Finally, Brohl Handar no longer felt helpless.
Atri-Preda Bivatt fumed in silence. The damned fool at her side was going to get himself killed, and she would be made responsible for that failure to protect him. K’risnan and Arapay bodyguards would achieve nothing. The Factor’s agents infected every Letherii legion on this march, and among those agents… Errant-damned assassins. Masters of the Poison.
She liked this warrior at her side, dour as he was-which seemed a trait of the Tiste Edur in any case. And though clearly intelligent, he was also… naive.
It was clear that Letur Anict had penetrated the pathetic unofficial efforts of Brohl Handar and a half-dozen other overseers, and the Factor intended to eliminate this nascent threat here and now. On this very expedition.
‘We have a problem with Brohl Handar,’ the Factor had said, his pale round face looking like dusty stone in the habitual gloom of his inner sanctum.
‘Sir?’
‘Unsanctioned, he seeks to exceed his responsibilities, and in so doing undermine the traditional functions of a factor in a border province. His ambitions have drawn others into his web, which could, alas, have fatal repercussions.’
‘Fatal? How?’
‘Atri-Preda, I must tell you. No longer are the Patriotists focusing exclusively on the Letherii in the empire. There has come to light evidence of an emerging conspiracy among the Tiste Edur-against the state, possibly against the Emperor himself.’
I
Absurd. Do you truly take me for such a fool, Anict? Against the state and against the Emperor are two different things. The state is you and people like you. The state is the Liberty Consign and the Patriotists. The state is the Chancellor and his cronies. Against them, the notion of a conspiracy among the Tiste Edur to rid the empire of Letherii corruption seemed more than plausible. They had been occupiers long enough to come to understand the empire they had won; to begin to realize that a far more subtle conquest had taken place, of which they were the losers.
The Tiste Edur were, above all else, a proud people. Not likely to abide defeat, and the fact that the victors were, by j their measure, cowards in the true sense of the term would sting all the more. So she was not surprised that Brohl Handar and his fellow Edur had at last begun a campaign of eradication against the Letherii running the state. Not surprising, either, the extent to which the Edur have underestimated their enemy.
‘Sir, I am an officer in the Imperial Army. My I commander is the Emperor himself.’
‘The Emperor rules us all, Atri-Preda,’ Letur Anict had said with a faint smile. ‘The conspiracy among his kind directly threatens his loyal support structure-those who endeavour, at great personal sacrifice, to maintain that apparatus.’