She laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“I had a vision of you and me here, holding off the world.
And doing it, because you’re so damned stubborn. We weren’t fighting with swords. We were using ideas. Ours were better than theirs, and, oh, how they were howling! Like the Panthers when you beat them.”
“I didn’t know you’d noticed. Thought you hated Captures.”
“I do. That doesn’t stop me from betting. I won two hundred nobles that day.”
“Well, son of a bitch. What do you know about that?”
Outside, the mists had begun to clear. Mist. Best double-check that woman. Have Varthlokkur sniff out her backtrail. “Damn!”
“What now?”
“Nothing. Just seeing enemies under every bed.” And in a few, too. He strolled to the nursery door. A startled nurse faced him when he stepped through. He did not visit often.
Fulk lay on his stomach with his knees drawn up. Beautiful. Precious little things, babies. Made a man philosophical. “We all started this way,” he told Inger. “Ever think about that?”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s everybody, a long time ago. You. Me. Magden Norath. Varthlokkur. High lords of the Dread Empire. All helpless like Fulk. All cuddle, giggle, wet, and squall. What happens? How come we start cutting each other’s throats when we get up on our hind legs?”
“You are in a mood, aren’t you? Take that one to Derel. It’s beyond me.”
“Uhm.” Ragnarson bent, kissed his son. Fulk opened one eye, closed it again. “Better get to work. Still got to clean up after ourselves.” Sherilee crossed his mind. Business would take him out Lieneke Lane, wouldn’t it?
His breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs and fried chicken. Chicken again. Idly, he wondered if his enemies weren’t attacking through his palate.
First order of business? he wondered, leaning against the table.
Slugbait wandered through without noticing his monarch. He was arguing with another Guardsman. “We got to come up with a gimmick. Can’t let this match go. After yesterday, we could win a fortune.”
“Could, Slug. That’s the problem. We ain’t going to beat the Panthers again.”
“I say we can, if we got the King and we don’t have to go against them for a couple weeks.”
“How you going to get the match delayed? No. No way I’m going to lose any money on you guys.”
“Well, shit. Be that way. More for the rest of us.”
Ragnarson ignored the rest. He had found a place to start his day. He would see the judges. How could he get the match with the Panthers set back?
He encountered Varthlokkur at the stables. “Headed for town too?” The wizard grunted affirmatively. “How’s Nepanthe?”
“Fine.”
“The baby? Decided on a name?”
“Perfect. No.”
“Something bothering you?”
The wizard looked at him as if noticing him for the first time. “Oh. Still thinking about Norath’s assassins. Radeachar winnowed the castle last night. The Itaskians are all shielded.”
Ragnarson stared at a sentry atop the wall. “All?”
“Every one.”
It came up like a fist to the solar plexus. He grunted, faked a stumble to cover his distress. “Anyone besides the dowrymen?”
“A few. Mostly wives and children.”
“Babies? Even the babies?”
“Even the babies. Babies can hear. It’s not as bad as it looks. It’s mostly smoke screen.”
“Smoke screen.” Ragnarson looked back at the citadel. “Smoke screen.” One lay between himself and the wizard. They were avoiding what they had tucked into the backs of their minds. “What’s in town, anyway?”
“I had Radeachar search the city. He found the place where Norath’s killers hid out.”
“Need help?”
Varthlokkur shook his head.
“Might still be a couple around. We never accounted for all of them that attacked Liakopulos.”
“I’ll be all right. What’re you up to?”
Bragi explained about having to delay the match with the Panthers. Varthlokkur gave him an odd look. It asked why he was fiddling with trivialities. Bragi did not justify himself.
They departed the castle in silence. Finally, Bragi said, “These shieldings. Those people were checked before. How come we’re just noticing now?”
“They weren’t shielded before, possibly. Or we didn’t notice because we weren’t looking for it.”
“Or the plot’s growing?”
“Uhm.”
“Can’t you just break through?”
“There was a time.... The shields are too strong.”
