webcrawl/APGTE/Book-5/tex/Ch-107.md.tex

\hypertarget{interlude-bone}{%
\section{Interlude: Bone}\label{interlude-bone}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``Here's the only justice I care to bring across the Vales: a
sword in a just hand.''}

-- Queen Elizabeth Alban of Callow, the Queen of Blades
\end{quote}

The stone hit the man square in the cheek and he screamed in pain as
bone broke blood began trickling down. Another few followed, though most
were detritus snatched off the street instead of loose pavement. This
was the first time Sister Marie ever saw a stoning with her own eyes,
though some of the older scriptures did mention the practice in specific
circumstances -- traitors in Salamans had been dealt with in such a
manner, in those ancient days when the Arlesen Confederacy stood and the
Gigantes still tried to bring their rebellious escaped slaves to heel on
occasion. A case could be made, Sister Marie decided, that in these
troubled days a northern in Salia was close enough to a traitor
for\ldots{} this not to be without precedent.

``Please,'' the man begged. ``I'm not even Lycaonese, it's a-''

A clump of thrown ice interrupted the man's words. Was that a tooth
Sister Marie had glimpsed? Hard to tell, for the torches cast only
wavering light and the screams of the crowd were distracting. Odds were
the man truly wasn't Lycaonese -- he'd hardly be the first one with a
vaguely northern name to be dragged out of his shop tonight to stand
before the judgement of the crowd -- but it hardly mattered. The young
priestess' sermon had whipped up a frenzy in the odd hundred Salians who
attended her temple regularly, and it was not an easily quelled thing.
Brother Rémi, who stood between her and the Holies, had been clear that
nothing must be said that would temper the righteous wrath of the people
against Princess Hasenbach's attempt to make herself a queen.

``Procer is no queendom,'' Sister Marie screamed, to the approving roar
of the crowd, ``it is an assembly of the highest in the eyes of the
Heavens, and let all tyrants-''

Her eye caught sight of a glinting thing, spinning. She turned in
surprise as a dark-skinned man caught a coin with an open palm. The
crowd had parted around him without even realizing it, Sister Marie
realized. Like a school of small fish around a larger one. Calm eyes
found her own, serene in the midst of the screaming chaos. A heartbeat
later there was a burn of blinding Light and she felt searing pain going
through her skull before she felt nothing at all. Sister Marie's
headless corpse fell to the ground, everything about the neck turned to
ash.

``Disperse,'' the White Knight evenly told the crowd.

---

Louis de Satrons found, to his surprise, that he must have missed field
work. He did not consider himself a sentimental sort, but there was a
strange pleasure to seeing to the necessities by your own hand. Like
filing a nail, he thought, or cracking a joint. The man before him the
dark room was awake, though the hood on his face had been enough to cow
him into stillness for now. Perhaps the Silver Letter agent even
believed that by keeping his focus he'd be able to retrace his steps to
this particular safehouse. If so, the head of the Circle of Thorns
commended him for his dedication. Not that it would help.

``Proceed,'' Louis ordered.

The hood was ripped off by one of his helpers, and the unremarkable face
of a middle-aged man with luxurious blond curls was revealed. The spy
blinked at the sudden restoration of his sight, but found he could not
see well: surrounded by glowing magelight orbs, the man was bound
sitting in the sole island of light within the interrogation room.
Louis' own presence would be reduced to a voice from the dark until he
wished it otherwise.

``You're making a fucking mistake, whoever you are,'' the spy called
out.

``My mother,'' Louis said, voice dry as dust, ``was a huntress of great
skill. Stag, boar -- even geese and swans in our lands by the shores of
Lake Artoise. She insisted I learn, but I never succeeded at sharing her
enthusiasm for the affair.''

``They'll know I'm missing,'' the man said, fear beginning to win over
anger in his tone.

Few good things ever happened to bound men in dark rooms being told
wistful stories.

``If you return me to my people I'll argue leniency,'' the spy tried.
``Otherwise they'll fucking rip you apart, I don't care how high your
birth is. I'm a Silver-''

``Letter,'' one of Louis' helpers completed from behind the prisoner.
``We know.''

``Then what do you want?'' the prisoner hissed.

