Inger turned to the Wessons. Boyer disagreed completely with Cleary. Neither considered Liakopulos a vil ain. Cleary was sure the General just did not stop heading west when he saw a chance to leave. Boyer was sure that Liakopulos had been murdered. “And rebels didn’t do it. It wil be Greyfel s when the truth comes out. It’s a matter of who stands most to gain, Your Majesty.”
“Spoken like a true money-grubbing merchant,” Sir Arnhelm snarled. “Everything comes down to a balance sheet.”
“Yes, it does,” Inger said. There was no love for the General here. Liakopulos had kept these men in check, favoring no one, contemptuous of them al because he considered them adventurers and plunderers who cared nothing for Kavelin. Bragi, Queen Fiana, and her husband the Krief, who died when Fiana was a teen, had al stretched reason to breaking to create a nation in which al the peoples had a stake.
Inger covered her forehead with her left palm, rubbed, thumb and little finger massaging her temples. “Jokerst, find Colonel Gales. I want him here for a working breakfast tomorrow.”
Gales would replace Liakopulos. He had been understudying, with the General’s assistance. The move was expected. And might be what Dane wanted to see.
Was he behind Liakopulos’s disappearance? He was capable. But would he dare the hostility of the Mercenaries’
Guild?
Inability to predict consequences accurately was the bane of the Greyfel s line. Again and again they dropped stones on their own toes while trying to be clever.
“The rest of you. No more speculation. Get me facts. Find out what actual y happened.”
Several faces went pale. It was dangerous out there.
“One thing can’t be denied,” Sir Arnhelm said. “The break with the old regime. Liakopulos was the last.” Inger suspected that pleased the man no end. “Al of you, go away. I need rest before I go mad.”
They went. She sent for Dr. Wachtel, an overlooked holdover from the old regime. But Wachtel was a holdover from every regime. He was Castle Krief furniture. He had tended Kavelin’s rulers for sixty years, whoever they were.
The doctor provided a draught to make Inger sleep. The medication sometimes had a harsh side effect. It caused vivid, often prescient dreams, some of which would be nightmares.
Inger wakened less rested than she had hoped. She did not remember her dreams but met the new day afraid.
...
Credence Abaca’s Marena Dimura partisans kept their political prizes in comfort but there were limits to what could be managed in the wilds of the Kapenrung Mountains.
Kristen and her companions learned the cost of commitment to a cause, though the privations were social, intel ectual, and circumscription of movement rather than a dearth of food, warmth, or shelter.
The children, including young King Bragi I , did not mind.
They ran wild with the Marena Dimura urchins, getting every bit as filthy and bruised while having just as much fun in the ice, snow, and forests. Kristen tried to convince herself that this was good for a boy who would become king of al Kaveliner peoples, including the disenfranchised Marena Dimura.
Which was their own fault, Kristen believed. They would not leave the wilderness and become part of the nation, though some had done so while Bragi was king. Abaca had been one of the army’s top commanders.
Kristen and Dahl Haas shared a bench inside a cozy cabin equipped with the blatant luxury of a huge glass window. Kristen often wondered where the forest people had stolen it. Snow fel outside. Big chunks hit the window, melted, slid downward as they perished. “Winter here is harder than it is in Vorgreberg.”
“Think so? How about during the Great Eastern Wars?”
“That was one bad winter.” She frowned. It had been more than one winter and had been unimaginably worse than this. Hunger, danger, fear, and sickness had been constant companions.
Haas leaned close, no longer discomfited by his affection for the girl who had been the wife of his king’s son and who was the mother of Bragi’s legitimate heir. Kristen had abandoned reticence long ago. She knew her father- in-law approved.
She said, “Sitting here like this, I don’t think this is such a bad life.”
“How much better the world if everyone were equal y content.”
“You ought to be content. You’ve got me.”
“Somebody is getting a big head.”
Sherilee came for the fire and to watch the snow. The couple said nothing. Speaking to Sherilee gave her license to vent her unhappiness. She could be tiresome.
Sherilee was young, smal , beautiful, almost porcelain in her perfection. She looked years younger than she was, which was only Kristen’s age. In his absence she had become pathological y enamored of King Bragi, based upon a brief, furtive liaison with a man older than her own father. In her dramatic way she had reconstructed her life around what she thought she had lost when the King had fal en.
Sherilee sighed dramatical y.
Her performance drew no response. After further vain sal ies, the tragic dol declared, “There must be something we can do to rescue him.”
Sherilee was one of a tiny number of people who knew King Bragi was alive and a prisoner.
Kristen sighed herself, then plunged into the game.
“Michael Trebilcock and Aral Dantice got away with that once, when they rescued Nepanthe. It won’t work again.
He’s being held by the Tervola, not some dinkle-brain queen of Argon.”
She played loosely with history but facts did not matter here. What did was the undeniable futility of any effort to free the King. To start, no one knew where he was being held. Unless, maybe, Michael Trebilcock or Aral Dantice knew. But Michael was out of touch and Aral no longer haunted Kavelin. Trebilcock might be dead. He had not been seen for months.
But Michael was his own man. He went his own way. And that worried everyone.
Since coming to Kavelin Michael Trebilcock had created his own hidden realm of dedicated friends and al ies who disdained the smal minded politics of the Lesser Kingdoms. Those people believed in the welfare of the whole instead of that of the partisan.
Michael Trebilcock had remained faithful to Bragi while Bragi was king but Bragi was never ful y confident of Trebilcock.
Sherilee asked, “Do you think Aral is in touch with Michael?”
Those two had been friends since their school days in Hel in Daimiel. They had shared several fierce adventures in Kavelin and abroad. Dantice occasional y visited the Marena Dimura during more clement seasons. He lived in Ruderin nowadays but remained in the family business, being part trader, part smuggler, part gangster. Once upon a time, before the wars, his father had been a trader, too. A more legitimate trader.
Aral had one foot firmly in the shadows. Many of his associates over there had spied for Michael Trebilcock.
Dahl said, “Maybe. But Michael would come to him.
Michael lives in his own secret kingdom of loyal friends. I couldn’t guess their ideology, if they have one. Probably something like what Bragi’s was. They aren’t after power.
They col ect information, then dispense it where they think it’l do some good. And they hide each other when there’s a need.”
“He did support the King.”
“As far as we ever saw, he did. He took extreme risks on Bragi’s behalf but Bragi never trusted him completely. Inger is sure that Michael cleaned out the treasury.” Kristen caught something. “Dahl? You know something about that?”
“How could I? I was way far away.”
“Dahl. Talk to me. I’m your Queen Mother, remember?” Sherilee stalked in from the other side, looking ferocious.
“Talk, soldier boy! This is something you shouldn’t be hiding.”
“I’m not hiding anything. I don’t know anything. I just remember what contingency plans there were. It’s just