Bragi sped the wizard a puzzled look. “How come?”
“Not sure I can explain. Not sure I understand myself. Negative entropy.”
“Huh?”
“Know what entropy is? The tendency of a system to run down, like a fire burning out?”
“You can always throw more wood on a fire.”
“Only till you run out of wood. The wise believe the universe itself is a woodpile that will be gone one day.”
“What’s that got to do with shielded minds?”
“The classical view of sorcery has been that the Power is entropic. That there’s only so much. Each time a spell is cast, a little is used up. When it’s gone, it’s gone. I now believe recent events have proven that viewpoint false.”
“I still don’t see....”
“Consider everything that’s happened in your lifetime. Back to the El Murid Wars. Sorcery, but nothing really startling. Come forward. Here, there, a bigger thing or two. Then Shinsan’s war with Escalon. The biggest release of thaumaturgic energies since the Fall. Then the Great Eastern Wars. Bigger still. And now this war with Matayanga. Even bigger. Part of it is increased know-how, but more is because spells are getting easier to cast. Less talented people are using the Power with greater effect.
“We’re chewing holes in the fabric of reality. Our spells are like worms gnawing through timbers. Each one lets a little raw Power leak away and float free. Just like the air. Next time someone tries a magick, it’s a hair easier, a hair stronger, and more Power leaks free. I think it’s that free-floating energy that powers my Winterstorm. And Radeachar.”
“Then he’d be getting stronger too, wouldn’t he?”
“He is. That’s what started me thinking.”
“Is it important?” Ragnarson saw shadows. Black shadows. More shadows that he did not want to see.
“It could be. I don’t know. I hope it doesn’t mean something is beginning to unravel.... I don’t know what it means.” The wizard seemed to be talking to someone else, to be arguing. “There’re too many distractions. I don’t get time to think, to study, the way I once did. What I need is a year locked up in Fangdred.”
“The older you get, the more the world closes in,” Bragi observed, for want of a better response.
They were several blocks into the city. “Here’s where I leave you,” the wizard said. “Place is a couple blocks that way.”
“Take care.” Ragnarson resumed trying to invent an excuse that would impress the judges.
The wizard stood in the street with his eyes closed. Passers-by looked at him askance, recognized him, hastened away. Most made signs against the evil eye. Often as not, the sign was repeated, interposed between signer and palace. There was a distinct fear of the darknesses the King had enlisted as allies.
The wizard listened to his creature, Radeachar. He scanned the building with his own powers. He was a cautious man.
Nothing. No trap. But still he was nervous. Not a half mile away lay a castle filled with people he could not read. He prepared a bitter spell. Any ambusher would receive a nasty surprise.
He need not have wasted his time. Nothing moved inside save the ubiquitous roaches. The men who had occupied the flat would threaten no one ever again.
For a lo
ng time he could not look at the bodies. He had seen his horrors over the centuries, but....
The flat was barren save for blankets ranged as pallets along the walls. The dust was thick. A few sausages hung from a beam. Gnawed, moldy cheeses lay piled in one corner. A scatter of crumbs marked the site of a bread stack.
He glanced at the bodies. The rats had been at them. Tiny red eyes stared at him through a tangle of dry hair. He shuddered.
He prowled restlessly, sneezing as he stirred up the dust. There was no stink of corruption. Norath’s creatures seemed immune.
He began searching, wizard’s senses probing. Nothing. What had they done here, these created assassins? Sat in silence, eating when the flesh demanded? No games to while the time?
He murmured, “Norath, you scare me more than my old enemies in Shinsan.”
Searching as if these had been true men, likely to conceal damning evidence, he nearly overlooked the paper. He looked for loose boards and secret compartments till by chance he noted the tattered, wadded scrap behind the cheeses, perhaps thrown there before the food was laid in.
A long, lazy hand, full of arrogance, declared, “Milady: The appearance of the bearer will assure you of the completion of my half of our agreement. Norath.” The ink had faded to sepia
Varthlokkur eased toward the door, an unhappy man. This scrap could hang. Should he pass it to the King? The assassins had failed, after all.
