Working God's Mischief (42 page)

“You think there's a life lesson to be learned?”

“Lesson or no, you see the point.”

“I'll keep it in mind. But I really would like to be kept informed.”

“You want to send a message to Anna or the girls?” The old man tinkered with Hecht's amulet as he talked. “You don't see Vali or Lila because Muno has them on a crash education course. They're too damned tired to come aggravate their daddy.”

“So it's not about me being surly because they come whenever they feel like it?”

“Oh, it's that, too, of course. You do put on the attitude. About Muno, though. He's determined to include them in the deal when Heris takes over as the Twelfth Unknown.”

The itching in Hecht's wrist went away. “Damn! That feels so good.”

“Maybe you won't be so nasty, now. Anything for Anna?”

“Let me write a note. How is she?”

“Well enough. Forted up in her house. Comes out for the occasional command performance at Muno's townhouse. She's happy, considering her circumstances.”

“Circumstances?”

“Her man is hundreds of miles away and not particularly interested in visiting. How is the wrist, now? All right?”

“It's wonderful.”

“Keep using the ointment. I'll take that.” He snagged the note to Anna, turned sideways, and was gone.

The Commander of the Righteous did not get to St. Miniver, Martyr, chapel that night.

*   *   *

Hecht was studying maps prepared by the Shining Ones. They were wondrously detailed and generously annotated. Any commander would have been thrilled. He was unhappy only because the Instrumentalities continued to duck him.

Asgrimmur arrived. “You want to see me?”

“Occasionally, yes.” Hecht glanced at his wrist. It was healing nicely. “In fact, frequently, lately. You've let your personal appearance slide.”

“Indeed?”

“Why is whatever is happening in Antieux more important than our preparations here? Why is a skirmish in the Roessen more important?”

“The old girls have been carrying tales.”

“No. I can't find them, either. They do, however, generate the occasional useful report. In your case I've started to think our arrangement is a waste. There's been no payoff for me.”

“I follow my conscience.”

Odd answer. “What does it say about keeping your word?”

Grimmsson shrugged.

“Come with me. We can't talk here.”

A half minute later Hecht shut the door of a quiet room.

“I know about your travels from the Bastard. I see the Shining Ones less than I see you. I can't get hold of them.”

Grimmsson looked baffled. “Why not? You could see Fastthal or Sprenghul any time you want and a summons to Hourli will get her here in less than an hour.” Grimmsson stopped. He stared. “Are you having memory problems?”

“Sometimes. What do you know about that?”

“I'm marveling that you would handicap yourself by forgetting that you can summon any Shining One you want any time you want, Hourlr excepted.”

“All right. I'm a virgin. I have no clue. I'm worse than a virgin. I'm a dimwit four-year-old. Tell me what to do.”

“Commander, just say, ‘Hourli, it is necessary that I speak with you.' Using that formula. Add the time and place and what guise she should wear if you think that's necessary.”

That seemed awfully simple.

“Write it down. Right now. Make notes of where you put the information. You've been told all this before. The formula will work for your guardians, too, though you might not like what you see when they arrive. They're slower to manage their aspects.”

“And you?”

“I'll respond to the formula, too, though almost certainly not as fast as the Lord High Duke of Arnmigal might like.”

“I'm a Grand Duke, not a Lord High Duke. So. Sprenghul. I need to see you. Right here, right now. No excuses.”

“You messed it up already. Write it down! It has to be exact, and by will, so impossible things don't turn up during a casual conversation. And you can't summon the Shining Ones from inside a quiet room.”

“Yeah. Stupid me.” He had paper and quill, now. “The exact formula, then.” He wrote.

Asgrimmur said, “There have been unconscionable oversights in your supernatural education.”

“What supernatural education?”

“With the Unknowns in your family? You may have the talent of a stone yourself but you should have some idea how things work.”

“They never took time to teach me.”

“You sure it was them who didn't take time?”

“You're right. I always found an excuse.”

