Mother of Lies

OLIVA ASSICHIE-CELEBRE

sat on her ivory chair alongside the doge’s empty throne and made a valiant effort to attend to city business.

The ancient palace of the doge had been built on a vast scale for comfort in Celebre’s tropical climate. When the noon sun blazed down, its high ceilings and wide concourses offered cool breezes and welcome shade, but such grandiose architecture was less effective against tempests. On that fearsome night, invisible storm giants stalked the galleries, rattling doors, swirling drapes. Even the Hall of Pillars, normally majestic and serene, was clamorous. The spaces between the columns that divided it from the river terrace had been closed off with massive shutters, but even they fluttered in the wind like aspen leaves, continually rattling and creaking. Periodically an especially massive gust would either suck all the air out of the hall and make Oliva’s ears pop, or else push far too much air in and make her ears pop. Water trickled under the shutters to puddle on the polychrome tiles. Thunder rumbled petulantly in the distance.

Oliva’s head throbbed and her ears pop-pop-popped. Her senior scribes, Gienni and Althuse, waited cross-legged at her feet, surrounded by the clutter of their profession-baskets of baked clay tablets, boards with soft clay rolled ready for inscription, pots holding sharpened reed styli. Two tiny oil lamps flickered in the wind, barely illuminating their work, and an apprentice lurked mouselike in the background, ready to attend to the needs of his betters. The rest of the hall was a restless, noisy darkness.

She did not trust either Gienni or Althuse. Gienni had served the doge and his own interests-not necessarily in that order-for many years. He was old and desiccated, a human pinecone wrapped in his official robes, whereas Althuse was newer and much younger, hiding his thoughts behind the compellingly trustworthy eyes of a gazelle. He seemed competent enough, but he had won his promotion to master scribe in Gienni’s bed. They were both in the pay of the great houses, although such disloyalty was traditional and was normally kept within limits by fear of the doge. Regrettably, these two were well aware how little real authority Oliva possessed. She often wondered if some of the letters she dictated were ever sent, and how many other people read them first.

“A letter,” she said wearily. “From our lord doge to Flankleader Jorvark. Usual greetings.”

Althuse started poking the clay with his stylus, but Gienni looked up.

“My lady? Do you wish us to address the Werist that way or give him the state he claims-Governor of Celebre and so on?”

“As I said.” It was absurd to write a letter to a juvenile hooligan who lived on the far side of a narrow street and could not read, but the last time she had sent a runner, the boy had been returned on a litter and had required the services of two healers. Jorvark would have to take the tablet to a public scribe, and they were notorious gossips. Her protest would do no good, but at least it would become public knowledge.

“Begin. ‘The lord doge speaks: Since our last words to you, five sixdays ago, the offenses of which we complained have continued unabated. Hardly a day passes without your men committing rapes, beatings, and thefts, violating guarantees the bloodlord made when we put our city under his mercy, fifteen years ago.’”

She waited for the styli to stop moving. “‘We shall send a full report of your offenses to Bloodlord Stralg and demand-’”

“My lady!” Gienni muttered.

“Write my words! ‘And demand that you be held responsible.’”

She stopped with a sigh. She had no idea where Stralg might currently be, and he rarely acknowledged her letters. It was not impossible that Flank-leader Jorvark would come storming back from the scribe and make her eat her words, clay tablet and all-but even that would shore up her crumbling authority in the city. “Usual ending.”

In a moment the apprentice came to kneel at her feet and proffer the first tablet. She rolled her husband’s seal across the clay just below the writing. Then the archive copy…

At the edge of the shadows, a herald was bowing.

“Yes?”

“Master Preceptor Dicerno, my lady. He craves audience on a matter of extreme urgency.”

Oliva could not recall that most dignified of mummies ever using words like “extreme urgency” before. Whatever had Chies gotten up to this time? It was a good excuse to stop, though.

“Scribes, you may withdraw. We shall seal the covers tomorrow before the letters are sent.” Perhaps a night’s sleep would reveal a better way to deal with the odious Jorvark. “Admit the honorable preceptor.” She sighed again. “And send our son to us.”

They went, leaving her alone on the ivory chair in near darkness, while her ears popped and the storm rattled the great shutters like some monster beast trying to break in. Piero, were he his usual self, would be planning to tour the city on the morrow, viewing damage, giving comfort, and organizing relief. She wondered if she dared try that. She feared that she would be snubbed, or ignored, or mocked.

