David Drake - The Tyrant

Personally, Demansk thought the old Vanbert virtues could be found in that class more often than in the actual aristocracy. Certainly more than among the merchants and usurers. Gentrymen were invariably courageous in battle and often made capable, if usually unimaginative, officers.

But, while he thought Helga was being a bit uncharitable, he understood her sentiments well enough. The gentry was even more notorious for its endless and obsessive bickering than the nobility. With some exceptions-always regarded as eccentric-they treasured and gloated over every small increase in status like misers over gold; schemed for it constantly; and took any reverse, no matter how small, as if it were the world's worst natural disaster.

There was a popular legend-which Demansk suspected was probably true-that five gentry families died to the last person in the city of Ghust when the volcano erupted. They were on the outskirts of the disaster, and had plenty of time to flee. But they spent so much time quarreling over which of their carriages should get precedence in the escape that the cloud of gas and ashes overtook them in mid-squabble.

Demansk turned his head and examined the loom in the corner. It pleased him, even though he knew it was an excuse, to liken what he was doing to a weaver's work instead of a butcher's. Though the main color in the cloth he was weaving would be red-blood red-it was still work which would leave something other than ruin at its completion.

Maybe, he admitted. If I do the work extremely well, and the Goddess of Luck favors me.

The gentry, and its attitudes, would play a very big role in that weaving. Demansk was gambling that, when the time came, he could use their ambition and avarice to overcome their natural conservatism. With enough of them, at least, to enable him to hold power while he set about shredding the established ways of the Confederacy.

It would not be easy. The gentry, on their own farms, did not depend on slave labor to the degree that the aristocracy did on the great estates. Emancipation would hurt them economically, to be sure, especially at first. But the more capable and energetic families would also be able to take advantage of the chaos of the transition. Forming alliances with money-lenders and merchants; investing in manufacture-which would now have a large pool of former slave labor to draw on; carving out careers in a suddenly opened and merit-based government apparatus.

On the other hand… if they didn't need slaves, the gentry treasured their status as slave-holders all the more for it. It gave them the illusion of being noblemen themselves, at least in part.

Avarice against habit; ambition against custom; cold realism against unthinking conservatism. Those were the forces Demansk would manipulate, one against the other, until he had created the fabric he wanted. Or, in the failing, wreck the loom entirely.

"Stop being gloomy, Father," Helga said. As so often, daughter read father's mood to perfection. "It'll work. As well as anything does, anyway." She gave the loom a skeptical glance. "That's just a construct, you know. Something made; a thing with clear parts and sides and limits. The real world's a lot messier."

The baby woke up, and started bawling immediately. "Like this creature here," she added, good cheer mixed with exasperation. "Gobbling like a pig at one end and shitting even worse at the other. About as pretty as a hogpen." She silenced the infant in the time-honored way; wails were replaced by the soft sounds of suckling. "But he works, after all. And in the meantime, he's just so cute. "

Demansk's eyes almost goggled. Whatever other metaphor or simile or euphemism he had ever used to describe his project to himself, the word cute had never so much as crossed his mind.

Helga smiled. "It's just like the poet said, Father. 'Only the blood of women runs truly cold.' "

She nodded toward the door. "And now, you'd best be off. You've got hot-blooded man's work to do."

This was the only time Adrian Gellert was really thankful for the trance-haze. Dealing with his brother Esmond directly, without the shielding buffer which two other minds sharing his brain gave him, was… painful.

When did it happen? he asked, almost plaintively.

He could sense, if not see, Raj's shoulders rising and falling in a shrug. The sensation was purely one created by his own imagination. He'd never met Raj Whitehall in the flesh. What he knew of him, even the man's appearance, came solely from glimpses which he got from Raj himself. And those were filtered already, because they were Raj's images of himself when he had still been made of flesh and blood. As if a man knew a friend-closer in many ways than any friend he'd ever had-only from seeing him reflected in a mirror.

Who can say? There's never a moment for something like this. Any more than you can say there is a moment when poison kills a man. Hate's a toxin as corrosive and deadly as arsenic, if you take too much of it. And Esmond's been guzzling at that well for a long time now.

Sadly, Adrian stared down at the whimpering creature huddled in a corner of Esmond's tent. From the hair color and what little else Adrian could discern about the battered figure, he thought he came from the northern part of the continent. A "Confederate" in name, even if he was most likely a peasant rather than a true Vanbert. That would be enough to serve as a focus for Esmond's rage.

Adrian estimated the boy was not more than twelve years old. It was hard to be sure, though, because his face was pulpy and bruised and the scrawny body was emaciated from hunger. The manacles on his thin wrists and ankles were quite unnecessary. The boy was obviously so weak he could not even crawl, much less stand. Adrian was not sure he would even be alive the next day.

"We'll see about that," he growled, dropping to one knee next to the child. He reached out his hand and lightly shook a shoulder. There was no response except a soft moan.

Moving as gently as he could, Adrian gave the boy a quick examination. The touch of his fingers brought forth more moans and whimpers. Every part of the child's body seemed bruised or lacerated. A few of the wounds were even still bleeding, although Adrian was relieved to see that none of them seemed to have ruptured any internal organs. At least, there was no blood or fluid leaking from any orifice.

He's got a broken arm and maybe some broken ribs. But he's not bleeding internally, I don't think. And it doesn't look as if Esmond raped him.

Probably not, agreed Raj. Esmond's lusts have gotten much darker than that.

Adrian shook his head. Not in disagreement, simply in sorrow. He could remember a time-remember it well-when he had treasured his older brother. A time when Esmond Gellert's soul had seemed as bronzed-perfect as his superb athlete's body.

But that time was gone, now. Had been for… at least a year. The death of Esmond's lover Nanya had been the trigger for the change. Or so, at least, Esmond claimed himself on the few occasions when he was willing to talk about the transformation in his character.

Adrian had his doubts. True, Esmond had been besotted with the woman. But many men were besotted with women, and didn't react to their deaths in such a manner. Adrian thought the truth sat at a square angle, so to speak. He thought that Esmond's rage against anything Confederate had not been caused by Nanya's death so much as the fact that Esmond had not been able to prevent it.

Adrian had been standing at Esmond's side when it happened. Watching, along with his brother, the great roof beam in the burning mansion of the traitor Redvers when it collapsed onto Nanya and the other women of the household. They had come so close to saving her from the disaster. But-not close enough.