Chapter 156 The White Guard Who Wanted a Transfer

Despise the Windsors in the strategy; take the hurt they can do with full seriousness in the tactics. When the old Minister of Rites came to the General's mansion a second time to demand the killer, the Count had Lord Legard over to the house. Legard's whole office was the stirring of nice thick mud — so much useless wind spent on either side. He was busy just then working the question of who should hold the Lohenheim army after the Count's rotation; Voss had already given him his word: no new man sent down, but the command to fall to him by its own weight. So the Count's time left in the Eastern Capital was one month only, and side-shoots of trouble were the last thing Legard wanted. That same day Roland was off up to the capital with a letter for his grandfather the Duke of Charwick, and the Duke laid the affair of the Windsors' badgering of the Odenheims before the King in a petition. Just as Leon had read it: the King heard it and thought — excellent! The Windsors overmighty, the great houses at odds among themselves, and no leisure left them to join hands against Us. The Odenheims had taken their grievance to the throne first, and that cut the road through the King off at the root — for the Windsors had sent men of their own asking too, and turned up no firm proof the Odenheims had done it. Bringing the Odenheims down by the official road was now a hope past hoping. On the same journey Roland brought his mother home with him. Brendan had been a month and more in the capital. His cousins of the ducal house had led him out among the young lords of quality, and every day it was wine and revelry, cockfighting and bird-fighting — too happy to think of home. Lohenheim was a thriving city, but beside Augustburg it fell a good way short; his one grudge was that he could not stay — that he must go back to that barracks with its thick mesh of rules. In Augustburg he had crossed paths, all unplanned, with Cedric Salt, and so learned that the Salt house held wide property in the capital too. A notion sprouted in Brendan: to leave the army after the pattern of Hugo, and go run with Cedric Salt. "What? The tarocchi were sold to the Fairfaxes by the Odenheims? How is it I never knew?" Cedric Salt roared with laughter: "I had it from others as well. The second Master Fairfax has made a pretty pile off those tarocchi. And I hear besides: your eldest brother went up to the Serene Palace to pay his respects, and presented a set of the tiles to the Queen Mother — the old dowagers are mad for them. Haven't you seen? He's at the Serene Palace every day now, teaching them the play." "My eldest brother... at the Serene Palace? Why don't I know this either?" Brendan bit down hard on his back teeth: So — in this family I'm counted as thin as air. In truth, Alvin hadn't told his two young brothers only because a short telling would have tangled it worse; he meant to explain on the road back east — there would be time and to spare for it. "The day I'm home I'll tell Father: I resign my commission. What's wrong with being footloose like Hugo? And then, Master Salt, I'll be counting on your patronage." Brendan said it without a thought's weighing, straight off the tongue. Cedric Salt laughed: "That stiff-straight father of yours agreeing? That'll be the day." Brendan went blank. Take himself out of the count, and there were four brothers of the house still in the army — why would Father say no? Carl's life in the Eastern Capital ran far simpler. For one thing, whenever Mother went back to the ducal house or to Prince Jasper's, it was always Carl she took along. For another, he had gone out twice with his cousins to play polo, and won far too easily — no sport in it. The kings of the last two reigns had both been weak in health — polo and football had become things to watch others play — and so the young lords of the capital had no great love for sports that spend strength. Their play carried no force and no craft either: one wild scramble after the ball. Carl and Norton were of an age, both in the years of shooting up like beanpoles, running over with strength; bred up in a house of the military arts, he had nothing but scorn for those young lords — not the strength in them to truss a chicken — gilded rind and rot within. At the sight of his third brother he broke out at once into his complaint: "Roland — you two are the limit! Even Lora got to go to Yorvik. How come I couldn't come along?" Carl would never have dared speak so to his eldest brother — this complaint had been waiting in him a long, long time. "And I haven't started on you! How came you not to keep an eye on our little sister? You were at the docks the day we set out — how did you let a slip of a girl get herself aboard the boats?" The third brother bit right back: "Mother — wouldn't you say this one lands on Carl? You've always set him to watch his sister. He didn't do his office." Brendan stood by eating plums and laughing at him: "Serves you right. Who told you to bring it up yourself? Now you know the taste of being done out of a thing by Lora." "Lora can do me out of anything she likes — does that burn you?" Carl would pick his