firepowder is supposed to be made exclusively for us. The Patriarch’s men.”
“Good point,” Hecht said.
Pinkus Ghort did not quite look Hecht in the eye. “The Collegium say they’re part of the Patriarchal armed forces, Pipe. Looking at it realistically, firepowder manufacturers are producing more than you’re buying. Your conquest of Artecipea took care of the saltpeter shortage. They’re turning a tidy profit on the extra production.” And, perhaps, certain individuals charged with enforcing the rules were getting a share.
Hecht glared toward the Devedian quarter, yet was more irked with himself than those people. This he should have foreseen.
There was nothing more likely to facilitate the redistribution of wealth than a new means of killing people. Though handling and employing firepowder effectively required skill.
Skilled firepowder handler Kait Rhuk asked, “How long before we see firepowder weaponry in the hands of our enemies?”
“Let me guess,” Hecht said. Loosing his sardonic side. “As long as it takes someone to work out a good formula for the stuff?”
Rhuk snorted. “If that was true we’d be up to our asses in bad guys with firepowder toys. The formula ain’t no secret. Every apothecary and chemist in Brothe knows it. What they don’t know is how to put them together. If it was me, I’d have somebody I really trusted permanently installed at Krulik and Sneigon. I’d babysit them day and night. I’d use somebody who’d cut a throat anytime the mood hit him. Somebody who ain’t weasel enough to get rich on the bribes he was gonna be offered.”
The Captain-General did not want to operate that way. But he saw the point. Men who wanted a fast profit, right now, would happily sell the most wonderfully murderous tools to the worst enemies of their own state or people, somehow oblivious to the fact that those weapons might bite back.
The Rh?n had a ferocious secret weapon. They called it nephron. It was a thick, heavy liquid that, once fired, could not be extinguished. It had to burn itself out. Rh?nish merchants would not sell the formula but willingly sold nephron itself, even to Sha-lug who used it against the Eastern Empire’s soldiers.
Human minds did not seem large enough to encompass an obligation to eschew profit if making it required providing a means to destroy one’s neighbor.
Pinkus Ghort said, “Hey, Pipe. You lost in there?”
“What?”
“You went away someplace inside your head. I was afraid you got lost.”
“It isn’t that vast a landscape, Pinkus. Pinkus, knowing you, you’ve found a source for the best wine in town. And you’ve found some way to get in touch with what’s going on in the underworld.”
Ghort gestured with both hands, as though playing with a balance scale-or pair of breasts. “Thus. So. I try. But, really, all I need to do is put on a show that’ll keep the senate happy.”
“Bronte Doneto is who you need to keep happy. Him and the old men of the Church. Not the old men of the city.”
Ghort shrugged. “Pretty much the same crew.”
“They’re wearing you down. Aren’t they?”
Ghort shrugged again. “How can you tell?”
“You don’t even bother to talk bad about them.”
“A man gets addicted to eating regular.”
Hecht faked a laugh. “What are you going to do about this?” He gestured at the hole where the Bruglioni citadel had stood.
“I reckon I could get a shovel and start filling it in. But I don’t suppose that’s what you mean.”
“No.” Smiling. Attitude was a big part of what made Pinkus Ghort Pinkus Ghort.
“I’ll get some of the old farts from the Collegium to come exercise their talents. Give them a chance to show off. Them antiques have egos like you wouldn’t believe. When they figure out it was really an accident, then I’ll grab my shovel. It they decide somebody did it, I’ll hunt the asshole down and drag him in begging me not to turn him over to the Bruglioni.”
“Good for you, Pinkus. You want to come by Principat? Delari’s town house some evening, I brought you half a dozen bottles of white wine from Alten Weinberg.”
“Hey. That was thoughtful.”
“It was, wasn’t it? I’m warning you, though. It’s different stuff.”
“Good. I hear you had an interview with the Empress her own self.”
“I did. She offered me a job.”
“Shit. That’s some shit. I guess you said no.”
“I said no. I’m not ready to break in a new set of crazy old men who are out to sabotage me.”
“I smell rank cynicism, Pipe. You promised you’d work on that.”
“I do. Every day, right after my prayers.”
“That don’t exactly boost my confidence. Did I ever catch you praying? I don’t remember if I did.”
“You’d have to be sneaky and fast. I try to keep it between me and God.”
Ghort chuckled. “I don’t even bother anymore. My god is on a five-century bender and don’t have time for mortal trivia.”
Hecht understood Ghort’s attitude but could not, himself, thumb his nose at the Deity. Whichever One He might be. He asked, “What’s your boss up to?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where’ll he stand when Boniface goes? I’m hoping he doesn’t put you and me in a difficult position.”
“You mean to enforce the Viscesment Agreement.”
“I swore an oath.”
“And the City Regiment, in our myriad, wondrous forms, will be blessed with breaking up the riots.”
“They get to be too much for you, Krois or the Castella can whoop and six thousand veteran Patriarchals will be here overnight. Fifteen thousand in a week. There’s only going to be one next Patriarch.”
“Easy, Pipe. No need to get all intense.”
“Just want to make my point.”
“Consider it made. But you won’t make yourself popular.”
“I have to do the right thing.”
“I give up. It won’t matter a hundred years from now, anyway.”
There was room to debate that. Hecht saw no point. It was hard enough to get Ghort to worry about next week.
Ghort said, “Tell me about your god-killing adventures in the Connec. And Alten Weinberg. What was that like?”
“The interview with the Empress was as interesting as it got. The wedding was just long, boring, and hot. And way overdone.”
“No shit? Is Katrin still as good-looking as she was when we saw her in Plemenza?”
“Time hasn’t been kind. The Grail Throne is a cruel taskmaster.”
“She made it hard on herself, changing sides in the Imperial squabble with the Church.”
“Definitely part of it. Jaime won’t help, either.”
“Not the big, handsome hero, eh?”
“Not so big. Definitely handsome, in a southern kind of way. And he did show good at Los Naves de los Fantas. They say. But he doesn’t have a much finer character than our onetime friend, Bishop Serifs.”
“Not good.”
“And Katrin won’t see it.”
Ghort stared down into the hole. “You see something moving there, Pipe?”
“Where?”
Ghort pointed.
Squinting, Hecht could just make out…“Rhuk! Front!”
Kait Rhuk shoved gawkers aside, rolled his falcon to the lip of the sinkhole. Lifeguards closed in. Hecht snarled, “You men! Stand back! Rhuk. Your eyes are better than mine or Colonel Ghort’s. Something is moving down there where that furniture is all tangled up. Get a sight on it.”
