After breakfast he visited the Colonel at his office in the Redoubt.
Xeno studied him as he entered, rose, bowed slightly and then returned to his desk. He finished signing some documents and said; “You visited Lady Asea yesterday.”
“I did, sir. You gave me permission.”
“And you discussed your recent mission with her.” Sardec saw where this was going now.
“Lady Asea is one of the First, sir, and she was curious.”
“So you told her what she wanted to know.” Xeno’s tone was silky. Sardec sensed the danger in it. He remembered some of the rumours that had flown around the officer’s mess about Xeno and Lady Asea. There was some long-standing animosity between them, over what no one seemed to know. Sardec guessed it was political. In politics Xeno was so conservative he was almost purple.
“I told her what seemed reasonable to tell her, sir.”
“And what was that?”
“I told her about the Ultari. I was hoping she could throw some light on the matter.”
“She certainly seems determined to. She has a ripjack in her cage about Uran Ultar and someone trying to reawaken him. She sent me a message about it this morning.”
“Perhaps someone is, sir.”
Xeno steepled his fingers and looked up at the ceiling. He let out a long sigh. “Yes, Lieutenant, perhaps someone is. That is why you shall be accompanying the Lady Asea back to the ruins of Achenar as soon as she finds it convenient.”
“Sir?”
“The Lady Asea requires an escort into the mountains. You and your men were the last ones at the site she wishes to visit. It seems logical that you should be the one to accompany her. Don’t you agree?”
“Indeed, sir, but we are mobilising for intervention in Kharadrea.”
“A trip into the mountains will not take too long, I hope. We can’t have one of the First wandering around on her own in such dangerous territory, not with the hill-men all stirred up now, can we?”
“You are correct, sir. When must my men be ready?”
“She is hosting her famous Solace Ball this evening, so I doubt the Lady Asea is going to be ready to travel before tomorrow. The men can have their Solace leave. After that, be ready to go.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Lieutenant Sardec…”
“Sir?”
“Next time please be a little more careful before discussing your duties with anybody not in this regiment. No matter who they are.”
“I will, sir.”
“That will be all, Lieutenant.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Getting in and out of the camp proved easier than Rik had expected. No one had stopped them from getting back to his bothy and claiming his rucksack. A quick check to make sure everything was still in place, to pick up some of his special gear and they were ready to head back.
At the gates the sentries had checked their passes with a mixture of resentment and envy but they had done nothing to stop them. Now they were back in Mama Horne’s, drinking deep and preparing for tonight’s meeting. Weasel had booked the room. Rik had written a note concerning the new arrangements to Bertragh and read the merchant’s tetchy reply to his compatriots. There was not a lot else they could do now except wait.
“That should be the last,” he told Weasel and the Barbarian, pointing to their full wine cups as he rose to seek out Rena. “You’ll need your wits about you tonight.”
“My wits are always about me,” said the Barbarian.
“Half of them anyway,” said Weasel. Rik was disconcerted, though, that they paid attention to him. Weasel gulped down his goblet’s contents and then shouted for chai. He was obviously more nervous than he looked. Rik was not surprised. Not only was he looking forward to taking possession of a small fortune, he was anticipating getting rid of something that could get them all burned at the stake if the Inquisition caught them.
Outside in the street, preparations were well under way for the Solace carnival. From a hundred households came the smell of frying fish and cinnamon scented wine. Children ran everywhere wearing masks of beasts and monsters and demons. Incense burned in the small shrines in every shop front. People flowed past in their temple best, heading for the mid-day service. At moonrise, Mourning would officially be at an end and the food and drink would flow. For quite a few people staggering out of the grog-shops, it looked like it had finished already.
“Do you want to go to temple?” Rena asked.
Rik shook his head. “I stopped going a long time ago when Leon and I busted out of the orphanage.”
She gave him a sidelong glance then returned to looking at the children skipping in a ring around the pig rummaging in one of the garbage mounds. “You never knew your mother and father?”
“No.”
“You know anything about them?”
“They said my father was an Exalted and my mother was a street girl but how could they know. I talked to one old woman who remembered my mother being brought to the poorhouse. She claimed she gibbered something about a Terrarch and blasphemy as she gave birth.”
“Couldn’t you ask your mother?”
“She died while I was being born. Or so they said. You never know. Maybe she ran off afterwards. These things happen.”
“How can you think that of your own mother?”
“I was born in Sorrow, remember? A hundred worse things happen every day.”
She reached out and took his hand as though in sympathy. He wanted none of it, and let her hand go. He found himself oddly angry without knowing why. He thought he had come to terms with this all a long time ago.
“You’ve known Leon a long time then,” she said, obviously trying to change the subject. A young boy in an angel mask fled screaming from two girls garbed as demons. He bounced off Rik as he raced passed. Automatically Rik checked his purse, but nothing was taken. Rena noticed the action.
“You’re very suspicious.”
“I’ve known Leon since we both could walk,” said Rik choosing to ignore the statement. Somewhere in a side street someone was banging on some drums. Someone else was tuning up a fiddle. People were getting ready to have a party. They turned down another narrow alleyway. A man screamed at Rik and came straight at him with a hatchet. He stepped to one side and the man raced passed chasing a chicken down an even narrower alley. It looked like someone’s feast day meal was making a break for it.
Rik glanced around warily, keeping his hands near his weapons. He felt at home here in the maze of the Pit, in the way he did in Sorrow but this was not his home. The bully boys did not know him. The pickpockets would still chance their hands. It did not matter that it was Solace to them. The predators were always hungry. He half expected some of the Agante hill-men to come out of the side alleyways but they did not.
Ahead of him, he could smell the river, murky water and sewage flow mingling with the smell of plants and cooking food. They emerged onto a small muddy bank. On one side of them was a tavern built on a stilt-borne platform over the river. It was an extension of a stone building on the riverside, and some of the stonework flowed onto the platform itself. Rik had seen such buildings before. Inevitably they crumbled into the water.
On the other side of the river, he could see warehouses and wharves and barges tied up on the waterfront. Most of them were occupied only by skeleton crews and watchmen now. By nightfall even those would be drunk, and then the river gangs would come out. From here he could see Bertragh’s go-down. He wanted to get another look at it while there was still light. Later, he thought, they would take a walk by the place. It never hurt to take a second look.