Chapter 13 | Other Conspiracy

The fire in the Strauss castle's great hall burned high and warm.

Far away, in a forest in northern Canada, Bolward held his hands toward a smaller fire and waited for feeling to return to his fingers.

It was taking its time.

Snow clung to the spruce branches above the camp. Whenever the wind changed, loose powder fell onto the men sitting beneath them.

Nobody moved very far. Moving meant giving up a place near the flames.

Fifty men, one fire, and another November night to get through.

Bolward pulled his coat tighter.

At forty, he had spent enough nights outdoors to stop expecting the next one to be better. The coat needed mending at the shoulder. He pressed the seam closed and watched a log settle into the embers.

Footsteps crunched beyond the trees.

The man with the eyepatch turned first, his hand dropping to his weapon.

A young man stumbled into the firelight.

"It's gone."

Bolward looked up.

The messenger bent over, bracing his hands on his knees. His breath came in short white clouds.

"Catch your breath," Bolward said.

"Chaos. It's gone."

Across the fire, Vasco stopped rubbing his hands together.

"Driven back?"

The young man shook his head.

"Destroyed. They broke the core."

Someone farther around the fire swore.

Bolward lowered his hands.

"Who?"

"The three families. And Matthias. The reincarnation was fighting with them."

"The twins?"

"Both there."

Bolward stared at the fire for a moment.

Of course they had been.

"Sylvia failed," he said.

The messenger nodded.

"She escaped before it ended."

Vasco's jaw tightened.

"Naturally."

"Three years," Vasco said.

He sat three logs away from Bolward, elbows on his knees.

"Finding people who would turn against Bzekoz. Getting close enough to learn his movements. Making sure Sylvia had support when she finally moved."

He dug the heel of his boot into the snow.

"We put her in that seat."

"And now she's still in it," Froid said. "Just with fewer followers."

Vasco looked across the fire.

Froid shrugged inside his coat.

"I warned you."

"You warn everyone about everything."

"A woman who couldn't keep her husband from walking out wasn't going to hold that cult together."

The one-armed man lifted his head.

"Did her husband fight at Teutoburg?"

Froid frowned.

"That isn't what I meant."

"Then perhaps complain about the people who did."

A few men shifted around the fire. Nobody laughed.

Froid spat into the snow and looked away.

Bolward waited until Vasco turned back to him.

"Did she lose the whole force?" Vasco asked the messenger.

"I don't have a count."

"Then find one."

"After he's warmed up," Bolward said.

He nodded toward an empty space by the fire.

The young man sat.

Vasco looked as though he wanted to argue. Instead, he reached for a branch and pushed an unburned log farther into the flames.

Sparks rose between them.

"What does this leave us?" the man with the eyepatch asked.

He sat angled toward the trees, keeping his good eye on the dark beyond the camp.

Bolward rubbed his palms together.

"Without Chaos? Fewer chances."

"For another dark lord."

"Yes."

Vasco gave a short, bitter laugh.

"The Marco again. Three thousand years ago, they threw our families out. Now the last of their line helps destroy the one thing that might make them need us."

"They didn't throw our ancestors out for fighting," Bolward said.

"They fought beside the heroes. They helped win that war."

"And afterward, they started charging people for protection from themselves."

Vasco's branch stopped moving.

"They had to eat."

"That's what they said. The Marco didn't accept it."

Bolward had heard the argument since childhood. Every telling began with the battle and ended with the banishment. The years of extortion between them tended to become shorter as the evening went on.

Their ancestors had made their choice.

He couldn't ask a dead man to make a better one. He could only deal with what remained.

"We're still outside the network," Vasco said. "Still taking whatever work the great families don't want to look at."

"I know."

"Do you? Because Joseph Marco gets to walk away a hero, and we're here."

Bolward glanced around the fire.

Patched coats. Worn weapons. Men who knew how to keep fighting with fingers too cold to close properly.

"I hadn't missed that."

Vasco lowered the branch.

The man with the eyepatch turned back toward the trees.

"Three thousand years," he muttered. "You'd think we'd have found something else by now."

Nobody answered him.

Duncan leaned forward.

"Then we kill Matthias."

Bolward looked at him.

The youngest of the men speaking tonight, Duncan still said things before checking how everyone else would receive them.

Sometimes Bolward appreciated that.

"His soul reincarnates again," Duncan continued. "Maybe the next vessel doesn't want a desk and a quiet life."

"No."

"We could wait for—"

"No."

Duncan sat back a little.

Bolward kept his voice level.

"What happens when we move against him?"

"The twins come after us."

"And?"

Duncan's gaze shifted toward the one-armed man.

The empty left sleeve was folded and pinned below the elbow.

"We lose people," Duncan said.

"We die. Like dogs. Those who survive get to spend the rest of their lives remembering why they should have listened."

The one-armed man touched the pinned cloth.

"Some of us already do. If that happened again, none of us would survive their wrath."

A year and a half earlier, there had been fifty of them too.

They'd found Belial and Astreal during a surveillance operation. Two women, away from the man they were protecting.

Bolward remembered counting his people before giving the order.

He remembered thinking they had enough.

Belial's staff had flashed before the first men reached her.

The advance broke apart.

Those who tried to rush through the light found Astreal waiting. Those who turned toward Astreal exposed themselves to Belial.

Orders disappeared beneath shouted warnings.

