"Self-preservation, girlie. Looking after number one. They were going to try do something I really didn't want to repeat and I tried to stop them."
"You killed them to protect them?" Somehow, saying it made it almost logical, which wasn't her intention.
Crowe blinked and rubbed his forehead. "I'm not looking for forgiveness, pet. Not from you, not from anyone."
Gabriella thought long and hard before answering. "I understand."
Kesar stood on the slope of the rise upon which they had made camp and watched the glittering peak of Freedom through a spyglass.
"It's ideal," he commented to Preceptor DeBarres. "All of Kell's little friends, bottled up in there. Unless we force them out and they manage to escape into the closest settlements."
"There are no settlements nearby. They've already displaced the goblin nests, and those have been dealt with. Unless, of course, they scatter into the Sardenne."
"They would be most welcome to do that," Kesar murmured. "They may find it better than the bridge to Kerberos."
"You mentioned that a moment ago. You could try to sound more ironic."
Kesar smiled. "But it is indeed a bridge to Kerberos."
DeBarres, standing next to Kesar, looked at him disbelievingly. "What? You're not seriously telling me those heretics are going to…"
"They're going to see the light, Preceptor. It is a bridge to Kerberos, I assure you. Well, perhaps it would more accurate of me to say it is a bridge from Kerberos."
"A bridge has two ends. But not always two directions of travel."
Kesar rose and strolled towards his tent, DeBarres following. Kesar began to neaten his hair with a small comb, absent-mindedly, as he looked up towards Kerberos. "Tell me, Preceptor, do you know where magic comes from?"
"From the Lord of All, as does everything in the world." He grunted. "I know there are those who think otherwise, however."
"People don't have access to the histories that you and I, or the Anointed Lord, do."
"I'm only a soldier, Eminence. A good one, of course, but a soldier nonetheless."
"You sound very sure of yourself."
"The Lord of All gave me a particular set of skills and talents and Katherine Makennon and Eminence Voivode saw where those talents best lay." He smiled calmly, knowing it would needle Kesar. "Between three such august personages, I can't imagine they're all wrong. Can you?"
Kesar's lip curled as he gave DeBarres a cold stare.
"Mid-morning the day after tomorrow,'" Gabriella said. A light drizzle had begun and so Gabriella and Crowe had withdrawn into their tent. They squatted opposite each other on low stools, while she tried to light an oil lamp.
"Yeah, that's what Kesar said."
"Which means tomorrow now. Why be so specific?" she asked.
"I told you not to trust him, Dez. That bloke's got something up his sleeve."
"But whatever it is, it can't be military…"
Her mind was racing, and she found herself fighting against it. It was plunging headlong in a direction she didn't want to go in. "It could be something to do with — "
"Aw crap," Crowe muttered. "The bridge. Those things we met at the Isle of the Star, they knew in advance what was going to happen! Like, it was a regular thing…
"And if this place is the same."
"And it is."
"Because that would mean Kesar knows about the regular thing, yet no-one else had ever heard of it." Her voice faltered, and he knew she was beginning to get an inkling of what he was trying to get her to see.
"You told me yourself," Crowe said, "the higher you rise in the ranks of the Final Faith, the more access you get to ancient knowledge, to records written by Faith scholars over the centuries. The average person doesn't really believe that goblins really exist, but every member of the Swords knows about them. I doubt you know the complexities of the Faith's accounts as well as Eminence Kesar does, in his role as Treasurer, right? And I'd be willing to bet that somewhere in Scholten, somebody — maybe Makennon, maybe an Eminence, I don't know — that somebody knew what the Isle of the Star was, and knew what Freedom Point was, and damn well knew what was going to happen and when!"
"Right… So?"
"Joachim Foll takes a pot-shot at Rhodon and all bloody hell breaks loose. Kell and his mates in the Brotherhood are on the run, but where do they run to? Luckily Kell has a hideaway, in the form of a fancy glass mountain, out where no humans live…"
"Freedom."
"So the word spreads, the sinners and the heretics and the Brotherhood all make a bee-line for this fabulous new gaff, right? The goblins would make mincemeat of these no-hopers, but there are some good magicians in the Brotherhood. So the way is cleared out for everyone to come here."
"And in a place where they can all burn together." A chill ran down Gabriella's spine. "Only the Brothers and sinners and heretics who need to be cleansed didn't come alone. They brought their friends and families and lovers. People who have committed no heresy. All to burn together."
"If you're going to celebrate, I want nothing to do with it."
"The deaths of innocents are never a cause for celebration. Never." She shook her head. "But Kell has been sending people here for months, via the Golden Huntress…"
"He's had two years to get this place up and running."
"But how did he find out about it in the first place?"
He took several deep breaths. "Why don't we go and ask him? Where do we find a way in?"
"From the Brotherhood, of course."
The Brotherhood were everywhere in Freedom. While the women cooked and tended children and danced, the men were drilling. It wasn't just the mercenaries, either. Groups of civilian men were being enticed to join in. There was a literal series of levels to their drills, with men and boys in casual clothing trying out simple exercises on lower terraces, rising up to men in uniform leather jerkins practicing with weapons on the higher terraces.
Crowe tried out a couple of the regimes and found it was handy for getting warmed up; he has spent too long in the saddle over the past couple of weeks and some muscles were feeling the worse for wear.
This gave him the chance to listen to what the men in training were saying. Most of them chatted about girls and booze and friends or family they had left behind, but some were too proud of their achievements here to keep their mouths shut. Soon, a well-trained man in a red robe came by the terrace on which Crowe was practicing with a short staff. The man had a Brotherhood tattoo on his forehead, of all places. Crowe could hardly believe it; the bloke obviously didn't get the secret part of a secret society.
A more disturbing thought occurred to him; perhaps the Brotherhood wanted to be less secret, impossible though it seemed. He gave the man a friendly nod. Then he spotted Gabriella beckoning for him to come over.
Goran Kell walked down the steps of the Glass Mountain, enjoying the sight spread out before him. Four men in red robes, all with Brotherhood tattoos on their foreheads, flanked him, though he was confident he didn't need them.
Chaga, on the other hand, he did need, but Chaga had never returned from Andon. Kell could guess what had happened and, for one of the few times in his life, felt a pang of sadness.
He continued on, looking over the terraces. There were plenty of pretty girls to amuse him, but for now he was more interested in the men who were being trained.
"How are they progressing?" he asked the robed man to his left.
"Quite well, considering. The Dreamweed makes them open to suggestion and the lifestyle makes them fit. They'll make good soldiers."
"They'd better." He smiled to himself. Freedom, what a joke. "There's a new Brotherhood coming and they'll spearhead it."
Gabriella wasn't crazy, of course, despite that being Crowe's first thought when she expressed an intent to get the Brotherhood to give her Kell. She wasn't mad enough to try making one of the men around here confess. She simply picked one to follow.