Irons in the Fire (Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution)

by Juliet E. McKenna

  So Tathrin knew how to deal with whores. He should be proof against whatever blandishments Failla had up her ostensibly demure sleeves.

  "We turn right there." Tathrin pointed for the chair-carriers' benefit before smiling at Failla. "Have you ever seen the bridges at Palastrine?"

  "No." Failla's wide-eyed gaze invited him to continue.

  Was she an actress as talented as any gracing the stage at The Looking Glass Playhouse? On the other side of the balance, why shouldn't she find Tathrin attractive? He was tall, handsome and straight-limbed, and shared her passion for righting the wrongs of their homeland.

  Was his mistrust of her simple jealousy? A moment's rational thought reminded Aremil that he had absolutely nothing to recommend him to such a beauty. Who would ever imagine that he might desire Failla? Not even Lyrlen thought there was any impropriety in her staying as his guest. After all, there was no way he could negotiate the staircase to the guest bedrooms even if he had a mind to.

  No, he reflected, he wasn't jealous. Tathrin could bed the wench, if not with Aremil's goodwill, then at least with his understanding. He was more envious of the time Failla had spent with Tathrin over the last half-season. He really didn't want to hear about their journey and their long conversations lamenting the harsh reality of life in Lescar and their speculations as to Duke Garnot of Carluse's plans. Aremil wanted to tell Tathrin about his own discussions with Charoleia and Gruit, with Reniack and Lady Derenna, as they had pooled their knowledge and ideas. He wanted to hear Tathrin's opinions on the tales of aetheric enchantment that he'd been assiduously gathering.

  Quite apart from all that, he just wanted to spend some time with Tathrin, to play white raven and talk about whatever inconsequentialities occurred to them. After being so used to having a friend, he hadn't enjoyed returning to his old isolation.

  "It's the house with the green door." Tathrin pointed ahead.

  The chair-men set him down gently in front of it. Aremil waved Tathrin away and managed to get to his feet on his own. "I have dined here several times while you've been away."

  "Good day, gentlemen." Charoleia's maid opened the door.

  A serene Relshazri woman, Charoleia had certainly not found her among the girls lingering in the portico of Drianon's temple in hopes of a profitable hire. Aremil wondered how long she had served her mistress and just how much she knew about the mysterious Lady Alaric and all her other guises.

  "Failla!" A stocky blond man with an engaging grin followed the maid out onto the steps. "We've missed you!"

  With his unkempt hair, sturdy boots and plain brown doublet and breeches, he looked as rough-hewn as any of the Mountain Men who visited Vanam from time to time. But his accent had nothing of the uplands about it.

  "Hello, Gren." Her smile was polite but not encouraging.

  "Master Aremil," Gruit said in welcome.

  Aremil noticed the wine merchant watching him apprehensively as he followed the others into the parlour on slow crutches.

  "Let me." Tathrin held the door open for him.

  This sitting room was refreshingly clear of clutter, which made it all the easier to notice the expensive furniture, and the elegant statuettes of the gods on the marble mantel. Paintings of Vanam's hills in the days before the upper town had spread beyond its walls quietly suggested that this wealth had deep foundations in the city.

  Reniack was pacing back and forth across the wide bay window, keeping a watch on the street. A second blond man was sitting opposite Derenna, a small table with a half-played game of white raven between them, the pieces all enamelled bronze on a patterned marble board.

  This must be Sorgrad, Aremil decided, the other blond man's brother. The one whom Tathrin seemed to think was more dangerous. Contemplating the game pieces with quiet intensity, he was dressed in dark-blue broadcloth tailored with all the understated elegance of Vanam's wealthiest residents.

  Derenna wore the same shabby black dress Aremil had last seen her in, with the same lack of concern.

  "Who's winning?" Gruit went to look at the game while Aremil lowered himself carefully into a chair.

  "We don't know as yet." Derenna shot her opponent a sharp look of reluctant admiration.

  "For the moment, honours are even." Sorgrad's expression was amiable and unreadable.

