But while she had been thinking about that, would anyone have "eavesdropped" on her? She didn't think so.
But if they had—
She stifled a slow wave of hot anger. No use in getting angry over something that might not have happened.
But if it has—someone is going to pay.
They kept her cooling her heels for some time before finally letting her into the Council Chamber. Skif left her at the door and disappeared, leaving her no one to question, and being kept there did not help her smoldering temper any.
But after she had waited, impatiently, for what seemed like hours, she heard footsteps coming down the hall leading to the Council Chamber. She turned to see the rest of the Council approaching—and at that point the door to the Council Chamber opened, and they all filed in to take their places. Elspeth no longer felt quite so annoyed at being dragged off to see the Circle, then left in the hall.
Though it would have been nice if someone had bothered to tell her they were waiting for the other Council members to arrive.
She took her seat with the rest, casting covert glances at the faces of those Councilors who were also in the Heraldic Circle: Teren, who had taken Elcarth's place as Dean of the Collegium; the Seneschal's Herald, Kyril; the Lord Marshal's Herald, Griffon; the Queen's Own Herald, Talia; Selenay; and Prince Daren. Their expressions didn't tell her much; their faces were tightly controlled. That, in itself, was something; it meant they were worried. And since there was a White-clad Herald with the silver-arrow insignia of the Special Messenger sitting on the extra chair reserved for guests and petitioners, chances were slim that the Circle and Council were going to take Elspeth to task for her notions.
She relaxed and sat back a little into the familiar bulk of her Council seat. So this is just Council business after all. If the others hadn't looked so serious, she'd have chuckled at herself. See, Elspeth, the world doesn't revolve around you!
Selenay rose when the others had settled themselves. "This messenger arrived from the Eastern Border earlier this afternoon, from Shallan, one of Herald-Captain Kerowyn's lieutenants. She had ordered this messenger to come to me, first, before reporting to his Captain."
Elspeth stifled a smile. There's one in the eye for anyone who still wonders where Kero's loyalties lie. Or the Skybolts', for that matter.
"Since the Circle was in session, and since I understood that his message was fairly urgent, I had him brought here. After hearing what his message was, I decided to call an emergency Council meeting." She nodded at the messenger as she sat down. "Herald Selwin, the floor is yours."
The messenger cleared his throat—though not selfconsciously, Elspeth noted—and stood. "I think most of you know that the Eastern Border is considered a sensitive enough area for messengers to be posted at garrisons full time. My current post is the town garrisoned by Kerowyn's Skybolts. Now, what you probably don't know is that the Skybolts have—with the Queen's knowledge and permission—been engaging in some—ah—covert activities."
He flushed a little, and Elspeth raised a surprised eyebrow. Some of the other Councilors muttered a little, and one of them stood up; Lady Kester, speaker for the West. "Just what do you mean by 'covert' activities?" she asked sharply, looking a great deal like a horse who is about to refuse a jump.
"Well—" Herald Selwin glanced at the Queen, who shook her head imperceptibly. "Some of them—I can't talk about. I'm sure you'll understand—the Queen and the Consort both know every move, but it's very much a situation where the fewer who know, the better."
"I trust the situation that brought you here is something you can talk about," the woman said dryly.
"Uh—yes, of course." Selwin quickly regained his aplomb. "We've been smuggling; people and information out of Hardorn, and—uh—supplies in. One of the people we just smuggled out was not just one of Ancar's farmers who has been pressed too far; this was an escaping prisoner."
We? Huh, that means Selwin's involved, too. He's not just a messenger. Elspeth glanced around the table; from the looks of speculation, she suspected that this had not come entirely as a surprise.
"This wasn't an ordinary prisoner, either," Selwin continued. "He had been one of the under-secretaries in Ancar's officer corps." This time murmurs of surprise met the statement. "He held the same position under Ancar's father, and the reason he was never replaced, like so many were, is that he is so ordinary as to be invisible. He says—and we've Truth-Spelled him, so we believe him—that he didn't know what was going on until recently."
