War Maid's Choice: Chapter Four

    “Careful, lummox! That’s my head you’re dumping crap all over!”

    The hradani stopped, parked the wheelbarrow carefully, and then leaned sideways, looking over the edge of the excavation.

    “And would you be telling me what in Fiendark’s name you’re doing down there right this very minute?” he inquired testily.

    “My job,” the dwarf standing in the bottom of the steep-walled cut replied in an even testier voice.

    He took off his battered, well-used safety helmet to examine its top carefully, then rubbed a finger across the fresh patch of dust (and dent) the falling piece of rock had left in the steel and looked up accusingly. The hradani hadn’t actually “dumped” it on him — his wheelbarrow had simply dislodged a small stone in passing and knocked it over the edge — but the result had been the same.

    “If I hadn’t been wearing this, you’d have splattered my brains all over the cut!” he said.

    “Now that I wouldn’t have,” the hradani replied virtuously. “They’d not have covered more than a handspan of dirt at most, and likely less, come to think on it. And you’ve still not told me what it was you thought you were after doing down there when it was yourself told us to start pouring in the ballast.”

    “Checking the form, if you must know,” the dwarf growled. “No one signed the check sheet.” He waved a clipboard irritably. “Somebody has to do a walkthrough before the voids get filled in!”

    “Well, you’ll not be doing any ‘walkthroughs’ so very much longer if you don’t get your sawed-off arse out of the way.”

    “‘Sawed-off arse,’ is it?” the dwarf demanded. He stumped over to the ladder fixed to the face of the massive, freestanding wooden form and started swarming up it. “For about one copper kormak I’ll use you for ballast!”

    “Ah? And how would you be doing that?” The hradani propped his hands on his hips and looked down at the dwarf from his towering inches. “I’m thinking a wee little fellow like you’s likely to strain himself moving someone who’s properly grown!”

    The dwarf made it to the top of the ladder and across the wooden plank between the form and the solid ground beyond the cut, and stalked towards the enormous hradani. He was barely four feet tall, which made him less than two thirds the hradani’s height, and he looked even smaller beside a massive, hradani-scaled “wheelbarrow” larger than most pony carts. But his beard seemed to bristle and he jabbed an index finger like a sword as he halted in the wheelbarrow’s shadow and glared up at the hradani.

    “It’s a pity all a hradani’s growth goes into his height instead of his brain,” he observed acidly. “Not that I should be too surprised, I suppose. After all, when a skull’s that thick, there can’t be all that much room for brains inside it!”

    “Sure and I’m thinking such envy must be a hard thing to bear,” the hradani replied. “Still and all,” he gripped the wheelbarrow’s handles again, “such as me, being full grown and all, would look right strange creeping about in those squinchy little tunnels your folk favor.”

    He lifted, straightening his spine with a slight grunt of effort, and the heavy wooden handles — well over six inches in diameter — flexed visibly as the wheelbarrow’s massive load of gravel went thundering down into the excavation. A plume of dust rose, blowing on the hot afternoon breeze, and he glanced down with satisfaction.

    “Which isn’t to say such as you wouldn’t be looking right strange pushing around wheelbarrows as are all grown up, either, now I think on it, now is it?”

    The dwarf shook his head with a disgusted expression, but his lips twitched slightly, and the hradani smiled benignly down upon him.

    “You’re like to do yourself a mischief venting all that spleen, Gorsan, and a sad thing that would be,” he said. “Well, sadder for some than for others, now I think on it.”

    “Somebody’s going to suffer a mischief, at any rate,” Gorsandahknarthas zoi’Felahkandarnas growled back.

    “And so I have already, I’m thinking,” the hradani sighed. “Why, I might be off lounging around on guard duty somewhere — or at least mucking out a stable — and instead, here I am, wheeling around loads of gravel to fill a hole I had the digging of my own self in the first place, and all of it with a wee little runt no higher than my knee yammering and whining the time.” He shook his head dolefully. “It’s enough to make a man tear up like a babe in arms, it is, and I’m after wondering just what it was I had the doing of that got me on Prince Bahnak’s bad side and landed me here.”

    “You really don’t want me to answer that one,” the dwarf told him with a chuckle. “Or maybe you do. Listing all the reasons he doesn’t want to trust you doing something hard would take long enough to keep both of us standing here till the end of the shift after yours, wouldn’t it?”

