Ascendant's Rite (The Moontide Quartet) (69 page)

‘Freedom for Ja’afar! Freedom for Javon!’

The drums thundered and the first ranks stepped off on the road leading west.

26

Family

The Mage Houses

The Pallas Magi are obsessive about family, being the guardians of magical bloodlines. They will marry only among themselves, and any barren marriage is the source of severe opprobrium. Quite simply, the mage-blood is the foundation of the empire, and real power is procreated through the loins of the pure-blood families.

O
RDO
C
OSTRUO
A
RCANUM,
P
ONTUS, 807

Southern Kesh, on the continent of Antiopia

Awwal (Martrois) 930

21
^st
month of the Moontide

Ramon Sensini nudged Lu, his mare, down the slope to where Silvio Anturo was waiting. Above and behind him, a shadow on the gloomy ridge, Jelaska waited. Silvio spurred forward to meet him.

Anturo had his own bodyguards, a squad of a dozen men, Silacian and Dhassan toughs who eyed the figure on the ridge above uneasily. All were big, muscular men, but they knew who Jelaska was, and none wished to make a false move.

One of Anturo’s party, waiting a little aside from the rest, trotted forward and lowered his hood: an older man with silvery hair and a cheerful face that could go stony as a grave-marker. Ramon knew him well: Tomasi Fuldo, Pater-Retiari’s right-hand man. ‘Buona sera, Ramon,’ Fuldo called in musical Rimoni. ‘Come sta, amici?’

Jelaska sent. She was loosely linked to his mind, her touch watchful.

Ramon reined in, reassessing. ‘Capo Tomasi, to what do I owe this pleasure?’

Tomasi Fuldo had been Ramon’s mentor in the world of the familioso. To say he was the brains of the organisation was to exaggerate: Pater-Retiari was highly intelligent himself, and no one’s pawn. But Tomasi was the smartest man Ramon knew. He had once been a treasury official for the Imperial Governor of Silacia, but always in the pay of Pater-Retiari; up until the day he was exposed and had to flee, he’d robbed the governor blind. Now he applied his expertise to aiding the familioso finances; it was he who had suggested the misuse of the Imperial promissory system that Ramon had been carrying out.

They dismounted, embraced and kissed each other’s cheeks, and Ramon noticed Tomasi’s smile was getting nowhere near his eyes. ‘You’ve been a worry to us all,
giovanotto
.’

‘Things haven’t exactly gone to plan,’ Ramon told him.

The Retiari capo nodded as if approving, but Ramon sensed unease. He would already be noticing changes in his pupil: maturity, perhaps even hints of disaffection. ‘The Petrossi familioso are also anxious, Ramon – it had been so long since we lost touch with you, while investment has continued to flood in – far more than you and I even dreamed.’

‘How so?’

‘These Rondian nobles think the world owes them money,’ Tomasi replied. ‘We’ve made full use of all the excesses of the Imperial system – the greed of the magi, who believe that no one would dare to defraud them; the corruption in the legions, and the flimsy controls around the whole promissory note system itself. But now we have to close the deal.’

‘We can do that,’ Ramon assured him.

‘But where have you been? Sol et Lune, I’ve had to work hard covering for you! We even maintained interest payments after the Second Army left Peroz, to quiet the rumours. We’ve had to use our own reserves, gambling that you would reappear with the bullion.’ Tomasi’s face tightened. ‘I was confident – others less so. Where is the gold, Ramon?’

Silvio Anturo edged closer. ‘My patrona, Isabella Petrossi, also wishes very much to know this.’

The Crusades were a financial wilderness, ripe for exploitation, but if Tomasi was right, their ruse had been almost too successful. No one involved had known what was coming: Shaliyah. That catastrophe had left the familioso as exposed to the promissory notes as anyone else – and now it was beginning to look like Tomasi had gambled the wealth of the Retiari on finding Ramon with the gold.

Which is exactly what I wanted,
Ramon thought,
but I have to keep this illusion going, or all Hel will break free
.

‘I have some of it, and I know where the rest is,’ he told them. ‘There are caches on our route, all the way from here to Khotri.’ He’d already told Silvio Anturo this: it was good for lies to be consistent.

