Page 11 of Crucible of Chaos

‘Fair enough,’ Estevar conceded, settling his hands on his hips in a way that suggested arrogant defiance, but was actually to make drawing his dagger quicker, should this be the place for an ambush. ‘And what ofyourdeceptions, Sister?’

‘Brother,’ she corrected with a faint sneer. ‘We keep to the old ways here. Some of us, anyway.’

An odd tradition of this country, Estevar had always thought, that those who undertook monastic lives called themselves brothers regardless of sex. He supposed it was meant to remove the false distinctions of gender that separated men and women in the secular world.

‘Forgive me, then, Brother. . .’

‘Agneta. I am Brother Agneta, the abbey’s chief quartermaster.’ She paused a moment before adding, ‘One of them, anyway.’

How does an abbey have more than one chief quartermaster?Estevar wondered, but set the question aside for more pertinent ones.

Beneath her penetrating gaze, he felt scruffy and oddly oafish in his soaked, filthy, bloodstained clothes and bare feet. The water overflowing from the gutters curving down the street was slithering between his toes, chilling him even more. If only he weren’t so tired and feverish. He kept imagining tiny fencers jabbing needles into his wound, over and over, cutting through his stitches. If his mind were clear, he might deduce from the sectati’s words and tone, her mannerisms and subtle insinuations, such evidence as would help him uncover what was happening on this island. Instead, he was forced to employ blunter methods, the kind more suited to a brutish village constable than a King’s Magistrate.

‘Well, Brother Agneta,’ he began formally, ‘that you saw the rowboat means you were not, as you claimed, inspecting the storm drains beneath the abbey. Nor have you asked who rescued me from the raging currents, so the boatman must be known to you. That you did not come to the gate when I rang the bell as a friend seeking succour exposes an uncharacteristic distrust of strangers. That you reacted as you did when I mentioned seeing someone in the watchtower suggests that distrust extends to your own brethren.’

He took a step closer to loom over the diminutive monk. ‘You know me for a Greatcoat, so you also know that I may compel your testimony if I require it, and I surely do now. So, answer me, Brother Agneta, what disharmony plagues Isola Sombra?’

His question drew a sudden smile and a curt, almost barking laugh. ‘Disharmony?Oh, Eminence, your wisdom is indeed a blessed light shining through the fog inside this cobweb-infested old skull of mine. Disharmony–that’sthe word I’ve been racking my brain for these past weeks. Yes, Eminence,disharmonyis the word that has eluded me until now.’

Estevar’s wound had roused again, the freezing rain like tiny claws picking at it. ‘Answer me, then,’ he urged her. ‘Tell me why Abbot Venia, who summoned me here, hides in his tower. Why did the twelve knights who came to investigate the odd goings-on in the abbey return to their fortress suffering from a torpor the margrave’s own physicians cannot explain? Who covered their bodies in markings that suggest heretical occult rituals performed inside the walls of Tristia’s once-holiest site?’

Brother Agneta opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again as heavy footsteps came clomping down the wet flagstones from the winding road ahead of them. ‘Ah,’ she said, sounding almost sad. Her shoulders slumped beneath the chaperon cowl of her robes. ‘I’d hoped to spare you from the knowledge you seek, Trattari. However, I fear that you are about to discover the answer to all your questions.’

With that, she let go of Imperious’ reins and produced from inside the folds of her black outer robe a brass-fitted mahogany wheellock pistol. Aiming it directly at Estevar’s chest, she said, ‘Forgiveness is more a part of my vocation than yours, Eminence, but I do hope you’ll forgive me for what happens next.’

CHAPTER 9

INTRUDERS AND INTERLOPERS

Two monks, a man and a woman, came striding around the corner. Their combined ages were, he suspected, less than half that of Brother Agneta, while the glares they shot her would have better suited those of enemy infantry charging the battlements than loving brethren.

Both were tall, their dark hair not quite shorn to the scalp. Over rich black wool robes they wore sleeveless surcoats not unlike Brother Agneta’s, but these were cut from sturdier leather and dyed a shimmering dark yellow. The traditional dangling pewter coins were absent from their cloaked chaperons, which were trimmed with gold rather than blue. The woman, broad in the body and square of jaw, carried a longsword, the blade resting on one shoulder, the hilt gripped in both hands, ready to strike. The man was slender and sharper-featured. He carried a shortbow, already strung, in one hand, while his other reached for an arrow from the quiver slung to his belt.

‘Strange to find religious recluses so well armed,’ Estevar observed. He couldn’t reach for his own dagger, needing both hands to hold tightly to Imperious’ reins. The confused mule strained against his tether as if he wanted to stampede the invaders, neither of whom were looking at all hesitant about using their weapons against him.

‘These are, indeed, strange times,’ Brother Agneta agreed. The muzzle of her wheellock was still aimed squarely at Estevar’s chest. ‘Almost makes me wish I hadn’t given up liquor.’

Estevar was familiar with her weapon, recognising the theological and military symbols carved into either side of the brass plating in the mahogany barrel. Inscribed in the brass on one side was a phrase in archaic Tristian.

‘Not by my will is judgment rendered,’ he read aloud. The other side he recited from memory. ‘By a god’s decree is my hand guided.’

‘So nice to meet a Trattari who recalls that not all laws fall under the purview of the Greatcoats,’ Brother Agneta said, offering the courtesy of a barely discernible nod.

‘Only those laws for which justice is the desired outcome,’ Estevar replied, keeping an eye on the other two armed monks, neither of whom were approaching any closer. ‘You are no doddering sectati, are you, Brother Agneta?’ He didn’t do her the insult of waiting for a reply. ‘Shall I instead address you asCogneri, or do you preferInquisitor?’

Agneta allowed him a small smile, but her hand remained steady around her pistol’s grip. ‘Let us not stand on stodgy formality, Eminence. We are both enforcers of the law, are we not? Besides, my young colleagues here find such antiquated terms offensive to their modern sensibilities.’

‘He is ours,’ the tall woman in the black and yellow habit declared. Her voice, though stern and unyielding, was more distinctly feminine in tone than Estevar would have expected. She raised the blade of her longsword up to a high diagonal guard well-suited for a quick beheading. ‘The interloper belongs to the Trumpeters now. That was the agreement.’

‘The agreement,’ Agneta repeated, uttering the last word in a slow, disdainful manner. ‘Since when do the Trumpeters concern themselves with the honouring of agreements,SisterParietta?’

Trumpeters,Estevar thought. The term was unfamiliar, but so too was the yellow and gold adorning the monks’ surcoats and chaperons. He noted the subtle differences between Sister Parietta’s cowl and that of her colleague.A military distinction?he wondered.And the use of ‘sister’ rather than the more customary ‘brother’. . .Agneta looked unduly irritated by the unconventional term. Why? Because it broke with tradition?No, he thought, noting the faint curl of her upper lip.Her dislike is more personal, yet not entirely directed at Sister Parietta. Her leader, then? A different ‘sister’ who is also, judging by the habits and behaviour of these ‘Trumpeters’, a kind of general?

The young man– was he also a ‘sister’ like Parietta?–was arguing with Agneta, blustering something about pacts and which faction had rights over intruders despoiling holy ground.

‘You see what I am forced to contend with of late, Eminence?’ Agneta asked Estevar in a theatrically weary tone. ‘My days are wasted debating with amateur lawyers unfamiliar with the finer points of laws and contracts.’ The muzzle of her pistol hadn’t moved an inch from Estevar’s heart. ‘What Sisters Parietta and Jaffen do not understand is that there is a crucial legal distinction between an intruder and an interloper.’

‘They are the same!’ Jaffen insisted.

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