Erenor, a bundle of thongs held in his mouth, scrambled up the dragon's back, lithe and agile as a boy half his age, and secured the rucksacks to the rigging almost as quickly as Kethol and Ahira could throw them up to him.
*Beralyn is awake, and she's having Thomen awakened at this very moment, and I'd just as soon we be gone before he manages to stumble out of bis bedchamber and inquire as to what is going on, wouldn't you?* the dragon asked, wisps of steam coming from between his scaly lips as his mouth parted long enough to snap up the pig carcass that Ahira had hauled up to the ramparts.
The bones crunched merrily in the dragon's mouth.
"Would you help me up, Kethol?" Leria asked, extending a hand.
It was all he could do not to take that hand and pull her to him, her mouth warm and wet on his –
But he stooped to make a stirrup of his interlaced fingers, and lifted her up high, until Pirojil and Erenor, each taking an arm, brought her the rest of the way.
Kethol let Pirojil check her straps as he made his way to his usual place on the webbing across the dragon's back, and fastened himself in with just a safety line around his waist.
He sat down, hard, and gripped the webbing tightly with his hands, slipping each boot under it for additional security.
"Good luck," sounded from below, and "Be careful," and "See you soon," and, finally, in the dwarf's gravelly baritone, 'Ta havath."
Ta havath. Stand easy, it meant. Relax. Don't worry.
Easy for him to say. *Hold on.*
A roaring gout of flame ending any pretense of quiet or subterfuge, the dragon leaped skyward.
Chapter 19
Thomen
It's easier to get forgiven than to get permission. Usually.
– Walter Slovotsky
I learned a lot from my father, and more from your friend Karl," the emperor said, his voice seething with calm. "Now you've taught me another lesson."
"Yes, Emperor." Walter Slovotsky stood at the position that he would have called "parade rest" rather than "at ease," back during his abortive six weeks in ROTC, a few lifetimes ago: back straight, feet shoulder width apart, hands folded behind his back, eyes looking straight ahead, not looking down to meet the emperor's.
Thomen sat back against his fluffy pillows, thin, warm-weather blankets piled about his bed. He still wore a silken nightshirt, as though he hadn't gotten out of bed, yet, although Walter knew from Ellegon that he had. Having Walter Slovotsky attend him in chambers could be either a sign of friendly intimacy or a deliberate insult, and Walter really didn't have much of a doubt as to which this was.
"Aren't you going to ask me what that lesson is?" Thomen's voice was silky smooth, more reminiscent of Tyrnael's than of any Furnael's.
I sort of thought you were going to tell me anyway, Walter thought. "Yes, I would like to know, if the emperor would be kind enough to share the thought with me."
"Never trust anybody who isn't blood," Thomen said. "You went behind my back."
There wasn't any obvious answer to that. Yes, he had gone behind his back. No, he wasn't sorry, particularly.
"Don't you have anything to say for yourself? I mean, other than offering me your resignation."
"The emperor can have my resignation at any time that he wishes it," Walter Slovotsky said. "My family and I can be on our way before nightfall."
"That might be a good idea," Thomen said. "Where do you think you'd go?"
Walter dropped his gaze and met the emperor's stony look squarely. "I think I'd be more than welcome in Home, for one place. Or in Barony Cullinane, for another," he went on, ticking it off on another finger. "Or Endell, for another – His Majesty wasn't overly eager to lose my services when we made the move here, and I've always gotten along well with the Moderate People."
"You'd leave your daughters here with Kirah and Baron Adahan?"
There was a threat in that question, and it took Walter Slovotsky a moment to decide how to handle it. "No, I don't think that would be a good idea," he said, quietly. "I think that things are unstable enough around here right now that I'm worried about their future – "
"Pfah." The Emperor snorted. "Essential to the empire, are you?"
"No." He shook his head. "Or maybe yes. We'd only know that in retrospect, wouldn't we?" He shrugged. "I'm sure the emperor and the empire could get along perfectly well without me – but I'd just as soon have my family far away, in a more stable situation, if I'm not going to be here."
