David Drake - The Tyrant

Thicelt grinned. "And then?"

Demansk hooked his thumb at the ram. "If it's working, does it need you to captain it?"

Thicelt shook his head. "Any good captain can manage the thing, with some training."

"Good. Because what I really need is an admiral. "

All the good cheer left Thicelt's face. He studied Demansk very carefully. Then: "An honest pirate, as I said. So I will not lie. The 'price' involves costs as well as rewards. There is only one reason you would need an 'admiral,' and that is to conquer the Isles." The man's long face grew longer still. "I have family on those Isles, Justiciar Demansk. Political loyalties are nothing to me. Family… is a different thing. People get hurt in conquests. Killed and ravished and maimed. Their property taken and themselves sold into slavery."

Demansk nodded. "I wouldn't expect your loyalty under such conditions. Nor would I even want it, to be honest." He reached out a hand and seized the taller man by the shoulder. "I can promise you this, Sharlz Thicelt. If you let me know where your family lives-and especially if you can get word to them ahead of time-I will see to their safety and well-being."

He dropped the hand and shrugged. "I can't promise that none of their properties would be damaged or taken. In war…"

"Who knows?" Thicelt completed the thought. "Property can always be replaced. Especially when one of the family members is a 'Special Attendant.' "

He nodded his head. The gesture had a very formal aura. "It is done, Justiciar Demansk. A bargain, and an honest one."

"And what about me, Father?" asked Trae. "What do you plan for me?" His youthful face was creased with confusion. "And what is all this business about, anyway?"

Demansk spent the rest of the evening explaining. Trae and Thicelt were his only companions through that long discussion, and Demansk decided to allow Thicelt to remain for all of it. He had known from the beginning that he was taking a risk by employing Thicelt. He had done so because he needed the finest admiral he could get his hands on. And he was quite certain that the canny King of the Isles had chosen his very best captain to command the steam ram.

Still, it was a risk. With what he learned in the course of that evening's discussion, Thicelt could sell the information to any one of Demansk's enemies-and come out of the sale a rich man as well as a free one.

But risks have to be taken, at times. And Demansk had always been of the philosophy that there was no point in postponing them. Eventually, he would have had to tell Thicelt, anyway. And there was simply no way to keep under close guard a man whom he intended to load with so much power and authority as well as responsibility. So… may as well find out quickly.

By the end of the evening, however, Demansk's lurking fears were allayed. Thicelt, clearly enough, was the kind of man who enjoyed a genuine challenge. No one simply seeking to gain information for a later betrayal would have pitched into the discussion and the planning so eagerly-not to mention advancing so many excellent suggestions himself. Demansk suspected that the man's insistence on his piratical nature was due more to Islander custom than anything else. A role, as it were, rather than the man himself.

As a servant led him to the sleeping chamber where he would spend the night, after the discussion was over, Demansk found himself thinking about that "role." Not so much Thicelt's alone, as those of millions of men. When all was said and done, what Demansk planned to carry out was a gigantic "mixing of roles."

All of the Confederacy's decay, he thought, could in the end be reduced to that. The great realm forged by Vanbert had settled into layers, like sludge rotting in a pool. It was time to "mix it up. " Break classes as well as nations, and churn new life into the mix.

And so it begins, he thought, as he lay down on the couch and closed his eyes. Verice Demansk, the head of one of Vanbert's oldest and most illustrious families, was already "mixing it up." It was not an accident, he now realized, that outside of his immediate family the first recruits to his conspiracy were a former peasant and a pirate.

He chewed on the thought for a while. Then, fell to sleep much more easily than he would have suspected. And why not? His own ancestors had been peasants; and pirates, too, for that matter. "Land pirates," of course. Vanberts were not natural seamen.

"I can't stay long," he told Helga. "I've got to get back to the capital in time for the Council session, and I've got to visit the siege of Preble along the way."

Helga looked down at the baby nestled in her lap. "Are you listening?" she demanded. "No, you're sleeping-lazy little sot! When your grandfather's giving you such excellent lessons in duplicity!

"This is lesson Number 64, too," she added, clucking her tongue with motherly distress. " 'How To Appear Deeply Concerned By Grave Matters of State.' You'll never be a successful politician without it."

Demansk's lips quirked. As much as Helga's tongue often annoyed him, he had long ago decided that, on balance, it probably also helped keep him sane. Unseemly as her sarcasm might be-her own father! — it was usually right on target.

Certainly in this instance. Demansk really had no legitimate reason to visit the Confederate forces maintaining the siege of Preble. Jeschonyk's enemies, with Speaker of the Assembly Albrecht leading the pack, had bayed for his dismissal after the initial disasters at Preble the previous year, and his replacement by Albrecht himself. Demansk had been dismissed from his command along with Jeschonyk. Partly because he was seen as Jeschonyk's loyal subordinate, which, in truth, he had been. But mostly because Albrecht wanted no independent top officer on his staff to share the credit for breaking Preble's rebellion-especially not one as famously competent as Demansk. Albrecht wanted no one beside him when he rode in the chariot at the triumph. Or even whispers that someone should have been riding beside him.

Neither Demansk nor Jeschonyk had made more than a token protest. Jeschonyk, because the old man had become weary in the course of the strenuous siege; Demansk, because his mind had already begun turning to a much more ambitious goal than breaking a single city's rebellion. A goal, and a scheme, which being forced to remain at the site of a long siege would severely hamper-as Albrecht was about to discover himself.

"That's the one good old custom, if nothing else," he said, "which still remains intact." He bestowed a stern look upon his sleeping grandson and wagged his finger. "Don't forget it, lad! The commander of an army on campaign must remain in the field with his troops until the victory is won.

"Which," he added cheerily, "is still a long way down the road at Preble. Ha! That arrogant bastard!" Somewhere in Demansk's soul, Albrecht's derisive remarks of the year before still rankled. "He's found out, hasn't he now, just how tough a siege can be against a determined opponent."

The unheeding, sleeping babe was now subjected to finger-wagging from his mother. "And don't think you'll be able to bribe your way out of it, either, you little rascal! Desertion is desertion. No amount of bribes will keep you from the executioner's blade. Not even if you've got Albrecht's fortune. Forget the blade, for that matter. Nobleman or not, you'll be fit onto a commoner's stake."

She raised her head and studied her father, seated upright on a stool across from her. The room they were in, where Demansk had found her upon his return, was Helga's weaving room. Other than the loom and the small divan on which she was perched, the only piece of furniture available had been her knitting stool. But Helga's father, unlike many such men in the elite of the Confederacy, had not hesitated to use it. Stools not much different, after all-except for the lack of fancy carving and inlaid precious stones-had been his customary seating while on campaign.