Children of Earth and Sky (29 page)

His own triumphs had been limited. He'd only had a single cold, wet winter in Obravic, mind you, and spring brought a different set of elements into play, the way an alchemist (
hah
, he thought) deployed new compounds in his attempt to conjure gold, or devise an elixir of immortality, or just one that eased gout.

Obravic was worried about its defences in Sauradia. They expected word, any day, as to whether the Osmanlis were on the move again this year against the great fort of Woberg, key to those parts of Sauradia still held for holy Jad.

And a gateway, in grim truth, to Obravic.

There was no sure way to gauge how far the ambitions of Grand Khalif Gurçu might extend. Could the khalif truly imagine Asharite bells ringing the faithful to prayer right here? Sanctuaries of Jad converted (as they had been in golden Sarantium) to profane temples of Ashar?

Distance had been their ally thus far. And rain. Rain was what they needed, each and every spring. Not here, but to the south and east where the cavalry of Ashar and the infantry—including the dreaded djannis—and the great cannons they wheeled ponderously with them came through Sauradia towards the children of Jad.

There was a certain delicacy to the Seressini position, of course: they traded happily with Asharias. They guaranteed the safety of Osmanli cargo in the Seressini Sea. Their lagoon-bound city stayed afloat (poets had written) on the tide of that trade.

Even so, one didn't want the star-born moving
too
far this way. Power needed to be balanced. If only the khalif would be content with the empire he had, with trade and wealth. With his sumptuous palaces and gardens and (by all accounts) the languorous beauty of his women.

There were so many elements in all this. Conflict brought danger, death, grief—and opportunity. Emperor Rodolfo needed money. Urgently. Fortresses that endured sieges required repair. Seressa, through its honourable ambassador, the esteemed Signore
Faleri, had been pleased to offer additional loans at generous rates—in solidarity, Faleri had said, with the Jaddite cause and faith, and honouring the courage of the emperor's brave soldiers.

He had also seeded his ground in the palace with the usual scattering of bribes. Not for the chancellor: Savko was unimpeachable, a succession of ambassadors over the years had confirmed that. The man disliked Seressa personally, it was believed. No one had been able to determine why.

But there were others with the emperor's ear, carrying less meticulously arrayed scruples. Seressini largesse had found its way over the winter to several of these.

At the same time, this court was working on Faleri, of course. The dance of it was amusing. The yellow-haired girl, Veith, the one from his first evenings here, had become a regular visitor after dark. Over time she had induced him to adjust his views as to the preeminence of Seressini courtesans. She deployed certain accessories that were new in Faleri's experience, and she had not yet exhausted either her devices or her imagination.

He still didn't let her into the room on the main level where he worked. On nights when he let her stay (more often, through the winter) he had a servant posted outside that room in case he fell asleep and she wandered—purely by happenstance, of course—to the desk where the papers were. Gaurio, his own manservant, did some of this guarding, then others in the house relieved him. Faleri's letters were double-masked, she'd learn nothing, but he didn't want it reported back to the Council of Twelve that he was careless with documents out of stupefied lust or some such thing.

She did leave him deeply satiated on the nights she visited, though. Certain women, you might say,
understood
a man.

It was all done to a purpose, and Faleri knew it. Everyone who befriended him here was looking to know more about him, about Seressa. She was subtle when they talked in bed. An intelligent woman. Worthy of Seressa, he had decided.

They didn't actually talk a great deal after lovemaking. He tended to be exhausted, and sometimes in pain.

He had come to enjoy this ceaseless dance of under-the-surface intentions, despite hating to be so far from home. His mistress was no longer his, among other things.

It had always been likely. He had thoughts as to what he might do to regain her on his return. It depended on achieving a seat on the Council of Twelve. Annalisa would like that very much, even more than his wife and daughters, perhaps. His daughters remained unwed, though it was past time. His wife had chosen her tactics the way a military commander might do on campaign. She had made it clear she was relying on his elevation to the council to improve their matches.

There was a great deal riding, in short, on his ability to persuade this court and its absurdly distractible monarch that the pirates of Senjan really did need to be—for once and forever—destroyed.

The chancellor to Jad's Holy Emperor had much on his mind that spring. He always had a great deal to contend with, but some seasons were worse than others and this was one of those.

They had needed to borrow additional funds from Seressini banks to repair the great fortress of Woberg and to supply and pay the garrison there. There was no question the garrison needed to be paid. They were the main defence to the emperor's richest lands. Woberg had been the principal target of the Osmanlis for three campaigns now. Mighty as it was, those troops couldn't be left hungry and unpaid
and
expecting a renewed assault.

There was also the problem of being so much indebted to Seressa.

He had asked aid from Ferrieres, pointing out (again) that all the Jaddite world was at risk if Woberg and its environs fell
under the Osmanli yoke. The young, ambitious king of Ferrieres sent back eloquent letters of agreement and encouragement—but not money, and certainly not soldiers.

The Jaddite world was more divided and mistrustful than ever, the chancellor thought grimly. And, really, if the siege of Sarantium twenty-five years ago had not been able to unite them, what would do that today?

The High Patriarch also sent encouragement and, when winter ended, he had dispatched fifty of his personal guards to journey by sea and land to Woberg. Not a significant force, but fifty good men did help in a fortress. The chancellor replied on behalf of the emperor with appreciation, and a request for prayers.

