Not Quite Scaramouche; A Guardians of the Flame Novel

1
 
Earlier: the Proctor and the Emperor
 
 
Life is a series of unplanned accidents—largely because nobody asked my opinion. Me, I'd rather it was a series of planned accidents, and I can think of a few people I'd very much like to plan some for.
—Walter Slovotsky
 
 
It would be infuriating to a lesser man that the emperor didn't see things his way all the time.
But Walter Slovotsky wasn't, at least in his own opinion, a lesser man. Besides, life would get boring if everything was easy. Life wasn't boring. Life was, sometimes, far too much the contrary.
“My point, do you think?” the emperor more said than asked, lowering his practice sword, his voice level and even, although maybe there was a hint of a challenge in it. Slovotsky wasn't sure.
But the emperor's point? That would depend on what rules they were using, if any. By standard practice rules, no point had been scored—Slovotsky's springy practice sword had touched the emperor's leather chest plate within a heartbeat of when the emperor's own sword had scored on Slovotsky's left biceps. Had it been a real fight, Slovotsky would have come out with a painful if not disabling wound, and Thomen Furnael, Emperor of Holtun-Bieme, would have had his belly pierced deeply and would not be wondering at all whose point it was.
This style of sparring encouraged defense, and waiting for an opportunity to score a touch, some disabling wound to the arm or leg that would, in a real fight, slow an opponent down enough so that you could go in for the kill safely. Slovotsky's personal preference for that sort of thing was to anchor a foot or leg with a thrown knife from a bit more distance.
If he had to engage in a sword fight at all.
That wouldn't be anything close to Walter Slovotsky's preferred method of settling a serious argument. A well-sighted rifle at one hundred yards was far preferable, and if the opponent was missing a leg, blindfolded, hobbled, and tied to a stake with a nice circular target pinned over his heart, that would make it all the better.
But in life, enemies were rarely considerate enough to arrange things so conveniently, alas. Sometimes—too often—they weren't even considerate enough to identify themselves. Even to themselves.
It made for more complication than one would like; it made the dowager empress's naked hatred almost refreshing, by contrast. Almost.
“Perhaps you didn't hear me,” the emperor said, irritated. “I said, that I thought it was my point.”
“No, I don't think so,” Walter Slovotsky said. He raised his practice sword again in salute. “Or perhaps you're changing the rules on me here when you allow me to change them on more important things?”
He couldn't make out Thomen's facial expression through his mask, but a stiffness in the shoulders and posture said that he caught the emperor by surprise. That was a good thing, in moderation. Moderation had its virtues; there was a reason that the term in Dwarvish for dwarves meant “the Moderate People,” and Walter Slovotsky liked dwarves, generally.
Not that Walter Slovotsky was a big believer in moderation for himself. Nor even a moderate believer in moderation, come to think of it.
Thomen didn't answer, at first, then: “Very well. Your point it is.” His breath was coming in audible pants, and he removed his mask for a moment as he walked to a side table and poured himself a goblet of water and drank it in one large gulp before setting it back down.
He was, for all his flaws, a handsome man, strength of will showing in the bones of his face, and in the too rarely blinking eyes that seemed to miss nothing. His hair was black, jet black, the black of a raven's wing, but his close-cropped beard was shot with gray, as though he was only giving in by stages to the pressures of the Silver Crown and throne of Holtun-Bieme.
But as he returned from the side table, there was still that spring in his step that had been too long absent, and Walter Slovotsky wondered if the cause was the program of rest and recreation that Walter and Bren Adahan had talked him into, or whether it was the admittedly lovely Lady Leria that Kethol had brought back from Barony Keranahan.
No reason it couldn't be both, of course.
“Have at it, shall we?” Thomen asked, replacing his mask.
He was loosening up some, granted, Slovotsky decided, but somebody really ought to do something to remove that metaphorical broomstick he had stuck up his butt.
The throne room was empty, well, as empty as it got.
The Kiaran tapestries still covered the walls; if you squinted, you could almost have believed that you were in a green glen, surrounded by capering fawns frozen in mid-leap by some artistic wizard.
The throne itself and the smaller one next to it for the dowager empress—the old, and mean, vicious one, not Andrea Cullinane—remained on their podium, and the long banquet table had been separated into component parts, smaller tables that interlocked at their ends like jigsaw puzzles, and stacked in pairs, top-to-top, in the corner farthest from the great hearth. The thick carpets had been rolled up and carried away to be beaten in the open air, and replaced before Parliament met.
