They knew we were coming.
*Duh,* the dragon said. *If there was some reason to hide it, you might have wanted to mention it by now. Not that it would have done any good, of course.*
"In the meantime," Ti'een said, "I have another message, for another of you. It goes: 'You left not so long ago, leaving behind death and pain and misery – though not solely of your own making.
"'It is not right that you come back here, now or ever.
"'Blood does not seek blood, and pain does not seek pain, for that is not the way either of the elven or of the humans who have lived among us, but do not linger here, nor return.
"'You are what you are, and if you have come here to ask that you become something else, leave now.' "
Kethol was waiting to see Erenor's reaction when he realized that the elf was facing Pirojil.
"I don't know why you're talking to me." Pirojil's lips where white. "I haven't come here to ask for anything, not from you, not from anybody else," he said, his voice too calm, too low, too even.
You work with somebody for long enough, you eat and sleep and shit and fight with him, and one day you find that you can, sometimes, read his mind. Not through any magic, but through the way he stands, or speaks, or breathes.
Kethol had long been that way with Pirojil, but now the facility abandoned him.
Was Pirojil going to attack the elf?
If so, were any of the elven soldiers that Kethol only now could see out of the corner of his eye, at least a dozen of them, gathered around the edge of the plaza, going to try to stop him? Kethol was a good longbowman, sure enough. But the prowess of the elves was legendary –
– and there were at least three bowmen among them, their bows strung and arrows nocked. Kethol's bow was still strapped to his rucksack, at his feet.
But his sword was loose in its sheath, and even if he hadn't had the sword, he still had hands and feet and teeth.
A tension he hadn't known was there went out of Kethol's scalp.
Well, perhaps the elves could get their retribution, and perhaps they could even stop Pirojil. But if Pirojil decided that his companions' deaths were worth the killing of this Ti'een, well, then, that was the way it was.
He didn't have to look out of the corner of his eye to see Erenor's nod, not one whit more than he would have had to see Pirojil's, or Durine's, and he would not shame Erenor or himself with any doubt.
And if that meant that Leria died here, too?
No.
She looked at him, and nodded, once. Yes.
"No." Pirojil held up a hand.
No?
What was this no? No: meaning I'll not put up with this insult? Or no, meaning Don't kill the elf, don't pay attention to how angry I am, don't –
"No," he said, again, quietly. "My name is Pirojil," he went on. "You must be mistaken. As for me, I'm just an ordinary soldier, fealty-bound to Barony Cullinane of the Empire of Holtun-Bieme."
Kethol looked over at the elf soldiers – at where the elf soldiers had been. They were gone, either having moved back into the trees as silently as they had emerged, or never having been there at all.
"Ah." Ti'een smiled, and as he did, his pointed canines reminded Kethol that the Therranji had a reputation for, if not cruelty, a certain viciousness. Therranji garrotes, after all, would tighten by themselves, their barbs digging into the flesh of the neck as they did so.
"The Empire of Holtun-Bieme, is it? Two tiny countries, welded together under a usurper, and they are an empire. I shall have to remember that."
*Do.* Ellegon's nose issued steam. *Do remember that.*
"Of course, noble dragon." Ti'een's head bobbed toward the dragon. "I shall." He turned to Kethol, pointedly ignoring Pirojil. "You are ... ?"
"Kethol," he said.
"Well, Captain Kethol – "
"Just Kethol." There had been a time when Kethol had been mistaken for an officer, that he had let the mistake go. Leria had been there, and he had often wondered why she hadn't objected, or protested. Had it amused her? Or had it flattered her that the Adahanian officer had assumed that her escort must be a captain of some sort?
But that had not been here, not in front of Pirojil and Erenor.
"Very well, Just Kethol," the elf said. "If you, Just Kethol and your... companions will follow me, I will take you to where you can wait for Lord Forinel."
Chapter 24
Playing for Time
What's the secret of comedy? Err... timing?
