Socia was nowhere to be found.
Bernardin grumbled, “I’ll bet she sneaked off to see Kedle. She didn’t have any other obligations today.”
“But she…”
“Really, Master. Socia Rault? Who knows her better than you? Will the woman let good sense get in her way?”
Guillemette had just come to see if they needed anything. She snapped, “The Countess spent the morning with Lumiere. After lunch she went to the audience hall to deal with a gaggle of magistrates who claimed they’d been ordered to a general assembly of city judges.”
“Damn me!” Brother Candle swore so seldom that Bernardin and Guillemette alike were stunned. “I forgot! I was going to upbraid them for wasting Socia’s time with petty cases. I blame you, Bernardin. If you hadn’t dragged me out…”
“My fault? You could have said you had something going.”
“You made it sound like Socia wanted it handled right now.”
“It could have waited. Getting those chickenshit justices to look down and find their balls would be more important than any silly-ass running around we did.”
Exasperated, Guillemette said, “And you’re the men the Countess considers the backbone of Antieux. Is there something you want? I’ll only be here a few minutes more.”
Bernardin said, “You could tell us where the Countess is. So we can tell her what we found out. And so the Master can apologize.”
Brother Candle rolled his eyes.
Guillemette made a growling noise. “You can get your own supper.” She headed for the nearest doorway, but halted, framed there. “She’s probably enjoying dinner with my cousin in Arnhand.” Then she was gone.
Half a minute later Brother Candle said, “Bernardin, I’m too old. I should have been one with the Light years ago. I feel more like I’m not in my own world anymore, every day.”
“You know too much. Everybody we saw today would feel just as lost if they knew what you do.”
Bernardin had misunderstood. Deliberately? Maybe not. Amberchelle’s worldview was simpler. “No doubt. No doubt.”
“What I’m thinking now is, we’re missing something. Something that might be obvious to an outsider but you and I can’t see because of what we believe.”
“Bernardin…” This was one of those times when Amberchelle amazed and perplexed him by being deeper than seemed possible.
Talk of the devil conjured her. Socia wandered in, looking exhausted. An attentive Guillemette rematerialized.
“Thought you were going away,” Amberchelle grumbled.
“I lied. I had to get away from you children.”
Socia volunteered, “I went and saw Kedle.”
Brother Candle grunted. He wanted to mention the obligations of motherhood but did not, recalling what Guillemette had said about how Socia had spent her morning. It would be breath wasted, anyway.
Amberchelle responded, “And? They haven’t hung her yet?”
“No. I’m getting worried about her.”
“Really? Why would that be?”
Socia did not catch Amberchelle’s sarcastic tone.
“Because she’s running wild. She’s killing people. She doesn’t care who. If they aren’t one hundred percent our friends and willing to exterminate anybody who doesn’t think the way we do … She’s in Arnhand, now, being more cruel than the Arnhanders ever were. Yesterday she overran an estate belonging to one of Anne of Menand’s cousins. She killed everything, including mice and sparrows where she found them. She burned everything burnable. She poisoned the wells. Her men never argued. They believe she was chosen by God to punish Arnhand. They idolize her.”
“And you’re jealous?” the Perfect asked.
“Not anymore. Now I’m terrified she’ll start believing what her men say. That she’ll decide God really is with her and it’s perfectly reasonable to think she can subdue Arnhand with just a few hundred men.”
Bernardin muttered something about more men slipping away every day to join Kedle. He did not mean to be heard.
Brother Candle said, “You’re worrying too much. Kedle is stubborn and willful but she does have a sense of proportion. She’ll just harass Arnhand. She won’t get into any real fights.”
“You sound like you’re behind her.”
“I’m trying to tell you what I think she’s thinking.”
Bernardin shifted talk to what they had learned about the problems in Antieux’s churches.
* * *
Antieux enjoyed a halcyon season of several weeks’ duration. The entire city seemed happy and content. Even Bishop LaVelle’s complaints were infrequent and random.
The magistrates, justices of the peace, and remaining parish priests began taking care of the trivia they should have since Socia’s ascension. They learned that she would not overrule them even where she disagreed with their judgments.
Then came news concerning the improbable events at Vetercus.
21. Alten Weinberg: Winter
The Righteous reached Alten Weinberg on an afternoon when random snowflakes swirled, proclaiming the end of the campaign season. There had been enthusiastic welcomes along the way. Common folks, for some reason, seemed to feel included in the triumphs of the Righteous.
The nobility were more restrained. A common adventurer, however favored by the Ege sisters, was poaching in their preserve.
Hecht did his best to charm those he met along the way. Possession of Anselin of Menand helped, but not a lot.
Although holiness had abandoned more and more churches the hunger for crusade was rising, a communal insanity taking hold of the Chaldarean world. Hecht began to worry about the whole becoming too big to control.
He worried about the Shining Ones, too, though they respected their contract and remained disguised. The more compliant they were the more nervous he became. The core him, hammered into shape in the Vibrant Spring School, did not want to believe any good could come of traffic with devils.
As much as he worried about them, his staff worried about him more.
Events in Hovacol had rendered less striking his apparent return from the dead. He had been strange after that, but only somewhat and only for a short while. He had appeared normal enough in Brothe. His turning up unconscious on the road into the Remayne Pass was troubling, but …
Lord Arnmigal was downright weird. He called devils to the battlefield. He did not break a sweat while conquering a renowned brawler. He had driven a demon out of said brawler.
None of which had been explained to anyone’s satisfaction. Lord Arnmigal was as concerned as anyone else.
Always clever, he had become smoothly facile tactically. He knew what his opponent would do before that opponent moved. He seemed incapable of error and equally incapable of understanding why monstrous competence scared those around him.
He had every characteristic desirable in a Commander of the Righteous on the eve of a history-defining effort to cleanse the Holy Lands of unbelievers, heretics, and other abominations in the eye of God.
On the other hand … Piper Hecht was frightened. He could not shake a conviction that he was not the man he had been. The Hovacol raid had changed him. Again.
Else Tage had become Piper Hecht. Piper Hecht had settled in so comfortably that Else Tage was scarcely a reminiscence. Piper Hecht had become so real that he had memories of his manufactured Duarnenian past. It took an effort of will to recall the Vibrant Spring School.
When he did ferret out those elusive recollections he banged up against the realization that he had been another someone before he became Else Tage, the boy Gisors, whose natural father was a lord of the Brotherhood of War. Gisors had had a family. Piper Hecht had found that family again-and right now very much wished that the member called the Ninth Unknown would show up and help navigate the stormy emotional seas.
Where was that old man? For that matter, where was Heris? Where were Lila and Vali? His only family was Pella, who went round in a slack-jawed daze, constantly frightened.