He went back to glowering at the floor. Shadow wondered why he had been chosen as confidant in this crisis; he felt both flattered and worried by the honor. "How about the royal portrait gallery?" he asked.
There he scratched gold--Vindax brightened. "By God, Shadow! This beak of mine--it shows up in some, but a long way back. Before Jarkadon IX, anyway. So, if it's the sort of thing that jumps generations..." Then his black mood returned, and he brooded for a while. "You ever heard of fair-haired parents having dark-haired children?" he asked.
"Yes," Shadow said, "but it always causes gossip."
"Gossip!" The prince lowered his voice to a whisper. "It isn't gossip that bothers me, Shadow. It isn't illegitimacy. It isn't Jarkadon IX. It's Jarkadon X."
Shadow knew of no Jarkadon X, so he raised an eyebrow, and Vindax nodded. "He's an ambitious bast--he's not notably scrupulous. If he thought he could make a case, he's quite capable of starting a civil war."
But who was the legitimate heir?
Shadow decided to take some risks. "Prince, I think you're overreacting...and being very unfair to your mother. And your father. They wouldn't have concealed...I mean your mother wouldn't have..."
He dried up and got a mocking smile. "Hard to put into words, isn't it?" Vindax said. "Why did they never summon Foan to court? Why was my mother so frantically against my making this journey? She raised every objection she could think of, even bad dreams. She's been failing ever since I suggested it--I thought she had some serious disease. I wanted to get the trip over with and get back as soon as possible. Now I think it was the thought of the trip doing it to her. You realize that until now almost no one else in the kingdom has met both him and me?"
"What did your father think of the idea?"
"He never met him," Vindax said grimly. Then he laughed harshly. "I was told to invite him to court! He'll be a sensation!"
Boots stamped outside, and Shadow reached over to lift the drape, unveiling Vice-Marshal Ninomar, soldierly, precise, and utterly brainless.
"Yes?" the prince said wearily.
"The men have been unable to locate any fuel, Your Highness," his lordship said. "We have virtually no provisions except raw goat meat. I wondered if you still wish to remain here over third watch or press on to Ninar Foan?"
He did not say that the countryside was barren for hours in all directions, that he had been against stopping at Vinok at all, that he had recommended bringing spares which could have carried supplies--food, perhaps, but hardly firewood, thought Shadow--or that the aerie might have been properly prepared for the royal visit had Shadow not tampered with the schedule.
Vindax sighed at this petty interruption and looked to Shadow--he seemed to be doing that more and more.
"There are spare mattresses," Shadow said. "Dry mute pellets burn very well, and I believe that the roof is made of timber."
He dropped the curtain without another word and was pleased to see a smile on Vindax's face.
"How do you do that?" the prince demanded. "The trooper found no fuel. So he reported to the trooper who was going to do the cooking, I suppose, and he told the ensign and he told the colonel...it works its way up through six or seven men until it reaches the heir to the throne. Then you solve it with a snap of your fingers! How?"
It was not a subject Shadow would have chosen, but anything was better than letting Vindax brood on his own paternity.
"From my father, I think," he said. "The Guard doesn't teach men to do thing; it teaches themhowto do things. You build a fire with kindling and logs. No logs, no fire."
"So?" the prince asked, puzzled.
Shadow smiled. "The locusts eat my father's crops, one corner of the Keep is subsiding, the wilds and the Guard steal the livestock, the neighbors deepen their well and his dries up, the serfs don't work if they're not watched, and the royal tax collectors demand more than he's got. But if he doesn't solve those problems, his serfs will starve, and he feels responsible. So he finds another way. No one tells himhow."
Vindax nodded. "Practical! That's the sort of thinking I want in my staff, Shadow. I want to meet your father. When we get back--"
The drape rustled aside to admit the countess.
The countess of Dumarr was not a person, she was an office. Appointments to that office were neither gazetted nor bestowed at dubbing, although they might as well have been from the speed at which they were known around the court. The countess of Dumarr was the crown prince's current mistress, a position of some importance in palace politics. The present incumbent was a sweet little cuddly blonde with a heart of steel and a very practical attitude to her work--Shadow approved of her. Normally there was no count of Dumarr, but the chief of protocol had been told to use that name for the duration of the trip. Some of the country gentry may even have believed that he was her husband.
She slipped by Shadow, sat down next to the prince, and looked him over appraisingly. Then she cuddled, getting little response.
"It's more complicated than we thought," she said.
"I thought it would be," Vindax said sadly.
"She's a woolly-headed spoiled brat, full of romantic notions and her own importance, but I don't think this jaunt was truly her idea. She was put up to it by her mother and someone called Ukarres, an uncle." The countess glanced up to include Shadow in the conversation, then back to Vindax. "She was led to believe that her father was coming here--to warn about a plot on your life."
Shadow stiffened.
"Her father knows this?" the prince asked.
"I would guess not," the countess said. "He can certainly deny it. She didn't want to be cheated out of meeting her dream prince, so she came herself."
Vindax frowned and looked to Shadow.
"Then her father will be coming also?" Shadow asked.
The countess shrugged. "She told them she was going off in the opposite direction, so he will probably be starting a search for her about now."
"Considerate little bitch!" the prince muttered.
The countess nuzzled the side of his neck.
"Was she told to bring that Rorin kid with her?" Shadow asked.
The countess was smart enough to have seen that point. "No. That seems to have been chance."
"Why does that matter?" Vindax asked sharply.
"Because that chance sort of scrambled the egg," Shadow said. "Without him along, this would have come out in private, even if she did faint at the sight of you."
But the egg had been scrambled--the whole royal party knew now. Vindax could turn tail and run back to Ramo, but the court would still hear how he looked so much like the duke of Foan's groom.
"Should I see her?" Vindax asked.
The countess shook her head. "Not yet. She's still in deep shock. She equates you with Rorin."
"Thanks."
She kissed his ear. "Silly! I mean that ever since childhood she has been dreaming of marrying the crown prince--and now she's discovered that he looks like her half-brother."
Vindax drew back his teeth in a snarl and looked up at Shadow.
"You will have to marry her now, you know," the countess said cheerfully. "It will be the only way to squash the rumors."
"Think of the wedding," Vindax snapped, "and the jokes about the father of the happy couple. I suppose you will now forbid me to visit Ninar Foan?" he demanded of Shadow.
"Who's behind the plot?" Shadow asked, needing time to think. "The rebels? Karaman?"
The countess said that neither Elosa nor her mother knew.
"Oh--hell!" Vindax said. He went paler than ever. "The duchess of Foan did visit the court once. I remember her being presented. I must have been about four." He stared in horror at the countess and then at Shadow. "So there my be no assassination plot at all--just a plot to keep me away from the keeper. Perhaps the duchess of Foan has been playing the same game as my mother?"