“Suppose Sprenghul heard your summons? If you'd gotten it right? When this isn't your house to destroy?”

“She'd really…”

“She would. The Choosers aren't smart. Arlensul was brighter than the other two put together but she was still dim enough to get herself knocked up by a mortal.”

Hecht turned toward the door.

“Hold up. Sprenghul did stir some. You named her name. You may hear about apparitions and unusual activities out there.”

“Conjuring plausible explanations seems to be where I excel. Poor Destiny. She rode the wrong chariot this time.”

“What?”

“Nothing goes the way it should around me. My story is all about things that don't work out according to someone else's plan.”

“In which case the Enterprise of Peace and Faith is doomed.”

That was not what Hecht meant. “Possibly. But it will be an interesting venture, even so.”

“Even so. Are you done with me, Commander?”

“For the moment. But I want to make my point again. I want to be able to ask questions.”

“No problem. Just ask the right questions, in the right place, at the right time.”

“Meaning?”

“Don't demand trivia or information you could develop yourself if you weren't lazy. Or that has nothing to do with the Great Work. Don't call the Shining Ones out in public. A meeting should be necessary, not just because you're feeling left out or because you want to remind everybody that you're the guy in charge. The Shining Ones are giving you the information you need to make your crusade work. They do so in a timely manner. Where they are or what they're doing otherwise is of no import to you or to the Enterprise. The fact that you want to know something has little bearing on your need to know it.”

“I don't get to decide my needs?”

“No. All the stamping and roaring in the world won't change that, though I do think that you could make yourself obnoxious enough to chase Hourli away altogether, despite her crush.”

Hecht heard that as a cautionary suggestion, not a real threat. “I have no problem with their work. I just want to know what they're doing. And why.”

“Are your ears full of shit? What did I just tell you? How will knowing those things help you with the Enterprise?”

They would not. Of course.

“Go, Asgrimmur. And, please, when you come round again, try to be clean and neat. I demand that from everyone.”

“As you will.”

Hecht went back to his maps. He had wasted the interview. It was true, though, that what he wanted to know was not material to the success of the Enterprise.

He still wanted to know. He wanted control. He wanted no loose ends. No unpredictable variables. No surprises.

He rubbed his left wrist. That was so much better now.

*   *   *

The Empress and Lord Arnmigal were reviewing the van of the Enterprise: favored champions the Commander of the Righteous considered least likely to generate enmity toward the crusaders coming along behind.

The spring melt had begun early, as Hourli had predicated. The van would move out in four more days.

Meantime, captains studied maps and the intricate supply system the quartermaster staff had developed. And they paraded.

Lord Arnmigal wished he could ride with the van. His place would be with the main host, wrangling the willful, the selfish, the stubborn, and the stupid.

The Empress, as titular monarch of the western world, had taken an oath from each member of the host. It required obedience to the precepts of a charter from the current Patriarch, and to Lord Arnmigal as Commander of the Righteous. With Church and Grail Throne behind him Hecht had the legal power he needed.

Those who would not take oaths had been sent home under obligation to make fiscal contributions. Nothing was required of anyone who did not ask to participate.

Many wished for a different order but few challenged it. Lord Arnmigal and the daughter of Johannes Blackboots recognized challenges before they developed. Their intelligence was golden. Further, they controlled the artisans of Krulik and Sneigon, who provided tools that made argument a very bad idea.

Since the Shades only blind tortoises refused to admit the power of the new weapons. The Righteous had the best of those and the most talented and innovative falconeers.

Some tried to resist, even so. They came up wriggling in Hourli's nets. But the gods themselves fail to notice what makes no noise.

Neither the gods nor the most skilled spy can thwart an assassin who shares his thinking with no one, makes no threat, never complains, never seeks allies, and cares nothing about his own continued existence once the needful is done.

Franz-Benneroust Plaza was a sea of glamorous champions honoring a woman whose decisions would shape the next thousand years. Batteries of falcons passed in review. The bird and the weapon had become tutelary emblems of the Enterprise. The crusaders would carry more firepowder than flour to the Holy Lands.

