Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (24 page)

    
An elevated dais stood reserved for the royal family.  To get to it we crossed a lavish dance floor made of some polished hardwood and ringed with tables containing diners and meals.  Although you could smell the kitchen, you couldn’t see it.  A gold-linked chain separated the dais from the main room, and had to be uncoupled for us to cross.  The tables and chairs were made of what looked like rosewood.  Ancenon spoke briefly with another couple sitting nearby and then sat down at a square table with us.  The guards took up a position in a corner.

    
“Do you know anything about me?” Ancenon began.

    
I shook my head. 

    
“Then you are not a politician?” he said, smiling indulgently. 

    
“No,” I said, as a steward brought wine for us to drink.  “But I don’t think that is your interest in me.”

    Xinto snickered.  The waiter had to bring a child’s seat for him, and had made quite a point of acknowledging the need to do so.  Clearly the prince had no interest in him.

    
“Ancenon Aurelias is a High Priest of Adriam and he performs adorations at High Mass.  He has wealth and power and used to sit on the Fovean High Council.”

    
“Fair enough,” Ancenon said, as the steward poured for him.  A liveried Uman carried a meat platter to us now. 

    
Ancenon spoke with us for a while about the Battle of Two Mountains.  He remained sufficiently laid back about the details that I knew he must be very interested in them.  He also worked more information out of me than I would have thought wise to give.  His tactic appeared to be to ask about some general, irrelevant point, then tie it into a more important aspect.

    
“Do you find that Dorkans are as unintelligent as they are rumored,” he asked.

    
“I think it is part of how they are raised,” I said.

    
“Elaborate,” he pressed.  He folded his thin fingers in his lap and leaned forward, his pencil-thin eyebrows arching over his silver-on-silver eyes.

    
“I think they might be brought up dependent on their Wizards,” I said, and shared my theory on the Dorkan un-education program.

    
“So, you think that Dorkan Wizards, then, are of normal or above-average intelligence?”

    
“I would think so.”

    
“Yet the Dwarves humbled their army, lead by their Wizards …”

    
“Oh, I think anyone can fall for a trap, if it is clever enough.”

    
He raised an eyebrow.  “So they
were
ambushed somehow?”

    
“They were pinned between two mountains,” I countered – seeing the snare close.  “Have you fought them before?”

    
“I am not a military man,” Ancenon countered.

    
Xinto laughed.  Ancenon grinned and took the opportunity to take a drink of wine.

    
“Their tactics are wanting,” I told him.

    
“I am told that they protect their Wizards with the mainstay of their armies, then use the armies to clean up after the damage by the Wizards is done.”

    
“Yes,” I said.

    
“And you find that tactic wanting?”

    
“
They
did.”

    
That lead to me giving him details of the battle, and admitted to my part in it.  I likely would have told him more if Xinto hadn’t punctuated my remarks with appropriate sighs.

    
The whole meal went this way.  He tried to press me on my country of origin, but I only gave him “North of Dorkan.”  He really didn’t like that, but I knew better even to engage him on the subject.  Ancenon was clearly more intelligent than I, and once I became sure of that, I shut down on him.

    
We were having a brandy with our dessert, some kind of cake-thing that tasted too sweet, by the time he got down to some sort of serious business.  Again, the lack of coffee haunted me – I asked about it and Ancenon confessed that he had never heard of such a concoction.  Xinto had become edgy and had already checked on our belongings twice.  I could tell that he didn’t feel as confident of the place as he had let on.

    
“I have use for a bounty hunter,” Ancenon said, of a sudden.

    
“You do?” Xinto asked.  “Do you want us to recommend one?  I know a few.”

    
Ancenon kept his eyes on me.  I kept mine on his.  It was disturbing to look at someone with no cornea.  Uman-Chi had no whites to their eyes, just pure silver.  Although I had noticed this on the ship coming in, I really hadn’t appreciated it until now.  You couldn’t tell if they were really looking at you.

    
“Are you available?” he asked me.

    
“For what?”

    
“We need to talk, Mordetur,” Xinto said.  I made a push down motion under the table, where he could see it, still holding Ancenon’s gaze.  It occurred to me that he might have been staring right at my arm and I wouldn’t have known.

    
“A journey,” Ancenon said.

    
“To where?”

    
“An old, ruined fortress.”

    
“Which one?”

    
“I am not at liberty to say, I am afraid.”

    
“And yet, you expect me to go?”

