Wolfblade (32 page)

“And then we’ll see who’s the stronger. Provided you confront her at the same time I’m leaving Greenharbour with Lernen, she’ll be none the wiser about what’s happening in Warrinhaven.”

“And suppose it turns out she’s stronger than me, after all?”

“Then I imagine you’re going to have a headache that goes on for days.”

“I should be so lucky. She could kill me, Kagan. Or worse, I might kill her. I don’t fancy having an angry Warlord on my tail for the rest of my days seeking vengeance for murdering his wife.”

“Nobody is going to die and nobody will be seeking vengeance,” Kagan assured him. “Just call her out and see what happens.”

“You still haven’t told me how, Kagan.”

The High Arrion thought for a minute and then he smiled.

“Tarkyn Lye,” he said confidently. “If there is one sure way to get to Alija Eaglespike, it’s through Tarkyn Lye.”

E
lezaar’s fragile security came crashing down around his ears as he listened to Marla inform her slaves about the substance of Laran Krakenshield’s proposal. They were gathered in her small, cosy sitting room the following morning, the weather grey and uninviting outside, while the princess detailed the High Arrion’s unbelievable plan to rescue her from marriage to the King of Fardohnya by marrying her to the Warlord of Krakandar and Sunrise Provinces.

As he listened, Elezaar felt that same sense of impending doom he’d experienced when Alija Eaglespike walked into Venira’s Emporium after Ronan Dell’s assassination. He wasn’t ready for this. While Elezaar had always known the chances were slim that Marla would be allowed to keep him after her marriage to Hablet, that event was months away yet. By then, he’d planned to make himself so valuable to her, so indispensable, that he would have been in a position to beg a favour of his mistress before she married. He could have asked her to send him somewhere safe. Give him as a gift, perhaps, to another household, far from Alija Eaglespike’s influence.

Laran’s offer effectively ended any hope of that happening. If Marla accepted this offer, then she would marry within days and Elezaar would be right back where he was the day he watched Alija’s soldiers slaughter everybody—including his brother—in Ronan Dell’s palace.

“You can’t be thinking of accepting him!” Lirena cried, when Marla finished telling them what Laran had offered her, echoing exactly what Elezaar felt.

“Why not?”

“You’re already promised to Hablet of Fardohnya!” the old nurse reminded her. “You can’t go back on your word.”

“I didn’t actually give my word, Lirena,” Marla pointed out. “In fact, I wasn’t even asked about it.”

“Nevertheless, Lirena has a point, your highness,” Corin said, siding
firmly with the nurse. It wasn’t hard to figure out why, Elezaar thought. He was Alija’s creature and Laran Krakenshield’s offer would stop the Patriot Faction’s plans dead in their tracks. He could do nothing else but try to dissuade Marla from accepting Laran.

Which meant—by default—Elezaar had no choice but to take the opposite argument.

“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” he announced, after Corin and Lirena had voiced their objections.

Marla turned to him with a puzzled look. “Why?”

Picking up her wine from the hearth where it had been warming, he walked across to her chair and handed it to her with a short bow. “For one thing, it means you won’t have to marry Hablet.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean her highness wants to replace him with another unwanted husband,” Corin countered. “Laran Krakenshield is merely a Warlord. Hablet is a king. She’ll be much better off in Fardohnya.”

“Whose side are you on, Corin?” Elezaar demanded. “Her highness doesn’t belong in some foreign harem with a bunch of bored wives and
court’esa
all trying to claw their way over her for supremacy. She deserves much better than that.”

He glanced at Marla out of the corner of his eye as he spoke, hoping the mental image he conjured up of a harem full of enemies would be enough to persuade the young princess. Although marriage to Laran was a looming danger, at least Laran Krakenshield had promised her she’d be allowed to keep one
court’esa
if she went with him. And she
had
to believe Elezaar was the only one who understood her plight. He was gambling on the fact that if she chose Laran, and Corin opposed the union, it wouldn’t be the handsome young
court’esa
who left Highcastle with his mistress tomorrow.

Marla sipped her wine thoughtfully as the slaves argued around her, apparently putting his lessons to good use. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking these days, when she set her mind to it.

“Whose side are
you
on, little man?” Corin asked. “You’re encouraging the princess to renege on a deal her brother made and bring dishonour to Hythria and the entire Wolfblade House.”

“Somehow, I don’t think my brother spends a lot of time agonising over the honour of the Wolfblades,” Marla remarked. “Or Hythria.”

“The whole thing reeks, if you ask me,” Lirena grumbled.

Elezaar thought carefully before he spoke again, glancing cautiously at Corin. The handsome
court’esa
had been rather full of himself since Marla decided to make use of his services—as if sharing her bed had somehow elevated him in the pecking order. Elezaar thought it high time the young man realised that being useful in bed didn’t make one particularly useful anywhere else. The dwarf had tied himself in knots befriending and instructing the princess since he’d come to Highcastle and no pretty-boy spy of Alija Eaglespike’s
was going to stand in the way of his secure future. Not now. Not when it was so close he could almost taste it.

But he had to be subtle. Cautious. Marla could be a petulant child at times, but she was whip-smart when the mood took her and not easily swayed by flattery. The truth, Elezaar decided, was the only way to win this argument. Corin couldn’t fight that.

“There’s a lot of very powerful people in Hythria who don’t wish Princess Marla’s wedding to Hablet to go ahead,” Elezaar told Corin, although his words were meant for the princess. “I’m not in the least bit surprised that some have come up with a way to prevent it. And Lord Krakenshield said the High Prince would be waiting at Warrinhaven. One assumes that if he’s involved, then the plan is legitimate.”

“I suppose the real question here is how much you trust Laran Krakenshield,” Corin said.

“What do you mean?” Marla asked.

