He switched ink and paper, to the special colors of both that would tell these operatives that he had a job for them. The note he sent would be commonplace greetings, of course; no special agent would ever trust primary instructions that came written. This was a gamble on his part, for many of these people were free-lance workers. When they heard what he had to say, they might even turn him down; although they would be paid more for these targets than any of them had ever gotten for a job before, getting to their targets through the miserable conditions that existed now could be a real problem. And again, that was the privilege of an agent who was as good as these were; you couldn't persuade an artist to make a masterpiece by standing him in front of an easel and threatening him with death. It might be possible to pick off one or two of these provincial leaders with ordinary assassins, and if he came up short on the number of agents he needed, that was what he would do.
But he really would prefer it if all of these operatives found the jobs enough of a challenge to take them on. They were very good. He, above all, should know; he used to be one of them, as did Porthas, and he had even trained some of them in technique.
There was nothing like being able to call on old school ties...
As he wrote out his list of "invitations," it occurred to him that he actually did have a way to fulfill the Emperor's demands and "bring Tremane to justice," provided that the "justice" came in the form of a swift, sure blade or the sharp bite of poison. There were three of these assassins—four, if he counted Porthas, though he did not intend to do without that worthy's talents right here, who could and possibly would go to Hardorn and eliminate Tremane. Magical assassination being out of the question, physical assassination would take a year or more, but it could be done.
He paused to consider it, even though the idea did not appear to be a particularly good one. There was a certain amount of personal satisfaction to be had if he could somehow kill Tremane. How had the man managed to wheedle his way into the hearts and minds of the Hardornens? It did not seem fair that his old enemy should come through a situation that should have destroyed him, only to be made a King. Granted, he would never see his home again, and granted, Melles was going to be an Emperor, not a mere King. Nevertheless, the prospect was galling. It would have been satisfying to bring him down altogether.
Porthas took away the cup, and left a fresh one and a plate of sliced fruit, bread, and cheese in its place. This was a subtle hint that he should eat something. He took the hint, and ate without tasting any of it.
He weighed all the considerations. Given that the agent sent out would be brilliant, crafty, and given every resource, the likelihood of anyone from the Empire reaching the center of Hardorn was remote. Success would be remoter still, for an agent of the Empire, without the magical aids that would enable him to study the people and conditions surrounding his target, would be operating blind in a foreign land. He would stick out like a single red fish in a school of green fish.
In a way, it was possible to sympathize with the Emperor's obsession. Tremane should be dead at this point. Normally, he did not give in to his own emotions, but there was a sick anger in the bottom of his stomach that twisted and bit as if he had swallowed a viper, and it would probably never give him rest. He wanted Tremane dead, and he wanted to do whatever it would take to get him there.
But even when he had been an operative himself, he had known that there was a point past which it was inadvisable to pursue your target, no matter what your employer said or offered. This was one of those times.
He got up from his desk and poured himself another drink, ignoring for the moment the cup of mulled wine; not brandy this time, but a thick cordial with no alcohol in it, made entirely of syrup and stomach-soothing and gut-deadening herbs. He went back to his seat, let himself down into the embrace of the chair, and tried to convince his heart of what his head knew were facts.
When the enemy is "dead" to the world one inhabits, he might as well be dead in totality.
That was something his teacher had told him, and it was as true now as it was then. Tremane might as well be dead; his lands and possessions were confiscated, his name erased from the records, and he could never return here again. He would have to be content with a petty kingdom in a land of barbarians.
Pursuit of Tremane was a waste of resources, which were in very short supply, especially good operatives. There was no point in wasting a man who could serve Melles better elsewhere. It was time to bury the past vendettas with Tremane's name.
There was no point in following the Emperor into madness.
Every time a mage-storm washed over them, anyone with any pretensions at being a magician felt it; there had even been clever daylight robberies timed to coincide with the onset of a mage-storm, when the owner of a building would be incapacitated. The Storms were bad enough when they came during the daylight hours, but when they occurred at night, when everyone was asleep, they were worse, for they became part of one's dream and turned those dreams into nightmares.
Melles woke up in a sweat, clutching his blankets, out of a nightmare of tumbling through empty space. But the waking reality was no better, and he hung onto his bedding with grim recognition of what was behind the dream. Complete disorientation, nausea, the feeling that he was on the verge of blacking out and yet could not have the relief that unconsciousness would bring—this was a mage-storm to him, and he was profoundly grateful that Porthas and his guards were not mages and did not feel these effects.
At that, his own bouts with the Storms were not as bad as those of some of the other mages he knew, though he had not ventured to ask the Emperor how he weathered these things. He had a theory that the amount a mage suffered was directly proportional to the amount of magic he had tried to work in the interval between the Storms. If magic was tied to its caster, and the Storms disrupted magic, it stood to reason that when the Storms hit, they would give trouble to mage and magic together. As a consequence, he had tried to keep from working any magic at all, even giving up his own rejuvenation magics when they had not survived disruption.
When the Storm finally passed, and his dizziness and nausea vanished as they always did, he let go of the covers and tried to relax back into his goosedown mattress. With any luck, the Emperor would be "indisposed" today after his bout with the storm, and with further luck, the mage-storm would send his mental and physical state plummeting again. It was too much to hope that the Storm had killed him, but it was certainly possible that this time he might wind up bedridden.
That would be an excellent thing, for then Melles would have to stand proxy and speak for him. It might even be possible to frighten him into stepping down and making Melles the Emperor. He would not hope for it, and he would not urge it, for the Emperor might well take such suggestions very badly. It was a fine dream, though, and one he was loath to give up.
He closed his eyes and tried to relax in hope of resuming his slumbers, but it was of no use. He could not get back to sleep again. He opened his eyes and stared up at the canopy of his bed, or rather, at the darkness within the sheltering curtains of the bed. No light penetrated those thick velvet curtains, nor would it until morning, when the servants pulled back both window and bed curtains to wake him. Now that there was no magical way to heat Crag Castle, one needed those heavy curtains around the beds to keep the drafts out, just as one needed goosedown comforters and featherbeds, and many blankets. Even then, he often woke with a cold nose.