As Edward finally won the battle against his sagging eyelids, he spoke. "Good morning, Sudian."
"Good morning, Master." Nightfall turned to sorting wrinkled and dirty from passable, the day’s wear already chosen.
Edward sat, and the blankets fell into a jumble across his legs. “Are you ready for a productive day?"
Nightfall did not like the sound of that. He looked over, a pair of breeks dangling from his hand. "Productive, Master," he asked, careful to phrase the words like a statement rather than a question.
“Slaves to liberate. People to educate." Edward shoved aside the blankets. "The Almighty Father’s word to spread. He has given us this day, and we will use it for him."
Nightfall tossed the breeks onto the dirty pile, mind racing for a distraction. He would need several more days of betting to accumulate the necessary capital to buy land. If Edward insisted on preaching at slavers, they would need luck just to survive until the evening. He failed to find a long enough list of occupying tasks to keep Alyndar’s youngest prince reined, but he did manage to put together words from his lessons on war. He quoted Sharfrindaro, one of Edward’s favorite generals: "The battle doesn’t start until first scouting is done. Strategy without knowledge is doomed to failure."
Edward corrected the inaccuracies: "The war does not begin until advanced surveillance is completed? He considered. "Why bring that up now?"
“Well, Master." Nightfall twisted his words to build points rather than questions. The need to concentrate on presentation had the additional effect of making him sound more eloquent than usual. "It seems wise to consider the words of those we admire before taking on a battle no one else has dared to fight."
Prince Edward reached for the clothing Nightfall had chosen for him, dragging it up beside him on the pallet. “You mean we should study the ways and patterns of slaves and those who keep them before executing the Father’s will."
Nightfall shrugged, returning to his sorting. "I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just guessing at your plans."
Apparently, Nightfall had found a positive combination of proposition and modesty, because Edward considered longer as he shed his sleeping gown and flipped his breeks over his feet. "I hadn’t thought of the matter exactly as a war," he admitted. "It’s not as if there’s killing involved." He winced, apparently reconsidering the incident Nightfall had heard about in Alyndar in which Edward had accidentally taken a Hartrinian slave master’s life. "And there are no sides. Once they understand the pain and wrongness of their actions, men who keep slaves will gladly free them."
And kings will gladly give their castles to the homeless. Nightfall hoped the events of the last few days had given Edward an inkling of reality. At least, I should try to educate the romantic, guileless dizzard while I have him thinking for a change. "If we could gather every man who has owned or thought of owning slaves, I’m certain your silver tongue could carry the truth to them as it has to me. But to bring the message to each, one by one, seems a task that will outlast our lifetime.”
Prince Edward rose, breeks only halfway in place. The binding cloth spoiled his regal pose, and his partial nakedness stole dignity from his bearing. "I would consider it an honor to live and die serving the Father in this manner.”
"And I would consider it an honor to live and die serving you." Nightfall exchanged his own tunic from the previous night for the cleaner one he had selected. Alyndar’s purple and silver had grown tediously familiar. “But I’ve done only part of my job if I deflect a knife from killing you that then stabs your foot. Each slave freed may be a victory. But can we really claim success for rescuing three if we could have used the same time and effort for ninety-five?” Nightfall mulled a strategy he had raised and discarded some time ago. Once, he had thought of slaying a king’s enemies one by one, crediting the purge to Prince Edward and, thus, earning his master title and land. He had dismissed the possibility because the sequential murders might require him to become too much Nightfall. He had also abandoned the tactic of encouraging the prince to go on a similar spree based on honorable dueling. First, no matter how competent the prince-or Nightfall’s unobtrusive cheating-the odds would catch up to him in time. Nightfall spoke the second reason aloud. "It would take an eternity to defeat an army, or a cause, man by man."
Edward adjusted his breeks. He pulled on his tunic, belted it, then added the calf-length over-tunic, its neck and hem decorated with threaded patterns in silver and gold. “Sudian, I’m the scholar of war. You’re coming dangerously close to questioning my judgment.”
Finished dressing, Nightfall met Edward’s gaze directly, seized with a sudden urge to grab the naive prince by the throat and shake him until sense jarred loose from the cobwebbed corners of his brain. Instead, he funneled his frustration and belligerence into words. "Master, I would question directly if I thought it would serve your cause and lessen the harm to you. I would rather die for the impropriety than let any hurt befall you." Nightfall kept his hands free and his attention alert, hoping Edward would translate this to the significance of his point. "Even good people, like your father and brother, do not see the Father’s light when the best of all men presents it to them. People like Amadan care only about making their own lives easier. Do you think you can convince him, and others like him, to give up their slaves?”
"There is good in everyone. With the right words, may the Father give them to me, I will convince him."
Nightfall cursed Prince Edward’s boundless innocence and faith.
Then the prince added another point that made Nightfall wonder if experience had not begun to crack the shell of idealistic ignorance. "If I cannot convince him, then I will buy and free his slaves myself."
Nightfall had already found the flaw. Paying Amadan for his slaves would only grant the Hartrinian the money to purchase more. In the name of right, the prince would pay an exorbitant sum, and Amadan would wind up with more slaves to brutalize than before the sale. Nightfall swerved with the argument. "There’s another thing to consider.” He continued to hold Edward’s gaze. "I mentioned the possibility of freedom to one of his slaves last night. She refused it."
Edward’s eyes crunched closed, and his jaw wilted. Though he clearly trusted his squire, he found the incident too impossible not to question. "A misunderstanding, surely."
Nightfall shrugged and returned to sorting. "You’ve heard the story of the Hartrinian twins and the tiger." He knew the honest prince would deny the assumption, having no way of knowing Nightfall had made up the title and the story on the spur of the moment.
"No," Edward admitted. "Which book is it in?"
Having little knowledge of books of any kind, Nightfall covered neatly. "It’s not in any book as far as I know. It’s the story of how Hartrin became slave territory, and people down this way have been telling it to their children since the whole thing happened." He glanced at Edward again. "Would you like me to tell it?”
The prince nodded absently, obviously still puzzling over how he could have missed hearing such an important tale.
Nightfall created an answer to the unspoken query. “It’s not the sort of story I think nobility likes much. It’s about a set of twin princes, the first royal offspring of a king, whose name I never knew, though the boys were called Ursid and Brionfra. A slight woman, narrow in the hips, the queen seemed incapable of birthing her children. She labored longer than a day, until it appeared certain she would die along with her offspring. Then, at last, a Healer came who believed he could take the children another way. He sliced open her womb from above and hauled the babies from their exhausted mother."