Kethol didn’t understand all of what was going on, but he knew he didn’t like either idea: signing himself up for a lifetime of service or flatly turning the Baron down, not to mention that he couldn’t speak for Durine and Pirojil, no matter what Morray thought.
There was only one thing to do: stall, until he could get Pirojil to work it out.
‘I’m flattered, and honoured, my lord.’
‘So you accept?’
‘I’ll have to speak to the others before I can commit them – or even myself. We long ago agreed that we’d decide matters of where we go and what we do together, and I can’t bind them by my promise, nor make it without at least giving them fair notice.’
What I really want to do, my lord, he thought, is to make utterly sure that I never spend another minute I don’t have to around the twisted, flowing politics of LaMut, much less embedded in it, up to my nostrils, with the tide coming in.
But there was another side to it.
Yes, this whole offer suggested a conspiracy – not just between Barons Morray and Verheyen, trading off Morray’s chance at the earldom for Verheyen’s support in his marriage to Mondegreen’s widow – but it also suggested that something strange had gone on between Baron Mondegreen and his lady, and Kethol would leave it to Pirojil to work it out, as trying just made Kethol’s head ache.
He was a simpler man, all in all.
And Kethol remembered a kind-eyed, dying man, gasping in his deathbed in his stinking room. He could never forget the way the dying man had put his wife’s safety in Kethol’s hands. Kethol wasn’t sure that he could decline the request that came not just from Baron Morray, but from that kind-eyed dying man who had – and this was such a minor thing that he didn’t understand quite why it seemed to mean so much to him – offered him a cup of tea and looked up at Kethol with trust.
Trust – except from Durine and Pirojil – wasn’t something Kethol was any more used to than guilt. He didn’t quite know how to deal with it. It was there, lodged in his chest, or up in his throat, or maybe the pit of his stomach. It lingered and reminded him of that old man every minute. No matter how much he wished it wasn’t there, he couldn’t pretend that trust hadn’t passed between them, any more than he could just privately dismiss it as indigestion.
Morray nodded. ‘In the morning, then.’
He refilled both their glasses, and they drank, as though they were a pair of merchants who had just sealed a bargain.
‘He said what?’
The emphasis on the last word was the only sign that Durine was furious. The three of them had gone outside, onto the packed snow of the parade ground, where they could have a private discussion without worrying about being overheard. Breath from his nostrils turned to steam in the cold night air – but it looked rather as if Durine was so angry that he was suddenly producing smoke, and the effect only further emphasized his obvious displeasure at what Kethol had just told him.
‘And you said what?’ Pirojil shook his head in disgust, and dug at the snow with the toe of his boot. ‘Tell me, please tell me that you’re just fooling with me, that you really said, “I’m sorry, my lord, but we’ve got an urgent engagement somewhere else, anywhere else".’
Kethol just repeated what the Baron had told him, and that he had agreed to talk it over with Pirojil and Durine, and give the Baron an answer in the morning.
Pirojil swore under his breath, both at Kethol, and at himself, then tried to calm himself down. It was important to keep your eye on the goal, and while Kethol apparently couldn’t, that only made it more important that somebody else be able to think clearly – or think at all, since Kethol clearly wasn’t going to do that – for all of them.
They had to detach themselves from LaMut, to get away.
Pirojil started with that. If you didn’t know what you wanted to do or where you wanted to go, you had no chance of doing that or getting there.
So, start from the beginning: the three of them wanted to get away.
What they should be doing, right now, was sewing up their pay – which was still lingering in the vault in the castle basement, awaiting the imminent conclusion of the Baronial Council and what Pirojil hoped was immediate disbursement after its conclusion – into their cloaks or the coin vests that they wore under their tunics, preparatory to getting out of town the moment it became possible.
Very well. That was impossible at the moment, so forget about that. Forget about getting out of LaMut at the moment, too, though right now, if there had been some way to get out of here without the coin, Pirojil would have taken it in a moment.
He said as much.
