Chapter 195 Good News from Roland

Of the two men, it was true enough — one's knife wound ran too heavy to drag anywhere, and the station had been forced on them, not chosen.

Their plan had been to lose themselves in Tarnfield's crowds — nobody the wiser. And then a dog had made off with a shoe. They had changed clothes at once, and put fear into the physician, making him find a pair of shoes for the wounded man.

They had meant to slip out of the station — and found the exits already stopped.

There was nothing for it but to double back — stealing shoes on the way from a guest room whose lamp was out, and dropping them in the night-soil bucket. Then back again, to lean on the physician once more, and hide themselves among the station's own people.

If not for Chance, the two would have walked clean through it.

Two live captives taken in the station by pure chance — Morn was not the man to let that go. He found them a little dark room, had them trussed, and put them to the question through the night.

The two were that day's assassins, sure enough. The strange part: they were killers brought in by Chase Judd, a master of the Shrine Office under the Rites Office — hired for one task, the carrying-off of the young Lady Odenheim — and of anything beyond that, they knew nothing at all.

How did one even begin to say that?

Chase Judd, if you reached back, counted as royal kin. He was of the line of the eldest son of Shaun Judd, the great founding general, onetime Duke of Charnford.

His forebear Theo Judd had been posted away to the Southern Protectorate, and from that day the family had lived on at Jarrow, generation upon generation.

When the present King took the throne, he had called broadly for descendants of the old dynasty's worthies. Someone recommended Chase Judd, and he was fetched up from Jarrow to Augustburg — and settled into a fat berth: master of the Shrine Office.

"And what does that office govern?" Lora hadn't a clue about the uncommon titles.

Leon laughed: "What they hold now is the issuing of ordination certificates for the abbeys' monks. With a certificate, the abbey may tonsure the man a monk — and the government's registers strike him off corvée and tax."

"That really is a fat berth! Whoever wants a certificate must send silver into the Shrine Office — a stream that never runs dry, never runs short." Lora turned it over, and asked:

"But what use am I to the Judds? Why should their house want to carry me off?"

"That trail runs into Joss Wray — and into Hanley of the Left City Watch, who hangs on him. How the three of them stand together won't be told in a sentence or two, but Wray is somewhere in the root of it."

Leon's memory told him this: Hanley, commander of the Left City Watch, four years on, would be the coward whose weakness gave away the King's plot against Mortimer.

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On the day of the Silver Coup, it was Hanley who reported "sweet dew on the pomegranate tree," luring the great chamberlains over to the Left City Watch quarters to see it — and Hanley, in a snowfall, sweating like a man in summer heat — and that was what opened the chamberlains' eyes.

"Before Hanley came back to the capital, he was Protector of the Southern Protectorate. Chase Judd was his aide. When he returned, he brought Judd along with him."

Leon turned and drew Lora to his side, gentle and unyielding at once:

"When you begin to change the world about you, you've stepped into the whirlpool where the interests circle. When you chose to stand with me, you went into the whirlpool of the crown itself, body and soul. Are you... afraid?"

In Lohenheim, whoever the officials were, they stood within the Odenheims' reach, or the Fairfaxes', or Leon's own. But Augustburg — there was the center every whirlpool turned round.

Lora had already turned the matter over in the carriage.

Transmigration stories always figure the modern soul in the old world for a knockout from a whole dimension up. But let anyone touch the Empire's core interests — and who isn't a grain of sand?

No. She and he were one in strategy and one in tactics. They were no common sand — they had molted into the largest pearls in the shell.

Lora crouched down, laid her cheek against Leon's leg, and let his hand rest on her temple. She said, slowly:

"I'm not afraid. If it's worth it, there's nothing I fear. Your brother has held the throne fourteen years — soft in the deciding, suspicious of good men. His whole reign, no great fault to hang on him, and all the same he has stood square in the road of the realm's rising. Leon — trust my eye. You are fitter than he is to be the restorer-king."

"You fear I can't cut the brother out of my heart? When he made me burn the very proof of my innocence, and knuckle under to the treason Voss hung on me — that day, the brother in my heart went cold, and stayed cold."

Two masked men taken — and nothing but hired blades who knew not why.

The hirer, a Chase Judd with no visible thread to anyone. Between him and the true hand, who knew how many wrappings yet — no way to see the shape of the truth through them.

The reason Leon wanted some readiness in Lora was this: once he walked back into Augustburg, there would be no stepping back out again. A brother's portion, an uncle's portion — none of it would stand in his eyes any longer.

Seeing that the two had no more to give up, Morn rolled up his whip and told his men: "Take them out. At the mountain's edge, let them go."

That day they had laid five of their own at the mountain's edge. Before those five, he would let the two out of this world.

For some days after, the weight on everyone's hearts lifted by degrees. At Sharnford, the north and south high roads ran together; the post road widened, and the traffic thickened.

They made better speed, and at Blackstone Pass station, they came upon Roland.

"Roland!"

Lora was astonished and glad at once. A month and more apart — and it felt like years.

At the sight of her son, the Countess was all but in tears. Past Blackstone Pass, the capital stood one step off; the terrors of the road could be half laid down at last.

At the station, hearing what had befallen them on the road, Roland's face changed: "Had I known the danger ran that high, I'd have ridden to Lohenheim to meet you."

"Twenty days there and back — and you'd skip your court sessions?" Lora's spirits were up, and she smiled like a flower in sun.

"The War Office has two vice-ministers; one at least stands in court. Easier footing than a ministry with only the one." A month and more in, Roland was settling into the new post.

He'd had Lora's express letter — and so had learned that Brendan was bound for a post in the capital too.

Five days past, at the Odenheim house in Augustburg, he had seen Brendan. That one had run his road hard — two days quicker than the common pace.

"Lora — I came in a burn to bring you good news." Roland glanced once at his mother's back, and dropped his voice on purpose.

"What good news?"

Lora brightened too. It had been bad news, bad news, bad news of late, and Leon frightening her with whirlpools on the road — the poor easy-sailing soul of her, twenty-seven years untroubled, was carrying more than her share.

Roland teased it out: "Before you came to Augustburg — what was the thing you worried over most?"

"Worried? Nothing! Good teeth, good appetite, everything I eat tastes grand... grand... Roland — you mean the marriage decree? That's nothing to do with me, no sirree, nothing at all!" Lora swung her head, mouth set hard as iron.

If it was good news — then it had been settled?

"Stop making a mystery of it. We staged that play with all our hearts, and your fourth brother came within a hair of wrecking it. How did it play?" Lora's gladness was Leon's gladness too.

"Brace yourself. The Sorensens have you written down by now for a violent young wastrel. How they pushed the banns and the contract through so fast I can't say — but the day before yesterday fell on an auspicious day for weddings, and Anselm Sorensen married his granddaughter to Gale Clifford.

It near choked the King with rage — all that was wanting was for him to stand up in court and point his finger under Sorensen's nose." Remembering yesterday's scene at court, Roland was still laughing out loud.

He named Clifford outright because Leon knew the man.

Gale Clifford, of the second house of the Clearbrook Cliffords, was a junior officer of the City Watch — serving at this moment under Corbin Tate.

The vice-minister truly looked down his nose at the royal house.

Marry his granddaughter to a low-grade officer of the guards? So long as he was of the Seven Surnames, Ten Houses — he was still a better man than any Leon.