She looped dirty copper hair behind her ears. "My father was Volrath's mentor and later his servant. I know something about the Stronghold." She handed the empty water bottle to Eladamri.
"The map room it is," he said.
He and Takara had to be helped to stand. They braced each other.
Takara smiled wryly. "You never know what you'll find behind a closed door, do you?"
When the alarm went off, Belbe was in the control room of the flowstone factory making the third of her subversive adjustments to the output meter. As she suspected, the monitoring units built into the factory machinery had detected the reduced output by comparing current production figures to those of the past. All through the day the production of flowstone steadily increased. By the time she arrived late that night, the works were churning out flowstone at 90 percent of capacity. The speed at which the factory corrected itself troubled her. It meant she would have to be more vigilant in her sabotage if her goal of preventing the conjunction with Dominaria was to be met.
When the alarm sounded, she covered all traces of her tampering and started back to the palace to find out what was going on. She found the corridors clogged with guards. Though the palace garrison numbered over two thousand men, she found hundreds of troops of the regular army mustering on the factory concourse. She accosted a captain of the Tenth Company and asked him what he knew about the situation.
"Forgive me, Excellency, I don't know much more than you do," the officer said. "I heard something about Predator-a riot between the moggs and the workers, maybe. I don't know."
"Why would they need so many troops to quell a brawl?"
"There's thousands of moggs in the warrens, Excellency. If they get out of hand, it would take the entire army to put them down."
"Who's commanding this operation?"
The captain frowned and pointed. Belbe followed his gesture and saw a sergeant standing on a flowbot armature, shouting orders. If the Corps of Sergeants was involved, it meant Crovax was in charge.
Belbe was seized by a sense of foreboding. She smelled a plot. If Crovax had engineered an emergency in order to flood the Citadel with army troops, it gave him an unbeatable advantage in the struggle for power. True, she had offered him the evincar's crown, but that was just a ploy to save Ertai's life. She'd still held out hope that with Greven's help she could suppress Crovax and lead Rath in an entirely new direction. Now things looked very bad, if not hopeless.
Once in the palace, she learned there had been a disturbance at the upper airship dock. She went there immediately and found the pinnacle heavily occupied. The docking platform was littered with slain guards, and the air was spiced with the smell of burnt gunpowder. Predator floated evenly on its tether, but there was obvious damage to the deckhouse and main bridge.
She easily picked out Greven and Crovax among the mass of troops. Greven bowed when he saw her. Crovax did not.
She approached Greven. "What's the matter?"
"Things are unclear at the moment, Excellency," he replied. "We're questioning the workers and moggs who were on board when this happened, but we're not getting a coherent story from any of them. The guards who responded to the first call for help are all dead, killed by that." He indicated the twelve-foot-long harpoon head, now imbedded in the far wall of the platform. "Someone fired the deck gun without closing the breech. The gun's mangled, and the harpoon cut down more than twenty men at once."
"What do the workers say?" asked Belbe.
"They say the moggs went berserk and attacked them."
"And what do the moggs say?"
"Moggs are moggs," Greven said. "I've learned not to put much stock in what they say."
"Tell her," Crovax said. He seemed half-angry, halfexcited. "Tell her what they said."
"It's not proven," Greven said evenly.
Even this mild contradiction brought swift retaliation from
Crovax. Greven's face contorted as his spinal rod sizzled into action.
"Enough," Belbe said. "You tell me, Crovax."
Crovax made his hulking victim suffer for a few seconds, then released him. "The moggs claim they were attacked by soldiers-men of the army."
"Why would our own soldiers attack Predator?"
Crovax leaned closer, and in a mocking whisper said, "When is a rabbit not a rabbit?"
"What?"
"When it's a fox."
Sergeant Nasser, on the foredeck of the airship, hailed his master. Crovax excused himself politely and went to see what Nasser had to tell him.
Belbe turned to Greven. The warlord still had his eyes tightly shut.
"Greven," she said. "Are you all right?"
"He's learned to inflict lingering pain," Greven said through clenched teeth. "He's done this to me several times in the past few days. He punishes me, or amuses himself with my suffering. I think it's over, but he leaves me a surprise. Lately it's been acute pain when light hits my eyes."
Belbe lowered her voice. "I'm sorry to hear that. Would you walk with me a moment? I have a proposal I want you to hear."
"As you command, Excellency. First-" Greven's eyes sprang open. They were shot with blood, and when the normal light of the Stronghold hit them, he grimaced and uttered a short cry of agony.
"Does it hurt so much?"
"I'm getting used to it," Greven grunted. "However, if I don't gratify Lord Crovax's sense of humor by screaming, he will redouble the effect next time."
Belbe shuddered. "Come. I have something important and secret to tell you."
She led him into the shadow of the flowstone carapace, dismissing the guards who were already there. When they were alone, Belbe began.
"The time has come for plain speaking. Crovax has been pressuring me to name him evincar. After many threats and some violence, I've agreed to do so tomorrow afternoon in the convocation hall."
"I've wondered why you've delayed this long," said Greven. She was taken aback. "At first, I wanted him to prove himself worthy. Later I became afraid of what he would do when total power was his. I saw what he did to the hostages. I was there. It troubled him no more than you or I swatting a fly. I discovered he gains power when life is extinguished-he absorbs the life-force of dying beings into himself. Don't you see? This guarantees people will continue to die!" "We will all die sometime, Excellency." Belbe's hands closed into fists. "What's the matter with you? Of all people, I expected you to understand. He torments you. He mocks you. It will only get worse, can't you see that? Have you no ambition for yourself, Greven? If we could forge an alliance against Crovax, we could change things on Rath." "Crovax is too powerful. He controls the flowstone." "Ertai has influence over the stone, too. Not as great as Crovax's but sufficient to even the odds if you and I attack him together!"
Greven made a pretense of looking around. "Where is Ertai?" "I don't know. Crovax's men are holding him prisoner." "Then he's a dead man."
"No!" she said forcefully. "Give me your word-promise you'll join with us against Crovax, and I'll find Ertai this night and free him!"
"I cannot." Belbe was visibly deflated by Greven's flat rejection. "There is more at stake here than you know, Excellency. I cannot act as you ask. My loyalties are… committed."
"I don't believe it," she said. "I know you hate him. Can it be you're afraid of him as well?"
She thought this taunt, which always enraged Greven in the past, would arouse him again, but the hulking warlord turned away without a word.
"I'm not free to act, Excellency," Greven said. "I never have been. Though I command armies and the flag on Predator's bridge is mine, I do not have command of myself. I'm sorry."
Speechless, Belbe watched him return to the hubbub surrounding the damaged airship. On the way, he was intercepted by an officer of the palace guard in a crimson mantle. Though Greven outranked anyone else in the guards or regular army, she distinctly saw him salute this minor officer.