``From you?'' Louis said. ``Nothing you will not give soon enough.''

He slowly rose to his feet, then glanced to the side. There was quite
the selection awaiting, for the Circle's facilities in the city were
well-equipped.

``But there is one part of her insistence I thank my mother for, to this
day,'' Louis de Sartrons mused out loud. ``For she was old-fashioned,
and demanded I skin and cut my kills myself instead of allowing a
servant to do so in my stead.''

His fingers closed around the flensing knife, elegantly inlaid with
silver.

``Look, I'm willing to talk,'' the spy hastily said. ``Just tell me what
you want to know and-''

``You know nothing of import,'' the helper said. ``Your position is that
of a bottom-feeder in Balthazar's band of beasts.''

``Then what is it you \emph{want}?'' the spy desperately said.

``For you to scream loudly enough that it will carry to our other
prisoners,'' Louis mildly said.

It truly had been kind of Mother, to ensure he would learn young to have
a precise hand with a knife. And how to use it, too: there was
surprisingly little difference between a stag and a man.

Under the skin, anyway.

---

``What's the damned holdup?'' Prince Arsene yelled from atop his horse.

Balthazar Serigny supressed a sneer. The man had insisted on coming yet
barely left the palace grounds before beginning to complain about every
little thing. The tall spymaster discreetly palmed a knife in the long
sleeve of his greatcoat and barreled forward on foot, elbowing the
soldiers ahead of him so he could reach the front of the column. There
was little difficulty in finding out what the trouble was when he'd
arrived there, however. The men and women in their way were a ramshackle
bunch, a patchwork of different arms and uniforms when they even had
either. There was Salian city guard in there, and garrison as well, but
others were civilians: many fair-haired and older, Lycaonese veterans
who'd dragged themselves awake and into the streets in the name of one
of their own. The loyalty Hasenbach still commanded among her kind even
after abandoning them to the wolves was outright disturbing. Some youths
in elaborate arms and armour, clearly highborn and perhaps even distant
royalty, had \emph{gallantly} gathered as well. They were the loudest by
far. Their challenges to the soldiers that were in principle led by
Prince Arsene of Bayeux -- and in practice by Captain Julien, who
Balthazar owned -- were both boastful and improbable, as was Alamans
custom.

The spymaster was reluctantly impressed by the young woman who baldly
asserted she would kill them all with half an icicle, one handed, if
they dared to take another step forward.

Still, this was a waste of time and time was his most dangerous foe at
the moment. With every passing moment that old fuck Simon had been loose
in the capital for longer and the chances he'd found Hasenbach rose. And
though Balthazar's middling esteem for the man had dropped even further
when he'd failed to sniff out such a large conspiracy amongst the
Holies, there was no denying that the Holy Society had a wide array of
friends and hiding holes in the city: if Brother Simon got his hands on
the savage, the coup was unlikely to recover from it. Which meant there
was no time to humour the fools who'd raised a ramshackle barricade
across the street, barring the way to the near three thousand men the
conspiracy had gathered to smother any chance of Hasenbach's escape in
the crib. There were a few hundreds at most and would be swept away in
moments if it came to blades. The head of the Silver Letters shoved
aside one of his own soldiers, who was standing around hesitantly as
insults were hurled at her. Fucking Salian garrison, they had no spine
and hardly more pride. The former fantassin approached the barricade and
raised his voice.

``By order of the Highest Assembly, you are charged to disperse,''
Balthazar called out. ``You are aiding treason and heresy by standing in
our way.''

That saw some hesitating, for both offences he'd named were capital ones
and there tended to be generous in doling out death when it came to
rooting them out. A hirstute, bearded old man -- drunk, by the looks of
him, leapt over the barricade with only a long knife in hand.

``Crook,'' the man said, Lycaonese accent thick. ``Crook and servant of
crooks. Hannoven fell for you and now you slide the knife.''

``You will not get another warning,'' Balthazar called out, ignoring him
in favour of the crowd.

``\emph{Lest dawn fail},'' the old man screamed, and hundreds roared it
out with him.

Fools that they were, they charged out from the barricade. Balthazar
hastily retreated, loudly calling for a shield wall to be formed, and
the slaughter began.

