Songs of the Earth (22 page)

Gair looked over at the north stand, where the last of the Masters were filing away. Aysha leaned on her canes, her feet dragging with every step. He waited, but she did not look back.

Ansel’s study was not a large room. Where bookshelves did not reach, the walls were panelled, and a large tapestry hung above the hearth opposite his heavy oak desk, which had been pushed from its usual place in front of the windows to make room for an easel, placed where it would catch the best light. Ansel himself, magisterial in his snowy-white vestments, with a psalter open on his lap, sat in a high-backed siege in the window embrasure whilst the artist fussed with the folds of the robes until they were arranged to his liking before returning to his sketch.

‘Just so, my lord Preceptor, just so. Now, if you could raise your head a fraction?’

Danilar closed the door quietly behind him and folded his hands in his sleeves. He recognised the slender fellow in the painter’s smock. Teuter was the finest portrait artist in Dremenir, but the Preceptor’s expression made Danilar wonder how long it would be before that exquisite psalter was thrown at the man’s head.

‘Finally sitting for your portrait, my lord?’ he asked.

Ansel rolled his eyes. ‘Had to happen sooner or later,’ he muttered, and shifted in the chair. The artist clicked his tongue but continued sketching, his pencil darting over the paper.

‘Fetch me a cushion, will you? My arse is numb from this damned chair.’

‘As I explained, my lord, a cushion will spoil the line of your robes,’ Teuter fluted. ‘It simply would not do to have you portrayed as some kind of invalid.’

‘Ha! It wouldn’t do, would it not? Since when did it
not do
to tell the truth? I’m an old man, Teuter; paint me as you see me!’

‘My lord?’

Ansel gestured with the book. ‘As you see me, twisted hands and all.’

Teuter pursed his lips but said nothing.

Danilar watched the sketch taking shape. A few deft lines suggested the bookshelves and window leading, then bolder strokes shaped the chair and its occupant, whose scowl was transformed into a benevolent half-smile.

After a scant five minutes, Ansel stirred. ‘That’s enough for today, man. I have matters to discuss with the Chaplain.’

‘My lord, we have barely begun—’

But Ansel had already hoisted himself out of the chair, wincing as he kicked the swathes of velvet and satin away from his feet. ‘I said enough, Teuter. Come back tomorrow.’

The painter lowered his pencil and rolled a few words around his mouth, then swallowed them unsaid. ‘As you wish, my lord.’ He gathered up his materials and headed for the door.

Danilar bowed him out and closed the door after him.

‘Whose idea was it to commemorate our time in office with portraits, Danilar?’ Ansel shrugged off his heavy outer robes and flung them carelessly over the arm of the siege. He limped to his displaced desk and sat down behind it, easing his bones into the cushions with a sigh.

‘Preceptor Theudis, I think, four hundred years ago.’ The Chaplain heeled round the chair opposite for himself.

‘Damn silly idea, if you ask me.’

‘If you’d sat for it when you were anointed, like your predecessors, you wouldn’t be finding it so uncomfortable now.’

‘When did I have time to sit for a portrait? Within six months of taking office I was riding out to war, and I spent the next five years in the saddle. Fine portrait that would have made, all dented plate and bloody to the eyebrows.’

‘It would make a refreshing change to see a Preceptor at work,’ Danilar remarked.

‘Instead of all this beatific posturing, you mean? It would at that.’ Ansel shook his head. ‘By the saints, if that Teuter makes me look like old Theudis, all constipated with his own piety, I’ll feed him his brushes through his ears.’

The Preceptor reached for the decanter and glasses on his desk and poured two generous brandies. He pushed one across the table.

‘It’s barely High, you know,’ said Danilar.

Ansel’s lips twisted. ‘Don’t you start sermonising,’ he snapped. ‘It’s bad enough when Hengfors does it without you chiming in. It’s too late to worry about the state of my liver now.’ He took a large mouthful and swirled the brandy around his teeth, then swallowed with a sigh. ‘I’m sorry, old friend. I shouldn’t take it out on you.’

‘Your joints troubling you?’

A grimace. ‘Pain always did make me tetchy.’

‘I remember.’ Danilar picked up his glass, but did not drink. ‘You used to roar at the healers every time they had to stitch you up.’

‘And that was a few times more than the dignity of my office led them to expect, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Danilar could not help but smile. In an instant more than twenty years had rolled away and he was back in the blistering heat of the desert, a sword in his hand and doubts in his heart as Ansel led the charge from the front, as he always had.

‘The Gimraeli healers did good work.’

‘Aye, they saved quite a few we thought were lost. That calls for a toast, I think.’ Ansel topped up his glass and raised it in salute. ‘A toast to old comrades and absent friends.’

‘Now that I will drink to.’

Their glasses chimed together and Danilar sipped, letting the spirit warm his gullet.

‘I miss those times.’ Ansel cradled his glass on his belly. ‘The company of honest men, with a common purpose, instead of all this endless politicking.’

‘I don’t miss the heat.’

‘Or the flies.’

‘Or the fear.’

‘It made you feel alive, though, didn’t it?’ Ansel asked. ‘Your pulse racing, your breath quickening. That roil in your stomach as you snicked your visor down and gathered up the reins, waiting for the signal.’

‘I always kept my visor up.’

‘Weren’t you afraid of splinters if your spear shattered?’

‘I was more afraid I’d sick up and choke on my own vomit.’

Ansel laughed uproariously. ‘I never knew that about you, you know. We’ve been friends all this time, and I never knew. How many years is it now?’

‘Forty and some, since we left the novitiate.’