Fourth daughter of an ancient but decayed mercantile house, Oliva Assichie had seemed fated to wed some prosperous apothecary or master artisan willing to accept noble relations in lieu of dowry. But by the mercy of holy Eriander, or perhaps holy Cienu, at fifteen she had caught the eye of Lord Piero, the widowed and childless doge. Her mother had fainted from joy. Her sisters had never quite recovered.

Four children Oliva had given him, three sons and a daughter, and their life had been an idyll of happiness until the Vigaelians came. Stralg had taken her and the children away. Later he had sent her back to her husband and she had borne a fifth child. Even in her youth she had never been sylphlike, and now she was nothing less than hefty. She was effectively doge of Celebre while her husband wasted away in the torments of the Dark One, but the council put up with her because it was seriously divided on what to do. As soon as it reached a consensus she would be gone.

Even so, running a city was easier than being a mother.

A pale robe shimmered in the shadows. The old man lowered himself carefully to his knees, then folded forward, forehead to floor, just on the edge of the puddle of light the two little oil lamps spilled on the tiles. Everything else under the high ceiling was darkness and the gigantic surging of the storm.

Oliva had several choices. She had once seen Piero leave an unwelcome petitioner crouching like that for half a day until the man must have been near to screaming from cramp. Or she could say, “Approach,” which would mean he had to crawl forward like an insect.

Instead she said, “Welcome, Master Dicerno,” and that was permission for him to rise and walk closer-bowing several times, naturally. They were alone and no one could eavesdrop in a hall so huge. “Well? What has my infamous son been up to this time?”

Chies was already taller than her by a fair amount and absolutely impossible. Master Preceptor Dicerno had the reputation of being able to turn the most obdurate adolescent animals into model citizens, but she would not be surprised in the slightest if he had come tonight to announce that he had met his match at last and must wash his hands of an intractable lout. Then all the tongues of Celebre would wag harder than ever. Blood, as they said, will out.

The preceptor looked blank. “To my knowledge nothing, my lady! I believe he is really trying now. Lord Chies is truly remorseful when he offends you, you know, even if he cannot say so; men of his age have trouble admitting to errors of judgment. If I may presume… a few words of praise from you now would be most helpful. I am very happy with his progress and his efforts.”

Oliva breathed a silent prayer to some god or goddess. No, to all of Them. “I shall certainly congratulate him. That is very good news! But if you have not come about my son, why do you venture here in such weather?”

She was surprised to see the haughty old man glance around at the shadows. Paradoxically, he seemed both nervous and even more pleased with himself than usual.

“I come as envoy from an important visitor, my lady. He wished an audience with his lordship, and I explained how that would not be possible. So he begs that you will receive him tonight. Here. He specifically asked that the audience be here in the Hall of Pillars.”

She hid an unexpected shiver of fear behind bluster. “Outrageous! To dictate where I will receive him? I doubt if even the Fist himself would presume so. Who is this arrogant knave?” Whoever he was, she was much afraid that she could guess who had sent him. For the last year, the war had been relentlessly moving in this direction.

Dicerno came a pace closer. His voice was soft as gossamer, almost inaudible under the rattling of the shutters. “A man who may now be greater than the Fist.”

If all her blood were drained away and replaced by ice, she might feel like this… “In person?” she whispered. “Here in Celebre?” Ice, ice! “Are you sure?”

“He was a pupil of mine, my lady. A little older than lord Dantio. I believe he can be trusted. He… he has a warrior’s rough manner at times, my lady, but he is not the bloodlord.”

No. No one else was Stralg. Utter evil could not appear twice in human guise. “What does he want?”

“He will not say.”

“Tomorrow, when my advisers-”

Dicerno shook his head. “He swears he will be gone by dawn. My lady, I wager my soul that he can be trusted this far! He… he is a Celebrian noble, remember. My lady, you must receive him!”

Piero would not tolerate that word, and Dicerno would never use a word by accident.

Marno Cavotti himself? She could not imagine what Stralg would do if he found out, and few knew his cruelty better than she did. But what might the Mutineer do if she refused him? She was between millstones. His mother was a councillor, but no friend of Oliva’s-and perhaps not of her own son, either.

