Foreign Devils by John Hornor Jacobs Read Free Book Online Page B

secretaries and slaves here – everyone ran about clutching papers and wax styluses. But Fisk fixed the pilum-bearing eagle pin to his shirt – showing his rank as legate – and snagged a page by the elbow.
    ‘Take me to Marcellus,’ he said.
    The boy – no more than sixteen – looked frightened. ‘Can’t, sir. He’s in Harbour Town. Some of his legates have remained here, and so has the camp prefect.’
    ‘Take me to the prefect, then.’
    The boy led us through a warren of offices and hallways, neatly lit by daemonlight fixtures, until we came to a large room centred around a three-dimensional map of the Imperial Protectorate and Hardscrabble Territories. Many officers and messengers spoke quickly and quietly, prim and officious and efficient. The air smelled of tallow and blood and ink and on a far wall there were six or seven tremendously large slaves – each wearing a torc around his neck – attending Quotidians that hissed and scratched their messages on parchment and were then snatched up by waiting legates.
    ‘I’ll be damned,’ I said, looking at the slave-manned Quotidians. ‘That’s a blood-thirsty bit of work, there, Fisk.’
    He squinted, eyeing the slaves. ‘Those hosses seem like they got enough, though, don’t they?’
    There was one officer who simply sat at the map, holding a parchment and smoking.
    ‘That’ll be our man,’ Fisk said to me and then approached the map, the orders Cornelius provided us in-hand.
    The camp prefect was a thick, burly fellow with a distracted air. He stared at the parchment he held as if he wanted to strangle it. Or the person who wrote it.
    ‘Pardon me, sir,’ Fisk said, slowly. ‘We come under orders from Governor Cornelius.’
    The camp prefect glanced at us, jarred out of his brooding, and looked surprised to see us there.
    ‘And?’
    ‘We’re looking for a man. Beleth. Cornelius’ fugitive engineer.’
    ‘I have heard of him. There are wanted posters.’ He turned and bellowed, ‘Gellus! Where’s that munitions report?’
    A thin, nervous looking man piped up: ‘Coming, Mr Maelli! It will be ready in moments.’
    Maelli frowned. ‘From Harbour Town as well?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    He nodded brusquely, and then waved Gellus away.
    ‘A reward?’ Fisk asked.
    ‘I believe there is,’ the man replied, his thick shoulders set in sort of a defiant shelf of muscle. It’d be easy to imagine that he was half-bear. His corded arms were covered in dark fur and he had a bristling, angry beard. ‘Not much for a man of your rank, but it would be a nice bonus, if you bring him in.’
    ‘No matter. If you know of him already, is there any intelligence on the man’s whereabouts?’ Fisk asked.
    Just like that, the prefect’s interest in us evaporated and he turned back to his parchment and resumed reading. ‘Have a slave take you to Andrae. He’s the spymaster.’
    Fisk made a curt bow and touched his heart in salute.
    A slave led us downward, into the guts of the building, revealing that there were at least as many levels below ground as there were above. The corridors became closer and more cramped and the daemonlight fixtures more sparsely positioned – which was odd because down here was where they were needed most. But the slave led us to a small conference room with a large table covered in stacks of parchment.
    Sitting at the desk was a long, lean man with hawkish eyebrows and a narrow, patrician nose. He had the full, lush lips of someone familiar with pleasures of the flesh, yet tinged toward cruelty, and his eyes possessed a keen intelligence. More Quotidians sat in neat rows behind him. There was a bottle of wine and a plate with a rime of blood on it perched precariously on a stack of ledgers and papers, a fork and knife at crazy angles. Judging by the Quotidians and lack of slaves, he’d have to eat quite a bit of meat just to have the blood for correspondence. Behind him, a mirror-backed daemonlight fixture cast a bright, yet wavering,