Tchazzar smiled. “Even though it’s contrary to your inclinations.”
“Majesty, I swear to you-”
The Red Dragon raised his hand. “Please, Daughter. I wasn’t doubting you. Or scolding you. I was leading up to saying that I’m starting to wonder if perhaps you actually do see something in Jhesrhi Coldcreek that I haven’t permitted myself to see.”
Halonya’s lingering feelings of bitterness and humiliation fell away. He had given her an opening, an opportunity! But she had to proceed carefully. She was sure that, even if he was finally experiencing a moment of clarity, Tchazzar’s infatuation with the golden witch hadn’t faded away entirely.
“Has something happened?” she asked.
Tchazzar snorted. “It’s more what hasn’t happened.”
Halonya hesitated. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, let’s put it this way. I’m a god, am I not?”
“The greatest of gods,” Halonya replied.
“And the monarch of a splendid realm. I raised Lady Coldcreek up to be one of the two most powerful personages at my court. I ended the persecution of the arcanists, and thus, she told me, granted her fondest wish. And yet…”
“What, Majesty?”
“There’s still a… reserve in her. Something that makes her hold herself aloof. Mind you, she explained to me early on that she has a defect in her spirit, a flaw that makes her different from others, and I believe it. But sometimes it doesn’t feel like she’s trying to climb over the wall. It feels like she’s sheltering behind it.”
Halonya still wasn’t sure what Tchazzar was actually talking about. But whatever the source of his doubts, she wanted to encourage them. Her first impulse was to do so by pointing out that, like all wizards, Jhesrhi was demon touched. Unfortunately Tchazzar probably wouldn’t agree. He hadn’t only freed Chessenta’s arcanists to please the wretched sellsword. He truly did believe they were basically the same as everybody else. Halonya might someday be able to persuade him away from that dangerously generous viewpoint, but it would be shrewder to attack the immediate problem in another way.
“Majesty, even the humblest of your subjects owes you love, loyalty, and gratitude. And considering all that you’ve done for Jhesrhi Coldcreek, her debt is even greater. If she isn’t willing to pay it… well, even I, your prophetess, find that hard to understand.”
Tchazzar took a long drink from his cup. “It isn’t just the one thing I knew from the start would be difficult. Does the bitch even know how to smile? I granted her a miracle tonight. I threw open the door between life and death, even though Cousin Kelemvor wept and begged me to forbear, just to give her a gift that no one else in all the worlds could have given. And it meant nothing to her.”
Halonya shook her head. “Again, I have to say I have no idea how any of your children could be so ungrateful.”
Tchazzar eyed her. “Really? Aren’t you the one who tried to convince me repeatedly that Jhesrhi is a traitor? That she helped Khouryn Skulldark escape and all the rest of it?”
Halonya drew breath to say yes, then thought again that it might be counterproductive to push too hard. “Your Majesty commanded me to put all such suspicions out of my head.”
“Yes. Because, despite what I’ve just told you, Jhesrhi… well, she’s done glorious things for me.”
Halonya assumed she knew what one of the “glorious things” was. Jhesrhi had rushed to Tchazzar’s aid when Alasklerbanbastos had him at a disadvantage. She would have liked to know what the others were too, but the living god didn’t discuss them. It was a mark of his distress that he’d even alluded to them.
But whatever had happened in the interval between the moment when Jhesrhi and Gaedynn Ulraes first encountered Tchazzar and the day the Red Dragon returned to his people, Halonya could see his mood altering in its sudden, unpredictable way, his mind shying away from hurt feelings and suspicion. Fearful that her chance was likewise slipping away, she said, “I’m grateful for any good thing the wizard has ever done for Your Majesty. But can we be sure that means she’s loyal today? She’s a sellsword. You’re a warlord and understand such folk better than I ever could, but isn’t it necessary to buy their loyalty again and again and again?”
Tchazzar frowned. “I hoped that Jhesrhi was shaped of purer clay.”
“I pray you’re right,” Halonya said. “But I fear what could happen if you’re not. Especially now, when some undead horror has sneaked into your palace itself and you’re about to start another war.”
“You have a point. There are so many players, working on so many levels. Any of them-” He caught himself, as if he’d been on the brink of saying something he shouldn’t. “The dragonborn, that is, and the remaining renegades in Threskel.”
“I understand,” Halonya said, although she wasn’t sure it was true.
“But I can’t move against Jhesrhi unless I have proof she’s disloyal,” Tchazzar continued. “And it’s not just because I love her, although that’s part of it, of course. I’ve always believed that you and she are the two halves of my luck, my sister Tymora’s double gift to me. And anyone who spurns such a blessing without cause trades good fortune for bad.”
“Your Majesty is wise as always. But I beg you to consider that when you have doubts about Jhesrhi, that, too, is your wisdom coming out.”
Tchazzar smiled a crooked smile. It was a cast of expression Halonya almost never saw on his long, amber-eyed face, seemingly reflective of a wry, self-aware amusement. “But if my instincts tug me in opposite directions, where does that leave me?”
“It leaves you with the need to test which feeling is the true one. I confess I’ve done my best to keep an eye on Jhesrhi. I didn’t tell you because I was afraid it would anger you, and the need to go behind your back limited what I could do. But if you now agree that someone should watch her…” Halonya spread her hands.
Tchazzar nodded. “Then we can watch her properly.”
“There’s something else,” Halonya said. “If Lady Jhesrhi is disloyal, then it stands to reason that Aoth Fezim and his company are too, and probably committing treason up in Threskel.” She remembered the Thayan gripping her forearm from behind, the threat of his spear and his magic, and she had to clamp down on a spasm of loathing to keep her voice steady. “I think you should check on them as well.”
FIVE
15-19 E LEASIS, THE Y EAR OF THE A GELESS O NE
Aoth studied the drake riders on the rocky ridge below. One outrider was too close to the column. The other had strayed too far away. He suppressed a sigh.
But he shouldn’t have bothered because Jet still heard the sigh inside his head. “It’ll be a marvel if they make it another day,” the griffon rasped.
“Some of them can handle a crossbow or a spear,” Aoth replied. He’d run his new command through a few tests and drills before departing Airspur, less in the hope of improving their skills at such a late date than to assess what he had to work with. “Some have elemental tricks that may prove useful. And some have been in these mountains before.”
“They’re still in over their heads,” said Jet. “Especially when you consider that, judging by what happened back in the city, Vairshekellabex knows we’re coming.”
“At least the company’s not likely to be ambushed.” Aoth felt a twinge of humor at his own expense. He didn’t think of himself as optimistic by nature, but Jet could be so relentlessly dour that it provoked a fellow into arguing the opposing point of view. “Not with you, me, Gaedynn, and Eider in the air.”
Jet grunted. “The column’s stopping.”
And so it was. The riders at the head had reined in their mounts, the better, perhaps, to confer. After a moment, Cera looked up and waved her mace in the air. The gilded weapon gleamed in the sunlight.