Mienthe looked relieved. She nodded her head to show him the way. “I was going to ask one of my maids to bring tea, but maybe it would be better not to let the kitchen know where you are, either. Though my maids are discreet. I think.”
In Tan’s experience, maids were never discreet. He didn’t quite know how to say so. He could hardly suggest young Lady Mienthe invite him to stay unchaperoned in her own rooms.
“Karin can be discreet,” Mienthe said, in the tone of one coming to a necessary conclusion. “She chatters, but that’s all just show for the young men. She won’t talk about anything important.”
Tan said nothing.
“I swear I won’t tell,” the young maid Karin promised solemnly when Mienthe told her that Tan might be spending the night on a couch in her sitting room. She was a buxom girl with an outrageously flirtatious manner. “Not even my string of lovers,” she added at Tan’s doubtful glance, and winked. Oddly, Tan felt the girl might actually be telling the truth about her discretion, if not her string of lovers.
Mienthe made Tan take the best couch and settled in a cane chair, tucking her feet under her skirts like a child. “Well,” she said, looking at Tan, and stopped, clearly not knowing what to say, and small blame for that.
The maid had settled, more or less out of earshot, across the room on the hearth of a fireplace. She busied herself with some sort of needlework, pretending, in the immemorial way of maids everywhere, not to listen.
“So,” Tan said, low enough that the maid might not overhear, “and are you rising into mage power, Lady Mienthe?”
“No!” said Mienthe at once, but then hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. How can one tell?”
Tan, not being a mage himself, had no idea.
“And you?” Mienthe said. “Do you feel anything? Have you, since you found that book?”
Tan had to admit he could not tell. “It’s all very… very…”
“Alarming? Well, but exciting, too, don’t you think?
It could have been anything, couldn’t it? Well, anything valuable,” Mienthe amended. “Something that your Istierinan would be desperate not to lose. Something to do with the magic of language and law. Maybe you’ll be able to speak all languages now, do you think? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Erich tried to teach me Prechen, but I couldn’t get more than a word or two to come off my tongue. Or maybe you’ll be able to tell when someone is speaking the truth, or when they’re writing a contract with intent to deceive. It stands to reason a legist would put only some wonderful, strong magic in a book, doesn’t it? Only he didn’t expect another legist with such a strong gift to get it out again, did he? Only then you did.” Mienthe paused, staring at Tan in speculation.
Tan tried not to smile. He liked her optimism, and hoped she was right, and hesitated to say anything that might reveal his own terror of what his mind might now contain.
Somewhere, distantly, there was a shout. Indistinct with distance, but definitely a shout. Mienthe jumped up in alarm, and Tan reached for his cane.
There was a firm knock on the door before he could get to his feet. A guardsman opened it, leaned in, and said, “Lady Mienthe?” He looked a little embarrassed, but determined—the very picture of a man driven by orders to a forwardness that was not his by nature. It was Tenned son of Tenned, which amused Tan even under these circumstances. “You do find yourself on duty at the most fraught moments,” he commented.
“Yes,” said the young guardsman in a harassed tone. “Nothing like this ever happened before you came to Tiefenauer. I don’t think I’ll ever complain of boredom again.”
“What
now
?” Mienthe asked.
“Esteemed lady—” Tenned began, but paused. Then he said, out in a rush, “Captain Geroen says he’s getting reports from riverside, they say there’s an awful lot of activity across the river, and Captain Geroen wants to undeck our half of the bridge, and send men to watch all the fordable parts of the river upstream and down, and muster the men. And the other captains, as were in command of the different divisions before Lord Bertaud appointed Geroen above them all, they don’t want to do any of that, they say it’s a fool who sees smoke from one campfire and declares the whole forest is burning. And the captain of the royal guard, Temnan, you know, he wants to send after the king to see what he should do—”
“
That’s
a fool,” Tan murmured. “Indecisiveness is the worst of faults in a captain—other than shyness, and that
send after the king
could be a sign of either. Or both. I don’t know what influential family the king would be accommodating to have promoted a fool to a captaincy, but I wonder if this is why he left the man behind?”
