Yet his eyes still shined with a merry light and keen perceptiveness. Now, as if he followed Kith’s thoughts, he turned to the elven general and chuckled.
“Tell ’em, young fellow. Tell ’em what we’ve got up our sleeves.” Kith nodded. The time was right.
“We have word that the humans are planning a trap against the Windriders. They will lure the griffons into an archery ambush. We want to amass the Wildrunners, using all the mercenaries, garrison forces, and dwarves—our entire army. We want to come at them from the north, east, and south. If we hit them hard and we keep the advantage of surprise, we’ll achieve the kind of setback that will force them to the bargaining table.”
“But Sithelbec—you’d leave the fortress unscreened?” Sithas asked. In the course of the Kinslayer War, the siege of those high palisades had become an epic tale, and a bustling military city had blossomed around the walls. The place had a tremendous symbolic as well as practical importance to the Silvanesti cause, and a sizable proportion of the Wildrunners were permanently garrisoned there.
“It’s a risk,” Kith-Kanan admitted. “We will move quickly, striking before the humans can learn our intentions. Then the Windriders will act as the bait of the trap, and while the enemy is distracted, we will strike.”
“It’s worth a try,” urged Parnigar, supporting his general’s plan. “We can’t keep chasing shadows year after year!”
“Some shadows are more easily caught,” observed Quimant acidly. “The human women, for example.”
Parnigar leaped to his feet, knocking his chair over backward and lunging toward the lord.
“Enough!” The Speaker of the Stars reached out and pushed the warrior back toward his chair. Even in his rage, Parnigar heeded his ruler.
“Your insulting remark was uncalled for!” barked Kith-Kanan, staring at Quimant.
“True,” Sithas agreed. “But neither would it be invited if you and your officers kept your loyalties a little more clear in your own heads!” Kith-Kanan flushed with anger and frustration. Why did it always come down to this? He glared at Sithas as if his twin was a stranger. A noise at the tent flap pulled their attention away from the conference. Vanesti, Ulvian, and Verhanna, the children of the royal twins, erupted into the tent with impertinent boldness. Hermathya followed.
Kith-Kanan met her eyes and froze, suddenly numb. By the gods, he had forgotten how beautiful she was! Furious and guilty, he nonetheless watched her furtively. She cast him a sideways glance, and as always, he saw the beckoning in her eye that only furthered his pain. Never again, he knew, would he betray his brother. And now there was the matter of his own wife.
“Uncle Kith!” Vanesti irritated his father by running directly to his uncle. The young elf stopped quickly and then pantomimed a formal bow.
“Come here. Stop acting like the court jester!” Kith swept his nephew into an embrace, keenly aware of the eyes of his own children upon him. Ulvian and Verhanna, though younger than Vanesti, had matured much more quickly because of their half-human blood. Already young adults, they looked disdainfully upon such adolescent outbursts of emotion.
Perhaps, too, they sensed the bitter contrast in their relationship with their own uncle. There had never been an “Uncle Sithas” or a “come here, children!” between them. They were half-human and consequently had no place in the Speaker’s royal family.
Perhaps they understood, but they didn’t forgive.
“This reminds me of a final matter for discussion,” Sithas said stiffly. He relaxed when Vanesti left Kith’s side to stand with Ulvian and Verhanna beside the open door flap of the tent.
“Vanesti is due to begin his training in the warrior arts. He has disdained the academies in the city and has prevailed upon me to make this request: Will you take him as your squire?”
For a moment, Kith-Kanan sat back, acutely aware of Vanesti’s hopeful gaze. He couldn’t suppress a surge of affection and pride. He liked the young elf and felt that he would be a good warrior—good at whatever he attempted, for that matter. Yet he couldn’t entirely ignore another feeling.
The proposition reminded him of Ulvian. Kith had sent his son to Parnigar, as squire to that most able soldier. The young half-elf had proven so intractable and shiftless that,
with deep regret, Parnigar had been forced to send him back to his father. The failure had stung Kith-Kanan far more than it had disturbed Ulvian. Yet when he looked at the young form of Vanesti, so much like a younger version of Kith-Kanan himself, he knew what his answer must be. “It would be my honor,” Kith replied seriously. * * * * *
The aging woman watched the image of the elf in the mirror. The glass was cracked and patched, with several slivers missing. It had, after all, been reconstructed from shards. Five years earlier, she had hired a legion of skilled elven artisans to take those broken pieces, guarded by Suzine for years, adding crafts of their own to restore the glass to some measure of its former power.
It seemed that, with the distance that had grown between herself and her husband, she had little left to do in life but observe the course of things around her. The mirror gave her the means to do so, without forcing her to leave her carriage and be exposed to the subtle humiliations of the Silvanesti elves. Suzine flushed as she thought of Hermathya and Quimant, whose cutting remarks had hurt her decades earlier when she had allowed them to penetrate her emotions. Yet even those barbs had been easier to take than the aloof silence of Sithas, her own brother-in-law, who had barely acknowledged her existence!
Of course, there was goodness to be found in elvenkind, too. There was Nirakina, who had always treated her as a daughter, and Tamanier Ambrodel, who had offered friendship. But now age had impaired even those relationships. How could she feel like a daughter to Nirakina when the four centuries old elf-woman seemed like a spry young woman beside the aging Suzine? And her hearing made conversation difficult, so that even Tamanier Ambrodel had to shout his remarks, often repeating them two or three times. She found it less embarrassing to simply avoid these two good souls. So she remained in this enclosed coach that Kith-Kanan had given her. The large vehicle was comfortably appointed, even to the point of containing a soft bed—a bed that was always hers alone.
For what must have been the millionth time, she wondered about the course her life had taken, about the love she had developed for an elf who would inevitably outlive her by centuries. She couldn’t regret that decision. Her years of happiness with Kith-Kanan had been the finest of her life. But those years were gone, and if she didn’t regret her choice of nearly four decades earlier, neither could she bury the unhappiness that was now her constant companion. Her children were no comfort. Ulvian and Verhanna seemed embarrassed by their mother’s humanness and shunned her, pretending to be full-blooded elves insofar as they could. But she felt pity for them as well, for their father had never shown them the affection that would have been due his proper heirs—as if he himself was secretly ashamed of their mixed racial heritage. Now that she was too old to ride a horse, her husband carted her around in this carriage. She felt like so much baggage, a cargo that Kith-Kanan was determined to see properly delivered before he proceeded with the rest of his life. How long could she remain like this? What could she do to change her lot in her waning years?
Her mind drifted to the enemy—to her husband’s enemy and her own. General Giarna frightened her now more than ever before. Often she had observed him in the repaired glass, shocked by the youthful appearance and vigor of the man. She sensed in him the power of something much deeper than she had first suspected.
Often she remembered the way Giarna had slain General Barnet. It was as if he had sucked the life out of him, she remembered thinking. That, she now knew, was exactly what he had done. How many more lives had the Boy General claimed over the years? What was the true cost of his youthfulness?