The Tyranny of the Night

maybe he followed me from here. Maybe he was supposed to follow somebody else who was staying here.'

'Possible, I suppose. Or Starkden might think you're someone else in disguise. Who could she mistake you for?'

Else shrugged. 'I've spent my whole adult life fighting for Triamolin. I don't own anything worth stealing, in the Holy Lands or back home in Tramaine. I'm carrying my whole fortune with me. Who would this woman be spying for?'

'Rumors have linked her to the Patriarch, to the Eastern Emperor, and to Hansel Blackboots. Do any of them have any treason to kill you?'

'Hardly.'

Lorica added, 'Starkden has been associated with the Unbeliever, too. With Lucidia in particular.'

'I never had much to do with them. We mostly dealt with tribal raiders that Dreanger bribed to harass us. Except for the battle at the Well of Days. Which I missed because I was laid up with a wound from a poisoned arrow.'

Parthen Lorica told him, 'We've been forthcoming with you. We hope you have with us. You're leaving aboard Infanti? If anything turns up before she sails we'll send a message.'

'I appreciate that' It was a generous gesture. These men respected what they believed him to be. But he hoped they would have no success. Success could mean them finding out that Starkden really was after a Sha-lug chieftain pretending to be Aelford daSkees.

He devoted himself to mental exercises meant to conquer stress. Success eluded him. He envisioned a pretty little blonde girl, a toddler grinning wildly as she tried to walk toward him.

He puzzled that until he realized that she must be his sister. And that left him with the icy chills.

Normally, he failed miserably when he tried to remember his family. Which was surprising. The boys of the Vibrant Spring, while they were still little, remembered their families. Their mothers, especially. And spent a lot of silent tears in the darkness, when their instructors could not see.

Else boarded Vivia Infanti shortly after noon, having eaten nothing all morning. The ship was still taking on cargo when he arrived. He spied both Mallin and Nahlik on the quay.

A Sonsan seaman checked his name off a list. Another man, wearing a pipe on a chain around his neck, drew him aside. 'Sir Aelford, the stuff you sent ahead is in your personal locker, up forward. I'll show you.'

Vivia Infanti did not resemble the long, lean sharks of war that Else had seen while approaching Staklirhod. She was a huge wooden bathtub with exaggerated castles on either end, a hundred and thirty feet from stem to stern and fifty-five wide at the beam. A monster of a merchant ship, probably originally meant to transport soldiers eastward on the crusader routes.

There were stowage lockers below the rails up forward, obviously installed as an afterthought. The seaman opened a hatch on what proved to be a cubicle slightly more than two feet in each dimension.

'This will keep your stuff from sliding around. Or washing overboard in bad weather. It won't keep anything from getting stolen. It won't keep anything dry if we do run into any weather. Use it accordingly.'

'Thank you.' Else considered the small oilskin bundle lying inside. The bundle contained written instructions from Gordimer. He was not allowed to open them until he was on his way to Sonsa.

Else stowed his gear, shut the locker, and joined Enio Scolora at the landward rail. Scolora said, 'I heard the Witchfinders had you in.'

'Who? The Brothers I talked to this morning? They wanted to know what happened at the Rusted Lantern. What nobody else cared about'

'I heard it was Parthen Lonca and Bugo Armiena.

'One said his name was Lorica.'

'That's them. They're from the Special Office. They hunt down ghosts and demons and sorcerers and whatnot. You don't want to get noticed by them.'

'What? Tell me about this Special Office.'

'You didn't have the Brotherhood underfoot in Triamolin, I take it.'

“Triamolin is the back end of beyond. We're still there only because it isn't worth the trouble of kicking us out.'

Scolora related a long tale about fanatics hidden inside the already fanatic Brotherhood. Men with strong sorcerous talents who wanted nothing less than the extinction of the tyranny of the night.

Else did not understand. The things of the night were no more evil than lions or hyenas. They did what God made them do, like dogs and flies and rainbows. They might be dangerous and deadly but so might any other part of the natural order. The tyranny of the night was part of the world and life.

Scolora shrugged. 'They got it made. They can afford to be fanatic. They live out here where the night ain't part of their life every minute of every single day.' Which it was amongst the Wells of Ihrian, more so than anywhere else in the world.

'How do they manage when they visit the Holy Lands?'

'They grumble a lot. And take it out on the Pramans. Word is, though, something happened over there that's got them all stirred up.'

'Uhm?'

'I think somebody skragged some kind of big deal spook thing. Just a regular guy, not a wizard. They want to know how he did it.'

Sailors asked Else and Scolora to move away from the rail. They began singling up the mooring lines. Boats gathered to nudge the vessel away from the quay and toward the channel. Vivia Infanti depended entirely on sail power. Eliminating oarsmen offered huge labor savings.

There was a ghost of a breeze directly on the ship's beam, pushing her toward the quay. The oarsmen in the boats earned their pay.

The deck force did not take in the fenders until Infanti was thirty feet out from the quay and her bow was swinging toward the channel.

The first small sails broke. Infanti soon held her heading on her own, and crept forward, though without adequate steerage way. More sails spread.

Else said, 'The master of this tub is good.'

'He wasn't, he wouldn't be her master. Sonsans are practical and pragmatic in the extreme. You all right?'

'I'm never all right when there's water under me instead of dirt. Big things with lots of teeth live down there. And they all want to eat me.'

Scolora chuckled. 'You get seasick, eh?'

The merchantman put more way on. She eased into the channel and ranged the lighthouse that marked the mouth of the harbor. Once Vivia Infanti passed that two-hundred-foot-tall brick structure she would be on open seas and Else would feel more and more like he had fallen off the edge of the world. 'Yes.'

Infanti's master lined her on the range markers. Signalmen exchanged messages with the harbormaster ashore and me traffic watchers in the lighthouse. There was a lot of traffic at Runch.

Excitement broke out on the stern castle. One of the signalmen called for the ship's master. Else said, 'Something's up.'

'They can't get anything past you, can they?'

The ship's master, first officer, and several others closed in on the signalmen. After two minutes of wigwags the chief boatswain shouted orders to the deck crew to get the sails taken in. The helmsman took the ship to starboard, out of the channel. She lost way. Shortly, the anchor chain squealed and rattled.

'Bet that there is the reason why,' Scolora said, indicating a longboat putting out from the small quay at the foot of Mount Calen, which was crowned by the Castella Anjela dolla Picolina, headquarters of the Brotherhood of War. 'Somebody wants a ride.'

Else hoped that was all.

The ship's master barked. The deck hands began herding passengers belowdecks. Demands to know what was going on received no answer.

The working crew followed the passengers, no more pleased about their situation. The ratings and officers