Cursed by Fire (14 page)

But none of that disturbed her more than the idea of walking willingly down the stairs from her rooms tonight and into his chambers.

No. She could not risk that long course night after night. She would be seen. It would be reported. And as much as he might like the idea of Grannish hearing about it, she did not. If Grannish thought he was losing his power over her, he would not hesitate to gain it back by any means necessary. She had no wish to be ill again
or, worse, to die. She would have to be careful never to take any food in her chambers. She would have to be satisfied with these common meals, where it would be impossible for her to be poisoned without risking poisoning the entire table. Or so she hoped. She did not put it past Grannish to kill others in his quest to get to her.

She barely paid attention as she was led to her seat. Her father entered the room moments later and everyone sat down, Dethan at her right elbow and Grannish boring holes into her from across the table. Gwynn was in her seat to Selinda’s left, a point that had irritated her a great deal when it had first happened. She should have headed the table with her father; instead, his mistress was given a position above her. Yet another way she was made certain of the strength of her father’s respect for her, she thought bitterly.

She caught herself in the thought. No! Her father was being misled and manipulated. By Grannish on the one side and Gwynn on the other. She should not be angry with him for trusting the wrong people.

“Your most honorable, I have reconsidered your offer,” Dethan said baldly after their first course was served. “I will help you with the Redoe. It is in my best interests because I cannot leave without it and because I can always use the gold. Provided the sum is correct.”

“And what sum would you ask of me?” the grand asked. “We are a small city and our coffers suffer from the Redoe.”

“Are you withdrawing your offer, then?” Dethan asked. And Selinda knew a moment of sheer panic. No. That could not happen!

“Father, I would gladly give up half my personal jewels if it will help us to be free of the Redoe. They can easily be replaced once the city is thriving again.”

“Nonsense,” the grand said with a chuckle. “You see my daughter, Sor Dethan? She always jumps in with
both feet before thinking of the consequences. It is why she could never be grand in her own standing. She reacts too emotionally.”

“Better that than with no emotional sensitivity at all,” Dethan argued. Her father may not have been aware of it, but that was a dig at him. She was sure of it. She frowned at Dethan, but he wasn’t looking at her. She suspected he wouldn’t much care even if he was.

“True,” the grand agreed. “Very well. Ten thousand gold pieces,” the grand said magnanimously. The sum was tidy and it elicited murmurs of surprise up and down the table.

“A large sum for such a poor city,” Dethan said. It was another dig, Selinda thought. But why should he care if he was getting what he wanted. The gold should have been enough for him. And yet she sensed that his respect for her father was very low indeed and she didn’t know how to feel about that. She prayed she had not released a viper in her father’s house. Then again, she thought as she looked over at Grannish, there was already a viper at her father’s neck, poised to strike at any moment.

“You will be worth your weight in gold if you can achieve what we have been trying to do for nearly five decades. Before then the Redoe were just raiders who came in occasionally and stole from the outlying farms. Now they are two thousand strong and organized like we have never seen before.”

“What else do you know about them?” Dethan asked.

“I’m afraid that’s all we know,” the grand said.

“Have you no intelligence? None at all?” This remark Dethan aimed down the table, toward the general.

“It’s not as though a spy would blend in,” Firru snapped.

“The Redoe are red-skinned,” Selinda whispered to Dethan.

Dethan smiled internally. It pleased him that she wasn’t willing to just sit aside and dry her tears while he took over and fixed the mess of her life. He had not deemed her to be so weak from the ways he had seen her stand up to Grannish in public, all the while knowing she would pay for it later. That reminded him. Tonight he would have to remember to ask her just how far Grannish had gone against her. He suspected he’d made more than a little impression; otherwise, why would Selinda have sought him out?

“And it did not occur to you to find a spy of their coloring?” Dethan asked.

The general sputtered, “You know nothing of what you speak! The Redoe are not to be trusted. Not a single one of them! They would simply hand us false information and it would be a waste of our time!”

