ever do it again.
‘Please forgive our Countess, my Lady,’ Mangaran said.
‘Sometimes she breaks out in this rash of cleverness. We’ve tried to break
her of the habit, but you can see for yourself how fruitless it’s been.’
‘I’ve noticed that, my Lord,’ I said. ‘This time what she says is
true, though.I absently plucked a deep red rose from a nearby
bush. ‘Just to save some time here -‘ I held out my hand with the
rose lying on my palm. ‘Watch closely,’ I instructed.
I did it slowly, in part to make it more impressive and in part to
keep from alerting the Murgo who was somewhere in the palace.
The rose on my palm shriveled down to almost nothing, and then
it sprouted a tiny, spiraling shoot that grew quite rapidly, branching
out as it reached up toward the sun. Leaves appeared first, and then
the tips of the twigs swelled into buds. When the buds opened, each
new rose was of a different color.
‘Now that’s something you don’t see every day, isn’t it,
Mangaran?’ Asrana suggested mildly.
The earl appeared more than a little startled. Then he quickly
regained his composure. ‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘Welcome to Vo Astur,
Lady Polgara.’ He bowed with exquisite grace.
I translocated my rainbow rosebush into a corner of the nearby
flower bed and responded to the earl’s bow with a curtsey. ‘Now
that we’ve covered that, we need to talk, my Lord.’
‘You’ve managed to capture my undivided attention, Lady
Polgara. I’m at your immediate disposal.’
‘Oh, please don’t dispose of him, Polly,’ Asrana said, her eyes
sparkling. ‘If you don’t want him, let me have him.’
‘That will do, Asrana,’ I told her. Then I looked at Mangaran. ‘Are
you in the mood for a touch of treason this morning, my Lord?’ I
asked him.
‘I’m an Arend, Lady Polgara,’ he said with a faint smile. ‘I’m
always in the mood for mischief.’
‘Polly’s going to kill our duke,’ Asrana said breathlessly, ‘and I
get to watch while she does it.’
‘Me too?’ Mangaran said in a tone every bit as childish as Asrana’s.
‘Oh, dear,’ I sighed. ‘What have I let myself in for?’
‘We’ll be good, Polly,’ Asrana promised. ‘How are we going to
exterminate the Bug?’
‘We probably aren’t going to,’ I told them. ‘He might know some
things I’ll need. He’s being led down the garden path by a Murgo
who’s trying to start a war between Arendia and the Tolnedran
empire.’
‘Great Chaldan!’ Mangaran exclaimed. ‘Our duke’s an idiot, but
‘He’s not the only one who’s being deceived, my Lord,’ I told
him. ‘I’ve just come from Vo Wacune, and the same thing’s been
going on there – and probably in Vo Mimbre as well. The Angaraks
are trying to stir up dissent and wars here in the west in preparation
for an invasion out of Mallorea. My father sent me here to Arendia
to put a stop to it. I gather that your duke’s too thick-witted to listen
to reason, so I don’t think we’ve got any choice but to depose him
and put you in his place.’
,Me? Why me?’
Why does everybody keep saying that?
I told him why him in the bluntest way imaginable, and even the
unflappable Asrana seemed just a little flapped.
‘The duke has a lot of guards, Lady Polgara,’ Earl Mangaran said
dubiously, ‘and they get paid even when the rest of the army doesn’t.
They’ll defend him with their very lives.’
‘We could bribe them,’ Asrana suggested.
‘A man who can be bribed usually isn’t honorable enough to stay
bribed,’ Mangaran disagreed.
Asrana shrugged. ‘Poison the lot of them, Polly. I’m sure you’ve
got something in that little bag of yours that’ll turn the trick.’
‘That’s not a very good idea, dear,’ I told her. ‘This is Arendia,
and the bodyguards have families. If we kill them, you’ll both spend
the rest of your lives looking back over your shoulders for somebody
with a knife to come sneaking up behind you. I’ll take care of the
bodyguards.’
‘When are we going to do this?’ Earl Mangaran asked.
‘Did you have anything planned for this evening, my Lord?’
‘Nothing that can’t be postponed. Aren’t we moving a little fast,
though?’
