“Just how obviously could your burglar burglarize the Prime Councilor’s files?” he asked out loud.
“Obviously?” Salgahn raised an eyebrow.
“If everyone knows Macebearer’s office was successfully broken into, then Cassan’s a lot less likely to worry about whether or not we’re trying to feed him forged documents. If we’re going to physically steal them anyway, I’d like to leave enough evidence behind-evidence that Macebearer and the Crown would be able to keep from becoming general knowledge-to prime the pump with Cassan. His need to show how smart he is is his biggest weakness, when you come down to it. So if he knows about the ‘secret burglary’ when I show him copies-or even originals-from Macebearer’s files, he’ll be so smug about knowing how I got them that he won’t even consider whether or not any alterations were made before he saw them. Letting someone convince himself always works better than trying to sell it to him from the outside.”
“It’ll make it a little riskier for my man,” Salgahn pointed out.
“I’ll triple the Guild’s usual fee.”
“Then I’m sure something can be worked out.” Salgahn smiled, and Varnaythus chuckled.
“What about Borandas?” Sahrdohr asked, and Varnaythus frowned thoughtfully.
Borandas Daggeraxe was the Baron of Halthan and Lord Warden of the North Riding. The oldest of the four great barons of the Kingdom, he was also of no more than average intelligence, and he knew it. He was aware of the political power games swirling around at Court, but he was wise enough not to fish in such troubled waters and let himself be drawn into the toils of smarter but less scrupulous players. His son, Thorandas, was sharper than Borandas, and he’d been his father’s primary political advisor for years. He understood the value of maintaining the North Riding’s neutrality in the bitter power struggle between Cassan and Tellian. With Yeraghor of the East Riding supporting Cassan and the wind rider’s representative supporting Tellian, that neutrality allowed the North Riding to effectively hold the balance of power on the Great Council, and Thorandas was unlikely to favor any course which would endanger that situation. On the other hand, he was also one of the hard-line anti-hradani bigots…
“I’m not sure about Borandas,” Varnaythus admitted. “But if Tellian’s correspondence with Macebearer says what I think it says, then showing certain select passages to Thorandas might pay a very nice dividend in the fullness of time. I’ll have to think about that once we see what it actually does say.”
Sahrdohr nodded, and Varnaythus drew a deep breath.
“Now,” he said, “the reason I want to get my hands on all that documentation is that the time has come-or is coming very soon-for us to…restructure the Kingdom of the Sothoii. And this is how we’re going to do it. First-”
Chapter Four
“ Careful, lummox! That’s my head you’re dumping crap all over!”
The hradani stopped, parked the wheelbarrow carefully, and then leaned sideways, looking over the edge of the excavation.
“And would you be telling me what in Fiendark’s name you’re doing down there right this very minute?” he inquired testily.
“My job,” the dwarf standing in the bottom of the steep-walled cut replied in an even testier voice.
He took off his battered, well-used safety helmet to examine its top carefully, then rubbed a finger across the fresh patch of dust (and dent) the falling piece of rock had left in the steel and looked up accusingly. The hradani hadn’t actually “dumped” it on him-his wheelbarrow had simply dislodged a small stone in passing and knocked it over the edge-but the result had been the same.
“If I hadn’t been wearing this, you’d have splattered my brains all over the cut!” he said.
“Now that I wouldn’t have,” the hradani replied virtuously. “They’d not have covered more than a handspan of dirt at most, and likely less, come to think on it. And you’ve still not told me what it was you thought you were after doing down there when it was yourself told us to start pouring in the ballast.”
“Checking the form, if you must know,” the dwarf growled. “No one signed the check sheet.” He waved a clipboard irritably. “ Somebody has to do a walkthrough before the voids get filled in!”
“Well, you’ll not be doing any ‘walkthroughs’ so very much longer if you don’t get your sawed-off arse out of the way.”
“‘Sawed-off arse,’ is it?” the dwarf demanded. He stumped over to the ladder fixed to the face of the massive, freestanding wooden form and started swarming up it. “For about one copper kormak I’ll use you for ballast!”
“Ah? And how would you be doing that?” The hradani propped his hands on his hips and looked down at the dwarf from his towering inches. “I’m thinking a wee little fellow like you’s likely to strain himself moving someone who’s properly grown!”
The dwarf made it to the top of the ladder and across the wooden plank between the form and the solid ground beyond the cut, and stalked towards the enormous hradani. He was barely four feet tall, which made him less than two thirds the hradani’s height, and he looked even smaller beside a massive, hradani-scaled “wheelbarrow” larger than most pony carts. But his beard seemed to bristle and he jabbed an index finger like a sword as he halted in the wheelbarrow’s shadow and glared up at the hradani.
“It’s a pity all a hradani’s growth goes into his height instead of his brain,” he observed acidly. “Not that I should be too surprised, I suppose. After all, when a skull’s that thick, there can’t be all that much room for brains inside it!”
“Sure and I’m thinking such envy must be a hard thing to bear,” the hradani replied. “Still and all,” he gripped the wheelbarrow’s handles again, “such as me, being full grown and all, would look right strange creeping about in those squinchy little tunnels your folk favor.”
He lifted, straightening his spine with a slight grunt of effort, and the heavy wooden handles-well over six inches in diameter-flexed visibly as the wheelbarrow’s massive load of gravel went thundering down into the excavation. A plume of dust rose, blowing on the hot afternoon breeze, and he glanced down with satisfaction.
“Which isn’t to say such as you wouldn’t be looking right strange pushing around wheelbarrows as are all grown up, either, now I think on it, now is it?”
The dwarf shook his head with a disgusted expression, but his lips twitched slightly, and the hradani smiled benignly down upon him.
“You’re like to do yourself a mischief venting all that spleen, Gorsan, and a sad thing that would be,” he said. “Well, sadder for some than for others, now I think on it.”
“ Somebody’s going to suffer a mischief, at any rate,” Gorsandahknarthas zoi’Felahkandarnas growled back.
“And so I have already, I’m thinking,” the hradani sighed. “Why, I might be off lounging around on guard duty somewhere-or at least mucking out a stable-and instead, here I am, wheeling around loads of gravel to fill a hole I had the digging of my own self in the first place, and all of it with a wee little runt no higher than my knee yammering and whining the time.” He shook his head dolefully. “It’s enough to make a man tear up like a babe in arms, it is, and I’m after wondering just what it was I had the doing of that got me on Prince Bahnak’s bad side and landed me here.”
“You really don’t want me to answer that one,” the dwarf told him with a chuckle. “Or maybe you do. Listing all the reasons he doesn’t want to trust you doing something hard would take long enough to keep both of us standing here till the end of the shift after yours, wouldn’t it?”
The hradani grinned, conceding Gorsan the last word, and trundled back off for another load of fill. Gorsan watched him go, then stepped back out of the way as another hradani wheeled another massive wheelbarrow down the pathway of wooden planks which had been laid across the muddy ground. The newcomer had clearly heard most of the exchange, and he shook his head, foxlike ears cocked in amusement, as he dumped his own load of gravel into the gap between the form and the side of the excavation.