Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (17 page)

    
“Someone entered that room, and then sealed it with a Cheyak ward,” Ancenon concluded, although I had already figured out what he would tell me.  “Four hundred years ago, no Uman-Chi could have done that, even if they wanted to.  Four hundred years ago, the Uman-Chi were trying to find a homeland, and were searching for any place that had a Cheyak identity.  Someone who knew the truth about Outpost V had helped to disguise it, to keep it from them.”

    
“Clearly, some Cheyak have survived the Blast.”

Chapter Eight

Families

    
I’d heard what I needed to from Ancenon and D’gattis.  I could dispose of this Dorkan wizard later.  I was worried about my daughter now.

    
I marched straight back to my quarters.  Ten Wolf Soldiers sent by Shela met me half way.  Their sergeant saluted me, making a fist over his heart.

    
“Lupus,” he said, “the Lady sends us for you.”

    
“My daughter?”

    
“She is well, Sir,” he said.  Shela knew better than to send half of a message.  “But there was an attempt on your apartments.”

    
I nodded.  “Assemble the Pack,” I ordered him.  “Asleep or awake, on duty or off, 100% of them, no excuses.  If they don’t or won’t show, execute them.”

    
He saluted, turned on his heel and left.

    
I had a traitor to find.

    
Shela sat in the rocking chair in our apartments, nursing Lee.  She bolted from her seat when she saw me.

    
“Look at it,” she demanded, pointing to the door.  “Look at it and tell me what you see.”

    
I squatted down and studied the doorjamb, expecting to see evidence of prying, but saw nothing.

    
“Not there,” she said, her voice filled with fear and anger.  “The hinges, look there!”

    
I leaned closer.  They were shiny brass, letting the door open in, so that it could be kicked in, but not have its hinge pins removed and slid open.  At first I saw nothing, and then on the lowest of the three I saw a tiny scratch, shiny and new.

    
I tapped it and the top of the pin jiggled.  I put my fingernail under the brass top, and it lifted away easily, revealing an iron pin, its top merely dipped in brass.

    
“You could-“ I began.

    
“Pop it with a magnet,” Shela finished for me.  “That isn’t the work of any soldier, any spy.  That is the planning of a bounty hunter who knows what he is about and is setting up his attack.”

    
“Klem may be a bounty hunter, then,” I said.

    
“Or be working with one, or have their training,” Shela said.  Lee fussed at her nipple, and Shela moved her to her shoulder.  Patting her back nervously, I could see how this rattled her to her heart.

    
“White Wolf,” she said, “we cannot allow –“

    
“I have the Pack assembling,” I said.  “You will come with me, and I will ask each one them where their loyalty lies, if they would ever betray me, and if they know or are Klem.  That should catch our spy.”

    
She nodded.  “And if that doesn’t reveal him?”

    
I looked her in the eye.  “I can get more of that gas, if I have to,” I said.  “But understand that this is going to hurt morale, and hurt it badly.  After this, we will have to do something to show that we have faith in the rest, and don’t blame them for this happening.”

    
“What will you do?” she asked.

    
I smiled.  I already knew.

     The Wolf Soldiers, ‘the Pack,’ stood at attention in the palace courtyard, a wide open space paved with grey flagstones, between the palace gates and the granite stairs leading up thirty feet to two giant red, wooden double doors.  Discipline was their bread, duty their water.  They were on their second chance, and they knew they were more feared and better respected than any troops who marched on Fovea.  They defeated ten times their number if they had to, and took it in stride.

    
This would slap them right in the face, I knew, but it had to be done.

    
“There is a traitor among you,” I said.

    
The comment ripped an audible gasp from them, not as one would hear in a court, but as one would hear on the wind.

    
“One, named Klem, infiltrated the ranks, got past me, got past the Lady, and stands with you now.  He has already prepared an attempt on Lee, my daughter.”

    
Shock turned to rage.  Lee had become as much the daughter of every one of them as mine.

    
“I will have him,” I said.  “If he steps forward now, he will merely die.  If not, he will wish he died.”

    
No one moved. I gave them a slow count of thirty.  Nothing.

    
“Very well,” I said.

    
They were in thirty rows of fifty.  I went to the first man on my left on the first row, and looked him right in the eye.  He was a Volkhydran.  I remembered that he had been a farmer who killed his tax collector for suggesting that his taxes would be forgiven for a roll with his daughter.

    
“Where does your loyalty lie?” I asked him.

    
“With the Wolf Soldiers.”

    
“Would you ever betray me?”

    
“I would rather die.”

    
“Do you know or are you Klem, or have you worked with or heard rumor of him?”

    
“I have not.”

    
I stepped to my right, and looked the next one in the eye.  She was an Uman, a whore from Sental, where whoring was illegal.  I asked her the same questions, and got the same answers.

    
And the next, and the one after that.  For an hour, I asked them the same question, and Shela verified them.  I’d gone one thousand deep into them and she stood dead on her feet from the effort, but she would let no other take her place.  She would know for herself.

    
Just as I wouldn’t have given this job to one of my majors.  This matter involved the Pack, and myself as Pack leader.

