"I'll try and we'll see how we fare."
Whether he tried and succeeded or tried and failed, she would neither praise him for prevailing despite his handicaps nor chastise him, however kindly, for overtaxing his strength. She'd merely assess his progress and discuss his understanding of the relevant aspects of the enchantments.
Charoleia came back into the room looking pleased. "I think they will do very well."
"You think they'll join us?" Aremil hoped she was right.
"I do." She nodded. "We should send Jettin to join Reniack. He'll appreciate the boy's enthusiasm and know how to channel it effectively, and how to curb it when need be."
"And Kerith?" Branca enquired.
"He'll do best in Carluse," Charoleia said with conviction. "He's committed to the common Lescari cause as far as his reasoning goes, but Carluse's fate is still what holds his heart."
Aremil nodded. "So we still need to find someone to join Lady Derenna and someone to join Tathrin, Sorgrad and Gren."
"I think I would prefer to keep contact with Tathrin between ourselves." A crease appeared between Charoleia's perfectly shaped brows. "I'm confident neither Kerith nor Jettin would betray us deliberately, but there's always the chance they'll let something slip by mistake. Halcarion forfend, but if they're ever questioned, we want to be certain there'll be little they can say about anyone else's part in this business. The same goes for Failla and Nath, Lady Derenna and Welgren. Having our efforts in any one dukedom discovered will be bad enough. If the dukes get wind of Captain-General Evord's army, that'll be a whole different roll of the runes."
"I can continue to communicate with Tathrin," Branca said calmly. "It won't be long till Aremil can do the same."
Her confidence heartened him. She never flattered him, after all. He resolutely set aside his doubts in the despairing watches of the night, when he'd feared he'd never manage the enchantment. That was why he'd tried to get out of bed to retrieve the book of ancient lore, convinced that the light of the Greater Moon, riding unchallenged at its full in the cloudless dark, would be bright enough to read by.
"Have you spoken to Tathrin today?" Charoleia might have been asking if Branca had met him on the street rather than wielded enchantment reaching hundreds of leagues.
Branca nodded. "He says they're travelling at a good pace. There's only a small group with Evord, but a good many people have come and gone and Sorgrad's confident they will find a sizeable force mustering at the time and place Evord has appointed."
"When is that?" Aremil asked. "And where?"
"Tathrin didn't say." Branca surprised him with a grin. "He doesn't know. Evord won't tell him, nor Sorgrad."
"They both know the value of silence." Charoleia was unperturbed. "Is Sorgrad confident no word is trickling down to the lowlands?"
"He is," Branca confirmed.
Hearing news at second and third hand was intensely frustrating. Aremil clenched his feeble fingers. The sooner he could contact Tathrin for himself, the better. Then he realised Branca was looking slightly troubled.
"Tathrin says Evord and Sorgrad agree they need a banner, something with a bold blazon."
Charoleia was far from being surprised. "Of course."
"Why 'of course'?" Aremil looked curiously at her.
"They're raising an army," the composed beauty pointed out. "When they go into battle, they'll need a standard for Evord's personal company, so that the rest of the bands can see where he is. The lesser captains will need to send runners to his position or rally to him in case of retreat. They need a blazon that the other companies can add to their own standards. Evord will need to see how his own forces are faring across the battlefields."
Battlefields where men and women would fight and fall injured, some of them dying. Tathrin could so easily be among the wounded or--Poldrion forfend--the dead.
Aremil looked at Branca and saw his own misgivings reflected in her dark eyes.
"Foolish, isn't it?" she said frankly. "We've been talking about raising an army and overthrowing the Lescari dukes, but I've never really thought about the bloodshed."
"We're none of us warriors," Charoleia pointed out, "which is why we are leaving such things to Sorgrad and Evord. We must trust them while we play our part here." She paused. "We don't merely need to devise a standard. We need to see banners sewn and dispatched."
"Without anyone knowing what they're for," Aremil warned.
"Whatever we choose, it had better not be anything that could be confused with the dukes' badges," Branca said after a moment.
