Ellinden So had never believed – perhaps no one had ever believed – that the Council city Aihvenavama was “safe.” They all knew too well that schemes were laid there, that its halls and chambers bred plots that were carried out elsewhere. But for a time at least, she had believed it safe from the carrying out … Until she was fourteen, and her father choked on his own blood, surrounded by an ever-widening circle of spectators. The crowd had pulled back as he folded over the long-handed knife in his gut, the faces wearing a collective expression of shock. An expression that quickly turned – within seconds – to one of calculation over the Council seat that had just fallen vacant. She learned then, as she crouched by him, pressing her own back against the nearest wall, that even here every hand was set against her.
If not for Manton, she might have never risen from her father’s side. If not for Manton, she might have found herself bleeding out her life on any one of a dozen occasions before she claimed his seat at sixteen.
But she did not fall, despite the lies and the broken oaths.
Doubt near to paranoia was her other ally. Doubt of the sanctity of this island city, where the Council was said to be inviolate. Her father had not been safe here. None of them were … At twenty-four, she proved the truth of her father’s example. Not that she was even in the city at the time. No one could even remember whether Manton had been seen there more recently than a fortnight before Boll Greffitt was found with a garotte about his neck.
Behind the wards of Sutton she counted herself safe, and nowhere else.
Somewhere, in the background of her dressing chamber, Ghaland’s voice chattered on about the morning meeting, and her assessment of everyone’s reactions, her speculations of what plans were being put into motion … or revised, or even abandoned. Ellinden continued to pull the wire brush through her long, silver-shot black hair, only half-listening.
As she swept the brush downwards, towards her lap, she studied her own face in the mirror. Still a young one, despite the fine lines that had settled in around her mouth, and around the sapphire blue eyes she had inherited from her mother. The same eyes she had given to her own children. All except Janne ... the girl’s eyes were as dark as her father’s. That had been unfortunate, since Ellinden’s hand-mate at the time had a considerably lighter gaze.
”... deserved to have a bounty to put on their heads Ghaland muttered as she stalked back and forth, skirts swishing around her thick form.
Occasionally, she would stop for a moment to glare first at Ellinden, then at Manton, before setting about hanging robes and rearranging pillows on the sofas, or straightening paintings on the walls. “If they can’t even show the courtesy to appear when asked, then they should lose the seat, it’s been vacant long enough, and if they’re actually off helping the Clunne …”
Ellinden met Manton’s glance in the mirror, and bit off a smile that threatened to spread when he rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. Not that she necessarily disagreed with Ghaland, though Manton might … But the A’nari situation had been a problem for more than a dozen years now, and was not one to be solved in one morning, if ever.
Luckily, though, that last comment was enough to send Ghaland off on a well-rehearsed and oft-voiced lamentation about the lack of respect for the Council rather than a demand to have Ellinden pronounce her thoughts on the whole mess. Another thing she had learned was that it was best to keep her thoughts to herself for as long as possible, especially about something as potentially touchy as this one. Especially with Owen of Clun lurking in the background. The merest mention of him early in the discussion had been enough to set half the Council atwitter with nervous glances at the corners of the chamber. And the other half to deliberately unreadable expressions. Just one mention, not even a complete sentence, by Talma, the legate from Malisis, as a possible explanation for why neither Morgan Raine nor his cousin Iaondrin had come when summoned.
Owen was the current unwashed bogeyman, now that Adelu seemed to have settled into relative quiet in Seldez; Talma had, for a moment, looked as if she half-expected the Clunne to come pouring into the room at the very mention of Owen’s name. At least the specter of the barbarians to the west provided some distraction from the intractable dilemma of how to handle the growing dispute between Sa’iph and Torei – and a distraction from the question of what stand Sutton would take if Sa’iph’s accusations, carried to the Council by Lord Antazos, about Jotunn ship-builders creating a war fleet for Arkus were true.
Ellinden set the brush aside, and pulled her hair back from her face. Almost before she stood, Ghaland was at her side, holding a brocade robe so that she could slip her arms into the wide sleeves. She stood patiently as the other woman laced the sash, adjusted the collar, and then stood back to pronounce her lady presentable. One disapproving look in Manton’s direction was the only comment Ghaland allowed herself on the Evandin’s appearance; he always had insisted on the plainest garb.
Easier to move in it, he would say. Much easier than her own robe, and the dainty slippers Ghaland insisted on sliding on to her feet, embroidered silk suitably elegant for the semi-official dinner.
Manton gave the footwear as disdainful a look as that Ghaland had given his tunic and trousers, but said nothing more. She would not be able to run in them. But Ellinden was not the sort to run anyway.
After one last fuss by Ghaland, Ellinden slipped one hand into the crook of Manton’s arm and allowed him to lead her from her suite, towards the dining hall where the plotting would continue.
DM’s Note: This photograph used under Creative Commons license.
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