Mudar Sokullu broke into the tirade. “Cease, in the name of the Eternal! The infidel priest bribed you and probably tweaked you. You were born in Jorgary, so you’re a Jorgarian. And you are still unfledged. So no trespass!” he told Umbral.
“But who told him to help Vranov take the castle?”
“His own idea entirely. Four days ago he brought the priest’s body to us at Alba Iulia, as he should. He was told to return to Cardice and wait until we assigned him a new handler.” The janissary made a gesture of dismissal, as if throwing away a walnut kernel. “The boy is weak-minded. Whatever he did was his own idea and the voivode did not order it. The wretch is solely to blame. You may have him! Hang him, burn him, stone him, whatever you want.”
“You told me to make myself useful!” Alojz shouted, then cowered even lower, clearly terrified of what he might have provoked.
“And how else did you make yourself useful?” Lady Umbral inquired gently. “By ancient custom, we keep no secrets at these conferences.”
Staring at the floor, the squire muttered, “I tweaked the bishops at the parley to help cover up Father Vilhelmas’s blunder at the banquet. That’s a permitted exception to the second commandment! I helped the count’s attack on the castle because he told… er, asked… me to. I was trying to help my handler’s client!” He blinked like a child about to weep and blurted: “I’m only three months short of being fledged. I hoped if I did a good job they would jess me and let me take over the contract!”
Umbral’s face remained unreadable, but her chuckle was eloquent. “We are aware that the Agioi, unlike the Saints, let their falcons fly without the restraint of cadgers, answering only to the voivode. So Father Vilhelmas, a member of the Agioi, had a contract with Havel Vranov, a count in the peerage of Jorgary? This is not trespass?”
Mudar Sokullu gave Lady Umbral a glare so toxic that it should have melted her into a puddle of terror, although it might have been directed at Alojz. “There was no contract between Vranov and Father Vilhelmas.”
“So on whose behalf was Vilhelmas acting?”
There was a long pause before the janissary answered. “Duke Wartislaw’s.”
Until then the spectators had been eerily quiet, but at that news Wulf detected a sort of wordless murmur, a shuffle of feet. The wind moaned and the lamps continued their crazy dance.
“Wartislaw,” the janissary continued, “flew three falcons of his own. We were not aware until a few days ago that he had also hired Vilhelmas and was using him to meddle in Jorgarian affairs. Vilhelmas should have informed us and obtained our permission. But this sniveling trash is a Jorgarian, and no concern of ours. Take him and clip his talons, or kill him and let us proceed to discussing the massacre of the Pomeranian army.”
“I am not sure I want him,” Lady Umbral said tartly. “As he indirectly caused the death of Lady Magnus’s husband, Sir Wulfgang’s brother, we shall let them pronounce sentence in due course. Stand over there, brancher.”
She pointed at Wulfgang. Alojz lurched down the step and hurried to his side, giving him a nervous smile, which Wulf did not return. Madlenka sought out Wulf’s hand again.
“When,” Umbral demanded, “did the Agioi learn of Vilhelmas’s trespass, and why did they not act to stop it sooner?”
“Vilhelmas has gone to the Source of Peace. The matter is of no importance.”
“It is of importance to me.”
And to Wulf. Now he knew how Vilhelmas had turned up at the head of the Wend invaders. Almost certainly he had been watching Anton, the unexpected new count who had arrived to take charge of the defenses. They had not yet met in the flesh, but Vilhelmas would certainly have been Looking in on Vranov’s visit to the town that Sunday and seen Anton announce himself in the cathedral. By then Wartislaw must have infiltrated an advance force into Long Valley, and when Anton rode off to inspect the frontier post on Tuesday, Vilhelmas had gone to take charge. He had gone to commit murder! When Anton had been wounded, he had mockingly sent him home to bleed out or die of wound fever. Very likely he had cursed him to make sure. Any lingering guilt Wulf felt over the priest’s death now evaporated.
