The following day Tarma managed to frighten the maids half to death, rising from the pile of bedding on the floor with sword in hand at the first sound of anyone stirring. The younger of the two fainted dead away at the sight of her. The other squeaked and ran for the door. They didn't see that maid again, so Tarma figured she had refused to go back into their suite; defying any and all punishments.
The other girl vanished as soon as Kethry revived her, and they didn't see her again, either, so she probably had done the same. The next servants to enter the suite were a pair of haglike old crones with faces fit to frighten fish out of water; they attended to the cleaning and picking up of the suite, and took themselves out again with an admirable efficiency and haste. That was more like what Tarma wanted out of servants; the giggly girls fussing about drove her to distraction at the best of times, and now -- well, now she wasn't going to take anything or anyone at face value. Those giggly girls were probably spies -- maybe more.
Kethry heaved a sigh or two of relief when they saw the last of the new set of servitors.
Hell, she's an old campaigner; she knows it, too.
Gods, I hate this place.
After wolfing down some bread and fruit from the over-generous breakfast the second set of servants had brought, Tarma headed off to oversee the further training of the horses, concentrating on the gold and the dapple. The gold she wanted schooled enough that he wouldn't cause his rider any problems; the dapple she wanted trained to the limits of his understanding. She hoped that might sweeten the Horsemaster's attitude toward them.
She kept her ears open -- and as she'd hoped, the stable folk were fairly free with their tongues while they thought she couldn't understand them. Besides several unflattering comments about her own looks, she managed to pick up that Idra had gone off rather abruptly, but that her disappearance had not been entirely unexpected. Her name was coupled on more than one occasion with the words "that wild-goose quest." She learned little more than that.
Of the other brother. Prince Stefansen, she learned a bit more. He'd run off on his brother's coronation day. And he'd done something worse than just run, according to rumor, though what it was, no one really seemed to know. Whatever, it had been enough to goad the new king into declaring him an outlaw.
If Raschar caught him, his head was forfeit.
And that was fair interesting indeed. And was more than Tarma had expected to leam.
"That doesn't much surprise me, given what I've heard" Kethry remarked that evening, when they settled into their suite after another one of those stifling evening gatherings. This one had been only a little less formal than their reception. It seemed this sort of thing took place every night -- and attendance was expected, even of visitors. "I'd gathered something like that from Countess Lyris. It was about the only useful thing to come out of this evening."
"I think I may die of the boredom, provided the perfume doesn't kill me off first," Tarma yawned. She was sprawled on the floor of Kethry's room on her featherbed (which the maids had not dared move.) Her eyes were sleepy; her posture wasn't. Kethry knew from years of partnering her that no one and nothing would move inside or near the suite without her knowing it. She was operating on sentry reflexes, and it showed in a subtle tenseness of her muscles.
"The perfume may; I don't think boredom is going to be a problem," Kethry replied slowly. She leaned back into the pillows heaped at the head of the bed, and combed her hair while she spoke in tones hardly louder than a whisper. The candle-light from the sconce in the headboard behind her made a kind of amber aura around her head. "There is one hell of a lot more going on here than meets the eye. This is what I've gotten so far: when Idra got here, she supported Raschar over Stefansen. The whole idea was that Stefansen was going to be allowed to exile himself off to one of the estates and indulge himself in whatever way he wanted. Presumably he was going to fade away into quiet debauchery. Raschar was crowned -- and suddenly Stefansen was gone, with a price on his head. Nobody knows where he went, but the best guess is north."
Tarma looked a good deal more alert at that, and leaned up against the bedside, propping her head on her hands. "Oh, really? And what came of the original plan? Especially if Stefansen had agreed to it?"
Kethry shrugged, and frowned. It was a puzzle, and one that left a prickle between her shoulder-blades, as if someone were aiming a weapon for that spot. "No one seems to know. No one knows what it was Stefansen did to warrant a death sentence. But Raschar was -- and is, still, according to one of my sources -- very nervous about proving that he is the rightful claimant to the throne. There's a tale that the Royal Line used to have a sword in Raschar's grandfather's time that was able to choose the rightful heir -- or the best king, the stories aren't very clear on the subject, at least not the ones I heard. It was stolen forty or fifty years ago. Idra apparently volunteered to see if she could find it for Raschar, the assumption being that the sword would pick him. They say he was very eager for her to find it -- and at the moment everyone seems convinced that she took off to go looking for it."
Tarma shook her head, slowly. Her mouth was twisted a little in a skeptical frown. "That doesn't sound much like the Captain to me. Sure, she might well say she was going off looking for it, but to really do it? Personally? Alone? When the Hawks are waiting for her to join them and it's nearly fighting season? And why not rope in one of Raschar's tame mages to help smell out the magic? It's not likely."
"Not bloody likely," Kethry agreed. "I could see it as an excuse to get back to us, but not anything else."
"Have you made any moves at old Jadrek?"
Kethry sighed. Jadrek had been exceptionally hard to get at. For a lame man, he could vanish with remarkable dexterity. "I'm courting him, cautiously. He doesn't seem to trust anyone except Tindel. I did find out why neither Raschar nor his father cared for Jadrek or his. The hereditary Archivists or Rethwellan both suffered from an overdose of honesty."
"Let's not get abstruse, shall we?"
Kethry grinned. This part, at least, did have a certain ironic humor to it. "Both Jadrek and his father before him insisted on putting events in the Archives exactly as they happened, instead of tailoring them to suit the monarch's sensibilities."
"So what's to stop the King from having the Archives altered at his pleasure?"
"They can't," Kethry replied, still amused in spite of her feelings that they were both treading an invisible knife edge of danger. "The Archive books are bespelled. They have to be kept up to date, or, and I quote, 'something nasty happens.' The Archives, once written in, are protected magically and can't be altered, and Raschar doesn't have a mage knowledgeable enough to break the spell. Once something is in the Archives, it's there forever."
Tarma choked on a laugh, and stuffed the back of her hand into her mouth to keep it from being overheard in the corridor outside. They had infrequent eavesdroppers out there. "Who was responsible for this little pickle?"
"One of the first Kings -- predictably called 'the Honest' -- he was also an Adept of the Leverand school, so he could easily enforce his honesty. I gather he wasn't terribly popular; I also gather that he didn't much care."
Tarma made a wry face. "Hair shirts and dry bread?"
"And weekly fasts --with the whole of his Court included. But this isn't getting us anywhere -- "