Dave Duncan - When the Saints

Back at the castle, Vlad stripped off his armor, established that His Babyship the count was believed to be in the solar, and ordered some food to be sent there. It was now Saturday, he decreed, since the sun had set, meaning red meat and none of that salt fish sewage.

The rumors had preceded him, so everyone he met wanted to confirm them, and a celebratory riot was already under way in the castle. It did not extend into the solar. Otto and Anton were slumped in chairs, scowling ferociously and clutching wine bottles with the air of men determined to get drunk as fast as possible. The only other person present was a woman he did not know.

“Wulf get back?” he demanded anxiously.

Anton said, “Yes. Hear we won.” And took another drink.

Vlad found this morbidity decidedly eerie. He started with the stranger, putting fists on hips and giving her his best bearded-monster glare. “I am Vladislav Magnus.”

She held wine, also, but in a glass. She nodded. “The last time I saw you, you were a lot less hairy and about one-third the height. I’m your Great-aunt Kristina.”

“And a sor… I mean Speaker?” She must be about a hundred years old!

“Of course. My working name is Justina.”

He choked back a couple of military expressions and went down on one knee to kiss her hand, the one without the glass. “And since these two drunks are apparently past talking, will you tell me what the problem is?”

“ Their problem,” she said, “is that Cardinal Zdenek called them in and left them on their knees while he gave them a thorough chiding. Their dignity is sorely hurt.”

“Called them in-to Mauvnik? Tonight? Sata… Speaking?”

She nodded again. “In all my days, I have never seen talent being splattered around as wildly as it is here in Castle Gallant just now. If the Inquisition decides to take notice, it will have a feast day.”

Otto spoke for the first time. “It wasn’t just our dignity. Zdenek is threatening to turn both of us over to the Church unless we give him Wulfgang.”

“Give him Wulfgang,” Vlad echoed, but the words still made no sense. He stood up.

“Speakers,” his aunt said, “are required to be bound-we call it ‘jessed’-by a workaday, a non-Speaker. It makes us a little easier to live with and better behaved. The cardinal feels that he needs and deserves a falcon on his wrist, although he already has several he can call on.”

Vlad headed to the bottle table. “My youngest brother, Aunt, may not be of the full twenty-one years the law recognizes, but he is a Speaker and, as of today, a battle-hardened warrior whom I admire enormously. Who in the good God’s creation is going to order him around, or give him to anyone? Gramercy! If I wanted him to pass the salt, I’d ask politely.” He glanced around the group. “Where is Wolfcub, anyway?”

“We don’t know,” she said. “He went into limbo, and I can’t trace him until he returns to the world. He’s utterly exhausted and I’m frightened he may go to sleep there.”

“And if he does…?” He guessed from her expression that he didn’t want the answer.

A knock on the door announced a page bringing the long-awaited food. Vlad took the tray himself, telling the boy to close the door and Anton to clear a space on the table.

Provisioned with a cold goose leg and his wine bottle, he made himself as comfortable as possible on the larger of the two available chairs. Otto had snapped out of his uncharacteristic sulk to start explaining about Wolfcub. Not just Zdenek, he said-a coven called the Saints also wanted to “jess” him. Then there was another coven, which Father Vilhelmas had belonged to, and which might want revenge. And there was the Church, which feared all Speakers it did not control. Since Speakers could find a man anywhere, running away would be a mere confession of guilt. By the time Otto had finished his summary, Vlad understood the prevailing mood of gloom. He tossed the bone in the fire and went back to the manger for more hay. “So what are we going to do?”

Silence.

“I’m waiting for the superior of my order,” Justina said. “Lady Umbral. She is the best fixer in Christendom, though I wonder if even she can untie this knot.”

“Explain ‘fixer.’” Well laden, Vlad returned to his seat.

“She’s matchmaker to senior nobility, arbitrator of quarrels, advisor to crowned heads… The world would be in a much worse mess if she didn’t exist. Only a Speaker can heal a prince who fractures his skull in the tilting yard, or cure a bishop’s leprosy. If the Amsterdam merchants hear that a Venetian galley has sunk with a cargo of spices, they can raise their prices. When a king starts mustering his army, his neighbors want to know that right away. Nothing travels faster than falcons. There are never enough of us.”

Vlad tried to whistle around a mouthful of blood sausage.

“It’s all done in absolute secrecy, of course, and only very rarely for money. If you need your heir cured of smallpox, then you must give up your threat of war on-” The old woman sat up straight. “He’s back!”

“Wulf?” three voices said.

Anton added, “Where?”

The Satanist hesitated, then said, “He’s talking with your wife.”

Anton uttered a sort of bark and shot out of his chair, heading for the door.

Otto cried, “Wait! Anton, you told him that you wouldn’t… That you would ask the bishop…”

Anton paused with his hand on the door handle and looked back, his face a cockpit of conflicting emotions. “I was only going to tell him that we must speak with him.”

“Let him be, lad! He’s out on his feet. Even if he sleeps in your bed, I don’t think you need have any fear of being cuckolded tonight.”

Vlad rather doubted that, remembering the fires of youth with nostalgia. He had no time to comment-he was planning to guard his tongue for once, anyway-before a section of the plastered wall shimmered and faded away. In walked a nonthreatening, almost tubby little m an wearing the dark robes and pectoral cross of a priest, under an oily, professional smile. Behind him loomed two much larger and younger men in garish blue and orange livery, each armed with shiny pike, sword, and dagger. They made the little room very crowded. The gap in the wall healed behind them.

“Anton,” the priest said, “I have urgent business with Wulfgang, your brother. Will you take me to him, please?”

Looking as if he’d been clubbed, Anton just nodded.

The priest smiled down at the Speaker. “You promise not to interfere, Justina?”

She sighed. “I promise, Father.”

Anton opened the door and led the way. ="0ont›

Countess presumptive Madlenka had never known a worse day. After gathering up wounded in the morning, she had spent the rest of the day in the madhouse of the infirmary. When her mother became both exhausted and distraught by all the horrors she had witnessed, Madlenka took over and sent her off to rest. She was probably the youngest person there, but leadership was what nobility were for. She ordered the blood-splattered floor washed and the unneeded beds tidied away, and she cleared out all but a necessary minimum of medics, sawbones, and priests.

Anyone with a chance to live had already been bandaged and returned to his family. Eight wounded remained. By nightfall, two had died and another had gone home to do so.

She spent most of her time with Radomir. A year younger than she and the son of a palace guard, he had been a childhood friend of Petr, her brother. Now he was a smith’s apprentice, a husky, happy young man. He had just carried a building stone up to the roof of the north barbican when a Wend arrow had gone right through him. There was no way to stitch up bowels. He was bleeding inside, and if that didn’t kill him soon, fever would later, so he had been given extreme unction. He writhed in agony, but the town was out of poppy, mandrake, mallow root, and all other known painkillers. It was even short of honey for dressing wounds.