"They described you pretty well. We need to do something about your hair."

Else sighed. "Maybe so."

"Right now you need to get clean."

ELSE REMAINED INVISIBLE FOR THREE WEEKS. HE RETREATED to an attic room whenever Anna Mozilla had company. Which was often. The widow was a gregarious woman with numerous friends and relations who enjoyed gossiping. She had no children.

She was energetic and positive and must have been the driving force in her marriage. She gathered regular news of events in the city.

The Three Families fell out with the Brotherhood of War because the badly wounded Brotherhood sorcerer tried to order the Devedian population exterminated after he escaped the fighting in the Devedian quarter. That was a presumption of such epic arrogance that the Three Families all refused to allow it.

Brotherhood casualties that night included twelve dead and nineteen seriously injured. The uninjured survivors were unable to resist when the Durandanti evicted them from their barracks.

"They chartered a ship to take them to Brothe," Anna Mozilla reported. "But they'll be back." A large Brotherhood establishment, Castella dollas Pontellas, the Fortress of the Little Bridges, existed just a few hundred yards from the Chiaro Palace, and even closer to Krois, the island stronghold of the Patriarch. And the current Patriarch had that sweetheart relationship with the Brotherhood.

Anna continued, "The dons aren't pleased. The sorcerer threatened them with writs of anathema. Bishop Indigo threatened right back, banning the Brotherhood from the Son-san See forever. He was never their friend. He preached against letting them set up here in the first place, back when I was a girl."

"The sorcerer did survive?"

"Yes. But they say he was hurt so bad he'll be crippled from now on. And he'll never perform major sorceries again."

"Uhm?"

"I heard he lost part of his left arm and the rest is useless. And that side of his face was destroyed. There's so much silver embedded in him, his own body will ruin whatever spells he tries." She sounded pleased.

"I really wish he was dead," Else said. "But I'll settle for second best. You say he left Sonsa?"

"Almost two weeks ago, now. He offended Don Bonaventura Scoviletti so badly that the Scovilettis say they won't support the Patriarch in anything that involves the Brotherhood in any way. Bishop Indigo is Don Bonaventura's uncle, by the way."

"Interesting. That must've taken guts. So. We had a nasty, major black-hearted villain here and even now we don't have any idea who he was."

"One of the top sorcerers from the Castella Anjela dolla Picolina. They say he came here because the augurs predicted that a huge threat to the Church would materialize in Sonsa."

"Be an ironic twist if his attempts to prevent that actually caused it."

"A lot of people are saying that."

"The trouble with the Deves should fade away, now. For a while. Without the Brotherhood to keep everybody angry."

"That's the, talk But things will never set back to normal."

"I should slip out of Sonsa, now."

"Not yet." Anna Mozilla sounded reluctant to see that happen, though what she said was, "The dons are still looking for somebody who sounds like the man I found at my door one night a while back. The Devedian elders insist they were duped by a provocateur from Dreanger who died in the explosion that started the fire in their quarter. You don't look like a Dreangerean."

"Goes to show you, you can't believe everything you hear."

Anna Mozilla gave him a look. He was fooling n.o.body but himself.

FOURTEEN DAYS LATER, IN THE VILLAGE OF ALICEA, TWENTY-two miles east of Sonsa, Else chanced on a dozen men out of Grolsach, Rence, Reste, and several other small political ent.i.ties in the confusion of Ormienden and Dromedan. They were mostly very young and very tired. Else was tired himself. But he was on the road to Brothe at last He had killed a hare with a slung stone earlier in the day. The rabbit bought him a place at the fire. The dozen were headed for Brothe, too, with ambitions toward finding work as soldiers. They were mostly strangers who had come together on the road.

The Grolsacher brothers Pico and Justi Mussa and their friend Gofit Aspel had deserted the men who held their apprentice indentures. They had picked up Rafi Corona and shifty-eyed old Bo Biogna while drifting through Dromedan, in Ormienden. The rest had acc.u.mulated since. Except for Biogna and a very large and slow-witted fellow who insisted on being called Just Plain Joe-whose traveling companion was a moth-eaten mule named Pig Iron-the men had no military experience. This was a first adventure for everyone. Even Bo Biogna and Just Plain Joe did their military stints in their home territories. When they heard Else was a traveled veteran they insisted he tell them all about the glory of war.

He told them the truth. They were not happy. That was not what they wanted to hear. But they had seen enough of the world to suspect that reality refused to bow to wishful thinking.

10. Khaurene, in the End of Connec

Word spread throughout the End of Connec. The synod of the Perfect had ruled that true Maysaleans must resist evil when evil became oppressive. So the Bishop of Antieux could be ignored if he confined himself to his cathedral or just lurked in his country manor, ranting about heresy. If he sent men to harm Maysaleans they would not be expected to turn the other cheek.

