“What I thought he said,” Oliva said, “was ‘The Winner.’”
Quarina agreed. Berlice nodded, thin-lipped. So, when asked, did the Mercy.
Giordano would not admit that he was deaf. “Winner?” he barked. “What winner? Winner of what?”
MARNO CAVOTTI
handed the reins to one of his guards and lurched down awkwardly from the chariot. More guards opened the cottage door, releasing a blaze of firelight into the darkness; they peered inside to make sure it was safe for the precious Mutineer to enter. Cavotti detested bodyguards because they made him feel like a child, but ever since his near-death and last-minute rescue by Vespaniaso at Tupami, the Liberators’ governing council insisted he go nowhere without them. He limped up the steps and pushed in past them. The door closed behind him.
Half a dozen men sat in a semicircle before the fireplace. Cavotti dropped his pack and hobbled over to them-his left ankle had not mended properly at Tupami and never would. He passed through the line without a word and knelt to warm his hands. Even in his alpaca cloak he was frozen, having driven for half a day over the wind-scoured, treeless moors of the Altiplano.
No one spoke. He could imagine the glances. The smoke was making his eyes water and he would not let this audience see his tears. Butcher’s hand came into view holding a smoke-stained pottery beaker with an enticing odor. Cavotti took it and drank. He scalded his throat and shivered deliciously.
When he had drained the cup, he could delay the inevitable no longer. He stood up, shed his heavy cloak, and finally turned to warm his back and survey the company-Filiberno, Nuzio, Vespaniaso, Fangs, and of course Butcher. Big, black-bearded Werists all, as hard and ruthless a collection of killers as you would find on all Dodec, veterans of their lifelong struggle to rid Florengia of the ice devils. All were oversized from too much battle-forming. Fangs and Filiberno were so brutalized that they barely looked human, while Nuzio was just a larger version of the fresh-faced boy who had ripped out his first Vigaelian throat eight years ago. They were permanently filthy and most of the time lousy. Even these days they often went hungry, but the very fact that they were daring to assemble like this showed that the bloody tide had turned in their favor. Including Cavotti himself, this was six-eighths of the Liberators’ governing council.
They had shed their Altiplano cloaks and furs, and were sitting around in their usual chlamyses. Freedom fighters pinned theirs under their right arms instead of on the shoulder, either just to be different from extrinsics or perhaps to flaunt their brass collars-he could not remember why they had agreed on that. A chlamys would double as a bedroll, and for emergency battleforming could be removed just as fast as the Vigaelians could shed their loincloths. The boy rebels had been able to afford nothing better in the early days of the mutiny.
No doubt they had been well warned what to expect. Butcher knew what Cavotti had become, and so did Vespaniaso. None of the others had seen him since it happened. At least now he would be able to look Filiberno in the eye without shame. Filiberno had looked like a bear for years. Cavotti was like nothing the gods had ever dreamed of. Children fled screaming from him. The miracle was that he still lived.
This temporary command center was one of the few habitable buildings in Nelina. Once a prosperous ranching and mining town, it had been the first in Florengia to learn the folly of resisting the ice devils. Stralg had raped and slaughtered, and finally burned the houses. Before leaving, he had poisoned the wells by stuffing corpses down them-but that had been fifteen years ago. Now the water was sweet again and Nelina had a few inhabitants. They could be relied on to support the Liberators.
Lacking furniture, the Heroes were sitting around on their packs or stacks of firewood. At dawn the chariots would roll; they and their guards would disperse again. Rarely in the last ten years had Cavotti spent two consecutive nights in the same place. There should be a woman present, too. His eyes had failed to grow in again completely at Tupami, and he needed a moment to find her, sitting back in the shadows, wearing a dark brown wrap. It was Giunietta, and from habit his heart jumped. Heart? said his conscience. That’s not your heart down there. He had known there would be a seer, not that it would be she. What must she think of the monster he had become? Still, sex was a complication he need never worry about again.
“What have you decided?” he asked. “I need something to eat.”
Butcher said, “Nothing.” He would never let anyone decide anything when his idol was not present. The others would have reached a consensus without his noticing.
“What have you discussed, then? Fangs?”
Fangs did have fangs, the right one badly chipped, but no nose. His smile was straight nightmare. “He was only a kid. Thought if he deserted as soon as he got here, we would forgive him. Spilled a lot of interesting stuff.”
Fangs would take all night. Cavotti should have asked one of the others, anyone except Butcher.
“Was he telling the truth, Witness?”
Giunietta said, “Yes. The hostleader promised him his freedom if he would, and he kept his side of the bargain. Every word he spoke was true. And when he had nothing more to tell, the hostleader killed him!”
“Quickly?”
“Reasonably quickly,” Fangs said. “He admitted he helped kill prisoners in his training.”
“Then I hope he paid for it.” Cavotti met the seer’s accusing stare with one of his own. He must reassure the others that his own ordeal had not softened him. “It’s standard practice, Witness. Standard on both sides. I don’t care what oaths he swore, he could have betrayed us, whether he meant to or not. Stralg has seers, too, you know. Will somebody please tell me what the prisoner said that was worth my coming all this way?” Butcher handed him a leathery slab of meat, cooked but cold. He tore off a chunk without looking at it, still on his feet, lording it over them.
Giunietta said, “Vigaelia is in revolt. Recruiting is down to almost nothing. Most new initiates never reach Nardalborg. He said his hunt started from somewhere near Ocean and was down to a sixty by the time he got to Nardalborg. The deserters are massing, preparing a revolution. He didn’t know where or when, but probably soon.”
Cavotti nodded. Good news, but not urgent enough to call a council.
“The prisoner crossed in Caravan Five,” the seer said. “He says there will definitely be a Six this year. Nardalborg was waiting until Five left to begin restocking the shelters.”
Nuzio was smiling. He was the logistics expert. He could work numbers like a tallyman. “It must arrive within the next few days or it won’t arrive at all.”
“But we discussed this,” Cavotti said angrily. He was tired-oh, gods, was he tired! — tired of the two-day race up here, tired of the endless homelessness, the slaughter, the whole Xaran-accursed war. He was already tired of being a monster, and he had the rest of his life to enjoy that. Meetings like this were still dangerous folly. Suppose Stralg had planted that informer? If the kid had not known he was being used as bait, the seer might not have detected the trap. “We agreed we wouldn’t try campaigning on the Altiplano in the rainy season.” The ice devils were far more tolerant of cold than Florengians, or so the Florengians believed, and a mere belief like that could tip a battle before it even started. “So we take out one caravan? We kill four sixty of the swine, but then we have to fight our way out again, past five times that many at Veritano.”
He saw the leers. Especially Fangs’s.
“You haven’t heard the best of it, Mutineer,” Nuzio said. “It looks like the Fist’s been counting on us thinking that way. He doesn’t have five hunts at Veritano, no more than five sixty men, the boy said. At the most. He was quite certain of that! They change stripes all the time, so our watchers think there’s more of them.”