The Road to Hell - eARC (59 page)

Which was exactly what he’d done when Neshok pointed out to him how useful a window into Tamdaran’s shop might prove.

“And Two Thousand Harshu’s orders were definite?” the five hundred pressed.

“He was pretty damned clear, Sir…according to Falmyn, anyway. He wants Ulthar, Sarma, and the others taken alive—especially any Sharonians with them—and he’s sending Thousand Stanohs back to handle it very quietly.”

“I see.”

Neshok nodded slowly, drumming his fingers on his desk while he considered the news. His sources had reported Hadrign Thalmayr’s arrival almost before the dragon landed, and he’d had a quiet word with Senior Sword Kalcyr that same afternoon. Kalcyr had worked well with Neshok in the advance from Hell’s Gate, but he’d been less forthcoming than Neshok had anticipated. It had taken the five hundred the better part of an hour to worm the story out of him, because Thalmayr had ordered him to keep his mouth shut. And now Harshu was sending out his own troops to look for the mutineers under remarkably constraining orders.

And he’s not telling mul Gurthak about it
. Neshok’s fingers drummed harder.
That’s not a frigging oversight on his part, either. It’s deliberate
.
And if he wants those Sharonian bastards back alive, it’s not for any reason the Two Thousand’s going to like
.

He caught his lower lip between his incisors as he tried to evaluate how this latest disaster was likely to affect his own precarious position. It was obvious there was no love lost between mul Gurthak and Harshu, and Neshok had quite a lot riding on the relationship between the pair of two thousands. There were times when he wished he’d gotten mul Gurthak’s instructions in writing before he’d been transferred to Harshu’s command, especially now that he found himself drifting in an ambiguous no man’s land between the Mythalan and his field commander.

The one thing I can be
damned sure of is that
someone’s
going to be scapegoated now that the Sharonians
have stopped that arrogant smartass Harshu in his tracks
.
I wonder
…
I know the bastard’s getting ready to dump everything on me if the IG starts nosing around about the Kerellian Accords, but did he realize from the beginning that the Two Thousand assigned me to him specifically to keep an eye on him?
Did he plan to drop me to the dragons all along, no matter what happened, just to get rid of me?

The thought made a certain disturbing sense, but if that was what had happened, what did he do about it? It was possible, given the obviously…cool relationship between Harshu and Thousand Carthos that he might find an ally there, but how useful could Carthos be? He was too junior to be used as an active weapon against Harshu, and Neshok’s contacts reported that Carthos had operated far from gently against the Sharonians during his advance up the Kelsayr Chain. Unless the five hundred missed his guess, that meant Tayrgal Carthos was in very much the same fix as he was. So would any…arrangement with Carthos be a case of two men guarding one another’s backs, or would it be a case of two men fighting over the same life preserver?

No. Unless he discovered some presently unknown factor that changed things, he was on his own, and it would be wiser for him to make his plans on the assumption that he’d stay that way. But that, unfortunately, left the question of what sort of plans a man in his position
could
make. He’d kept his records, written his reports, done everything he could internally to protect himself, yet there was no point pretending. Without a patron of his own—a patron like Nith mul Gurthak—he was dragon-bait whenever Harshu decided to toss him into the feeding pit. And without something to make him valuable to mul Gurthak, there was no guarantee the two thousand would remember his promises. In fact, without something to make him valuable, it would probably suit mul Gurthak’s purposes far better to quietly forget about those promises and hang Neshok around Harshu’s neck like another anchor.

But there’s valuable, and then there’s
…valuable,
isn’t there?

He thought about it a moment longer, recognizing the risk, yet the water was neck deep and showed every sign of rising higher. Perhaps it was time to take what an arrogant bastard like Harshu was fond of calling a “calculated risk.”

“All right, Lisaro,” he said. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I don’t want you squeezing Falmyn too hard, but if he drops any more tidbits on you, I want to hear about them. Clear?”

“Clear, Sir.”

Porath nodded, saluted, and disappeared, and Neshok leaned back in his chair, toying with his PC while he considered how best to play what could only be described as a risky card. He was pretty sure no one on Harshu’s staff had tumbled to his discreet, private communications channel to mul Gurthak, just as he was pretty sure mul Gurthak didn’t realize just how much his good friend Alivar Neshok had recorded during his private briefings and instructions. He might not have gotten mul Gurthak’s orders in writing, but he’d managed to record enough of his conversations with the two thousand to make very interesting hearing for any representative of the Inspector General or Judiciary General. Clearly it was time to make Two Thousand mul Gurthak aware of the situation in Thermyn which Two Thousand Harshu was deliberately concealing from him. And when he did, perhaps he should use the same opportunity to make mul Gurthak aware—discreetly, of course—of the…potentially awkward information in his possession.

