The Road to Hell

Chapter Twenty-Four

January 13

The door chime rang as the hummer battered its beak against the bell mounted beside Arylis Ulthar’s porch door.

She turned from the cake she’d been frosting, and her eyes widened as she realized how exhausted that hummer was. The wings were missing a few iridescent green feathers, and whatever Novice or Journeyman had been supposed to recharge the levitation spell at the last way station to help the small beast’s natural magic maintain its breakneck speed had obviously bungled the job. The creature had settled, exhausted, into the open wire cage by the doorpost instead of taking any number of more natural perches in the small yard or nearby trees.

Strong compulsion spells gave the hummer no choice in its destination, and the crystal chip in the base of the cage glowed as it transferred the message from the travel-worn creature. Arylis wanted that message-wanted it badly-but she knew hummers well enough to realize how thoroughly distressed this one was. The message would be there whenever she got to it; the hummer might not be, if something wasn’t done about its exhaustion.

She’d worked summers as a hummer trainer and run a hummer nursery business with her sisters before marrying Therman Ulthar. It was the sort of support work-on the edge of the Army but not quite in it-many Andaran women did between school and marriage and sometimes after, and her family was garthan. They’d found refuge from the nightmare of Mythalan society under the protection of Andara, and like most refugees, their patriotism and devotion to their new home burned hot and fierce, which had made that support work even more satisfying. The young hummers needed about a year’s growth after leaving the nest before they gained enough strength to receive their enchantments, and her family had bought hummer chicks from Gifted breeders and fed them up before reselling the strong, older birds to the Union Army and private communications services. She’d come to love the swift, jewel-like little creatures, and she didn’t bother to close the cage door or slip on the bespelled handling gloves hanging under the cage before she reached for this one with her bare strong, dark-skinned hands. She knew hummers too well to bother with them, and she didn’t care to mess the inside of the gloves with cake frosting from her interrupted baking.

She handfed the creature a couple of ounces of honeywater with her icing bag. The small magic in the icing tip wasn’t designed to feed birds, but it worked-beading in a fat wet globe at the end of the bag between the hummer’s red-throated gulps. It was very hungry, and she wanted the worn creature fed before she confirmed the download from its message chip and let it follow its next spell-compulsion to streak back to the North Portalis Hummer Aerie. She hoped it would receive a gentle grooming and a few days rest before its next long message route.

Her half-iced cake had been more in the way of practice than actually needed for a gathering, so she didn’t mind interrupting her decorating efforts to ensure the little creature at least got some sugar in its system before powering back home again. Not only had she spent years raising them for the mail service, but more recently, sleek-winged hummers who’d probably never flown further than the outskirts of Old Portalis on Arcana Prime arrived weekly with short messages from the Commandery’s Bureau of Family Relations and Military Support Services. That always happened when a unit was deployed, and Arylis had grown accustomed to their general nothing messages about Therman’s unit when it was on deployment.

Of course, those messages had been anything but “general” or “nothing” since the first news of the clash with the mysterious Sharonians had blasted over the entire Union or Arcana. The nightmare of not knowing for almost two weeks what had happened to him-if he was even alive or dead-had been horrible, despite the way in which all the 2nd Andarans’ wives and family members had rallied about one another. But then had come the wonderful news that he was alive and recovered from his wounds, although he was now stationed in a universe called “Thermyn,” which she’d never even heard of. Once she’d gotten over the shock-and finished weeping in joy-at the news that he was alive, she’d been a bit amused that his current post’s universe bore a name so similar to his own.

But she hadn’t heard a great deal directly from him yet. There’d been a brief note from her brother Iftar, telling her Therman had been found alive and rescued. And there’d been an even briefer standard Military Support Services survivor’s message, from Therman himself. Aside from that, there’d been nothing, which suggested the censors were clamping down pretty hard. Arylis had enough of a garthan’s suspicion of those in authority to make her uneasy over that silence, but she trusted the Army to tell her if anything bad-anything else bad-happened to her husband.

