“That fits pretty well with everything I’ve heard about them here in the Palace,” Sahrdohr agreed. “And I had an opportunity to drop his name into a conversation with Shaftmaster day before yesterday, which led to a couple of interesting tidbits. For one thing, Sir Whalandys made it pretty clear that most people think Thorandas is a sharper blade than his father…and that Baron Borandas realizes it.”
“Really?” Varnaythus cocked his head thoughtfully. “That’s helpful, especially if Cassan’s right about Thorandas’ attitude towards the hradani. He has to be as well aware as his father that at the moment the North Riding holds the balance between Tellian and Cassan on the Great Council. The question is how he’s likely to react when he realizes just how thoroughly this Derm Canal is going to scramble all of the traditional balances of power here on the Wind Plain. If he’s as prejudiced against the hradani as Cassan and Yeraghor think, that’s bound to play a role in his evaluation of the new…realities, shall we say? And that’s going to have an effect on the advice he gives his father about it, now isn’t it?”
“Exactly.” Sahrdohr’s smile was even thinner than before. “And if Sir Dahlnar starts giving the same advice?”
“Especially if he comes slowly and gradually to share Thorandas’ concerns, yes.” Varnaythus nodded. “Not too quickly, though. Borandas may not be the very smartest man in the entire Kingdom, but he’s not exactly a fool, either. He’s going to think twice-more likely three or four times-before he steps into any sort of arrangement with Cassan. For that matter, Thorandas isn’t going to be in any hurry to forget how badly Cassan burned his fingers last time he and Tellian squared off.”
“No, but I’ve had a thought about that.”
“What sort of thought?” Varnaythus’ tone was a bit cautious, and Sahrdohr chuckled.
“It’s not that inventive,” the magister assured his superior. “But that’s the second interesting tidbit I got from our good Chancellor. According to Shaftmaster, Thorandas is in the market for a wife. In fact, Sir Whalandys approves of that; he thinks it’s past time Thorandas settled down and started breeding heirs of his own. Unfortunately-from my esteemed superior’s perspective, at any rate-Sir Thorandas seems rather taken with Shairnayith Axehammer.”
“He does?” Varnaythus’ eyes narrowed, and Sahrdohr leaned back and raised both hands.
“That’s what Shaftmaster seems to believe, at any rate, and he’s not very happy about the notion.”
“I can see why he might not be, given how enthusiastically he’s been supporting Tellian at Court,” Varnaythus observed in a tone of considerable understatement. Then he frowned. “I can see why he might not be,” he repeated, “but I didn’t pick up a hint of anything of the sort from Cassan the last time I was in Toramos.”
“Maybe he isn’t aware of Thorandas’ thinking,” Sahrdohr suggested.
“ Cassan? ” Varnaythus barked a laugh. “Trust me, if Shaftmaster’s right and Thorandas really is looking in Shairnayith’s direction, Cassan knows about it, all right. He’d never miss something like that, especially where Shairnayith is concerned! In fact,” his eyes narrowed again, “that could be the problem. He dotes on the girl, after all, and it could be that he’s perfectly aware of the opportunity and simply chooses to ignore it. If he’d been in any rush to marry her off, they could have managed it long ago, I’m sure. There have to have been plenty of other offers for her by now, at any rate. She’s-what, twenty-two? — for Carnadosa’s sake! Do you seriously think nobody’s even so much as tested the water where a prize like her is concerned?”
“Maybe there’ve been quite a few offers and he simply hasn’t thought any of them were worth accepting,” Sahrdohr pointed out. “She’s his older daughter, after all. As you say, that makes her the kind of prize that doesn’t come along often. That’s a political token a man like Cassan isn’t going to be in a hurry to use too soon!”
“That’s true enough,” Varnaythus acknowledged. “But she’s a deep one herself, and the Lady knows she worships the ground her father walks on. The possibility of a direct marriage alliance between the Axehammers and the Daggeraxes?” The wizard snorted. “She’d have to recognize the potential advantages Cassan could wring out of that! And short of Yurokhas himself-and Fiendark knows Yurokhas would never marry an Axehammer-where’s she going to find a better marriage than to the North Riding’s heir?”