– Walter Slovotsky
I see no great reason to wait on this matter," Baron Nerahan said, his voice echoing hollowly through the Great Hall, "but hardly one for any haste, either." Rob-aid Nerahan toyed with his bristly mustache, twirling the ends of it enough that Walter pretty much expected him to break into a Snidely Whiplash-style "nyah-hah-hah" at any moment. "Why do we need to rush?"
Saint Dymphna, save me from my allies, Walter Slovotsky thought.
"I agree with Baron Nerahan," Tyrnael said. "My barony is being run by men I trust, and while I certainly am eager to get back – there are some matters I'd rather handle myself – I think this is the sort of decision that should be made judiciously, by the whole Parliament."
And, Saint Dymphna, as long as you 're listening, please consider preserving me from allies who talk like melodrama villains, and enemies who voice insincere support, trying to make a weak case in my favor.
Was that going to fly? It was a transparent attempt at manipulation, but - –
"Not I." Selahan went for it – well, Walter Slovotsky had long ago concluded that he was, in fact, as stupid as he looked. Any noble who spent enough time out in the sun to burn through any tan was probably not spending enough time tending to affairs of state.
"I'm eager to return home, myself," he said. "There's only so much I'd like to see the governor's deputy doing in my absence, and ..."
Walter Slovotsky turned his ears off as the Holt rambled on. The fact was that it was the Selahan governor who was in charge in Barony Selahan, and the Baron Selahan was likely to be one of the last of the Holtish barons to assume control of his barony.
"I think it would be wrong of me to delay any decision." Treseen knew whom he was working for. "I'm certainly willing to serve as long as necessary," he said, his fingers idly playing with his belt knife. There was no threat in that; Treseen was just one of those people who needed something to keep his hands busy, and if he wasn't fiddling with his knife, he'd probably be playing with himself.
At least he wasn't twiddling his mustache.
"But if this Parliament confirms Lord Miron as baron, we could at least start to move toward the day I'll retire."
He smiled. "I've thought about buying a small holding along some main road, somewhere, and sitting on my front porch, watching the world go by."
He didn't look over at Tyrnael, and Walter didn't wonder at all whether that small holding was not so small, and was in Barony Tyrnael.
He didn't wonder for a moment.
A pity, that – after the near disaster in Keranahan, Walter should have not only figured out how crooked Treseen was, but inquired as to his price.
Niphael and Verahan weighed in next, both eager for their own reasons to end the Parliament and get home, while Benteen and Arondael just seemed to want to argue for the sake of arguing.
Jason Cullinane stood. "I'd like to settle this now. Perhaps Miron isn't provably guilty of having been involved in his mother's plotting – but does that mean that we have to give him the barony?"
Well, yes, it probably did, and half a dozen of the older barons, concerned about their own heirs, immediately called out, while Beralyn Furnael simply smiled at the way the hated Cullinane had just helped make the case for her.
No, she didn't particularly want Tyrnael and Miron to win – what she wanted was Walter Slovotsky and the Cullinanes to lose.
"Excuse me." Thomen's voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the babble like a sharp knife through a neck. "We have not
yet decided that the succession is a decision to be left to the Parliament."
Bren Adahan smiled at that. The royal we neatly ducked the question of whose decision that was.
That was something to trade off on:
"The emperor is, of course, quite right," Walter said. "Is it an imperial decision? Or should it be left to Parliament? Or is it one that the emperor should propose and the Parliament dispose?"
Political deals had to reflect the reality on the ground, and the reality was that the Biemish barons could, collectively, take on the Home Guard quite easily, and with Holtun occupied largely by baronial troops under imperial command, there wouldn't be much to stop them.
On the other hand, the barons would have to reach some sort of consensus that that was the thing to do, a consensus that they'd not easily reach with their heads – and the attached necks – under the emperor's roof.
