Part 19 (2/2)

'A thousand warriors,' Oscagne replied. He smiled at Ehlana. 'With two thousand Atans at your disposal, your Majesty could conquer Edam. Would you like to establish a toe-hold on the Daresian continent? It won't really be all that inconvenient. We Tamuls will administer it for you for the usual fee, of course-and we'll send you glowing reports at the end of each year. The reports will be a tissue of lies, but we'll send them anyway.'

'Along with the profits?' She actually sounded interested.

'Oh no, your Majesty,' he laughed. 'For some reason, not one single kingdom in the whole empire ever shows profit-except Tamul itself, of course.'

'Why would I want a kingdom that doesn't pay?'

'Prestige, your Majesty, and vanity. You'd have another t.i.tle and another crown.'

'I don't really need another crown, your Excellency. I've only got one head. Why don't we just let the King of Edam keep his unprofitable kingdom?'

'Probably a wise decision, your Majesty,' he agreed. 'Edom's a tedious sort of place. They grow wheat there, and wheat-farmers are a stodgy group of people all obsessively interested in the weather.'

'How long is it likely to be until those legions arrive?' Sparhawk asked him.

'A week or so. They'll come on foot, so they'll make better time than they would on horseback.'

'Isn't that the other way around, your Excellency?' Melidere asked him. 'I thought horses moved much faster than men on foot.' Mirtai laughed. 'Did I say something funny?' Melidere asked.

'When I was fourteen, a man down in Daconia insulted me,' the giantess told her. 'He was drunk. When he sobered up the next morning, he realised what he'd done and fled on horseback. It was about dawn. I caught up with him just before noon. His horse had died from exhaustion. I always felt sort of sorry for the horse. A trained warrior can run all day. A horse can't. A horse has to stop when he wants to eat, so he's not used to running for more than a few hours at a time. We eat while we're running, so we just keep on going.'

'What did you do to the fellow who insulted you?' Talen asked her.

'Do you really want to know?'

'Ah-no, Mirtai,' he replied. 'Now that you mention it, probably not.'

And so they had a week on their hands. Baroness Melidere devoted her time to breaking hearts. The young n.o.blemen of King Alberen's court flocked around her. She flirted outrageously, made all sorts of promises none of which she kept-and occasionally allowed herself to be kissed in dark corners by persistent suitors. She had a great deal of fun and gathered a great deal of information. A young man pursuing a pretty girl will often share secrets with her, secrets which he should probably keep to himself.

To the surprise of Sparhawk and his fellow knights, Sir Berit devastated the young ladies of the court quite nearly as much as the Baroness did the young men. 'It's absolutely uncanny,' Kalten was saying one evening. 'He doesn't really do anything at all. He doesn't talk to them, he doesn't smile at them, he doesn't do any of the things he's supposed to do. I don't know what it is, but every time he walks through a room, every young woman in the place starts to come all unraveled.'

'He is a very handsome young man, Kalten,' Ehlana pointed out.

'Berit? He doesn't even shave regularly yet.

'What's that got to do with it? He's' tall, he's a knight, he has broad shoulders and good manners. He's also got the deepest blue eyes I've ever seen-and the longest eyelashes. '

'But he's only a boy.'

'Not any more. You haven't really looked at him lately. Besides, the young ladies who sigh and cry into their pillows over him are quite young themselves.'

'What's really so irritating is the fact that he doesn't even know what effect he has on all those poor girls,' Tynian observed. 'They're doing everything but tearing their clothes off to get his attention, and he hasn't got the faintest notion of what's going on.'

'That's part of his charm, Sir Knight.' Ehlana smiled. 'if it weren't for that innocence of his, they wouldn't find him nearly so attractive. Sir Bevier here has much the same quality. The difference though, is that Bevier knows that he's an extraordinarily handsome young man. He chooses not to do anything about it because of his religious convictions. Berit doesn't even know.'

'Maybe one of us should take him aside and tell him,' Ulath suggested.

'Never mind.' Mirtai told him. 'He's fine just the way he is. Leave him alone.'

