To Aldric’s slight surprise they did as they were bidden at once, without question—and without a word of protest at the Prokrator’s high-handed manner. That in itself told him a thing or two about the power of the Secret Police. But as he turned his head to watch them go, he caught his first glimpse of three men who stood silently in the lee of the doorway; men who by their appearance had nothing to do with the military conference but everything to do with Bruda. Only one he recognised: Garet, the officer-cadet who had been his gaoler aboard
Teynaur
. The others he had never seen before.
There was a man in armor, flashed with
tau-kortagor’s
rank bars like those Garet wore, and alongside them— also like Garet now, though they had not been there before—silver thunderbolt insignia which meant nothing to Aldric other than that Bruda wore them prominently at the collar of his robe. Whilst the third stranger was strangest of all, for he was a replica of the Prokrator himself, with a mask—this of red-enamelled metal etched with patterns that seemed to mean more than simple decoration—and a wide-shouldered scarlet over-robe stiff with matching silver-worked embroidery. Aldric’s first impression was of some reptilian creature which only incidentally resembled a man; and it was an impression which refused to go away.
“My chief lieutenant,
Hautheisart
Voord,” said Bruda in that resonant metallic voice of his, and Voord bowed with a courtier’s grace. “I think you know his action squad already.
Tau’hach-kortagorn
Tagen and Garet.”
Aldric looked steadily at the two officer-cadets, guess-ing privately that such a low rank in the Secret Police was far from low at all. Garet’s profession of ignorance had been no more than that. “We have met, yes—but not socially. And without formal introduction.”
A wintery smile crossed Goth’s hard features. “We’ll be talking for a while yet; I think refreshments would be in order. See about it, and bring Lord Aldric’s gear and equipment.”
“All of it?” Voord’s voice was plainly quite youthful—and petulant—despite the hollow echoes of the mask.
“All. Do it. Now.”
Aldric suppressed a smile; he had sensed from the very first that Voord probably didn’t like him much. The reason didn’t concern him, and it certainly wasn’t going to cause any sleepless nights since it was plain that as Goth’s “guest” he enjoyed a somewhat privileged position. The situation was one he was fully prepared to use. Then his hearing plucked a familiar name from the background mutter of conversation, and without thinking he echoed it aloud.
“Kathur?” Heads turned, and though he could see only one face of the three that mattered, all were probably alike in their quizzical expression. “Then I was right.”
“Right about what?” Voord was the first to voice everyone’s question.
“About the woman, Kathur—in Tuenafen. That it wasn’t a coincidence, when she and I…” He stopped, embarrassed, but his meaning was clear enough.
“
Kagh’ Ernvakh
regard coincidence as useful,” said Bruda, “only when we create and control it. At all other times I dislike it intensely. Though it does seem that the woman in question—”
“Went beyond her instructions rather,” finished Voord, and had his face been on show it would have been stretched by an unpleasant salacious grin. “She was ordered to contact you, to keep an eye on you. The fact that she chose to keep much more than an eye should be a source of some amusement,
hlens’l
It most certainly was to me.”
“Kathur wouldn’t talk about—” Aldric burst out, and was promptly silenced by a wave of Voord’s hand. There was something wrong with that hand, something horribly wrong.
“Kathur would,” the
hautheisart
said with a nasty air of authority. “And did. After the proper persuasion. At considerable descriptive length. She gave you a very, very good report—one you should be proud of.”
“Voord!” Goth really had no need for the added emphasis of a flat-handed slap against the table; that an Imperial Lord General had cause to raise his voice was emphatic enough. “I earlier had cause to warn
Eldheisart
Hasolt about insulting talk. Stop it. At once!”
Voord swung round on the general and, secure in his own power and the power of what he represented, paused just long enough for insolence but not so long that it was obvious. Only then did he salute. “Of course, sir. Immediately, sir. But these are merely facts related to me by one of my own agents. Sir…”
“Whether they’re merely facts or your own opinions, Lord
Commander
Voord, be good enough to suppress them. Because regardless of your arm of service, Lord
Commander
, three gold diamonds outrank one in silver, and any
junior
officer can be broken by a
superior
. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
“Eminently so, sir!” Voord was at attention now, and very likely sweating inside his mask. “But I would point out, sir, that this agent, this
woman
thought enough of the prisoner—”
“Guest, Voord, not prisoner. Guest.”
