Children of Earth and Sky (31 page)

“I cannot say for certain. If I were certain . . .” He took a breath. “It would be a grave matter.”

Grave
. Indeed, Savko thought. Buried deep in a grave. Worms devouring a lovely face, a supple body.

“Perhaps,” said his secretary, “I might impress upon him the gravity of
all
circumstances associated with the chancellery? The critical importance of discretion?”

But, listening, Savko came to a decision. In truth, what happened was that he realized he'd already come to it while the ambassador had been in the room. He felt a great sorrow, like winter. The burdens of office and of life.

He said, “Hanns, it would be better, all considered, if neither Vitruvius nor the woman, Veith, were seen again in Obravic.”

“Indeed, my lord,” his secretary said, voice and face unrevealing.

He was such a lovely boy, Vitruvius. Fair-haired, fair-skinned. Clever and quick to laugh. And tender. He was tender. A sweetness.

Savko added, “In fact, it might be best, for the empire as we prepare for war, if neither of them were seen again anywhere.”

Hanns went pale this time. He had a right to that, Savko thought. It still distressed him to see it. A judgment without words.

“Anywhere. Yes. I understand,” his secretary said. No judgment in his voice. He was too polished for that. “I will look after this.”

“Thank you,” said the chancellor. He gestured to the darkness outside the window. “It is late. I am sorry to have kept you. You may go. I will see you in the morning. Take this please, Hanns. Have it copied and sent.” He handed him the orders he had written, the ones for Senjan.

He sat alone for some time after Hanns left. The room was warm with the fire going. He thought about pouring himself a glass of wine.
Better at the residence
, the accursed envoy had said. Probably true. It was reported he'd brought reds from Candaria. Those were difficult to obtain, even at court, except through Seressa.

He did get up, did pour wine, watered it as he always did. He was the chancellor, he needed to be prudent in all things. Sorrow once more, with that thought. A lovely boy, really, with such promise. So was the woman, though he had to admit she mattered less to him. The way of things.
We can only grieve for so much at a given time
, Savko thought.

He sipped his wine. He thought about Senjan, the orders he'd just given to his secretary to have carried the long way south. They would obey those orders. He knew it. They were fiercely, violently loyal. To the emperor, to the god. To Imperial Chancellor Savko, acting for both.

And in obeying, they would be terribly vulnerable, of course. But, Savko told himself, it was necessary. It was his way of trying
to protect them against the demand coming from Seressa here in a day or two. The republic had given the emperor money he needed. And they would need more. You owed someone a debt and it
would
be called, one way or another.

Seressa wanted Senjan destroyed. And though Rodolfo wouldn't want to allow it, would feel strongly (as strongly as he felt about anything not alchemical) about the matter, his chancellor might have the duty of telling him that a town of raiders, howsoever brave and loyal, could not be measured in the scales against Woberg, which
could
not be allowed to fall.

He might buy some time for Senjan with that letter he'd just written. Or he might have killed a great many heroes of that town. You could do that, kill people with a letter scribbled in a palace room, copied and carried across hills and rivers and valleys.

He went up stone stairs, a servant carrying a light for him, to his sleeping room. He had a handsome home in the city below—he had several homes, country estates, he was well-rewarded for his services. He slept in the castle most nights. It was best. The needs of a challenged empire did not obey the hours of the light.

They brought him a meal. He read dispatches at another desk while he ate, listening to the wind. The night was clear, there were stars, and then the blue moon.

He crossed to the window and looked out. Down at the river, at the scattered lights of Obravic at night. He prayed for rain in Sauradia. Rain and rain. He drank a second watered glass of wine. Didn't pour a third. He was as melancholy as if it were autumn, edge of winter, not the god's sweet springtime.

Sweet
was a hard word just now.

He went to bed, but was still awake, the fire low, when a knock came and a servant entered to his command, bearing a light and two letters, one under seal, one folded. The folded-over note was from the tower where the emperor's guests were housed. He opened that first.

In a neat hand, one of the newer alchemists, a Kindath, explained that the code of the Seressini letters had not been deciphered because there was not, in fact, any true encryption.

