“Gold-washed, or silver-washed?” the elder of the two negotiators asked. “With these lovely ladies, I would personally recommend gold-washed armor—it will set their—”
“Actually—” Gina said, with a note of apology in her voice, “neither. We want it to look like this, more or less—”
And with that, she laid out a set of shabby armor.
A mail-coat that was tarnished and even rusted in places, with ragged edges to the hems, as if the armorer had gotten tired of weaving in links and had just One Good Knight
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given up. A helmet dinged and dented. Bracers and greaves that had clearly seen better days.
The four Dwarves stared. The two youngest went absolutely round-eyed. The Armor Master’s guard made as if to draw his ax.
But it was the Armor Master herself whose reaction was the most unexpected.
She rose out of her seat, bristling, outrage in every line of her. “Impossible!” she shouted. “Out of the question! We are masters of the craft! What do you take us for?”
Adam looked nonplussed and diffident, but Gina simply raised an eyebrow.
“I beg your pardon,” she said politely. “I was under the impression that you were masters of the craft. I’m sorry you can’t manage to give us the sort of armor we need. Have you any recommendations on who could?”
All four Dwarves stopped. Just stopped. No movement, hardly any breathing, nothing to show that they were even alive at that moment.
The Armor Master gave Gina a look that could have blistered paint, but asked, with icy politeness,
“This is not what Dwarven armor should look like.”
“But it is what the armor of a Ragged Company should look like,” Gina replied, just as politely. “We are not only needing the best possible protection, we need to invoke the aid of a powerful Traditional path.”
There was a long silence. A very long silence. And then, “Ah. I see,” said the Armor Master. She sat 314
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down again, then leaned over and pondered the pathetic armor laid out in front of her.
“This is quite a challenge,” Gina said casually.
“Something that would take a great deal of finesse.
Every suit must be slightly different. Suits that all had the same apparent flaws would be recognized immediately for a ruse. And it is going to be an even greater challenge to create those apparent flaws without weakening the armor. Anyone can make beautiful armor. It will take a true master to make these.”
The Armor Master stroked her chin. “True, true,”
she muttered. “A challenge. Quite a challenge.”
“We wouldn’t ask just anyone,” Adam said helpfully.
“Hmm.” The Dwarf ignored him. Finally she nodded brusquely. “We can do this.”
“I rather thought you could,” chuckled Gina.
“Shall we conclude our negotiations, then?”
The Dwarves departed with their measurements, their instructions and their fees. Andie divested herself of circlet, necklet, belt, bracelets and rings with a sigh of relief, turning them all over to Peri to be put back in the hoard. “That was cleverly handled,” she said to Gina in a voice full of admiration. “Very clever. I don’t think I would have thought of that appeal to their vanity.”
“Oh, you would have, and I’ve had the advantage of dealing with a Dwarf or two before.”
“Still. I’m glad I didn’t have to.”
Gina just grinned. So did Adam. “I will admit,”
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the dragon said playfully, “that I was seriously wondering about your sanity there for a moment.”
“Only a moment? I’m the leader of this herd of cats,” she responded. “I doubt my sanity every day.”
Andie went back to her room to change, carefully folding up the sacrificial gown and putting it away.
They might need it again another day. Actually, they probably would need it again another day.
Nevertheless, it was not a role nor an image Andie was particularly comfortable with. Too much of a figurehead. Too much like the role that she thought her mother might be playing.
In the past few days she had been wavering back and forth between certainty that her mother was the puppet in the hands of Solon and certainty that her mother was equally guilty. And when she actually thought about it, she had to admit to herself that when she was certain that it was the former, it was because that was what she wanted to believe—and when it was the latter, it was because that was what logic told her.
But there was more than enough to think about and more than enough to do without brooding on something she couldn’t change and something that would not affect her anyway.
While the other girls learned the sword, she was learning the sling, and evidently, The Tradition strongly approved of her taking up this ancient Acadian shepherd’s weapon, because she could put a lead bullet through the eye-slit of one of those old helms at sixty paces.
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She and Peri were also busily engaged in a search of history books as well as those one might lump under the category of “lore” for more ways of manipulating The Tradition to their own ends. So far the prospects for both a peasant army and an all-female army looked quite good. Granted, there had never actually been an all-female army before, but there had been a Unicorn army, a wing of a full dozen dragons, innumerable instances of Gryphons, Hippogriffs, and other creatures forming something like an army—and doing well, too.
Speaking of which… “Have you spoken to the Unicorns yet?” she asked Peri.
He dropped his head a foot. “No,” he replied.
“Actually—no, I haven’t.”
She sighed. “You know that someone is going to have to. And you know that they are too busy serving up adoration to pay much attention to anything I tell them.”
His head dropped another foot. “I know,” he said glumly. “But…but I hate making them unhappy!”
