chairs had been set up on the floor just beneath the steps that led to the low stone altar. “It is the only chamber m this castle where we can close the door and find any privacy,” Kendrick explained to the nobles. “Anything important said in the throne room or the Oak Chamber will be spread across Southmarch before the speaker has finished.”
Bamck moved uncomfortably in the hard, high-backed chair. He had been chewing willow bark since supper but his crippled arm still ached miserably from Shaso’s blows. He darted a sour look at the master of arms. Shaso’s face was a mask, his eyes fixed on the frescoes that, with so many lamps lit, gleamed daytime-bright, as though the birth and triumph of Erivor was the most interesting thing he had ever seen. Barrick had not attended many of these councils he and Briony had only been invited since their father’s departure, and this was his first without her, which added to his discomfort. He could not shake off the feeling that a part of him was gone, as though he had woken up to find he had only one leg.
Gailon of Summerfield was talking quietly into the prince regent’s left ear Sisel, Hierarch of Southmarch, had been given the position of honor on Kendrick’s other hand. The hierarch, a slender, active man of sixty winters or so, was the leading priest of the rnarchlands, and although in some things he was forced to act as the hand of the Trigonarch in distant Syan, he was also the first northerner to hold the position, and thus unusually loyal to the Eddons. The Trigonarchy had been unhappy that Barrick’s father Olin had chosen to elevate one of the local priests over their own candidate, but neither Syan nor theTrigon itself wielded as much power in the north as they once had.
Ranged around the table were many of the other leading nobles of the realm, Blueshore’s Tyne, Lord Nynor the castellan, the bearlike lord constable, Avin Brone, and Barrick’s dandified cousin Rorick Longarren, who was Earl of Daler’s Troth (strangely matched with those dour, plainspoken folk, Barrick always felt) as well as a half dozen more nobles, some clearly sleepy after the midday meal, others indifferently hiding their irritation at giving up a day of hunting or hawking. That sort would not even have been present were it not for their interest in seeing some relief from the royal levy, Barrick felt sure. The fact that his sister was the bargaining chip bothered them not at all.
He would gladly have seen them all skewered on Erivor’s golden fish spear.
Shaso alone seemed suitably grave. He had taken a place at the table’s far end, with a space between himself and the nearest nobles on either side. Barrick thought he looked a bit like a prisoner brought to judgment.
“Your argument should be made to all,” Kendrick loudly told Gailon, who was still whispering to him. At this signal, the other nobles turned their attention to the head of the table.
Duke Gailon paused. A bit of a flush crept up his neck and onto his handsome face. Other than Barrick and the prince regent, he was the youngest man at the gathering. “I simply said that I think we would be making a mistake to so easily give the princess to Ludis Drakava,” he began. “We all want nothing more than to have our King Olin back, but even if Ludis honors the bargain and delivers him without treachery, what then? Olin, may the gods long preserve him, will grow old one day and die. Much can happen before that day, and only the unsleeping Fates know all, but one thing is certain—when our liege is gone, Ludis and his heirs will have a perpetual claim on the throne of the March Kings.”
“Easy enough for you to say, Summerfield,” growled Tyne Aldritch, “with all your share of the ransom gathered already. What of the rest of us? We would be fools not to take up Ludis’ bargain.”
“Fools?” Barrick straightened. “We are fools if we don’t sell my sister?”
“Enough,” said Kendrick heavily. “We will come back to this question later. First there are more pressing matters Can Ludis and his envoy even be trusted? Obviously, if we were to agree to this offering… and I speak only of possibilities, Barrick, so please keep still… we could not allow my sister to leave our protection until the king was released and safe.”
Barrick squirmed, almost breathless with fury—he would never have believed that Kendrick could talk so carelessly about giving his own sister to a bandit—but the prince regent had spoken with another purpose.
“In fact,” Kendrick continued, “we know little about Ludis, except by reputation, and less of his envoy Shaso, perhaps you can make us wiser about this man Dawet dan-Faar, since you seem to know him.”
His question settled on the master of arms as softly as a silken noose. Shaso stirred. “Yes,” he said heavily. “I know him. We are… related.”
This set the table muttering. “Then you should not be seated in this council, sir,” said Earl Rorick loudly. The royal cousin was dressed in the very latest fashion, the slashes in his deep purple doublet a blazing yellow. He turned to the prince regent, bright and self-assured as a courting bird. “This is shameful. How many councils have we held, speaking, though we knew it not, for the benefit not only of the marchlands but Hierosol as well?”
At last, Shaso seemed to pay attention. Like an old lion woken from sleep, he blinked and leaned forward. One hand had fallen to his side, close to the hilt of his dagger. “Stay. Are you calling me a traitor, my lord?”
Rorick’s return look was haughty, but the earl’s cheeks had gone pale. “You never told us you were this man’s relative.”
“Why should I?” Shaso stared at him for a moment, then sagged back, his energy spent. “He was of no importance to any of you before he arrived here. I myself did not know he had taken service with Ludis until the day he arrived. Last I had heard of him, he led his own free company, robbing and burning across Krace and the south.” “What else do you know of him?” Kendrick asked, not particularly kindly. “He called you a name—’Mordiya’.”
“It means ‘uncle,’ or sometimes ‘father-in-law.’ He was mocking me.” Shaso closed his eyes for a moment “Dawet is the fourth son of the old king of Tuan. When he was young I taught him and his brothers, just as I have taught the children of this family. He was in many ways the best of them, but in more ways the worst—swift and strong and clever, but with the heart of a desert jackal, looking only for what would advantage himself. When I was captured by your father in the battle for Hierosol, I thought that I would never see him or any of the rest of my family again.”
“So how does this Dawet come to be serving Ludis Drakava?”
“I do not know, as I said, Ke… Highness. I heard that Dawet had been exiled from Tuan because of… because of a crime he had committed.” Shaso’s face had gone hard and blank. “His bad ways had continued and worsened, and at last he despoiled a young woman of good family and even his father would no longer protect him. Exiled, he crossed the ocean from Xand to Eion, then joined a mercenary company and rose to lead it. He did not fight for his father or Tuan when our country was conquered by the Autarch. Nor did I, for that matter, since I had already been brought here.”
“A complicated story,” said Hierarch Sisel. “Your pardon, but you ask us to take much on faith, Lord Shaso. How is it that you heard of his doings after your exile here?”
Shaso looked at him but said nothing.
“See,” Rorick proclaimed. “He hides something.”
“These are foul times,” Kendrick said, “that we should all be so mistrustful. But the hierarch’s question is a fair one. How do you come to know of what happened to him after you left Tuan?”
Shaso’s expression became even more lifeless. “Ten years ago, I had a letter from my wife, the gods rest her. It was the last she sent me before she died.”
“And she used this letter to tell you about one of what must have been many students?” The master of arms placed his dark hands flat on his knees, then looked down at them carefully, as though he had never seen such unusual things as hands before. “The girl he ruined was my youngest daughter. Afterward, in her grief, she went to the temple and became a priestess of the Great Mother. When she sickened and died two years later, my wife wrote to tell me. My wife thought it was a shattered heart that had taken Hanede—that our daughter had died from shame, not just fever. She also told me something of Dawet, full of despair that such a man should live and prosper when our daughter was dead.”
Silence reigned for long moments in the small chapel.
“I… I am grieved to hear it, Shaso,” Kendrick said at last. “And doubly grieved that I have forced you to think of it again.”
“I have thought of nothing else since I first heard the name of Hierosol’s envoy,” the old man said. Barrick
