This is the twenty-third chapter of Wealthgiver, an alternate history serial romance about nationalism and cave-Thracians. For the back-of-the-book description and an index of chapters, click here. For the beginning, click here. For the previous chapter, click here.
A visitor would have noticed nothing odd about the cellar of Peshtera's richest leather merchant. It was dark, of course, and mostly empty. Spring was the hungriest time of year.
It was the work of minutes to push the few barrels of sauerkraut to the wall, shut the door, and open one's mind to the infinite darkness that waited below all mortals.
"Excellent," said Andrei once the introductory ritual was complete. "Now, what's this I hear about us conquering Europe?"
"Not Europe, My Master," said the merchant, introduced as Dragomir. "Just the eastern Balkan Peninsula and northwestern Anatolia."
"I see."
Andrei couldn't. This cellar was not as utterly black as the Sacred Depths, but in a way, that was worse. He kept twitching at movements in the corners of his eyes. Placing a hand over his face helped.
"We received news of the Maiden's final prophesy last week," Dragomir continued. "Blood and iron around the skirts of the Red River Mountain. We have been preparing."
Andrei leaned his heavy forehead against his hand.
Dragomir was Kori's usual host in Peshtera. If Andrei's presence and status had shocked the man to the core of his religion, he hadn't shown it. In Cenk's words, he "knew his way around a dark cavern."
"My Mistress, Master," Dragomir said. "Words cannot express how glad I am to present our plans to you. To hear with my own ears the Vessel of the Unseen extend his terrible hand to caress his lands."
Andrei was sure the man was showing off his French.
Kori nudged him. "Hold out your hand," she said. "He will give you the map."
Andrei didn't know what good a map would do in the dark, but he held out the hand that wasn't supporting his forehead. Something rough and flat brushed against his fingertips. It gave slightly and sprang back like the skin of a drum. Andrei imagined something like an artist's canvas: rough cloth stretched over a wooden frame.
He reached out with his other hand to take the map, feeling as he did so the smooth lines and dots on its surface.
"Wax?" he said.
"Yes," said Dragomir proudly. "The tool we use is very much like the one Christians use to decorate Easter eggs. A tube of copper filled with wax and heated at the tip, no more difficult to use than a quill pen."
Andrei wondered how much of the cultist's life had had been spent waiting to tell an outsider about his people's clever traditions. If only it were not death for a Fool to know of the existence of the Good, Dragomir would make a splendid ambassador.
But not a general. Andrei's fingers found the solid coastlines, the ridged mountains, and the star-shapes that must indicate cities. The dotted lines, then, would be borders.
"I feel that you've drawn these borders north of the Danube and east of the Bosporus."
"The Master of the Mountain is most astute."
Andrei said nothing, but Kori squeezed his upper arm as if telling him to be careful.
"This is the land of our people," she said. "As recorded and promised in record and prophesy. Although I'm sure the priests didn't order our armies to take it all at once?"
"Oh, My Mistress, they do so plan." Skin rasped against skin. Dragomir was rubbing his hands together. "The Ottoman army is in a shambles and the Russian army is exhausted. When the Great Powers meet this autumn, they will surely slice up and reapportion the great haunch that Count Ignatyev has served himself. To do so, they will gather in once place, probably in Berlin, where a bomb, along with a few other pinpoint assassinations, will be waiting. Then, we shall spring from our caverns."
Silence followed that, and a feeling of expectation, as if two faces turned toward Andrei.
He let out a long breath, trying to imagine what the god of death would say. Should he chuckle gleefully? Tell them how glad he was about all the corpses this crazy battle plan would generate?
What do you think, Doctor?
Andrei shook his head. "Caverns," he repeated. "How many exactly? If you have a battalion of soldiers hidden in every mountain in the Rhodopes, maybe, yes, you can make a Great Power take notice."
"Our only stronghold is the Holy Mountain," said Kori.
"Which holds, what, a dozen people?"
"Many dozens," she corrected.
"And another forty thousand in settlements around the Eastern Rhodopes," said Dragomir. "Our largest population is in Tatar Pazardjik, but there we are not in the majority."
As if giving a prescription to a recalcitrant nobleman, Andrei walked them through the logic of their situation. "Let's be generous and assume a quarter of the Good population is fit to fight. That would be an army about a thirtieth the size of the Sultan's, which has just been utterly smashed by the Tsar's army. The Tsar's damned army," Andrei said over the murmurs of protest, "which is more than twice as big again, and is located right on top of us."
Kori was poking him. Her fingernail drew letters on his upper arm, but Andrei didn't need to read them. He knew the patient didn't want the medicine.
"And I haven't yet spoken of any army's greatest enemy, which is its own ill health," he went on. "We lost more men on the march here than died in battle. Five times more!"
"Our men are already in place," Kori retorted, out loud this time.
"Your assassins, you mean. The hornets you plan to use to sting the rumps of the Great Powers. But once you have their attention, what then? Who's going to stop their soldiers?"
"We will," she said.
Andrei pressed his teeth together, trying to keep up appearances in front of the cave-Thracian. Basement-Thracian.
So was Kori. "My Master is unaware of our plans for the Russian Empire." Her voice swung toward Dragomir. "He is under the misapprehension that Tsar will be our enemy in the coming war."
