Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (34 page)

     “You say this, White Wolf, because you do not know these things,” he told me.  “The call of the magic is too great.  You don’t teach children to ride wild horses, you teach them to ride tame.”

     “But you
do
teach them to ride,” I argued.

     I looked back at Lendeen.  “I think that there are thousands of barely gifted who practice in secret, and who learn to control their power and do simple spells.”

     “If you want to fund some sort of experimentation,” one of the Oligarchs informed me, “that is certainly within your power.  May I only ask that we do it in a place not close to anything – um – “

     “Anything you don’t want to lose,” Henekh finished for him. “Volkhydrans don’t play with this power at all, Lupus.  You’d be wise not to either.  The gods grant magic to control the rest of us – b
ut for a few big snakes you can see, a lot of little ones can be hiding anywhere.”

     That was an interesting hypothesis and jibed with a lot of other things I’d seen since I’d come here.  We spoke through dinner without coming to any real conclusions, but I resolved that, before I left on the campaign I’d promised Tartan, I was going to set up a school for the barely gifted.

     Nowhere near the palace, of course.

Chapter Sixteen

              The Party’s Over

     I returned to my rooms a little drunk and a little flustered.  I admit it – I don’t like it when people disagree with me, especially when I know I’m right.  None of them were going to set up the kind of schools I planned to set up, and even my own people were going to resist it.

     This wasn’t something that I could do on my own, even if I had the time, which I didn’t.  I pushed the door open to my room
s, grateful to see that Shela’s countrywomen had vacated them, and pulled my shirt over my head.  I sat down on the divan and pulled my boots off, and then leaned back and wondered if I wanted one more drink before I crashed.

     I hadn’t slept alone in a long time and I wasn’t looking forward to it.

     I about jumped out of my skin when Nina trotted out of the bath room.  She was wearing something like a sun dress that girls around the palace usually wore when it was warm.  It was a light, white cotton with a black belt and straps.  Nina still had a child’s body and the outfit suited her.

     “Where’s Shela and Lee?” she asked me.

     She crossed the room and jumped up on the divan next to me.  By jump I mean three steps, a leap, a twist in mid-air and then landing on her behind six inches from me to my right.  I was impressed but didn’t say anything because to an Aschire, that was as normal as breathing.

     “They’re staying with the Andarans in a pavilion outside of the stables,” I informed her.

     She nodded.  “Those ladies left,” she informed me.

     “They did, huh?”

     Nina nodded.  “They were crying and complaining to each other in Andaran.  I don’t know what they said but the Wolf Soldiers took them from the parlor and they both had a bunch of bloody linens with them.”

     My life is hell.

     “Um, so, do you understand, I mean – do you know…?” I sputtered out.

     Nina sighed.  “I figured you did babies with them,” she informed me. 

     As honest an assessment as I would have been capable of, anyway.

    “What do you think of that?” I asked her.

     Her people considered Nina a woman now.  More importantly, adults tended to tell children what to think rather than get their opinions, and I think that made for a disservice for both parties. 

     Of course, I had no friggin’ idea
what
to tell Nina to think, and that helped.

     She screwed up her face and looked up at the ceiling for a moment.  “I think you’re going to make Shela mad with that,” she said, finally.  “Krell taught me how some Men have more than one wife, and that’s fine, but Aschire only have one, and I think that’s better.”

     I smiled.  “I think that’s better, too,” I told her.  “I think from now on it’s just Shela and me.”

     “And me,” she informed me, laying her little purple head on my forearm.  My heart skipped a beat.

     “I’m going to watch all the babies,” she concluded. 

     Oh, thank you, whichever god straightened that out.

     “I need to go to sleep,” I informed her.  “Have you picked out rooms in the wing you were looking at this week?”

     She took my forearm in both hands without looking up at me.  “Yes, but they aren’t ready.”

     Nina did
not
like to sleep alone. “Do you want to bring in a pillow and a blanket and sleep on the divan?” I asked her.

     She nodded, still not looking up at me. 

