56 Condemned (1/2)

”My Prince?”

Baron Harmin was presently unoccupied and happened to be turned towards Leal when the latter had spoken. The younger man modulated his voice but could do nothing about the scowl that had once again formed between his brows.

”It is nothing, my lord,” he said. ”Only that it had occurred to me, I might be out of my depth in this place.”

The possibility was rankling, but the more he revised his previous interpretations of recent events using the fresh information he'd gathered, the less sure of himself he felt. What he thought was a grueling but straightforward enough path to attain his personal desires might actually be a lot more complicated – perhaps even damn near impossible to attain without using force.

The sandy-haired Baron was a sharp man. Leal did not doubt that he'd also been closely following the day's events, and despite not having access to the information he did, the older, scholarly man might be doing a better job of coming to the right conclusions.

For instance, that the Princess and the Lord General's daughter had always been contingency plans – backups who had long ago been set in place just in case the worst ended up happening. And wouldn't you know it, it did.

That begged the question, why keep this secret hidden for so long only to be ham-fisted about the revelation of its parts at the first opportunity?

This was the reason Leal had started to doubt himself. Before, his answer to that question would have been that the Lord General had simply committed a grave mistake. But what if the man did NOT, after all, make a careless gamble out of desperation?

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When he followed this new thought, a peculiar sense had invaded him. He'd been assuming that the game started when Lothar and Prince Dieter died, but now it felt as if he'd stumbled across a chess match that had already been going on for years.

”Please, Your Highness,” Baron Harmin replied in an amused tone that contained no meanness in it, ”I beg to disagree. And to put it mildly, through no fault of our own, we all just caught our neighbor at a very bad time.”

Leal snorted. ”Putting it mildly indeed. But I'm almost certain Father had intended for us to witness it all – and to give our neighbor a hard time while we're at it.”

”Would that your identity had remained hidden,” the Baron replied with a sigh. ”I doubt His Majesty had accounted for the rest of what has happened where you're concerned.”

With a trace of resignation, Leal chuckled. ”Now I'M begging to disagree.” From the corner of his eye, he observed the placid and good-humored Baron, whose own eyes were occupied with roaming over the people who'd remained. They were shining in evident fascination over what he was seeing – more gossips and cloaked conspiracies, most likely. In dry amusement, he said, ”I'm glad you seem to be enjoying yourself, at least.”

An acknowledging smile appeared in Baron Harmin's face, and he kept looking at the scenes before him. ”They are so different from us,” he said. ”For the most part. They are so…”

”Restrained, but willfully.”

The other man laughed. ”I'd choose another word, but that applies too. If not for the requisite cattiness, I'd forget they are also nobles. Most of our unrestrained brethren do not even have the first notion of what 'self-control' means.”

”Wish you'd been born an Arnican instead, my lord?” Leal teased.

”Good god, yes,” the Baron readily answered. This time, they both let out a brief laugh that had a trace of wistfulness to it. There were moments when Leal had that wish too.

”These nobles,” he went on, ”they are careful not to take their power for granted. Unlike…”

For a spell, Leal found himself torn on whom to compare them to – ”us” or ”me” – but he never got the chance to finish. From the wide break in the surrounding trees, a man's voice echoed and increasingly became louder. Those who still had their wits about them turned in varying degrees of alarm to watch the man, the servant that Leal had seen with the Lord General before, running straight to his liege, who had already gotten on his feet beside the blanket where his wife lay.