Parliament had to be seen by them, though, as every bit as much of a chance to exercise collective power as scheming to overthrow the Crown was, and that meant that their decisions would have to count.
In the long run, a parliamentary imprimatur on imperial nominations for succession probably made the most sense, and imperial nominations ought to, except under extreme circumstances, stick to the usual rules of inheritance.
There were times when you had to roll the dice, and hope they'd fall where you wanted them.
"I think," Walter Slovotsky said, "that the emperor should propose Baron Keranahan's son and heir as the next baron, and I think that the Parliament ought to endorse that choice, and freely, after some due consideration, of him and of other possible claimants to the barony."
Tyrnael's mouth twitched. "Just how much consideration should be needed? We have Lord Miron here; there are no other claimants – "
Now or never. "Yes, there is," Walter Slovotsky said. "The wizard Henrad has put a location spell on an old family heirloom."
Tyrnael was good, but he wasn't good enough to keep the surprise off his face. Miron had told him about Elanee having destroyed all the possible traces, a long time ago. "How – I mean, how wonderful," he said. Faked sincerity came easily to the baron. "I had heard rumors that you'd sent Ellegon and others off to Keranahan to look for such items, but..." he shrugged. "But that's but a few days ago – could they have located something so quickly, and..."
Walter had always preferred limit poker, rather than table stakes. In a limit game, you could take each hand as it came, knowing that if, in the long run, you made better decisions than the other folks did, you'd end up with all the chips.
But in table stakes, there came a time when you had to push all your chips to the center of the table, and hope and pray that either you had the best hand or nobody else would call.
"It was an old ring of Forinel's, Baron Tyrnael," Walter said. "He gave it to Lady Leria the night he left, years ago, under the influence of Lord Miron's mother." Walter Slovotsky forced a smile to his face. "No, I'd not send Lady Leria and the Cullinane soldiers to look for some distant possibility – they already had what they needed, despite Baroness Elanee's very thorough scouring, I've no doubt, of Castle Keranahan.
"No, I've sent them to find Lord Forinel. He should be here within a very few days. Shall we give it another, oh, tenday? Shall we, Baron Tyrnael?"
'Ten days," Tyrnael nodded, looking around. "Are we all in agreement?" he asked, his gaze finally settling on the emperor. "Within the next ten days, either Walter Slovotsky will produce Lord Forinel, or Lord Miron will be confirmed as Baron Keranahan?"
Walter Slovotsky was not the only one who could push all his chips into the pot.
"Ten days." The emperor nodded.
Chapter 25
Forinel
Kethol had been in worse jails. Come to think of it, he had never been in a nicer one. Mostly, being locked up meant being stuck in some dark hole with – if you were lucky – a chamberpot to keep you company. Escape was always the issue, and in practice that had usually meant waiting for Pirojil and Durine to figure out something – as he had never seen, much less been in, a prison that you couldn't get out of, not if you had enough wit and help.
Here, he and the others were free to wander not only in Visitors' Tree – a misnaming for a dwelling that was more than half that crystalline construction that the Therranji built or maybe grew around the Named Trees – but down the winding staircase cut into bark of the tree itself and to the ground below.
There were no walls, except for the forest itself, and while that probably wasn't impenetrable, every time he tried to leave one of the paths he simply found himself crossing and recrossing them, over and over again, until he finally gave up and took the paths.
And all paths that he took seemed to twist through the forest to the fountain plaza where Ellegon still lay, and then back to Visitor's Tree.
The dragon seemed utterly unbothered by the notion of simply sitting in place and resting for days, or even longer –
*We're a patient lot, we are, except when we're, oh, chained in a Pandathaway sewer, forced to flame foul feces into smoke and ash, or have it up to our noses. After a century or two of that, even a patient dragon like myself can tire."
Kethol tried another path and found himself back at Visitors' Tree.
It was a comfortable imprisonment.
