Wolf's Eyes

by Jane Lindskold

  “That's not a bad idea,” Sapphire reflected. “There's good in Jet, but he's been too influenced by Mother.”

  She brushed her fingers along the snow white mark on her forehead as she said this, a tacit admission to those who knew her history that Jet was not the only one who must overcome Melina Shield's influence.

  “And peace?” Firekeeper said. “Is peace found?”

  “The talks continue,” Sapphire replied, “but in great secrecy. King Tedric has not even called in his counselors.”

  Derian demurred. “That's not quite correct. He calls us together every afternoon and again every evening. However, I agree wholeheartedly with his decision not to take a huge entourage with him to these meetings. Forgive me, noble friends, but I have never heard anything like dukes and duchesses, earls and…”

  Here Derian paused for a moment, for the tide for male and female Great House heirs was pronounced the same, though spelied differendy. Then he shragged and stormed on, “And earles all arguing for positions that—no matter how they are worded—are meant merely to advance their personal causes.”

  Sapphire didn't look offended, neither did Shad. Derian reflected that what he had said was no news at all to scions of Great Houses. How had he ever been so naive as to believe that those noble born were any different from the lowliest farmer or cobbler?

  Derian continued: “And matters become worse the longer we remain here. Queen Gustin's entourage has been fattened by representatives of all her Great Houses. King Tedric al-ready had members of most of his here, but those who felt they were not represented by someone of high enough rank have sent along someone else. The only ones who benefit from this proliferation are the merchants in the twin towns. Hazel Healer said that profits are up so high that even rumors that changes are in the wind bother no one.”

  “Changes,” mused Shad Oyster. “My father has told us to expect such. I fear that no matter how these negotiations are resolved, I will never again stand on the deck of a Bright Bay ship. Father has made the queen his enemy.”

  Given that such rumors had been current for several days now, not even Firekeeper looked greatiy surprised.

  “This feels,” the wolf-woman said somberly, showing a greater understanding of the situation than Derian would have given her credit for, “like the prickle that fills the air before a thunderstorm. We shall either see battle again to make the battle before as nothing or…”

  “What?” Shad asked, as transfixed as if she spoke prophecy.

  “I don't know,” Firekeeper said, wincing as she leaned back against her pillows. “I am only a wolf.”

  XXVIII

  DUKE ALLISTER SEAGLEAM feared that despite his best efforts Bright Bay would soon be at war again. The question was with whom?

  The ministers from Stonehold had arrived several days before with the promised compensation payment. However, doubtless informed by their spies of the tension between Hawk Haven and Bright Bay, they were being remarkably coy about handing the money over and clearing out their army.

  The ministers’ excuses were ever so polite and ever so practical. Stonehold's wounded could not yet be moved. The army was short of horses to pull their wagons. They needed to purchase supplies for the march home since Queen Gustin would not permit them to bring over supplies from Stone-hold.

  Neither Duke Allister nor Queen Gustin was fooled by these excuses. What Stonehold's ministers were really waiting to see was how much longer Hawk Haven would continue to support Bright Bay and, indeed, how much longer could Queen Gustin keep a hold on her increasingly unhappy populace.

  The degree of that unhappiness had been a surprise to the young queen—although perhaps it should not have been. Crown Princess Valora had ascended the throne of Bright Bay eight years before, on die death of her long-lived father, Gustin III. Hers had not been an easy ascension, complicated by events from many years before her birth.

  Duke Allister, seventeen years her senior and the result of much intrigue himself, clearly recalled those events and the history that had seemed to make them inevitable.

  The net of intrigues, likes, and dislikes within the noble families of Bright Bay was no less complicated than that within Hawk Haven. At the time he established his new kingdom, Gustin I had created five Great Houses. From the start, these had relinquished their original family names and assumed new ones: Oyster, Dolphin, Pelican, Seal, and Lobster. The members of the newly created Great Houses had been encouraged to think well of themselves, to design elegant coats of arms, to bmld fine estates.

