"I"m sorry I couldn"t be more help, Gervase."

"A little clumsy, eh?"

"It is. Wait. You never told me what the ring looks like. Something big, gaudy, and ugly, right? If it"s got a charge of sorcery on it?"

Saluda shrugged. "I"ve never seen it. Paludan says it"s just a plain gold band."

"That doesn"t sound like much. Not very impressive."

""There"s stuff engraved on it."

Hecht waited. Saluda did not expand.

"Spells? Family history?"

"I don"t know. I wasn"t told. I"m not family."

"Really? From where I stood you looked more Bruglioni than anyone born to the name."

Saluda grunted. Hecht had touched a sore spot. He asked, "The old place still holding together? Madam Ristoti managing all right?"

"You done real good while you were there, Mr. Captain-General. It hasn"t fallen apart yet."

"Good. I gave value for money."

"More than that, really. Paludan does take an interest nowadays. You sure you can"t help with the ring?"

"You"re a Prince of the Church, now. Bully some low-level witch doctor into hunting for it. It"s got to be in the house somewhere. Unless it was pinched by somebody I fired."

"That doesn"t seem likely."

"Is that it? There isn"t anything more critical?"

"Just the ring."

"Then it must be more important than I suspected."

Saluda considered a moment before admitting, "Could be. Paludan didn"t tell me why he"s so interested, suddenly. Maybe he found a note he wrote to himself and decided to get after it before he forgot again."

"I see. Let me know if anything turns up." Hecht made a small gesture to Bechter. "We have work to do at the Castella. Oh. Gervase. Did the disaster yesterday hurt the Bruglioni?"

Saluda flashed a smile. "Not much. The Madisetti and Arniena took the brunt. And Cologni. A fortune in racing tackle went down with the hippodrome."

"I see. As I said, keep me posted. Sergeant, those papers you wanted me to read. Bring them once you show the Princ.i.p.ate out."

Redfearn Bechter did as instructed. Hecht scanned reports during the walk to the Castella dollas Pontellas. Half dealt with recent events in Brothe. They were more properly Pinkus Ghort"s responsibility. "Give me an opinion, Bechter. How should we deal with this disaster?" The human cost was greater than he had expected. The hippodrome had been infested with squatters.

"That"s been determined already, sir. The Patriarch announced a subscription effort. As donations are made the money will be used to clean up and rebuild."

"Not going to spend any of his own, eh?"

"Hardly. Not that he has much. Most of the Arnhander bribe still hasn"t arrived."

The plan was to pay unemployed refugees in food for labor.

PRINc.i.p.aTE DELARI ASKED, "DID DONETO SHOW UP AT your staff meeting?"

"Yes. And showed no sign that he thinks I might suspect lurn. But maybe he was too tired to play around. I know I was."

"Good. I was concerned." The old man poured white wine into sparkling scarlet Clearenzan stemware, pushed that across a walnut tabletop polished smoother than a sheet of gla.s.s. Muniero Delari lived an austere life but did not disdain presents when.someone wanted to b.u.t.ter him up. "Did you present your case?"

"I did. He told me it was ingenious. That Sublime should go along. I should get a Patriarchal Bull before the end of the week."

"I was afraid of that."

"Sir?"

"That tells me they"ve been looking for the kind of tool you"ve just given them."

"All right. I give. How did I mess up?"

"You didn"t. You"re doing your job. I"m in a political place where that disappoints me. Do you want to see our captive?"

"Not unless I need to. Did you get anything?"

"Of course. He wasn"t at the center of the conspiracy but he knew where the Witchfinders want to go. Which is to gain direct control of the Patriarchy."

"They"re not happy with Sublime? The man is obsessed with the Holy Lands and heretics and unbelievers."

"They"re not happy at all. Sublime isn"t at war with the Night. The Witchfinders don"t care about the Connec. They don"t care about reclaiming the Holy Lands, either. They believe all that will follow automatically from a triumph over the Night."

"So they"re up to what?"

"Thwarting Sublime. Breaking Sublime. Positioning themselves to seize control of the Patriarchy by naming Sublime"s successor. Who will forget the Connec and Dreanger and preach a crusade against the Night itself."

Hecht shook his head. "I don"t understand your world. This makes no sense to me."

"Better start trying to get it. Suppose Sublime does stumble?"

"I understand that. Can I change the subject?"

"Of course."

"Look at this." Hecht produced the Bruglioni ring. "I understand it"s magic."

Delari took the ring into a better light. "Where did you get this?"

"In a bag of old foreign coins I got hold of, back when we were fighting the Calziran pirates."

Delari"s glance said he did not believe a word.

