"Because of that," Leeana continued, "two thirds of the Council want Father to go ahead and set Mother aside to produce a good, strong, male heir. Some of them say it's his duty to the bloodline, and others argue that a matrimonial regency always creates the possibility of a succession crisis. Some of them may even be sincere, but most of them know perfectly well he won't do it. They see it all as a sword to use against him, something he has to use up political capital fighting off. The last thing he needs, especially now, is to give his enemies any more weapons to use against him! But the ones who are sincere may be even worse, because the real reason they want him to produce a male heir is that none of them like to think about the possibility that such a plum might fall into the hands of one of their rivals. And the third of the Council who don't want him to set Mother aside probably hope they're the ones who will catch the plum."
Kaeritha nodded slowly, gazing into the younger woman's dark green eyes. Tellian Bowmaster's marriage eighteen years before to Hanatha Whitesaddle had not simply united the Bowmasters of Balthar with the Whitesaddles of Windpeak. It had also been a love match, not just a political alliance between two powerful families. That had been obvious to anyone who'd ever laid eyes on them.
And if it hadn't been, the fact that Tellian had furiously rejected any suggestion that he set Hanatha aside after the riding accident which had left the baroness with one crippled leg and cost her her fertility would have made it so. But that decision on his part did carry a heavy price for their only child.
"And how does the plum feel about being caught?" Kaeritha asked softly.
"The plum?" Leeana gazed back into Kaeritha's midnight-blue eyes for several silent seconds, and her voice was even softer than Kaeritha's when she finally replied. "The plum would sell her soul to be anywhere else in the world," she said.
The two of them looked at each other, then Leeana shook herself, bobbed a quick half-bow, and turned abruptly away. She walked down the passage with quick, hard strides, her spine pikestaff-straight, and Kaeritha watched her go. She wondered if Leeana had actually intended to reveal the true depth of her feelings. And if the girl had ever revealed them that frankly to anyone else.
She frowned in troubled thought, then shook herself and turned back to the window as fresh thunder grumbled overhead. Her heart went out to the girl-and to her parents, for that matter-but that wasn't what had brought her to the Wind Plain, and it was past time she got on with what had brought her here. She gazed out the window a few moments longer, inhaled one more deep breath of rain from her relatively dry perch, and then turned away and walked briskly towards the tower's spiral stair.
The library was quiet, the silence broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock in one corner and the soft, seething crackle of the fire on the hearth. There was no other sound, yet Bahzell looked up an instant before the library door opened. Baron Tellian, sitting across the gaming table from him looked up in turn, and then shook his head as the door swung wide and Kaeritha stepped through it.
"I wish you two would stop doing that," he complained.
"And just what is it the two of us are after doing?" Bahzell inquired genially.
"You know perfectly well what," Tellian replied, using the black pawn he'd just picked up from the chessboard to wave at Kaeritha, still standing in the doorway and smiling at him. "That." He shook his head and snorted. "You could at least pretend you have to wait until the other one knocks, like normal people!"
"With all due respect, Milord," Brandark sat in a window seat to take advantage of the gray, rainy-afternoon light coming in through it and spoke without ever looking up from the book in his lap, "I don't believe anyone's ever been foolish enough to suggest that there was anything 'normal' about either of them."
"But they could at least try," Tellian objected. "Damn it, it's uncanny . . . and it worries my men. Phrobus! It worries me, sometimes!"
"I apologize, Milord," Kaeritha said with a small smile. "It's not really anything we do, you know. It just . . . happens."
"Aye," Bahzell agreed, and the smile he gave the baron was much broader than hers had been. "And come to that, I've not heard yet that champions of Tomanâk weren't supposed to be after being 'uncanny.' "
"That's because they are," Brandark said in a slightly more serious tone, looking up from his book at last and cocking his foxlike ears. "Uncanny, that is. And the truth is, Milord," he went on as Tellian turned his head to look at him, "that it's so unusual to have two champions as houseguests at the same time that very few people have ever had the opportunity to watch them being uncanny together."
Tellian considered that for a few seconds, then nodded.
"You have a point," he conceded. "But then, everything about the current situation is on the unusual side, isn't it?"
"It is that." Heartfelt agreement rumbled in Bahzell's deep voice as he leaned back in his chair-specially built by Tellian's master woodworker to Bahzell's size and weight-and gazed across the neat ranks of chessmen at the human host who was technically his prisoner. "And I hope you won't be taking this wrongly, Baron, but it's in my mind that those of your folk who'd sooner see my head on a pike are after getting a mite more . . . vocal about it."
"You're talking about those idiots Kaeritha trounced at the temple the other day?" Tellian asked, and Bahzell nodded.
"Those, and those like them who're after being a bit more discreet, as you might be saying," he agreed a trifle grimly. "And I'm not so easy in my mind about those problems biting Lord Festian's backside, either." Tellian raised an eyebrow, and Bahzell shrugged. "I've no doubt there's always enough political infighting to be going around amongst you Sothōii-there certainly is amongst any other lot of noblemen I've ever heard aught about! But I'm thinking that there's more than a few getting behind to push where concern over your taste in houseguests is concerned."
"Of course there are," Tellian agreed. "Surely you didn't expect anything else to happen?"
"Of course not," Bahzell said. "Not that that's after making it any more pleasant-or keeping my shoulder blades from itching whenever daggers are about-now that it's here."
"On the other hand," Kaeritha observed mildly, "nobody ever said being a champion of Tomanâk would be an endless pleasure jaunt, either. Or, at least, no one ever said so to me, anyway."
"Nor to me," Bahzell admitted, and his ears twitched in wry amusement as he recalled the conversation in which the god of war had recruited one Bahzell Bahnakson as the first hradani champion of any god of Light in the past twelve millennia. "Pleasure jaunt" was one phrase which had never passed Tomanâk's lips.
"I can well believe that." Tellian shook his head. "It's bad enough being a simple baron without having a god looking over my shoulder all the time!"
"That's as may be," Bahzell said, "but I'm thinking it wasn't all that 'simple' for you, either, when we ran up against each other in the Gullet."
"Oh, I don't know about that." Tellian leaned back in his chair and smiled. "If nothing else, at least I've assured that I'll go down in history. After all, how many men have ever managed to surrender to a force they out numbered twenty or thirty times over?"
"I have a feeling you'll go down in history for more than just that, Milord," Kaeritha said. "But Bahzell does have a point, you know. Those louts trying to goad Thalgahr into the Rage knew exactly what they were doing. And I don't think they came up with the idea spontaneously all on their own. They weren't bright enough for that! Which suggests that someone is orchestrating events a bit carefully this time. Is it possible you might actually have an enemy somewhere, Milord?" she asked in an elaborately innocent tone.