Summerblood (10 page)

In any case, they got themselves settled, with Avall in his favorite chair beside the fireplace. “I need to be distracted,” he
informed them frankly. “Probably we all do. But I
don't
need frivolity. Therefore, as much as I hate to discuss politics, this might be the time for it. Most of you saw what transpired at court today. You must also know that I had no more notion of convening that council I promised than I had of holding court while painted blue. Which is not to say that I don't think such a council is needed, nor that, now I've committed to it, one won't be forthcoming. Still, I preempted myself to buy time in an awkward situation, and now I have to throw myself on your mercy”—he grinned at that—“and ask your advice after the fact. Specifically … what
are
we going to do about Priest-Clan?”

“Assuming we do anything,” Strynn added. “If we play things carefully, we can let them destroy themselves. They have as much to answer for as we do, if we can only get Common Clan to see it. Whatever we've been hiding from them—which, as far as I'm concerned is nothing—Priest-Clan has been hiding far longer.”

Avall chewed his lip. “So you're saying that we should try to redirect whatever questions are put to us to Priest-Clan instead? Let them bear the brunt of whatever … rebellion, to name the direst option, Common Clan contrives?”

“The problem is,” Lykkon observed, “there isn't one single, united Priest-Clan, and I'm not sure there ever was. There are the folks that tried to kill you and Rann, for instance. We've no idea if they're officially sanctioned, or if the bulk of Priest is no more aware of their existence than we were. From what little Eddyn told us between his return and death, I'm inclined toward the former.”

Tryffon scratched his short gray beard. “And I wish we'd thought to query him more thoroughly, since he was our main source of information about them. As it is, we know very little. Mostly that they're very canny, very competent, and have at least one citadel between here and Gem-Hold-Winter.”

“But if they're that canny,” Merryn retorted, “they're likely to have
more
than one. Fallback positions are a necessity for
extralegal groups like that. It would be nice,” she added with a sour grimace, “if we at least had something to call them.”

“Eddyn called them ghost priests,” Avall supplied. “Because of those white cloaks they wore. That'll do until we learn otherwise.”

Lykkon cleared his throat. “Actually … a means
does
exist to learn otherwise—maybe.”

Avall looked puzzled, then glared at him, as realization dawned. “You mean Rrath?”

Rann and Lykkon nodded as one. “He's still alive,” Rann continued. “Whatever happened to him doesn't seem to have involved brain damage—not like what's afflicted Gynn. His healers say his coma is more like a retreat from the world. The gems in the regalia kept him alive after what should've been a fatal fall. There's no reason they shouldn't also have saved his mind, given that they seem to protect whoever wields them.”

“Which raises the question of whether the gems are active or passive parties in all this,” Merryn noted.

“Which is damned far from the question of Priest-Clan,” Avall growled, “and more properly subject for open debate before this new council I now have to organize. In the meantime, I think Lyk's right. There
is
no single Priest-Clan now, and maybe never was. Eight, I can think of three factions without even trying.

“The first,” he went on quickly, counting on his fingers, “are those who want to preserve things as they are, but for positive reasons. They're the arm that honestly wants to serve the people—
all
the people, but especially Common Clan, and clanless. They care less about dogma or power than about expressing the will of The Eight in ways that can actually help people. If some heavy theological debate a quarter from now suddenly has us acknowledging that geens have souls, the cosmic implications of that decision will matter less to them than the practical matter of how it would affect the supply of surplus meat, since geens would then have to be kept from starvation, just like people. If there's a rebellion—which I pray won't
happen, but which we must admit might occur—we can probably count on that faction to go their own way calmly, and play as much as they can for both sides. They won't fight against us, but I doubt they'll fight for us, either. And they'll minister spiritually to anyone who requests it.”

“Good thinking so far,” Tryffon conceded. “Optimistic— but that's your age talking. Still, it's in line with what I've seen and heard.”

“Second faction,” Merryn prompted. “Let's define the structures,
then
fill in the details.”