The message was less important for content than for the language in which it was written. Itaskian.
Ragnarson found himself passing through Vorgreberg’s west gate. His mount seemed to be taking him to Lieneke Lane without conscious guidance.
“Sire?” the voice called a second time, breaking his self-enchantment, startling him with its concern. “Are you all right?” Sir Gjerdrum and Aral Dantice were staring at him.
“Just daydreaming.” He flashed a grin. “Tell Slugbait I got the Panthers match set back. Put your money on the Guards. We’re going to win.”
Dantice responded with a dubious scowl.
“Well, don’t bet the deed to the old family farm. I’m headed out Lieneke Lane. Come from there?”
Gjerdrum nodded. He looked grim.
“Something wrong, Gjerdrum? Trouble?”
“No. It’s personal. Going to tell Gwenie it’s over. Can’t think how to say it. Julie and me... there might be a wedding.”
“Congratulations. I guess. Seen Mist, Aral? She pull out yet?”
“She’s gone.” Dantice fumbled inside his shirt. “Left you a letter.” He was not a happy man.
Ragnarson accepted the envelope, opened it after leaving the younger men.
Mist merely repeated her apologies, saying he had been a friend good and true throughout her exile. As a gesture, she would leave her children with him. He grinned. Crafty witch. They would be less hostages to fortune here. She wasn’t making a gesture. She was shielding them from the politics of the Dread Empire.
He’d have to hand them over to his daughter-in-law. How would Kris take that? Two more mouths, two more little bodies to cuddle and mend, another two hearts to keep unbroken.... “She’s going to raise merry hell.”
Lieneke Lane was quiet. His own house seemed silent, moody, withdrawn. Down the lane, Mist’s place already looked deserted.
Kristen stepped out as he dismounted. She placed hands on hips, glared. “Just what makes you think I’m going to take care of Mist’s brats too? What is this? An orphanage?”
“What?” He threw up his hands in faked bewilderment.
“Don’t try to con me...”
Bragi’s face drooped into an idiot grin. Sherilee was leaning out an upstairs window. Kristen shrugged, defeated by chemistry.
The old doorman collected Ragnarson’s horse. Bragi gave Kristen a hasty peck on the forehead, charged upstairs. Sherilee squealed when he swept her into his arms.
Varthlokkur cradled his daughter with his right forearm. His left hand lay folded within his wife’s fingers. He stared out the window. “Looks like rain tomorrow.”
“What’s the matter?” Nepanthe asked.
“Trouble.”
“Always trouble. Ours?”
“The King’s. Looks like Inger bought those assassins.”
“Inger? She’s so nice. I don’t believe it.”
“It wouldn’t be a historical precedent. I think Bragi knows, too. He’s trying to lie to himself. Like maybe if he ignores it long enough, Inger will come to her senses.”
“Talk to him.”
“Too much like telling a man his wife is cheating. He don’t want to hear it. Puts him in a vise. He has to do something. Like as not, he takes a whack at you instead of the woman.” He didn’t want the King taking a poke his way. He might say something Nepanthe shouldn’t hear.
How much did Bragi know about the east? And Mist? She would soon be intimate with the situation.
“Talk to Prataxis. Bragi will put up with anything from him.”
“That might do it.” But he was thinking Michael Trebilcock, not Derel Prataxis. Michael would do something.
The sun plunged into the clouds of the west. Derel and Baron Hardle reined in before the King’s suburban home. They made a mixed pair, those two, yet were as alike as pod-mate peas today. Two more sour, embittered faces could hardly be imagined. They did not speak as they stalked toward the house.
Kristen answered their knock. The pandemonium of a small herd of children echoed behind her. “Yes?” Her smile faded as she saw their grim faces. “What’s happened?”
“Is His Majesty here?” Prataxis asked.
“Come in. I’ll get him. Strangle a few kids if they bother you.”