They needed soldiers, though. Even more, they needed rain. They required the heavens to turn dark and open and
drench
the roads of Sauradia. They needed holy Jad above to soak the infidel armies. Cold water in their boots, dripping into their tents at night, bringing disease, slowing them in thick mud, and—more than anything—preventing their terrible cannons from reaching Woberg in time.

It was always about time, distance, speed.

The fortress gateway to the emperor's heartlands lay at the very end of the Asharite army's fighting range. The Osmanlis had to delay setting out for their horses to be fed and strengthened at winter's end, which meant giving them time to graze on new grass. Then they had to get across land and rivers (the god be thanked for rivers) a very long way, feeding a very large army (and the horses). And then assemble a siege outside Woberg's great walls (great only if they had been repaired) and invest it closely, pounding with their cannons . . . and still leave themselves time to get back home.

They could not overwinter in northern Sauradia until they controlled it. It was a blessing for the emperor. It was what had saved them thus far. There was no way to feed and shelter so many horses and forty thousand men in winter in the lands south of Woberg when the north wind and the hard cold came.

Distance and time weighed in the balance of the scales of war.

And rain. They prayed for rain in all the sanctuaries of Obravic, and the High Patriarch's letter promised that he and his clerical college would do so every morning and evening. Rain, blessed, saving, necessary rain. The destiny of empires turned on spring rainfall.

It could make a man, thought Chancellor Savko, feel as if all his devising was of limited significance. That was a bad line of thought. He pushed it away when it came. You needed to prepare as best you could for a spring of mild sunshine and dry roads—with the massive guns of Asharias rumbling remorselessly north to blast the fortress walls with a noise like the thunder that had failed to come from heaven.

You could not put all your faith in the god. Jad needed you to act for yourself. So it was taught. Good men had to do what they could, year after year. Savko considered himself a good man, if cruelly limited in his resources.

The winter loan from Seressa would carry—as it always did—strings attached. Money would be needed from them again next year. It might be withheld for evidence of imperial ingratitude. They couldn't let that happen.

Savko needed—he always needed—a weapon, levers, any tool to use against the Seressinis. He had agents there, as they had them here, and he was spying on their ambassador, of course. The woman, Veith, was singularly adept; they had employed her before. The current envoy, the merchant Faleri, was not the incompetent figure they had initially thought he might be, but he didn't appear to be
experienced
in these matters.

Faleri had been careful, for example, to keep the girl out of his working room. She had been careful, in turn, to intimate she enjoyed nothing more than being in his bedchamber all night. The ambassador kept her by him in the dark and, lest he sleep and she
drift downstairs in a silent house, had servants guarding his papers.

And, of course, one of those servants was their man. It hadn't been particularly difficult for someone trained to enter the writing room three nights ago, unlock a chest, and swiftly copy the encoded letters Faleri was writing to his council.

Their man had sent copies to the castle that same day.

And they had not helped. At all. They offered no weapon, no tool. No meaning to be found. They couldn't
read
them.

The emperor had the best scientific minds in the Jaddite world gathered at this castle. Savko had immediately put a number of these alchemists and mathematicians to work on the documents. And the finest thinkers in their world had been able to make nothing,
nothing
of the newest Seressini code.

It was maddening. One might have thought—might have naively hoped!—that the expense of housing and extravagantly paying the wretched figures who trundled to Rodolfo's court and explained to him how they, and only they, could achieve his long desire of alchemical transmutation—well, one might have thought they could break a diplomatic code.

Not so. They were, Savko thought—though he shared this only with his young lover and his most trusted adviser—useless. They were buffoons, parasites. He needed, desperately, a defence against the Seressini demands that were certain to arrive—and he didn't have one.

And then, early this morning, grim tidings had come up to the castle, to the chancellor's suite of rooms. The body of a man named Fritzhof, one of the servants employed at the Seressini residence, had been found by the river and recognized. He had washed up on a sandbar downstream from the Great Bridge.

It would not, in the normal course of events, have been a matter for the imperial chancellor. The death of a man in the serving class? They killed each other too often, for too many reasons.
But this Fritzhof had been their man in that house, in the chancellery's pay for years (Savko couldn't recall exactly how many years, he had a note of it somewhere).

Fritzhof was the one who had sent the copied-out sheets of the ambassador's letters. And he was dead two nights later. Savko had no idea how Orso Faleri had discovered the man was a spy but . . . he had done so, and acted upon it. No public accusation, no diplomatic protest, no dance of complaint and denial. A body in the river.

A long knife or short sword, Hanns reported. That was the word of the guardsman who had attended when children reported a dead man on the sandbar. It was a common place for bodies to be found. It had to do with the way the river curved, approaching Empress Bridge.

Savko ground his teeth. He cursed, which he rarely did. There was nothing he could do, of course. The Seressinis had avoided a public squabble about spying, and he would have no way—he knew they'd have been careful—of laying this death at their door. And even if he could, it would be an error. This wasn't worth a diplomatic war—and it would cause one if he spoke recklessly. He had been caught placing a spy, and the man had died for it.

Something occurred to him. He called Vitruvius into his offices. His young Karchite lover had a number of skills. This time Savko didn't need him for killing but to forestall the possibility of another death. The woman, Veith, might be in danger now. If not, well, it could serve as an unspoken punishment for Orso Faleri to be deprived of his nighttime pleasures. He sent Vitruvius to collect the woman and remove her from Obravic.

But then, abruptly, he had another, happier idea. That could happen. You
could
be clever, shrewd, inspired. The chancellor smiled for the first time that day.