"The Tsar you were planning to blow up?" Andrei couldn't help but ask.
"Obviously I meant his successor." Kori's voice was cool.
Andrei stared in her direction, as if that might do any good. "You think Aleksander Aleksandrovich will support us after we kill his father?"
"We will make him think somebody else was responsible." She sounded annoyed. "We have been doing this for a long time, Andrei."
Dragomir laughed like a man who does not feel comfortable watching his god and goddess squabble. "The new Tsar, whomever we decide he may be, will thank us for liberating Macedonia and Eastern Rumelia, My Master, you may be certain."
"But even if you assassinate the Tsar and the Tsarevich and all of the Grand Dukes, Princes, and bastardly by-blows in Saint Petersburg…" Andrei realized he was blustering and stopped himself. What the devil did it matter what idiocy these people engaged in? The more chaos, the better, as long as he and his wife could slip away in the middle of it. Agree, Doctor, agree. And find a way to get out.
Dragomir spoke like a merchant pointing out a nicety of stitching that the customer might have missed. "My Master, we plan at first to only seize territory from Muslims."
"This will give the Tsar a reason to support us," said Kori.
"Of course," Andrei agreed, thinking of presenting someone like Count Ignatiev with the choice between Mohammedans and Hades-worshiping cultists. Cultists with small numbers who had just blown up any number of the man's royal cousins. "Whom should we send to tell him?"
"I think it would be premature to appoint ambassadors," said Kori, but Andrei couldn't stop his perversity from voicing itself.
"Let's send Nikolai to Saint Petersburg! He would make an excellent ambassador. He's a Russian prince himself. He can negotiate for support for your new nation. I mean our nation."
"My Master jokes," said Dragomir, a wince in his voice.
"Or?" Andrei looked toward Kori. "We go ourselves." Now, there was an idea! There were any number of ways a pair of people could go missing between the Balkans and Russia.
And Kori seemed to be playing along. While Dragomir made dubious noises, she said, "I have always wanted to carry out an assassination personally."
At least, Andrei hoped she was playing along.
"I am sure," said Dragomir carefully, "that the Master will shield the Mistress from any possible harm, and also keep her away from unwise risks."
"I will," promised Andrei.
"But the people need their Mistress, My Master, and, if I may give my opinion, the high priest would be best employed in the Sacred Depths, where he is."
"You make a good point," Andrei agreed.
Dragomir responded as if Andrei had said, "Let me just see the other leather merchants' prices."
"And perhaps My Master has not yet learned of all of his army's advantages! The Good are universally literate and numerate. Our grasp of tactics is unmatched and we have the most modern weaponry money can buy."
"I'm sure they are."
Kori added, "And we have a few tricks the Fools don't know about."
Dragomir tongue-clicked. "Our numbers are small, My Master, it's true, but consider this: our god is the Host of Many, and the dead are his slaves."
Andrei put his hand back over his face.
"Excuse me?" said Kori, but he understood.
"You mean," he said, "that only the officers will be Good. The rank-and-file will be outsiders, with the officers' guns aimed at their backs."
"My Master understands quickly."
"Yes. I've extracted enough bullets from buttocks and spines."
Dragomir took that as encouragement. "The Fool conscripts will take up our banner willingly enough after their first victories. Enemy armies will be routed away, or attack each other, or have their orders misplaced, or else their high command will suffer a series of mysterious deaths and bouts of insanity. As it says in the Andrean Prophesy…"
"Andrean?" asked Andrei, but Kori was already reciting.
"With Master at Hand, the Mistress will Stand."
For a dizzy moment, he remembered his hands on her hips.
"We shall behead our enemies and plunder them before the bodies hit the ground," said Dragomir. "From the chaos that follows will burst forth the Hadean Empire!"
Bellowed from under the mustaches of an officer, such words had once stirred Pan-Slavic fervor in Andrei's own breast. Whispered in this dark Bulgarian basement, they were silly and pathetic, though no less horrific for that.
Kori leaned forward. "I was not aware of this aspect of our plans," she said. "The nation I envisioned would be born in peace."
Aside from all the assassinations.
"Relative peace," she said, as if she'd heard Andrei's thought. "I haven't had time to explain fully, but I can outline the constitution I have composed. It's been one thing after another these past few days."
Andrei gave himself a moment to remember and smile.
"We were to convince the Powers that an independent state on the Balkans would be in their best interest," Kori continued. "We are neither Christian nor Muslim, Slavic nor Turkish. We would make an excellent buffer state, with Switzerland as our model."
"I am sure the priests took your suggestion into consideration, My Maiden," Dragomir said with the diffidence of a man treading dangerous ground. "It must be that the priests interpreted the prophecies you spoke differently than you did."
Andrei looked to Kori. Of course he couldn't see more than a vague, dark shape, but her hand found his and squeezed it. Yes. She couldn't say so here, of course, but Kori must see the insanity of this plan and reject it. Mustn't she? Had she ever planned to run away with him, or had she only said so to buy time while she entangled Andrei more deeply in her cult's evil and impossible schemes?
It didn't matter. Andrei had sworn to himself that he would not abandon his duty again, and that duty was Kori. When the time came to escape, Andrei would rescue Kori with or without her cooperation.
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Next: Chapter 1: Courage (3/20/2025)