A Dictionary of Fools (The HouseOf Light And Shadow Book 2) Read online

  A

  DICTIONARY

  OF

  FOOLS

  P.J. Fox

  Book Two of The House of Light and Shadow

  This novel is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed herein are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places or things, in this solar system or another, is purely coincidental.

  A DICTIONARY OF FOOLS

  Copyright © 2014 by Evil Toad Press

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Evil Toad Press

  Published by Evil Toad Press

  ISBN 978-1-942365-12-9

  First Edition: November 2014

  For my mom, Bobbi

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  About the Author

  ONE

  The orderly placed a fresh cup of coffee on the edge of Kisten’s desk. He nodded in acknowledgment, not bothering to look up. Bowing, the orderly withdrew. Kisten was so engrossed in his reading that he barely noticed.

  Before him was a report on the latest arson. A group of masked men, most believed to be between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, had set fire to a local free clinic that ministered mostly to prostitutes and homeless children. There was some suspicion that the clinic had been set up for the express purpose of luring women into prostitution. Kisten had never heard of anything so ludicrous in his life, and if he hadn’t had the tangible proof in front of him he never would have credited the idea that anyone could be so stupid.

  According to the Brotherhood, this dirty trick of free healthcare was just one more step on the road to ruin. Treating venereal disease meant accepting it, a local religious leader had claimed in one of his sermons—and but for the lecherous needs of Alliance soldiers, there wouldn’t be any venereal disease. Because, Kisten was sure, Tarsoni men were all celibate.

  Of course the Alliance was providing free healthcare, the cleric had argued; these so-called doctors wanted their flesh fit. Care and concern were painted as a kind of drug in these and other, similar sermons, lulling unsophisticated and unsuspecting young things—who all, in the retelling, became instant models of virtue—into some sort of luxury-induced stupor and then turning them into sex fiends.

  The man was dangerous, and Kisten wanted to have him arrested. He’d held off, because he didn’t relish beginning his reign by painting himself as a tin pot god too brittle to tolerate free speech. But enough was enough, and before him on the desk lay convincing proof that this so-called “man of peace” had been behind the arson.

  He’d laugh, if it weren’t all so horrifying.

  Aros walked in, dropped something on Kisten’s desk and walked out. The strain was wearing on him, too. He’d been as snappish as an old woman all morning, favoring one and all with a baleful glare as he slumped from room to room. Normally easygoing, Aros was simply too phlegmatic to be disagreeable. Until now. Him and everyone else on this accursed rock.

  Kisten sat back in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. A minute or two later, he reached for his coffee. It had gone stone cold. He’d been studying the report for longer than he’d thought. A faint rumbling in his stomach announced that he’d missed lunch. He made no move to ring for food, only stared at his mug: thick army issue ceramic, as ungainly in its proportions as the rest of the room. Army décor, at its finest, meant the bland and faintly troubling consistency of week-old oatmeal translated into paint colors and furniture choices.

  He’d gone out shooting with Aria at first light, and then come straight here and been flat out ever since. He’d scheduled a noon meeting with Setji who, predictably, was late. He was probably at The Twisted Lip, Kisten reflected sourly, passed out in the company of a few whores. He and the ex-Deputy Commissioner had seemed quite friendly.

  The Haldon Cantonment was comprised of six large, interconnecting compounds. It had been built on the edge of the city, rather than in it, and covered the no man’s land between the city walls and the hills where Kisten had been that morning. Purple in the haze, they were the first steps in an enormous circle of mountain ranges. The site was, Kisten thought, not a favorable one. For despite the high walls that ringed their little cantonment on all sides, they were still on low ground. From up in the hills, or even from within the city itself, any would-be adversary could easily fire down into any of the compounds. No wall was high enough to block off the line of sight from a mountain.

  Skirmishes were one thing, but it would be almost impossible for the cantonment to defend itself against a full-scale attack. He wondered, and not for the first time, why the cantonment hadn’t been built into the hills instead of beneath them. Occupying the high ground was important, tactically, for several reasons. First, one gained more range with both artillery and small arms—and more accuracy. If nothing else, gravity played a large role: because explosive projectiles and even lasers dropped, even the meanest shot was more likely to hit something when he was pointing down at the target. Moreover, the higher up one was, the more obstructions one could clear. From their present position, they’d be firing through the trees instead of over them.

  They could see nothing of their enemies, while their enemies could see everything of them.

  The knowledge that he was a sitting duck lay heavily on Kisten every time he left his office.