Shivering, she nodded. “Bring him. I will receive him here, if that is what he wants.”

On this she must seek Piero’s advice and instructions. As she hurried through the drafty halls, she prayed to holy Sinura that he would be well enough to give them. She went alone, bearing a single oil lamp on the palm of one hand and sheltering its tiny flame with the other. Two years ago she would have moved within an entourage of ladies-in-waiting and flunkies carrying lights, but as Piero’s health had failed, their state had dwindled. That was mostly her doing. She feared all courtiers now, imagining their sneering amusement that Assichie-Celebre thought she could run the city, their hints that the council must appoint a regent in her place, or the blood-lord would soon impose a new doge of his own choosing. Convinced that the people were better off not knowing how near to death their lord was when all rightful heirs were still far away in Vigaelia, she had steadily shed attendants, as if the court itself was dying. At times she felt like the last inhabitant of the palace, or even of the city.

The official ducal sleeping chamber was spectacular, a treasure hall where doges were supposedly born, fathered heirs, and died, but Piero had never used it. It made him feel like an exhibit in a museum, he said. He and Oliva had slept in what were officially guest quarters, and quite opulent enough. One of the larger rooms had now been turned into a sanctuary of Nula and stank of the godswood being burned before holy images. Although at first glance it seemed almost deserted, it contained four Nulists, two nurses, and a trio of palace flunkies, several of whom were stretched out on the great sleeping platform, dozing. Obviously they had not expected the dogaressa to return tonight. The senior Mercy-a large, matronly woman distinguished by a white cowl-knelt in prayer before an altar of holy Nula. The rest were watching a tegale game; players and audience scrambled to their feet as Oliva entered. Without comment, she swept on through, into the short corridor that led to more intimate chambers, one of which had been converted into Piero’s sickroom. He had always hated dying in public, he said.

Hearing her husband’s voice, she stopped in the doorway, sudden anger flaring-she had repeatedly stressed that they were to summon her at once if he rallied. The chamber was small and simple, but all the banked flowers along the far wall could not hide a sour scent of death. The dying man lay on rugs on a portable cot, his face ochre in the spectral lamplight. Never a large man, Piero now seemed wizened and discolored like last year’s apples.

Another Mercy, dark-robed and cowled, sat on a stool beside him, holding his hand, listening to his raspy whisper winding on and on. Oliva moved softly closer, straining to hear what state secrets he might be revealing. The words were not in Florengian. Nor, she realized, were they anything like the fragments of Vigaelian she had learned during her captivity.

“What?”

The Nulist jumped and looked around. Oliva was accustomed to Mercies being elderly people, but that might be because they usually sent only their most senior members to solace a doge. The face inside the cowl this time was that of a boy, startled by her silent approach. He looked barely older than Chies.

“What is he talking about?”

The youth smiled the typical sad smile of a Nulist. He had mastered that at least, even if he was only a second-string beginner given a try at night duty when the dogaressa wasn’t around to notice. “Nothing, my lady. It is only babbling.”

He murmured something to the patient and patted his hand. Piero fell silent.

Oliva did not know-probably no extrinsic knew-how much of the Nulists’ comfort came directly from the goddess and how much the cultists themselves controlled. “Were you making him do that? How dare you!”

“Not making him, my lady. Letting him, perhaps. It seems to help him.”

“Leave us. I will speak to your superior later.”

The boy carefully laid the patient’s hand on the bedding and rose. The light fell on his face for the first time and she saw that it was wet with tears, his eyes raw with weeping. Shaken by that, she took the stool he had vacated and put her lamp on the table. He bowed and withdrew.

“Where have they gone?”

Piero’s quiet whisper startled her, it was so clear. His eyes were open, but still unfocused.

“Bring them back!” He frowned at her-puzzled, dazed.

“Bring who, dear?”

The Mutineer was in the city, but Piero could not advise her now. At first one brief Nulist treatment a day had sufficed to hold the pain at bay, but now he could only snatch a few lucid moments before it returned. She should not have come here to trouble him. Yet if she had not come, she would not have stumbled upon that boy engaged in whatever foul experimentation he had been up to.

“The children!” Piero closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them he was conscious, smiling at her. “Dreaming. I was dreaming the children were coming home.”