The trick, of course, was how to phrase his message most felicitously.

Chapter Thirty-One

January 31

“Come
on
, chan Resnair! It’s a frigging
gang
plank, not the grand staircase at Hawkwing Palace, for gods’ sake!”

Arlos chan Geraith smiled as the leather-lunged chief-armsman remonstrated gently with the petty-armsman staggering down the gangplank to the Shosara docks under his heavy pack and shoulder-slung rifle. The unfortunate chan Resnair didn’t look as if he felt particularly well, which really shouldn’t surprise anyone. The North Vandor in winter could be as unpleasant as any body of water in the world, and the division-captain didn’t doubt two thirds of his men had found themselves wondering whether or not seasickness was fatal.

From chan Resnair’s looks, the petty-armsman might well be among the sizable minority who’d wished it had been.

“At least none of the ships actually sank, Sir,” Regiment-Captain chan Kymo observed dryly, as if he’d read chan Geraith’s mind. “A time or two, there, I was pretty sure one of them was
going
to,” 3rd Dragoon Division’s quartermaster added.

“Nonsense. Nonsense!” Chan Geraith slapped the taller and much younger chan Kymo on the shoulder. “Why, I never doubted the splendid seaworthiness of those transports for a moment! After all, the sea runs in Ternathians’ blood!”

“But not even Ternathians can
breathe
it, Sir,” Regiment-Captain chan Isail pointed out.

“A mere bagatelle which shouldn’t have occupied your minds for a single instant,” chan Geraith said sternly.

“I’ll try to bear that in mind next time I’m aboard a transport that seems intent on standing on its head, Sir,” chan Isail assured him, and chan Geraith chuckled. Not that chan Kymo and the chief of staff didn’t have a point.

“The important thing,” he said rather more seriously, “is that we’ve got everybody across now except for the Ninth and the Thirty-First. And we’ve got enough shipping to bring both of
them
over in a single lift. That means we can have them here and ready to move out in less than three weeks.”

Chan Isail nodded. They hadn’t managed the movement in as orderly a fashion as they’d hoped, which shouldn’t have surprised anyone, given the speed with which the entire operation had been thrown together. Brigade-Captain chan Khartan was still in place at Salbyton and wouldn’t be able to pull his remaining regiment—the 9th Dragoons—out of the defenses there until the first brigade of Division-Captain chan Jassian’s 21st Infantry Division arrived to replace him. Brigade-Captain chan Ursan’s lead regiments should reach Salbyton within the next three days, however. At that point, chan Quay would entrain back to Renaiyrton, link up with Brigade-Captain chan Jesyl’s 31st Dragoons—the last unit of Brigade-Captain chan Sharys’ 3rd Brigade, which was currently still en route from Jyrsalm, where it had been awaiting additional Bisons and Steel Mules—and follow the rest of the 3rd Dragoon Division to Renaiyrton and across the ocean as soon as the TTE transports could return from Shosara. The rest of 5th Corps’s infantry and supports would be arriving in Traisum over the next couple of months, aside from Brigade-Captain Desval chan Bykahlar’s 3rd Brigade of the 21st Infantry, which would be following chan Geraith’s division down the Kelsayr Chain.

The movement, which undoubtedly had every TTE traffic manager between Traisum and Sharona tearing his hair, wasn’t pretty, and it bore precious little relation to the tidy paper studies the Imperial Ternathian Army’s staff college was accustomed to putting together. It was, however,
working
, which was not a minor consideration for the largest trans-universal troop movement in history. Although, judging by the Voice messages coming down-chain, it was only the beginning of what the Emperor had in mind.

Of course, the other side’s probably thinking a lot of the same things
we
are
, chan Geraith reflected.
That could make things…interesting. If our flanking move happens to run into a division or so
of Arcanans headed to reinforce Harshu…

No doubt that was true, but given the concentrated firepower the 3rd Dragoons represented, he’d take his chances against an Arcanan division in the open field.

