webcrawl/APGTE/Book-2/tex/Ch-045.md.tex

\hypertarget{conspiracy-i}{%
\section{Conspiracy I}\label{conspiracy-i}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``In its infancy, the Fifteenth was in the awkward position of
being within spitting distance of the heart of the Empire without being
part of it. Legate Juniper, ever brutally sardonic, pointed out that
give how tall their manors stood, they had a better chance of landing
the spit on us than us on them. History wasted no time in proving her
correct.''}

-- Extract from the personal memoirs of Lady Aisha Bishara
\end{quote}

Hakram had learned the move from the battlemaster for the Howling Wolves
when he was nine years old. Catch the enemy's wrist with your hand,
leveraging greater muscles, and on the other side slap your open palm on
the human's ear. The wheat-eaters were known to be delicate in the head,
by the standards of the Clans. There was a pop as the dark-skinned man's
eardrums burst: the pain stopped him for a moment. The adjutant snarled,
lunging forward and sinking his teeth in the exposed throat. Long fangs
buried in soft flesh, ripping through veins and arteries as he shook his
head out. The stranger twitched, blood spraying everywhere and coating
Hakram's face with pleasant warmth, then dropped. Eyes perfectly calm,
he looked for the other man who'd tried to accost them but found Aisha
had already taken care of it: she'd buried a knife to hilt through the
Soninke's eye. With measured elegance she slid out the knife, flicking
away some kind of transparent fluid. Robber popped out of the side-alley
a moment later, shaking his head.

``There were only two,'' the yellow-eyed tribune said, face unusually
serious.

It seemed even Robber took attempts to kill them seriously, on occasion.
Swallowing the last of the meat, Hakram cleared his chops of the gore
with a rough tongue. Good thing no other orc was around, it was
considered a pretty suggestive movement where he was from -- but then
the Howling Wolves kept to many of the traditions from the Lesser
Steppes, for all that they lived in the heart of the Northern ones. An
unbroken line of shamans and blood-witches going back to the Golden Age
had done much to keep the old ways alive.

``You were the target,'' Aisha decided, addressing him nonchalantly as
she riffled through her corpse's clothes. ``Mine spent half the fight
trying to get at you.''

Hakram almost chuckled. Aisha might call that little rumble a fight, but
what he'd seen of her part of it had looked more like a cold-blooded
execution. The Hellhound's second had not hesitated so much as heartbeat
before putting down her opponent, not that this surprised him. Taghreb
were not a merciful people and their nobility had only gotten where it
was by being terrifyingly nastier than all other comers. Not even the
orcs had ventured in the Hungering Sands, back in the days of their
power. The only people to have mastered the desert tribes were the
Miezans, and hadn't they mastered the whole world?

``Can't blame them, my boy Hakram is a handsome bastard,'' Robber added
thoughtfully. ``More bastard than handsome, in truth, but he only has so
much to work with.''

``Your moral support humbles me,'' the adjutant replied mildly, then
returned his attention to the olive-skinned aristocrat. ``If they had a
target, this wasn't two locals trying to shake up soldiers after
pay-day.''

Aisha raised a condescending eyebrow at him. She'd yet to manage to
shake herself of that habit, not that Juniper had done anything to help.
The Hellhound apparently found the sight of humans sneering at other
humans amusing.

``This was an assassination attempt, Hakram,'' the aristocrat said.
``There's no use trying to pretend otherwise.''

The tall orc had arrived at the same conclusion, actually, be he
disliked hurrying to judgement. In a city like Ater, acting too quickly
was a dangerous thing. The Fifteenth was camped half a day away from the
scheming heart of the Empire and this was far from the first time they'd
been probed by unknown forces. Had Lord Black not still been in the
capital, he imagined it would have been much worse -- the Empress' right
hand cast a long shadow, and few were willing to risk the man's ire by
attacking his pupil directly. Until today, it seemed. Hakram would not
delude himself into thinking he'd achieved enough as an individual to
rank an assassination attempt: it was his function in the Fifteenth
Legion that merited killing.

``The Boss is going to be in a \emph{mood} when she hears about this,''
Robber said delightedly.

Aisha frowned at the comment, then rose to her feet. ``No personal
effects,'' she said. ``He does have a tattoo between his shoulder
blades, though.''

The Staff Tribune had thoughtfully flipped the corpse over for them to
look at. Hakram knelt by the dead human and peered at the inked skin.
Some kind of bird picking at a corpse. He cast a look at Aisha, silently
asking for information.

