Not Quite Scaramouche

by Joel Rosenberg

  "Enough of your games," Pirojil said. "If you have something you want to say, then just say it. If you don't have anything – "

  "Could we do with a little less bickering, please? Here." Kethol produced a gold coin and thumb-flipped it to Erenor, who snatched it out of the air quite easily.

  "Thank you, friend Kethol," Erenor said. He held his fist in front of Pirojil's face. "I have a coin in my hand here, correct?"

  Pirojil frowned. "No, you don't. You switched it to the other hand."

  "Really?" Erenor smiled. "Then this," he said, opening his hand to reveal the coin lying flat in his palm, "can't be here, can it?"

  Pirojil nodded. "So? It was in your hand."

  "And it isn't now." Erenor pocketed the coin with his right hand – and why did he ask for a coin if there were coins enough in his pouch to jingle? – and brought both hands, palms up and out, in front of Pirojil. "Correct?"

  "I suppose so."

  "And now," he said, reaching his left hand past Pirojil's right ear, touching the ear lightly with his fingers and then returning the hand, the gold coin once again in the palm, "it isn't here, either, correct?" This coin, too, went into his pouch with the click of metal on metal.

  "Yes, yes, yes, but what of it?" Pirojil was unimpressed. "So you can do magic, and hide and reveal a coin. I've seen you do better illusions, but – "

  "But the illusion is the point. It's not the hand that you think holds the coin that you should be worrying about," he said, reaching his hand once again past Pirojil's ear. Again, he touched his fingers against the side of Pirojil's head. "The one thing you can be sure of is that whatever you're being shown isn't being shown for your benefit, but for somebody else's." He withdrew the hand, and this time it was holding a small, pointed knife.

  Erenor smiled as he considered the edge of the knife as it gleamed in the bright sunlight. "And while you are trying to spot the coin, an enemy has just slit your throat. Perhaps it wasn't so clever of you to keep your mind fixed on where the coin was, eh?"

  Kethol smiled. "He has you there, I think."

  Pirojil grunted. "I don't see the point."

  "Well, then," Erenor said, reaching out his other hand and producing another knife. This one was –

  Pirojil's hand went to his belt sheath of its own volition, and found it empty.

  Erenor's superior smile was maddening. "So you see, the real game was for me to take your belt knife from you," he said, offering the knife, properly hilt-first, to Pirojil, who accepted it with bad grace and clumsily re-sheathed it, not taking his eyes from Erenor's hands for a moment.

  He reached out and produced yet another knife, this time apparently from Pirojil's left ear. "Let us agree, shall we, that I could not possibly beat you in a swordfight or a knife fight, but – "

  "You'd best be sure of that."

  “– But I didn't have to. I've just had three easy chances to open your veins to daylight. Even somebody as clumsy as I could have slipped the blade through your neck," he said, and flipped the three knives end-over-end into the air, adding a third in an impromptu juggling exhibition, giving the lie to his claim that he was clumsy. He threw first one, then a second, and then the third knife high into the air, and by the time he caught the last knife, the other two were gone – Pirojil had been watching the third and didn't see where Erenor had put them.

  Erenor held the remaining knife between his thumbs and forefingers. "Now, would you care to bet me that I can't make this disappear while you watch?"

  "Bet what?"

  Erenor pretended to consider the matter. "Oh, perhaps, one of my spell books? The minor dominatives one would be quite handy, and – "

  Kethol held up a hand. "You can have another one of your spell books." He looked over at Pirojil. "Well, we're not going to keep them forever, and he's made his point."

  Pirojil shook his head. There was something seriously wrong here. It wasn't just coins and knives that were appearing and disappearing right in front of his eyes; it was their roles. He and Kethol were supposed to be in charge, not Erenor. And most of the time, that meant that Pirojil was in charge.

  To make it worse, Kethol apparently understood what Erenor was getting at, and Pirojil's mind felt all fuzzy, as though he was a dullard who couldn't understand what was right in front of his face.

  Pirojil had too much pride to pretend otherwise. "I don't understand what you're getting at," he said.