  "Anyone want to roll some runes?" Gren asked hopefully.

  "Are we all here?" Trailing a scent of summer flowers, Charoleia arrived in a gown of amethyst silk. Her maid followed with a tray of glasses and a bottle of Master Gruit's finest Tormalin red wine.

  "You two think you can improve on our plans?" Reniack turned around. He wore a dark tunic and breeches with stockings and polished shoes, all clerkly neatness, but his manner was as combative as ever.

  "Yes." Gren raised his glass with cheery smile.

  "We can." Sorgrad was quietly confident.

  "Please explain." Charoleia sat, gesturing with a silver-ringed hand.

  Aremil waved the maid's offer of a glass away. After the door closed behind her, he watched Derenna and Reniack as Sorgrad outlined the case for overthrowing all of Lescar's dukes. Tathrin had already set out their reasoning to Aremil, summarising the long debates he'd had with Sorgrad and Failla as they had travelled together.

  Was it possible? Aremil wondered. Could they do this? He'd spent most of the previous night staring at the ceiling of his darkened bedroom, his usual pains a minor consideration as he turned this astonishing proposal over and over in his mind. He asked himself time and again what this stranger could possibly gain by persuading them all down a road to ruin. What profit could there be for a mercenary in that?

  "You want to kill the dukes?" Reniack said with disbelief.

  "Overthrow," Tathrin corrected him.

  "You won't overthrow Duke Orlin of Parnilesse," Reniack told him roundly. "He'll take death before defeat."

  "His choice." Sorgrad shrugged. "This is still Lescar's best road to peace. You've been talking about attacking the dukes' ability to fight by cutting off their funds and depriving them of fighting men. That's fine as far as it goes, but you've already realised that weakening one dukedom will only leave the others in a stronger position. If you really want to put an end to this strife, you have to rid Lescar of them all."

  "Could we?" Gruit breathed.

  Aremil saw that the idea had caught the old man's imagination.

  "With the right mercenary companies fighting for you." Gren lounged against the marble fireplace. "As long as you have enough coin to keep them sweet."

  "You also need the right captain-general for those mercenary forces." Sorgrad moved an enamelled swordwing and smiled at Derenna. "Your move, my lady."

  "Do you know the right man?" Gruit demanded.

  Derenna spared the game a cursory glance and moved the white raven behind a gorse brake.

  "Evord Fal Breven." Sorgrad studied the board.

  "He would be my first choice," Charoleia agreed.

  "Never heard of him," Reniack said dismissively.

  "He'll be very glad to know it." Sorgrad didn't look up from the game. "That doesn't alter the facts. Fourteen years ago, he commanded one of the most successful mercenary companies that Lescar's seen in a generation."

  "Captain-General Evord is a Soluran," Charoleia said calmly. "He earned his spurs fighting in their western provinces. Mercenaries in the pay of the border barons keep beasts and wild men from crossing the Solfall River and make sure the Mandarkin don't come south through the mountains."

  "What brought him to Lescar?" Gruit asked curiously.

  Gren shrugged. "Easier fighting for better money."

  "Where is he now?" Tathrin wanted to know.

  "He went back to Solura." Sorgrad moved a pied crow. "He got sick of never being allowed to win a victory that would actually solve anything. He would accept a commission from a duke, come up with a plan and carry it through. Before he could force a decisive conclusion, he'd be whistled back like a recalcitrant hound when some duche
ss's petticoat plotting or a realignment of the dukes' alliances made it all moot."

  "You would set a Soluran to rule over us?" Derenna moved the white raven, snapping the alabaster figurine down with unnecessary force. "How long would that peace last? Nobles and commoners alike would refuse to bow to a foreign usurper."

  Aremil shifted so he could get a better view of the game board. The Mountain Man was a very skilled player.

  "Evord would have no interest in Lescar's so-called throne." Sorgrad shifted an owl. "Which is another reason why you want him in charge of this army. He'll do what he's paid to do and then retire to his own lands in Solura."

  "As long as you pay him with gold coin," Gren pointed out, "not Lescar's lead-laced excuse for silver."

