in 725, Caprice preserve us!

“You appear to have started the war early, Commodore?”

“Broken collarbone, Y'r Honor,” Furnas said with much disgust.

“What happened to the other guy?”

“Nothing—yet. We were loading to ship out on
Sea Eagle
at dawn and a couple of men bringing a bundle of oars misjudged a turn and knocked me off the dock. Hit the deck. Just a silly accident.”

Irona had served on enough judicial benches to know hornswoggle when she heard it.

“And what will happen to those men when you meet them the next time?”

“One of them's going to lose half his teeth and the other a kneecap, ma'am.”

“Really?
” Podakan had turned to stare up at the commodore with a glow of hero worship in his eyes.

“Really. You got ears in the back of your head, boy.”

Podakan felt the back of his head with his free hand. “Have not!” he said indignantly.

The sea stayed as smooth as glass for them, ideal water for galleys, whose rowers had trouble with even a low swell. Podakan behaved better than Irona had known him to since he got his first two teeth and learned to bite her breast. She wondered how long he could keep it up and knew it could not be very long.

Neither Purace nor Severny, the two largest cities on their route, had anything new to add to the stories of lizard men raiding in Achelone. Sodore, though, at the mouth of the Huequi River, had been invaded by scores of refugees, who spoke of the Gren as monsters that couldn't be killed and ate human flesh. The holiday mood vanished. The flotilla lingered a few days there, partly because even Benesh marines needed a rest once in a while, and partly to prepare for the journey upriver. Two hundred men would eat whole shiploads of food in the ten days or so to Achelone, and the fleeing human locusts would have stripped the countryside. Fortunately, the galleys would not need to carry water on a river, and there was a salmon migration under way, so Commodore Furnas had bought fishing nets. The banks of the Huequi were well stocked with driftwood for campfires.

It was a dangerous road for shipping, though, because Achelone's great export was timber, and the logs were floated downstream. They were supposed to be chained together in rafts and marked by flags, but there were always strays. Galleys' bows were reinforced for ramming, so they were in less danger than other craft, but a large log fouling a bank of oars could injure half the crew. Furnas put the flotilla in line ahead and insisted that Irona not travel in the lead ship.

She spent her time studying the bagful of record tablets she had been given by the Geographical Section. On other missions she had been able to rely on Sazen Hostin to brief her, but she could almost hear his dry, sly tones in the words, as if he had written what she was reading.

Achelone was a fairly poor province, bounded by the Rampart Range to the north and the unexplored wasteland of Grensdalur to the east. The lowlands supported large cattle ranches and the foothills provided timber, which was cut by the same slaves who provided the muscle power to haul the logs to the rivers for transport. A few Achelonians were very rich, and everyone else very poor. With much of the Empire now deforested, the colony was vital as Benign's principal source of lumber and also an important provider of leather. The Gren, whoever or whatever they were, must not be allowed to interfere with trade.

Achelone was officially a republic, but in practice a tyranny run by, and for the personal benefit of, the longtime vice president, Sakar Semeru, who was propped up by Benesh arms. Reading behind the words, Irona gathered that he was about as unsavory a character as the Empire possessed. She had been part of the inner circle for years, so why had she never learned that imperial troops were being used to support such a horror? Because, perhaps, none of the Seventy had ever bothered to investigate: Achelone was a long way from the sea.

In theory, Semeru ought to be kept in line by the Benesh representative, but the Seventy never wasted anyone with real ability on such a posting; and the current representative, Ambassador Golovnin, sounded fairly typical. In practice, nobody would ever squander Benesh lives to support a revolution that could do very little to better the lot of serfs and slaves in what was very much a foreign land. Now the problems had all been dumped on Irona 700.

Just keep the timber and leather coming, darling.

Refugees were still trudging tediously along the dusty trail that flanked the river, or coming dangerously downstream on rafts or in cockleshells. Each evening, when the flotilla made camp, Irona had a few of these wretches rounded up so she could buy their evidence with a good meal. None of them convincingly claimed to have seen Gren with their own eyes, but almost all the stories agreed: the raiders weren't human and couldn't be killed. No one could tell her how far east the Rampart Range extended, but she was seriously wondering if the Shapeless had found another way out of the Dread Lands. If that idea had been suggested in Benign, it would explain why she had been selected to investigate: she was the Empire's expert in dealing with Maleficence. Her term at Vult had been a curse she would never shake off.

She wished now that she had not brought her son with her. If Maleficence was roaming Achelone, he would know her and seek revenge. None of the human participants in this, whether Achelonian or Benesh, would see any advantage in killing the Empire's commissioner, but she discussed the problem with Furnas, and he agreed that she must be very careful.

The capital, Achelone City, was a dusty, dilapidated scattering of shacks set on a baking hot plain for no evident reason except that two rivers met there. Several great palaces towered above the shanties like swans among pond scum, and the largest of all must belong to the current figurehead president. The second largest, and closest to the river, was flying the Benesh flag and could be presumed to be the ambassador's residence. Although
Scamper
was displaying a Chosen's standard, there was no sign of a guard of honor at the jetty. There was no sign of anything much happening anywhere. Granted it was noon, and stupefyingly hot, with a wind like a skinner's knife, but Irona was in no mood to make allowances.