"You stand too near the edge," Pirojil said. "You could fall over with just the slightest of shoves."
Kethol turned. "I don't think so. Care to try?"
Pirojil smiled as he shook his head. "No, because I'd either succeed or fail, and I wouldn't want to do either. But you've got to learn to be careful."
"Why?"
"Because a ruler without caution is a like a bowman without arrows. He can strike a pretty pose, but that's all." Erenor cocked his head to one side. "That's just about the silliest thing I've heard you say. How about 'A ruler without caution is like a horse with only three legs'?"
"That's – "
“– or 'A ruler without caution is like woman without nipples'? With clothes on, both look like the real thing, but you'd not want to trust a nursing baby's health to either, and – "
"Erenor, shut up," Kethol said. He was getting tired of the wizard.
Pirojil waved Erenor to silence. It didn't escape Kethol's attention that it was Pirojil that Erenor was listening to and not Kethol.
Pirojil eyed him thoroughly, the concern that creased his ugly face making him look all the uglier. "Me, I'd say no, even if I were offered the chance."
Erenor laughed. "Oh, me, neither. Marry the girl? Inherit a barony? Go from being an ordinary soldier to a rich man in a moment? Oh, I'd not do that, either," he said.
"I can't." Kethol shook his head. "I don't mean that I don't want to – I just can't."
"That, friend Kethol, is where you're wrong," Erenor said. "It would be easy. After all they've gone through together, it will surprise nobody if Lord Forinel and Lady Leria ask Pirojil to leave Cullinane service for theirs." His head cocked to one side. "And, no, an ordinary soldier like me won't be much missed, having gotten killed in the rescuing of Forinel – and that story will grow in the telling, let me assure you. In a dozen tendays or so, if it should happen that an aged wizard appears at your baronial door and asks to take up service with the barony, I think you'll have no difficulty finding a place for him, even if he's only a shadow of his former self, and barely able to do more than a weak seeming." Erenor muttered something under his breath, and in an eyeblink – and only for an eyeblink – he was an old man, bent with age, his long white hair a fringe around the periphery of his gleaming bald pate.
"I'll need my spell books back – all of them, Pirojil – to make a go of that."
Pirojil nodded. "Done. As soon as we get back to Biemestren."
"Do you mind telling me where they are?" Erenor asked. "I would just – "
"Well, yes, I would." Pirojil smiled. "It's not like I'm going to get into the habit of trusting you or anything."
"Excuse me." Kethol hadn't raised his voice, but both of them fell silent. "You're assuming that I don't mean it when I say no."
Pirojil shook his head. "Oh, I do think you mean it. I just think you'll change your mind. It's part of who and what you are – "
"What would you know about that?" Kethol said, instantly regretting it.
“– and what you always will be, under a seeming, or under a change that's so deep it makes you immune to seemings," Pirojil went on.
Kethol's jaw clenched painfully. "And what's that supposed to mean? That I'm such a lackwitted idiot that I can be talked into anything?"
"No, and I don't even mean that you're in love with Lady Leria, and have been since the day we took her away from Baroness Elanee – although there's that, too." Pirojil's eyes locked on his. "Because she's the woman who is going to make you do this. Elanee. Not Erianne, and not Leria. But Elanee, dead in her grave.
"The thing is, the thing I keep coming back to, is this: If you don't go through with this, the bitch wins. We killed her, and she still wins. It will be her seed that takes root in the barony."
He reached into his cloak and produced a mottled green bottle, pulled the wooden stopper out, and took a hefty swig, then wiped rubbery lips with the back of his hand before he passed it on to Erenor.
Maybe that was it. Maybe it was that Pirojil was more than a little drunk.
"That's the part that bothers me," Pirojil said. "What Elanee wanted – when she charmed Forinel into leaving so that Miron would become heir to the barony, when she tried to have Ellegon killed – was to establish her house, to raise Miron, and his sons and theirs.
"It wasn't just for herself that she tried to kill Ellegon – and Durine died in stopping her – it was for her House, for Miron, and for his children, when he has them.
"That's what you won't be able to face: her winning. Death? Shit, Kethol, we all are supposed to die in this soldiering we've taken up. It's just taken you and me a little longer than Durine, and him much longer than most." He put the plug back in the bottle, and pushed it home so hard that the glass neck shattered, splashing him with harsh-smelling whiskey.
He slapped at Erenor's hands, and threw the bottle away, over the side, ignoring the way what was left of the whiskey splashed down his arm.
"No. Leave me alone," Pirojil said. He twisted his fingers together, as though he would rend his own hands apart. "It's Elanee winning that bothers me, and you. That's what you can't stomach. Not dying. We're supposed to die." He shook his head, and his expression was a horror to behold. "Die, yes. But we're not supposed to lose."
Leria joined him out on the veranda. She was lovely in the torchlight. Somebody had done up her hair in one of those complicated knots that left her neck bare, save for a few wisps of stray hair that stroked at it, stirred by the light breeze. She shivered for a moment, although it didn't feel cold to Kethol.
"Well," she said, "I hear tell that you think I should marry the emperor." She folded her arms defensively under her breasts as she leaned back against the balustrade without pushing at it to test its solidity, the way he would have; he had to stop himself from reaching out to grasp her arm.
