Thalric sighed. 'You're thinking of me as a courtier, Captain Marger. You're thinking of the Regent, some fop who's never done a day's work for the service. I didn't get my Major's rank through family or favour. I earned it. I know full well that if a group like the Iron Glove was muscling in on your area of operation, you'd get briefed.'
For a long time Marger kept his usual easy smile, no more than the puzzled junior officer. Then it collapsed, and he gave a single hard-won nod. 'Well then, Major, we didn't know they were here, but it seemed likely enough for me to hear something. Nothing certain, mind, since they're tight with their information. They travel all over the Exalsee and beyond, in those helms and that black armour, and they manufacture arms that are strong, cheap, top quality. For special customers they offer more than that, new designs that have the Imperial artificers in fits. The Exalsee is already ahead of us, in some branches of artifice, and the Iron Glove is keeping ahead of them, too.'
Thalric digested this. 'And we trade with them? We should do.'
'As of recently, we do,' Marger confirmed. 'It's difficult, though. We want their schematics, their plans, but they're only prepared to sell us the finished articles. Reverse-engineering is always time-consuming, especially at the level of complexity that the Iron Glove are working at. And there are … other complications.'
'Tell me.'
Marger shrugged again, but it was a shrug from the heart. 'Like I said, they're secretive, and we don't know for sure who's running the cartel. Only … there are rumours.'
Thalric made an impatient gesture.
Marger grimaced. 'You must have heard of the Colonel-Auxillian? That mad halfbreed artificer who captured Lans Stowa and Falme Dae and Tark? Official records have him dead, along with the rest of the garrison at Szar, but … the rumours keep coming back that it's him …'
Thalric was thinking hard now. The armoured man had got the blows in, but he had lowered his guard in order to do it: he had let Thalric know who he was, and his armour alone marked him as a man high in the Iron Glove hierarchy. Where did Stenwold's renegade artificer fit in, though? Where had he gone after Helleron?
He wasn't at Helleron. The recollection came suddenly, like a splash of cold water. He was the one that Scyla replaced, because the boy had run off to… Tark. Tark, where the Colonel-Auxillian Dariandrephos had been practising his siegecraft.
'Send to the General,' he told Marger, who looked suspicious at the instruction. 'Get some clerk to dig out names of the artificers who were assisting the Colonel-Auxillian.' Am I right? He knew he was right, but he had no evidence. Drephos had survived or, if he hadn't, someone who worked with him did.
Oh, my armoured friend, I shall have you yet — if I have to use the Empire to beat you to death. The thought brought a rush of satisfaction, soothed both the bruises and his damaged pride.
Marger was still looking at him. 'Actually, Major …'
'What?'
'I'll be sending to the General as soon as I can get a messenger, but my report is incomplete. I need your help to complete it.'
'Of course, just ask.' In that moment, Thalric felt confident enough to be unassailable.
'You have been somewhat on your own recognizance,' Marger said. 'I understand that you were sent here because of your familiarity with the Lowlanders in general, and now it would seem that we extend that to certain individual Lowlanders that are here. I need to know what your plan of action is, so that the General can endorse it, and so that you and I won't trip over each other.'
And there's a good question, for which I have no answer. 'I am still gathering information,' Thalric remarked.
'You seem to have established a rapport with the Collegiate ambassador,' Marger noted. 'I can see the benefit of that. Do you intend to seduce her?'
The question stopped Thalric dead, both in thought and action, leaving him looking at Marger with a half-framed expression on his face. At the same time something stirred inside him, that might have been anticipation, and the automatic answer: Why not?
'You're direct, Captain,' he said, expecting and receiving a shrug in return.
'She seems young for an ambassador,' Marger said. 'Inexperienced. It is easy enough to keep track of the others, but she seems to appear and disappear almost at random. If you were able to establish some kind of a hold on her, it would serve us well.'
'I'll … consider it,' said Thalric, his throat unexpectedly dry. In his mind the face that loomed before him was not Che's but that of the Empress. What word will wing its way back to Capitas now? When she draws me back there eventually, what other treasons will I have committed?
Amnon arrived shortly after Che had left, which spared Totho the burden of too much introspection. She had not quite warmed to him yet, but it had been two years, and the circumstances of their last meeting had hardly been conducive to fond memories. She had assumed he was dead, while he himself had done his best, in that time, to discover where she was and what she was doing. The resources of the Iron Glove stretched to a little spying, and Drephos had tolerated his eccentricities.
The Captain of the Royal Guard sauntered in with a broad smile. His sheer robust energy made Totho feel tired.
'So, we are ready for my fitting then,' the big man began, with an enthusiasm that was almost childish. It doesn't matter how strange these Khanaphir are, everyone loves a new toy, thought Totho. Corcoran had picked out the First Soldier as the man they should primarily impress, in order to further the Glove's influence in Khanaphes. He was loved by the people, high up in the city hierarchy, and yet he was a hands-on commander always to be found in the front rank. It made him an ideal customer.
'My people are unpacking the armour even now,' Totho told him, once he had led Amnon to a room they set aside for testing. There were weapons on the walls, breastplates and helms displayed on armour trees. He imagined this man would want to try out his new mail as soon as he had put it on.
'I see you're wearing your own, still,' Amnon observed. 'Is it so light?'
Totho could not suppress a slightly shamefaced smile. 'It is new, so I'm wearing it as much as possible to get used to it. It's not the weight, so much, just the way I need to move in it.'
Amnon nodded approvingly. 'Armour and mounts and women, you have to get used to them all,' he said. He started to say something else, but paused to rethink. In a man normally so positive, the hesitation caught Totho's attention.
'You are one of these Lowlanders, are you not?' the big man said eventually.
'From Collegium, although I've travelled since then,' Totho told him. He felt the time since he had left Collegium as a physical distance, a desert that he could never recross.
'Collegium, excellent.' Amnon made a show of examining some of the weapons on the wall. 'Will you advise me, then, on a matter regarding Collegium?' His accent gave the familiar name an exotic sound.
'If I can.'
'How is it with the women there?' Amnon said, still not looking at him directly.
'The …?' Totho let the sentence hang. Do I want to know what he means?
'It is like this.' Amnon turned to him, and his big, amiable face wore a defensive expression for once. 'One of the Collegium delegation has caught my eye. In fact, I find her quite the most beautiful woman there is.' He said it quickly, without fumbling the words in any way. 'I know she is not wed, or intended, but I have not spoken to her of my feelings yet. I am not sure how things are done where she comes from.'
Totho felt a sinking feeling. 'Is it … the ambassador?' he asked. No more rivals, he thought. And certainly not this man, this absurd specimen of physicality. He tried to imagine competing with Amnon, with all his smiles and prowess and position.