Aremil saw what she was thinking. "We don't want anyone to assume that this undertaking is just some feint to put a particular duke on the High King's throne."
"We don't want anything that could be mistaken for some Tormalin prince's insignia, either," Charoleia agreed.
"What manner of badges do they use?" Branca asked uncertainly.
"A great many animals." Aremil searched his recollections. "The swan for the House of Tor Kanselin, the lynx for D'Olbriot."
Branca sighed. "With Carluse's boar's head, Sharlac's stag and Triolle's green grebe, we had better avoid beasts and birds altogether."
"And weapons," Aremil agreed, "given Marlier's swords and Parnilesse's halberd and long sword."
Charoleia was still thinking about Tormalin badges. "D'Alsennin uses the holm oak and Den Dalderin the honeysuckle. Tormalin princes use at least as many trees and flowers as they do birds and animals, so we had best shun all such motifs."
"What does that leave?" Aremil looked at Branca and saw she was as bereft of inspiration as him.
"We need a design that mercenary companies can easily blend with their own."
Charoleia looked for Aremil's agreement but he could only look blankly at her.
"Why so?"
"A mercenary company that's sworn fealty to a duke or a Tormalin prince adopts some element of their paymaster's insignia alongside their own." She raised her brows. "Did you not know that?"
"I left Draximal as a child," he reminded her, "discarded as unfit to lead men into battle. No one explained the intricacies of hiring mercenaries to me."
"Master Reniack will want something that's easily drawn and copied, if he's to include it in his broadsheets and night letters," Branca observed.
Aremil nodded. "A blazon to identify our common purpose could serve more ends than just rallying men on the battlefield."
"So it must symbolise all aspects of our common endeavour." Charoleia frowned.
The faint sound of wheels on the cobbles outside emphasised the silence in the room.
"Perhaps Master Gruit can lend us a helping hand," Charoleia said at length. "He'll need to send the banners along with everything else we will need him to buy to supply Evord's army. We can ask him where we might buy the necessary cloth, and have the pennants made up by seamstresses who can keep their mouths shut."
"We want everyone in Lescar lending a helping hand to our common purpose," Branca said suddenly. "Let's show that on this standard."
Aremil looked at her. "I don't understand."
"Linked hands would show cooperation." Branca crossed her own chapped hands in demonstration.
"Six hands, to show the six dukedoms united?" Aremil mused.
"Hands holding something other than weapons," Branca said with feeling, "to show that we're concerned with common folk's lives, not dukes' and nobles' warfare."
"Ordinary folk from highest to lowest. A broom and a pitchfork for goodwives and farmers, or a sheaf of wheat?" he suggested.
Branca smiled. "A handbell for priests and a quill for scholars?"
"A hand holding a halberd like those the militiamen use would show that these common folk are ready to raise arms in their own defence." A sudden smile lightened Charoleia's expression. "If you'll pardon the jest."
"Does anyone already use a similar blazon?" Aremil couldn't think of any such.
"Some of the lesser Tormalin families use a single hand or arm, and so
me of the mercenaries show gauntlets and the like, but that doesn't signify." Charoleia looked at Branca. "How would you arrange six hands without this badge looking like the leavings on some battle surgeon's floor?" She softened her words with a smile. "Since Gren's not here, I feel I should play the mocker. Believe me, mercenaries are most inventive when it comes to pouring scorn on a rival warband's insignia."
"I'm sure the dukes will be just as eager to diminish our challenge with ridicule," Aremil allowed.
"I'm no artist." Branca shook her head.
"Nor me," Charoleia admitted ruefully. "But I know some talented painters. Shall I see if one of them can make something of these ideas?"
"As long as you can think up some convincing excuse for offering such a curious commission." Aremil was beginning to wonder just how long they could keep all their planning a secret. More and more people were being drawn into this plot, even if they didn't know it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Karn
Ronde Street, in Vanam's Upper Town,
20th of Aft-Summer
The sultry night didn't need blazing torches adding to the stultifying heat. Karn didn't need their yellow glare making it impossible to find concealment closer to the house he was watching.
