“Got a message for you, sir,” he said. “From His Excellency. One of his men delivered it personally.”
Marcus found his heart leaping at the prospect. A good excuse to get out from behind the desk and away from the mountain of papers would be welcome. He accepted the envelope from Eisen and broke the seal, finding two scraps of notepaper inside.
One read:
Captain-the inquiries I mentioned earlier have borne some fruit. I believe this to be the location of a cell to which our sleeping friend reported. I suggest you take an armed guard when you investigate, and be very careful with any prisoners you take. Good luck.-J
The other had an address that Marcus didn’t recognize. He folded the note and put it in his pocket, then looked up at Eisen. “Could you fetch the vice captain, please?”
It was a few minutes before Giforte came in. His features were composed-if he was irritated at being called in, he didn’t show it. He must be used to a new captain making a show of being busy for a few days.
“You called, sir?”
“Yes.” Marcus handed him the note with the address. “Do you know where this is?”
Giforte frowned slightly. “Yes, sir. It’s in Oldtown, a couple of blocks from the ford. Why do you ask?”
“I’m going there on an investigation. Orders from His Excellency the minister. Could you lend me a couple of men who know the way?”
“The Armsmen are at your disposal, Captain.” Giforte saluted. “With your permission, I’ll accompany you myself. Let me put together an escort. A dozen men should be sufficient.”
“I don’t need to stand on ceremony, Vice Captain. Just yourself and Staff Eisen will be sufficient.”
“Ah,” Eisen said. “I’m not sure. .”
“What Staff Eisen means to say, sir,” Giforte said, and Marcus recognized the patient tone he’d gotten so often from Fitz, “is that standing orders are not to go into Oldtown in groups smaller than six. And it would be best to take a carriage.”
Marcus looked between them and sighed.
The carriage was a big one, painted in Armsmen green with the hooded-eagle crest on the sides. Marcus and Giforte sat inside, while Eisen and a pair of Armsmen waited on the roof, and another squad of eight Staves followed behind. Marcus hadn’t asked for stealth, but he’d hoped at least for subtlety. This was about as subtle as a bullhorn.
Rather than splash through the muddy ford, Giforte directed the carriage to take the Grand Span to the South Bank and then follow the River Road east to Oldtown. The driver, another Armsman, didn’t require any further directions, which left Marcus and Giforte sitting awkwardly in silence as the carriage rattled down cobbled streets and clacked over flagstones.
“So.” After five years in Khandar, living in the tight circle of the Colonials, Marcus found his small-talk reflexes a little rusty. “Tell me a bit about yourself, Vice Captain.”
“What would you like to know, sir?” Giforte said.
“Are you a family man?”
“Widower, sir.”
Marcus winced. “Any children?”
“A daughter.” A hint of real emotion was visible for a moment in the vice captain’s face, but it was quickly suppressed. “We’ve lost touch.”
“Ah.” And that, Marcus thought, was the end of that. Hardly my fault if he doesn’t want to hold up his end of the conversation.
Probably Giforte thought it wasn’t worth getting too chummy with a captain who might be gone with the next cabinet shake-up. Actually, it might be downright dangerous. Marcus looked at the vice captain’s bland smile, and wondered how much he knew about affairs at Ohnlei. If he knows that Janus and the duke are enemies, then he may expect me to be gone sooner rather than later.
He pushed aside the curtain and looked out the window as the carriage bumped down off the bridge and turned onto the packed dirt of the River Road. The chaotic sprawl of the Docks soon gave way to the grid of symmetrical towers that was Newtown, stained and blackened by smoke and weather. The River Road was kept reasonably clear of obstructions-he remembered a duty rota assigning squads to the job-but the side of it was lined by carts, stalls, and tents, with vendors shouting at the top of their lungs to draw people out of the stream of traffic. The combination of obvious poverty and manic entrepreneurial energy reminded Marcus of Ashe-Katarion before the Redemption.
A flash of green drew his attention, and he saw a small crowd gathered some distance up the street. Two crowds, really. In the center, a man in a white robe was speaking to a small group. Surrounding this inner circle was a ring of Armsmen, staves held sideways to hold back a much larger and dirtier crowd that watched the proceedings with a sullen air, shouting unintelligible abuse. Another pair of Armsmen patrolled inside the ring, watching for any attempt to force through the line or throw things at the speaker. When one man raised a rotting cabbage high, they pounced and clubbed him to the ground.
The speaker held something out at arm’s length, and the inner crowd fell to their knees. Marcus caught the glint of gold. The jeers of the outer crowd increased.
Marcus drew Giforte’s attention to the scene as the carriage went past, and the vice captain glanced at the window and grimaced. He shook his head.
“Sworn Priest,” he said. “Borelgai, by the beard. They’re always preaching down here.”
“Why does he have a whole squad protecting him?”
“His Majesty’s orders are that the Sworn Priests should be free to offer their teachings unmolested. We’re charged with enforcing that.” He watched Marcus for a moment, considering, then added, “It was part of the peace treaty. After Vansfeldt.”
A hundred and fifty years ago, Farus IV had thrown in his lot with the League cities in their rebellion against the Sworn Church of Elysium. The subsequent war, waged simultaneously against the Murnskai legions and a cabal of his own horrified nobles, had come close to costing Farus his crown. The last bloody flames of that revolution had taken a generation to die out, and atrocities committed on both sides had given the Vordanai people an abiding distaste for the power of the Sworn Church. The Great Cathedral of Vordan had been sacked and left in ruins to guarantee that none of the new Free Church parishes that were rising from the ashes could lay claim to leadership of the others.
The Borelgai had been having their own civil war at the same time, with opposite results. Their king had lost his head for heresy at the hands of an ecclesiastical court sent from Elysium, and since then the interests of the Borelgai throne and the Sworn Church had been tightly entwined. Fifteen decades had served to cool the hatred enough that the Sworn were no longer officially banned from Vordan, but they had never been allowed to preach in the streets, much less with an official Armsmen escort.
After the war. That would have been just about the time Marcus was leaving for Khandar, at the conclusion of the War of the Princes. He’d gone straight from the disastrous Vansfeldt campaign back to the War College in Grent, two hundred miles from the capital, and he hadn’t paid much attention to politics in those days in any case.
“He didn’t look like he was having much success,” Marcus said.
“There’s always a few Sworn around. Foreigners, mostly, and some of the very poorest.” Again, Giforte gave him an evaluating glance, deciding how much he should say. “All I know is it’s a headache for us. They’re always stirring up trouble.”
Marcus nodded. What Janus had told him about fighting in the streets seemed a bit more plausible now. The Crown’s debt to the Borels was one thing; only merchants cared about that. But foreign priests by the side of the road, with Armsmen protecting them. .
“It’s getting worse, too, now that this Danton is telling everyone the Borelgai are the source of all their problems.”