Durine nodded. ‘Yes, I would, as well. If there was a way. When the ship’s sinking it’s time to get overboard and not worry about what you’ve got stored in the hold, eh? But right now, we’re locked in the hold ourselves, and we’d best hope that the crew can keep it afloat until we can break the door down, and then dive over the side.’
‘And quickly.’
Kethol didn’t do what he should have done, which was to nod vigorously in agreement.
Instead he just stood silent for a moment, then shrugged.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t much matter what we want to do, not at the moment, not unless you want to leave our pay behind and you think that we can make our way across deep snow like a trio of Natalese Rangers?’
‘Which we can’t,’ Pirojil said.
‘Well, even if we could, there’s the matter of the money, and I don’t like giving up our pay.’ Kethol spread his hands. ‘So we’re not leaving for the moment –’
‘You, Kethol, have a keen eye for the obvious,’ Pirojil said.
‘– and that means that we can at least think about Morray’s offer, doesn’t it?’
‘What’s there to think about? How far down the path you’ve taken us without our knowledge?’ Pirojil tried to calm himself. What they should be doing was separating themselves from this war. Instead, with every passing minute, it seemed that they were getting further intertwined in local affairs that were none of a mercenary soldier’s proper business, and should have been none of their concern.
First there was bodyguarding Morray against the threat of this apparently mythical assassin, and then being detailed by the Swordmaster to help keep the peace among the feuding factions, and now…
‘No.’ Pirojil shook his head. ‘Make that: shit, no. I’ll tell you right now, my answer is no.’
Durine nodded. ‘Mine, as well. I’m not at all sure that this Tsurani scout does presage a Tsurani drive to the east, much less a late-winter one, but if it does, given their numbers and the number of the Muts standing in their way, they could run through LaMut and not slow down until they reached Loriel.’
‘Or the Dimwood, for that matter,’ Pirojil said. Which was probably an exaggeration, but not much of one. There was not a lot of anything between Loriel and the Dimwood.
‘And more to the point, it doesn’t much matter what cushy billet you think you’ve procured for us if that billet is crushed beneath Tsurani sandals – along with us, eh?’ Durine said. He frowned and shook his head.
‘Would you just please think it over for a moment?’ Kethol pleaded. ‘Please?’
‘This stupid idea of yours –’
‘Hey.’ Kethol held up a hand. ‘It wasn’t my idea. I wouldn’t have brought the subject up at all, not without discussing it with the two of you –’
‘And somebody had better learn to keep his mouth shut, and work harder at staying invisible at other times than when we’re hiding in a forest, eh?’ Pirojil shivered. Maybe it was a little warmer – well, no maybe about it; it was starting to warm up – but that didn’t make it comfortable outside.
‘I don’t know what it is that you think I did,’ Kethol said. ‘Other than not telling the Baron no right away. All I agreed to –’
‘You should have said “thank you, my lord, for your very gracious offer, but no, no, no, no”, not left him to think that we might
take him up on the offer, if the price is right or if pressure is applied. He might up the price and apply the pressure, eh?’ Pirojil wasn’t disposed to accept excuses. ‘As to what else you did, you flirted with the Baroness, that’s what you did, apparently.’
That was unfair, but Pirojil wasn’t disposed to be overly fair at the moment.
Durine shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Which shouldn’t have had such dramatic results. Then again, a little nick over the artery in your neck shouldn’t cause the blood to spurt out until you lie dead on the ground, either, but it does! Little things can have large effects!’
‘Just think about it,’ Kethol said, insisting. ‘I promised we’d think about it.’
‘I can’t help thinking about it,’ Pirojil said, his mind racing.
‘Well, then.’ Kethol gave a happy nod.
‘He said he was thinking about it, not that he was seriously considering it,’ Durine said.
Assuming that Kethol was telling the truth about his brief conversation with Baron Mondegreen, and Pirojil didn’t have any reason to doubt that – even Kethol could not be stupid enough to lie to him, not right now – Pirojil didn’t believe for one misbegotten moment that the origin of this idea lay with either of the barons, Morray or Mondegreen.
