by David Weber
Her green eyes glistened, and Leeana opened her mouth to reject any need for her mother to apologize for something over which no one but the gods themselves had any power. But Hanatha shook her head, stopping her before she spoke.
"I ought to have encouraged your Father to seek a divorce and take another wife," she said very softly. "I knew it at the time, too. But I couldn't, Leeana. I wasn't that strong. And even if I had been, I knew in my heart that there was no way I could have convinced him to. And so, whatever you may think, he and I do owe you an apology for the way our own selfish decisions have constrained your life."
"Don't be foolish, Mother!" Leeana said fiercely. "If Father had been able to set you aside so easily, I certainly wouldn't be the person I am now, because I love him. And I wouldn't love a man who could do that. Of course there are things about my life I'd change if I could! I think that must be true of anyone. But I would never, ever have wanted them changed if the price had been to separate you and Father. Never!"
"No wonder I love you so much." Hanatha's tone was light, almost whimsical, but her eyes glowed, and Leeana smiled. They sat for several more moments in silence, and then Hanatha cleared her throat.
"At any rate," she said more briskly, "the reason I was lurking in the hall to intercept you, was to chide you for doing something we both know you love to do and also knew you shouldn't be doing."
"I know that, Mother, but—"
"There are no buts, Leeana," her mother said with stern compassion. "Perhaps there ought to be, but there aren't. You simply cannot do things like taking long, solitary rides. Dressing as you are right now—" she waved one hand at Leeana's leather trousers and worn out smock "— would be bad enough in the eyes of most of your peers, but that much, at least, I'm not prepared to deny you. I want you to begin dressing more as befits your station and your age for normal wear, or when we have guests. But for stable tasks or garden work, or hacking about the countryside, comfortable clothes—if, perhaps, somewhat less worn out than the ones you have on now—are fine with me."
Leeana let out a deep breath of half-relief, but her mother wasn't done, and she continued in that same gently implacable tone.
"But one thing I am going to insist upon, Leeana. And if you can't agree to accept it, then I'm afraid you won't be taking any rides anywhere except under your Father's direct supervision."
Leeana swallowed apprehensively. She could count on the fingers of her hands the number of times her mother had issued such a flat decree of authority.
"You will never again go riding without at least Tarith in attendance," Hanatha told her. "Never, do you understand, Leeana?"
"But, Mother—"
"I said there are no buts this time," her mother interrupted firmly. "I don't intend to be any more unreasonable than I have to be, but I do intend to be obeyed. I've also spoken to Tarith about it." Tarith Shieldarm was Leeana's personal armsman, and had been since she learned to walk. "He understands that I do not expect him to play the role of informant. I need for you to be able to trust him, as you always have, and so I've instructed him that he is not to discuss your comings and goings with me or with your father so long as he's certain none of those comings and goings are without him. That, I hope I need not add, applies only here in Balthar. Here, everyone knows you and we can be relatively confident of your safety with only Tarith to look after you. We cannot be certain of that elsewhere, however, and I will expect Tarith's duty to safeguard you to take precedence over his responsibility to respect your confidences."
Leeana looked at her mother with dismay. She knew Tarith would die to protect her, and that he would respect and protect her privacy and the confidentiality of anything she said to him up to the very limits of his oath of fealty to her father. He was in every sense except blood itself a member of her family, a beloved uncle whose protectiveness might sometimes be exasperating, but whose devotion and rocklike reliability were beyond the very possibility of question. Yet her mother's decision—and Leeana knew an unyielding decision when she heard one from the baroness—meant an end to any true privacy. Worse, it was a gentle, loving declaration that she would no longer be allowed to fool herself, even briefly, into forgetting that she was the heir conveyant of Balthar and the West Riding.
Tears gleamed on her eyelashes, and her mother sighed.
