Chies translated.
“Their names!” Saltaja shrieked. “Where did they go?”
Eligio snarled, but Chies dragged out answers. Orlad and Waels had left at sunset to swim to the city. Fabia and Dantio had gone that morning by more conventional means, to be delivered to an agent in Celebre.
“What agent?” Chies demanded. Father would want to know. So would he, when he was doge. Traitors!
Eligio had chewed his lower lip bloody, watching where Chies’s hand was straying. “Berlice Cavotti.”
“You’re lying! She’s head of the Stralg party on the council.”
“I am not lying, lord.”
Chies looked doubtfully at Saltaja. Was it possible for the Mutineer’s mother to play a double game and deceive Stralg’s seers while doing it? Or had she deceived her son and betrayed the Celebres? Something to worry about.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Lord, you are the Fist’s bastard from the palace.”
Ah, he would certainly have to die. “Correct. My companion and I need to get into Celebre without being questioned by ice devils. How will you arrange that for me?”
Eligio snarled. “Just go. Now, tonight.”
“The gates shut at sunset.”
“Not tonight. You go outside and listen. The trumpets are blowing. The doge has died. No curfew tonight.”
Puzzled, Chies translated.
Saltaja uttered a shriek and staggered to her feet. “Blood! Blood!” She stared in the direction of the city. “I can smell blood!”
Chies could not imagine how she could smell anything at all with that oozing, rotting stump of a nose. She was crazy. “Um, do we want to go there now?”
“Yes! Yes! They’re fighting! Stralg may be there. And Fabia Celebre almost certainly is! And the next doge must be there to claim the throne. Tell that one-eyed idiot to harness up a chariot for us.”
Drive in the dark?… “Yes, of course, Aunt. Eligio, we need your best car and best team. Now!” He sighed at Carmina. He would have to postpone his enjoyment until another day. “You go and help him. Aunt, we won’t kill them, will we? That would leave a trail from Veritano to here and then to me, when I’m doge. Show me how to make them forget us, Aunt.”
Saltaja sighed. “Softie! But I suppose you’re right.”
DANTIO CELEBRE
was overloaded, losing detail. Whole areas were disappearing from his vision. Fighting had broken out in Pantheon Way. He knew that men other than Orlad and Waels were invading the palace grounds, but he could not identify them. If any were Werists, he hoped they were Marno’s. They might just be town youths scrambling over the palace walls to view the action, stimulated by the near-riot spreading through the city. Roused by the doge’s death, Celebre was bursting out of its long sleep.
Like all Witnesses trained in the Ivory Cloisters, Mist had been repeatedly warned of the fate that befell the seers of Jat-Nogul. Trapped in the city during the sack, they had been driven raving mad by the horrors, and so had any other Witness who went near them thereafter. Even some tough survivors of Stralg’s massacre at Bergashamm had succumbed to the emotional storm of Jat-Nogul.
Celebre was not at storm level yet, but winds were rising to dangerous levels. The trumpets had proclaimed the news of Piero’s death, and Celebrians were notoriously demonstrative mourners. Defying curfew, citizens poured into the streets, wailing at the tops of their voices and hammering cook pots, drowning out even the trumpets’ ear-torturing wail. One of the city gates had been opened to admit a cavalcade of chariots bearing at least a full hunt of Vigaelian Werists. All those llamoids and ice devils were trying to force their way through a grief-maddened mob, and there just was not room. Soon they would start hurting people, and then violence would erupt like a volcano.
One host-four sixty-was a strong force, but a very small part of the Fist’s horde. That it might be Stralg’s personal bodyguard made sense. But Marno Cavotti had both excellent sources of intelligence and extraordinary cunning. He had been smuggling men into the city all day, pod after pod of black seals swimming in through the secret gap in the siphon. He had set up Celebre as a trap. Stralg would never walk into a trap as long as he had his Witnesses to warn him, so Cavotti must have managed to pass along the news that Dantio and the others had brought from Vigaelia, that the notorious compact was broken and they were free to deceive the monster they had served so long. Dantio himself had set this pot a-boiling.
Whether Stralg himself had arrived or not, Liberators scattered in safe houses all over the city were gradually learning of the Vigaelian incursion and emerging to slake their bloodlust.
All of this was bad enough and promised to get infinitely worse when the fighting and arson began, but Dantio was also personally involved in the drama around his father’s bier. Orlad and Waels had found their way to the palace grounds and were lurking, naked and wet, in the bushes outside the pillars. They could see the ceremony under way, could see Oliva and her two newfound lambs struggling to restrain their reactions, could even see the bag of clothes lying just out of their reach within the hall. They could do nothing about that glowering, suspicious Huntleader Purque, Stralg’s commandant in Celebre, short of charging in and killing him. Purque had guessed that something significant was happening right under his nose and was trying to learn what it was.
Oliva was gamely fighting against hysteria, stressed almost beyond endurance by the events of the evening and the continuing threat of the peg-leg Werist. Their plans for a secret, confidential reunion had collapsed into this turmoil. Dantio was being pummeled by joy and grief, fear and frustration, from all directions.
Just as he braced himself to go and tell Purque that Stralg was looking for him-which must be true to some extent-he sensed agitation outside the north door, where the huntleader had left his escort. With an effort, Dantio unearthed the psychic clues of a Hero having just brought a message from the barracks in Wheelwrights’ Alley. After a moment’s hesitation, the ranking flankleader opened the door and peered in. The commandant frowned and stumped off toward him, thumping along on his spear. Saved! Sure enough, in a moment the Werist was gone, leading his troops back to the barracks.
Everyone else present smelled trustworthy.
“All clear for now, Mama.” Dantio trotted over to the bundle of clothes and hurled it out into the darkness. Waels saw it eclipse the candlelight, leaped up, and grabbed it.
Wiping sweat from his forehead, Dantio turned back toward the catafalque in its lake of candlelight. Completed or not, the ceremonial recording of the doge’s passing had obviously come to an end. The scribes were carrying away their tablets to be baked. Fabia and Mama were locked in a tearful embrace-which was wildly out of character, because neither was naturally demonstrative-and everyone else was staring in bewilderment either at them or at him, the eccentric bag-throwing seer. Neither Quarina nor Berlice had been told that Orlad might attend this meeting also.
But Dantio Celebre, heir presumptive, was home in the hall of his ancestors. This was the day he had dreamed of. He raised his voice and let it ring back from the vaulted ceiling.
“My lords and ladies! I am Dantio Celebre, eldest son of the late Doge Piero. This is my sister, Fabia. We have just returned from our exile in Vigaelia.”
The resultant rush of joy almost knocked him over. The elders curtsied, bowed, and cheered, all at the same time. He detected no hidden reservations at all, not one. Oliva came sweeping to meet him and they embraced. She was sobbing. Holy Mayn, so was he!
“Dantio! Dantio!..” she exclaimed. Then came the shock of finding unbearded lips on a man nearing thirty.
Before either of them spoke, someone cried out in fear. Two Werists came striding in through the pillars- Florengian Werists, unarmed and barefoot. Dantio led his mother forward to meet them.
“Mama, this is Orlad. And this is his liegeman, Waels Borkson.”
The dogaressa ignored the liegeman. She just stared in disbelief at her Hero son, as if petrified by that