“If you can tell me how we could possibly bring Unicorns into the Palace, I would like to hear this plan,” she replied. “Honestly, I would very much like to add them to the invading force. But I can’t see any way of getting them to the Palace, much less through the Palace.”
“But they look so dejected when you tell them they can’t do something!” he said. “It’s a heart-break for them!”
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She considered the options. “Well, how about this. Tell them they can join our forces but only if they can get to the Palace on their own.”
He perked up. “That is an excellent solution. I doubt very much that any of them will even think about it, much less plan it. Their attention span is usually dependent on whether or not a butterfly is passing. I will go talk to them.”
She smiled warmly at him. “Thank you. I hate disappointing them, too.”
But not too much.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Solon sprawled in his favorite chair, stared at the flame of the lamp on the table in front of him and brooded. The fox had vanished. Had not returned at all and there was no sign that it ever would. Solon was furious. He had tried tracking the beast, but for some reason the geas it was under had been negated.
How that could happen, he could not imagine.
Unless…
The fox was in the Wyrding Lands and any number of things could have happened to it. It could have been caught and eaten. It could have attracted the attention of a Magician of some kind, witch or hedge-wizard, and the geas could have been broken in that way. A witch or a hedge-wizard should not have been able to do so, but it was the Wyrding One Good Knight
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Lands and the Wyrding Others had powers inherent to their nature that were not altogether predictable.
Likeliest, though, was that the foul thing had gotten itself eaten. It would be ironic in the extreme if it had been eaten by his dragon.
Which might be exactly what had happened. If the dragon had sensed the fox carrying around that scale he’d given it— The more he thought about it, the likelier that scenario seemed.
At least he knew that the dragon was still alive.
The charm remained warm. It had shown up precisely when it should have done to take the next two sacrifices, so there was no need to worry yet.
He had sent some nonspecific curses aimed at Andromeda, but they had neither rebounded nor struck home. They probably were too nonspecific.
They had probably faded as such things did when they did not find a target.
But the Queen was demanding an answer. And he did not have one to give her.
Damn fox! Why could it not have—
Then he smiled. The Queen was no Magician, and he was the only decent Magician she knew. He could tell her whatever he chose, and she would never know one way or another. He rose, smoothed down his robes and moved into his bedroom.
It was an austere place, except for the not-too-obvious comforts of silken sheets and luxurious goose-down mattress and pillows. She never came here; he always came to her, like a supplicant. That 320
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was how she liked things, but so did he. He did not want her here. She would be an intruder, impinging on his privacy. She would want to change the stark, white walls with lush murals, want to pile the bed high with pillows, want layers of gauzy drapes instead of the heavy damask, and flowers, flowers everywhere. He wanted only the occasional scent of bitter incense, aloes and myrrh. No flowers. No sweetness. Not even much sensuality, actually.
Nothing overt.
She was everything overt, and becoming more so as she grew older. He craved a simpler style.
Well, perhaps he would not need to put up with her for much longer. For now, though, she was expecting him and it didn’t do to keep her waiting.
He thumbed the hidden catch on the headboard of the bed, and the entire section of wall, headboard and all, moved slightly outward with a click, showing the outline of the hidden door-panel. He shoved on the bed, which slid sideways on hidden wheels, taking the headboard and the wall with it. After slipping into the passageway he tugged on the handle built into the panel on that side. Bed, headboard and wall moved back in place, and he pulled them shut.
The passage was black, stuffy and narrow, but he didn’t need a light. It ended in only one place: the Queen’s bedroom. Who had built it? Why? It had to have been installed when the Palace itself was built, and probably for the oldest of reasons, for the same (almost) reason he used it—to visit a lover.
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Or perhaps not. It might have been for escape…
He felt his way along the passageway until his hands encountered the blank wall of the end; the latch and the handle were at waist height. He trig-gered the latch release and pushed a little, then tugged sideways. One good thing about Cassiopeia’s penchant for draperies and arras everywhere was that they hid her side of the secret passage, which was not built into the headboard of a bed. He squeezed through the gap, leaving it open as always.
If he had to leave in a hurry because of an emergency or the unexpected arrival of a servant…
She was alone, lounging luxuriously on a pile of cushions. He surveyed her with a false and foolish smile on his face. But behind his smile of infatuation he surveyed her coldly.
Aging. Definitely aging—hints of a wrinkle there, a sag here; breasts that were no longer pert; the signs of a little more chin than she should have… Age did not treat women well. It gave men dignity, but it left women with signs of wear.
She looked up. “Have you—?”
“Yes. News, my Queen. They are both disposed of.”
Relief suffused her features. “The dragon?”
He shook his head. “The Wyrding Others. Some sort of monster, possibly a Hydra, possibly a Chimera,” he said, lying fluently. ‘‘My informant could only convey an appalling number of heads and teeth, and an ambush on the road.”
