Working God's Mischief (59 page)

Hourli said, “We don't get paid to understand his motives, ladies. Any ingenious ideas about how to make a difficult wish come true?”

*   *   *

A chance to be alone with Helspeth sneaked up when she, having lost patience, decided to make it happen. She lighted the time candle, which she had insisted on keeping herself, and walked through Shartelle, the candle hidden in a bucket. She entered the trade exchange center the Righteous had taken for its headquarters, wandered the labyrinthine interior in search of her lover, feeling more foolish by the minute. She found Lord Arnmigal arguing with his son, who wanted to command the falcon battery accompanying the force his father was about to send to shadow Iresh abd al-Kadiri.

Helspeth was unaware of Lord Arnmigal's strategic investment in a Praman success at Vantrad. Nor did Pella know. Helspeth caught only fragments of the argument from inside her time bubble.

Her visit did not go unnoticed. Time also changed for anyone who got too close. It was impossible to remain unseen by someone breathing in your face. Sometimes she had to get close to get past.

Her adventure would birth a fear that the Night was up to something involving a ringer for the Grail Empress.

The Night, the Shining Ones, of course, would have managed without attracting as much attention. They did not have to travel through the space between.

Piper Hecht sensed an unseen presence. So did Pella. The boy thought the quiet visitor might be his aunt or one of his sisters.

Hecht thought one of the more shy Old Ones wanted to talk. For a moment he hoped it would be Aldi. Then he caught a glimpse that Pella, from his angle, did not.

His son would not understand a late-night visit from that woman and was too old to fool with yak about a secret emergency.

Helspeth did not reveal herself otherwise. She recognized the absurdity. She went away feeling sad, frustrated, and foolish.

*   *   *

Lord Arnmigal found the Empress inside St. Eules, not kneeling before the altar but seated discreetly on a bench in shadow in back. She was crying quietly. “I hoped you'd come here.” And, a moment later, “After so long.” Another moment. “It's getting harder to give my lifeguards the slip.”

She finally lifted her gaze. What light there was glistened off her tears. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. Did it cause any trouble?”

“There will be questions tomorrow but so many surround me now that they won't bother pressing it.”

She scooted over. He settled beside her. She said, “None of the priests are awake. They don't do night prayers here.”

“Antasts are more relaxed than we are.”

Helspeth slipped her hand into his. “Aaron was more relaxed, too. His Church was more like the Maysalean thing than the Episcopal.”

“Uhm. We should light the candle anyway if we're going to be here. There's no guarantee we'll stay alone, otherwise.”

“God knows, I hate this. But we can't do anything else. Unless I want to become another Anne of Menand. Or Clothilde, rutting with whom I want, where I want, whenever I want.”

Hecht let go her hand while she fired the time candle, then slid the hand across her shoulder. She leaned against him, seeming much smaller than the Empress Helspeth Ege. He said, “We choose to let the world define love for us.”

Helspeth sighed.

Hecht was not in the grip of any physical need tonight, nor was she. The moment felt almost exactly right, except for Helspeth suffering those little moments when she trembled as though feeling a chill. Each such moment ended with her trying to burrow closer.

In time, she confessed, “I am with child.” She said it in a tiny voice, into his chest, to his heart, but never did he mistake what she said, nor was he completely surprised.

His mind did race. It had to have happened before he left Alten Weinberg. Had to have for her to be so certain now. It would not be long before it began to show. Not long before it became the scandal of the decade. “I'm sorry, beloved. I am so sorry. I have ruined you.”

She did not disagree.

He promised, “I will not fail you. I will do whatever needs to be done.”

“I know. I know. I've had a long time to worry. A long time to lose a lot of sleep. A long time to dread all the ways you might respond to the news. I imagined some ugly possibilities. But, right now, you sound like I hoped you would.”

