Storm Warning (3 page)

One comer of Tremane’s mouth twitched a little, in recognition of Charliss’ irony. They both knew what the Emperor meant by that; the citizens of what had been Hardorn wanted their country back, and they had organized enough to resist further conquest.

“In addition,” Charliss continued smoothly, “this land of Valdemar is overrun with refugees from all the conflict within Hardorn and from the wretched situation before Ancar perished. Valdemar could decide to aid the Hardornens in some material way, and that would cause us further trouble. We know that they have somehow allied themselves with those fanatics in Karse, and that presents us with one long front if we choose to fight them. Valdemar itself is a damned peculiar place....”

“It has always been difficult to insinuate agents into Valdemar,” Tremane offered, with the proper diffidence. Charliss wondered whether he spoke from personal experience or simply the knowledge he had gleaned from keeping an eye on Charliss’ own agents.

From beyond the closed doors of the Throne Room came the soft murmur of the courtiers who were waiting for the doors to open for them and Court to begin. Let them wait—and let them see just whose business had kept them waiting. They would know then, without any formal announcements, just who had become the Emperor’s current favorite. The little maneuverings and shifts in power would begin from that very moment, like the shifts in current when a new boulder rolls into a stream.

“Quite.” Charliss frowned. “In fact, that
Hulda
creature was once one of my freelance agents in the Valdemar capital. I was rather dubious about using her again, despite her abilities, until I realized just how cursed difficult it is to work in Valdemar. As it was, her progress there was minimal. Most unsatisfactory. She was never able to insinuate herself any higher than a mere court servant’s position, and she had more than one agenda and more than one employer at the time.”

The corner of Tremane’s mouth twitched again, but this time it was downward. Charliss knew why; Tremane never knowingly worked with someone who served more masters than he.

“Why did you trust her in Hardorn, then?” the Grand Duke asked in a neutral tone.

“I never
trusted
her,” Charliss corrected him, allowing a hint of cold disapproval to tinge his own voice. “I trust no agents, particularly not those who are as ambitious as this one was. I merely made sure that this time she had no other employers, and that her personal agenda was not incompatible with mine. And when it appeared that she was slipping her leash, I sent an envoy to Ancar’s court to remind her who her master was. And to eliminate her if she elected to ignore the warning he represented. That was why I sent a mage, an Adept her equal, with none of her vices.”

“Your pardon,” Tremane replied, bowing slightly. “I should have known. But—about Valdemar?”

Charliss permitted his icy expression to thaw. “Valdemar is peculiar, as I said. Until recently, they’ve had next to no magic at all, and what they had was only mind-magic. There was a barrier there, according to my agents, a barrier that made it impossible for a practicing mage to remain within the borders for very long.”

“But how did Hulda—” Tremane began, then smiled. “Of course. While she was there, she must have refrained from using her powers. A difficult thing for a mage; use of magic often becomes a habit too ingrained to break.”

Charliss blinked slowly in satisfaction. Tremane was no fool; he saw immediately the solution and the difficulty of implementing it. “Precisely,” he replied. “On both counts. And that was
why
I continued to use her. In business matters, the woman’s self-discipline was remarkable. As for Valdemar—though they have begun again to use magic as we know it, the place is no less peculiar than before, and many of the mages they seem to have invited into their borders are from no land that my operatives recognize! Well, that is all in the past; what we need to deal with is the current situation. And that, Grand Duke Tremane, is where you come in.”

Tremane simply waited, as any good and perfectly trained servant, for his master to continue. But his eyes narrowed just a trifle, and Charliss knew that his mind was working furiously. A current of breeze stirred the tapestries behind him, but the flames of the candles on the many-branched candelabras, protected in their glass shades, did not even waver.

“Your Duchy borders Hardorn; you will therefore be familiar with the area,” Charliss stated, his tone and expression allowing no room for dissension. “The situation in Hardorn grows increasingly unstable by the moment. I require a personal commander of my own in place there; someone who has incentive,
personal
incentive, to see that the situation is dealt with expeditiously.”

“Personal incentive, my Emperor?” Tremane replied.

Charliss crossed his legs and leaned forward, ignoring the pain in his hip joints. “I am giving you a unique opportunity to prove, not only to me, but to your rivals and your potential underlings, that you are the only truly worthy candidate for the Wolf Crown. I intend to put you in command of the Imperial forces in Hardorn. You will be answerable only to me. You will prove yourself worthy by dealing with this situation and bringing it to a successful conclusion.”

Tremane’s hands trembled, and Charliss noted that he had turned just a little pale. How long would it take for word to spread of Tremane’s new position? Probably less than an hour. “What of Valdemar, my Emperor?” he asked, his voice steady, even if his hands were not.

“What of Valdemar?” Charliss repeated. “Well, I don’t expect you to conquer it as well. It will be enough to bring Hardorn under our banner. However, if during that process you discover a way to insinuate an agent into Valdemar, all the better. If you take your conquests past the Hardorn border and actually
into
Valdemar, better still. I simply warn you of Valdemar because it is a strange place and I cannot predict how it will measure this situation nor what it will do. Valdemar can wait; Hardorn is what concerns me now. We must conquer it, now that we have begun, or our other client states will see that we have failed and may become difficult to deal with in our perceived moment of weakness.”

“And if I succeed in bringing Hardorn into the Empire?” Tremane persisted.

“Then you will be confirmed in the succession, and I will begin the process of the formal training,” Charliss told him. “And at the end of ten years, I will retire, and you will have Throne, Crown, and Empire.”