    The hradani grinned, conceding Gorsan the last word, and trundled back off for another load of fill. Gorsan watched him go, then stepped back out of the way as another hradani wheeled another massive wheelbarrow down the pathway of wooden planks which had been laid across the muddy ground. The newcomer had clearly heard most of the exchange, and he shook his head, foxlike ears cocked in amusement, as he dumped his own load of gravel into the gap between the form and the side of the excavation.

    Gorsan shot him the expected grumpy look, but the dwarf’s brown eyes twinkled when he did. The truth was that he got along extraordinarily well — indeed, far better than he’d expected — with the hradani laboring on the Derm Canal. The canal was the longest and (in most ways) most vital portion of the massive construction project conceived by Kilthandahknarthas of Silver Cavern, Bahnak of Hurgrum, and Tellian of Balthar six years earlier, and it had been an enormous professional compliment when Gorsan was named its chief engineer. It had been inevitable that it would go to someone from Clan Felahkandarnas, given that Felahkandarnas stood second to Clan Harkanath in Silver Cavern by only the slimmest of margins and that not even Harkanath had been in a position to finance something like this solely out of its own resources. All of Silver Cavern was deeply invested in it, and the other clans had a right to nominate their own fair share of its supervisors. There’d still been at least a dozen possible candidates for the assignment, however, and Kilthandahknarthas and Thersahkdahknarthas dinha’Felahkandarnas had made the choice based on proven ability. On the other hand, that ability had been demonstrated working with other dwarves, and although Gorsan would never have admitted it to a soul, he’d approached the notion of supervising a mixed crew of hradani, dwarves, and humans with pronounced trepidation.

    Actually, he conceded, watching another outsized wheelbarrow approach, it hadn’t been the humans who’d concerned him. The hradani’s reputation as the most dangerous of the Races of Man had been well earned over the twelve hundred years since the fall of Kontovar. Their tendency to erupt in berserk, homicidal fury when struck by the Rage — the inherited madness of their race — was enough to make anyone nervous, especially people who’d lived in the same vicinity as them for the past several centuries, and the old adage about burned hands teaching best had come forcibly to mind when he first contemplated his assignment.

    In theory that had all changed now, and Gorsan admitted that he’d seen no episodes of the Rage during the five and a half years he’d supervised the canal’s construction. Despite that, he still wasn’t certain he believed all the stories he’d heard about how the Rage had changed, even if they were vouched for by Wencit of Rum and a champion of Tomanak. For that matter, he still had a few problems wrapping his mind around the concept of a hradani champion at all!

    But whatever might be true about the Rage, he’d discovered there were definite advantages to a work force whose laborers had the size, strength, and sheer stamina of hradani. They took workloads in stride which would have made even a dwarf blanch, and for the first time in Gorsan’s experience, a job actually looked like it was going to come in ahead of schedule, even with the miserable weather of northern Norfressa to slow things up!

    And there was no question that Prince Bahnak of Hurgrum was a far cry from the stereotypical barbarian brigand most people thought of when anyone said the word “hradani” to them, either. Gorsan had met the prince and most of his almost equally formidable offspring, and he suspected the rumor that Bahnak had suggested the project to Kilthan rather than the other way around might well be true. The dwarves of Dwarvenhame were far more accustomed to interacting with the other Races of Man than any of the ancestral clans had been back in Kontovar, and Kilthandahknarthas was even more accustomed to it than most, but the sheer boldness and scale of the Derm Canal — and its implications for all of Norfressa — were staggering.

    We should have thought of it years ago, he reflected now, clasping his hands behind him as he strolled down the brink of the canal cut. Except for the minor matter of its being impossible until Bahnak came along!

    He snorted at the thought, but it was undeniably true. Even for dwarven engineers, the thought of building a canal almost four hundred leagues long between the human city of Derm and the hradani city of Hurgrum could never have been anything but a fantasy as long as the hradani city states had been at one another’s throats. But Bahnak of Hurgrum’s Clan Iron Axe had finally brought hundreds of years of ongoing conflict to an end.

    For now, at least.