Prataxis watched her bustle upstairs. He muttered, “More complications. He couldn’t have picked a worse time.”
“Uhm.” Hardle, too, had seen enough to guess what was going on. “Can’t say as I blame him. A delectable morsel.”
Prataxis snorted. He was a man perpetually baffled by the power woman exercised over others of his sex. He just could not comprehend how an otherwise sensible man could be knocked cuckoo by a skirt, though he had seen countless such devastations.
The more he thought, the more irate he became. He was in a positive frenzy when Ragnarson appeared. “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “We did everything but call out the Vorgrebergers.”
“What’s happened?” It had to be bad to make Prataxis stand on his hind legs and howl.
Prataxis retreated, awed by his own temerity. “It’s too late now.”
Sourly, the Baron added, “Too late for anything but the weeping.”
“What are we talking about?”
“We needed you in the Thing. To stand witness for yourself. We couldn’t find you, and couldn’t argue for you because you never told us....”
“To the point. What did those idiots do?”
“They passed a succession law,” Prataxis said. “Seems they started on it when we locked ourselves up out here. It went through today. The Estates bought enough votes....”
“Succession law? The Estates?” Red crept through the King’s beard. Prataxis handed him a rolled copy. He did not read it immediately. Derel would not be here, in this mood, were its terms acceptable. “Where the hell were you? Why didn’t you stop them?”
“We were here till today,” the Baron reminded him. “Along with Sir Gjerdrum, Colonel Abaca, and everybody else who might have made a difference. Mundwiller couldn’t beat them alone.”
Ragnarson ripped the roll open, read, hurled it away. He sat on the stairsteps, folded his fists before his face, gnawed the knuckle of a thumb.
Kristen retrieved the copy. She scanned it, stiffened. It fell from her hand. She glared at the men, flung herself from the hallway.
Ragnarson muttered, “Fulk. With Inger Regent. That’s not what I wanted. Definitely not what I wanted.”
Derel refrained from saying I told you so. “That’s why I scrambled so hard trying to find you. Never
occurred to me to look here till Gjerdrum mentioned meeting you at the gate.”
“All right. We blew it. They slipped one past us. How do we undo it?”
“Lawfully, we can’t,” Hardle said. “They made a good job of it.”
“Laws can be unpassed, can’t they?”
“We could change it if we muster the votes. What the Baron wants to say is, we can’t.”
“Why the hell not? Get all our people here and ram it through.”
“We’ve been deserted. On this, not in general. There’s a lot of relief about having everything settled. Some of our people don’t want the question reopened. They want a denned succession.”
“But....”
“The future is enemy territory,” Prataxis said. “Most people don’t have your take-what-comes attitude. They want it scouted out.”
“Damn! Hand me that thing, Derel. Maybe there’s a hole in it somewhere.”
Prataxis retrieved the document. “No loopholes, Sire. Some good men shaped it up.”
He saw that. Fulk was his successor, with Inger Regent should the throne come vacant before Fulk achieved his majority. Which, without doubt, the Estates hoped fervently. Next came any other children Inger might bear, then Inger herself in a twistback counter to all tradition. Only then did the line leave Inger’s control. It swung to Bragi’s grandson, and from the younger Bragi to Ragnarson’s sons. A complex document and, as Prataxis said, without loophole or leeway.
“Well. Damn my eyes. This’ll learn me, won’t it? Guess we have to live with it.” Again he stared at the floor. After a time, “Thanks for coming round. I’ll be along. Strategy session. Got to talk to Kristen first.”
Derel and Baron Hardle bowed slightly, departed. Their faces were greyer than ever.
One day’s victory had segued into another’s defeat. The old ways were threatening a return.
Ragnarson continued reflecting on what that document meant beyond what it said. It constituted a quiet, gentlemanly declaration that the Estates had returned to the field.
It was a letter of marque for anyone who cared to take his head. From now on he had better be damned careful, damned quick on his feet.
Michael’s face crossed his mind. He smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. It was wicked. “Kristen. Let’s talk now.”