The Dagger's Path Page 11

  “I will.”

  “When it’s light enough, we’ll go faster. Try not to fall off.”

  “You–you could leave me behind. I mean, you have to warn the Pontifect, that’s what you said—”

  “Yes, I did. But I think we need you and your witchery, lad. I’m not sentimental, I just think you’re more of a help than a hindrance. I’m going to get you in one piece all the way to Vavala. You are going to meet Pontifect Fritillary Reedling.”

  And I wonder what she’ll think of a lad not yet twelve, who can pull a sword out of a man’s guts without blinking?

  11

  The Antagonists

  Fritillary Reedling woke from a confused dream about a storm, to the reality of someone banging on her bedroom door. She sat bolt upright, shocked. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had thought something was urgent enough to wake her in the middle of the night. And it was the middle of the night. She’d left her window unshuttered, and moonlight glowed softly through a night mist.

  “Who’s that?” she asked as she slipped her feet to the floor and reached for her woollen wrap.

  “Secretary Barden.”

  Ridiculous question. The old man was the only other person with a key to her apartments. Even so, her heart was beating too fast as she crossed the floor, so she took a moment to calm herself before she opened the door.

  Two people stood in the anteroom behind Barden, one a boy of about twelve or so. It took Fritillary a moment to recognise the woman with him. Shabbily dressed in muddy clothes, her hair uncombed, her face smudged, she smelled of sweat, stables and dirt.

  Sweet Va. “Proctor Brantheld.”

  “Your reverence.”

  Barden was already hobbling around the anteroom lighting the candles. He was dressed in a voluminous nightgown, a floppy nightcap with a tassel and heavy woollen socks. He looked ridiculous, but she found nothing to laugh at in the expression on his face. She switched her attention to the lad hesitating in the middle of the room. She didn’t know him, but a glance told her he was dirty, scared and tired enough to collapse any moment. The bubble of fear inside her chest grew larger and more painful.

  “So,” she asked evenly. “Do I have time to get dressed before the execution?”

  “Only if you hurry,” Gerelda said, her tone indicating that she was not entirely joking.

  She turned to her secretary. “Barden, take this lad, whoever he is, out of here, give him a meal, or a bath, or a bed–in whatever order is appropriate to his needs–and leave Gerelda and me to talk while I dress. And send someone up with a hot drink and a meal.”

  Without another word, Barden beckoned to the lad and they headed out of her apartment. Fritillary stepped back into her bedroom, crossed to her washstand, bathed her face, patted it dry.

  By the time she was dressed and had returned to the anteroom, it was to find Gerelda had unbuckled her sword and collapsed into the room’s most comfortable chair.

  “So, what’s this all about, Gerelda?”

  “You were the one who told me to return in a hurry.”

  “I don’t remember saying wake me in the middle of the night.”

  “All right. I’ll come back in the morning.”

  She gave a soft laugh. “Ah, Gerelda, there is no one quite like you. To business. That boy is far too young to have a witchery, but he does. What’s happened?”

  “I have a lot to tell you, but for now just this: the discovery that made me ask Barden to wake you. As I was coming down the valley into Vavala earlier yesterday, I heard whispers of men in Wildmadder Wood, and Perie–that’s the boy: Peregrine Clary–he said he could sense folk there wearing the black smudge that shrine keepers talk about. That’s his witchery.”

  “Ah. The one they call A’Va’s mark.”

  “Yes. He can taste it on the air, he says. I followed his lead and sure enough, we found several hundred lancers camped out in the hills above the city. All of them wear grey coats. The ones there that we overheard speaking had Staravale accents.”

  Fritillary pulled her wrap tighter around her shoulders. “Several hundred? That’s hardly an army. There are over a thousand guards here who are charged with the protection of the Pontificate.”

  “With no experience of war. The most any of them has ever done is probably discipline a drunken muleteer, or catch a cut-purse lad. These men in the Vavala hills were a disciplined bunch, alert and hardened. They have horses and lances. By the way, they were not the only lancers we had the misfortune to encounter either, but they appeared to be the best trained.”