An ammunition wagon drawn by a four-mule team rumbled along near the end of the column. It exploded as it neared the reviewing stand.

It carried a half ton of firepowder made at home by a madman who was not entirely sure of his formula. Most did not explode at all but just flung out in gouts of smoke and gobbets of burning sulfur.

The villain was one Rolf fon Utmeg, bachelor baronet. He had avoided detection by the Shining Ones by relying entirely on himself. He got what he paid for.

He got dead. His mules got dead. Scores of onlookers got burned. Hundreds suffered lung damage. Among the burned was the Empress Helspeth. Likewise, Lord Arnmigal and others on the reviewing stand. But the disaster touched them only for an instant, though shock, shrapnel, and poisonous air should have claimed them all. But a dark curtain fell an instant after the first gust of fire rolled out of the wagon.

Hecht had a fraction of a second to register the appearance of something all fang, claw, and stench of corruption, interposing itself between the explosion and the reviewing stand.

A second horror materialized between the wagon and the parade.

Long screams ripped through Hecht's mind. Bits of iron from the wagon tormented Fastthal and Sprenghul. Then they vanished.

Poorly made firepowder, burning and bubbling still, fell.

Few in the square failed to see the Choosers. Few failed to understand that they had saved the Empress, Lord Arnmigal, and senior leaders of the Enterprise, as well as the men on parade.

Hacking sulfur smoke, Hecht ordered, “Wrap this up. Captain Drear, get the Empress to her physician.”

Helspeth wept with pain. She had suffered several burns, small but fierce. A blob of sulfur had landed in her hair. Drear had gotten it out before it reached her scalp, getting burnt himself in the process. “Will do, my lord.”

Hecht mentioned guardian angels repeatedly. Unfortunately, those inclined to believe in angels wanted them to be beautiful creatures of light.

Hecht overheard veterans of the Hovacol incursion claim to have seen these same dread angels before.

*   *   *

Hecht and Helspeth, Ferris Renfrow, Archbishop Brion, Ormo va Still-Patter, the Lord Admiral fon Tyre, and others the Empress had drawn into her circle shared a table in the palace's biggest quiet room. Hourli and Hourlr accompanied the Grand Duke of Arnmigal. Others could see that those two were siblings but not that they were Instrumentalities.

Renfrow said, “I fail to see any excuse for further excitement. A lone madman tried to … All right. We don't know what he wanted. To kill the Empress? The Commander of the Righteous? Or did he just think a nasty big bang would scuttle the Enterprise? It doesn't matter. We survived. He did not. Let's get on with our work.”

Hecht sipped coffee, flirted with Lady Hilda, and stayed small while Renfrow took the heat—though there was little enough of that. That was all out in the city, where rumors had grown so crazy that only crazy people listened. But Hecht worried that superstitious soldiers would abandon the Enterprise if they decided it was connected with evil Night.

Helspeth said, “There will be no change in plans. The vanguard marches on time. Rolf fon Utmeg was a fever dream. Forget him. Don't mention him again. We do not have to apologize for surviving. Disdain the distractions. Let the Enterprise unfold. You in particular, Archbishop. The Holy Lands await.”

Archbishop Brion had learned some sharp lessons lately. Foremost was that he could serve his Church best by not irritating his Empress. And he did want to experience the Holy Lands for himself.

Lord Arnmigal smiled across the table, rested a finger familiarly on the back of Daedel's hand as she poured him an extra coffee.

Most attendees left the meeting puzzled. What had been discussed? What had been decided? Nobody could say for sure.

Again, the Enterprise went forward as the Commander of the Righteous desired.

Or such was the rumor spread by someone who wanted to undermine the baseborn foreign upstart with unholy control over the Empress.

During a hectic four days scribes and secretaries transcribed hundreds of letters. The Empress signed them all. Each was tailored to its addressee. Each listed sins and suggested that Helspeth would not be in a forgiving mind should such behavior persist.