Magic's Pawn

 - if he figures out the game we're playing, he'll be able to use blackmail on Van against me, and me against Staven. Oh. gods, I shouldn't have let him go. I should have told him to ignore Leshara's invitation. I should have. I -

The creak of the garden door broke into his worries, and his tensions evaporated when Vanyel slipped in from the darkness and latched the door behind himself.

'Ashke?' Tylendel began, then hesitated, seeing the troubled expression in Vanyel's eyes.

'He's a damned persuasive man, this Leshara,' Vanyel said softly, sitting himself in the chair in front of the cold fireplace.

'That's why he's here,' Tylendel replied grimly. 'It's the Leshara countermove to my being here. Since they can't buy into the Heralds, they've sent the one of their kin with the sweetest tongue to get the ear of the Queen, if he can.'

'He says he's got it. He said a lot of things. 'Lendel, there was an awful lot of what he said that made sense.'

'Of course there was!' Tylendel interrupted. 'I'll be willing to bet that half of what he told you was the absolute truth even by my standards. It's the way he said it, the context, and what he was prompting you to infer from what he told you that counts! You ought to know yourself from what you've been writing home that the best possible lie is to tell only the truth - just not all of it!'

'But 'Lendel,' Vanyel still looked uncertain. ' 'Lendel, he says his people have been willing to settle for months now, a settlement the Queen approves, and yours refuse to go along with it - '

'He didn't tell you what that 'plan' was, did he?'

Vanyel shook his head.

'To marry my thirty-year-old maiden-cousin who's never been outside of a cloister to a fifty-year-old lecher, take Staven out of being Lord Holder and put her in,' he said savagely, 'which effectively means putting him in, since there's no way she'd ever be able to stand up to him. She'd dry up and blow away the first time he spoke harshly to her. That's the Leshara notion of an equitable settlement.' He glared at Vanyel, angry and a little hurt that Vanyel would even consider taking Evan Leshara's word as the whole truth. 'He's using the fact that Staven's only seventeen as a way to imply that he's incompetent, too young to make any kind of rational decisions. And a lot of the powers at Court, being old goats themselves, are buying into the idea. After all, seventeen's only old enough to be told you have to go fight and die for something - it's not old enough to have any say in the matter!'

Vanyel's eyes had gotten very distressed, and he had shrunk back into the chair as far as he could. ' 'Lendel,' he faltered. 'I didn't mean - I wasn't doubting you-'

Tylendel gave himself a mental kick in the posterior for upsetting him. 'Ashke, I didn't mean to shout at you,' he said, kneeling beside the chair and putting one hand on Vanyel's knee. 'I'm sorry - I'm just so damned frustrated. He can say any damned thing he wants, and because I'm a Herald-trainee, I can't even refute him. It makes me a little crazy, sometimes.'

Vanyel brightened, and put his hand over Ty lenders. 'That's all right. I know how you feel. Like me and Father and Jervis.'

'Something like it.'

' 'Lendel, would you,' Vanyel hesitated, 'would you tell me your side?'

Tylendel took a deep breath. 'If I do, I'll be breaking a promise I made to Savil, not to get you involved.'

'I'm already involved. I - why? That's what I really want to know. What's keeping this thing going?'

'Something Wester Leshara did,' Tylendel replied, fighting down the urge to get up, grab a horse, and ride out to strangle Wester with his bare hands. The white-hot rage that always filled him whenever he called that particular memory up was very hard to control. 'Savil says I have to be absolutely fair - so to be absolutely fair, I'll tell you that this was in retaliation for a raid that accidentally killed his youngest son. We - our people - went in to stampede his cattle. The boy fell off his horse and wound up under their hooves. But I don't think that excuses what Wester did.'

'Which was?'

'My father had just died; he hired some kind of two-copper conjuror to convince Mother that Father's ghost wanted to speak with her. She wasn't very stable - which Wester was damned well aware of, and this pushed her over the edge. We got rid of the charlatan, but not before he'd gotten her convinced that if she found just the right formula, she'd be able to communicate with Father's spirit. She started taking all manner of potions, trying to see him. Finally she did see him - she ate Black Angel mushrooms.'

He did not add that he and Staven had been the ones to find her. Vanyel looked sick enough. Tylendel got a lid on his anger, and changed the subject. 'What did the bastard want, anyway?'

'He wanted me to let him know any time I heard anything about you or your family, and he wanted me to talk my father 'round to his side.'

'What did you tell him?'

Vanyel grimaced. 'I guess I was playing the same game of telling not all of the truth. I told him that I heard more about your people directly from you than I heard casually, and let him draw his own conclusions.'

Tylendel relaxed, and chuckled. Vanyel brightened a little more. 'What about your father?'

'I told him the truth; that I had been sent here as punishment, because I wouldn't toe the line at home, and that father would take advice from a halfwit before he'd take it from me. He was rather disappointed.'

Now Tylendel laughed, and hugged him. 'Ashke, ashke, you couldn't have done better if I'd given you a script!'

'So I did all right?' Now Vanyel was fairly glowing.

'You did better than all right.'