Bolward could still remember how quickly the distance between them had stopped mattering. One moment Astreal was across the ground from him. Then she was inside another man's guard, and he hadn't seen her cross it.

They had gone in expecting to overwhelm two opponents.

By the time he called the retreat, men were dragging their friends away through the dirt.

Across the fire, a finger brushed the edge of an eyepatch.

Bolward watched it drop.

"Belial keeps you from closing," he said. "Astreal reaches you before you can recover. If you turn to deal with one, the other has you."

"We know," Vasco said.

"Then remember it when someone suggests trying again."

Duncan looked down at his hands.

"Matthias wasn't trained then."

"No. He is now. And he has a holy sword."

Bolward let that settle.

"We do not engage him. We do not engage Belial or Astreal."

The one-armed man nodded once.

Duncan looked up.

"Then what do we do?"

"Watch Sylvia," Bolward said.

Vasco stared at him.

"Again?"

"She survived. She still wants a dark lord."

"She just lost Chaos."

"And do you think she'll accept that and stop?"

Vasco opened his mouth, then closed it.

Bolward leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

"She's lost fighters, resources, perhaps part of her network. She'll have to change how she operates. I want to know what she tries next."

"You want me to help her."

"Pass along something useful when there's a reason. Keep her willing to talk. Don't promise our people."

Vasco looked into the flames.

"We spent three years making her useful."

"Then don't throw away the contact because you're angry with her."

For a moment, the only sound was the crackling wood.

"You trust her judgment?" Vasco asked.

"No. That's why I want to watch what she actually does."

Duncan rubbed his hands against his trousers.

"And what are we hoping to see?"

Bolward considered how much to say.

They needed a reason to wait. If he gave them certainty, though, someone would decide to help the plan along.

He had already watched fifty men mistake confidence for an advantage.

"A different kind of pressure," he said.

"Think about the old candidates."

Froid glanced up.

Bolward watched the fire.

"A family burned on a charge of heresy. A village destroyed because someone with an army wanted the land. A child who didn't come home."

"Grief," the one-armed man said.

Bolward nodded.

"They lost something they couldn't replace. Afterward, Chaos found a way in."

Duncan frowned.

"But Chaos is gone."

"Yes."

"Then how does that help us?"

"I don't know if the same thing can happen without it. Nobody does."

Bolward looked at him.

"But Matthias already carries the soul of a dark lord. That didn't disappear in Germany."

The fire popped. A small shower of sparks rose and faded.

"He has power," Bolward continued. "He has people teaching him how to use it. For now, he has reasons to be careful."

The one-armed man stopped rubbing his sleeve.

"Belial and Astreal."

"Yes."

"The three heroes, too."

"He fought beside them."

Vasco raised his head slowly.

"So if Sylvia stopped trying to kill him..."

He didn't finish.

He didn't need to.

Bolward looked around the circle. The men nearest him were listening closely now.

"Threatening Matthias brings his friends to his side," he said. "Taking someone from him might produce a very different response."

"You think he'd become what she wants?" Duncan asked.

"I think we'd find out how much of his restraint survives it."

The one-armed man looked down.

"And we would have something to fight."

"Possibly."

Bolward made himself hold the man's gaze when he looked up again.

"Possibly," he repeated. "We aren't going after anyone tonight. We watch Sylvia. We learn what she's planning. If she creates an opening, we decide what to do with it then."

Vasco's expression tightened.

"But we keep feeding her information."

"When it serves us."

"And let her take the risk."

"Would you prefer to take it yourself?"

Vasco glanced at the pinned sleeve beside him.

"No."

Duncan leaned back and stared past the flames.

"I hate this work."

Nobody asked which work he meant.

"Mercenary jobs. Collecting money from people who haven't got it. Taking orders from men who wouldn't let us through their front doors."

He turned his hands over. The knuckles were split beneath the dirt.

"Our ancestors stood beside heroes. They helped bring down a dark lord."

"Then got themselves banished," Froid said.

"I heard that part."

Duncan looked at him, and Froid let the interruption die.

"I know what they did afterward. I know what we do now."

He gestured around the camp.

"But this can't be everything."

Bolward had no ready answer.

Beyond the firelight, a man pulled a blanket higher around his shoulders. Another was working at a damaged fastening on his coat with the point of a knife.

The same small repairs. The same weapons kept ready for the next job.

Duncan looked back at Bolward.

"I want something worth fighting. Something that needs what we know how to do."

"A dark lord could kill you."

"So could the next man who decides not to pay us."

Bolward said nothing.

"I'm not saying I want to die," Duncan continued. "I'm saying I want to die for something."

The words carried farther than he'd raised his voice.

A few men beyond their circle had stopped talking.

Bolward looked at the young man's face.

He remembered being that age. He had expected the work to lead somewhere too.

"I know," he said.

Duncan lowered his eyes.

For a while, they listened to the wind in the spruce branches.

Vasco broke the silence.

"I'll keep the contact open."

Bolward nodded.

"Find out how many people Sylvia has left. And whether she's already moving."

"No promises of support."

"None."

Duncan drew his coat closed.

"And the rest of us?"

"We wait. We watch. We see what she does."

Nobody offered a better plan.

The messenger held his hands closer to the fire. Across from him, the one-armed man adjusted his pinned sleeve and settled back on the log.

Bolward reached for another piece of wood.

He laid it over the embers and waited for it to catch.