“Thought enough of him to threaten me with a weapon later proved to be both loaded and lethal.”
“And were you disturbed by this threat,
Hautheisart
Voord? Did it frighten you?” Goth’s voice was silky.
“Frighten? Not for a moment, sir!”
“Then you were a fool. If you spoke to her as you have spoken to me, I’m surprised she didn’t at least mark you just to teach you manners!”
“Lucky for her that she didn’t.”
Goth stroked his beard a moment and stared at Voord without troubling to hide his dislike. Then he smiled with a quick gleam of teeth and no humor at all. “But luckier for you.”
It was perhaps as well that at that point the chamber doors were opened to admit several retainers. Most carried trays of food and drink, but two bore benches, on which were items that Aldric had thought he would never see again. His armor, left behind in Tuenafen—or so he had thought. His saddlebags and saddle, suggesting that just possibly Lyard had been transported here as well. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility. Then he saw what was tucked like an afterthought into the facial opening of his helmet’s warmask; a cylinder of papers, bound with tape and sealed with the crest—he could see it even at this distance—of the Imperial Fleet. It had the look of a report about it; the sort of report that a warship commander might put in concerning certain irregularities on his last voyage.
Voord—Voord, Voord, Voord: where had he heard that name before?—stepped forward and plucked the scroll from its resting-place, snapping away the seal with his left hand. Aldric looked at that hand and shivered; something most unpleasant had happened to the
hauthei sart
at some time, to leave him with such a claw, and it made his own few scars entirely insignificant. After only a moment scanning the sheets as they uncoiled from their tight roll, Voord nodded as if they had contained no more than he expected, glanced with his expressionless masked face towards Aldric and then laid them with a flourish on the table before Goth.
“Will you take wine?” Aldric jumped a little; the voice at his shoulder belonged to Bruda, who moved with uncanny silence for such a large man; the sight and sound of this sinister figure playing the courteous host— and playing it well---chilled him with a recollection of where he was.
“I… I would rather something with more strength, I thank you,” he replied, cursing his jumpiness, cursing his shock-born stammer and taking refuge in slightly stiff formality. When he was offered Elthanek malted-barley spirit, he didn’t for once pause a second to wonder how it had passed through the various blockades between its source and his hand. Instead he put the glass to his mouth, feeling and hearing its rim clink against his teeth, and let the liquid fire within it run down his throat to light a small, comforting furnace in the pit of his stomach. There he took another swallow; and a third.
There was a small metallic click behind him and Bruda removed his mask before helping himself to some food. Voord did likewise, and there was a third and more final clatter from the door as Garet and his companion secured it to keep unauthorised eyes from the faces of the Empire’s Secret Police.
Aldric’s eyes might well have been regarded as unauthorised, but special dispensation had left him on this side of the door so he stared his fill. First at Voord, he being closest—and also most likely to be annoyed by the scrutiny. The
hautheisart’s
features were those of a young man, sufficiently so to be remarkable when set against the markings of his rank. He was only a couple of years older than Aldric, most likely, and he looked thin, stretched, gaunt—although it was difficult to be sure about that, for there was armor beneath his patterned overrobe and it gave his body a bulk it probably lacked in the flesh.
Voord’s hair was fine and washed-out blond, almost colorless; he wore it brushed straight back from a high, intelligent forehead that gave him a disdainful air. Hooded light-blue eyes returned Aldric’s gaze with an apparent or well-played lack of interest—his mask, as was its purpose, had concealed an initial monstrous curiosity about the Alban’s wolfskin jerkin, a curiosity born of reluctant, unbelieving familiarity. His whole attitude was one of studied indifference, and only his mouth was wrong; to match his languid expression it should have been full-lipped and decadent. Instead it was little more than a flaw in a clean-shaven face carved of white alabaster.