“Well, the man’s obviously got ambitions far beyond your hand in marriage, your highness. If you ally yourself with him and he fails, you’ll be guilty of treason, too.”

“Fails in what?” Elezaar scoffed. “The man wants to marry our mistress, Corin, that’s all. Hardly the stuff of treason.”

“That’s what he wants today,” the
court’esa
countered. “But once he’s married to the High Prince’s sister, what then? How long before he starts eyeing off the throne?”

Marla looked at the two of them, shaking her head. “Laran suggested nothing of the sort. You’re both mad!”

Elezaar turned to the princess with a grin. “Actually, probably only one of us is mad, your highness. Your job is to decide who.”

She turned to her nurse, searching for some hint that would help her make the hardest decision of her life, but all Lirena could do was shrug helplessly. “Don’t look at me, lass. I don’t know what you should do.”

“And you, Corin? You obviously think I should marry Hablet.”

“Yes, your highness. I think you should honor the agreement your brother made months ago in Greenharbour. Otherwise we could be facing a war with Fardohnya.”

She sipped her wine, her brows drawn together thoughtfully, before turning to the dwarf. “And you, Elezaar? You seem to think I should accept the offer Lord Krakenshield has made.”

“I don’t think it’s an offer, your highness.”

“What do you mean?”

“If your brother is waiting at Warrinhaven for you, then there’s no crown awaiting you in Fardohnya any more. I think Lord Krakenshield made you an offer because he wants to give you the illusion that you have some control over your fate. What’s more, I suspect if you deny him, it will make little difference.
There are some powerful people behind this, my lady. They won’t take kindly to you defying them.”

“So you don’t think it matters what I decide?”

“Not in the slightest. I think this was decided some time ago and a long way from here.”

“That’s silly!” Corin declared. “Why ask the princess if she has no choice?”

Elezaar shrugged. “Maybe he’s just being nice.”

“Do you think so, Elezaar?” Marla asked, full of hope. Even if she had no choice, the idea that the man she was being forced to marry had at least some basic human decency in him was something she needed to cling to.

“He’s a Warlord,” Corin reminded them. “
Nice
isn’t a word you use a lot when describing the highborn. Particularly not a Warlord.”

“Glenadal Ravenspear was always nice to me. He was a Warlord.”

Marla sounded a little hurt. And she was starting to get annoyed at Corin. That augured well for Elezaar’s future. If he kept this up, Corin had no chance of being the one she chose to take with her to Warrinhaven.

“And Laran Krakenshield is the man Lord Ravenspear chose to succeed him, your highness,” Elezaar reminded her. “I think you’d be well served remembering that.”

Marla nodded absently, taking another sip of the mulled wine. Elezaar wished he had some magical power, some way of reading her thoughts. Better yet, some way of influencing them.

“Leave me,” she ordered abruptly. “I want to think about this some more without you all jabbering at me.” The three of them rose to their feet and headed for the door, experience having taught them the futility of trying to defy the princess when she was in this sort of mood. “Not you, Fool.”

Elezaar stopped, a little concerned, and returned to her chair by the fire as the other two left. She hadn’t called him Fool for months.

“Your highness?”

Marla leaned back in her chair and studied him for a moment before she spoke. “Tell me what you know about Laran Krakenshield.”

“What makes you think I know anything about him, your highness?”

“You hear things. I know you do. People ignore you because they think you’re a halfwit, just like they used to ignore me when I was a child. Or they don’t see you at all. I want to know what you’ve heard about him.”

“Not much, your highness,” he admitted, cursing his inability to have foreseen this. If only he’d known Laran might make an offer for Marla, he would have made it his business to know everything there was to know about the Warlord of Krakandar. Elezaar was a survivor, however. He knew how to turn his ignorance to his advantage. “That says something in itself, though, your highness.”

“What does it say?”

“It says he probably doesn’t have that many bad habits. Or if he does, he keeps them to himself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The slaves’ grapevine is very effective, your highness. I could tell you things about some people you’d never dream of. Trust me on this. The worse the gossip, the quicker it finds its way through the slave ranks. If I’ve heard nothing about Laran Krakenshield, then there’s a good chance it’s because he’s never done anything that warranted the gossip of his slaves.” He smiled, as he remembered something that might help his cause. “I could tell you about his sister, though.”

“His sister?”

“Lady Darilyn Taranger. She lives in Greenharbour.”

“So?”

“Well, rumour has it, Lady Darilyn had a bit of an accident a couple of years ago, not long after her husband died. Had to have it taken care of rather discreetly, so the story goes.”

“You mean she had an abortion?” Marla asked impatiently. “What of it? Women do it all the time when they’ve had a mishap.”

“Lady Darilyn comes from a very wealthy family, your highness. There’s no need for an abortionist in that household. Her
court’esa
are all Loronged males. Every one of them is sterile.”

“So you’re saying her babe wasn’t fathered by a
court’esa?”

“I believe, at the time, the best odds were on Lord Oscarn, husband of Lady Darilyn’s good friend, Lady Syble.
He’s
known in the lower quarters, by the way, as ‘The Hound’ because according to his
court’esa
he likes to do it doggy style.”

In spite of herself, Marla laughed. “You truly are the most scandalous wretch, Elezaar.”

“Actually, I’m a very bad and disloyal scandalous wretch, your highness.”

“Disloyal? To whom?”

“Slaves the world over, your highness. I really shouldn’t be repeating our gossip to my mistress. It’s considered very bad form.”

That seemed to amuse her. “But it’s perfectly all right to talk about your betters among yourselves in such a manner, is it? Do you have names like ‘The Hound’ for all your masters?”

“Most of them,” he admitted.

“What do they call Aunt Lydia below stairs?”

“It would be worth more than my life to tell you, your highness.”

“Do the slaves have a name for me?”