  Fritillary listened, appalled, as Gerelda went on to describe all that had happened to Peregrine and herself since she’d left Twite. “I believe those earlier men were new recruits, assembling for training. Not so the group we found yesterday. They might be here to kill you. I’m betting Valerian Fox is up to his nasty nose in all this.”

  “Did you know he’s here in Vavala?”

  “He is? Doing what?”

  “Seeing me. I have an appointment with our beloved Prime tomorrow morning, at his request.”

  “Oh!” Gerelda gaped. “Did you already know about these lancers in the hills outside of the city?”

  “The local shrine keeper sent word. Fox, of course, is not openly associated with them. They wear no insignia. I suspect he will deny any connection, if asked.”

  Gerelda’s expression darkened into a glower. “You should consider assassinating Prime Fox.”

  “Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. “What do you think King Edwayn would have to say about that? And no, I am not going to send a company of arquebus musketeers to battle these lancers, either. Va-faith does not condone killing, or war. For a lawyer, you can be worryingly bloodthirsty. I cannot even accuse Fox, because I don’t have a shred of evidence that he’s involved in anything nefarious.”

  “I thought Saker Rampion found evidence when he searched Faith House in Throssel.”

  “Sketchy at best. Enough for me, true, but not enough for the King. At worst, whatever proof there was, Fox surely disposed of when he realised Saker had been there. I can’t attack Fox openly. He was appointed by, and is still supported by, King Edwayn.”

  “The Prime is poison, and you must not keep that appointment.”

  “Must not?” It was her turn to glower, but Gerelda did not take the hint.

  “Send him away without an audience. He obviously wants you to know about those lancers sitting on your doorstep. He wants to intimidate you into giving him that audience, or into making concessions–something!”

  “Gerelda Brantheld, you are my agent for legal matters, not my political adviser, let alone my military one. What kind of a Pontifect would I be if I fled like a rabbit when a fox knocks at my door, especially when he happens to be the Ardronese Prime? I could not maintain any credibility if I behaved in such a craven fashion.”

  “Why does he come backed by soldiers?” Gerelda was waving her arms, and the smell of sweat and dirt wafted more strongly around the room. “They are a bare ten miles from the city walls. Tomorrow they could well be closer. You may be dead come afternoon.”

  “If Fox wants to usurp the post of Pontifect, I’d prefer he started his reign with my public murder than with my abdication of duty. He’d at least look guilty of something.”

  Someone knocked at the door and she rose to her feet. “That will be food and drink. You can fill me in on details as you eat. And then I trust you will have time to take a bath.”

  Gerelda pecked at the food and downed the better part of a flagon of cider, describing all she had found out in Ardrone and East Denva. When she’d finished, Fritillary leaned forward and asked the question that had loomed large in her mind for well over a year. “Why do these people–the lancers–leave their homes and their loved ones? Not for a single coin, I feel sure. That’s just an enticement to listen. You saw them, Gerelda. How did it happen?”

  “We–well, Peregrine–did overhear the lancers sometimes, talking among themselves
. They never mentioned what they were doing, or why. They never spoke of home, or of anything much, except the next meal, or a sick horse, or maybe to curse the weather. They weren’t normal. They didn’t sit around the camp fire and tell bawdy stories. It was the same when I saw the ones recruited on the village green in Needlewhin. It was as if they were…”

  “Go on.”

  “Ensorcelled.” She snorted as though she didn’t believe she’d actually said that. “Can A’Va do that?”

  “Of course not. Well, not to those who follow Va-faith. Tempt, perhaps. But not turn a person into something he or she is not, no.”

  “Well, if you want my opinion, something did just that. Or someone. Like Fox.”

  “One man? Recruiting from Ardrone to Staravale? Gerelda, the last time I saw the Prime, he was still just one individual.”

  “His family is a large one,” Gerelda pointed out.

