There was only one problem with it.
"No." Lady Doria stepped in front of him. "That's not a suggestion, Pirojil. Step aside, and let my friend Derinald help me inside. Now."
Pirojil's ears burned red as Derinald escorted her inside the keep, but Durine just shrugged, and high above came a deep laugh from Kethol.
Doria sat in front of the fireplace, a cup of hot tea at her elbow, the orders Beralyn wanted her to sign on the writing desk next to her.
It would be possible to ignore Beralyn perhaps, she decided, particularly now. One orc, even one rogue one, without companions or weapons, probably presaged the appearance of others. And while Derinald and his men had been able to track it, it had been her three who had brought it down, and there was a good argument for keeping them around. She could explain that to the emperor, if she had to, and she probably would have to.
"May I interrupt?" Derinald stood in the doorway. His hair was wet from the bath, and his clothes were fresh and clean, the crease on his trousers razor-sharp, his loose shirt white as an egg.
She nodded. "Of course." She gestured to a chair on the other side of the fireplace.
"Hederen's resting comfortably," he said, sinking comfortably into the chair. "He'll have a few scars to brag of, but he'll keep the eye, most likely - those Spidersect healing draughts were none too potent in the first place, and they'd probably been sitting in my bag too long."
"There was a time ..." Doria shook her head. There was a time when she could have put out her hands and let the healing flow into him, a current of power and magic warming her even while it drained her. But that time was gone, and most of her powers along with it. She had defied the Mother, and had been excommunicated from the Hand, and while she had often regretted the fact of it, that was done. "I'm glad he didn't get hurt worse."
Derinald's fingers fluttered. "Yes. It could have been much worse. Those three, they're quite good at what they do, aren't they?" he asked. "Their horses spooked just as badly as the rest of ours did, and every bit as quickly. But the three of them were out of their saddles at the first warning."
"They were, at that." She smiled. "Yes, there's a reason why they've survived when others haven't, and it's not just luck. Nor is it just loyalty."
"Yes. But I'm still surprised that they've survived this one. One would think that they really wanted to spit themselves on my men's spears."
Was he really that stupid? No. He couldn't be. Anybody with half a brain could see that Kethol was a heroic suicide, looking for a place to happen, and Durine and Pirojil weren't much better. Dying didn't scare any of the three of them. What was important was that they preserve themselves until they found the right place to die.
She shook her head. "No. It's important to them that they serve the Old Emperor, and his death only made that more complicated for them, and they're three men who do not dote on complexity."
"Which is why you're not going to order them to look into things in Keranahan, correct?" He shook his head. "I think that unwise, but..."
"No," she said. "I am."
"Eh?"
"I said I am sending them. I'll sign the orders tonight, and they'll leave in the morning."
"I see." He smiled knowingly, smugly. Stupidly.
She smiled back, not meaning it for a moment.
Men were men, no matter what their profession. A soldier, a sailor, a bookkeeper, a farmer, a mechanic: most - all? - of them thought themselves magicians who could cast a spell over any woman with the magic wand that sprouted from between their legs.
But last night had been pleasure, and today was business.
Chasing the orc had reminded her of something that she would have liked to forget, or at least to ignore: Barony Cullinane was, like all the others, dependent on the empire. During the Holtun-Bieme war that had created the empire, the barony had had no more chance of holding out alone against the Holtish forces than any other, and the Holts had spent much of the war simply slicing off barony-sized chunks of Bieme, selling peasants off to the Slavers Guild to finance their war, and were in the process of cutting up Barony Cullinane - then Barony Furnael - when Karl and his people had taken a hand.
Peace hadn't changed things, not permanently. There were bordering countries to worry about, and with the flush of magical things from Faerie over the past few years, it was entirely possible that the barony would need much help from beyond the borders.
Pirojil had only illustrated the problem with his manufactured confrontation with Derinald. In a conflict between the barony and the empire, the empire's needs had to be considered, even if at the moment the barony could prevail.
