Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (21 page)

    
“You might note that, as you made clear, those enemies were not left alive.”

    
“Well then,” Aniquen said, without missing a step, “there is this devastating war between Sental and Volkhydro.”

    
“Eldador is not involved in that affair,” I said.  “And Eldador shall not be drawn into that affair.”

    
“And if the call is made for the Fovean armies to intervene?” Aniquen asked.

    
“That shall be taken on its merits,” I said.  “I cannot say that the armies of Eldador will stay home if called upon, neither can I say that they are at the beck and call of the Fovean High Council.”

    
Aniquen nodded.  “I should like to speak, then, to King Glennen on this matter.”

    
“I am sure you would,” I said.  “However, he is indisposed.  I am at your disposal, and you have heard me.”

    
“This is not in keeping with –“ he began.

    
“Is there anything else?” I asked, interrupting him rudely.  I knew the Uman-Chi.  That was an unforgivable slight.

    
I think he leveled a glare at me – it’s hard to tell with those ambiguous eyes – so I met it.  I disliked him, and I saw no benefit in acting otherwise.

     He turned to one of the Uman who’d come with him, and took a package from his hands.  He opened it and held the contents up for me to see, a marble carving of a rearing stallion, in white.

     “In celebration of your daughter’s birth,” he said.  One of the Oligarchs was already descending the throne steps to retrieve it.

     I couldn’t suppress a smile.  “I didn’t expect this,” I told him, frankly.

     “A child is a cause for celebration,” Aniquen informed me.  “We see them rarely among our people.  Every child is a chance for change, for improvement, for new insights into the world.  A child is a precious thing, your Highness, no matter whom the father.”

     He could have left that last part off, but I thanked him.  The Oligarch couldn’t lift the statue so a couple Wolf Soldiers helped him with it.

     “Eldador withdrawn from the Fovean High Council is Eldador with no friends in Fovea,” the Uman-Chi warned me.  “Such an Eldador would have a difficult time on Tren Bay.”

    
“Fortunate for Eldador, then, that this is not your decision to make,” I said.  I agreed with him that I couldn’t withdraw from the Fovean High Council.  But I could be the France of the EEC and get away with it.

    
“You are dismissed,” I said, and brushed him off with a wave of my hand, looking away.  He turned on his heel, passed giggling courtiers in the gallery, and out the throne room door.

    
“Perhaps poorly advised, your Highness,” Oligarch two whispered to me, ascending the steps again.

    
“Probably,” I said, loud enough for the court to hear me.  “But the emissary they sent tried to kill me once.  A statue doesn’t forgive him that.  I’ll be more civil to one who didn’t.”

    
He smiled and nodded.  I ordered a division of Eldadorian foot from Steel City to patrol the Aschire border and protect it from woodsmen.  Rennin wouldn’t want or need wood from there, and he would best be able to spare the men.  I ordered Oligarch three to write him a letter of explanation and to have it to me before I went to bed, then called court over for the day.

     Hectar and J’her were waiting for me with, of all people, Tom Kelgan.  By rights the man should have been in shackles in the dungeon with the wizard that I still hadn’t decided on.  In fact, he stood not three feet from me, a sword over his shoulder, looking me right in the eye with an irritating smile on his lips.

    
So I punched them.  Four Oligarchs, a major and a Duke stood stunned as the bounty hunter’s blood sprayed them down.

    
The next took him in the nose.  He went for his sword and I pinned him by the neck to the wall with my left hand, then caught his left wrist in my right hand, twisting it so that the knife he held didn’t find my stomach as he had intended.

    
I slammed his head against the stones as all four Oligarchs protested as one and Hectar’s hand found my shoulder.  J’her already had a dirk out and in position to be driven into the side of Tom Kelgan’s head.

    
“Met your friend, Varoth,” I said, looking into his seething green eyes.  “I didn’t like him real well.”

    
“I am told he didn’t live to regret it,” Tom Kelgan said.  His eyes stayed fixed on mine, but he released the dagger.  Blood already seeped into the red hair on his head and moustache.  Hectar pulled the sword from his shoulder sheath without removing his hand from my shoulder.

    
“You weren’t smart to set me up,” I said, and released him.  “But you were plain stupid to stay here after.”

    
“I gave you my word I wouldn’t act against you, and you knew I was a spy,” he said.  “I stayed because you still bear watching.  Don’t blame me if the Guild hasn’t found a way to you yet.”

    
“This is more insolence than the Heir should hear,” Hectar said.  J’her nodded.  “Certainly, you have killed bounty hunters before, your Highness.”

    
I looked in his eyes, not really knowing what I would see.  If I had been him, I would have stayed, too.  I would have wanted to see how the target handled it.  But I knew Tom Kelgan to be smoother than I, better at this sort of thing, more mature.  He had played me better than I would have thought possible, making him not just smarter than I, but smarter and wiser.

    
A threat to me – but keep your friends close and your enemies closer.  If I knew whom I dealt with, and I knew that person’s advantages, then I knew more about him than I would about his replacement, who would surely follow if I dispatched this one. 

    
“From this point on,” I said, “you lose a finger for every weapon you bring into my presence.  After you run out of fingers, I start on toes.  After toes – well, by then you deserve what happens to you.”

    
He nodded, and I released him.  He rubbed his neck.  “The Guild is still pursuing allies against me?” I asked him.

