by David Weber
“Why?” Varnaythus asked bluntly, and then chuckled sourly as Sahrdohr stared incredulously at him. “Don’t tell me you think They’re infallible!”
Sahrdohr’s incredulous expression segued from astonishment to apprehension to complete blankness in a heartbeat, and Varnaythus’ chuckle turned into a humorless laugh.
“Of course They’re fallible, Malahk! We wouldn’t be sitting here in Norfressa if They were in fallible, because They’d have won in Kontovar twelve hundred years ago! Of course, the other side is fallible, too, or Wencit of Rum would still be sitting in Trofrolantha.” He shrugged. “It’s a fair balance, I suppose, though I’ve never been all that fond of the concept of fair. And if either side truly was infallible, They wouldn’t need us mortals to help things along, which has worked out pretty well for me personally…so far, at least. But don’t wed yourself to the idea that They always know what They’re doing. Or that They even know what all the cusp points are. Both sides manage to hide at least some of the more critical threads from each other. That’s how They blindsided Wencit and the Ottovarans in Kontovar, but it also means the other side can blindside Them.”
It would have been hard to say whether Sahrdohr looked more unhappy or more worried by Varnaythus’ frankness, but he gave a grudging nod.
“Still,” he said after a moment, “I can’t see this leading to any fundamental advantage for them. So Bahzell’s found a lover-so what? If anything, it makes him more vulnerable, not less, especially if anything…unfortunate were to happen to Mistress Leeana. And she’s already legally out of the succession, so even if they were to have a child someday-and you know how likely that is-it won’t make any difference in the West Riding. For that matter, Bahzell’s so far down the succession from his father that it wouldn’t make any difference in Hurgrum, either!”
“Granted.” Varnaythus nodded. “And granted that it’s going to be more grist for the mill of really traditional Sothoii like Cassan and Yeraghor. In fact, it’ll be interesting to see which outrages them the most in the end. They’ve been disgusted over Leeana’s becoming a war maid in the first place, but now they get the chance to be even more disgusted and revolted by the notion of a hradani ‘polluting’ one of the most highly born Sothoii ladies imaginable. Of course, it would be more than a bit inconsistent of them to be pissed off over both those things at once, but little things like consistency never hamper your true bigot’s outrage, now do they?” He pursed his lips while he considered it for several seconds, then snorted. “Knowing Cassan, I imagine they’ll come down on the side of it’s being no better than bestiality, in the end. After all, what else could you expect out of an unnatural bitch like a war maid?”
“Ummmm.” Sahrdohr frowned thoughtfully. “You may have a point there, especially if we handle it properly-get behind it and push judiciously in the proper direction.”
“I’m perfectly willing to push all you want, but I’m not going to let myself be distracted from the main object. And if the chance comes along to kill either of them, I intend to take it.” Varnaythus showed his teeth in an expression no one would ever have mistaken for a smile. “Bahzell’s on our list anyway, and you’re right about the way this makes him more vulnerable. Champions of Tomanak should be smarter than to offer up hostages to fortune this way. And any nasty little accident which befell Mistress Leeana would have a salutary effect on Tellian, too, for that matter. Using this to foment more unhappiness among the bigots might be useful, but if she’s considerate enough to wander into our sights at an opportune moment, I’ll take the opening in a heartbeat.”
“Do you think there might be a way we could use her as bait?” Sahrdohr thought out loud. “Grab her and use her to suck Bahzell into a place and time of our choosing?”
“Oh, there might be ‘a way,’” Varnaythus said, “but I wouldn’t hold my breath looking for it, if I were you. We’re talking about a war maid. And a wind rider, now. Not exactly the easiest person in the world to capture and use for ‘bait’! Especially not when the war maid in question is as good with her hands as Mistress Leeana and the courser who’s adopted her is Walsharno’s sister. You do remember what Gayrfressa did to the shardohns who attacked her herd, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” Sahrdohr replied a bit irritably. “Not even a courser is immortal, though. Arthnar’s men would’ve killed Dathgar if Bahzell and Walsharno hadn’t been there. For that matter, they could’ve gotten Walsharno if they hadn’t been so focused on Tellian! So it doesn’t really matter how dangerous Gayrfressa might be if we can get enough arrows into her first. And the same goes for Leeana, for that matter.”