"I'm sorry, Leeana," she said regretfully. "I wish I could let you ride anywhere you wanted, with or without a guard. But I can't, love. Not even here in Balthar, anymore. The situation with your father, and the Council, and this business with Prince Bahzell and his father . . ." She shook her head. "There are too many enemies, Leeana. Too many people who would strike at your father any way they can. And it wasn't so many years ago that abductions and forced marriages were accepted, even if they were looked upon more than a little askance. I honestly don't think anyone would be stupid enough to believe for an instant that your father would allow any man who dared to touch you against your will to live, under any circumstances. But some of his enemies are almost as powerful, or even fully as powerful, as he. Some of them singly, some running as packs. I will not risk your safety at a time like this."
Leeana inhaled deeply as she heard the flat, unwavering determination of Hanatha's last sentence. Her mother was right, and she knew it, however little she liked it. Indeed, any other mother and father in the same position would probably have locked her up in one of Hill Guard's towers long ago. Yet that made the draught no less bitter on the tongue.
"You understand what I'm saying, and why?" her mother asked after a moment, and Leeana nodded.
"Yes, Ma'am," she said. "I hate it, but I understand it. And I don't hate you because of it."
"Thank you for that," Hanatha said softly.
"I wish—" Leeana began, then closed her mouth.
"You wish what, dear?" her mother prompted after a second or two.
"I don't know," Leeana said, feeling the hearth fire warm against her back as she sat on the stool at her mother's feet. She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. "I wish it didn't have to be this way. I wish I could be who I am and still be someone else, someone who could do and be what she wanted to . . . and who didn't have to worry about someone else's using her as a weapon against her family."
"I don't blame you, darling," her mother said with a tiny smile. "But you can't, anymore than your father or I can."
"I know." Leeana opened her eyes and returned her mother's smile. "I know, Momma. And I'll try to be good, really I will."
"You've always been good, even when you were bad," her mother said with a small, sad chuckle. "I'm not asking for miraculous changes in your behavior or who you are. I'm only insisting that you to be careful, as well."
"I'll try," Leeana repeated.
Chapter Seven
"I don't think you should be here," the powerfully built, blond-haired nobleman said. His expression was almost neutral, but his hand lingered near the hilt of his dagger and his voice was dangerously flat. He was a man who neither liked surprises nor was accustomed to—or brooked—disobedience, and it showed.
"It's not as if anyone else knows that I am here, Milord Baron," his visitor replied. He was a nondescript little man, brown-haired and brown-eyed, and his clothing was just as unremarkable and easily forgotten as he was. He might have been a tradesman, or a clerk. Possibly a minor functionary, attached to the household of some middle-ranked nobleman. Perhaps even a moderately prosperous physician with a middle-class patient list.
But, of course, the baron thought, he was none of those. Although what precisely he actually was remained much less satisfyingly defined than the list of things he wasn't.
The baron listened to the spatter of raindrops and the splash of gurgling downspouts on the terrace outside the study of his private suite and considered pointing out that he was on his way to bed and suggesting that the other come back at a more convenient time. As a matter of fact, he considered the idea very carefully before, in the end, he rejected it.
&n
bsp; "And how can you be so certain no one knows?" he asked instead.
"My dear Baron!" The little man sounded affronted, although he was respectful enough about it to satisfy propriety. "We're talking about part of my stock in trade! What sort of a conspirator would I be if I couldn't be positive about things like that?"
The baron clenched his teeth at the word "conspirator." Not because it was inaccurate, but because he disliked hearing it bandied about so casually by a man about whom he knew far less than he liked. And also, perhaps, because a noble of his rank was never party to something so common as a "conspiracy."
"I repeat," he said, his voice frosted with a warning edge of chill, "how can you be so certain?"
"Because your armsmen aren't swarming into your chambers even as we speak, Milord," his visitor said in a much more serious tone. The baron arched one eyebrow, and the other man nodded. "If I could get into your personal chambers without them noticing me, I think it's safe to say that no one else could possibly suspect I'm here. Besides, I have a few . . . other ways of being certain I'm not under observation."
"I see."
