Wartorn Obliteration

AQUINT (1)

"What do you mean, they're gone?"

Cat regarded him with a withering, disapproving stare. "I'd think that's a simple enough sentence to have penetrated your hangover."

Aquint made an effort not to groan out loud as he pushed up onto his elbows. This bed was big and soft, and he remembered having at least one soft companion in it last night. Now, she, or they, were gone, and there was just his young confederate here in the room.

He'd had a lot of wine last night. It was easy to have a lot of wine when you didn't have any worries about being able to pay your tab. He was enjoying this luxurious apartment and the generous stipend he was collecting as an agent of the Felk Internal Security Corps. The fact that, as a native of this conquered city of Callah, he still regarded the Felk as basically evil wasn't interfering noticeably with his performance in their service.

Aquint ran a hand over his bleary face.

"The rebels?" he asked, focusing. "You're talking about the group that's holed up in my old warehouse?"

Cat continued to stare with those judgmental eyes. The boy had never approved of any of Aquint's recreational habits.

"Was holed up there."

"When... when did they go?" Aquint sat up straighter, his head whirling, but determined not to let it show.

"Sometime between the last time I checked up on them and just half a watch ago."

"You're sure?" Aquint asked.

Cat looked offended by the question, and rightly so, Aquint thought. The boy moved like a shadow and was as good a spy as any Aquint had ever known.

Aquint reached for his scattered clothes. As he did he felt his gorge suddenly lurching dangerously. Cat wordlessly handed him a big cup full of cool water. Aquint drank it down, gratefully, feeling it restore him somewhat.

His mind was slowly starting to churn. If what the lad said was right, and the rebels had vacated their lair, then it did indeed mean trouble. As an Internal Security agent he was charged with rooting out traitors and revolutionaries here in Callah. He had already had some real success in that duty. He had broken a clever counterfeiting scheme that had flooded the local economy with worthless duplicates of the Felk-issued scrip.

He had also, with Cat's inestimable help, tracked a bona fide group of rebels to the same warehouse where he had once run a freight hauling business, before this war. He had also done some smuggling and black marketeering on the side, but that was neither here nor there.

Aquint had planned to feed those rebels one by one to his superior, Lord Abraxis, head of the Corps. Job security was important, especially since if Aquint was hunting rebels in Callah, he got to stay in Callah and enjoy all the benefits of his position.

Of course, as far as rebels went, this was a motley bunch, hardly worth anybody's effort to arrest. Aquint, however, preferred that nobody knew that but he and Cat. He had even picked out their first trophy catch, the man who had been behind that counterfeiting operation, the Minstrel. That one, at least, had committed a real crime. Besides the forgery business, he'd killed a Felk soldier, which had brought the wrath of the garrison down on all the people of occupied Callah.

Aquint dressed, drank more water, and gathered himself together. Cat waited patiently. Aquint combed his fingers through his hair as he thought.

"I waited too long," he finally said, fatalistically.

"You're just realizing that?"

"Forgive me, lad, my mind's still somewhat adrift."

"On a lake of wine," Cat scowled.

"I waited too long to start turning them over to Colonel Jesile's troops," Aquint said, repeating himself with great self-recrimination.

"This isn't going to help us," Cat said.

Jesile was the Felk governor of the city-state. As far as occupiers went, he was a sane and sensible man, not a sadist, not a barbarian.

"Do you have any idea where the rebels went?" Aquint asked the boy desperately.

"Don't you think I might have mentioned it by now if I did?"

Aquint still wasn't sure he wasn't going to vomit. Having that group hiding in his own abandoned warehouse had been like holding a pair of Headsmen cards when one was playing Dashes. It was a great secret advantage.

He had been too smug about it all, he realized. He thought he'd had the game all sewn up.

He shook his head several times, determined to clear it. Cat was right. This wallowing wasn't going to help anything.

"All right. This is bad but not catastrophic. I want those rebels found, and I want to do it without any help from the Felk garrison. I still want us to come out of this looking better than them, for when I report to Abraxis. You got a look at their faces, the night you spied on the rebels, right?"