Tremane’s eyes lit, and his lips twitched into a tight, excited smile. Then he sobered. “If I do not succeed, however, I assume I shall resume nothing more than the rule of my Duchy.”

Charliss examined his immaculately groomed hands, gazing into the topaz eyes of the wolf’s-head ring he wore, a ring whose wolf mask had been cast from the same molds as the central wolf of the Wolf Crown. The eyes gazed steadily at him, and as he often did, Charliss fancied he saw a hint of life in them. Hunger. An avidity, not that of the starving beast, but of the prosperous and powerful.

“There is no shortage of suitable candidates for the Throne,” he replied casually, tilting the ring for a better view into the burning yellow eyes. “If you should happen to survive your failure, I would advise you to retire
directly
to your Duchy. The next candidate that I would consider if you failed would be Baron Melles.”

Baron Melles was a so-called “court Baron,” a man with a title but no lands to match. He didn’t
need
land; he had power, power in abundance, for he was an Adept and his magics had brought him more wealth than many landed nobles had. His coffers bulged with his accumulated wealth, but he wanted more, and his bloodlines and ambition were likely to give him more.

He also happened to be of the political party directly opposite that of Tremane’s. Tremane’s parents had held their lands for generations; Melles was the son of merchants. Melles was, not so incidentally, one of Tremane’s few enemies, one of the few candidates to the succession who did not underestimate the Baron. There was a personal animosity between them that Charliss did not quite understand, and he often wondered if the two had somehow contracted a very private feud that had little or nothing to do with their respective positions and ambitions.

Melles would be only too pleased to find Tremane a failure and himself the new successor. This meant, among other things, that if Tremane happened to survive his failure to conquer Hardorn, he probably would not survive the coronation of his rival, and he might not even survive the confirmation of Melles as successor. Melles was the most ruthless of all the candidates, and both Charliss and Tremane were quite well aware that he was a powerful enough Adept to be able to commit any number of murders-by-magic, and make them all appear to be accidents.

He was also clever enough
not
to do anything of the sort, since his political rivals would be looking for and defending against exactly that sort of attack. Melles was fully wealthy enough to buy any number of covert killers, and probably would. He was too clever not to consolidate his position by eliminating enough rivals that those remaining were intimidated.

That was, after all, one of the realities of life in the Empire; lead, follow, and barricade yourself against assassins.

And the first in line for elimination would be Tremane—if Melles were named successor.

Charliss knew this. So did Tremane. It made the situation all the more piquant.

Interestingly enough, if Tremane succeeded and attained the coveted prize, it was not likely that he would remove Melles. Nor would he dispose of any of the other candidates. Rather, he would either win them over to his side or find some other way to neutralize them—perhaps by finding something else, creating some other problem for them, that required all their attention.

Charliss had used both ploys in the past, and on the whole, he preferred subtlety to assassination. Still, there had been equally successful Emperors in the past who ruled by the knife and the garrote. Difficult times demanded difficult solutions, and one of those times could be upon them.

The entire situation gave Charliss a faint echo of the thrill he had felt back at the beginning of his own reign, when he first realized he truly did have the power of life and death over his underlings and could manipulate their lives as easily as the puppeteer manipulated his dolls. It was amusing to present Tremane with a gift of a sword—with a needle-studded, poisoned grip. It was doubly amusing to know that Melles, at least, would recognize this test for what it was, and would be watching Tremane just as avidly from a distance, perhaps sending in his own agents to try and undermine his rival, and attempting to consolidate his own position here at court.

The jockeying and scrabbling was about to begin. It should produce hours of fascination.

Charliss watched Tremane closely, following the ghosts, the shadows of expressions as he thought all this through and came to the same conclusions. There was no chance that he would refuse the appointment, of course. Firstly, Tremane was a perfectly adequate military commander. Secondly, refusing this appointment would be the same as being defeated; Melles would have the reward of becoming successor, and Tremane’s life would be in danger.

It took very little time for Tremane to add all the factors together to come to the conclusions that Charliss had already thought out. He bowed quickly.

“I cannot tell my Emperor how incredibly flattered I am by his trust in me,” he said smoothly. “I can only hope that I will prove worthy of that trust.”

Charliss said nothing; only nodded in acknowledgment.

“And I am answerable only to
you,
my Emperor? Not to any other, military or civilian?” Tremane continued quickly.

“Have I not said as much?” Charliss waved a hand. “I am certain you will need all the time you have between now and tomorrow morning, Grand Duke. Packing and preparations will probably occupy you for the rest of the day. I will have one of the Court Mages open the Portal for you to the Hardornen front just after you break your fast tomorrow morning.”

“Sir.” Tremane made the full formal bow this time; he knew a dismissal even when it was not phrased as one. Charliss was very pleased with his demeanor, especially given the short notice and the shorter time in which to make ready for his departure. There were no attempts to argue, no excuses, no plaints that there was not enough time.

Tremane rose from the bow, backing out of the room with his eyes lowered properly. Charliss could not find fault with his posture or the signals his body gave; his demeanor was perfect.

The great doors opened and closed behind him. Alone once again in the Throne Room, Emperor Charliss, ruler of the largest single domain in the world, leaned to one side and chuckled into the cavernous chamber.

This would be the most enjoyable little playlet of his entire reign, and it came at the very end, when he had thought he had long since exploited the entertainment value of watching his courtiers scramble about for the tidbits he tossed them. But here was a juicy treat indeed, and the scramble would be vastly amusing.

Charliss was pleased. Entertainment on this scale was
hard
to come by!