notice that even him and his cronies have only slowed down whatever it is out there.'
'She's got that right, Pipe. There ain't no concrete proof, but I'm pretty sure all we've managed is to chase him, or it, farther underground.'
Hecht knew. Delari was unhappy about it, too. In the extreme. And, after a fruitless winter, was beginning to worry. Saying just what Ghort had.
In a city teeming with refugees it was impossible even to guess how many people were disappearing. Or why.
There were people willing to buy bodies, living and freshly dead. And others willing to supply them.
'It's almost… It's like there's another one of those bogon monsters. Here. A clever one. Historically, they haven't done a good job avoiding people.'
'Not a bogon,' Ghort countered. 'Not possible. That would be something the Collegium can handle. It's what they were created for.'
More or less. Though it was now the senate of the Church, the consistory of its high priests, in pagan times the Collegium had been a parliament of sorcerers created to beat back the Instrumentalities of the Night.
'That was then. They're mostly hacks today.'
'Then maybe it's time to call in the Special Office.'
Hecht did not say so, but the Special Office was involved already. He was not supposed to know. But he had recognized several faces amongst recent visitors to the Chiaro Palace. One was the man who had given him the courier wallet to take to Sonsa.
Muniero Delari was not happy. He loathed the Special Office. He hated Witchfinders. He had little love for the Brotherhood as a whole. He blamed them for the death of his only son.
'We don't want to have to deal with that. They're too powerful already.'
'And getting more powerful fast,' Anna said. 'Rumor says the top Witchfinders have come over from the Castella Anjela dolla Picolena. They want to take control of the Society for the Suppression of Heresy and Sacrilege.'
Hecht said, 'It does look that way. And it's making a lot ot people unhappy.'
Everyone in the Church, excepting the Brotherhood of War, were certain that the Brotherhood enjoyed too much power and influence already. The Brotherhood believed it ought to rule a Church Militant. A Church far more aggressive toward Unbelievers and the Instrumentalities of the Night. Honario Benedocto's commitment was too feeble for them.
Pella announced, 'There's food, people.'
'I swear,' Anna grumbled, 'I can't teach him manners at knife point.'
'He does fine in public,' Ghort said.
'Kind of like you,' said Hecht.
'A lot like me. I'm slick as a weasel when I got an audience. The lad must be my spiritual offspring.'
Anna said, 'He doesn't tell as many tall tales.'
'Give him time. He's only a kid. So what's on the table, Pella?'
'Lamb pie. Piper always wants mutton something whenever he's here. Like he was a Deve, or something.'
'I just like mutton. And you don't get it around here much.' He started to pull a seat away from Anna's low dining table.
The world began to shake.
'What the hell?'
'Earthquake!' Anna squealed.
Pella's jaw dropped. Nothing came out of his mouth. Vali shrieked, the first sound Hecht ever heard from her. She flung herself at Anna, buried herself in the woman's skirts. Terrified.
'I don't think it's a quake,' Ghort gasped. 'It's going on way too long.' The earth did go on shaking. A deep- throated, distant, ongoing roar, punctuated by screams, came from outside.
'I don't think so, either,' Hecht said. He was aware of no historical instance of an earthquake in Brothe. He headed for the front door.
Anna barked, 'You don't want to go out there!'
The racket outside suggested rising panic.
Something fell in the kitchen.
'I want to see…'
'Every one of those idiots will expect you to know what's happening. And what to do about it.'
The woman might have a point. She knew her neighbors. 'You check it out, then. I'll see what happened in the kitchen.'
Anna went outside. The kids followed her, too quick and elusive to be stayed.
Ghort said, 'We're gonna got to go out there anyhow, Pipe. 'Cause whatever that is, it's big and it's our job to get in the middle of it.'
Pinkus Ghort was not psychic. Anyone able to walk and talk at the same time could have made that call. They had made themselves critical cogs in the Brothen machine.
They got away without attracting attention. People were all focused on a vast, thick, dense boiling cloud rising to the north-northwest.
'What the hell?' Ghort muttered, awed.
'That doesn't look like smoke.' But Hecht could not imagine how so much dust could be thrown up.
The ground still trembled occasionally, but no longer continuously.
Lightning crackled inside the roiling gray cloud.
'Sorcery,' Ghort murmured. 'I've never seen lightning with that greenish tint.'
'I'm getting a bad feeling, Pinkus.'
The lightning flashed more emphatically. The cloud lit up from inside, a flickering lilac glow that waxed and waned like a slow heartbeat. Thunder burped.
'That's got to be up by the hippodrome, Pipe. Maybe the part they're working on fell down.'
The racing stadium was fourteen hundred years old. In ancient times it had been the scene of gladiatorial contests and other blood games. Renovations had been under way since the close of the autumn racing season because a small collapse had taken place during the pounding excitement of a late-season chariot race featuring champions from Firaldian cities against several from the Eastern Empire.
'It'd have to be a big part.'
They were afoot, pushing upstream against a current of fugitives whose panicky reports made no sense.
The lightning in the cloud grew more excited. The cloud itself was ferociously active but contained. It was not spreading. It did rise higher with every flash. The waxing/waning light sent glowing globs climbing the vast trunk, fading as they slowed.
'It's definitely dust,' Hecht said. 'I can smell it already.'
'Maybe we better not get any closer, then. That much stuff could drown you without water.'
Particularly vicious lightning ripped through the cloud. And sustained itself.
The cloud burst.
'Shit! Look at that!'
The cloud collapsed. Moments later a churning flood swept around a turn a quarter mile ahead. It charged them faster than a man could run. Ghort swore. 'Aaron's Hairy Balls!'
Hecht hoisted his shirt over his face, almost panicky.
Ghort pulled him into a tenement doorway a moment before the flood arrived. Ghort pounded on the door. 'City Regiment! Emergency! Open up!'
To Hecht's amazement, that worked. A stooped crone stared at them from behind a preteen boy armed with a broken board. Her cataracted eyes were open amazingly wide.
'We ain't spooks, Granny. Get your ass in there, Pipe! You want to drown in this shit?'
Ghort slammed the door. Dust swirled in through cracks. Ghort brushed himself off enough to reveal his City Regiment officer's jacket. Which he wore mostly because of the perks it could command.
The boy recognized him. 'It's the Commandant his own self, Nana. Really.'
The old woman remained suspicious. Which seemed a sound strategy to Hecht.
