Working God's Mischief

1. Antieux: The Stress of Peace

Brother Candle settled at the breakfast table, still sleep-groggy.

“Look at him being smug. All fruit and berries, there.”

A dozen people shared the table, Count Raymone Garete’s intimates. His spouse, the Countess Socia, had made the disparaging remark.

Count Raymone’s cousin Bernardin said, “Don’t mind her, Master. She’s looking for a fight again. Or still. Calm down, girl. Peace has broken out. Enjoy it.”

Brother Candle nodded. He agreed.

Socia knew it could not last.

The world would pull itself together and get back to the horrors soon.

Following a bite of melon, the old man observed, “The world has rolled over complete when Bernardin Amberchelle is the voice of reason.” To the Countess, so like a daughter after all they had suffered, he said, “Control your emotions. For the sake of the child.”

Socia was gravid in the extreme. That exacerbated her naturally abrasive character. The baby was overdue. It would be her first. She was plagued by all the first-time terrors. She refused to follow the custom of her station and go into seclusion.

Socia Garete was no ornament to her husband. She was a working partner, even a managing partner. She did not want to miss anything.

The Count, the Maysalean Perfect Brother Candle, and everyone else for whom she cared, and who cared for her, had abandoned hope of getting her to behave as a proper noblewoman.

Hell, she spent half her time with an equally injudicious commoner refugee heretic from Khaurene, Kedle Richeut. She idolized Kedle. Kedle Richeut had made a difference. Kedle had killed a king.

Brother Candle had known Socia since she was a bloody-minded teen living with three brothers in a small stronghold on the Connec’s northeast frontier. Never had she shown the least inclination to be a good girl, focused on embroidery and producing children.

As always, Count Raymone showed only amused indulgence. He loved Socia with the passion and depth sung by the Connec’s jongleurs, unusual in a time of negotiated marriages. But Raymone Garete had come into his patrimony young. Those who would have strapped him into a loveless political alliance had passed on before he could be fitted to harness.

Count Raymone had chosen Socia on brief exposure because he had recognized her instantly as a soul perfectly complementary to himself.

Count Raymone said, “At this point, my love, you should listen attentively when the Master speaks.”

Startled, Socia shut her mouth.

Raymone continued, “I understand. I have my own problems adjusting to an absence of enemies. The fact is, we aren’t likely to have any till Anselin gets home or Serenity makes a startling comeback.”

Bernardin said, “Anselin shouldn’t be a problem. He won’t let his mother bully him. I’ll bet a shilling now that he stuffs her into a convent.”

Socia made snarling noises to remind everyone that she was in a foul humor. Still.

Raymone ignored her. “I can’t even fritter time chasing Society brothers. The survivors are hidden so deep they’ve forgotten which way to swim to find the light.”

Brother Candle grumbled, “If they cared about the Light they wouldn’t be in the Society for the Suppression of Sacrilege and Heresy in the first place.”

Bernardin chuckled through a mouthful of salt pork. He professed the Maysalean creed but refused to observe its dietary whims. “Been a few weeks since I’ve nabbed one. But the rest aren’t buried as deep as they hope. The new bishop isn’t as clever as he thinks.”

“LaVelle?” Brother Candle asked.

“The very one. The latest. Dumber than a keg of rocks but the first honest one since way back before Serifs. I’m going to make sure he survives.”

For a decade Episcopal Chaldarean bishops had shown a remarkable inability to stay healthy in a bishopric the Church was determined to scourge and flense for tolerating heresy.

“Honest?” Brother Candle asked.

Bernardin offered a wobbling hand gesture. “Comparatively. He did bring along a clutch of deadbeat relatives. But he’s no holy bandit like Meryl Ponté or Mathe Richenau.”

Count Raymone interjected, “Darling, when was your last visit to Mistress Alecsinac?” Alecsinac was her senior attendant midwife.

Clever, in Brother Candle’s thinking. Stopping Bernardin from admitting he had an agent close to the new bishop, in case LaVelle or the Society had an agent close to the Count.

There was a point to Raymone’s question beyond that.

Socia did not deliver a definitive response.

“I thought so. Master. Once you finish, see my lady Socia to the midwife. Making no side trips and accepting no delays or excuses.”

“As you will.” Brother Candle allowed himself a satisfied smile.

Count Raymone seldom invoked a husband’s prerogative. When he did, he meant it. There was no appeal.