    Gorsan grimaced as his mind insisted on adding the qualifier, yet it was hard to believe anyone or anything could truly turn the northern hradani into a single realm and keep it that way. But Bahnak and his Horse Stealers hadn’t hammered the Bloody Swords into surrender by simple force of arms. Oh, he had hammered them — that was the only way anyone ever convinced a hradani to do anything he didn’t want to, after all; that much hadn’t changed whatever might have happened to the Rage — yet it had been Bahnak’s shrewd diplomacy which had made his victory possible…and which looked like making his conquest stand up. Even the name he’d chosen — the Northern Confederation — only underscored his shrewd understanding of his own people. No one doubted for a moment that the “Northern Confederation” was actually a kingdom and that Bahnak was its king, yet he’d been careful to avoid the other clans’ stubborn, hardheaded, not to say intransigent noses in that reality. Instead, it remained a simple confederation, no more (officially) than an upgrade and an enlargement of the old Northern Alliance he’d forged amongst the Horse Stealers, and he remained a simple prince, no more (officially) then first among equals. It was true, perhaps, that he stood “first among equals” by a very considerable margin, yet he was careful to show what Gorsan believed was a genuine concern and respect for the opinions of the members of his newly created Council of Princes. No one was going to be so foolish as to cross him or mistake him for anyone but the Confederation’s undisputed ruler, but that was due in no small part to his demonstration that he understood the responsibilities of a ruler.

    The fact that he was already proving one of the canniest rulers in Norfressan history didn’t hurt, either, Gorsan reflected. He wasn’t afraid to think, as his ability to conceive of something like the Derm Canal and drive it through to success amply demonstrated. No doubt it had been difficult to convince the newly conquered Bloody Swords to take the proposal seriously, at least at first. Getting them to realize there could be more profit in supporting commerce than in plundering it couldn’t have been easy, at any rate! It had probably helped that the canal would stretch right across the traditional Bloody Sword holdings, giving them ample opportunity to make plenty of money off of the freight it would soon be carrying. And, after the initial labor of building the thing, for far less effort than more traditional wealth-gathering hradani practices, like looting and pillaging.

    And once shippers get accustomed to the notion of actually sending their cargoes through hradani lands, they’ll probably take a certain comfort in the fact that the hradani will be providing security rather than raiding their goods. It would take a lunatic to cross hradani guards on their own ground!

    He stopped and gazed out across the sprawling construction site. Close at hand, crews used rollers and muscle-powered, footed pile drivers to tamp down the gravel ballast filling the gap between the wall of the excavation and the finished wooden forms which awaited the concrete. Gorsan would have preferred to use even more gravel and have a sarthnasik like Chanharsa fuse it, but other portions of the project were already eating up the efforts of at least two-thirds of Silver Cavern’s available sarthnaisks, and concrete worked just fine for something as routine as a canal. Further west, the next lock in line was nearing completion, and more crews were tearing down the heavy forms now that the concrete had set. And, further west still, barges loaded with construction material moved steadily up and down the portion of the canal which was already operable.

    The Derm Canal had been the most exhausting and exhilarating project of Gorsan’s career, and his heart swelled with pride as he watched those barges moving across the gently rolling grasslands of Navahk. Another six months, he thought hopefully. Assuming they could finish before winter set in, that was. He shuddered as he remembered other winters, but he was determined they were going to beat this one. And with the Balthar locks already open and the Gullet Tunnel almost completed, the entire route could be ready and open as early as sometime next spring. He could hardly believe it even now, but those construction barges were the clearest possible proof that it really was going to work.

    And those Purple Lord bastards down in Bortalik are going to be dropping in droves out of sheer apoplexy when it does, he thought with grim satisfaction. Which suits me just fine.

    “Do you think Shaftmaster’s estimates are accurate?” the man across the table asked, and Cassan Axehammer reminded himself not to roll his eyes.

    Yeraghor Stonecastle, Baron Ersok and Lord Warden of the East Riding, was of little more than average height for a Sothoii—two inches shorter than Cassan himself — and as dark and swarthy as Cassan was blond. He had very long arms, and his powerful wrists accurately reflected the rigorous traditional training regimen he maintained, despite his high rank. He and Cassan were kinsmen and close political allies, but there were times Yeraghor’s ability to belabor the obvious grated on Cassan’s nerves. In fact, it bothered him more because he knew how intelligent Yeraghor actually was, which only made his tendency to ask obviously rhetorical questions even more irritating.

