Unholy War (58 page)

Dubrayle replied, his normally calm voice beginning to fray.

They all fell silent again while Gurvon stared at his hands.
My gold … my payment for securing Javon … it’s still in Pontus, with Jusst and Holsen Banking …

Lucia’s face remained icily calm.

She held up a hand.

Dubrayle nodded shortly, the others grudgingly.

Lucia fixed her eye on Gurvon.

she added archly.

When the meeting was over, Gurvon sat for a long time in the tower room, barely able to think.

*

The clergy demanded a spectacle, and Gurvon was forced to give them one. The venue was a former gladiatorial arena set up by the early Rimoni settlers before they were forced to abandon the barbaric practice. It was now used for large-scale public entertainments like concerts, plays, and executions.

For two weeks the streets of Brochena had been awash in protest, factions of Jhafi clashing as they championed either Cera Nesti’s innocence and heroism or her guilt and damnation. The city was exhausted after ceaseless chanting and marching, vigils, beatings, fighting, fires lit, rocks thrown at soldiers trying to keep the factions apart; it felt like the entire populace had been left gaunt and hollow-eyed.

Especially its Imperial Legate.

The Regency Council was presiding: Gurvon himself, plus Sir Roland Heale and Sir Craith Margham for the Dorobon, Grandmaster Etain Tullesque for the Church of Kore, and Endus Rykjard and Hans Frikter for the mercenaries. Gurvon found himself sitting beside Craith Margham, who displayed all the foppish airs of a Pallas courtier as he clutched a scented handkerchief to his nose and surveyed the crowd.

‘Don’t these wretches ever wash?’ Margham complained. He was a pure-blood, and his line had adjacent lands in Rondelmar and a long alliance with the Dorobon. The young man clearly saw himself as the eventual new king, though they were all taking care to pretend they were acting for Francis’ unborn child in Hytel.

The arena was filled past capacity, with more than a thousand Jhafi men, the most deeply fanatic Amteh worshippers, answering the Godspeaker’s call for believers to come and hurl the stones that would batter their former queen to death. Commoners, Gurvon guessed: illiterate labourers and peasants. The mass of them together was overpowering, and there were thousands more in the streets outside. The Jhafi were at least six to one in favour of Cera, but the most violent were those here to kill the queen.

This event had split the Jhafi community body and soul, he knew that. Tens of thousands of them, more than half of them women, were holding vigil and prayer, led by moderate Ja’arathi clerics who were preaching in open defiance of Godspeaker Acmed al-Istan. If Gurvon strained, he could hear their chants even in here. One of the moderates, a Godspeaker named Talfayeed al’Marech, had even called for a Convocation of the Amteh, seeking to depose Acmed as head of the Jhafi faithful.

Far away, a bell tolled, and an expectant hush fell over the arena. The time had come.

Gurvon Gyle rose to his feet and called for silence. His words would be translated by the Scriptualist beside him, hopefully accurately. He’d been studying the language recently, using Mysticism to accelerate the learning, so he’d know if the man misquoted him.

He took a deep breath. ‘People of Javon! Today heralds a new era of justice! Today, the Crown and the Amteh join with the Kore and the Sollan faith to bring down righteous punishment on the wicked!’

The men of the crowd crowed and shouted and waved the rocks in their fists. The noise was a wave that shook his throne. It made him wonder what it would be like to have that hatred turned on him, how it would feel to be the woman below, waiting to be led out. Rykjard’s cordon of magi looked very few, compared to the bloodthirsty crowd.

In a box on the other side of the arena, Acmed al-Istan watched and waited, surrounded by grey- and white-bearded clerics. The Godspeaker looked unperturbed. Gurvon had found the man quite reasonable to negotiate with, despite his stiff-necked reputation. Acmed claimed to deplore the zeal of some in his flock. Gurvon wasn’t fooled: he’d dealt with fanatics of the Kore many times and some of them were the blandest, most serene souls he’d ever met: they spoke in hushed voices and made the worst and most depraved deeds seem utterly reasonable.

