Geoffrey grinned. "Why, what a fox you are!"
"Do you not mean, a vixen?"
"I doubt it not," Geoffrey assured her, and managed to restrain himself from telling her that he enjoyed hunting. "But what of your brothers? Did they not find it galling to take orders from their little sister?"
"Nay." There was a gentle amusement, perhaps even tenderness, in her tone. "They knew enough of command to realize that if they challenged my leadership, the outlaws would cease to respect me and would desert one by one—and they knew also that it was better to have an outlaw band, than to be beset by one."
"Wisely thought," Geoffrey said, with approval. "Did they tell you this?"
"Aye, when I demanded to know. 'Twas two days after the raid on the castle, look you, and I had braced myself for them to come to me all three together to say, 'You have done bravely, sister, but now you may sit back safely and leave all to us.' "
"What would you have said if they had?"
"I would have told them that I had won the outlaws' obedience, through fear if nothing else, and that if I were to step aside, they would have to win that obedience all over again."
"You would have held onto what you had won, then."
"Aye." Quicksilver's smile turned predatory. "I had begun to enjoy the taste of power."
"It does whet the appetite," Geoffrey agreed. "Did not your brothers hunger after it?"
"'Of course,' my eldest brother told me. 'Who does not? But we have discussed the matter, sister, and are all agreed that you will be our surest route to power.' "
"So simple as that?" Geoffrey asked, amazed.
"Aye. Mayhap they thought of me as a useful tool, but if so, they have not sought to master that tool. I think, though, that they were sincere—and I know they are proud of me." She smiled, a glow in her eyes.
"I doubt it not," Geoffrey assured her. "I would be proud of such a sister." He looked up, thinking over that statement.
"Have you such a sister?" Quicksilver asked.
"Aye, now that I think of it—though Cordelia fights with magic, where you fight with steel. And I am proud of her."
"But do you seek to rule her?"
Geoffrey gave a bark of laughter at the thought and shook his head. "I would never dream of it—but if I did, I would be grasping my head with the king of all aches in an instant."
"But you would not think of it."
"Nay, and I'd string out the guts of the man who did!"
"Then you should not find it hard to believe that my brothers do not seek to rule me."
Geoffrey thought that over, too, and nodded. "Even so. If Cordelia were to win what you have won, I would not seek to steal it, but would help her guard it, even as your brothers have done."
"Then why do you take me to the King and Queen, so that they may steal it from me?" Quicksilver asked softly. That brought Geoffrey up short. "Because it is the law," he said slowly, "which I am sworn to uphold—and because what you have, you have stolen from its rightful owners."
"The county, do you mean? And are you so sure that young Count Laeg is its rightful owner?"
"He is, in the law," Geoffrey replied.
"But in morality? Does not the land rather belong to them who till it? Should not its fruits belong to those who have drawn them from the earth?"
"There might be right in that," Geoffrey admitted, "but it is the world as it perhaps should be, not the world as it is. I live in the world that is, and will let Their Majesties decide whether or not it is right or wrong."
"But what know they of County Laeg?" Quicksilver protested. "What know they of the ways in which the Count and his father and, aye, his grandfather, abused their office and their peasants?"
"Little," Geoffrey admitted. "But if you tell them, and bring them some sort of proof, they shall see the right of it and amend it."
"You have greater faith in Their Majesties than I," Quicksilver said bitterly. "But then, it is not hard to have more than nothing."
"I have just such faith, for I have known them from childhood," Geoffrey returned. "They are good folk, look you, and if you review the actions they have taken for the good of the land and the folk, you will be reassured."
"I would like to think so," she said darkly, "the more since I am going to appear before them."
Geoffrey frowned. "Are you so sure that you are so much better a ruler than the Counts Laeg?"
"I am," Quicksilver returned, "for I was close to the peasant folk, and knew their distress and their grievances. When I gained power over them, I saw to it those grievances were redressed."
"Tell me the manner of it," Geoffrey urged her. "When three bands had sought to attack us, and been beaten for their pains," Quicksilver explained, "others began to give us a wide berth. But those we had beaten, we put to work hauling and hewing, for we had builded us a little village within the forest. However, when we went to raid Count Laeg's tax collectors, I placed them in my brothers' commands, though armed only with staves ... "
"You did not put one band for each of your brothers!"
"Of course not." She gave him a look of contempt. "How great a fool do you think me?"
"None at all," he said promptly.
She colored a little, and looked away, but her voice ground on. "I split each band among the four commanders—my brothers and myself. There were never more than a dozen to a band, so what is four more among trusted and seasoned men?"
"Aye—eight trusted, and four new!"
"But each of those eight had beaten one or two of the others at practice," Quicksilver pointed out. "Besides, they had seen how well we lived, and were minded to give my captaincy a try. We captured the tax collectors and sent them back to Count Laeg with only their tunics and hose, for we kept their shoes, their gold, and even their robes. The new men sang my praises then, though they grumbled against me when I kept the greater part of the loot for myself. They might have mutinied, had I not sent some of them out with packets of money to help friends in the villages who were hard pressed for food to live on, since the tax collectors had taken nine parts out of ten."