This message might well be from BFR or even from Therman himself, which was why her fingers itched to check its contents, but she made herself take the time to finish caring for the hummer. Hummer stations could transfer the messages from creature to creature as they came down the line, but the hummers didn’t get immediately sent back after long trips, either. So if the message was from Thermyn and not the BFR office right here in Portalis, this hummer might have been the one to bring her message much of the way across New Arcana from the outbound portal to New Andara. Or it might have brought some other message and simply been reused for a purely local message by a sloppy handler who hadn’t noticed the creature’s need for rest.

If it had been Threeday, she’d have been certain it was just another Bureau of Family Relations nothing message. But today was Fiveday and she’d already gotten one of those this week.

The hummer finished the last bead of sugar water, pressed its needle-sharp beak against the back of her hand with feathery gentleness, then squirmed until she released it. It hopped back into the cage, crossed to the cage’s message chip, and tapped the chip once with that same beak. Its complex enchantments had completely transferred the message to the sarkolis chip in the base of the cage, and it was clearly impatient-thanks to those same complex enchantments-for her to confirm receipt and send it upon its way once more.

She had no intention of doing anything of the sort, however. It needed a longer feeding, and so she refilled the icing bag with more honeywater and hung it from the top of the cage before she extracted the crystal from its receptacle. then she latched the hummer into the cage to ensure it would get to finish feeding before the homing compulsion forced it on.

Arylis tried not to hope for too much when her shaking hands slotted the message chip into the carved lines of the family’s old message reader. A family with a magister, or even a novice in its household, would use a PC for this and a multitude of other tasks. Since neither Arylis nor Fifty Ulthar had a scrap of Gift between them, she used reliable single purpose spellware for the few things in their home life that required enchantment or disenchantment.

“My name is Arylis Ulthar.” She spoke carefully into the device, enunciating, and projecting her voice a bit more than normal to make sure its aetheric energy made a strong enough field for the old spellware to work.

The carved lines marking out runes and amplification circles around the message chip glowed a familiar solid blue, and Arylis relaxed. The old device hadn’t chosen this moment to stop working.

The chip slowly warmed until it too glowed. Then it did exactly what she expected.

“Personal message from”-the spellware paused to access the sender’s name and then continued, and Arylis’s heart leapt as Therman’s familiar reference number rolled out of the reader-“soldier 2AS-5 °C-03-73524. Speak access code to retrieve message.”

“I love you Therman. It’s Arylis.” She wiped a little wetness from her face. It was hard to deliver her personal access code in the deadpan tone necessary for the spellware, but she managed. Sheer stubbornness kept her from changing it, even as difficult as it sometimes was to speak the phrase clearly on the first try.

The hummer chirped happily. She glanced up and saw it return to feeding.

“Message decryption in progress. Please wait.”

She waited.

And waited. And waited. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. This message was far longer than the MSS survivor’s message had been, and she wanted it-wanted it more badly than she’d ever wanted anything in her life! But it would take however long it took, she told herself firmly…and was just about to poke at the crystal chip to see if it was seated properly when it finished.

“Arylis, my love,” Therman’s voice said from the reader, clearly him, but with the extra rasp camp-recorded messages always had. “I’m fine. Things have been rough out here. I’ll tell you about it when we all get home. The war, well, its war, but I’m okay and I’ve seen Iftar. He’s fine, even if he isn’t any happier about this whole damned mess than I am. Pass that on to your sisters and give them my best, as well. And I’m sorry about putting you in this position, but I knew you’d find a way. I love you.”

The message continued with just soft rasping over silence while Arylis stared at the crystal chip. He was sorry? About what position? Then the reader’s spellware clicked on a second time.

“Personal message for soldier 2AS-Actual. “Message decryption in progress. Please wait.”

Arylis’s mind froze. 2AS-Actual?!That was…that was ridiculous!

Her husband, Fifty Therman Ulthar was 2AS-5 °C-03-73524, the Fifty commanding Third Platoon, Company C, Second Andaran Scouts and assigned the lineal number of 73524. But 2AS-Actual was the commander of the entire Second Andaran.

