And if there’s a third party involved, she added silently, what the hell does it want?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“YOU HAVE A MESSAGE,” LADY BARB said, when Emily finally returned to the house. “I think it’s important.”
Emily nodded, tersely. She needed to have a proper chat with the older woman. Lady Barb was a good sounding board for ideas, even if she didn’t always agree with Emily’s wilder flights of fancy. Her mind had been churning for hours, ever since the madcap escape and Aiden’s confession she was related to an arch-royalist. Civil wars tended to be nasty - it had been sheer luck Alassa’s half-brother hadn't been murdered by one side or the other - and rebel undergrounds were suspicious of people with ties to the establishment. She wondered, tiredly, if anyone had asked any questions. There were times when looking a gift horse in the mouth was a thoroughly sensible idea.
She took the note and glanced at it. The rebels and royalists were going to meet, face-to-face, in a village roughly midway between the city and the army camp. Both sides had apparently issued safe conducts to the other and sworn before the gods to honor them, but they also wanted Emily to ensure that both sides actually kept their words. Althorn had added a note in his own handwriting inviting Emily to accompany him personally...
“They’ve arranged a meeting,” Emily said. She guessed that explained why the moderates had moved so quickly to meet with her. “Why didn’t they tell me?”
“The rebels, I suspect, don’t care about the proper way to do things.” Lady Barb picked up the letter and scanned it, then passed the paper back to Emily. “Do you know why we have diplomats and ambassadors?”
She went on before Emily could answer. “If a diplomat says something undiplomatic, his master can recall and replace him. If an ambassador makes a proposal the other side doesn’t like, his master can insist it was all the ambassador’s dunderheaded idea and turn him into a scapegoat. And everyone will pretend to believe it, even though everyone will know it isn’t true. Kings rarely meet face-to-face with their equals because it’s a great deal harder to disown the words of a king.”
“I see,” Emily said. She gratefully accepted a mug of tea from Silent. “And the rebels are ignoring tradition?”
“So is King Dater,” Lady Barb said. “I wonder who put him up to it. And why.”
Emily stared down at her hands. “I feel... I feel as though I keep getting glimpses of something moving below the waters, but no clear look at it. I feel...”
She looked up. “Someone tried to kill me and make sure that poor girl would be blamed for it,” she said. “I assumed the person behind it was either a royalist or a rebel. Both sides have reasons to want to avoid peace talks, particularly ones that might actually succeed. Turning me into a martyr would work. Right?”
“Yes,” Lady Barb said, patiently.
“But what if there’s a third party?” Emily sipped her drink thoughtfully. “What if someone wanted to turn the revolution into an outright civil war?”
“Both sides think they’ll win if they fight it out,” Lady Barb pointed out. “Why assume the existence of a third force?”
Emily nodded, slowly. “True,” she said. “But the rebellion happened a little too quickly. If someone was pulling the strings...”
She sighed. “I keep thinking about Laughter.”
Lady Barb’s eyes narrowed. “In what way?”
“Someone planted a charmed book in the school,” Emily said. “The book remained undetected even though the intruder was exposed. The charm worked its way into the minds of the staff and students, leading to a series of... incidents... that attracted outside attention, but it would have remained undiscovered if the charm hadn’t been used to derail the conference. Whoever put the book in the school had an excellent chance to subvert the school completely, but... they threw it away.”
“The book might have been discovered when they started setting up security for the conference,” Lady Barb pointed out. “The intruder might have felt they had to use it or risk losing it.”
“They could just have pulled in their horns and waited,” Emily said. “The really big incidents didn’t start until after the conference was announced. What if... what if the original objective was discarded? What if the whole affair was intended to ensure the conference never took place?”
“If so, it didn’t quite succeed,” Lady Barb said. “The conference has been moved to Whitehall.”
Emily nodded. “Yeah, but...”
She stared at her hands. “What if Master Lucknow was behind the scheme?”
“That’s a very serious allegation,” Lady Barb cautioned her. “Do you have any proof?”
“No,” Emily admitted. It was easy to believe Master Lucknow was the villain, but... she had no proof. “He was the one who practically panicked when the book was uncovered. He tried to arrest and convict me, doing it in a manner calculated to cause trouble. And then he sent me here, where we know there’s at least one powerful sorcerer stirring the pot. He’s not a royalist or a rebel. He just wants chaos.”
Lady Barb considered it. “Master Lucknow has a reputation for being a stiff-necked old bastard,” she said, after a moment. “But there’s never been any suggestion he didn’t have the good of the Allied Lands at heart.”
“His view of the long-term good might be different from ours,” Emily countered. “Is he a Supremacist?”
“He might be,” Lady Barb said. “But why would a Supremacist cause trouble at Laughter?”
“Perhaps he wanted to recruit new Supremacists from amongst the students,” Emily said. “I just don’t know.”
“No,” Lady Barb said. “And without proof, no one will listen to you.”
They listened to Master Lucknow, Emily thought, sourly.
She stared down at her hands, feeling tired. She hadn’t felt comfortable sleeping in Aiden’s apartment, no matter how strong her protections. Aiden would be in deep shit if anyone discovered her unfortunate relative. Althorn might overlook her lineage,
