She sucked down a deep, shaky breath. As it was, she had a job to do and a society to save from another group of people she respected, two members of whom she’d come to care for as very dear friends. For the first time in her life, the knee-jerk, automatic Ransaran dislike of war had a profoundly personal basis.
War was hell.
Particularly when it was your job to win it.
* * *
It had been hours.
More than a dozen hours.
Gadrial had paced the floor. Chewed her nails ragged. She’d destroyed her carefully arranged hair, redone the styling spell to rearrange it into a neat coif, then destroyed that, as well. At least twenty times, now. If word didn’t come soon, she was going to start tearing the draperies down from the walls and hurling breakables across the room.
Would they find Jasak guilty?
Or innocent?
She couldn’t bear the suspense much longer. The calm, very nearly serene poise of the duchess, seated beside her, drove Gadrial nearly mad. How could Sathmin just sit there, gazing down into the street?
Because, Gadrial’s conscience whispered, she’s a great deal stronger than you are. She bit her lip. Then made another frantic circuit around the room, nearly ready to climb the walls with a sticky-spell that would let her crawl out across the ceiling like a fly and scream from the center of the chandelier.
I can’t bear this! Not another moment!
The door opened.
Gadrial jerked around, heart beating so hard, she couldn’t breathe. For one long, stupefied moment, she simply stood there, staring at the figure in the doorway. It wasn’t the duke, with word about his son. It was Shaylar.
Gadrial hadn’t even seen the other woman since the terrible night Thankhar Olderhan had unflinchingly told all of them what he’d learned. The Voice had withdrawn to the apartment she shared with Jathmar to weep for her dead, to cope with the horrible knowledge she’d never wanted yet had needed to know. One or two of the Garth Showma staff had seemed irked by her refusal to leave her chambers, but they’d followed their employers’ example and left her to the privacy she so desperately needed.
And so had Gadrial. She’d longed to try to comfort Shaylar, but when she’d quietly suggested that to Jathmar, he’d shaken his head sadly.
“Not now, Gadrial,” he’d told her. “She…she just needs to be alone for now. It’s hard, especially for a Voice, to cope with all of this-” he’d waved vaguely at the townhouse around them in a gesture which took in everything beyond it, as well “-without knowing what’s happening in our own universes. And just now…just now she’s too raw and wounded to want to see anyone. Even you.”
His words had cut her like knives, but she’d understood. And now, as the door opened and she looked up, she froze. She wanted to run to her. Wanted to throw her arms around the other woman and beg her to forgive Gadrial for being on the wrong side in this awful war. She wanted-
She didn’t have to do anything.
Shaylar, tears streaming, crossed the room and embraced Gadrial. “I couldn’t bear it any longer,” Shaylar said softly. “Knowing how much this wait was hurting you.”
“But…”
Shaylar’s arms tightened down; then she stepped back.
“But you’re my friend, Gadrial. My only friend here. I need you, Gadrial,” she whispered. “And I think you need me?”
Gadrial hugged her again. “Gods, yes,” she said equally softly. “But I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to speak to an Arcanan again!” She felt her own eyes prickle. “After what the Duke’s found out so far, knowing there could be even worse to come, I-”
Shaylar drew a deep, ragged breath. “No, Gadrial. I never felt that. I needed to be…alone for a while. It’s been terribly hard for me. For Jathmar and me, both of us. But I never felt like I didn’t want to see you, ever again.”
Gadrial’s eyes filled with tears. “Shaylar, there’s nothing I can say that can tell you how horrified I was by that news. How horrified I still am. Nothing justifies that. Nothing.”
“Thank you, Gadrial. That…helps.”
Gadrial touched Shaylar’s hair, tucked a lock of it behind her ear. “Thank you, Shaylar. For still being my friend.”
Shaylar nodded.
“Jathmar?” Gadrial asked after a moment
“He’s…thinking it over,” Shaylar said softly, and Gadrial nodded. Of course he was.
“I hope he decides to join us, too,” the duchess said, rising to put her own arm around Shaylar and hug her tightly. “But in the meantime, my dears, why don’t we all have some tea and send for something to eat?”
“I think that sounds like a very good idea, Your Grace,” Shaylar replied, and if her smile was wan and just a bit watery, it was also real.
* * *
Three hours and seventeen minutes later, the drawing room door opened again. Everyone jerked around, and Gadrial’s heart shuddered to a halt when she saw Jasak standing in the doorway. For long moments, she was frozen to the chair in which she’d been sitting for the past two hours, too exhausted to continue her pacing. Her eyes met his and the blaze of fire in them left her pulse shuddering, wondering if that fire was the look of a man filling his eyes with the sight of her for the last time or the fire of a man out from under the cloud that had dogged his heels all the way from that pile of wind-wrecked trees. Not to mention the man and woman sitting beside her, whose capture had wrenched Gadrial’s life-and everyone else’s in this room-inside out and upside down.
Then Jasak spoke. He whispered hoarsely, “The verdict was not guilty, on all charges.”
Gadrial sobbed aloud once; tears filled her eyes. Someone else was weeping, as well, close by. But then Jasak spoke again, and she stared at him in shock.
“I…can’t stay in the army,” he said.
“I don’t understand!” she cried. “You’re innocent! They cleared you! Cleared your name, your reputation, completely! Why can’t you stay in the army? We’ll need good officers!” Even as she said it, a flutter of terror-and raw, selfish gratitude-tore through her. He won’t be going to war! Even though he needed to…and wanted to, being a mad Andaran. “I don’t understand,” she finished, miserable for failing to understand even this about the man she loved, and a strange little smile touched his lips.
“Yes, I was cleared, completely. But the Army needs someone to take the blame, even so. Someone besides Garlath, who’s been officially found responsible for starting the war, but who’s inconveniently dead and therefore not an ideal candidate. Much of the verdict hinged on his failure to obey my order to hold his fire, as we suspected it would. But that was a two-way sword. They determined that I was in command and that Garlath’s refusal to obey that order started the war. They also determined that my decision to leave him in place was reasonable and correct, given the circumstances surrounding his…attitudes and behavior. Your testimony tipped those particular scales very firmly in the direction of the final verdict, Gadrial.
“But because I was in command, ultimately the blame for the war rests in part on my shoulders. And however…fraught any decision of mine to summarily relieve him might have been, I didn’t do it. The fact that I obeyed regulations by leaving him in command clears me of legal responsibility, but a lot of people who weren’t there are going to be wise after the fact and second-guess my judgment. There’d probably be fewer Andarans like that than Ransarans or Mythlans, but there’d be more than enough of our own people. Any future military career for me would probably be a disaster, and if I tried to stay in uniform, every single one of Father’s political enemies would have a custom made club to beat him over the head with in Parliament and public opinion. So I’m resigning my commission to enter politics.”