Let’s get this damned charade over with.

‘Bring out the prisoner!’ he shouted, screwing up his notes.

The call was taken up and below, the doors to the tunnel leading from the pits beneath were thrown open and a squad of armoured legionaries hauled out one small Jhafi woman. They had to raise shields as the first stones began to fly, hurled by men impatient for the killing to begin. It reminded him of hangings in Norostein, during the worst days after the Revolt.

Where’s that damned maid?
He’d wanted to have two prisoners to parade today, but Tarita had still not been found. He suspected Mustaq al’Madhi had her well-hidden. He’d have to deal with the crime-lord soon, but the man was increasingly hard to find.

He forced his eyes back to the young woman walking barefooted into the middle of the small circular arena. It was barely forty yards across, but the feverish heat of bloodlust filled the space. All of a sudden he didn’t really want to watch – but he had no choice.

The queen was clad only in a rough shift. Her arms were bruised, her hair matted and tangled, her eyes buried in swelling and welts. She could barely stand, though she looked as if she was fighting for dignity. She was trying to speak but no sound came out. Her mouth was rimmed with blood from the removal of her tongue: he’d insisted upon that, to prevent any final words that might trigger chaos.

Beside him, Craith Margham turned suddenly and vomited. Roland Heale looked just as ill. These were noblemen who punished their subjects second-hand; they seldom had to deal personally with such things. He trusted this would be a lesson they wouldn’t forget:
See? This is what I’m prepared to do to control Javon
.

To his left, Rykjard, Frikter and Tullesque appeared unmoved, as he’d expected. He nodded to them, then spoke again. First he announced that the maid Tarita had been strangled, as her station did not warrant death in this place. The crowd grumbled, but it was Cera they wanted anyway.

He addressed her next. ‘Queen Cera Nesti! You are charged with regicide of the rightful king of Javon, Francis Dorobon, and you are jointly charged with the perversion of Safia. You have corrupted the royal marriage bed and brought dishonour on your house!’

He paused while the Scriptualist repeated his words in Jhafi.
I bet he didn’t translate the word ‘rightful’.

The girl below stared up at him with blank eyes, swaying slightly. She was drugged to the point she could barely stand: the most mercy he could afford. ‘You have confessed these sins,’ he shouted. ‘Let judgement begin.’

He picked up a rock.

He was a mage: he could ensure this stone killed her with one smashing blow to the skull, but then the crowd would be cheated of their part in the death and would look for other targets. There would be a riot.

The mob is thirsty, and their appetite must be met. Didn’t I tell Cera something like that?

His rock struck the girl’s belly, doubling her over. He heard one wordless cry from her ruined mouth, then the air filled with flying stones that thudded into the ground with hard cracking noises, or struck flesh and bone with a wet crunch. In the space of half a minute, the girl was reduced to unidentifiable pulp beneath a bloodied pile of stones.

25

The Inquisition and the Kirkegarde

Rutt Sordell was, true to his nature, a worried man. It was a default emotion for him, and though he’d enjoyed the thrill of victory when he’d brought down Coin, it was almost with relief that he lapsed back into anxiety.

He was on the Lybis Road, still in Guy Lassaigne’s usurped body. Beside him Mara Secordin was sitting gracelessly on her mount, sweating like a pig, while they waited with their escort for a band of riders to reach them. He had been warned to expect the newcomers.

They swept up, the cohort of white-cloaked Kirkegarde riding smooth-galloping mounts with the preternatural speed and intelligence of constructs. Each bore a single horn on their forehead: khurnes, the new steed of choice. The Kirkegarde unit was a hundred men, a fifth of the maniple, and it was led by Grandmaster Etain Tullesque himself.