That was the Duke of Garth Showma himself.

She was still staring at the reader in shock when the hummer tilted its long beak away from the tip of the icing bag and gave a bright chee-dit. It was done feeding, and her hands moved as if they belonged to someone else as they loosed the fine bird. It tapped the cage’s floor once, its complex enchantments received the signal that the message had been completely transferred, and with a blur of wings, it was gone. Arylis’s eyes tracked it automatically as it disappeared

“Decryption complete,” said the message crystal reader. “Message ready for replay.”

* * *

The well-fed hummer landed at North Portalis Hummer Aerie. The delay while it was fed had also delayed its confirmation that its message had been downloaded to Arylis Ulthar’s reader. That meant its implanted crystal had been active when Arylis spoke her access code and Therman’s brief message played itself. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did occasionally, and the privacy laws were clear. When it did, any scrap of personal information which had made its way onto a hummer’s crystal was immediately deleted. But in this instance, when it returned to its aerie and the scrap of conversation uploaded to the central traffic crystal, someone who shouldn’t have even known about it read it before it was deleted it.

* * *

“Straight to the Duke,” Arylis told herself. “Just take the message straight to the Duke.” She almost laughed. Of course Therman had thought that would be easy; he hadn’t been living in northern Garth Showma these past six weeks. He didn’t know what they’d been hearing about the war. Instead he’d been experiencing the truth of it.

She shivered at that thought, because it shouldn’t have been that different. What she’d been certain of and believed with absolute conviction and what she thought was probably true now, after hearing Therman’s version-they shouldn’t be so opposite.

Not knowing what else to do, she packed up the half frosted cake in its beautiful red striped carrier and matching satchel. One of her sisters had given her the thing. A cake carrier bespelled for freshness and balance to keep the frosting from messing even if the whole thing was tumbled end over end…and just a little greater in diameter than the flat, round spellreader. She put the reader into the fitted satchel first, then slid the cake carrier on top. The rosy bubble over the cake stuck out a half palm’s width more than it should have, but with a little effort Arylis still got the satchel to close. Tinkling bells played a soothing arpeggio and the Ransaran company logo on the satchel changed from pale rose to burgundy. Good, it had sealed.

She hung her apron on its hook, wrapped the satchel strap twice around her wrist for a good hold, and set off for Portalis. The duke was in residence, and he wasn’t likely to be anywhere else when she arrived. Not with the news services’ daily, breathless reports about the closed sessions of the courts-martial.

Arylis Therman didn’t follow those reports…mostly because she already knew exactly what their outcomes should be. Her family’s memories of Mythal were long, deep, and bitter. None of them had ever been bound in service to the vos Hoven line, but one shakira clan was very like another, and what she’d heard of the charges against him told her precisely what sort he was. Magister Halathyn would have spat on his shadow, she was sure.

The memory of the dead magister sent a fresh stab of grief through her…and an even hotter stab of fury. She hadn’t actually read Therman’s message to the duke; that was between him and his CO. But he’d wanted her to know at least some of why it was so important for that message to be delivered, so he’d included a brief synopsis just for her. Which meant she now knew that the official stories coming from official government spokesmen-the stories she’d put down to an effort to control the rage of every garthan in a hundred universes-were actually the truth. That they hadn’t been fabricated to still the outrage, as journals like the Herald Times trumpeted in every issue. That the “scoops” from “official sources speaking on condition of anonymity” were the lies. The Sharonians hadn’t killed the magister; their own troops had! And like her brother and her husband, Arylis could think of only one reason-and one group-with the motive to lie so consistently, so passionately, and so convincingly about it.

And vos Hoven’s part of that same stinking, lying, twisted sewer of shakira, isn’t he? she thought bitterly. Well, at least maybe he’ll get what he has coming! And if Ulthar and Therman are right, the Duke may just see to it that another batch of the scum get what they’ve got coming, as well!