Brother Candle expected that most would, even so. Seekers After Light were gentle folk who longed for a world free of greed and hatred and all the evils Man practiced upon his fellows.

Brother Candle had argued against any surrender to the venom of the flesh. But he would not contest the will of the synod. G.o.d would be acknowledged His role as final arbiter. In any event, the targets of the Brothen interlopers were more often Connecten Episcopals than Maysaleans.

Bishop Serifs had kept his head down since the attack on the Patriarchal legate, though the Patriarch kept demanding a more aggressive campaign against heresy.

The legate was slow to recover from his wounds.

Antieux was quiet. Count Raymone Garete, young and quick of temper, remained in Khaurene, Duke Tormond's seat, held there by Tormond so he would not provoke the Church.

Brother Candle made his way through the crowded morning streets of Khaurene for the first time in two decades. No retinue accompanied him but he received more attention and respect than he had when he was Charde ande Clairs.

Episcopal and Maysalean alike, people saluted him or bowed or even hailed him in the ancient imperial manner. Becoming Perfect was considered a great accomplishment by Connectens of all faiths. Even Deves and Dainshaus, who could be found in all the larger towns and cities of the Connec, respected a holy spirit when they encountered one.

The old fortress called Metrelieux stood on an eminence overlooking a bend in the fat, slow, brown Vierses River. Metrelieux had been the seat of the Connecten dukes since time immemorial. The present fortress had been erected using dressed limestone from local quarries four centuries ago, on the foundations of an Old Brothen fortress that had served the identical purpose in imperial times. The original structure had been looted for building stone during the two centuries following the collapse of the Old Brothen Empire.

The stone of the modern fortress was soft. It was dirty. It showed severe weathering. Brother Candle doubted that it would last another hundred years.

Metrelieux reflected the nature of the man who occupied it. So the folk of Khaurene said, who knew him as the Great Vacillator.

Tormond IV just never seemed to get around to doing the big things.

Tormond was loved by the people of the Connec, as much for what he did not get around to as for what he did.

Tormond did not involve himself in the lives of his people. The people of the Connec found that an endearing trait in a ruling duke.

Tormond's father and grandfather had set the precedent. Though the grandfather (also Tormond, the third duke of that name) had gone crusading as a young man. His grandfather had been one of the founders of the crusader states of Kagure and Groves, which, in forms much diminished by Indala al-Sul Halaladin, survived today. Ruled by princes, nominated by the Brotherhood of War, and confirmed by all the more recent Patriarchs.

Brother Candle came up to the barbican gate of Metrelieux. Two sleepy, overweight, and elderly guards were all that stood between the fortress and invasion. They observed sporadic foot traffic from beneath a portcullis that, in all probability, would not come down in an emergency.

No one living could recall the last time the fortress had closed its gates.

There was fear in the streets today, though. The folk of Khaurene sensed that centuries of peace and prosperity were in peril. The people were troubled by a failed attempt on the life of Immaculate II, the anti-Patriarch.

Rumors in the street said that, through great good fortune and the grace of G.o.d, a.s.sa.s.sins intent on murdering the prelate had been overwhelmed by Immaculate's Braunsknechts Guards. There was talk of miracles and divine intervention. The killers should not have failed.

Sublime V, was, of course, the chief candidate for villain behind the crime. Though, naturally, Sublime would deny all responsibility.

The guards at the gate asked him what he wanted.

"I'm Brother Candle. The Duke..."

"Eh. Ye're late, sair. Himself pro'ly guv up on ye comin'." The heavier guard spoke a dialect used way out west, possibly from beyond the River Payme in Tramaine. "Come wi' me, sair."

Brother Candle asked, "What brought you to Khaurene?"

"Khaurene were where I was when I figured out I were ta aid ta be an adventurer anymore." Adventurer being the common euphemism for mercenary soldier. "An' I shoulda done 'er twen'y years sooner. The Duke, he bees a good man ta work far."

"I hear that everywhere." Brother Candle eventually left the guard with a blessing, at his request.

The Patriarch was right. They were everywhere.

Brother Candle pa.s.sed through dusty halls where, it seemed, no effort had been made to keep house since the current reign began.

Tormond had unusual priorities, it seemed.

Tormond of Khaurene was a balding, graying, gaunt man in his early fifties. Handsome and vain in his youth, Tormond had lost interest in his appearance when he lost Artesia, his d.u.c.h.ess, in childbirth at the age of forty-four, four years past. The child was both deformed and stillborn. Every Connecten who put words into the mouth of G.o.d had something to say about that Tormond disdained them all.