He and Mara both knew the bargain Mater-Imperia had forced on Gurvon: find Elena Anborn or face arrest. Unexpectedly, Tullesque had volunteered his services in the hunt. Gurvon suspected Tullesque just wanted to claim the glory and negotiate for his own reward at their expense, but Rutt had to admit they needed the help.

Stay close to Tullesque
, Gurvon had told him,
and don’t trust him an inch.

So as Tullesque reined in this khurne, he gave a grudging smile and bowed. ‘I am at your command, Grandmaster.’

‘Magister Lassaigne,’ the Grandmaster replied condescendingly. ‘Your mission remains the same: find and execute Elena Anborn. But now we do it my way.’ A Grandmaster of the Kirkegarde might be effectively only a maniple commander, equivalent in military rank to a legion battle-mage, but Tullesque had a pair of junior Church-magi reporting to him, which regular battle-magi didn’t, and he wielded all the authority of the senior clergy. He was tall and strongly built, though he had a dandy’s air about him, with his shoulder-length curling hair and fashionably styled beard and his richly accoutred clothing, from the kidskin gloves to the non-standard silk cloak and tabard. But the Kirkegarde were among the best-trained and equipped soldiers in the empire, and in addition, he was also a pure-blood mage of some repute.

Tullesque nudged his horse closer and stared into Rutt’s eyes as if trying to see the scarab within. ‘Magister Sordell – although I understand that publicly I must address you as “Guy Lassaigne”?’ he asked softly. His eyes held both the contempt of the soldier for men who wore disguises and the contempt of a mage for a man reduced to what Rutt now was. He raised his voice again: ‘Well, Magister
Lassaigne
, I now control your mission and you will serve me. I have been briefed by Gyle himself.’

‘Is Gurvon contactable?’

‘Of course. But all communication is now to be through me.’

‘But Gurvon knows the target intimately—’

‘I know exactly how intimately he knew the target, Magister. I myself hunted you “Grey Foxes” in the Noros Revolt. We had some successes.’

Rutt’s eyes narrowed.
Oh, did you just?
He recalled comrades who had been captured by the Kirkegarde and tortured to death, the desecrated bodies left to be found.
You’re one of those, are you? Well, you didn’t catch Gurvon, you didn’t catch me and you didn’t catch Elena
. Aloud he said, ‘Elena Anborn is especially elusive, Grandmaster.’

‘Well, we had best be on our mettle then,’ Tullesque replied briskly, ‘for my orders are that if she is not brought to justice, her former colleagues will be.’

‘I have an Imperial Pardon,’ Rutt replied stiffly.
They cannot …
He closed his eyes.
Of course they can. They can do whatever they damned well like.

‘What the emperor gives, he can take away,’ Tullesque responded offhandedly. ‘Come, show me your plans.’ He eyed up Mara, then added, ‘Just you, Lassaigne.’

Rutt was immediately uneasy. Big, ugly Mara was solid as the stones; her presence centred him. But he bowed and dismounted. ‘At once, Grandmaster.’ He strode towards his pavilion. ‘This way.’

Inside, he poured arak. He couldn’t go without the stuff these days; its bitter-sweet sting restored some equilibrium. Tullesque turned it down, muttering about ‘foreign piss’, which merely reflected his insular crassness as far as Rutt was concerned.

He pointed at the maps. ‘There is a pattern to the way Elena operates,’ he told the Grandmaster. ‘She likes to pick off the weak and isolated, so we’ve created such a target for her. It’s a typical caravan of goods and mail going to Lybis. We’ve loosed some whispers that a royal courier is travelling with it carrying letters for the Emir of Lybis – nothing that out of the ordinary, but unusual enough that it should gain her attention. We’re tracking this courier, very loosely. It should be enough to draw her in. If she strikes, we close the net over her.’

‘How is she travelling? Is she alone?’

‘We believe she has an accomplice: a Keshi mage. They travel by windskiff, and only at night.’