But there were no guards or servants, although the latter were as close as the pull of a bell-rope, and the former as close as a loud yell for help.
But Walter Slovotsky was one of the few people allowed to come into the emperor's presence either armed or unescorted, and one of the very few allowed into the presence both armed and unescorted—that came with the job of imperial proctor—and neither he nor Thomen particularly wanted House troops to see the emperor lose a point in an embarrassing way.
Or, for that matter, to see Slovotsky himself do so. For the emperor, it would be undignified, and Slovotsky had his own legend—read: unwarranted reputation—to maintain.
Besides, as much as such a thing was possible under the circumstances, Slovotsky and the emperor were friends, and friends could always use some time to themselves.
Straw had been scattered over the bare stone floor, to make the footing more treacherous. In a real fight, you could never count on having good footing beneath you, and Murphy—who, Walter Slovotsky explained to the locals, was the Spirit of Fighting and Battles on the Other Side, which was more true than not—would make sure you never did.
Thomen raised his sword in salute, which Slovotsky echoed, and they closed again. This time, Slovotsky tried to draw an attack, but Thomen read the spacing between the two of them better than Slovotsky had, and closed with a quick bounce that led him parry Slovotsky's counter, and then score easily on Slovotsky's sword arm before bouncing back out of range.
“Not bad.” Walter Slovotsky stepped back and pulled off his mask. There had to be something more comfortable than this boiled-leather hood, ventilated with barely enough slits. An Other Side fencing mask would be ideal, but that would require stiff wire mesh, and New Pittsburgh was far too busy with more important production.
Eventually. There were other uses for wire mesh, after all. It would be nice to have all the windows of the castle unshuttered on a hot afternoon, and let the breeze blow through without turning it into a refuge for every bloodsucking bug in the Middle Lands.
Slovotsky had to force himself not to scratch at the maddeningly itching cluster at the base of the back of his neck. The fencing mask had been rubbing at the bites, making them worse than usual.
It had all been much worse last night than usual, and Slovotsky and Aiea had spent too much of it alternately unshuttering their window when it got too hot and stuffy, and then closing it when the mosquitoes took the open window as an open invitation.
Well, if nobody else was going to do it, Slovotsky didn't mind confronting the wizard. Walter and Henrad went way back, after all.
“Again,” the Emperor commanded, lowering his own mask. “Have at you,” he said, in English, the words slurred.
“Gesundheit.”
“Eh?”
“Oh. That's English for ‘As you would have it, my Emperor.'”
“A compact language, this Englits of yours. I should make it a point to learn more of it.”
“It has its virtues,” Walter said, moving in. “Baron Minister Adahan has noted that one, on more than one occasion.”
They were well into a complicated sequence of counter, riposte, and counter-riposte that was, Slovotsky thought, destined to end with the emperor's blade just enough out of line for Slovotsky to beat it to one side, when the door creaked open behind him.
That was enough of a distraction that Thomen was able to judge the distance better than Slovotsky could, and ended the point with a well-judged stop-thrust that actually stung.
Slovotsky managed a too late parry, and spun around in annoyance, prepared to give whoever it was a few choice words about interrupting.
He was only slightly surprised and vaguely disappointed to see that it was the dowager empress herself, a thin smile on her pinched face as she silently tapped her fingertips together in applause.
Well, a dowager empress, at least: Beralyn Furnael, the Emperor's mother. It would have been a lot nicer to see Andrea Cullinane, the late emperor's widow. It wasn't just that Andrea was as lovely from skin to bone as Beralyn was ugly, although that certainly helped things.
“Well struck,” she said. “Well struck, indeed.”
Thomen had his mask off and his sword tucked under his arm as he walked swiftly to her for a quick and dutiful kiss.
“Good afternoon, Mother,” he said. “You're looking well today.”
She chuckled thinly. “Bieme and the whole Empire are fortunate that you can lie so easily and so well, Thomen. Truth is only an occasional tool of statecraft.”
Actually, she looked about the same way she usually did, a collection of lumpy flesh covered in black muslin, topped by a sagging-jawed face that was itself framed by a tight helmet of gray hair fastened in a severe bun, small, piggish eyes softening only for a moment when she looked at her son, but hardening into an unconcealed look of hatred when she turned to Slovotsky.
