Heaven's Gate (6 page)

“Angus,” the priest greets his old protégée as he enters, “I have missed seeing you at prayer.”

Leedon’s
shoulders, already hunched, seem to tense still further.

“Yet I assure you that I have not missed a call to dedications, Father.”

“Oh I am sure of it, my son but having built me this sumptuous chapel, it is unfortunate that it is so rarely that you share it with me.” Rugan extends a hand to forestall
Leedon’s
protest. “Don’t worry, I know, affairs of State. I understand, even if it is disappointing for an old man. It is not as it was in the beginning, we must be respectable now.”

“We have always been respectable,” the General responds, the iron in his voice warning Rugan not to take his familiarity too far.

“Indeed, indeed, but the barons did not always think so! I was merely wondering what had torn you away from them for the moment and brought you back to me?”

Not as politic as I should have been, Rugan admonishes himself even as the words leave his lips, but damn it, the boy had to be reminded. The barons had not made him a leader willingly, merely ratified his position, when they had been given no choice.

Anger then acceptance war on Angus’s face.

“No, you do right to admonish me.” He says at last.

Rugan does not dare hope that the boy has regained some of his honesty, indeed it said something of how far those political animals have twisted him that he was so easily able to master his emotions and present the face he knows his old councilor would want to see most. Rugan was a master of this himself and he recognized it easily in others.

“No I understand, our position is still not certain and with the wedding so imminent…” Rugan reassures, him taking his place in their game easily and with practiced innocence. He notes the veiled emotions pass under the General’s fixed expression and cannot help feeling guilty at cutting so close to the bone. It saddens him because, when he had first known Angus, the boy would never have been capable of such duplicity and now they must both fence around the truth.

“The Lillian’s gone,” Angus blurts, his natural passions briefly overwhelming his self-imposed reserve.
 
“She slipped away some time in the night. I knew she was as dubious about our marriage as I but I did not think she would defy her father. I must decide how to proceed quickly, before the whole alliance is wrecked.”

“So you decided to come to me because you are not ready to tell the barons or any of your advisers, who might let them know of the situation before you are ready.”

“Yes.” The General admits. “You are my counselor as much as any of them.”

More so, once, the old priest thinks bitterly.

“It is good to know I rank amongst such august company.”

“Please, Rugan, without Carter’s daughter you know that I will not be taken seriously. All we worked for is at risk, this is not the time for jealousy.”

“All you worked for?
We
worked for an end to the evils that have so long divided and preyed on our fellow men.” Rugan reminds him, gently.

“And how may that work continue if I am seen as nothing but a warlord, holding title without dispensation? The Crusades are six years gone now and what peace we brought is already being taken for granted. Some even claim that there was no enemy in the first place and that we used the pretext of a holy war to take power and wealth.”

“There will always be those who say such things, they would not have bothered you six years ago.”

“Implying that they are more true now?” The boy is sharp and not to be toyed with, Rugan reminds himself.

“As you say you have no choice but to seek an alliance with the barons, I understand the reasons, I just do not want you to lose sight of our true goal. Power is not something a good man holds for its own sake.”

“I know. Rugan, you have not been as close to me these last two years or you would know, know how they have tried to whittle at me and how strong I have had to be to deny them victory. Do you think I have any interest in being shackled to this spoiled whore? Her father’s name and support are vital if I am to be seen as something more that the military overlord of
Island
City
, or would you rather see Tenichi raised in my place? I know you have no love for him.”

Oh very clever, the priest mentally congratulates his protégé; bring up the Lord Pardoner. There was no arguing that Angus needed added legitimacy in order to counter the growing power of the Chief Pardoner and his peace time Inquisitors; Tenichi had a name and a barony of his own, along with his high standing as head of the Campaign of Moral Purification that had followed
Leedon’s
Crusade. Angus had judged right in mentioning him, because Rugan would see the General married off to Satan’s second daughter, rather than see him supplanted by a man he publicly disliked and privately suspected of being under the influence of the Strigoi.

“If I have not been as close, it is none of my doing and I counseled that you take Baron Whistler’s daughter for a wife, as I recall. She has a far more pious nature, you would have been well matched and there is little to choose between Carter and Whistler in power and influence, whatever the former and men like Tenichi may have told you.”

“No it must be Baron Carter’s daughter. Carter is my closest
neighbour
and he has promised me that he can gain the approval of the rest for my
rulership
of
Island
City
and our control over the old Thatcher Barony.”

What else? Rugan thinks to himself, how does she fit into their plans? “When do you think she left the palace?” The priest confines himself to asking.

“Some time last night. I don’t know how she found a ferryman so late, unless she had somehow arranged it earlier.”

“You think she had an accomplice?”

“It’s possible. She seems to have disappeared very easily.”

“You have begun a search then?”

“Only a few trusted men but they should have found more to report than they have. I can’t afford to raise a general alarm, it might play right into the hands of whoever is behind her…disappearance.”

“You cannot keep it hidden much longer, either or someone’s sure to accuse you of covering it up or even being involved in some way.”

“I know! That’s why I need your advice.”

“The first thing is to guess which way she might have fled. Do you think she might have gone back to her father?”

“Unlikely, he wants this alliance as much as I do, she must know he’d just send her back.”