She hugged that thought to her, but at the same time, a fresh shiver of concern melded with the hot fury, like an icy wind through the throat of an angry volcano. If Therman was right about what was happening, then the odds against Sir Jasak Olderhan were even worse than she’d feared they were. Like virtually every garthan, Arylis knew about the bitter hatred between the Olderhans’ faction of the Andaran nobility and the shakira. That was one reason she’d been so proud when Therman was assigned to Hundred Olderhan’s company. But if Therman was right about how high the lies and the manipulation had to go, then Sir Jasak had to be in the sights of whoever was truly behind it. And no one had to tell a garthan how deadly any shakira line lord’s malice could be. And if there truly was some sort of general conspiracy behind all of this…

Arylis hugged the float-assisted cake carrier to her chest as she walked into the public slider station and checked the schedule. She found the connection she wanted, bought her ticket, and settled into an available seat with the cake carrier cradled in her lap, and her mind went back to the questions and speculation buzzing through it like Mythlan mosquitos.

There was no news about either of the courts-martial, and there wouldn’t be, until they were concluded one way or another. The Union Army’s tradition-adopted from the Andarans-was that the public was entitled to full disclosure of charges, testimony, evidence, and verdicts in any court-martial…but only after the trial was completed. The accused was guaranteed the protection of confidentiality until his guilt or innocence was determined, and that confidentiality could be extended still further if he was convicted and chose to appeal…assuming the Judiciary General’s Office granted an appeal hearing. That was another reason she’d avoided coverage of the trials; all the reporters and talking heads could do was rehash rumors, speculation, and more of those “confidential sources,” and she didn’t trust any of them as far as she could spit.

Well, they’ll have something else to chatter about after the Duke reads Therman’s message, she thought grimly, and tried to suppress a fresh pang of fear-this time for her husband-as she considered how a shakira was likely to respond to being dragged out of his foul, comfortable concealment by a mere commander of fifty.

I’m not going to think about that, she told herself firmly. Not right now, anyway.

She pushed the thought from her mind-or as close to from her mind as she could get-and tried to distract herself by watching the scenery flow past the slider window.

The slider system trundled through Portalis, making its many stops to deliver her with thorough, if not speedy, efficiency to the Central Portalis Station. The ducal town house was only a few stops farther, but this was where the sliders really began to pack in with fellow travellers. There were a lot of them-more than there should’ve been-and heavy bags with broom handles and folded bits of sheeting poking out of them filled the overhead luggage compartments. The conversation around her was filled with none-too-suppressed anger-and fear-and Arylis didn’t care for it a bit. There was also a lot of talk about forming up at the last stop and marching to the Garth Showma House together.

What especially disturbed her was the percentage of the protesters who were clearly garthan. Their anger was even more searing than that of the Andarans flocking to demand a more rigorous prosecution of the war. The fury over Magister Halathyn’s “murder” was to blame for that, of course, and she wanted to shout out the truth. But she dared not. Even if they believed her, it would be a betrayal of Therman’s charge to get word secretly to the duke…and odds were they wouldn’t believe her. The rage was so profound, the notion that the Sharonians had killed the magister had burned itself so deeply into their minds, that they’d almost certainly turn on anyone who tried to deny the “truth” they knew like rabid animals. Indeed, some of them reminded her of rabid animals-of the very stereotype the shakira had tried for so many decades to sell to the rest of the Union-and their assumption that she was one of them made her toes curl. Of course she looked the part: younger, female, obviously Mythalan and working class (and thus automatically a garthan herself), and out during the middle of the day without an obvious work errand at hand. One or two of them tried to talk to her, but she only nodded politely and returned as noncommittal a reply as possible.

The crush getting out of the slider was dreadful, and try though she might, she couldn’t break free from the tide of bodies flowing through the streets. By the time she reached Garth Showma House, the group from her slider-and far more people beside-packed the wide avenue from one side to the other. She couldn’t see very clearly; she was too short to see over the sea of heads between her and the townhouse, but the chanting was in full swing and if they’d ever formed up in any sort of order they’d long since fallen out into a rough mob, swirling like a storm-lashed ocean. Fortunately, the high walls around the front of the public-facing building, which looked ornamental, were proving to be a solid defense. But broomsticks intended to hold painted sheets tied between them were now being banged against the wall in tempo to the chanting.