Yes, Pirojil and the other two could have killed the small troop of imperials, and perhaps the crime could have been covered up, or more likely swept under the carpet... but what good would that have done?
It was the classic individualist dilemma, on a baronial scale instead of a personal one.
As long as things went well, as long as the rest of the universe cooperated, it was possible to go it alone and make it work.
But you couldn't go it alone, not always. The world was not a gentle place. A person needed a family, a community, a nation, perhaps. And there had to be a balance between what you gave and what you took.
Yes, Kethol, Pirojil, and Durine had handled that one orc by themselves, and they could have taken on more.
But what if it had been a dozen? Doria might well have needed Derinald and his scouts to track down the orc before it did a lot more damage, and while Durine and Kethol and Pirojil had been the ones who put it down, it could just as easily have been Derinald's troopers.
And what about next time?
One rogue orc wasn't all that important, not by itself.
Derinald being a trifle overfamiliar was nothing; she could have handled that with a glare or a gesture or a word.
But both the orc and Derinald's overreaching could serve as a reminder that the balance was always there, was always precarious, and that whatever Doria's feelings were about that dried-up bitch Beralyn Furnael, she represented, in a very real if not a formally legal sense, the empire that kept the scales even and unshaking, that would provide help and would demand service, as well.
And if three soldiers would have to be risked to keep that balance, even if the three of them had just saved Doria's life, well, they were expendable. Even if they had just shown themselves willing to die to prevent a slight-that-was-barely-a-slight.
Even though they were more loyal than a good dog, they were expendable. And it was her job to expend them, if necessary.
She was vaguely disgusted with herself as she reached for her pen.
But she dipped it in the inkwell anyway.
Chapter 4
A Night in Riverforks
The wizard had been drinking for hours, Pirojil decided. Most of them looked half-drunk most of the time, but this one's eyes were barely able to focus as he raised a finger to signal for more of the sour beer that already had Pirojil's head buzzing.
The Wounded Dog - Pirojil had asked for an explanation of the name of the place, and had promptly forgotten it - wasn't the best of the inns in Riverforks that catered to travelers, and it wasn't the cheapest, but it was the only one that had a private room to let... at least for the likes of the three of them.
They could have gotten off cheaper by taking floor space in the common room at the Bearded Thistle and spent the night sleeping in turns to avoid the predations of some light-fingered thief, but they weren't that eager to save the dowager empress a few marks that they would probably try to cheat her out of anyway, and their room down the hall from the bath wasn't excessively expensive.
Kethol had bolted down a bowl of stew before finding a game of bones in the common room with a bunch of teamsters, and Durine had stalked out into the night, probably looking for thieves rather than a whore. Riverforks, having become a trading center of sorts, was more than big enough to have its own criminal class ... in addition to the nobility, w
hich you had everywhere.
Kethol would probably relieve his newfound friends of their loose coin and head out into the night in search of another game, but Pirojil was content enough to sit over a pitcher of beer while he waited for his turn in the bath. It would be nice to be clean again, at least for a while. After even a few days on the road, it felt like the road had ground its dirt into you beneath the skin, as well as into it.
The innkeeper, rawboned and surprisingly skinny, brought another wooden pitcher of beer over to the table where the wizard sat alone in his stained gray robes, stopping for a moment to chat before he hustled back through the swinging wooden doors to the kitchen.
Over in the corner, a half-dozen or so dwarves bent their heads together over their pitchers - the dwarves shunned simple mugs -in quiet conversation. Pirojil had been raised in a country that had been pretty much free of the Moderate Folk, and they still looked funny to him: as broad as a muscular man, but barely chest-high. The knuckles on the hands that rested on the table looked like walnuts. Broad faces, with heavy jaws covered by thick long beards, and brows even more solid than Pirojil's own. Pirojil could remember slamming in the face of a soldier who had once suggested that Pirojil should go hunt himself up a dwarf sow because she might not find him as ugly as any decent woman would.
Pirojil would have tried to join them in conversation - he spoke fairly good dwarvish, although his accent was too nasal - but that would have drawn attention of a sort that wouldn't be wise. The idea was to keep a low profile here, to get in, find out what this minor matter in Keranahan was really about, and then get out without a fuss.
