Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (12 page)

    
I could lie, and easily, to one so young, but I think it is the greater cruelty.  Better that they live in the real world, if they have questions like these.

    
“I have to tell you all, the odds are that the drink will kill him,” I said, watching their eyes tear.  “I have seen this before, and it is sad, and they become terrible people when it happens.  I will do everything I can to keep you from him, if that’s what you want.  And if he
does
try to quit, we will do everything we can to help him.

    
“But you must be ready for the fact that, most likely, he is too far gone, and he will die.”

    
Averee burst into tears and ran into Shela’s arms.  Terran took his lead from Tartan, who just stood straighter and nodded.  Glennen pounded, “Be tough” into a kid who had very little toughness in him, and Tartan did his best to rise to it.

    
He probably realized better than anyone that he had not been named heir and, when his father passed, he lived at my mercy, Glennen having no family and Alekanna being of a house that had been wiped out in one of Eldador’s many internal skirmishes.

    
When the time came, I wanted to give him a city, but I wanted him to show me first that he could be a Duke, without being told he already had the job.

    
Alekennen seemed the most pragmatic of the four.  She never lived a day thinking that she would rule Eldador.  She’d been born a girl, and she knew what nobles used their daughters for.

    
“You’ll get me a husband if you’re right?” she asked me.

    
I looked her in the eye, thirteen and a woman.  Her time approached quickly.  There were unmarried sons out there.

    
“I can probably get you a better one if it is before he dies,” I said.

    
She nodded, turned on her heel and walked away.  Averee clung to Shela for as long as she could, then broke away to be with her sister.  Family was family, after all.

     I tried to tell myself that this was what War wanted.  He’d given me his command, He’d told me to replace Glennen.  Now Glennen was doing all the leg work, and I only had to sit back and do nothing.

     So why did I feel like I was holding a bloody knife, and the whole world was looking at me?

     J’her met me in the Heir’s chambers.  Shela was complaining that dust had collected everywhere in the month we’d been gone, when he rapped on the polished double-doors and begged permission to come in.

     I welcomed him and introduced him to
Shela and Lee.  Something came into his eyes as he looked down at the gurgling girl in her bassinet.  He didn’t offer and I didn’t push it – in the Pack, you came in with what you had, and it was yours, no matter what.

     “Where do we stand?” I asked him.

     He looked down at the floor, around him, and back at me like I’d said something crazy.

     “Who controls the palace?” I asked him again.

     He raised his chin and eyebrows without saying, “Ahhh.”  He considered himself a comic in his own way, I assumed. 

     “I’ve been hearing reports that tell me you’re in charge here, as much as you can be,” I added.

     “I run it all now,” J’her informed me, simply.  “The Eldadorian Regulars aren’t even allowed inside the palace without our permission.”

     ‘Our,’ not ‘his,’ I noted.  Well played, J’her – make sure I’m in on it, and you’re just running it for me.

     “Did they make much of a fuss?” I asked him.

     “Do you remember Daharef?” J’her asked me.

     “The general who replaced Sammin,” I answered him.

     J’her nodded.  “He’s pretty dead.”

     Wow – I  hadn’t seen that coming.  “That must have pissed – that must have made a lot of their commanding officers upset.”

     J’her shrugged.  “I put him in a position where he was insulting me, and I called him on it.  It was to first blood, but he didn’t survive it.  That sort of thing happens.”

     “So you gave them a way out from having to come after you,” I noted.

     He sat down on the one hard-backed chair in the room.  Couches had been added, and a table, but the chairs were either not ready or not ordered, and for whatever reason we only had one.

     Pretty ballsy of him to sit in it while I still stood.

     Shela caught my eye and arched an eyebrow.  Subordinates could get too familiar.

     “I have to ask you something, Lupus,” he said to me, looking me in the eye.  “And I have to ask that you be very honest with me.”

     I parked my hip on the table and kept looking in his eye.  His were brown, very steady.  He’d faced death about as much as I had.

     “Always,” I informed him.

     “You’re not going to – what’s the expression you use? – start ‘knocking off’ Eldadorians, are you?”

     I wanted to laugh but just smiled.  “No,” I informed him.  “I didn’t even want you to take out Daharef.”

     “But you realize that some of them had to die,” he said.

     I didn’t, but there was no point in fighting it.  He was worried that he’d signed up with a bad guy.  He was going to try to get permission to leave me if he didn’t hear what he wanted to.

     I’d have to back-pedal pretty fast if that happened.  A lot of Wolf Soldiers liked J’her.

     “I need my own people in charge here,” I informed him, “because Eldadorian Regulars can’t handle the King, and because we’ve put a lot of effort into making the rest of Fovea afraid of us.  You know what Two Spears said, when he came back from here?”

     J’her shook his head.

     Shela chimed in, “He said that, if he were still with my people, then he’d come sack this city, because it would be so easy.”

     J’her nodded again.  “If not for the Wolf Soldiers, it would be,” he said.

     “If not for the Wolf Soldiers,” I agreed.

     “But the Eldadorians could never admit that,” he continued.

     “Shame on them if they did,” I said.

     “Yes, a lot of it,” he agreed.  “But when they lose a fight to one of us, and then I use that as an excuse to start changing out their warriors with ours – “

     “People are afraid of us for a reason,” I finished for him.  “No shame in that.”

