“It fell down because the catacombs caved in. Was anything done to stop that from happening again?” The catacombs offered the monster there a sheltered path of attack, otherwise.
There were several opinions. No one knew for sure. Hecht studied the Empress and Captain Ephrian. Ephrian had gotten himself wounded. He was pale, exhausted, on the verge of collapse. Katrin looked like she had been smoking kuf. Smelled like it, too.
Ephrian noted his sniffing. “It actually helps,” he said. Then fell asleep.
Hecht envied him.
He began to talk about the likelihood of a serious encounter with the Night, tonight. Tonight could make or break the whole campaign. He made no comment on the presence of royalty. If the Righteous got through tonight they ought to be able to fight through to the Teragi tomorrow, there to isolate Krois and the Chiaro Palace. Then they could relax and wait on the Grand Duke.
Hecht tried to make it sound like he thought this war was as good as won. If they could just make it through tonight.
The night went quiet.
Hecht’s amulet itched brutally.
Katrin offered a vague smile to no one in particular.
Something exploded on the other side of the stadium.
A firepowder cart? No. That was huge but down in the ground. Underneath.
There was no big flash or smoke, just a muted bang, and shaking.
Everyone started trading dimwit questions.
The other side of the stadium groaned. Then it rumbled. Then it settled majestically, dustily, into the earth.
“Did they do anything to the catacombs so that wouldn’t happen again?” Titus asked. “I’m thinking, probably not.”
Hecht said, “We had people and weapons posted over there.” Noting that this was not the section that had fallen before. “One more time and we’ll have a whole new hippodrome. Get down there and see what needs doing.”
Something more than an explosion and collapse had happened. Hecht’s staff already believed it had been an attack.
The irritation offered by Hecht’s amulet had a whole new feel.
“Wait.”
Hecht thought Katrin had spoken. “Your Grace?” But the Empress had drifted into a thousand-yard stare. And Captain Ephrian was sound asleep.
“Father. Here.”
“Lila?”
“Here.” Inside a shadow hardly big enough to hide a pin.
“You’ve had me worried half to death, girl. You just plain disappeared last night.”
“I had to help Great Grandfather seal off the Construct. Then I had to get some sleep. And then I had to help him set the trap that just got sprung.”
“That explosion?”
“That would be the most obvious part.”
“He’s making a habit of knocking this place down.”
“But that’s good. For you. It means the monster walked into the trap. It means you won’t have to fight it off.”
Hecht rubbed his left wrist. “I don’t know.” It felt like the Night remained plenty active.
Someone called out from below. He yelled back something about looking out for the Empress.
Lila said, “I have to go. I have to help Great Grandfather tonight. Don’t worry about the monster. The explosives were silver-charged. They shredded it.” She turned sideways.
Hecht turned himself. And found Katrin watching him, not looking the least bit drugged. “Who was that, Commander?”
“My daughter. The sorceress.”
The new collapse at the hippodrome served to declare a truce between the working people on both sides. A lot of rescue work needed doing, particularly of horses and the people who lived with them.
It was another long night affording little rest. On the plus side, casualties were amazingly few.
Lila said Muniero Delari was responsible. The Principat? had destroyed the thing in the catacombs again, maybe permanently this time. And the effects were immediate and far-reaching.
Come morning the city was quiet. And flooded with rumors. The squabble in the Collegium had taken a dramatic turn. Serenity’s most obdurate supporters had fled into Krois, where they would assist the Patriarch in waiting the several days it would take the Captain-General to come rescue them.
Whether or not Serenity liked it, Pinkus Ghort could not just turn his back on the Grand Duke. That would get him slaughtered. He needed to maintain a force capable of making a rescue.
Loud supporters of the Patriarch were scarce today. Those Hecht did see were in the custody of partisans of families not named Benedocto. There was no resistance.
Could that thing down under have been a revenant old god of strife?
Hecht delivered the Empress and her party to the Penital, where Ambassador va Still-Patter had been under siege for weeks. The besiegers had gone away during the night.
Hecht rubbed his left wrist. The amulet barely tickled this morning.
Principat? Delari had done good. He had done real good.
Military operations continued. Krois had to be isolated. The Chiaro Palace had to be neutralized. The north side gates had to be taken under control to forestall their use by the Captain-General, whose motley Patriarchal levies now outnumbered the Imperials harassing them.
Hecht went to one of the little gates of the Castella dollas Pontellas and asked to see his family. After he had made arrangements for his soldiers with families locally to visit their loved ones, with minimal risk.
Chaos waxed and waned. There were no serious outbreaks. No attack on the Devedian quarter materialized. Hecht was quick to encourage rumors that blamed him for having kept an attack from developing.
Hecht finally sat down with his family. Even Muniero Delari was there. Though triumphant, the old man looked like he was on his last legs, and believed that himself. “This time was too much, Piper. Protecting the Construct, harassing Doneto, slaying his monster, trying to turn the tide in the Collegium… All too much for one old man. And Doneto is still out there, scheming up something else.”
“You stop. He’s been thwarted. Leave the rest for someone else.”
“There is no one else.”
“Pella. I have a mission for you. You can draft Vali to help.”
“Dad?”
“Put this old coot into bed and sit on him till I tell you to turn him loose. Brothe will survive without him tinkering.”
Vali and Pella closed in on Delari. They did not have to drag him. And he did not protest.
All he needed was for someone to take the decisions away. He could then surrender to exhaustion.
“You’ve been unnaturally quiet since I got here,” Hecht told Anna, lying in bed. She had been powerfully responsive but otherwise uncharacteristically silent.
“I don’t know what it is. I can’t deal with all this emotionally. It’s so frustrating because there’s no way to make it change. We are who we are and the world is what it is, and, I firmly suspect, I wouldn’t be the least bit happier if everything suddenly changed to be exactly the way I think I want it.”
“You always were able to look past emotion. Better than me, really.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“This isn’t over by a long way. Pinkus is coming and he outnumbers me.”
