‘Sephrenia?’ Kalten said in a slightly resentful tone.
‘Yes, dear one?’
‘You can teach people languages by magic?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why did you spend all those years trying to teach me Styric? When you saw that it wasn’t going to work, why didn’t you just wiggle your fingers at me?’
‘Kalten, dear,’ she said gently, ‘why was I trying to teach you Styric?’
‘So that I could perform magic tricks, I guess,’ he shrugged. ‘That’s unless you just enjoy making people suffer.’
‘No, dear one. It was just as painful for me as it was for you.’ She shuddered. ‘More painful, probably. You were, in fact, trying to learn Styric so that you could work the spells, but in order to do that, you have to be able to think in Styric. You can’t just mouth the words and make them come off the way you want them to.’
‘Wait a minute,’ he objected. ‘Are you saying that people who speak other languages don’t think the same way we do?’
‘They may think the same way, but they don’t think in the same words.’
‘Do you mean to say that we actually think in words?’
‘Of course we do. What did you think thoughts were?’
‘I don’t know. But we’re all human. Wouldn’t we all think the same way and in the same language?’
She blinked. ‘And which language would that be, dear one?’
‘Elenic, naturally. That’s why foreigners aren’t as clever as we are. They have to stop and translate their thoughts from Elenic into that barbarian gabble they call language. They do it just to be stubborn, of course.’
She stared at him suspiciously. ‘You’re actually serious, aren’t you?’
‘Of course. I thought everybody knew that’s why Elenes are smarter than everybody else.’ His face shone with blinding sincerity.
‘Oh, dear,’ she sighed in near-despair.
Melidere put on a lavender gown and swished off to the emperor’s private apartments bearing a blue satin Elene doublet over one arm. Mirtai followed her. Mirtai did not swish. Melidere’s eyes were ingenuously wide. Her expression was vapid. Her lower lip was adorably caught between her teeth as if she were breathless with excitement. Emperor Sarabian’s courtiers watched the swishing with great interest. Nobody paid the slightest attention to what she did with her hands.
She delivered the gift to the emperor with a breathy little speech, which Mirtai translated. The emperor responded quite formally. Melidere curtseyed and then swished back to the Elene castle. The courtiers still concentrated on the swishing – even though they had already had plenty of opportunity to observe the process.
‘It went off without a hitch,’ the Baroness reported smugly.
‘Did they enjoy the swishing?’ Stragen asked her.
‘I turned the entire court to stone, Milord Stragen,’ she laughed.
‘Did she really?’ he asked Mirtai.
‘Not entirely,’ the Atana replied. ‘A number of them followed her so that they could see more. Melidere’s a very good swisher. What was going on inside her gown looked much like two cats fighting inside a burlap sack.’
‘We should use the talents God gave us, wouldn’t you say, your Grace?’ the blonde girl asked Emban with mock piety.
‘Absolutely, my child,’ he agreed without so much as cracking a smile.
Ambassador Oscagne arrived about fifteen minutes later bearing an alabaster box on a blue velvet cushion. Ehlana took the emperor’s note out of the box and read aloud:
Ehlana,
Your message arrived safely. I get the impression that the members of my court will not merely refrain from interfering with the baroness as she moves through the halls but will passionately defend her right to do so. How does the girl manage to move so many things all at the same time?
– Sarabian
‘Well,’ Stragen asked the honey-blonde girl, ‘how do you?’
‘It’s a gift, Milord Stragen.’
The visiting Elenes made some show of receiving instruction in the Tamul language for the next few weeks, and Oscagne helped their subterfuge along by casually advising various members of the government that he had been teaching the visitors the language during their long journey. Ehlana made a brief speech in Tamul at one of the banquets the prime minister had arranged for the guests in order to establish the fact that she and her party had already achieved a certain level of proficiency.
There were awkward moments, of course. On one occasion Kalten grossly offended a courtier when he smilingly delivered what he thought to be a well-turned compliment. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ the blond Pandion asked, looking puzzled as the courtier stalked away.
‘What were you trying to say to him?’ Mirtai asked, stifling a laugh.
