“I care for you, girls. Very much. So I’ve made arrangements in case something happens to me. Men will come here—soldiers, probably—from Lady Knecht. Do what they say, go with them.”
Several of the younger girls began babbling assurances that nothing untoward could possibly happen—! But not Kata. Perhaps because she was older, or smarter—or simply, like any Southron girl by the age of ten, had seen plenty of relatives hacked down in the tribes’ perennial feuding.
“Can we trust them, master?”
“Yes. As long as they are from Lady Knecht. No one else, you hear?”
She bowed her head in obedience. As he had so many times before, Jeschonyk found himself admiring the clean lines of her neck and shoulders, the long blond hair spilling over her breasts, the—
“I’ll be damned,” he said, startled. “Once more—at my age? Come here, Kata.”
* * *
He whispered just one thing that night, the rest of the noises he made being much louder. Into Kata’s ear, this, so that none of the others could hear: “You have always been my favorite.”
“I know,” was her reply, whispered back. And there was something in those two words which let Ion Jeschonyk finally realize that, at least in her case, he no longer had to wonder.
* * *
The next morning, at daybreak, half the Council was pounding on his door. He spent the rest of the day—and the next, and the next, and the next—in a whirlpool of deceit and deception and double-dealing. Which had its own quirky pleasure, admittedly. Even at his age—perhaps because of his age—Jeschonyk could lie and deceive and double-deal better than anyone.
All the more so because he knew one secret that none of the other Councillors knew. Of that, he was quite sure. He had not even told Demansk that he knew.
Everyone else thought that Demansk’s daughter, Helga, was still in seclusion at their distant estate in the far western province on the coast. Being a female, of course—especially a disgraced one—she was not really of much concern to the great men of Vanbert. But Jeschonyk was no fool. So he, alone, had paid spies to keep an eye on her. And he, alone, knew that she had long since departed for the south, leaving a girl who resembled her a great deal (at least at a distance) to serve as her double.
Where she had gone, exactly, Jeschonyk was not sure. Marange, according to what his spies had been able to learn. Nor did Jeschonyk have any real idea what she was doing down there.
But he could guess. He was one of the few Councillors of Vanbert who had actually seen the bastard. And if that blue-eyed babe with his fuzz of golden hair had been sired by a fat old islander pirate, Jeschonyk would eat his own tunic.
* * *
“So what do you think, damnation? Speak up, Ion!”
The half shout from one of the Councillors in the chamber broke Jeschonyk’s little reverie. He looked up and saw that the shouter was one of Tomsien’s allies.
Slowly, with great dignity, Triumvir Ion Jeschonyk, former Speaker Emeritus of the Confederacy of Vanbert and without question its most prestigious and respected living statesman, rose to his feet and uttered the finest lie of his life.
“Nothing to fear, my fellow Councillors! The balance of power remains intact, does it not?” He gave the man who had shouted at him a stately nod. “Despite the size of the great force Demansk has assembled—which, I remind you all, has even now set forth to rid us once and for all of the predations of piracy—Triumvir Tomsien still retains a larger force in his southern provinces. And what could possibly threaten that army?”
He sat down amidst scattered applause and a collective sigh of relief so loud it could have almost lifted the great rotunda of the chamber. And, while the Council proceeded to its next round of squabbles, went back to his contemplations on bastardy.
* * *
A week later, by sea, the same news came to Marange.
“That’s it, then,” said Helga. Adrian was already heading for the door, wanting to reach Prelotta’s pavilion as soon as possible. From the room where he and Ilset made their own quarters, Jessep Yunkers was hurrying also.