Lydiell's office, at the top of the tower, had a dizzying and unrestricted view that he, as a military commander, could see was of incalculable value for the chatelaine of the manor—or the commander of its defenses. The office walls were all window, and he wondered as he stepped gingerly off the platform what a storm would be like up here.
Lydiell greeted him with a smile, which made his apprehension vanish. She even rose; that was an unexpected honor, and he bowed as deeply as he could without looking ridiculous. The Lady did not like groveling; none of her clan did.
"Sergeant Gel, please, make yourself easy," she said, as she gestured with that grace only the Elvenlords possessed towards an unoccupied chair. "This is not an official summons—rather, it is a personal one. I have a desire to consult you."
Tenebrinth evidently took this as the signal to depart; he stepped back on the little platform and discreetly dropped back to the next level, leaving them alone.
Gel took his seat and examined the Lady's face, and swiftly understood why she wanted to see him. "Kyrtian?" he asked, wasting no words.
She nodded, and took her place behind her desk, clasping her hands on the surface before her. "I had hoped," she said, hesitantly, as if she was voicing thoughts long held in secret, "that I could keep Kyrtian isolated from the politics of the Great Lords and the Council. Unfortunately, it seems that the times conspire against my hopes."
"It does look like he's going to get tangled up whether he likes it or not," Gel said cautiously, his eyes never leaving her face, unnerving as it was to look her straight in the eyes. "My Lady, I don't mind telling you that I don't like the idea any better than you do."
"I'm not certain you realize just how tangled he's likely to get," Lydiell replied, a faint frown-line creasing her ageless brow. Gel couldn't for the life of him read those odd emerald eyes the Elvenlords all had, but at least she wasn't trying to hide her facial expressions. "Lord Kyndreth is not going to be content merely to learn a few tricks with magic to help train humans—when he realizes just how extensive Kyrtian's knowledge and practical experience of military matters is, he is going to want my son to exercise his talents in the service of the Old Lords. He will certainly want Kyrtian to command a force against the Young Lords, and possibly keep him on after the Young Lords are crushed, to move against the Wizards and the wild humans."
Gel swore under his breath, angry at himself for not thinking of that himself. And it was far too late to try to talk Kyrtian out of abandoning the full-scale maneuvers he had planned. The boy was determined to prove to Lord Kyndreth that this was the only way to train fighters, and nothing would do but to show him how easy it was to hold the spells needed on entire armies.
Lady Lydiell sighed. "Your face tells me that my fears are likely to be realized. Oh, why couldn't he have been an artist or a musician, or obsessed with—with—oh, horticulture or something equally frivolous?"
"At least he isn't bent on being the dead opposite of his father, my Lady," Gel replied grimly. "You'd not like him as a fop, or a lazy layabout. Or worse, falling in with—"
He hesitated; after all, he was a human, and Lydiell was El-ven. Blood was blood—
But Lydiell surprised him with a bitter smile and a light answer. "Falling in with the pampered perverts that most of my kind are. You don't need to spare my feelings, Gel; we cannot afford to be less than honest with each other if we are going to be able to keep Kyrtian out of the pitfalls lying before him."
Ah, cowflops. Why do I have to feel like it's me that's his father? I'd rest easier at night. He might be only a few actual years older than Kyrtian, but in real terms, he might just as well have been the Elvenlord's father. By the standards of his race, Kyrtian was the equivalent of a stripling, although by human reckoning he was in his late thirties. In knowledge and general responsibility, he was certainly that—but in the unconscious things that characterized an adolescent, he was very much Gel's junior. His boundless energy, his enthusiasm, his tendency to act rather than sitting back and waiting for events to come to him—those were the characteristics of the young, and made Gel feel very old.
The strength, speed, and endurance of youth were also his, and might be for the next century or two, which made Gel feel even older. He'd noticed of late, much to his chagrin, that he was slowing down, losing some of his edge; in fact, he and that man of Lord Kyndreth's had talked about that. Kaeth wasn't getting any younger either, and if he ever had to actually foil a fellow-assassin, that could be fatal if he didn't take steps to compensate.
We 'II both just have to be sneakier to make up for what we 're losing, he reminded himself. Youth and enthusiasm are no match for experience and treachery.
"I hate to admit this, my lady," he said, feeling ashamed that he had not anticipated this situation, "but I've kept him as ignorant as you have of the way things are—" he waved his hand vaguely at the windows "—out there. And I did it for pretty much the same reasons as you, I figure. Why throw something at him that he couldn't change and would only worry about?"
Ah, all those old lessons came back to him now, of being taken off the estate as Tenebrinth's page, so he could see just how the other Elvenlords really acted and thought. Tenebrinth had collared him, of course, and if he'd done something even slightly stupid—which, even as a child he hadn't been likely to—the Elvenlord could have quickly controlled him. And in a peculiar way, that, too, had been part of the lessons in just how fragile and precious the life humans led here was.
Lydiell nodded. "And at this point, if we try to tell him that Lord Kyndreth is no more to be trusted than Aelmarkin, he would only make the wrong decisions. He'd try to put Kyndreth off, or—or something. And now that he's aroused Kyndreth's interest, he can't do that without arousing suspicion as well."
"Damn all politics anyway," Gel said sourly. "Kyndreth is going to use him, make a tool out of him, and give him nothing but fine words and empty praise for his troubles—"
"Yes—but—" Lydiell began.
Gel waited, but she didn't complete the thought. He spoke into the heavy silence. "But it might not be bad for him; so long as he's valuable to Kyndreth, he's not going to be wasted. And as long as he's valuable, Kyndreth will see that we're left alone, no matter how peculiar some things around here may look to him."
Lydiell nodded, and Gel felt a certain relief that she agreed with him. There was selfishness in his motivation, and he knew that; as long as Kyrtian was not only alive and well but under the open protection of someone like Lord Kyndreth, Gel and the other humans on the estate would be perfectly safe. Aelmarkin wouldn't dare try to interfere or continue in his attempts to gain control of the manor and lands.
As for the humans living elsewhere—humans that Kyrtian would be very concerned about if he knew how bad things could be on other estates—Gel found it difficult to worry about the well-being of people he didn't know. The sufferings of human slaves on other estates were just stories to him, and although he believed them in the abstract, he just couldn't make himself care when people he knew needed his whole concentration and concern.
He couldn't really believe in anything he hadn't seen with his own eyes, not deep down where it counted.
Those are all old stories, anyway, and it makes no sense these days that the Elvenlords would wantonly waste or mar their own possessions. With wild humans on the border, dragons in the sky, the Wizards threatening to start the war up again and their own children in armed revolt, they can't afford the sort of goings-on they did in the past. Slavery—-yes, there was no doubt that the Elvenlords were harsh masters, and kept their humans under complete control. It was a terrible thing that humans elsewhere had every action controlled by someone else, that they could make not even the smallest decision about their own lives. But starvation, torture, abuse—why? There's no reason to do any of those things; a starved, abused, or injured slave works less, and is worth less, than a healthy one who is punished only when he deserves it.