Tomasi scowled. ‘It’s inconvenient that you’ve buried it, but understandable. I expect I would have done the same. But the Treasury also knows you’re here: your arrest, and the recovery of that gold, has become an unspoken objective of this phase of the Crusade. I am told the Church and the Crown have joined forces to that end.’

Nice to feel important
, Ramon mused as he studied Tomasi. Confronting his Capo at some point had always been an inevitability. What he would do next he still wasn’t sure; whatever it was, he would have to step carefully.
If I can’t get my mother and sister out of Retiari’s hands, it’s all been for nothing . . .

That meant keeping the gold out of everyone’s clutches but his own. Though he was also going to pay the Lost Legions soldiers what they’d earned. They were his kin now, that much he knew, far more so than the familioso had ever been.

‘We had some losses, and some of the recoveries will be difficult,’ he said.

‘Then we need to get what we can,’ Tomasi said. ‘You must leave the army and bring your wagons with you – that ruse is over.’

‘That’s twenty-five wagons,’ Ramon replied, ‘all with false bottoms and cargo. How’re we going to conceal so many? Especially with the Inquisition trailing me.’

‘The Quizzies are after you?’ Tomasi looked at him anxiously.

Silvio Anturo frowned. ‘You’ve not mentioned this before, Sensini.’

‘I didn’t think it was related – we discovered secret Inquisition death-camps on the far side of the Tigrates, and the Inquisition has been plaguing us since. They arranged the destruction of the bridges at Vida to cut us off. But now it appears they’re working hand-in-glove with the Treasury people in Vida.’

Tomasi grimaced. ‘It makes your escape even more urgent. What are your movements from here?’

‘Seth Korion has sent messages to his father, apprising him of our situation as we rest and prepare for the retreat north. We’re still six hundred miles from Southpoint, and then it’s another three hundred across the Bridge. It’s early Martrois: we’ve got four months to walk a thousand miles. Seth wants us on the road inside the week.’

‘There will be opportunities to escape on the north road.’

‘No doubt, but the wagons are well-guarded – by my own men, for sure, but it’s not a simple thing.’

‘We have the manpower to snatch the wagons,’ Tomasi assured him – which was alarming – but then he added, ‘I don’t think we’ll be ready to make that move for several weeks.’

That bought Ramon time. The meeting broke up cordially, with perhaps a little more trust than it had started. As he rode Lu back towards the legion camp, Ramon rejoined Jelaska. She clearly wanted to talk, but refrained from speaking until she was sure the last tracker had turned away.

‘What are you going to do?’ the Argundian woman asked. ‘You’ve got the Inquisition, the Imperial Treasury and now
two
familioso after you. I imagine the Hebusalim underworld are going to want a word too.’

‘I’ll hide behind your skirts,’ he said with a grin.

She wasn’t in the mood to laugh. ‘The Hel you will. If you’re going to get that money back to Pontus and keep all your promises, you’re going to need a few more fox-tricks.’

‘Fox-tricks are my specialty. My children – I mean my
child
– needs me.’

‘Children?’ Jelaska pounced. ‘You’ve more than one child? Who else . . . ? Calipha Amiza in Ardijah, right? Tell me I’m right!’

‘Si,’ he admitted. ‘And my maid in Silacia was pregnant before I left for the Crusade, so that one will be a year old – no, more by now.’ He thought of another encounter. ‘And then there was a girl in Pontus – but she was also a mage, so the odds of her conceiving were low.’

‘Oh la! Anyone else? How’s Lanna?’

‘She says she’s barren.’ Since Severine left, Lanna had taken to sliding into his bed after dark – he’d thought no one knew, but Jelaska had always had a nose for what went on in camp.

They reached the Lost Legions’ perimeter and parted before re-entering. He headed for his tent, the one Severine had cast him out of. It felt empty, the absence of Julietta a painful void, the silence a reproach. So after lying alone fidgeting for a while, he got restless and went wandering.

The night was hot and sultry and the men were lively. They had plenty of water from the river, and their escape from Riverdown had lifted them immensely. Once again their commanders had delivered, keeping them safe and one step ahead. The suffering of that confined camp was forgotten, and the men who noticed him called his name, offering drink from dozens of illicit stills.

The rankers were in good spirits, despite the army having lost more than a thousand men at Riverdown. They now numbered around eleven thousand. He eventually found his own guard cohort: down to sixteen having lost Neubeau, Hedman and Briggan at Riverdown. Most were wounded, but they were in better shape than many units.

