Mother of Lies (44 page)

The rancher, Eligio, wore a peasant’s loincloth and flaunted a brass collar in full view. That seemed like rank insanity in Stralg country. When Orlad had asked his rank he had answered merely, “Spy.” He had good reason to be surly, for he looked no older than Waels but had lost an arm and one eye and would never battleform again. He ran thirty or so llamoids and a staging post for the Liberators. His wife, Carmina, seemed impossibly young to be the mother of the two children. She was an excellent cook, but Orlad reluctantly postponed thoughts of breakfast.

“You might have warned us that you were leaving.”

Eligio barely looked at him. “You’re staying here. Go back to the loft and keep out of sight.” He greeted the driver with a fast twitter of Florengian.

Fabia said, “Or go and beg Carmina to run you up a stack of her onion pancakes. The gods dine here.” She hooked a foot in a wheel and swung up to the wagon as if she had been doing it for years.

Dantio said, “Nice legs,” and followed more circumspectly.

Eligio and the boy were still yammering away, both at once, with much hand-waving. Orlad stepped to within biting distance of Eligio.

“Why are they going? Why are we not?”

“Don’t worry. We can trust them, Orlad,” Dantio said quickly.

“I still want to know what’s going to happen.”

Eligio looked at him as if he were moronic. “
They’re
going to a safe house in the city, and don’t ask me what they’re going to do there because I don’t know.
You
stay here for now. No one enters Celebre without showing his neck to the scum on the gate.”

“So how do Waels and I get in?”

“I’ll tell you when it’s time.”

“Why not now?”

“The less you know the safer.”

“Why don’t they wait and come with us?” Orlad was surprised at how protective he felt toward his siblings now.

Eligio rolled his eyes. “Because they’re not Heroes, stupid. You want my help or not? If you do, throttle your gullet.”

“You’re speaking Vigaelian!” Orlad said, realizing belatedly.

The Florengian showed a set of teeth as jagged as a saw blade. “I help interrogate prisoners. It’s a hobby of mine.” He looked up to Dantio. “Leave the stuff I gave you at the triple fountain after dark. Check if they’ve picked it up every pot-boiling or so. If they haven’t arrived by dawn, try again tomorrow night. If they don’t appear then, they won’t be coming. If it isn’t safe to meet up, try to leave a broken pot there instead. Then they’ll come back here and wait for news.”

Putting on the best face he could, Orlad smiled up at Fabia and Dantio. “Until tonight then. Twelve blessings on you. Give my love to Mama. Tell her I like my steak raw.”

“Twelve blessings on you,” Dantio said. “Raw it will be.”

Fabia said, “Try and stay out of fights, you two.”

Waels flashed her his heart-stopping smile and said, “Why?”

As the wagon rattled out of the yard, Eligio growled, “You want to eat?”

“Very much we do, my lord,” Waels said. “And then we want some lessons in looking after guanacos. All I’ve learned so far is that they don’t smell as bad as onagers.”

Orlad had learned that they didn’t kick as hard, either, but he wasn’t going to mention that.

CHIES STRALGSON

had never been so frightened in his entire life. Not even on the night he was kidnapped, because then he had been falling-down drunk. But now …

Now the sun was setting and Chies was driving down the gully road at breakneck speed because he couldn’t control the team. The car leaped and bounced and rocked, heading steadily closer to Veritano with Sesto following, yelling at him to slow down. The best thing that could happen now would be for him to tip the car and fall out and break his neck. Or throw Saltaja out, but he was certain that would never happen.

He had always known he had half-brothers and a half-sister somewhere beyond the Edge. No one had ever mentioned an aunt. Certainly not a foul, mad, murderous, gangrenous aunt. An aunt who invoked
Xaran!
An aunt who had cast the evil eye on him and murdered ten Werists.

Sesto had promised, speaking in his curious new singsong, that they could pass Veritano on a trail so far from the buildings that Witness Giunietta would not notice. But Chies couldn’t control his rig. And Melchitte had at least two other patrols out, somewhere. And the dead Werists up on the Altiplano would be missed soon, so searchers would go looking. And war-beasts could outrun llamoids with one paw behind their backs and follow a scent for days. When they caught the killers they would tear them to pieces.

