Macebearer and Prince Yurokhas in urging the King to issue a formal Crown charter for the canal. And with his three most trusted and powerful advisers in agreement, it was hardly surprising Markhos had agreed. Indeed, it had taken them so long to bring him around only because he’d recognized just how thorny and sensitive the issue was with certain of his other advisers. That recognition was probably the reason he still hadn’t made his approval of the charter official; he wasn’t going to do that until the Great Council’s official fall session, when anyone who wanted to object would have to look him in the eye to do it. That sort of defiance took a hardy soul, Varnaythus thought sourly. There wasn’t likely to be a lot of it, and once he did make the charter official, the canal and all of its traffic would come under royal protection, which would assure the Crown of a tidy new source of income…and make any effort to sabotage it an act of treason.
Cassan wasn’t going to like that one little bit.
“Do you think this will finally move him off dead center on the assassination issue?” Sahrdohr asked after a moment, and Varnaythus grimaced again, even more sourly than before.
“If anything will,” he replied. “It’s been an uphill fight to get him to even consider it, though. I think part of it is that he’d genuinely convinced himself he was ‘too honorable’ a fellow to violate his oath of fealty.” The wizard rolled his eyes. “But I suspect most of it was that he was too well aware of how the Kingdom could disintegrate back into the Time of Troubles. As long as he thought he could game the situation to get what he wanted without that, he didn’t have any desire to face Tellian and the wind riders across a battlefield. He isn’t anywhere near as smart as he thinks he is, but he’s not that stupid! And he is smart enough to recognize that unless he takes some sort of drastic action-probably before the fall session, given Markhos’ intention to announce Tellian’s charter then- he’s done. There won’t be any way he can ‘game’ anything after the Crown for all intents and purposes gives Tellian its full backing. I imagine his ‘man of honor’ image will fly out the window pretty quickly as soon as he realizes that. And if it doesn’t occur to him on his own, Master Talthar will certainly find a way to point it out to him. A clever fellow, Master Talthar.”
He smiled thinly at Sahrdohr, and the younger wizard chuckled.
“So, actually, this”-he jutted his chin at the images and the gramerhain-“is more likely to work in our favor than against us.”
“Probably,” Varnaythus agreed. “I don’t plan on betting anything particularly valuable on it, though. Carnadosa knows I’ve been…unpleasantly disillusioned every other time I’ve thought Bahzell was going down or that we’d finally gained a decisive advantage! Still, at the moment I don’t see any way it’s likely to hurt us any.”
It was a somewhat less than ringing declaration of confidence, and he knew it. It was about as far as he was prepared to go, however, and he glowered down at the gramerhain for another few moments, then shrugged and passed his hand over it. The light in its heart flared once, then vanished, and he looked at Sahrdohr.
“I suppose we should start thinking about the most effective way for Master Talthar to present this unfortunate information to his good friend Duke Cassan, don’t you?”
“I’m thinking I must look a right idiot,” Bahzell Bahnakson remarked as he and Leanna rode along the eastern bank of the Balthar River. “Or so I would if it happened as anyone was watching, any road.”
He sounded remarkably unperturbed by the possibility, Leeana noted, and smiled across at him.
“I faithfully promise to turn loose of your hand and look suitably dour the instant anyone turns up,” she told him.
‹ Not that it’s going to fool anyone,› Walsharno remarked. ‹ Even a courser only has to look at the two of you to know your brains have turned into mush. Any two-foot is going to decide you need to be locked up in a nice, safe room somewhere where you can’t hurt yourselves!›
‹ And who asked your opinion?› another, less deep mental voice inquired tartly, and Bahzell chuckled. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised he was able to hear Gayrfressa now that she’d bonded with Leeana. It was unheard of-impossible! — of course, but the two of them-well, the four of them, now-had never done anything else the way they were supposed to, now had they? It seemed likely to him and to Walsharno that his own version of the coursers’ herd sense had a lot to do with it…but that neat, comforting explanation didn’t account for Leeana’s ability to hear Walsharno.