    
“I never agreed to inform on the Guild-“

    
The back of his head made a hollow ‘thunk’ when it hit the stone wall, my fist in his eye.

   
He might be smarter but I didn’t have to like it.

    
“Your temper is going to be your undoing, your Highness,” Kelgan told me.

    
“It will undo you in less than a minute,” I said.  “But then you will look a lot worse and have a
lot
less blood in you.”

    
He sighed, threw a futile glance to the others there, and sighed again.

    
“The Dorkans know what you know of them,” he said.  “The Guild used the knowledge they were receiving from Klem to support what they were finding out through your Oligarch.  Klem’s family is in Conflu.”

    
“And Duke Ceberro?” I asked him.

    
He hesitated, and I looked at J’her.

     “I am tir
ed of this,” I said.  “Take him to Shela. Tell her I want him sore, but not dead.”

    
“We approached him, and we explained your Fire Bond and how to exploit it,” he said.  “He wasn’t interested.  We offered him gold, he still didn’t seem interested.”

    
“How do you know this?” Hectar asked him.

    
“I receive regular reports, so that I can tailor my advice back to the Guild,” he said.  “As a top operative, I can be trusted.”

    
I looked back at J’her.  “How many Wolf Soldiers are watching us now?”

    
“Twenty.”

    
“Strip him, look in every crevice, get all of his weapons, take him to Shela.”

    
“I told you the truth,” Tom Kelgan complained.

    
I looked him in the eye.  “You hesitated,” I said.  The Wolf Soldiers were already forming up next to J’her.

    
“And you pissed me off.  Bet you don’t do either again,” I said, leaving with the Duke and the Oligarchs.  I heard steel clatter as it hit the ground.

     When we were out of earshot, I looked at Hectar and, as we walked, asked him, “What were you thinking?”

    
“When?”

    
“When you brought him armed into my presence?”

    
“J’her turned him up among the courtiers today,” the Duke said.  “He knew who Kelgan was, and he knew that you hadn’t had him to dinner since returning from Uman City.  He told me that we should bring him to you, and I agreed.”

    
“That was a lot of initiative,” I said.

    
The Duke looked at the side of my face.  “You don’t allow that among your soldiers?”

     
I smiled without looking at him.  “I let them be their own men and women,” I said.  “J’her had been a farmer once.  He is a lot more than that now.  I am impressed with him.”

    
Hectar just nodded.  I liked the fact that J’her thought to build a bond with the Duke.  I still planned to have Shela verify his loyalty again.  Trust is a luxury that had burned me before.

    
“Where are we going, your Highness?” Oligarch two asked me.

    
“The stables,” I said.

    
“Shall we ride, then?” Hectar asked me.  I had it on good authority from a stable hand that he had gotten close enough to Blizzard to be bitten.

    
“I hope so,” I said.  The stallion had been cooped up too long.  “But I have another meeting to attend, and that is as good a place as any, and better than the throne room.”

    
The royal stables were out behind the palace building, within its walls, and accessible by a back exit that went near my own quarters.  As we approached them, I could see Karel of Stone riding his pony within its grazing fence, and D’gattis and Ancenon watching him from the fence itself.

    
Both of the Uman-Chi were dressed in their usual robes.  Karel wore his bear skins, even mounted.  He seemed to be trying to show the pony how to take direction from his knees, while he shot arrows at a target I could barely see.

    
The Uman-Chi watched me with their ambiguous eyes as I approached with Duke Hectar and my Oligarchs.  They barely acknowledged me, which told me more than if they had.

    
“Welcome,” I said.

    
They nodded.

    
“You were taken care of with rooms and all?”

    
“All fit for a visitor,” D’gattis said.

    
“You handle your anger well,” I said.  Why game around with it?

    
“We have had a lot of practice with you,” Ancenon said.

    
Hectar chuckled. 

    
“I remember a rough warrior on a rogue stallion,” Ancenon said, “and he could be relied upon for great secrets and trusts.”

    
He wanted me to justify myself.  As with anything the Uman-Chi did, there would be nuance within nuance, and, of course, if I played their game, I would look stupid and end up apologizing like a good Man.

    
“Was he the one whom you led the Legionnaires against?” I asked him, frankly.  “Or was this the one whom you warned the Trenboni about?”

    
“These are issues which we have thoroughly explained,” D’gattis said. 

    
“And yet, there it remains,” I said.  “You’re upset that the compound on the Plains of Angador is invaded, and you think I allowed it.”

    
“You didn’t prevent it,” Ancenon said.

    
“I cannot within the laws of Eldador,” I said.  “And I’m bound by them.  I will never attack you, I will never allow your persons to be attacked, but I cannot prevent a Duke whose support I need from overrunning the compound that you didn’t think to defend and, unlike you, I didn’t give him the information that he needed to do it.”

    
“We didn’t think we had to defend it within your borders,” D’gattis said.

    
“You wouldn’t have if you had told me what you were doing,” I said.  “You are hundreds of years old.  I overrated your intelligence, for which I accept blame.  But had you simply said, ‘Declare our estates off limits,’ I could have made it an Earldom or something and you would be protected for a minimum amount of taxes.”

    
They looked at each other, then at me.  I knew I wouldn’t outfox them, so I just told the truth.  The blatant truth is nice in a pinch.