---

Francesco grit his teeth and struck again, finally smashing through the
wooden shutters. The others let out a whoop of joy and Anselme helped
him clear away the broken remains before going through the window.
Moments later the other man opened the door from the inside and the lot
of them went into the shop, a few looking for any coin that might be
kept by the drapier but less ambitious looters simply grabbing every
roll of cloth and displayed tapestries they could. It was all a sin,
Francesco knew, but virtue did not fill stomachs. That pretty tapestry
displaying verses from the Book of All Things might, though, so while
ashamed he carefully unhooked it before folding it under his arm. From
the ripping sound to his side, not all his fellows had been so delicate
in taking it. What waste.

``Drop everything,'' a woman's voice called out. ``Or you'll not leave
here alive!''

The drapier herself had come out from the back, he saw when he turned.
She was overweight and long past fifty, so the sight of her brandishing
a slender duellist's sword while in a nightdress was more laughable than
worrying.

``We'll take the sword too, thank you,'' Alessandra chortled, mocking
the woman they were robbing.

It was a hard crowd he ran with these days, but with a crime to his name
the city guard ran him off whenever he tried to attend the First
Prince's alms-givings. Who else was he to run with, if he did not want
to starve or die of cold out in the streets? Francesco caught a flicker
from the corner of his eye and saw a coin spinning up -- and though it
spun so well and high it should have touched the ceiling instead it
vanished. There was some hooded figured leaning against the doorsill
behind them all, but Francesco barely noticed for the silhouette that'd
spun the coin moved like the wind and then Alessandra's head was rolling
on the floor. The man, for Francesco now saw it was a man, paused to
take a look at Anselme before killing him too.

One stroke of his longsword, that was all it took, and as the looters
began to flee the stranger repeated the process again and again. A look,
a strike, a death. The drapier had pissed herself at the sight, though
he could hardly judge her since he'd done the same. The man finally
turned to him, tall and dark-skinned and with eyes that Francesco met
entirely by accident. Within he saw a spinning coin, silver, one side
bearing crossed swords and the other laurels. And then it ceased, and
laurels was what he came back to himself and knew this to be a glimpse
of madness. The stranger's sword rested against his neck, and he tapped
it lightly with the flat side.

``Amend your ways,'' the White Knight said. ``While you still can.''

Then he moved to the side and Francesco flinched in anticipation of a
changed mind or a cruel game coming at an end, but the man instead took
a look at the drapier -- who'd fallen on her knees and dropped the
sword, trembling in terror.

``You have reason to be afraid,'' the stranger coldly said. ``They see
all.''

There was a flash of light and the drapier's charred corpse tumbled
back, half the face whispering ash. The man took a last glance around
before walking out of the charnel yard, the hooded figure following him
without a word.

Francesco threw up and nearly choked on the filth, for he was weeping in
relief.

---

``Interesting,'' Louis de Sartrons said, washing his hands clean in a
water basin.

He dried them with a silk cloth before setting it aside. The full weight
of his attention went to the woman at his side and the report she had
recited by memory. Promising that she would have such talent for recall
without any notes, though Louis was in no position to make an official
commendation. If it turned out that the Silver Letters had not been used
by a foreign power, then his ordered abductions and torture of their
members would be taken a gross overreach of the Circle's mandate. Should
this be the case, he would confess to having abused the resources of the
organization out of his deep personal loyalty for Cordelia Hasenbach and
take full responsibility. For that fiction to be kept, however, it must
appear as if he'd acted on his own unknown to his peers. A commendation
on record would rather strike a discordant note.

``It appears that as far back as five months ago the Silver Letters
began unearthing Praesi infiltration,'' his helper said. ``Interrogation
of a captured spy yielded information that led them to several
safehouses, including two holding scrolls and correspondence. Balthazar
Serigny is said to have taken great personal interest in the findings of
the second one.''

``And we missed operations of this scale?'' Louis frowned. ``How?''

``Of all these, only the two Eyes of the Empire in Madame Soucillon's
brothel were known to us. Their capture and death were made to look like
criminal activity, however, so they raised no alarms,'' the woman
replied. ``As for the rest, the Silver Letters appear to have found a
genuine Praesi spy chain unknown to us.''