“Then I see where I am to start,” Dethan said, turning his back on the general. “I will begin immediately. If all goes well, I should have the problem resolved by turntide.”

“Turntide!” the general spluttered, his face turning a mottled red. “Sor, I but live for the time! Then my liege will see what a liar and a deceiver you are! What say you, your most honorable?” General Firru said to the grand. “The Redoe routed by turntide or this … this
liar
thrown into the dungeons by turntide!”

“Sor Dethan, turntide is only sixty or so sunsets away.”

“I am aware of that,” Dethan said with a respectful nod. “These are
your
conditions, your most honorable? Because I face them without any fear if they are.”

The grand fiddled with his fork for a long minute as the table awaited his words in near total silence. Everyone had ceased to eat.

“Very well. The Redoe routed by turntide or you will reside in my dungeons until I say otherwise. I do hope
you know what you are doing, Sor Dethan, because I would hate to see you in the cold, dark belly of this fortress.”

“Believe me, your most honorable,” Dethan said, “I have been in far worse places.”

“Very well, then. And since you will be working hand in hand with General Firru, you will have the same benefits afforded to him. Your chambers will be moved to the main level of the fortress. You will be given a page of your own.”

“Of my choosing,” Dethan said quickly. “And I would have you leave General Firru to the city watch and me to my own troops. It will work better, since we have such differing opinions.”

“As you like. Although Grannish is much better versed in the workings of this castle and the day-to-day abilities of its staff. You might do well to ask him for a suggestion as to a page.”

“Thank you, but I think not,” he said, the smile he shot the jenden acidic. “I have someone else in mind and I wouldn’t want to put any undue strain on the household by depriving it of a regular servant.”

The grand accepted his answer, completely oblivious to the undertones going on across the table. Or at least it seemed as though he were. Perhaps he was choosing to act ignorant. Either that, and he was as sly as a fox for doing so, or he was truly as blind as his daughter had said he was.

“Very well. So tell me how you plan to tackle this matter.”

“If you would like to know, I will be happy to tell you so … in private and with your promise not to speak of it with anyone else. The success of my plan hinges on secrecy. I do not trust others when it comes to matters of war, and neither should you.” Dethan dulled any
sting that might be perceived by his words with a lazy smile.

“Too right,” the grand said after a moment of deciding exactly how he should take the idea of a total stranger of low station telling him what to do. If he had been worth the throne he sat on, he would have taken umbrage, would have at least questioned Dethan. But he did not. He did what Dethan believed was an all too common habit for the grand. He accepted the word of another at face value and left it at that. And this before Dethan had even done anything to prove himself. Dethan’s hand closed into a fist on his thigh. This was why the man’s daughter had been driven to all but sell herself to a total stranger, thinking her lot could not possibly get any worse. Fortunately for Dethan she didn’t really see that things could
always
get worse. In fact, he was rather an expert in worse.

If he had any say in the matter, he would see that she experienced nothing worse than she already had.

No. Wait
. He could make no such promises. If anything, his experiences had taught him that he was not in control of fate, his or anyone else’s. Only the gods could truly do that. The gods had the final say in all things … and the gods were not known for championing mere mortals. They were better known for punishing them. But there were rewards too, weren’t there? There were stories of great people, mortals, who fought through great ordeals and were then rewarded by the gods. It was these stories, however, that had led him to his folly. He had believed that by following in the footsteps of another great mortal he would deserve the same great reward. But while the gods had been impressed by the first mortal to find the youthful waters, they had taken Dethan and his brothers’ actions as an assault. A raping of their goodwill and power. And they had been right to punish the men for their hubris.

But did it have to be for so long and in such a way?

Yes. It did, he realized. Even now, he was fighting the temptation to do the wrong thing, to let himself be distracted from his course. He could not lose sight of his goal. He must win cities for Weysa. To give her power meant an opportunity for her to achieve her ends. And maybe …

He closed his eyes and forced away thoughts of his brothers. His motives needed to be pure and concise. He could not wallow in undue emotion or get mired by others.

