Helga chuckled. “Father, you’re not rebelling against the Customs of the Ancestors yourself, now?”
“Our Ancestors were a bunch of pig farmers,” Demansk said bluntly. “My grandfather used to be out every day, weeding the fields beside his slaves. Times have changed; Audsley’s rebellion, Marcomann’s dictatorship, the proscriptions . . . things are falling apart.” His gaze sharpened. “And evidently my daughter has been driven mad by a scratch from one of the cats that draws Gellerix’s chariot, and has become besotted with a rebel.”
Helga shook her head. “Adrian’s not . . . not really a rebel. His brother, Esmond, yes—Esmond would bring the whole Confederacy down in ruins, and everyone in it, I think, if he could. Adrian’s more . . . reasonable.”
“Reasonable and learned,” Demansk said, keeping his voice casual. “He’s the one that came up with this damnable hellpowder stuff, isn’t he?”
Helga laughed ruefully. “You know, Father, the reason Adrian put me ashore was that he didn’t want me to be forced to betray the Confederacy. And here you are, trying to worm his secrets out of me! I’m between the mad velipad and the direbeast.”
“If you don’t want to talk about it . . . I suppose I do owe this man something for getting you out of Vase, and for putting you ashore.”
“There’s not much for me to say,” Helga said. “I don’t know how the hellpowder is made—Adrian didn’t tell me, and it’s a close-kept secret. So are the other weapons.”
“Other weapons?” Demansk said sharply.
“There were all sorts of rumors, and I saw what happened in Vase—the city wall pounded to rubble, and the gates of the citadel smashed like kindling.”
“Hmmm.” Demansk rubbed his chin again. “I suppose . . . larger barrels of hellpowder thrown by catapults? That could get nasty, very nasty, especially in siege operations, or at sea—and here we’re faced with both!” He slammed a fist into the arm of the folding camp chair, hard enough to make the tough wood and leather creak. “I spend my whole life learning the trade of war—not leaving it to the underofficers, but really learning it, the way Marcomann did, damn his soul to the Ash Fields—and this whippersnapper of an Emerald turns it upside down, all at once. A philosopher, a rhetorician!”
“Father . . . I don’t think Adrian really is a rhetorician, not anymore. He studied rhetoric, and he’s very good at it . . . but what he mostly seems to be interested in now is . . . is the . . . way the world’s put together.”
Demansk’s eyebrows shot up. “A natural philosopher? Hmmm. There haven’t been any of those since the League Wars! If this hellpowder is what comes of it, I’m glad there hasn’t been. Still, the wine’s out of the jug now, no use trying to put it back.” His shrewd green eyes fastened on his daughter’s face. “Just what do you think this Adrian fellow will do, facing us now.”
“Facing you now,” Helga snorted. “Jeschonyk couldn’t find . . . what’s the soldier’s expression?”
Couldn’t find his dick with both hands and a hooker to help, Demansk thought automatically. Still, however much of a tomboy she was, there were things you didn’t say to a daughter.
“Couldn’t find his arse with both hands on a dark night,” he chuckled aloud. “Not quite fair. He has enough sense to leave details to experts, and he listens . . . occasionally. But he’s set in his ways even for a man of his generation. And I asked you a question, missy.”
Helga’s chin went up. “Adrian will do what you least expect, and when you least expect it,” she said proudly. “His brother’s a good soldier and a demon with a sword but Adrian . . . thinks about things.”
Demansk shuddered, a little theatrically. “Allfather Greatest and Best, this business is bad enough without scholarship,” he said, and then cocked an eye. “Rumor has it that the gods talk to your Adrian.”
He hid his surprise when Helga looked distinctly uneasy; she was as skeptical as any young noble—the way the younger generation openly said things that were whispered in his younger days shocked him, now and then. In his grandfather’s day they’d been killing matters.