A shudder from the small object curled in his cold hand brings him back from boyhood fancies. He looks down at the little messenger, a construct, all brass and glossy steel, yet so cleverly made that it was light as a bird in his hand. Indeed the creature under the metal skin had once been a bird but that was before he had shared some of his essence with it and grafted it into the metal skin it now wore. Now its tiny eyes were his eyes, its every flutter his to command, should he so choose. With such instruments at his disposal it was surprising that he had not learned of the girl’s disappearance almost as soon as it happened; the only explanation was that there had been an outside agency involved, someone who knew enough to keep her out of sight or how to make sure that they kept away from his small spies. A task that was not all that easy since, unless it was stripped down as it was now, the messenger would be almost indistinguishable from any one of the thousand birds that flew over the royal palace every day, he’d only taken the outer skin off now to ensure that someone had not found a way to tamper with it.
After all the effort he had taken to
maneouver
the girl into
Leedon’s
clutches, it was galling to think that she had simply escaped. Impossible to countenance that she had slipped both
Leedon’s
guards and his own spies without help, Zacurius must be involved, there was just no other explanation. Kalip curses himself for a fool, there had been no
rumour
of the silver obsessed
beaurocrat
and he had made the mistake of reckoning without him or indeed
Pellan
, who, it seemed, had now got hold of the girl.
It had seemed so perfect, marry the girl, who was the key to the whole equation to the General and then let him do all the legwork. Just as he had allowed the General to dispose of his fellow Elders, with the added bonus that, due to his agents’ unstinting efforts, many of the forbidden artifacts that had once been kept from him in the Citadel, were now in his position. He was already working on a creature that blended his own handiwork and this ancient power when the girl had disappeared.
Kalip looks across his cabin to the silver shape reflecting the ruddy half light of the room in its smoothed contours and whip thin appendages that looked so much like the limbs of the fresh water squid that inhabited the waters around
Island
City
. The repairs were so close to completion, the functions listed on the old parchment were almost perfectly integrated with its new functions and the mind of the unfortunate he had sealed inside the metal skin. The servant was almost certainly mad by now but that was hardly the point, a combination of machinery and sorcery ensured that its twisted mind had little or nothing to do with its behaviour, at least until the controller allowed it to express that pent up rage. He had allowed himself to get too carried away in the details and forgotten that he was not alone. Now, if he were to keep things as he wanted them, he would have to come to terms with
Pellan
. The bloated freak would no doubt ask for more than either he or Zacurius could afford but he would have to meet those demands no matter what it took. Besides, once the Gate was his, this world would mean very little. Kalip gives a sigh that is more a reflexive memory than anything to do with breathing.
The construct could have massacred a whole army if it had to but it would be no good against his fellow Elders, no real use until he could get Leedon in position to use the girl. He would have to rely on smaller tools for now, his new toy was an instrument designed for broad strokes. As if in answer to his thoughts, a light rap on the cabin’s hidden door announces the arrival of his most senior human agent.
With a snap of his fingers Kalip activates the door’s mechanism and allows the man to enter. The white of a Pardoner’s robe, only slightly stained by the station’s soot, makes the Tinker smile. Who would suspect that such a senior member of the Inquisition could be one of the
Strigoi’s
servants and would soon be in the presence of the General himself? Kalip only regretted that the nature of the game they now played prevented him from having his man simply reveal Zacurius to Leedon, but whatever else he might think, the leader of the Crusade must not suspect the truth of his failure until the last.
“My Lord.” The man in the robes simpers. His true and helpless adoration for his master cannot prevent the Pardoner from slapping at his clothing in the hope of getting some of the soot from it. The man had always been fastidious and too obsessed with his appearance but it was something that Kalip tolerated, after all he reminds himself, a bad workman blames his tools. Sensing something of Kalip’s displeasure, the man makes as if to speak.
“Spare me any explanations,” the Tinker forestalls his servant, “the girl is gone and that is an end to it.”