Hecht sighed. She was not wholly pleased because he accepted the Will of God without demur? “I'm not surprised. It's not something that I expected to happen but I have considered the possibility. There were so many times when we just gave ourselves up to the flame.”

“I can still save the Enterprise. I can still make sure that Katrin is remembered for what she bequeathed the world.”

“What?”

“I can name Algres Drear as the father.”

“You will not.”

“The court will accept that. He was always close. They gossiped about him. And he won't deny it.”

“That will not happen. I will not have Drear ruined for my sake.”

“Piper, I can't play the virgin birth card. That only works when it happens two thousand years ago.”

For a moment an exultant Katrin shone in his mind's eye, overjoyed. Wherever her soul resided, it would be jubilant if it was aware. This would be God's judgment …

Hecht was startled. People really did put those kinds of black, petty motives into the hearts of their gods. But why would God—or any god—concern Himself, or Herself, with such trivia? There was a universe to be managed. Even gods as small as the Shining Ones cared little about what mortals did to one another in their beds unless they were part of the action.

“Piper, I can't stand it when you just wander off inside yourself like that!” Helspeth's hard voice dragged him back, shaky. “Why would you do that?” she demanded. “You make me feel … Stop it. Just stop it!”

It had been a long time. He had been another man with another name, with another woman in a dramatically different culture, where no man was much exposed to his woman while she carried a child, but he did recall that there could be emotional storms, often from no apparent cause. “I don't do it intentionally. I don't know I'm doing it. And I don't know why I do it. It started after that assassination attempt that almost succeeded. The old man who turns up out of nowhere thinks it's because I came so close to dying that I left my body briefly, then never got a firm grip on it again after I came back.”

Cloven Februaren had, indeed, so speculated but he did not believe it. Neither did Hecht. There would be another answer.

Helspeth did not want to quarrel. She leaned in again, pressing close. “What are we going to do?”

He had no idea beyond letting the tide of tomorrow come and go, coping as it surged. “There are no challenges we can't handle. You've already shown that you're strong enough to face anything.”

“I hope you're right. But it's going to be difficult.”

Oh, it would be, on levels both personal and political.

He held Helspeth as tightly as she held him.

*   *   *

Hourli asked, “Have you formed any plans?”

Hecht was startled. The Shining Ones, even Hourli, seldom just dropped in, especially while he was in bed. “About what?” It sounded like she meant something specific. There were a thousand considerations in search of a plan.

“You know your lover's situation, now. She finally found the courage to tell you.”

“You knew?”

“We knew seconds after it quickened. You're never alone. Fastthal and Sprenghul stay on you like those idiot ravens used to stay on Ordnan's shoulders. I wonder what ever became of them?”

“Asgrimmur probably knows.” Becoming distracted that easily. “Damn! And damn again. I hope you found us entertaining.”

“Only in a somewhat poignant sense. You did show enthusiasm.”

He refused to ask what she meant. He had a notion that he would not understand her explanation. “Damn for the third time. Now that will be in the back of my head every time I'm alone with…”

“Middle-worlders are never alone. There are watchers always.”

He offered a skeptical look in response.

“All right.
Often
may fit better than always. But liaisons remain secret only because the Night doesn't find them worth gossiping about.”

“Was there a point to you showing up before I've gotten my feet on the floor?”

“I do want to know if there is a plan.”

“Really?”

“Truly. We should know what part you want us to play so we can prepare ourselves.”

He began readying himself to face the day, noting, without paying intimate heed, that the morning felt like those times when he was with Helspeth and the time candle was burning.

He had done no thinking. The fatalism ingrained during boyhood had taken over. What would be would be what God Willed. He could only wiggle and whine in a doomed effort to thwart the Almighty.

Startled thought.

He was in the presence of a god. This god shaped his world directly, every day, and did so visibly. He did not have to ascribe anything to her. She talked to him. He did not have to subscribe to the existence of a fathomless Will or Plan.

Hourli observed, “You have had a thought.”

