The acute hatred which had poured off of some of the Olderhan servants had eased considerably over the last week, for which she was grateful. The most hate-filled had simply disappeared, although she didn’t know if Sathmin Olderhan had found them other positions on another of the Olderhans’ many properties or simply fired them. Most of the remaining staff continued to regard her and Jathmar as profoundly unnatural beings from an alien and threatening universe populated by the gods only knew what monstrous threats, however. As Jasak Olderhan’s shardonai they were entitled to service and respect-even to protection, since those servants were also part of the extended Garth Showma household-but nothing seemed capable of banishing that penumbra of fear.
“His Grace’s complements, Madam Nargra-Kolmayr, and he requests that you and your husband join him in the Blue Salon.”
“Did His Grace say why he’d like us to join him?” Shaylar asked in some surprise, and the maid shook her head.
“He just told me to ask you to join him, Milady.”
“I see.” Shaylar gazed at the other woman for a moment, then shrugged.
“Please tell His Grace we’ll be there as soon as possible.”
* * *
The Sharonians stepped through the door to the enormous room called the Blue Salon holding one another’s hands and paused, just inside the threshold, in astonishment. They’d expected a private meeting with Thankhar Olderhan, but the Duke of Garth Showma wasn’t alone.
Jasak stood by the windows, gazing out into an evening which had turned gray and cold, burnished with a swirl of snowflakes and polished with wind moan. Gadrial stood beside him, her expression worried, and Sathmin Olderhan sat in one of the elegant, impossibly comfortable armchairs. Shaylar and Jathmar hadn’t expected the others, but at least they knew who all of them were. They had no idea who the man standing beside the duke might be, however.
He was a nondescript, brown-haired fellow in civilian clothes, yet Shaylar had the strangest impression that he ought to be in a uniform of some sort. Of course, that seemed to be true of an awful lot of the Andarans she’d met since that hideous day at Toppled Timber.
“Thank you for coming,” the duke said, crossing the room to personally usher her and Jathmar to a small floating couch which faced his wife’s armchair.
He waited until they were seated, then stepped back and clasped his hands behind him. There was something…frightening about the way he stood facing them, like a soldier bracing against an enemy charge. That was Shaylar’s first impression. Then she was sure she’d imagined it…until she glanced at Jasak and saw him watching his father with exactly the same sort of wariness she felt.
“I asked you here,” the duke’s voice was strangely formal, “in the presence of your baranal, because it’s my duty, as his father, as an officer of the Union Army, and as Duke of Garth Showma, to tell you-all of you-what I’ve learned this very evening.”
He paused and inhaled, nostrils flaring, then took one hand from behind him to indicate the stranger, still standing beside his desk.
“This is Sertal Halka. Once upon a time, he was Commander of Five Hundred Halka and served with me in the Second Andarans before he was invalided out of the service after the same fracas in which Otwal Threbuch saved my life. Since then, he’s had an…interesting career in Intelligence, and he and I have stayed in touch over the years.”
He beckoned, and Halka crossed to stand beside him. The retired five hundred walked with a slight but noticeable limp, favoring his left leg, which struck Shaylar and Jathmar as odd in a culture which had Gifted healers. Having seen people snatched back from the very brink of death-having been snatched back himself, in Jathmar’s case-by Arcanan healers, they had to wonder what sort of injury those healers hadn’t been able to completely cure for Halka.
“I asked Sertal to join us this evening because, at my request, he’s been investigating certain outside-channel reports which have reached me. In particular, I asked him to investigate a report from Fifty Therman Ulthar.”
Jasak’s eyes narrowed suddenly, and his father glanced at him and nodded ever so slightly.
“I apologize for not sharing the contents of that report with you sooner, Jas,” he said. “And I appreciate your patience, since I know how impatient you must’ve been to hear whatever he had to say.”
“Should I assume you’re about to share them with me now, Father?”
“Yes,” the duke said heavily. “And I wish to all the gods I didn’t have to. Unfortunately, you and I both have obligations which leave me no choice.”
“Thankhar,” his wife said quietly, “you’re frightening me.”
“I’m sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean to. But there was a very good reason young Ulthar sent me that message. He’s concerned about violations of the Kerellian Accords.” The duke’s voice was flat, hard as hammered iron. “Deliberate violations of the Kerellian Accords.”
Jasak snapped fully erect, so suddenly Gadrial reached out and laid a concerned hand on his arm, and Sathmin Olderhan stiffened in her armchair, her expression shocked. Shaylar had no idea what the “Kerellian Accords” might be, but her hand tightened on Jathmar’s as she sensed the sudden storm of tension rising all about her.
“Violation of the Accords?” Jasak’s voice was even flatter than his father’s had been, with an over controlled calm that sent icy fingernails up and down Shaylar’s spine.
“That was one of the things he reported,” his father confirmed in a voice hewn from granite. “His report was…comprehensive and very informative, and I took it seriously. In fact, I’ve already dispatched an inquiry team in response to it, although it will be some time before it can reach Thermyn to verify everything in it. Under the circumstances”-he met his son’s eyes levelly-“I sent it on my own authority, as hereditary commander of the Second Andarans, without involving the Commandery. The allegations contained in his message were that serious. But it was clearly incumbent upon me to verify anything I could from this end, as well. Which is how Sertal got involved.”
All eyes returned to the brown-haired man who squared his shoulders under their weight.
“Sertal left official government employment some years ago,” the duke said. “He established his own security firm, and he’s assembled a highly competent staff which has handled my personal security needs from the time he opened his doors. I want all of you to understand that there isn’t a man in the entire Union I trust more implicitly and completely then Sertal.”
He paused a moment, as if to allow that to sink in, before he continued.
“It turns out we’ve had at least some piecemeal communications from Commander of Two Thousand mul Gurthak which haven’t been made public. For reasons which I strongly suspect we won’t like very much once we find out what they are, the Two Thousand still hasn’t filed any official dispatches dealing with this material with the Commandery, even though the communications which have reached Portalis contain significant military information. Instead, they were sent to the Ministry of Exploration and the Directorate of Intelligence.”
He must have seen from the Sharonians’ expression that his last sentence meant little to them, because he grimaced and explained.
“The Ministry of Exploration is the civilian ministry charged with overseeing our exploration policies, and the Directorate of Intelligence is a civilian intelligence service. The Ministry’s in charge of developing the infrastructure in the explored out-universes and of coordinating our general exploratory policy, but the actual exploration mission belongs to the Army, and the Ministry has no direct authority over that aspect of its operations. And the Directorate of Intelligence is a department of the Ministry of Justice, not of Exploration or the Army. In fact, there’s been an ongoing turf war between the Directorate and Military Intelligence for at least fifty years, just as there are those in Exploration who’ve argued for years that they should control the actual exploration rather than leaving it in ‘the Army’s clumsy hands.’”