David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

"Is it possible," he said, "that this Valgard really is the son of Valence Stronghand? I realize it's still a rebellion, but-"

"There'sno possibility!" Waldron said. "Bolor says the fellow claims to have been born to a princess of the People who Stronghand captured in the Battle of the Tides. Supposedly Stronghand sent him back with the mother to be fostered in her country. There weren't any women with the People! I'll swear to that, and so will anybody else who was there!"

Garric frowned. "The People?" he repeated. "Who are they? I don't…"

"Ornifal was invaded from the east in the fourth year of King Valence II," Liane said.

"That's Stronghand," Waldron said, looking glumly at his hands again. "Everybody called him Stronghand after the Battle of the Tides, but to tell the truth he never was that again. He took a spear in the hip joint and fought another hour with it sticking out of him, the point stuck in bone. But it ruined him, it used him up."

Liane had opened her travelling desk. She reached among the books filed in pigeonholes within, then stopped with a stricken look on her face.

"I didn't bring it," she said in barely a whisper. "I didn't think I'd need-"

She broke off, clacked the desk shut, and resumed in a crisply businesslike tone, "That was forty-nine years ago, I believe."

She grimaced and returned to the snarling whisper to add, "I should have brought theEastern Chronicles with me!"

Reise'd given his children an education in the classic literature of the Old Kingdom. He hadn't taught them modern history, though, the history of the age in which they lived-because he wasn't interested in the subject.

Garric didn't know who'd preceded his real mother, Countess Tera, on the throne of Haft, let alone what had been happening across the Inner Sea on Ornifal generations ago. This was one of the rare times that he felt the lack of that knowledge.

"Forty-nine years, right," said Lord Waldron, looking up at a corner of the marquee while his mind stepped briefly into the past. "I was there, in Lord Elphic's squadron, my foster father…"

"Yes," said Garric, hoping to cut off a digression into history that-however interesting in the abstract-had no bearing on the present problem. "We can be sure that this Valgard is an imposter, but since he's been accepted by Lord Bolor-and I assume others-already, that doesn't help us."

"It could," Waldron said, returning to the present with the crashing abruptness of a cavalry charge. "Itwill if I'm there to talk to Bolor and the others like him. The claim's preposterous, and they'll believe me when I tell them that to their faces."

"Granting what you say for the sake of argument," Lord Tadai said, touching his fingertips together in a precise pattern. "There'll be others in the conspiracy purely for the hope of gaining wealth, and very likely there are supporters of the former Queen who've been hiding since we overthrew her. They know they won't be safe until we, that is Prince Garric, are put down in turn."

"There'll be rabble," Waldron snapped. He knew Tadai well enough to respect him, but he and the Valles merchant had so little in common that they consistently spoke past one another while trying to hold discussions. "There's always rabble. But it's the Northern squadrons who're a danger to the kingdom, not bullies and footpads!"

"That may be," Tadai said in a pointedly patient tone. "And you may be right to discount the presence of a wizard with the conspirators as well. But it appears to me that this rabble has a vested interest in not allowing you to have a manly, honorable chat with your cousin and neighbors as you seem to intend. I'm not usually an advocate of military force, but I'm afraid in this instance it seems necessary. If you go to Ornifal without the army, you'll be assassinated."

"And while I understand your concern about my presence inflaming the situation," Garric said, nodding to Waldron, "I don't want to give the false impression that Ornifal is less important to me than Sandrakkan. I think I need to deal with Valgard myself."

"Notwithout the army!" said Attaper. With a pained expression he raised both hands before him to forestall the reaction his outburst merited. Apologetically he offered an edited version: "That is, I hope you won't go without the army, your highness."

"No, I won't," Garric said, smiling faintly. King Carus in his mind wore a rueful expression. If one ofhis officers had flared at him that way Carus would've had his sword clear of its sheath before the statement was complete. They both knew that would've been a bad response. "While I think, Ihope, that the presence of the army will convince Valgard's supporters to put down their arms, in the end I'm afraid Lord Attaper is correct. Rebels are rebels, wherever they are."

"Your highness," Waldron said, clasping his heavy belt in both hands to keep them away from the hilt of his sword. He looked down at the table for a moment before he was able to raise his eyes to meet Garric's. "Your highness, send me and one of the Ornifal regiments. Let me try. Please. For the sake of-"

He paused, then burst out, "For the sake of the kingdom!"

"Garric?" Sharina said. She was sitting across the table from him in the seat Lady Lelor had filled during the negotiations. "If Lord Waldron goes back with enough soldiers for safety-"

She quirked a smile that perfectly mirrored the one Garric felt bending his own lips. They both knew that no number of soldiers could guarantee safety.

"Anyway…," Sharina continued. "If Waldron goes back and I go with him-then you're neither slighting Ornifal nor antagonizing those who don't like the thought of being ruled by-"

She grinned very broadly, at Garric and then at Waldron beside him.

"-a warrior king from Haft, let's say," she concluded.

"That would also permit your highness to conclude the present negotiations with Earl Wildulf without appearing to be under pressure," Liane said, holding a document which seemed to have been written on a sheet of lead foil, like a curse to be buried in a graveyard. "While I don't want to seem alarmist, it's public knowledge that there's hostility toward the kingdom at all levels of Sandrakkan society, and other indications-"

Her spies, she meant. Liane appeared to have agents on every island, though for the most part she kept their operations secret even from Garric.

"-suggest that there would be a very real danger of revolt if your highness were to suddenly withdraw with the royal army at this stage."

Garric took a deep breath. He smiled, but the expression didn't go deeper than his lips. "Doesn't anybody think I ought to go to Valles?" he asked.

The truth was, he didn't want to return to Ornifal, not under these circumstances. He'd never felt comfortable in the society of the Valles court. Half of Ornifal's nobles viewed him as the next thing to a usurper, and all of them to some degree resented him for being from Haft. Whatever they might say in public, they knew in their hearts that Garric's ancestors had raised the kingdom to heights which it had never regained under the Dukes of Ornifal.

'Prince Garric' had been accepted because he brought the stability that'd vanished under Valence III; but if a strong leader from Ornifal appeared, one who claimed to be the son of the warrior king of the past generation, there'd be many who'd be glad to support him. Courtiers, bureaucrats… soldiers. Even some Blood Eagles, perhaps. It was one thing to face enemies. It was another to turn your back on a seeming friend in the knowledge that he might be waiting for just that chance with a dagger in his sleeve…

"We don't want you to go if there's another alternative," said Tadai, glancing around the table to a series of nods that proved he was speaking for all. "And Princess Sharina just showed that there is."