``A buzzard, I think,'' she said. ``Associated with Aksum in Soninke
heraldry but I've never seen this symbol before.''

That didn't mean much. The Dread Empire wasn't as bad as Callow or
Procer, where everybody and their goat had a sigil, but the Wasteland
bred ancient conspiracies the way the West whelped chivalric orders and
every single one of them had some sort of meaningful secret sign.
Tyrants stamped them out whenever they came in the open, but for every
one out in the sun there were a dozen meeting in crypts. Ignoring Robber
-- never a good idea, that -- Aisha met his eyes squarely. Unusual.
Taghreb and Soninke both avoided doing that whenever they could. Demons
and devils taking human shape could use eye contact to steal your soul,
as could some Warlocks. Aisha was being serious about whatever she would
say next.

``We can't tell Lady Squire,'' the Staff Tribune said.

Robber burst out laughing. ``Boy, did you pick the wrong crowd to try to
float that.''

The goblin tribune wasn't wrong. Inside the unofficial `Squire faction'
of the Fifteenth, both he and Robber were prominent members. Nauk was
the only one more outspoken about his allegiances: the other orc had
decided that Cat was the warlord of their generation, and as far as he
was considered that settled the matter. Every matter, really. Good orcs
did not question their warlord, though they ripped out the guts of
anyone who did. \emph{And yet}. Hakram did not believe in unthinking
service. Blind obedience had been the death of many a villain. Aisha
Bishara was an aristocrat to the bone, but that did not make her the
enemy. The Fifteenth would come to telly on her ability to navigate the
treacherous waters of Tower politics in the coming years, he suspected.

``Why?'' he asked.

Aisha straightened, her face smoothing out in a pleasant mask. The
apparent charms of her appearance -- that Ratface still couldn't shut up
about, when he got into his cups -- were thankfully lost on Hakram.
Humans were like ugly hairy two-legged cows. Unlike orcs they got hair
on every part of their bodies instead of just the top of the head. Why
the males got beards and moustaches when the females didn't was just one
of those mysteries of biology: he suspected whatever Gods had created
humans had not been sober at the time.

``You're her favourite, Hakram,'' Tribune Bishara stated.

It was not a question and he did not deny it. Exactly what Cat saw in
him he wasn't sure, but he liked her enough he didn't care to question
the bond.

``If Lady Squire hears there was an attempt on your life, she'll be
kicking down every door in Ater until she gets to hang whoever she deems
responsible.''

``It'll be fun,'' Robber grinned. ``Been millennia since there was a
proper greenskin raid on the capital.''

\emph{That's her whole point, Robber}, Hakram understood as he remained
silent. Even the goblin had unconsciously realized that Praesi soldiers
would balk at entering the streets of Ater in full gear to exact
retribution. The Callowan recruits were still an unknown quantity but
they might see the whole affair as a way to wiggle out of service to the
Legions. Too many risks involved.

``Her response could be more measured than that,'' he pointed out.

People who underestimated Catherine Foundling had this nasty habit of
eating dust.

``It won't be,'' Aisha said confidently. ``You didn't see her in the
Tower, when one of Heiress' minions provoked her. She broke that girl's
finger without hesitating and then paid for it. The Fifteenth's too
young, we can't afford to make the kind of enemies a heavy-handed
retaliation would earn us.''

``We're not without protection ourselves,'' the orc said.

Aisha shook her head. ``We can't get the Black Knight involved. Relying
on his protection every time we have a problem just makes us a
liability. We need to start dealing with these kind of messes ourselves,
Hakram. Quickly, quietly, cleanly.''

She wasn't wrong, he decided. The orc was not sanguine at the idea of
involving the most famous of the Calamities in their business, in all
honesty. Cat seemed strangely fond of the man but Hakram considered him
a considerable danger nonetheless. He wasn't willing to hide any of this
from Squire, but neither was it necessary to send a runner to her the
moment things got complicated. Taking care of issues like this fell
under his function as adjutant, in fact if not in name. He took a moment
to consider the possible consequences, ignoring the way impatience
flickered in Aisha's eyes, then made his final decision.

``Agreed,'' he said.

``Hakram,'' Robber broke in, looking startled, ``you can't possibly-``

``We hang a dozen nobles and the entire court will be out for blood,''
the orc replied. ``It might become enough of a mess we won't get
deployed.''

Deployed where, he did not yet know. Cat was playing that one close to
the chest, but she'd made no secret of how urgent getting the Fifteenth
in fighting shape was. That much was common knowledge among all the
high-ranked officers of the legion.

