Adrian looked around in alarm, fast enough to draw a fresh throb of pain from his bandaged leg. It was healing so quickly as to be near miraculous in this hot climate—Center had had some hints about spirits of wine—but it was a serious wound.
“No, don’t worry, little brother,” Esmond said. “We couldn’t get away with it—not between Casull and the Confeds. The Confeds might take us on as client-kings, but that’s out of the question, of course.” His smile became a little strange. “Their camp burned, but Vanbert still stands . . . and Nanya’s not avenged yet.”
Adrian swallowed and looked away. “Well, there’s an idea I’ve had,” he said. I and my friends. “It would get us away from Chalice, which Casull would like; it’ll cause the Confeds a lot of grief, which we’ll both like—” though you more than me, brother, he thought sadly. Center’s merciless visions left a man little of the loyalties he’d been brought up with. “—and I think it might really change things.”
“As long as it’s a change the Confeds hate, I’m for it,” Esmond said, waving to a bevy of hareem beauties leaning out of a window and throwing dried flower petals. The sons of the Syndics were making heavy weather of the crowds on the way to the Town Hall, even with a squad of Esmond’s Strikers going before them with active spear butts. “Tell me more.”
* * *
“O King, live forever, your favor has been lavished on us like the Sun’s light on the fields,” Adrian said, gagging slightly on his own fulsomeness. It didn’t sound quite so bad in Islander, but he could see why his ancestors had fought so hard in the League Wars to keep the Islanders out of the Emerald cities. “We wrack our brains for a means whereby we may repay a tenth, a thousandth of the kindness you have shown our unworthy, outland selves.”
When you’re dealing with an autarch, lay it on with a trowel, lad, Raj’s voice said. At least, when he’s got the jump on you. Part of the cost of doing business.
Despite the riches and titles King Casull had showered on the Gellerts—he had little choice, with the greatest Islander victory over the Confeds in five generations dropped in his lap—it was notable that the Gellerts were no longer invited to small informal audiences. This one was in the Syndic’s Hall of Preble; besides the guards who lined the wall behind the throne there were a brace before the dais as well, and a quartet of hard-faced Islander admirals—or pirate chiefs, if you looked at it from another angle—flanking the King.
“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” Casull said, leaning his bearded chin on a fist and the elbow on an arm of the throne. The aigrette of peacock feathers and diamonds nodded over a face more lined and gray than it had been when the Gellerts first saw him. “Do go on.”
“O King, the Isles are strong at sea. The Confederation is strong on land; not least because of the endless number of their fighting men. This is the Isle’s most insoluable problem, because while the Confed’s numbers may learn skill, the Isles cannot bring forth a half a million peasants to draft into an army.”
“Yes, yes.” An impatient gesture of the hand.
“Would it not then follow—” Adrian caught himself falling back into the cadence of a Grove lecture, and gave himself a mental shake “—be sensible, I mean, to make alliance with the only other power which commands manpower on the same scale?”
Casull’s brows rose. “Now you really do interest me! What power is left in the civilized world, beyond the Isles and a few little scraps, and Confed client kingdoms and puppets?”
“No civilized kingdom, lord King.”
Adrian waited, sweating, while the lights went on behind the King’s dark eyes. Inwardly, he asked once more: Are we really going to serve civilization by arming barbarians? We call the Islanders that, but the Southrons—they’re fucking savages, no mincing words.
given a continuation of present trends, civilization on the northern continent will fall; the probability is as close to unity as stochastic analysis allows, Center thought remorselessly. A vision unrolled before Adrian’s eyes, one he had seen before—the gap-toothed grin of a Southron horseman as he pursued a silk-clad woman down a street in burning Vanbert. Adrian blinked it away with a shudder; his own mind had painted Helga’s face on her.