He looked at them ruefully. “And you convince Jam it’s his work. Sorting out all the cries for justice will settle him in fast, and it will accustom the people to his rule. Hadrann, you’d better forge another letter from Shastro to his captain of the guards. Say that Shas-tro and Kirion are working a great sorcery against the besiegers. It may take a number of days and they cannot be disturbed. You’ve been delegated to make the decisions until then.”
His gaze fell again on the bodies. “And something will have to be done about those too.”
“I’ll see to it before Keelan and I leave. I can spell them with a holding that will last some days. The bodies won’t change.” Aisling’s voice was quiet.
“Good. Then I’d better gather my men and rejoin the army before some fool out there decides Hadrann played me false and panics.”
He tramped out, his men forming up to follow him as he left the palace. Once he was gone, Aisling had the bodies of Shastro and Kirion carried up to the highest room in Kirion’s tower. They were placed on the four-poster there, covered decently, and the curtains pulled about them. Then she laid a preservation spell over the bed and its occupants that would hold about a week; she had that much power and knowledge. After that they might have to chose another method.
The forged papers had convinced Shastro’s guard captain. Hadrann was busy keeping the city under some sort of calm, not an easy task with most of the population desperate. Aisling and her brother chose to ride to Trevalyn keep; it was a swifter easier method of travel. With them went their three guards. They had no idea of what was happening, but they trusted their employers.
The trip was exhausting. Aisling pushed her mount, using her gift to keep herself warm, balancing that with the need not to draw too deeply on what she had left, but she kept up. They dared not waste time on this. As she rode she mourned the man Shastro could have been. If only Kirion had not murdered Paran and Sharna, she was sure that with them at his side, he’d have been a different man, even a good duke. She remembered a night just before the siege when they had danced. They’d hunted earlier, now she teased him as they swung through the figures of an old country circle dance.
“Ah, sire. You trip this as well as any farmer.”
His return smile had been oddly wistful. “I sometimes wonder if I would not have made a good farmer. I like beasts. They never play you false as men do. They love or hate openly.”
“Ah, but a farmer weds. He works all day and has a wife and children. How would that have pleased you, my Lord Duke?”
“Very well, perhaps.” His eyes darkened in remembrance. “Once I would not have minded being wed. I thought of children too. I would have liked that, with her.” He visibly wrenched his mind from that thought. “And you, my dear Murna, will you wed and have a husband, children?”
“If my uncle finds me a man I deem acceptable.”
“Ah ha. Choosy are we?”
“Indeed, my Lord Duke. Better no marriage than an unhappy one. I will always have a place with my uncle, and I have a tiny income of my own. That shall content me if no good man comes courting.”
Shastro opened his mouth. She saw the thought in his face and hastily distracted him. Yet the shadow of memory was still on Shas-tro’s face. Would he have made a good husband with the cousin he had loved? She thought he might have, with his love and his friend to temper him. The minstrel had begun to sing.
Shastro snarled into the sudden hush. “Another song, minstrel. That one I like not to hear.”
The minstrel bowed and hastily plucked the strings again. This time the song was approved. He sang at length of Sirion, duke of Kars when the incomers first settled. Apparently the man had all the virtues and then some. Shastro settled back in his seat with a cynical grin as the song wound on. He leaned over to Aisling to speak quietly.
“I doubt the man was any better than Pagar, but distance in time aids forgetting. In the end it doesn’t take much before the people remember only that Sirion pleased them.”
“That’s true, sire.”
Shastro sighed softly. “I wonder what they’ll sing of me when I’m dead. Will I be a hero too?”
“I think it likely, sire. All dukes tend to be heroes once they’re gone.”
Shastro chuckled. “True, although Pagar wasn’t. But then, I’ve not lost near as many as he did. Maybe I’ll get a better song.”
They turned to laughing over court gossip. As they rode now, Aisling remembered that night. It had been so innocent at the time, but in its way foreshadowing what was to come. She wondered, had they been right? Would Kars remember Shastro kindly now he was gone?
Back in the city Hadrann was hiding the death of the two men who’d ruled Kars, each in their own way. If the secret were discovered the people would riot, the guards rebel, and anarchy would descend on Kars. Hadrann had seen to it that small amounts of fuel and food were distributed from Shastro’s storehouses without fuss.
It kept the people quiet for a while longer. The guards had been ordered out to patrol more often in greater strength. They had extra rations added to compensate, so they grumbled but obeyed. In the hills five riders hammered on a keep gate and were admitted. Keelan and Aisling, shedding snow from their cloaks, refused more than a mug of hot trennen and urgently demanded the keep lord.
Once closeted with Jam neither minced words. He listened. It took most of two days, but he was Geavon’s kin, born and bred to serve his land, and once he’d heard everything, he understood the necessity.
“Jannor, my heir, is wed. He has a little daughter already, and his wife bears again. If I am assassinated as duke, then Trevalyn is not rulerless. I will come.”
He rode out with them, almost every man of his who could sit a horse riding in double file behind. Over them waved the banner of the dukes of Kars, taken quietly by Aisling before she and Keelan had left the city. On Jam’s arrival at the Kars gate, Franzo formally raised siege. By the time it sank into citizen minds that this wasn’t their old duke giving the orders at the palace now, they didn’t care. Shastro had caused the siege, given them over to fear and death. This new duke had opened the palace warehouse so that they had something to eat and drink again.
With the siege lifted, many of those who’d fled were already returning, bringing with them in some cases coin to aid those they’d been forced to leave behind. Old Lady Varra was in the forefront of these in a horse litter. Her eyes and tongue were busy as she swept her kin up to her suite and saw to it that they settled in. She herself sought out Aisling for a good enjoyable gossip. She’d always been first to know the news, and dead dukes and sieges were grist to her mill.
Trader and merchant caravans were arriving almost daily now as an early spring contributed to the city’s relief. The markets were filling with fuel, food, wine, horse fodder, and other essentials. The low quarter watched to see how much of the inflow was portable. They’d lost almost three-quarters of their number and all of such scraps of goods as they had ever owned. They settled very happily to repairing their loss of numbers as well.
Jam announced that since so many had suffered they should have a chance to rebuild. Taxes would be remitted by one half for all families who had been present during the siege. In addition, if they could prove to the duke a genuine inability to pay, ducal estate would be kept to a minimum for five years and the taxes halved for that period also. For the next five years they would rise by half of the announced reduction. After that they would return to the original level. Those merchants and tradesmen who believed themselves ruined rejoiced.