It would have been nice to know what the dwarves were doing here, though it could have been any of a hundred things, and not just the mining that they were famous for. The Old Emperor himself had hired a company of Endell dwarves to redo the sewer system in Biemestren, for example; and dwarf warriors were awfully handy to have around in a fight.
Pirojil caught the wizard watching him watching the dwarves, so he raised his own mug in a friendly salute, and then looked away, not particularly wanting to get involved in a conversation or draw attention to himself by trying to avoid one.
But the drunken wizard took his movement as an invitation and staggered over to the table, mug in one hand, pitcher in the other, and seated himself in a chair opposite Pirojil. In the flickering of the overhead lanterns, his face was lined and tired, his gray beard forked into two uneven tufts. "A good evening to you," the wizard said, his voice slurred. "Do you drink?"
"I've been known to," Pirojil said, lifting his own mug and taking a measured sip. "I'm called Pirojil."
"Erenor the Magnificent," the wizard said, refilling Pirojil's mug with a surprisingly steady hand. "Formerly of glorious Pandathaway, and now of this ... somewhat less glorious place."
Pirojil could have rolled his eyes. Every third drunken hedge-wizard seemed to claim origin in the Pandathaway Wizards Guild, no doubt having studied under Grandmaster Lucius himself. Pitiful. Predictable, but pitiful. Couldn't one of them bill himself as, say, "the Moderately Competent"?
Pirojil's thumb stroked against the hidden gem of his signet ring. Yes, it was pitiful. As pitiful, perhaps, as a simple soldier reminding himself every now and then that he'd been born noble, as though that made a difference in his present estate.
Did it matter if it was true or not? No. Not for him, and not for this wizard.
So he just nodded. "Interesting place, Pandathaway," he said.
"Ah." Erenor raised an eyebrow. "That it is. You know it well?"
"Not well." Pirojil shook his head. "I was there just once, some years ago." He was tempted to mention, say, the fountain at the end of the Street of Two Dogs, just to see the reaction - the street existed; the fountain didn't - but what point would there be in making the drunken old wizard out a liar?
Particularly if he was, as seemed likely. Tell the ugly truth about a man, and he'd never forgive you. Pirojil had looked at his own reflection in too many mirrors, too many pools of water, too many faces, to think that knowing the truth was always a good thing, and had cut too many men for speaking it to diink that saying the truth was always safe.
"So. Tell me about Riverforks," Pirojil said. "A good place to live, is it?"
Erenor shrugged. "There's worse, and there's better. I spend most of my time doing farming magic these days - helping to get a barren mare with calf, casting preservative spells on granaries, the like. Death spells, of a certainty - but only on rats." He smiled slyly. "But there's always call for love philters among the nobility, and I've quite a hand with those, as well."
"A lot of those, eh?" Pirojil doubted this disreputable wizard had much connection with the nobility, but he could always be wrong, particularly in Holtun. Pirojil didn't have quite the same feel for Holtun that he did for Bieme. The Holtish nobility had always been more stylish and overly formal than the Biemish, and while the Biemish victory in the war that had created the empire had modified that, it hadn't changed it totally.
"Well, yes," the wizard said, producing a small vial stoppered with wax. "Take this one," he said. "Not just your ordinary love potion, mind, one that will make a resistant woman more willing. But sprinkle this over your food and your lady's, and you'll find her eyes wide and loving as she stares into even yours, I mean even as she stares into your eyes."
Pirojil knew what he meant. Even drunk, the old wizard could see a man too ugly to get a woman other than a rented whore, and would be happy to sell a traveler a potion, and if the potion worked, all the better, eh?
It was one thing for inbred nobility to play at games of love and dominance, a love potion seducing an already half-willing girl for a night. It was another thing for somebody like Pirojil to use one.
The kind of love that even an effective love potion brought was cheap and unsatisfying and would turn to hate and disgust the moment the spell wore off, which it would. Pirojil had tried that, only once. Only once that was long ago, only once that was far too recently. Only once that was far too many times.