  "The point is, friend Pirojil," Erenor said, "that what information you're given can determine what you do. If I show you one hand, you look there, and not to the other. If you're watching knives tumbling through the air, you're not watching me sheathing the one in my hand."

  "And if we tell the baron that there's evidence of somebody – the assassins – having been here, he'll go after them." Pirojil frowned. "Or even if he listens to reason – as much as Cullinanes ever listen to reason, which isn't a lot – he'll send us after them, when he should be in Biemestren, and we should be at his side." It wouldn't be the attack on himself that would anger Jason Cullinane so much – but an attack on his mother, and his Uncle Ahira?

  Cullinanes acted like they, themselves, were invulnerable, not like people they cared for were.

  It took maturity to do the right thing when your fire was up, and even then ...

  He shook his head. It wasn't wrong to be angry, but it was wrong to thoughtlessly act out on that anger, and in his dreams, the screams of people in a burning house would remind him of that until the day he died.

  Erenor's smile seemed warm and genuine as he spread his hands wide. "You see? Even I can be wrong – I thought you a slack-wit who wouldn't take the point of my little demonstration."

  The flapping of his huge leathery wings sent a covey of grouse flapping noisily, explosively, into the air – Pirojil had been wrong; something was hiding in the brambles – as the dragon came to a bouncy landing on the road. Kethol and Erenor quickly scrambled up his scaly side, Pirojil behind them.

  He slipped on the fourth rung of the rope ladder, and would have slammed his crotch down on the previous rung if Jason Cullinane hadn't grabbed his hand.

  Which would have been not only painful, but embarrassing.

  "There's no reason to hurry," Jason Cullinane said, as he lifted Pirojil up. Pirojil tried to rely as little as he could on the baron's grip to bring him up the rest of the way. It wasn't that the grip was weak – in fact, the younger man's hand was awfully strong for one so smooth – but there was something . . . inappropriate about the likes of Pirojil relying on a noble. It was supposed to be the other way around.

  "After all," the baron went on, "you wouldn't have signaled for a landing if there was some problem."

  Toryn smirked. "It's one thing to rely on loyalty, and another to rely on competence."

  Jason Cullinane eyed him coldly. "I'll rely on both, thank you for the concern." He clapped a hand to Pirojil's shoulder. "Ignore him. Please."

  The dragon settled down on all fours and craned its neck to munch on the fundleberries, brambles and all. The thorns didn't seem to affect the dragon a bit.

  "So." Jason Cullinane looked to where Erenor and Kethol had already fastened themselves into their positions on the dragon's back. "I take it you didn't find anything interesting."

  *Speak for yourself, young one,* the dragon's mental voice said over the crunching sounds as the dragon snaked its neck farther into the brambles. *Or, at least, try some of these before you speak quickly. Yum.*

  Pirojil tried very hard not to look at the smug smile on Erenor's face. It would have left him almost unable to prevent himself from using his fist to pound that smile into a bloody red paste. He would, of course, have controlled himself, but it was easier not to look.

  "There's nothing of any interest, my Baron," he said, the words tasting of salt and ashes in his mouth. "I don't see any reason we should look any further. If there were other assassins, they are long gone by now."

  It was all he could do not to vomit in s
elf-disgust. Yes, it was the right thing to do. Loyalty took precedence over honesty. But lying to the baron made him feel cheap – and disloyal.

  The only reason it was tolerable was that Erenor was right: the loyal thing to do was to lie to the baron with a straight face, and if that made Pirojil's stomach want to rebel, then so much the worse for his disloyal guts.

  The dowager empress – the dowager empress, Andrea Cullinane – unbuckled her straps and rose, concern creasing her face.

  There were women who aged poorly, and repulsively, like the other dowager empress, and then there were women like Andrea Cullinane, who wore each year with dignity and beauty. Wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and lips spoke of both laughing and worrying, but her jawline was still firm, and her hair, tied back behind her like a young girl's, held only a trace of silver here and there. "Are you unwell, Pirojil?" she asked, rising gracefully, balancing easily on the dragon's wide back, stepping tentatively toward him, each step a movement in a dance. "You look pale."

  "He looks as ugly as usual," Toryn said. "He – " Toryn stopped himself at Ahira's glare.