Unlike the Nulist, she had no tears left to shed. “I’m sure they won’t be long now, dearest. It must be a year since Stralg promised to send for them.” Only an incorrigibly bewildered imbecile would trust a word that monster said.

“They are all grownup now, you know.”

She nodded. Twelve have mercy! Fifteen years gone. Fifteen years lost. Even if they still lived, what would they care for Celebre? Or Florengia? Or her. “Fabia must be a young woman?”

“A beautiful one.” He sighed.

“What did she look like-in your dream?”

“In my dream… very like you, my dear, at her age. Your fierce eyes. I always liked your eyes.”

“That wasn’t what you told me you liked.”

“In public I said eyes.” He smiled. “You should see Benard! So strong-looking.” He smiled. “Just a dream, but vivid! They were coming in a boat, can you imagine? Over the Edge in a boat! Benard was always the artistic one. He’s a sculptor now, got his shoulders chipping marble, he said. In my dream he did, I mean. Remember we used to say Orlando was the fighter?”

No, she just remembered the terrible day when they had been stolen-Stralg holding out his hands to the toddler and Orlando, too young to understand evil, going to him. Dantio had been staring in horror, Benard hiding his face in her skirts, Fabia fretting, wanting to suck. She could not imagine Fabia as an adolescent, nor even Dantio as a grown man.

“Brass collar,” Piero muttered, frowning. “And Dantio… great sorrow there, my dear. Great wisdom. I always said he’d make a fine tegale player, remember? They were speaking with me. Asking…” He winced. His face was so shrunken and skeletal that it seemed to be all teeth and gaping eye sockets. He drew a deep breath. “Asking who was going to…” Gasp! “… succeed me.”

“And who did you tell them?”

The dead man’s vote, they called it. A doge’s designation of his heir counted as one vote in the council, no more, no less, but only very rarely in the history of Celebre had the elders overruled the dead man’s wishes. Piero had made no testament because he did not know which, if any, of his children still lived. He shook his head, unable to speak. His skull face shone with sweat. The pain was back already, tearing at him.

She rose and went from the room, almost running into the young Mercy in the corridor, waiting for the call. He hurried over to the bed, clasping the patient’s hand even before he sat down. In a few moments Piero was sleeping peacefully again.

In a few more moments the Nulist was able to glance around at Oliva, who stood by the door.

“I am sorry I spoke harshly,” she said. “Your name?”

“Luigo, my lady.”

“Thank you, Brother Luigo. Whatever you were doing made him very happy. Please continue.”

“I will try, my lady.”

“Twelve blessings on you.”

“He’s not dead, then?” Stralg said.

The voice behind her was unforgettable-deep and sonorous, but also imperious, very masculine. Like a war horn.

She gasped with shock and spun around so hard she staggered.

She looked up. He seemed taller every day. Still bony, all feet and hands and a boy’s loincloth like a linen flute. On his way to being very big. Gold bracelets adorned his wrists and a weighty pelf string laden with silver wisps encircled his neck. He had dark Florengian coloring, but the fierce eagle-beak nose was developing fast. Since his voice broke, Chies had sounded exactly like his father, and now was undeniably starting to look like him, too.

“You sent for me. I thought he must be dead.”

“No. Come.” She pushed past him and did not speak until they had passed through the sanctuary. She nodded approvingly to the senior Mercy and went out into the corridor with her willow-tree bastard slouching behind her.

They walked together with her little lamp throwing bizarre shadows on the high walls. Typically, Chies had not bothered to bring a light. Perhaps young eyes saw better in the dark.

“I wanted to tell you that Master Dicerno is pleased with your progress. He says you are trying very hard. I am happy to hear this, Chies.”

Grunt. “That’s all?”

Her mind groped for the right answer. Was there ever a right answer when dealing with adolescents? She had no experience. Dantio had been only a child when her first brood was stolen away. She was very old to be learning. Deep breath…

“It is a sign of maturity. As a reward, and as long as you continue to progress, I will let you wear a dagger. You can choose-”

“Why not a sword?”

You could never score when the target kept moving.

“Not until you know how to use one. You’d be a gift-wrapped prize to the first street thug you met.”

“I’d still have my guards with me,” he said sulkily.