“That remains to be seen. For all you know, Carter has been planning to embarrass you like this from the beginning. This may simply be the first move in an attempt to weaken or even unseat you.”

“It is too early to think like that, there are not enough facts, no point in creating our own phantoms as you used to say. The question is what I should do now?”

“The first thing would obviously be to find her and find out who was involved in her disappearance. We have little chance of finding her if we use only a few agents and we have no surety about where she is headed. If you take my advice you will announce that she is gone and get more people involved in the search.”

“I just said I can’t afford for this split between us to become public. The alliance
must
seem solid.”

“So it will, if you let it be known that she was abducted.”

“Another lie that could backfire on me! Besides it makes us look weak.”

“Not if she were abducted by supernatural forces.”

“That will cause panic.”

“Exactly! You yourself just said how our power has diminished since the beginning of the peace. The barons grow bold again and the Chief Pardoner grows in influence every day; almost certainly one of them is behind her disappearance, how else could she have escaped so cleanly.”

“I will not believe it of Nathaniel, he all but suggested the match.”

Rugan resists the temptation to point out that the man could also have done so in order to cause humiliation. The Pardoner still had great influence with the General, both on a personal level and because Leedon knew, as well as anyone else, that any conflict between the two of them could split the faithful into veteran Crusaders and the more modern brand of Inquisitors, who had come, as inevitably as vultures, to feast on the former’s success. Such a threat to everything the Crusade had achieved could not be countenanced on the say so of an old priest, no matter how high he’d stood during the Crusades.

“Forgive me, Angus,” Rugan deliberately uses his first name rather than any title or rank, “it was you who mentioned the possibility that the Chief Pardoner might be looking for an advantage.”

“I only mentioned it because of the possibility that the barons might look to him as one of their own if I do not find legitimacy soon. I do not think that Nathaniel is actively disloyal but I would be a fool to discount anyone of his stature.”

“Very well, if she did have help and it’s unlikely that it could be otherwise, it means that someone with something to gain has been plotting against us, perhaps one or more of the barons. Indeed it may even have been our old enemies and if not, by claiming you suspect them rather than one of your new ‘advisors’, it may give whichever baron is behind it a false sense of security.”

“How do we know the spoilt brat didn’t just decide that she wouldn’t marry me?”

“Any way you look at it, she just could not have got so far without help or outside intervention. Hence you are safe to draw the conclusion and present it to the barons, the involvement of an outside agency prevents anyone suggesting that you were at fault in some way,” Rugan continues firmly. “We emphasize that she had to have been abducted and dismiss any suggestion that it might have been due to any kind of souring between the two of you. Even if we discover that that is the case, it is what people will assume unless we give them information to the contrary, besides she will hardly be allowed to announce that publicly, once we have her back! We have everything to gain by asserting abduction and little to lose.”

 
“True enough and saying that the help came from the desert rather than one of the barons will unify those who are still loyal and give us an excuse for recruiting new troops, along with allowing a full search without embarrassment.”

Sharp indeed! Rugan thinks, I must tread carefully.

“Though when we do require the girl I think you should carefully reevaluate your position. Another bride might still be more suitable. ” Rugan cautions.

“Let us concentrate on regaining the girl. I must be seen to be doing all that I can to save her from this terrible fate. Besides, despite your objections, I still wish this alliance to succeed, the Carter barony is worth a little discomfort and bother.”

“Indeed, but if we handle it properly we could ride the wave of public outcry and suspicion against the Carters and then arrange an alliance with the Whistler clan after all.” Rugan says, without much real hope of diverting the General’s intent.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Rugan. I’m more than likely to get her back at the moment so I still see no reason to upset our arrangements with Baron Carter.”

“As you say, Angus,” Rugan concedes quickly, while privately hoping that
Jesop
Carter is fool enough to
harbour
his daughter, thus implicating himself and forcing the General’s hand.

Chapter 3:

“Limit”

Sand hisses around his horse’s hooves, piling up against its shanks. The wind is faster than it was an hour ago, its growing strength promises a storm but the rider hunches in the saddle, unmoving, staring down at the fastness of the line stop below him, watching the lights wink on in the growing dark. Limit, a town once thought to be as far as civilization could reach on the line, a truth that had held until Simon Richard’s great boreholes struck water at Triumph. The settlement was fat with trade now, untold amounts of silver and steel, the basis of the
Rucroft
barony’s wealth flowed through the town every day. That wealth had funded the high stone walls guarding the heart of the town; had built the cathedral towers that rise above them and the sumptuous buildings with their gardens that seemed to defy the lifeless dunes and hills that surrounded the town with their verdant beauty.

Very little of this wealth reaches what is by far the larger part of Limit, the huge sprawl of shanties and shacks that huddle against its thick walls, like moths drawn to murderous flame. It is hope which was killed in Limit, a hope embodied by the wealth behind those grey walls. At night the slums are at their most dangerous, with the light and music from their overlords seeping over that high barrier, the dispossessed citizens of Limit were at their most bitter and desperate. A few still have it in them to dare the haunted desert and bring back what they can from the forbidding hills to the north or the abandoned wastes to the south but most of the slum’s inhabitants have learned to wait. Wait, feeding off other, more successful, adventurers and in times of extremity, each other. Necessity has made them what they are - thin cannibals, tight packed, with the smell of another man’s meal rich in their nostrils.