Страница 25 из 130
The ecclesiastic hesitated slightly. Ignatius recognized the tone: it was the one used when tactful words were made to convey a blunt truth. ?… not well-governed at present. The factions around Anthony Heasleroad are like a knot of rattlesnakes beneath a rock. We need not obey unjust laws for their own sake, but prudence is also enjoined on us. As gentle as doves, as wise as serpents, remember.? ?Still, there are many of our flock here who have positions of wealth, power and influence,? Ignatius said.?The Heuisinks, for example. We were guests at their estate before we came on to Des Moines, and Ingolf Vogeler is a close friend of the Heuisink heir.?
The Cardinal nodded.?But they are not much in favor at court.? He shook his head, looking a little bemused for an instant.?How natural that sounds now!?
Ignatius frowned. Why shouldn?t it sound… ah, the Cardinal is an elderly man. One must make allowances for those raised before the Change. They had a habit of judging the years they lived as if they were a play or story, rather than taking their roles for granted. ?In any case, I had no intention of calling on you for physical force, Your Eminence,? Ignatius said.?My Order is a militant one, but we are strictly enjoined not to seek secular power or to defy the authorities of any realm except at greatest need. What I principally beg of you is first, information, and then-? ?U-Maer, u-Maer,? Ritva Havel murmured fretfully in Sindarin, the special language of the Dunedain Rangers her Aunt Astrid had founded a few years before she was born.?Not good, not good.? ?That place is as bad as the dungeons of Dol Guldur,? Mary Havel agreed softly, staring northward from the balcony towards the harsh metallic gleam of Iowa?s citadel.
Then beneath her breath:?Olthon o le, Ingolf.?
Somewhere in there was Ingolf Vogeler, Mary?s friend, her companion on the trail since they left the Willamette Valley to cross the Cascades, and for the last six months her lover. Ritva?s twin touched one finger lightly to the black patch that covered her left eye socket, a habit she?d acquired since a Cutter sorcerer-priest slashed the eye out of her head in the mountains of eastern Idaho late last year.
They?d been identicals, before Mary lost the eye. It still gave Ritva an absurd pang now and then to realize they couldn?t play games with people?s heads by switching identities anymore. They?d been doing that since about the time they learned to walk. It had been useful in more serious business now and then too. Mary?s face showed only a cool in tentness, but when Ritva put her hand on her shoulder it was quivering tense.
We?ve always been able to read each other?s souls, Ritva thought. I?ve been envying you all this time for wi
She raised the monocular to her eye and lowered it again. Staring at those smooth granite-sheathed concrete battlements and towers, the multiple welded-beam steel gates, the ranked firing ports for murder machines and flamethrowers, was just too depressing. Even the golden dome of the old State Capitol behind it seemed like a taunt.
Impressive, she thought grudgingly; and she?d seen Castle Todenangst, and the walls of Boise.
Not so much the height, but the circumference. And that?s just the ruler?s citadel! The ones around the city aren?t as high… quite. .. but the quantity!
She?d never seen anything on this scale, and the Rangers traveled widely-that was a major reason she and Mary had left Larsdalen and moved in with Aunt Astrid.
Besides the fact that we Dunedain are just so cool, of course. ?Well, we weren?t pla
And the Heasleroads have been busy as beavers on their citadel for longer than I?ve been alive, and with all of Iowa to draw on.
There were millions of people in the Provisional Republic, nearly as many as there had been in the state before the Change; Ignatius said they had somewhere between a tenth and a fifth of all the human beings left in North America, and on some of its richest land. Usually the places where the Change killed the least had been those that had the fewest to begin with, remote ranching and farming country. More people meant more cities, and above a certain size cities had meant death for themselves and the land around them when the machines stopped.
Portland was a partial exception, but from what she?d heard that was because Norman Arminger and his dreadful consort had managed to get most of the inhabitants to leave, one way or another. Sandra had spread rumors that the State government had answers, or huge stocks of food and medicine, and had her Judas-goat organizers lead scores of thousands southward to die in the plague-ridden refugee camps around Salem. Norman himself had just burned great swaths of the city down, turned off the gravity-flow water system, or had his goon squads prod people out to die at the point of improvised spears.
He?d also hanged the former mayor and chief of police from meathooks outside the building he?d taken for a palace, just to make a point about who was in charge.
Heasleroad Sr. must have been a lot like the Lord Protector Arminger, she thought. Except that there was so much food here he could keep a lot more population alive to work for him, and fewer people fought him.
Then she sneezed, not liking the coal smoke that made your eyes water here… not that any of them did, being country bred. Des Moines had a great many factories and foundries and furnaces worked by water power or even the low-pressure steam engines that still functioned in the Changed world, and coal came in piled in barges on the river and cars on the horse-drawn railways. ?We could cross the Mississippi and join up with Rudi and Edain,? she said carefully, when the silence had grown a little uncomfortable.
Usually I know you?re not going to do anything stupid and reckless. Smart and reckless, yes… but is your judgment still good, sis?
Aloud she went on judiciously:?Get the wagons, get them back to the river, and the Bossman promised Ingolf and Matti and Odard would go free.?
Mary Havel sniffed, and tossed her head; the wheat-blond fighting braid bobbed behind her long shapely face. ?And how are we supposed to find Rudi there? His trail will be cold, and the Bossman?s men are watching all the city gates. Besides which, that assumes the Bossman will keep his bargain. Would you care to bet on that?? ?No,? Ritva sighed.?We?ll have to do something ourselves.?
So we have me and Mary, who are the sneakiest of all Rangers, Ritva thought. There?s Father Ignatius… well, yes, a man of many skills. There?s Virginia Kane, who?s… oh, well, she?s a good enough woman of her hands and she grew up on a ranch, so she?s a good rider and shot, but even more out of place in a city than we are. Middling with a blade, even those meatchopper shetes these easterners use. And there?s Fred Thurston, who?s just nineteen and a likely lad, and has co