“An even chance is all we need,” said one of them, his eyes gleaming. He wasn’t a young lord, either. He must have been one of those with little or weak magic, and as a result, the grudge he carried was probably centuries in the brewing. “That’s all we’ve ever asked for.”
“Aye to that,” said another.
Lorryn nodded, and rubbed the side of his head wearily. Would this all work? And what was going on with Shana? The last he’d heard, through his craftsmen, Keman had recruited more dragons, but did she know that the armies were coming? Could even a sky full of dragons prevail against the numbers that were coming?
And for that matter, was she even in charge anymore?
It didn’t matter; events had gotten away from them all. Now they had to act or be run over by them.
“You all know what to do—” he said, waving at them in dismissal. He had more of these meetings to hold, even as his draconic friends were holding similar meetings in the other four cities. “It’s up to you how you do it”
And up to the rest of us to make the most of it.
Ah, Shana—I could use your stubborn good sense right now!
Rena had been a very, very obedient little girl, remaining meek and pliant in every way while Lord Tylar ordered her about. She hoped to lull any suspicions that he might have had by never mentioning Lady Viridina in his hearing, and never directly asking about her to the slaves.
He must have suspected something—or perhaps the habit of suspecting everyone had become so ingrained that he could not drop it even if he wanted to—for he took care that she was never alone, even though she thought she was going to scream with frustration.
Finally, though, she had a respite, if an eleventh-hour respite. He was too busy today preparing for the Council Meeting to watch her himself, and as nearly as she could tell, he had not set anyone to watch her. For the first time since she had come back to the estate, she was alone.
It might be her last and only chance, and she was going to take it.
She dared not wear her jewelry, though—she herself was going to have to work magic, and the magics guarding her mother’s garden-tower were likely rigged to set off mechanical alarms if they were made to fail. So she took both packets still swathed in their insulation of silk, hid them in her gown, and slipped out of the bower with the silence of a stalking Iron Clan warrior.
Or so she fondly hoped, at any rate.
She slipped along the hallways, as cautious as a cat; she passed through the magic-barriers that Lord Tylar had placed around the bower with no trouble, although she had feared that they might stop her. Her father had told her they were supposed to be for her safety—in case Lorryn came after her again—but she was not going to take anything Lord Tylar said at face value.
Now she passed through corridors made more for use man for show, heading for the herb and kitchen gardens. In theory, since she was in charge of the household, she had every right and duty to go there. In actuality—it would be hard to explain her presence to anything above a household slave.
In the middle of the kitchen garden, some wag of an architect had set a prison-tower for the confinement of anyone Lord Tylar wanted out of the manor, but near enough to keep a personal eye on. It hadn’t been in use in Rena’s lifetime, but she’d heard of recalcitrant underlings who had spent brief but uncomfortable visits there. It was supposed to be escape-proof, provided the person kept there was less than Lord Tylar in magical power.
Or provided that the person kept there had no allies with any magical power on the outside.
The sun-drenched expanse of vegetables and herbs in their neat and mathematically patterned beds seemed very large as she peered out the door into the bright light. And there in the middle was the tower—very pretty to look at, all of white marble, stretching up toward the sun, a round, slender white column, fluted and sculptured, its whiteness marred by nothing like a window anywhere along its height.
But it seemed that her father had stripped every slave that he could from the household to serve in his army—evidently it was numbers that counted, not skill with weapons. There was only one slave picking cabbages at the foot of the tower, and no one else anywhere in the garden. Rena waited in the shelter of the door until the slave finished her work and hurried toward the kitchen door.
Now I know why the house has sounded so quiet, so odd. Father probably took every male slave we had and sent them off to make up his share of the forces. He may even have taken the brawniest of the females as well! No matter that they’ve never held anything but an eating knife; I doubt that matters to him. There are always more, waiting in the breeding sheds.
She thought about the humans she had come to know in the tents of the Iron People: Diric, Kala, the new War Chief.
She thought about the craftsmen, who were not warriors, and how ill suited they would be to fight. She thought about all those people being herded off to die like so many cattle, but without the care and dignity granted to the Iron People’s cattle, and she burned with rage.
She had hated her father before, but this hatred was no longer personal—it was for everything he and every lord on the Council stood for.
She waited a moment longer, fighting her anger—both to see if the slave came back out to the garden and to get herself back under control. As long as she was this angry, she could be distracted; she could not afford to be distracted.
Finally the anger subsided to a slow burning in her heart; she took a deep breath and strolled out into the garden as if she had a perfect right to be there.
The door was on the opposite side of the tower from the manor; she walked with simulated carelessness up the pathways of round gravel, paced around the base, and stepped up onto the white marble stoop, all without once spotting anyone who might have been set to watch. She studied the lock to the door with her eyes closed, as Mero had taught her, but it was a lot simpler than she had expected it to be. Perhaps for a male, unused to working magic at so fine and controlled a level, it would have been very difficult to open—but for a female, well, it was easier than sculpting the feathers on a living bird.
She had it open in a moment; she slipped inside, and closed the door behind her.
The bottom story was quite empty: one echoing white marble room, with that sourceless light that illuminated most elven-made dwellings. She listened then, straining her ears against the silence, trying to determine if there was more than one occupant here. Talk among the slaves indicated that Lady Viridina was not even allowed a single body servant and had to tend to all her needs herself, but talk among the slaves was not always accurate.
She heard footsteps, faint and far above, but there was only one set of them. Someone was pacing, around and around the round wall of the tower, but it was only one person.
Silently Rena slipped up the stairs, pausing to peek over the edge of the next floor to see what was there.
This room was like the one below, except that it held a marble table, and a single chair. There was no one here, either, but as Rena moved up into the room itself, she saw a tray of partially eaten bread and a pitcher of water on the table. The bread did not look particularly fresh, and it was the coarse brown bean-bread generally fed to slaves.
Clever.
She headed for the next set of stairs, and once again paused to listen. The footsteps sounded as if they were directly above her now.
She got halfway up the stairs before the footsteps stopped, suddenly.
“Who is there?” Lady Viridina called sharply.
Rena couldn’t stop herself; she ran up the rest of the stairs, heedless of the fact that her mother might not be alone.
But Lady Viridina was alone; dressed in a simple gown of bleached fustian, the kind a slave might wear, her hair confined in a single neat braid, with no sign of the fine lady she had once been. She stared at Rena—made a sign, and Rena felt the tingle of magic that told her a spell had just passed over her—then ran to take her daughter into her arms, babbling and sobbing as incoherently as if she had been mad.