Lady Mondegreen was obviously behind it, and every indication was that she was terribly dangerous.
All roads led to her – from her husband having gained an inflated view of their abilities as warriors, right up to Morray giving up his campaign for the earldom.
Pirojil wouldn’t have been surprised if the idea of breveting the three of them to help keep peace in the city had originated with her, and Steven Argent didn’t even know that the seeds had been planted in his mind – perhaps while he was busy trying to plant the seeds of what would officially be Mondegreen’s son in her belly, although if she had manipulated the Swordmaster, she had probably been somewhat more subtle than to whisper suggestions while they coupled in the night.
No; that was wrong.
She had been pregnant for some time – that was clear from her trip to Mondegreen, to spend one last night with her husband and establish the child’s paternity. But the rest of the idea held up, and there was no reason to believe that her apparently effective dalliances had ceased upon her return to LaMut, and quite a lot of reason to believe otherwise.
It seemed that she wanted some reliable outsiders to watch over the upbringing of the child growing in her belly, the child that had apparently been put into her belly by one of the nobles with whom she had been cuckolding her dying husband, a child planted there quite probably with that husband’s knowledge and blessing.
Which meant either that she didn’t trust anybody around her, not even Morray, even though he had apparently been her childhood sweetheart; or that she, as a matter of policy, believed in coppering all bets.
Or both, of course.
That she was capable of being bloody-minded was no surprise to Pirojil, now that he had a moment to think about it. She had, after all, married Mondegreen rather than Morray, and it was clear that she had had the choice between the two of them.
Was that because she had had her eye on being the wife of the Earl of LaMut and hitched her wagon to Mondegreen’s star? She certainly would have noted Vandros’s unavailability because of his longstanding attachment to Felina, and his likely ascension to the dukedom. Logic argued against her setting her cap at the younger earl. If she wanted to rule in LaMut it would have to be as the wife of the man to follow young Vandros.
Had she really worked all that out and calculated that Baron Mondegreen was likely to become the Earl – before anybody else had?
Or was it just that she had expected to outlive Mondegreen, and had her eye on both baronies?
It even could have been that she just preferred the man she had chosen to the man she had passed over. Call it affection, or love: call it anything you liked. It hadn’t stopped her from manipulating other barons and soldiers with an ease and ability that terrified Pirojil, who didn’t think of himself as a man easily frightened.
Pirojil always preferred to have a high opinion of the opposition, even if it usually made sense to keep that opinion to himself. He had to admire the enemy here, because the enemy was clearly Lady Mondegreen, and she was good at what she was doing, and capable of laying plans that would take years to complete, promptly adjusting her tactics as things changed on the ground – what with her husband’s inability to get her with child, and the wasting disease that had, finally, killed him.
Pirojil thought he had had great respect for the political abilities of Kingdom nobility, but this woman … It was a shame that she wasn’t born a man, or Pirojil knew who would be running the staff meeting in Yabon City at this moment, if not presiding at the table of the Viceroy in Krondor.
She was probably good at some other things, as well. She had managed to persuade Morray to make a deal with his enemy, Verheyen, with Morray’s only payment being herself and the appointment as regent of Barony Mondegreen in return for Morray giving up his claim on the earldom.
Had that been the plan all along? It seemed likely, although there was no way to know for certain.
Morray didn’t seem to be the sort to take a sure small profit over a large speculative one, and the word was that he had possessed a more-than-average chance at being the next Earl of LaMut. Yet, in the space of a few hours, he had given up on that. Pirojil nodded. Very nicely done, Lady Mondegreen, he thought. From what Kethol said, while it was clear that Morray was dedicated to the notion of raising Lady Mondegreen’s child as though it was her freshly-dead husband’s, it was also clear that Morray thought the child was his.
As it might well be.
