The elf’s response was drowned in the flash of bulbs and the screech of questions, and a baying howl from the crowds at the platform gate. They broke the guards’ cordon and flooded in. The Knights Flagellant moved forward and scuffles broke out. Will Brandiman stepped back in among the journalists, effectively concealing himself, and stripped off his tight black doublet. He reversed it to show the scarlet lining and struggled to get his arms back into the sleeves.
“Amazing,” a familiar voice commented. Magda Brandiman removed her slouch hat and passed it to her son, standing revealed in an evening dress and fur stole, the picture of a socialite halfling. “Much more effective than planting a question about the reverend’s financial irregularities Amarynth might have wriggled out of that. This is his political death.”
“Mother, it was nothing to do with us!” Will tugged the hat down over his eyes and pointed to where the dark elf and the defrocked abbess were being pushed and shoved. Ugly noises sounded from the crowd. “Let’s get Ned out before real trouble starts.”
The halfling smiled, tiny crow’s-feet wrinkling in the corners of her dark eyes. “There’s always an old favourite,” she murmured, moving to the opposite platform’s edge, striking a sulphur-match, and dropping it into the litter between the rails.
Will filled his lungs and bellowed. “FIRE!”
The stench of burning rags filled the air and the crowd panicked. Will elbowed his way between the dwarf correspondent and the elf camera crew, caught Ned’s arm and pulled; the two halflings rolled and dived and dropped down between the edge of the platform and Amarynth’s election-special express. Ned tore his habit to tunic-length and wiped off his face-paint. Heads ducked down, they loped along under the train and exited on the far side, merging with the crowd disembarking from a northerly stopping train, and slipping out onto the far platform.
The Duchess of Graagryk’s coach departed from the outside of Ferenzia’s main station, Her Grace naturally enough not wishing to be involved in the riot that, beginning on platform seven, spread out from there and before the night’s end had barricades up in fifty streets of the poorer quarter. The duchess’s coach, as well as its driver and complement of baffling bodyguards, acquired two new coachmen, who rode in the chilling air without complaint as the coach jolted over the cobbles towards the Royal Quarter.
“I don’t know, Will.” Ned Brandiman shook his head. “I’m not saying I won’t accept him. It was just so sudden. A girl likes to have time to make up her mind.”
Will Brandiman perched beside Ned on the tiger’s seat at the back of the coach, watching the dark streets of Ferenzia jolt by. He put his head in his hands. His voice came muffled to Ned. “What I say is, never marry an elf who refers to himself in the plural, that’s what I say.”
“Well…” Reluctantly, Ned conceded, “There may be something in that.”
The ducal coach left the cobbled streets of the Royal Quarter, the horses’ hooves muffled on the turf of the Royal Park, where the forces of Darkness were encamped. The Duchess Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau leaned out the window and spoke briefly to the kobold and dire-wolf guards.
She alighted in front of the Dark Pavilion and entered.
By the time she reappeared Will had engaged in dice-throwing with the kobold guard and was the proud possessor of two saw-tooth daggers (with spikes on pommels), a wyvern-skin ration bag (with split seam), and four copper coins of indeterminate value. The red eyes of the kobolds glowed at this total pillage of their wealth. Will tactfully palmed his other set of loaded dice and lost a double-or-nothing last throw. He joined Ned and his mother in the coach.
“Well?”
“I could have had a beautiful bride’s gown,” Ned mourned. “With ribbons.”
“Brother, be quiet!” Will scratched at his itchy hair, determined to remove the dye-spell as soon as possible. “So, Mother, what’s happening?”
Ned added, “And those little flounce things, with lace…”
Magda Brandiman struck flint to steel, the light blossoming in the dark body of the coach. As the vehicle clopped away she lit a thin black roll of pipe-weed, placed it in her pipe-weed holder, and inhaled deeply.
“We’ve done you a considerable favour,” Will pointed out. “That routine with the prayer-wheel was good for months yet. Ned and I could have been rich. Richer. Comfortably off, even.”
“And afforded a wedding gown with a train,” Ned Brandiman put in. “Twenty yards of the best Archipelago silk.”
Will elbowed his brother halfling firmly in the ribs. “As a favour to our mother, we sink the Light’s election candidate—yes, I know it wasn’t us, precisely, but we were going to. I’d prepared a marvellously touching speech where I broke down and confessed to Amarynth’s forcing me to extort money from the pilgrims.”
Slightly miffed, he added, “It was really good, for a rush job. Shame. However, the chances of Amarynth Firehand winning the election to the Throne of the World are slender now, to say the least, and we want to know, Mother—what did the Dark Lord offer you as a reward? And how much is our share of it?”
Chiaroscuro shadows chased across Magda Brandiman’s lined, sallow face and the swell of her small breasts under her evening gown. She frowned, exhaling pipe-weed smoke. “That Bitch! I know exactly what She’s after, She doesn’t fool me for one minute. Which is more than I can say for a certain starry-eyed orc…”
Will frowned. “Mother, I think you’d better tell us about this. What have orcs got to do with it?”
Magda Brandiman turned her head, her delicate profile appearing against the window as the grey of false dawn streaked the sky over Ferenzia.
“I may have misled you, son,” she confessed. “Removing Amarynth wasn’t the Dark Lord’s idea. It was mine. It occurred to me, you see, that with no rival in the election, and Her victory therefore certain, it wouldn’t be necessary for my Ashnak’s trial to go ahead.”
“Oh, no,” Will Brandiman groaned. “Ashnak!”
“The evidence against your stepfather has been, shall we say, mislaid. And She doesn’t need a propaganda victory with Amarynth Firehand disgraced. But,” Magda snarled, “will She cancel his trial? She will not! Ten o’clock this morning, it goes ahead.”
“You mean we’ve just attempted to help that—orc—out of trouble?” Will Brandiman demanded. He glared at Ned for help, but the brown-haired halfling leaned back in the jolting coach seat and hummed a wedding march. “Mother! How could you?”
“I couldn’t count on your voluntary assistance.” Magda Brandiman stubbed out the pipe-weed holder on the gilt frame of the coach window, scowling. “I begin to see it now. I’m a fool. There’s no way She’ll stop the trial or settle for any verdict less than guilty. With my Ashnak out of the way She controls the marines. And they’re the only thing now that stands between us and the Bugs.”
The condemned orc ate a hearty breakfast.
Morning sun shone down from the grill into the tiny cell the Order of White Mages had allotted their prisoners. Ashnak blinked as the sun moved across his eyes. Fathoms of spellcast chain rattled as he rolled off the plank bunk and onto his bare feet.
“Urrp!” He scratched his crotch through his ragged combat trousers, chains rattling again, and relieved himself against the cell wall. The sun’s heat raised a malodorous warmth. The orc beamed and belched again.
“General Ashnak!” A thunderous banging sounded on the door, succeeded by the rattle of keys, and the heavy oaken door swung open.