R. Salvatore - The Dragon King

“No,” Deanna reminded herself aloud. “It was only one of the keys.”

She walked determinedly across the room and gathered up her robe. Selna’s room was only three doors down the hall.

In the duke’s private room in Eornfast, Ashannon McLenny watched his mirror cloud over and then gave a great sigh.

“No turning round’about now,” said a voice behind him, that of Shamus Hee, his friend and confidant.

“If ever I had meant a round’about, I’d not have told Deanna Wellworth the truth of Greensparrow,” the duke replied calmly.

“Still, ’tis a scary thing,” Shamus remarked.

McLenny didn’t disagree. He, above perhaps any man in the world, understood Greensparrow’s power, the network of spies, human and diabolical. After the coup in Avon, Ashannon McLenny had thought to break Baranduine free of the eastern nation’s clutches, but Greensparrow had put an end to that before it had ever begun, using Ashannon McLenny’s own familiar demon against him. Only the duke’s considerable charm and wits had allowed him to survive that event, and he had spent the subsequent decade proving his value and his loyalty to the Avon king.

“I’m still not knowing why Greensparrow ever kept the lass alive,” Shamus mumbled. “Seems a cleaner thing to me if he had just wiped all the Wellworths from the world.”

“He needed her,” McLenny answered. “Greensparrow didn’t know how things would sort out after the coup, and if he could not cleanly take the throne, then he would have put the lass there, though he would have been in the shadows behind her, the true ruler of Avon.”

“Wise at the time, but not so much now, so it seems,” remarked Shamus with a chuckle.

“Let us hope that is the case,” said McLenny. “Greensparrow has slipped, my friend. He has lost a bit of his rulership edge, perhaps through sheer boredom. Events in Eriador are proof enough of that, and, perhaps, a precursor to our own freedom.”

“A dangerous course,” said Shamus.

“More dangerous to Deanna by far than to us,” said McLenny. “And if she can succeed in her quest, if she can even wound Greensparrow and steal his attention long enough, then Baranduine will at long last know independence.”

“And if not?”

“Then we are no worse off, though I will surely lament the loss of Deanna Wellworth.”

“You can break the ties to her and her little plan that easily, then?”

Ashannon McLenny nodded, and there was no smile upon his face as he considered the possibility of failure.

Shamus Hee let it go at that. He trusted Ashannon’s judgment implicitly; the man had survived Greensparrow’s Avon coup, after all, whereas almost all of the other sitting nobles at the time had not. And Shamus understood that McLenny, whatever his personal feelings for Deanna (and they did indeed run deep), would put Baranduine first. He had seen the man’s face brighten with hope when they had first learned from Deanna Wellworth that Brind’Amour of the ancient brotherhood was alive and opposing Greensparrow.

Yes, Shamus understood, McLenny was a man for the ages, more concerned with what he left behind than with what he possessed. And what he meant to leave behind was a free Baranduine.

“Yes, my dear deJulienne,” Brind’Amour said absently, leaning back in his throne, chin resting heavily in his palm. “DeJulienne,” he muttered derisively under his breath. The man’s name was Jules!

The other man, dressed all in lace and finery, and spending more time looking at his manicured fingernails than at Brind’Amour, continued to spout his complaints. “They utter such garish remarks,” he said, seeming horrified. “Really, if you cannot keep your swine civilized, then perhaps we should put in place a wide zone of silence about the wall.”

Brind’Amour nodded and sat up straighter in his throne. The argument was an old one, measuring time from the formation of the new Eriadoran kingdom. Greensparrow had sent Praetorian Guards to Malpuissant’s Wall to stand watch on the Avon side, and from the first day of their arrival, bitter verbal sparring had sprung up between the cyclopians and the Eriadorans holding the northern side of the wall.

“Uncivilized,” Brind’Amour replied casually. “Yes, deJulienne, that is a good word for us Eriadorans.”

The fop, Avon’s ambassador to Caer MacDonald, tilted his head back and struck a superior pose.

“And if you ever speak of my people again as ‘swine,’” Brind’Amour finished, “I will prove your point exactly by mailing your head back to Carlisle in a box.”

The painted face drooped, but Brind’Amour, seeing his friends enter the throne room, hardly noticed. “Luthien Bedwyr and Oliver deBurrows,” the king said, “have you had the pleasure of meeting our distinguished ambassador from Carlisle, Baron Guy deJulienne?”

The pair moved near to the man, Oliver bobbing to stand right before him. “DeJulienne?” the halfling echoed. “You are Gascon?”

“On my mother’s side,” the fop replied.

Oliver eyed him suspiciously, not buying a word of it. It had become common practice among the Avon nobles to alter their names so that they sounded more Gascon, a heritage that had become the height of fashion. To a true Gascon like Oliver, imitation did not ring as flattery. “I see,” said Oliver, “then it was your father who was a raping cyclopian.”

“Oliver!” Luthien cried.

“How dare you?” deJulienne roared.

“A true Gascon would duel me,” Oliver remarked, hand on rapier, but Luthien grabbed him by the shoulders, easily lifted him off the ground, and carried him to the side.

“I demand that the runt be punished,” deJulienne said to Brind’Amour, who was trying hard not to laugh.

“With my rapier blade I will write my so very long name across your puffy Avon breast!” Oliver shouted.

“He suffers from the war,” Brind’Amour whispered to deJulienne.

“Phony Gascon-type!” Oliver yelled. “If you want to be truly important, why do you not stand on your knees and pretend you are a halfling?”

“I should strike him down,” deJulienne said.

“Indeed,” replied the king, “but do have mercy. Oliver killed a hundred cyclopians personally in a single battle and has never quite gotten over it, I fear.”

DeJulienne nodded, and then, as the impact of the statement hit him fully, blanched even paler than his chalky makeup. “I will spare him then,” the man said quickly.

“I trust our business is finished?” Brind’Amour asked.

The Avon ambassador bowed curtly, spun on his heel, and stalked from the room.

“Jules!” Oliver called after him. “Julie, Julie!”

“Did you really see that as necessary?” Brind’Amour asked when Oliver and Luthien came to stand before him once more.

Oliver tilted his head thoughtfully. “No,” he answered at length, “but it was fun. Besides, I could tell that you wanted the fool out of here.”

“A simple dismissal would have sufficed,” Brind’Amour said dryly.

“Baron Guy deJulienne,” Luthien snorted, shaking his head in disbelief. Luthien had tasted more than his fill of the foppish Avon aristocracy, and he had little use for such pretentious fools. The woman who had sent him on the road from Dun Varna in the first place, the consort of yet another self-proclaimed baron, was much like deJulienne, all painted and perfumed. She had used the name of Avonese, though in truth her mother had titled her “Avon.” Seeing the ambassador of Avon only reaffirmed to Luthien that he had done well in giving the throne over to Brind’Amour. After the war, the Crimson Shadow could have likely claimed the throne, and many had called for him to do just that. But Luthien had deferred to Brind’Amour, for the good of Eriador—and, the sight and smell of deJulienne pointedly reminded him, for the good of Luthien!