  "You would leave us with anarchy." Derenna shook her head, exasperated.

  "There are a great many systems of government, real and imagined." Sorgrad's cold blue gaze challenged her. "Scholars and philosophers debate them endlessly by their comfortable firesides. Are you saying that all you educated and scholarly Lescari wouldn't be able to come up with a way forward between you?"

  "Whatever's decided, it won't be the nobles laying down the laws," Reniack asserted. "The poorest folk can finally have a voice if we can get rid of the dukes."

  "All shouting at once," Derenna scoffed.

  "You'd deny them their right to speak?" Reniack's chin jutted belligerently.

  "That would hardly be rational." Sorgrad smiled.

  "This whole notion is irrational," Derenna said stubbornly. "If mercenaries attack one duke, or even two, as soon as the rest realise that the same threat extends to them, they'll unite to fight out of simple self-preservation. Quite rationally," she said acidly.

  "So we attack them all." Gren clearly didn't see the problem.

  Sorgrad smiled. "Get everyone in the right places before the first blood's spilled and it could be a very short campaign."

  "How?" Derenna demanded. "How could you possibly bring everyone you needed into such a plot and hope to keep it a secret? How could you send word to all the people you needed to act without being discovered?"

  Something on the game board caught her eye and she frowned before swiftly moving the white raven again.

  Reniack laughed with harsh amusement. "How do you think I've escaped Duke Orlin's hangman with no more than torn ears? There are plenty of ways of spreading news as well as gathering it. I don't suppose you have much to do with men in the travelling trades, my lady, but thatchers and chimney sweeps, ox-handlers and slaughtermen, candlemakers and charcoal burners--they all carry bundles of my pamphlets and broadsheets around Parnilesse without anyone being the wiser." He looked from Tathrin to Gruit. "You have all those same trades in Carluse and Marlier?"

  "Quite so." Gruit smiled slowly. "And I know any number of merchants who carry discreet letters from place to place. You know that yourself, my lady."

  "Tavern musicians carry letters for the guildmasters in Carluse," Failla volunteered.

  "Troupes of players and musicians travel between vassal lords' manor houses." Charoleia smiled. "As do tutors and painters and map-makers and doctors. Many such people are well known to me, and most owe me favours."

  Aremil had wondered just how she came about the information she traded. He'd guessed she must buy it from servants and the like. He hadn't thought about the humbler trades who cooperated with Reniack, though. The pamphleteer's words were more coin tipping the balance in favour of this plan.

  "Every one of these unknown people becomes another link to us," Derenna cried with exasperation. "How long do you think it will be before we're loaded down with chains?"

  "Stay out of Lescar and no duke can seize you." Gren shrugged.

  "Then our families will pay the penalty," she said bitingly.

  Sorgrad was unconcerned. "Mostly folk will just need to know one thing, one place to be at a certain time. If no one but ourselves knows the whole story, any thread a duke's spy pulls on will snap before it leads to us."

  He moved a pied crow that had been shielding a trio of mistle thrushes clustered round an oak tree. Derenna instantly shifted the white raven and put them to flight off the edge of the board.

  "I must go back to Parnilesse." Reniack looked grim. "The people we'll need there have felt the lash of Duke Orlin's whip too often to trust anyone but me."

  "I'll be going back to Carluse," Failla said quickly. "I'm the only one the guildmasters will believe, and as far as Duke Garnot is concerned, I'm dead anyway."

  "How in Poldrion's name did you manage that?" Gruit asked with misgiving.

  "It would be a cursed sight easier if you people buried your ancestors like decent folk instead of throwing them on bonfires," Gren said cheerfully, "but there's always some unclaimed dead on a Lescari battlefield. So we found the site of some old fighting and dug around a bit."

  Aremil saw Failla pale at the recollection while Tathrin looked anxious.

  "Duke Garnot got her clothes and some bones back, half-burned but still recognisable enough to convince him." Sorgrad moved a russet owl figurine with a soft click.