'Mirtai's right.' Ehlana said. 'Don't tamper with him, gentlemen. We'd like to keep him innocent for just a while longer.' A hint of mischief touched her lips. 'Sir Bevier, on the other hand, is quite another matter. It's time for us to find him a wife. He'll make some girl an excellent husband.'

Bevier smiled faintly. 'I'm already married, your Majesty-to the Church.'

'Betrothed perhaps, Bevier, but not yet married. Don't start buying ecclesiastical garb just yet, Sir Knight. I haven't entirely given up on you.'

'Wouldn't it be easier to start closer to home, your Majesty?' he suggested. 'If you feel the urge to marry someone off, Sir Kalten is readily at hand.'

'Kalten?' she asked incredulously. 'Don't be absurd, Bevier. I wouldn't do that to any woman.'

'Your Majesty.' Kalten protested.

'I love you dearly, Kalten,' she smiled at the blond Pandion, 'but you're just not husband material. I couldn't give you away. In good conscience I couldn't even order anyone to marry you. Tynian is remotely possible, but G.o.d intended you and Ulath to be bachelors.'

'Me?' Ulath said mildly.

'Yes,' she said, 'you.'

The door opened, and Stragen and Talen entered. They were both dressed in the plain clothing they usually wore when making one of their sorties into the streets. 'Any luck?' Sparhawk asked them.

'We found him,' Stragen replied, handing his cloak to Alcan. 'He's not really my sort. He's a pickpocket by profession, and pickpockets don't really make good leaders. There's something fundamentally lacking in their character.'

'Stragen!' Talen protested.

'You're not really a pickpocket, my young friend,' Stragen told him. 'That's only an interim occupation while you're waiting to grow up. Anyway, the local chief's named Kondrak. He could see that we all have a mutual interest in stable governments, I'll give him that. Looting houses when there's turmoil in the streets is a fast way to make a lot of money, but over the long run, a good thief can acc.u.mulate more in times of domestic tranquillity. Of course Kondrak can't make any kind of overall decision on his own. He'll have to consult with his counterparts in other cities in the empire.'

'That shouldn't take more than a year or so,' Sparhawk noted drily.

'Hardly,' Stragen disagreed. 'Thieves move much more rapidly than honest men. Kondrak's going to send out word of what we're trying to accomplish. He'll put it in the best possible light, so there's a very good chance that the thieves of all the kingdoms in the empire will co-operate.'

'How will we know their decision?' Tynian asked him.

'I'll make courtesy calls each time we come to a fair-sized city,' Stragen shrugged. 'Sooner or later I'll get an official reply. It shouldn't take all that long. We'll certainly have a final decision by the time we reach Matherion.' He looked speculatively at Ehlana. 'Your Majesty's learned a great deal about the subterranean government in the past few years,' he noted. 'Do you suppose we could put that information on the level of a state secret? We're perfectly willing to co-operate and even a.s.sist on occasion, but we'd be much happier if the other monarchs of the world didn't know too much about the way we operate. Some crusader might decide to smash the secret government, and that would inconvenience us a bit.'

'What's it worth to you, Milord Stragen?' she teased him.

His eyes grew very serious. 'It's a decision you'll have to make for yourself, Ehlana,' he told her, cutting across rank and customary courtesies. 'I've tried to a.s.sist you whenever I could because I'm genuinely fond of you. If you make a little conversational slip, though, and other monarchs find out things they shouldn't know, I won't be able to do that any more.'

'You'd abandon me, Milord Stragen?'

'Never, my Queen, but my colleagues would have me killed, and I wouldn't really be of much use to you in that condition, now would I?

Archimandrite Morsel was a large, impressive man with piercing black eyes and an imposing black beard. It was a forceful beard, an a.s.sertive beard, a beard impossible to overlook, and the Archimandrite used it like a battering ram. It preceded him by a yard wherever he went. It bristled when he was irritated, which was often, and in damp weather it knotted up into snarls like half a mile of cheap fis.h.i.+ng line. The beard waggled when Morsel talked, emphasising points all on its own.

Patriarch Emban was absolutely fascinated by the Archimandrite's beard. 'It's like talking to an animated hedge,' he observed to Sparhawk as the two of them walked through the corridors of the palace toward a private audience with the Astellian ecclesiast.

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