“True.” Varnaythus nodded. “That’s why I’m perfectly willing to kill her if the opportunity presents itself. But trying to take her alive?” He grimaced. “ That would require getting just a bit closer to her than bow range, and I’d suggest you ask the dog brothers how many of them would be eager to take on that particular commission. Personally, I’m willing to bet none of them would. Not without a damned substantial bonus, at any rate.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “For that matter, I’m sure they remember what happened the first time they went after someone close to the Bloody Hand-and he wasn’t even a champion then! Does the name ‘Zarantha’ ring any bells with you, by any chance?”
“You’re probably right,” Sahrdohr conceded with a sigh. He frowned again, absently this time, and sat staring into space for several seconds. Then he shrugged and refocused on Varnaythus.
“I assume we do want to pass this information on to Cassan and Yeraghor as soon as we can?”
“Of course we do. Master Talthar will turn up in Toramos to discuss it with the good duke in a day or three.” Varnaythus shrugged. “I’ll even do a little of that judicious pushing we discussed, although he probably won’t need that much to throw three kinds of fit over it. Especially when I report on Tellian’s antics here in Sothofalas at the same time.”
“No, he isn’t going to be happy about that, is he?” This time Sahrdohr’s smile was almost beatific. “Particularly not with my own esteemed superior’s contribution.”
Varnaythus returned his subordinate’s smile. Sir Whalandys Shaftmaster and Sir Jerhas Macebearer had finally talked King Markhos into officially sanctioning Tellian of Balthar’s Derm Canal project. All of the Derm Canal project, including not only the Gullet Tunnel but the open challenge to the Purple Lords’ monopoly of the Spear River, as well.
Macebearer had been supportive from the outset, although his acute awareness of the potential political price had prevented him from openly and officially endorsing it. His advice to the King on the subject was hardly likely to come as a surprise to anyone, however, whereas Shaftmaster had been far more dubious initially. Unfortunately, the fact that everyone-including King Markhos-knew the Chancellor had originally cherished such powerful doubts only made his conversion into a supporter an even weightier argument in the canal’s favor.
Of course, Shaftmaster’s original reservations had stemmed from more than one factor. First and foremost, he’d doubted that such a monumental project was possible, even for dwarven engineers. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he’d been only too well aware of the enormous economic advantage for the entire Kingdom if it could be done, but he’d been far from convinced it could. And as the son of one of Tellian of Balthar’s lord wardens, he’d probably been even more aware of the advantages for his father’s holding of Green Cove, squarely on the most direct route from the Gullet Tunnel to Sothofalas. But he’d also been aware of the political risks inherent in endorsing it too loudly, specifically because of his family’s links to the West Riding and just how wealthy Green Cove stood to become if it succeeded. The last thing any chancellor of the exchequer needed was to be accused of using his position for personal or family profit, especially in the Kingdom of the Sothoii, where political exchanges were still known to turn into personal combat upon occasion. Quite aside from any considerations of physical survival, a chancellor whose personal honor and hones
ty had been brought into question would become far less effective as a minister of the Crown.
And on top of any political factors, there’d been the fact that he’d been about as thoroughly prejudiced against the hradani as anyone could have been. In fact, up until three or four years ago, he’d belonged to the court faction most concerned by the threat of a unified hradani realm, and it was no secret that he’d quietly approved of Sir Mathian Redhelm’s attempt to prevent that from happening, which had put him in direct opposition to Tellian’s actions. That had led to a certain tension between him and Sir Shandahr Shaftmaster, his father…not to mention Tellian himself. In fact, that tension was one of the things which had made him acceptable at the Exchequer (at least initially) as far as Cassan and his partisans had been concerned, and he’d frankly doubted that anyone as primitive and barbaric as hradani could possibly hold up their end of the proposed construction schedule even if the dwarves could actually design the thing in the first place.
