2.24. To The Necropolis

Lisa squared her shoulders as the newcoming carriage rolled to a halt. Her glare deepened to a degree that sent the pencil-necked pilot skittering from his box, to open the door for his master.

The titanic carriage creaked on its side as it disgorged the broadest, most barrel-bellied murani man Seth had ever seen, dressed in a uniform that must have been made from a spare stormship’s envelope, so bulked was its bearer. His marsh fire eyes gleamed in a face as bulbous and gray as a granite boulder. The executioner sword on his back was barely visible from his front facing side. Silver frogging climbed his chest in a martial ladder, within which heavy buttons were drawn taut as fat flies in a web.

Lisa drawled, at a confrontational contralto: “Rafi al Kanap.”

Verdugo al Kanap widened his bridge-broad stance. His whiskers twitched. His pointed ears flattened. “Lisa al Ydris.”

“The tabby king of the cathouse.”

“The blackened bitch with her brood.”

Lisa stayed very still. Seth’s confused hackles raised. He coiled like a spring. He remembered a moment like this one the first day he’d met Annalise, standing across from a different murani murderer:

I’ve never killed a Verdugo before.

No? I have.

Rafi’s chins wobbled as he took in the al Ydris retinue, and at the wraith of Riccana il Teremi, who sat silently within the canopied passenger seat. “Saints and Seraphs, you’ve gone and popped out two more, have you? Was not even the seraph plague enough to keep your legs shut and your fields fallow?”

“It helps when there’s room in the carriage for more than a single triple-wide rider.” Lisa sneered. “I knew it was you, Rafi. Suspension so low to the ground it’s spitting sparks, waft of wine in the air. Spat out of every taphouse in the Territories, I imagine, if you’re finally dragging your bloated bulk back here.”

Their stare maintained itself for three heartbeats more and then Rafi laughed, loud and boisterous, and opened his arms. ”Come here, you wicked bitch. Silas’s blessings on the blade that kept you.”

Lisa joined in the laugh (at seventy percent sincerity, by Seth’s calculations), and embraced the huge man. “What a year, Raf,” she said. “What a saintfucking year.”

Rafi slapped Lisa’s back. “Aren’t they all?” Seth decided he still didn’t quite like this guy yet.

“You’re early,” Lisa said.

“So are you.”

“I’m always early.”

“And I’m always lazy, is that what you’re saying?”

Lisa released their hug with a censuring wag of her finger. “Your words, Lord Verdugo.”

“And damned if they’re a lie,” Rafi said, his ears perking with pride. “Only I ran into some luck early this year. Ambushed by some anti-Legion conspiracy in this Sektorbrav border burg. Landed myself a dozen heads barely out of the gate. And there I am stomping the scaffold acting so righteously enraged when I really want to say ah, bless you beautiful shavepated so-and-sos.”

“You were a lion, I’m sure.”

“We put our work in,” Rafi said. He snapped his clawed fingers twice. “Malark finally got his blade bloodied, didn’t you, boy?”

His reedy driver scampered to the front of the carriage, dressed in the same minimalist black as Seth. “Yes, Lord Verdugo.”

“Saved my bacon, I don’t mind telling you. Split a Sektoric nave-to-chops, just before the bastard got me. Wobbled like a willow bough for a while, but he’s all right now. Eh?”

Malark swallowed. “Yes, Lord Verdugo.”

“Good lad. Water the horses.”

Malark busied himself with his lord’s command. Seth hoped he didn’t look quite so nebbish in his service blacks.

“But so what about rebels,” Rafi said. ”I hear you killed a fucking blackfeather this year.” When Lisa affirmed this with a grin and a nod, he whistled loud, and Seth caught spiced wine on his breath. Early for that. “Saints, the stones on you. It’s been zonks since we’ve seen the puniest pinfeather of a siegebreaker.”

“This one was a week or so back,” Lisa said. “Snuck in during the end-of-year clusterfuck, likely as not, and tried to eat a place called Shaheill.”

“Shaheill, eh?” Rafi stroked his pointed beard—a little strip of dyed hair in a style Seth knew as a Tuthimi Arrowhead, and had last seen below Rohan il Agante’s grinning lips. “First I’ve heard of a Shaheill.”