Saltaja was haggard and stank of rotting meat. She had lost fingers and toes and most of her nose. And teeth. She was so weak that Chies had to keep one arm around her to hold her in the chariot. He had tied the reins around his waist so he wouldn’t fall out, but that was hunting technique and he had never practiced driving that way. He ought to head straight to Veritano and scream for men to bring ropes and spades to tether and bury a Chosen. He wouldn’t, because she wouldn’t let him. He would do exactly as he was told.

He would also tell Sesto to do whatever she said, and Sesto would obey, too. She spoke no Florengian, yet that had not stopped her using her evil eye. She’d first enslaved Chies and Sesto, then given her orders through them to the other men. She had made them line up so she could hobble along the line, muttering at them, one by one. Then they had been told to strip and kneel down. And then
they had just stayed there on their knees while their flankleader split their heads open with a wood ax and she chanted a hymn to the Evil One!

If a Werist flankleader had killed his own men on her orders, what chance did a boy like Chies have of resisting her? But he was not proud of himself, even so. He had thrown up when the killing started, and lost control of his bowels when she kissed him. He must smell as bad as she did. Now he was terrified by the chariot’s breakneck plunge down the hill and she did not seem worried at all.

“How old are you, Nephew?”

“Sixteen. Just turned.”

“And so tall! Have you made your vows to the gods yet?”

He shivered, wondering why she wanted to know that. “No. The rebels kidnapped me before the turn of the year.”

“That will help. What’s that smoke?”

“Steam. Hot springs.”

“Ah, I could use a good soak. So could you. Stop at a warm pond.”

“I’ll try,” he mumbled. He could not turn the team of four with only one hand, but if he let go of his aunt she might be hurt, and he knew he mustn’t let that happen, whatever he did.

“Tell me about the war,” she mumbled.

“Dunno nothing. The Mutineer seems to be winning. All the battles are his victories.”

“Then tell me about your father.”

“Which father?”

“Don’t play games with me, boy, or I’ll curse the balls off you.”

“I don’t know!” Chies howled. “Stralg? I’ve never met him, not that I remember. He doesn’t …” He was going to say “doesn’t love me” but that would sound ridiculous. How could anyone love him now? He was in league with Xaran, helping one of Her Chosen. Murdering people.

Sesto caught up with them and shouted instructions on how to turn the team. When the llamoids had been slowed to a walk, Chies told him they must find a hot pool. With Sesto leading this time, they reached a place where he said they could bathe. She told Chies to tell him to lift her down from the car.

“Undress me!” she ordered Chies, waving her mutilated hands, and of course he did. She was a horrible sight, the color of old bone, tufts of white hair, every rib showing, dried out dugs like empty meal sacks. “Help me into the water. You get in, too. And tell him to follow.” Sesto had blood all over his hands and arms.

So the three of them sat in the steaming water as the stars came out. Chies had little chance to brood on all the dead men, because she kept mumbling questions and he had to answer, or find out from Sesto for her—the war, the assault on Veritano, yesterday’s unexpected visitors. She listened eagerly to that part. She made Chies tell her all the things the Celebres had talked about with the Mutineer, so far as he had heard. It was a long agony. She was in no hurry, yet the warbeasts might be on their trail already.

“Now, how will you get your dear old aunt to Celebre?”

Chies translated. “We have to take her to Celebre. How can we do that?”

Sesto’s face kept twitching strangely and he spoke funny. “We’ll have to take to the river, or the others will track us.”

“There are boats?”

“Small boats. It’s a small river until we get near the city.”

Chies hugged himself in misery. “Won’t they just run along both banks until they find us?”

“Warbeasts can’t run forever, boy. Boats can.”

Chies told the hag about the river, and boats.

She cackled with satisfaction. “You will arrange whatever we need. He will obey your orders if you say they come from me. If you need anything from someone else, tell me and I will Control them just like I’m Controlling him.”