"Or, if that didn't suit your fancy, a seeming, perhaps," the wizard went on.
"Of course." Pirojil snorted. "A seeming. Thank you, no. I've no use for seemings."
"Ah? And that would be because ... ?"
"Because it's just an illusion, a vapor, dispelled by a touch or a breath or the morning sun. There's no truth to it, no substance, that's why." Even a major seeming was easily dispelled, and a minor seeming would flicker when seen out of the corner of the eye. And neither would make Pirojil any less ugly. That was the way it was. Why? Did it matter? He was ugly.
"Ah. You suffer from the common fallacy. Permit me to persuade you otherwise." The wizard muttered harsh syllables under his breath, barely audible.
Pirojil tried to hear them, tried to remember them, but he couldn't: they vanished on his ears like snowflakes on a warm palm.
But the wizard changed. Stains faded and vanished from his robes, and his crooked back straightened; his beard shrank and receded while it darkened. His wrinkled skin grew smooth and young, and while his eyes remained glazed, they grew brighter and sharper.
"As you can see," he said, his voice still low, but now the more powerful voice of a younger man, not the wheeze of an old one, "there can be substance to a seeming."
Pirojil would have liked to slap the grin from the wizard's face, but attacking a wizard would be a stupid way to get killed. And besides ... "But a seeming is just that," Pirojil said. "It's not real. It's just illusion. One touch, and even if it doesn't all fall apart, it doesn't have any reality to it. It just - "
'Try it," the wizard said, extending a hand. It wasn't the wizened hand that had poured Pirojil's beer moments before; it was a strong, unlined hand, that of a powerful young man.
Pirojil took the hand in his, and the wizard smiled and set his elbow on the table.
"Wrestle arms with me, Pirojil," he said, "and perhaps I can show you that a seeming is, in the proper hands, sometime
s more than just a momentary illusion."
Years of working out with polearm and bow and sword had left Pirojil's arms as strong as a farmer's, and while there certainly were stronger men than he, even a young wizard should be no match for him, and this one man ...
Unless, of course ...
"So," Pirojil said, placing his own elbow on the table and gripping Erenor's hand in his own. "You're ready to cast a spell of weakness on me, eh? Or perhaps one of strength on yourself?"
"No." Erenor grinned wolfishly. "Of course not; I intend nothing of the sort."
Pirojil grimaced. "Of course not."
'Truly, friend Pirojil. Would you not take a wizard's word on that?"
"Do I look like that kind of fool?"
"Well, perhaps not." The wizard shrugged. "One never knows."
"You place a geas on yourself, bind yourself to use no magic, and perhaps I'll believe it. But I'm willing to let you win a spot of arm wrestling, with magic." There was no shame in losing to magic, after all.
"I've a simpler way." Erenor lifted his beer mug with his free hand. "I'll hold a mouthful of beer while we arm wrestle. If I spit it out before the back of your - before the back of one of our hands rests against the table, I'll admit myself full and fairly defeated. I can hardly murmur instigators or dominatives with a full mouth of beer, and while I could barely move my tongue for hegemonies, that would do me no good without the rest, eh?"
Pirojil was suspicious, but he was more curious. "I assume we're doing this just for our own amusement, eh? There's no local custom that the loser of an arm wrestling match serves the winner as a body servant for years, or buys the winner's wares, is there?"
Erenor's smile was a row of sparkling white teeth. "Buying the winner some beer, perhaps, would be but simple good manners. But I ask nothing more of you, my suspicious friend, than simple good manners. Do you care to try, or do you care to dither and delay and try my patience?"
The tavern was quiet, and if Pirojil hadn't been drinking he would probably have already noticed that most eyes were on him and Erenor. The dwarves over in the corner had risen from their benches and moved in close. Wrestling was considered a high art among the Moderate People, and while Pirojil had never heard of them being involved in this simpler sort of contest, their interest was not surprising.
Not Exactly The Three Musketeers Page 6