That the Bastard had not passed along everything related to the Dread
Empire to the Circle of Thorns at first opportunity was impolite, but
not outright damning. It could be argued that the Circle's inability to
ferret out the Praesi had voided obligation for the Silver Letters, and
this incident in and of itself was not enough to justify the assault on
them Louis had ordered. As he had said earlier, however, it was an
\emph{interesting} detail.

``Have every known and suspected Praesi infiltrator in the city looked
in on, immediately,'' Louis de Satrons finally said. ``And it is time we
deploy all our\ldots{} acquisition assets.''

``Sir?'' she murmured, sounding surprised.

``Find me someone who had a notion of what was in that correspondence
the Bastard took,'' the spymaster order. ``Neither gentleness nor
discretion are any longer a concern in achieving this.''

---

``Are the firebreaks ready?'' Balthazar asked.

The wind had picked up, though by the standards of Salian winter this
was still a rather mild night. Though the tall killer knew that decisive
action was needed for Hasenbach to be put down, he had no intention of
burning down the entire capital. Though Princess Malanza might be
grateful for what he'd done, she'd still have to order him killed to
appease the mob. Not being a fool, he'd ordered firebreaks to be dug
around the high districts and great masses of snow carted up to prevent
the fires about to be lit from spreading. It would be enough, most
likely. With a little luck it'd even snow later that night or come
morning, and even the embers would be put out.

``They are,'' Captain Julien agreed. ``Are you certain this is wise,
sir? Lots of royals have manses in this part of the capital. They might
take issue with returning to ashes instead of a nice \emph{salon}.''

``These are hard times, Julien,'' Balthazar mildly said. ``And we've
confirmed that Prince Cordelia has set mages to summoning demons to take
back the city somewhere within the districts. The ritual must be
disrupted no matter the costs.''

The other man did not believe him the slightest, though he was wise
enough to keep silent. In truth, though for those of some learning this
was a wild accusation Balthazar had not chosen that particular excuse
without reason. Few Procerans knew much of magic and it was well known
that Hasenbach had brought some of the magickers back to prominence by
founding her Order of the Red Lion. Those with little knowledge of
sorcery, which happened to be the overwhelming majority of the
Principate, would find it believable enough. As for the learned, they
would know well enough not the cross a broadly popular First Princess
with great command of the Highest Assembly and the enthusiastic backing
of the House of Light.

``So be it,'' Captain Julien said, murmuring \emph{Gods save us all}
under his breath.

For all his dithering, he was prompt in having the fires started.
Balthazar had ordered they begin with the northmost sections and rake
their way down, to flush out Hasenbach if it was possible: it was still
best to have her imprisoned instead of dead if possible, though not so
such a great extent he'd let an opportunity to put an arrow in her pass.
The high districts had sewers, which he had watched by his people, and
every way out of them was currently held by soldiers and guards. The
noose would not be slipped, not by a woman who was suspected to have a
broken leg. The torches hit the oil-soaked bundles of wood and roared
out, beginning to spread into the attached manse. As the fire crackled
merrily Balthazar the Bastard smiled, for he'd have the savage in chains
before dawn even if he had to go street by damned street.

---

Lieutenant Pauline had been feeling nauseous for near half an hour, now,
and emptying her stomach had helped absolutely nothing. She was city
guard, she told herself, she wasn't \emph{meant} to handle messes like
this. There must have been at least two hundred corpses scattered around
the street where the `authorities' had clashed with the `rebels', most
of them belonging to the poor fuckers who'd gone after garrison soldiers
under Julien while armed about as well as your average street tough. The
shield wall had scythed through them like wheat, though stubbornly quite
a few had kept coming. Some old veterans and garrison men stayed
loyalist had tried to get a shield wall of their own going, but Captain
Julien had brought archers and there weren't enough shields on the rebel
side to be able to even remotely take an organized volley.

