Gloomily, she studied the army camp without really noticing any of its details. Her mind was still focused inward, awash in memories of Jessep’s warm presence and Ilset’s frequent gaiety. But Jessep and Ilset were gone, now. The Paramount had ordered his Special Attendant to the eastern provinces, to give Forent Nappur what aid he could in bringing that region out of a state of chaos. They were low-born easterners themselves. If anyone could cajole or convince or swindle—or just break the heads, where needed—of those headstrong commoners recapturing their yeomanry, it would be men like them.
Helga understood the logic of her father’s command. Just as she understood the logic of everything he did these days. But she didn’t have to like it, or the way that logic was turning her father into a grim and forbidding presence—and had deprived her of a substitute in Jessep. Much less the way it had turned her own husband into someone who, for all that he moved and talked and walked about—even made love to her, now and then—reminded her more of a statue than anything else.
A voice startled her. “Oh, give it a rest, girl. Men are men, it’s the way it is.”
Arsule was huffing her way up the trail. Just behind her, walking with far greater ease, was Jeschonyk’s former concubine Kata. Arsule had more or less adopted the slave girl, unofficially—and had already announced she would adopt her, once her husband had the good sense to extend the emancipation throughout the Confederacy. Or, at least, make manumission something feasible, instead of the tortuous legal process which had so far stymied even the wife of the Paramount.
Arsule reached the crest and took a few triumphant breaths. Then, slapped a hand on her rump. “There’s advantages to having a meaty ass—your father damn well dotes on it—but rigorous exercise is not one of them. However, I thought this would be a good time for us to talk. Which we need to—and you, I think, much more than me.”
She fluttered her fingers toward the army camp. “Forget all that, would you? Nothing you can do about it, and all this fretting and glumming you’ve been doing is not good. Not for you, not for anyone else.”
“There’s no such word as ‘glumming’,” replied Helga, a bit sullenly.
“Of course, there is. I just used it, didn’t I?” Arsule gave her that sideways cock of the head which Helga still found a bit weird. After all these months of close proximity, Helga had gotten accustomed to Arsule’s multitude of mannerisms, quirks and eccentricities. But only . . . more or less.
“Fussing over the decline of the menfolk, are we? And just what did you expect would happen, silly girl? They’re not actually monsters, you know; it’d be easier for them if they were. Just men trying to play the part, and getting worn down by it in the process. Especially when it goes on, month after month, with no end in sight.”
She straightened her head with a jerky, bird-like motion. “Oh, to be sure, this nasty business here will be settled soon enough. But there’ll be something else come along right after, you can bet on it. The eastern provinces will dissolve into sheer anarchy; there’ll be another rampage of starving ex-slaves somewhere in the west—or here, more likely. Plague, pestilence, that’s guaranteed. Another pathetic uprising by some piece of the aristocracy still intact. Easy enough to crush, of course, but crushing doesn’t really come all that easily to our sort of men. Praise whatever gods may be. Which,” she said firmly, “brings me to the subject at hand.”
She beckoned Kata forward. Helga was shaking her head, trying to follow the—as usual—convoluted route which Arsule’s thoughts always seemed to take.
“What are you talking about?”
Arsule’s eyes widened, as a polite person’s will do when someone asks them a particularly inane question.
“Religion. What else? You and I are going to become fanatics. Well . . . devout converts, anyway, if not outright fanatics. Not overnight, of course. Men aren’t that stupid. And we happen to be cursed by an especially shrewd pair of them, to boot. So we’ll have to ease our way into the thing.”