    
We were silent for a moment.  I assumed that most would say, “Yes” to Ancenon just for the opportunity of getting into his good graces.  I didn’t know that I needed the good graces of the High Priest of another god.  I sure didn’t need to be his dupe.

    
I had learned more about bounty hunters.  On Earth, they were men with a legal right to hunt down fugitives for money, and who didn’t need a warrant to make arrests or enter private property.  Here they were somewhat the same, without the legal needs tied in.  I didn’t think that I came across so mean.

    
Ancenon frowned, considering.  “Do you know of the race of Cheyak?” he asked, finally.

    
“I do.”

    
“Oh, no,” Xinto said.

    
Ancenon regarded Xinto.  “I mean no disrespect,” he said, “but your services really won’t be needed, and what I am discussing is of a … proprietary nature.”

    
“Ooo,” Xinto said, his eyes wide in mock-amazement.  “Another Uman-Chi is going to violate Confluni territory to go after Outpost X.  Big state secret, your Highness.”

    
Obviously, Xinto also saw no benefit in being in Ancenon’s good graces.

    
“Outpost X was
not
destroyed,” Ancenon insisted, glaring at Xinto with silver eyes.

    
“And the Confluni National Guard, which can find every squirrel crossing from Andoran or Volkhydro into Conflu, have been unable to unearth and sack it because …?”

    
“There is a reason,” Ancenon said.

    
“You are certain of this?”

    
“I am.”

    
“And, of course, an Uman-Chi would know the place, if he could only see it.”

    
Ancenon just sat back and smiled.

    
Xinto looked up at me.  “Have you ever been to Conflu?” he asked.

    
Again, I felt tempted to lie.  Again, I remembered that I didn’t know enough about the situation to tell a good one.  I now knew that an Uman-Chi and a Dorkan had been able to derive whether I told the truth in the Council.  I didn’t know how yet, and this was a bad time to find out.

    
“No,” I said.  “Never.”

    
“Do you know what the Confluni
do
to those they catch trespassing?” he asked.

    
“Murder them,” I said.

    
“Fair enough,” Ancenon said.

    
“I have fought Confluni before,” I said.

    
“Oh?” Xinto said, raising an eyebrow.  “And?”

    
“And I lived,” I said.  “It wasn’t that long ago.”

    
“Raiders,” Ancenon said.  “You came here through Volkhydro then.”

    
“Precisely,” I said.

    
Ancenon looked at Xinto.  “No worse than CNG,” he said.

    
Xinto nodded grudgingly.  “Probably
were
CNG,” he said.  He looked back at me, his eyes narrowed.  “How many?”

    
“Five of us, eight of them,” I said.  “They jumped us in the night, when we didn’t have our weapons.  Killed our guard, killed one of the others before we could engage them.  Killed one more of us in the fight.  One got away.”

    
“Not bad odds,” Xinto said.  “I am surprised Saa Saraan was so unimpressed with you.”

    
Ancenon scoffed and finished his brandy.  “I have been a swordsman for two hundred years,” he said.  “And Saa Saraan is unimpressed with
me
.  In fact, he claims that his granddaughter has forgotten more that I shall ever learn.”

    
I smiled.  “With me, it was his great-granddaughter,” I said.

 
     Xinto snickered.  “The man has a dangerous family.”

     Two days later I left the city to exercise Blizzard.  Outside of Trenbon’s land-bound gate, extending for about five miles into the Silent Island, they kept a flat marshalling area.  Here the grass grew short and brown, if at all, and the soil had been beaten hard by thousands of feet over hundreds of years.  Blizzard left the gate running, the open space calling to him like a trumpet.  He needed frequent exercise that he couldn’t get inside of the city proper.  From just outside the gates, away from the parade of people entering and exiting the city, Xinto sat on a pony while I raced my white stallion back and forth outside the city walls.

    
After an hour the stallion still pounded the plain.  Xinto whistled and behind him I saw five Uman-Chi in silver armor, riding matching bay horses.  All of the mounts had their manes starched and tails braided, barded in shining mail and their coats gleaming with health.  I turned Blizzard, cut to my left, and pounded across the plain to meet them.

    
The mounts stood stock-still, the men upon them no different.  The Uman-Chi watched me approach, the sun glinting from their armor, nothing in their ambiguous eyes.  I reined in before them, noticing as I drew closer that they wore winged helmets and thin, satiny capes in purple, gold and green.  They left their green and violet hair unbound around their shoulders, and each had a different gold armband.

    
Xinto turned his pony and stood behind me.  I looked for Ancenon and did not find him.