Arylis pushed her way through, using the cake satchel as a prod to force a place for herself. It didn’t have the sharp corners of a sturdy traveller’s trunk, but the rounded shape worked better in this already hostile mob. The spirit of the crowd was too uneasy, filled with too much sullen anger-and fear, probably-and she really didn’t want to crack the dragon’s egg without family around to back her up in a fight. Even with the chanting and banging, people were too upset and too quiet, and she had a skin-prickling sense of latent violence swirling all too near the surface of their uneasiness.

A knot of women blocked her way with tightly locked arms. They swayed together with the motion of the crowd’s cheers and sobbed in time.

Arylis called out her apologies and tried to push between two of them.

Tear-streaked faces about her own age in shades of brown looked down on her. There were older faces-most more starkly Andaran-pale but some almost as dark as Arylis own skin-among them. An Andaran family with garthan immigrant parents or grandparents, she realized, and from their expressions they were almost certainly here to mourn Magister Halathyn and not to lash out like so much of the rest of the crowd.

“The guards won’t let us in,” one of them told her sadly.

“I just need to try,” she replied, although she really wasn’t sure what she’d say to get admittance even if she managed to reach the front of the crowd.

The words didn’t mean anything particular, but the women loosened their grips on each other just enough to let her through and she plugged gamely on until she was close enough to duck under the stick wielders themselves. One of them nearly hit her-by accident, she thought-but she managed to block the stick with her cake carrier.

“I’m trying to get in!” she told the man with the stick as he glared at her as if it was her fault he’d almost hit her. She had to shout to make herself heard, and his expression made her go on quickly. “I just want to ask-”

It was the wrong thing to say.

A woman with a voice amp heard it and the chant changed.

“We want in! We want in!” it roared, and the crowd surged in response.

Arylis was suddenly mashed against the wall around the townhouse. A quick turn saved the reader inside the cake carrier, but put the force of the impact on her left hip and shoulder for two surges of the crowd. It knocked the breath out of her, as well, and she staggered for balance, suddenly terrified she might fall and be trampled underfoot. But she managed to keep her footing, somehow, and sucked in a deep breath of relief.

On the next pulse in the chant, she regained her momentum and spun the cake carrier on its side, with the reader pressed into her belly, while she used the cake as a pillow against the wall, pushing inch by inch closer to the entry.

A stone handrail to the entry stairs blocked her path almost at the goal, and she gave up on gentleness, using elbows and kicks to push the precious feet straight back into the crowd to get around the side rail and up on the stairs themselves.

Two javelins and a sword of the Garth Showma Guard stood at the head of those stairs. They were armed with peacekeeper staffs and, judging from their expressions, furious as they glared at the crowd.

One of the javelins was saying something to the sword, utterly inaudible over the chanting of several hundred angry voices. He got a headshake in response, but the first one gripped his staff as if he was going hit the crowd with it, and Arylis flinched back. She had absolutely no desire to be struck by accident. For that matter, she wasn’t sure that if the javelin hit her it would be by accident. There was no way the Guardsmen could differentiate between her as separate from the rest of the crowd, after all.

The peacekeeper staffs had a rough look to them. They were solid eldritch oak, with rounded sarkolis caps that glowed faintly and ominously, and Arylis wished she could pull back well out of the crowd control weapon’s fifty-foot range. Getting struck with one wouldn’t kill her, but being unconscious and alone in a crowd this angry could be deadly all on its own.

“Please,” she tried to yell over the roar of the crowd, “I just need to come in!”

A crash sounded somewhere behind her, and she dared a fearful look over her shoulder into the mass of people. Had more people joined in since she worked her way to the front of the townhouse?