     “And you’re the Heir, after all.”

     We both nodded.  We talked for a while.  I let him know there was another promotion in his future.  He didn’t ask about it.

     But I was happy with him.

     Over the next three days we spoke more, and I tried to catch Glennen in some period of lucidity, so that he could at least have a chance to give the kids something decent to remember him by, but Glennen was a committed drunk now, and there would be no respite for him.  His Oligarchs were clearly feeding him as much as he wanted in order to keep him manageable.  I didn’t know whether or not they knew that this would hasten his death.

     One thing I’d noted was that, to sober him up, they’d toss him in a big, marble bath tub that sat in a room adjoining his room.  Getting hot water into it involved a bucket brigade from the kitchens, and getting the water out involved another.  The whole thing created a mess and it happened three times a week (and had been daily when Alekanna had been alive). The
se people had no concept of indoor plumbing or water heaters, so I spent an entire day with two of the Uman, Dwarf-trained engineers whom I’d brought with me from Thera and enlightened them to a world of running water.

    
On the third day, sitting in court, the Free Legion petitioned for my audience.  I granted it to them and summoned Shela.

    
They were the same as last I had seen them.  A year hadn’t changed much.  Thorn scowled to break glass, and D’gattis with him.  I could see Karel grinning ear-to-ear, and Arath looked shrewd and pensive.  Nantar clearly wanted to grab me in a bear hug, and Ancenon just as clearly didn’t like being summoned.

    
Dilvesh just nodded to me, as if to say, “I know you, and you know me – and we have that no matter what else happens.”

    
“We come at your request, Rancor Mordetur, as citizens of Eldador,” said Ancenon, speaking for the group.

    
“I made no
request
, Ancenon Aurelias,” I said.  “We are most concerned over the siege of Eldador the Port.”

    
“We were within our rights as mercenaries,” Thorn scowled. 

    
“But not,” I said, “as Eldadorian citizens, which you are.”

    
“I am actually a Trenboni,” Ancenon said, “and a visiting representative of King Angron.”

    
“Angron has declared for Avek Noir,” I corrected him, looking him right in the eyes.  “We are informed that it is
he
who represents the future of Trenbon.”

    
D’gattis and Ancenon looked at me with silver-on-silver eyes, which made it difficult to tell if they were looking straight ahead or at each other. Their eyebrows, however, were telling.

    
“We were in fact under that nation’s employ,” Ancenon said.

    
“Which you took instead of that offered you by Eldador,” I said.

    
“We received your offer too late to act,” D’gattis said.

    
“And yet, you found time to answer Trenbon’s offer,” I countered.

    
I could tell he wanted to say that he got Trenbon’s offer first, but Shela stood right there to detect the lie.  At least I knew, right then, that the bounty hunters weren’t working with Conflu and the Trenboni, unless they simply knew of the plot and acted on it.

    
“You will note,” Ancenon said, “that when your personage presented itself, even in clear effigy, we retreated before you.”

    
“You’re saying you knew it wasn’t me?” I pressed him.

    
“That horse was
not
Blizzard,” Thorn scoffed.

    
I should have known better, but there isn’t a horse like Blizzard.

    
“We stood away from Eldador and collaborated in the ruse against our client, because we are Eldadorian citizens,” Ancenon said, looking right at me.  A lie, but a good one, and one that everyone could live with.  Even when it got back to the Trenboni, they would know the truth and not feel betrayed.

    
If I wanted to make things hard for Ancenon, I had my shot right now.  But it gained me nothing and lost me what little I had left with him.

    
I nodded.  “We will expect you at the royal table tonight,” I said.

    
Ancenon looked irritated but nodded and thanked me.  Throwing capes up over their shoulders with a flourish, they turned and exited, dismissed.

    
Well, that was new.

     Waiting for the King when you knew that he’d passed out in a puddle might be a persistent pain in my ass, but protocol demanded it, and it
did
get me fifteen minutes every day with the Oligarchs.

    
“Your Free Legion is in attendance,” three told me.

    
“And as you requested, it is they, and us, and none of the court barons, most of whom are chagrined and vexed with you,” one added.

     I smiled.
“Chagrined
and
vexed? When does a revolution begin?”

    
“We need alliances for the upcoming change of crowns,” four complained.  “And a court baron is a powerful ally to a duke with a city’s resources behind him.”

    
“No one likes how you handled Yerel,” three commented.

    
“Everyone expected you to raid his city, but not depose him,” one said.

    
“And now they’re wondering who’s next?” I said.

    
All four nodded.

    
A part of me said, “Let them wonder,” but that part needed to think about every single city in the nation trying to go its own way at the same time, which could happen.

    
“Invite them to meet me by twos and threes,” I said.  “We can’t do anything official with the King here, but I can meet with anyone I want.  Tell them I need their advice.  People love to give people like me advice.”

    
“I know I enjoy it,” two said.  The other three smiled.

    
“Protocol is satisfied, I think,” three said.

    
We entered the royal dining room, the people at the table rising to meet us.

     We dined on the usual stacks of meats and cheeses, with more fish than usual, because this late in the season fish became the most plentiful food.  As the next harvest grew through the summer, we would eat more things like fish and grains, until the next harvest, when we would have more fruits and vegetables.