The door behind him eased open, and Walter Slovotsky forced himself not to spin around – humility might be called for, here and now, but not a sign of weakness or of fear – as a dumpy young serving-girl arrived with the imperial breakfast on a wicker bedtray that looked exactly like one he had seen once in a J.C. Penney.
Well, when it's wicker bedtray time...
She set it down in front of Thomen, and left without a word.
Thomen removed the silver dome from his plate, and picked up an eating prong. The smell of the smoked trout and fried onions on his plate made Walter Slovotsky's mouth water.
"So, you're ready to leave my service, is that it?"
"Not eager, no. But ready, yes."
Thomen Furnael smiled around a mouthful of trout and onions. 'This humility doesn't suit you, Walter."
"Thomen, I – "
"I'm talking. You do it well, but I know you: It's utterly false and not believable for a moment." He pointed at him with the eating prong. "You're thinking, while I'm berating you, that you're still the great Walter Slovotsky and I'm just the boy that you and Karl Cullinane rescued, and that if you got angry enough with me, I'd be lying here, dead, for hours before I was found, long enough for you to get away."
Walter Slovotsky didn't answer.
"Well, aren't you thinking that?"
"No," he lied. He shook his head. "It's not just that I don't mean you any harm, Emperor – although I don't," he quickly added, his voice raised. "It's also that I'm sure you've got guards behind some hidden panel here, and that if I made a move they didn't like, or if you dropped a secret password in casual conversation, they'd be all over me like ugly on a dwarf."
The emperor nodded. "But that wouldn't save me, not if you wanted me dead – I remember waking up in this room with your knife at my throat, not so long ago."
"Well – "
“– and was it not this very bed that Prince Pirondael died in, of a knife thrown by you?"
Walter Slovotsky nodded. "Yes, it was. Moments after he murdered your father, if you'll recall." He frowned. "No, actually, it wasn't this bed, come to think of it. Karl had the bed removed, and a new one put in, for some reason or other. And I'm sure you've had the feather mattress changed more than a few times, but – "
"Be quiet, Walter," the emperor said. "It's hard for me to stay mad at you while you're chattering so." He smiled, for just a moment. "As I should be, shouldn't I?"
"You're worried about Lena?"
The Emperor's mouth twitched. "Yes. I am. I don't know much about love, Walter, but I do know that I find her company pleasant, and that she's of good lineage, and fertile, and that one of the problems my mother is right about is that I need an heir."
Fertile?
"I had the Spider examine her," Thomen said, answering the unasked question.
It was probably his mother who had ordered that, but it was a good idea nonetheless. Good ideas didn't spring only from the minds of good people. And the tastiest food was grown in dirt, dirt with manure mixed in.
I'm getting old. Years ago, I wouldn't even have thought "manure" when what I meant was "shit."
"Well, with all this preparation, what does the lady say?"
Did Thomen color just a little at the cheekbones? It wouldn't have been politic to stare, and probably worse to ask. "I haven't asked her, yet. I haven't even decided to ask her. But there have been rumors enough going around, and you've seen the two of us together enough – didn't you think for a moment about asking me before sending her out
into danger?"
Walter slowly – careful of the audience; accidents could happen – reached two fingers into his tunic and pulled out Lena's letter, and tossed it to the bed. "This will explain that it wasn't me who thought of it, that it was Lena's idea, and her idea alone, and probably that I tried to talk her out of it, and that if things go wrong she has no one to blame but herself – except, I hope, Miron and his dead mother, and you should save your anger for them."
Thomen fingered the wax seal. "Whose thumbprint is this? Yours? Aiea's?"
"Don't break it – save it. It's Leria's. Unless, of course, she's setting me up for some unknown reason, which I doubt." Walter leaned up against the bedpost, folding his arms in front of him. "You might next want to accuse me of having her signature and her handwriting forged, as long as the accusations fly."
The emperor had broken the seal already, and scanned the letter quickly. "She doesn't seem to blame anybody, except perhaps herself, and that only for not talking Forinel out of such a bad idea." He looked up. "But she couldn't have talked him out of it, could she?"
