He failed to notice the two figures stepping into the taverna, a man and a woman dressed in civilian clothing, their shaven heads covered by felt hats, their hard stares fixed upon him.
Through the eyeglass, Archgeneral Sparus watched a pair of skyships taking off from the heart of Tume, Red Guards standing along the rails, their cloaks blowing in the breeze as the vessels lifted ponderously into the air. He snapped the eyeglass together and handed it to the officer closest to him, Captain Skayid. So it was true: Creed was evacuating the fighting men from Tume now.
Sparus knew that the Lord Protector would be one of the last to leave the floating city, and, knowing that, he was pushing the bridge rebuilding effort hard.
He was loath to allow the man to escape once again. He wanted Creed alive; he wanted very dearly to set his best people to work on him. They would break him, as they broke everyone, with narcotics and mind games and carefully applied measures of pain, until Creed was nothing more than a wreck of a man, malleable to all that they demanded of him…
It had become his favoured fantasy, ever since the aftermath of the battle and the Khosians’ close escape. The Lord Protector, chained and naked in a cage and renouncing aloud all he had ever stood for, while Sparus paraded him in front of the walls of Bar-Khos for the Khosians to witness what had befallen their great war leader.
Perhaps Creed could even join Lucian as another living trophy. That would be only fitting, Sparus mused. In defeat, the Lagosian insurgency had shown itself to be nothing more than another reckless folly. Soon now, the defiance of Khos and the Free Ports would become a fallacy too; the battles of Coros, Chey-Wes and the Shield would be remembered as the last bright moments of a people stuck stubbornly in the past, futile attempts at denying the new world order.
Sparus didn’t doubt this, for he had seen it time and time again. While the scholars liked to quip about victors writing the books of history, Sparus knew that it went much deeper than that. It was victory itself which shaped the history in people’s minds, which showed the righteousness of a cause and the mistaken beliefs of those who had been defeated. Victory had power in it, while defeat… defeat was nothing but a husk, quickly discarded save for what seeds lay within it, those hopes of future triumphs.
When Mann finally conquered the Free Ports, and then the lands of the Alhazii, it would be the end of the contest of the ages, the contest of beliefs. And the victory itself would be the proof of Mann’s righteousness.
Still, he had a personal score to settle with this man first, this Lord Protector who had made him look the fool twice now, first with his night attack, and then with his unexpected escape from the field. And Sparus knew precisely how he was going to achieve it.
‘Colonel Kunse,’ he said, and the colonel snapped to attention, along with the other officers around him. ‘Prepare our Commandos for a night attack. Have them build some rafts so they can get across. When it starts nearing dark, redouble the efforts on the bridge. Offer gold to attract volunteers if you have to. I want it completed tonight, not tomorrow, do you hear?’
He looked to the west with his single eye, over the imperial heavy guns that pounded away along the southern shore. Another Khosian skyship was returning just then across the lake.
‘And do something about those skyships, will you? We should be contesting the skies, not leaving them open for the Khosians to escape in good order.’
‘But our birds are still under repairs, Archgeneral.’
‘I don’t care, Colonel. If they can fly, get them in the air.’
Sparus was demanding the impossible, but he didn’t care.
‘We’ll take the city tonight, and Creed himself, while he’s still evacuating his men.’
A few of them smiled now, seeing the irony of it.
Aye, Sparus thought. Let us see how these Khosians like a taste of their own medicine.
A clatter of wooden plates jolted Che from his drunken stupor.
He saw that food had been laid out on a small dining table, and that he and Curl sat in a room of their own. A neatly made bed stood along one wall. A pair of velvet curtains covered a window at their backs. A plush rug lay on the floor. Despite the clean condition of the room, it still smelled of dampness and mould.
A murmur of laughter sounded through the closed door from the hallway and the taproom at the bottom of the stairs. Che sat and stared at the food with a soft spin to the world around him. For a while he forgot who this girl was, sitting next to him. Yet their legs were touching, and she seemed not to be bothered by it, so something existed between them, even if he couldn’t recall what it was. In his other hand, a hazii stick hung smoking from his fingers. He drew it to his lips, trembling. Inhaled, feeling each and every grain of the hazii weed scratching down the back of his throat.
‘Exhale, you idiot,’ said the girl as she took the stick from him, her cheeks bulging with food. He’d been sitting with the smoke in his lungs, not doing anything but staring into the guttering flame of the candle in the middle of the table.
Che exhaled and sat back and looked at her. ‘How beautiful you are,’ he said.
She smiled politely, as though she’d heard those words a hundred times before, then returned to her food.
‘You should eat,’ she told him. ‘It will do you good.’
He couldn’t face the thought of eating just then. His neck was truly throbbing, and it dawned on him only slowly that it was more than mere head pains. How long since I took the wildwood juice? he suddenly wondered.
‘They’re coming for me,’ Che mumbled as he tried to rise to his feet, though the words were mashed by his useless tongue.
‘They’re coming for all us,’ he heard her reply.
His hand slipped from the table and he dropped back into his seat. He could no longer sit up straight. He leaned forward to rest his forehead against the cool surface of the table, then turned it so that his cheek was pressed against it. Drool ran from the corner of his mouth.
He noticed that the wineskin was still in his lap. More drink was what he needed, he decided, and he straightened with a groan in the chair, and went through the laborious process of getting the Keratch into his mouth.
Before he could swallow it down, he was jolted by the sharp stab of the girl’s elbow against his ribs.
Through his swimming vision he saw that someone now stood before the table, and another was closing the door behind them.
They were dressed in civilian clothing beneath thin cloaks, the cloaks parted at their waists, a pistol poking out from each of them aimed at Che’s heart.
All at once he was sitting upright in his chair.
‘Mind if we sit?’ enquired Guan, and took one of the chairs across the table while his sister did the same. Swan studied the food for a moment, plucked a small pastry and popped it into her mouth.
Curl was frozen in her chair. Swan flashed her dark eyes at the girl. ‘Who’s your pretty friend?’ she asked sourly, and Che wondered how he had ever considered this woman to be attractive.
He said nothing, for Guan was fixing him with a cold glare. ‘I’d stop reaching for that gun if I were you,’ the man said. ‘I’m a whisker away from squeezing this trigger.’
Che took his hand away from the wooden stock of the pistol in his belt.
‘Hands on the table,’ Guan told him. Che laid the wineskin down, and his hands to either side of it. ‘You too,’ he told the girl.
Che was finding it hard to stay focused on the Diplomat’s face. It seemed to be leering at him in the dim candlelight of the room, shadows making pits of his eyes and a twisted gash of his lips. He could smell the water of the lake off him. Che’s eyes flickered to Curl’s hands on the table. They were trembling. He blinked, focusing on the man’s face again.
‘Well, say something, won’t you?’ prompted Guan. ‘Why don’t you explain to us why you turned traitor?’