Elspeth was very skeptical of that statement, until Selwin finished describing the former prisoner. Then she could believe it. Lieutenant Rojer Klinseinem was exactly the kind of focused, obsessive individual their own Seneschal and Lord Marshal prayed to see come into their secretarial corps. His life was in his accounting books; he never left his office except to eat and sleep, and he truly never thought about what those figures he toted up daily meant.
Until Ancar's excesses among his people began to affect even him. He found officers and court officials he had known all his life vanishing without a trace. He discovered friends, neighbors, even children in the street avoiding him when he wore his uniform. Then he noted some odd discrepancies in his accounts. One of his duties was to take care of the prison accounts. The number of prisoners in the cells had gone up, substantially, but the amount of money allotted for their maintenance had not increased in the corresponding amounts. Furthermore, the names of those imprisoned changed, sometimes weekly. For all his shortsightedness, he was an ethical man, and all these things worried him, so he decided to investigate them himself, an investigation that led him eventually to the prisons and the barracks rooms, then the king's own dungeons.
What he discovered horrified him. Then one of the king's sorcerers caught him.
He'd had the sense to keep his mouth shut about most of what he'd learned, and because he was so completely ordinary, with no record of ever thinking for himself, he was actually put under house arrest until he could be questioned by someone they called the "Truth-finder General." He didn't wait to discover who or what that was; he got out a back window, stole a horse, and fled toward Valdemar.
He remembered the old days, the days of friendship with Valdemar and its Queen, and he was no longer inclined to believe the official stories about the cause of the hostilities between Valdemar and Hardorn. He fled toward a hoped-for sanctuary with the hounds on his heels.
"I won't go into all the details," Selwin said, "You can question him yourself when we bring him here. Right now he's not up to much traveling."
Elspeth nodded, grimly. Nothing Rojer said would surprise her, not after some of Kero's stories—and not after what had happened to Talia.
"What's important at the moment is that he learned where the prisoners were vanishing to. They're being used as sacrifices in blood-rites—and there are more of them dying every week. Ancar is bringing in mages, lots of mages, and those he is not buying outright or coercing, he's making alliances with. Rojer says that Ancar's long-range plans include another major war with Valdemar, and this one is going to include those mages as a major part, rather than in a support capacity. The one that caught him boasts that not even a god would be able to hold defenses against all the mages Ancar is gathering."
Now the muttering around the Council table grew louder, and there were distinct undertones of alarm.
"That's not all," Selwin said, over the voices. The Councilors quieted, and some looked at him with real fear in their eyes. "Right after we got Rojer out, there was an attack on the Sky bolts' garrison town. A magical attack, and it got across the Border. Past the protections."
"Why?" asked the Lord Patriarch—Father Ricard, who had replaced elderly Father Aldon. At the same time, the Lord Marshal asked "How?"
"Why should be fairly obvious," Prince Daren said, the first time he'd spoken since the meeting began. "They knew we had Rojer, and they felt what he had to tell us was important enough to try to silence him."
Selwin nodded. "Precisely, Your Highness," he replied. "As for 'how,' I presume the mage managed to overcome the Border-protections somehow. I saw the attack. At first, I thought it was some kind of mist, and I didn't think it looked all that dangerous. But Lieutenant Shallan said the Skybolts had seen this sort of thing before, and got us all evacuated; she said they had something to take care of it, but it would only work at a distance. The 'mist' turned out to be a swarm of tiny insects, no bigger than gnats, but poisonous enough to drop a man. And they were guided, there's no doubt of that. They came out of a kind of hole in the sky." He shook his head. "I really can't properly describe it. But the hole appeared near the outskirts of town, inside the Valdemar Border."
"These insects," the Seneschal asked, "are they gone now?"