“All right.” He turned away from the tall-sided ships lying against the docks and headed purposefully for the steamer sedan on the quayside with the faint heat shimmer of a kerosene-fired boiler dancing above its exhaust. It flew a fender-mounted flag with the two gold star bursts of his rank, and the driver popped out, opened the rear door, and saluted sharply as he and his staff officers approached.

“The first thing is to get ourselves to chan Quay’s HQ and check in,” the division-captain continued as he settled into the forward-facing rear seat and chan Isail and chan Kymo took the rearward-facing seat across from him. “The next order of business is to get a Voice message off to Battalion-Captain chan Yahndar and make sure everything’s still proceeding more or less to plan at his end.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

February 7

Noriellena Drubeka, one of dozens of SUNN correspondents assigned to cover the newly elected members of Sharona’s Imperial Parliament, flipped through notes and prepared to throw her life away over a handful of interview questions. Voice Kylmos Trebar watched her do it with a carefully suppressed sigh.

Their assigned region of Uromathia included Emperor Chava’s capital city, but they didn’t have to be in his waiting room or attempting to get in to interview the emperor to do their jobs. They could have stayed in Tajvana, interviewing MPs representing that part of his empire instead of following a very dangerous man back to his home country after the conclusion of the Conclave.

Correspondents all over Sharona’s populated worlds were interviewing the members of parliament and trying to get reactions from public officials about likely power blocks in the new Parliament. But Drubeka wasn’t satisfied with that approach. Years ago, as a beginning SUNN hometown news correspondent, she’d asked Ambassador Shalassar Kolmayr-Brintal to comment on a Uromathian ambassador who’d proposed euthanizing elderly cetaceans for their whale oil.

Shalassar’s response still replayed in the Voicecasts, and he could tell Drubeka was hoping for another career-making interview.

She’d initially planned for a single question, if they could only manage to intercept Emperor Chava in transit: “SUNN is honored that you’d take this interview, Your Majesty. Please, tell us just what would it take for you to support the Imperial Parliament’s war caucus?” But it looked like they’d be getting a full formal interview with the emperor, instead.

The war caucus had other, longer names. “The Sharonan Imperial Defense Group,” for one. Then there was “MPs for the Restoration of the Frontier Universes and Defeat of the Arcanan Scourge”—which was just the beginning of an unwieldy mouthful of a name advocated by MP Ruftuu. Whatever they called it, the MPs who’d joined it were in agreement about supporting the war. The conflict was on
how
to support it, and the group most reporters were calling the “war hawks” were pushing to extend the policies begun as Emperor Zindel’s executive orders.

No surprise to political observers, the New Farnalian MP Kinlafia was one of the many representatives expected to vote with that power block. The Uromathian MPs—both from the Uromathian Empire and other historically Uromathian nations—were also supporting the war, however, which was enough to make anyone suspicious, given Chava’s influence. Virtually every one of SUNN’s political analysts expected them to become the opposition party, but as yet they hadn’t formed any distinct caucus of their own or even explained exactly
how
they intended to support the war, and Drubeka wanted answers about what they were
really
up to from the power everyone knew was writing their marching orders.

The waiting room lacked mirrors, so Drubeka used Trebar’s eye for her final pre-Voicecast touch ups. The Shurkhali Voice took no special care for his own appearance, beyond buckling on platform shoes to raise his height of eye from five foot three to five foot eight. Viewers liked correspondents at eye level and Drubeka stood five seven in flats and five eight in the pastel court attire selected to complement her olive skin and contrast nicely with the audience chamber’s carpet, where she expected to make her obeisance before and after the interview. SUNN might cut it to show only a cordial bow for the ’cast shown in regions outside Uromathia, but that would be for other staffers to decide. Trebar would capture the best lighting and angles and try to keep Drubeka in sight as much as possible.

Voices were never harmed in Uromathia except by chance street violence. Critics without the Voice ability to send an exact record of their final moments did not fare so well. But there were more kinds of power than back alley brutality. Drubeka knew that as well as he did, but she was betting the Emperor of Uromathia would see the value of occasionally giving his version of events directly to the people of Sharona.

If the worst happened and she vanished, SUNN would give her memory as many headline stories as it could, but Drubeka wasn’t planning to die. There was still too much news to find and tell.

The correspondent’s carefully practiced sexy but still serious personality had a lot of fans, including the court page managing the order of the supplicants to see the Emperor of Uromathia. The young man controlled the political factions in the room without a blink, but his interactions with the famous must have been few. He fairly melted when Drubeka spoke to him and eagerly complied with any requests Trebar conveyed.