quarrel with his fourth brother whatever came. "Enough, enough — every last one of you had a hand in it, and the mercy is that Lora came to no harm. Third brother — you and the eldest go round to Prince Jasper's and make your farewells to the great-grandfather. Tomorrow morning, first light, we set out home." The Countess had been away so long that the General's mansion hung at her heart; she dreamed of nothing but getting back to it. Roland and Alvin passed out of the Odenheim mansion's gate. Their day was close-packed: besides the farewells at Prince Jasper's and at the ducal house, there was one man they must see. A man like themselves: royal blood three generations off the main line — Lucan. In the putting down of the rebel baron Wade, though a few years the elder, he too had been a little squirt trailing at his father's heels to farm himself some battle-experience. Now he held a general's post in the Left White Guard. With the rise of the Silver Shield, the White Guard — one of the six armies of the Northern Office — had slid by degrees into a parade formation for court days. A Lucan with heart and soul set on killing the enemy and winning his spurs — how should he rest content in a White Guard so awkward in its standing? Worse: the White Guard's pay ran a notch below the City Watch's, its armor not half so bright as theirs — and against the Silver Shield there was no comparing at all. Only — the Silver Shield was governed by chamberlains, and he could not stomach serving under chamberlains. The City Watch was the place he truly wanted. Choked hopes aside, in the great slaughter of the Silver Coup he too had gone down a wronged ghost under the Silver Shields' blades. Princes, dukes, and lords of Lucan's line had all gone to their graves early; the titles had long gone from the family. Even for a transfer to the City Watch he would have to wait — wait for the hour of some merit won, for the hour when the King's eye found him out. "Roland Odenheim? Long time no see. We drank a few rounds together, back in your Augustburg days. Five brothers, and four of you up at once — what's this? Rotation to Thornford next month, and your hearts flown there ahead of you?" Alvin had already seen Lucan since coming up to the capital — but he had not looked for his third brother to be carrying a message from Leon as well. "You joke, Cousin. This time it's a big matter that's brought us running to find you." "A big matter?" Lucan pricked up his ears. Roland went grave: "Our house has somehow or other fallen foul of the Windsors, and twice now we've run into their killers. We hear that Chancellor Bohun had already been taking on wandering men as retainers in the capital — and that archer of theirs shoots the flying arrowheads of the old Thorn Guard. Is this known to you?" "A thing like that? I've heard nothing of it in the capital. But the flying arrowhead is a vicious, evil thing — it was banned outright the day the Empress's son broke up the Thorn Guard. How does it come walking abroad again? These retainers grow too insolent by half — a pack of dogs borrowing their master's power!... Good — my thanks for the word. I'll have the matter looked into quietly." And this was a big matter indeed: it called up in Lucan's mind what had passed this spring. The capital's garrison had long had one running headache: The retainers of the great ministers went armed as a matter of course, racing their horses through the city, hunting beyond the walls, eyes empty of anyone at all. That spring, a band of mountain brigands had gone so far as to pass themselves off as retainers, slipped into the city, and plundered merchants and officials' houses — and the City Watch on the walls had been called every name in the book by the King. If the Windsor retainers were truly proven rotten, he would have his grounds to carry it to the King and demand that officials be made to sift and bridle their retainers — and that would stand to him as a real service done the capital's peace. The archer Hugh Kestrel had reached Lohenheim long since; in the capital Lucan would find nothing of him, naturally. But the other Windsor retainers would go under the eye; and with a little word let slip Lucan's way here and there, the Windsors' use of retainers to strike and waylay their rivals would come to the light as well. When the thing broke next month, Lucan would stand up and count out the Windsor retainers' crimes one by one, hoping thereby to catch the King's favor — and win his transfer to the City Watch. "Inquire as freely as you please. My uncle's ducal mansion stands right across from the chancellor's — the house guards there will keep an eye out for you, and word will go over at any stir." Lucan said it warmly: "Alvin — Roland — my thanks for bringing me this." "It's nothing at all. We too fear being trapped by the Windsors — and you're of the White Guard, with the right at least to move about the capital. We're all kin; kin that don't help each other drift apart." So Alvin made his courtesies. "True, true — even for my own sake, I'd never let such a chance slip by." One move of Leon's hand, and a passerby turned ally.

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