‘A Keshi mage … Ordo Costruo?’ Tullesque asked. ‘I’ve heard the sultan had Dokken in his army at Shaliyah.’

‘I’ve heard that too. Either, perhaps. Elena has no pride: she’ll use anyone she can.’

Tullesque grunted, studying him. ‘You absolutely hate her, don’t you? I can read it in your face.’

‘She destroyed my body, betrayed our cause …’
Cast me out of her body. Killed half the team. Fucked us all over
. ‘She deserves to die.’

‘And this courier you’re dangling as bait?’

‘He’s genuine: a sacrifice to bring Elena in. We expect to lose him.’

‘I heard you were a cold fish, Sordell,’ Grandmaster Etain sniffed. ‘What are your own resources?’

‘Me, Mara and a cohort of soldiers, plus we have some of Rykjard’s men nearby, under Rhumberg.’

‘That’s not a large force.’

‘Too many men will make Elena suspicious and scare her away.’ He tapped his skull. ‘I have divined the possibilities. This plan offers the best chance of success.’

‘I have heard that you have some repute as a diviner. Have no fear, Magister: if we get even a sniff of Anborn’s position, I’ll get her. Our khurnes can outrun a windskiff over a short distance in all but gale conditions.’

Perhaps on a training ground, but on this terrain?
‘Might I ask your affinities, Grandmaster?’

‘Sorcery, Magister Sordell, with Fire and then Earth as my preferred channels.’

‘So you are primarily a Wizard and Necromancer, Grandmaster?’

‘Indeed, Magister Sordell. No need for me to ask your skills: I’ve been told all about you.’ He suddenly kindled purple light in his right fist that flared into Rutt’s eyes while he uttered a series of alien clicking, whirring sounds. Abruptly, Rutt felt as if the roof of his mouth was being torn open and purple light started gushing forth as he lost control of his limbs and fell to his knees. For a panic-filled few seconds he lost all sight and smell, then touch was the final sense to fail him. His last sensation was something hard scrabbling inside his blood-filled mouth. Then he
was
that thing, the scarab that contained his soul, pushing through flabby lips into the light.

Something vast reached down and grasped him and he was lifted and held in a gauntlet, dripping blood and the protective slime he secreted inside the cavity he’d burrowed in Lassaigne’s head. ‘Ah, Magister Sordell, there you are,’ boomed Tullesque. The sound was deafening. Rutt rolled up his many legs, cringing, his feelers bending inwards, his mandibles clicking frantically.

‘You see, Magister,’ Tullesque said, ‘when you lost your original body, you became a lesser being, and as such, vulnerable to other Necromancers. Do you understand me? I could crush you in my hand and you would become nothing more than pulped shell and scum. For that is all you are now, Rutt Sordell:
scum
.’

Tullesque dropped the scarab and he fell and landed on Guy Lassaigne’s vacant face. The young man was still breathing and he crawled back inside the mouth as quickly as he could, burrowing back into the roof of the mouth with desperately flailing legs.

As he reconnected to the gnosis channels he had established normal human vision returned, then, slowly, his control of the body. It hadn’t been quite perfect, and now it would take days to recover full control.

Iwillkillyou Iwillkillyou Iwillkillyou …

‘No, you won’t, Magister Sordell,’ Tullesque replied with smug condescension. ‘You will do nothing of the sort. Instead, you will serve me as fervently as you have ever served Gyle, and you will be grateful to do so. Understood?’

Rutt could barely focus his eyes as he crawled to his knees. In the moments of unconsciousness Lassaigne’s bladder had relaxed and the smell of piss filled the tent. ‘I understand,’ he croaked, biting his tongue over the last syllable and convulsing in pain.

‘Excellent,’ the Grandmaster purred. ‘It’s good to have a clear understanding over the pecking order, don’t you think?’ He turned back to the charts. ‘So, how shall we set this trap?’