‘I told him that I was pleased to see that he was smiling,’ Kalten replied.
‘That’s not what you said.’
‘Well, what did I say?’
‘You said, “May all of your teeth fall out.”’
‘I used the wrong word for “smiling”, right?’
‘I’d say so, yes.’
The pretence of learning a new language provided the queen and her entourage with a great deal of leisure time. The official functions and entertainments they were obliged to attend usually took place in the evening, and that left the days generally free. They passed those hours in idle conversation – conducted for the most part in Tamul. The spell Sephrenia and Zalasta had woven gave them all a fairly complete understanding of vocabulary and syntax, but the smoothing out of pronunciation took somewhat longer.
As Oscagne had predicted he would, the prime minister threw obstacles in their paths at every turn. Insofar as he could, he filled their days with tedious and largely meaningless activities. They attended the openings of cattle-shows. They were awarded honorary degrees at the university. They visited model farms. He provided them with huge escorts whenever they left the imperial compound – escorts that usually took several hours to form up. Pondia Subat’s agents put that time to good use, clearing the streets of precisely the people the visitors wanted to see. Most troublesome, however, was the fact that he severely restricted their access to Emperor Sarabian. Subat made himself as inconvenient as he possibly could, but he was unprepared for Elene ingenuity and the fact that many in their party were not entirely what they seemed to be. Talen in particular seemed to completely baffle the prime minister’s agents. As Sparhawk had noticed long ago, it was quite nearly impossible to follow Talen in any city in the world. The young man had a great deal of fun and gathered a great deal of information.
On one drowsy afternoon, Ehlana and the ladies were in the royal apartments, and the queen’s maid, Alean, was speaking as Kalten and Sparhawk quietly entered.
‘It’s not uncommon,’ the doe-eyed girl was saying quietly. ‘It’s one of the inconveniences of being a servant.’ As usual, Alean wore a severe dress of muted grey.
‘Who was he?’ Ehlana’s eyes were like flint.
‘It’s not really important, your Majesty,’ Alean replied, looking slightly embarrassed.
‘Yes, Alean,’ Ehlana disagreed, ‘it is.’
‘It was Count Osril, your Majesty.’
‘I’ve heard of him.’ Ehlana’s tone was frosty.
‘So have I.’ Melidere’s tone was just as cold.
‘I gather that the Count’s reputation is unsavoury?’ Sephrenia asked.
‘He’s what’s referred to as a rake, Lady Sephrenia,’ Melidere replied. ‘He wallows in debauchery of the worst kind. He boasts that he’s saving God all the inconvenience of condemning him, since he was born to go to hell anyway.’
‘My parents were country people,’ Alean continued, ‘so they didn’t know about the count’s reputation. They thought that placing me in service to him would give me the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s the only real chance a peasant has for advancement. I was fourteen and very innocent. The count seemed friendly at first, and
I considered myself lucky. Then he came home drunk one night, and I discovered why he’d been so nice to me. I hadn’t received the kind of training Mirtai had, so there was nothing I could do. I cried afterward, of course, but all he did was laugh at my tears. Fortunately, nothing came of it. Count Osril customarily turned pregnant maids out with nothing but the clothes on their backs. After a few times, he grew tired of the game. He paid me my salary and gave me a good recommendation. I was fortunate enough to find employment at the palace.’ She smiled a tight, hurt little smile. ‘Since there were no after-effects, I suppose it doesn’t really matter all that much.’
‘It does to me,’ Mirtai said bleakly. ‘You have my word that he won’t survive my return to Cimmura by more than a week.’
‘If you’re going to take that long, you’ll miss your chance, Mirtai,’ Kalten told her almost casually. ‘Count Osril won’t see the sunset of the day when I get back to Cimmura, I promise you.’
‘He won’t fight you, Kalten,’ Sparhawk told his friend.
‘He won’t have any choice,’ Kalten replied. ‘I know any number of insults that no man can swallow – and if they don’t work, I’ll start slicing pieces off him. If you cut off a man’s ears and nose, he almost has to reach for his sword – probably because he doesn’t know what you plan to cut off next.’
‘You’ll get arrested.’