  “The Fox estates are large, certainly. They are administered, as far as I have been able to ascertain, by servitors. I’ve never actually met anyone who told me they were a member of the family. Have you?”

  “Possibly that recruiter?”

  “But he didn’t say his name was Fox.”

  “No. Do you have people investigating the family?”

  “I do. It is amazingly difficult to find out anything. The idea that this Peregrine could recognise these lancers intrigues me, though. I want him to meet Valerian Fox.”

  “You are going ahead with this meeting?”

  “My only possible victory will be to make Fox look bad in the eyes of true believers of Va-faith, and I think I know just how to sow the seeds of that.”

  “By allowing yourself to be killed?”

  She swallowed her irritation with Gerelda and said mildly, “I really don’t think he’s going to murder me in my own audience hall. That would make others, including King Edwayn, wonder about his ambition and his motives. Besides, I want to speak to him. I want to know what he’s up to.”

  Gerelda snorted. “You think he’ll tell you what he’s planning?”

  “It’s all a matter of asking the right questions. Gerelda, I’m going to tell you something that I’ve only ever told two people, and one of those doesn’t know everything there is to know. Have you ever wondered what my witchery is?”

  “Of course! There can hardly be a person in the whole of Vavala who hasn’t wondered at some time or other. The most popular guess is that you read minds, because you have an uncanny way of knowing too much.”

  “A lot of that stems from the knowledge I gain from my many agents. However, my witchery does help. I have the knack of knowing the general essence of someone’s thoughts when they speak to me–especially if those thoughts pertain to something of importance to me. For example, I know you are fearful for my safety. I know when you speak of Fox he worries you deeply. When you speak of Perie, you are both protective and exasperated. If you were to lie deliberately to me about anything of importance, I would know. Lies in a conversation are to me like… flames flaring up out of coals in the fireplace. On the other hand, if you were to let your thoughts stray to some handsome fellow you wanted to bed on the morrow, I wouldn’t have a clue, because it’s not important to me.”

  Gerelda opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. There was a long silence before she said, “That’s very… disconcerting.”

  “I agree. It’s handy, because it so often tells me not only if someone is lying to me, but how important that lie is. I’ll admit, though, it is a somewhat uncomfortable witchery to have. Not one I want you to mention to anyone.”

  “No.”

  “Unfortunately, Fox’s mind is closed to me, and always has been. Imagine that: of all the people I have met since the day I received my witchery, he’s the only one I can’t read. Luckily, it seems that you have delivered just the right instrument into my hands.”

  “Wh—? Peregrine is not a weapon! He’s a lad who’s been to the deepest misery of horror and is still clawing his way back—”

  “We are all weapons in this war. Why has he been granted a witchery if not to use it? I shall use your lad, in the service of Va.”

  “He’s not my anything. I’m no nursemaid, but I do think he needs care. He hasn’t shed a tear for his father, that I know of, not once. He has a… a bloodcurdling coldness that’s not healthy in a lad of his age. Your reverence, that boy pulled his father’s severed feet out of his boots so he could wear them. He saw his father’s gnawed ribs tossed to the ground by men who ate him.”

  She said, deliberately cold, “Witcheries are Va-bestowed for a purpose. It is perfectly obvious to me that Va has seen to it that your Peregrine has arrived at precisely the right time.”

  “He is here because I endured and murdered and stole and fought to get him here. And he went through a Va-less hell on the way to become what he is. If that’s Va’s way of achieving things—”

  “I don’t want to get into a religious discussion centring on doctrinal interpretations right now, thank you, Gerelda. I want him to take a look at the Prime and then tell us what he sees. And then you and he are going to Lowmeer.”

  That finally halted her. She thought about that in silence, then asked, “You’d seek help from Regal Vilmar?”

  “Perhaps, later. But there is another matter that concerns me first. I’ve had a communication from Saker, delivered in a somewhat unconventional manner. There is a possibility I will need to make a… a clerical visit to Ustgrind to call on the Regal and the Regala and the Prince-regal. However, I think I want you and Peregrine to look into the matter first. Then I will need to know if such a visit by me is necessary.”

