The False Martyr (51 page)

“
I’ve heard the same,”
Commander Valien admitted with a frown, “but I don’t know anything
specific. As I was just telling my fellows, I was at the briefings
when everything went sideways. I, like Lord Commander Rammeriz,
didn’t know anything about Traeger’s conspiracy.” He gave Joal a
sharp look. The big man filled with bluster and looked like he
wanted to respond, but his rival continued over him. “I was in my
room when, suddenly, I had a half-dozen guards at my door trying to
arrest me for treason. They were quiet rude about it, so I had no
choice but to defend myself.” He puffed himself up, showing his
indignation. “I was a champion fencer in my youth, you know, and I
had enough left in me to make it through them to the door. I
trapped them in the room, rallied my own men, and fled the city
before Nabim knew what had happened.”

He looked around the room,
catching each eye as if challenging them to refute the improbably
story. Joal looked like he might rise to the bait before releasing
a long breath of concession. His personal heroics established,
Commander Valien continued, “I tried to get back to Ca’ Einir, but
that rat bastard Emperor cut us off every time we tried to go
south. We were running out of options when one of my men confided
that he was one of Jaret’s embedded legionnaires.” This time the
sharp look was for Jaret – he seemed to neither notice nor care.
“He led us here. I arrived a week ago and have practically been
Corwin’s prisoner ever since.”

“
And such a gracious
prisoner, too,” Corwin added with a wry smile.

“
I simply wish that you
had had the courtesy to let me know that you were planning to
overthrow the Emperor.” Commander Valien threw up his arms. “I
might have helped, you know. You might not be in this situation if
I’d had my men ready.”

“
Or we might have all
ended up without our heads when you told the Emperor,” Joal
bellowed, no longer able to hold his tongue.

“
Which hurts all the
more,” Valien continued, directing his comments at Jaret
now.

“
Don’t look at me,” Jaret
replied without humor. “They didn’t tell me either.”

“
Because you would have
stopped us,” Joal hollered.

“
But you and Traeger
thought you could endanger me, endanger my entire family, without
even allowing me to prepare?” Ewon returned to the table, driving
in on Joal.

“
Family,” Joal scoffed.
“Do you even know your wife’s name anymore? Do you even know where
your daughters are?”

“
How dare you suggest . .
. ?”

“
Stop it, both of you!”
Jaret pounded his hand on the table. “You’re acting like children.
What’s done is done. I don’t like it any more than you, Ewon. I
think it was an Order-cursed disaster, ill-conceived, poorly
executed, naïve, and impulsive, but we are all complicit now. Even
if I don’t agree with Traeger’s methods – may he find peace in the
Order – Joal is right that something had to be done. Traeger may
have chosen the wrong path, but at least, he had the courage to
act, which is more than any of the rest of us can say. We were
every bit as much traitors. If we’d have left the Emperor on his
throne another year, it would have been the mobs rather than the
legionnaires that killed him. The entire Empire would have fallen
into the Maelstrom. I saw it on my tour but refused to accept it.
Thousands upon thousands would have died. Liandria and Pindar
probably would have invaded just to keep the uprisings from leaking
across their borders. We wouldn’t have to deal with Emperor Nabim,
but the mob probably would have been worse. So let’s forget what’s
done and focus on what needs to be done, on the fact that we are
all still alive, that we still have a chance to fix this damned
mess.”

Jaret glared at each man
until his eyes were focused on the table before him, including
Lius, who suddenly wanted to run. “Now, I would like Lius to tell
us what happened in the Hall of Understanding,” Jaret continued,
when the commanders were sufficiently cowed. “I think it is
important to understand the nature of the bastards we face. Then we
are going to stand here. We are going to look at this map. We are
going to share every scrap of information we have, and we are going
to make a plan to overthrow Emperor Nabim. We have three of the
greatest commanders in the history of the Empire, the former
Emperor’s own son, the Xi Valati’s personal representative, a safe
base of operation, some of the best trained soldiers the world has
ever known, and the Holy Order itself to aid us. We cannot and will
not fail. The mistakes of the past are in the past. The Order has
brought us here to correct them, and that, by Its holy name, is
what we’re going to do.”

