They wouldn’t bother him with the details, so vos Sidus put it from his mind. He was shakira. His task was the work of magic and those small duties assigned to him by his seniors., and his job today was a lunch, so a lunch he would have.
The “old friend” in question was a contact and not actually a companion in any true sense, but Emm vos Sidus did what his superiors asked, even if that meant taking up a friendship with an only barely gifted Andaran. And Nosak Urrihan had risen to the highest ranks of the Andarans now. It was only appropriate, vos Sidus agreed, for a person with some magic ability to be placed over so many with absolutely none, but if the man had been Mythalan he would have been carefully ringed all round by a cohort of many-generations-loyal garthantri. And probably with an equally carefully selected tutor. Someone needed to turn Nosak Urrihan’s dabblings into something approximating competence, anyway.
The thought wasn’t entirely fair. Back in his youth, when his duties had been limited to riding dragons, Urrihan might even have been a capable officer, but now the man was retired from military service and held a political appointment in the Andaran Air Force: Undersecretary, Office of Dragon Warfare. Urrihan could be relied on to fly his favorite old dragon breeds every chance he had. For everything else-policy making, the organization of branches and forces-he wasn’t just uninformed, he was actively disinterested in ever becoming more knowledgeable or remotely capable. That made him an exceptionally useful idiot.
Emm vos Sidus made it a point to visit Urrihan at least once a quarter to maintain the fiction of their long-time friendship. Mostly they spoke of dragons. Emm’s family bred the seadrakes, which Urrihan disdained as not true dragons, but since Urrihan didn’t really consider transport dragons worthy of being called true dragons either, it was a friendly old argument.
And the shared luncheons and dinners weren’t that terrible, either, since Andarans made a point of serving their troops good hearty meals whenever possible. Urrihan always made that observation, and Emm vos Sidus always agreed. And he actually meant it. Some truly excellent cuisine was available at this heart of Andaran power. They didn’t serve the exquisite delicacies of Mythal, but there was something to be said for being able to dispense with a taster and enjoy the pantomime play that came with a trip outside his family estates.
In Garth Showma, vos Sidus pretended all people were equal and that he didn’t even notice the poor quality of the spellware hanging about or that those who would have been trained up as garthan in a proper household were to be found here and there begging on street corners. In Portalis, some of the magicless pretended to be artists and played off-key music for coins in a hat and Urrihan seemed to enjoy hearing military marches butchered by street players, so vos Sidus even tossed the savages coins himself now and then.
Mostly he made charitable little gestures in Urrihan’s company, but just in case someone in the Andaran’s extended family ever smartened up enough to run some kind of inquiry, he did it while on his own as well. His duties outside the home estate were clear: make contacts, keep them at a distance, and plant servants in their households.
The girl he’d placed overtly with Urrihan was doing well. No complaints at all. In fact Urrihan was effusive in his praise and a little concerned that her period of study might end too soon, calling her back to Mythalan Falls Academy and leaving a hole in his staffing.
There was no notice at all of the others placed in the man’s employ or the handful vos Sidus recruited among the garthan Mythlan immigrants living in the town. Those were utterly unreliable, since they’d abandoned their original lords and selfishly destroyed the trust their families had spent generations building, but a few words here and there via his own staff would always get them to feed him what he wanted to know.
Combine enough independent semi-reliable sources and a reasonably accurate piece of general intelligence could emerge. Currently he was interested in the mood of the city, and it was leaning strongly against the war.
The common people were horrified by the reports they were hearing. But they were still Andarans at heart, so they supported the soldiers: their brothers, sons, and grandsons in the forward universes. That meant the discontent had to go somewhere else, and it was beginning to focus on the Andaran Army’s senior officers. That was too soon for the plan, but there’d always been a certain flexibility to the schedule, and no one could have anticipated the boon of the encounter with the Sharonian barbarians. Indeed, it seemed likely a good dose of fury towards the Sharonans would help spice everything up…and the Duke of Garth Showma’s own son had brought back two Sharonan prisoners under the odd Andaran honor code.
Emm vos Sidus considered. Yes. Yes. That should do nicely…and I won’t even actually have to do a single thing!
That was good. It would require no extension of his assets or risk exposing anything. The natural fury of an untrained mob of garthan was about to hit the lords of Garth Showma.
The High Lords would be very pleased. Vos Sidus would make the suggestion in his report and then ensure he was nowhere near Portalis in the next few months, when all this came to a head. He’d seen a rough report of the events at the front-as an Andaran handler he was entitled to that information-and the news that currently riled the Andaran people wasn’t going to get any better. Oh no, not by a long shot.
Emm vos Sidus boarded the transport dragon for home content with the multiverse…and pleased with the hell about to rain down on his Line Lord’s enemies.
* * *
The salt and foam of the Strait of Tears lifted her easily while the porpoises played about her. Whale song ran out at a distance, and Cetacean Ambassador Shalassar Brintal-Kolmayr floated with an ease that belied her inner turmoil.
Her ocean guardians didn’t notice the distress. A pod of porpoises crested and dove with the waves around her. The peaceable, friendly creatures were clearly taking turns swimming beside her in case she grew tired and needed a tow back to shore. They were mostly younger ones who hadn’t yet decided who they were with enough conviction to select adult names, and Shalassar floated with the waves, reaching out and listening to the many others speaking and singing in the oceans today.
The cetaceans were discussing things she thought had been decided absolutely a long time ago. The topic at hand was whether or not to consider Arcanans sentient. It was clear that all of the speakers knew beyond any doubt that Arcanans could think, but a more fundamental question was at stake.
The orca wanted it formally agreed that the Arcanans could be eaten freely. Most of the dolphins agreed quite readily with the idea of the Arcanans being eaten, but given their digestive preferences did not intend to actually bite the bad human flesh themselves. Most of the various whale types were somewhat less accepting of the idea.
The discussion hinged on the interpretation of how a finned creature would know if a particular stranded human flailing about at sea was of the Sharonan pod or of the Arcanan pod.
Shalassar listened with growing horror as some of the orca, who had multiple representatives instead of just a single primary, provided detailed descriptions of the taste, crunchiness, and texture of human meat that could be compared with any samples of Arcanan meat if it were ever tasted. Teeth Cleaver, newly elevated to hunter-scout within the pod for his week in the aquarium car, swam a careful distance from these toughest of orca.