Truth was an occasional tool of statecraft, after all.
“Good afternoon, Beralyn,” he said.
“And to you, too, Lord Proctor,” she said, ignoring the familiarity. “Are you not going to compliment me on my appearance, as well?”
Damned if I do, and damned if I don't. Slovotsky gave a slight bow of admiration. “I don't recall ever having seen you look healthier and more vigorous,” he said.
Let her make what she would of that.
She barely sniffed. “I have some matters I wish to discuss with my son,” she said, characteristically coming to the point right away. Beralyn was capable of subtlety, but she didn't waste it on the likes of Walter Slovotsky.
“Then I'll either beg leave to take my leave of the two of you—or maybe just go,” Walter said.
He stripped off his fencing armor and mopped at his sweaty chest with a towel, tossing the armor and towel toward a far corner before he picked up his tunic and reclaimed his gear, his back to the emperor and his mother. That he was allowed to be armed in the Presence didn't mean that he wanted Beralyn and anybody else with a grudge against him to know just how well armed he was, or with what and where, after all.
One throwing knife went into the sheath in his sleeve, while another one went into a sheath hidden under the skirt of his tunic. As he belted his sword about his waist, he took the opportunity to check and be sure that his Therranji garrotes were still in his pouch. A brace of pistols completed his everyday armament—well, that and the other knives he had hidden, one sheath tucked just inside the waistband of his trousers, which he transferred invisibly (he hoped) to his boot as he bloused the legs of his bulky, loose trousers.
“You and Aiea will be at table tonight,” Thomen said, as Walter pulled the door open. It was not a suggestion.
“Looking forward to it,” he said, as he exited into the hall and closed the door behind him. Lying was an important tool of statecraft, after all.
With only two of the barons in residence, he had been hoping to skip it. There would be enough state dinners when Parliament convened, in just a few tendays.
A nice quiet dinner in their rooms would have been preferable. Aiea, having spent her morning as a member of the effete nobility, was spending her afternoon with her class of castle servant children, teaching them the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic in the storeroom halfway up the southeast guard tower that she had converted to a classroom, although with her adopted mother due in Biemestren any day, she could probably lay that job off on Andrea, if she wanted to. Both of them liked to keep busy, and while both mother and daughter could and did handle themselves well among the nobility here for Parliament, both seemed to prefer teaching to that.
Understandable, really. Teach a kid to read and write and calculate, and you open up the world to him, even if it was a strange world.
The guard across the hall eyed him suspiciously; Walter headed down the long hall, toward daylight.
Not that Walter had seriously considered trying to eavesdrop on Beralyn and Thomen. Yes, there would be some advantages to being a fly on the wall at their conversation, but that was the only way he would hear something interesting. Beralyn played her hand closely, and Thomen was too loyal a son to tip her hand.
It would have been nice to have the room wired, but the technology for that was still, probably, years away—and talk about whisper channels and echoes and secret passages had long kept conspiratorial and private conversations in whispers, or out in the open air with no one about.
Walter Slovotsky rubbed at the back of his neck. It still itched, and he could either see the Spidersect healer about it first, and have the itching healed, or go brace the wizard about the bugs.
A lesser man would have picked the Spider, and Walter Slovotsky didn't mind passing for a lesser man.
* * *
Thomen knew what Mother was going to say before she said it, at least in general outline. There were times when he found it irritating, but this wasn't one of them.
“Well, Mother,” he said, “what approach is it going to be today? Political: me marrying, and producing an heir, why that would make the Empire more stable, and bring peace to the land. Or personal: you want grandchildren, and it is my responsibility to produce them. Or philosophical: life does go on, but only for those whose line follows the past into the future. Or practical: if I keep—”
“Enough.” Her lips pursed tightly. “You know how I feel, and we'll speak no more on that.” Did she actually believe herself? “Actually, I was going to ask you about the seating at table tonight.”
There was trouble on the border, more and more stories of ores up in the hills of his—what had been his—barony, a baronial governor who had probably been involved in a conspiracy against the Crown…and Mother wanted him to worry about dinner seating.
He shook his head. It was strange, and he wished there was somebody he could talk about it with: he had had to manage most of the same problems when he was regent, waiting for Jason Cullinane to assume the Crown.