Unfortunately by entangling himself in the politics of Hexis he was doing exactly that. But he was in the unique position of being able to conquer a city without need of an army and he would be a fool to pass up that kind of opportunity.

He looked to his left and watched Selinda. There was food on her plate, but she was not eating. She was merely poking at the sausage with the prongs of her fork, stabbing into it again and again very slowly, each puncture allowing the contained grease to bleed out onto her plate until the sausage was swimming in a small lake of its own juices. He could easily imagine her desire to stab that fork into her true enemy, sitting merely a table’s width away from her.

That brought his attention to Grannish. Grannish was staring hard at Selinda as well, as though he were trying to divine her thoughts for some reason. Dethan knew the very moment she became aware of the jenden’s regard. Her entire body went tense and she dropped her fork to her plate. She forced both her hands into her lap and stared hard at her butchered sausage as if it were the most interesting piece of meat she had ever seen. Dethan decided that he did not like seeing her so afraid. He did not doubt she had cause to be that fearful. But she was braver than she thought. He had seen her stand
up to Grannish, had seen her manipulate him in public, where he dared not immediately retaliate or gainsay her. That took courage. Especially knowing the consequences. Grannish was a bully, Dethan surmised. He had a cruel streak—Dethan had seen it when Grannish’s man had been whipping Tonkin. There had been an appetite for the suffering of others in his eyes.

So in what ways was he making Selinda suffer? Dethan wondered. And no sooner had he thought it than a sickened feeling crept low into his gut. The idea of her being under the thumb of someone like Grannish … No wonder she was scrabbling for something, anything, to save herself with.

He had known others like Grannish, and they had earned nothing but his contempt. A man made his way in the world using his intelligence and his skills of battle, compensating with one where he was weak in the other. Yes, it was true that innocents fell in battle alongside those who were not so innocent, but the cities Dethan had taken had been in dire need of taking, in dire need of someone at the helm who could manage them and make them flourish. Very often the innocents that died in the taking of the city were outweighed by those already dying from disease or starvation or any number of other things that a mismanaged city was prone to.

That was exactly what he was facing here. A city so mismanaged it was dying a slow, agonizing death. Perhaps a quicker death with the Redoe outside its walls, sitting and waiting for them to collapse in on themselves. The Redoe were far cleverer than Grannish and the general were giving them credit for. They were whittling away at Hexis more and more each year and their patience was beginning to pay off. They could afford to sit and be patient. They had all the crops they could want at their disposal and no one was challenging them … so why not sit and wait? Dethan’s task was to
make it as uncomfortable for the interlopers as possible. But that would require discomfort for those behind the walls as well.

“I should like to go about inspecting your troops later today,” he said to the general.

“What, all together?”

“Yes. All together.”

“The city guard protects the walls and those within the walls. I can’t just call them all together. It would allow for mayhem in the streets.”

“They will be called together and will do so in shifts afterward at least once per day. Otherwise, how do they know what is expected of them, what direction you wish them to take?” He grimaced. “Or is it that you don’t give them any direction at all?”

The general coughed, bits of eggs flying from his lips, his face mottling in fury and indignation. “Your most honorable! I refuse to take such insult from a lowborn piece of—”

“Be warned,” Dethan said quietly, “I do not take kindly to insults.”

He did not raise his voice like the general did. He did not have to, Selinda thought. The entire room quieted in response to his warning because they could all feel the coiled threat that he was, like a serpent ready to strike if he was poked or irritated.

“It is no insult, only truth!” the general hissed, although there was a sudden caution in the lines of his stocky body. “I have been his most honorable’s general for fifteen years! You are hardly old enough to be called a commander, never mind a general. And we still have no proof you are anything but a wastrel off the street, taking advantage of his most honorable’s need and graces.”