The baron shrugged and crossed the study. He sat in the comfortable chair behind his desk and turned to face his visitor. He had to agree that the point about his armsmen's not having noticed the other's arrival was a good one. And then there was the other man's second point. The baron neither knew nor wanted to know all of the resources his self-proclaimed fellow conspirator might possess. He strongly suspected that sorcery was among them, and if it was, it was most certainly not white sorcery. And since the punishment for dark sorcery and blood magic was death, he preferred to have no more direct knowledge than he could avoid. In an ironic sort of way, his very ignorance—however hard he had to work to maintain it—would be his most powerful protection if things ever went far enough wrong for him to face investigation. Even a court-appointed mage could only confirm the truth of his statement when he testified that he didn't know that the other was a sorcerer.
"Well," he said, after regarding the nondescript man with coldly for almost a full minute, "since you're here, I suppose it wouldn't hurt for you to go ahead and tell me why."
The other man seemed remarkably unaffected by the fishy eye of such a powerful noble. He wasn't precisely insouciant about it, but he strolled across to stand at a corner of the desk, hands clasped behind him while he toasted his backside at the baron's fireplace, and smiled.
"There are a few matters I thought we ought, perhaps, to discuss," he said easily. "And there are also some bits of news about which you probably should be informed. So since I was already in Sothofalas, I decided to come on as far as Toramos and share them with you."
"What sort of news?" the baron asked.
"For starters, Festian has decided to formally appeal to Tellian for assistance." The baron grunted in an unsurprised sort of way, and the little man chuckled. "I know, I know—we expected that from the beginning. Indeed, I'm mostly surprised that he's waited this long."
"That's because you're not a lord," the baron said, and smiled thinly as he not so subtly emphasized the gap between his rank and that of his visitor. "Yes, he has both the right and the duty to call upon his liege in a matter like this. But by appealing to Tellian for aid he admits his inability to handle the problem out of his own resources, and among our people, that will constitute a serious blow to his authority and legitimacy in many eyes." He shrugged. "Whatever I may think of Festian and his claim to Glanharrow, I understand the constraints he faces."
"No doubt you're better placed to understand," the little man agreed amiably, unfazed by any effort on his ostensible employer's part to put him in his place. "My question is whether or not you want his messenger—he's decided to send Sir Yarran—to reach Tellian."
"Surely what I want or don't want has little bearing at this point," the baron said, watching the other man's face carefully from behind the untroubled expression of a veteran politician. "Balthar is the better part of a hundred and fifty leagues from where we sit."
"True." The other man nodded and pursed his lips judiciously. "On the other hand, I did just tell you that Festian has decided to appeal to Tellian, not that he's already done so. If my . . . sources can get that information to me that promptly, what makes you think I couldn't get instructions back to them just as quickly?"
"Put that way, I don't suppose there's any reason you couldn't," the baron acknowledged, silently taking himself to task for asking the question in the first place. That sort of probe was dangerous to his carefully maintained ignorance. He leaned back in his chair, stroking his beard, and considered the question.
"I think it's best that we leave his messenger alone," he said finally. "While it's tempting to take this opportunity to dispose of Yarran once and for all, it's better to remember that a prudent spider weaves her webs patiently. Yarran is a capable enough man, in a rough-edged sort of way, and he's completely loyal to Festian. As such, he'll have to go eventually. But killing him—or even arranging a perfectly natural seeming accident for him—at this particular moment would only make Tellian even more suspicious than he'll already be."
"In what way?" the little man asked in a tone of mild curiosity.
"Yarran is Festian's senior field commander," the baron said. "If we kill him at this point, we up the stakes all around. It would be a major escalation from simply stealing cattle, or even horses. As I say, we'll have to do it eventually, but I've just launched a little arrow which ought to add significantly to Tellian's distractions. I'd prefer to give that time to work on him before we escalate any further. Especially if the escalation in question might be sufficiently significant for Tellian to justify calling in Crown investigators. Those infernal busybodies are probably just panting to poke their noses in, and half of them are magi, curse them."