    “I don’t know whether they’re accurate or not,” Cassan said once he was sure his voice would come out the way he wanted it to.

    He sipped expensive Dwarvenhame whiskey, then set the crystal glass down very precisely in front of him and leaned back. His comfortable rattan chair creaked under his weight, and he gazed out across the rolling green fields of the Barony of Frahmahn. He could see literally for miles from the roofed balcony set on the west side of his castle’s central keep, and everything he saw was his. But somewhere out there, beyond what he could see, beyond the borders of his own South Riding, lay Tellian of Balthar’s West Riding, and he felt his jaw muscles clench as he considered the reason — the real reason — for this meeting with Yeraghor.

    “I don’t know whether they’re accurate, but I think it’s obvious Shaftmaster thinks they are — or will be, when all’s said and done. And given that he’s the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I’m not prepared to say he’s wrong.”

    “And you’re sure they’re genuine?” Yeraghor asked, his eyes narrowing shrewdly. “Master Talthar’s a resourceful soul, but we both know he has irons of his own in this fire.”

    “I’m sure,” Cassan replied grimly. “And I’ve spent some time looking at the reports his estimates are based on, too.” His expression wasn’t getting any happier. “I’m not sure I agree with all of his analyses, but he can’t be too far off.”

    “Shit,” Yeraghor said flatly. Unlike Cassan, Yeraghor preferred beer to whiskey, and he buried his nose briefly in his silver chased tankard. Then he slapped it back on the table and glowered at Cassan.

    “And this business about Macebearer signing on? It all looks genuine enough… I doubt he’d hesitate to offer us false information or even outright forgeries if it would serve his purposes. And capable or not, actually getting his hands on Macebearer’s records — or even just getting access to them — couldn’t have been easy. I know.” He smiled thinly. “I’ve tried myself on more than one occasion!”

    “They’re not forgeries,” Cassan said with a grimace. “I haven’t managed to get anyone inside Macebearer’s staff yet, either — not high enough to get his hands on this sort of documentation, at least — but I do have my sources in the Palace. Which is how I know someone broke into his office a few weeks ago. They’ve all done their best to hush it up, of course, but the investigation was as thorough as it was quiet. Talthar hasn’t mentioned it to me specifically, but I’m pretty sure the ‘servant’ who disappeared the same night Macebearer got himself burglarized was his man.” He shrugged. “I recognized Macebearer’s handwriting, too. I don’t think there’s any question the documents are exactly what Talthar told me they are, and that means those estimates are about as accurate — or official, at least — as they get.”

    “Wonderful,” Yeraghor said bitterly. “Things are bad enough the way they are. The last thing we need is Tellian getting Crown approval for that kind of boost to his revenues!”

    It was nice that Yeraghor agreed with him, Cassan thought acidly, but it would have been even nicer if he could have foregone — just this once — his compulsion to restate the obvious. But then Cassan made himself stop and draw a deep breath. His temper, he reminded himself, remained closer to the surface and faster to flare than he would have liked, and however irritating Yeraghor might be, Cassan had no business taking out his ire on his kinsman. Nor was it reasonable to expect any other initial response out of him, given the circumstances. Yes, Yeraghor’s conclusion was blindingly obvious, but Cassan had had the advantage of two additional weeks to study the documents the other baron had seen only in the last hour or so.

    And obvious or not, he had a point, Cassan conceded sourly.

    One of the unfortunate realities of life was that the water transport of trade goods was far and away safer, faster, and much, much cheaper than trying to ship the same goods overland. That was true even in the Empire of the Axe, with its superb highways; here on the Wind Plain, or in the Empire of the Spear — where even the best of roads were dirt and the worst were…well, pretty terrible — moving anything remotely bulky by land over any really extended distance was far too expensive for anyone to show a profit on it.

    As a consequence, it had always been difficult for Axeman merchants to ship their goods into the Kingdom of the Sothoii. It was possible to move at least some of them (mostly low-bulk luxury goods) overland from Dwarvenhame through the West Riding, but the Ordan Mountains and their foothills were a formidable barrier even over dwarf-designed high roads, and roads in the Duchy of Ordanfalas and the Duchy of Barondir, between Dwarvenhame and the West Riding, were no better than those of the Kingdom itself. For that matter, Barondir had a perennial problem with brigands and raiders, and the duke himself had been known to charge unexpected and sometimes extortionate “tolls” with very little warning.