He could blame the Swordmaster, as well, come to think of it. Steven Argent had apparently, although probably unintentionally, planted in Lady Mondegreen’s serpentine mind the notion of the value of outsider bodyguards with everything to lose if something happened to whoever they were supposed to protect: so it wasn’t surprising that she would want a set of bodyguards like that – or those specific bodyguards – for her own child.
And he could blame himself and Durine and Kethol, too, for that matter, for the quick and effective way that they had protected Baron Morray during the Tsurani ambush that had only been a few days before, but was already starting to feel like ancient history. That had apparently impressed Lady Mondegreen, for whom combat had been a nebulous thing until the Tsurani had dragged it into her lap.
So Pirojil could blame the three of them for that. He chuckled to himself. As long as he was diverting himself by blaming, he could blame the Tsurani, the King, Prince, and Regent and the gods themselves, and probably be more right than wrong.
Not that laying the blame would do any good.
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘my careful, considered, thoughtful answer is the same one as my offhand, reflexive, instinctive answer: no.’ He shook his head. ‘I like things just a leetle more straightforward than they are here, and this Lady Mondegreen scares the shit out of me.’
‘Lady Mondegreen?’ Kethol hadn’t worked it out, yet. Pirojil would have to explain it to him slowly, later.
Using very small words. One. At. A. Time.
‘Yes. Her.’ Durine was nodding. ‘Yeah. I’d much rather have her as a friend than an enemy, but …’
‘Shit, yes. I’d rather be in a death duel with Steven Argent than that. At least with the Swordmaster you’ve got a chance to see the blade coming your way.’
Durine nodded again. ‘Or run away from it, without knowing that you were just running into some other blade, put in place against just that eventuality.’
‘Enough chance of that if you’re a friend, eh?’
‘Yeah.’
She hadn’t done anything to harm them – save for wrapping them more and more tightly in local politics, and politics was a dangerous sport, and not to Pirojil’s taste.
Protecting yourself was one thing. Spending twenty or more
years protecting not just one baron for one little patrol, but a baby baron, through to his majority, was something else entirely. And knowing that you had been picked precisely because you had no local connections, that you understood that if anything, ever, happened to the baby, the boy, the man, it would be your fault…
That would certainly compel whatever fool agreed to that to take great pains with the safety of the baby, the boy, the man.
But Pirojil wasn’t that kind of fool, and he really did want to be able to sleep some time over the next twenty years, and on better than a one-in-three.
‘So,’ Pirojil said, ‘we have to decide. Yes or no? Do we decide that we enjoy the taste of LaMutian conspiracy, and ask for more, with a helping of intrigue on the side? Or do what any sensible man would, and run the moment we can? And if that means leaving our pay behind, so be it.’
Durine chuckled. ‘I think your position on it is clear. As is mine.’
‘But –’
‘Shut up, Kethol. It’s my turn to speak.’ Durine shook his head. ‘I’ll be clear about my choice: I am leaving. If it’s with one or both of you, that’s fine. If you want to stay behind and take service here, Kethol, I’ll wish you well, bid you goodbye, and make sure that the gold is properly divided before I go. I don’t like things complicated, and the more we get involved with this northern nobility, the more complicated things get. Not for me.’
Pirojil nodded. ‘I agree. Two of us say no to the Baron’s kind offer. If you want to say yes, you’re on your own.’
Kethol stood silently for a moment, and then his shoulders slumped. ‘You’re right, I guess. I just wanted to think about it.’
‘We’ve thought. We’ve talked. Decide.’
Kethol raised both palms in surrender. ‘Oh, never mind. I’m with the two of you.’ He sighed. ‘And if you choose to think me a fool for having considered staying, then you can just go ahead and do so.’
Pirojil clapped a hand on Kethol’s shoulder. ‘Well, what I think is that there are no other men I’d rather have watching my back, and that’s a fact. We’re agreed, then?’
‘I already said so.’
The Complete Legends of the Riftwar Trilogy Page 59