“And me,” he muttered.

She patted his shoulder with a ruined claw of a hand. “No, Nephew. I’m not Controlling you. I’m forcing him, I admit. He knows I’m doing it and he can’t help responding. But you’re helping your poor old auntie because you
want
to, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Aunt.” He thought he was just too frightened to argue.

“You want to punish the people who did these terrible things to me, don’t you? You want to help your father defeat the Mutineer, don’t you? You want to be doge, don’t you?”

Had he heard right? “Is that possible, Aunt?”

“Bah! If I can send a flank of Heroes to Xaran, you think a ragtag herd of elders will stop me making you doge?”

Chies said, “No, Aunt!”
Holy Twelve!
That made a difference.

“You get me near this Marno Cavotti and there won’t
be
any rebellion.”

“Yes, Aunt. I mean ‘No,’ Aunt.” Hello, Papa. Aunt Saltaja and I have tamed the Mutineer for you. I have his head in this bag. And the elders elected me doge …

“We children of Hrag stick together and help one another!”

“Of course I will do whatever you say, Aunt!”

“How will you get us into the city itself?”

Chies turned back to Sesto, whose twitch seemed to be growing even worse. Giving orders to a rebel flankleader was a heady sensation. “How do we get into Celebre?”

“I can’t go in. The ice devils watch all the gates. They’ll kill me.”

“I can. How about her?”

Sesto blinked, chewed his lip, flicked eyebrows as if his face had gone crazy. “They’ll question a Vigaelian woman. Don’t see them around often.”

Chies turned it into Vigaelian for her.

She was undoubtedly madder than a burning cat, but she was not stupid. “The Celebre boy is a Werist too. And had another Werist with him, you said. How will they get in?”

Translation …

Sesto whimpered, as if in pain. “The Mutineer was going to take the Celebres to Flankleader Eligio. He runs a ranch north of Cypress Gate. He has friends. He gets people in and out.”

“You know this place?” Chies asked.

“Never been there, but it will be easy to find. Just south of Montegola.”

The news made the Chosen cackle again. “Then we will go there and speak with Flankleader Eligio. We’d best be on our way. Chies, you will dress me. Now you see why I told you to collect the men’s robes before Sesto got blood all over them?”

As Chies was helping her out of the pool, he said, “If you want to meet up with Stralg, Aunt, I don’t think we should go to Celebre. He won’t be there.”

She turned and smiled at him. Her mouth was a foul-smelling pit of bloody gums and a few blackened teeth. “Good, good! Starting to be helpful. Your father can wait, boy. What matters first is your sister.”

“Um, Fabia?” He kept forgetting he had a sister.

“Yes, that one. Frena, she used to call herself. But I don’t care what she calls herself. I do care, very much, how she dies. Understand?”

“Er, yes, Aunt.”

“Very horribly, very slowly. Because of what she’s done to me.”

“Of course, Aunt.” Chies finished drying her scrawny carcass with one chlamys and reached for another to drape her. “And her brothers, too?” He didn’t want a contested election.

Not far off dawn, they stole a boat. Two dogs started to bark, then had second thoughts and ran away into the darkness, whining in terror. Their owners were either asleep or had enough sense not to interfere. The hag made Sesto release the exhausted llamoids and push the two chariots off the scruffy little jetty into the river. They floated away upside down, wheels plaintively turning. How soon until the Veritano warbeasts arrived?

Chies gave Sesto his orders, then collapsed in the bottom of the boat and went to sleep.

Before noon they left the river and commandeered a wagon.

That night, Chies found himself eating a hearty meal in a farmer’s hut. Several hearty meals, in fact, one after the other. The farmer was a heavyset man, almost big enough to be a Werist, but he was Controlled as tightly as Sesto, wearing the same mindless expression, answering questions in the same singsong. He had a fat wife, a hulking adolescent son, and a remarkably pretty daughter. They were all Controlled, too. Sesto was a walking corpse, barely able to speak, but he had probably not slept since leaving Veritano. Chies repeatedly had to order him to keep eating.