“And yet you still ended up in Scorazin,” Lizanne noted.
“Things rolled along pretty well for everyone for a good few years. With my husband gone I was able to bring a certain efficiency to the business, doubled our profits soon enough. Then the old governor died of gout. His replacement was some cousin of the Emperor’s, a real stickler with a rod up his arse who thought accepting a bribe was beneath one who bore the Divine Blood. He set his constables to seizing our shipments, after hanging a few who’d been a bit too free with their bribe money. Even then we might have survived, kept things at a low level and waited for the bastard to sod off back to Corvus, but it turned out he had the favour of the Blood Imperial. Once that old fucker sent his agents into Kestria, it was only a matter of time before I found myself at the end of a rope or in Scorazin. Spent a good deal of my life behind those walls. Not saying I didn’t deserve at least some of what I suffered there, but by no means all.”
She raised her eyes to Lizanne’s, holding her gaze for a long moment of silence.
“Oh dear,” Lizanne groaned in realisation as the woman’s intent became clear. It was odd, but her disappointment in the Electress was almost as great as her disappointment in Arberus. Although as dreadful an example of the criminal class as Lizanne had ever expected to meet, she nevertheless had nurtured a deep respect for the woman’s pragmatism. “You actually intend to march on Corvus.”
The Electress shrugged her broad shoulders. “We’ve all got scores to settle. Besides which, with this empire in chaos, who knows what opportunities might happen along? Sailing away to some corporate holding has a certain appeal, if you’d’ve actually kept your side of the deal, which I have my doubts about. But I don’t know the corporate world like I know this empire and its people. Like you said, I could do great things here.”
“Arrogance is its own brand of weakness,” Lizanne reminded her, expecting to arouse the woman’s anger and so was disappointed when she only laughed.
“I’ve never been arrogant in my life,” she said. “But I’ve also never been one to turn my back on an opportunity, or an unpaid debt.”
It took a moment for Lizanne to understand her meaning, and when she did she voiced a brief laugh of her own. “The Blood Imperial. You want revenge for what he did to you.”
“Seems like the only occasion in this lifetime I’m likely to get the chance. But it takes a Blood-blessed to kill a Blood-blessed.”
“Meaning me, I assume.”
“Meaning I’m renegotiating our arrangement. You want Tinkerer, I want that old bastard dead when we get to Corvus.”
“There’s a fair chance he’s dead already.”
The Electress shook her head. “Done my research over the years, gathered every scrap of knowledge I can about the Blood Cadre. I think we both know the Blood Imperial will have survived this coup. Perhaps he even had a hand in bringing it about.”
Lizanne thought back to her meeting with the Blood Imperial, the old man’s deep-set cynicism and ingrained facility for intrigue certainly indicated a soul capable of engineering Caranis’s downfall. But she also recalled his attachment to the established order. It’s an absurd and ancient pantomime, and it works. “I find that unlikely,” she said. “It’s probable that he will be paying lip-service to Countess Sefka’s authority for now, but they’ve been enemies for years. Conflict between the Blood Cadre and the new order is most likely inevitable, meaning he will be more use as an ally than an enemy.”
“You talk like someone who knows him.”
“I do, although our acquaintance was brief. It was thanks to his intelligence I came to Scorazin.”
“Suffering a great deal of privation and risk just so you could bring out Tinkerer. I think it’s time I knew why he’s so important.”
“Suffice to say, if you don’t permit me to take him to an Ironship holding nothing that occurs in this empire will matter a jot.”
“Yes, I gather plenty has happened since I went away. A lot of wild tales to be heard in this town, about how the empire and the corporates got kicked out of Arradsia by a bunch’ve drakes and deformed savages.”
“Sadly all true.”
“Which means no more product for you and your kind. If we wait long enough the Blood Cadre will have exhausted its stocks and won’t be able to oppose us.”
“By which time you’ll be facing something far worse than the Cadre.”
“Then it’s in your interest to ensure our victory is a swift one, my dear.” The Electress paused, eyes narrowing. “You really think the Blood Imperial will throw in with us?”
“Only in extremis. It’s more likely he’ll do everything he can to crush us. You can expect to face his Blood-blessed children before long.”
“How fortunate then that I have you, and that Brotherhood boy, whatsisname.”
“Hyran. He’s far too inexperienced to face combat with a Cadre agent, Blessed or not.”
“Best get to training him then.”
“This is madness,” Lizanne told her simply. “Countess Sefka can still muster enough loyal troops to defeat us, even without the Blood Imperial’s help. You can’t expect this rabble to stand against regular, veteran soldiers.”
“You should have more faith in our general. I’m expecting great things of him.”
The Electress levered herself out of her chair and nodded at the door. “Think that gets it said, don’t you? You could take yourself off of course, can hardly stop you. But this is the deal now, you get the Tinkerer the day you lay the Blood Imperial’s head at my feet on the steps of the Sanctum. In the meantime, go within a dozen feet of the Tinkerer and I’ll have Anatol slit his throat.”
? ? ?
The army moved out after a three-day halt at Hervus during which time Arberus did everything he could to transform his rabble into soldiers. To Lizanne’s surprise there had been no sudden upturn in desertions following the Electress’s announcement that their ultimate objective was now Corvus instead of Vorstek. The ease with which Hervus had fallen seemed to embolden the recruits, even attracting a few more volunteers from the surrounding towns and villages as word spread. Recruitment increased further after the Brotherhood began proclaiming Arberus’s true lineage. They sent riders from town to town spreading the news that the grandson of Morila Akiv Bidrosin herself had emerged from the shadows to lead the march to freedom. By the time they began the march the army’s ranks had swollen to almost ten thousand people, although to Lizanne’s eyes they still displayed only a vague semblance of military order.