``We still need a lead,'' Robber conceded grumpily.

``I have a cousin who may know something,'' Aisha offered.

The same one who ran the Sword and Cup, if Hakram had to guess. Clever
of the Staff Tribune to turn a family-owned property into the unofficial
watering hole of her legion, but Hakram misliked the idea of getting too
many unknowns involved.

``We're keeping this in-house. We already have a man, if we need a guide
in the underbelly of Ater,'' he said.

Aisha grimaced and Robber cackled.

``Let's go visit Ratface, then,'' the goblin grinned.

Hakram waited until they'd left the alley ahead of him to lean over the
closest corpse and pluck out the eyeballs, popping one into his mouth.
No use wasting good meat, and it looked like he wouldn't be getting
dinner.

---

Aisha knew where Hasan -- Ratface, as the others still called him --
was. He'd already been a regular at the Burnished Swan when she'd first
become involved with him, long before other cadets had taken to
drinking. It had been part of what had made him attractive at the time,
the way he seemed to have \emph{lived}, strayed outside the confines of
cadet routine and the War College. She should have known that no one
took up frequenting dives like this unless there was already something
wrong in their life, and the list of Hasan's issues would cover several
small books. Their parting had been amicable, though apparently
surprising to him, but having been the one to distance herself she
disliked the idea of asking for his help now. She'd let Hakram do the
talking, if she could: owing the other Taghreb a favour was not
something she desired to happen any time soon. Robber, the irritating
pest, seemed to smell her discomfort.

``A romantic reunion, eh?'' he leered. ``Careful not to swoon too hard,
the floors look dirty.''

\emph{Weakness is a goblin's meal}, the saying went. Give this one an
inch and soon he'd be chewing your bones.

``I will have you drowned in a latrine pit,'' she replied in Taghrebi,
smiling invitingly at him.

Hakram snorted. The goblin was, at least, correct about the floors. The
Burnished Swan was in dire need of a mop and a handful of stray dogs
were digging at scraps the patrons occasionally threw them. The parlour
was full of bangue smoke and the heavy smell of poppy pipes from the
back where hard men and women gambled with dice and bones over narrow
tables. She ignored the few leers she got from older men and headed
straight for the stairs, taking the lead. There were a handful of
private rooms there and the one furthest back had been set aside for
Hasan permanently. How exactly he'd managed that she was not sure, but
she suspected that more than money had changed hands. She rapped her
knuckles thrice against the door before pushing it open, Hakram and
Robber trailing in behind.

Much like the last time she'd been here, Hasan was seated on a pile of
cushions with piles of parchment and a cheap set of scales at his side.
Two empty jugs of wine were to his left and a full one was currently
employed in pouring himself a cup. The Supply Tribune's handsome
features twisted in surprise, an unseemly display of bare emotion. He
must have been rather drunk: the other Taghreb despised everything their
culture stood for, but he'd not left behind the concept of losing face
even in private.

``Well,'' Hasan spoke up, the slur in his voice barely noticeable,
``this is a surprise.''

``Oh Gods, he's drunk,'' Robber said, sounding thrilled. ``Quick, Ratty,
how many fingers am I holding up?''

Hasan replied to the goblin's flipping off in kind, his eyes passing
over her and finally coming to rest on Hakram.

``I have a feeling I'm not going to enjoy the coming conversation,'' he
said.

``We left two corpses in an alley,'' Robber contributed cheerfully.

One of these days, Aisha was going to strangle him. No tonight,
unfortunately, but the time would come.

``There was an assassination attempt on Hakram,'' the olive-skinned
aristocrat said. ``We disposed of the assailants.''

Hasan rubbed the bridge of his nose, then carelessly gulped down his
whole cup of wine.

``Fuck,'' he said. ``There goes my night off. Why are you three here
instead of say, in camp, arming up?''

``There was a tattoo on the back of the corpses,'' Hakram gravelled. ``A
buzzard picking at a corpse.''

``Marked men, it's not unusual,'' Hasan replied. ``I reiterate, why the
Hells are you three not in camp while a runner gets Foundling?''

Aisha almost frowned. The familiar way he insisted on referring to Lady
Squire was quite irritating. The greenskins could be excused the poor
manners, but she knew the other Taghreb had been raised better than
that. Even bastards got etiquette lessons, and Hasan had been
presumptive heir to his father's lordship for the better part of a
decade.

``We won't be getting Lady Squire involved,'' she said.

