“What would this forfeit be?” Demoiselle Avila demanded curtly.
“Since the days of Tadriol the Staunch’s Maitresse, poetry has been the usual penalty.” Lady Channis waved a hand. “Reciting the first few stanzas of The Edicts of Perinal the Bold is a favourite sentence. A serious offence can merit all three verses of The Death of Decabral the Eager. If you really tread on someone’s hem, you could find yourself reciting Drianon’s Hymn to the Harvest to the entire room.”
“I do not know any of those.” Temar shook his head cautiously.
“Which would make your humiliation complete, would it not?” Avila looked grim as Lady Channis continued.
Movement beside me prompted a glance for Casuel, who was listening avidly. His smugness suggested he knew all the relevant poems and epics. I remembered the mage’s own ambitions to rank. What of other wizards with less narrow preoccupations? What would Planir do to protect his own concerns? How might his actions impact on D’Olbriot? How would Hadrumal seek to influence a quarrel between the Names that ruled the Empire? What could the Emperor do? Nemith the Last and his forebears might have ruled from the ocean to the Great Forest by unquestioned decree, but Emperors in this age have a different notion of justice. I pondered the bits and pieces of legal lore Mistal had bored me with when he’d first started his studies.
That led my thoughts to Hansey and Ridner. It wasn’t only minor Names like Den Veneta who’d suffer once each Name dragged their allies into this struggle. My brothers are D’Olbriot tenants, but they buy their stone from Den Rannion quarries. Skirmishes over goods and services would break out from the Ast Marsh to the Cape of Winds, and people ill fitted to bear the losses would suffer first. I closed my eyes as I sought a way through this maze.
“That’s all we need to know?” Avila’s faint sarcasm roused me from trying to tease out all the potential consequences of a plan irresistibly forming in my mind.
“My thanks, my lady.” Temar shot Avila an unexpected look of reproof.
Avila smoothed her skirts as she rose. “And now I have another chance to see how many different gowns one woman can wear in the same day.”
“May I take a moment of your time?” I stood, hands laced behind my back, formal stance stiffening my resolve.
Lady Channis smiled. “Ryshad?”
I took a deep breath. Some ideas look perfectly convincing inside your own head and then sound like drooling idiocy once you try to explain them.
“We’re sure, aren’t we, that Tor Bezaemar’s the House orchestrating hostility to D’Olbriot and D’Alsennin? But we can’t prove it to the satisfaction of the courts.” I hesitated. “The courts are the formal setting for the Emperor’s justice but his authority as arbiter still applies anywhere, just as it did before the Chaos. Custom demands the Emperor hears every argument before he makes a decree, but there’s nothing binding him to that. Tadriol could simply announce a verdict if he had sufficient weight of evidence to tip the scales.”
“The Emperor’s word was law in our day.” Avila sat down again.
“What if we could prove Tor Bezaemar’s enmity to the Emperor directly?” I looked at Lady Channis. “Tadriol could act in support of D’Olbriot without waiting for the courts to grind every parchment into dust. The longer this quarrel drags on, the worse the consequences for everyone, from noble Names to commonalty. Tadriol is sworn to defend all ranks, isn’t he?”
“He won’t want open strife between D’Olbriot and Tor Bezaemar,” said Lady Channis slowly. “Not if it can be avoided.”
“Would your Houses accept an Imperial decree cutting through all this convoluted argument before the court?” Temar asked Lady Channis hopefully.
“Given the consequences to the minor Houses if Tor Bezaemar and D’Olbriot go for each other’s throats?” She looked pensive. “Most would back an Imperial decree, if only to save their own Names.”
“We know Malafy Skern is still a favoured retainer of the Relict Tor Bezaemar,” I said slowly. “She has to be involved.”
“No one drops a hairpin in that House without her knowing,” Lady Channis agreed.
“What if we could get her to betray what she knows?” I suggested.
“In front of witnesses?” She shook her head. “She’d never do it, and in any case witnesses can always be discredited.”
“What if she didn’t think there were witnesses? What if she were provoked into boasting or threatening?” I persisted. “What if the Emperor heard her for himself?”
Lady Channis looked puzzled. “You plan to provoke her to some indiscretion with the Emperor hiding behind a door like some maid in a bad masquerade?”
“Dirindal is too sharp for that, Rysh,” said Temar, disappointed.
“What if Artifice were prompting her to speak without her usual care?” I tried to ignore the qualms in my belly. “What if she were alone with you, my lady, confident anything you claimed could be denied? There are enough rumours flying around the city; it wouldn’t be unusual for you to discuss them with her?”
“Tor Bezaemar must still think themselves secure,” Temar said unexpectedly. “They have no reason to believe we suspect their malice.”
“They’ll know by the end of the day, if I know Guliel,” said Lady Channis rather sadly.
“Dirindal would be keen to know what the Sieur is thinking,” I suggested.
“If she were annoyed, Artifice would be all the more effective in urging her to speak her mind,” Avila observed.
Lady Channis waved her hands impatiently. “How does it help to have Dirindal admit anything to me, however incriminating? It would be my word against hers, and I’m hardly an impartial witness.”
“The Emperor could see and hear it all if a mage worked the right magics,” I told her. “Dirindal would never know.”
Lady Channis gaped at me.
“Scrying is mere sight without sound.” Casuel was frowning in thought. “It could be done with bespeaking, but you’d need another mage with her ladyship as well as one with the Emperor.”
“We’ve Allin and Velindre to call on,” I pointed out. “Either or both could help. Planir won’t disagree, if it means we can head off this strife.”
“I would have to be close at hand, to work the Artifice on Dirindal,” said Avila slowly.
“Dirindal will never betray herself in front of three witnesses,” said Lady Channis flatly.
“Couldn’t you be in the next room, Demoiselle?” I persisted. “Out of sight?”
Avila thought for a moment. “Yes, I believe so. Master Mage?”
Casuel nodded eagerly. “A short distance would be no hindrance.”
Lady Channis shook her head in disbelief. “It’s a fascinating fancy, Ryshad, but it’s completely irrational. How could we ever do it? Dirindal will suspect eyes and ears behind every curtain and closed door if she comes here, and I’m certainly not going to Tor Bezaemar’s residence. I’d be seen, and when word gets out of hostility between the Houses that would prompt all manner of rumours weakening Guliel.”
“Can’t you meet on neutral ground?” Temar asked impatiently.
“A dressmakers?” suggested Casuel hopefully. “A jewellers?”
“Such people come to us, Master Devoir, we don’t travel to them.” Lady Channis’s words were kindly meant but Casuel still blushed to the roots of his hair.
I cast my mind back to my early sworn days attending the minor Demoiselles of the House. Where had they gone to gossip free from the discreet supervision of their elders? “A feather merchant?”
“That’s believable, at least.” Lady Channis smiled wryly. “The cursed things come to grief so easily, we’re always buying them at the last minute.”