“Second faction is the opposite of the first,” Avall went on. “I'm talking about the ghost priests, of course. We know they're the radical political arm of the clan. We know they're powerful and have resources at their disposal that we can't begin to suspect. Beyond that, we know nothing.”

“I do,” Vorinn volunteered, speaking up for the first time. “I've been talking to some of the Ixtian defectors, and one of them says that some people he assumes were representatives of these very ghost priests came to Barrax's camp one night with some kind of bargain to offer. From the very little he overheard or pieced together later, it appears that this faction told Barrax that they—and, by extension, Priest-Clan—wouldn't oppose him during his invasion, in exchange for assuring their own position.”

Avall felt heat rise in his face. “Now you tell me!”

Vorinn regarded him calmly, his smooth features carefully controlled—yet vaguely at odds with the rest of his body, which evinced a kind of restless power, even in repose. “I only just learned myself. And let me stress that a lot of it is guesswork.”

“Makes sense, though,” Tryffon rumbled. “Those to whom power is important will work to secure that power any way they can. If it involves throwing in with the enemy—well, they might just as well regard us as enemies, and with better reason, if implicit threat is what defines an enemy to start with.”

“The third faction—” Lykkon reminded them, looking up from his ever-present journal, “I assume it's the middle ground?”

Avall shook his head. “I don't think there
is
a middle ground. The primary variable really seems to be how much a given faction values power in the abstract over their clan's stated goal. One faction evidently doesn't—much. The second values it above all—I suspect for its own sake. The third is the ‘no-change’ sept—except that what they're hoping to maintain happens to be very powerful anyway, simply because their clan ‘controls’ religion. And since religion equals both hope and comfort for a large part of our population, that isn't to be underestimated.”

Strynn steepled her fingers before her. “Which means that in case of rebellion they'd advance their own causes before they'd advance ours.”

Merryn nodded gravely. “Given that we're probably the ones they'd be rebelling against to start with, I think that's a fair assessment.”

“Rebellion,”
Lykkon echoed harshly. “We keep throwing that word around like it was something very abstract, much like we did ‘war’ two seasons back. But I wonder how abstract it really is. I assume that this rebellion, if it comes, will be Common Clan against High Clan, with Priest sitting by to pick up the pieces?”

Tryffon leaned back and folded his arms. “Not necessarily. Common is no more united than anyone else—less so, if anything, simply because it's so diverse. They've got people poor as mud who'll side with anyone who'll give them a meal, preferably for free. And, on the other extreme, there are those who are so precisely similar to us in every way but lineage that we marry them and think nothing of it.”

“But we're not united, either,” Rann retorted. “Even before the war we were factionalized. There's the ancient Smith-War-Lore triumvirate, to start with—with Stone almost included as well, since we've married into the others so often;
and Gem as a somewhat shaky adjunct: not strong enough to go against the powerful three-and-a-half, nor yet wanting to be overrun by them—and important because they're rich.”

“In other words, they'd like to be courted,” Avall summarized. “I wonder if anyone actually has. Remind me to set someone watching their hall and hold, to see who enters.”

“I'll tend to it,” Merryn volunteered before Veen could preempt her.

The discussion continued in ever-more labyrinthine detail as the day waned. Eventually, it progressed to every single clan and craft being named and its strengths, weaknesses, alliances, loyalties, and countless other traits assessed. It was tiring work, and represented only one set of admittedly biased opinions, but it proved to be a useful and much-needed distraction from confronting Eellon's passing. That was properly a clan matter, anyway, to which Avall would merely give royal assent. He could sit in on the deliberations, but only as a clansman, not as King.

Finally, Avall took a deep breath. “Well, that's about as much as we can accomplish today—mostly to put us all on equal footing in terms of information. I'm sure Tyrill will be needing several of us soon, which means we won't get anything useful accomplished until after Eellon's funeral. I'll have to participate, of course—in a double role. But the actual logistics are for Priest and the Argen chiefs to work out. In the meantime, I have a bit of personal business I need to conduct.” He rose at that, which everyone but Rann, Strynn, Merryn, Lykkon, and Vorinn took as a request to leave. Those five lingered. He eyed them wearily, loath to abandon their company, which was comfort in itself. “Merry and Lyk,” he sighed at last. “Stay here and be my spies in Argen—and my mouth, should that be needed. I trust you both to know my will if a ruling is needed. Strynn, I'm about to do something you may not like, but I don't want to leave you out of any more than I have to, so you can accompany me or not, as you choose. Same for you, Rann. I know you're preoccupied. Vorinn—”

“I have my own plans,” Vorinn replied cryptically.