“Agreed. On the other hand, the consequences would be fairly obvious to just about everyone,” Sahrdohr pointed out, “and the Great Council would have to approve the marriage.”
“If Borandas approved it, he, Cassan, and Yeraghor between them would have a clear majority.”
“And would Markhos be foolish enough to let it go through, anyway?” Sahrdohr challenged. “ He’d have to assent, too.”
“If he were around to do the assenting,” Varnaythus pointed out in turn, his voice soft. “If he wasn’t-if the Great Council happened to be acting as regent to a minor heir-then that wouldn’t matter, would it?”
“No,” the magister said slowly.
“So if Cassan and Yeraghor were to decide this marriage would be a good idea, and if Thorandas is as receptive to the notion as your good friend the Chancellor seems to be suggesting, then we might just have found another argument to help sway Cassan to our thinking about the best way to deal with the Crown’s unfortunate support for Tellian’s little project, mightn’t we?”
The two wizards gazed at each other through their linked gramerhains and slowly, slowly smiled.
Chapter Thirteen
The membership of the council of war no longer struck its participants as bizarre, although there were moments when any one of them was likely to feel as if he’d fallen into some sort of fever dream. On the other hand, those moments were no longer as common as they had been, and they were becoming steadily less frequent.
Not that anyone expected they were ever going to disappear entirely.
“Well, I suppose we should get started,” Sir Vaijon Almerhas said, looking around the spacious wooden table.
That table sat in one of the stout stone buildings which had blossomed along the new, Axeman-style high road between the Escarpment and the equally new Lake Hurgrum over the past few years. They were obviously of dwarvish design and construction, their stones laid without mortar yet cut so precisely it would have required a sledgehammer to drive a knife blade into any single joint. One of the by-products of enjoying the services of Silver Cavern’s strongest sarthnasiks, Vaijon reflected, was that Chanharsa could turn (and had turned) several thousand cubic yards of rock into perfectly uniform, impossibly precisely “cut” stone blocks without so much as turning a hair. Driving the tunnel clear up through the Escarpment had provided them with what was literally a small mountain of building material, and hradani and dwarvish work crews had made good use of it.
These buildings had been constructed specifically to serve as the central military base for the Ghoul Moor campaigns, however, which meant they had very lofty ceilings for any dwarvish designed structure. Sothoii tended to be tall, and Vaijon was taller even than most of them, but even he tended to feel a bit undersized when he looked up at the meeting chamber’s twelve-foot ceilings and nine-foot doorframes. Rooms sized for Horse Stealer hradani had that effect on most people. Of course, heating them could be a tad difficult, especially in a north Norfressan winter, as Vaijon had discovered over the past several years. Fortunately, the dwarves who’d designed these buildings had pronounced opinions on things like comfortable winter temperatures and they’d built heating ducts into the concrete foundations when they poured them. In fact, they’d gone even further and used some of the water power tapped from the lake to drive fans that circulated heated air through ceiling ducts, as well.
Which was one reason he had Sermandahknarthas building the Order of Tomanak its own properly spacious- and comfortably heated-hall back in Hurgrum, as well. With luck, they’d have it finished before first snowfall and he’d finally spend a winter in Hurgrum without icicles hanging from the tip of his nose.
At the moment, however, brilliant sunlight spilled down from a sky like polished lapis lazuli, dancing on the enormous lake’s sapphire water, and the chamber’s windows were open to admit a cooling breeze. Distant shouts drifted in with the breeze as construction crews continued their unending labors, and he could hear a leather-lunged hradani sergeant counting cadence from the drill square beside the nearest block of barracks. Bhanak Karathson’s Hurgrumese had learned the value of discipline, training, and drill and used it well. Now they were teaching it to the rest of the Northern Hradani, and if the new Confederate Army remained short of the smooth, polished perfection of the Royal and Imperial Army’s demonstration drill teams, Vaijon would have been perfectly willing to match its battalions against any regular Axeman field force. They were certainly better than any non — Axeman infantry he’d ever seen, and he found that a very comforting thought just at the moment.
