Those That Seek

For this week's story, I'm pulling an excerpt from an upcoming novel. The novel is one I call Katerina's Loss, it is Book 2 of the Boyar's Curse series. This excerpt is the first chapter.

To recall, the Boyar's Curse told us the opening of a tale of centuries; Rikard has been marooned in time. The gods, having left the world behind, cursed Rikard with an extended life.

Rik's spent his time learning. Wandering. Fighting where he must, and far more often than he would prefer. At the time this story opens, Rik finds himself in Paris. But he's been here far too long, from the first Napoleon to now the last. Too many people have seen his face far too often.

Rik's ready to move on and leave his current life behind. But on his way out of Paris, he'll first need to stop and discuss a little business with...

Those That Seek by M. K. Dreysen

At a small table in the cafe, three men sipped wine. Two of them discussed the just-announced end of the civil war in the United States.

The third man wondered at his reasons for being there. The sun had left the darkness to its business. Richard wondered what the two men assuring themselves of the profits they'd earned in the Americans' war had to discuss that was worth listening to their blather.

"Colonel Belanger," the younger man finally said. "We understand that you're considering a trip to Prague. My uncle and I wondered if you might have time to take on a bit of side business while you're there?"

Richard's time in Paris had, so far as he was concerned, drawn to a close. He'd come to the place in response to Napoleon's gravitational field. Time had more than passed, the emperor's loyalists were all dead. None left would recognize Richard's face.

Yet now the emperor's nephew ruled. Enough so that the city was quiet. If Rik stayed too long, eventually the next generation would notice the lack of wear and tear on his face. He'd arranged the trip to Prague, and the rumors of it through the court and military apparatus, so that some at least would weep when word of his death returned to Paris.

He rather hoped that a few of the tears would even be real. Paris had been enjoyable. He swirled the wine around the bottom of the glass. Should he? What matter, he thought, a little extra gold up front wouldn't hurt. And the uncle and nephew Caillou might perhaps join the mourners to be. "I do have some small flexibility in my schedule, Pierre. I need only information regarding your cause. And, perhaps, funds appropriate to it."

The older man snorted into his wine at that, tried to cover it up as a connoisseur's hearty sniff of the aroma.

His nephew shook his head, as if to laugh off his older relative's reticence over the crude discussion of finance. "Colonel, do you recall the late General Renaud?"

"You mean Alain?" Richard suggested. Knowing that the answer would be...

"No, Guy, of the first emperor's corps. My father worked in the late General's service, as an aide de camp. After the General passed, in memory of my father's service, a small piece of his estate came into my possession. My father having passed just a few months before the General, you understand."

Richard did indeed remember the General Guy Renaud. For which reason he had purposely misnamed the man. Renaud had survived the original Napoleon's ignominious end, and the inevitable political repercussions of it. Through main political guile, from Richard's obervations.

Richard himself had passed the gantlet via the simple means of disappearing to Berlin, then Zurich, and returning under a different name. The last time just after the nephew consolidated his hold on the empire. Throughout, the General Guy Renaud was there.

Richard had blessed the man's passing, if nothing else for the fact that this meant Richard himself would have less work to trick the old bastard's eye.

The younger Caillou was still going on. Apparently, the Renaud estate had included a small home, and the assorted paraphernalia, just outside of Prague proper. "None here at court know the why of this, Colonel. I would ask you to recover this story for me, if at all possible, as you catalogue the house, the grounds, and all the chattels therein."

"Your documentation?"

The older man came into the conversation here. "Impeccable, of course." Roger Caillou opened the first few of the letters. "As you see, Franz Josef's court issued the original determination. And our own emperor has ruled the bequest legitimate. Our claim to the property is then..."

Our claim? Richard wondered to himself as the older Caillou giggled over his newfound position. Richard had fought beside Armand Caillou, Pierre's father. Rik remembered much of the then-young soldier's story. Of the farms and fields he'd grown up exploring. Of the maids he'd pursued as a teenager, the crafts and trades his parents had implored him to entertain.