The man blinks, obviously surprised that his lord has taken the disruption to their schemes so well.
“Don’t be surprised, I can hardly be angry with you when I failed to get wind of her escape. I have, however, at least some passably good news.”
“What is that, my Lord?” His minion dares to ask.
“My little friend here has brought me some valuable information,” Kalip holds up the intricate little construct in his hand. As it had been preprogrammed to do when in the open, the little spy hops from foot to foot imitating the quick darting movements of a small bird on a branch. The almost perfect mime is made strangely disturbing by its skeletal metal limbs. Unaware or indifferent to his servant’s discomfort at this simple display of his handiwork Kalip continues, “
Zacurius’s
plan to have the girl has been disrupted by
Pellan
, one of his children snatched her while she was still on the road.”
“With respect, sir, how is that good news? Those marshes would be impossible to thoroughly search, if Pellan wanted to, he could keep the girl and there would be little we could do about it except to launch a full invasion against an apparently empty swamp, which if ever we could persuade General Leedon to countenance, would be almost impossible to explain without confirming old Rugan’s constant insistence that vampires are still a threat.”
“Have no fear of that, the old freak definitely has no interest in the girl for his own sake. He’s carved out a niche for himself, which he’s not left in generations, why would he develop an interest in the Gate now?”
“You think he will trade her?”
“Just so. We will probably be able to come to an arrangement and we have the advantage of being able to make an offer before Zacurius even knows his plans are thwarted. Besides the girl is no good without the book, with luck we shall be able to reclaim the girl and proceed with the original plan…. Nothing more than a case of wedding jitters eh?” The Pardoner seems partially comforted by his lord’s reassurance but he still shifts uncomfortably.
“Is there more I should know?” Kalip prompts.
“No it’s just, well… can we trust the plan now? It will be hard to keep General Leedon to the idea, he was hardly keen on her to begin with.”
“If politics isn’t enough to convince him then the Gate will be, how can so pious a man refuse a chance at Heaven itself?”
“Not easily but there is always Rugan. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were he rather than Zacurius behind the girl’s disappearance.”
“And what would the priest have to gain? You’ve all but usurped him, haven’t you?”
“Just that, sir, I think he seeks to destroy the alliance I forged in order to undermine me in the General’s eyes.”
Kalip is about to reply when a small slit, set in one of the compartment’s walls, admits another winged spy, at the same time one of the crystal panels set in the wall opposite flares into life, revealing the image of a bedraggled pair, pulling themselves from the mud. Kalip’s servant draws in a breath of recognition at the sight of the grimy Lady Carter but Kalip’s attention is all for the tall white haired figure next to her.
“It would seem that I have underestimated the odds once again! Pellan is no longer someone to worry about.”
“How could Zacurius have achieved this so quickly?” The Pardoner wonders aloud staring at the devastation of Pellan’s collapsed home.
“There is more to this than the merchant,” Kalip says slowly, “we have other enemies trying to thwart us.”
“How can we be sure the man is not just one of
Zacurius’s
agents?”
“Because Samuel Blake would never ride at the order of a Strigoi.” Kalip answers.
Chapter 8:
“Inquisition”
Nathaniel
Ramond
Tenichi, Chief Pardoner, second in line to the Tenichi Barony, since he had sentenced his eldest brother for heresy, Justice of Christ’s Peace and Father to the Fallen. Since the war the man had acquired titles like a corpse does flies. Normally Father Rugan would not have willingly shared the same room as him, at least not with the Chief Pardoner’s knowledge! He had personally observed the Chief Inquisitor more than once through the secret panels and spy holes of the palace, which he had made it his business to find out about, with methods every bit as ruthless as those employed by the blood- thirsty aristocrat. For the last five years the old Necromancer had been doing his best to undermine the man without exposing himself to the Inquisitor’s revenge, a very dangerous game indeed and best played at a distance. No one would dare to openly question the activities of the Inquisition’s highest official. Even the General’s confessor could afford to say little against a man, who was widely considered to be second to Leedon only in name. When he might have done something to curb the Chief Pardoner’s power Rugan had not seen the need; power for the peace time officers of the Inquisition had seemed like power for all crusaders but as the years had passed and Angus had slipped further from him, Rugan had developed a terrible suspicion, which recent events and his own investigations had all but confirmed.
