Faded Steel Heat

102

Max stared the length of the hall at the stormwarden. The sorcerer had come inside just far enough to be seen and cause a stir. He'd made himself shadowy and nine feet tall. Teensy lightning bolts slithered through the nimbus surrounding him. He was accompanied by two apparently ordinary men-at-arms who, on closer inspection, showed a slight golden shimmer. Sarge and Puddle were pleased to abandon their posts to the newcomers.

The hall had become a tomb with Spite's advent. Everyone anticipated the moment when he no longer just stood there. The shapeshifters seemed particularly unhappy, which suggested they recognized the sorcerer and knew him well enough to believe they had reason to be unhappy. And Marengo North English seemed to have faded into the very woodwork.

Weider listened closely while I explained what we'd found in the ruined brewery. He nodded occasionally, then observed, "They might've created themselves a small army if they'd gotten hold of my place, then."

"Which was probably their plan."

"But why would they get help from a faction of The Call?"

"We still need to dig that out. But I'm pretty sure the Wolves thought the help was going the other way. We know these shifters are old, now. We saw that when Storey had his fit." Trail and Storey and the Heaven's Gate contingent remained dutifully attentive to the keg they had staked out. "They've had lifetimes to practice telling Karentines what they want to hear and showing them what they want to see."

"Hadn't you better get on with the digging? That spook-wrangler gives me the creeps. He's got a bad feel to him. Try to get him out of here before he starts something I'll regret."

"You heard of him before, boss?"

"Perilous Spite? No. But I don't cross paths with those people much. I'm in trade. A brewer. A brewer doesn't have much contact with anybody but people who buy beer. Even during the worst days of the war the brewery had no intercourse with the war's managers and manipulators. I want to keep it that way. Go to work, Garrett."

"Quit swearing." I surveyed the mob and grimaced. I'm not big on getting up in front of crowds. Not when I have to share the spotlight with a lord from the Hill—especially when that lord is a complete unknown. Block seemed impressed by him, though, and now-invisible Marengo hadn't too far from being petrified.

"Quiet down!" I bellowed. Immediately every thug from The Call and the brewery and the Guard redoubled the racket by trying to shush everybody else. I would've done better just standing there letting them come to the notion that things were about to ripen. Though tardily, silence did find its way among us.

A sea of ugly faces turned my way. Not a one looked happy. I wasn't overflowing with joy, myself.

I hadn't thought this part through. Get them all together, let it turn into a pressure cooker. Slip a couple cards up my sleeve that nobody but Ty knew about. See what the situation produced. That was the plan.

Should I explain? Some of these people had no idea why they'd been summoned. The rest probably had the wrong idea.

I decided to let the thing unfold.

"Mr Trail. Mr. Storey. You gentlemen became exercised a while ago. Please explain why to everyone else." I could imagine the rumors that had begun to go around already.

Trail couldn't get a word out while surrounded by so many people who outranked him socially. Storey didn't have that problem, though. He had bolstered his courage mightily at Weider Brewing's expense. He repeated the tale of the Myzhod campaign. I let him ramble and editorialize but he didn't embellish much. The stormwarden demonstrated an intimidating willingness to bestow cruel attention on any member of the audience inclined to become restless. I suspected that a lot of my guests knew more about Spite than I did. I suppose if I'd had one of those posh army sinecures instead of a real job as a Marine, I might have heard something about him, too.

Storey made it clear that he and Trail believed these shifters right here, right now, in this very room, were the same damned treacherous shifters who'd led an entire Karentine army to its destruction fifty years ago.

Once Storey depleted his store of vitriol I announced, "Miss Quipo Trim, lately of His Majesty's Royal Army Medical Corps, is going to tell us whatever she recalls that might be germane."

Quipo told the crowd what she'd told me, adding details she'd remembered since then. Then, in succession, I got statements from everyone else who'd had contact with the shifters. I revealed my own history. I exempted only Relway, who wasn't present anyway, according to official information. Almost everyone had to see that this assembly wasn't about me and the Weiders, as many might have expected. Ultimately, it was about the security of the Karentine Crown.

The stormwarden weighed on my mind when I said, "That establishes the picture. These creatures have pretended to serve the Crown for ages but everywhere they go disaster follows. Rather like Glory Mooncalled. I haven't dug out much more about them. They're a big secret. Their commander in modern times was a Colonel Norton Valsung. Miss Trim tells me Valsung was Karentine but she's the only person I've found who ever met the man. I consider his existence problematical. He may have been a particularly clever shapeshifter."