"Not gone, my lord," Selwin replied. "Dead. The Skybolts, as I said, have seen this kind of weapon before. They evacuated the town, then used small catapults to lob pots of burning herbs into the streets. The insects were killed so completely that there were none to follow us, and few to return when the hole in the sky reopened."
He sat down again when no one else had any more questions. Prince Daren stood up in his place. "This is not going to be the last attempt, my lords and ladies," he said grimly. "I think we can count ourselves fortunate that it was the Skybolts who encountered this first. If it had not been—if it had been a regular garrison—they would have died to a man, and we would never have known what it was that killed them."
Prince Daren sat down and took his wife's hand; Selenay looked very pale.
"I must admit," she said, "that I doubted when Kerowyn and my daughter swore that Ancar would find a way to penetrate our Border with magic. I was wrong."
Selenay looked over at Elspeth, and bit her lip. "My daughter also proposed a solution that I rejected out of hand; she suggested that Valdemar seek out magical allies as well, and find some mage who was strong enough to pass our borders to help us from within, and perhaps even teach new mages. She suggested that, since the Chronicles all speak of a 'Mage-Gift,' that there may still be Heralds carrying that Gift. She thinks that Gift has simply gone unrecognized and untaught because there was no one to teach it. She also suggested that she be the one to leave Valdemar, find such a mage, and bring him—or her—back to us."
Silence met her words as the Councilors turned looks of doubt toward Elspeth's end of the table. She did her best to look as mature and competent—and confident—as any of them could have wished. She was very glad now that Kero had insisted she wash and change before the meeting. She doubted she would have been able to convince any of them looking like a disheveled hoyden.
"May I speak?" she asked. At Selenay's nod, she stood up.
"Always speak to the Council from a standing position, kitten." Kero had tutored her a few weeks ago, after watching one of the sessions from the visitor's seat. The Council had wanted a report on what the Skybolts had been assigned to—and now Elspeth knew why Kero had been fairly reticent.
But what the Council didn't realize was that Kero had learned more about them than they had from her. The Captain had made careful assessments of the Council and their reactions to Elspeth, and had some fairly shrewd observations to make afterward.
"Always speak to them from a standing position. That will put your head higher than theirs, and give you an emotional advantage. Put your hands on the table, and lean forward a little. Showing your hands tells their guts that you have nothing to hide, leaning says that you are comfortable with your power, and leaning forward tells them that you are earnest. Never raise your voice; in fact, if you can, speak a little lower than usual. That tells their guts that you're not just an emotional female. But if you feel passionately about something, choose your words carefully, and put some punch behind them."
Talia and Selenay did all these things, but they did them without thinking, without knowing the reasons why they worked. Talia analyzed the audience through her Gift of Empathy, and adjusted herself accordingly, all without ever thinking about it. Selenay had been trained by her father—who may have known why his advice worked, but didn't bother to explain it to his daughter. Kerowyn, on the other hand, had to fight her way up to the top in a predominantly male profession—and she was a superb tactician in any arena. She knew how to deal with authority figures, and why the tactics she used worked.
Elspeth tried to keep all her advice in mind as she began.
"Herald-Captain Kerowyn and I have had several conversations about this eventuality," she said, quietly. "That in itself is unusual, because until now, it seems as if it has been very difficult even to speak about magic within the bounds of our realm, especially for Heralds. Please think back, think about what has happened every time in the past that you've spoken about magic in this Council Room—you've gone outside these walls, and gradually forgotten all about it, haven't you?"
She looked around, and got slow nods from most of the Councilors. "Somehow, as urgent as the threat seemed to be, it became less urgent once the immediate danger was over, didn't it? It did for me, too, until I met Kerowyn. I suspect that 'forgetting' may be a symptom of whatever it is that has protected us until now. But now—if you'll notice, we're speaking about magic, all of us, and I don't think we're going to forget about it outside the room. And I am terribly afraid that this is a symptom of something else—a symptom of the fact that this protection is weakening."
