Vipond asked him a few more questions, but whether he believed Cale entirely or not, it seemed clear that the boy was giving nothing more away and so he went on to his plans for guarding the safety of Arbell Swan-Neck.
It was clear from his written arrangements for keeping her safe and his answers to Vipond’s questions that Cale was as skilled in preventing death as he was in enabling it. Finally satisfied with Cale’s answers, in this at least, Vipond took a thick file from his desk and opened it.
“Before you go, I want to ask you about something. I have had a number of reports from Antagonist refugees and double agents, and captured documents about a Redeemer policy they refer to as the Dispersal. Have you heard of this?”
Cale shrugged. “No.” This time Vipond was convinced by the puzzled look on his face.
“These reports,” continued Vipond, “are about something called Acts of Faith. Is this a term familiar to you?”
“Executions for crimes against religion witnessed by the faithful.”
“It’s claimed that up to a thousand captured Antagonists at a time are being taken to the centers of Redeemer towns and are being burned alive. Those who recant their Antagonist heresy are shown mercy and strangled before being burned.” He paused, looking at Cale carefully. “Do you think these Acts of Faith are possible?”
“Possible. Yes.”
“There are other claims supported by captured documents that these executions are only the beginning. These documents refer to the Dispersal of all Antagonists. Some of my people say this is a plan once victory is achieved to move the entire Antagonist population onto the island of Malagasy. But some Antagonist refugees claim that the Dispersal is a plan, once they are removed to the island, to kill the entire Antagonist population in order to wipe out their heresy for good. I find this difficult to believe-but you have more experience than any of us as to the nature of the Redeemers. What do you think of such a thing? Is it possible?”
Cale said nothing for some time, clearly torn between his loathing of the Redeemers and the enormity of what he was being asked. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I never heard of anything like that.”
“Look, Vipond,” said IdrisPukke, “the Redeemers are clearly a brutal collection, but I can remember twenty years ago during the Mont uprising there were all sorts of rumors about how, in each town they captured, they’d collect all the babies, throw them up in the air in front of their mothers and impale them on their swords. Everyone believed it-but it was all bloody lies. None of it ever happened. In my experience, for every atrocity there are ten atrocity stories.”
Vipond nodded. It had not been a productive meeting, and he felt both frustrated and ill at ease about the stories from the East. But something more trivial was also nagging him. He looked suspiciously at Cale.
“You’ve been smoking. I can smell it on your breath.”
“What’s it to you?”
“It’s whatever I choose to make it, you insolent young pup.” He looked over at IdrisPukke, who was still looking out of the window and smiling. Vipond turned back to Cale. “I would have thought you had more sense than to imitate IdrisPukke in anything. You should look to him as an example of how things should not be done. As for smoking-it is a childish affectation: a habit loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, causes the breath to stink and makes any man who takes it for long enough effeminate. Now get out, both of you.”
25
Four hours later Cale, Vague Henri and Kleist were settling themselves into their comfortable rooms in Arbell Materazzi’s quarter of the palazzo.
“What if they find out we don’t know anything about being bodyguards?” said Kleist as they sat down to eat.
“Well, I’m not going to tell them,” said Cale. “Are you? Anyway, how difficult can it be? Tomorrow we go through the place and make it secure. How many times have you practiced doing that? Then we stop anyone new from coming in and one of us stays with her wherever she goes. If she leaves here, which we discourage, she can’t go outside the keep, and two of us plus a dozen guards go with her. That’s all there is to it.”
“Why didn’t we just take a reward for saving her and get out?”
Kleist’s question was a good one because it was exactly what Cale knew they should be doing, and if it wasn’t for the way he felt about Arbell Swan-Neck, it was exactly what he would have done.
“We’re just as safe here as we would be anywhere else” was all he said. “We’ll get the reward we were promised and the money for taking care of business here. This job is money for old rope, and the truth is we’ve got an entire army guarding us from the Redeemers. If you’ve got somewhere better to go, be my guest.”
And that was that. That night Arbell Swan-Neck slept with Vague Henri and Kleist outside her door. “We’d better be careful until we can make a plan of the place tomorrow,” said Cale, planning all the while how he was going to make his entrance the next day as her all-powerful protector. He would show her his disdain for everything about her, and she would be cowed and afraid, and he would be delighted with himself as well as devastated.
It was nine o’clock the next morning when Arbell Swan-Neck emerged from her private apartment, having been told by the maids who’d brought her breakfast that there were two guards outside accompanied by two scruffy-looking herberts who they’d only seen before clearing out the stables.
Wearing her coldest face, she was put out to discover that, besides the two guards standing formally to attention on either side of the door, she was faced not by Cale but by two boys she’d never seen before either.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“Good morning, lady,” said Vague Henri affably.
She ignored him.
“Well?” she said.
“We’re your bodyguards,” said Kleist, controlling his urge to be bowled over by her staggering beauty and covering it with a look that signified he had seen any number of beautiful aristocrats in his life and he wasn’t impressed, especially and particularly, with this one.
“Where’s your…” She couldn’t think of a word insulting enough. “Ringleader?” she said, at last, unsatisfied.
“Looking for me?” called out Cale as he turned the corner from a nearby passage accompanied by two men carrying several long rolls of paper.
“Who are these people?”
“These are your bodyguards. This one is Henri, the other one is Kleist. They have all my authority and you will please do as they ask.”
“So, they’re your familiars,” she said, hoping to be as offensive as possible.
“Familiars? What’s that?”
“Devils,” she replied triumphantly. “Like the flies who go with Beelzebub whenever he leaves hell.”
Unsurprisingly this put out Henri and Kleist but delighted Cale.
“Yes,” he said, smirking at the two of them. “These are certainly my familiars.”
“They’re a little on the puny side for bodyguards, wouldn’t you say?”
Cale looked at them regretfully. “I’m sorry about their condition-I wouldn’t want to have to look at them all day myself. But as for puny? Perhaps you’d like to set a couple of Materazzi on them, then you’ll see how puny they are.”
“So they’re killers like you?”
Henri was deeply offended by this, but Kleist clearly liked the insult.
“Yes,” replied Cale easily, “killers exactly like me.”
Unable to think of a reply, Arbell Swan-Neck walked back into her apartments and slammed the door behind her.
Ten minutes later there was a knock at the door, and Arbell Swan-Neck signaled her personal maid to answer it. When she did so, the maid was pleased to see that Cale’s eyes widened with astonishment. It was Riba.