“So who makes the decision?” Ekka asked, nodding to some passing ladies.
“He does,” Kade said confidently. “He will name his heir.”
Ekka waited for more, then prompted. “But can he make it stick after his death?”
Kade smiled unwillingly. “Time has not blunted you, dear. That will depend on a lot of things. Will the people accept her? Will Nordland? Will the Impire?”
Mmm… obviously something more topical was bothering her. Something had provoked this confidence, or it would have come out months ago.
“And his decision, and all the others' decisions, will depend on her choice of husband?”
Kade nodded absently, acknowledging friends whirling past. “Very much so, I think. Certainly Nordland’s.” More silence and then she said, “And the timing.”
Ah! “Timing, dear?”
Inos came dancing by. She noticed her aunt and smiled radiantly, then was swept away into the pattern. She was almost the only woman in the room who could wear a green like that. It set off her eyes beautifully—and almost as much as her golden hair, it let Kade pick her out in the crowd.
“Holindarn can train a successor,” Kade said, “whether Inos herself or her husband. Ruling a kingdom, even a single-bed-size kingdom like Krasnegar, does take a certain knack.”
This time silence was not enough lubrication. “He is a relatively young man yet,” Ekka suggested.
“Of course.”
But there had been a hesitation. Travel between Krasnegar and Kinvale was not impossible in winter. Trappers and other rough men could do it. Such men would do it for money. If Kade had been concerned about her brother’s health, then she would certainly have arranged for someone in the palace hierarchy to keep her informed—she was not nearly as scatterbrained as she pretended.
“You have had no word lately, have you? No news is good news.”
“So they say,” Kade agreed, with a tranquility that did not deceive the dowager duchess for a moment.
For if Holindarn did not want his sister to hear, then he was quite capable of learning whom she had recruited and then derecruiting them. Had any message arrived at Kinvale, Ekka would surely have heard of it. No news, then, was bad news, and that was what was rankling.
And if Inos did not succeed, who was next in line?
“So the hussar we send back to his horse,” Ekka said, “or we may aim him elsewhere—the Astlio girl, perhaps… Have any of his predecessors dropped sparks on the tinder?”
“Yes indeed. I wanted to ask you about him. You built a blaze with your first attempt, dear, and left no fuel for the others.”
Ekka was surprised. “That merchant youth? What was his name? The one from Jini Fanda?”
“Good Gods, no!” Kade spluttered in a very unusual display of emotion. “Even I couldn’t stand him. No, the Andor boy.”
“Andor? Oh, that one! Still?” Ekka frowned. “He wasn’t one of mine, Kade. You gave me no warning, remember. It took a little time to call them in from the pasture. Angilki invited that one.” At that moment she noticed her son, dancing with the Yyloringy woman, his face as blank as a well-polished table.
“Perhaps a fortunate chance, then,” Kade remarked sanguinely.
“Perhaps.”
This time it was Kadolan who detected the hesitation. She turned to her hostess with an inquiring glance.
“It is his house, after all,” Ekka said. “I can hardly stop him from inviting his own friends to stay.”
“Of course not, my dear.”
But this would not be the first time Angilki had unwittingly thrown complications into his mother’s plans. She had told him more than once that he could invite anyone he liked except men—or women. The joke had escaped him. Jokes usually did. “Well, Sir Andor undoubtedly had character,” Kade said, “or at least charm. If diplomacy is a requirement for ruling Krasnegar—and it certainly is—then he would qualify on that. What else do we know about him?” Inos was coming around again.
A very good question! Ekka did not think her memory was failing her yet. She was rather proud of her memory. But on the spur of the moment, she could recall nothing at all about that Andor boy. She had engaged him in conversation several times, of course. She had begun a careful probing. Curiously, though, it seemed that the subject of Sir Andor’s background had always slipped out of play. All she could remember was laughing very hard at some of his jests.
“Why don’t we check the files in the morning?” she suggested. “He brought letters, of course… and my notes. Just look at that wretched Ithinoy girl! How could her grandmother ever dream of allowing her to wear puce, with her coloring?”
“Ekka?” Kadolan said sharply.
Ekka sighed. “You should have suggested him sooner. We could have invited him to the ball.”
“He is probably not available. He told Inos that he was leaving on some romantic mission of honor and danger. He has not written. She does not write to him.”
The two ladies exchanged puzzled glances.
“But why leave?” Ekka said. “If that’s what he was? If that was what he wanted?”
“If that was what he wanted, then he succeeded. She has not looked seriously at anyone else.”
“He did not…” Ekka paused. Even with a very old friend, there are some questions…
“No! I’m quite sure. One can always tell. But he certainly could have done, had he wanted. She was very innocent, remember. Now she is perhaps a little wiser, but he knew every trick in the box. I fancy I know most of them, but that young man could have sidestepped me with no trouble, had he wished.”
From Kade that was an astonishing confession. In her years at Kinvale, even before their respective husbands had died, she had been Ekka’s pupil and partner in matrimonial machinations. Anything the Princess Kadolan did not know about chaperoning and the wiles of swains should not be worth knowing.
Still, Ekka was relieved. Three juvenile domestics had been dismissed soon after Sir Andor’s departure, and probably several others had been more fortunate in their follies.
“So what was he after, I wonder? The crown?”
“Then why leave?” It was very unlike Kade to let worry show on her face. “What business could possibly be more important?”
“Perhaps he went off to take a look at Krasnegar?”
That remark provoked loud, unladylike guffaws from both of them.
The gallopade had ended. Angilki went by, leading the Yyloringy woman, breathing much too heavily and still half asleep with boredom.
“Well,” Kade said cheerfully. “There would seem to be no use worrying about the Andor man. Inos does not know where he is, and if she doesn’t, then I assume that no one does. We’ll just have to keep the parade going and hope that she takes to someone else.”
“Or until he chooses to return?”
“Exactly.”
“And if he brings a proposal?”
“Oh, Inos would accept with her next breath. He bewitched her. And I have my orders. Unless I have very—very—good reasons, she is to be allowed to make her own choice.” She sighed wistfully. “I can’t blame her, He certainly did sparkle. Grim old Krasnegar would be a merrier place with him around.”
But..,
Ekka nodded as the music began again for the gavotte. If Inosolan did not succeed, who would? How soon was Holindarn going to die? She had been thinking in terms of years, and now it sounded like perhaps months. There was a title involved. There was a kingdom. More than that, there was almost certainly a word, part of the Inisso inheritance.
Ekka decided to keep her own options open. She would summon Angilki and inform him that he need not propose to the Yyloringy woman this evening after all.