Elvenblood (43 page)

And they all played host to elves who were too low in rank and status to have estates, manor houses, and concubines of their own—or young elves, leashed and collared by their lord fathers, who likewise had nothing of the sort as their own. This—and the taverns like it, in this city and the other four trade-cities—was where the "legacies," the supervisors, the seneschals and trainers, came to forget the petty insults heaped upon them by their liege lords. This was where the "extra" sons and the disregarded heirs came, to forget that there was nothing that they would ever see or touch that was truly
theirs
.

This was where the former concubines, or young girls and boys too delicate to serve in the fields, but not comely enough to grace a harem or work as house slaves, also came. It was difficult to imagine a worse life than that of a field hand, but surely this was it. Especially for the traumatized, abused creatures waiting in those upper rooms. Lorryn tried not to think too hard about them; he was already doing what he could to change their fates.

Lorryn provided a sympathetic ear, and more important, a ready purse. (Many of them were kept on meager allowances by those so-careful lord fathers, generally an amount that was less than the cost of a good dog or a field hand.) He offered his wine and murmurs of understanding. That was common enough; they all shared their grievances, those who came here. What was uncommon was that he also provided a remedy.

Word of that remedy was spreading.

He had learned something fascinating during the hours he had spent in these places, where the air was scented with perfume to cover the odor of spilled wine, and the light was dim to hide the stains on the velvets and satins of the upholstery, the serving girls, and the clientele. His worst fear had been that one or more of the seemingly disgruntled would prove to be an informant, and that the game would be uncovered be fore it began. And surely one or more
had
been an informant—

But whether they informed out of fear or out of greed, when he actually gave them a way to even the odds with the Great Lords, when he
showed
them how ineffective magic was against his "talismanic" jewelry, they all turned. Each and every one of them turned against the lord they had been working for, passed over the gold, hid the necklace, headband, and armbands in the breast of his tunic, and walked out without a word.

Except, perhaps, to "inform" to someone else who had a lord as cruel, as indifferent, as sadistic as his own.

He had always known that the Great Lords were cruel to their underlings, but he had never, in all of his planning, guessed that they were
so
cruel that their liegemen would turn against them at the first opportunity. He had seen the gilded facade of their world, as he walked through it as Lord Tylar's son and heir. Beneath the languid manners, the pretty magics, the idle games, was a cruelty that was all the darker for being so completely casual, a cruelty that used up and disposed of humans and elves alike as if they were toys meant only to amuse an idle hour.

He sipped his wine, and sat in his back-corner booth, and waited for them to find him.

There had been a young lord—he must be a younger son, for he did not wear livery, and his clothing was of too high a quality to be an underling—sitting at a table nearby, drinking steadily, and watching him for the past hour. Now, finally, he rose to his feet, wove his way through the tables with surprising grace (considering the quantity of drink he'd been putting away), and settled himself onto the bench across from Lorryn, empty cup still in hand. He helped himself to the wine in Lorryn's pitcher without a by-your-leave, which further argued for a high position.

Lorryn simply nodded, and pushed the pitcher of wine closer to his new drinking companion.

The stranger took that as an open invitation, downed his cup in a single gulp, and poured it full afresh.

"
Fathers
," he said at last, sneering, and making the word a curse. 'Tell you how important you are from the time you can walk, give you ev-everything you ask for right up until you co-come of age.
Then
what?"

"You tell me," Lorryn said blandly.

"Nothing, that's what!" The stranger emptied the cup again; this time Lorryn refilled it. "You come of age, and nothing changes! You're still 'the boy,' still have to come and go as you're bid! You want to ha-have a little fun, bring in some friends, and next thing you know,
he's
got you hauled up in front of him like you were stealing from his money chest!"

"Ah," Lorryn replied wisely. "I know. You want to have a little manor of your own, a few slave-girls, you ask for it, and hoy! He acts like you'd spit on the names of your Ancestors!"