A swift intake of breath was the only sound that broke the silence following her words, but she couldn't tell who it was that had gasped. She glanced around the horseshoe-shaped table. Several of the Councilors were nodding, though not happily. She continued.
"I don't think we have a choice; I believe we must find a mage or mages to help us. I have several reasons why I think that the person who goes to look for one should be me." She paused again, waiting for opposition, but she didn't see anyone leaping to his—or her—feet to object. "A Herald must be the person we send to find us a mage—or mages. That is because only a Herald is likely to be able to weigh the motives of those we consider, and find a person of sufficient ethics to do us any good. As to my qualifications, first of all, my rank is such that I'm not likely to encounter anyone who doubts my ability to negotiate. Now, Talia is the Queen's Own, but she also has a small child. I think it would be unreasonable to ask her to leave him for an indefinite length of time. And there is a very sinister reason for her to avoid taking him with her; if someone captured her child, Jemmie could be held to be used against her."
Emphatic nods around the table gave her confidence to continue. "As you know, Ancar has made an assassination attempt on me. I think he will find it harder—as Kero would say—to hit a moving target. There may be other Heralds who have sufficient rank to be able to negotiate, but of all of them, only Kero and I seem to be able to even speak of magic clearly, much less assess the capabilities of a mage. And Kero was a mercenary—frankly, the kind of mage we are looking for may hold that against her." She spread her hands and shrugged. "The answer seems obvious to me. And if I may be so blunt as to say so, I am expendable. Mother has the twins, either of whom can easily succeed me as Heir."
She sat down carefully, and then the uproar began.
Elspeth had a pounding headache before it was over, and the arguments went on long past dinnertime and well into the night. Servants were sent out for cold meat, cheese, and other provisions, then called in again to light the lamps. Because of the nature of the arguments, young Heraldic trainees in their final year were brought in to serve at the table, and keep a steady supply of tea and other nonintoxicating drinks on hand. This was not the longest Council session on record, but it was certainly right up with the record holders.
And Elspeth was right in the middle of it all. Half the time, the Councilors went at her like a horde of interrogators, shouting questions, each one trying to make himself heard over the rest. The rest of the time, they acted as if she weren't even there, arguing about her and her competence at the tops of their lungs.
Talia spared her a sympathetic glance or two, but she had her own hands full.
And besides, this was Elspeth's fight. It was up to her to win it; no one else was as convinced of her mission as she was. And her mother was still dead set against it.
So she fought by herself, grimly determined that she would win, no matter how long it took.
She did notice something odd, however. Every time it looked as though one of the Heralds would say something against her decision—he or she would freeze for a moment, sometimes in mid-sentence, and then fall silent.
Heralds often did that when their Companions were speaking to them, but Elspeth had never seen it happen so many times—or so abruptly. It was almost as if the Companions were arguing on her behalf, against their Chosens' better judgment. Elspeth even caught her mother in that momentary "listening" pose.
Shortly before midnight, the Council was finally in reluctant agreement. Elspeth could go; in fact, must go. She had succeeded, she and Selwin, in persuading everyone of the urgency of the situation. She had persuaded even her mother that she was the only person with the right combination of talents and credentials to successfully carry it off.
However, her route and ultimate destination would be watched over, at least inside Valdemar, and she would not go alone.
"You can't possibly go without an escort," the Lord Marshal said firmly. "I would say—twenty armed at the least."
"Thirty," said the Seneschal, over her squawk of outrage. "No less than that."
"Absolutely," Lady Cathan of the Guilds seconded. "Anything less would be inappropriate."
I'm trying to track down mages, she thought in exasperation. I'm trying to find people who are notoriously shy, and they want me to bring an entire army with me?
But she didn't say that; instead, she waited while the Councilors argued about the size of her escort, building it up until it did resemble a small army, then entered into the affray again when she thought she had a chance of being heard over the din.
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