  Kiste
n had made a few changes since assuming his new role. They weren’t much, but they were something. Governor Jhansi had been in the habit of working from home; his residence, like the Chief Commissioner’s, had been half house and half office. Kisten had put a stop to that, setting up his office in a different compound entirely. Conducting the business of empire inside a residential compound only made it—and its inhabitants—a target. So instead, he’d commandeered the administrative facilities of one of the purely military compounds; the compound, indeed, that had been set aside for the famous Blues. The only mixed regiment quartered inside the cantonment, they were also the pride of the Tarsoni Army.

  Moving his office into their midst was safer as well as showed his faith in his men—both Alliance-born and otherwise. The Blues were an elite group. By offering a higher rate of pay, they’d attracted more applicants and so, from the beginning, had been able to pick and choose amongst the best and the brightest. They were, too, a largely native regiment.

  Aros had decried Kisten’s decision as foolhardy, accusing him of confusing rash action with bravery and tempting fate. He was, Aros had pointed out, dropping them into a potentially hostile regiment. Many Blues had participated in the mutiny.

  Kisten, in response, had pointed out that the risk of which Aros spoke couldn’t be avoided except by leaving the planet. The Blues were the heart and soul of the Tarsoni army; if they turned, every Bronte in the cantonment would die regardless of where Kisten had set up his office. The best he could do—the best they could all do—was show confidence and hope for the best.

  Which was why he’d ordered the inspection.

  After his meeting with Setji, which looked like it wasn’t going to happen, Kisten was joining General Bihar on an inspection tour of certain select battalions. He’d been holding such inspections since his arrival, in an effort to reestablish discipline and boost morale. He might be a civilian now, and hamstrung to some extent, but he still knew how to lead men.

  This afternoon, he was inspecting the 2nd Battalion of the 29th Lancers. The 29th was a native regiment that, until recently, had shown no signs of discontent. But as he’d learned during the war, appearances could be deceiving. The men who’d tried to capture the Callisto, his long ago ship, had given every appearance of loyalty until the moment they mutinied.

  He thought about ringing for another cup of coffee and decided not to. What was the point? He drank too much coffee already, and the coffee here was swill besides. He sighed. Sometimes, lately, he felt hopeless. Particularly after episodes like this morning’s, it was all he could do not to give in. The idea that he, one man, could wrestle an entire world back from the brink was beyond ludicrous. Tarsonis might have one inhabited continent, but it was a large planet with a lot of places to hide. And who knew how many of its fifty million inhabitants thought as the Brotherhood did?

  Kisten’s family estate, Neel Giri, was named for the surrounding mountains: snow-capped giants that reared up on all sides. Neel Giri meant Blue Ridge in the old tongue. As a child, Kisten had loved the name for the images it conjured. But, as majestic as Neel Giri was, both house and grounds were also ancient—and, like all ancient places of whatever size or glory, riddled with dry rot and other challenges. Dry rot was, Kisten had learned from questioning the overseer, deadly not so much for the effect it had on individual pieces of wood but because it spread.

  Kisten had been fascinated by this information; as a child, he was constantly underfoot and pestering everyone with questions about what they were doing and why.

  The overseer had been a tolerant man with children of his own, and he’d taken the nine year old Kisten—and his brother, of course, Kisten never went anywhere without Keshav—to observe a renovation. The bathhouse porch, this time; the estate was a constantly revolving series of renovations. The boards on top had looked as pristine as ever; there was no immediate need, that Kisten could see, to fix anything. But just as he was about to tell the overseer so—even then, Kisten had had a well-developed sense of his own importance—the boards had come up and he’d seen the mold-riddled horror that lay beneath.

  Rot spreads.

  The words came back to him now with a shiver, and a horrible sense of foreboding. Only a little at first, but then more and more. Keep an eye on it and don’t procrastinate, or by the time you’re ready to tackle the problem you’ll be too late. This whole porch has to come down, the overseer had told them, because the last overseer, God bless his soul, was a fool.

  There was an infection on Tarsonis, but how bad was it?

  Kisten didn’t know, and that was what scared him the most.

  That, and the fact that he couldn’t know, until something happened to blow apart the calm façade that lay over Haldon like a fog. Blow it apart, and reveal the rotting canker beneath. He sipped his cold coffee, and grimaced. There was an argument to be made that, if things were really so bad, inspections might do more harm than good by inflaming resentments too entrenched to be checked. But what was his alternative? Bury his head in the sand, like an ostrich? Like the old overseer had done?

  He’d died, Kisten remembered now, by leaning his full weight against a rotted guardrail and falling head-first into a drainage ditch.

