Mother of Lies by Dave Duncan Read Free Book Online Page A

nobody else knew about. That would save him a run around the stables, too. Twelve gods!
    “Getting to , my lady. We are getting to the final payoff. Two years ago we finally had as many collars as Stralg did and were training faster than he could bring men over the Edge. That was the turning point. He’s limited by the Ice on the other side, you see. Their seasons are more extreme over there, and—”
    “So you think you can beat him?”
    “He’s beaten now. He knows it. The problem is to kill off the survivors with as few collateral deaths as possible. You heard about Miona?”
    She shivered. “Conflicting stories.”
    “Believe the worst of them,” Cavotti said grimly. “Stralg billeted a host in the town. We surrounded it and torched it. You know how peasants burn the stubble and the vermin run out with their fur—”
    “Please!”
    “He lost seventeen or eighteen sixties. That was two years’ reinforcements gone in one night.”
    “And how many civilians died?”
    “All of them, basically. It was not a small town.”
    “Atrocity!”
    “Regrettable. But for Stralg it was the beginning of the end. Hardly a sixday goes by without a battle now. Piaregga, Reggoni Bridge … two sixties here, three there. I am nibbling him to death, my lady! He cannot stand these losses. We can match him body for body and still get stronger.”
    Horrible! Horrible! “What do you want of me?” she yelled. Why was Cavotti talking so much? It was almost as if we were waiting for the Vigaelians to get there and kill him. Chies belting along the alley, almost at the barracks …
    Cavotti pulled a face. “I want to stop Celebre becoming another Miona, of course. It’s my home, too, and the smell of burning babies isn’t something you ever forget. Look at your maps, lady of Celebre. His escape route to Vigaelia goes past your city. He’s falling back as slowly as he can, but we’re driving him, and very soon now he will have to make a stand. Where better than here?” The big man’s raspy voice rose to fill the hall: “He has about three-sixty-sixty left. How do you feel about that many ice devils occupying your city, Mistress? For half a year while the Vigaelian winter has the pass sealed?
    Gods! “No!” A mere dozen was more than it could stand now.
    Chies must be at the barracks by this time, yelling for the flankleader. Werists moved like birds. It was their speed that made them so deadly. They’d come straight over the walls.
    Cavotti smiled, exposing more tooth enamel than humans should have. “Then join us, my lady! Give me the signal, and I’ll slip my men into Celebre before the garrison knows what’s happening. I swear that I can control them. They’ll behave. They’re patriots, Florengians all, and they despise the Vigaelian scum. They want to show they’re better.” He thrust out a great paw, like a bear’s. “Shake on it! Sixty-sixty of my men in Celebre and we’ll deny it to Stralg. We’ll cut him off from his base and bleed him to death on the plains.”
    Shake? She would not touch his murderer’s hand if she were drowning. Piero was dying reviled, childless, and detested. “Never! You would make this city a battlefield. Don’t you understand that my husband has been labeled coward and lackey and lickspittle all these years because he gave up his own happiness and mine just to save Celebre from sack? It worked. This city survived when most didn’t, although many people still won’t admit he was right. And now you would have me throw that all away?”
    The Werist glowered at her angrily, then paused a moment as if listening. “I must go.” He hauled off his cowl, exposing Weru’s brass collar. Below such classically perfect features it seemed even more of an obscenity than usual.
    Would the Vigaelians believe Chies’s fantastic story of Cavotti in the palace? But he didn’t need to say the Mutineer’s name, just that there was a Florengian Werist. They knew Chies, they’d trust