Slowly and deliberately, Alwir regarded the prelate where she sat in the room's single, carved armchair, with her white hands linked before her and the hearth fires dancing in the purple depths of her episcopal ring. "Ingold Inglorion, my lady," he declared quietly, "neither leads nor counsels in this fortress. I have appointed him chief of the Wizards' Corps, since that is where his talents lie. And I might point out to you that the Church has yet to produce either reconnaissance, protection, or weapons to aid us against the Dark."
Govannin's chin went up. "And of what merit is any wizard's work against the salvation of souls?"
"You know more about the salvation of our souls than I, my lady," Melantrys said in her low, sweet voice. "But these devices are going to be the salvation of our hides, and no mistake." Her small, dainty hand caressed the looping rigs of wire and tubing that festooned the flame thrower's glass bubbles. She shook back her barley-gold hair. Under soot-black, impossibly long lashes, her eyes were as pitiless as a hawk's. Rudy had left two rifle-sized flame throwers with Melantrys, with instructions to organize the firesquad among those born with the lesser magical powers capable of wielding the weapons. The lovely captain had taken him at his word. "The troops of Alketch won't quibble with magic on those terms," she added.
"The ignorant won't," the Bishop replied softly. "The godless won't. But ignorant and godless warriors march in all armies. Sometimes they even command them."
Alwir swung around, bristling, and met only that close-lipped, reptilian smile. With determined cheerfulness, he said, "Surely it would be flying in the face of providence to reject weapons that have come down to us, miraculously preserved, from the Times Before. Exactly how Dare of Renweth's forces defeated the Dark Ones and drove them back underground is a secret regrettably lost to us, for the last scion of his House is an infant, and Tir's father perished in the ruins of Gae. But I am convinced that Dare used weaponry of this kind-and as such, he must have had a trained corps of firebringers to wield them. Their success may be gauged by the centuries of respite humankind had from the Dark."
The Bishop's ivory fingers flicked. "Wizards' work," she snorted disdainfully. "Work that fouls the hands of any who touch it, your precious Dare of Renweth along with the rest." She cast a scornful glance across at Bektis, who sat with the amber colors of the hearth fire gleaming in the white silk of his beard, gravely examining a second flame thrower at the other end of the table. In the middle of the table, the Guards' Commander Janus and the handful of poker players around him were keeping a wary eye on which way the muzzle was pointing.
Alwir's smile remained resolutely pinned to his mouth. "I think we have heard enough of wizards for one evening, my lady Bishop."
"You will hear enough and more than enough when the representatives of the Lord of Alketch arrive." Her bitter eyes were like starlight on oily black water. "The Emperor of Alketch is a man of true faith."
"He's a priest-ridden bigot who had his own first wife burned for a witch," the Penambran Bishop snapped, looking up from the misshapen knot of his crippled hands.
Govannin's lip curled. "The fact remains, Maia of Thran ," she said, rolling the peasant form of his surname from her tongue with all the scorn of a descendant of the most ancient of noble Houses, "that in the South, where the Straight Faith is strong and unpolluted, there are no Dark Ones. Only in the North and in the plains where the heathen Raiders roam have the Dark Ones risen to scourge humankind."
"According to Stiarth of Alketch," Janus said. He spoke the name of the Imperial Ambassador as if it were wormwood in his mouth.
"Do you doubt him?" Govannin purred.
As Commander. Janus could say nothing, but Melantrys opened her mouth, and Alwir's rich voice cut across her possibly unseemly reply.
"Of course not. There is an air about a man whose world has collapsed in ruins about him. You know it; you have all seen it. That, if nothing else, should have spoken to you all." The Chancellor turned to survey them, haughty eyes challenging any of those ragged warriors in their frayed surcoats to deny what they all knew in their hearts. "He was clad richly and fed well-too richly and too well for a man whose world is a ruin. No," Alwir went on, "whether it was by virtue of God's will, or the Emperor's merit, or purest chance and the fate of mankind, there are no Dark Ones in Alketch. We would be fools if we did not mold our policies accordingly."
There was a murmuring, unrestful and wary. Melantrys folded her arms over the clumsy length of the weapon in her lap; Minalde, her mouth set at the memory of her battles with her brother over the preliminary negotiations with the Emperor's Ambassador, looked down at her fingertips. Govannin settled back in her chair and tented her fingers again before her, an unpleasant glitter in her narrow eyes.
Alwir continued. "We have sent word to all the landchiefs of the Realm: to Harl Kinghead in the North and Tomec Tirkenson in Gettlesand; to Degedna Marina and her vassals in the Yellow River Country in the East. From none of them have we received a reply. The hand of the Dark lies heavy over the Realm. It may be that none will stir to fight. I have heard that the greatest of the landchiefs, the Prince of Dele, is dead; the others may have set themselves up as independent kinglets, each ruling from his own pitiful fortress, in spite of the vows he made to the High King of Gae.
"Therefore, we must work with our allies of Alketch and hold in check out prejudices and whatever grudges we may have formed in the past." As if by chance, that chill, jewel-blue gaze touched the gaunt form of the Bishop of Penambra, who raised smoldering eyes in return. "We need that alliance," the Chancellor continued grimly. "We need it, as a wounded limb needs a healthy body for its rejuvenation. The Empire of the South has all those things that we now lack- trade and commerce, education, arts, culture, the wherewithal to forge steel weapons, and the civilization to enforce laws."
"Aye," Janus murmured, leaning his great, red-furred forearms on the table. "But whose laws?"
In the momentary silence, Alwir's face seemed to harden in the cross-grained shadows of the scattered glowstones and the leaping redness of the hearth.
Govannin said, "Written laws, my muscular friend. The son that my lord Alwir has sought from the beginning to purge from the records."
"The useless quibblings of Church legalists whose bones rot in the streets of Gae!" The Church records were a sore point with Alwir. "I swear by the ice in the north, woman, the paper they're written on is of more use!"
"To write your own laws upon?"
"To keep census and records of the Keep!" he shouted, losing his temper. He made a move toward her, goaded past endurance, but then he saw her smile and struggled to master himself.
In the shadows of the guardroom, no one moved or spoke. Only Gnift the swordmaster slapped a greasy card on the table and crooned, "And eight lovely hearts for the charming lady in black."
Alwir took a deep breath, his mouth clamping beneath flared nostrils. "I tell you, my lady Bishop-and I tell all of you-that, of all things, this alliance with Alketch is of the greatest importance to the Keep and to everyone within its walls. Without it, we lose our last hope of civilized existence. We will become degenerate villagers, ignorant and brutal, prey to the stronger and the better-armed. And that I will never permit." His eye touched them alclass="underline" Melantrys, her delicate nostrils flared as if against the stink of Ambassador Stiarth's perfumes; Aide, still looking down at her hands in angry silence; the Bishop of Penambra in his patched red cloak and scavenged brocades. "I will let nothing interfere with it. Believe me, there is nothing-and no one-that I would not sacrifice to bring about a lasting alliance with the Empire."