  This had almost certainly been because Gustin Sailor—unlike Zorana Shield—craved pomp and circumstance. In-deed, at the same time that Gustin I was giving names and tides to his Great Houses, he had renamed his own family, shedding the pedestrian trade name Sailor in favor of the lofty and poetic Seagleam.

  But beneath his flourishes, Gustin I was practical when it came to securing his ambitions for his young family. Before the end of the Civil War, his wife Gayl Minter—later Queen Gayl—had borne him two children. The eldest, a son named Gustin for his father, was designated crown prince. The second became Princess Merry. A year or so after the war had ended, Princess Lyra was bom, die first child to be born into the Seagleam name.

  Gustin I would have rested content had not Crown Prince Gustin died of pneumonia shortly after his sixteenth birthday. Driven nearly mad with grief, Gustin I confirmed Princess Merry as his heir, but decreed that upon ascending the throne she would be known as Gustin in memory of her brother—and, the cynical said, of himself.

  King Gustin died five years after his son, an embittered man of sixty-five whose many successes could not console him for his one great loss. Crown Princess Merry, aware that the first succession in a monarchy is always the most uncertain, followed her father's commands and changed her name to Gustin, although she had been heard to protest about being forced to bear what before had always been an exclusively male name.

  Although the new monarch was only nineteen, she was a strong-willed woman. Queen Gustin H used her unmarried state to explore the internal politics of her Great Houses and six years after she had taken the throne she married wisely and well to Lord Amery Pelican, a second son of that house. Theirfirstchild, a son, was born less than two years later. Contrary to expectations, the queen named the boy Basil, saying that two Gustins was too many. In this way she unintentionally established the custom that die name Gustin was only to be used by the monarch.

  Queen Gustin II bore two other children, Princess Seastar and Prince Tavis. Then she concentrated her efforts on ruling her kingdom, efforts which included the idealistic but doomed marriage arranged between her son Prince Tavis and King Chalmer of Hawk Haven's daughter Princess Caryl Eagle.

  When he was twenty-six, Crown Prince Basil married Lady Brina Dolphin, a union that was to have serious con-sequences for Bright Bay and for Basil's own unborn heir.

  The marriage was unblessed with children. When this be-came evident some suggested that Crown Prince Basil adopt an heir. Several Great Houses thrust forth candidates—-one of whom was young Allister Seagleam. With an egotism suggestive of his grandfather, Gustin I, Crown Prince Basil re-fused to settle for anything but an heir of his body. His mother frowned upon a divorce—not wishing to anger the Dolphin family, which had already been offended by her marrying of Tavis to Princess Caryl—as it had suggested to them that the chddren of their Brina might not succeed their father to the throne.

  But the Dolphins’ Brina bore no children and when at the age of thirty-six Crown Prince Basil became Gustin III, he set about finding a new wife. He did not do this quickly. Indeed, some said he enjoyed sampling the eligible noble-women quite freely. Others said that his reasons for delaying were more practical—he needed to gather support from the rising nobles of his generation before declaring his divorce.

  Whatever the reason for the delay, seven years after ascending the throng Gustin in took the formal step of divorcing Queen Brina—who reassumed her fanrily name and t
itle. Before the next year ended, King Gustin in had married Lady Viona Seal, a woman of only twenty—twenty-four years his junior.

  Rumor said that the new queen was pregnant with the king's child when marriage oaths were exchanged. Rumor further reported that Queen Viona miscarried shortly thereafter. Whatever the truth, Queen Viona did not succeed in bearing a Uving child until seven full years after her marriage to the king.

  The birth of Crown Princess Valora was publicly celebrated with dances, feasts, and songs. Privately, it was the source of much wrath. The newly made Grand Duchess Seastar—for as the king now had an heir she was displaced as Crown Princess—was wrathful. Although of late Grand Duchess Seastar had ceased to believe she would succeed her brother, she had come to believe that King Gustin IB must adopt one of her sons as his heir.

