He put them in a small, private dining room, with the troop seated in the larger room outside. Elspeth had not realized how much she had missed being able to talk to him without worrying about the ears of others. There were things she had wanted to discuss that needed to wait until they were alone in their room—if they were alone, since they often shared their sleeping quarters with the others.
They lingered over their last drink, making the most of this private time—and that was when the innkeeper interrupted them.
"Town Council would like to talk, sir, lady," he said diffidently, poking his head into the room. "Alone here, if you please?"
Elspeth sighed. She did not please, but there was no point in saying so. "If they must," she replied, allowing some, but not all, of her annoyance to show.
The innkeeper vanished, and the delegation must have been waiting right outside, for they trooped through the door immediately.
"We won't take up much of your time, Envoy," said the best-dressed of the lot, a fellow who still boasted the velvets and furs of earlier prosperity. "It's just something we'd like you to—to say for us, to Duke Tremane."
"Not a complaint!" added a second, only slightly less elegant than his fellow. "No, not a complaint! Something he might want to hear, maybe—"
"There's been talk," the first interrupted, with a glare at the second. "We've heard the talk. Oh, I was Guildmaster for the Wool and Weavers Guild for this whole region—"
Which explains the finery, Elspeth thought.
"—and Keplan here was Master for the Leather and Furrier's Guild. So, as I say, there's been talk, and people have come to us with it. Duke Tremane's proven good for us, and there are some that want to make him our leader." The Guildmaster waved his hands expansively. "Some who are even saying—King."
The second interrupted his fellow Guildmaster. "Now, we've sent out word, looking for some of the old royal blood of Hardorn. We've got ways of sending word out farther and faster than you'd believe. And there's no one, not one person of the old Royal Family left alive."
"I can't say that amazes me," Elspeth told them dryly. "Ancar wasn't one to tolerate rivals. And he wouldn't let a little thing like the age or sex of a possible pretender stop him from removing someone he wanted out of the way."
The Woolmaster coughed. "Ah. Aye. And woe betide anyone that got in the way back then." He looked up hopefully to see if Elspeth agreed with this attempt to exonerate himself for not attempting to interfere. By that, she inferred that at least one opportunity had occurred, and he hadn't even tried.
But who am I to judge? I wasn't there, I don't know what happened. If he took the coward's path, his own guilty conscience may be punishing him enough by now.
"You were saying that there isn't anyone of the old royal blood left," she prompted. "So?"
"So—well—there's some consensus that we might offer Duke Tremane the Crown. With conditions." He held his breath and waited for her reaction.
"An interesting proposal," Darkwind said quietly. "I presume that the conditions would be unusual, since you mention them at all."
The Woolmaster switched his attention from Elspeth to Darkwind. "They could be," he said. "it's—well, it's something our old Kings hadn't done for generations. It's—"
"He'd have to take earth-binding," the furrier burst out. "We've got a priest of the old beliefs, one that knows the ceremony and can make it stick. He'd have to bind himself to the earth, to Hardorn, so that anything that hurt the land would hurt him!"
The Woolmaster stared at his fellow, appalled, but Elspeth only shrugged. "It sounds like a sensible precaution on your part," she told them. "And if the opportunity presents itself, we will convey your message to the Grand Duke. But we can't promise anything, and we certainly can't promise that he'll agree to any such thing."
"That's all we ask, Envoy!" the Woolmaster said, waving at his little group and backing up himself, with a great deal of haste. "That's all! Our thanks!"
As he spoke, he herded the others out in front of him, and with the last word, he shut the door to the dining room behind him.
Darkwind looked at Elspeth, and she grimaced. "Well," she said, into the heavy silence. "That was certainly interesting."
"And it leaves the question begging," he replied, with a rueful smile. "Just how would one present such a proposition to Tremane?"
"I think that we can wait until we ride into Shonar itself, and we get a chance to see what the Empire represents—as molded by the hand of Grand Duke Tremane," she replied. "That in itself will tell us whether or not there's any point."
Despite the icy wind cutting through her coat, Elspeth sat back in her saddle and stared until her eyes hurt from snow glare. "I can't believe they raised all this in a single season," she muttered.
:And without magic,: Gwena reminded her, shifting her weight in tiny increments to keep muscles warm. :Granted, they did have a great deal of incentive—the possibility of hostile Hardornen troops attacking, and the certainty of monsters—what did that fine young man call them?:
"Boggles," Elspeth replied absently, taking in the reality of a two-story-tall wall, and not a wooden palisade, mind, but a brick wall. This edifice circled not only the entire city of Shonar but the much larger camp and garrison of the Imperials, and an open sward that had once been the town's grazing commons as well. A monumental task? Without a doubt.
Then add to that the equally monumental task of constructing barracks buildings for the Imperial forces before the snow fell, and it became a job to stun the mind in its scope. How had he gotten all that built? Where had he found all the laborers?
"We're very proud of our work, Siara," said the "fine young man" in Imperial uniform who had met them half a day out of Shonar and escorted them in. Siara was evidently the generic title of respect applicable to either sex that the Imperial military used when the person doing the addressing did not know the true rank of the one being addressed. It was probably the equivalent to "sir;" mercenaries generally addressed their officers as "sir" regardless of gender, a perfectly sensible approach of which Elspeth approved.
"We all worked on the walls and the barracks, every man of us," the young soldier continued, his cheeks flushed in the cold. "Except when some of us went to work on the harvest, and then we traded work with townsfolk. However many it took to make up the work that one of us could do, that's what Duke Tremane traded, so the walls and the barracks could keep going up."
:Sensible. Did you notice? The boy says that Tremane "traded" work for work, not that he conscripted workers.: Gwena's head was up as she made her own survey of the walls. :Granted, it wouldn't have been very smart to conscript workers for a wall you're building for your own protection, but that hasn't stopped rulers in the past from doing things equally stupid.:
Elspeth nodded; no point in confusing the poor fellow by answering someone he couldn't hear. The Imperials were already confused enough by her insistence on special treatment and housing for Gwena and the dyheli Brytha, although they had agreed to such a condition before a single Valdemaran set foot on the road to Shonar.