them with a naval blockade of the city. That’ll soon loosen their purse-strings.”
Golophin nodded. He tucked his pipe back into a pocket which was scorched from similar use. “I must be going. I have some people to see.”
“Tell the King, when next you speak to him, that we are his men—that we always have been, Golophin,” Mercado said haltingly.
“I will, though he has always known it,” the wizard replied with a smile.
T HE chamber was small and circular. Its roof was domed and in the dome was a bewildering array of small beams, too slender to provide any architectural support. Corfe could not guess at their purpose, unless it were mere ornamentation. They were hung with cobwebs.
Large windows covered half the circumference of the walls, some of stained glass, predominantly Torunnan scarlet which lent a rosy hue to the place despite the greyness of the weather outside. Inside, the furnishings were rich and comfortable. Velvet-upholstered divans whose lines curved with the walls. Intricately embroidered cushions. A miniature library, the shelves untidy with added scrolls and papers. A tiny desk with a quill springing out of an inkwell. A bronze figurine of a young woman, nude, the face laughing exquisitely. An embroidery stand with rolls of thread tumbled about its foot. The room of an educated, affluent woman.
Corfe had no idea why he was here.
A palace flunkey, all lace cuffs and buckled shoes, had shown him the way soon after he had received the summons. He stood alone now in the private tower of the Queen Dowager, utterly at a loss.
There was a click, and a part of the wall opened to admit the Queen Dowager Odelia. It shut behind her and she stood serenely looking Corfe up and down, a slight smile on her face.
Corfe remembered his manners and bowed hurriedly; he was not of sufficient rank to kiss her hand. Odelia inclined her head graciously in response.
“Sit, Colonel.”
He found himself a stool, absurdly conscious of the contrast between his appearance and the lady’s. He still looked rather as though he had just trudged off a battlefield, though he had been in Torunn for two days. He had no money, no way to improve his wardrobe, and no one had offered him any advice or help in the matter. Macrobius had been borne away on wings of policy and state, and Corfe had had it brought home to him exactly how insignificant he was. He longed to be back at the dyke with his men doing the only job he had ever been fit for, but could not leave until he had the King’s permission, and getting to see the King was well-nigh impossible. He was baffled, therefore, by the Queen Dowager’s summons; he had thought himself entirely forgotten.
She was watching him patiently, a glint of what might have been humour in the marvellous green eyes. Carnelian pins secured her golden hair in a stately column atop her head, emphasizing the fine line of her neck. Corfe had heard the rumours; the Queen Dowager was a sorceress who preserved her looks through judicious use of thaumaturgy, sacrifices of new-born babes and the like. It was true she looked a good deal younger than her years. She might have been Lofantyr’s elder sister rather than his mother, but Corfe could see the blue veins on the backs of her hands, the slightly swollen knuckles, the faint creases at the corners of her eyes and on her brow. She was attractive, but the signs were there.
“Do you believe me a witch, Colonel?” she asked, startling him. It was almost as though she had followed his train of thought.
“No,” he said. “At least, not as the rumours have it. I don’t believe you slay black cockerels at midnight or some such nonsense . . . your majesty.” He was not sure of the right way to address her.
Something black scuttled along one of the beams above his head, too quickly for him to catch more than a glimpse of it. So they have rats even in palaces, he thought.
“Lofantyr is ‘Majesty,’ ” the Queen Dowager said. “To you I am just ‘lady,’ unless there is some other epithet you would prefer.”
She seemed to be deliberately trying to disconcert him. The realization irritated him. He had no time for the games of the Torunnan court.
“Why did you summon me here?” he asked bluntly.
She cocked her head to one side. “Ah, directness. I like that. You would be amazed how little of it there is in Torunn. Or perhaps you would not. You are a soldier pure and simple, are you not, Colonel? You are not at ease here in the intricacies of the court. You would rather be hip-deep in gore at Ormann Dyke.”
“Yes,” he said, “I would.” There was nothing else he could say. He had never been any use at dissembling, and he sensed it would do him no good here.
“Would you like some wine?”
He nodded, totally at sea.
She clapped her hands and the door through which Corfe had entered opened. A willowy girl with the almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones of the steppe peoples—a household slave—entered bearing a tray. She set out a decanter and two glasses in silence and then left as noiselessly as she had come. The Queen Dowager poured two generous glassfuls of ruby liquid.
“Ronian,” she said. “Little known, but as good as Gaderian if it is well cared for. Our southern fiefs have fine vineyards, but they don’t export much.”
Corfe sipped at the wine. It might have been gun oil for all he tasted it.
“General Pieter Martellus thinks highly of you, Colonel. In his dispatches he says you made an excellent defence of Ormann Dyke’s eastern bastion ere it fell. He also adds that you seem to work best as an independent commander.”
“The general flatters me,” Corfe said. He had not known that the dispatches he carried from the dyke had included a report on himself.
“You are also the only Torunnan officer to have survived Aekir’s fall. You must be a man of luck.”
Corfe’s face became a stiff mask. “I don’t much believe in luck, my lady.”
“But it exists. It is that indefinable element which in war or peace—but especially in war—sets a man apart from his fellows.”
“If you say so.”
She smiled. “Aekir has marked you, Corfe. Before the siege you were an ensign, a junior officer. In the months since you have soared to the rank of colonel purely on merit. Aekir’s fall may have been the counterweight to your ascent.”
“I would give all my rank, and more besides, to have Aekir back again,” Corfe said with some heat. And to have Heria again, his soul cried out.
“Of course,” she said soothingly. “But now you are here in Torunn, friendless and penniless, an officer without a command. Merit is not always enough in this world. You must have something else.”
“What?”
“A . . . sponsor, perhaps. A patron.”
Corfe paused, frowning. At last he said: “Is that why I am here? Am I to become your client, lady?”
She sipped her wine. “Loyalty is more precious than gold at court, for if it is to be real it cannot be bought. I want a man whom gold cannot buy.”
“Why? For what purpose?”
“For my own purposes, and those of the state. You know that Lofantyr has been excommunicated by the rival Pontiff Himerius. His nobles know Macrobius is alive—they have seen him with their own eyes. But some do not choose to believe what they see, because it suits them. Torunna is boiling with rebellion; men of rank never need much in the way of an excuse to repudiate their liege-lord. If nothing else, Corfe, I think Aekir and Ormann Dyke have burnt loyalty into you, whether you like it or not. That kind of loyalty, when it is accompanied with real ability, is a rare thing.”
“There must be some men loyal to the King in the kingdom,” Corfe growled.
“Men tend to have families; they put that loyalty first. If they serve the crown well, it is because they want advancement not only for themselves but for their families also. Thus are the great houses of the nobility created. It is a necessary but dangerous exchange.”