“You’ll hear more, I’m sure,” Lisa said. “The stones were theirs; Seth and I only piled them up. The Legion had better come through and build them a whacking big statue.”

Rafi peered past her to where Seth stood. “And this would be Seth, then?”

“Seth il Gutierre.” He bowed. Were all Verdugos this huge? Erheis hadn’t been. Perhaps he was a spindly exception.

“Seth is my newest employee,” Lisa said. “And my beau. Seth, this is Rafiel al Kanap. One of the good ones, and we’re around few enough ears at the moment that I’d be candid if it were otherwise. On his—what, Rafi, your thirty-fifth harvest?”

“You mummify me, Madame.” Rafi stuck a massive hand out; Seth took it. “Hello and congratulations, young man. Pillowdark, are you?”

“That’s right,” Lisa said, before Seth could ask what the hell that meant.

“Well, Seth,” Rafi said. “It’s a pleasure to make the acquaintance of a man whose luck is as exquisite as his taste. What do you do?”

“I find things,” Seth said.

“What kind of things?”

“This kind,” Seth said, and handed Rafi the pin that held the older man’s change purse shut.

Rafi gawped and for a moment Seth’s coxcomb confidence congealed; then he favored Seth’s display with a laugh loud and untamed enough to genuinely qualify for the moniker of chortle. “You rogue. Maybe luck has less to do with it than I thought.”

“Maybe not,” Seth said, and liked the man more. “Rogues learn to create our own.”

“You didn’t take anything out of this, did you?”

“If he did, I’ll give him a spanking.” Lisa’s fingertip coasted along the crisp piping that lined Seth’s uniform collar. Her nail felt ceramic on the nape of his neck—that was one of her hexentats, she’d once told him. Gotta invoke before I clip ‘em. Or use a bleeding chisel.

“You should dream bigger,” Seth said. ”For that payment I’d steal more than a purse clip.” He won additional laughter from both Verdugos, and felt like someone’s clever nephew at a dinner party.

Rafi gave Seth a jolly smack on the shoulder and turned to the twins, hopefully quick enough to miss the sprawling step his snowshovel of a hand had forced Seth into. “And the twins. Hullo, young ones.”

Tiago saluted. Ofelia only smiled. “Hullo right back, Rafi.”

With a noise like a cutlery drawer yanked from its housing, a suit of full-plate armor unfolded itself from the colossal carriage behind Rafi and teetered across the straw, moving stiffly. A metal mitt smoothed the black-and-green lancer tabard on the knight’s midsection, then slammed the grille on the front up to reveal a single unlit eye, its opposite covered by a patch.

Lisa tipped the brim of her saturno. “Good morning, Pars.”

The eye darted downward to Seth. The gauntleted hand produced, from a hip pouch, a slip of card. Pars(?) held it out.

Seth gingerly took it, and read, in neat and practiced pen:

Salutations. I am Verdugo Officiyant Pars al Kanap. I do not speak. Please do not take my silence as impropriety or disengagement. If required, my husband Rafiel (cont on inverse)

He flipped the card over.

and our retinue can serve as intermediaries, but I would prefer to remain a listener as often as is convenient. Thank you for your understanding and patience. Please return this card.

“Saints be kind,” Rafi said, as Seth read. “Is that a moustache you have there, Sunshine? I feel positively decrepit.”

“The attempt is all, milord,” Tiago said.

“He’s gotten a hexentat to grow it out,” Ofelia said. “The Mossy Rock.” Her brother gave her a sharp, brief swat on the bicep.

“Ahh.” Rafi tapped the side of his whiskered nose. “I’ve heard of that one.”

Seth returned his attention—and the card—to Pars. “It’s an honor—“ Seth realized he had no clue whether this silent soldier was a milord or a milady. “—Officiyant.”

Pars nodded, evidently satisfied, and clacked the full plate suit’s visor shut.

“So they’re both Verdugos?” Seth asked, as the al Ydrises returned to their carriage.

Riccana glanced from the window at the al Kanap party. “There’s only one Verdugo per carriage. Isn’t there?”

