Elvenborn

'Aelmarkin, it is a pleasure to see you,' she said, exuding subdued warmth. 'Forgive me for not rising to greet you prop­erly, but as you see, you have caught me in the midst of my lit­tle chores.'

Now, Aelmarkin knew very well that she had gotten ample enough warning of his imminent arrival to have set her 'little chores' aside, and she knew that he knew and he knew that she knew that he knew, so they were most comfortable in their mu­tual knowledge. He looked the visitors' couch over before sit­ting in it, and was probably not surprised to discover what a disadvantage it put him at.

'My cursed cousin has covered himself with glory,' he grumbled, as a slave appeared at the door, offered him wine, and disappeared again. '1 hope you've been making better progress than I. It will be worth it to me to lose this bet if you can bring him down.'

She smiled enigmatically. 'You are aware that the key to all this is to either get rid of his mother or encourage him to put her in her—appropriate—place?'

Aelmarkin wasn't stupid; she had to grant him that. He sat up—or did so as much as the couch would allow him. 'So it's Lady Lydiell who rules that roost, does she? I'd suspected as much. That's hardly surprising, given how long she has been the sole authority on that estate.' He looked sour, and would

probably have added his disapproval of a lady assuming such authority, but that was hardly politic in Triana's presence.

'But it's high time that Lord Kyrtian assumed his proper role as head of the estate, I should think,' Triana replied, carefully examining her flawlessly polished nails. 'And I expect, after all of his victories in the field, he's not going to be content to sit back and let someone else manage his property anymore.'

Aelmarkin relaxed back in his seat and produced a thin smile. 'And the right woman could—would!—certainly en­courage him in that direction, wouldn't she? The only question in my mind is, to what effect?' The smile hardened. 'It is not going to please me particularly to find that the mother has been supplanted by the equally— competent—wife.'

She left off examining her nails and gave him a chill look. How very like a male to assume that she intended to take the mother's place! 'I do assure you, Aelmarkin, that wedding that child is no part of my plans. There is nothing about his estates or his person that could tempt me to the folly of putting my es­tates and my person into his legal control.'

'See that you remain of that mind,' Aelmarkin responded shortly. There was no mistake; he fully expected her to be that foolish! Did he think that every female in existence lived only to wed?

'The thought would never have crossed my mind, and is no part of my plans.' She allowed a tinge of contempt to color her gaze. 'Did you come all this way to fence with me, or have you another purpose you haven't yet revealed?'

He had come to discover what, if anything, she knew or had done, of course—but she suspected that- he had also come to keep an eye on her. Of course he had begun to think her plans might include wedding Kyrtian as well as seducing him—he .was a male, after all, and he was blinded by the automatic as­ sumption that every female wanted ultimately to be someone's lady—as if the only possible identity a female had was through her male relatives.

Idiot.

But she could use him. This little exercise that had begun as a bet had taken on a life and a purpose for her far beyond its

original. No, she did not want Kyrtian or his estates—but she did want that seat on the Council that had been denied her for so long. She wanted to be counted as the equal of any Great Lord. She knew—how not?—that Lord Kyndreth only intended to support Kyrtian for as long as it took to destroy the Young Lords' Revolt and possibly the Wizards. Once that was over, Kyrtian had the potential to become a dangerous rival for Lord Kyndreth's ascendancy in the Council. He would be altogether pleased to find someone willing to help and placed to eliminate Kyrtian when the time came. Not by assassination, no—that was too crude, and besides, there was the small problem of get­ting away with murder once it had been committed. That altogether-too-efficient bodyguard of Kyrtian's was another problem.

But elimination by other means—that was another covey of quail altogether. Once Triana was close to Kyrtian, trusted by him, there were any number of options open to her. She could arrange for him to do something that would disgrace him en­tirely—something to do with slaves, perhaps. He treated that bodyguard with suspicious softness, and Lydiell's family was known for its ridiculous cosseting of humans. Perhaps some­thing could be concocted linking him to the Wizards as a sym­pathizer. Or if none of that seemed possible, a female, allowed closer than any male, could do things that were not open to men. She could administer drugs that would enfeeble mind or body, but gradually—and most important of all, irreversibly. She could leak important financial or other details of the estate that would allow someone like Kyndreth to work the magic that would ruin it—its main source of income lay in foodstuffs, af­ter all, and properly manipulated weather or insect-plagues for several years in a row could bring the family to its knees. She could and would encourage infatuation on Kyrtian's part, along with the giving of very expensive gifts and reckless behavior to impress her. It was possible that she could arrange him to bank­rupt himself, in games of chance and the like—or to break his own neck in sport and the hunt.

Or, even, to emulate his father and vanish into the wilder­ness, never to be seen again. That, in particular, appealed to her.

Encouraging him in that direction had great potential, and shouldn't be all that difficult. The wilderness had killed the fa­ther, so why not the son?

There were so many options open to her, once she got close to Kyrtian, that she had no intention of limiting herself to any one plan for the moment.

Meanwhile, it was actually possible for Aelmarkin to prove useful.

'If you would care to stay for a visit, I think we can accom­modate you,' she said, smiling, and surprising him. 'Have you come prepared to remain?'

She knew he had, of course; although she might not know the contents of his baggage, she certainly knew the weight and vol­ume. He'd brought a cart-full and only two personal slaves, so he'd been intending to inflict himself on her for a good fort­night at least.

'I confess I was hoping that you would tender the invitation,' he replied cautiously. Clearly he had hoped to trick or bully her into the invitation, and had not thought for a moment that it would be offered freely.

'Then why don't you settle in,' she said airily, waving a hand at the door, where at her invisible signal, the slave who had brought him here arrived, having responded to that summons. 'I'll deal with my little household affairs, and we can discuss plans over luncheon.'

She kept invisible her amusement at his struggles to extricate himself from the couch, and responded to his none-too-gracious bow with a nod of her head. As he accompanied the slave to the guest quarters she went back to her accounts. While not of spellbinding interest, they were important after all, and needed to be attended to. These days she didn't trust that any­thing had been done properly unless she herself had run a criti­cal eye over it.

Now—luncheon was certainly going to be interesting. She was quite looking forward to it, after all.

She counted on the fact that she had welcomed Aelmarkin, and that there wasn't a great deal for him to amuse himself with on

her estate, to ensure that as soon as he had convinced himself that she wasn't playing a deeper game than he thought, he would leave.

And, in fact, that was precisely what happened. Although he had clearly come prepared to remain for a week or more, within three days he was gone.

She had speeded his departure by being ridiculously virtuous for the duration of his visit. She held no parties,