The whole thing had been a massacre, and the smell of it was now
lingering in her nose and mouth even when she covered it with cloth and
faced wind blowing the other way. Gods, if only she'd not had a taste
for poppy brew. If her debts had not been so deep the Silver Letters
would never\ldots{} It mattered not. They were deep as could be, and she
owed to the wrong sort of folks. Hasenbach had been a decent enough sort
to the people of the capital but not so saintly Pauline would burn down
her own life for the First Prince's sake. Weren't no saints anywhere in
Salia, as far as she could tell, and a woman had to take care of herself
when the going got rough. She just wished the \emph{stench} would go
away.

``Stack the bodies together properly,'' she yelled through the cloth.
``The carts need to be able to pass through the street when they're
carried out. And all of you just standing around, lend a fucking hand
would you?''

Only her own guards heeded the instruction, the idling soldiers and
fantassins -- Silver Letters, most likely -- ignoring her outright.
Considering they made for half the hundred she'd been left with, it was
no surprise this bloody mess was going on forever. Even if the damned
carts did finally get here they'd all be stuck waiting until guts and
corpses no longer clogged the way. The Bastard ran this coup, looked
liked, and he'd not trusted her enough to let her guards handle this
alone. Fair enough, but the man could at least have left her with more
than godsdamned watchers if she was to have this street cleaned up
enough it didn't look like a butcher's yard under morning light.

``Half of them,'' a man's voice calmly said, ``were hardly even armed.''

Lieutenant Pauline nearly jumped out of her own skin. The man who'd
talked was some tall foreign fucker, though well-dressed. Probably one
of Balthazar's, if he'd made it through the other blockades unimpeded.
Maybe he'd know when the carts would be coming. There was a hooded woman
at his side, the guard then noted, and she could see bits of a mask in
the shadows beneath. Yeah, definitely some sort of spies.

``They were armed enough,'' Pauline grunted. ``And you're sounding awful
judgy for one of theirs, I got to say.''

``I do not judge,'' the dark-skinned man refuted. ``Though judgement has
been passed on you nonetheless.''

``You're not one of Balthazar's,'' Lieutenant Pauline said, stomach
sinking.

``No,'' the White Knight said. ``Though I expect we shall meet in due
time. I shall mark the exculpated, Antigone. For the rest, do as you
will.''

The woman cocked her hooded head to the side as the wind suddenly picked
up, and the last thing Pauline ever saw as a blade shining like the sun.

---

``And you are quite certain,'' Louis de Sartrons said, ``that it
concerned the Augur's limitations?''

``Yes,'' the dark-haired prisoner said. ``I saw only part of the scroll,
but it claimed to contain the Carrion Lord's own thoughts on the
matter.''

And there it was, the trap the Tower had laid. It'd been done cleverly
enough, the emaciated spymaster had to admit. If that scroll had been
found on the first foray of the Silver Letters, Balthazar would have
recognized it for the dangled bait that it was. Instead it'd been a
progressive, heady climb for the other spymaster: information extracted
that led to more, operations successful but never too easily, until he'd
found quite the cache of compromising documents including this
particular scroll. Likely Serigny had held some doubts as well, but
ultimately decided that not even the Empire was so callous as to
sacrifice near a hundred spies and hirelings altogether to simply feed
someone information. He never quite had gotten the measure of the Eyes
of the Empire, had he? Oh Balthazar had prevented their successes on
occasion but there was a reason that the Webweaver's pawns were for
Louis and his peers to deal with and not the Bastard. Clever as
Balthazar could be on occasion, he was used to the deceptions of the Ebb
and Flow: shifting alliances and secrecy, the labyrinthine procedures
and precedents of the Highest Assembly paired with blackmail and the
occasional assassination.

And the Tower did use those means, it was true. But the Tower was a
cursed beast that swallowed its own tail, there was no gambit too
ruthless for it. Worse, after the Scribe and the mysterious Lady Ime had
wrested the reins from the hands of their predecessors they had proved
to be exquisitely deft hands at the game. Some of the ways the Circle's
agents in Mercantis had been dislodged had been so superbly executed
that Louis had been more admiring than angry when reading the reports.
Under the tenure of those two, the Eyes of the Empire had become the
peer of the Circle of Thorns in every way. He had a great deal of
respect for that society, and he'd studied them for decades: this had
the telltale marks of a Praesi conspiracy all over it. It was always
their preference to fund and empower local turncoats rather than to
introduce a plot of their own whenever possible. Under Dread Empress
Malicia the Empire had turned again and again its wealth into poison
flowing through the veins of the Principate, and this was no different.