Now Drubeka set aside her notes and nodded to Trebar.

A word to the page about the need for processing time before the evening Voicecast saw their audience shuffled forward to next in line. A quickened pulsing at Drubeka’s temples caused Trebar to reach for a hairbrush. He could adjust her hair to mask more of her temples, but she lifted a hand and he held back. That wouldn’t be the right look for Drubeka’s public personality, and Emperor Chava was unlikely to be fooled into believing he didn’t scare them.

Trebar applied a light coat of powder to hide the shine on her forehead.

“We can walk out of here and catch a train back to Tajvana. Get some interviews with the MPs themselves. Noriellena, we don’t have to do this,” Trebar said. He didn’t like to see her sweat.

“I’ve got this,” Drubeka said. She was deepening her voice and lengthening the vowels to stretch her normal speech patterns—getting mentally ready to be on. “SUNN needs this interview. We’re going to bring in ratings gold on this one.”

“You can’t move up to Special Correspondent if a third of the features are in areas SUNN can’t send you because Chava has you declared persona non grata.” Trebar reminded her. “Go easy, Noriellena. Just remember he’s an Emperor and this is his seat of power. Don’t push too hard. Promise me, okay?”

“No promises; no lies, Kylmos.” Drubeka rolled back her shoulders and smoothed her dark hair, tucking a lock behind her ear in her signature interview pose: Noriellena Drubeka, SUNN, listening for you. “How do I look?”

“Ready as always,” Trebar replied, just as the page gave them the nod and opened the double doors of the entry hall. They were on!

“Good. Let’s do this.” She flashed her classic grin.

* * *

Chava Busar, Emperor of Uromathia and power behind a dozen or more theoretically independent polities, understood perception—and how to create it—well. He met the SUNN team on his own terms a few steps inside the audience chamber.

The emperor wore normal street wear and held his formal court robes tucked over one arm, as if he was a mere justiciar who’d just finished ruling on a long case, without a legion of servants to take that heavy brocade and see it cleaned and pressed for his next audience.

Drubeka in her SUNN personality began a very creditable obeisance for a woman who’d spent the last several years interviewing small town fishermen and plebeian business magnates. She got no further than the initial bow, because the emperor stepped in close and clasped both her arms in the warm greeting of colleagues. That caused the robe to slide, and Drubeka caught it.

Emperor Chava laughed out loud, the handful of courtiers attending to business around the room chuckled in pure delight…and a chill ran down Trebar’s spine.

Chava’s eyes twinkled inviting all of Sharona to share in the joke. The Uromathian-based Voice Broadcast Service had accused SUNN of carrying the robe for Emperor Zindel. The phrase implied an ugly willingness to do distasteful things to further the desires of the robe’s owner—an insinuation SUNN Voicecasters had simply ignored. Now VBS would play the nasty comment to the hilt with their audience if SUNN used the interview.

“Mistress Drubeka.” The emperor chuckled. “You SUNN correspondents simply cannot help yourselves. I shall have to ask the VBS to take your natural inclinations into account when they make their news bulletins.” He tipped his head at a courtier standing a half dozen paces back up the entry wearing, Trebar noticed belatedly, the sash of office adopted by Voices in the employ of VBS.

So they could be sure this interlude would run tonight whether SUNN showed it or not, he thought. SUNN in the person of Noriellena Drubeka would be accused of being Emperor Zindel’s robeholder, and the VBS report would surely expand that to imply Drubeka was so used to being Zindel’s servant that she’d reached out and grabbed Emperor Chava’s robe too out of helpless habit. Regrettably the other man had had a better view of the whole exchange, and Trebar moved quickly around to position himself for the rest of the interview.

Drubeka rallied by offering the robe to the VBS Voice…who avoided ruining his version of events by making a leave-taking bow to Emperor Chava and exiting the chamber. At a crook of the emperor’s finger, a servant relieved Drubeka of the heavy garment.

“Please, please.” Chava motioned to an alcove, clearly set up specifically for this meeting. “Let us sit. My page, he tells me he is a big fan of your work, but you have questions about the new Parliament, of course. And you would like to ask me about the war caucus. Is that not so?”

Trebar was already very still taking the record. Drubeka only froze for a fraction of a second. Then she smiled right back at the Emperor.