"Oh, aye!" the stranger agreed. "And just try and walk off the path, just a bit, just for a lark!
He's
on you, he's using his power on you as if you were his slave, his property! Bad enough he crushes you down to the ground, worse that he lays the Will-Lash on you! Next thing you know, he's threatening the Change on you, to make you mind!"

'To unmake your mind, you mean," Lorryn said, in a grim voice.
Ah, so that's what's set this one off. Not that I blame him, not after what Rena told me
. "Make you into some kind of puppet, dancing to
his
tune!"

"That's ex-exactly what he said!" the young elven lord said in surprise. " 'You dance to my tune, boy, with the Change or without it, so put your mind to it!" And next thing I know, he's got me betrothed to some whining, milk-faced girl who can't walk across a room without having vapors, who can't say three sensible words in a row, who—Ancestors, help me!—
faints
whenever she sees a man with his shirt off! What's she going to do when she sees more than that? And I'm
stuck
with her!"

"And if you choose to leave her in the bower, and find some fun elsewhere?" Lorryn prompted.

The young lord snarled. "It'll be the Change for me, my lad. I'm to
do my duty by her, like a proper er-Lord
, that's what!" He poured another cup of wine, but this time he didn't drink it. Instead he leaned over the table and said, in a far different tone, "But I've heard there's a remedy for that situation."

Lorryn made patterns on the tabletop with his finger and a bit of spilled wine. Filigree patterns. "There might be—so I've heard," he said casually.

"I've heard there's a bit of jewelry that can keep someone from—having magic worked on him against his will." The er-Lord looked up through his long, pale eyelashes expectantly—and a little desperately.

"There might be. I've heard that." Lorryn completed his lacy pattern. "I've also heard there's something of a craze for patterned silver necklaces, armbands, headbands. Very popular among the young lords these days, I'm told. You might begin to wonder if the cure for your troubles is in that jewelry, eh?"

The stranger nodded eagerly. "You wouldn't know where I could find a dealer for some of that—would you? A man's got to keep up with the fashions."

Lorryn pretended to think about it. "You know, I might have a bit of that with me now," he replied. "I'd bought it for a friend, but I could let you have it right now for the same price. I can go find the maker again, easily enough, but he's a hard man for a stranger to find."

"And what would that price be?" Now the er-Lord was leaning forward so eagerly that Lorryn almost spoiled the entire deal by laughing out loud. He named the price, and the stranger pulled a purse off his belt and shoved it across the table.

"There's twice that in gold there," he said, his fingers twitching, as if he could not wait to get his hands on the jewelry. "Take it, take it all!" The desperation in his eyes overwhelmed the wine. Then again, who
wouldn't
be desperate, threatened with the Change?

Lorryn did not touch the purse; he carefully took a purse of his own from his belt, one containing silk-wrapped, silver plated ironwork from the hands of Diric's people, and slid it across the table. The er-Lord snatched it up, hiding it in the breast of his tunic, and only then did Lorryn take the purse of gold.

"You'll want to test it, of course—for its
quality
and
workmanship
," he said. "There'll be a party three nights from now in the private room above the Silver Rose. If you show up there, wearing
that
, someone who's an expert in jewelry will look it over for you, and you might hear something more that's likely to interest you. And keep it in the silk until you need to use it, hey? You know how things—give themselves away. You give the game away, and you'll hurt more than yourself."

The er-Lord nodded, obviously impatient to be gone. Lorryn suppressed a smile.
He
was able to hear this one's thoughts as clearly as if he were shouting, which, in a sense, he was. That was how Lorryn knew who the would-be informants were—and knew when he had persuaded them to his side.

This young man could hardly wait to get his prizes home. He planned to wear them constantly, as so many of his friends were, hidden beneath the silk of his clothing as like as not. And he would be at that party, another set of willing hands to aid the revolt that Lorryn was planting the seeds of. Lorryn would not even be there—

He didn't have to. The ringleader of the revolt, at least in this city, was Lord Gweriliath's seneschal, a man who had seen his precious daughter sent away as a bride to another powerful lord more than old enough to be her great-grandsire, and all to pay one of Lord Gweriliath's gambling debts. Lorryn only needed to coordinate the revolt; the ringleaders sprang up of their own accord as soon as word of the power of the jewelry began to spread.