Unfortunately, while he might have been prejudiced, he wasn’t stupid, and his attitude had shifted steadily from one of acid skepticism to one of enthusiastic support. The numbers had been too persuasive for him to ignore, and the steady-indeed, astonishing-rate at which the construction had progressed, coupled with the success of the expeditions Tellian and Bahnak had launched into the Ghoul Moor, had dealt his contempt for the hradani a death blow. He still didn’t like them-or the idea of an actual alliance with them-but he’d been forced to admit the same things which had made them formidable foes could make them equally formidable allies. Besides, he was a realist. Unlike Cassan, who might continue to dream fondly of the way the Northern Confederation must inevitably disintegrate upon Bahnak’s death, Shaftmaster recognized that Bahnak had built better than that. The Confederation was here to stay, whether he liked it or not, and since it was, he preferred to be on good terms with it and to bind its future economic interests to those of the Kingdom in any way he could. People were far less likely to attack people whose prosperity was intimately linked to their own, after all. A point, Varnaythus thought glumly, which wasn’t lost on Kilthan, Bahnak, or Tellian, either.
That realism and pragmatism of Shaftmaster’s were the reasons he’d finally come out and firmly supported Macebearer and Prince Yurokhas in urging the King to issue a formal Crown charter for the canal. And with his three most trusted and powerful advisers in agreement, it was hardly surprising Markhos had agreed. Indeed, it had taken them so long to bring him around only because he’d recognized just how thorny and sensitive the issue was with certain of his other advisers. That recognition was probably the reason he still hadn’t made his approval of the charter official; he wasn’t going to do that until the Great Council’s official fall session, when anyone who wanted to object would have to look him in the eye to do it. That sort of defiance took a hardy soul, Varnaythus thought sourly. There wasn’t likely to be a lot of it, and once he did make the charter official, the canal and all of its traffic would come under royal protection, which would assure the Crown of a tidy new source of income…and make any effort to sabotage it an act of treason.
Cassan wasn’t going to like that one little bit.
“Do you think this will finally move him off dead center on the assassination issue?” Sahrdohr asked after a moment, and Varnaythus grimaced again, even more sourly than before.
“If anything will,” he replied. “It’s been an uphill fight to get him to even consider it, though. I think part of it is that he’d genuinely convinced himself he was ‘too honorable’ a fellow to violate his oath of fealty.” The wizard rolled his eyes. “But I suspect most of it was that he was too well aware of how the Kingdom could disintegrate back into the Time of Troubles. As long as he thought he could game the situation to get what he wanted without that, he didn’t have any desire to face Tellian and the wind riders across a battlefield. He isn’t anywhere near as smart as he thinks he is, but he’s not that stupid! And he is smart enough to recognize that unless he takes some sort of drastic action-probably before the fall session, given Markhos’ intention to announce Tellian’s charter then-he’s done. There won’t be any way he can ‘game’ anything after the Crown for all intents and purposes gives Tellian its full backing. I imagine his ‘man of honor’ image will fly out the window pretty quickly as soon as he realizes that. And if it doesn’t occur to him on his own, Master Talthar will certainly find a way to point it out to him. A clever fellow, Master Talthar.”
He smiled thinly at Sahrdohr, and the younger wizard chuckled.
“So, actually, this”-he jutted his chin at the images and the gramerhain-“is more likely to work in our favor than against us.”
“Probably,” Varnaythus agreed. “I don’t plan on betting anything particularly valuable on it, though. Carnadosa knows I’ve been…unpleasantly disillusioned every other time I’ve thought Bahzell was going down or that we’d finally gained a decisive advantage! Still, at the moment I don’t see any way it’s likely to hurt us any.”
It was a somewhat less than ringing declaration of confidence, and he knew it. It was about as far as he was prepared to go, however, and he glowered down at the gramerhain for another few moments, then shrugged and passed his hand over it. The light in its heart flared once, then vanished, and he looked at Sahrdohr.
“I suppose we should start thinking about the most effective way for Master Talthar to present this unfortunate information to his good friend Duke Cassan, don’t you?”