  Nor was she the only one of King Gustin Ill's nobles to feel that the baby girl was too little too late. Some muttered that Crown Princess Valora was not legitimate—that Gustin Hi's seed, not Lady Brina's womb, had been at fault for their childless marriage and that young Viona had in desperation found another man to father her child.

  Others, unwilling to publicly question Viona's honesty, had questioned the validity of Gustin Hi's divorce. Still others had urged the claim of Duke Allister Seagleam, saying that he had been born to assume the throne and that the long delay in the king's producing an heir had been an omen in his favor.

  All in all, Valora's birth had awakened much spite, but King Gustin III had turned a deaf ear to the murmurings, distracting himself by watching his daughter grow and his people with military ventures against Hawk Haven.

  Crown Princess Valora proved to be a healthy child, astonishingly free of whatever flaws had slain her brothers and sisters while still in the womb. She grew strong, intelligent, willful, and even beautiful. Her doting father was too wise to permit her to become quite spoiled, but from the time she could talk, Valora knew she would be queen. Unlike King Tedric, who could threaten to disown one of his children, Gustin IB had no such option-—even should he desire it. Nor did the crown princess ever believe her father would wish it. He had striven too hard for her birth.

  As Crown Princess Valora grew, the ambitious still dreamed that a way to power would be opened to them—that King Gustin in would die while his daughter was still too young to rale without a regent and they could assume that privileged post. Yet King Gustin III defied them all, remaining sound of mind until a weak heart claimed him at seventy-one. By then Crown Princess Valora had passed her twentieth birthday and was safely beyond any challenge that she was disbarred by age from taking up her crown.

  At the time of her coronation, some raised the old complaint that Valora was not a child of Gustin Hi's body, but this was a weak argument by now. From Gildcrest, Bright Bay had inherited the custom that an adopted child could inherit with the full rights of a naturally born one. Even if Valora was not Gustin Hi's daughter, he had clearly raised her as such and the will of a king served as adoption enough.

  So Crown Princess Valora ascended the throne. In the pattern of her grandmother, Valora continued the tradition of taking the male name Gustin. Like her grandmother, she waited to marry until each of her Great Houses could present its claim—and its best candidate. Two years after becoming queen, Gustin IV married Lord Harwill Lobster, a handsome, but untried man slightly younger than herself. Some said that Harwill's relative youth and lack of achievement had been part of his attraction, for Queen Gustin IV would accept no rivals. Others were kinder and said that there was real affection between the two.

  And yet how quickly our queen forgets, Duke Allister thought, how her very birth was resented, how her own aunt saw her as a squatter on a throne destined for other—better—people. Perhaps she doesn't want to remember, but prefers to believe that these eight years have erased ambitions that had over thirty to grow.

  Whatever the reasons for her way of thinking, the queen's lack of decisiveness in this recent action has not helped her position. Indeed, I think that noble and commoner alike would support me over Gustin the Fourth if their choice was me as king or more war to keep a woman who many think should never have been born or ascended the throne.

  Indeed, once rumors had been spread that Allister had re-quested the queen name him her heir, representatives of several of the Great Houses—starting with Pearl's own brother, Reed, Duke Oyster—had approached Allister, offering him their support if he wished to force the queen to step down. King Tedric had also shown his support for Allister—not publicly where the Stonehold ministers might claim it invalidated agreements made with Queen Gustin IV, but in a private meeting with Queen Gustin IV.

  The queen had not been pleased, but no one was certain what shape that displeasure would take. Would she force a war that might lead to her kingdom's destruction or would she step down?

  Duke Allister didn't know, but he suspected that the closed meeting which had been called for this very morning at the Toll House would resolve the question.

  THE MEETING ROOM WAS CROWDED, for the Toll House had not been designed to accommodate such events. However, the international nature of the invitation list demanded that the conference be held on something resembling neutral ground.