The janissary scratched his right armpit vigorously. “As Allah is my judge and witness, the Agioi discovered the situation only a handful of days ago, but we decided it was a personal vendetta and the politics were incidental. Vranov was so convinced that Wartislaw could take Castle Gallant with his bombard that he turned his coat. Half a year ago he wrote to Wartislaw and offered to deliver Castle Gallant to him without a shot being fired, helped by his cousin Vilhelmas, a Speaker. Wartislaw meant to take Gallant by force, but to have Havel Vranov give it to him would have been much cheaper and an exquisite pleasure. Making Havel Vranov pay-pay long and hard-for all his crimes was an old ambition of his, so much so that he had ordered Vilhelmas to contrive the Hound’s utter destruction. He was to be branded a traitor and a Satanist, so that both king and Church would turn against him, and his nights would be filled with terror.”
“But of course Vilhelmas had tweaked Vranov to turn his coat in the first place, as Lady Magnus suggested?” Umbral’s voice oozed scorn.
Madlenka squeezed Wulf’s hand.
“Oh, Vilhelmas may have nudged him a little,” the janissary growled in his harsh croak, “but you are well aware that tweaking cannot move a man far along a path he does not wish to tread. Havel succumbed because he is a coward and afeared of his sins.”
“Then why are you so hard on the brancher? He has completed his handler’s work magnificently. Vranov has made war on his own king, is now seen to be in league with the devil, and is trapped in a stolen castle with his would-be ally buried under a mountain of snow. You should be heaping praise on the boy.”
Alojz straightened up, leering. He glanced at Wulf as if expecting approval, and promptly shriveled again.
The pasha spat on the floor. “If you think he is so good, you jess him. Let us discuss Magnus’s cold-blooded destruction of the Pomeranians.”
“By Our Lady, I am surprised to hear a member of the sultan’s army worry about bloodshed,” Lady Umbral said. “That was a brilliant application of talent, with a tiny effort producing great results. Clearly the powder wagons were ignited by lightning and the explosion brought down an avalanche. It has been accepted all over Christendom as an act of God.”
“But not all over Islam. Not in Pomerania. And not by the Agioi. It was trespass!”
“It was not!” The shout came from Madlenka. “Those lands belonged to my father… er, my… to the count of Cardice! It was the Pomeranians trespassing, not Wulf!”
“Lady Magnus is correct, Pasha,” Umbral said. “Occupation is not ownership. There had been no surrender or peace treaty. Is there anything more to discuss?”
“Certainly!” The janissary pointed a hairy finger at Wulfpeace. “He murdered Vilhelmas!”
“Sir Wulfgang,” said Umbral, “advance to the center.”
Wulf strolled to the middle of the room and stepped up onto the dais, where he bowed to Umbral, then turned to bow to the pasha. Madlenka noted admiringly how handsome and brave he seemed, completely calm, and very unlike the cringing Alojz who had stood there a few minutes ago.
“Your brother pulled the trigger to kill the priest,” the Turk said. “That was cold-blooded murder!”
Wulf shook his head. “With respect, Pasha, it was justice. Two days previously, that same priest had led an attack on that same building and slaughtered the garrison, offering no preliminary challenge or quarter. The post belonged to my king and my brother the count, who gave us permission to perform the execution. As lord of the march and lord of high justice, he had the legal authority to so.”
“You were seen by workadays! That was a violation of the first commandment.”
“Marek was seen, true. But less than an hour earlier, Vilhelmas had created a major display of talent in the hall of the keep at Gallant. He tore up the rules first!”
Madlenka heard a few quiet murmurs of amusement and approval behind her.
But Wulf had not finished. “I am grateful to you for revealing his motivation, Pasha, because we have all been puzzled by it. Now that we know that Vilhelmas was working for Wartislaw and not Vranov, it makes complete sense. Vranov lost his temper, which I daresay is not an unusual occurrence, and uttered curses, so then Vilhelmas made him vanish-in a p uff of sulfurous smoke, I expect. He was instantly branded an agent of Satan,