Keep the governors and barons honest; raise taxes and armies; judge and condemn; forgive if not forget—he had taken it all seriously, yes, but he had had the luxury of distance, of knowing that, finally, it was somebody else's responsibility, not his.
“Well,” he said, “Niphael arrived just this morning, and Nerahan's party has been sighted on the Prince's Road—”
She interrupted him with a raised eyebrow.
“—as you well know, since you read the same telegraph message I did, probably before I did—so let's put them at the head, next to me.”
She smiled slyly. “And Lady Leria Euar'den?”
He returned her smile, but didn't bother to dispute the family name. Whether or not Leria was the heir to the Euar'den dynasty that had ruled Tynear wasn't terribly relevant, save as that would soften the blow to the Biemish barons if he married a Holt.
If.
She was lovely, at that, but…
…but what? Forinel? He was long gone, and almost certainly dead. Could she still be pining after him? She seemed awfully comfortable in the presence of her three regular bodyguards—but she had been through much with them, and while one of them did sleep across her doorway each night, were there more than that going on it would have been reported to him, via Mother, if nobody else.
He shrugged it off. An emperor had more important things to worry about than why a lovely young woman seemed to harbor some dark secret.
It was all such a juggling act.
Back before the wars, back before it all fell apart, back when he was a boy, his father had brought him to the fair in Biemestren, once, and it was there that Thomen Furnael had seen his first juggler. He had thought, until his father corrected him—and Father was never wrong when he spoke so certainly—that it was some form of magic, but no: it had merely been skill that had kept a cascade of objects in the air.
An egg, a knife, two brightly colored juggling sticks, and at least in his memory, a full score other objects had flown through the air, seemingly more gently guided than carefully thrown by the bare-chested man whose eyes never left the stream as he continued his endless patter, in exchange for just a few coppers thrown into the wooden bowl at his feet.
But something had gone wrong, and the juggler had cried out, his finger flying to his mouth as everything that he had kept juggling fell about him in an absurd rain.
Thomen was willing to bet that the juggler's mother had never bothered him about seating plans…
 
Copyright © 2001 by Joel Rosenberg

1
 
Earlier: the Proctor and the Emperor
 
 
Life is a series of unplanned accidents—largely because nobody asked my opinion. Me, I’d rather it was a series of planned accidents, and I can think of a few people I’d very much like to plan some for.
—Walter Slovotsky
 
 
It would be infuriating to a lesser man that the emperor didn’t see things his way all the time.
But Walter Slovotsky wasn’t, at least in his own opinion, a lesser man. Besides, life would get boring if everything was easy. Life wasn’t boring. Life was, sometimes, far too much the contrary.
“My point, do you think?” the emperor more said than asked, lowering his practice sword, his voice level and even, although maybe there was a hint of a challenge in it. Slovotsky wasn’t sure.
But the emperor’s point? That would depend on what rules they were using, if any. By standard practice rules, no point had been scored—Slovotsky’s springy practice sword had touched the emperor’s leather chest plate within a heartbeat of when the emperor’s own sword had scored on Slovotsky’s left biceps. Had it been a real fight, Slovotsky would have come out with a painful if not disabling wound, and Thomen Furnael, Emperor of Holtun-Bieme, would have had his belly pierced deeply and would not be wondering at all whose point it was.
This style of sparring encouraged defense, and waiting for an opportunity to score a touch, some disabling wound to the arm or leg that would, in a real fight, slow an opponent down enough so that you could go in for the kill safely. Slovotsky’s personal preference for that sort of thing was to anchor a foot or leg with a thrown knife from a bit more distance.
If he had to engage in a sword fight at all.
That wouldn’t be anything close to Walter Slovotsky’s preferred method of settling a serious argument. A well-sighted rifle at one hundred yards was far preferable, and if the opponent was missing a leg, blindfolded, hobbled, and tied to a stake with a nice circular target pinned over his heart, that would make it all the better.
But in life, enemies were rarely considerate enough to arrange things so conveniently, alas. Sometimes—too often—they weren’t even considerate enough to identify themselves. Even to themselves.
It made for more complication than one would like; it made the dowager empress’s naked hatred almost refreshing, by contrast. Almost.