Again, Jaret glared at the
commanders, but this time it was doubt that his stare seemed to
extinguish. He held their eyes until their spines stiffened, jaws
clenched, and eyes steeled. Even Lius felt, for a moment, that they
could not fail. “Now, Lius, please tell us what happened in the
Hall of Understanding.”

“
The Emperor’s creatures
came in the night,” Lius began.

Chapter 31

The
29
^th
Day of Summer

“
By the Order,” Ipid
cursed as his coach lurched, nearly landing him, Eia, and Jon in a
pile on the floor. They held their seats and straightened their
hats. “Joss,” Ipid called to the driver, “though they are repairing
the road, the workers do not intend their bodies to be part of the
cobblestones.”

The driver laughed. “Yes,
Lord Chancellor. I am sorry, sir. That one snuck up on
me.”

“
In that case, he deserved
it,” Ipid yelled back. The driver laughed. Joss was somehow always
jolly, and Ipid was glad that Jon had managed to bring him and
almost all of his household staff back into his employ.
Unfortunately, his companions did not share the driver’s
humor.

“
It’s a joke,” Ipid
explained. “He didn’t actually hit anyone. It goes back to when I
first hired Joss. We were going somewhere. . . . I don’t remember
where, but it was raining sheets and dark as the Maelstrom’s heart.
All of a sudden, Joss hit a pothole so hard it practically tore the
wheels off the coach. I bumped my head and started yelling at him.
He said that he could have laid down in that pothole, and I told
him that next time he should. We eventually got a laugh out of it.
Now, whenever he hits a bump, I joke about needing someone to lie
in the street.” Ipid laughed again. His companions failed to join
him.

Ipid didn’t care. For some
reason, he felt good. He felt like laughing for the first time
since he had arrived in Wildern. He was outside. It was not too
hot. A breeze was blowing. A week now since the city center had
been destroyed, the smell of smoke and dust seemed to have finally
faded. What’s more, almost all the news he had received in the past
two days had been good. The work crews had increased in size as
people realized that it was the only way to receive food. Rationing
was not popular by any means, but it was working. Everyone was
hungry, but no one should have been starving. The Darthur were
receiving enough to keep them momentarily satisfied. And Field
Marshal Landon had seen equal success in the other cities. Reports
had come in from every city now with news that martial law had been
implemented, that measures similar to those taking place in Wildern
were being implemented, and that there had been no casualties or
mass protests as a result.

Four more
weeks
, Ipid thought.
If we can simply maintain this for four more weeks, the
Darthur will be gone. The people can go back to their lives, and
there will be no more destruction.
It was
a distant hope, he knew, but thus far, it looked like they just
might pull it off.

The coach came to a stop.
“End of the road, Lord Chancellor,” the driver called,
“literally.”

Ipid looked out at the
rubble around him. His good mood waned. They had been passing
through the remains of the Capital District for several minutes,
but Ipid had kept himself from noticing. He did not want to see it.
There was nothing he could do about the devastation – it would not
even fall on him to rebuild – and he had enough problems without
dwelling on ones that were not his to solve. Still, his heart ached
as he stepped from the coach and looked out over the piles of
broken rock, the mounds of ash, the jagged blackened structures. He
tried to keep his mind from dwelling on what that devastation used
to be, on what had been lost.

As Joss had said, they had
literally reached the end of the road. Before them, a mountain of
shattered stone blocked any progress toward the most northerly of
the city’s four bridges. In the distance, Ipid could clearly see
the span of that bridge, but there was still several hundred paces
of rubble to clear before they would be able to cross that span. A
hundred or more men swarmed around the mounds of rock with sticks
and ropes. Their faces, shirts, and arms had been caked white with
ash then streaked black where the sweat ran, leaving them looking
like they had just risen from their graves.