  Every branch of the military taught that there was nothing so vital, when it came to solving performance problems, as enforcing discipline. A lesson Kisten had learned early, first at Mirzapur and then during the war, and still believed. A disciplined soldier was a motivated soldier, and motivated soldiers were what kept units functioning and training productive. Some officers expected their men to work hard, simply because that was their job. A good officer recognized the fact that all men, of whatever rank, needed to know that their job mattered—and be praised for doing it well. Treat him like he’s part of a team, and he’ll become one.

  Each man, from General Bihar down to the lowliest mess assistant, was vital to the success of the mission and if he believed that, he’d act accordingly. Which was why every soldier, on every mission, was given a place in the chain of command. If and when the mantle of responsibility fell to him, he’d be prepared. Even if he was only the assistant mess cook.

  Holding his men to a high standard said that he, Kisten, believed—believed that said assistant mess cook had it in him to take over for his fallen commander, that every man on his team had the heart of a warrior. Moreover, enforcing the kind of meaningless discipline that characterized military life was useful in eradicating the individuality so injurious to group functioning—which, of course, was why the military had so many rules. A man who questioned orders, more often than not, wound up dead and his comrades with him.

  The correct way to sit, stand, salute, and tie one’s shoes was what the army said it was. Learning to accept that the army knew best about how to tie shoes led to following orders that might, on the surface, appear to make no sense. In matters large and small, the issue was trust. Without trust, an army was nothing; and trust grew from discipline. And discipline, in turn, wasn’t about seeing his reflection in a man’s buttons, not really; it was about acceptance of one’s duty—to the army, to obey, to himself as a soldier first and foremost. Once a man felt comfortable ignoring the little things, it was only a matter of time before he rebelled against the idea of duty.

  And realized, perhaps, that mutiny was an option.

  The door opened and Aros came in. He threw himself down in a chair, took a sip of Kisten’s coffee and grimaced. “The 2nd Battalion is arriving soon.”

  Kisten nodded thoughtfully.

  The 29th Lancers were quartered in the city itself, not the cantonment. Rather than go to them, and surround himself with an entire regiment of men who might be on the verge of mutiny, Kisten had ordered a single battalion to come here. He might be starved for choice, but he wasn’t stupid; if trouble started, he wanted the home court advantage.

  Now all he had to do was pray that he hadn’t put his faith in the wrong men.

  “The woman in question,” said Aros, looking at
a tablet, “is one Madam Gaudi.”

  It took Kisten a minute to place the name. Gaudi…there was a Brigadier Gaudi.

  He asked Aros if that was the one, and Aros nodded.

  “He swears up and down that he had no idea.” Gaudi led the 29th, and his consort was responsible for the lion’s share of trouble in that regiment. A self-styled crusader for virtue, she’d taken it upon herself to have the Scriptures printed in Tarsoni and distributed to her husband’s men. Whether they wanted them or no. “He adds, though,” Aros said dubiously, “that he sees nothing wrong with a little faith-promoting action.”

  Kisten produced a sound uncommonly like a snort. “Of course he doesn’t. Is he coming?”

  “Perhaps he’ll hold a prayer meeting.”

  Kisten didn’t know if Gaudi was one of Karan’s lackeys or just stupid, but imagined that the answer would become plain soon enough. Gaudi wouldn’t be the first misguided soul to think that all it took was a good prayer meeting. Kisten’s great-grandfather, the same zealous Charonite convert who’d produced Udit, had been such a man. He’d died at the hands of the same men he’d endeavored to save, ripped limb from limb as they screamed obscenities at him.

  Both Kisten and Aros were aware that several of the more vocal men in the 29th, including one Lance Corporal Baugh, believed this new push for conversion to presage a return of the ban on ceremonial headgear. They had, with some justification, concluded that their leader’s consort wouldn’t do anything as dramatic as distributing literature without her husband’s at least tacit support. Where they were wrong, however, was in assuming that Kisten had anything to do with this mess. Gaudi had gone behind his back.

  The man’s duplicity infuriated him, as did the fact that his hands were tied. Sheer lack of manpower meant that, barring truly egregious circumstances, Kisten had to make do with what he had. Some men, like Ram Saghred, had to be removed regardless of the inconvenience; others he’d been, of necessity, forced to keep on. If he’d canned everyone who showed signs of incompetence, then he’d be alone in this building.

  He had to make the best of a bad situation and hope that, given the opportunity, at least a few of these men would rise to the challenge. Most of them had never experienced anything approaching real leadership—or expectations of any kind. So there was hope.