In Legend Born (63 page)

"A what?"

"Never mind," said Tansen. "I'll be watching your back."

"Ah, but then who will watch yours?"

"Luckily,
shatai 
are trained to watch their own backs. I'd have died during training if I hadn't learned how."

Tansen escorted Elelar and her servants for part of their journey the following day. This was bandit country. Of course, all the bandits in Sileria were now part of Josarian's army, but they didn't know that Elelar was, in her way, one of them. Even if they knew, they still might not care—not enough to forego robbing her if she were unprotected. Kiloran had brought Sileria's many bandits (who routinely paid him a percentage of their booty, as tradition demanded) into the rebellion, but he hadn't exactly tamed them. However, they knew Tansen by now—who had slain twenty Moorlanders with a single blow, after all—and so they would grant the
torena
immunity while the
shatai
rode with her.

"The Imperial Advisor has asked me to marry him," she announced suddenly as they rode side by side through the morning sunshine.

He frowned. "Don't you already
have
a husband?"

"A minor impediment which he intends to eliminate." Her voice was flat.

"Divorce?" It was anathema in a clannish society where blood-ties and loyalty mattered more than wealth, but Tansen  supposed that the Imperial Advisor didn't concern himself overmuch with Silerian tradition—especially not if it interfered with his plans.

Elelar cleared her throat. "Divorce is the possibility he specifically mentioned."

He noticed how strained she looked. "You're afraid your husband might refuse, and Borell will resort to more brutal measures?" When she nodded, he asked, "But why? Surely a Valdan will divorce you. They have no—"

"He's half-Silerian." She briefly explained her husband's lineage and background.

"So," he surmised, "you married him for his money and his Valdani connections."

"And because he was so unlikely to find out about my work in the Alliance," she added.

He frowned. "Why?"

"Because he's a drunkard and a fool."

Tansen almost winced at the open contempt in her voice. He rather pitied her husband, married without love or respect, and now openly cuckolded. Indeed, Tansen supposed there had been other men besides Borell, and perhaps
Toren
Ronall, though a "fool," suspected it, too.

"Was he a drunkard
before
he married you?" he asked. There were times when, desire notwithstanding, he recognized that living with Elelar would probably be worse than living without her.

She glared at him but didn't respond to the insult. "I do not seek my husband's death."

"Why not? You sought mine, after all." He could feel his temper starting to rise.

She kept hers under control. "Nor do I seek marriage to the Advisor."

That surprised him. "Why not? I would have thought—"

"Do men ever think?" she asked bitterly. "As the wife of a shiftless half-wit, I go where I please and do what I want. My house is a haven for our allies and for fugitive rebels. I can conduct much of the Alliance's business there."

He was starting to understand. "But the Advisor's wife would live at Santorell Palace, meaning you'd need an excuse every time you went to your house, a property which he'd probably pressure you to give up anyhow."

She nodded. "The wife of the Imperial Advisor would be under constant supervision. My time would be completely taken up by ceremonial duties and assisting my husband in politics. My privacy would be compromised by my husband's servants. All my activities and behavior would be subjected to the continual scrutiny of courtiers. It would be a nightmare for any intelligent woman, and a disaster for one connected to the Alliance. Besides..."

"There's more?"

She made a sound of impatience. "He's from Valda. This is just a political posting, not his home. He hopes to be given a seat in the Imperial Council in a few more years."

"Ah. And he will take his wife with him when he leaves Sileria."

"Forever," she acknowledged bleakly.

"What are you going to do?"

She shook her head. The knotted cords of her headdress, which she had tucked away from her face, fell over her eyes. She brushed them away. "I don't know. I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with a plan. He's made it quite clear that he doesn't need Ronall's cooperation in order to marry me."

"I don't suppose you can just refuse his proposal?" Tansen ventured.

"I'm the one who made him fall in love with me," she said irritably. "I made him trust me, rely on me, and believe in my love."

Tansen shrugged. "You could reject him. Give him up. Break it off. I know he's been valuable to the Alliance, to us all, but if you've got to—"

"He thinks I'm in love with him, too." She made another impatient sound. "I've given him ample cause to think so. So how can I explain spurning him?"

"You're a woman. And the one thing that men everywhere can all agree on is that we don't understand women. If you leave him, he'll be bewildered at first, but then..." Tansen shrugged.

"That's it?" she asked doubtfully.

"Well... Angry, hurt, confused... But he will know he's not the first man ever abandoned by the woman he loved, or the first to wonder why."

"I don't know... He might still try to eliminate Ronall, thinking my husband has threatened me or forced me to give him up. Or he might attack me out of wounded vanity. His power is absolute in Shaljir. No one could help or defend me if I... If he..." She made a vague gesture.

"Stall him until after Alizar, then," Tansen suggested. "If we succeed there, then there will be war. He's the Advisor, after all, and he'll have a disaster on his hands. He may well forget, at least for a while, his personal concerns."

"Stall him..." She let out a long, shaky breath. "Stall him..." She straightened up suddenly. "I know! I'll tell him I won't feel worthy to be his wife until we know for sure that I can conceive his child. He's positively
fixated
on impregnating me."