"If you hold it to the light at different angles you can see different lines of writing. On the inside. I"ve been studying them. This is what I wrote down." He pulled a strip of paper out of his sleeve.

Four lines, printed with painstaking care, had been recorded one above another. The result of hours of eye-straining work. "One must be Cla.s.sical Brothen. Most of the words resemble Church Brothen. But not all of them. Plus some of the characters are different."

"You"re right. It"s a spell. Meant to disorient. If you spoke it while wearing the ring everyone nearby would become confused. They would forget what they were trying to do."

"That"s scary."

"And useful if you spend much time around people who want to hurt you."

"I don"t recognize any of the other writing."

"It"s all in alphabets older than Old Brothen. The second line is Philean, a language common in the Holy Lands in antiquity. Ancestral to languages spoken there today. I know scholars who can translate it. I don"t think anyone speaks it properly anymore."

"Would that be a spell, too?"

"Undoubtedly. This third line uses Archaic Agean characters but the language isn"t Agean. My guess is, the spoken line would be a Dreangerean dialect. Just guessing, though, based on the distribution of consonants."

"Could the ring really be that old?"

A brief-lived Agean empire had ruled the littorals of the eastern Mother Sea when Brothe was still a modest town under the dominion of the Felscian Confederation.

"I do get a sense of great age, Piper."

"What about the last line?"

"I don"t know. I"ve seen characters like those before but I don"t remember where. I"ll need to do some research. Looking for mention of the ring itself, too. If it"s important at all it will have left a trail across time. Likely mile-marked by unpleasantries."

Hecht nodded. That had been his guess, based on stories about magical artifacts he had heard.

The Princ.i.p.ate said, "One wonders how such an item falls into the hands of someone like yourself."

"Exactly the way I explained it."

"Oh, I believe that. I"m curious about the mind that made it happen. That singled you out. The way you were singled out for the attention of the soultaken, before? Who? Why? Did he have good intentions? Or is this a b.o.o.by trap?"

"I have no idea. And I don"t intend to dig into it, either. I"m leaving the d.a.m.ned thing with you."

"Piper. You never want to give up something with so much potential value."

"Why not? It"s no use to me. It wouldn"t be like I was turning out my pockets and tossing my money into the Teragi. All I could do is sell it for the gold."

"Or to a sorcerer for its power."

"Which you can"t even tell me what it is. So even for you it"s only a chunk of gold with potential."

Delari shrugged. "Life is that way. For me. Trying to winkle potential out of stubborn nuggets."

Hecht did not respond. Delari had to become more forthcoming if he was going to tap the potential in this particular nugget.

Delari seemed more amused than frustrated. "Patience is my great virtue, Piper. All right, I"ll study this beast. In my copious spare time. And let you know as soon as I find out anything interesting. Who can guess? It might turn out such a dud that you can just give it back to the Bruglioni."

The old man startled him. And he let it show.

"It"s common knowledge, among those who pay attention, that the Bruglioni are looking for a talisman that belonged to Princ.i.p.ate Divino. And they suspect that said talisman pa.s.sed through the hands of onetime employee Piper Hecht."

Delari, as always, was better informed than he ought to be. Which was frightening.

Piper Hecht had secrets he did not want known by even the friendliest member of the Collegium.

The old man smiled like he knew exactly what was going on inside Hecht"s head.

Despite repeated a.s.sa.s.sination attempts, Hecht did not travel with a klatch of bodyguards. He hoped anonymity would protect him. He never dressed his station. That offended some at the Chiaro Palace but left him indistinguishable from other outlanders in the streets.

He headed for Anna Mozilla"s place, by way of the hippodrome, where he visited Pinkus Ghort. Ghort had set up a military camp right there in the plaza. Hecht told him, "You look terrible. You need to get some sleep."

"I love you, too. Yeah, mom. I"m gonna get on that real soon. Seriously, we"ve got a handle on it. I can take some time, now. There ain"t much chance we"ll find anyone alive anymore. Thanks for sending your guys."

"No problem. I"ll get some grief but they won"t fire me."

"They worried about the mob? I heard you almost had an incident."

"Yes. One of your boys was right in the middle of it, too."

"Bo? He"s doing good work. We get done with this s.h.i.t here, I"m gonna make some moves on them rabble-rousers."

"You need him desperately?"

"Bo? Why?"

"I want to borrow him. There was another man in that crowd that shouldn"t have been there. Shouldn"t even be alive. I want to track him down."

"Important?"

"It might be. I want to know for sure."

"He"s around somewhere. I"ll talk to him after my nap."

"I"ll be at Anna"s house."