Perhaps Acreon himself is not certain if he likes me. I doubt that he has had much commerce with anything other than humans. I wonder if I frighten him a little? He does not strike me as a particularly brave man, physically, although I think he is very strong in the spirit. I also think, perhaps, he does not know how strong he is.
Could Acreon be trusted? Probably. Of the three, he was the one with the least to lose and the most to gain if T'fyrr succeeded, out of all expectation, in making the King see where his duty lay. He was already overburdened and uncredited for most of the work he did; if the High King began acting like the ruler he was supposed to be, a great deal of that burden would be lifted from the Seneschal's shoulders.
He might even be able to enjoy spiced meat again, without suffering a burning belly.
He decided that he would make use of the Seneschal in the lightest way possible_by asking advice, not on difficult things, but on the subject that the Seneschal probably knew better than any other, his fellow Advisors. Acreon would probably tell him the truth, and if the truth were too dangerous, T'fyrr suspected he would be able to hint well enough for the Haspur to guess at the truth. Very well. Trust the Seneschal, as long as Acreon had nothing to lose by what T'fyrr was doing.
Levan Pendleton. The Lord Artificer was a puzzle. He liked music well enough. He was fascinated by the workings of things, and devoured facts the way a child devoured sweets. Those traits, T'fyrr was used to_the Deliambrens were rather like that.
He is also utterly amoral. He saw no difficulty in ridding himself of an enemy by murder; had even boasted tonight how he would do so. T'fyrr, adept at reading the nuance of voices if not of human expressions, sensed that he meant every word he said. He might even have been warning me, obliquely. He all but said openly that he was for sale. He might have been telling me that someone might buy his services to use on me.
There were only two things that Levan Pendleton valued_fact and truth. They were also the only things he cared about; he had said, more than once, that no matter what the cost, he would not conceal facts or distort the truth, at least when it came to his discoveries about the workings of the world. He had described, as if it were only an amusing anecdote, how his stand had already gotten him in serious conflict with the Church, and that only his rank and position had saved him from having to answer to Church authority.
T'fyrr could supply him with plenty of facts, anyway. He had traveled in lands that the Lord Artificer had never even heard of, and that meant he could enlarge Levan's knowledge of Alanda. As for things closer to home, the devices and machines that the Artificer so loved, if he could not explain the workings of Deliambren machinery, he could at least supply information on the workings of simpler things. The staged pumps that brought water up to the highest aeries, for one thing, or the odd, two-wheeled contrivance that the Velopids rode instead of horses.
I can probably entertain Levan for months, even years, and as long as I entertain him, I am too valuable for him to eliminate. I am also too valuable for him to permit anyone else to get rid of me. I can trust Levan Pendleton, but within strict limits.
And those limits would be determined mostly by what T'fyrr himself could or could not supply. An added benefit was T'fyrr's vast collection of music, much of it from strange cultures. Levan liked music, and to have someone who could not only perform it but explain the meaning or the story was something he had not anticipated. This could be a very good position to be in, so long as T'fyrr did not overestimate the limits of his entertainment value.
Levan Pendleton would be most useful simply as a patron. If people didn't like to go to dinner with him_they would also be disinclined to try to eliminate or disgrace one of his friends.
Lord Secretary Atrovel. Now there was a puzzle! He seemed completely shallow, a sparkling brook that was all babble and shine on the surface, but was nothing more than a lively skin of water, unable to support or hold anything of value. Yet the man was witty, and while it was possible to be witty and be stupid, it wasn't very likely.
Atrovel had access to everything the King did and said. That was his job. Now, it was probably not a bad idea to have a flippant fellow for a secretary, a man who really didn't care a great deal about the correspondence and documents he handled. But still_T'fyrr had the feeling that that sparkling surface was not all there was to Atrovel.
Perhaps, though, the deepest thing about him is his pride. He was certainly a man who had no doubts whatsoever about his own worth, and had no modesty about it, either. He would be the first to tell you just how important he was.
That might have been what T'fyrr sensed: beneath the flippant exterior was a man with a deep sense of pride in himself. If that was true, then the worst thing one could do to Lord Atrovel would be to harm his pride, to make him look foolish. He would never forgive that, and as Secretary he had access to the means to take revenge. Certain papers could fall into the hands of an enemy, perhaps... certain others vanish before they could be signed.
Lord Atrovel could be trusted_warily. And T'fyrr would have to be very careful of that touchy little man's feelings.
Oh, this is all too much to think about_Yet there remained one more human that T'fyrr sensed he must consider tonight, before he slept.
High King Theovere.
Now there_there was a puzzle and a question more complicated than that of Lord Atrovel.
For one thing, he is not sane. He is not rational. He has mood changes that do not necessarily correspond to what is going on around him, and his ability to concentrate is not good. His priorities are skewed. His Advisors don't care, because his insanity gives them leeway to do anything they really want. The problem is, what caused this? Theovere was not the man he once was. Harperus had been quite emphatic about that. High King Theovere had been well-respected, if not precisely beloved; he had kept every one of the Twenty Kingdoms under his careful scrutiny. So what happened? Why did he suddenly begin to lose interest in seeing things well-governed?
Was it a lack of interest? Was he ill, in some way that simply didn't show itself on the surface? There were certainly hints of that in the childishness, the petulance, the obsessive interest in music and other trivialities.
And yet_and yet there was still something of the old King there as well. King Theovere wanted T'fyrr the way a child wants a new toy, yes, but there was something else beneath that childish greed.
He is using me. Something in him is still vaguely aware that there is trouble in his Kingdoms, trouble involving nonhumans, and he is using me, he said so himself. I am to provide an example of excellence and tolerance. And I don't think the Advisors are truly aware that he is using me in that way, even though they heard him say so. They don't believe he could still have that much interest outside his little world of Bards and Musicians.