Of the minor poverty, and complete lack of name or family prospects to relieve it. Armand's commission had broken the back of that problem, if the appearance and mannerisms of the two men Rik found himself shackled to were any indication. "I assume there is some title associated with the property?" Richard asked.

The nephew and uncle exchanged glances. The uncle Caillou shook his head, murmuring "Non, Non," but the nephew grimaced. "I would be Freiherr Caillou, or whatever the Czech styling is."

"Congratulations, Baron Pecka, on your advancement. I'm sure our young Napoleon will be overjoyed at the growing ties between Vienna and Paris."

Pierre smiled, his uncle harrumphed at the teasing insult. "The emperor did express his interest in the doings. Especially in the matter of the history, how General Renaud came to be entitled to the name and the property in the first place."

Richard had his guesses. After all, Guy Renaud had likely been an artilleryman at Austerlitz. But neither of the two before him would appreciate the reminder. And the uncle especially had, if Armand Caillou's description of his brother was any guide, reason to avoid being directly compared to military bravura. Or any bravery, for that matter.

In the end, Caillou the younger parted with gold, papers, and suitable introductory letters. "Prague is rumored to be shifting, the national revival has controlled the city for some few years now."

"They've shown no interest in disputing their place in the empire, young baron. I suspect that you'll have more shoals and reefs in the days after your inheritance than those leading to it. I will of course keep you informed." And Richard left the two men, arguing now over the likelihood of Palmerston holding his parliament through the end of the year.

"At least this time," Richard reminded himself as he boarded the train east, "I won't need an army to take the place."

Richard spent his travel time reading newspapers in half a dozen languages. Remarking to himself on the sheer speed of the transport; years now and his mind still insisted that the steadily galloping mountains passing by the windows were only a dream. That this traverse required months of weary treading. Sweat and blood and battle; hemorrhoids, if you were damned to the iron-hard contrivance of the carriageways.

And yet here he was, in Vienna in a mere three days. And Prague only another day or so more, once he'd gone through the niceties of the emperor's court.

Richard bought yet more papers, piles of them he procured from the stand at the front of the hotel he'd chosen. English, French, German, Russian, he piled them into a case by the fistful. Along with a handful of the penny dreadfuls from the rack hiding tastefully behind the news purveyor's elbow.

"You must have a hunger for world news, my friend," the newspaper hack suggested.

"My next few days are spoken for by the court, my friend. I just want to be prepared."

The newsstand operator's laughter floated behind Rik, all the way to the imperial district.

By the standards of the mature empire, Rik's three-day excursion through the bowels of paperwork was a sprint of near record-breaking pace. Some of this was due to Rik's patience, honed by the centuries of life. The rest appeared due to the fact that the paperwork had been generated from within the imperial court itself.

"If your Napoleon had begun this process, you would need to set aside months," the last clerk but two informed him.

Rik shrugged. "I retired just recently, Herr Thielen. I am entirely at your disposal."

Herr Thielen winked at him, signed another form for Rik's stack, and passed him on to the next in line. Finally, on what would be the last day, the last clerk sent Rik to a man who turned out to be secretary to a titled minor power of the court. "Edler Fink holds the responsibility for the Kingdom of Bohemia, Colonel. I believe that I in fact wrote the letter you carry."

"Does the Edler require me to meet with him directly?" Rik wasn't impatient; he knew better than to push. The niceties must still be observed.

That, and the coins in his pocket should be sufficient...

In fact, they were. Secretary Graf ostentatiously checked Rik's paperwork for any errors, nodded, recorded obscure marks in his copybook, and then disappeared behind the door he'd been placed to guard. There was a bare murmur of conversation, a few shuffles of paper, a scratch of a pen, and then Secretary Graf appeared again. "Colonel, if you would be so kind as to sign my book in acknowledgment of receipt?"

"Of course." Following the tradition, Rik left the eight florins beneath the sheet he signed.

And that was the extent of the imperial involvement in Baron Pecka's inheritance. On the other hand, the Kingdom of Bohemia was another matter entirely.