Yet when the reports from the other order had had given began to pour
in, what had been clear instead became muddled.

``Pardon me,'' Louis said. ``I don't believe I heard you correctly.''

``They are killing each other, sir,'' the helper said. ``It is not a
coincidence, we've ten separate instances confirmed of known or
suspected Imperial agents fighting.''

A factional struggle between the Eyes? It was said that the Black Knight
and the Dread Empress had sundered ties, but the Circle had been dubious
given the lack of follow-through on either side. It would not be the
first time that those two feigned quarrels to draw out foes and slay
them. It was not, however, impossible.

``In seven out of ten instances, the party being attacked was trying to
start a fire in the city,'' the helper recited. ``In two out of the
seven, magic was used by the attackers. In all ten instances the
attackers won and retreated. We have several being followed.''

The mages, Louis thought, were the trouble here. The great advantage of
Praes spies was the ability to transmit what they learned by scrying,
which greatly complicated ascertaining if a suspect individual was truly
in contact with handlers. Which was why the Eyes so carefully guarded
the identities of their mages in Procer, often preferring to lose an
entire band of spies on the ground rather than endanger that more
important component. Two had already been outed tonight, and more might
follow. Which meant either this gambit, whatever its meaning, was worth
burning them and potentially a very significant potion of the Eyes of
the Empire in Salia -- if not all of Procer.

Or, he grimly conceded, there truly was factional fighting within the
Eyes. Between the Empress and the Carrion Lord, or more practically
speaking Lady Ime and the Scribe. The former was said to never leave the
Tower, if she even truly existed, but the latter\ldots{} She was alleged
to have been in the heartlands at some point in the past, though the
information had been judged unreliable. It was not impossible for her to
be in Salia at this very moment. One side was attempting to start fires,
another to prevent such actions. It could not be that arson itself was
the liability, for given the utter chaos in the capital it'd be nearly
impossible to seriously contend that Praes had been responsible for the
fires. Not when Balthazar's band of pawns was happily starting a few
without prompting.

``The riots will grow worse, if the fires take hold,'' Louis frowned,
thinking out loud. ``Both those of the First Prince's partisans and
those of the conspirators.''

More specifically the House of Light, who could stir the people to anger
like few others. Still, Cordelia Hasenbach was not without friends in
Salia and remained popular with the people -- in particular soldiers,
retired or otherwise, but also artisans and the poor.

``Fighting has begun in earnest between our own people and the Silver
Letters,'' his helped noted. ``As well as the Eyes and the Silver
Letters, though that has been infrequent and we believe possibly
accidental.''

Louis de Sartrons' eyes sharpened.

``Where?'' he asked. ``Where are the Eyes and the Letters clashing?''

The particulars had to be sent for, but the ember of inspiration had
struck and slowly he followed the thought to its conclusion. As always,
the devil was in the details. One might credibly conjecture that at the
moment there were four assemblies of spies in Salia: the Silver Letters,
the Circle of Thorns, and what one might venture to term the Praesi
arsonists and the Praesi hatchets. The hatchets, as it happened, were
the key. Because as descriptions were confirmed it became clear that
there were significantly less of them than the arsonists -- this was
known because some of their executioner crews were sighted several
times.

The Praesi arsonists were being clipped away by the hatchets with
methodical precision before they could light fires in vulnerable parts
of the cities, where it might easily spread. Now, the hatchets did not
intervene when Silver Letters and arsonists fought but they themselves
had raided several Silver Letters safehouses. Which meant that the
Praesi `hatchets' were trying to prevent the `arsonists' from carrying
out a plot, while most likely trying to get their hands on some damning
piece of evidence. Meanwhile the Silver Letters were being fallen upon
from all sides, including the Circle's more martial assets, while
lashing out essentially blindly.