“And if you run into trouble, you’ll just stand by without drawing and let them defend you?” But apparently the absence of a dagger was no longer the most important thing in the entire world, no longer a source of eternal shame. It no longer justified suicide, as it had a sixday ago. “Is there something you would rather have?”

“Take girls to my room.”

She needed several deep breaths for that one, but Master Dicerno’s strongest advice had been “Be just, be fair, and encourage him any chance you get.” Better his room than under a bush somewhere.

“Have you taken girls to your room already?”

Pause. “Maybe.”

She knew he had tried twice and the guards had blocked him. But he had not told her a direct lie. Encourage him, the preceptor had said.

“As long as you continue to be discreet I won’t mind. I’ll give you a key to the private door.”

She stole a glance. He was pleased. Very pleased. Probably quite pink, although it was hard to say in this light. How long before he started giving away palace silverware? How long before the first little hussy cried rape or pregnancy?

“You are almost grown up. At New Year, you’ll start wearing a seal and I shall take Master Dicerno’s teeth out of your leg. You may find your girlfriends’ brothers and fathers coming after you with cudgels, but that will be your problem.”

“By then I’ll be doge.”

“What!?” The echo of her cry rolled away along the concourse.

He smirked down at her. “It has to be a man of the royal house and I’m the only one. Who else can they choose?”

“Chies, Chies darling… I’ve never lied to you. You know that Piero is not your father.”

“But you lied to everyone else.” Sneer. “He accepted me as his. Didn’t want to tell people his wife balled other men.”

Piero could have handled this with a few quiet words. She couldn’t. She warned herself not to start screaming. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

He laughed. “The Werists call me ‘the Little Fist’!” Even more than dagger-wearing, his chumminess with the garrison had been a source of family friction. Practicing his Vigaelian, he’d called it. She’d thought they were just loose company. So now she knew better. If the ice devils saw him as the bloodlord’s son they might even start taking his orders, and then Chies would be dangerous.

“It’s the council that matters.”

“Piero never denied me!” Chies shouted and stopped walking. “They won’t!”

She turned to face him, feeling as if she were drowning. Why had she never guessed he would aspire to the coronet? Was that why he had been on his best behavior lately?

“The last time Stralg…” She began again. “ Your father carried me away by force and kept me for seven sixdays as his prisoner and plaything. He raped me, abused me, even stole the babe from my breast. The day he released me he told me that the seers said I was carrying his child and it was a boy. He said he still had my four children as hostage and I was to carry you to term and Piero was to raise you as his own, or else he’d send orders and all four would die.”

Stralg’s son shrugged. “So he hadn’t any choice.”

Why should the boy be grateful?

“Piero? Yes, Piero had a choice, because I never told him what Stralg said. He knew you weren’t his, but you were mine, and you were innocent of the crime, so he let you live. He reared you and loved you. When you were lovable.”

At once she wished she hadn’t said that last thing, but it was too late to take it back. If anything, Chies had been too lovable. With the others gone, he’d been all they had, and they had spoiled him horribly. Now their weakness was about to bear terrible fruit.

A stray gust puffed out the flame on her lamp.

“But you just admitted,” Stralg’s voice resonated in the darkness, “that the Fist made me because he wanted me. Obviously he wanted me so I can be doge and rule Celebre for him.”

No. Stralg had just wanted to show his contempt for Piero by sending her home bearing his bastard, but she could never tell Chies that.

He said, “The council knows what’s good for it. They’ll do what my real father tells it to do, just like that milksop husband of yours always did.” The hated voice suddenly turned squeaky. “My real father will tell them to elect me! And if you really try hard and behave yourself in future, I may let you take men to your room!”

While she was still floundering to find a suitable retort, any retort, she remembered that she was on her way to meet with Marno Cavotti. If Chies Stralgson caught the merest hint of a suspicion of a rumor that the Mutineer was in the palace, he would be across the road to the Vigaelian barracks to claim the notorious reward, faster than a thunderbolt.

Without another word, he turned and ran. She caught a brief glimpse of his gangling form against a glow at the end of the concourse as he ran around the corner into the Hall of Pillars.

The storm was moving on. One of the great shutters in the colonnade had been unlatched and moved aside to admit glimmers of gray light and wafts of steamy air. The rain on the terrace outside had dwindled to a drizzle. Forcing herself to move no faster than usual, Oliva swept across to join the three men standing there.