The mountains let Rik know he was close. The rails and the city at their end sang to his blood. He ignored these signs. He'd practice, after all.

The men waiting at the station were more difficult to ignore. Or, the things wearing the faces of men, Rik corrected himself.

He'd taken a first-class passage, half surprised that he had the room to himself. Rik sat in the seat as the train's speed bled away. The city lights wound past the glass. He left the window cracked at the top. To smell the city.

To smell the hidden beings waiting on the platform. Rik hadn't anticipated them, but he was happy to enjoy the pleasant accident. Whatever the human faces the two creatures wore, they smelled of wolf and rancid meat. Rik chewed a cigar, to alleviate the smell, and to give himself time to think.

The doors were sliding open in the hall. His neighbors were impatient. When the train finally stopped rolling, Rik allowed the rush to settle. He could afford the time, having already arranged for his luggage to be delivered to the hotel.

When the train porter began his discrete knocks, Rik shrugged himself into the greatcoat, tipped the man, and headed for the exit.

He did ensure his pistols were loaded, first. That the sabre hung properly, and the dagger behind his back was ready if needed. When he stepped out onto the platform, he fought the urge to take a big sniff of the air. The coal stench of the engine would have forced him to cough. If, whoever they were, they were foolish enough to attack him on the platform... but no. He stepped aside, to give room to any who might step down from the train, but it appeared to Rik as though he were the last passenger to leave.

He rolled the cigar in his mouth. Appear indecisive, he told himself. Perhaps lost. But no, that didn't do it either. "Shit," he muttered around the cigar. He took time to pull it from his mouth, spit down onto the rails, then he set himself to walk for the exits.

The hack drivers waited, two of them, with empty spaces aplenty to testify to the fact that Rik's fellow passengers had left. Rik gave the two hopefuls credit for remaining. He stepped to the closest. "Hotel Barataria?" he asked.

"Batavia?" the man returned.

"Da," Rik replied. He figured that Russian at least avoided the German-Czech divide.

"Three pfennigs, Colonel."

Rik's greatcoat had given him away. He handed over the coins, and cursed himself for the most elementary of errors while he climbed into the carriage. "How far, do you think?" he asked, this time in German.

"Twenty minutes or so, it's faster this time of night," the man said. "Get up, you," he said to the horse. And that was the last the man said, until Rik handed him another penny as tip. "Thank you, Colonel. Take care."

"I will," Rik replied.

The desk clerk may not have recognized the insignia, but he guessed well enough. "Colonel Belanger?"

Rik cursed under his breath. "Indeed, sir. Did my bags make it safely?"

"Absolutely, Colonel. Your room is prepared, as requested." The clerk waited for Rik to sign his book, then waved a young boy over to the desk. "Jens will show you to you room, Colonel. Please enjoy your stay."

Rik had wired the money for the reservation, and instructions for his luggage, from the hotel in Vienna. He'd trusted the hotel clerk there; his last visit to Prague, Napoleon had been feted in the palaces, but Rik had not yet been among those lesser officers who'd joined the emperor in his more polished moments. And prior to that visit, Rik had visited the city when the inns were considerably rougher.

He appreciated the change over rushes on the floor, or army cots. Rik handed the child a penny, thanked him, and closed the door.

The two creatures were making their way along his trail. Rik had spent the ride waiting for the presence, in his mind and nose, but the two minds had made no moves to follow the carriage. Apparently, they hadn't needed to.

"Hopefully, they're just following my scent," the old soldier grumbled as he familiarized himself with the room.

The window was actually a door onto a balcony overlooking a small courtyard. Rik opened the door, stepped onto the balcony. Long enough to sniff at the faint hint of flowers in the garden, and likely kitchen herbs. He bounced on the balls of his feet, testing the strength of the balcony.

It held, gave nothing to him. The thing was real, no ornament. "Good," he muttered. Hoping he wouldn't need it. Then he returned to the room, closing the door behind him.