“
Heave,” a voice called
from just outside. It was followed by a collective grunt then the
scrape of stone on stone. Slowly, inch-by-inch, a huge slab of
stone began rising from the rubble, grinding against those around
it as it crept up. The grunts grew into a collective groan, curses
floated from it like bubbles rising from a river. “Heave,” the
voice yelled again. The groan intensified, rose in tenor, but the
stone just ground to a halt. Ipid could almost see the men
straining at the ropes, pulling for all their might, willing the
mass of stone to move, watching it stutter to a halt, and praying
that it somehow start again. “Okay, block it,” the foreman
yelled.

Ipid did not know the
command, so he threw open the door to the coach and looked out just
in time to see a dozen boys run under a slab of stone twenty feet
long and two feet wide. It must weigh tons. Three ropes had been
tied around it and were being used to hoist it from the ground so
that the section over the road stood six feet, sliding to the
ground where a three foot block acted as a fulcrum. Having expended
the distance that they could raise the slab, the men held it while
the boys positioned triangular wooden supports beneath. Staying
below the height of their supports, the boys only hope if the stone
should fall was that the lashed-together pyramids would hold the
weight of the stone until they escaped. As it was, Ipid watched
them with his heart in his mouth, breath held, until they were free
of the stone. The foreman called to them to hurry, chastised their
sloth, and screamed his warnings. The boys seemed to find more
motivation in some game they had devised to see which of the braces
would be placed first. They watched each other as they pushed their
pieces into place and called insults as they ran back
out.

Only when they were well
away did the foreman call again, “Down slow!” The men who had been
straining to hold the stone, let it fall slowly until it rested on
the supports, which creaked, gave slightly, then held. The men
dropped their ropes, stepped back, heaving and rubbing their hands.
Several of the boys ran to parents extolling their strength,
bragging about their speed, and offering water. The fathers seemed
too tired to respond. Most simply patted their sons’ backs as they
drank and watched them with tired, worried eyes.

“
Lord Chancellor,” the
foreman interrupted Ipid’s inspection. The words brought every eye
immediately to Ipid. Shock filled those eyes then eased into scorn
in far too many. “I am sorry I didn’t see your coach.” The foreman
approached, wiping his grimy hands on his canvas pants and eyeing
the dozen mounted warriors that had accompanied the
coach.

“
What do you do now?” Ipid
asked, forcing his voice to be aloof. He desperately wanted to dive
into the process, to wrap his arm around the foreman, discuss
leverage points and mechanical force. Certainly, he was no
engineer, but he had spent enough time with them to know the
basics, and like any good manager he could not help his desire to
put his nose in every piece of the business. Yet here he had to
fight that urge. He was not the foreman’s friend, his confidant,
his collaborator. He was his master. This man and all his fellows
were a means to an end. They deserved all the attention that a
carpenter gives his hammer.

“
Well, sir,” the foreman
looked back at the slab of stone angled above the ground. He
remained standing well back from the Chancellor, outside the loose
ring of warriors who had dismounted and arrayed themselves around
the coach. “It depends . . . .”

“
Depends on what?” Ipid
asked, fighting his desire to walk over to the slab and inspect the
supports. He could see now that they were not simple stands, but
rather had a screw mechanism built into them with a crank at the
side.

“
On me,” a familiar voice
said before the foreman could answer. Ipid turned to see Liano step
through one of his portals. “Lord Chancellor,” he greeted with a
bow then floated toward them, feet entirely hidden beneath the hem
of his robe so that he seemed to take no steps. The hood was pulled
up around his face, but in the bright of the day, it could not hide
his handsome features. “I am sorry I was not here to greet you. I
was at another site, and it took longer than I expected to complete
my work.”