The words had been analyzed by him, the man wrote, and no pattern had emerged. It was his belief that the Seressinis used the appearance of a cipher to mask their true device, which was likely to be invisible ink written between the lines of a letter. Only if they held the actual document could it be subjected to various techniques that might cause hidden writing to appear. He signed with humble respect.

It was, Savko thought, sitting up in bed in a linen nightshirt and cap, almost certainly the truth. The thesis covered the matter perfectly. He drew a breath of relief. This didn't help him immediately, but it explained something, and knowledge was always good. It was coinage.

He opened the other letter, which was under seal, from their envoy all the way south in Dubrava. He looked at the date, he always did. The couriers had made speed—this was obviously deemed important. They had brought it to him at night, as well.

He read it. It
was
important. It was a gift.

He sat in a lamplit room and pictured a relay of messengers carrying this here, in morning light and twilight and night, a boat along the coastline, then by horse through mountain passes to this palace, his high chamber. And reading it again, he understood that he now had his weapon against Seressa. Because Jad
could
show mercy to his overburdened, hard-working children sometimes.

They had behaved very badly, the Seressinis. A false Eldest Daughter of Jad placed in Dubrava. Impiety, murders. Murders! Her connection to the Serene Republic kept secret, until now. She was dead, having tried—the letter reported—to kill a Senjani woman, a guest of the holy retreat.

Senjan and Seressa. Again, Savko thought.

Were there patterns in the world, or did men devise them? Did they try to impose meaning on randomness, striving to come nearer to the wisdom of the god? Was that folly, vanity? Was it even heresy?

He dismissed the servant with the lamp. He lay down again, thinking. He realized that these tidings, this weapon, might mean he did
not
need to send the orders he'd just written for Senjan. They might not need this added protection from Seressa now: the idea that they were heroically fighting for the emperor, who could not abandon them while they were doing that.

He considered it, looking at low sparks arcing in the embers of the fire. He decided that, all considered, he wouldn't recall his orders.

The fortress at Woberg would still benefit from Senjani reinforcements—if they managed to make it there. It was a long, dangerous way. But they were supposed to be fierce fighters, weren't they? Wasn't that what was always said about them?

You performed balancing manoeuvres like an acrobat, the chancellor thought. You did shrewd, clever things; you made mistakes. People lived, flourished, suffered, died because of you, or despite you. The faith of Jad was to be defended as best you could devise, also the empire and its borders. You went to the god, eventually, carrying the reckoning of your days, and were judged.

I
t had rained at the beginning of spring in the grazing lands near Asharias. A good thing. The young grass grew. The horses, gaunt as always after winter, were let loose to feed and gain strength for the campaign to come.

Rain there and at that time was needed. Later, on the road, it would not be. It would be destructive, perilous to their purpose. The ka'ids of the khalif's armies conferred with each other (grudgingly) and with those responsible for the well-being of the horses. You wanted to leave as soon as you could, but not too soon, or the cavalry would have tired or even dying mounts when the hard slogging in the rough country towards the Jaddite fortress came.

They were going there, however. That much was known at court.

The restive, rebellious tribes to the east were quiet this year. Some had argued before the grand vizier (for him to carry their words to the khalif) that this was the best time to attack east and decisively conquer those tribes. This had been dismissed, as it deserved to be. The Osmanlis were never going to occupy those empty, deadly lands (broiling in summer, open to savage winds and snow in winter). They only needed them quiet.

No, the prize lands were west and north, around and beyond accursed Woberg and its sister forts behind it. If they could take those, occupy and hold them and the farmlands and towns around, they could pasture horses there, overwinter securely, then expand the next year into the richer Jaddite provinces held by the fool-emperor. They might even take his imperial city—as they had taken triple-walled Sarantium, deemed impregnable, and had renamed it and made it their own, and Ashar's.

And then, truly, might Grand Khalif Gurçu, who had named himself “the Conqueror” and was called by fearful Jaddites “the Destroyer,” begin to make true an assertion that went back to the first ride out of the desert so many hundreds of years ago—ruling the known world in the name of Ashar and the stars, all other faiths and peoples subdued.

Two dates for departure were proposed to the grand vizier. An astrologer was consulted, a Kindath (as the vizier was). The khalif trusted his Kindath—excessively, some believed. This one was wise enough not to gainsay the wisdom of the ka'ids, whatever his moons and the stars might tell him. He approved of both dates, with the usual equivocations.