‘A long time.’ The Preceptor looked down at the glittering Oak on its chain round his neck. ‘A long, long time.’

After another small sip, Danilar set down his glass. ‘Somehow I don’t think you sent for me in order to reminisce about the desert war.’

‘To the point as always, eh? Well, it was partly to get me out of the clutches of that wretched painter, and partly because I need your advice.’

‘Spiritually?’

‘As a clear pair of eyes.’ The Preceptor opened his desk drawer and took out a sheaf of broadsheets. On top was a tangle of
message slips, covered in minute script on both sides, tightly curled from being rolled into cylinders. He tipped the slips onto his desk like so much wood shavings.

‘Can you tell me why the Order spends hundreds of marks every year maintaining a network of agents who send me all this paper when it contains less news than I can find in these?’ The broadsheets landed on the desk with a thud. ‘What is the point of it if I can get more up-to-date and in many cases more accurate reports on the street corner for a farthing?’

Danilar frowned. ‘I think Elder Cristen would be the best person to answer that, since he maintains the network,’ he said.

‘Cristen is a fool. The most he knows about Gimrael is that it’s where the silk for his undershirts comes from. As for what his agents send, the pigeons make more sensible pronouncements than the messages they carry. Listen to this.’

Ansel rooted through the slips until he found the one he wanted. ‘“Minor unrest in the silk quarter of El Maqqam, quickly contained’’,’ he read. ‘And according to the broadsheet – where are we? Yes, here, four attempted arson attacks on Empire merchants’ warehouses, one of which resulted in the loss of the entire stock and the deaths of a nightwatchman and two civilians who were trying to rescue him when the roof collapsed.’ Ansel screwed up the message slip and flicked it towards the hearth. ‘An interesting definition of “minor”, don’t you think?’

‘Cultists?’

‘No one seems to know. Oil lamps tossed through the windows, apparently. No one saw anything.’

‘No one ever sees anything in El Maqqam,’ Danilar grunted. ‘Too afraid of looking crosswise at a Cult sympathiser.’

‘And that incident isn’t the half of it. There’s been piracy on merchant ships, spice caravans lost in the inner desert, and that’s just what’s been happening where there was someone to witness it.’ Ansel scooped up the remaining slips and let them shower down through his fingers. ‘And barely a word of it here.’

Danilar felt a twitch of unease. ‘That is … worrying,’ he said.

‘Just like the old days, isn’t it?’ The Preceptor grinned wolfishly. ‘Twenty-four years on and we’re back where we started – only my agents were actually useful then, when they risked being throttled with their own intestines if they were caught. Tell me what you make of it, Danilar. I need clear sight and plain words, from someone who spent long enough in Gimrael to know what a viper’s nest it can be.’

‘You hardly need me for that, Ansel. You were there too.’ Despite himself, Danilar reached for his glass. A little spirit in his stomach would be comforting. ‘This was how it began last time, and it ended in Samarak. Have the Church’s interests been attacked?’

‘I’ve no reports to say so, but the Cult tends not to leave witnesses, so it may take time to come to light.’

‘Does the Emperor know?’

‘I sent a courier this morning, although I’m sure Theodegrance’s spies have already informed him.’

‘Well, it’s Kierim’s duty to maintain the peace in Gimrael. He needs to look to his borders if he wishes to keep the Cult at bay.’

‘A thousand miles of sand? No one can expect to maintain borders like that without the goodwill of the innermen, and that’s where the Cult draws most of its sympathisers. There’s little love between them and the people of the outer desert, even at the best of times. No, Danilar.’ Ansel’s mouth tightened into a line like a scar, pale and taut. ‘I’m too old a warhorse not to smell battle in the air long before the trumpets ring out. It’s only a matter of time before Endirion’s standard flies over the legions.’

Danilar shuddered. ‘I pray Goddess you’re wrong. No one will thank us for fighting the desert wars over again. Last time around was enough to make me hang up my sword and turn to the cloth.’

‘We may not have a choice, if the Lector declares a crisis of the faith.’

‘What are we going to fight with?’ Danilar asked, spreading his
hands. ‘We are too few, Ansel. I doubt we could muster more than four full legions, even if we sent the entire novitiate to their vigils tonight.’

‘Then we must direct our prayers accordingly, because I’m afraid the choice will not be ours to make.’ Ansel tossed the last of his brandy into his throat and swallowed hard. Almost at once he began to cough. He covered his mouth with his fist whilst his other hand fumbled in his pockets for a handkerchief. Each cough shook his spare frame, like a gale shaking a willow.

Danilar let himself into the next room to get a glass of water from the jug on the night-table and set it down on the desk as the Preceptor hacked one last time and wiped his lips.

‘Thank you,’ Ansel said hoarsely. His chest heaved. ‘Perhaps brandy in the middle of the day is not such a good idea after all.’

He sipped water until his breathing steadied and the unnatural colour faded from his sallow cheeks.

Danilar frowned. ‘I think I should send for the physician.’

‘Goddess, no,’ said Ansel, waving him back into his seat. ‘It’s nothing to bother Hengfors with.’

‘Ansel, you’re not well.’

‘Nonsense, I’m fine. The brandy just caught in my throat.’ Folding the handkerchief back into his pocket, the Preceptor sat back. ‘See? Nothing wrong at all. If you send for Hengfors he’ll expect me to take one of his foul potions and they’re worse than being sick. Now, we have work to do.’

He drew the pile of broadsheets towards him and swept the message slips aside with his hand. Lines of vivid scarlet streaked the yellowed paper.

Danilar stared at the blood, afraid of what it might signify.