The boy shrugged. "Sure. But this is a big city. Finding a handful of individuals—"

"Now, don't get pessimistic on me, Cat. We've got other things in our favor. Remember those circles with the slashes through them? The ones that appeared all over the city during the Lacfoddalmendowl festival? I think we can finally use that to our own advantage."

Everyone of fighting age had been absorbed into the Felk army when that force had overrun Callah, several lunes ago now. Aquint wore his arm in a sling to maintain the pretense that he had been wounded, and thus was currently on soft duty here in Callah. So far, the disguise was working.

Callah was a beautiful city, to Aquint's eyes anyway. Even occupied as it was by these Felk bleeders, it gladdened his heart to be home. He hated this war. It was a big messy waste. Sure, it was affording him opportunities to skim and scam monies out of the Felk coffers, but he had been doing just fine before, with his legitimate and illegitimate businesses.

How many had died on battlefields since this thing began? It was a lot, to say nothing of the absolute atrocity that had been committed at the city-state of U'delph, when the Felk had butchered and burned until the place was nothing more than a corpse-filled ruin. Aquint had been a part of that terrible carnage, and it had sickened him. It sickened him still to think about it.

The sun was peeking out from the clouds, bright enough to make Aquint wince every time he fell under its direct rays. That really had been an awful lot of wine, but he was collecting good wages these days, on top of the walking around scrip Governor Jesile's office had issued him. He couldn't help but spend a little on the pleasures of life.

That scrip had been rendered effectively worthless by the flood of phony notes that had apparently gotten into circulation. Aquint had heard that Jesile meant to combat this by imposing severe taxes in an effort to rebalance the local economy. The thinking was that it was more efficient than a complete recall of the paper money.

Good luck with that, Aquint thought. Further oppressing these conquered people with heavy taxes wasn't going to help pacify them. Quite the opposite, it might create more rebellious attitudes.

But that debacle with the Felk scrip wasn't Aquint's problem, not directly, at least.

He walked the streets, enjoying the cooling autumn breeze. He could almost imagine, at moments like this, that the war had never happened, that the Felk and their soldiers and their magicians had never poured south out of the Isthmus's northernmost state.

Someday, this war was going to have to end. But what if the Felk won it? And considering how powerful they were, the betting man's odds were with them. That would mean things would be like this forever, Callah occupied by a foreign force. Callah owned by the Felk.

Aquint shook his head, snapping himself out of the gloomy reverie. He could brood the next time he had a belly full of liquor. Right now, he had work to do.

He entered a cafe and ordered a light breakfast, bland foods he thought his stomach could handle. It was a busy eatery, and he was inevitably recognized and greeted. He still had quite a number of acquaintances here in Callah, among those too old or too infirm to have been drafted.

"Aquint, if I didn't know better I'd say you were playing up that wounded arm of yours just a bit," said a large elderly man named Gownick, whom Aquint had invited to join him at his table.

"You can imagine how anxious I am to return to the fighting," Aquint said, ruefully. He ate his eggs and biscuits slowly, careful not to upset his stomach.

"What's it like working for the Felk?" Gownick asked. He was drinking a large cup of tea. It was a blunt question, with confrontational undertones.

Aquint set down his fork. Gownick had been in the hauling business, too, before the Felk arrived and conscripted his wagons and horses.

"It's like being apprenticed to a master you despise," Aquint said. "You wish him dead every day, but you're stuck with him until your term of service is up."

Gownick nodded, grimly. "That's how I figured. If you'd been smart enough to have been a tenwinter or two older you never would have gotten into this mess."

"Next time I'll know." Aquint smiled.

They chatted amiably after that, while Aquint finished his meal. He felt better for having the food in him, soaking up last night's dregs.

"Gownick," he said suddenly, in a low voice, "can I trust you?"

The older man blinked. "We were rivals in the old days, Aquint, not enemies. We're not enemies now."

"I'll take that to mean you won't go blabbing what I tell you."

"You may take it as such," Gownick said, but there was eagerness in the old businessman's eyes.

Aquint looked around the cafe. Then he huddled closer to the older man, opened his jacket, and removed a swatch of coarse cloth.