“To guard his
queen
?” Mienthe objected. “And his daughters?”
“He can’t have expected anything to happen…”
“I’m sure Temnan is perfectly competent,” Mienthe declared, but her eyes hid worry.
“However that is, Captain Geroen, he sent me to find you, esteemed lady, and beg you come and tell him he can undeck the bridge—”
“That can’t be necessary,” said Mienthe, rather blankly.
The bridge between Tiefenauer in the Delta and
Linularinan Desamion had never been a truly permanent sort of bridge of stone and iron; the history of the Delta was too complicated. It was a timber bridge, which meant that rotted timbers had to be replaced from time to time, but also meant that either side could undeck the bridge if times became suddenly uncertain.
“Lady—” Tenned began.
“Esteemed Mienthe—” Tan said at the same time.
Mienthe held up her hand to quiet them both. Possibly Tan’s comment about indecisiveness was echoing in her ears, because she said to the guardsman, “Go tell Captain Geroen to give whatever orders he sees fit about the bridge, and about setting sentries around Tiefenauer. Mustering the men—isn’t that something we sometimes drill? Don’t I recall my cousin ordering a muster once just to see how fast the guard could respond?”
“Four years ago, yes, lady,” said Tenned respectfully. “Just after I joined.”
“We could do that now. Couldn’t we? But in the middle of the night? Maybe we ought to wait for morning?”
“The captain—”
“I’ll come speak to Captain Geroen,” Mienthe decided. “But I think—wait a moment.” She caught up the blank-paged book and darted with it into the other room. But in only a moment she was back again, breathless, the Linularinan book gone. “All right, let’s go,” she said to Tenned, and waved at Tan to accompany her.
“Kohorrian cannot possibly be planning to march troops across that bridge!” the captain of the royal guardsmen was—not quite shouting, Tan decided, but very nearly. “Earth and iron, man, you’ll have Her Majesty in fits to suit your own silly humors! Are you a guard
captain or a little girl, to be afraid of moving shadows in the night?”
Geroen simply stood with his head down and his eyes half shut, in much the same attitude he might have shown in a storm. He seemed otherwise unmoved by the other’s vehemence. Next to Temnan’s polished courtier’s grace, Geroen looked decidedly lower-class, mulishly stubborn, and even rather brutish. But he also looked like the very last man to be moved by tight nerves and silly humors.
“I’m not entirely certain we can be perfectly confident of what the old Fox may and may not do,” Tan put in smoothly, in a tone of polite deference. “And, after all, though the move must naturally prove unnecessary, I’m certain the city guard will profit from a little exercise.”
“What is Her Majesty’s opinion?” Mienthe asked.
“The queen has long since retired for the night,” Temnan said stiffly, by which Tan understood that he was not so confident of his own position that he wanted to risk the queen’s overriding him. Not that Tan was in the least interested in the queen’s opinion, personally. He glanced sidelong at Mienthe, wondering how to convey a suggestion that, at least tonight, they might best take any warnings very seriously.
Mienthe did not seem to need to hear this advice from anyone. She kept her gaze on the royal captain’s face, lifted her chin and said, “Well, though I should be glad of Her Majesty’s opinion, in the Delta my cousin’s opinion is foremost.”
“I’ve sent after His Majesty and Lord Bertaud—”
Mienthe continued as though the captain had not
spoken, “And since my cousin is not here, I will decide what we will do.” Tan, standing close behind her, was aware that the young woman’s hands were trembling. She had closed them into loose fists to hide the fact. From Temnan’s stuffed expression, he did not realize Mienthe was nervous—but he did know that she was right about where authority rested in the Delta, and that he’d been in the wrong to try to overrule Tiefenauer’s own captain.
Mienthe turned deliberately to Geroen and said, “Do as you see fit to guard the Delta and the city and this house. We will say it was a practice drill, if nothing comes of it. Do as you think best in all matters, Captain Geroen, and then come and explain to me what kind of activity it
is
that you think you’ve seen on the other side of the river and what you think it means.”