  Both Bright Bay and Hawk Haven were represented not only by their monarchs but by a single representative for each of their Great Houses. Duke Allister Seagleam, although technically not a representative of any Great House, was also present. Whether his Bright Bay title, his relationship to King Tedric, or his recent victory gave him the right was moot—not even Queen Gustin IV at her most autocratic would have dared exclude him.4

  In addition to these fourteen people, there were body-guards for the monarchs—a matter, most hoped, of etiquette rather than of necessity. There were a handftd of secretaries and clerks to take notes or to supply documents as needed.

  The crowding of not quite two dozen people made the stone-walled room close and heightened the air of tension. Duke Allister Seagleam, seated beside his brother-in-law, Reed Oyster, tried hard to look impassive though his heart was beating at afranticrate.

  King Tedric, as befitted his years, made the opening statement.

  “We have gathered here,” the king said, “to resolve certain matters that have arisen out of Stonehold's attack on Bright Bay. My kingdom came to Bright Bay's aid when she was attacked by her supposed allies. Although Bright Bay has settled with Stonehold, she has not fully settled with me. Until this is done, I do not believe matters with Stonehold truly have been resolved.”

  Queen Gustin IV, her red-gold hair cascading loose over her shoulders from beneath her crown, looked pale and stem as she stood to make her reply. As had King Tedric, she addressed her remarks to the gathered nobles rather than to her fellow monarch.

  “Bright Bay has offered Hawk Haven a half share of the monies to be received from Stonehold as compensation for her assistance in defending our lands. We believe this fair and even generous for although both of our armies fought, Bright Bay's lands alone suffered damage. We have taken more than half of the injury, yet we are prepared to give over a fair half of the compensation in thanks to our recent ally.”

  Whereas King Tedric's speech had been met with neutral silence, when Queen Gustin stopped speaking low, angry muttering could be heard—mostly from where the Hawk Haven delegates were seated.

  No wonder, Allister thought. Their people died in her defense and yet she belittles their sacrifice. She doesn't even repeat the thanks she offered publicly and grudgingly upon her arrival after the bloodshed had ended.

  He noticed, however, that not all the Bright Bay delegates were neutral. Arsen, Duke Dolphin, no great friend of the queen and enough years her senior that he felt secure speaking out, stood to be recognized. Gustin did so with a formal nod of her head.

  “I wish to call to Your Majesty's attention,” Duke Dolphin stated with equal formality, “that according to the heralds’ counts more of Hawk Haven's soldiers died upon the field than did our own. Tme, t
he number was close, but their valor in giving up their lives for the security of your kingdom deserves more than mere monetary reward.”

  Duke Dolphin's sly but certain emphasis of the phrases “their valor” and “your kingdom” served as a pointed reminder that Queen Valora had not been present to defend her lands. The queen's eyes narrowed, but her color did not rise.

  “We thank Duke Dolphin,” she said, “for his reminder. We had not forgotten this fact, but the matter remains that we had not asked for Hawk Haven's aid. We feel she should accept what reward we have to give, not barter likefishsellers in the marketplace.”

  This time the angry exclamations were more general and less restrained. King Tedric, however, merely raised to his hand for silence and said:

  “Indeed, Hawk Haven was not invited initially, but after the Battle of the Banks, Duke Allister did thank us and formally request our continued assistance. It is my understanding that, although Your Majesty was too busy to cbme and assess the situation for yourself, you did feel comfortable designating Duke Allister your representative, even to the point of urging your officers to support him.”

  “I did,” Queen Gustin said stiffly. She might have said more, but King Tedric continued with a smoothness that made his overriding her not even seem mde.

  “We came to Bright Bay's aid,” Tedric said, “without any formal contract, nor did we come as mercenaries. We came because I wished to support those who shared a heritage with my people against a foreign aggressor. Moreover, Duke Al-lister Seagleam is my own sister's son. I could not face my ancestors in good conscience if I refused him aid.”

  “Yet,” Queen Gustin said bitterly, “you have not worried about your ancestors’ reaction to the many battles you have fought against my people in the past.”

  “Those,” King Tedric said, “were family squabbles such as the ancestors themselves have fought. No doubt you planned to instigate a few yourself, perhaps once this old king was gone and a monarch less certain sat upon the Eagle Throne.”