‘When do we march, sir?’ Pilus Lukaz asked after Ramon had accepted a thimble of the liquor that Ilwyn brewed, which travelled down his throat like a liquid fireball.

‘In about a week. We’re trying to talk to Papa Kaltus by relay-stave to clarify orders, but even Seth has to go through the protocols, apparently.’ He raised his voice to encompass the whole cohort. ‘Don’t you lads worry about food: we’ll be back in the Imperial supply network soon. Standard issue: beans and hardtack. I bet you’ve missed that, si?’

The men laughed. ‘Don’t think I c’n stand food that en’t cooked in Noorie spices any more,’ Vidran remarked. ‘Gonna get me a Dhassan wife, one that can cook eastern grub.’

This elicited a chorus of comments about the relative merits of Yurosian and Antiopian food; soldiers could be relied upon to go on for ever about food. Then, as men will, they turned to the merits of Dhassan woman – soft bodies, good cooks, compared to Keshi women – slim, passionate, but devoutly Amteh; and Khotri women, who were earthy, bony creatures who offered few creature comforts but were fiercely loyal. Ramon shook a few hands and drifted on, leaving them to it.

He found his maniple’s tribune, Storn, sitting inside one of the wagons containing the gold, ticking off supply-rosters and shaking his head. He looked up in alarm when he heard movement, then relaxed when he identified Ramon. ‘Evening, sir.’

‘Evening, Storn. Any problems?’

Storn could have given him an hour-long recital of problems, but they both knew what he meant. ‘No one knows but me and the other logisticali. That’s two dozen, who’ve proved they know how to stay mum,’ he assured Ramon.

The twenty-five bullion wagons all had false floors, beneath which they were lined with one-pound ingots of pure gold, melted down en route from all the coin they’d accumulated. If Tomasi Fuldo was right, the latest spike in the gold price meant that it was now worth close to one million auros, a mind-boggling sum. A pound-ingot was the size of his hand and half as thick, and they had six thousand of them, about eight thousand per wagon. It didn’t look like a lot, but each ingot represented approximately the lifetime earnings of an ordinary farmer in Yuros. With gold now so rare, they were potentially carrying enough to mint about a fifth of the coins in circulation in the empire.

‘The horses must be struggling with the weight?’

‘No more than the other wagons – gold is heavy, obviously, but we’ve balanced the bullion loads with lightweight material to fill the wagons,’ Storn answered. ‘The water wagons are actually far heavier when full. But I’ve been wondering what’s next, sir? When do we
divest
of this weight?’

Ramon leaned in close. ‘For now, we stay silent. And I want you to find some smelting equipment. First place we stop, start minting coins – take a mould from a Rondian auros, use tin and copper to make the coins, then dip them in liquid gold. Make sure it’s the requisite amount: I want our boys to be able to use these coins in the West, si?’

‘I’ll be happier when we’ve distributed the bulk to the boys, sir,’ Storn confessed.

‘That can’t happen until we’re safe,’ Ramon replied. He patted Storn’s shoulder. ‘You’re doing well, Tribune. We’ll be home soon, and you’ll be a rich man.’ He saluted, and moved on.

*

Seth Korion stared around his tent at those of his magi who’d joined him. The appointed hour was almost here, and he found his hands were beginning to shake.
Tonight I’m going to talk with Father . . .
He didn’t feel at all ready.

Beside him Jelaska was chatting with Evan Hale about the merits of Keshi versus Yurosian bows. Hale, like all Brevians, used a longbow, but the Keshi used recurved shortbows. Hale was a taciturn man who seldom spoke, but he played the lute and sang sad Andressan laments beautifully.

Chaplain Gerdhart was also present, because Seth wanted a priest at hand – not for any logical reason, but Father might expect it. And Fridryk Kippenegger was here when he’d not been invited, having wandered in and poured himself a drink and now Seth didn’t know how to ask him to leave. Kip was muttering about something to Ramon, who was still subdued after Severine Tisseme’s desertion.

I wonder where she went? I hope she’s safe – and little Julietta too.

On the table before him was a metal platter of water and various powders heating over some candle-stumps, slowly steaming to create a billowing cloud in which the scrying image would emerge. As the hour-bells rang, they all lapsed into silence, and their eyes drifted back to Seth.