Her former lover laughed. ``I could swear I just heard you say no one
was going to tell Catherine Foundling an assassination attempt was made
on her personal adjutant,'' he said. ``Clearly I've been drinking too
much. Could someone speak again but use words that don't make me want to
order a fourth jug of wine?''

Hakram cleared his throat and Aisha cast the situation an interested
look. Technically speaking, Hasan was of higher rank than the orc -- so
was she, as a tribune-ranked member of the general staff. The hierarchy
at play was muddled by the fact that technically Hakram answered
directly to the Lady Squire and was deepest in her confidence. The
adjutant might yield little authority in theory, but at the moment he
could end a career or string a noose with a single whisper. That he'd
shown remarkable restraint in the use of his influence had cemented
Aisha's respect for the orc, who she'd always considered one of the most
competent members of Rat Company.

``Concerns have been raised that she may retaliate in a way that burns a
lot of bridges,'' Hakram said.

Robber mimed getting hanged to help getting the point across. Almost
useful of him. Maybe she'd have him drowned in scum water instead. Hasan
smiled thinly.

``I bet she will,'' the Supply Tribune agreed. ``She'll take fire and
sword to the city until she owns the hide of whoever's responsible.''

He poured himself a glass, hand surprisingly steady. Perhaps not so
drunk, after all. \emph{Or just so used to drinking he's developed a
talent for this,} she thought less flatteringly.

``I don't see a problem with that,'' he finished, sipping at his wine.
``Ater could do with fewer fucking nobles. This whole Empire could.''

She'd known it would come to that. Aisha felt her blood rise. For
someone talented in so many clever ways, Hasan was so \emph{horribly
dim} in others. He couldn't see past his grudge against his father, and
had extended that hatred to every aristocrat in Praes. Which was
punishingly narrow-minded, if he wanted to pursue a career in the
Legions. A hundred times she'd told him, that he'd never be more than a
career tribune if he was openly hostile to anyone with influence in the
Tower. Gods Below, half the students at the War College were nobly born.
Aisha smoothed out her temper, which had thankfully escaped anyone's
notice. Reasoning would be of no use here. For all that, her quiver was
not yet empty. Softening her face, she knelt next to the Supply Tribune.

``Please, Hasan,'' she asked softly, lightly touching his bare wrist.
``For me. Just this once.''

His hard-eyed defiance deflated almost instantly. Her met her eyes with
his for half a heartbeat, just long enough not to break custom, then
looked away. Aisha almost felt guilty for exploiting the fact that he
was quite obviously still in love with her when she did not feel the
same, but guilt weighed little on the scales compared to the
consequences of failure here.

``Bish,'' he murmured. ``Don't be like that. I'm following protocol
here.''

``I'm not asking you to follow the rules, I'm asking you to do what's
best for the Fifteenth,'' she replied just as quietly.

And that was what tipped the vase over, in his mind. Hasan loved the
Legions with an almost childlike purity. He'd found the family there
that his blood had denied him and all his allegiances were founded on
that bedrock. He would do much for her but even more for the Fifteenth.

``Fine,'' he finally grimaced. ``I don't recognize the mark, but I know
someone who will.''

He rose to his feet a little unsteadily, only to be settled by the touch
of her hand on his chest.

``Thank you,'' she said.

``Don't do that,'' he muttered. ``I know what you're doing. I'm just
fool enough to fall for it anyway.''

He left them in the room, heading down the stairs. There was a moment of
silence, then Robber whistled.

``That was the coldest thing I've seen all day, and Hakram just ate a
guy,'' the goblin said.

``Part of one,'' the orc corrected mildly.

Aisha glared at the wretch. He'd just slid back to latrine drowning.

---

So Juniper's handmaiden had just worked the harshest of wiles on poor
innocent Ratface, which boded ill for the guy's love life. Robber
sympathized, inasmuch as he could sympathize with anything or anyone. It
wouldn't stop him from mercilessly mocking the man later, but he liked
to think of that as a labour of love. The Quartermaster came back with
the shadiest woman Robber had ever seen, and he was a \emph{goblin}.
Matrons basically became Matrons by proving it was possible to be even
more outrageously ruthless than their predecessors, and every single
female goblin who wasn't a Matron was one poisoning away from correcting
that injustice. This wonder of humanity glared suspiciously at all of
them, then spoke in soft aside to Ratface in some horribly garbled
Taghrebi dialect.

``I trust them,'' the Quartermaster said, with laudably poor judgement.

``You've killed marked men,'' the woman said, then spat to the side.
``What was the mark?''

``A buzzard tearing into a corpse,'' Hakram said.