Chava Busar was good. He’d had to be to build and hold the political position Uromathia had maintained for the last decade, but in Ternathian-influenced areas of Sharona it was too easy to discount the man as a power-mad aristocrat more likely to be killed by his own kin than to survive to old age.

The emperor sat and the interview began.

Drubeka skipped the formal, flowery intro she’d practiced. This had become Chava’s Voicecast, not hers. He was setting the tone and she’d have to scramble to slip in her best questions wherever she could make them fit. The plan had been to distract him with a few cetacean rights questions, the topic she was known for pursuing in many of her interviews, and then shock him into an unplanned response with questions about the MPs who might emerge as parliamentary leaders.

Clearly surprise was now out of the question. She could ask about the cetaceans after all, but that was old news, with well-worn talking points he’d already spoken to with a dozen VBS reporters. Drubeka had pursued this audience to get something fresh, and the war caucus was the topic of the day.

The group supported Emperor Zindel, celebrated the unification of the Sharonan universes, and sought to transfer as much power as possible to the Winged Crown. One MP had even suggested folding existing national police agencies into a single imperial police force—far beyond anything Emperor Zindel had requested. The obvious question was what the Uromathian Emperor would have to say about this support for his rival’s objectives.

Drubeka didn’t do obvious, but she didn’t normally interview emperors, either.

“Mistress Drubeka.” She’d waited too long and Chava was taking the interview’s reins again, and the correspondent clenched her teeth at the thought. “Why is it, exactly, that your news organization, this SUNN, is so negative towards all things Uromathian?”

“Your Excellency, I’m no emperor to speak for all of SUNN.” Trebar breathed relief as Drubeka rallied enough to speak calmly. “Personally, I find Uromathia a lovely place and, as you yourself mentioned, we have many fans here, including Master Rihva your Excellency’s Court Page.”

She didn’t take the bait and attempt to defend the reporting, for a lot of reasons. One was that it was
true
reporting, highly critical not of Uromathia itself but of Uromathia’s current emperor, as she and her Voice was in a far better position than most non-Uromathians to know. Kylmos Trebar and Noriellena Drubeka were among the many who’d been greatly relieved when Zindel had emerged as Emperor of Sharona instead of Chava. Another reason, of course, was that attempting to defend it would give Chava exactly what he wanted: legitimization for the VSB’s claims of bias. The SUNN correspondent had obviously been scrambling for an explanation of Chava’s legitimate question, their mouthpieces would opine. It wouldn’t matter what she’d actually said, either; they were past masters at twisting clear, simple declarative sentences into pretzels to make those sentences say exactly what they
wanted
them to say.

“Your Excellency,” Drubeka said instead, “while I have this wonderful chance to ask, and I must say it’s beyond gracious of you to have allowed this interview, I must ask some questions myself. So I suppose I should start with a question your page told me he hoped I would ask: Who’s your favorite MP?”

It was a simple question, she’d never thought to ask, but after the page had mentioned it, Drubeka hadn’t been able to let it go. If Chava answered, he’d probably name the man he’d chosen as leader of the opposition and she’d be able to stop leaning on the SUNN analysts’ guesses about which Uromathian MPs had influence and which didn’t.

Emperor Chava smiled indulgently, as Drubeka held her breath waiting to see what he’d say.

“Here in Uromathia,” he said. “All our MPs are the exquisite flowers of their districts, as difficult to chose between as an orchid over a rose. So I would not normally answer this question.” Emperor Chava leaned in with a knowing look directly at Trebar. “But for my friend Mistress Drubeka who sees the loveliness of Uromathia, I tell this secret. My favorite is the fine Mister Darcel Kinlafia.”

Trebar blinked quickly. He needed to focus and catch all this.

Kinlafia had no connection to Uromathia. The MP’s district was in New Farnal, which had been populated by settlers from Ternathia not Uromathia, and the MP’s wife was even Emperor Zindel’s former Privy Voice.

Someone was being played right now. Quite possibly it was all of Sharona, but it might be just SUNN and Drubeka. Trebar couldn’t tell where this was going and he needed to see and hear what Chava decided to announce next.

Drubeka glanced downward with an eyelash flutter that was something of a signature expression for her. It gave the viewers a distraction while she thought.

And she might not realize it, but Trebar knew she used it far more often when she thought the interviews were going exceptionally well than when she thought they were out of control. Not for the first time he wished she’d been at least a trace Mind Speaker so he could whisper a warning as she played with a black tendril of hair by her ear.