Chapter 27: Falcon and Falconer

“You utter imbecile!”

Seneschal Hawkwright glared at the captain of the guard, his steel grey eyes narrowed into slits.

“Are you always so utterly incompetent, or did you make an especially determined attempt this time? Did you perhaps, invite the enemy directly into the heart of the camp, to do whatever they wished? No?”

Across from him, guard captain Maria hunched her shoulders under the withering barrage. She stood in a salute, fist pressed against her chest, unwilling to move while the Seneschal continued to scream her head off.

“Well, Captain?” He stalked forward, stopping only a few feet away from the other woman. “I should like an answer for this failure, this…travesty!”

“We did not invite them into our camp, Seneschal,” she said.

“You didn’t? You didn’t!” The man threw up his hands. “How lovely, you didn’t invite the enemy into your camp.” He took a deep breath, pressing his fingers against the sharp bridge of his nose. On his hand, the ducal seal glinted in the low light of his chambers. Duchess Ivey was present in the room, but only in body. She hadn’t moved from her seat in the past twenty minutes of Hawkwright’s yelling, sitting close to the fire as a physik attended to her fretfully.

Hawkwright, of course, paid her as much attention as the Duchess spared the rest of the room as he continued to lay into the guard captain.

“How then,” he asked, voice low, “did a group that couldn’t have numbered more than ten managed destroy one of our largest camps? Months of work, wasted in an hour, and the only answer you have for me is ‘we didn’t invite them inside’?” He shook his head. “How did they enter? How did they do so much damage while your men were guarding the camp, when you knew that they were coming?!”

Maria swallowed. “We posted more sentries to the south, watching the road and the coasts,” she said. “After hearing news of a group closer to Lady’s P—”

“Do not call it that!” Hawkwright slashed his hand through the air. “It is a squalid stain on the face of our republic, nothing more.”

Maria paused for a moment, eyes flicking left and right. “After a group of enemies attacked our sentries closer to the enemy’s…camp…I gave orders to redouble those watches, and to keep close eyes on the jungle as well. They saw nothing.”

Hawkwright paused, turning back to glare at her once again. “Nothing?”

Maria shook her head. “Not a whisper, seneschal.” She glanced down for a moment, before taking a steadying breath. “After piecing together testimony from the camp, as best as I can determine, they were attacked instead from the North, where our perimeter was weakest.”

Hawkwright said nothing for a long second, coming spidery fingers through his sharply pointed beard. “The North…” he said. “Still, that does not answer how an entire camp full of guards and mercenaries were so thoroughly routed.”

“Demons, sir,” Maria replied.

Hawkwright’s countenance grew tense, draw like a string about to snap. “She was there.”

“As best as I could determine, Seneschal.”

“By all the hells in the deeps.” He picked up a goblet on the edge of his desk, fingers clutched knuckle white on the stem. He took a long pull, before gently, almost delicately, setting the cup back down on the wood without a drop being spilled. “And then,” he muttered, “with a horde of demons to run amok through the camp, your men were distracted for long enough to free the Direspine.”

Maria jerked her chin in a rough approximation of a nod. “That is what I have determined.”

Hawkwright snorted. Catching a sleeping Direspine with a prepared group was one thing, having one free to rampage through a disorganized group of men, setting loose other monsters as it went? Such an event could only go one way. There was a reason such massive beasts still roamed the jungles of Vecorvia, putting them down was more trouble than it was worth.

Hawkwright turned to face Maria once again. “And how did she evade your sentries?”

Maria paused, glancing to the side.

“Answer me, Captain!”

She bit her lip. “I don’t know, Seneschal.”

“What?”

“I said, I don’t know,” she repeated. “I sent runners, there is no trace of anyone passing through the jungle, no one on the road that wasn’t stopped and questioned. No ships, no caravans running down the coast…nothing at all!”

“A high level scout, then,” Hawkwright muttered.

“I had my dual classers investigate, sir,” Maria said. “They found nothing either.”

Hawkwright stilled. “It must be a traitor then.”

Maria said nothing, eyes locked on the floor.

“You have a traitor, Captain Maria, in your ranks.” Hawkwright turned to face her fully. “One that not only allowed the enemy to pass unseen, but no doubt aided their passage and obscured their trail.” He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth creaked. “Perhaps they’ve even vanished south, back to that pisshole of theirs.”

Maria said nothing.