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me,” the emperor said, irritated. “I said, that I thought it was my point.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Walter Slovotsky said. He raised his practice sword again in salute. “Or perhaps you’re changing the rules on me here when you allow me to change them on more important things?”
He couldn’t make out Thomen’s facial expression through his mask, but a stiffness in the shoulders and posture said that he caught the emperor by surprise. That was a good thing, in moderation. Moderation had its virtues; there was a reason that the term in Dwarvish for dwarves meant “the Moderate People,” and Walter Slovotsky liked dwarves, generally.
Not that Walter Slovotsky was a big believer in moderation for himself. Nor even a moderate believer in moderation, come to think of it.
Thomen didn’t answer, at first, then: “Very well. Your point it is.” His breath was coming in audible pants, and he removed his mask for a moment as he walked to a side table and poured himself a goblet of water and drank it in one large gulp before setting it back down.
He was, for all his flaws, a handsome man, strength of will showing in the bones of his face, and in the too rarely blinking eyes that seemed to miss nothing. His hair was black, jet black, the black of a raven’s wing, but his close-cropped beard was shot with gray, as though he was only giving in by stages to the pressures of the Silver Crown and throne of Holtun-Bieme.
But as he returned from the side table, there was still that spring in his step that had been too long absent, and Walter Slovotsky wondered if the cause was the program of rest and recreation that Walter and Bren Adahan had talked him into, or whether it was the admittedly lovely Lady Leria that Kethol had brought back from Barony Keranahan.
No reason it couldn’t be both, of course.
“Have at it, shall we?” Thomen asked, replacing his mask.
He was loosening up some, granted, Slovotsky decided, but somebody really ought to do something to remove that metaphorical broomstick he had stuck up his butt.
The throne room was empty, well, as empty as it got.
The Kiaran tapestries still covered the walls; if you squinted, you could almost have believed that you were in a green glen, surrounded by capering fawns frozen in mid-leap by some artistic wizard.
The throne itself and the smaller one next to it for the dowager empress—the old, and mean, vicious one, not Andrea Cullinane—remained on their podium, and the long banquet table had been separated into component parts, smaller tables that interlocked at their ends like jigsaw puzzles, and stacked in pairs, top-to-top, in the corner farthest from the great hearth. The thick carpets had been rolled up and carried away to be beaten in the open air, and replaced before Parliament met.
But there were no guards or servants, although the latter were as close as the pull of a bell-rope, and the former as close as a loud yell for help.
But Walter Slovotsky was one of the few people allowed to come into the emperor’s presence either armed or unescorted, and one of the very few allowed into the presence both armed and unescorted—that came with the job of imperial proctor—and neither he nor Thomen particularly wanted House troops to see the emperor lose a point in an embarrassing way.
Or, for that matter, to see Slovotsky himself do so. For the emperor, it would be undignified, and Slovotsky had his own legend—read: unwarranted reputation—to maintain.
Besides, as much as such a thing was possible under the circumstances, Slovotsky and the emperor were friends, and friends could always use some time to themselves.
Straw had been scattered over the bare stone floor, to make the footing more treacherous. In a real fight, you could never count on having good footing beneath you, and Murphy—who, Walter Slovotsky explained to the locals, was the Spirit of Fighting and Battles on the Other Side, which was more true than not—would make sure you never did.
Thomen raised his sword in salute, which Slovotsky echoed, and they closed again. This time, Slovotsky tried to draw an attack, but Thomen read the spacing between the two of them better than Slovotsky had, and closed with a quick bounce that led him parry Slovotsky’s counter, and then score easily on Slovotsky’s sword arm before bouncing back out of range.
“Not bad.” Walter Slovotsky stepped back and pulled off his mask. There had to be something more comfortable than this boiled-leather hood, ventilated with barely enough slits. An Other Side fencing mask would be ideal, but that would require stiff wire mesh, and New Pittsburgh was far too busy with more important production.
Eventually. There were other uses for wire mesh, after all. It would be nice to have all the windows of the castle unshuttered on a hot afternoon, and let the breeze blow through without turning it into a refuge for every bloodsucking bug in the Middle Lands.
Slovotsky had to force himself not to scratch at the maddeningly itching cluster at the base of the back of his neck. The fencing mask had been rubbing at the bites, making them worse than usual.