The Duke had aged terribly. His gray eyes were haunted.

"Charde ande Clairs," Tormond said, leaving a clutch of n.o.bles to greet the Perfect.

"Just Brother Candle these days, Your Lordship."

"It must be true, what they say about you people drinking the blood of virgins. You don't look a year older."

"You flatter me, Your Lordship. My bones feel like the bones of an octogenarian. My joints creak and groan any time I bend over. My best years are behind me, alas."

Duke Tormond continued his own thought. "I, on the other hand, have aged for both of us. I'm so tired, Charde. Since I lost Artesia I wake up already weary of the world and its trials."

Had this been anyone other than Tormond, Brother Candle would now witness the peace to be found amongst the Seekers After Light But this was Tormond IV, beloved by his people, whose only male child had been stillborn. Whose most likely successor was Count Raymone Garete of Antieux, a friend of the Seekers but barely out of his teens and a ferocious hothead. Count Raymone suffered from the unfortunate delusion of an independent Connec allied with and protected by King Peter of Navaya in nearby Direcia.

Brother Candle said, "Send a courier to Heaumont. The nuns can provide you an herbal remedy that will have you stamping the earth like a young stallion again in three months."

"Ah. Your wife is there these days, isn't she?"

"That's where she took her orders."

"I'll do that. You chose the perfect moment to arrive. I suppose that's why they call you Perfect Master." Tormond's sense of humor was not entirely dead. When Brother Candle did not correct him, he went on. "My sister is here." He indicated the group he had departed. Among them was a handsome woman in her early thirties.

"Pardon my brash observation, Your Lordship, but she's become quite a striking woman."

Isabeth was twenty-one years younger than Tormond. She was more like an indulged daughter than a little sister.

"I didn't know she was visiting."

"Officially, she's not. Officially, she's in Oranja, running the state while Peter besieges Camarghara. Please don't tell anyone that you saw her."

"Of course. If that's what you want."

"It is. Come over and sit with us."

Brother Candle followed the Duke to a table where the Queen of Navaya had just settled with six older men. One was a Dainshau. Two were Devedians. Of those two, one's dress suggested that he had come from Direcia, perhaps accompanying Isabeth. The other, named Michael Carhart, was a Devedian religious scholar of considerable substance and Khaurene's senior Devedian.

Of the remaining men, two were Episcopal priests and one looked like a professional soldier. Brother Candle recognized none of them.

Once Brother Candle and the Duke seated themselves, there were no empty chairs. Brother Candle said, "I presume that I'm the last to arrive. So what's the occasion for such a distinguished a.s.sembly?"

Tormond said, "A communication from the Patriarch. Sublime, not Immaculate."

Brother Candle surveyed the others. How had Isabeth gotten here so fast?

"Isabeth was here when the letter arrived. She came because King Peter had heard from the Patriarch earlier, on a related matter."

"I see."

"Sublime has commanded me, as Duke of the End of Connec, to rid the province of all heretics and unbelievers. He's done that before, but never backed by the threat of force. As always, he didn't specify who the offenders might be."

One Episcopal priest muttered, "The man is an idiot."

The other priest glared.

The first said, "Does he suppose Johannes would let him get away with that?"

The man who looked like a soldier said, "The message seems timed to arrive right after Immaculate's a.s.sa.s.sination. That failed. So the threat has no substance."

Queen Isabeth said, "Sublime presumes too much. He believes his own propaganda. His grasp on reality has become suspect."

Brother Candle turned to Duke Tormond for further explanation.

Tormond said, "The fool ordered Peter to ready his forces for an invasion of the Connec."

"Peter of Navaya?" That did indicate a serious disconnect with reality. Why would Sublime think that Peter would abandon the Reconquest to attack his wife's brother? Also, while Peter was a devout Chaldarean, he was tolerant. He did not persecute the minorities within his own kingdom. Not even Pramans, so long as his own suzerainty remained unchallenged. h.e.l.l, rumor had it that Peter's queen was a Maysalean heretic herself. And there were more Maysaleans there than anywhere outside the Connec, except the rump Praman mercantile republic of Platadura, a port on the Direcian coast of the Mother Sea just beyond the eastern coastal end of the Verses Mountains.

Brother Candle suggested, "King Peter now regrets that his father shifted his allegiance from Viscesment to Brothe."

Queen Isabeth confessed, "He did that only because a few important va.s.sals insisted. And they still do."

The military man asked, "Will they make war on fellow Chaldareans?"

"No, Sir Eardale. Our lords are of one mind militarily. The Reconquest. They won't respond to Sublime's call. They all have ties with our Connecten families. But someone else certainly will respond if called."

"Who?" Tormond asked.