And then a dragon bellowed suddenly and she found herself in what had abruptly become a great deal of open space. She looked up…and swallowed a squeak of terror as a yellow-young to be ridden-soared over in a slow pass. The crowd roared back at the sky, even the chanting lost in momentary surprise. Some of the protestors recognized the threat inherent in that pass, but at least half the crowd had misinterpreted it as no more than a surprise bit of airshow. After all, for all their fury, they knew it was the Air Force’s job to protect the Union’s citizens, not threaten them with lethal force!

The pilot turned the dragon and began a second pass, coming in so low this time that Arylis could feel the air pressure change as the spells pulled in aetheric power to hold the beast aloft.

She clambered a few steps up and crouched against the rail wall to the side of the stairs her arms still wrapped around the cake carrier. Groups at the edges of the crowd had begun to move away and the center moved back with it. The chanting was gone, replaced by individual yells and shrieks, and she drew in a deep breath of relief. They’d all go home now, she thought, and in a few moments she might even be able to speak loudly enough to be heard over the din and possibly gain admittance at least into the public reception hall.

She looked back to the Guardsmen and saw not calm, but horror sketched across both their faces. They were screaming at the pilot, who certainly couldn’t hear them. She snapped her head back the other way and saw the dragon open its mouth.

Two shots burned over her head passing a warmth and numbness across the back of her neck. Through a darkening sight Arylis saw the pilot collapse limp in his straps and the dragon’s mouth go slack and snap shut.

* * *

“What the hell was that?”

A noncommittal grunt answered.

Icy fingers running down the back of Arylis’s neck cut through the thumping in her head. She awoke, still on the steps to Garth Showma House, but with a nearly empty street in front of her. The yellow perched on a nearby building roof and lowed mournfully, its pilot limp in his cockpit.

More people in GSG uniforms scurried from huddle to huddle in the street giving aid or assistance as needed to those left behind by the crowd.

She moaned and found one of the Guardsmen immediately at her side.

“Awake now, Missus?”

She nodded slowly, surprised to find her neck functioned just fine and that the pain in her left arm was only the too tight tangle of the cake carrier’s strap.

“Why don’t you head on home then? We’re going to help a group down to the slider station nice and slow here in a minute if you feel you can stand?”

“No.” I need to go see the Duke.

“That’s alright, you can rest a few more minutes, and we’ll get someone to carry you. Maybe there’s someone you could send for?”

“I need to get in,” Arylis said and was rewarded with a long sigh for her accidental repeat of the chant. “No, not that-” she tried to explain “-I’m trying to see the Duke.” She pointed her cake in an effort to explain.

The man cursed softly. “A cake delivery? In the midst of all that? I’d hate to have your boss, Missus.”

He didn’t get it right, but the door was opening and another retainer was summoned to help her up and walk her inside. Arylis saved her explanations for further inside the townhouse.

She found a comfortable chair in the receptions office and settled into it. Office doors were flying open, and staff were rushing about entirely too quickly to catch their attention immediately. She rested, for just a moment.

“I don’t believe for one moment the Undersecretary for Dragon Affairs personally authorized that disaster!” The voice echoed down the hall.

“I’m just telling you where the staffer I spoke with said the order came from, Fifty.”

“That pilot up there isn’t even a commissioned Twenty-Five.”

“Hope to Graholis he never gets a commission either, Fifty.”

“Hm. Kid might not even be alive.”

An inarticulate grumble answered that one.

“Trooper’s right, Fifty. I don’t want to serve with anyone who’d even think about firing on civilians.”

“He’s going to say he didn’t mean it. You know he’s going to say he was just faking to scare the crowd, and he’d never have dropped gas on anyone!”

“Don’t they gas people sometimes in Mythal?”

“I don’t care what the spell-blasted Mythlans do. We don’t, and that boy up there needs a healer. The dragon probably caught some of the blast, too. See about finding a dragon healer while you’re at it.”

Arylis let herself slip back into a dozy grey while she waited for the public offices to calm.