‹ You really are full of yourself, aren’t you? › Walsharno observed in a teasing tone, regarding his sister fondly. He’d deliberately taken position to her left, where she could see him with her single eye, and now he tossed his mane at her. Then he snorted profoundly. ‹ Newly bonded coursers are always full of themselves, I suppose. Why, even I was for the first, oh, twenty minutes or so.›
‹ But you got over it, I see,› Gayrfressa replied sarcastically.
“I see this is going to be a lively relationship,” Leeana said dryly, yet there was an undertone, a softness, to the words. An undertone Bahzell remembered only too well from the day a courser named Walsharno had opened his heart to one of his people’s most bitter traditional enemies.
“Never another minute of privacy will you have,” he told her, flattening his ears and grinning at her. “Natter away at the drop of a hat, they will. And there’s never a courser born as isn’t positive his brother shouldn’t be let out on his own without a keeper. I’ve little doubt Gayrfressa’s after being one more chip off the old block, when all’s said.”
‹ There must be some reason I like you so much,› Gayrfressa mused. ‹ Probably I’ll be able to remember what it was, if you give me a day or two.›
“Be nice,” Leeana said mildly. “He’s mine now, and I don’t want you picking on him without my permission.”
‹As long as you don’t go putting unreasonable restrictions on it, › Gayrfressa replied.
“I’m going to be very strict.” Leeana’s tone was much more severe than it had been. “You’re absolutely forbidden to pick on him on any day of the week that doesn’t have a letter ‘y’ in it. Is that understood?”
‹ Coursers can’t read, you know,› Walsharno pointed out.
‹ Perhaps you can’t read, Brother,› Gayrfressa said sweetly. ‹ I, however, have spent the last few winters learning to do just that.›
“Have you, now?” Bahzell looked across at her, and she turned her head to meet his gaze.
‹ Actually, Walsharno, as usual, is only partly correct,› she told him. ‹Most coursers never learn to read. For one thing, our eyes don’t seem to focus properly for it.› Bahzell felt the unspoken allusion to her lost eye behind the words, but there was no trace of self-pity, and his heart filled with fresh pride in her. ‹ Quite a few of us have, over the years, though. Of course, writing is just a bit more difficult for us!›
‹ Showoff, › Walsharno teased, nipping her very gently on the shoulder, and she snorted in amusement.
“If anyone had ever told me I might be riding along on a courser, having a conversation like this one, I would have told him he was mad,” Leeana said. She shook her head, green eyes soft. “I don’t know what I might have done to deserve it, but whatever it was, it couldn’t have been enough.”
“There’s never a wind rider I’ve met as doesn’t feel exactly the same thing, lass,” Bahzell told her. “And I’m thinking the truth is there’s nothing we could have done to be ‘deserving’ it. It’s a gift we’re given, not something as we could ever have earned.”
‹ It works both ways, Brother,› Walsharno said quietly, his mental voice very serious. ‹ The joy you take from our bond is no greater than the joy I take from it. It can’t be.›
Gayrfressa tossed her head in agreement, and Bahzell found himself nodding back to her. Leeana looked down at the big mare’s single ear, then leaned forward to Gayrfressa’s neck.
“I feel the same,” she said. “And yet I can’t help worrying about Boots.”
‹ Worrying?› Gayrfressa repeated.
“He’s not just my horse, Sister,” Leeana said slowly. “He’s my friend, too, and he has been for a long time.”
‹ And?›
“And I saw him watching from the paddock as we rode away,” Leeana said even more slowly. “Don’t misunderstand me, please, but he deserves better than for me simply to ride out of his life, even on you.”
‹ Of course he does,› Gayrfressa said, turning her head to the left until she could see her rider. ‹ Did you think I wanted you to do anything of the sort?› She shook her mane, her ear half-flattened. ‹ The lesser cousins