“Pars is a Verdugo Officiyant,” Tiago said. “Like how Feeli and me are Verdugo Teniyants. We’re part of the Verdugo corps, but we’re not the Verdugo. Gotta be an Exark for that.”

Seth hesitated. “So, wait. Your mom’s an Exark, then?”

“You’ve been in her house,” Tiago said. “What do you think?”

“I think I’m in over my head.”

“Some pretty soldiers on the carriage carry cocked shotguns,” Ofelia said.

“Don’t do the dumb mnemonic,” Tiago said. “It’ll confuse him.”

“It’s not dumb,” Ofelia said. “S.P.S.O.T.C.C.C.S.G., you see? Soldat, Primary, Subofficiyant, Officiyant, Teniyant, Capitan, Coronat, Comandant, Superior, General. If you’re anything above Teniyant, you’re an Exark and your family gets a fancy al in their names. And the wings are Verdugo, Legionnaire, and Sorcerer. So Tiago and I are Verdugo Teniyants, and that fellow by the door is a Legionnaire Primary, and Mother’s a Verdugo Superior which makes her an Exark. Oh, and if you’re a Lanzman—that’s like a Lanzteniyant or a Lanzcapitan—you’re like a lesser version of the rank. Get it?”

“Barely,” Seth said, truthfully.

“It’s quite simple,” Ofelia said. “Just remember that some pretty soldiers on the carriage carry cocked shotguns.”

“I’ll give it my best try,” Seth promised. “What about the hermandati?”

“They’re not anything,” Ofelia said. “They’re just town militias. The Legion doesn’t care about—what the hell?” This last part she said because Tiago had swatted her again. She swatted him back. “Stop.”

“You stop,” Tiago hissed, gesturing to the carriage window. The curtain through which Riccana had been watching them was closed again.

“What I meant to say,” Ofelia said, visibly chastened, “is that the essential work of the hermandati, while appreciated by the Legion, is not officially within their organization.”

Larson a’Lauvey arrived next, and he was still lit.

Seth had been unlit for a matter of weeks and had already stopped noticing the black of his own eyes in the shaving glass. But Larson came into the carriage house at a jog with his saturno under his arm, ruddy and pink and blue-eyed and warm-colored, and Seth’s age, and every unlit head in the place turned toward him the way a dark room turns to an open flame.

“Am I late?” he asked, and found his answer in the close attention. “I’m late.”

“You’re early, young man, and you’re wearing yesterday’s collar.” Rafi was already crossing to him. He took the hat from under the youth’s arm, snapped the brim straight with two cracks of his thumb, and put it on his head. “Fifty in your third season, we heard.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Say it like it’s a boast, boy, you’ve earned the boast.”

“Fifty in my third season,” a’Lauvey said, and it came out cracked on an edge, and he laughed at himself, and then he stopped laughing rather suddenly. There was a red rawness at the corner of his mouth where he’d been at the skin with his teeth.

Seth wondered how it was, in the early years. How he would be, if he were asked to do what Annalise al Ydris did.

“A commendable job,” Lisa said, gentler than Lisa usually did, and Seth maybe ought to have been jealous, but her tone was so close to a hospice bedside’s that he wasn’t. “Would you like to sit at our dais at the Bastion? The City Exarks will want to parade you and you’ll say yes to everything they ask, which is how they get you. Sit with us instead, and I’ll be rude on your behalf.”

A’Lauvey’s throat worked under his flared cloak collar. “Verdugo al Vhesse already offered a spot at hers.”

“Ahhh.” The font of Lisa’s good cheer froze to chandelier crystal. “She’s a friend of yours?”

“A mentor.”

“How lovely,” Lisa said, and her smile returned. She’d exchanged the genuine article for a cheaper, sturdier one that wouldn’t chip. “We’ll see you at the reception then, young man. And congratulations again.”

A’Lauvey saluted and entered conference with the Primary.

“First Sunshine’s got a stache, and now al Vhesse has a new cadre of adherents.” Rafi hopped onto the lip of his carriage and then to its roof, with startling grace for a man of his heft. “I’m not mummified, I’m fossilized.”

