As its chief story this morning, it carried a speech King Avram had made to his council of ministers a few days before. Would it have done that without… encouragement from those southron officers? “I doubt it,” George murmured, and peered at the paper.
Avram said, The most remarkable feature in the military operations of the year is General Hesmucet’s attempted march of three hundred miles, directly through the insurgent region. It tends to show a great increase of our relative strength that our Marshal should feel able to confront and hold in check every active force of the enemy, and yet to detach a well-appointed large army to move on such an expedition.
Doubting George made a sour face. The King of Detina thought-or said he thought-the traitors were stopped all over the map. Why didn’t Marshal Bart think the same way? George feared he knew-Bart was trying to drive him out of his mind. The marshal was doing a pretty good job of it, too.
And am I trying to drive Marshal Bart out of his mind? George shook his big head. He wasn’t trying to do anything of the sort. He was trying to get rid of the Army of Franklin, and to make sure he didn’t get rid of his own army instead. If Bart couldn’t see that… then, gods damn him, he’d give the army to someone else.
Muttering-he’d distracted himself-Doubting George returned to the Ramblerton Record. King Avram continued, On careful consideration of all the evidence accessible it seems to me that no attempt at negotiation with the insurgent leader could result in any good. He would accept nothing short of severance of the Kingdom-precisely what we will not and cannot give. He does not attempt to deceive us. He affords us no excuse to deceive ourselves. He cannot voluntarily reaccept the unity of Detina; we cannot voluntarily yield it. It is an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory. If we yield, we are beaten; if the northern people fail him, he is beaten.
The more George studied Avram’s speeches, the more he became convinced the rightful King of Detina was a very clever man. He hadn’t thought so when Avram took the throne. The new king’s uncompromising attitude on serfdom had prejudiced him. He saw that now.
He had to open the Record to an inside page to find out the rest of what Avram had told his ministers. What is true, however, of him who heads the insurgent cause, is not necessarily true of those who follow. Although he cannot accept the united Kingdom of Detina, they can. Some of them, we know, already desire peace and reunion. They can, at any moment, have peace simply by laying down their arms and submitting to the royal authority. A year ago general pardon and amnesty, upon specified terms, were offered to all, except certain designated classes; and, it was, at the same time, made known that the excepted classes were still within contemplation of special clemency. During the year many availed themselves of the general provision. During the same time also special pardons have been granted to individuals of the excepted classes, and no voluntary application has been denied.
Doubting George had to read that twice. He hadn’t realized King Avram was so reasonable, so merciful. Was the king softening on serfdom, too?
He got his answer right away, for Avram finished, In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance to the royal authority on the part of the insurgents, as the only indispensable condition to ending the war on the part of the Kingdom, I retract nothing heretofore said as to serfdom. In stating a single condition of peace, I mean simply to say that the war will cease on the part of the Kingdom, whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it.
No, Avram hadn’t softened. As well as more wit, there was also more iron in the King of Detina than anyone would have suspected when the Thunderer’s chief hierophant first set the crown on his head. A few days afterwards, another hierophant of the Thunderer had put a different crown, hastily made for the occasion, on Grand Duke Geoffrey’s head up in the north. Not much later, Avram and Geoffrey had stopped talking and started fighting. They’d been fighting ever since.
“Matter of fact, Avram makes a pretty fair King of Detina,” Doubting George murmured. He’d sided with Avram when he hadn’t believed that at all, out of loyalty to the notion of a united Detina rather than from any particular loyalty to or admiration of the sovereign. A lot of people, in the north and even in the south, had expected Avram to make a dreadful hash of things. But he hadn’t, and it didn’t look as if he would.
Colonel Andy knocked on George’s door, which was open. When George waved for him to come in, he said, “Sir, there’s a scryer here who wants to talk with you. Do you want to talk with him?”
Scryers, lately, had brought little but bad news. Even so, George shrugged and nodded. “I’d better, don’t you think?”
“Who knows?” Andy turned away and spoke to a man in the antechamber: “Go ahead, but don’t you waste the general’s time.”
“I won’t, sir.” The scryer, a captain, wore a gray mage’s robe, his epaulets of rank, a sorcerer’s badge, and a gold-in fact, probably polished brass-crystal ball to show his specialization. He shut the door on Andy after he came inside. Doubting George’s adjutant let out a squawk, but the scryer ignored him. To George, he said, “This is for your ears alone.”
The commanding general reached up and tugged at one of the organs in question. “Seems to be in tolerable working order,” he observed. “Say your say, Captain-?”
“I’m called Bartram, sir. Bartram the Traveler.” Bartram was somewhere in his thirties, with a long, lean, mournful face and sad, clever, hound-dog eyes. He gave off a feeling of reliability. Some people did. Some of those people also let you down, as George was painfully well aware. The scryer coughed a couple of times, then said, “My hobby, sir, is looking for ways to read crystal balls that ought to be out of range.”
“Some people grow roses. Some people raise snakes. You never can tell,” George said.
“Er-well-yes,” Captain Bartram said. “But I wouldn’t be here now if I did those things.”
“I suppose not. You’d probably be happier if you weren’t, too,” Doubting George said, though he wondered whether Bartram could be happy anywhere. His face denied the possibility. The commanding general went on, “Since you are here, suppose you go ahead and tell me why.”
“Yes, sir. I’m here because of some of the things I heard when I was fooling around with my crystal ball late last night. They stretch farther then. I don’t know why, but they do.”
“And what you heard was-?” George tried to project an air of expectant waiting.
“Sir, what I heard was orders for Baron Logan the Black to hop on a glideway carpet and head east to take command of this army. And what I heard was Marshal Bart saying he’d come east, too, to take charge of Logan.”
“Did you, now?” George said slowly, as if he came from the Sapphire Isle. Now he tried not to show the anger he felt. Logan the Black wasn’t a regular at all. Hesmucet had declined to let him keep command of a wing when he took it over after James the Bird’s Eye was killed outside Marthasville. And now Marshal Bart wanted to hand him command of a whole army? Of this whole army? If that wasn’t an insult, Doubting George had never run into one.
“What will you do, sir?” Bartram the Traveler asked. “I thought you ought to know.”
“I will do just what I am doing,” George replied. “I don’t see what else I can do. If Bart wants to show me the door for doing what I think is right, then that’s what he will do. I don’t intend to lose any sleep over it.”