anyone who is connected to you, your wife, or to the Collegium. Is that clear?”
“That is clear.” I did have another idea, but whether it would work depended on what else I discovered.
“Good. Is there anything else?”
“Glendyl still isn’t able to talk. I will let you know.”
Maitre Dyana rose. “Please do.”
I nodded and left her study.
When I returned to my study, there were two copies of the Year 700 list of High Holders set on my desk with a note on the top.
The signature was Kahlasa’s.
Even though the book was sixty years old, I decided to estimate how many High Holders there had been when it had been printed. There were thirty lines for print on each page, and generally about three lines on each High Holder listed, with an empty line between each entry. That worked out to seven entries a page. That was when I noticed that the pages were unnumbered. I also discovered that the High Holders were listed alphabetically, by region, starting with the northwest and those around Eshtora.
So I counted the pages. There were seventy-three sheets with names on them, or one hundred forty-four pages, since two pages were blank. At that point, I knew I had to count every name on every page, very carefully. I counted the names in ten-page segments, marking the segments with long slips of paper. When I was done, I had one thousand and nine names.
Then I counted up the annotations. Maitre Poincaryt and Maitre Dichartyn had noted the loss of ten High Holdings, and Ryel-Iryela’s father-had noted some twenty-one names, but the entries in his book dated back forty years, while the oldest date in the Collegium book was 742 A.L., just nineteen years back. Three names had been eliminated by date, as were they all in the Collegium book, after Ryel’s death.
By the count in the Collegium book and according to the Council compact, that meant that the High Holders should lose one Council seat. By Ryel’s count, that should have happened years ago. Was that why the count had never been updated?
I could see why Maitre Poincaryt would not have acted on the Collegium count. If threatened by the loss of control of the Executive Council, and thus the loss of the power to block spending and taxation measures, even the greediest of High Holders would have agreed to relinquish some assets and lands to create another High Holding or two, or even found a way to elevate a wealthy and pretentious factor. To me, it was clear that Maitre Poincaryt had been waiting until the number of High Holders dropped to the point where that was not possible. If that happened to be so, then why had Suyrien slipped that “reform” valuation provision into law?
At that moment, I understood, and I stood and picked up both small volumes and headed back upstairs.
Gherard looked at me, then at the closed study door. “Maitre Rholyn just left. She’s alone, sir.”
His tone suggested that I should enter at my own risk.
I smiled. What else was there to do? “I’ll try to leave her in a calmer frame of mind.” I eased open the study door, stepped inside, and closed it gently, but firmly, behind me.
Maitre Dyana looked at me with an expression that, for all its apparent serenity, would have frozen the River Aluse solid all the way from L’Excelsis to Solis.
“Is this about Glendyl? Or Geuffryt?” Her tone was low, smooth, and cold.
“No. It’s about control of the Council.”
“Not that again.”
“No. Maitre Poincaryt and Maitre Dichartyn didn’t have enough information. I borrowed a copy of the year 700 printed roster. It has annotations of twenty-one lost High Holdings dating back to 710. It also does not include the three in the past five years. As of 700, there were only one thousand nine High Holdings.”
“Where did you get that roster?”
“From the library of a noted High Holder-with permission. I had that High Holder’s annotations added to the Collegium copy.”
“You realize what you have there, don’t you?”
“The possibility of civil war? It’s possible, but the change is also inevitable. Suyrien had to have known that. That was why he slipped in that provision about High Holder valuations. He decided to do it so that the change would be so dramatic that there wouldn’t be any question about the change having to take place. He planned on it not taking effect for another year or so, when he would have had a chance to prepare the groundwork with Maitre Poincaryt.”
“How do you know that?”
“The changes don’t take effect until after the first of Ianus, but the first valuation would be based on land and asset values as of 35 Finitas of next year, and wouldn’t take effect until a year from this coming Ianus. Maitre Poincaryt had had more than a few meetings with Councilor Suyrien.”
She sat there studying me for a time. “What do you propose we do?”
“Follow, if we can, what they planned to do. The older annotations will make it easier, but you’ll have to spend a great deal of time with every High Holder Councilor, as well as those who are powerful and not Councilors.”
“Maitre Rhennthyl, you will be at every one of those meetings, but we will not arrange any meetings until after we deal with the Ferrans. For now, we will not speak of the matter to anyone, especially not to Maitre Rholyn, not until after Ramsael becomes Chief Councilor. I also suggest you keep those books in a very secure place.”
“I will. What should I know about Maitre Rholyn’s position, besides the fact that he is unhappy with me, and that he sides with the militant High Holders against the factors and the free holders?”
“Do you need to know more?”
“Do I?” I countered.
“Ramsael would like to avoid violence and wants to calm matters down in the east. Rholyn is trying to persuade him, without appearing to do so, that ancillary water rights erode the very basis of Solidaran water law and should be abolished. At the moment, Maitre Jhulian is finishing a brief to refute that. Maitre Rholyn does not know that, nor should he.”
Maitre Dyana’s words told me more than I really wanted to know, including the fact that she might well be setting Rholyn up. She would only be doing that because Rholyn was openly following her orders and secretly doing otherwise. That confirmed my long-held opinion of him.
“I believe you understand,” she said.
I just nodded before I left, the two books in hand.
41
Finally, in the late morning on Jeudi, Draffyd allowed me in to see Glendyl, after cautioning me not to exhaust him. The Councilor was propped up in the infirmary bed at a slight angle, halfway between lying down and sitting up. His head did not move as I stepped up to his bedside, but his eyes fixed on me.
“Good morning, Councilor.”
“I wouldn’t call it good…except…compared to the…alternatives.”
“Sometimes comparisons are revealing,” I agreed.
“I understand you saved…my life, Maitre. I do appreciate that.”
“I kept you alive so that Maitre Draffyd could.” That was a fair statement, I thought. “We never did finish our conversation. I don’t understand why a Ferran agent would shoot at you.” I watched him closely.
I thought I caught a slight stiffening and perhaps a moment of surprise, and I went on. “After all, you are the voice of the factors and the leading advocate for change in Solidar. That is, change in a direction that would be
