“I made my sacrifices! I deserve some reward!”
“Yeah, you have and you do. But that’s not the way it’ll be seen by others. They’ll march for a saint, Cass, but not for a Fluxlord. And with nothing to keep your power, your temper, your wants and your needs down, that power will corrupt you just like it did all of them, Coydt included. He trapped you just as sure as he trapped me.”
“Suzl—promise me you won’t do anything rash until the wizards get here and I can sort this out. Will you at least do that?”
She nodded. “For a little while.”
Relieved, Cass looked around. “Where’s Matson?”
A fairly strong force had been waiting on standby north of Lamoine, but Coydt had ordered them well back and it had taken some time for Weiz to make it back to the town and then send a runner with the news. Now they rode forward to the wall. The fires were out, but it was still a smoking ruin up there.
General Shabir, chief administrator of the riding, looked disgusted. “I told him that it was a pushover. You know what he said? ‘I want a pushover, but a convincing one.’ ”
Weiz nodded. The steps were in ruins, but were still serviceable for about three quarters of the distance. It wasn’t easy, but a crew managed to get up with hooks and ropes and lower down netting for the troopers to climb up. One of the first to survey the apron from the top turned and shouted back, “Sir! There’s a lone civilian standing there just below us! Looks like a stringer! He says he wants to talk to you!”
“Don’t shoot!” Shabir ordered. “Tell him I’m coming up. Keep him covered, but that’s all!” He turned to Weiz. “Want to come with me?”
The captain nodded.
The stairs on the side leading to the apron had been blown out about a meter, but they had somehow escaped catching fire. They were singed, but serviceable, and were easily drawn back and secured with hooks. With a hundred guns trained on him, Matson stood calmly and waited for the brass to show up.
The military men approached him cautiously but correctly. He had dropped his weapons belt and was clearly unarmed. “My name is Matson,” he told them, not offering his hand. “Coydt van Haas is dead. Your wizard is dead over there, and I’ve blown up your pretty machine. If we can’t come to some agreement fast, in an hour or so an awful lot of power is going to burst right through that area right there.”
The military men swallowed hard at the news. Dimly, in the void, they could see where the machine should have been, and there was nothing.
“One of you wouldn’t happen to have a cigar on you, would you?” the stringer asked. “I’m dying for a smoke.”
One of the infantrymen looked to the officers, who nodded, then handed Matson a cigar and a safety match. He lit it and seemed much more content.
“If what you say is true,” the general said slowly, “then it is the end of Anchor Logh. Many of my men are scum, I freely admit, but they’ve been made that way. They’ve marched and died on command in other people’s armies for nothing. The Fluxlord I once served, and deserted for this, is a particularly nasty sort. The military leadership here is experienced and superior. They were given a chance to take their own land, and they did it. They will not return to the way they were, and they will leave this place a costly hell.”
The stringer nodded. “I figured as much. That’s why we have to take this time to make a deal. We have to keep all this quiet from the rest of Anchor Logh, or the other wizards will panic and let the shields drop as they run, and everybody will be primed for the last stand. Then it might be too late.”
The general frowned. “Too late for what?”
“A deal. Suppose there was no invasion outside of this small area? Suppose we let you keep Anchor Logh and run it without any interference? What would you say then?”
Both officer’s mouths fell open in surprise. Finally, the general recovered. “At what price?”
“The empire controls the machines, and the temple becomes a sort of embassy. We need to insure that it’s not a free and easy passage to the Hellgate. Beyond the temple, no one leaves or enters without the permission of your government and the empire’s. The stringer guild will deal with you at east and west gate. I’ve seen a thousand Fluxlands, General, and so have most of the others. We’ll keep your trade open, and we’ll be the intermediaries between the empire and your people. It makes no sense to cost a million lives and make this a wasteland. No sense at all, for either side. They want to keep this contained. If you’re here, running the place, they can do so. They do it by co-opting you into the empire. Making it legitimate. Anchor Logh is restored, but has total internal self-government. Everybody benefits and nobody else dies.”
“If we could only trust the empire on that,” Weiz put in. “But it’s a theocracy. How can we trust it?”
“Guarantees can be worked out. You and the Church have both been working with an illusion. The empire isn’t the Church; the Church serves the empire. Nine wizards set policy and control everything that it does, and none of them are in the least bit committed to the Church. The war has bled off the surplus population so far, but that won’t last forever. Flux will absorb the surplus, though, as it always has in one way or another. The ones with the power, the Nine Who Guard, are really mostly concerned with securing those Hellgates. Secondarily, they went as far as they could in learning. They needed a mechanism to break the control of the wizards, each of whom had some piece of old knowledge that usually meant nothing to them until fitted into the whole. They needed a way to pry the ancient stuff out, and they needed Anchors, with fixed laws, to experiment with what they learned. I think they can spare Anchor Logh.”
“It seems reasonable to me,” Weiz noted. “But it’ll have to be sold to higher-ups, in secret, while everything is contained here.”
“Just keep your men on the wall. I’ll stop them and explain the conditions there, too. I think the head of the Nine will be among the first through. You sell it to your side; I’ll sell it to mine.”
“It’s a tough job,” the general noted. “Still, I agree, for what that’s worth, and I’ll cooperate so long as there are no tricks. But no empire forces are to cross the wall or extend more than a kilometer in either direction. If they do, it’s all off.”
“These are hard choices you’re handing both sides, Matson,” Weiz noted. “You’re the only one free and clear in all this. You don’t give a damn.”
“Life is all hard choices, Captain,” the stringer replied. “I’ve had more than my share. But most folks never get any choices at all, and hard as they are, I’d rather be the one making the decisions.”
Weiz stirred. “Did you see a woman in Flux? Short, chubby, kind of cute?”
“Yeah, Suzl’s alive. Why? What’s she to you?”
“I… sort of married her.”
Matson chuckled. “On orders, of course.”
“Well, yes, on orders. But I find her a little special.”
“You can hardly even know her!”
Weiz shrugged. “I’m a gambler.”
“Well, we’ll see if she is. Do your job first, Captain. The rest is academic if we fail.”
It had been kind of imposing, even threatening, to stand in front of a point in Flux and try to talk an invading force into not going into Anchor. Fortunately, the initial shield opening was quite small, and there were few soldiers to work with—and a wizard. The wizard had contained the assault and sent for Mervyn.