Kethol swallowed, heavily. He nodded. "Yes, I do."
"I don't recall him asking," she said, quietly. It was hard to read her expression.
"He will. Pirojil says that his mother sees you as a good choice, and – "
"Well, of course she does," Leria said. "I've spent more time and effort courting her than I have courting him. It's taken much more effort – he's far more pleasant company." She leaned her hands against the balcony rail. "He's a good man, Thomen is. Wise, kind, gentle – "
"You don't have to persuade the likes of me of the virtues of the emperor." Thomen Furnael was good enough a man and good enough a ruler that the Old Emperor's son had abdicated in his favor, and that had always been more than ample proof for Kethol that Thomen deserved to be emperor.
"The point," she said, "that you seem to be missing is that it's not him that I've wanted. I don't want to be empress. I've had my heart set on being Baroness Keranahan for some years now, and not by marrying Miron, either."
She looked up into his eyes. "I can't say that I could have been an ordinary soldier's woman, or a woodsman's wife; it's not what I was raised for; it's not what I know. I don't mind getting my fingers dirty, now and then, out in the woods or cooking over an open fire – but I'm used to a hot bath, if not when the day is done, sooner than later."
He didn't know what to believe. This all would be a lie, and while she may have been talented at lying to others, she had never lied to him before; he would have known.
"So in order to become a baroness, you'd go along with this, this craziness? You'd marry an imposter, knowing that if – when this all came out, it would be your neck as well as mine?"
"Yes," she said, smiling. "Just to be a baroness," she continued, her tone and smile giving the lie to her words. "I don't even care if you do it for the empire, or for the barony, or for me, as long as you do it."
That was a lie, too.
And then she was in his arms, holding him as tightly as she could, while he held her gently, for fear of shattering her to a thousand pieces if he used his strength, if he held her as tightly as he wanted to, and he wanted to tell whoever it was that was s
obbing so loud to shut his mouth...
. .. until he realized it was himself.
"As you wish," he said. "Let it be so."
Afterword
An Evening in Biemestren
The guard glared at him out of the comer of his eye as he passed Walter Slovotsky on the parapet, but didn't actually say anything.
You have a nice day, too, Walter thought.
Understandable, really, that Walter would be persona non grata up here. And it was even more understandable that there were two other guards, one between him and each staircase on either side, just so that a third could make twice-hourly reports to the new guard captain on where the imperial proctor was.
His slipping in and out of the castle without permission was professionally embarrassing to the Home Guard, and after Parliament was over, Walter intended to assign himself some proctoring in an outlying barony.
Tyrnael, maybe. It would be interesting to see if anybody there knew about the hiring of assassins. Most likely, of course, Tyrnael would have covered his tracks well enough, but you never knew.
If it even was Tyrnael.
He sighed. No matter which way you turned, you offered the rest of the world your back, and there were always knives out there, seeking it.
Some day, perhaps, one of those knives would find him.
Below, the inner bailey was no longer crowded. The barons were in residence, of course, for Parliament, but much of their various entourages were already on the road home, carrying with them new tax schedules for the village wardens, letters of credit and imperial orders, and probably more than a little gossip.
Two more days.
"Two more days," Jason Cullinane said, from near his left elbow. "Two more days until they make that bastard Miron the baron."
"I hadn't heard you walk up," he said.
"Oh, I'm fairly good at walking silently," Jason said. "I had a good teacher. Mother asked that you and Aiea make no plans for tomorrow evening, other than to stop by her rooms for a private goodbye." He looked out at the night. "It'll be good to be home – I think I'll rush straight back."
Slovotsky smiled. "Oh, if Ellegon shows up in time, I bet he can be persuaded to get you home."
Jason shook his head. "No, I don't think so. I think I'll ride directly home – and maybe have an outrider or two, spotting for me. I'd kind of like to have somebody try to kill me again. I can't turn speculations and guesswork into proof – but maybe some mouths can be persuaded to talk."
Walter Slovotsky shook his head. Only a Cullinane. Only a Cullinane would use himself as the bait in a trap by preference, rather than necessity. Likely the breed was going to extinguish itself more quickly than not.
"Well?" Jason looked up at him. "Do you have some problem with that, Uncle Walter?"
"Nah. Not at all." There was a detachment of Cullinane troops in the capital. A little early for them to be rotated home, what with the Arondaelian replacements just having arrived, but it could be arranged.
Somebody had to watch out for the kid.
Jason's face lit up in a huge smile. "He did it!" he shouted. "They all did it."
It took a moment for Walter Slovotsky to realize what that had to mean. Jason had always been more sensitive to the dragon's mental voice than anybody else, perhaps from having first had contact with Ellegon while Jason was still in the womb.
By then, the sound of leathery wings filled the air.
Ellegon?
*What gave it away?*
Did you –
*Well, yes and no. Can you keep a secret?*
Of course.
*So can I. Better wake up the barons and tell them that – a bit dazed and confused, somewhat battered and bewildered, having suffered greatly in his exertions over the years – Forinel is here.*
Yes. They had found Forinel, and they had brought him home in time.
*Close enough. Sometimes, just sometimes, close enough will have to do.*
High above the castle walls, a long gout of flame lit up the night sky.
END
Not Quite Scaramouche Page 27