‘That’s no problem, Sparhawk,’ Ehlana said, grimly. ‘I’ll pardon him.’
‘You don’t have to do that, Sir Kalten,’ Alean murmured, her eyes downcast.
‘Yes,’ Kalten replied in a stony voice, ‘as a matter of fact, I do. I’ll bring you one of his ears after I’ve finished with him – just to prove that I’ve kept my promise.’
Sparhawk fully expected the gentle girl to react with violent revulsion to her protector’s brutal offer. She did not, however. She smiled warmly at Sparhawk’s friend. ‘That would be very nice, Sir Kalten,’ she said.
‘Go ahead, Sephrenia,’ Sparhawk said to his tutor. ‘Roll your eyes and sigh. I might even agree with you this time.’
‘Why should I do that, Sparhawk?’ she asked. ‘I think Sir Kalten’s come up with a very appropriate course of action.’
‘You’re a savage, little mother,’ he accused.
‘So?’
Later that afternoon, Sparhawk and Kalten had joined the other knights in the gleaming great hall of the counterfeit Elene castle. The knights had put aside their formal armour and now wore doublets and hose. ‘It wouldn’t take very much,’ Sir Bevier was saying. ‘The walls are really very sturdy, and the fosse is already in place. The drawbridge is functional, though the capstans that raise it need some grease. All we really need to finish it off are sharpened stakes in the fosse.’
‘And a few barrels of pitch?’ Ulath suggested. ‘I know how much you Arcians enjoy pouring boiling pitch on people.’
‘Gentlemen,’ Vanion said disapprovingly, ‘if you start reinforcing the defences of this place, our hosts may take it the wrong way.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘It might not hurt to quietly lay in a goodly supply of stakes, though,’ he added, ‘and maybe a number of barrels of lamp-oil. It’s not quite as good as pitch, but it won’t attract so much attention when we bring it inside. I think we might also want to start unobtrusively bringing in provisions. There are quite a lot of us, so concealing the fact that we’re filling storerooms shouldn’t be too hard. Let’s keep it all fairly low-key, though.’
‘What are you contemplating, Vanion?’ Emban asked him.
‘Just a few simple precautions, your Grace. Things are unstable here in Tamuli, and we have no way of knowing what might happen. Since we’ve got a perfectly good castle, we might just as well give it a few finishing touches – just in case.’
‘Is it just my imagination, or does it seem to anybody else that this is a very, very long summer,’ Tynian asked suddenly.
Sparhawk became very alert. Someone had been bound to notice that eventually, and if they really pursued the matter and started counting days, they’d be certain to uncover the fact that someone had been tampering with time. ‘It’s a different part of the world, Tynian,’ he said easily. ‘The climate’s bound to be different.’
‘Summer is summer, Sparhawk, and it’s not supposed to last forever.’
‘You can never tell about climate,’ Ulath disagreed, ‘particularly along a sea-coast. There’s a warm current that runs up the west coast of Thalesia. It can be the dead of winter in Yosut on the east coast, and only mid-autumn in Horset.’
Good old Ulath, Sparhawk thought with some relief.
‘It still seems a little strange to me,’ Tynian said dubiously.
‘Lots of things seem strange to you, my friend,’ Ulath smiled. ‘You’ve turned down any number of invitations I’ve sent you to go Ogre-hunting with me.’
‘Why kill them if you’re not going to eat them?’ Tynian shrugged.
‘You didn’t eat any of those Zemochs you killed.’
‘I didn’t have a good recipe for cooking them.’
They all laughed and let the subject drop, and Sparhawk breathed a bit easier.
Talen came into the hall then. As usual, he had almost routinely shaken off the agents of the prime minister that morning and gone out into the city.
‘Surprise, surprise,’ he said dryly. ‘Krager’s finally made it to Matherion. I was starting to worry about him.’
‘That does it!’ Sparhawk burst out, slamming his fist down on the arm of his chair. ‘That man’s starting to make me very tired.’
‘We didn’t really have the time to chase him down before, my Lord,’ Khalad pointed out.
