“So I’ve hung around a lot with guys who humped into town with the high and the mighty.”
“And?”
“There are incredible career opportunities for men in my line. Especially up north.”
“Kharoulke the Windwalker.”
“Not yet. Not directly. But his cult is back. That’s weird, isn’t it? The wells of power start drying up and, suddenly, we’ve got ten thousand more Instrumentalities plaguing us. You’d think it would go the other way.”
“Slow down.” Rhuk had a substantial accent. It thickened when he became excited. “Do you know what you’ll do if we do come up against an Instrumentality like Kharoulke?”
“More developed than Seska was. Probably bend over and kiss my ass goodbye.”
“Because?”
“At some point an Instrumentality should become powerful enough to see ambushes ahead of time. Then it’d stand off and do you wicked. With a platoon of first-string sorcerers I could lure him into a trap that didn’t look like a trap until the firing started. If the first salvo was accurate I could finish him before he pulled his shit back together. But if I didn’t get him the first time I’d never get another chance.”
“Not what I’d hoped to hear. But pretty much what I expected.”
“You ask me, boss, if you want to handle a demonic assertion like the Windwalker, you better get the Patriarch on the case with God. Get Him to come out and flex His muscles the way He used to do in the olden days.”
An interesting suggestion. But not especially useful.
Hecht suspected that God would not show up.
His faith had suffered serious ablation lately. “Think about the Kharoulke problem. If we ever face something that big it’d be handy to have a strategy set.”
“Of course, sir.”
Kait Rhuk was dedicated. He would do that. When he was not busy catching whores.
Cloven Februaren came and went. In the main, he brought good news. Buhle Smolens was headed for Brothe with five hundred crack mountain infantry. Patriarchal garrisons throughout Firaldia were on alert. The Master of the Commandery, the new Brotherhood chieftain at the Castella dollas Pontellas, Addam Hauf, would quarter Patriarchal troops there, meaning the Brotherhood would back the Patriarchal forces.
The Brotherhood existed to make war in the Holy Lands. They could not do that without support from the west. Internecine squabbling anywhere meant reduced resources available to those determined to liberate God’s homeland.
The Captain-General was satisfied that everything possible was being done. If Boniface hung on for a week, a smooth succession would be assured. Buhle Smolens would be close to the Mother City. The Captain-General would be headed south.
The Ninth Unknown said he thought the Patriarch would last a month.
He was able to get that close, now he had begun to put thought into the effort.
Cloven Februaren began to show the strain of trying to hold everything together. Hecht told him to ease up. If it looked good, let it ride. Let it work itself out.
Advice he had to take himself. He could not walk away before the wedding.
The wedding did come, though the wait seemed endless. As an anticlimax. Being Boniface’s representative, the Captain-General watched with the attendant clerics. He played no part himself, not being in orders. Pella was not allowed to join him. The boy remained outside the Holy Kelam and Lalitha Church, shadowed by Presten Reges and Shang “Bags” Berbach. The lifeguards were frantic. If ever someone wanted to get at the Captain-General through his son, this was the time.
Holy Kelam and Lalitha was one of the great churches of the Grail Empire, rich in architecture, furnishings, and decorative detail. It was an object of pilgrimage. Relics of both Founder namesakes were buried beneath its altar. The lame and sick came to light a candle and pray to Lalitha, who had wrought miraculous cures while living.
The Captain-General spared little attention for the wonders of the church. He focused on the wedding party. On Princess Helspeth and King Jaime. There was little mystery about his interest in the Princess Apparent. The Adversary had found a foothold inside his soul. He did wonder why the Direcian monarch interested him, though.
Attitude? The man was sure to be trouble. Everyone watching could tell he was impatient to get this nonsense over. That he was eager to start throwing his weight around.
Jaime was headed for a world of disappointment. Katrin might be besotted, might be fawning over him, but she was Johannes Blackboots’s daughter. No pretty Direcian would win control of the Grail Empire simply by wedding her.
And if she did surrender all reason?
The Council Advisory would step in. A dozen grim old men and their grimmer women. They watched from the floor, afraid that they had erred by agreeing to this match.
They could tell that the Castaurigan had ambitions unfettered by reality. He expected to outshine Peter of Navaya, using his new spouse’s wealth and power.
Could he be that blind? His bride meeting privately with Boniface’s military commander had outraged him. He had no idea what might have been discussed, but was aware that the Church was little interested in glorifying Castauriga or its king. The Church was cozy with Peter of Navaya.
King Jaime would be in a tight place with the Church. The outstanding characteristic of his wife was her devotion to Brothe. That was her external strength and her great political liability inside the Empire.
Hecht leaned nearer the Archbishop beside him, Elmiro Conventi. Conventi represented several Imperial cities in northern Firaldia. “We need to watch this King. He’ll intrigue with the anti-Brothens if he can’t bully the Empress.”
The grossly fat Archbishop first showed annoyance, then grasped the suggestion. “Excellent observation. I’ll pass the thought along.”
The ceremony was a long one. It did not just join a woman and a man, it formalized an alliance and founded a dynasty.
Piper Hecht thought he had been in the west long enough to be acclimated to its weirdest customs. He was aghast when he discovered that the grande dames of the court were, at this late hour, jockeying to be chosen to witness the Empress’s defloration. There would be five. Tradition assigned the respective mothers and the bride’s aunts the task. Neither Jaime nor Katrin had a living mother. Jaime had brought no sufficiently exalted Castaurigan women. He tried to refuse the ceremony. The court harpies would have none of that.
They wanted to see the Ege chit humiliated.
Somehow, the Empress, Alten Weinberg, the Grail Empire, and the greater world got through the night. As did the Captain-General of Patriarchal forces.
Madouc assured him, “Only the highborn endure that. Before the conversion to Chaldareanism, girls lost their virginity early. They seldom married before they proved their ability to bear children. It’s still that way for the peasantry. But the nobility consider it imperative that there be no doubts about paternity. No man wants to leave his patrimony to a child not his own.”
“I understand.” Without fully comprehending. “Yet most women here young enough to be interested seem to indulge in liaisons with men who aren’t their husbands. Some with more than one man. While the men are involved with women not their wives.”
“The underlying consistency is hard for outsiders to grasp.” Madouc’s tone was caustic. “The romanticism of the jongleurs is to blame.”
“Meaning?”
“They say marriage is a business arrangement. Love is something else.”
The Praman world had its love stories. Its fables of deceit, betrayal, and cuckoldry, usually illustrating the weakness of the cuckold. In real life even the suspicion of infidelity could lead to a harsh death. Here, everyone winked at it-even when one’s own woman was concerned.
And yet, Piper Hecht could not see Helspeth Ege and keep his thoughts channeled into propriety.