    Most of the Axeman goods that did reach the Sothoii made their way up the long, majestic stretch of the mighty Spear River, and even that was barely a tithe of what it might have been. Bortalik Bay, at the mouth of the Spear, lay well over twenty-five hundred leagues south of the Wind Plain. That was an enormous voyage, and Axeman goods coming up the river first had to sail clear down around Norfressa’s western coast just to reach Bortalik. Yet distance was only the first hurdle they faced, for the half-elven Purple Lords who ruled Bortalik were deeply resentful of the Empire of the Axe’s economic dominance, and they regarded the entire basin of the Spear as their own private preserve. The tolls they charged to permit Axeman goods to pass through Bortalik and up the river were damned close to confiscatory, and they also used their strategic position to fasten a stranglehold on the foreign trade of the Empire of the Spear — one that frequently drifted over into outright control of Spearman politics. Any Spearman noble who angered the Purple Lords was apt to find all access to foreign goods embargoed by them, with consequences ranging from the merely painful to the ruinous.

    Neither Cassan nor Yeraghor had any particular problem with that arrangement. What happened in the Empire of the Spear was no concern of theirs, and if Axeman goods found it difficult to make the voyage from Bortalik to Nachfalas, Cassan’s clifftop port above the Escarpment, Purple Lord goods made the trip just fine. True, it made the Kingdom’s economy almost as vulnerable to Purple Lord manipulation as the Empire of the Spear’s in some ways, but that was actually advantageous in many respects, especially from Cassan’s viewpoint. That “unavoidable Purple Lord pressure” gave the Kingdom another card to play when it came to managing its relationship with its Axeman allies, who could be counted upon to cough up occasional concessions to sweeten the alliance as a counterbalance. And, on a more personal level, Cassan showed a pretty profit on all of the trade, Purple Lord or not, that passed through his lands on its way to Sothofalas and other points north. As for Yeraghor, the East Riding was the site of most of the Kingdom’s iron mines and smithies, and Yeraghor’s smiths and craftsmen had absolutely no desire to find themselves competing with the smithies and forges of Dwarvenhame.

    But that, unfortunately, was exactly what was going to happen if Tellian succeeded in his latest intolerable scheme. The so-called Derm Canal was going to make it possible for Axeman merchant barges to sail up the Morvan River to Derm, the highest navigable point on that river, and then across to the Hangnysti River at Bahnak’s capital of Hurgrum and up the Balthar River to the very foot of the Escarpment and their accursed “Gullet Tunnel.” Once their goods reached the top of the Escarpment, the Balthar would be available again to ferry them all the way to Tellian’s capital, or they could be delivered directly to Sothofalas by way of Glanharrow in less than a third of the time it took for them to reach the capital from Nachfalas…all without paying a single kormak in tolls to the South Riding. And worst of all, it would break the Purple Lords’ monopoly on the Spear River. Those same barges could sail down the Hangnysti to the Spear and as far south as they pleased with cargos of Axeman goods and return the same way with cargoes from Spearman merchants without ever going near Bortalik Bay. The Purple Lords were about to lose a disastrous portion of their wealth and power, and while Cassan would have lost no sleep over that, the thought that largish chunks of that same wealth and power would be pouring into Bahnak’s accursed Northern Confederation and the West Riding, instead, was another matter entirely. While it was likely his own income would actually increase, given the Nachfalas location and the greater volume of trade which would be passing up and down the upper Spear, that increase would be only a shadow — and a very thin, dim shadow, at that—of the revenue increase Tellian was about to see.

    Cassan’s nostrils flared as he contemplated that grim future and a dull tide of resentment burned through him yet again as he remembered how close he’d come to defeating Tellian for good.