“You and I both, Lord al Kanap.” Lisa stroked Draco’s inky mane and traced his tack to the reins. “Will you take these and hop up to the driver’s box for me, please, darling? No bumps now, my love. I’ll be on top.”

He took the reins and tapped a pair of fingers to his forehead in salute. “As you deserve, Madam Verdugo.”

She giggled—Lisa’s most honest laugh was her giggle—and kissed him on the forehead.

He took advantage of the closeness: “Who’s al Vhesse?” he asked, sotto voce.

“A stupid cunt,” she murmured back, and he put a hand over his mouth to muffle the snort that produced. She looked pleased at his reaction. “Don’t worry about her, little fox. I protect what is mine.”

He hadn’t been worried, and then he was, briefly, and then she called him little fox and he wasn’t anymore.

A distant fanfare shook through the stable’s heavy stone colonnade. In its wake the strange whooshing noise increased. The Primary shifted foot-to-jittery-foot. “The parade is beginning, milords. File by seniority, please.”

Larson trotted to his carriage and seated himself at the reins. No retinue to steer him, apparently. Rafi bent at the knees to stabilize himself as his carriage rolled forward to the threshold of the doors.

“You’re all right?” she prompted. “Ready?”

“Sure,” he said. “I haven’t had the chance to fret. Fast morning.”

“It’ll slow down when we’re within the walls. We’ll find some time to catch up, and get some breakfast in us, and then I’ll find a closet to drag you into.”

Seth’s heart fluttered. “I never know when you’re serious, as Lisa.”

She winked. “Yes you do.”

“What’s that noise?” he asked.

“Hmm?”

“The whooshing noise,” he said. “Sounds like the Sheepfuck stormship.”

“That’s people, my love. Our people.”

“People?” Seth’s forehead furrowed. “People don’t sound like that.”

“My beautiful little provincial.” She kissed him again, lingering this time, like he was a flighty horse she was calming. “They do when there’s this many.”

Her longcoat swished past him then as she bounded to the carriage roof. The great doors opened. The light poured blindingly in. The sound resolved itself into a cacophonous roar. That’s people?

“Vivat a Legia!” An amplified, basso profundo voice cut through the din at a volume that rumbled the pit of Seth’s stomach. “Vivat a Verdugoya!”

Rafi grinned over his epauletted shoulder. “Off we go, then! Do keep your mouth shut, Mr. il Gutierre!”

“Rafiel al Kanap,” cried the voice, and Rafi snapped twice, and his colossal carriage thundered forth out into the square of brilliant light.

Ofelia craned herself along a femur-shaped handhold to Seth’s box. “Prepare yourself, Mr. il Gutierre. The Necropolis is where the continent’s hatred for the Verdugo alchemizes into adoration.”

Seth blinked into the brightness, trying to resolve it into shapes past the departing Rafi’s carriage. “That’s adoration?”

“Love has a heaviness all its own,” she said. “Especially for those accustomed to disdain.”

He forced a noise partway to a laugh through the tightness of his throat. “You should write a book someday, Feeli.”

“Though I imagine, being Mother’s man, you’re well aware of the weight.”

“Stop.”

“Annalise al Ydris!”

“Now,” Tiago called, barely audible over the universal scream. “Now, Seth! Onward!”

Seth lashed the reins. Draco snorted in annoyance; Draka, ever the stoic, went, and took her partner with her. Lisa’s posture widened as she braced herself against their canter. Onward they went, and the light struck them, then, and its brilliance resolved itself into—

He’d expected spires and he got them, black and fluted, and he’d expected crowds, standing shoulder to shoulder, but his mind had not been fitted for what he now beheld. Crenellated monoliths taller than Seth understood buildings could be, and a bridge as wide as the world, lined with people, and great blackstone promenades swarming with people, and rooftops and ledges dense with people and firestairs and cornices and iron balconies and people, more people than Seth had realized existed, such a crowd that it alchemized into a primeval force, cloaked in a snowstorm of flowers and jubilant noise.

Standing astride her carriage, bathing in this terrifying adulation, Lisa smiled with the serenely immortal calm of a monument.

“Welcome, Seth il Gutierre!” she sang, impossibly poised in the face of this impossible tableau. “Welcome to the Necropolis!”