I was fishing. But somebody might remember something and volunteer it. Heck, somebody might even volunteer to tell me who was behind the Brotherhood Of The Wolf and all The Call's embarrassments. Somebody might, but I wasn't going to bet the family silver that someone would.

The stormwarden moved ever so slightly, over by the front door. A sourceless whisper sounded beside my left ear. Years of practice with the Dead Man kept me from jumping. "Valsung existed. His continued survival is, however, indeed improbable. He was of use to them no longer."

I nodded slightly, letting him know I'd heard. I guessed I was supposed to use the information somehow. I didn't see what use it might be, though. I glanced up at the Goddamn Parrot. The old hen was observing alertly from the chandelier while taking care not to draw attention. Excellent. Remarkable. Bizarre. But excellent. Because if the stormwarden figured out how the wonder dodo was being used, I was going to have one very irritated sorcerer on my hands.

It wasn't possible that anyone would get the blame for me. That's Garrett's law.

I murmured, "I hope you stay very, very quiet and let the wizard carry the load."

The pressure hadn't yet had the effect I'd hoped. Nobody had lost control and started spouting secrets.

I turned to Brotherhood Of The Wolf. With them my footing was speculative and personally dangerous: They remained an enigma despite being subject to human motives. They were in bad odor with The Call but I couldn't question the purity of their politics. Those remained rigorously correct by the strictest standards espoused by the most fanatic of rightsists.

The silence in the hall continued but the overall restlessness quotient kept rising. To hold the crowd's attention I began moving down the stair. As I did so, I said, "There's a circumstantial but evident connection between the Black Dragon creatures and Brotherhood Of The Wolf." The fact that your dialectic might be impeccable and your treason accidental would not impress some true believers, lack of imagination and compassion being leading marks of the beast.

I made no direct accusations. I wanted Genord's friends to come to the light on their own, to decide that they owed amends. Genord himself was hopeless. He had decided to protect somebody.

I hollered back up to the balcony, "Boss, you want to weasel your goofball pal back out of your den?"

Max grunted, nodded to Gilbey. Manvil went. He returned leading a Marengo North English still trying to avoid being noticed by the stormwarden.

I had no mercy. "Tell us about the Wolves. Where did they come from? Why did they go away?"

Marengo didn't want to talk. That sorcerer really had him spooked. North English must have pulled some truly stupid stunt. He spoke only with the greatest reluctance, hastily, stumbling, obviously not always certain of his facts.

Morley materialized beside me. He whispered, "Why do you keep talking? Cut their throats and be done with it." City elves are direct folk. They'll chuck out the baby with the bathwater counting on the gods to look out for the tad if he deserves it.

"Because if I go slicing shifters up, I'll probably piss off about half the people in this zoo. Look around. Every one of these clowns is looking for an angle and trying to figure out how to use this. If they can sneak around the stormwarden—beforehand. Anyway, we need to find out how widespread this changers cancer really is. Which we can't do using dead men. That being a stormwarden over there, not a necromancer." And I, for my part, being obsessively curious, wanted to ferret out a few whys as well as the whos and whats. And that took getting people's minds into the right frame by asking the right questions so the right answers would float to the surface.

Marengo didn't say much interesting about Brotherhood Of The Wolf. They'd been his first effort to give The Call real muscle, a band of unimpeachable war heroes, accomplished, skilled, and dedicated. But having grown accustomed to deal with the King's enemies unsupervised, for weeks or months at a time, they tended to act without consulting their superiors. When they tried to drive the Inner Council to adopt policies they favored, by means of an unspecified intervention that left the council no other option, said council ordered them disbanded. They would be replaced by less elite, more pliable believers. The new groups grew haphazardly till Colonel Theverly came along. Most of the Wolves joined the new freecorps. A few, like Gerris Genord, dropped out and went elsewhere.

Marengo insisted that the Wolves, disaffected or not, would never knowingly ally themselves with Karenta's enemies.

Only the thickest-witted witness would have failed to understand that just from observing the captive Wolves.

Devotion to the Crown is a foundation stone of the freecorps ethic. We had plenty of evidence that shapeshifters did not share that dedication.

North English said his piece and retreated as fast as he could. His courage was extremely inconstant tonight. Perilous Spite really worried him.

I got the impression that the reverse wasn't true. The sorcerer was indifferent to everyone but the shapeshifters.