  The dowager empress reached out a hand to touch Pirojil's. "Do – are you ill?"

  He pulled back. It wasn't fit that somebody like her should touch somebody like him, someone who couldn't even find a way to tell her, or the baron, the truth. He could do that, of course, but Erenor was right. Loyalty was more than simple obedience, just as friendship was more than blindness to faults. And if Pirojil was sickened by the very thought of lying to the dowager empress and Baron Cullinane, well, then, what of that? His life was expendable, after all. What was a little nausea or guilt?

  "It's nothing, my lady," he said. "It's just been a long couple of days, and I'm a little tired." And that was true enough.

  She frowned. "If you're sure ... ?"

  "Leave it be, Andrea," the dwarf said. "Leave it be."

  Ahira's gaze was steady, and his expression stony. Pirojil hadn't fooled the dwarf for a heartbeat.

  So why hadn't Ahira exposed him? Or at least questioned him?

  *Because he trusts you, you ugly, short-lived fool.* The dragon craned his neck to look back at Pirojil. The huge eyes, as wide as Pirojil's arm was long, stared at him, only the nictating membrane blinking. *As do I, in my way, for that matter.*

  His fingers seemed distant and clumsy as he buckled himself in, then sagged back against the straps as the dragon leaped skyward.

  *Your loyalty, if not your judgment, that is,* the dragon went on. *All three of you let your own personalities influence how to deal with a problem. Kethol likes solutions that are plain, straightforward, and heroic: dash in, sword in hand, and let the bones and drops of blood fall where they may. Erenor likes it complicated and tricky: lie by telling the truth, or get somebody who likes to tell the truth to lie, and multiply complication upon complication until everything is so knotted that only he can untie it.*

  Pirojil didn't want to know what the dragon thought about him. *You? You should know: You like to solve things in ways that punish yourself. If it isn't putting your body between a knife and somebody you protect, hoping to get cut, it's throwing your face in front of a young woman who will recoil in horror, and then flagellating yourself for being ugly. If danger or rejection isn't available, you mope about, as though you are weary of life, until it arrives.*

  Pirojil shook his head. Truth to tell, he was tired, at that.

  Chapter 15

  A Matter of Succession

  Walter Slovotsky found himself almost nodding off as the discussion of financing the railway between New Pittsburgh and Biemestren droned on.

  "... I estimate, roughly, a cost of a thousand marks every league, and that's just for steel and wood. The steel will get cheaper as time goes by, but the wood surely won't." Ranella shuffled through her notes. 'There are four major stands of oak and two minor in Adahan, two and three in Cullinane, and six and five in imperial forests that I've had surveyed, and all are reserved. That should see us through the first year, but we'll need to buy more widely, after."

  What? You going to tell me that oak doesn't grow on trees?

  That wouldn't have gone over well; Other Side humor didn't translate. Either that, or folks around here were a bunch of humorless sourpusses.

  Or both, of course.

  He looked across Thomen at Beralyn Furnael's pinched face. Which president was it who Will Rogers said looked like he had been nursed with a lemon? Twenty-odd years on This Side and he was starting to lose much of his memory of the Other Side. Senility was only months away.

  No, tendays. Not months. They didn't have months here. For months you needed a moon.

  He missed the moon.

  He let the conversation drone on around him. The details of imperial finances were – thankfully – the business of the baron minister and not – even more thankfully – that of the imperial procter.

  "... and I'm frankly tired of spending as much silver and gold – yes, and pig iron, if the truth be known – on the salaries of these so-called engineers," Arondael went on. And on. "For what we're paying just one of them, I could pay two regimental captains."

  "Ah." Young Verahan smiled as he raised a finger in gentle protest. "But could your two regimental captains build a railroad?"

  Arondael threw up his hands. "Perhaps not, but perhaps so. It seems little more than putting down a road made of iron instead of stone, and while I wouldn't make any claims for Holtun, in Bieme we've been building roads – and good roads – for some time now."

  Verahan was starting to snap out a response when Bren Adahan, signaling him to be quiet, leaned forward. "If necessary, most of the financing can come from Adahan. But if that's so, then I don't see why you shouldn't pay what rates I set for iron and steel when it comes from my barony."

