Jegrai's expression turned to one of near-anguish. "Teo—Teo, my brother, will your people give him those things? The learning he starves for?"
Teo was growing used to these confidences, and the way the Khene spoke freely to him. It was logical; he was an outsider, safe to confide in, not someone Jegrai had to command. But there was something more than logic behind it, and the confidences hadn't been one-sided. He'd told Jegrai about Kasha—how on the one hand he longed for something deeper than friendship, and feared the changes that would bring—and on the other shied away from the commitment implied. And Jegrai had listened with a sympathy he'd hoped for, but hadn't actually expected.
They weren't so dissimilar, his people and the Vredai.
Neither were he and Jegrai.
"Jegrai, I speak as the brother you have called me," Teo said carefully. "If this path should take him away from the Vredai, perhaps for all time, would you still wish him to follow it?"
Jegrai bowed his head and was silent for a very long time, staring now at the floor of his tent Finally the words came; slowly, deeply thoughtful. "If he felt the calling—if he felt it was worth the sacrifice—how could I deny him?" The Khene raised his head and looked straight into Teo's eyes, and Teo could not help but see the pain there, and the longing.
If he could trade places with his cousin, he'd do it in an eyeblink. Gods. I can't give him everything he wants—but by all the gods—I'll give him what I can.
"Felaras pledged he'd be taught as one of our own, Jegrai. She meant it. Knowledge, learning—they're close to being sacred things for us. She doesn't make pledges like that lightly."
Jegrai let out the breath he'd been holding in a hiss, and nodded. His hand fell on the skin of khmass, and he looked at it as if he was surprised to find it there.
"You know, we have a saying. 'In drink, there is sometimes truth.' Do you feel up to more truth, Teo? Or shall we speak of the weather, or of horses?" He drank, then held out the skin, and his hand was steady.
Teo took it, took a long pull himself, and ignored the little chill that went down his neck. "Truth. If you really want to hear it." He passed the skin back.
"Northwind thinks that your Master has a plan that involves all of us—as allies. What do you say to that?"
"That your Shaman is a very wise man. And a very perceptive one."
"And my brother says as much by what he does not say as by the words he chooses," Jegrai replied sardonically, drinking and returning the khmass.
Teo shrugged, drank, and handed it back.
"So. And what if we, too, have plans—involving all of us as allies? Hm?" Jegrai demanded. "How would your Master reply to that?"
"It would depend, I think, on what the plans were, and in which direction those plans turned," Teo said as cautiously as he could, while Jegrai drank with one eye on him. "There are things we—the Order—had rather not do. And if that was your direction, well, there would be trouble. I should not tell you this, but . . . my brother, this is not to go beyond your ears. The Master does not rule unopposed. She can be replaced by another if it is the will of the majority of the Order. And Felaras is not altogether the most popular of Masters." He took back the khmass, feeling the need for it.
Jegrai's eyes went wide with surprise, then narrow with speculation. Finally he nodded as he accepted back the skin. "Let me say that Khenes have met with challenge also—and . . . 'accidents.' There are those who do not favor the path I have chosen for Vredai. And this is not to go beyond your ears. We walk a narrow bridge, I think, both of us. I shall have to think upon this." He shook the bag of khmass; it was as flat as a child's chest. "I think we have had enough of truth and drink for one night, hm?"
Teo stifled a yawn and nodded. "As it is, I'm going to wish to die in the morning. I am not entirely certain that I will remember my body finding my bed!"
But as he walked back to his tent in the cool night air, Teo knew he had spoken something less than the truth about being weary. Certainly his body longed for rest, and he was assuredly feeling the impact of the liquor, but his mind buzzed with unwelcome thoughts that kept him thinking even as he crawled into his bed.
Those uncomfortable speculations kept him staring up into the darkness long after he should have been asleep.
So. Jegrai has plans, too. That shouldn't have surprised me. And if those plans involve getting rid of whoever or whatever it was that chased him and his Clan west—I'm all for helping him. But what if that isn't the direction he's looking? What if he's figuring on cutting himself new territory? Like in Ancas? Or Yazkirn? What the hell should I do if I find that out? Should I tell Felaras? Do I tell her my suspicions now?
The night-sounds of the nomad camp soothed him, and reminded him of how little he had in common with those to the west and south of the Pass. And how little good the folk of those nations had done for the Order. And how much harm.
What's the rest of the world ever done besides give us grief, cast us out of our homes and livelihoods, even murder us in our beds?
The horses stirred restlessly on their picket, and a voice lifted in soft—but alien—song to soothe them.
These people—what did he really see of them past their surface? They had no written tradition at all; a reverence for learning, yes, but they had remained unchanged for hundreds of years, while the Order spawned change. Gods. How can we side with illiterate barbarians with the intent of taking down civilized nations?
Teo turned on his side; he could see the watchfire that flickered in front of the Khene's tent through the gauze of the insect-screen covering the entrance to his own. Jegrai won't be illiterate for long—if he has his way, we'll be teaching every member of Vredai who wants to learn. He favors us the way nobody in those so-called civilized lands ever has. And he's a good man.
But the Order had to look beyond the present.
What if the next Khene is a despot? Gods, where should my loyalties lie?
Halun lay unsleeping, staring at a single star, one that seemed to have been caught in the smoke-hole of his tent. There had been another meeting tonight, this one with not only Gortan, but the Khene's own brother, Iridai, and a handful of disgruntled nomads whom the Shaman had passed over in favor of the young man now calling himself Demonsbane. On a hunch, Halun had tested them, and found they had considerable raw, if untrained, power in the wizardry of ill-wishing.
That had not been the only surprise of the evening. Gortan had made him a proposition: a strange and very seductive proposition.
Help us, the nomad had urged. Help us to raise discontent with Jegrai. You say you wish to teach us many things, but may be forbidden to teach them by your Khene. So; help us to be rid of Jegrai, then we will go from here, and you may come with us, you will be the right hand of the Khene, who will heed you in all things. You will teach us what you will, and we will honor you above even the Khene.
He cradled the back of his head on his arms and tried to think things through logically. He had, by the gods, not expected that particular offer.