But the Greater Moon was fading past its last quarter and the Lesser was barely waxing to its half. Poldrion forfend the rich and privileged stub their toes on an uneven cobble.
At least the upper town's alleys were swept clean of filth and vagrants. Karn could wait comfortably enough while watching to see who was coming and going to buy information from or sell it to Lady Alaric.
He was curious. A day or so gathering gossip suggested Lady Alaric was spending most of her time within her own doors. Her visits to Vanam usually saw her spending her evenings at dances and gambling parties or as an honoured guest in one of the upper town's sedate drawing rooms, where incautious scholars would find their tongues loosened by wine and a beautiful woman's flattering attention.
Karn had played that game himself, and on the one occasion he had seen Lady Alaric before, she had been strumming on the vanity of the Tormalin Emperor's master of music with all the skill of a celebrated lutenist. Karn hadn't spoken to her then, passing unnoticed through the throng in a lackey's livery.
When would he get the chance to introduce himself tonight? How many guests was she entertaining? Like most of the other houses along the street, the shutters and casements above the ground floor stood open in a vain attempt to entice a breeze inside. To his intense frustration, he couldn't get close enough to distinguish between the shadows crossing and recrossing her lamp-lit windows. Every shape might be a different man, or some restless individual might simply be pacing back and forth.
He yawned. He was still feeling the effects of his punishing journey here, though steaming himself in a bathhouse on the Ariborne that afternoon had gone a long way to easing his aches. And encountering an amiably corpulent glovemaker there had gone a fair way to replenishing his purse. Such men were usually happy to reward an agreeably anonymous lad with firm, deft hands. Karn always liked to show Master Hamare how little of Triolle's silver he needed to spend.
A clock struck somewhere, four chimes echoing around the granite buildings. Karn shifted. Not long till midnight. The summer darkness this far north of Triolle was short enough before it was divided into the night's ten hours. Lady Alaric's party would soon be ending. Scholars went early to their solitary beds and those who might wish for more frivolity showed due consideration for the university's customs. The university's mentors were generally their landlords, after all.
He pursed his lips. Who was renting this discreetly prestigious address to Lady Alaric?
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder "I'll have your name and business, lad."
"I have a message but I don't want to interrupt her ladyship." Ducking his head, he made sure his voice broke nervously upwards.
"Let's have a look at you." The Watchman shoved him towards the golden light of the closest torch. Despite the heat, the broad-shouldered man wore a voluminous cloak.
Karn noted the line of a weapon hidden beneath it to supplement his official stave. A club or a sword? No matter. It didn't suit his purpose to get into a fight tonight.
"My name is Karn Mellar." He folded his hands, hunching his shoulders as he met the Watchman's gaze, meek but not afraid. Fear would imply he knew he had no right to be here.
"Who's your message for?"
Karn knew the Watchman was taking in his clean-shaven face, his expensively tailored doublet and the sheen on his boots. Upper-town Watchmen were no fools. They were the ones with the experience and influence that won them the right to walk quieter streets through the darkness. Stupid recruits didn't last the course. The attractions of petty power and a bell to ring over erstwhile friends and rivals lost their lustre after the fourth or fifth taste of having the cockiness kicked out of them in some tavern courtyard.
"My Lady Alaric Verlayenne." Karn assessed the Watchman's interest. No, the man's face betrayed no hint of unsavoury lusts driving him to walk the darkened streets instead of sitting by his own fireside with a wife and child.
"Lady Alaric? Let me take you to her door." The firm hand behind his elbow brooked no argument.
Karn offered none. Lady Alaric was doubtless buying the allegiance of the local Watchmen, which was why the man was prowling the back alleys instead of keeping to the middle of the streets on his prescribed route.
The Watchman rapped smartly on Lady Alaric's polished door with the brass-bound end of his stave.