  “You want to send me to the Lowmian court?” The look Gerelda gave her said she thought the idea was odd, to say the least.

  “Oh, you haven’t heard anything yet,” Fritillary said. “I’m going to tell you about a set of royal twins and a compact made between the Vollendorns and A’Va. Then there’s the matter of a lascar’s dagger, some golden plumes and a letter sent to me by a bird…”

  By the time she had finished explaining, half an hour later, Gerelda was looking at her as if she had two heads.

  Fritillary waited.

  “Let me see if I have this right,” Gerelda said slowly. “For the past four hundred years, regals have been giving instructions for twin babies to be slaughtered because A’Va uses them as minions called devil-kin–a right granted to A’Va by those very same regals. I don’t think I have ever heard of anything more disgustingly vile. Or absurd!”

  “It’s certainly not very plausible,” she admitted. “I’ll say this to you, but not to anyone else: I’ve always had grave doubts about the actual existence of A’Va. However, there is something… evil… going on here that needs to be investigated. I want you to look into it. With Peregrine.”

  As the day progressed, Gerelda tried several different arguments, but nothing she said could make the Pontifect change her mind about meeting Prime Valerian Fox. Privately, though, she had to admit Fritillary’s meticulous planning would ensure she wasn’t going to be assassinated, at least not during the meeting itself.

  The Commander of the Vavala Guards arranged a ceremonial honour guard to line the walls of the audience hall, with every man holding his pike. Invitations had been sent to all the Va-cherished Hemisphere ambassadors, as well as to the local clergy and the local shrine keepers, not to mention all the notables of Vavala. As most of those invited had accepted, and many of them would, as was customary, bring their secretaries or scribes, the number of people present would be substantial. Some of them would have witcheries. It would take a foolhardy man or woman to attempt violence against the person of the Pontifect in front of such an audience. Even so, Gerelda was still worried.

  “All it would take is one person,” she said to Fritillary that morning as they prepared the details, “someone willing to sacrifice his life. A single person to shove a knife between your ribs. You fall in public, tragically assassinated by a madman�
�and who is the noble fellow of stature who will step into the breach, full of concern and so conveniently on hand, doubtless vowing immediate vengeance on the killer? Prime Fox. The next thing you know, the assassin is dead, Fox’s lancers are on the streets of Vavala, ostensibly to keep everyone calm, and the way is clear for Fox to be elected the new Pontifect. Only you wouldn’t know, because you’d be dead.”

  Fritillary regarded her thoughtfully, head tilted. “Sometimes I wonder just what the study of law does to a normal person’s mind. Do such convoluted plots occur to you often?”

  “Only when merited. And you can’t tell me you haven’t considered this, or something like it, because I don’t believe you.”

  “Fox is nowhere near ready to seize power, but just suppose you’re right. It seems to me we have the perfect solution. You and Peregrine will wait at the entrance to the hall. Everyone who enters, from my own personal servants and guards to every guest, must enter through the same doors. Every main guest will have to halt there momentarily for their name and rank to be announced. Peregrine can tell you if any are his pitch-hearted people. You will signal my guards to bar anyone he denounces.”

  Gerelda had breathed a little easier then, especially when Fritillary invited the guests to arrive earlier than the meeting had been scheduled, so that when the Prime did arrive with his staff, he’d be faced with a room full of people.

  “And the other entries to the building, through the kitchens and so on?”

  “Don’t patronise me, proctor! Guards will be on duty. No one enters. Deliveries are dropped off and searched. All right?”

  Gerelda, suitably chastened, sought out Peregrine, now well-fed and rested, and asked him if he could do his part. He looked surprised that she should even ask. “Of course,” he said.

  “I’ll arrange to have some banners hanging from the ceiling that we can hide behind, with a slit to look through. Some of the Vavala guards will stand right in front of us, ready to help.”

  “I don’t need to see pitch-men to know them. I hope some of them do try to enter the palace. I want them to try. Then they can be killed.”