He slipped up to the door and knocked the prescribed series, unsure that anyone would respond at this hour. He ran through the series a second time, then a third, shrinking into shadow in order to be less noticeable. He leaned out once to consider the progress of the fire in the Devedian quarter.
They seemed to have gotten that under control.
His fourth effort was rewarded by appropriate counter-knocks from inside. He offered the counter countersign.
The narrow door opened a crack. Else saw nothing but heard a whispered query. He offered the proper response.
The door opened another inch. It was as dark as the Patriarch's heart in there. He did not move. He would not until he was invited or refused. There would be some sort of protection set up for the householder.
'Come forward.'
He moved carefully, keeping his hands in plain sight, doing nothing that might be considered suspicious. The agent would be nervous, what with the Brotherhood raving on about foreign agitators stirring up the Deves.
'Turn to your right.'
He could not see the speaker in the dark. The whispers came from a low altitude.
Not another dwarf?
No, it developed. Not another dwarf. A woman. Which he discovered once they entered a small room where a single weak candle burned. 'I thought…'
'You were expecting my husband. He passed away last winter.'
'I don't believe they know that at home.' He did not mention al-Qarn because, he recalled, this agent believed he served the Eastern Emperor.
'It hasn't been reported. I need the money. Pledga left me no other income when he went.'
Else did not ask how or why. He did not care. And knowing would change nothing. He considered the woman. She was small in stature and frame, about forty, graying, obviously proud, still striking and still betraying traces of the beauty she had been not so long ago. 'I understand. Are you alone, then?'
The woman studied him as intently as he studied her. Each considered his or her life to be in the hands of the other.
'Yes. As long as the stipend keeps coming, I can afford that.'
'Your husband let you know what he was doing?'
'We had no secrets. He told me a story he believed. But he was a bit gullible. What do you need?'
'A place to hide.'
'You're the foreign spy they're warning everyone about.' Her large, dark eyes came alive with humor.
'I'm a spy. The one they're talking about is one they made up to scare people. A boogeyman to make people behave the way they want.'
'They described you pretty well. We need to do something about your hair.'
Else sighed. 'Maybe so.'
'Right now you need to get clean.'
Elseremained invisible for three weeks. He retreated to an attic room whenever Anna Mozilla had company. Which was often. The widow was a gregarious woman with numerous friends and relations who enjoyed gossiping. She had no children.
She was energetic and positive and must have been the driving force in her marriage. She gathered regular news of events in the city.
The Three Families fell out with the Brotherhood of War because the badly wounded Brotherhood sorcerer tried to order the Devedian population exterminated after he escaped the fighting in the Devedian quarter. That was a presumption of such epic arrogance that the Three Families all refused to allow it.
Brotherhood casualties that night included twelve dead and nineteen seriously injured. The uninjured survivors were unable to resist when the Durandanti evicted them from their barracks.
'They chartered a ship to take them to Brothe,' Anna Mozilla reported. 'But they'll be back.' A large Brotherhood establishment, Castella dollas Pontellas, the Fortress of the Little Bridges, existed just a few hundred yards from the Chiaro Palace, and even closer to Krois, the island stronghold of the Patriarch. And the current Patriarch had that sweetheart relationship with the Brotherhood.
Anna continued, “The dons aren't pleased. The sorcerer threatened them with writs of anathema. Bishop Indigo threatened right back, banning the Brotherhood from the Sonsan See forever. He was never their friend. He preached against letting them set up here in the first place, back when I was a girl.'
'The sorcerer did survive?'
'Yes. But they say he was hurt so bad he'll be crippled from now on. And he'll never perform major sorceries again.'
'Uhm?'
'I heard he lost part of his left arm and the rest is useless. And that side of his face was destroyed. There's so much silver embedded in him, his own body will ruin whatever spells he tries.' She sounded pleased.
'I really wish he was dead,' Else said. 'But I'll settle for second best. You say he left Sonsa?'
'Almost two weeks ago, now. He offended Don Bonaventura Scoviletti so badly that the Scovilettis say they won't support the Patriarch in anything that involves the Brotherhood in any way. Bishop Indigo is Don Bonaventura's uncle, by the way.'
'Interesting. That must've taken guts. So. We had a nasty, major black-hearted villain here and even now we don't have any idea who he was.'
'One of the top sorcerers from the Castella Anjela dolla Picolina. They say he came here because the augurs predicted that a huge threat to the Church would materialize in Sonsa.'
'Be an ironic twist if his attempts to prevent that actually caused it.'
'A lot of people are saying that.'
'The trouble with the Deves should fade away, now. For a while. Without the Brotherhood to keep everybody angry.'
'That's the talk. But things will never set back to normal.'
'I should slip out of Sonsa, now.'
'Not yet.' Anna Mozilla sounded reluctant to see that happen, though what she said was, 'The dons are still looking for somebody who sounds like the man I found at my door one night a while back. The Devedian elders insist they were duped by a provocateur from Dreanger who died in the explosion that started the fire in their quarter. You don't look like a Dreangerean.'
'Goes to show you, you can't believe everything you hear.'
Anna Mozilla gave him a look. He was fooling nobody but himself.
Fourteen days later, in the village of Alicea, twenty-two miles east of Sonsa, Else chanced on a dozen men out of Grolsach, Rence, Reste, and several other small political entities in the confusion of Ormienden and Dromedan. They were mostly very young and very tired. Else was tired himself. But he was on the road to Brothe at last
He had killed a hare with a slung stone earlier in the day. The rabbit bought him a place at the fire. The dozen were headed for Brothe, too, with ambitions toward finding work as soldiers. They were mostly strangers who had come together on the road.
The Grolsacher brothers Pico and Justi Mussa and their friend Gofit Aspel had deserted the men who held their apprentice indentures. They had picked up Rafi Corona and shifty-eyed old Bo Biogna while drifting through Dromedan, in Ormienden. The rest had accumulated since. Except for Biogna and a very large and slow-witted fellow who insisted on being called Just Plain Joe — whose traveling companion was a moth-eaten mule named Pig Iron — the men had no military experience. This was a first adventure for everyone. Even Bo Biogna and Just Plain Joe did their military stints in their home territories. When they heard Else was a traveled veteran they insisted he tell them all about the glory of war.
He told them the truth. They were not happy. That was not what they wanted to hear. But they had seen enough of the world to suspect that reality refused to bow to wishful thinking.