Human servants, their pale skin and light hair generally speaking of Salke ancestry, brought food and drink at regular intervals. There was always more than one could possibly eat or drink – so much so that it was understandable that at each delivery, leftover portions were unceremoniously scraped from their trays and plates into an oubliette in the circular inner wall of the wedge-shaped apartments, sliding away down the impossibly slick crystal tube inside.
But the human servant engaged in conversation only to the least extent possible, and answered no questions, referring everything to Ti'een.
"Care to try again?" Leria asked, one eyebrow arched.
"Eh? I mean, 'Excuse me, my Lady?' "
"No," she said, with that giggle that made her seem to be a little girl, "you meant 'eh.' "
She didn't look like a child, though. Her traveling clothes had been replaced, at least for now, with an elven dress that appeared to be little more than a long, wide, embroidered bolt of silk, wrapped several times around her at bosom and hips, but only once on its way from breasts to hips, then twisting around her left leg down to that ankle, leaving her right leg bare from sandals to mid-thigh.
He couldn't see any pins, and there was always the feeling that the whole garment was about to fall off, like a hawk's jesses wound too loosely around its spool – but that would have been undignified, and the Therranji elves would hardly have provided her with their own formal clothes if embarrassing her had been their intention.
*Whatever they've done with – or for – Forinel, he's obviously earned some respect here, and I'm sure they're not going to embarrass her,* the dragon said, from off in the distance. * Worry about the other things.*
"You haven't answered me, Kethol," she said.
He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Lady. I was caught up in thought."
"Well," she said with a smile, "uncatch yourself, and let's see if we can walk ourselves free of this leafy prison, or at least discover where the walls and the bars might be."
He nodded. "I'll get – "
"No." She laid her hand on his. "Pirojil is sleeping off whatever it was that he drank last night, and he's foul enough company these days."
He was about to protest when she put a finger to his lips. "Shh. I don't mean to criticize him. He's obviously troubled. This is where he comes from, isn't it?"
Kethol shook his head. "I don't know."
Her eyes met his. They still had that strange quality of interfering with his breathing.
"Very well," she said. "Let's walk."
Their apartments were far enough up the tree that Kethol would have been concerned about how long the climb would have been, although as they exited through a cr
ystalline door and onto the circular staircase cut into the bark, he wouldn't have sworn that they were as much as halfway up the tree's trunk.
The woods were quiet, at least at this level, despite the breeze that rattled the leaves against each other, hard enough that, for just a moment, Kethol could see flashes of crystal through the leaves.
"I've been thinking about Pirojil," she said. "It begins to make sense. Remember when Erenor tried a seeming on him? To make him look less, well – "
"Ugly is the word you're looking for, Lady," he said.
"Ugly it is." She nodded her agreement. "It didn't work, and Erenor is rather good at seemings, if nothing else.
"That sounds like what I've heard about elven magic. There used to be an elven presence in Tynear, back during the Euar'den days." She sighed. "He's been made not just to look ugly, but to be ugly, in a deep and profound way that makes a seeming impossible. Or so Erenor thinks."
"He said that?" When would Erenor have been alone with Leria, anyway, and –
"No." Her eyes met his. "If you spend enough time with somebody, if you talk and listen to him about things important and trivial," she said, "you find that you know what he thinks about some things without him saying it. Haven't you found it so?"
Kethol nodded. "Yes, I have."
Whether her hand rested on his arm for physical support or for something else he couldn't have said.
Hoped, yes, but said, no.
Besides, it didn't matter. It was only a matter of time.
Forinel was on his way, and the two of them would, shortly, be on their way back to Biemestren. All in all, it was just as well, although she would have made a lovely empress. Better she be with Forinel.
The ring was, after all, the heart of it. She could have taken the ring off and secured it in a jewelry box, somewhere. But if she had kept that ring on her person, next to her heart, for years, she must have loved him very much, indeed, enough that the pain of missing him was less important than the familiar warmth of it.
Not Quite Scaramouche Page 25