She laughed. And though he was in agreement 322
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with her about the need to eliminate Andromeda, still, there was something sickening about the fact that this woman was laughing about the death of her own daughter.
“One less trouble to worry about. What chance that anyone will ever find remains? I might be forced to act if they do.”
“None,” he lied again. Or—well, this wasn’t a lie; no one would find remains because there were no remains to be found. “The thing came back several times to drag everything to its den. No one will ever find anything.”
Unholy joy. That was certainly the right description for her expression. And as he joined her in her bed, he wondered how long it would be before he could be wed to her, then rid of her.
The Queen watched the hidden door close behind Solon, and wondered how long it would be before she could afford to be rid of him.
The problem was that he was a Magician, and they were always tricky to eliminate. She sank back among her pillows and considered her options.
There was poison, but Wizards were notoriously suspicious of their food and drink and Solon was no exception to that rule. He examined every bite and sip, never ate anything in public that did not derive from a common platter, never ate or drank anything in her presence that did not come from a source they shared. For all she knew he never ate or drank any-
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thing in private that he had not prepared with his own hands. So poison was probably not an option.
There was the possibility of doing it with her own hands. That had the advantage that she could always claim he had tried to take advantage of her, or better still, that she had discovered he was the one who had summoned the dragon. That was better still, because it was the truth, and one misleading truth was better and more effective than a hundred lies. So that was a possibility. The only problem was that so far she had not seen him in a single unguarded moment for as long as she had known him. Not even in bed.
Especially not in bed.
So that left getting someone else to do it.
The best would be to have someone discover he was the summoner of the dragon. Then she could easily condemn him as a traitor and have him put to death.
The problem with that particular scenario was that he would implicate her, as well. And while as the Queen she could have him silenced, one way or another, there would always be doubts. And without him to hold the Border against interfering interlopers like Champions and Godmothers, the next thing she knew there would be someone calling her to account.
So that was probably not viable.
She turned over on her stomach and rested her chin on her arms, thinking. Getting one of her Guard simply to kill him probably would not work, either.
He was much, much too clever to be caught doing anything egregious. No one would believe her if he 324
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was found here and she claimed he had forced his way in, and unless he was killed on the spot—not likely—the same problem arose as with denouncing him. He would talk. Word would spread. The jealous-lover scenario was also not a good choice, tempting though it was. Not unless she could find someone who was both hopelessly naive and much more powerful than he was.
She had to laugh at that idea. Powerful wizards of whatever ilk did not get that way by being naive. She might be able to find someone, but it was a certainty that she would only trade one problem for another.
Irritating. Very irritating.
And none of this had to happen, that was the most irritating part of all. If that tedious husband of hers had just had the grace to die by himself— It wasn’t as if he had been doing anything remotely useful with his life. If he had been a great King and Warrior, he would have conquered the Wyrding Others and gotten back all that valuable property for the Crown.
The timber in there was amazing, so the shipwrights said. Acadia could have exp
orted it, even started shipbuilding trades here. She frowned. It just gave her a headache. All that timber waiting to be ex-ploited and no one touching it. And for what? So the trees could grow to a size too big to support their own weight, fall over and die. What good did that do?
And who knew what else was in those mountains? Gold and silver surely; there were Dwarves in there, and everyone knew that Dwarves went where One Good Knight
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the gold and silver and gems were. All that could have belonged to the Crown, too, if her husband had just done his duty by her and his country. Treaties weren’t worth a feather. But if he had really needed an excuse, there was a ready enough one in that the Treaty Lands were simply packed with dangerous creatures that the so-called “good” ones were protecting. If those Wyrding Others were so “good,” so benign, then why hadn’t they been turning in the
“bad” ones? That alone was sufficient reason to invade the Treaty Lands.
As it was, he had to be gotten out of the way so she would have a freer hand in controlling these people. Without a Warrior-King, she was going to have to hire mercenaries to take over the Treaty Lands, and he simply would have put up too many objections to the kinds of taxes needed to pay for something like that. And it wasn’t as if she’d raised taxes all at once. A little here, a little there—people learned to cope, learned to work a little harder.
Those that couldn’t, well, they had to give way to those that could.
Couldn’t they see how she was going to make them all prosperous? It really was annoying how ignorant they were.
She stared at the flame of her scented oil lamp and pondered the puzzle. It certainly was obvious God put some people in the seats of power. Most people were too stupid even to know what was good for them. It required those who were superior by birth 326
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and by native cleverness to be the shepherds over these sheep.
People like Cassiopeia.
Take the storms she’d had Solon create. If people had simply been law-abiding and hadn’t persisted in trying to evade the port taxes, she wouldn’t have needed to have Solon work nasty weather magic on the coastline. It was too bad about the farmers and herdsmen living there, and the fishermen, but the fishermen were probably all smugglers themselves, and the farmers would be able to relocate to much better situations once she had the Treaty Lands under control.
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