  "If you please, slow down a little, for my benefit, if none other, Baron Minister." Tyrnael appeared surprised. "The Crown sets the price."

  "Of the iron, and of the steel," Bren Adahan nodded. "But of transporting it? It's not just a matter of what we have to sell, but where it is. When the line is finished, I'll be able to put as many sheep, as many cows, as many swine, as much flax, and as much steel as we can sell right here, in Biemestren, within days of bringing it to market." He shrugged. "But if the building of the lines is paid for by me, well then, it seems only proper that the profits from the lines will be paid to me."

  Beralyn leaned over and whispered something in Thomen's ear. Probably something derogatory about Walter Slovotsky and/or the Cullinanes, although she was probably, as usual, giving Bren Adahan a pass. Their families were hereditary enemies, but by her husband's time, that had become less personal than official – Zherr Furnael and Vertum Adahan had been, in their way, friends.

  Thomen nodded. "I think that would be only fair, but the railroad lines are not going to be either paid for, or built by – or protected by! – Barony Adahan alone. The question I've put to Parliament is as to how the costs will be divided, not whether." He steepled his fingers in front of his face. "I was a great admirer of the Old Emperor. I served him, loyally and faithfully and happily, as baron, and as a judge.

  "But I've never thought that loyalty should make me blind to his faults, and one of his faults, as emperor, was to make too many decisions out of improvisation, rather than principle. It's been my wish to be – no: I'm speaking not as the senior baron, but as emperor, so ... it has been our wish to be more consistent than our predecessor was.

  "It's our intention to use Parliament and our office to set policy, to establish principle and law, so that all may know what to expect, from the peasant who works his fields with dirt between his toes, to – " his gesture encompassed the room “– those here, and to our neighboring countries, as well. Unpredictability certainly has its place, but we prefer to hire unpredictability," he said, with a smile at Walter, "rather than exercise it ourself."

  Tyrnael tapped his aide on the arm, and the slim young man next to him left the room quickly.
>
  Walter Slovotsky wasn't sure why, but he didn't like that at all.

  "If I may." Tyrnael leaned forward, his eyes not leaving the emperor's. "Your point, my Emperor, is most well-taken," he said. "It's one that's been of concern to me for many years, particularly during the reign of the Old Emperor – who was my friend, and whom I greatly respected."

  Walter Slovotsky didn't recollect hearing about a whole lot of warmth between the two, but he hadn't around for much of it, so perhaps his skepticism was unwarranted.

  In a fucking pig's fucking eye.

  Tyrnael stood, leaning on the table in front of him with both hands. "I'm ... worried about some of the discussion we've had here today," he said. "The absence of Baron Cullinane has been noted, but yet no one has advocated taking away his title, his lands, his treasure, or his home because of it." He nodded judiciously, agreeing with himself. "That is entirely as it should be. Should it not? Or shall we sit and discuss who shall take on Barony Cullinane, as well?"

  "Of course not." Niphael grunted. "That seems obvious; I'm sure the baron has some less than obvious point he wishes to make."

  Tyrnael walked over to where General Treseen sat, and put a hand on the general's shoulder. "Indeed. But – with permission of the emperor and this Parliament – let me make it in my own way. I only ask for a few moments' indulgence." He patted Treseen's shoulder. "We do not believe that guilt flows from person to person, do we?

  "Oh," he went on, making it clear that the question was entirely rhetorical, "it can, of course, in whispered conspiracies, in dark corners, where promises and gold can be exchanged.

  "But not simply by association or by blood." Again, he patted Treseen's shoulder. "The good general, here, was governor of Keranahan while the Baroness Elanee not only thought treason, but plotted it. He saw her almost daily – yet nobody here has suggested, and nobody should suggest, that he is a disloyal governor." He removed his hand from Treseen's shoulder and returned to his seat. "That is as it should be." He looked from face to face. "There are those – I have heard them – who speak of Governor Treseen with less than the respect he is due, and while I can disagree, surely they have as much right to their opinions as I do to mine.