man club.'
Pinkus Ghort always had an answer. It might not ring true or make sense, but he had one.
'The corpse,' Hecht reminded gently.
'Izzy. Buchie. Search the dead guy. And don't pocket anything. It could kill you later.' Softly, he said, 'They wouldn't take nothing, no how. They're all guys from out in the sticks. So superstitious and scared of the Night it'll be a miracle if they keep it together now long enough to find the kind of priest who'll pretend to pull the imaginary supernatural leeches off them.'
Ghort was exaggerating. That was a matter of course. But Hecht had run into people who were that afraid of the hidden world. People who could not draw a breath without praying and calculating how much attention that might draw from the Instrumentalities of the Night.
Brothe being the Holy Mother City of the Episcopal strain of Chaldareanism, its streets ever boasted floods of religious pilgrims. Many were the sort who held intimate discourse with their deity every waking moment. They wandered in a perpetual daze, babbling constantly.
God must find them annoying. They suffered more misfortunes than the less devout.
Ghort helped Polo onto his mount. Sensitive to the Night, the animal grew skittish. Men, forced to walk because their mounts were carrying a dead sorcerer, a wounded ambusher, or had run away, kept Polo's horse under control.
Polo was incoherent.
He needed a healing brother. Soon.
Pinkus Ghort did not dispute possession of the prisoners. 'Just let me have one healthy one, Pipe. A trophy. So I don't have to listen to Principate Doneto bark.'
'Take your pick. Take two if you want.' Hecht was confident that nothing useful could be gained from any of the prisoners. 'That'll ease my budget.' Working for Sublime, even indirectly, included an endless, thankless, continuous scramble for money. The Patriarch had no comprehension of economics. He could not be made to understand that he had to have income if he wanted to spend. He resented any effort to explain by those whose wages had to be paid and whose costs had to be underwritten.
Sublime was convinced that the Lord would provide. And that hired hands should be happy with what the Lord provided.
They were crossing the vast limestone sprawl of the Closed Ground, so-called since antiquity because the wings of the Chiaro Palace enfolded it completely. The Palace was three and four stories high, its limestone architecture classically simple. The eastern face, in the direction of the Holy Lands, boasted balconies where the Patriarch and senior Principates presented themselves on Holy Days. There were always scaffoldings somewhere around the marges of the Closed Ground. The Chiaro Palace was under continuous rehabilitation.
The Palace was built of stone from the same quarry as the pavements but the coloring did not match. The pavements had been in place for only three centuries. Parts of the Palace went back fifteen centuries. They showed the effects of all those years of weather and bad air. The stone was streaked brown, yellow, or pale pink.
The first foundations of the Chiaro Palace had been laid down before the Old Brothen Empire recognized itself as such.
Parts of Brothe were older, still. But Hecht was not impressed. His boyhood had passed in a city where structures still in daily use were three times the age of the oldest in Brothe.
The rain continued, growing heavier. Thunder mouthed off north of the Teragi River. There was a pre- Chaldarean superstition about thunder's location being some sort of omen. Hecht could not recall details. He was too wet and uncomfortable to focus on much but the ambush and getting into dry clothing.
His batman came out to help. 'What's all this, sir?' Redfearn Bechter was a pensioner of the Brotherhood of War. And, surely, still its agent.
'They ambushed us, Sergeant.'
'Bad decision on their part. I know that one there.'
'What?'
'Not personally. I've seen him before. He was with Duke Tormond of the Connec when he visited the Patriarch a few vcars ago.'
Bechter had a scary knack for recalling names and faces. 'Rainard. That's his name. I remember thinking he was either too stupid or too smart for the job he was doing.'
'And that was what?'
'He was one of the varlets managing their animals. But he didn't do much work. He kept sneaking off to hang out in low places. So he was a shirker. Or a spy. I figure spy. A shirker wouldn't get away with it for long.'
'You listening, Pinkus?'
'Plenty. You want to keep him? I'll take the other two.'
'We do have better interrogators here.'
'Let me know what you find out. Look, I came after you for a reason. The screaming high shits really do want to talk about Clearenza. Now.'
Being Captain-General had its perquisites. A dozen varlets and stablemen came for the animals and prisoners and casualties. Ghort lied to them. 'The guy with the bad arm is related to Principate Bruglioni. See he gets treated like it.'
Polo did come from the Bruglioni household, originally, and likely continued spying for them. But he was a hireling. Even so, invoking the name of one of the Five Families got results.
Ten minutes later, Hecht entered a room he found depressingly familiar. Each time he visited, it was to face irate members of the Collegium, the Princes of the Church. This looked like no exception. The dozen most powerful Principaees had gathered. A bitter squabble was under way, along the usual political lines. The one friendly face he saw belonged to Principate Delari.
'About damned time!' Principate Madisetti bellowed. 'Where the hell have you been? We sent for you hours ago.'
And the Cologni Principate wanted to know, 'Why do you have to come here filthy, smelling like a dung heap?'
'We were ambushed. Four men. Three equipped with our own standard-issue crossbows. The fourth a sorcerer of some skill but very little luck. The corpse is downstairs. If you want to examine it. Who, other than Colonel Ghort and yourselves, knew that I'd been summoned?' Professionally, he had to admire the quickness with which the ambush had been put together. Though, certainly, the ambush team had been around, waiting for an opportunity, for some time.
It did not occur to Hecht that he might not have been the target. He thought he knew who was behind the attempt. He did not know why.
He watched the churchmen closely, not expecting anyone to betray himself. None were major suspects, anyway. Their crime, if any, would be the sin of talking too much.
Only Principate Delari reacted strongly. His response was vast anger tightly reined. He had, to all intents, adopted Piper Hecht. This ambush was a direct assault on his family.
Piper Hecht had not plumbed the relationship deeply enough to understand. The man he had worked for from his earliest mercenary days, Grade Drocker, had become his mentor during the Calziran Crusade. Drocker was one of the top dozen men in the Brotherhood of War. And the warrior priest had been the illegitimate son of Principate Muniero Delari. Who assumed the mentor role with a passion following Drocker's death.
Hecht did not understand but he did not scruple to exploit the situation.
'I'll return shortly,' Muniero Delari said. He was a sallow stick figure of a man in his seventies. He moved as easily as men thirty years younger. He left in a rush. The air seemed to go out with him.
The Madisetti Principate, Donel Madisetti, presumed to pick up his attack. For reasons as obscure as Delari's favor, the Madisetti family had developed an antipathy toward Hecht. The Bruglioni and Arniena families were firm supporters, though they disagreed with one another about Sublime V. The Cologni family waffled. More often than not, though, they opposed the Captain-General because he had worked for the Bruglioni before his elevation. And the Bruglioni may have been behind the assassination of Principate-designate Rodrigo Cologni. Which had taken place before Hecht's arrival in Brothe.
The relationships and balances between the Five Families seldom made sense to outsiders.
Strange bedfellows. Always. Piper Hecht now worked for Honario Benedocto, the Patriarch Sublime V. The
