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Degalla cleared her throat. Toleration of guests was deemed a virtue. ‘Now that it has been determined that the riders below are not delivering a message from Manaleth, perhaps we should determine who is upon the road below. Jureg, do accompany me. Lady Manalle, please remain in the care of my Houseblades for the moment, as the safety of my guests must ever remain uppermost in my mind.’
With that, she nudged her horse forward, Jureg falling in beside her, and they rode clear of the gate and on to the winding cobbled track leading down to the road below.
Winter traffic was rare in the best of times, and apart from an unexpected visit from Captain Sharenas over a month past, the tower watch had seen no one riding either from or to Kharkanas since the first snows. Footprints had been noted on occasion, as refugees crossed the road in the dead of night, seeking whatever sanctuary they could find in the forest to the north, but the coming and going of Deniers was of little interest to Degalla.
The three riders below had either heard or seen their approach from the keep’s steep track, and were now drawn up, awaiting them.
‘Two nights,’ Jureg said, ‘and I’m of a mind to flee to Urusander to kiss his sword.’
‘Oh, she’s not that bad,’ Degalla said. ‘The overly schooled are always at risk of becoming insufferable.’
‘Her armour of knowledge is proof against my keenest jibes,’ Jureg replied sourly.
‘Indeed, you can only crush such a creature with knowledge superior to her own. Or the sweeter cut that is common sense. However, should a theory be easily shredded by an utterance of the obvious, then you’ll have made a lifelong enemy. Be warned of that, husband.’
They ha
d slowed their mounts, as the cobbles were slick, the slope treacherous. ‘Hedeg Lesser wears the smile of the punch-drunk,’ Jureg observed. ‘I wager she describes the origin of every carnal position, and finds heat not in the act, but in the deluge of words beneath which she drowns all spontaneity. In her husband’s eyes there is the dulled despair of the defeated: a victim of explanations.’
‘Have you only pity for Hedeg, then?’
‘He stirs to life in her absence, but it takes work. I’ve yet to decide the effort’s worth.’
‘Well, we will share their company for some days yet, in our yielding to Hish Tulla’s invitation.’
The track levelled out momentarily, and then swung round into the final descent, and at this point they found themselves close enough to discern the three riders in detail.
‘Ah,’ murmured Degalla.
Her husband said nothing.
Close to the keep’s gate, Lady Manalle and her husband, Hedeg Lesser, had edged their mounts some distance from the Vanut Houseblades, sufficient for the pair to speak without being overheard.
Below, their hosts picked their way down the slick track.
‘I swear,’ muttered Manalle, ‘if I must witness yet one more exchange of knowing looks between those two, I will weather the curse of murder, guest-named or not. Worse, I may well descend into torture, out of sheer malice.’
Her husband tugged at his close-trimmed, greying beard. ‘Careful, beloved. That’s not a curse thinned by blood or years. Would you truly consign our family to everlasting condemnation?’
‘I am tempted. It is the selfish pleasure that most easily forgets consequence.’
‘Then there is her venal brother to consider. Lord Vanut would delight in a blood feud.’
‘Wretched family,’ muttered Manalle.
Her husband nodded in commiseration, and then asked, ‘Who are those riders, do you think? Emissaries from Urusander?’
‘I doubt that. Such would bear a standard, bold and diffident as befits both their vulnerability and their arrogance.’ She glanced over and was pleased to see her husband’s appreciative smile. There had been no accident in the inversion of her last statement. Diffident arrogance and bold vulnerability – what sweeter descriptive for emissaries of the Legion, coming among the highborn with belligerent promises of peace and preening threat? ‘Perhaps,’ she ventured, ‘survivors from the Wardens.’ A moment later she shook her head. ‘I still cannot fathom Ilgast Rend’s stupidity.’
‘If word of the slaughter at Andarist’s estate had reached him, Manalle, might you not forgive him his outrage?’
‘Then let him beat fists against a tree. Not waste thousands of lives in a futile gesture. He made us all seem precipitous, enslaved by base needs. Never mind Urusander – none of this is his game – it is Hunn Raal’s, and Hunn Raal is a clever man.’
‘When sober.’
‘His every stumble invites you to underestimate him, husband.’
‘She should have included us in the ride down,’ Hedeg said. ‘It was a deliberate snub.’