*

Elena Anborn crept to the ridgeline, hidden deep in the shadow, then edged through a gap so she could see the road below. Heat radiated from the rocks, through her leathers and into her flesh, though evening was coming. She was sweating uncomfortably with the exertion of maintaining a shield and the stress of remaining unseen. Below, the wagons under the Dorobon flag moved slowly. They were well-guarded, but most were these days. Security was tightening along all the roads, even here, where she’d not yet struck. Word from Mustaq al’Madhi suggested that this caravan included a royal courier.

Kazim ghosted into place beside her. ‘What do you think, Ella?’

‘It’s well guarded. Two magi this time – so perhaps there really is a courier in that carriage.’

‘There are two of us as well.’

‘I don’t like this one, Kaz. It’s the first one we’ve been told about, rather than finding on our own. That’s enough to make it smell bad.’

Kazim nodded slowly, and she was reminded that one of the many things she liked about him was his growing maturity and patience, the way he no longer rushed in thoughtlessly. ‘So we let it go?’

‘Perhaps. Just because it might be a trap doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn. Let’s keep watching.’

They were probably halfway to Lybis, in a broken landscape of fractured hills and gritty flatlands. Spindly trees and tough, reedy grass tried to find purchase in the sun-baked soil, and roaming herds of small antelope and deer were stalked by lions and jackals. A string of tiny settlements lined the roads, tending plots of grain and small herds of hump-backed cattle. The lack of water kept the gatherings small and poor, among the poorest in Javon.

The shadows lengthened and the sun dived towards the horizon, and when nothing had come past their vantage in the half-hour since the wagon-train had gone, Kazim touched her shoulder. ‘I do not think there is any trap.’

‘Do you not?’ She placed her ear to the rock. ‘Listen.’

He followed her example, pressing his own ear to the cooling stone. After a moment he discerned a faint rhythmic thud reverberated distantly through the earth which resolved itself into the sound of horses, appearing through the haze on the road two hundred yards below: a dozen white-clad riders, their lance-pennants and shields bearing the red heart and silver dagger of the Kore. There were two non-knights with them, clad in Dorobon blue.

‘Kirkegarde,’ she whispered. ‘Soldiers of the Church of Kore.’ And that confirmed the rumour Mustaq had passed down, that the Dorobon’s Church knights had been sent this way. ‘Those are Dorobon magi with them.

‘What are they riding?’

She squinted – his eyesight was better than hers, she had to admit – and just made out that the Kirkegarde had what looked like some kind of ceremonial head-mounting on their horses’ heads. ‘Just horses, I think, with an armour spike?’

He shook his head. ‘No, it’s a horn. Are horned horses native to Yuros?’

‘No – I’ve never seen them before. Perhaps it’s some new kind of construct.’

‘Are there no ends to the perversions of you magi?’

She smiled grimly. ‘Probably not. So let’s keep our heads down.’

They pressed further into the shadows as the sun fell and the Kirkegarde moved onwards and out of sight. Light leached away, turning the brown earth and the blue skies to pale grey, and Luna rose in a waxing crescent, her pitted face spilling silver light across the ground, enough to just see by. This time they really were about to leave when she heard the second force rumble past. This time they had wagons of their own, and a cohort of plain red-cloaked mounted legionaries as well as many more of the Kirkegarde. And jolting along awkwardly among them, she could just make out a huge cloaked shape riding a cart-horse.

Mara Secordin … what’s she doing out here?

Beside her rode a man with blond hair, and though he wasn’t close enough to recognise, she knew that hair-style. Habits die hard, and she was willing to bet that one of the first things Rutt Sordell did when he took a new body would be to tailor that host to his own ways.
So at least we know who we’re up against …

They slipped below the ridge and away, winding back through the empty land as the night fell around them. The only sounds were the distant, mournful yowls of the jackals. The skiff was hidden a mile away, their camp already set up. They lit a sheltered fire, boiled spiced lentils and then ate. They made love, then lay a little apart, letting the night air cool their sweat.