'We got them all, Captain-General.'
'Indeed? Any prisoners, Mr. Studio?'
'Uh… No, sir. The Brotherhood guys killed everything that moved. They were seriously angry.'
Hecht sighed. 'Claim some of the bodies. Maybe somebody interesting will come looking for their dead.' At a glance, in the poor light, he saw nothing unusual about the bodies. 'We might yet come up with a clue about who to hunt.' Damnit, prisoners should have been taken! 'And see that any wounds get taken care of right away.'
Hecht's amulet gave him a series of tweaks, none of any weight. Things of the Night were about, drawn by pain and fierce emotion. As he was about to climb back into his coach, he asked, 'Was this a diversion or the main attraction?'
'The Brothers say this was it.'
'Interesting. Drive on,' he told the coachman, then considered his improvised family. Vali was pale as paper. She stared at him fixedly. Pella, suddenly, was as quiet as Vali. Anna had grabbed hold of his arm, so tight it hurt. 'I had a good time. Really. Everyone treated me better than I expected.'
She started shivering. The night was not that cool.
'Maybe because the only married man who brought his wife was Titus.' Other than Consent's whelps, Vali and Pella had been the only children, too. They had milked all the spoiling possible from celebrants in their cups, Pella selling the tragedy of the poor little mute girl. 'Why wouldn't they fawn over you? They're all goats. And you were the most beautiful woman there. I'd have been worried about leaving you alone with the Principate. Poor little Armand.'
'Piper!' But Anna liked it. She had seized the day, shipping a cargo of fine wine. 'Where did you and the old man disappear to? Or is that too secret for girls?'
'We had coffee. Fresh roasted Ambonypsgan. Maybe he didn't want to share with the whole mob.' Hecht shuddered suddenly.
'What?'
'Creepy feeling. Like something we might not want to meet just started following us around.'
'The women in the square talk like that happens all the time. A lot of people won't go out after dark anymore.'
Not an entirely remarkable state of affairs. Brothe was dangerous at the best of times. A glance outside revealed nothing unusual. The street was empty except for one man in tattered brown who staggered along without showing any interest in the coach.
Piper Hecht and Anna Mozilla moved in distinct circles when they were apart. His life was all studies of companies and regiments and how to feed, arm, pay, transport, and keep happy the troops who formed them. He had to outthink the ambitious warlords of the Grail Empire, his employer's lesser enemies, and Sublime himself. The latter was his biggest headache. He never saw the man. There was little reason to his decisions, which were subject to whimsical shifts. Too many, like letters of marque granted to Haiden Backe, originated deep inside a circle of cronies so intimate that even Sublime's cousin, Bronte Doneto, seldom knew what would happen next.
Hecht said, 'I get the feeling that I keep disappointing Principate Delari. But I can't figure out how.'
'You'll have to tell me more than you have. Unless it involves your super-secret Collegium business.'
He described recent visits with Muniero Delari. Anna asked questions. Good questions.
'Obviously, there's more than a big map down there. Just having it buried like that, all secret, means you have to think that it's a powerful magic artifact. Or will be when they finish it. It sounds like they're still building it.'
'We're home. Let me look around first.' He still had that sense of a presence close by. Though his amulet remained dormant. 'You kids need to get right to bed.' That would not be a hard sell. Vali was groggy, all reserves exhausted, and would have to be carried. Pella was dragging.
Hecht saw nothing unusual. He paid the coachman, adding a generous gratuity. The man fawned. Times were hard.
The coach team clip-clopped away, on damp cobblestones. A light sprinkle had begun. Hecht entered the house last, backing in, like a rearguard covering a desperate retreat. There was no light outside once the coach and its lamps turned a corner, the driver in a hurry to get away.
Hecht made sure of the locks and shutters while Anna put the children to bed. Vali had to be carried.
In bed, still nervously alert, Hecht remarked, 'What you said about the Principate's map. That's why I love you. I never thought of that.' Could his blindness be the cause of Principate Delari's disappointment?
'Talk to me about that ambush, Piper. Were they after you?'
'I don't think so.'
'What did you and the old man talk about? When you were having coffee.'
'Rudenes Schneidel.'
'Does he think you know something you're not telling?' Plainly, she thought he was holding out on her.
'Honey, I never heard of Rudenes Schneidel till a couple weeks ago.'
'So maybe he never heard of Piper Hecht, either. Or you might know each other by different names. There's a lot of that going around.'
Worth reflection, Hecht thought.
He was about to say he knew no one from Artecipea, nor had he heard of the High Athaphile or Artecipea before hearing that Schneidel called them home. He stopped as his mouth opened. He had had a thought about Vali. Which should have occurred to him long ago. One that meant a visit with the newest Episcopal Chaldarean before Consent's information sources dried up.
Anna continued. 'There's been some fibbing about where people really come from, too. But forget that. It's time to find out if I drank too much to enjoy anything else.'
The nightmare was so real it remained convincing after Hecht awakened. Anna demanded, 'What was it? You're shaking.'
'Nightmare. Haven't had it for a long time.'
'The one about your mother?'
Hecht frowned. He did not believe Anna was psychic. She made no such claims. But she surprised him sometimes.
'It started there. Same as always.' The same as memories he had had when he had cried himself to sleep in the Vibrant Spring School, back when they took the new slave boy in. He doubted he would recognize his mother today, even as she had been then, if she walked up and boxed his ears.
'Must be awful, being little and having no family.'
'You make your own family there. Or you don't survive. That's the whole point.' The Sha-lug schools produced hard men who disdained anyone who was not Sha-lug.
Piper Hecht feared he had softened during his sojourn amongst the Infidel, but his core remained adamantine Sha-lug. The Sha-lug were still his brothers, his family.
'It started out?'
'Huh? Oh. Yeah. Then it turned dark. There was a monster I couldn't see but I knew what it was. If I could catch it I could kill it. But I couldn't catch it. It kept doing awful things to people I cared about. And getting closer and closer to ambushing me. Meaning I wasn't really the hunter.'
'That's ugly, Piper, but it sounds like standard dream fare.'
Hecht grunted. He agreed. But… 'It had more than a dream flavor. Like my mind was trying to create images it could understand.'
'Think you can lay down and go back to sleep?'
'Probably not. But I'll try.'
Sleep came more swiftly than he expected, though that sense of the nearness of horror never went all the way away.
Anna let him sleep in. She wakened him, though, when neighbors came looking for someone who could act in an official capacity. 'They don't know where else to turn,' she told him as he pulled himself together.
Grumbling, he stumbled out into the cold to see the body some children had found. Pella and Vali ducked around Anna, tagged along, though not so close that Hecht would notice and send them home.
Hecht stiffened when he saw the corpse. Not because of the atrocities he had suffered but because he knew