His luggage, two trunks, had been set, one on each side, next to a wardrobe. The bed was on the opposite wall, and between, on the wall as the room's door to the rest of the hotel, were two seats and a small table. Enough for breakfast, late evening drinks, or correspondence.

The floor, tiled, was decorated with a Persian rug, a simple design but well made. Expensive yet tasteful. Rik had had occasion to know of such, but not with enough detail to do anything other than fool himself if he'd have tried to assign it more detail than that.

And there was a bathroom, the door standing discretely open just on the other side of the left hand trunk. Rik checked this; as with the room itself, a small gas light flickered and guttered its illumination sufficient to his needs.

They were taking their time, the creatures. Perhaps half way from the station to the hotel, and it had been well more than the twenty minutes the trotting carriage horse had made the trip in. Rik turned the bathroom gas lamp down, off. Then he returned to the main room.

Sat himself in the chair, the room's gas light within reach, and checked the weapons. Pistols first, he unloaded the revolvers completely. Then he examined each, barrel and wheel, checking their function. Satisfied, he loaded them and returned the pistols to their holsters.

The dagger next. An old, old friend, a wide-bladed knife, the steel unpolished, but well kept, faint spots here and there indicating it had gone a time or two with long stretches between oil and rag and stone. Rik checked its edge, wiped the blade on his pants, and returned it to its place at his back.

The sword last. This one was fairly knew, the leather grip worn enough to not slip, but the blade yet knicked only by practice work. He'd had no reason to use it in anger; he'd purchased it perhaps three years ago. A good weapon, a working cavalry sabre that he'd bought at the recommendation of a sergeant, rather than the showier weapons of his fellow officers.

Rik chuckled, wiped the blade on his pants, and sheathed the sabre in its turn. A difference between Napoleon uncle and nephew was that the first emperor had been as likely to appreciate such a decision as to tease an officer for not living up to his new station.

Napoleon III was unimpressed with what he'd suggested was Colonel Belanger's effort to make himself more familiar to his troops. "Soldiers will not appreciate your efforts, Colonel Belanger. They look always for a leader."

Rik shrugged, sitting in his room in Prague, just as he had then. In this, he was not interested in the opinion of emperors. "The point is to have a good sword, no more no less." And this one would do.

Rik unbuckled the sabre from his waist. Then the dagger, and finally the pistols. One by one, he set the weapons onto the table in front of him.

Within reach. Close enough to be used.

Far enough so that he wasn't touching them. Then he turned, blew out the gas light.

And sat in the dark. Thinking of nothing and everything, and least of all the weapons sitting ready for the violent use he might need to turn them to.

By the time the shadow moved within shadows, climbed up to the balcony from the courtyard below, the room was empty of all thought, all mind. Only the night in empty shadow greeted the snuffling inquiry from the balcony.

The shadow moved to the door. It reached, tested the handle. It paused, waiting for some, any response. When came there none, it twisted the handle and slipped into the room.

Nothing there greeted it. Only the quiet and the no-smell and the no-presence of the empty room.

It drifted to the trunks, the only visible sign that someone had rented the place. The man's scent was there; it stooped over to catch and confirm the traces. Then it moved to the other one, confirmed that the trunks were both of the same origin. They carried the same signs, of the man the creature had followed from the train station.

It paused in place. Not confused, but not satisfied. The man was beyond its ken. No simple being, even the soldier's greatcoat and insignia told only part of the story. His presence was not large, in the creature's mind it viewed the man as... solid.

Lasting. Perhaps... no. He was human, and no human was eternal. That was reserved for more, greater stuff than clay and spit and blood.

This man could be beyond ken, but he was no master. The creature spun, stopped. Listened. And, hearing nothing, it vanished into the night.

The empty room paused in its turn, as though space and time itself waited for a response. And then the room relaxed back to its empty, waiting state. All was as before, save perhaps a shadow or two.

And an empty space on the table, where now two revolvers, a sword, and nothing else, sat. Waiting in their turn.