The khalif, who might be ascetic and withdrawn (more so as he grew older), had never been indecisive. He chose the earlier date. Messengers had already ridden from the city to instruct every garrison as to where its infantry or cavalry was to join the main army. Prayers were chanted in the temples of Asharias the evening before departure.

The army of the Osmanli Empire, twenty-five thousand of them—to be joined by as many again on their way—left the city in the morning.

They paraded past the palace complex towards the gates. They always did that. If the khalif was watching he did so unseen. It had been years since ordinary men or women had seen him. The soldiers made their way past cheering crowds, past the ruins of
the Hippodrome and the High Temple of Ashar that had once been the infidels' great sanctuary before the city was redeemed by the Conqueror. They passed through the triple walls (still standing, mostly, though Asharias needed no walls) and turned north and then west to join the great, wide imperial road. There was sunshine behind them that day, glinting off the city's domes and the sea and the weapons they carried and the great guns on their wagons.

When Obravic sent an important message to Senjan, the court used two couriers, two days apart, for safety.

The identical messages that arrived (within a day of each other, as it happened) that spring were, indeed, important. You could also call them deadly.

There was never a moment when anyone in Senjan, whether at the meeting in the sanctuary, or privately in taverns or homes, or on the streets, or by the sea, spoke a word about not obeying.

Senjan remained what it always defined itself as being. In their own minds they were the eternally loyal warriors of the god. Hardship and death were always present, always close. They defied both.

If you were summoned to war for Jad, however far away, however hostile the lands between, you went to war.

They had done it before. They had died before, on the walls of Sarantium. Every Senjani hero there had died for the last Sarantine emperor. Not one came home, even as a body for burial. Senjan knew, in blood and sorrow, what it was to fight the infidels.

There were just under three hundred raiders in the town at the time the emperor's summons came. After the breaking of the Seressini blockade they'd sent parties down the coast and, more recklessly, across the narrow sea to raid along the other coastline. And because it was spring, two large groups had gone through the
pass towards the Osmanli villages that way. Captives to sell or sell back for ransom, oxen and sheep and goats were the usual coinage of these raids, if fortune favoured the just.

This was different. An imperial request, under seal, for a hundred fighting men to go all the way through lands controlled by Asharites, to defend Woberg Fortress. It presupposed they could even get there, with war headed that way. It meant much more than dealing with hadjuk bands and patrols. It meant the khalif's army of invasion, forty thousand of them, perhaps more. They'd have to beat that army to the fortress—then get inside, to be besieged by it.

And then, if they held out, if the enemy could be caused to retreat as summer turned, it meant getting all the way back here across those same hard, dangerous lands.

It also meant leaving Senjan itself thinly populated with fighting men at a time when they had enemies on the water, too.

They never hesitated.

Three captains were assigned to choose the best men remaining in the town. Those with wounds or with wives expecting children were exempt. Men with small children were not; this was an imperial command. Two of the clerics were quick to name themselves for this journey. More surprisingly, three women indicated they wished to come—following an example set by Danica Gradek, not even Senjani by birth or for long, who had gone to sea with a raiding party this spring.

That party had returned from the far side of the narrow sea triumphantly—but with one of their own men dead, at her hand.

She had not come back with the boats. She had gone to Dubrava to plead the Senjani case regarding a Seressini they'd killed on the raided ship. That death could make for real trouble, given that Seressa wanted them destroyed.

Hrant Bunic, the raid leader, had exonerated her in council of any wrongdoing. He'd praised her, in fact. The Miho family took
a different view, predictably, given that it was one of them she'd killed.

There had been words spoken. It remained a matter of tension in the town. Her family's empty house had been assigned a guard. A Miho was lashed for approaching it in the dark with a torch. Expulsion was threatened if such an incident occurred again.

It was interesting that the women who volunteered to go north and fight had their offer considered in debate. Voices were even raised suggesting it would be a further mark of the courage and ferocity of Senjan if they went.