"See?"

"What am I looking at, Aquint?" Gownick frowned.

"This was nailed to the door of the garrison barracks this morning."

"So?"

"So? Look at it, man. That pattern. It doesn't look familiar to you?" Aquint asked in an urgent whisper.

"It looks like a stain on the cloth," Gownick said, confused.

"It's not, for gods' sake! The circle, with the line through it. Don't tell me you don't recognize it."

"Should I?" Gownick asked.

"It doesn't mean anything to you?" Aquint feigned a dumbfounded expression.

The large elder was starting to look a little flustered. No one liked being left out of things. It was a childish impulse people never outgrew completely.

Aquint made to put the piece of cloth back into his jacket.

"Wait," Gownick said. "You say you found that on the Felk barracks door?"

"I had to report there early this morning. I saw it before anyone else did. I removed it, and didn't tell anybody about it."

"Why not?"

Again Aquint gave him an astonished look. "Because if I did then the whole garrison would know that the rebels are bold enough to leave their mark right on their very door. It would send soldiers into the streets, into people's homes. We don't need another shakeup like that last one."

He was referring of course to the garrison's violent response to the murder of one of their own by that Minstrel. But by telling Gownick this, he was siding himself with the Callahans, not the Felk.

"No," Gownick said, gravely, "we certainly don't need that." He frowned again. "Let me have another look at that."

Aquint showed him the mark on the cloth again. He himself had drawn it, naturally, using a stick of charcoal. This same slashed circle, which had been branded on numerous walls and doors throughout Callah, was, so Aquint had told Jesile, the emblem of the rebel underground.

Actually, he hadn't known if that was true or not. But at the time it was an expedient ploy, one that had helped firm up his position as an Internal Security agent fighting a real rebel network here in this city.

"I think I've seen this..." Gownick finally said.

It was quite possible he had. Whoever had been responsible for those strange brands had done a thorough job of spreading them throughout Callah. Jesile's troops had since eradicated the marks, removing doors and defacing walls where necessary.

"Well, I'm keeping it," Aquint said, finally stuffing it back into a pocket. "Hopefully, one day soon I'll make contact with someone in that rebel underground. When I do I'll use that symbol on that cloth as a kind of credential, to show I know who they are."

Gownick shook his head. "Why do you want to contact them?"

Aquint blinked at his former business rival. "To join them, of course."

With that he got up from the table, and left the cafe.

By the time he rendezvoused with Cat later in the day, Aquint was feeling much better. His mood had improved as well.

"You look pleased with yourself," the boy said, as they ducked beneath the flamboyant eaves of a building.

"And why not?"

"It went as you planned?"

"It did." Aquint nodded. "How about you?"

Cat shrugged. "Tracking is time-consuming work. There's lots of places that group could've gone, if they didn't just scatter individually."

Aquint was feeling magnanimous. "There there, lad. We'll find those motley rebels, one way or the other."

The boy shrugged again.

They stood there a moment, watching the foot traffic pass. Occupied or not, life still went on in Callah for its native inhabitants.

Aquint was indeed pleased. He had confided in three others besides Gownick, all just as big-mouthed. Word would get around about both the rebels nailing their mark on the barracks door, and about Aquint wanting to contact the underground. The first gambit would lend even more credence to a potential rebel uprising, which would secure Aquint's position even further, so long as he eventually turned the culprits over to Abraxis.

The second ploy just might put him in contact with the rebels. It depended on how seriously they took themselves. They had started as a sort of semifictional group, which Aquint himself had encouraged the Felk to believe in. Now, they might just become real, and might start accepting recruits.

If that happened, then they could be infiltrated.

Aquint was smiling, but his smile faded after a moment, as he considered the bigger picture. Suppose these ragtag rebels did rise up against the Felk. Suppose, somehow, they defeated Jesile's troops here in Callah. Did Aquint really want to be responsible for undoing a rebellion like that?

"What's wrong?" Cat asked, as always sensitive to Aquint's mood.

"Nothing." Aquint waved dismissively. "Tell me, do you think it's too early for a drink?"