"An impressionable kid? Under the influence of Elanee?" He shook his head. "To listen to Pirojil talk about her," there was no particular point in mentioning Erenor, "she apparently had some raw magical gift, some sort of sexual compulsion thing, and you can just see how that would have worked on a kid, particularly if Elanee seduced him in the process."
The emperor nodded. "So, it wasn't your idea; it was hers, is that it? I ought to apologize to you, I suppose, for having suspected you of instigating it, since it was her idea, after all, and – "
"No, it was my idea. She went along with it willingly, not quite eagerly, but it was my idea."
The emperor nodded, again. "I'm glad you said that. I didn't believe for a moment that it was her idea, or that you would let any young girl push you into anything you didn't want to have happen."
"Your mother's choosing your servants again, eh?"
Thomen raised an eyebrow. "Oh? You've been listening to gossip, again, I take it."
Walter smiled. "I always listen to gossip," he said. "That's part of what you pay me for, Thomen," he said.
The emperor smiled, and took another prongful of his breakfast. "Well, then, Parliament meets at noon, and you've no doubt got things to do to prepare yourself and Jason Cullinane for that," he said. "Do I have to tell you that we don't need any duels with Miron?"
"Probably not."
"Good." Thomen waved him away. "Then be about your business, Imperial Proctor," he said, lightly.
Walter turned to leave.
"Oh, just one thing. I wouldn't want you to think your charming me out of being angry means that this is all forgotten and over with." He chewed thoughtfully. "I guess before I decide quite what to do with you we'll just have to see how things turn out with Forinel."
And particularly with Leria, Walter thought.
"And particularly with Leria," Thomen said.
Chapter 20
The Waste of Elrood
Erenor held up the leather thong and flicked a trimmed fingernail at the dangling ring, one more time.
Ting.
It orbited rapidly, tethered by the thong, slowing only gradually until, once again, it hung not quite straight up and down.
Kethol hacked a point on the stick with his belt knife with half a dozen quick strokes, then hammered it into the hard ground with the flat butt of the knife, which had been made flat for just that sort of purpose. He picked up the other stick and walked a few dozen paces away – the farther, the better, but there was no point in making a hike out of it – and whittled a quick point on that one, too. He stuck the point tentatively in a crack in the hard-baked ground, and looked up at Erenor.
"No, that's not quite right." Erenor held the ring over the first post, and waved Kethol to the left. "A little bit over – just half a pace, no more," he said. "Not that it should matter much, but we may as well get it right." Which made sense.
We may be sure tomorrow, Kethol thought, but either the Katharhd stretches farther north than I thought it did, or we are heading more toward Therranj than the Katharhd.
The good part of that was that it might make a side trip to Home not only possible, but a good idea. The Engineer had no particular reason to be generous where Kethol, Pirojil, and Erenor were concerned, but as they were on Baron Cullinane's service, he might be prevailed upon for at least the loan of a couple of those revolving pistols that the baron had.
Kethol preferred relying on the sword, himself, but the truth was that Erenor would be, even if he worked very hard for many years, at best an indifferent swordsman, and perhaps an adequate crossbowman.
The bad part of that was Pirojil. He wouldn't talk about it, but the clearer it became that they were heading toward Therranj, the less he liked it, and if he didn't want to discuss it, there must be some good reason.
It wasn't something you could ask about, though. If Pirojil had been willing to talk about it, he would have.
Pirojil squatted in front of the fire, poking at it with a stick, sending sparks high into the still air. Not the sort of thing you wanted to do in the woods – forests would burn often enough by themselves; you didn't need to help them any – but out here in the Waste, there was nothing to burn except the wood they had brought with them, cut down at the edge of the Waste. Plenty of wood, though – that was one of the nice things about Ellegon as a form of transportation: weight wasn't a problem, not for four people and their gear.
*As long as you're not the one carrying the four people, and all of their gear, that is.* The dragon eyed him from where he lay a bowshot away, stretched out lazily on the hot-but-cooling ground from nose to tail.