****

He drifted behind the two creatures as they made their way through the city. When they turned corners, he paused just shy of those turns. And when they returned to their progress, he slipped around the corner and continued following.

To the creatures, his passage was one of empty space. Quiet in the midst of the street noises, of gas guttering in the lamps, of conversations from behind the windows above. The shadows that fluttered hid him, and the quiet mind too.

To the passers by, the city at night, he was just another traveler, making his way perhaps to some bar where soldiers far from home found companionship. There were a few of these. The creatures themselves they also passed, but these elicited shivers, gooseflesh on the back of the neck. An extra step or two of pace, and the urge to get inside that drove it.

Rik noted these reactions. And continued on. Until the creatures paused, to look around, and their point was obvious.

When they slipped into the darkened alley, Rik moved to the wall closest to the alley. They'd led him to an older section of the city, where the second stories of the buildings stood over the sidewalk, silent testimony to snow and rain and, perhaps, a chamber pot if he wasn't careful. Rik stopped a pace or so away from the alley to listen.

The conversations here, from above, and across the way, where apparently some Rene had made himself trouble with his wife... Rik let these sounds drift into noise, along with the fog coming on.

There. He isolated the creatures' voices in his mind, and the whisper of that which they had come to meet with. The voices were too indistinct to make out words, but they were there. He closed the space to the corner. Stopped, to let his anticipation drift, and the quiet mind return. When all was still and he had no more expectation, no more self, he joined the shadows in the alley.

"Name this man for me, then."

The creatures murmured to each other, indecision and nerves. "We have no name for you, master."

The figure they cringed and wrung their hands for didn't move. "You waste my time with trivia," he responded, after a time. "You found some soldier, perhaps a diplomat, if we're lucky. You followed him to a hotel and discovered... nothing. Other than a traveler's acoutrement."

The creatures whined. "Yes, but..." one of them began. "Master, he is different, no simple soldier this one," the other continued.

The other man chuckled. "All are different. All men claim they are unique. Powerful." He raised his hands to the buildings, the fog. The darkness. "We move through this world, command it, laugh at the foibles of those not us. This is what it means to be alive. Even you two, my wonderful allies, you are most delightful manifestations of spirit and will and the dark reaches of the void. You are alive and you are beautiful. And you are mine."

The creatures panted now.

"And if you come back tomorrow night with no more information... lie to me. Dream up a story of... anything if you must. Make of this soldier a mighty tale, if it serves your imagination." He chuckled again. "Or, better yet, find a new trail, a new hint of trouble, and bring me some true telling from that new direction. Go, and be my eyes and my ears as you are called."

And the creatures ran out into the night, whooping with delight at their master's words.

Silence descended, along with the fog. The man stood there yet, perhaps appreciating both. Or perhaps just waiting for someone else to appear. When none did, the man turned.

Then turned again, fast and deadly, a pistol appearing as if from nowhere.

When he admitted at last that no one shared the space with him, the pistol disappeared. To wherever it had come from. The man called, "You... you are there. My senses deny it. Your actions deny it." He waited again. "I understand deception. I surmise that so to do you, watcher in the night." He stopped, and again the pistol appeared from no place certain. "We will face each other, I think, and soon. The fates conspire against us both. Do you not feel it? Or are you too wary of confrontation, Sir Hides-His-Face?"

When no response came, the man made the pistol vanish yet again, and then walked from the alley.

The rats who used the alley for their passage weren't impressed. Neither was the owl who'd built her nest in the crevice above.

If the shadows had enjoyed the performance, none there could have discerned it; except, possibly, for a brief play of darkness overlapping in the man's exit. And then the shadows returned to their normal distribution.

Rik held his mind and judgements clear, and quiet, until he'd returned to his room. He deposited the dagger on the table, a beer beside it, an ashtray, matches, and a cigar to go with them all. When he'd set boot heels in place of the cigar and the beer, and puffed the former to a satisfying life, only then did he allow himself to let ritual go and contemplation of the night's cast take its place on the stage of his mind.