***
“I’m thinking I must look a right idiot,” Bahzell Bahnakson remarked as he and Leanna rode along the eastern bank of the Balthar River. “Or so I would if it happened as anyone was watching, any road.”
He sounded remarkably unperturbed by the possibility, Leeana noted, and smiled across at him.
“I faithfully promise to turn loose of your hand and look suitably dour the instant anyone turns up,” she told him.
‹ Not that it’s going to fool anyone,› Walsharno remarked. ‹ Even a courser only has to look at the two of you to know your brains have turned into mush. Any two-foot is going to decide you need to be locked up in a nice, safe room somewhere where you can’t hurt yourselves!›
‹ And who asked your opinion?› another, less deep mental voice inquired tartly, and Bahzell chuckled. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised he was able to hear Gayrfressa now that she’d bonded with Leeana. It was unheard of-impossible! — of course, but the two of them-well, the four of them, now-had never done anything else the way they were supposed to, now had they? It seemed likely to him and to Walsharno that his own version of the coursers’ herd sense had a lot to do with it…but that neat, comforting explanation didn’t account for Leeana’s ability to hear Walsharno.
‹ You really are full of yourself, aren’t you? › Walsharno observed in a teasing tone, regarding his sister fondly. He’d deliberately taken position to her left, where she could see him with her single eye, and now he tossed his mane at her. Then he snorted profoundly. ‹ Newly bonded coursers are always full of themselves, I suppose. Why, even I was for the first, oh, twenty minutes or so.›
‹ But you got over it, I see,› Gayrfressa replied sarcastically.
“I see this is going to be a lively relationship,” Leeana said dryly, yet there was an undertone, a softness, to the words. An undertone Bahzell remembered only too well from the day a courser named Walsharno had opened his heart to one of his people’s most bitter traditional enemies.
“Never another minute of privacy will you have,” he told her, flattening his ears and grinning at her. “Natter away at the drop of a hat, they will. And there’s never a courser born as isn’t positive his brother shouldn’t be let out on his own without a keeper. I’ve little doubt Gayrfressa’s after being one more chip off the old block, when all’s said.”
‹ There must be some reason I like you so much,› Gayrfressa mused. ‹ Probably I’ll be able to remember what it was, if you give me a day or two.›
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br /> “Be nice,” Leeana said mildly. “He’s mine now, and I don’t want you picking on him without my permission.”
‹As long as you don’t go putting unreasonable restrictions on it, › Gayrfressa replied.
“I’m going to be very strict.” Leeana’s tone was much more severe than it had been. “You’re absolutely forbidden to pick on him on any day of the week that doesn’t have a letter ‘y’ in it. Is that understood?”
‹ Coursers can’t read, you know,› Walsharno pointed out.
‹ Perhaps you can’t read, Brother,› Gayrfressa said sweetly. ‹ I, however, have spent the last few winters learning to do just that.›
“Have you, now?” Bahzell looked across at her, and she turned her head to meet his gaze.
‹ Actually, Walsharno, as usual, is only partly correct,› she told him. ‹Most coursers never learn to read. For one thing, our eyes don’t seem to focus properly for it.› Bahzell felt the unspoken allusion to her lost eye behind the words, but there was no trace of self-pity, and his heart filled with fresh pride in her. ‹ Quite a few of us have, over the years, though. Of course, writing is just a bit more difficult for us!›
‹ Showoff, › Walsharno teased, nipping her very gently on the shoulder, and she snorted in amusement.
“If anyone had ever told me I might be riding along on a courser, having a conversation like this one, I would have told him he was mad,” Leeana said. She shook her head, green eyes soft. “I don’t know what I might have done to deserve it, but whatever it was, it couldn’t have been enough.”
“There’s never a wind rider I’ve met as doesn’t feel exactly the same thing, lass,” Bahzell told her. “And I’m thinking the truth is there’s nothing we could have done to be ‘deserving’ it. It’s a gift we’re given, not something as we could ever have earned.”
‹ It works both ways, Brother,› Walsharno said quietly, his mental voice very serious. ‹ The joy you take from our bond is no greater than the joy I take from it. It can’t be.›