Bruda, for all his seniority in rank, seemed rather more approachable, more likely to make that small effort which bridges the gap from acquaintance to—however superficial—friendliness. It was a small thing, but one which experience had taught Aldric to regard as important. The Prokrator’s face, that of a man in his early forties for all that he moved like one fifteen years younger, was… ordinary. Totally ordinary. Aldric was disappointed at first; he had expected drama, an angular jaw, high cheekbones, distinctive, icy eyes. Something to make this man look like what he was.
And then he realized that Bruda was
perfect
for what he was. Apart from his height, and there was nothing unusual about it for there were many who were taller, there was nothing about the Prokrator to hang a memory on. His features were regular, symmetrical; neither scar nor blemish nor any other distinguishing mark marred the smoothness of his skin, which in itself contrived not to be so smooth as to be worth remarking on. Even his sweeping mustache meant nothing, because mustaches could be shaved—or false. For all that he had the necessary eyes, and nose, and mouth—which themselves were neither large nor small nor irregularly shaped—Bruda to all intents and purposes had no face.
Aldric took another mouthful of spirit, fully aware as he raised the refilled glass that this and the ration red he had downed earlier were the only things in his stomach. He was equally aware how quickly that would make him… relaxed; and the prospect concerned him not at all. There was nothing now that would better his situation, and probably nothing short of an armed assault on the three officers could make it any worse. All of this hospitality hadn’t fooled him; he knew the honeyed bait before a trap when he tasted it. The Alban
eijo
—for if that was what they wanted, that was what he would be— grinned on one side of his face with an expression he didn’t trouble to complete, and drained the glass instead.
Made bolder by the alcohol which had already percolated into his system, he studied the discarded mask: those metal screens that were the public visage of
Kagh’ Ernvakh
. Then he lifted the nearest—Bruda’s—for closer inspection and looked up from his own face reflected back at him to meet the Prokrator’s curious gaze. “Why?” was all he said.
“The masks? See for yourself. Status, and a mark of rank; secrecy, and somewhere to hide my face.” Even Bruda’s voice—and he was speaking Alban now—had no accent. No accent at all. Neither the underlying throati-ness and sibilance of one whose first tongue was Drusalan, nor the nasal purr of the Jouvaine; not even any of the Albans’ own regional colorations. The words emerged and were understood, but their source remained untraceable.
Aldric set down the mask and saw how even the lamplight seemed to shudder from its polished curves and angles. Or maybe that was just the slight movement of his own touch. “Yes. I see. All too well, I think.”
“Bruda!” General Goth spoke from the head of the table, where he held a sheet of paper at arms’ length with the plain wish that it could be held further still. “Bruda, read this if you would. The rest of you: Voord, Tagen, Garet, be seated. We should begin the business which has brought us here.”
“Myself included, Goth-eir?” asked Aldric, lifting his eyes from the steel mirror of the mask.
“Especially yourself. This concerns you—both as a man and as an agent of your king.”
“Of course.” If there was a faint edge to his voice, it was not directed at the general. “But have I a choice— whether to accept or to refuse involvement?” Even as he asked the question Aldric heard Bruda’s soft, inhaled oath as the Prokrator read what a certain Imperial ship-commander had to say about a certain passenger aboard his vessel; and that inhalation told him what the answer would be.
Had
to be. And he was right.
Out of the three who might have given a reply, it was Goth who voiced it. “I regret not, Aldric,” the general told him, but for all that there seemed to be little regret in the man’s tone.
“Then I’d as soon not hear your plan at all.”
“You misunderstand,
hlensyarl
,” said Voord unpleasantly. “What the Lord General means is that you have no choice at all.”
Aldric favoured him with a neutral glance. “We’ll see. Afterwards. But for now,” he deliberately turned his back on the
hautheisart
and inclined his head courteously towards the two senior officers, “whenever you wish to begin, sirs, I will be ready to listen.”
“Our Emperor,” said Goth, “has a sister; Princess Marevna. And she has spent the past two months under lock and key in the Red Tower at Egisburg.”