“And this errand is … ?” Strynn inquired with a troubled scowl.

Avall shook his head. “I don't feel like defending my actions just now.”

Rann shot him a conspiratory grin. “Count me in,” he murmured. “I have to go to the Citadel anyway.”

“That was odd,” Vorinn announced a moment later, into the sudden silence of what was now an empty room, save for his sister. He stretched his long legs languidly and helped himself to a handful of nuts from a silver dish beside his goblet. His eyes never left Strynn, who'd wandered over to stare out the window.

She felt that gaze, too, yet started when he spoke. “What was?”

Vorinn inclined his head toward the door through which his brother-in-law had just departed. “Avall. Is he always that—”

Strynn turned full around to face him, caught, as she often was these days, between agreeing and disagreeing with the same issue. “Dismissive? No. But there are things that are his, and things that are mine, and we tend to keep them separate.”

A brow lifted. “
And
, so it seems, things that are the King's that are separate from your husband's.”

Strynn's reply was to claim a seat beside her brother on the low couch he occupied. He was seven years older than she: enough that he'd never been part of her primary reality, a situation compounded by the fact that she'd been little more than a child when he'd first entered the Fateing, at twenty. He was midway through his fourth cycle now, which had seen him posted in a variety of distant holds and halls—for the last three years, as Sub-Craft-Chief of War in North Gorge and environs. Not that it wouldn't have been convenient to have had him around after Eddyn had raped her. The Eight knew
he'd have saved Smith a world of diplomacy by the simple expedient of killing Eddyn while Eddyn was still open to challenge by her next of kin. Of course he'd have had to fight Merryn for that privilege, but even Merryn would've deferred to Vorinn's cool, considered wrath. As it was, he'd arrived just too late—as he'd arrived too late for her wedding, but not for her Raising to adulthood—or another Fateing, which had posted him to Brewing, up past North Gorge, where he'd promptly fallen from a horse, broken both arms, then taken a winter's worth of chill. This was, she realized, the first time they'd been alone together since he'd come striding into Avall's coronation in full armor, regalia, and road sweat; beside himself that he'd missed the war—then promptly disappeared again, to assess the damage at War-Hold.

“You've missed a lot,” she acknowledged. “I can hardly believe it myself: the things that have changed in the last year.”

“Less than that,” he corrected, with a dry chuckle. “Last time I saw you, you were getting on the barge to head downstream to meet the trek that took you to Gem-Hold.”

She chuckled back, but her laughter held an edge of regret. “Where the world changed. It must be worse for you: to leave here with the kingdom running as it always has, then return to find that a war has come and gone in your absence; that magic—or something—is suddenly a reality, and has turned interclan politics topsy-turvy; and that someone you remember as a serious, dreamy boy is now your King.”

Vorinn eyed her soberly. “It still doesn't seem real, any more than it seems real that he's your husband.”

“He needs people like you, though,” Strynn murmured. “People who are loyal and reliable, but don't want anything out of him.”

Vorinn scowled. “How do you know I'm either of those things? I am—as it happens—but it's also an absolute fact that I'm more qualified to be King than Avall is.”

“Perhaps,” Strynn agreed, helping herself to some of the
nuts. “But when you're this close to the duty that goes with the title, you soon see that it's nothing for anyone to desire. You're a subchief, Vor; you know what that entails, and that's with you working with people who are either conditioned by birth to work with you, or who are so hungry to learn what you have to impart they'd give up their birth-clans to acquire that knowledge. Avall has very few truly stable pillars on which to lean. So much rests on tradition and conditioning, yet he—we, I should say—must challenge that foundation every day.”