“Not a practical one, I expect, but possibly useful.”

His apostasy, grown deviously since his betrayal by the Rascal and the Lion, had passed a tipping point. He muttered, “I shall have no other gods before me.” Then, puzzled, “Before you?”

Hourli asked, “What?”

“I have lost my connection to the divine.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh! Darling! I doubt that very much!”

“Huh?”

“You were thinking in some direction other than what the God of the Pramans and God of the Chaldareans would like. They have pushed you away. You're stuck with leftovers from a time of barbarism, obsoletes without the decency to pack it in and fade away. Not so? You were about to suffer an epiphany.”

“Now you mock me,” Lord Arnmigal grumbled.

“Sometimes it's fun to mess with you.”

He frowned, glared. One hardship of dealing with the Shining Ones was that there was subtext to everything they said. Hourli especially operated on multiple levels. “You're not going to seduce me again?” she said.

“Oh! What? No. Not me.” Again? What? The idea never occurred to him. Who was she talking to?

“That was backwards, darling. I'm the bad girl of the tale.”

“What are you talking about?” Was he whining? That sounded like whining.

“No worry. When I decide it's time you'll be a dried-out husk before you know you've been asked.”

He shuddered. What the hell was she doing? He had more trouble than he could handle already.

Then Hourli laughed. “What a face! Come on. What were you thinking?”

He needed a moment to recall that they had been talking about Helspeth before she decided to rattle him. Helspeth? Helspeth! Who was with child. His child. “I was thinking we should create another Helspeth. One who can be seen not being pregnant while the real Empress stays out of sight.”

Hourli considered him intently for some time. “Are you sure?”

“No. I want to save her the … But she might not … I'd have to find out what she wants to do.”

“You do realize that that is begging for cosmic complications?”

For problems he could not imagine right now because worry was crippling his reason? Cosmic? Hyperbole or fact? “I'll manufacture a way for you, me, and Helspeth to discuss this.”

“Good. Listen to her when we do.
Hear
what she says. We don't want to repeat mistakes already made before.”

What did that mean? She was not talking about Helspeth's situation.

*   *   *

Helspeth's news almost completely distracted Lord Arnmigal. Details slipped past him. He failed to define assignments adequately when the Shining Ones went off to handle shadowy particulars. He did not monitor his captains adequately. The Shining Ones did not come volunteering for work. They basked in whichever Well of Ihrian seemed sweetest, growing supernaturally fat. Captains had to guess at the Commander's intent when acting.

“Where is Pella?” Lord Arnmigal demanded of his lifeguards one morning. He could not find the boy. “I have a job for him.”

Titus materialized. “Sorry, Boss. He went off to help deal with the Dreangereans. They've stopped moving again. Sheaf says Iresh is waiting for his siege train, now.”

Lord Arnmigal shook his head. “Why? All he had to do was attack while we were busy everywhere else.”

“Plenty of strange stuff going on in this war, Boss. Him not wanting to take risks hardly seems odd. Anyway, how could he know that we're all tied up everywhere? He doesn't have our intelligence resources.”

“You're right. Send somebody to drag the boy back.”

“Sure. What did you want him to do?”

“I was going to put him in charge of the falcons harassing the Dreangereans. But now he'll take an entry-level job in the grave and latrine excavation trade. He needs to learn to take orders.”

“Harsh.” Titus laughed. “I had a note from the Empress. She wants to see you after midday devotions. She did
not
sound like a woman who is enchanted with Lord Arnmigal.”

“Sometimes I don't have sense enough not to say things that people don't want to hear. Plus, I think she thinks she should get more attention than she does. She could have had plenty if she'd just stayed home. Us smelly men down here are too busy with our war.”

“Have you had any midnight visitors lately?”

The shift evaded Hecht briefly. His conscience squealed. “You have, then?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I wondered if Heris or your girls had visited. I'm worried about Noë and the boys.”