It had all been much worse last night than usual, and Slovotsky and Aiea had spent too much of it alternately unshuttering their window when it got too hot and stuffy, and then closing it when the mosquitoes took the open window as an open invitation.
Well, if nobody else was going to do it, Slovotsky didn’t mind confronting the wizard. Walter and Henrad went way back, after all.
“Again,” the Emperor commanded, lowering his own mask. “Have at you,” he said, in English, the words slurred.
“Gesundheit.”
“Eh?”
“Oh. That’s English for ‘As you would have it, my Emperor.’”
“A compact language, this Englits of yours. I should make it a point to learn more of it.”
“It has its virtues,” Walter said, moving in. “Baron Minister Adahan has noted that one, on more than one occasion.”
They were well into a complicated sequence of counter, riposte, and counter-riposte that was, Slovotsky thought, destined to end with the emperor’s blade just enough out of line for Slovotsky to beat it to one side, when the door creaked open behind him.
That was enough of a distraction that Thomen was able to judge the distance better than Slovotsky could, and ended the point with a well-judged stop-thrust that actually stung.
Slovotsky managed a too late parry, and spun around in annoyance, prepared to give whoever it was a few choice words about interrupting.
He was only slightly surprised and vaguely disappointed to see that it was the dowager empress herself, a thin smile on her pinched face as she silently tapped her fingertips together in applause.
Well, a dowager empress, at least: Beralyn Furnael, the Emperor’s mother. It would have been a lot nicer to see Andrea Cullinane, the late emperor’s widow. It wasn’t just that Andrea was as lovely from skin to bone as Beralyn was ugly, although that certainly helped things.
“Well struck,” she said. “Well struck, indeed.”
Thomen had his mask off and his sword tucked under his arm as he walked swiftly to her for a quick and dutiful kiss.
“Good afternoon, Mother,” he said. “You’re looking well today.”
She chuckled thinly. “Bieme and the whole Empire are fortunate that you can lie so easily and so well, Thomen. Truth is only an occasional tool of statecraft.”
Actually, she looked about the same way she usually did, a collection of lumpy flesh covered in black muslin, topped by a sagging-jawed face that was itself framed by a tight helmet of gray hair fastened in a severe bun, small, piggish eyes softening only for a moment when she looked at her son, but hardening into an unconcealed look of hatred when she turned to Slovotsky.
Truth was an occasional tool of statecraft, after all.
“Good afternoon, Beralyn,” he said.
“And to you, too, Lord Proctor,” she said, ignoring the familiarity. “Are you not going to compliment me on my appearance, as well?”
Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. Slovotsky gave a slight bow of admiration. “I don’t recall ever having seen you look healthier and more vigorous,” he said.
Let her make what she would of that.
She barely sniffed. “I have some matters I wish to discuss with my son,” she said, characteristically coming to the point right away. Beralyn was capable of subtlety, but she didn’t waste it on the likes of Walter Slovotsky.
“Then I’ll either beg leave to take my leave of the two of you—or maybe just go,” Walter said.
He stripped off his fencing armor and mopped at his sweaty chest with a towel, tossing the armor and towel toward a far corner before he picked up his tunic and reclaimed his gear, his back to the emperor and his mother. That he was allowed to be armed in the Presence didn’t mean that he wanted Beralyn and anybody else with a grudge against him to know just how well armed he was, or with what and where, after all.
One throwing knife went into the sheath in his sleeve, while another one went into a sheath hidden under the skirt of his tunic. As he belted his sword about his waist, he took the opportunity to check and be sure that his Therranji garrotes were still in his pouch. A brace of pistols completed his everyday armament—well, that and the other knives he had hidden, one sheath tucked just inside the waistband of his trousers, which he transferred invisibly (he hoped) to his boot as he bloused the legs of his bulky, loose trousers.
“You and Aiea will be at table tonight,” Thomen said, as Walter pulled the door open. It was not a suggestion.
“Looking forward to it,” he said, as he exited into the hall and closed the door behind him. Lying was an important tool of statecraft, after all.
With only two of the barons in residence, he had been hoping to skip it. There would be enough state dinners when Parliament convened, in just a few tendays.