  The Mountain Men had played that trick before, Aremil was convinced of it.

  "So we're to achieve all this when we have to send letters all the way from Vanam to Reniack in Parnilesse and to her while she's skulking around Carluse's back roads?" Derenna flung a hand towards Failla. "It took the boy nearly a whole season to get to Draximal and back. How can you hope to manage this business with such delays? How long before something unexpected makes a mockery of whatever you have planned?"

  Aremil decided it was time for him to speak. "We won't send letters. We will use magic to communicate with each other."

  "Of all the follies I've heard today, that's quite the most ludicrous." Derenna looked scornfully at him.

  "Please hear Master Aremil out," Tathrin said tightly.

  "If you think for one moment we could get away with involving wizards in this madness, you should send that scholar's ring back to your mentor," Derenna retorted with rising anger.

  "Don't bite the lad's head off."

  Aremil was slightly alarmed to see Gren take a step away from the fireplace, his face hardening.

  "I don't mean magecraft," Aremil said hastily. "You must have heard of aetheric magic?"

  "Tricks and charlatanry." Derenna's lips narrowed.

  Charoleia looked at her with mild surprise. "You must be aware that Vanam's university leads the study of such ancient enchantments?"

  "You lowlanders forgot all about the old magics when your empires fell into ruin." Sorgrad took up his untouched glass of wine and studied it. "Then you found you had mageborn among you who could manipulate earth and stone, fire and water, even the wind and rain. Wizardry became the only magic that mattered. You've never paid much attention to what goes on in the uplands, not beyond convincing yourselves there's no harm in stealing our land to graze your sheep on. If you had, you'd know that what you call 'aetheric magic' had never been lost."

  He paused, contemplative. "There are learned men and women in the remote mountain valleys well versed in more than sharing their thoughts. They can pluck the very memories out of your head if they see fit, or see your innermost intent, and you'll never know they've done it. They travel from settlement to settlement to give judgement and counsel, to heal the sick, to greet the newly born, to comfort the dying. No one sees them on the road. They come and go as suits their own purposes. They spread news and carry appeals for aid or alliance from one settlement to another. As long as they believe those in need deserve help," he qualified. "If they don't, one lone traveller becomes ten or twenty stepping out of the shadows. No one will enter a valley the sheltya have declared closed. They also do whatever's needed to curb a pestilence or to find the truth of some crime against innocent blood."

  "And then?" Tathrin broke the uncertain silence.

  "Sometimes the settlements are found empty, all their people gone."

  Even Gren's cheerful demea
nour was subdued, Aremil noticed.

  "Or the folk still there have had their minds emptied of any recollection of what's gone on," Sorgrad concluded.

  "I don't know about the remote mountains, nor Vanam's scholars, come to that," Reniack said with uncharacteristic caution, "but I've heard rumours coming out of Tormalin. Whatever you make of these tales of lost lands rediscovered across the Eastern Ocean, the Emperor and all the princes are searching their archives and libraries for hints and fragments of the lore that underpinned the Old Empire. Artifice, they call it. They say it's a magic that can get inside a man's head, to find out all his secrets or convince him some illusion is solid reality."

  "It's all the same magic," Gren agreed. "But if Artifice gets inside your head, you can always--"

  Sorgrad silenced him with a word of what Aremil assumed was the Mountain tongue.

  Wondering just what had been said, Aremil continued, "My lady Derenna, I am acquainted with a mentor of unimpeachable reputation among the university's scholars who's travelled extensively in search of such lore. He has told me that those adept in the more complex enchantments can communicate with each other over hundreds of leagues, if not thousands."

  "But none of us are adept," Derenna countered, "nor likely to become so any time soon."

  "These Mountain adepts, would they help us?" Gruit asked, hope and apprehension following each other across his face.

  "No." Sorgrad was still studying his glass of wine. "They haven't involved themselves in the scholarship here, though thanks to curious scholars like Master Aremil's friend, they know all about it. So with luck, they won't step out of some shadow to chastise us if we communicate through aetheric magic instead of letters."