*Think of me as a lizard. Lizards like lying around lazily in the heat, and there's something... luxurious about sun-warmed dirt, rather than having to flame it into pleasant warmth myself.* Ellegon sighed, steam and smoke issuing from his huge nostrils.
As the steam and smoke dissipated, Leria walked around the dragon's head. She was dressed in a long, flowing, but utterly opaque white nightdress, her traveling clothes rolled in a bundle and clutched to her chest.
"Lady," Kethol said, "if we have enough water, we should wash out your clothes, and then let them dry while it's still warm out, or at the very least spread them out to air in the hot sun."
She nodded. "I can spread them out myself," she said, looking around for some place to do just that.
*Use my tail,* Ellegon said. *Just hang them over the scales; I'm not planning on going anywhere for some time.*
"Thank you, Ellegon," she said, as she unrolled her bundle of clothes. "Oh, Kethol? I refilled the billy," she said, as she shook out a white blouse and bent over to drape it over Ellegon's tail, her back to them. "It should be warm enough to be comfortable by now."
Rather than watch the way her bottom strained against the cloth of her nightdress as she bent over – there was no point in torturing himself any more than necessary – he glared pointedly at Erenor until Erenor stopped watching the way her bottom strained against the cloth of her nightdress as she bent over. "And put it back on the fire," she went on. "It should be warm enough to wash with shortly."
She turned around. She had been less careful in drying herself after her sketchy ablutions than she should have been, and Kethol felt his cheeks burning as he looked away from where her nipples showed through.
Erenor smiled at her. "That's very gracious of you, Lady." Kethol didn't like that smile, but there was a lot about this whole thing that Kethol didn't like, and it was kind of surprising that he wasn't used to it by now.
"Erenor," he said, "you take the next turn."
"No," Pirojil said, rising. "I will." He looked, long and hard, at the two stakes, his face studiously blank, and walked around the dragon toward where they had set up the privy and a small fire to warm the billy, only to return a few moments later to snatch up his rucksack, and, not meeting Kethol's questioning gaze, jogged back around the dragon.<
br />
Erenor cocked his head. His raised eyebrow asked, What is that all about?
Kethol shook his head. "Maybe he's just tired of the way you use up all the hot water. I know I am." He held Erenor's eyes with his own gaze, and wasn't sure whether or not he was doing it to punish both of them because he had been tempted to give Erenor an honest answer, or just to keep Erenor's roving eyes away from Leria, at least for the moment.
Therranj. Pirojil saw it, too. They were heading toward Therranj, not the Katharhd. Kethol didn't know what there was about Therranj that bothered – frightened? No, not frightened: bothered – Pirojil, but there was something.
Well, if Pirojil wanted him to know about it, he would have told him about it. Let the man have his secrets, and if his secrets weren't all that secret, well, then let that be Kethol's secret, and not Erenor's.
"We have plenty of water," she said, "and I tried to use as little as I could, so as not to waste it."
One corner of Erenor's mouth turned up. "He wasn't criticizing you, Lady. Friend Kethol has had to use my cold, overly dirty bathwater on, I blush to admit, far too many occasions, in situations less ... luxurious than the one in which we find ourselves." His broad gesture encompassed the empty Waste about them.
"I hadn't thought of a vast, empty stretch of flat, broken ground as luxurious," she said, smiling, as she stretched out on her sleeping blankets, after decorously tucking the hem of her nightdress under her legs.
"Ah, Lady," Erenor said, rising to his feet, his arms outstretched as if to embrace the whole Waste of Elrood, "then you don't appreciate the nature of true luxury, if you don't mind me saying so."
Well, she apparently didn't mind him saying so, judging from the smile and the beckoning gesture that invited him to go on, but Kethol did.
Erenor had no more business flirting with a lady than Kethol did, after all.
"Well, Lady," the wizard said, rising, "look about us: privacy and solitude, as far as the eye can see, and in the Waste of Elrood, the eye can see far, indeed.
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