    The two of them had been locked in combat for dominance on the Great Council for over twenty years now, and their respective houses had fought that same battle still longer — all the way back to the Kingdom’s very first Time of Troubles — with the struggle seesawing back and forth with the shifting of political tides. Under King Sandahl, the present King’s father, the House of Axehammer had enjoyed a pronounced advantage, but Cassan’s position had slipped under King Markhos…thanks, in no small part, to the advice the King had received from his younger brother, Yurokhas. Prince Yurokhas had been fostered at Balthar under Tellian’s father at the insistence of the Great Council, which had feared the South Riding’s influence with King Sandahl. He’d known the present baron since boyhood, and to make bad worse, he too was a wind rider, like Tellian. Besides, Cassan was forced to admit that he’d overplayed his own hand during Markhos’ brief regency.

    Markhos had been fostered at Toramos, the seat of the Barons of Frahmahn, under Cassan’s father, and Cassan had expected to capitalize on that relationship. It had been a mistake. He admitted that freely, if not happily. He’d put the boy’s hackles up, and he’d probably been just a bit too open — well, heavy-handed, if he was going to be honest — about using the advantages of his riding’s position on the Spear. He’d been younger then, himself, barely a dozen years Markhos’ senior, and he’d come to his own dignities only a few years before, but that was no excuse for his clumsiness, and he knew it.

    Still, he’d been confident of regaining all the ground he’d lost, and then some, when Tellian “surrendered” over four thousand of his men to less than eighty hradani. The hatred between the Sothoii and their hradani “neighbors” was deep as the sea and bitter as brine, and Tellian had passed up the perfect opportunity to ride down into the Horse Stealers’ lands and burn their cities behind them while their own warriors were off battling their Bloody Sword enemies. He’d been right there, poised to carry through the attack, with plenty of reinforcements available to follow his original spearhead down The Gullet. He could have destroyed “Prince” Bahnak’s alliance, prevented the Phrobus-damned abortion of a unified hradani “Confederation” on the Wind Plain’s very flank before it even began, and he’d let eighty of the barbarians stop him! And, even worse in some ways, he’d actually accepted the blasphemous claim that Tomanak Orfro could conceivably have chosen a hradani as one of His champions! For that matter, he’d accepted Wencit of Rum’s preposterous lie that it was the Sothoii who’d begun the millennium and more of bitter, brutal warfare between themselves and the hradani.

    The court faction which had been most concerned about the possibility of a unified hradani realm had been furious, nor had they been alone in that. Even some of those who’d been prepared to take a wait-and-see attitude had been shocked — and more than a little frightened, whether they’d wanted to admit it or not — by the idea that Tellian had actually connived to create the “Northern Confederation.” And the notion that he should recognize the champion status of a Horse Stealer hradani, the most hated and reviled of all the hradani clans, had triggered an upsurge of bitter anger. Cassan would never be able to be certain, but he strongly suspected that only Prince Yurokhas’ support for Tellian — and his acceptance that Tomanak might actually have been so insane as to take a hradani as His champion — had motivated Markhos to resist the furious demands that Tellian be stripped of his membership on the Great Council. Indeed, there’d been demands that he be stripped of his barony and lord wardenship, as well.

    Yet even though Markhos had stopped short of accepting those demands, Cassan had known how thin the ice had become under Tellian’s feet, and he’d been confident that this time he could finish off his rival’s influence in Sothofalas once and for all.

    Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked out that way. That his strategy to undermine Tellian’s rule with a series of safely deniable attacks on Festian of Glanharrow had collapsed would have been bad enough, but then that bastard Bahzell had been given credit for saving the tattered remnants of the Warm Springs courser herd and actually going on to defeat a pack of demons set upon the coursers by none other than Krahana herself! Cassan still found that tale too ridiculous to accept. He was willing to admit Bahzell might have had something to do with rescuing the surviving coursers — certainly something had inspired them to accept him as a wind rider, which was almost as blasphemous as the idea that he might actually be a champion — but Cassan Axehammer would believe Tomanak had accepted Bahzell Bahnakson as one of His champions when Tomanak turned up in person in his own great hall to tell him so!

    And then, as if that hadn’t been enough, that meddlesome, common-born bitch Kaeritha Seldansdaughter had seen fit to interfere in the Kingdom’s internal affairs, as well. Of course Cassan wouldn’t have wanted someone like Shigu to succeed in destroying an entire temple of any God of Light, but Lillinara was scarcely his favorite deity, either. If it had had to happen to someone’s temple, he would have managed to bear up under the knowledge that it had been Hers. And as for the war maids –! Anything that got rid of those unnatural bitches once and for all couldn’t be all bad.

