Shapers of Darkness (20 page)

“The same reason they didn’t trust your father. The same reason I’m afraid they won’t trust you. They fear the Solkaran Supremacy. They don’t want our house to grow too powerful.”

Kalyi shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Wars are strange things, Your Highness. They can weaken us, or they can make us stronger. Quite often a war strengthens the royal house, because it’s the king or queen who leads the army.”

“Or the regent?”

“Yes,” the archminister said, his face brightening. “Or the regent. And here I was afraid you were too young to grasp all of this.”

Kalyi couldn’t help but smile, though she quickly grew serious again. “But don’t we want our house to be strong? Shouldn’t all this make us want a war even more?”

“Well, that’s where this gets a bit confusing. Of course we want House Solkara to be strong, but we need balance as well, among all the houses of Aneira. It’s best for the realm if we maintain good relations with the other dukedoms. We don’t want the other houses to have cause to hate House Solkara, or her queen.”

Her queen!
The last thing Kalyi wanted was for the other dukes to hate her. She looked away, not wanting Pronjed to see how much the idea of this bothered her. “I guess that makes sense,” she said. She chewed her lip for a moment before remembering that her mother had told her queens weren’t supposed to. “So what should we do?”

“Well, I can only offer counsel, Your Highness. Ultimately this is up to you and the regent. But I believe we’d be best served by speaking with the dukes who oppose the war. Perhaps not all of them, but certainly Tebeo of Dantrielle, and Brall of Orvinti. Their houses are the strongest of those in question. And we should see if we can address their concerns, even if it means delaying our attack on Eibithar by a turn or two. The realm will be stronger if we’re united in this war.”

Kalyi frowned. She wasn’t certain that her uncle would
think much of this idea. “I should speak of this with Uncle Numar.”

“Of course, Your Highness. I’d suggest though that you not tell him the idea came from me. He and I don’t always see eye-to-eye on matters such as these.”

She wasn’t certain about that part either. She didn’t like to lie to her uncle. But she nodded to the archminister. “All right.”

They stood in silence for a moment, before Pronjed gave a small bow. “Well, Your Highness. I’ve taken too much of your time already. Good day.”

“And to you,” she called as he walked away.

The scent of fresh baked bread reached her from the kitchen, but the queen was no longer so hungry. She watched the archminister cross the ward. And when he had entered the castle corridors, she made her way to her uncle’s chamber.

The guards standing outside the chamber bowed to her as she approached the door and knocked, and another soldier pulled the door open from within.

“Her Highness the queen, my lord,” the man said, glancing back at Numar.

Kalyi couldn’t see his face, but she had noticed in the past that he didn’t always seem happy to see her, though he was always kind to her when she came to see him.

When he came into view this day, he was smiling broadly. “Your Highness,” he said, bowing.

“Good day, Uncle.”

He placed a hand on her shoulder, but he didn’t ask her into the chamber. “I’m rather busy at the moment, but I had hoped to speak with you later. Can you return when the priori’s bells are rung?”

Kalyi hesitated, started to chew her lip again, but caught herself.

The smile returned to her uncle’s face, though there was a brittleness to it this time. “Can you tell me what this is about?”

“It’s about the war.”

“The war.” He took a breath. “Very well. Please come in. We can sit for a moment or two.”

He nodded to the guard, who immediately left the chamber, closing the door as he did. Numar led her to the chair in which she usually sat and then pulled the adjacent one closer to hers.

“Now,” he said, “what about the war?”

She sat with her hands twisting in her lap, unsure now of how to begin. “I’m worried about our balance,” she said at last, knowing even as she spoke the words that this wasn’t quite right.

Numar looked puzzled. “Our balance?”

“I think we should be strong—our house I mean—but I don’t want us to be so strong that it’s bad. We should talk to the others even if it means that we don’t go to war right away. It’ll be better if we’re—”

“Wait,” the regent said, sitting forward. “Are you suggesting that we delay our attack on Eibithar?”

She nodded. “So that we can talk to the others.”

His eyes narrowed. “What others?”

“Dantrielle, Orvinti. The other houses. The ones that are afraid of us.”

“Kalyi, what are you talking about?”

She looked down at her hands, feeling her cheeks burn. “The war. I want to make certain that we don’t make the others hate us. I don’t want them to hate me.”

“Why would you think—?” He regarded her briefly. “Kalyi, did someone send you here? Your mother perhaps? The duke? The archminister?”

She looked up, then immediately lowered her gaze again.

“Did Pronjed tell you to speak with me, Kalyi?” When she didn’t respond, he took her hand, making her look at him. He was smiling now, his brown eyes locked on hers. “Was all of this his idea?”

“He didn’t really send me here,” she said.

“But he put these ideas in your head, made you think the other houses are going to hate you.”

She nodded, afraid that Numar would grow angry with her.

But his voice remained gentle as he said, “Why don’t you tell me everything you and he talked about?”

She related her conversation with the archminister, answering
her uncle’s questions when he interrupted, and trying her best not to leave out any details.

“You tell me that he didn’t send you here,” the regent said, once she had finished, “but he did recommend that you speak to me about all of this, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“But what, Kalyi?”

“But he told me not to tell you that he was the one who thought of all this. He said that you and he don’t always see eye-to-eye.”