‘Maybe we should have taken the time. I was sure of that when we saw him back in Sarsos. We’re settled in now, though, so let’s devote a little time and energy to rooting him out. Draw some pictures of him, Talen. Spread them around and promise a reward.’
‘I know how to go about it, Sparhawk.’
‘Do it then. I want to put my hands on that drunken little weasel. There’s all kinds of information inside that sodden skin of his, and I’m going to wring him out until I’ve got the very last drop of it.’
‘Testy, isn’t he?’ Tynian said mildly to Kalten.
‘He’s been having a bad day,’ Kalten shrugged. ‘He discovered a streak of brutality in his women-folk, and it upset him.’
‘Oh?’
‘There’s a nobleman in Cimmura who needs killing. When I get home, I’m going to slice off his cods before I butcher him. The ladies all thought it was a wonderful idea. Their approval shattered a number of Sparhawk’s illusions.’
‘What’s the fellow done?’
‘It’s a private matter.’
‘Oh. Well, at least Sephrenia agreed with him.’
‘No, as a matter of fact, she was even more bloodthirsty than the rest. She went so far as to offer some suggestions later on that even made Mirtai turn pale.’
‘The fellow really must have done something awful.’
‘He did indeed, my friend, and I’m going to give him hours and hours to regret it.’ Kalten’s blue eyes were like ice, and his nostrils were white and pinched with suppressed fury.
‘I didn’t do it, Kalten,’ Tynian told him, ‘so don’t start looking at me like that.’
‘Sorry,’ Kalten apologised. ‘Just thinking about it makes my blood boil.’
‘Don’t think about it then.’
Their accents were still rough; Sephrenia had seen to that, but their understanding of the Tamul language was very nearly perfect. ‘Are we ready?’ Sparhawk asked his tutor one evening.
‘Unless you plan to make speeches, Prince Sparhawk,’ Emperor Sarabian, who was paying them another of those whirlwind visits, said. ‘Your accent is really vile, you know.’
‘I’m going out there to listen, your Majesty,’ Sparhawk told him, ‘not to talk. Sephrenia and Zalasta are hiding our proficiency behind the accents.’
‘I wish you’d told me you co
uld do this, Zalasta,’ Sarabian said just a bit wistfully. ‘You could have saved me months of time when I was studying languages, you know.’
‘Your Majesty was keeping your studies a secret,’ Zalasta reminded him. ‘I didn’t know you wanted to learn other tongues.’
‘Caught by my own cleverness then,’ Sarabian shrugged. ‘Oh, well. What precisely are we planning?’
‘We’re going to winnow through your court, your Majesty,’ Vanion told him. ‘Your government’s compartmentalised, and your ministers keep secrets from each other. That means that no one really has a grasp of the whole picture. We’re going to fan out through the various compartments and gather up everything we can find. When we put it all together, we might be able to see some patterns starting to emerge.’
Sarabian made a sour face. ‘It’s my own fault,’ he confessed.
‘Please don’t be cryptic, Sarabian,’ Ehlana told him. The two monarchs were good friends by now, largely because the emperor had simply pushed all formalities aside and had spoken directly and had insisted that Ehlana do the same.
‘I blundered, Ehlana,’ he said ruefully. ‘Tamuli’s never faced a real crisis before. Our bureaucrats are more clever than the subject peoples, and they have the Atans to back them up. The imperial family’s always been more afraid of its own government than of outsiders. We don’t encourage co-operation between the various ministries. I seem to be reaping the fruit of a misguided policy. When this is all over, I think I’ll fix it.’
‘My government doesn’t keep secrets from me,’ Ehlana told him smugly.
‘Please don’t rub it in,’ he said. ‘What exactly are we looking for, Lord Vanion?’
‘We observed a number of phenomena on our way to Matherion. Our guess is that we’re facing an alliance of some sort. We know – or at least we have good evidence – about who one of the parties is. We need to concentrate on the other now. We’re at a distinct disadvantage until we can identify him. If it’s all right with you, your Majesty, Queen Ehlana and Prince Sparhawk will be spending a great deal of time with you. That means that you’re going to have to have a long talk with your prime minister, I’m afraid. Pondia Subat’s starting to be inconvenient.’