The stranger looked at the adjutant like he was something a dog had
thrown up on her carpet. Ah, one of \emph{those}. Ater wasn't as bad as
some of the northern cities of the Empire, but there were still quite a
few people there who thought greenskins shouldn't be allowed to step
foot out of their lands until they were called for. Apparently Nauk had
lost his shit over something like that in Thalassina, yet another proof
that the thick-headed bastard was unfit to be with Pickler in any way.

``Catacomb Children,'' the woman said. ``Old gang, from Aksum. Used to
do contract killings for the Truebloods, until Assassin had a talk with
them.''

By which she likely meant that they'd all been found in a warehouse dead
of a string of unlikely yet simultaneous mortal accidents. Robber had
always approved of the sense of humour the Calamity was rumoured to
have. If you couldn't make murdering your enemies hilarious, what was
even the point? Well, fun. And getting paid. But that wasn't the
particular point he'd been referring to, so his argument still stood
flawless and unbroken.

``And where do those naughty kids hole up, my blatantly criminal
friend?'' Robber asked.

``Muzzle your pet,'' the woman told Ratface in Taghrebi.

``That man is Tribune Robber of the Fifteenth Legion,'' Aisha replied
sharply in the same. ``Watch your tongue, if you intend to keep it.''

Ah, good ol' Aisha. Might despise him, but anybody insulting a legionary
was in for a rough time if she was around. Almost endearing how easy it
was to wind her up. The other woman spat again, but she didn't care to
get into a pissing match with someone who might as well have `highborn'
stamped on her forehead.

``Dekaram Quarter,'' she said. ``Near the buried sewer entrance.''

Robber almost whistled again. Taking a contract on a legionary was proof
those boys hadn't been great thinkers, but this was spectacular
confirmation. Only raging imbeciles set up shop near Ater's sewers: the
whole place was crawling with giant spiders. At least half a million, by
the last estimate, and they got bigger the deeper you went. They said
Dread Emperor Tenebrous himself -- well, herself now -- was the one
spawning them, having gone from thinking he was a giant spider in human
skin to actually being one. Oh, those wacky humans. Second year tactics
class spent a whole fortnight going over the logistics of clearing out
the sewer system and the tunnels running under it, an exercise to
demonstrate the concept of a victory too costly for the results
achieved. Mages sworn to the Tower shad put wards over all the exits,
but now and then one got out and nabbed some poor fool out in the
streets at night. That these Catacomb Children had decided it was clever
to base themselves close to a nigh-endless flood of death only barely
bottled up promised it would be good clean fun to take them on.

``Two corpses, Fa'ir?'' the criminal asked Ratface.

``In good shape, too. Where did you kill them, Aisha?''

The aristocrat looked like she was too good to frown but kind of wanted
to anyway.

``Two streets east of the Sword and Cup,'' she replied.

Hakram looked like he'd gotten caught hiding aragh under his bunk again.

``The eyes might be missing on one,'' he admitted.

``Oh, was that eye-breath?'' Robber asked. ``Gods, you really have a
problem with those.''

``Nobody sells them fresh around here,'' the adjutant replied
defensively.

The sketchy woman, who'd been about to hand Ratface seven denarii, took
two back from the Quartermaster's palm. She left without bothering with
goodbyes, ignoring Robber's cheerful wave.

``Hasan,'' Aisha said. ``What does that woman trade in?''

``Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to,'' Ratface
grunted, pocketing the silver.

Robber rubbed his palms together. ``So this is the part where I talk to
a few of my people and we have a nice chat with these Funeral Adults?''

``We all know you're getting that wrong on purpose,'' Hakram noted.

``Lies,'' the goblin tribune exclaimed. ``Calumny. Possibly even a
set-up.''

He leaned closer to Aisha.

``You can never trust a greenskin, Bishara,'' he confided. ``They're a
shifty lot.''

The noble looked like she was about to say something scathing when
Ratface broke in, because he was the enemy of all forms of joy and
laughter.

``You can't bring a goblin raiding party in the city, Robber,'' he said.
``This is Ater, not Foramen. Everyone important in the city will know
they're here within the hour and our targets disappear into the crowd.''

The tribune scowled. He'd been looking forward to giving his boys and
girls some exercise.

``There's currently two hundred legionaries on leave in the city,''
Aisha said.

Staff Tribune, coming to the rescue with her intimate knowledge of duty
rosters.

``So we assemble a crew, then get out hands on some weapons,'' Robber
grinned.

``And then we clean up this mess,'' Hakram said, baring his fangs.