Numar actually gave a small laugh, though he didn’t look at all happy. “That’s true enough.”

“Was I wrong to tell you?”

“No, not at all.” He stood and began to walk around the chamber. “Kalyi, do you remember the conversation you overheard between Pronjed and the master of arms?”

She would never forget it. They had been in one of the tower stairways, and though she had known that it was wrong to listen, she had been unable to help herself. Pronjed had spoken to the armsmaster as if he were a child, telling him what to think and how to behave. And Tradden Grontalle, the leader of Solkara’s army, one of the most powerful warriors in all the realm, had obeyed him without a word of protest. Kalyi guessed at the time that the archminister used magic to control Tradden’s mind, and her uncle had agreed that it was possible. “Of course I do, Uncle,” she said.

“And do you remember that we wondered at the time if the archminister might be a traitor?”

She nodded. This had occurred to her as well.

“Do you think it’s possible that he was saying all of this not to help you, but rather to hurt you, and House Solkara as well?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shivering. “Do you?”

“Yes, I suppose I do. House Solkara needs to be strong, and Aneira needs to fight this war when the leaders of our army tell us it’s time. If we do as the archminister suggests, and delay our attack, we could ruin everything.”

“But what about the houses that are against the war?”

“Tell me again, what Pronjed said about them.”

“He told me we should speak with the dukes of Dantrielle and Orvinti, that we should address their concerns.”

The regent nodded slowly. “I see,” he said, his voice low. “So the minister wants us to appease them.”

Kalyi wasn’t certain what “appease” meant, but she asked, “Is that what we’re going to do?”

“No, it’s not.” He had ceased his pacing and was standing near the window, gazing out over the castle ward. After a few moments he faced Kalyi again. “Your Highness, I believe the time has come to take a harder stance with those houses that would oppose your will. Only enemies of the realm would want to keep Solkara weak. So I would suggest that we do all that we can to demonstrate how strong your house can be. What do you think?”

She still didn’t understand all that was happening, but she knew that Pronjed scared her, and that when her uncle spoke of strengthening House Solkara it seemed to make a good deal of sense. “I think you’re right,” she said, drawing a smile from the regent. “If the other houses really want Aneira to be strong, then they should listen to us, and go to war when we tell them to.”

Numar fairly beamed, making the queen blush. “I couldn’t have said it better myself, Your Highness.”

Chapter
Eight

Dantrielle, Aneira

t had been a dangerous endeavor from the beginning. Tebeo, duke of Dantrielle, had drawn upon all his powers of persuasion to convince Brall of Orvinti to join his cause, and even that would not
have been enough had it not been for their close friendship. By trying to convince the dukes of Aneira’s other southern houses to stand together in resisting Solkara’s push toward an alliance with the Braedon empire and war with Eibithar, they risked being branded as traitors to the realm. But both men believed that this war was a mistake, that the realm’s true enemy was not their neighbor to the north, but rather the Qirsi conspiracy. So, early in the planning, they had decided to ride to the other houses and speak of rebellion with their fellow dukes.

In the end, Brall and Tebeo determined that they were best off traveling separately, Brall speaking with the new dukes in Bistari and Tounstrel and Tebeo riding to Kett and then to Noltierre. Even before word reached them of Numar’s rush to muster new men into the royal army, they had known that their time was limited. By dividing their tasks and pushing their mounts, the two dukes hoped to forge alliances with the four houses in question before the end of Amon’s Turn. With any luck, they thought, they might be able to dissuade the regent from this foolhardy war before his preparations had progressed too far.

Tebeo returned to his castle in Dantrielle more encouraged than he ever thought possible. His discussions with the dukes of Kett and Noltierre had gone perfectly. Due mostly to the untimely deaths of so many of the realm’s dukes during the past year, Ansis of Kett now ranked as one of Aneira’s oldest dukes, though he was quite a bit younger than both Tebeo and Brall. Like his father before him, Ansis had long been friendly with both men, and also with three of the late dukes—Chago of Bistari, Bertin the Elder of Noltierre, and Vidor of Tounstrel. Perhaps because the duke of Kett had always been the youngest of their group, Tebeo still found himself thinking of Ansis as a boy, a young noble so new to his power that he needed guidance from Tebeo and the others. Seeing the duke in his own castle, however, surrounded by his beautiful children and giving orders to his guards in their black-and-brown uniforms, Tebeo realized that he had been doing the man a disservice. Kett might have been no more than a middle-tier house, but her duke had grown wise with the years, and he was as brave as any man in the kingdom.

“You saved me the trouble of sending a messenger to Dantrielle,” the duke said, the night Tebeo arrived at his gates. “I had intended to deny Numar’s newest request for men, and I had thought to let you and Brall know, so that when the Solkarans marched on Kett, I might face them with more than just my army.”

Coming from another man, it might have sounded like an idle boast. But Tebeo had little doubt that Ansis meant what he said.

“Then you oppose this war as well,” he replied, hearing the relief in his own voice.

“Of course. I have no affection for the Eibitharians, but neither do I wish to find myself riding to battle with the emperor of Braedon. My father always thought Harel too vain and foolish to be an effective leader. I can only imagine what he would have said had Farrad or Tomaz suggested an alliance with the empire.”