Rage seized Inger. This chaos existed only because one wild man had not been able to control his dick.
Heat filled Inger’s cheeks. She reddened further, recalling a rumor that Bragi had found yet another lover when his lust for her cooled down. A brat barely old enough to bleed if the gossip was true. A girl younger than some of his children.
His dead children. The survivors were pre-adolescents. If they survived. Dane had tried to kill them.
Inger’s conniving Greyfells blood considered starting a rumor that Bragi II had been sired by the King on his own son’s wife. She laughed. There was no chance that was true but it was the sort of canard that spread from border to border overnight. If she could produce one believable witness…
“Josiah, I can’t believe the ugly things I find inside my head.”
Gales grunted, rolled over. Only his eyes shone from beneath the covers. It was freezing. Servants did not visit the Queen’s bedchamber during the night.
He was not interested. He was being courteous because his lover was speaking. All he wanted was to sleep. But that was impermissible. He could not be here when morning brought Inger’s dressers.
“Get up. You have to go.”
Grumpily, groggily, Gales dragged himself out, got halfway dressed. A peck of a kiss and he was gone, sliding out via one of the hidden passages that worm-holed Castle Krief and had played so large a role in the stronghold’s checkered history. Even the late Krief had not known them all.
Inger watched the panel shut, heard the catch click. She was not quite sure of Josiah. She did know he loved her. He had since she was a maid. But she was a Greyfells and the Greyfells reality consisted of layered schemes, schemes within schemes, and conspiracies so convoluted the conspirators themselves lost track of what they hoped to accomplish.
Josiah said he was working for her. But he told Dane the same thing. He told each of them that he was setting the other up. He admitted that Dane was no longer confident of his loyalty.
But she was in no position not to rely on Gales.
Josiah was her best hope for maintaining herself and Fulk.
Inger was not religious. Few of her people were. The Greyfells outlook was that God helped those who forced their way to the head of the line. But now she got down on her knees and prayed.
…
The Empress looked too young for the role. Her appearance did not deceive her associates. Her vanity was legendary. Her seventeen-seeming had aged only a year in centuries, though she had borne two children.
She was exhausted. She had not had a good night’s sleep in months. Neither had anyone else amongst the soldiers and lords of the Dread Empire. Top to bottom, frontier to frontier, wars and scrambles for power had imposed intolerable stresses. Only the hardy remained.
Beautiful even in distress, Mist asked, “They want a truce?” Lord Ssu-ma said, “They want to negotiate an armistice.” “That got lost in translation. Grant them twenty hours of peace. I’ll pull rank and get some sleep. The rest of you should indulge yourselves, too.”
Lord Ssu-ma said, “An indulgence I mean to urge on everyone, Illustrious. The Matayangans have no capacity to take advantage.”
“Can we get up and moving again if we lie down?”
“In a limited fashion. Locally. After further rest.”
After a lot of rest, Mist suspected. Even the most hardened veterans had reached their limits. That Matayanga had begun to collapse was due entirely to the stubborn warrior culture of the legions. Matayanga had spent every treasure, every sorcery, every soul, trying to swarm and swamp its enemies before Shinsan, already battered and distressed, could steel itself on that frontier.
“I’m quitting now,” Mist murmured. She wanted to ask if she dared demand unconditional surrender. She wanted to ask if anyone had heard how her children were. She had not seen them in months. Most of all, she wanted to question the Tervola about the potential consequences of peace.
She did none of those things. She collapsed. Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i, the pig farmer’s son, placed her on a field cot.
…
Queen Inger’s liaison with the commander of her bodyguards was a deep secret, yet there were those in the know. The far sorcerer Varthlokkur knew via the Unborn.
Another who knew was the invisible Michael Trebilcock. Michael had been out of sight so long he had been forgotten by most people. But he was not far away. People who knew him saw him all the time without recognizing him. He appeared to have aged considerably.
…
In far Itaskia interested men within the War Ministry noted that most rumors about the Greyfells party were proving to be true. It was an excellent time to squeeze that clutch of troublemakers. That wicked, traitorous family appeared unable to withstand sustained financial and political pressure with Duke Dane off on a mad, expensive adventure.
…
The missing Guild General Machens Liakopulos, having gone unseen for months, came to the attention of outsiders while crossing a courtyard at High Crag, the mother fortress of the Mercenaries’ Guild. He had just spoken to a council of the Guild’s old men.
The witness who recognized him and cared enough to ask questions learned that the General had retired in one of the grand apartments that had come available when High Crag cleansed itself of the Pracchia disease.
The General felt badly about abandoning Kavelin but he felt no compulsion to sacrifice himself on the altar of kingdom worship that had claimed so many old companions. The King was dead. His dream died with him.
Wicked Inger could fry in her own drippings. Machens Liakopulos was old. He was tired. And he was done with ungrateful Kavelin.
…
One-time Lord Kuo Wen-chin was weary of exile but only exile let him enjoy any life at all. Once he had been overlord of all Shinsan. Those who had displaced him would eliminate him instantly should they learn that he lived. But the wishful heart will so often not attend the practical mind.
Kuo’s world was a lifeless island off a desert coast far from civilization and farther still from the heart of his homeland. It was a storied island but most of its tales were ancient beyond recollection. Three living beings knew what part it played in the Nawami Crusades. A handful more had heard of the laboratories of Ehelebe. The most terrible horrors subsided into still darkness after a few millennia.
Kuo amused himself by learning what he could from his surroundings. But months fled. Learning became tedious.
He had moments when he cursed Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i for having harkened to his appeal for sanctuary.
Kuo Wen-chin appreciated the honor his friend had done him. And Kuo was a patient man. But his patience was wearing.
He was too much alone. Food came unannounced and anonymously, arriving through a one-way portal. Nothing left the island.
Maybe Lord Ssu-ma had fallen fighting the Deliverer, or in the war with Matayanga. Or politics might have consumed him.
Yet someone kept sending supplies.
He shared the island with only one organism more complex than an insect or spider. Or the rare seabird that landed only perforce. Birds neither nested nor hunted here. They fled as soon as they had the power to go.
Wen-chin had found a crazy old man in a cell beneath the fortress that slithered along the spine of the island. The old man was little more than a ghost, physically and mentally.
Wen-chin found some purpose in nursing the ancient, who had suffered a mind-shattering trauma. He did not know who he was nor how he had come to be here, yet he had crystalline memories of things that had taken place thousands of years ago. He could describe forgotten storms of destruction in intimate detail, dropping the names of warlords and wizards whose empires and sorceries were less than an echo today.