Chapter 177 Pasture Beneath the Gold Mountain

Lora had drifted off half-dreaming. Leon waited till Lucy and Ruth had the couch made up, lifted her and laid her on it, told the two of them to keep watch over her — and only then swung off the boat.

"My lord — the evening meal is ready. Shall I call the young lady?"

"Don't call her. A whole day on the mountain — sleep matters more than food. Well? Did you find a place that answers?" Leon and Linn talked as they walked toward the tents.

"The old prince, when he bought these two mountains, staked out a wider sweep of ground than this. Only no one came for years, and the waste land on the back range was squatted on by landless farm families from the Lohenheim country. The Lornmere side is the easier one — we've taken the land back, and those families' houses sit well clear; their living does it no harm, and their living is no affair of ours.

It's the Isfeld side that's the trouble... The magistrate there is a money-grubber. His ancestors' tomb sits on the hillside, and when the old prince bought the land, the deed signed with the man's grandfather set the tomb's removal — the silver was paid over, and the tomb has never stirred.

The man began life as a petty peddler; how he got his thread to Voss, heaven knows — he bought himself this county's magistracy, came home, done up the ancestral tomb handsome, ran up three thatched huts beside it, and tells all comers the land is his family's."

Leon couldn't help being amused. "He doesn't know the mountain is the Odenheims' now? A county magistrate — that bold?"

"Perhaps because the general's house never much used these mountains. The last visit was several of the young lords come hunting — and nobody walks every corner. Today I went to find the magistrate. All compliance on the surface; but seeing it was a young lady come to treat, his nose went up on the spot."

Linn laughed on: "My lord — this being the Odenheims' own affair, I didn't put your name to it. The magistrate, Goldwater — smooth enough to your face, and slower than treacle to a young woman."

"Him! A bought office, and that insolent? Today my eyes have seen something new. Never mind clearing the ground — for the people's sake alone I couldn't let him run on like this." Leon's smile went cold:

"Go — look into everything he's done since taking office. The proofs lie in the county deputy's hands. Once you have them, don't put up the birds before the net is set; plan it out, then move."

This Goldwater, Leon did know him. In the life before, the man had bribed Joss Wray to his first magistracy, squeezed the people's fat and marrow to the last drop, then gone on bribing — Wray, Voss — and in a bare few years climbed to a high post in the Board of Revenue.

His brother the King, plotting with the Joss Wrays of the court to pry power back out of the chamberlains' hands — it had been children's theater from the first breath. He himself had ended in Mortimer's cage, and a whole string of others had paid the reckoning with their lives.

The traitorous crew whose doings would bring the court its catastrophe four years on — perhaps the rooting of it out should begin with Goldwater, magistrate of Isfeld.

Lora slept into the dog-watch before she woke, and by then the stars stood thick over the Yarrow.

"Linn's back. The two mountains are one range, split between the two counties — and the ground for our pasture sits square in the belt neither county governs. Only winter's on us now; we can do no more than run the stables up first, and come spring buy good horses off the Redmane of the north country."

Leon ladled out a bowl of hot soup for Lora, and then one for himself.

"And why haven't you eaten?"

"Waiting for you — not hungry anyway. Once we're back in Lohenheim, it shouldn't be long before my brother the King calls me up to Augustburg."

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The mutton on the point of Lora's knife stopped halfway to her mouth. She looked up:

"So soon?"

"The tenth of the tenth month is the King's Birth-Feast. I've written out for him a holy text in my own hand — the one I used to copy for his birthday when I was a boy. Brotherly feeling should come back to him with it, and he'll call me home."

He gave it out with such a grave face that Lora had to clap a hand over her mouth:

"What you mean is: the King wants a look at the new obedient you, and so he'll call you back. Talking of which — what sort of feast is this Birth-Feast?"

"My brother's birthday. The realm's officials, every one, take a day's rest in honor of it. In the capital, everyone of standing at court eats the birthday feast on the square before the Supreme Hall — and every house of consequence sends up its birth-tribute besides."

"Ah — so it's the empire's annual top-shelf bribery convention?"

