David Weber - Hell Hath No Fury

"Neshok will cease to be a problem as soon as I decide his usefulness is at an end. He's unaware that one of the troopers assigned to his intelligence section has very specific … instructions where he's concerned."

Mul Gurthak allowed himself a thin smile. Of course Neshok was "unaware" of those "instructions," since Javelin Lisaro Porath was unaware of them himself. Nor was there any reason for Neshok to suspect anything of the sort was even possible. The technique mul Gurthak had used to implant them required someone with a Gift vastly stronger than the one anyone outside the Council of Twelve knew mul Gurthak possessed. It also happened to have been proscribed, along with all other mind-ripping spellware, at the time the Union of Arcana was formally ratified. Unfortunately for the demands of the pious Ransaran reformers, the Council of Twelve had already been in existence for centuries at that time, and the Councilors had taken steps to preserve the knowledge which so many others-including so many shakira, who ought to have known better-had been prepared to simply throw away.

When Porath received the activation signal from mul Gurthak, he would obey the commands the two thousand had imprinted. Alivar Neshok would die quickly, before Porath-in an obvious paroxysm of guilt over the hideous crimes he had committed under Neshok's orders-hanged himself. And the most amusing aspect of the entire thing, as far as mul Gurthak was concerned, was that the signal would be a routine dispatch from him promoting Porath from javelin to sword on the basis of Neshok's glowing reports.

"Carthos, however, is beyond my immediate reach, as is Harshu," the two thousand continued. "We can always hope that one or both of them might become casualties once Sharonian resistance finally begins to solidify. We obviously cannot count upon that happy outcome, however. I believe that ultimately, Harshu will be almost as useful to our purposes alive as he would be dead. In a best-case scenario, his court-martial for permitting and condoning violations of the Kerellian Accords should constitute a significant self-inflicted wound for Andara.

"If not for Carthos' links to myself and the CBM, his court-martial-or disgrace, at least-would probably prove almost equally useful. In his case, however, any investigation by the Inspector General's Office would be entirely too likely to discover those links. For that matter, Carthos himself might well reveal them-and the 'suggestions' I gave him before sending him out to join Harshu's command-in return for being permitted to plead guilty to some lesser offense. As a consequence, I believe his removal to be imperative. Unless otherwise instructed, I intend to use the Gorhadyn Protocol to terminate him at the appropriate moment."

The beauty of the Gorhadyn Protocol-aside from the fact that no one outside the Council of Twelve even suspected its existence-was that its effects were virtually impossible to distinguish from a natural stroke. Only a powerfully Gifted magistron who already suspected what had happened could possibly detect it, and even then only if the autopsy were performed within no more than twelve to eighteen hours of the moment of death.

The drawback to using the Gorhadyn Protocol, of course, was that having too many people drop dead of convenient strokes at convenient moments was likely to raise a few eyebrows, at the very least.

"I've already reported my proposal for dealing with Hundred Olderhan and his family," mul Gurthak went on, "and if the Council approves my proposed strategy, it will be necessary for Five Hundred Klian to be removed, as well. Even if the Council rejects my proposal, however, Klian's death will hurt nothing and will further reduce the handful of people who know how vos Dulainah actually died. I therefore intend to deal with him at an appropriate moment. At this time, I'm looking for some means other than the Gorhadyn Protocol for accomplishing that portion of the operation. From the prospect of continuing to safeguard the Protocol's existence, I believe it would be wiser to find some other way to eliminate him. At the same time, it might well be that our agents in Arcana and New Arcana would be able to spin the similarity of his and Carthos' deaths into a suspicion that highly placed Andarans ordered their removal in an effort to shut their mouths about the 'truth' of Andaran mismanagement, arrogance, and atrocities, beginning with young Olderhan's wanton slaughter of the Sharonian civilians.

Please advise me as to your feelings in this regard. Although the message turnaround time will probably preclude the arrival of any advice from you before I'm forced to act in Klian's case, I will, of course, obey your instructions to the very best of my ability, should it be possible for them to reach me before that time."

He paused once more, considering all he'd already said. As always, he would play the entire message back at least once before he actually compressed it and embedded the encrypted file in his next letter to his brother-in-law. It was unlikely he'd be making very many changes, however, and he allowed himself a modest glow of pride. Given the disastrous effect of the Sharonians' sudden appearance and, especially, of Bok vos Hoven's incredible incompetence on the long-standing strategy of the Great Task, the job he'd done picking up the pieces and starting over again was nothing short of brilliant, and he knew it. False modesty was not a shakira vice, and mul Gurthak had no doubt that his performance in this emergency would be noted by the Council.

There might still be a few minor details in what he'd already recorded which needed a certain fleshing out, but he could always attend to that later. For now, it was time to shift gears and bring the Council fully up to date on what they had learned so far about the Sharonians and their "Talents."

"In addition to the purely military information which Neshok has obtained for Harshu," he began, "we've learned quite a bit more about the Sharonians.

"It would appear that at least traces of these 'Talents' of theirs are considerably more widespread in their population than trace Gifts are in our own. However, the strongly 'Talented' appear to be no more numerous than our own strongly Gifted. Moreover, the Sharonians' Talents are less flexible than our Gifts. From everything Neshok has been able to discover so far, it's extremely unusual for any Sharonian to have more than one or two Talents, and however powerful those Talents may be, they represent all the Sharonian in question can do. Whereas someone with a Gift can utilize almost any piece of spellware, Sharonians with Talents can do only the one or two things their Talent-or Talents-permit.

"On the basis of this, I believe that …"

The man who never thought of himself as Nith vos Gurthak except at very private moments, like this one, sat in his office, cradled in the heart of darkness, and continued his report quietly.

Sir Jasak Olderhan sat backward in the pedestal-mounted swivel chair, resting his crossed forearms on the top of the chair back, and leaned his chin pensively into the cushion they provided. Outside the observation dome, the virgin forests of the universe called Dystria flowed past. It was early morning, and the humid air of the Kythian lowlands hung in a sort of translucent golden haze as the slider rushed towards the coast and the passenger ship waiting to transport them across the fifteen hundred miles of saltwater to the next portal in Paerystia.

Thirty-five thousand miles, he thought. That was how far he'd traveled with his shardonai and Gadrial Kelbryan in the last two months. And we're still less than halfway to New Andara. I wonder if-

His musing thoughts broke off as he heard feet on the steps behind him. He looked back over his shoulder, and his eyes brightened as he saw Gadrial climbing up them from the lounge level.