In the end the clerics had their way and the offers were declined, though respectfully. The Miho clan elder made some remarks about not permitting the Gradek girl to serve as any kind of example for good Senjani women. Hrant Bunic had a blunt reply to this, and there had been a moment when it appeared that a fight might ensue. It had not. They had Osmanlis to deal with, by command of the Emperor Rodolfo, Jad's anointed in Obravic.

One hundred men set out three days later. Time mattered. The evening before there was a candlelit ceremony in the larger of their two sanctuaries (it wasn't actually very large).

The youngest of that company was fourteen. The oldest, Tijan Lubic, was about sixty years of age, as best he reckoned or remembered. The young one, a Pavlic boy, was faster on foot than anyone in the town; Lubic was the best reader of weather and routes they had.

It was a long way to Woberg. That company of men became the subject of song and story for a long time afterwards—the nearest most men ever come to enduring after death.

It is not truly courage if there are no risks, either apprehended or real. In this case there were both. They had known, hearing the letter sent to them, that this was a harsh request, and still they went. Let a greedy, slanderous, slack world take an example from Senjan.

Earlier that spring, shortly after leaving Dubrava with a party of merchants headed for Asharias in a wartime year, the artist Pero Villani had come to realize something about Danica Gradek.

She was formally with them as one of the guards hired by the Djivo family, but she was really coming because she wanted to kill Asharites.

He liked the Senjani woman, cautiously. He admired her greatly. He knew Leonora felt the same, even more so. He had no sense he understood Danica. He had no one to discuss his thoughts about her state of mind with, but it felt as if it mattered, or that it might.

They were travelling at the same time as a likely departure of the armies of Ashar. They would be south of the military's route towards the imperial fortresses. He'd been assured of that. They had papers to show and bribes to offer. Seressa was not at war with the Osmanlis, and Dubrava was a favoured tribute-paying city-state.

And the artist in this party was travelling with his documents and in response to a very specific request made to Seressa on behalf of the khalif, who wanted his portrait painted in the western style.

There should be no military danger to them, only the ongoing, obvious perils of the road: wild animals, bad food, weather, brigands, illness. Any official they encountered could be expected to assist rather than hinder them—though there would always be those bribes to be paid. Marin Djivo, leading them, had made this journey before.

It was interesting, even disturbing, Pero thought, how a great war might be underway, laying waste to farmlands, villages, cities, killing large numbers—and some men and women could go about their almost-normal lives around the edges of it.

Given that, his belief that Danica Gradek was praying for a fight, that she was
hoping
they'd be set upon by some band, was unsettling.

Whenever he glanced at her she seemed to be listening for something, or watching for it. She was intent, straining forward, even more than her dog was, he thought. The big dog—Tico, she called
it—was amusingly happy, chasing rabbits through muddy fields, returning to the party undisturbed by failure.

She wouldn't be, Pero thought. She wouldn't be undisturbed.

They could expect to be six or seven weeks on the road, Marin Djivo had told him—barring incident. The Dubravae was leading, despite the presence of three Seressini merchants and their goods. Most of the party walked, a few rode donkeys, four of the eight guards were horsed—two of these went ahead each afternoon to alert the next inn that a large party was approaching, with animals and goods. They didn't all get beds each night, though the road was quiet. They tended to have to sleep four or five to a room, at inns of varying cleanliness. Pero Villani, denizen of Seressa's tannery district, was accustomed to rough quarters. Djivo, fastidious, paid extra for a room of his own sometimes.

Travel was not for those accustomed to or desirous of a soft life. The guards slept in the stables with the animals, defending their goods there. An even less-soft life, Pero had said wryly when one of his fellow Seressinis complained at the third inn about rain dripping into the room.

Danica Gradek was the only woman, of course. She had refused to cut her hair, though she kept it pinned under her hat. She was tall, wore men's clothing, carried weapons; those encountering them casually might not even know she was a woman.

She and Pero were both on foot. The days were long, often wet. He tried at times to engage her in talk. She was courteous without being attentive.

They had Leonora in common. He wondered if this woman knew about the feelings he'd expressed to the other one in Dubrava, on the harbour. Probably not, he decided. Leonora Valeri (he wouldn't think of her as Miucci any more) was going to have to become extremely discreet in her new role. Another complex woman, and one, he realized, with every step he took away from her, he would probably love all his life.