“I know you would have.” It was Markhos’ turn to sit back, laying his forearms along the armrests of his chair. “And for the sake of his father’s memory, I wish he’d been willing to accept the offer. Unfortunately, Yurokhas was right; Cassan’s mind simply doesn’t work that way.”
There was more than a hint of anger in the King’s voice, Tellian reflected, and wondered again how much of Markhos’ willingness to support his own proposals stemmed from the King’s memories of Cassan’s…incautious efforts to control him in his early days upon the throne. There were those-Tellian among them, to be honest-who were of the opinion that Yurokhas had been gifted with a significantly sharper brain than his royal brother, but there was nothing wrong with the head in which Markhos’ brain resided. In point of fact, it was remarkably level, that head, and if he was slow and methodical-maddeningly so, upon occasion-when it came to making up his mind, there was nothing hesitant about him once he had.
“I don’t suppose there’s ever a major policy choice in any kingdom where the great nobles’ rivalries don’t factor into the decision process, Your Majesty,” the baron said after a moment. “And I suppose it would be unfair-or at least unrealistic-to believe there wouldn’t be rivalries between them, no matter what else might be true or how sincere they were in their disagreements. It doesn’t necessarily need avarice and ambition to breed conflict…or hatred, for that matter. Which isn’t to suggest all three of them don’t play a role in this particular rivalry. I think Cassan and I would’ve detested each other even if we’d both been born peasants, but having the two of us as barons can’t have been easy for you.”
“Oh, you’re right about that, Milord,” Markhos agreed with a knife-thin smile. “There’ve been times I’ve actually found myself wishing one of you would just go ahead and kill the other one off, to be perfectly honest. Of the two, I’d have preferred for you to be the one still standing, although given Cassan’s…devious nature, I’m not sure I would’ve been prepared to place a wager either way. But at least if one of you’d won, I’d have had a few moments of peace after the state funeral!”
Tellian snorted, although he knew the King was as well aware as he was of Cassan’s efforts to accomplish precisely that end. Not that Markhos could ever officially admit anything of the sort without absolute, irrefutable proof-unless, of course, he wanted to bring back the Time of Troubles.
On the other hand, his extension of a royal charter is a pretty clear inclination of what he actually knows, whether he can admit it or not. Shaftmaster’s revenue estimates and Macebearer’s arguments in favor of our increased influence with the Spearmen are all very well, but there’s a part of him that shares the real conservatives’ suspicions of Bahnak and the hradani. Come to that, it’s his responsibility to share those suspicions, given all the bloodshed lying between us and them. Despite which, I doubt anyone in the entire Kingdom’s going to miss the subtext of his proclamation or doubt for a minute that he sided with Bahnak, Kilthan, and me at least in part because it lets him hammer Cassan the way the bastard deserves to be hammered.
And, for that matter, I should probably admit there’s a nasty, vindictive side of me that bought into the entire idea so enthusiastically because I knew exactly what it was going to do to Cassan if we pulled it off.
Fortunately, for all his keen intelligence, Tellian Bowmaster was given to neither second thoughts nor self-deception. He knew precisely what was going to happen to his most bitter rival’s political and economic power, and he was looking forward to it. None of which kept him from truly regretting the way in which their decades-long struggle had overflowed onto the Kingdom as a whole and the King in particular.
“Well, Your Majesty,” he said, reaching for his surviving bishop and interposing it between his king and Markhos’ queen, “we may not have killed each other off-yet-but there’s a pretty good chance sheer apoplexy will carry him off when he finds out about your decision!”
The King laughed. There might have been just an edge of sourness in that laugh, but it was genuine. And probably owed something to the fact that the move of Tellian’s bishop allowed him to exchange one of his knights for the baron’s remaining castle.
“I would like to see his reaction,” the King admitted, setting the captured castle to one side. “Unfortunately, not even a king can have everything.”
The sheer, wild exhilaration filled her mind and heart with a fiery intoxication.
The fiercest gallop upon the back of the fleetest warhorse ever bred paled to insignificance. Perhaps- perhaps — a warhorse might have touched, ever so briefly, that headlong, booming, drumroll speed, but it could never have sustained it, never maintained it for more than the barest handful of minutes. Yet the mighty muscles continued to stretch and play, the matchless heart thundered not simply with exertion but with the untamed, unquenchable power of a courser’s dauntless will, and Gayrfressa’s link to the energy which formed and sustained the entire universe burned like a coil of lightning. It poured that energy into her, and her hooves spurned the earth not for mere minutes, but for hours.
Leeana Hanathafressa was part of those booming hooves, shared those straining muscles, tasted that energy and felt it pour through her. She was submerged within the wild rush of speed, feeling it as Gayrfressa felt it even as she felt the wind of their passage whipping at her braided hair, bringing tears to her eyes. It was the first time since their bonding that Gayrfressa had truly loosed the incomparable speed and endurance of her kind. They’d touched moments of such swiftness, yet until this moment, not even Leeana-a wind rider herself, wife and daughter of wind riders-had truly grasped what it would be like. Now she knew…and as she rode the tornado named Gayrfressa, she and her hoofed sister merged on an even deeper, even more complete level.
Dimly, in the back of her mind where her own thoughts resided separately from this driving charge across the Wind Plain, she understood that part of the magic was her own love of running. Her delight in the speed of her merely human feet, of the deep breaths pulsing in and out of her lungs, of the steady, elevated beat of her heart. She knew that love for herself, and so she truly shared Gayrfressa’s passion to outrace the wind and give herself to the thunder of her hooves-to gallop until even she could gallop no more. And as that thought wended its way through her own mind, she felt Gayrfressa touch it with her and sensed the mare’s agreement, exalted and joyous despite the gravity of their mission.
She raised her head, green eyes slitted against the wind, gazing ahead. Few creatures on earth could match a courser’s sense of direction. Gayrfressa knew exactly where they were headed, and she burned her way across open fields, vaulted dry stream beds and small creeks, slowed just enough to maintain her footing as she forged across a broader watercourse, carrying both of them arrow-straight toward their goal. Leeana knew the land around Chergor well, if not so intimately as the terrain around Kalatha, yet she could never have picked out the shortest path to her father’s hunting lodge as Gayrfressa had. She wondered how the courser had done it, yet that was something not even Gayrfressa could have explained to her. The huge chestnut mare simply knew where her destination lay, and no power on earth could have deflected her from her course.
Now Leeana blinked on tears, and her heart rose as she recognized known landmarks. They were no more than a quarter-hour from their goal, the way a courser galloped, and she lowered her head once more, lying forward along Gayrfressa’s neck, cheeks whipped by the courser’s mane, and laid her palms against her sister’s shoulders and the bunchy, explosive power of her deltoideus muscles. She flattened herself, molded herself to the courser, and they and the wind were one.