greatest caution of all, of course, prescribed that he kill her. But a duchy with no heir at all was more prone to civil unrest than a duchy with an inappropriate one. How many of his nobles, he wondered, hoped that he would live simply to avoid the possibility of Duchess Chassim coming to power over them?
Besides, it was the worst sort of bad luck to kill a witch, even more so if she was his daughter.
He had closed his eyes to the swaying of his palanquin. He opened them now as his bearers’ pace slowed. The curtains remained closed as his pole chair was lowered onto a set of rests. He listened to the soft scuff of their boots as his bearers departed. But what he did not hear was what alarmed him: no play of waters in a multitude of fountains, no chirping of caged songbirds. He smelled no waft of flowers. The sound of his own heartbeat began to fill his ears. With bony fingers, he groped inside one of his cushions to find the sheathed dagger it concealed. He pulled it out and silently bared it. It weighed heavy in his hand. He wondered if he would have the strength to wield it effectively. He did not wish to die with an unbloodied blade in his hand.
“Most gracious Duke.”
It was Chancellor Ellik’s voice. Of course. He would be the traitor. His most intimate and trusted adviser was the man in the best position to murder him and seize the reins of power. The Duke was only surprised that he had not acted years ago, when he had first fallen ill. He did not respond to the man’s voice. Let him believe his lord had dozed off. Let him come close enough to open the curtains and meet his blade.
As if he could see through the curtains to the heart of the Duke’s intent, the chancellor spoke again. “My lord, this is not treachery. I have but stolen this moment to speak to you privately. I approach to open your curtains. Please, do not slay me.”
“Flattery.” The Duke spoke the word flatly but held the dagger in both hands before his chest. If he glimpsed treachery, he would do his best to plunge it into the man’s heart.
But the chancellor was on his knees and empty-handed as he carefully drew the cloaking curtains back. The Duke surveyed him as he knelt, neck bent and bare, before the parted curtains. If he had wished to do so, he could have planted his dagger in that vulnerable neck. He did not.
“Why privately?” he demanded. “You have always had my ear. Why here and now?” He looked suspiciously about the chancellor’s own comfortable chambers.
“You do, indeed, my gracious one, always grant me your ear. But where you listen, others listen as well. And I would warn you of treachery and have only you hear my warning.”
“Treachery?” The word was dry on his tongue. The pounding of his heart was becoming painful. Too many threats in too short a time; courage alone could not sustain a weakened body. He looked down at the man still kneeling before him. “Get up, Ellik. I need water. Please.”
The chancellor lifted his eyes and then his head. “Of course.” Without ceremony, he stood and walked across the chamber. It was a man’s room, hung with weaponry and tapestries that recalled famous battles. The work- scarred table in the center of the room held a large ledger, a pot of ink, and a scatter of pens. The Duke had not been in the chancellor’s study for years, but it had changed little in that time. Beyond the table was a cupboard. Ellik took a bottle of wine and glasses from it. “This will do you better than water,” he informed the Duke. With adroit efficiency, he pulled the cork and filled the glasses. As he returned, he walked as a warrior would and presented the glass without formality.
The Duke took it in withered hands and drained off the wine. He felt welcome warmth course through his body. Without asking, Ellik refilled the glass from the bottle he still held. Then he sat down cross-legged on the floor by the pole chair as easily as if he were a young man settling down by a campfire. “Hello,” he said, as if they were old two friends come together in a chance meeting. And perhaps they were. Ellik watched the Duke steadily until he spoke.
“You know why it’s necessary. The bowing, the formality, the harsh order. It’s not to demean you, Ellik. It’s to enforce discipline and maintain distance.”
“So they only think of you as the Duke,” Ellik said.
“Yes.”
“Because if they thought of you as a man among them, you are not the man they would choose to follow now.”
The Duke hesitated. “Yes,” he admitted finally. “A harsh evaluation, but an accurate one.”
“And it works,” Ellik conceded. “For most of them. For those young enough not to question the order. It works not so well for your old comrades who warriored beside you in the early days when you were coming to power.”
“But not many of them are left,” the Duke pointed out.
“That is true, but a few of us remain.”
The Duke nodded gravely.
“And a few of us remain loyal to the man you were, as well as to the present Duke of Chalced. And so I have come to warn you of treachery, though the nature of the warning may cost me my life.”
“And so I listen to you, Ellik, man to man, warrior to warrior, knowing what you risk to serve me. Be brief. What treachery threatens me?”
Ellik tossed his wine back, considered a moment longer, and then replied, “Your daughter Chassim. She wants your throne.”
“Chassim?” The Duke shook his weary head, annoyed that the man had discomforted him just for this. “She is discontented, widowed thrice, a woman unfulfilled. I have known this for years. I have no fear that she has any ambitions of her own.”
“You should.” Ellik spoke brusquely. “Have you read her poetry?”
“Her poetry?” Now he felt insulted. “No. Girlish yearning for a handsome man to grovel before her charms, I suppose, or musings on a hummingbird hovering by a flower. Ponderings on love and daisies, all done in blue brushstrokes and ornamented with posies and ivy. I haven’t time for such things.”
“No. Her poetry is more like a trumpet call to arms. A rallying of women to rise up in Chalced, to help her inherit your throne so that she can lift other women to the status they once held. It’s fiery stuff, my lord, more fit to a fanatic in the market than a woman living a quiet, cloistered life.”
For some time, the Duke regarded the other man in silence. But his chancellor’s face remained grave. He was in earnest.
“Women rising up. . nonsense! You know this how? When would you have had cause to encounter my daughter’s poems?”
“In my wife’s chambers. Two days ago.”
The Duke waited.
“I entered without warning, in midmorning, an unusual time for me to call on her. She quickly tried to conceal a handful of scrolls she had been reading. So, of course, I wrested one from her to know what secret a woman sought to keep from her husband.” He scowled. “The scroll was tatter edged, well worn from being passed hand to hand, with many additions on the bottom and back of it. To the casual eye, it was a girlish poem just as you have described, ornamented with flowers and butterflies. But only for the first two verses. Then the words became scholarly and martial, citing historical references to times when the women of Chalced’s noble houses ruled alongside the men and governed their own affairs and properties and chose their own husbands. The little vines and flowers framed nothing less than a call to revolution.
“I rebuked her sternly for reading such treason, but she was unrepentant. And fearless, in that way of a fit that sometimes seizes dried-up old women. She mocked me, asking me what I feared. Did I dare deny that such a past existed? That my own family’s fortune had been founded by a woman, not a man?
“I slapped her for her insolence. She stood up and invoked some northern goddess, some Eda, praying her to withhold earth’s blessings from me. So I struck her again for daring to curse me.”
Ellik paused. Sweat beaded his brow, and for a time he was caught in the memory. His fingers tugged at his lips, and he shook his head in denial. “Can any man ever know a woman’s mind? I had to beat her, my lord, as I’ve not had to for years, and still she held out longer than many a young soldier I’ve chastised. But in the end, I had the rest of her cache of scrolls, and the source of them, and then the author’s name. Your daughter, my lord, as is plain from what she proposes.”
The Duke sat in silence, hoping nothing of what he thought showed on his face. But Ellik was merciless.
“It is not just your daughter. The other women of your household are involved. Chassim writes the words, but your women make copies and ornament the scrolls and tie them with little bindings of lace and ribbons and scent