Brother Candle asked, “Does LaVelle have any support from Brothe?”

Amberchelle replied, “We’re trying to figure that out. Serenity appointed him, but only two days before they ran him off. Serenity didn’t know him. He was put up by one of Anne of Menand’s tame Principatés, Gorman Sleight. Sleight doesn’t know LaVelle, either. He nominated LaVelle on behalf of Valmur Joss, one of the Society chiefs in exile in Salpeno. Joss is Connecten. But even he doesn’t actually know LaVelle, whose name originally got dropped into the process by a cousin, Laci Lindop, another Connecten Society exile. LaVelle has no prior Church connection, except as a worshipper. So nobody knows what we’re getting.”

The Perfect stared. Bernardin Amberchelle was a short, wide, dusky, rumpled man who looked like a dimwit thug. And he played that role on Raymone’s behalf. In private, though, he betrayed surprising depth.

Amberchelle winked.

Refusing to be left out, Socia asked, “Do we know where Serenity went when he ran away from the Captain-General?”

“That would be the Commander of the Righteous, dear one. Piper Hecht. He used to be Captain-General, before Serenity. Pinkus Ghort is Captain-General now. Serenity’s man, bought and paid for.”

“Not so much anymore,” Bernardin said. “Ghort gets on fine with the man Hecht installed in Serenity’s place.”

“But where is Serenity?” Socia demanded. “And how big a pain is he likely to be?”

“Right now he’s on Little Pinoché in the Pinoché Islands, off the Firaldian coast two-thirds of the way up between the mouth of the Teragi and the mouth of the Sawn. He’d be a major pain if he could but he can’t communicate very well. Sonsa and Platadura are blockading him. Queen Isabeth intends to keep him fixed till she makes him pay for what happened to Peter.”

He meant Isabeth of Khaurene, sister of Duke Tormond IV, wife and queen of Peter of Navaya. After an outstanding career taming the enemies of the Church, Peter had fallen defending his wife’s home city from Arnhanders who had invaded with the blessing of the Church.

Serenity had an obsessive hatred of the Connec. He had suffered terribly when he was Patriarchal legate in Antieux. Before becoming Patriarch he had participated in several campaigns against Antieux.

“He’ll find ways to communicate,” Socia muttered. “There’ll be a reason he fled to those islands.”

“Yeah.” Bernardin laughed. “There is. That’s where the storm put him down.” He explained. Serenity’s convoy, hugging the coast, had been caught in a squall and driven off shore. Serenity’s vessel had gone aground on rocks off Little Pinoché. The deposed Patriarch was among the few survivors. “He was headed for Arnhand. Anne of Menand would have taken him in.” But ships from Navaya’s allies had set a blockade almost before Serenity had gotten himself dried out.

Brother Candle pushed back from the table. “I’ve begun to suffer an intellectual malaise. I’ve become too comfortable here.”

Bernardin observed, “Here he goes, fishing for compliments.”

Socia snapped, “Bernardin, you’re too cynical. He’s a Perfect. They’re never happy unless they’re barefoot in the snow, starving, and being hunted by people who want to burn them.”

“This one squeals like a pig whenever we ask him to do something where he might get his tootsies wet.”

Pressed, Brother Candle would have admitted as much. But he was sixty-eight years old. That slowed a man. It left him inclined to ease the strain on his bones. “I’ll be back on the road soon enough to beat the first snow.” Snow arrived earlier every winter.

All conversation died. All eyes turned to the Perfect.

“What?”

“Why on earth would you…?”

“At your age?”

“My age? My age wasn’t a factor when somebody wanted me hustling messages and tokens back and forth between Antieux and Khaurene.”

Socia said, “It’s a factor because you mean so much to us. We don’t want you to leave.”

The Count agreed. “That’s as plain as it can be said, Master.”

Socia added, “You keep up this nonsense, I’ll get Kedle to break your leg.”

“That seems harsh.”

“Tough love, old man. Tough love.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. It is an intimidating journey and these old bones do have too many miles on them already. Meantime, though, I have to deliver you to the mercies of Mistress Alecsinac.”

“I was hoping you’d forget.”

“Get going, Socia,” Raymone snapped.

“An’ it please Your Lordship.” Socia rose, offered a mock bow. It was none too deep. Her stomach got in the way. Leaving the room a step behind the Perfect, she said, “Mistress Alecsinac may know how to convince this beast that it’s time to leave.”