they can demand my services if he does not offer.
He might not—but Leyuet had the horrible feeling that Shalaman would not raise even a whisper to find out. Not with Winterhart at stake.
Leyuet clenched his hands into fists at his sides, every muscle tight with anxiety. Oh, how was he to deal with this? What was he to do? It was a dreadful dilemma!
My duty as Chief Truthsayer is clear. If I even suspect there has been an attempt to circumvent my office, I must arrange for the barbarians to be informed of my function and my duties, and offer myself to them immediately. I must! That is fundamental to all of the oaths I swore! “Let no man be denied the Truth”—no man, be he Haighlei or foreign, and not even the King can deny that!
But his other oaths—the ones he swore when he took office as the King’s Advisor, were now in direct conflict with his oaths as a Truthsayer.
I have a duty to honor the wishes of the King. All of this is supposition and suspicion on my part—except for the fact of the Lilies and the Necklace, which make the King’s wishes clear to me.
His hands rose of their own accord to hold his temples. This was giving him a headache that surely rivaled any of Palisar’s.
I shall never again be tempted to think lightly of his pain!
Which of his duties was the deeper? Shalaman needed a Consort; indeed, he and Palisar had been urging him for many, many years to select one. How could he continue in the next twenty-year cycle if there was no female principle beside him to balance his male? And he needed a Consort for his own sake as well; the Royal Consort was the equivalent of a personal kestra’chern in many ways, a kestra’chern Shalaman would never have to share with anyone.
Winterhart looked, to Leyuet’s eyes at least, to be fully capable of serving that position admirably. In addition, wedding her would bring the foreigners neatly into the fold without having to concede anything. There would be no need for elaborate arrangements, or for special inclusion in the Eclipse Ceremony—they would become allies by virtue of marriage, the simplest way of all.
But my duty as a Truthsayer—
There had been nothing whatsoever in his training, arduous as it was, that dealt with a situation like this!
What do I do when the King, who is the embodiment of the honor of the Haighlei, is—is possibly—acting with less than honor?
Should he confront Shalaman? What good would that do? It was not his place or his right to confront Shalaman over anything—and anything less than an accusatory confrontation would serve no purpose. If Shalaman were innocent of these suspicions, he still would be shamed and lose face before Leyuet.
That would be unthinkable—and for suspecting such a thing, I should offer to take my own life.
If he were guilty—he would deny his guilt and probably still contrive to keep Amberdrake from exercising his rights.
And he might demand that I take my own life. How would I know without Truthsaying if he were innocent or guilty? I cannot Truthsay the Emperor without his leave!
There was really only one solution, and that was for Leyuet to redeem Shalaman’s honor himself. The only way to save this situation is to remove the temptation for Shalaman to act wrongfully. If I circumvent the need to confront him, then events will fall as they would have if he had not neglected to call me forward in the first place.
That meant that Leyuet, who abhorred taking direct action, would have to do just that.
You must make it impossible for Shalaman to make his “convenient” oversight, Truthsayer, said a stern, internal voice, his own voice. That is the deeper duty, both to your office and to your King. If he is acting without honor, he will be forced to confront that for himself without having an outside force confront him. If he was simply forgetful, he will be saved from the results of that neglect, as is your duty to him as an Advisor. You, yourself, must go to the barbarians and make it clear to them what their options are.
It might possibly be, still, that Shalaman knew something that Leyuet did not. He might be aware of some reason why the barbarians would not want Leyuet inside their hearts and souls. But Leyuet would not know that unless he went to the barbarians himself. Only then would his own conscience and honor together be clean.
