"Jadrek?" Stefansen called softly, catching Tarma's attention. "Have you walked yourself out yet? I'd rather you got a night's sleep, but Roald seems to think we need to talk now."
"Not just you two -- all of us, the mercenaries included," the Herald corrected. "We all have bits of information that need to be put together into a whole."
Stefansen is looking wary again. I'll warrant he didn't expect us to be included in this little talk. Ah well, duty calls. "Just for the record," Tarma said, unwinding herself from the eiderdown, "I'd tend to agree. And the sooner we get to it, the less likely one of us will forget some triviality that turns out to be be vital. My people say, 'plans, like eggs, are best at the freshest.'"
Kethry nodded, and got up long enough to turn her chair in a quarter-circle so that it faced the room rather than Tarma; Tarma did the same as the men pulled theirs closer, and Roald brought in a third chair for Jadrek. Mertis left hers where it was, but put the baby back in the cradle and leaned forward to catch every word.
Tarma watched the Prince, his spouse, and the Herald as covertly -- but as intently -- as she could. Warrl trusted them, and she'd never known the kyree to be wrong. He trusted them enough that he'd eaten without checking the food for tampering, and was now sleeping as soundly as if he hadn't a worry in the world. Still, there was a first time for everything, even for the kyree being deceived.
There's no sign of the Captain here, either. But that might not mean anything.
Jadrek spoke first, outlining what Raschar had been doing since Stefansen's abrupt departure. Tarma was surprised by the Prince's reactions; he showed a great deal more intelligence and thoughtfulness than rumor had given him credit for. He seemed deeply disturbed by the information that Raschar was continuing to tax the peasantry into serfdom. He looks almost as if he's taking it personally -- huh, for that matter, so does Mertis. And I don't think it's an act.
Then Tarma and Kethry took up the thread, telling the little conclave what they'd observed in their week or so at the Court, and what they'd noted as they passed through the southern grainlands of Rethwellan.
The Prince asked more earnest questions of them, then, and seemed even more disturbed by the answers. He plainly did not like Kethry's report of the mages lurking in the Court -- and the tale of the attack on Jadrek shocked him nearly white.
And that is not an act, Tarma decided. He's more than shocked, he's angry. I wouldn't want to be Raschar and in front of him right now.
And finally all three spoke of Idra -- what Jadrek knew, and what the partners had heard before she'd vanished.
That changed the anger to doubt, and to apprehension. "If she headed here, she didn't arrive," Stefansen said, unhappily, the firelight flaring up in time to catch his expression of profound disturbance. "Damn it! Dree and I had our differences, not the least of which was that she voted for Char, but she's the one person in this world that I would never wish any harm on. Where in hell could she have gotten to if she didn't come here?"
Tarma wished at that moment that she could have Warrl's thought-reading abilities. The Prince seemed sincere, but it would have been so very easy for Idra to have met with an accident once she'd crossed into Valdemar, particularly if Stefansen hadn't known about her change of heart. He could be using his surprise and dismay at learning that to cover his guilt.
At the same time all her instincts were saying he was speaking only truth --
If only I knew.
She turned her attention to Roald. He seemed to be both holding himself apart rrom the rest, and yet at the same time vitally concerned about all of them. Goddess -- even us, and he just met us a few hours ago, Tarma realized with a start. And there was a knowledge coming from somewhere near where her Goddess-bond was seated that told her that this Herald was, as Warrl put it, someone to be trusted with more than one's life. If Stefansen murdered Idra, he'd know, she thought slowly. I don't know how, but somehow he'd know. And I bet he wouldn't be sharing hearth and home with him. I can't see him giving hearth-rights to a murderer of any kind, much less a kin-slayer. Now I wonder-how much of his worry is for us two, and how much is about us?
After a long silence, Jadrek said: "This is not something I ever expected to hear myself saying, but whatever has happened to Idra, I fear her fate is going to have to take second place to what is happening to the Kingdom." Jadrek turned to the Prince, slowly, and with evident pain. "Stefan, Raschar is a leech on the body of Rethwellan." Tarma could see his eyes now, and the open challenge in them. "You never retracted your oath to your people as Crown Champion. You still have the responsibility of the safety of the Kingdom. So what are you going to do about the situation?"
"Jadrek, you never were one to pull a blow, were you?" The Prince smiled thinly. "And you're still as blunt as ever you were. Well, let me put it out for us all to stare at. Do you think I should try to overthrow Char?"
"You know that's what I think," Jadrek replied, eyes glinting in the firelight. He looked alert and alive -- and a candlemark ago Tarma would never have reckoned on his reviving so fast. "You'd be a thousand times better as a king than your brother, and I know that was the conclusion your sister came to after seeing him rule for six months."
"Roald?"
"You've matured. You've truly matured a great deal in the time you've been here," the Herald said thoughtfully. "I don't know if it was fatherhood, or my dubious example, but -- you're not the witling rakehell you were, Stefan. The careless fool you were would have been a worse king than your brother, ultimately -- but the man you are now could be a very good ruler."
Stefansen turned to Mertis, and stopped dead at a strange, hair-raising humming. Tarma felt the tingling of a power akin to the Warrior's along her spine; she glanced sharply at Kethry in startlement, only to see that the mage wore an equally surprised expression. The humming seemed to be coming from the heap of saddlepacks and weaponry they'd dumped just inside the door, after Mertis had extracted their soiled, soaked clothing for cleaning.
Stefansen rose as if in a dream, as the rest of them remained frozen in their seats. He walked slowly to the shadowed pile, reached down, and took something in his hands.
A long, narrow something.
Bits of enshrouding darkness began peeling from it, and light gleamed where the pieces had fallen away. The thing he held was a sword -- not hers, not Kethry's -- a sword in a half-decayed sheath --
As the last of the rotten sheath flaked off of it, Tarma could see from the shape of it that it was the dead man's sword that they'd found -- and no longer the lifeless, dull gray thing it had been. In Stefansen's hands it was keening a wild song and glowing white-hot, lighting up the entire room.
Stefansen stood with it in both hands, as frozen for a moment as the rest of them were. Then he dropped it -- and as it hit the wooden floor with a dull thud, the light died, and the song with it.
"Mother ofthegodsf" he exclaimed, staring at the blade at his feet. "What in hell is that?"