    
“Are you –“ I began.

    
His dagger flashed toward my stomach, catching me unaware.  The side of my hand blocked the blow before I even thought of it, and my other hand had him by the neck.

    
His knee came up to my crotch, and every soldier on every side of him had a hand on him.

    
“Hold your ranks!” I ordered. “Hold your ranks.”

    
This would be just the way a bounty hunter would work.  Have one betray himself somehow, so that another could sneak through.

    
The men and women closest held him as, from the corner of my eye, I saw another man cross from the ranks in front of me to the ranks behind.  Those nearest him had been distracted by my actions and thought nothing of it.

    
“In ranks,
now
,” I ordered them, and walked right to the man.

    
The women next to him found herself the fifty-first in her row, trying to line up.  Before I even got to her, she stepped back into the row, into a vacancy left from those who had taken the prisoner.

    
I walked directly past her, to the man who had moved.  He stood stock still at attention, like a Wolf Soldier.

    
“Where does your loyalty lie?” I asked him.

    
“Sir, I have already –“

    
“Where does your loyalty lie?” I asked him, again, looking him right in the eye.

    
“With you, Sir,” he said.

    
“He lies,” Shela hissed.

    
He had no time to draw his knife – the men and women around him had him.  The rest held ranks this time.

    
Now I had two.

    
I went back to where I left off, and asked my questions again.  The answers were more emphatic now.  They had their justification; this was no paranoia on my part.

    
This time I got to the last man.  Shela simply left with two female Wolf Soldiers to help her.  She would probably sleep all day, but there would be a wet nurse to watch our daughter, and we had already verified her loyalty.

    
“Your honor has been tarnished by these two,” I said.  “Normally, I would take them, question them, and find out what they know.  However, in this case, I already know what I need to.

    
“You enter the Wolf Soldiers, and we ask no questions of your past.  I won’t change that now.

    
I looked for and found J’her, his hands on the first man I’d caught.

    
“They are traitors,” I said, looking him in the eyes.

    
“When I see them again, I want them to be alive, but make sure they
look
like traitors.”

    
He smiled.  This man had killed three families who had tried to settle on his farm, until Rennin caught him.

    
He knew what to do.

     When I came back to the courtyard an hour later, Glennen sat on the ground by the palace entrance at the top of the stairs with a bowl of mead.  As much of it had soaked into his shirt as remained in the bowl.  He hadn’t shaved, and he smelled like piss.

    
“I look a mess, dun I?” he slurred, looking up at me.

    
“You have looked much better, your Majesty,” I said.

    
“Still look better than those two,” he said, pointing into the courtyard. 

    
“I would hope you do, your Majesty,” I agreed.  I couldn’t see the men, for the Wolf Soldiers around them.

    
He sighed, and I looked back down at him.  He squinted up at me, the light obviously hurting his eyes.  We stared, then he looked away, and back at me.

    
“I am a mess,” he repeated.

    
“Yes, you are, your Majesty,” I said.  “Are you telling me you don’t want to be?”

    
“No one wants to be like this,” he said.  “You don’t know the pressures of running a kingdom.”

    
I could have argued that, but why?

    
“When I drink, I can focus on my work, and not think about
her
all the time,” he said.

    
“She was a great lady,” I said to him, because I meant it, and because I hoped he would find his way back.  There would be consequences for that.  So be it.

     I admit I’m afraid of War, but he doesn’t own my soul yet.  Glennen
is a good man, albeit a lost one.

    
I acted no different without Shela.

    
I looked down and he had the bowl to his mouth, the alcohol seeping into his beard.  At first I thought that he had splashed some on his face, and then I realized that those were his tears.

    
It was hard, this whole husband and father thing.

    
I went out to see the high price of treason among my Wolf Soldiers.

    
They parted for me, standing at attention.  Both men were lying on the stone courtyard in their own blood.  Both were breathing.  One had a foot missing, the other’s hands were crushed.  Their hair lay in two piles, and their faces were bloody and bruised, their eyes swollen shut.

    
There were teeth on the ground near them, as well.  The men and women nearest them had bloody knuckles.  One woman squatted down between then, a curved skinning knife in her hands.  I recognized her as one of my captains.  Each of the spies showed marks on his back from her efforts.

    
J’her stepped up next to me and looked me in the eyes.

    
“Two traitors, presented to you, Lupus,” he said.

    
I nodded.  “They look like traitors,” I said.

    
“Would you rather they look like whores?” the woman squatting between them asked.  “Because that can be arranged, too.”

    
I grinned.  “Maybe later,” I said.  “Stand them up.

    
They were pulled to their feet.  They couldn’t have stood otherwise.  One I recognized, the other looked totally different.  I opened my mouth to ask if they were sure this second one hadn’t somehow managed to trade places with a loyal man, when I saw how much he looked like Earl Klem.

    
“He had a glamour,” I noted.

    
J’her nodded.  “A glamour usually fails if you pull out their hair,” he said.  “The magic bleeds away.”

    
I didn’t know that, but I nodded.  I stepped up in front of Klem’s son, first.

    
“Thought to get some retribution for your father?” I asked.