Silvery robe, silver hair-the one holding the lamp was Master Dicerno, and beside him stood Chies in loincloth and glints of silver. He was as tall as the preceptor, but he looked like a child alongside the third man. Werists were chosen for their size in adolescence and kept on growing-a little larger every time they battleformed, it was said.

As she arrived at the group, she was shocked to realize that the third man wore a Nulist robe. The cowl covered his head and shoulders leaving only his face exposed, so it was one of the very few garments that would hide a brass collar, but it seemed especial blasphemy for a Hero to pose as a Mercy. All three knelt to her, Chies just a fraction of a second behind the others. Correct protocol would have been for him to bow only, then present the newcomer.

Dicerno waited an instant for him before saying, “My lady… if I may have the honor… Brother Marno. Brother Marno is a renowned and skillful devotee of holy Nula.”

Marno was a common name, but Oliva wished they had chosen another. One glance at Chies warned her that his mood had changed yet again. He was twitching, excited, unable to keep his eyes off the disguised Werist. He knew! She had no idea how he knew, but she was quite certain he did.

Life had become a nightmare inside a nightmare.

“Rise, please, all of you. You are very welcome to our house, Brother Marno.”

“My lady, I thank the gods for giving me the opportunity and honor of attending lord Piero.” The big man spoke in a harsh growl, very unlike Stralg’s sonorous carillons, but his face was completely unlike her expectations of what a notorious rebel should look like-handsome, sensitive, aristocratic, with a strong resemblance to Duilio Cavotti, his long-dead father.

“You will be able to assuage my husband’s distress?”

“Not I, my lady. The goddess.”

“Of course.”

He should have said my goddess.

“You are new to our fair city, brother?” Chies making small talk had to mark the dawn of an epoch.

Cavotti must be aware of his Celebrian accent, because he evaded the trap. “I was born here, but I have been away for some years.”

“Since before I was born, yes?”

The fake Nulist waited a beat before saying, “ Much longer than that, lord Chies.”

Oliva chuckled, which was perhaps a mistake, but probably nothing would have stopped Chies now.

“Did you move that shutter, brother? It takes four men to put them up.”

“Master Dicerno did it. As he will have told you, the gods give strength to the pure in heart.”

Chies let out a surprised snigger.

“I have certainly told him that diffidence is a sign of good breeding,” Dicerno countered.

The boy’s eyes narrowed. “I saw my father just now and he’s in such terrible pain that I feel very upset. Will you give me some comfort, Nulist? Just a touch?” He extended a skinny arm.

Cavotti closed a huge hand around it. “Better, lad, I will show you how to work off your own worries.” He moved over to the doorway and out onto the terrace.

Chies perforce went with him, struggling, kicking, squealing. “Stop! You’re hurting! Let me go!”

“You don’t need holy Nula,” the giant growled. “See there? An agile youngster like you can easily scramble over that balustrade and jump down to the river wall. Run twice around the city as fast as you can, and you will find that all your cares have given way to a glow of healthy well-being.”

Released, Chies sprang away, rubbing the white marks on his arm and spitting anger like a cat. “I’ll find better shoes.” Without even a bow to his mother, he sprinted across the chamber and disappeared the way he had come.

The Werist came back in, chuckling. “Sorry, my lady, but I enjoyed that. I am a disgrace to Master Dicerno’s training.” He bowed again. “Marno Cavotti, at your service.”

“You dare manhandle my son?”

His eyes blazed. “You are lucky I didn’t break his neck, lady. At his age I was a prisoner at Boluzzi in compulsory Werist training. The only way to fail the course there was to die there. If you ran away you were run down-you know warbeasts can track like hounds? Ripped to pieces. Boys of thirteen, fourteen. They’d bring the scraps back to show us. No, my complaint against Stralg is even heavier than yours, my lady, and your precious bastard is lucky he’s still got his balls on right now.”

The preceptor moaned and was ignored.

“Boor!” Oliva had found a target for the fury she had been building all night. “It is you who may be lacking body parts very shortly. Chies has undoubtedly gone to ask the senior Mercy if she knows anything of a Brother Marno.”

“And after that how long for him to reach the Vigaelians?”

“A few minutes only.”