‘I think we must, my Lord. This is Arendia, after all, and no plot
here is secure for more than a few hours.’
‘True,’ he sighed. ‘Sad, but true.’
‘Be of good cheer, my Lord Duke,’ Asrana said roguishly. ‘I’ll
comfort you while Polly does the dirty work.’
*cHAPTER 14
History tends to gloss over revolutions, since they’re an indication
of that disunity and internal strife that academics find distressingly
messy. They do happen, however, and Arendia’s the perfect place
for them. I take a certain pride in the one I pulled off in Asturia
that summer, because it might just be the only one that’s ever gone
from inception to conclusion in a single day. That’s no mean trick
in Arendia, where the people just love to drag things out. Arends
are addicted to high drama, and that always takes time. If it hadn’t
been for the presence of Krachack’s counterpart here in Vo Astur,
we might have been able to move at a more leisurely pace,
but all it would have taken to make the whole thing crumble in my hands
would have been a chance word in the wrong place at the wrong
time.
Asrana looked around furtively, and when she spoke to me it
was in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘How do we proceed, Polly?’ she
asked me.
A word of advice to my family here. If anyone among you ever calls
me ‘Polly’, you’ll all get boiled hay for supper every night for a
week. I let Asrana get away with it for a very specific reason.
‘In the first place, Asrana, you’re going to stop doing that. No
crouching, no tip-toeing down dark corridors, and no whispers. Talk
in a normal voice and don’t keep looking around like a burglar with
a sack-full of loot over his shoulder. When you do that, you might
as well wave a flag, blow a trumpet, and hang a sign reading
“conspirator” around your neck.’
‘You’re taking all the fun out of this, Polly,’ she pouted.
,How much fun do you think spending forty years in the
dungeon’s going to be?’
‘Not much, I suppose,’ she conceded.
‘Think about it, dear. Keep the idea of sleeping on moldy straw
with rats for company firmly in mind all the rest of the day.’ I looked
at Earl Mangaran. ‘I gather that Oldoran doesn’t really have much
support here in Vo Astur, right?’
Almost none, Lady Polgara,’ he replied. ‘The members of his own
family support him, of course, and there are a few nobles who’ve
been profiting from his misrule. That’s about all – except for those
bodyguards I mentioned before.’
‘I’ll take care of the bodyguards,’ I assured him. I thought about
it for a moment. ‘Is there someone you can depend on who has a
house here in Vo Astur – a house some distance from the palace?’
He thought about it. ‘Baron Torandin sort of fits that description,
my Lady.’
‘Does he know how to keep things to himself? And will he do
as you ask without needing too many details?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Good. Ask him to have a party at his house this evening. Draw
up a guest list that includes everybody with blood ties to the duke
and those who have a financial stake in his remaining on the throne.
Sprinkle the crowd with some neutrals just so that nothing’s too
obvious. I don’t want any of the duke’s partisans around tonight.’
He grinned at me. ‘Torandin’s the perfect choice, then. His parties
are famous all over Asturia. Everyone he invites will be there.’
‘Good. Now let’s move on to our party. Let’s keep it small and
exclusive. The more people who know about our scheme, the more
chance there is for word of what we’re up to to reach the wrong
ears. I don’t want more than a dozen people to know what we’re
doing.’
‘You can’t overthrow a government with only a dozen people,
my Lady!’
‘You can if you do it right, my Lord. We’re not going to run
around waving swords and shouting slogans. Our scheme’s far more
subtle.’
‘That’s a very nasty word, Polly,’ Asrana complained.
‘Which word was that, dear?’
“Scheme.’ Couldn’t we find something more uplifting to call it?’
‘Let’s see. How about “plot”? “Conspiracy”, maybe? “Treason”?
“Betrayal of trust”? “Violation of a sacred oath”?’
‘None of those sound very nice either,’ she objected.
‘What we’re doing isn’t nice, Asrana. Oldoran’s the legal authority
here in Asturia, and we’re plotting his overthrow. That makes us
criminals – or patriots.’
‘That’s a nicer word. I like that one.’
‘Very well, then, Patriot Asrana. You told me that you could wrap
any man in Vo Astur around your little finger. Get to wrapping.’