“I’ll get to that. We stayed and we worked and we won our collars. Stralg was dreaming… he’s basically just a thug bully, as you well know… dreaming of setting up a second empire here, to match the one he had on the Vigaelian Face. He expected us loyal Florengian Werists to run it for him when he went home. Expected us to be grateful, I suppose. We were initiated, the first of us. We swore the oaths. He came to Boluzzi in person for the ceremony, and by that time he’d been all around the Fertile Circle, stamping out opposition. He ruled the Face then. Two Faces. Dream come true. We were part of his great plan, the first crop from Boluzzi, donning the collars we can never shed. We swore eternal obedience, cheered him, and went off to our postings, but we’d agreed to meet back at the school after Stralg and his guards had left.”
“This was your plan, your mutiny, how you got your name.” She thought Chies wouldn’t come back through here. He’d go around by the west stairs. That would hardly slow him at all, not the way he could move those long legs. Yet the Mutineer was showing no signs of haste, almost as if he were dragging this out.
“I was one of the ringleaders. The others are all dead now. On the chosen night we broke in and there was a fight. Oh, was there a fight! By the time the blood congealed, all the instructors were dead and so were most of us. There were twenty-four Werist survivors-me and twenty-three others. About four sixty cadets threw in their lot with us, and some senior probationers too. The young ones we had to leave. We told them to scatter and look out for themselves, but we knew Stralg would get them.”
Oliva imagined Chies hurtling down the stairs four at a time, belting along the arcade to the main gate…
“The Fist realized his mistake at once and ordered us hunted down, every Florengian Werist killed on sight. We were trying to stay ahead of him and train the cadets at the same time. Mutineers, fugitives, oathbreakers, partisans, guerrillas-call us what you will. It was a year before we were strong enough to double back and ambush one of his patrols. He lost five times as many as we did, but in those days he could afford the losses. That was how it went the first few years. But gradually we gained in numbers. We recruited, we trained, and the more we had the more we could get! Understand?”
Dicerno had gone, taking his lamp. The palace seemed deserted and very silent without the wind. She felt as if she were alone in it, standing chatting with a madman.
“Yes, yes! What are you getting at?”
Chies would have to talk his way past the men on the gates, who had orders to send guards with him when he went out. No, of course he’d go out the bolt-hole from the laundry, the one he thought nobody else knew about. That would save him a run around the stables, too. Twelve gods!
“Getting to, my lady. We are getting to the final payoff. Two years ago we finally had as many collars as Stralg did and were training faster than he could bring men over the Edge. That was the turning point. He’s limited by the Ice on the other side, you see. Their seasons are more extreme over there, and-”
“So you think you can beat him?”
“He’s beaten now. He knows it. The problem is to kill off the survivors with as few collateral deaths as possible. You heard about Miona?”
She shivered. “Conflicting stories.”
“Believe the worst of them,” Cavotti said grimly. “Stralg billeted a host in the town. We surrounded it and torched it. You know how peasants burn the stubble and the vermin run out with their fur-”
“Please!”
“He lost seventeen or eighteen sixties. That was two years’ reinforcements gone in one night.”
“And how many civilians died?”
“All of them, basically. It was not a small town.”
“Atrocity!”
“Regrettable. But for Stralg it was the beginning of the end. Hardly a sixday goes by without a battle now. Piaregga, Reggoni Bridge
… two sixties here, three there. I am nibbling him to death, my lady! He cannot stand these losses. We can match him body for body and still get stronger.”
Horrible! Horrible! “What do you want of me?” she yelled. Why was Cavotti talking so much? It was almost as if we were waiting for the Vigaelians to get there and kill him. Chies belting along the alley, almost at the barracks…
Cavotti pulled a face. “I want to stop Celebre becoming another Miona, of course. It’s my home, too, and the smell of burning babies isn’t something you ever forget. Look at your maps, lady of Celebre. His escape route to Vigaelia goes past your city. He’s falling back as slowly as he can, but we’re driving him, and very soon now he will have to make a stand. Where better than here?” The big man’s raspy voice rose to fill the halclass="underline" “He has about three-sixty-sixty left. How do you feel about that many ice devils occupying your city, Mistress? For half a year while the Vigaelian winter has the pass sealed?
Gods! “No!” A mere dozen was more than it could stand now.
Chies must be at the barracks by this time, yelling for the flankleader. Werists moved like birds. It was their speed that made them so deadly. They’d come straight over the walls.
Cavotti smiled, exposing more tooth enamel than humans should have. “Then join us, my lady! Give me the signal, and I’ll slip my men into Celebre before the garrison knows what’s happening. I swear that I can control them. They’ll behave. They’re patriots, Florengians all, and they despise the Vigaelian scum. They want to show they’re better.” He thrust out a great paw, like a bear’s. “Shake on it! Sixty-sixty of my men in Celebre and we’ll deny it to Stralg. We’ll cut him off from his base and bleed him to death on the plains.”
Shake? She would not touch his murderer’s hand if she were drowning. Piero was dying reviled, childless, and detested. “Never! You would make this city a battlefield. Don’t you understand that my husband has been labeled coward and lackey and lickspittle all these years because he gave up his own happiness and mine just to save Celebre from sack? It worked. This city survived when most didn’t, although many people still won’t admit he was right. And now you would have me throw that all away?”
The Werist glowered at her angrily, then paused a moment as if listening. “I must go.” He hauled off his cowl, exposing Weru’s brass collar. Below such classically perfect features it seemed even more of an obscenity than usual.
Would the Vigaelians believe Chies’s fantastic story of Cavotti in the palace? But he didn’t need to say the Mutineer’s name, just that there was a Florengian Werist. They knew Chies, they’d trust him.
They must be on their way by now.
“Your husband did as he saw right, lady, to stop Stralg from sacking the city as he’d sacked Nelina. But I am offering you a garrison to defend you. At your invitation.”
“And who rules Celebre then? The dogs would be worse than the wolves.” What of the hostages Stralg held, her children? “Stralg showed fifteen years ago that Werists can run up stone walls like rats.”
“Not when those walls are defended by other Werists, my lady. I didn’t dare storm Miona with him in there.”
“No, you burned it! And he would burn Celebre. No! No! Never! Begone! If I weren’t certain that Chies had gone to summon Stralg’s men, I would do it myself. Leave!”
Somewhere in the palace something bayed.
The Mutineer snorted. “Oh, hear that! That’s shocking! Take that beast’s name, Packleader. Well, it’s been a joy talking to you, sweet lady. We must do this more often. Put it to your council and send me a signal if you change your mind. The best landmark in the city is the canopy on the temple of Veslih. I expect it’s all covered with bird droppings?”
“Go!” She could hear something coming, many things. “Go! Go! Go! Go!”
“Needs cleaning. If you change your mind, put up a scaffolding around the tholos as if you’re going to clean it. That’ll be the signal. We’ll move in.” The big man clasped her shoulders and moved her aside as if she were a child. “Now, I really must dash. Don’t stand in the opening, woman; you’ll get run over.”