The hatchets were being used to contain and clean up a plot someone had
evidently judged ill-advised. Given their small numbers but efficiency
and eerily skilled coordination, as well as their precise strikes at
Silver Letters safehouses, Louis believed he knew who was heading them.
He sent for his coat and arranged for an escort to accompany him back to
\emph{Les Horizons Lugubres}. The other members of the Circle would be
long gone, by now, but it was not they he intended to meet.

``Sir,'' the helper said as he was led out, ``I had a room set aside as
you ordered. Who should I let the watchers expect?''

``Oh, you might say she's an old friend,'' Louis de Sartrons smiled,
``Though I expect she'll let herself in.''

---

The princes were folding, and Balthazar could almost taste the victory
in the air.

The last two royals in the city that were not already at the Highest
Assembly had sent messengers expressing they would not be setting out to
attend, and that they would go accompanied by their retinue given the
disorder in the city. They'd ordered that the blockade was to move aside
for them and their escort when they arrived, which Balthazar had arrived
-- so long as only men on foot and by horse came, and every single one
was inspected before being allowed to pass. They'd grown desperate now,
enough that neither Prince Renato of Salamans nor Prince Ariel of Arans
had even brought up that the head of the Silver Letters was torching the
district where their own manses stood. They'd recognized it for a lost
cause, and they were falling in line. Captain Julien had protested
letting the retinues out in the city, but they were less than two
thousand in whole so Balthazar had disagreed. They were elite soldiers,
true enough, but they could not seize the city with so few. If they took
the palace they might be able to hold it against greater numbers, but
Balthazar had ordered than only twenty soldiers be let in by prince and
any attempt to force entry with more be met with violence.

Given that the conspiracy's own soldiers were the ones on the right side
of walls and gates, at the moment, even if the two princes had struck an
unlikely alliance they simply did not have the strength to take the
palace with steel. And even if they did, by some miracle, they could not
defend it: while it might be true that the servants in the palace had
been fond of Hasenbach, and some even protested her seizing, he had
Silver Letters among their number that'd open secret ways into the
palace if it need be retaken. Watching another manse burn down, the
ferocious-looking man waited at the edge of the blaze's warmth for the
latest word out of the palace. By now the Holies and Princess Clotilde
ought to have crowned their pet princes, and the decrees could start
being passed in earnest. Cordelia Hasenbach's deposition would likely be
the first. The soldiers had begun piling the wood by the walls of
another manse, while another detachment briskly inspected the servants
and lesser nobles that'd come out of the last before sending them south
in small groups, when the messenger did arrive. One of his own Silver
Letters, he noticed, Rosalie. Less than pleasant a person, but utterly
without scruples and so reliable for all manners of work.

``Have I missed the election of First Princess Rozala Malanza?''
Balthazar amusedly asked.

The red-haired woman grimaced.

``You haven't,'' she said. ``The Highest Assembly hasn't even officially
convened yet.''

He was, for once, more utterly surprised than furious. For a moment, at
least, then fury claimed its due.

``What?'' Balthazar hissed. ``Are they all drunk? It's been most of a
bell, what could possibly be taking so long?''

``They can't enter the Chamber of Assembly,'' Rosalie said.

He blinked, unsure how to respond to that. Had some enchantment been
laid upon the threshold?

``They don't have the key,'' she explained. ``There was only one, in the
hands of the Master of Orders-''

``One of Hasenbach's,'' Balthazar frowned.

``No one can find him,'' Rosalie said. ``He must have fled the palace. I
have our people looking for him, but he could be anywhere by now.''

In principle that was a blow, as the Highest Assembly could only hold
session within the Chamber and any motion passed outside of it would not
be binding, but only in principle.

``Are you telling me no one can simply batter down those doors?'' the
spymaster growled. ``Given their age a few good soldiers ought to be
enough.''

``Princess Clotilde has refused,'' Rosalie darkly said. ``And the Holies
have agreed. They say it would cast into doubt the legitimacy of
Malanza's ascension to break open the Chamber.''

``Of all the bouts of bloody lunacy,'' Balthazar cursed.

He called for a horse, after that, and for Prince Arsene as well. This
part of the city was under control, now it seemed they were needed back
in the palace. Balthazar Serigny would see this coup succeed even if he
had to batter down the fucking doors himself.