     “Ok,” I informed her, and she was up off of the divan before I could change my mind.  I shucked off my pants and jumped into the big, lonely bed before she could get back.  When she returned, she made herself a nest on the divan, piling up the blanket and then curling up on it, the pillow against the edge of the divan.  A maid would come in later and put out the lights.

     “Good night, Lupus of the Free Legion,” she said to me.

     “Good night, Nina of the Aschire,” I said back.

     That was the last thing I remembered of that troubling day.

     Shela woke me in the morning by throwing open the curtains to the unshuttered windows facing the bay, hitting me square in the face with bright sunlight.

     “I see I’ve been replaced,” she informed me, hands on her hips.

     She wore one of her green palace dresses.  The palace staff usually wore light blue or grey, as they transitioned from Glennen’s colors to mine, so green was a safe color for any of the nobility.  It was a tremendous mark of shame to dress like the staff when you weren’t one of them.

     I pushed myself up in the bed on one hand, rubbing my face with the other.  I immediately sought out Nina on the divan – if Lee was going to pick a fight, she wasn’t going to be in the middle of it.

     She was gone.

     I felt my eyebrows furrow and the scar under my eye twitch.  Shela pointed to the other side of the bed, where Nina had decided she’d be more comfortable in the middle of the night.  She’d made the same nest and bordered it with pillows, leaving me the one I slept on.

     Shela was smiling.  “I think she is too young for you,” she informed me.

     “I think she needs her own room,” I answered.  Her purple hair framed her face in that look of peace that only a child can adopt, and then only when sleeping. 

     “When she didn’t seek me out last night I knew that she must be with you,” Shela said, crossing the room and sitting on the edge of the bed, laying a hand on my lap through the covers.  “Aschire don’t like Andarans and I
think so many of them were too much for one girl to approach.”

     That made sense to me.

     “I didn’t see Sings Softly or Little Bird,” Shela commented, not looking at me.

     “They’re under Wolf Soldier guard,” I informed her.  Nina stirred in her nest, the talking rousing her.  “We’re going to return them personally.”

     “Shall I take care of breeding the mares?” Shela continued.  She’d reconciled herself to what had happened.  There wasn’t a lot she could do about it, after all.  She had a station in life as she saw it, and we’d had a beautiful dream for her, and I could tell without asking that she thought a part of it was over.

     Andarans behaved this way.

     “We aren’t going to breed their mares,” I said.  “I didn’t like the terms from the Drifters and the Wet Bellies.”

     Shela’s dark eyes rose and sought mine out. She scanned my face and did that thing she did when she sniffed around in my thoughts.  No one else that I knew of could do that with me, but then, no one else was Shela.

     “White Wolf,” she said, her expression as close to dread as I had ever seen it, “the Wet Bellies and the Drifters are
powerful
tribes…”

     “So are Long Manes,” I argued, “and when your father wanted Blizzard’s stud service, he offered me a sorceress, and I kept her.”

     I took my slave girl’s, my
wife’s
, hand in mine, and I brought it to my lips, where my stubble could rub the back of it.

     “And I told her that is the tradition of my people only to have one,” I finished.

     A tear rolled down her cheek, and she threw her arms around my neck, and crushed her lips to mine.  Her tongue invaded me, her tears passing her lips, feeding me her passion.

     “But
I
get to raise all of the babies,” Nina informed us from her nest.  “Lupus
promised.
”

     My best morning in a long time.

     Breakfast that morning was pretty much the same people as had been at dinner the night before.  Jing-Wei, the Confluni princess, whose name also meant ‘Little Bird,’ oddly, sat next to me, Tartan on the other side.  The Andarans had already left and Shela sat next to Tartan with Lee, displacing one of the Oligarchs by one seat.

     The vacancy had let Tom Kelgan, the Bounty Hunter, slink back in with a few of the court barons.  As voraciously as the latter attacked the breakfast plates, I had to assume that if I didn’t feed them, they didn’t eat.

     Another thing to fix around here.

