Something inside him flickered rebelliously at the thought, but he suppressed it sternly. The die was cast, now it was simply a matter of arranging things as carefully as possible. As he’d suggested to Shairnayith, there were outsiders who would do almost anything to see Tellian’s canal fail. The trick would be to make certain any suspicion within the Kingdom fell upon those outsiders, instead of Cassan.
And if Talthar’s right and Yurokhas means to continue ignoring his brother’s summons home and stays right where he is on the Ghoul Moor, his death can probably be made into an accident-and one Tellian will be blamed for, since it’s his expedition Yurokhas is accompanying. He smiled thinly at the thought. Having him “killed accidentally in battle” will decouple his death from Markhos’, too, now that I think about it. Just a dreadful, tragic coincidence…and one which would never have happened-just as those “outsiders” would never have had any motive to murder the King-if not for Tellian’s perverted alliance with the hradani and Dwarvenhame!
The smile grew broader and colder as he contemplated the possibilities. If he was going to be forced to do this thing, then he would do it as well and as effectively as it could be done.
And he knew just how to go about doing that.
He turned from the window, crossed to the table, and tugged on the embroidered silken bell rope. No more than two or three seconds passed before the door from the pantry into the dining room opened and one of the under butlers stepped through it with a bow.
“May we clear away now, Milord?” he inquired.
“You may,” Cassan replied brusquely. “But first, send word to Sergeant Warshoe. Tell him I want to see him in my office as soon as possible.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Excuse me, Sir Dahlnar, but you have a visitor.”
Sir Dahlnar Bronzehelm frowned as he looked up from yet another of the endless documents on his desk. But the frown disappeared as he recognized the well dressed man standing behind the smiling clerk in his office’s doorway.
“Master Talthar!” Bronzehelm stood, the last of his frown turning into a smile. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
“I didn’t expect to be here again so soon,” Talthar Sheafbearer replied. “Obviously, circumstances changed.”
“Probably because kormaks were involved somewhere,” Bronzehelm said shrewdly, and nodded dismissal to the clerk as he waved Sheafbearer into the office proper and pointed at the comfortable chair in front of his desk. His visitor seated himself, and Bronzehelm sank into his own swivel chair and tipped it back.
“There are kormaks involved, aren’t there?” he said.
“Well, I did just happen to find myself in possession of a particularly nice set of rubies I thought Baroness Myacha might like,” Sheafbearer acknowledged with a charmingly modest smile. “That’s what brought me back here so unexpectedly.”
“I see. Well, it pleases me immensely-speaking purely as Baron Borandas’ seneschal and the protector of his private purse, you understand-to inform you that you’ve missed her. She and the Baron won’t be back from Leehollow for at least another three days.”
“Oh.” Sheafbearer grimaced, but then he shrugged. “I suppose that’s what I get for not checking to see whether or not they’d be here.”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t bankrupt a merchant of your deep pockets to spend a day or two in an inn here in Halthan while you wait for them. In fact, I think that would be a marvelous idea. At least someone here in the barony would recapture some of the disgusting amount of hard currency you’ve been sucking out of the Baron’s treasury ever since that first visit of yours.”
“I’m sure I don’t have the least idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, of course not!” Sheafbearer rolled his eyes. “And I suppose it’s pure happenstance that you keep turning up here with such spectacular pieces which just happen to be perfectly suited to the Baroness’ coloring?”
“Well, perhaps not pure happenstance,” Sheafbearer conceded, and Bronzehelm laughed.
A few of Dahlnar Bronzehelm’s clerks and assistants had been surprised by how quickly and thoroughly the seneschal had warmed to Master Talthar. It wasn’t that they didn’t understand how charming the gem merchant was, for he was unfailingly courteous even to the most lowly bureaucrat, and he radiated a gentle, charming warmth that was rare indeed. No doubt that natural geniality of his helped to explain his obvious success as a merchant, yet no one who’d spent more than a very short time in his company could have doubted that however useful his charm might be to him, it was also completely genuine. Nor was Sir Dahlnar a cold and distant personality, either. In fact, all of his clerks were devoted to him, for he was a naturally warm and generous man himself, and one who always appreciated wit and humor when he encountered them. So it surprised no one that he and Master Talthar should find themselves kindred sorts.
But for all his own warmth, Sir Dahlnar was also shrewd and conscientious, well aware of the implications of his position as Borandas Daggeraxe’s seneschal. Any number of people had attempted to take advantage of him, use him as a way to influence the baron or to profit from him over the years; none had ever succeeded. Yet Master Talthar, a merchant who was obviously making a great deal of money here in Halthan, had quickly-almost effortlessly-become a visitor Sir Dahlnar’s clerks automatically escorted to his office whenever he arrived.
Of course, it was also true that however many kormaks might be spilling into Master Talthar’s purse, his wares were worth every copper he’d ever been paid. In fact, on those occasions when Sir Dahlnar had been able to convince Baron Borandas to let him serve as his agent rather than dealing with the merchant directly, he’d driven a hard, hard bargain, however much he might like Master Talthar. Indeed, the price of Talthar’s gems in those cases had been low enough the merchant might well have actually taken a loss on the final price. And no one could have been more disinterested in the North Riding’s politics than Master Talthar. He kept himself informed upon them, but that was only to be expected from a shrewd and prosperous Axeman merchant who frequently carried a not-so-small fortune in gems about with him. Yet aside from the sort of information any merchant might have found useful, he paid them no particular heed, and he’d certainly never used his own contacts with Baron Borandas to try to influence him in any way.
If anyone had looked more closely, they might have begun to realize that rather than Talthar cultivating Bronzehelm, it was the seneschal who’d cultivated a relationship with the merchant, at which point things would have started to make much more sense. Bronzehelm had always had a shrewd eye for worthwhile sources of information, an ability to recognize observers who were both intelligent and insightful, and for all Master Talthar’s dry humor and warmth, that described the gem-dealer quite well. The quality of his wares meant he dealt with many of the wealthy and powerful, in the Empire of the Axe and even in the Empire of the Spear, not just the Kingdom. He obviously knew quite an extraordinary number of people, and he had factors or at least contacts in what appeared to be every major marketplace from Bortalik Bay to Sothofalas to Belhadan. Indeed, in his more modest fashion, his network of connections clearly echoed that of the great trading houses, like Clan Harkanath itself.
He paid the same attention to politics and attitudes elsewhere that he did here in the North Riding, for the same reasons, and he was perfectly willing to share his observations with Bronzehelm. He refused to violate any personal confidences, which only made the seneschal respect both his judgment and his character even more highly, but that didn’t detract from the value and clarity of his analysis.