And Lorryn had hardly been able to restrain himself when he saw, this very morning,
copies
of the filigree jewelry showing up in shops—but in gold, of course, and with none of the detail and intricacy of the genuine article. Before long, the er-Lords themselves might just start plating the silver with gold, and no one would ever be able to tell the difference between the genuine article and the copies.

Except by the effect—or lack of it.

"I wish you well, sir," he said gravely, giving the young er-Lord the signal that the interview was over. "And do enjoy the party."

"I shall, trust me, I shall." And with that, the young elven lord was out of his seat and striding out of the room with no sign whatsoever that he had put away enough wine to knock out a cart-horse.

Lorryn waited a little longer, but the hour was late, and it appeared that this was going to be his final "customer" of the evening. He paid the tavern-keeper—and paid him generously. The tavern-keeper was a human, and under his livery tunic he wore a much simplified version of the filigree-work torque, a cross between the women's jewels and the warriors' torques. These were being turned out by the clever hands of human slaves, craftsmen bought with the gold the lords were paying for the prettier styles.

They were very popular with the slaves, although Lorryn was being
very
careful whom he sold—or gave—these little baubles to. It had to be to someone who had a strong grievance against his current or past masters—and yet someone who was unlikely to be on the receiving end of his current master's power. Shopkeepers were good prospects; tavern-keepers, some overseers, a concubine or two. These, Lorryn tested himself, heart and soul.

He left the half-finished pitcher of wine on the table, and went up to the third floor, bypassing the second altogether. Here was where the tavern-keeper had his own quarters, and where the offices were. And here the tavern-keeper had made a small apartment, which Lorryn lived in with his sister and with Mero.

He paused outside the door, and sent a delicate thought-touch to the occupant. Mero opened the door for him, and he slipped inside.

"Convenient, this wizard-power, when you're building a conspiracy," he remarked, as Mero returned to the task he had left, of carefully wrapping silver-clad iron in swaths of silk, then slipping the resulting packet into a pouch like the one Lorryn had just given the young er-Lord below.

"That's precisely why the elven lords have been trying to destroy the power for so long," Mero replied, but he looked more troubled than the simple remark called for.

"What's the matter?" Lorryn asked, answering Mero's frown of anger and worry with a frown of concern.

"Shana—has her hands full," came the slow reply. "Keman and Dora went off on some quest of their own just after we left, and as soon as they could manage it, Caellach Gwain and a good half of the wizards called a wizards' Council against her, the alliance with the Iron People, and anything else they could think of. They don't
believe
that the elven lords are going to come after them—and even if they did, Caellach has the old whiners all convinced that all they have to do is give Shana up to the elves and the danger will be over!"

Lorryn did not shout his anger—but his hands clenched into fists, and a hot rage burned up in him. "They have a flexible notion of honor," he drawled. "Almost as flexible as that of the elven lords."

Mero stared at him for a moment, then his mouth twitched involuntarily. "Can I quote you on that when I talk to her?" he asked. "That's too good a line of argument to waste."

Lorryn relaxed, just the tiniest trifle. If Mero was able to see the humor in something, the situation couldn't be a total disaster—at least, not yet.

She has her allies, and she's very powerful in her own right. The other dragons will support her. If she has to, she can escape before they can make her a prisoner
. "Of course," he said, "and while you're at it—remind her to tell them that if the elven lords are treacherous enough to break the treaty in the first place, they are
certainly
treacherous enough to accept Shana, then attack anyway."

"A good point," Mero agreed. "Oh, I'm worried, but right now it's only at the talking point, and all the dragons are backing Shana, so the very worst that would happen would be that Alara would have to fly off with Shana and the rest of her followers, and take them all down to the Iron People."