The captain gave her a firm, satisfied nod. “Lady.”
“Very well.” Mienthe looked around once, uncertainly, as though hoping to see good advice carved into the walls or the ceiling. She said, “I wish—” but cut that thought off uncompleted. She looked at Tan instead. He gave her an encouraging nod and no suggestions at all, because she was already doing exactly as he’d have advised her. She looked faintly surprised, as though she’d expected argument or advice and was a little taken aback to receive only approving silence.
Mariddeier Kohorrian, the Fox of Linularinum, might or might not have desired soldiers bearing his badge and wearing his colors to march across the bridge, but someone—Istierinan Hamoddian, or someone he was advising—had indeed pulled together a surprisingly strong muster and pointed it toward the Delta. Geroen brought Mienthe that news almost before they’d gone—not back to Mienthe’s rooms to wait, but to the solar, the
one room in the entire great house that offered the best view of the city.
It should have been a quiet view, a peaceful night in the city. But there were lanterns everywhere, and torches and bonfires down by the river. Men moving in the streets, some with aimless confusion, but many quickly and with purpose.
Geroen brought descriptions of what he’d done with the city guardsmen, how he’d arranged them—along with a grim assurance that the eastern half of the bridge had been successfully undecked and bowmen placed on the rooftops to be sure the Linularinan troops could not easily redeck it from their side.
“But they want to,” the captain told Mienthe, without any satisfaction at being proved right. “They’ve tried twice, under shields.”
Mienthe said, voicing the common shock, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe they’re really trying this. How can they
dare
? Are you sure?” Then she waved this away, embarrassed. “Of course you are, of course—I can’t believe it, but I believe
you
.”
“None of us can believe it, but there it is.” Geroen didn’t sound panicky, or even excited. He sounded, Tan decided, rather more morose than anything else. There was a scrape across one cheek and his shoulders were slumped with weariness, but he met Mienthe’s wide-eyed gaze with commendable straightness. He said, “Now, that lot trying to cross on the bridge—they’ll have a hard time getting the job done, too hard a job if you take my meaning, and it’s my opinion they’re just meant to draw the eye.”
“What?” Mienthe did not, in fact, quite seem to take captain’s meaning.
“Ah, well,” he said, more plainly. “I can’t see as any sensible man would start up a war over some fool magic book, but it looks a great lot like maybe someone over there’s maybe not sensible. If it was me and I meant to do a right job of it, then I’d be sliding around through the marshes and never mind the bridge until I could get control of both ends of it, do you see?”
Mienthe nodded. “Go on.”
“Well, so I’ve got men watching, but not enough, my lady. I want to rouse out anybody as ever’s been in the militia and send them out to watch, if you’ll give me leave. And south, right down at the river mouth, because if it was me over there, I’d be thinking about loading up a few ships and tucking around that way—”
“You’ve sent a strong mage down to the sea to wake the wild magic, I suppose,” Tan said quietly.
“I did that, for which I hope you’ll give me leave, Lady Mienthe, because I ought by rights to have asked before I did any such thing, but—”
“You sent for Eniad of Saum,” Mienthe guessed.
Geroen looked a little embarrassed, as well he might, having made the broad decision to involve other Delta cities in Tiefenauer’s trouble. “You did say as I should do as I saw fit, my lady.”
“No, you were right to send to Saum,” Mienthe said quickly. “I’d have told you to, if I’d thought of it. Eniad of Saum is just who we’ll want to send the sea wild and close our harbor—all the harbors, I suppose, just in case—well, in case. How long ago did you send your man?”
“Oh… right after you said I might, Lady Mienthe. And I sent over to Kames with word that maybe there could be some trouble, and up along the Sierhanan, thinking
it would be best to have the whole Delta alert, just in case.”
“Just what you should do,” Tan said quietly, as Mienthe was starting to look doubtful about just how broad the captain’s actions had been.