“My lady!” Dicerno squealed. “Cannot you send the palace guard to stop him? This is terrible!”

“We have time to attend to our business,” the Mutineer said calmly. “But the less you know the better, old man. Leave us. I suggest you quit the city the moment the gates are opened in the morning.”

“Do as he says, master.” Oliva dismissed the preceptor by turning her back on him. “Be quick, Cavotti. I don’t want you all over my clean floor.”

The big man laughed and tucked his hands inside his sleeves as if he had worn Nulist garb for years. “We can start by agreeing that we share no love for Stralg Hragson. There were about four sixty of us to start with in the school, half of us from Celebre. In the five years we were there, earning our collars, we were joined by six or seven times that many-boys kidnapped from all over the Face.”

“I know the history,” she said, imagining Chies bursting into the sanctuary, yelling out his questions, then taking off along the corridor like a mad guanaco. “What do you want of me?”

“I’ll get to that. We stayed and we worked and we won our collars. Stralg was dreaming… he’s basically just a thug bully, as you well know… dreaming of setting up a second empire here, to match the one he had on the Vigaelian Face. He expected us loyal Florengian Werists to run it for him when he went home. Expected us to be grateful, I suppose. We were initiated, the first of us. We swore the oaths. He came to Boluzzi in person for the ceremony, and by that time he’d been all around the Fertile Circle, stamping out opposition. He ruled the Face then. Two Faces. Dream come true. We were part of his great plan, the first crop from Boluzzi, donning the collars we can never shed. We swore eternal obedience, cheered him, and went off to our postings, but we’d agreed to meet back at the school after Stralg and his guards had left.”

“This was your plan, your mutiny, how you got your name.” She thought Chies wouldn’t come back through here. He’d go around by the west stairs. That would hardly slow him at all, not the way he could move those long legs. Yet the Mutineer was showing no signs of haste, almost as if he were dragging this out.

“I was one of the ringleaders. The others are all dead now. On the chosen night we broke in and there was a fight. Oh, was there a fight! By the time the blood congealed, all the instructors were dead and so were most of us. There were twenty-four Werist survivors-me and twenty-three others. About four sixty cadets threw in their lot with us, and some senior probationers too. The young ones we had to leave. We told them to scatter and look out for themselves, but we knew Stralg would get them.”

Oliva imagined Chies hurtling down the stairs four at a time, belting along the arcade to the main gate…

“The Fist realized his mistake at once and ordered us hunted down, every Florengian Werist killed on sight. We were trying to stay ahead of him and train the cadets at the same time. Mutineers, fugitives, oathbreakers, partisans, guerrillas-call us what you will. It was a year before we were strong enough to double back and ambush one of his patrols. He lost five times as many as we did, but in those days he could afford the losses. That was how it went the first few years. But gradually we gained in numbers. We recruited, we trained, and the more we had the more we could get! Understand?”

Dicerno had gone, taking his lamp. The palace seemed deserted and very silent without the wind. She felt as if she were alone in it, standing chatting with a madman.

“Yes, yes! What are you getting at?”

Chies would have to talk his way past the men on the gates, who had orders to send guards with him when he went out. No, of course he’d go out the bolt-hole from the laundry, the one he thought nobody else knew about. That would save him a run around the stables, too. Twelve gods!

“Getting to, my lady. We are getting to the final payoff. Two years ago we finally had as many collars as Stralg did and were training faster than he could bring men over the Edge. That was the turning point. He’s limited by the Ice on the other side, you see. Their seasons are more extreme over there, and-”

“So you think you can beat him?”

“He’s beaten now. He knows it. The problem is to kill off the survivors with as few collateral deaths as possible. You heard about Miona?”

She shivered. “Conflicting stories.”

“Believe the worst of them,” Cavotti said grimly. “Stralg billeted a host in the town. We surrounded it and torched it. You know how peasants burn the stubble and the vermin run out with their fur-”

“Please!”

“He lost seventeen or eighteen sixties. That was two years’ reinforcements gone in one night.”

“And how many civilians died?”

“All of them, basically. It was not a small town.”

“Atrocity!”

“Regrettable. But for Stralg it was the beginning of the end. Hardly a sixday goes by without a battle now. Piaregga, Reggoni Bridge

… two sixties here, three there. I am nibbling him to death, my lady! He cannot stand these losses. We can match him body for body and still get stronger.”