Karn heard the scurry of slippered feet on tiles and a maid opened the door to them. No slip of a girl, she was old enough to have been Karn's mother. Had his mother lived.
"Compliments to your mistress." The Watchman tipped his stave to his temple in brief salute. "Lad says he's got a message."
"You can give it to me." The maid held out a smooth hand showing little sign of days spent scrubbing or polishing.
"I beg your pardon, but it's not a letter," Karn said respectfully. "My master told me to speak only to her ladyship."
"Did he, indeed?" The maid looked at him, her expression unreadable though her Relshaz accent was plain. "You had better come in and wait until it suits my lady to see you."
"Thank you." Karn ducked his head. There was something faintly familiar about the woman. What was it?
The Watchman slapped the end of his stave into a leathery palm. "I'll bid you goodnight, then."
"Thank you for your vigilance." The maid favoured him with a pert smile before she beckoned Karn inside with a peremptory gesture.
Lady Alaric would be paying the Watchman well enough to guarantee he wouldn't go far while she had a strange man in her house. He'd come running if her servants shouted an alarm, ready to use whatever weapon he carried under that cloak.
"In here." The maid lit a spill from the candle in the closest mirrored sconce and opened a door across the panelled hall.
"Thank you." Karn surprised her with a cheeky grin.
Her expression didn't change. "If you please."
Karn followed her into the shadowy room.
The maid lit the silver branch of candles waiting on the marble mantelshelf. "Please, refresh yourself while you wait."
She crossed to a rosewood table with spindly legs where a tray of crystal glasses stood between a squat bottle of white brandy and a decanter of plum-coloured liquor.
"Thank you." Karn wouldn't give offence by declining but he wasn't about to cloud his wits, not after so long a day.
The maid smiled at him. "My lady will see you soon."
As she walked to the door, the soft metallic melody of a music box filled the room. As the door closed, Karn went to look at the marquetry casket she'd opened. The brass drum revolved steadily, its pattern of fine bristles plucking at sweetly tuned metal quills. It played a Dalasorian dance tune.
He looked upwards at the plaster ceiling bright with moulded and painted
flowers. How many voices overhead? Men or women? The music box was just loud enough to foil any hope of distinguishing them. If he stopped it playing, he'd have to explain himself, wouldn't he? A neat trick.
There was an upholstered loveseat by the muslin-draped window and a small table flanked by two delicate chairs. The walls were hung with silk embroidered with the same flowers that decorated the hall: rain-roses, sweetflax and copper-sickle. Did Lady Alaric conduct business in here or assignations?
He frowned. He hadn't seen her attended by any maid in Toremal. Why did that servant look familiar?
Doors opened above. Feet sounded on the stairs, mingled with laughter and cheerful farewells. Outside he could hear carriages drawing up with a clatter of hooves. He looked at the window. Here on the lower floor, the shutters were securely closed. Even if he could open one quietly, the candlelight would betray his curiosity.
"Good evening." Lady Alaric entered, one silver-ringed hand smoothing woven plaits confining a cascade of chestnut ringlets.
"Good evening." Karn made his bow.
"Thank you. Your arrival reminded everyone of the late hour." A dimple beside her petal-soft lips made her confiding smile all the more attractive. "It wasn't the most exciting gathering but one must return the hospitality of one's neighbours."
Despite the lateness, the noblewoman was bright-eyed and all the oppressive heat did was tint her perfect cheekbones with a blush of rose. Lavender topaz set in silver filigree ornamented her slender neck, though the clarity of the stones couldn't hope to match her remarkable eyes.
Karn admired the calculated perfection of her appearance. The soft swell of her bosom above her white silk gown's low neckline was demurely covered by a frill of silver lace. More lace trimmed her sleeves in matronly fashion. On the other hand, the tightly fitted bodice drew the eye to her slender waist and the seductive swell of her hips.
Decorous enough not to threaten women, who, Halcarion help them, would inevitably look plain beside this beauty, while any man from the callowest youth onward would find her mature serenity deeply alluring.
Irons in the Fire (Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution) Page 25