Leon laughed. "Must you put it in those terms, so shameless? Has the King no face to keep?"

"I know very well you think the same. Last time you told me how much gold and silver Windsor Fane sent your brother for his birthday — and you couldn't be bothered to remember any of it."

Had Lora not long since seen that Leon was no man to hanker after luxury and ease, she would never have thrown herself so heartily into building his fortune.

She was counting it off on her fingers when Leon swallowed his mouthful and said, smooth as still water:

"No need to count. Half a month past the Birth-Feast comes your own birthday. Perhaps you might come to Augustburg for it — keep your birthday, make your presentation. We'd go back to the capital together."

"You needn't say it — Mother has the very same plan. She let me come out this once to 'sell the mountains' because she means to take me back to Augustburg. Fourth brother's healed now; he's for the Thornford camp again."

For all they meant to shift the family's weight toward Augustburg, men and horses must stay in the Eastern Capital.

Augustburg on every side was the wardens' and the Silver Shield's ground. Lohenheim, neither too far nor too near — a place where a prince of the blood could trade on his standing for a hundred conveniences, build up his strength in the dark, and hold the Lohenheim jurisdiction's advantage as the grain canal's halfway house, stretching his feelers out from here into every domain.

And by one of those coincidences that are no coincidences, on a pleasure boat strung with lanterns in Lohenheim, someone was saying that same thing:

"My Lord Regent — congratulations on your heart's desire: thirty thousand of the Lohenheim army in your fist. With the Eastern Capital's command in hand, what glory or power isn't yours? Why shove your way back into the court?

Lohenheim is the grain canal's midpoint — north to Yorvik, south to the eastern lake country. Hold Lohenheim, and you hold the Great Empire by the throat."

Legard squinted, sipped the wine in his ox-eye cup, and lifted it toward Brendan:

"Fine stuff! Good lad — your father plays the honest soldier all over Lohenheim, but under the counter there's little he lacks, eh? And he's had his share of the Eastern Capital's pickings too, I don't doubt?"

Brendan hurried out his crooked smile: "My father's thick skull doesn't run to half of that. It's my uncanny Lora who keeps the good things coming."

"Young lord, you're joking. Your sister — what is she, fifteen? A young lady out of the inner rooms. However clever, clever has a ceiling. Ah — my granddaughter was her schoolmate at the convent school, as it happens. Some day, bring your sister round to my house to play."

Legard liked the bite of the distilled spirit. Old as he was, mild wine had all but stopped tasting of anything to him.

"Gladly, gladly. My Lord Regent — the truth is, I came tonight with a favor to beg." Brendan got it out with a long gather of nerve:

"My riding-fall is healed, and Father will have me back under the colors before long. But I've no wish for that pit of a Thornford. Say it plain: following along behind my own brothers, there's no opening for me anywhere."

"No opening?" Legard burst out laughing:

"Your old father — sly as a fox with the toothache! Look at him: in one stroke he's settled your eldest and your third brothers into the very best posts. This meal ought to be on my account — we'll be leaning on that Roland of yours for gentle treatment of our Lohenheim garrison!"

A shade of stiffness crossed Brendan's face, and he pressed on:

"My Lord Regent — I don't want the camp at all. Is there some post in Lohenheim that would fit me? Anything at all, so long as I stay in Lohenheim and serve you."

Legard gave him one slantwise glance — neither yes nor no — and a man beside them laughed:

"The wine's down; shouldn't the table go up? Young lord — whatever post the Lord Regent sets you in, the rest is your own performance!"

At the word "table," Brendan's whole face lit:

"No problem there! These tarocchi were my sister's make too. I keep telling her — everything the Odenheims invent, the profit lands in the Fairfaxes' laps."

"I've heard it said — your sister dreamed her way to a book of secrets?"

Brendan threw back his head and laughed:

"Where do people get this moonshine? I watched her grow up — if she'd come by some treasure, wouldn't I know it?"

Four players riffled the tiles, and talk of the Odenheim lady's book of secrets was heard no more.