:There is not enough money in all of Karse twice over to hire the Tedrels,: Taver reminded him. :They are fighting for themselves, not Karse. Karse has not hired them, per se—or at least, they offered them something more than just gold. Karse has merely provided them with a platform from which to launch a campaign to conquer a new homeland and the resources to support them while they do so.:
"Why do the Karsites hate us so much?" Talamir asked aloud, in something like despair. "Why?"
Dethor shrugged. "Religion's at the heart of it, I'd guess," he opined. "But don't ask me, ask Alberich."
Religion. What about Valdemar could possibly seem so threatening to a religion?
:There is no one true way,: Taver said. :That is what threatens the Sunpriests; that is what terrifies them. If you offer that to people, you offer them freedom, and you challenge those who claim ultimate authority. If you offer that, you give people options. The Sunpriests rely on being the ultimate, unchallengeable authority; their lives depend on the very opposite of options. Their rule depends on their followers having no options, and relies on blind belief and even blind obedience.:
:Perhaps, but how do they expect to keep their people in the dark?: Short of building a wall around the country and guarding every exit point, there was no way of keeping people from finding out what was going on outside their borders.
:Ah, but a war builds that wall, doesn't it?: Taver responded. :You don't need stones when you've got an enemy.:
"Interrupting, I hope I am not," Alberich said from the doorway. He sounded exhausted; when he came into the light, Talamir took a good long look at him, and decided that he was at least as exhausted as he sounded.
"Hmm. Another fight?" he asked. The Weaponsmaster's Second was somewhat the worse for wear. He had a bandage across his forehead and another binding his forearm (suggesting that he'd already been to the Healers), bruised knuckles, and other signs that he'd been getting into trouble down in Haven. Small wonder he sounded tired.
"Fruitful," was all Alberich said. "But to drink, something wholesome, if you please?" He made a face. "The taste of sour beer, to remove from my mouth."
"I very much please, lad, and get off your feet," Dethor said quickly, and Alberich limped into the room. Dethor tilted the kettle at the hearth and poured out a mug of mulled wine, handing it to Alberich who sat down and accepted it, draining half of it in a single go. "So, what'd you net us this time?"
"Smugglers," Alberich replied. "Of vile things in—of information out." He raised a weary eyebrow. "One leak less, there is, and the jail, full." He still looked troubled, though, and Talamir knew why; it wasn't that he hadn't done well, it was just that he was concerned that there were informants who were eluding him. Anyone that Alberich caught down in the slums of Haven would not likely be sending the most sensitive information. Not that there was any sign that there was such a leak, but they always had to assume that one could exist.
Finding those leaks was Talamir's job; Alberich could not function in Court circles, while Talamir could, cultivating a mild-mannered and quiet demeanor, saying little and all of that agreeable and sympathetic. He came across as unworldly and just a bit absent-minded. People confided in him a great deal, and generally had no idea how much they had told him.
Nevertheless, there was no doubt in Talamir's mind that if saboteurs and couriers were to materialize in Haven, they would be living and operating in the area that Alberich was responsible for. Elsewhere, people were curious about their neighbors. In effect, each little quarter outside of the most impoverished areas was a kind of village, where everyone knew everyone else and wanted to know what they were up to. Not so around Exile's Gate. The inhabitants were utterly indifferent to the doings around them, and with good reason. Those who were too curious often ended up on—at best—the wrong end of a beating.
"Plenty of damage can come out of Exile's Gate," Talamir assured him. "Anything you do to stop it from traveling to our enemies is another arrow in our quiver."
Alberich sighed. "It seems like not enough." But he leaned back and accepted a refill and an apple, which he peeled with a frown of concentration, getting the entire peel off in one piece. The knife made a crisp sound as it passed through the flesh.
"If you were a maid, you'd be tossing that over your shoulder, and looking for the letters of your husband's name in it," Dethor observed, as Alberich carefully set the long curl of peel aside.
Alberich regarded him somberly. "Is that so? In Karse, such are for the children fried and dipped in honey. I have told you, divination a thing of witchcraft is. No Karsite maiden would dare such a thing, for the fear of the Fires."
Once again, Talamir was struck by how very different the Karsites were. A Valdemaran wouldn't think twice about tossing an apple peel, reading the tea leaves, wishing in a fountain. And that was the essence of the problem that faced the agents sent into Karse.
"Have you eaten?" Talamir asked, instead of commenting. "More than just that apple, I mean."
Alberich shrugged; Talamir took that as a negative, and made up an impromptu meal for him from the remains of supper's meat and salad and some bread. Since Alberich took it with polite thanks, then absently ate it in less time than it had taken Talamir to make it, the King's Own was certain that he must have been famished.
"Glad enough, I am, to be rid of such filth as were locked away," Alberich continued, swallowing the last bite whole and absently licking his fingers. "Only, I wish it were more that I was doing. In the South..."
That was as good an opening as Talamir was likely to get, and he took it, explaining what he had in mind. He knew Alberich very well now; he didn't waste his breath in trying to convince the man of anything, just stated his case. He watched as Alberich's eyes took on that curiously unfocused appearance that meant he was discussing the idea with his Companion.
This gave Talamir plenty of time to study Alberich, and he didn't like what he saw.
Besides the bandaged forehead and forearm—not his sword arm, which was telling—there was a bulge beneath the sleeve covering the biceps of that same arm that suggested another bandage, perhaps of a previous wound. The scars left from the burns on his face were crisscrossed by others now. That, as Talamir recalled, was a favorite tactic of low-and-dirty street fighting—to go for the face, figuring that the pain and blood that any facial cut produced would be such a distraction that it would be easier to go in for a kill.
Not that facial scars were going to make him stand out in the neighborhoods and the company where Alberich was going at night. The opposite was true, actually; the more scars, the more he would fit in. Beneath the scars, the face was good, if carved on harsh lines—a long oblong with a stubborn chin, high cheekbones, wide brow, heavy eyebrows set in a permanent scowl, aquiline nose, and the eyes of a goshawk, fierce and wild, with the barest hint of something that was not quite sane. Or at least, it was a peculiar sort of sanity, that saw deeper into dark places and could stare into the abyss without flinching. Perhaps it was the curious quality that Alberich's eyes had of never being the same color twice in a row, varying from the gray of a threatening storm through a muddy green-brown, to (as they were tonight) something close to black.