It had been unthinkable, at the time that the young aristocrat had joined the Crusade, to consider that he might be an agent for the Strigoi; in the first days of the Crusade they had been only too grateful for the legitimacy provided by a baron’s son. Without his aid and the information provided by his secret informers, they would never have found the Citadel, never have killed the Elders and that was the least of his contributions to the Crusade. With the heat of war and its enthusiasm gone, his peacetime Inquisition had seemed the best way to keep purity in the newly cleansed baronies. It was only as the new Inquisition gained strength, developing into an unofficial separate body in its own right, while Tenichi began to flex his slowly cultivated power, drawing in those elements in the army and the Church that sought a new route to power or an outlet for fanaticism that had not abated with the end of the war, that Rugan began to truly question Tenichi’s involvement. Too late it occurred to him that if he could use the Crusades for his own ends, there might be those in the ranks of his enemy who would be capable of doing the same thing.
With hindsight, it all seemed too convenient; how Tenichi and his informers had provided the intelligence that so quickly led them to the heart of the vampire infection; how he kept Angus supplied with old lore, gained through his ‘interrogation’ of heretics. Rugan was certain now that it was Tenichi behind the Strigoi influence on his general. It was Tenichi who had made him aware of the Gate and he had been one of the strongest proponents on the alliance with the Carter Barony. It was clear enough to Rugan now, it just had not occurred to him at the time, that there might be those in the Strigoi community who would willingly aid in the slaughter of so many of their own. It was a truth he had been reluctant to face but with the Strigoi stirring again he knew, without doubt, that he had taken the victory they had given him without examining it closely enough. He didn’t even dare tell the rest of his order about his suspicions, lest they decide he had lost all his influence and took precipitous action. With no one else to trust, all that was left to him was a clandestine search for anything that might discredit the man leading what was, currently, the most powerful arm of the Crusade. A man who would be equally happy to discover that the General’s confessor, who had so often questioned him, was an unholy Necromancer, requiring a release from his own sin.
“I am,
of course, grieved
to hear of your loss, sir,” the immaculately dressed young officer says, his contrition so convincing that only Rugan’s distrust allows him to see past the deception.
“As you know, I
favoured
the match, it represented much wealth and stability for the region and the
Union
as a whole, but there are other reasons for us to be disturbed by this turn of events, are there not Master Confessor?” Nathaniel
favours
the rotund cleric with a smile.
If Rugan has chosen his disguise in age and rotundity then
Nathaniel
has chosen style and beauty as his shield. Each strand of hair on his head has been meticulously gathered back into a short tail of jet black strands, even with the late hour of the meeting, he is freshly shaved, without even the hint of stubble. The dark blue uniform, which he had decided to wear, rather than his humble Pardoner’s robe, has been pressed immaculately, and the pistol at his side, bound with ceremonial peace wrappings of gold and crimson cord looks as though it has never been held by human hands, let alone fired. Only the half cloak that hangs from his left shoulder, breaks with traditional military dress and gives a hint of some of the
flamboyancy,
which Rugan knows he indulges in private. The Pardoner was discrete but Rugan had spies at his disposal that not even the walls of the Tenichi manor can keep out. Even with sorcery, however, it had proved difficult to confirm his
suspicion
that many of the young boys and girls, put into the Inquisition’s care by Tenichi zeal, soon found that the outwardly virtuous third son had other appetites as dark as his penchant for murder or torture. Those that survived their master’s mortification of the flesh were even now being inducted into his inner circle, a select group of Inquisitors that referred to themselves as the Hammers of Christ. Of course, there was no direct proof of these goings on and so, as usual, Rugan must content himself with simply being obtuse.