His last observation was an exaggeration, but not all that great a one. The Crown's best investigators were magi, with the mage talents to make them fiendishly effective at ferreting out the truth, however well it hid itself. King Markhos' father's decision to found the Sothofalas Mage Academy and commission almost a quarter of its yearly graduates as Crown investigators was a major reason the Time of Troubles of his own father's reign had not repeated themselves. Cassan knew that, and as Baron Toramos and Lord Warden of the South Riding, he had to approve, in a grudging sort of way. But that didn't keep him from detesting the consequences for his own plans . . . or regarding the Crown investigators with a wariness that verged far more closely than he cared to admit on outright fear.
"That might be unfortunate at this point," the other man agreed, wondering idly what sort of "arrow" the baron might have sent Tellian's way. "But as dangerous as magi are, it's not as if they'd really make that much difference, is it?" The baron frowned, and he shrugged. "I don't wish to appear alarmist, but at the moment, Baron Tellian has not one, but two champions of Tomanâk as houseguests," he pointed out. "I approve of all the precautions you've taken against magi, Milord, and I'm glad I was able to assist in some small way with them. But given my choice between two of Scale Balancer's champions and every mage in the world, I'd probably choose the magi."
"A point," the baron conceded. "But, of course, that assumes the two of them really are champions of Tomanâk." He bared strong, even, white teeth in something no one would ever have called a smile. "Given that we're talking about a hradani and a hradani-lover who's not only a woman but who publicly admits she was born a peasant, I sincerely doubt they are."
His visitor's expression didn't even flicker, but it wasn't easy for the little man to keep it from doing so. The baron was a powerful, cunning man who was not unduly burdened by scruples. In his own way, he was easily one of the most intelligent men the little man had ever encountered, as well. But he was also a Sothōii, and a bigot. Armored by his own iron prejudice, he genuinely didn't believe that Bahzell Bahnakson or Dame Kaeritha could possibly be what they claimed to be.
"I can understand why you might doubt their legitimacy," he l
ied after a moment, "but that doesn't mean they aren't dangerous. If even half the things they say about this Bahzell are true, he has a nasty habit of surviving rather . . . extreme threats. And whatever we may believe about them, a significant number of people, especially in Balthar and, unfortunately, Sothofalas, accept that they truly are champions. I might point out that even Wencit of Rum has vouched for them. So whether they are or not, they're going to be allowed to operate as if they were."
"So Wencit of Rum vouches for them, does he? Well, how wonderful!" The baron made a disgusted sound and looked as if he wanted to spit. "Wencit may be impressive to many people, but I'm not one of them," he said.
This time, the little man couldn't keep his shock, even fear, entirely out of his expression, and the baron chuckled harshly.
"Don't mistake me," he said. "I freely acknowledge Wencit's power, and I have no intention of openly challenging him or giving him a visible threat as a target. However, it's been my observation that Wencit is also an inveterate meddler. He works for his own ends and according to his own plans, and he's done it for so long now that I'd be surprised if even he remembers what all those ends are. I don't doubt for a moment that he would 'vouch' for this Bahzell and 'Dame Kaeritha' if it served his purposes. For that matter, I don't doubt that he'd vouch for a three-legged, one-eyed, mangy dog if it served his purposes."
His visitor nodded neutrally, but even as he did, he made a mental note to reevaluate all of the plans he and the baron had hatched together. Cunning and intelligent the nobleman might be, but what he'd just said showed an alarming ability to project his own deviousness and inherent dishonesty onto others, whether it was merited or not. The nondescript little man had no objection to deviousness and dishonesty—they, like his ability to suddenly appear places he shouldn't be able to get into—were part of his stock in trade, after all. But automatically assuming that those same qualities were what motivated an opponent, especially a powerful opponent like Wencit of Rum, was dangerous. Success required that enemies not be underestimated or discounted.