Reaching out, Hawkwright grabbed Maria’s chin, forcing the woman’s eyes up to meet his own. “Did you reach the same conclusion?”

“It…seems the most reasonable.”

With a muttered curse, he shoved her away. Maria staggered, one hand half rising to the hilt of her sword, before one of the seneschal’s guards took a half step forward from the wall.

Maria swallowed again, forcing her hand back to her side.

“Find the traitor. Whatever it costs.”

Maria nodded. “Yes, Seneschal.”

“Consolidate the rest of the monster camps. Make them impossible to target, build fortifications if you have to. This alone will set us back weeks or more, I will not countenance another successful raid.”

Maria looked away. “I am not sure if I have the men, your grace…”

Hawkwright raised a brow. “Oh?”

“Between scouring the ranks for the traitor, and increasing the forces necessary to guard a giant camp in the middle of the lava fields, I don’t have the forces.”

Hawkwright waved a hand. “Take them from the outer city.”

“Sir—!”

“That is an order, Captain.”

Captain Maria lowered her hand. “Understood…Seneschal.”

“Good.” The man nodded once. “Now get out of my sight. Next time, perhaps you will have better news for me.”

With one last salute, Captain Maria near fled from the room, the thick oak door slamming shut behind her.

Hawkwright, with controlled motions, returned to his desk, sinking into the overstuffed leather chair behind it. He took his goblet up once more, fingers trembling in barely repressed rage.

“I have half a mind to dash your brains out against the wall, Duchess,” he said. “Your niece has caused me no end of trouble.”

A dry, wheezing chuckle came from Duchess Ivey’s lips. “Of course.” The woman’s voice came in a whisper. “Please allow me to sympathize with your troubles, my dear Seneschal. It is truly so difficult…to maintain your grip on this city you’ve stolen, with wealth that is not your own, opposed by the enemies of your own…creation—"

He growled. “Enough.”

“No…no.” She shook her head slowly. “How like a man, to seize all he desires, and then complain that it is no longer to his liking…”

“I said, enough!” He hurled his goblet at the wall. It hit the marble plinth above the fireplace with a ringing chime, before thudding against the thick carpets. “Guards.”

Then the man paused. He let out an annoyed huff. “Out. All of you. The Duchess as well.”

He said nothing as the other occupants of the room slowly filed out, until it was just him alone with the slowly crackling fire. Only then did he lift his head. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice you skulking about?”

From the shadows stepped a woman with golden eyes. He has last seen her nearly two months ago, when he had dispatched her to handle the problem of Lady’s Port to the South. That she had returned…

“You’ve done a poor job,” he said.

“Aww, don’t be like that.” She shuffled forward from the edge of the room, on hand picking at the skin of her opposite wrist. “Haven’t I been working hard? I got so many monsters for you, didn’t I?”

“Only because you failed in your primary mission.” He turned away, slumping back in his chair. “The Devil of Lady’s Port sent you running with your tail between your legs.”

“One person can only do so much.” The woman spread her arms, lips twitching into a lopsided smile. “She got a bunch at her beck an call now.”

“And you wasted all of your dust.”

“Hey, now.” Her eyes narrowed. “I only used it to quick ‘cause I wanted to finish the jobs you gave.”

“And yet you failed in both regards,” Hawkwright replied, “so here you come to beg for more.”

The woman said nothing, but her eyes glimmered hopefully in the half darkness. This alone, her abject desire for more heaven dust, was all the reason Hawkwright needed not to touch it himself. Still, such tools could be useful, but perhaps only as blunt instruments. It was Hawkwright’s own fault, for assuming she could carry out a longer mission.

Something his foe had no trouble accomplishing.

Hawkwright frowned. “If that devil woman did not already know my plans she will certainly have grasped them now.”

“So send me to—”

“Be silent.” Hawkwright shook his head. “The last time I sent you anywhere, you did nothing but cause more problems then you solved. No.”

Now that he’d been struck once, there was no doubt that another blow would soon follow. Hawkwright had been too busy focused on the offensive campaign, that he neglected to attend to his own protections. No longer.

“You will remain by my said,” Hawkwright said. “And when next that devil summoner pops her head up, you will be ready. Until then, I want not another word from you, understood?”

The woman said nothing, only smiling as her body slowly vanished from his sight until naught but glowing golden eyes remained.

Then, with a blink, they vanished.