displaced by the gods that our God overcame when Chaldarean missionaries converted the north. I’ve heard rumors about the Windwalker returning.”
“You surprise me again by being so well informed.”
“I have friends in low places.”
“No doubt about that.”
“Sir?”
“I’ve found that while almost no one recalls a boy named Piper Hecht making his journey southward, to take service with the Patriarchs, records of his service with several local garrisons exist. He never stayed anywhere long.”
“Some captains kept records obsessively. I caught the habit myself. My people can account for every copper that ever touched our hands. Good record keeping lets you show your employer what you’ve accomplished and why it cost so much.”
“And still they complain.”
“Of course. This thing.” Hecht tapped the drawings. “You should’ve brought the corpse. That would cause a stir.” Maybe get some attention paid to some of the more serious threats to the world.
“Its flesh corrupted and melted within hours, though there was snow on the ground and ice in the trees. Neither ravens nor wolves would touch the flesh.”
“Something of the Night.”
“Undoubtedly. But what?”
“I’m not the man to ask. But I know who that man might be.” The Ninth Unknown. Cloven Februaren. Lord of the Silent Kingdom. Possibly the most powerful sorcerer alive. And the least predictable. “Unfortunately, he’s in Brothe. Like most of the Collegium, waiting for Boniface to die.”
“What do you hear about that?”
“Hugo Mongoz might outlive half the men who elected him.” Hugo Mongoz being the name of the Principat? who had chosen the reign name Boniface VII when he became Patriarch.
“Isn’t Bellicose supposed to succeed him?”
“That’s the deal. I have orders to enforce it if the Collegium tries to take it back. I’ll do what Boniface wants. Bellicose is a good man. Who may not last as long as Boniface has, despite being thirty years younger.”
“Drear should be with him, then. Not here.”
“Bellicose’s health will do him in. Not assassins. He sent Drear to be his representative at the wedding. As I’m standing in for Boniface.”
Ferris Renfrow kept his opinion to himself.
Hecht understood. “Bellicose knew what he was doing when he sent Drear. It’s because of how he was treated here when he was a bishop.”
Renfrow chuckled. “The pro-Brothen party were feeling their oats.”
“Is that all? I do have work to do.”
“I have ten thousand things. Nine thousand nine hundred you won’t help me with. So I’ll just leave you with another word of caution. You may have enemies you know nothing about.”
“You hear that, Madouc? Now you can nag me with the report of the Imperial spymaster himself.” Hecht felt less humor than he pretended. Madouc would, indeed, mention Renfrow’s warning every chance he got. It irked him that he would have to pay attention. He was exposed, here. And there were people who did truly believe the world would be a better place without Piper Hecht in it.
Madouc just smiled. More than did Hecht himself, the lifeguard looked forward to putting Alten Weinberg behind and getting back to murdering the Instrumentalities of the Night.
Ferris Renfrow said, “I’ve done what I had to do here. Which is warn you not to relax.”
“I do get lax, sometimes. Madouc never does. Madouc is an Instrumentality in his own right.”
“Cherish him, then. Honor him. Most of all, listen to him.”
Hecht asked, “Madouc, did you put him up to this?”
Hecht gathered Carava de Bos, Madouc, and Rivademar Vircondelet as soon as Ferris Renfrow left. Pretty blond Vircondelet could not stop yawning. Hecht stared at the letters on the black tray, longing to dive into them. “What have we found out about Renfrow? Anyone?”
De Bos and Madouc deferred to Vircondelet. The sleepy Connecten, a Castreresonese, had the potential to exceed his mentor, Titus Consent. “A Ferris Renfrow has been involved in Grail Empire politics for more than a hundred years. This Ferris Renfrow claims to be the son of the Renfrow who served the two Freidrichs and the grandson of the Renfrow who served Otto, Lingard, the second Johannes, and the other Otto. Every Ferris Renfrow frightened everyone around him. People won’t talk about them much. If a mortal can be considered an Instrumentality, Ferris Renfrow qualifies. He’s the living patron tutelary phantom of the Grail Empire.”
Hecht asked, “Is there a woman in any of the Renfrow lives?”
Vircondelet said, “I haven’t connected any Renfrow with any particular woman. Maybe they do like you and adopt.” Pella had just stuck his head in. He saw that he would not be welcome.
Maybe Renfrow’s family was like the Delari. Each generation produced out of wedlock, one after another.
Vircondelet kept on. “The princesses, Katrin and Helspeth, are the only women in his life of late. That’s because he’s the guarantor of Johannes Blackboots’s will and Bill of Succession.”
“Proceed on the assumption that all Ferris Renfrows are the same Ferris Renfrow. And keep digging. Find out who his enemies are. They’re bound to gossip.”
Carava de Bos said, “No one here has made much of it, but Renfrow appeared at court, filthy and wounded, with news of the victory, only hours after Los Naves de los Fantas.”
That startled Hecht. He hoped it did not show. “How could that be?”
“The critical question, right?”
“Keep an eye on him.” Hecht glanced at the letters. He could wait no longer. “All of you. Back to your duties. Vircondelet. Go back to bed.”
The Captain-General tormented himself. He opened the letter from Boniface VII first. He had no interest in it whatsoever. It told him its author had had a premonition that his hour on the stage was about to end. And begged him to make sure the agreements with the Viscesment Patriarchy were honored. By force if necessary,
In Hugo Mongoz’s estimation, most of the Principat?s of the Collegium were slime weasels interested only in filling their own pockets. They would ignore the agreements if they thought they could.
Hecht burned that letter. It was a waste of paper. Though Boniface could not be sure that his will would be executed. Unless he watched from Heaven as his Captain-General enforced his wishes.
Hecht read the letter from the Empress next. He dreaded what might lie inside that from the Princess Apparent.
Katrin Ege, Empress of the Grail Empire, with a string of subsidiary titles that filled half a page, requested the attendance of the Captain-General of the Patriarch of the Brothen Episcopal Church…
The flattering crap went on and on. Piper Hecht was not one to be turned and shaped by that. But he let it play. And composed an equally florid, disingenuous, and dishonest response. Yes. He would see Her Grace, the Empress, Katrin… Time and place, Katrin’s choice.
Katrin’s request was echoed by Princess Helspeth in her brief letter. Which he read over and over, looking for the slightest nuance.
In one hour Hecht would present himself to the woman who, at the moment, was the most powerful ruler in the western world. He was trapped in speculations about what might be on her mind. Alone. Pella was away wandering the city with one of his handlers. Madouc had expressed serious reservations.
Alone he might be. In the room where he slept. But one of Madouc’s men was right outside.
Some things needed no doors to get inside.
Hecht was rereading Helspeth when the flames of his candles danced briefly. “Cloven Februaren?”
“You’ve grown more sensitive. We get you more time in the Construct, you’ll be able to smell me coming.”