* * *

Later, hours later, Thankhar Olderhan, the Duke of Garth Showma personally opened the door and bowed to the fifty’s wife as she dropped him a curtsy and prepared to withdraw from his private office. She still seemed more than a little awed that the duke himself had wanted to hear her story, and she’d been more than a little nervous when she entered the warm, wood paneled room with its comfortable chairs, large desk, and the PC which now held a certified copy of her husband’s shocking message. He’d spent over an hour taking her back through every aspect of the extraordinary circumstances which had brought her to Garth Showma House-and damned nearly gotten her killed-and everything she’d said had only made him even more grimly confident that she was absolutely trustworthy.

“Thank you, Madam Ulthar,” he said as she rose from her curtsy. “It’s my honor to have men like your husband in the Second Andarans, and I genuinely can’t tell you how deeply grateful I am for your own integrity-and courage-in bringing his message to me so quickly. Magister Halathyn would be as proud of you as I am, I’m sure.”

“Thank you, Your Grace.” The words came out husky and the young woman’s beautiful brown eyes filled with tears. “I only…I mean, it was Therman who did it, really. And-”

“Your husband, Madam Ulthar, would be the first to tell me what a critical and personal service you’ve done me and my entire house, as well as the entire Union,” he said firmly. “And I’m very much afraid he may have put you at risk by asking you to undertake it. Because of that, you’ll be moving into Garth Showma House-unless you’d be more comfortable at Garth Showma itself? — until we know precisely what’s going on out there.”

“Oh, Your Grace, I couldn’t! I mean-”

“My dear, Her Grace has already spoken in this matter,” he told her with a faint smile. “I assure you that I’m not foolish enough to argue with her about it, and I’d recommend you not argue, either. It will be safer for both of us.”

The young woman was obviously flustered, but as she looked up into his face, she realized he meant it and her protests faded. He took her hand in both of his and gave her another bow-which only flustered her even more deeply, of course-and turned her over to one of the assistant housekeepers. Then he returned to his office, dropped into the comfortable chair behind his desk, and glared up at the ceiling while his mind raced.

He’d ruthlessly shoved he job of unraveling the chain of incompetence behind that fool trainee pilot onto the desk of Five Thousand Rukkar. The entire thing was a mess. The yellow wasn’t even a proper battle dragon-just a youngling on loan from Mythal Air Expeditionaries for a breeding experiment that probably should never have been approved. MAE was as undisciplined a group as ever claimed commissions, but Mythlan private families paid for the feeding and care for MAE’s fleet of dragons-a relief on the Union of Arcana’s military budget too large for Parliament to decline. The old practice of an airknight paying for his own equipage and fodder was darn useful in that respect, but other Mythlan habits didn’t mesh well with Andaran sensitivities. Among other things, they conducted side line breeding efforts and produced special dragon lines for crowd control, which had to be one of the stupidest godsdamned ideas Thankhar had ever heard of. And what kind of frigging idiot authorized a yellow for “crowd control”?

He shuddered as he thought about it. He’d never heard of a yellow which produced nonlethal gas, and he doubted like hell that anyone in Mythal was interested in producing one, whatever they might claim. And he had his doubts-serious doubts-about the rider’s claim that he’d never intended to actually fire on the crowd. Hells, he doubted he’d believe it even if the kid repeated it under a dozen truth spells! No, that little prick had been ready to gas the street in front of Garth Showma House, and what kind of miserable bastard used poison gas on a crowd of bereaved women and children?

As soon as the healers had that trainee back on his feet, Sathmin would have him at a meeting with the spouse’s club to make a very heartfelt and public apology. Sathmin would make it work, but the real apology should be coming from someone far more senior who’d allowed the almost disaster to launch. Rukkar had better figure out who’d started it, or Thankhar would have to.

