He dressed quickly, and as he was pulling on a clean shirt, not a uniform, she entered the dressing chamber.
“They’re washing all your uniforms so they’ll have enough time to dry. Are you hungry?”
“Yes.” In more ways than one. But dinner would come first.
They walked down the narrow stairs together. Quaeryt did hold her hand, firmly, but not too lightly.
She looked at him. “I’m glad you miss me.”
“I wish I didn’t have to.”
Vaelora shook her head. “If you don’t do what you must, then you’d come to blame me. I would not have that.” She smiled faintly. “Do not tell me you wish it were otherwise. I would not love you so much were you not striving to change things for the better. I have not told you this, but I would not change one thing you did as governor now that I have thought about it. I told Bhayar that also.”
“Thank you.” Quaeryt squeezed her hand again. “What did he say? Or did he just look at you with those dark blue eyes?”
“That doesn’t work with me. He tried it too often when we were young. He laughed. Then he said that I was getting to be as dangerous as you, and that he would have to watch both of us.” She shook her head, then smiled. “I told him I’d learned it all from him and Aelina. He said that he was surrounded by dangerous people, and that was the price of using those who were most able.”
“He’s right about that. Anyone who can carry out tasks well can turn that ability against one.”
“So a ruler has the choice between faithful incompetence or dangerous competence?”
“All too often, don’t you think?”
“I do.”
“Still…” mused Quaeryt, “there is one aspect that many overlook. Often those who are most able can see that they can accomplish more by working with a ruler than against him. It is usually to their interests to do so.”
“Unless the ruler is not trustworthy.”
“A ruler should always keep his word … that is, if he wishes to remain a ruler.”
“Has my brother?”
“So far as I know. Do you know otherwise?”
“He did not as a youth. Our father whipped him once for breaking his word.”
That was something Quaeryt had not heard.
“Father told him that lesser men could break their word, but not rulers. He also said that treachery and lying was a shortcut to ruin.” Vaelora smiled ironically. “He also said that there was little need to deceive men, because most men would deceive themselves.” She stopped as they reached the table on the terrace, placed so that the trees beyond the terrace shaded it from the last rays of the sun.
Once they were seated, Vaelora looked across at him. “You are tired.”
“I’m not that tired … but the last two days have been long.”
“How did it go with the Pharsi officers?”
“They will obey and follow my orders.” He laughed softly, not quite bitterly. “At least until I prove I’m not one of the lost ones.”
“And what if you are?”
“They may find that they do not want what they have wished for.”
“Oh … dearest…” Vaelora reached across the table and took his hands in hers for a moment, then released them as the serving woman approached, setting a pale lager in a beaker before each of them.
Quaeryt took a long swallow. He hadn’t realized just how thirsty he still was. “I do like good lager.”
“You like most things that are good.”
“So do you,” he said with a smile.
“Don’t most people?” She took a sip from her beaker, then set it down and waited as the serving woman placed a small platter of sliced peaches and cherries before her, and then another before Quaeryt. “I thought fruit, and then fowl, would be good.”
“It all sounds good.” He ate one of the cherries, careful not to bite on the pit, then another, before going on. “I’m not sure that most people like what is truly good. I think most of us want to think that what we like or what we wish to do is good. Just think about what happened in Extela. The grain and flour merchants wanted higher prices for flour, even though the price they wanted would have beggared many people. When I kept the price from going too high for just a few weeks, while restoring order, they all condemned me and complained to your brother. When I questioned High Holder Wystgahl about his motives and about the fact that he’d supplied weevil-ridden flour to the post, he got so upset that he died, and his son and everyone condemned me. No one said a word about the nature of the flour, or that his actions were a theft of so many golds that a poor man would have been beheaded for taking that much. Yet all of them believed that they represented what was good.” Quaeryt doubted he’d ever forget what he’d learned from his short time as governor of Montagne.
“You’re very right, dearest, and we can correspond about it. We should enjoy dinner … and the little time we have left together at present.”
Quaeryt was glad for the last two words she spoke, even as he knew she was right. He would have more than enough time without her to think over how people defined what was good and what was not. He smiled and lifted his beaker. “To your wisdom, to us, and to the evening.”
Vaelora raised her beaker as well, extending it so that it touched his with the faintest clink. “To us.”
They drank, eyes locked.
7
Quaeryt found himself once more in the saddle, looking out through the rain at the massed Bovarians as the horns began to sound. The mournful penetrating call shivered through his bones. As one the Bovarians began to advance toward the Telaryn forces on the low ridge south of the River Aluse, closing in from the north, the south, and even the west.
Quaeryt cleared his throat, extended his shields to encompass Desyrk and Shaelyt, then concentrated on imaging the bridge he visualized, with high slight arches to a central pier, a massive structure necessary for what must come.
Nothing happened, and the Bovarians kept advancing.
Could he do it again? Draw power from the warm rain, from the warmth of the Bovarian troopers and their mounts? From the river itself? Could he again slaughter tens of thousands?
Yet if he did not …
He reached out for that warmth-and from everywhere came lances of pain, strikes like cold lightning. Overhead, the clouds darkened into masses blacker than a moonless night without even the thinnest crescent of either Erion or Artiema, and liquid ice poured down like sheets in an arc around him, slashing through his shields as if they did not exist, sucking all the warmth within him away.
From somewhere came a mocking whisper. “Should you not suffer what you wrought?”
He wanted to protest that he hadn’t been the one who had begun the war, but the chill froze his tongue in his mouth. Brilliant lines of white ice-lightning flared through his skull, and the tears caused by that pain froze instantly on his cheeks. White fog billowed below him … and icy whiteness froze him into stillness. He struggled to escape, to move somehow, but he could not, chill as he was. He tried to blink, but failed, as if they were frozen open watching thousands freeze around him, even as ice built around him. Somewhere, he could hear rain, icy droplets … falling, coating him with yet more ice.
He shuddered, trying to escape the endless ice and chill.
Suddenly there was light all around him, light so bright he could hardly see, but he was cold, so cold he was shivering, even with all the sunlight.
Before he could say anything, Vaelora’s arms were around him. “It’s all right, dearest. It’s all right.”
Her words did not register with him, not for several moments, because they were in Bovarian. “What…?” he murmured, half mumbling because his lips were so cold they felt numb.