An'desha didn't bother to answer, since Karal was the one who had suggested they use these opportunities for just that. They'd all learned what they could from one of Kerowyn's agents, and now from their various vantage points they were polishing and adding to what they'd learned. Predictably, Karal was the best at picking up the language; Natoli and An'desha were about even in their lower level of proficiency.
It was harder to concentrate on the spell and read than it was to do so and listen. An'desha soon gave up. "What's it say?" he asked Karal.
The Karsite licked his lips and narrowed his eyes as he peered into the crystal. "Something about snow—oh, it's a report about the last blizzard they got. I wish I knew what their measures meant, I'd have some idea how deep it is. Deep enough that he's writing orders to the barracks commanders to build arches out of snow blocks and turn the paths between the buildings into tunnels so the men don't have to keep digging themselves out."
An'desha whistled. "Sounds pretty grim."
"Huh." Karal was already on to something else. "Well, if Kerowyn is still counting on 'General Winter' to starve them out, she's in trouble. The supplies are holding up very well; they even have a warehouse full of frozen meat. Oh—I've got the name of the man in charge of the whole army, it's "Grand Duke Tremane." That's a name we've heard a time or two."
Indeed it was, and usually it was with something complimentary attached to it. The men of the Imperial Army had both a competent and a popular commander, and that wasn't always the case.
"Let's not tell Kerowyn unless we find out we can't make any headway with our idea, shall we?" Natoli suggested delicately. "I don't want her to try something that might make the Imperials nervous. I'd rather they weren't nervous as long as Solaris keeps attending Grand Council meetings."
An'desha nodded vigorously, and so did Karal. "Solaris keeps trying to get me accepted as her trusted representative, but I'm still too young for most of the Council members to think of as a real envoy. And as long as they are thinking that way, she's either going to have to find someone to replace me or keep showing up here herself." He sighed. "I'm tempted to think that she likes getting away. Maybe she does; she doesn't get out of the High Temple grounds anymore, so maybe this is a nice change of scene for her."
They watched the man write out several more copies of the same set of orders, until Karal and Natoli were cross-eyed with boredom and An'desha felt his control slipping with fatigue. Finally, he let the image dissolve and broke the spell.
"That's all for now," he said. "We'll have to try again tomorrow."
The next day, with their scrying session sandwiched in between other duties, was just as boring and disappointing as the first in many ways. But on the other hand, they soon learned that the orders being copied were actually straight from the hand of Duke Tremane himself—and in An'desha's opinion, they showed a remarkable amount of that sense they were all looking for in a contact. Dared he hope that Duke Tremane would prove to be the man they needed?
Finally, very late on the third day of their vigilant watching, the clerk was summoned out of his tiny office. They followed his image through hallways and up staircases, until he was stopped by a pair of well-armed guards outside a door. An'desha held his breath; the clerk identified himself and the guards let him pass. There didn't seem to be any kind of checks for someone spying by the means that they were using!
At long last they were about to see the Enemy himself, the author of so many of their troubles, Grand Duke Tremane—
That's him? That's the enemy?
"That can't be Tremane," Natoli said in an astonished voice that reflected her disbelief. "No. That's some other clerk."
But their target saluted the unprepossessing man behind the desk as "Commander Tremane, sir," and there was no doubt. No matter how much like one of his own clerks the man looked, he was Grand Duke Tremane.
"How can that be him?" Karal wondered aloud. "I expected a monster like Falconsbane, or some rock-faced hulk in armor. This man looks like—like—"
"Like a petty bureaucrat," Natoli supplied. "Like the man who makes out requisitions, the man who sees to it that you never have exactly what you need, or who demands to know how you could go through a dozen pens in a month."
"Exactly!" Karal replied. "How could anyone who looks like that have done what he did?"
"That's precisely why he could have," An'desha said slowly. "Because to a clerk, people who are not immediately around him are nothing but numbers. They aren't people, and it doesn't matter if you just ordered their deaths, because you don't know them and you never will—all you are interested in is that a certain result is achieved. The most evil people in the world might be such clerks, because everything is just another number to the ones who don't consider the implications of what they are doing, who concentrate only on making the numbers add up the right way." He shivered as old, old memories drifted through his mind. "Dying soldiers don't matter—they're 'acceptable losses.' Burned crops don't matter—they're 'denying resources to the enemy.' People starving and homeless don't matter—they're 'non-taxpayers.' All that does matter is getting the numbers to come out your way, no matter what it takes."
Both Karal and Natoli glanced at him with odd expression of interest. "How did you figure that out?" Karal asked warily.
"Ma'ar," he replied shortly. "Ma'ar thought like that—as an apprentice he was also his mage-master's petty clerk and he learned to think like that. Worse, he learned how to make other people think that way, how to reduce the enemy to a faceless, dispassionate number." He shook his head, and shook the memories away at the same time. "Well, that's how Tremane could order terrible things on a regular basis—but that doesn't mean he has. He can't have slipped as far into that way of thinking as Ma'ar or he wouldn't be as popular with his men. At least, I hope I'm right in that—give me some time to study him so I can switch the spell."
While the clerk was absolutely average, Tremane was not. He was not handsome by any means, and certainly was not An'desha's idea of the way a leader should look, but it was possible to remember his face very clearly without having to strain to find tiny flaws or other marks of identification.
Just as their clerk was dismissed, An'desha felt he had Tremane's face adequately in mind, and broke the spell.
The moment he did, exhaustion overcame him so suddenly that he actually blacked out for a moment, and came to just in time to catch himself falling face-first into the table.
He would have done exactly that if Altra hadn't made a leap across the crystal ball and inserted his body between An'desha's face and the marble table. He got a mouthful of fur, but not the crack to the head he would have if it hadn't been for Altra.
"Browf!" the Firecat grunted as An'desha's face hit the cat's side. Karal was beside him a moment later, pulling him up and then forcing his head down between his knees. Once he was in that position, his dizziness began to clear. Eventually he was able to sit up again.
"Th-thank you, Altra," he said as the Firecat stared at him with real concern. "I nearly knocked myself out!"