He wondered, as he hauled himself up the dimly lit stairs, if it would ever work again. If it didn’t, he would have to give up dice for good.
Now, that was a really terrible thought!
He thrust it aside as he reached the top and saw Alder standing by the door of his room. As he walked down the short stretch of corridor and into his room he ran over the rest of the day in his mind.
It had certainly been an eventful one.
He hoped he never had another like it.
Alder opened the door and followed him into the room. As Sterren stood yawning, the big soldier lit a candle on the desk and stood awaiting orders.
CHAPTER 9
Sterren stretched, thought for a moment, and then shooed Alder out. When the door had closed behind Alder’s back he took a moment to make sure all his belongings were stashed where he could find them. That done, he lay down on the great canopied bed and tried to sleep.
His blood was still pumping hard from the excitement of the game, the shock of losing so badly, and the long climb up the stairs from the barracks, all coming at the end of an extraordinarily long and bewildering day; sleep was slow in coming. He was still lying awake when he heard a quiet knock on his door.
“What is it?” he called.
The door opened partway, and Alder stuck his head in.
“There’s someone here who wants to see you.” Alder said apologetically. “He says he has business with you.”
“At this hour?”
Alder explained, “He’s been stopping by regularly all evening, but you weren’t in before.”
That was true enough. “All right,” Sterren said, “what kind of business?”
“He won’t say. Something about settling an account your great-uncle left, I think.”
“Settling an account?” That did not sound encouraging at all. “Who is it?”
Alder considered before replying, “He’s a traveling merchant, I think, if that’s not too grand a word for him. He deals in trinkets and whatnot. I don’t know his name, but I’ve seen him before. He really did deal with the old warlord.”
“Trinkets?”
Alder explained, “This and that. Little things.”
Sterren considered telling Alder to get rid of this uninvited visitor, but his curiosity got the better of him; what had the old warlord had to do with a traveling dealer in trinkets? Why was the merchant so eager to see him that he had not been able to go to sleep at a reasonable hour and leave the business, whatever it was, until morning? “Send him in,” he called, as he sat up on the bed.
Alder ducked back out of sight, and a moment later another man slipped in through the half-open door, then carefully closed it securely behind him.
He was short and dark, his hair graying, and he looked as if he had been fat once, but was not eating well lately. He wore a greasy brown tunic and even greasier gray breeches; his boots were well made and also well worn. Despite his clothing, his face and hair were clean, and he had no objectionable odor.
After closing the door he checked the latch carefully, then turned and made a polite but perfunctory bow.
“Hello, Lord Sterren,” he said. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m called Lar Samber’s son. As your guard said, I’m a dealer in trinkets and oddities, and the occasional love charm or poison.”
Sterren nodded an acknowledgment, but before he could say anything, Lar continued, “And I’m sure you’re wondering what old Sterren had to do with me, and what this account is I want to settle. That wasn’t really my reason for coming here. I have another business besides my trading, you see, or rather, I trade in a product less tangible, but more important, than beads, and gewgaws. Your great-uncle was my only customer and the only person who knew about it.” He paused, eyeing Sterren, his face curiously expressionless.
Sterren nodded expectantly. “Go on,” he said.
Lar hesitated for the first time.
“I don’t know you,” he said.
“I don’t know you, either,” Sterren pointed out.
Lar nodded slowly. “True enough, and it’s not as if I have a choice.” The merchant hesitated again, but only briefly. “I’m your chief spy,” he burst out hurriedly. “I deal in information. Naturally, this is a secret, one that your great-uncle kept well; nobody else in Semma ever knew, until now. I’m trusting you with my life, my lord, by telling you this.”
His face remained oddly blank even as he said this; if he felt any great anxiety over the risk he was taking, it did not show.
Sterren puzzled over the word “spy” for a moment, then smiled and pointed to a chair. “Sit down,” he said, “and tell me about it.”
Lar’s face did not change as he took a seat, but Sterren was sure he was relieved.
He was relieved himself; it was good to know that his predecessor had even had spies, and had not relied entirely on his three officers and their men.
A thought occurred to him; Lar was a traveler and a dealer in information. “Do you speak Ethsharitic?” he asked.
Startled, Lar admitted, “Some. Not much. Mostly I speak Ophkaritic, Ksinallionese, Thanorian, and Trader’s Tongue.”
Sterren had never even heard of Thanorian, but he didn’t let that worry him. Instead, he burst out with a string of questions in his native tongue.
Lar had to repeatedly ask him to slow down, and several times the conversation switched back into Semmat for a time, or slipped into a pidgin of the two languages that they improvised on the spot. Even so, Sterren was able to communicate more freely than he had in days.
Unfortunately, what Lar had to communicate was not encouraging.
Both Ophkar and Ksinallion were planning to invade Semma.
Somehow, although he had been trying to convince himself war was unlikely, this news did not really surprise Sterren at all.
This impending invasion was not really a secret; in fact, the suspicion that it was being planned had been responsible for the urgency of Lady Kalira’s mission to Ethshar. The aristocrats of Semma were confident that they could survive a war, if they had a warlord.
So they had sent for Sterren.
Lar, however, did not stop his revelations at the mere fact of the coming war; he went on to detail the reasons for it, and also the reasons it had not yet begun. The underlying reasons were simple enough: Ophkar and Ksinallion both wanted Semma’s land and wealth and people. For three hundred years, Ophkar and Ksinallion had been bitter enemies; they had fought six wars in that time. In the first, Ophkar had captured the Ksinallionese province of Semma; in the second, Ksinallion won it back. It was during the Third Ophkar-Ksinallion war, in 5002, that Semma, under Tendel the Great, had rebelled against the cruel yoke of Ksinallion and asserted its independence, siding with Ophkar and leading to an Ophkarite victory.
Five years later, when Tendel died, Ophkar invaded Semma and attempted to annex it. Semma survived by enlisting Ksinallion’s aid.
From then on, Semma’s policy was to maintain a balance of power between Ophkar and Ksinallion by siding with whoever was weaker at any given time, playing the two off against each other in order to maintain its independence. Tendel’s son and heir, Rayel the Tenacious, had understood that; it was only when he was old and ill that matters had gotten out of hand, and a war with Ksinallion resulted in 5026. His successor, Tendel II, known as Tendel the Gentle, reigned for twenty-two years without ever letting the balance slip.
He was followed by Rayel the Fool, who only lasted nine years, six of them spent fighting Ophkar — and losing.