     “Did you sleep well, my Lady?” I asked the Confluni Princess.

     She smiled bashfully.  “Very,” she informed me.  “Your beds are wonderful and your staff well trained.  We are well accommodated here.”

     “The Princess wonders,” one of her entourage, an older warrior with a bald head and long, Fu-Manchu moustache, piped up, “if she might be returning, she enjoys your palace so much.”

     “Of course,” I said, and cut into a thick ham-steak in front of me.  “Or perhaps she might invite me to her own palace, and show me the greatness of Confluni architecture.”

     Glances passed among the Confluni and interest perked around the table.  Everyone knew about the paranoia with which the Confluni guarded their borders.  Everyone also knew that etiquette was important to them, too.  How could they be so ungracious not to return this invitation, having just begged for one of their own?

     “Of course,” the old warrior said, “it is the Emperor, not his daughter, who must extend such an invitation.”

     Three younger men, all sitting to his left, nodded vigorously.  The Princess looked down into her lap again and was clearly mortified.  Her advisor had pretty much knee-capped her in front of a good deal of the important people in her world.

     “Perhaps a trip to Toor would be more to your liking,” one of the Toorian delegates informed me. 
They sat farther down the table, and usually just kept their own council.  Karel and Kvitch were still among them.

     This was Kvitch’s doing.  He’d warned me yesterday that, while the Dorkans would be perfectly happy to hate me and to plot against me, with the Bounty Hunter’s guild or alone, the Toorians were likely to actually
do
something about their feelings, especially if they thought that his was a moment of weakness for the Eldadorian people.

     Angador, the southern part of Eldador, had no one but Ceberro looking out for it, especially since he’d booted the Free Legion out, and Ceberro had stretched himself pretty thin.

     “I believe that would be excellent,” I informed him.  “I don’t think the Eldadorian nation has ever officially visited Toor, and I would be honored to go.”

     The tensions around the breakfast table were palpable now.  No one had particularly good relations with the Toorians.  Like the
Aschire and the Scitai, they lived wild and they didn’t build cities.  Kvitch had informed me that strong tribes spoke for them as a nation, and it was common to see new faces among the delegates to the Fovean High Council as tribes fell in and out of favor.

     One way for the tribes to stop killing each other was for them to unit
e and to start killing
me
, and I really didn’t want that happening.

     “We will extend a personal
invitation for the
Bara Hindi
, my people,” the Toorian said.  He wore white robes thicker than the Uman-Chi, folded over down the sleeves and open at the chest.  His hair was cut short but revealed some gray – he’d been a powerful warrior once by the muscle and the scars on him, but his day had past.

     “I am embarrassed to admit,” I informed him, “that not only do you I not know who is the leader of the Bara Hindi, I don’t even know your name.”

     He smiled wide, and the other four men with him.  “I am called Akasema Duu,” he said.  “My warlord is Eusi Mfupa.  We appreciate that we are welcomed here – when we return, we will be certain to introduce ourselves.”

     Glances flew around the table.  I might be new here, but I knew when I’d been slammed, and that was pretty blatant.  The Oligarchs were all frowning and trying to catch my eye – they clearly wanted to handle this.

     I turned to the one I usually referred to as ‘One,’ and said, “My Lord, if you would make the appropriate arrangements with Ambassador Duu for us to visit Toor?”

     “Of course, your Majesty,” he responded.  “At your convenience, Akasema Duu.”

     The Toorian nodded. 

     Breakfast went on to accomplish what is accomplished at breakfast.

     Two Spears and I walked the docks at the port of Eldador, where ships swayed
pier side and workers from every Fovean nation scurried between the ships, the warehouses and the common market.  Karel of Stone had met us here uninvited and, for his diminutive size, had no trouble keeping up as we hurried to the far end, east of the city, where a tall wall obscured one ship.

     “How many keels are being set now in Thera?” I asked Two Spears.

     “A dozen,” he informed me.  “And we have the resources for a dozen more.  The Talen shipyards have another dozen already done, but they aren’t
special
.”