    King Markhos appeared to see things differently, however. Worse, he’d sent his accursed magi to investigate Tellian’s and Kaeritha’s claims.

    Personally, Cassan had never trusted the magi, anyway. Oh, he knew all about their precious Oath of Semkirk and how it bound all of them to use their powers only within the law…and as far as he was concerned, that and a silver kormak would get him a cup of hot chocolate. No one with the unnatural powers the magi claimed could be trusted. If for no other reason, how could anyone but the magi themselves verify that they were telling the truth about what they did — or didn’t — do with those powers of theirs? And the last thing he wanted was anyone peering around inside his head, which was why he always wore the amulet that blocked any mage from doing just that. Fortunately, at least some people had naturally strong blocks which made them all but impossible to read without a major — and obvious — effort (assuming the magi were telling the truth about their abilities, at least), and since his amulet simply duplicated that natural block, its protection hadn’t triggered any alarms in and of itself.

    That had prevented the magi from denouncing him as part of the “plot” against Tellian. But it hadn’t prevented them from uncovering almost all of the minor lords warden who’d been involved, and one of them — Saratic Redhelm of Golden Vale — had been Cassan’s own vassal and distant kinsman. That had almost proved disastrous, but Cassan had installed enough layers of insulation between him and Saratic to at least confuse the issue. The danger that Saratic might have chosen to trade his testimony against Cassan for some sort of clemency, or even outright immunity, from the Crown had presented itself…but only until Darnas Warshoe, that useful armsman, saw to it that Saratic suffered an accident.

    And given what Saratic had been up to, at least a sizable minority of the Kingdom’s nobles strongly suspected Tellian had been behind that “accident,” not Cassan. It wasn’t the sort of thing Tellian normally did, but mercenaries hired by another Sothoii noble didn’t normally try to kill Tellian’s nephew and heir-adoptive, either. There were some provocations no one could allow to pass unanswered.

    Cassan doubted anyone in the entire Kingdom believed he hadn’t been behind the raids, yet with Saratic’s death, there’d been no proof, and not even an irate monarch proceeded against one of the four most powerful nobles of his realm without incontrovertible proof. Not openly, at any rate. Still, whatever anyone else might think, King Markhos obviously knew who’d instigated it all, and he’d made his displeasure clear by stripping Golden Vale from the South Riding and incorporating it into Tellian’s West Riding…officially as a form of reparations for Saratic’s actions, although everyone knew whose wrist he’d actually been smacking. Nor had he stopped there.

    He’d summarily dismissed Garthmahn Ironhelm, Lord Warden of Chersa, who’d been his Prime Councilor — and Cassan’s firm ally — for over ten years. And he’d also informed Cassan in a cold, painful personal interview that he himself would be unwelcome in Sothofalas for the next year or two. The King had stopped short of expelling Cassan formally from the Great Council, yet Ironhelm’s dismissal and his own banishment from Sothofalas, however temporary it might be, had reduced his web of alliances and influence to tatters. He’d only recently begun putting those alliances back together, and they remained a ghost of what they had been.

    Which was, after all, one of the reasons Yeraghor had become even more vital to all of his future plans.

    “You’re right, of course, Yeraghor,” he said finally. “And it’s not just the revenues Tellian’s looking at, either. There’s the correspondence from Macebearer, as well. This isn’t just about money. Tellian’s climbing deeper and deeper into bed with the Axemen and that bastard Bahnak. He’s not only going to drag the entire Kingdom into actually endorsing Bahnak’s rule, but he’s going to get our foreign policy tied directly to Dwarvenhame! And when the dust settles, he’s going to be the real power broker here on the Wind Plain. Don’t think for a minute that that isn’t exactly what he has in mind in the long run, and when he gets it, don’t think he’s going to forget anyone who’s ever done him an injury, either.”

    He looked across the table into Yeraghor’s eyes, and his own were grim.

    “He can rhapsodize about how much good this is going to do our economy, but Shaftmaster and Macebearer are blind, drooling idiots if they can’t see the downside! And even if they don’t think it’s a downside for the rest of the Kingdom, it’s damned well going to be one for us. Assuming, of course” — he smiled thinly — “that we were so foolish as to let Tellian and Bahnak get away with it.”