Tansen didn't want to hear this and didn't want to see the visions that her comment brought vividly to life. "That's a good plan," he said briefly. "Stick to it." He kicked his horse and rode ahead to check for an ambush in the pass they were approaching.

Harjan's death was a loss that Captain Myrell felt deeply. The tailor had been a good source of information, saving the Empire lives and money on more than one occasion, and leading to the death or capture of numerous rebels. It was Harjan who had first advised Myrell that a
torena
often stopped at the inn on the outskirts of Zilar when traveling between Shaljir and her estates. There was nothing remarkable about this, of course, since the inn was a very fine one and many of Sileria's wealthier citizens broke their journeys there for a night.

But Harjan had grown bold and greedy enough to break a silence that no other informant was willing to violate: He whispered to Myrell about the Society, a subject which most
shallaheen
never discussed with outsiders, no matter what inducements were offered or what punishment was threatened.
Lirtahar
, and the brutal methods by which the assassins enforced it, ruled the mountains. Employing his own viciously brutal measures, Myrell had been unsuccessful in convincing anyone to talk about the Society, even in those rare instances where they
would
talk about Josarian.

Harjan, alas, had been the one man greedy enough for gold and confident enough of his own cleverness to risk the Society's wrath by speaking about its business to a Valdan. Not that a tailor from Zilar knew anything important about their business, of course. He did, however, observe various details and events that eventually proved to be the threads of a much larger tapestry. Although Harjan was dead, he had given Myrell the tools with which to start unraveling the fabric.

Harjan had always aspired to more than the miserable poverty of a
shallah
, and so he had patronized the fine inn at the edge of town, despite the high prices the keeper charged for food and wine there. A man of mediocre talents, Harjan had harbored the fruitless hope that he might acquire a few wealthy or aristocratic clients if he haunted the luxurious inn's public rooms. This explained how he knew that twice during the past year, the
torena
in question had stayed at the inn on the very same night as an assassin.

It was surprising enough that a lone
torena
would risk a second visit to an establishment frequented by an assassin. It was even more surprising that, on that second occasion, one of the public rooms was closed because—as Harjan had learned after creating a scene—the
torena
was dining privately in there with the assassin.

Since Myrell paid him for any news whatsoever about the Society, Harjan had related this startling news to the Valdan at one of their meetings. It was a surprising announcement in any event, for the
toreni
were well aware of the risk of abduction and usually took pains to avoid the assassins. However, a man and woman might well meet for many reasons, after all. Apart from the possibility that the assassin was the
torena
's lover, Myrell could conceive of a variety of possible explanations for the discreet assignation: the assassin might be blackmailing the woman; she might have petitioned him about a bloodvow, something that was beneath no one in Sileria, despite the airs the
toreni
gave themselves; or, yes, they might even be resolving an abduction or threatened abduction, that barbaric custom which Silerians treated like ordinary business.

Indeed, with so much work and so many worries to occupy him, Myrell might have completely disregarded Harjan's brief tale, except for one thing—the identity of the woman:
Torena
Elelar. He knew that Koroll had some contact with the Imperial Advisor's mistress by virtue of his position as Commander of Shaljir, so he had brought the information to his attention. Koroll would have the means to determine if there was anything in this tale which concerned them. Such a possibility seemed so improbable that Myrell had almost felt embarrassed to report the incident; but Koroll had pounced like a mountain cat and congratulated him for uncovering it. The Society was now allied to Josarian, and the Advisor's mistress was meeting with a Society assassin. Whether the Outlookers discovered a link between Elelar and Josarian, or merely collected enough information to discredit the
torena
, Koroll found this news worthy of serious attention.

Harjan had been publicly executed by the rebels only a day after reporting to Myrell that Josarian was planning to abduct a
toren
—Elelar's own husband, in fact. The abduction had never taken place. Had it been a ruse? Or had Josarian called off the plan upon realizing he'd been betrayed?

Myrell had argued with Koroll afterwards, pointing out that the
torena
was unlikely to ally herself to a
shallah
planning to abduct her own husband. Even if she loathed
Toren
Ronall, surely not even a woman would be foolish enough to beggar herself paying ransom to her own accomplice. Even if Josarian returned the money to her, which she'd be a fool to expect, what would be the point of such a laborious exercise?

Koroll, however, suspected that getting rid of Ronall was probably precisely why Elelar had sought an assassin and, through him, perhaps Josarian. He had no doubt that the Advisor's whore thought Borell would marry her if she became a widow. Josarian's men had already killed one Valdani abductee and were quite capable of killing another.

"Three have mercy," Koroll had added, "I think the woman may be right, too. I think Borell has become besotted enough to marry her."

Koroll had assigned his best spies to the task of discovering the
torena
's secrets while Myrell returned to the fighting in the mountains. Now that he had returned to Shaljir for another meeting, Myrell was astonished by what Koroll's spies had learned in his absence—and by what Koroll planned to do with the information.