“His Grace is doubtless correct.” Again, it was all I could think of to say.
“Of course. Trying to manage an unruly population would be expensive and bloody. The duke’s presence can do you a great deal of good. So, to put it simply, you’ve won. You know you’ve won, and the duke knows that you’ve won. He knows that all that he can do now is to aid in making the transition as painless as possible.”
“Good,” I said, feeling I was in way over my head. “I’m glad that’s all cleared up. But for now, the less said, the better.”
“Of course. I only wanted to add that if there is anything that I or my people can do, you have only to ask.”
“Good. Uh, it might be nice if the archbishop would stop trying to stir up trouble,” I said, taking a stab in the dark.
“That matter has already been taken care of. Our good archbishop suffered an unfortunate fall on a long stairway only an hour ago. We’ll all go to his funeral in a few days. You’ll get an invitation. Until the banquet, then.”
And then he left.
Roxanna seemed to be in shock after hearing the warlock talk, and said not a word during the rest of the walk home. An hour later, she was back to normal. Later, when I asked her for her thoughts about what the warlock had said, she claimed that he had said nothing, that the warlock had never spoken to me at all!
My only conclusion is that her mind was made up of little boxes, and that like all Christians, there were areas that contained things that she simply wasn’t able to think about at all.
I was happy to meet Adam on the way to the palace. I waved the women on ahead of us and then told him word for word what the warlock had said.
“It’s a real pity, about the archbishop, but I guess it had to happen,” Adam said. “But about everything else, it’s wonderful! Success in our own time! Victory! Our plan couldn’t possibly have worked out better! It’ll be clean sailing from here out.”
“Plan?” I said, “What plan? We never had a plan! And since when were we playing power politics on that level?”
“Since we left with our tails between our legs, survived the trip back, set up our trading company exactly like we told the people here we were going to do, and came back with a small, but very competent army to back us up. I mean, why else did we hire those ex-SEALs and the ex-Special Forces types? Rent-A-Cops would have been a whole lot cheaper. I was real impressed with your style all the way along there.”
“But I never really had a plan, Adam. I was just doing what seemed right at the time, making sure that we could get back here to the girls, and making sure that we could protect them.”
“And now they will be perfectly safe. You planned this outcome right from the beginning. Without a well thought out plan, it never could have worked out this perfectly.”
“I tell you, Adam, I never had a plan!”
“Yes, you did, even if maybe you didn’t know about it. You see, Treet, you have one of those `compartmentalized’ minds, the kind that can be totally rational in most things, but with some areas that are sort of like a computer in `protect’ mode, where you aren’t allowed to think about what’s in there. I mean, how else could you be such a good engineer, and still believe in that Atheism shit you’re always spouting? Anyway, we gotta get going, or we’ll be late to our own victory celebration, that the duke’s throwing for us.”
I stood there speechless, with my mouth open, until Roxanna took my arm and dragged me after the others.
The End