He didn’t care how mild the MAE’s Hundred who’d claimed credit for the idea thought the yellow’s gas was. That idiot had also been shocked-or claimed he had, anyway-that the crowd hadn’t instantly dispersed the moment yellow wings flared overhead. He’d clearly never met an Andaran woman. And he equally clearly hadn’t figured out how much of that crowd had been garthans who didn’t give a single solitary damn about any shakira ever born. Once they got out from under the bastards’ thumbs, there was no stopping any garthan. It was one of the things he most liked about them…and what was making it so godsdamned hard to get them to stand back and believe the truth about how Magister Halathyn had actually died.

And now this. What in all Shartahk’s Hells was going on at the front? He’d had his doubts, had his concerns, but this-!

His staff commo officers, with some assistance from Magister Gadrial-he wasn’t going to let a possible forgery slip by when he had a theoretical magister of her caliber on hand-had confirmed the message was legitimate. Arylis Ulthar hadn’t faked it, and the original message had definitely been recorded on a hummer at the front. He had to bear in mind the theoretical possibility that Fifty Ulthar hadn’t sent the original message, but the chance of anyone’s getting a successful forgery past Gadrial Kelbryan was virtually nil. Which only made it even worse, in a way. Ulthar had a solid performance record before his posting to the frontier, and Jasak had flatly stated that he’d been the best fifty in C Company. There was no reason-no sane reason Thankhar could think of, at any rate-for a man like that to invent an elaborate story, especially one like this…which meant what he’d reported was almost certainly true.

And that meant Thankhar had to assume the events at the front really were as bad as the message claimed. He needed to find out what was going on out there-everything that was going on out there-and he needed to find out yesterday. Most people would have felt the meat of Ulthar’s message was all about the violation of the Kerellian Accords and the truly horrible treatment of Sharonans held under Arcanan military authority, and Thankhar Olderhan’s fury had burned fiery hot as he read that part of it. Yet under the fury had been something far, far colder.

The Commandery knew the truce had broken down, that Two Thousand Harshu had led a counterattack deep into the Sharonian-claimed universes, and that the initial offensive seemed to have done well. But aside from that bare notification and the report that at least some Second Andaran survivors had been recovered alive, there were still no additional official messages. It was preposterous-or worse-but the most recent reliable information they really had was Jasak’s report, and that was both suspect in certain quarters and locked down, denied public release, until after his court-martial had delivered its verdict.

It wasn’t unheard of for there to be delays-sometimes very lengthy delays-in reports from the frontier when officers were overwhelmed dealing with some crisis. The Union of Arcana had learned long ago that it couldn’t micro-manage affairs over a communications chain that could take weeks or even months to pass a message one way. The military had to trust the judgment of the officers on the spot, and those officers were often more focused on the problem at hand rather than on writing reports for superiors who couldn’t do one damned thing to help them, anyway. So, yes, there’d been lots of examples of that sort of delay over the years.

But it also happened when officers were doing something profoundly stupid and thought they could fix it before the Commandery found out, and Thankhar Olderhan had decided weeks ago that that was almost certainly the case this time…unless it was something still worse. In fact, he’d been inclining further and further towards that “still worse” hypothesis even before Jasak, Gadrial, and Jasak’s shardonai reached Portalis. Now, with what Therman Ulthar had said about intelligence reports which contradicted what he knew first hand to be true added to what Jasak and Gadrial had already told him…

For anyone who’d spent as many years as he had fighting corruption and facing down one scheming political maneuver after another, the possibility that Army and Air Force personnel were being deliberately lied to by their own superiors raised questions which were far more chilling even than the violation of the Accords. Ugly questions about who was doing what, who was covering it up, and-above all-why he was covering it up. And when that was added to what was clearly an orchestrated campaign to leak the false narrative from the front to the news services which were most hostile to the current government…

He needed an investigation, and he needed it now. And whatever team he sent down-chain needed the military teeth to be listened to and the strength to withstand whatever threat the Sharonan military-and, much as he hated the possibility, its own military-represented. Collecting evidence in an active war zone was not for the faint of heart.

Lucky for him, Thankhar Olderhan was an Andaran, and Andaran inquiry officers didn’t come in faint of heart.