Horrible! Horrible! “What do you want of me?” she yelled. Why was Cavotti talking so much? It was almost as if we were waiting for the Vigaelians to get there and kill him. Chies belting along the alley, almost at the barracks…

Cavotti pulled a face. “I want to stop Celebre becoming another Miona, of course. It’s my home, too, and the smell of burning babies isn’t something you ever forget. Look at your maps, lady of Celebre. His escape route to Vigaelia goes past your city. He’s falling back as slowly as he can, but we’re driving him, and very soon now he will have to make a stand. Where better than here?” The big man’s raspy voice rose to fill the hall: “He has about three-sixty-sixty left. How do you feel about that many ice devils occupying your city, Mistress? For half a year while the Vigaelian winter has the pass sealed?

Gods! “No!” A mere dozen was more than it could stand now.

Chies must be at the barracks by this time, yelling for the flankleader. Werists moved like birds. It was their speed that made them so deadly. They’d come straight over the walls.

Cavotti smiled, exposing more tooth enamel than humans should have. “Then join us, my lady! Give me the signal, and I’ll slip my men into Celebre before the garrison knows what’s happening. I swear that I can control them. They’ll behave. They’re patriots, Florengians all, and they despise the Vigaelian scum. They want to show they’re better.” He thrust out a great paw, like a bear’s. “Shake on it! Sixty-sixty of my men in Celebre and we’ll deny it to Stralg. We’ll cut him off from his base and bleed him to death on the plains.”

Shake? She would not touch his murderer’s hand if she were drowning. Piero was dying reviled, childless, and detested. “Never! You would make this city a battlefield. Don’t you understand that my husband has been labeled coward and lackey and lickspittle all these years because he gave up his own happiness and mine just to save Celebre from sack? It worked. This city survived when most didn’t, although many people still won’t admit he was right. And now you would have me throw that all away?”

The Werist glowered at her angrily, then paused a moment as if listening. “I must go.” He hauled off his cowl, exposing Weru’s brass collar. Below such classically perfect features it seemed even more of an obscenity than usual.

Would the Vigaelians believe Chies’s fantastic story of Cavotti in the palace? But he didn’t need to say the Mutineer’s name, just that there was a Florengian Werist. They knew Chies, they’d trust him.

They must be on their way by now.

“Your husband did as he saw right, lady, to stop Stralg from sacking the city as he’d sacked Nelina. But I am offering you a garrison to defend you. At your invitation.”

“And who rules Celebre then? The dogs would be worse than the wolves.” What of the hostages Stralg held, her children? “Stralg showed fifteen years ago that Werists can run up stone walls like rats.”

“Not when those walls are defended by other Werists, my lady. I didn’t dare storm Miona with him in there.”

“No, you burned it! And he would burn Celebre. No! No! Never! Begone! If I weren’t certain that Chies had gone to summon Stralg’s men, I would do it myself. Leave!”

Somewhere in the palace something bayed.

The Mutineer snorted. “Oh, hear that! That’s shocking! Take that beast’s name, Packleader. Well, it’s been a joy talking to you, sweet lady. We must do this more often. Put it to your council and send me a signal if you change your mind. The best landmark in the city is the canopy on the temple of Veslih. I expect it’s all covered with bird droppings?”

“Go!” She could hear something coming, many things. “Go! Go! Go! Go!”

“Needs cleaning. If you change your mind, put up a scaffolding around the tholos as if you’re going to clean it. That’ll be the signal. We’ll move in.” The big man clasped her shoulders and moved her aside as if she were a child. “Now, I really must dash. Don’t stand in the opening, woman; you’ll get run over.”

He grabbed her hand to kiss it and was gone, racing across the terrace.

Then she guessed where he thought he was going, but that way was blocked. “There are knives on the weir!” she screamed.

She turned to the noise inside. Three… four… great beasts bunched in the doorway of the presence chamber, snarling and spitting, claws screeching on the tiles. She caught a fleeting glimpse of brass collars half-hidden by silver manes as they flashed across the hall, out through the opening, going almost too fast to see, going so fast she felt the wind stir her robe. More scraping claws and bestial baying as they saw their prey, then they were all gone in flying leaps over the balustrade.