A nice quiet dinner in their rooms would have been preferable. Aiea, having spent her morning as a member of the effete nobility, was spending her afternoon with her class of castle servant children, teaching them the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic in the storeroom halfway up the southeast guard tower that she had converted to a classroom, although with her adopted mother due in Biemestren any day, she could probably lay that job off on Andrea, if she wanted to. Both of them liked to keep busy, and while both mother and daughter could and did handle themselves well among the nobility here for Parliament, both seemed to prefer teaching to that.
Understandable, really. Teach a kid to read and write and calculate, and you open up the world to him, even if it was a strange world.
The guard across the hall eyed him suspiciously; Walter headed down the long hall, toward daylight.
Not that Walter had seriously considered trying to eavesdrop on Beralyn and Thomen. Yes, there would be some advantages to being a fly on the wall at their conversation, but that was the only way he would hear something interesting. Beralyn played her hand closely, and Thomen was too loyal a son to tip her hand.
It would have been nice to have the room wired, but the technology for that was still, probably, years away—and talk about whisper channels and echoes and secret passages had long kept conspiratorial and private conversations in whispers, or out in the open air with no one about.
Walter Slovotsky rubbed at the back of his neck. It still itched, and he could either see the Spidersect healer about it first, and have the itching healed, or go brace the wizard about the bugs.
A lesser man would have picked the Spider, and Walter Slovotsky didn’t mind passing for a lesser man.
* * *
Thomen knew what Mother was going to say before she said it, at least in general outline. There were times when he found it irritating, but this wasn’t one of them.
“Well, Mother,” he said, “what approach is it going to be today? Political: me marrying, and producing an heir, why that would make the Empire more stable, and bring peace to the land. Or personal: you want grandchildren, and it is my responsibility to produce them. Or philosophical: life does go on, but only for those whose line follows the past into the future. Or practical: if I keep—”
“Enough.” Her lips pursed tightly. “You know how I feel, and we’ll speak no more on that.” Did she actually believe herself? “Actually, I was going to ask you about the seating at table tonight.”
There was trouble on the border, more and more stories of ores up in the hills of his—what had been his—barony, a baronial governor who had probably been involved in a conspiracy against the Crown…and Mother wanted him to worry about dinner seating.
He shook his head. It was strange, and he wished there was somebody he could talk about it with: he had had to manage most of the same problems when he was regent, waiting for Jason Cullinane to assume the Crown.
Keep the governors and barons honest; raise taxes and armies; judge and condemn; forgive if not forget—he had taken it all seriously, yes, but he had had the luxury of distance, of knowing that, finally, it was somebody else’s responsibility, not his.
“Well,” he said, “Niphael arrived just this morning, and Nerahan’s party has been sighted on the Prince’s Road—”
She interrupted him with a raised eyebrow.
“—as you well know, since you read the same telegraph message I did, probably before I did—so let’s put them at the head, next to me.”
She smiled slyly. “And Lady Leria Euar’den?”
He returned her smile, but didn’t bother to dispute the family name. Whether or not Leria was the heir to the Euar’den dynasty that had ruled Tynear wasn’t terribly relevant, save as that would soften the blow to the Biemish barons if he married a Holt.
If.
She was lovely, at that, but…
…but what? Forinel? He was long gone, and almost certainly dead. Could she still be pining after him? She seemed awfully comfortable in the presence of her three regular bodyguards—but she had been through much with them, and while one of them did sleep across her doorway each night, were there more than that going on it would have been reported to him, via Mother, if nobody else.
He shrugged it off. An emperor had more important things to worry about than why a lovely young woman seemed to harbor some dark secret.
It was all such a juggling act.
Back before the wars, back before it all fell apart, back when he was a boy, his father had brought him to the fair in Biemestren, once, and it was there that Thomen Furnael had seen his first juggler. He had thought, until his father corrected him—and Father was never wrong when he spoke so certainly—that it was some form of magic, but no: it had merely been skill that had kept a cascade of objects in the air.
An egg, a knife, two brightly colored juggling sticks, and at least in his memory, a full score other objects had flown through the air, seemingly more gently guided than carefully thrown by the bare-chested man whose eyes never left the stream as he continued his endless patter, in exchange for just a few coppers thrown into the wooden bowl at his feet.
But something had gone wrong, and the juggler had cried out, his finger flying to his mouth as everything that he had kept juggling fell about him in an absurd rain.
Thomen was willing to bet that the juggler’s mother had never bothered him about seating plans…
 
Copyright © 2001 by Joel Rosenberg