“Oh, what expense is that?” YetAmidous said, waving his free hand. “Too many of them are idle wretches from the gutter who’d have met an early death anyway. They expect to return with treasure. Usually all they bring back is the diseases they picked up from the whores. Death in battle, a place in history, remembering in a victory song… better than most of the scum deserve. They’re a crude tool and they’re best used crudely, with none of this effeminate feinting and playing around. Better to attack straight and get it over with. These so-noble dandies dishonour the whole business of war.” YetAmidous looked at the two girls sitting at the pool side, then briefly at Yalde. “I wonder sometimes,” he said quietly to the two men, “whether there is not some other motive in the Dukes’ inability to finish this war.”
“What?” RuLeuin said, frowning.
“I had assumed, with the Protector, that they were trying as hard as they could,” ZeSpiole said. “What do you mean, General?”
“I mean that perhaps we are all being treated like fools, sir. That Duke Ralboute and Duke Simalg are closer to the Barons of Ladenscion than they are to us.”
“Apart from physically, obviously,” RuLeuin said, smiling but looking awkward.
“Eh? Aye. Too damn close. Don’t you see?” he asked, levering his bulk away from the side of the bath. “They go off to this war, they pull in more and more troops, they delay and delay and stumble and lose men and machines and come whining to us to help them out, taking troops from the capital and our other frontiers, leaving the way open to any bastard who might want to march in from outside. Who knows what mischief they might have got up to if the Protector had put himself in their midst? The boy about to die might save his father’s life, if he really is his father.”
“General,” RuLeuin said, “have a care. The boy may not be about to die. I have no doubt that in any event I am truly his uncle through my brother, and the Generals Ralboute and Simalg have always shown themselves to be good and true officers of the Protectorate. They joined our cause long before it was sure to succeed and could be said to have risked more than any of us in supporting it, for they started out with much power and prestige which they entirely risked by throwing their lot in with us.” RuLeuin looked to ZeSpiole for support.
ZeSpiole had busied himself with a segment of fruit, burying most of his lower face in it. He looked up at the other two men and expressed surprise with his brows.
YetAmidous waved his hand in dismissal. “All very fine, but the fact remains they have not done as well as they were supposed to in Ladenscion. They said they would triumph there in a few moons. UrLeyn thought they would too. Even I thought that the job ought not to be beyond them, if they applied themselves and threw their troops to the front. But they have done badly. They have failed so far. Cities have not been taken, siege engines and cannon have been lost. Their progress has been halted by every stream, every hill, every damn hedge and flower. I am simply asking why? Why are they doing so badly? What can be the explanation, if it is not deliberate? Might it not be some conspiracy? Might there not be some collusion between the two sides of the war, to drag us and our men in deeper and tempt the Protector himself forward to take part, and then kill him?”
RuLeuin glanced at ZeSpiole again. “No,” he told YetAmidous. “I think that is not the case, and nothing is accomplished by talking like that. Give me some wine,” he said to Herae.
ZeSpiole grinned at YetAmidous. “I must say, Yet,” he said. “Your talent for suspicion is almost on a par with DeWar’s.”
“DeWar!” YetAmidous snorted. “I’ve never trusted him, either.”
“Oh, this is getting preposterous!” RuLeuin said. He drained his goblet and sank under the water, resurfacing to shake his head and blow out his cheeks.
“What can DeWar be up to, do you think, Yet?” ZeSpiole asked, with a smile. “He certainly cannot wish our Protector dead, for he has saved him from almost certain death on several occasions, the last time being when each of us came closer to sending the Protector into the arms of Providence than any assassin ever has. You yourself came within a knuckle of sticking a quarrel straight through UrLeyn’s head.”
“I was aiming for that ort,” YetAmidous said, scowling. “And I almost got the thing, too.” He thrust his goblet out to Yalde again.
“I’m sure you were,” ZeSpiole said. “My own shot was more off target. But you have not said what you suspect DeWar of.”
“I just don’t trust him, that’s all,” YetAmidous said, sounding surly now.
“I would be more concerned that he does not trust you, Yet, old friend,” ZeSpiole said, staring into YetAmidous’ eyes.
“What?” YetAmidous spluttered.
“Well, he may have the feeling that you were trying to kill the Protector that day, on the hunt, by the stream,” ZeSpiole said in a quiet, concerned voice. “He might be watching you, you know. I would worry about that if I were in your position. He is a sly, cunning hound, that one. His approach is silent and his teeth are sharp as razors. I should not care to be the subject of his suspicions, I’ll tell you that. Why, I’d be sorely frightened that I might wake up dead one morning.”
“What?” YetAmidous roared. He threw down the goblet. It splashed into the milky water. He stood up, shaking with fury.
ZeSpiole looked over at RuLeuin, whose expression was anxious. ZeSpiole put his head back and burst out laughing. “Oh, Yet! You are so easy to rile! I’m jesting with you, man. You could have killed UrLeyn a hundred times by now. I know DeWar. He doesn’t think you’re an assassin, you big oaf! Here. Have a fruit.” ZeSpiole lifted a buncher and threw it across the bath at the other man, who caught it and then, after a moment’s confusion, laughed too, sinking back into the swirling water and laughing uproariously.
“Ha! Of course! Ah, you tease me like a hussy, ZeSpiole. Yalde!” he said. “This water’s freezing. Get the servants to bring some more hot. And bring more wine! Where’s my goblet? What have you done with it?”
The goblet, sunk in the bath in front of YetAmidous, had left a red stain in the milky water, like blood.
19. THE DOCTOR
The summer passed. It was a relatively mild season throughout the land, but especially so in the Yvenir hills, where the breezes were either pleasantly cool or tolerably warm. Much of the time passed with Seigen joining Xamis below the horizon each night, trailing after it at first, while we performed the first part of the Circuition, dancing almost in step with its senior during those eventful and perplexing early moons at Yvenir, then preceding it by gradually greater and greater increments for the rest of our stay, which, happily, was devoid of significant incident.
When time came to pack up what needed to be packed up and store what required storing, Seigen was anticipating the rise of the greater sun by a good bell or so, providing the hills with a long leading-dawn full of sharp, extended shadows when the day seemed only half begun and birds chorused and some birds did not and the tiny points that were the wandering stars could sometimes still be seen in the violet sky if the moons were absent or low.
Our return to Haspide was accomplished with all the usual pomp and ceremony. There were feasts and ceremonies and investitures and triumphal parades through newly built gates and dignified processions under specially commissioned arches and long speeches by self-important officials and elaborate gift-givings and formal conferments of old and new awards and titles and decorations and any manner of other business, all of it wearying but all of it, I was assured by the Doctor (somewhat to my surprise), necessary in the sense that this sort of participatory ritual and use of shared symbols helped to cement our society together. If anything, the Doctor said, Drezen could have done with more of this sort of thing.