Dragon Blood

"He will understand," I said. "Give Ciarra a little time and he'll be strutting around here arrogant as an Avinhellish lord."

The polite social expression Beckram wore gave way to a grin. "She does have that effect on men, doesn't she?"

14—WARDWICK

My father said that if the Oranstonians had liked fighting against the high king half as much as they liked fighting each other, they would have won their rebellion.

Six Oranstonian lords had accompanied Alizon. Farrawell, the one who'd yelled at Tychis, I knew by reputation though not by sight. He was the only one of the Oranstonians I hadn't met, so I had no trouble fitting the name to the man.

Farrawell had accounted himself well in the wake of the Oranstonian Rebellion, surviving not by diplomacy, as with many of the older Oranstonian lords—like, say, Haverness—but because he'd been imprisoned when the Oranstonians broke. I'd heard he was a man of hot temper and little insight. He'd been one of Haverness's Hundred and, like Haverness, had taken the defeat of the Vorsag as a signal that he could stay at his estates—which were vast by any standards.

Beckram's friend Kirkovenal was there, a generation younger than the other Oranstonians. He sat next to Garranon, who wore his usual bland court-face. Only the shadows under his eyes showed the strain of Jakoven's attack.

Danerra, Levenstar, Revenell, and Willettem had all fought in the Rebellion and the Hundred—which was all I knew of them. There was an empty seat between Willettem and Kirkovenal, and Beckram slid into it. I leaned against the wall. If I sat down now, I'd be asleep in five minutes unless someone did something more interesting than talk.

Alizon, when I'd known him at court, had been famed for his outlandish clothes and dyed hair. Today his hair was streaked with gray and cut short in no particular fashion. If I'd walked by him in a market, I wouldn't have recognized him.

Kellen and Rosem were noticeably absent, but my uncle sat on Alizon's right, watching the faces around him intently. Tosten wasn't there, either.

My uncle greeted me with a glance and then launched off into speech with the air of a man repeating something for the twentieth time.

"You say that you want to attack Estian," he said, looking from one Oranstonian face to another. "Which at this point is utterly foolish."

"Fighting in the streets of Estian, where every hand might be against you, will only lose men," agreed Alizon. "We have to pick our target."

"If not Estian, then where?" asked Kirkovenal. "Would the Shavig lords attack Avinhelle? Then we could attack Tallven while Jakoven was concentrating his efforts in the north."

Garranon shook his head. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt you'd get more than a tenth of the Oranstonian lords who would be willing to send armies to fight in Tallven. It leaves us too vulnerable to attack from the Vorsag on our southern border."

Revenell shifted forward on his seat and said, "If we split our forces and left half the army to defend our homes …"

Beckram shook his head. "Jakoven's men already outnumber us. If we spread out our troops like that, he'll cut a swath right through the Oranstonian armies while the Shavig are busy fighting the Avinhelle armies—which will be defending their homes, not just obeying orders to fight. Then when Oranstone is cowed, he'll come back and support Avinhelle, and they'll sweep back over Shavig before spring. The Avinhelle have their mountain folk who know how to wage war in winter as well as we." Duraugh nodded. "He's right."

"Tallven is all grasslands," said Farrawell. He was strangely hairless except for the salt-and-ginger moustache that covered his upper lip. "There are only two or three cities of any size. The keeps can't protect the land, just the people. Easy to run over that with an army. That's why the Tallvenish worked so hard to take over the other four kingdoms, so they'd have barriers to protect their grain fields."

"But we're not fighting a war to break away from Tallven, gentlemen," said Danerra, who would have looked more at home in a library than in a meeting of war—during the Rebellion his men called him the Badger. He said mildly, "We're trying to replace Jakoven with Kellen, not destroy the main food supply for the Kingdoms."

"I wasn't talking about burning the fields," said Farrawell. "That would be stupid—at least until spring."

"It would be just as stupid in the spring," said Levenstar hotly. "Kellen will want to feed his people after we're through."

The meeting began to dissolve into chaos, with stools shoved aside as men bellowed while Alizon and my uncle tried to bring it to order. Only Garranon seemed immune. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back to rest against the stone wall.

I moved around the fight (which so far was only vocal) until the wall I propped myself up on was next to Garranon. "Where's Kellen?" I asked.

"He gave up and told them to let him know when they had a plan."

"What did he want to do?

Garranon shook his head. "He wanted to wait and meet with all the Oranstonian lords like we just did with your people. But Oranstone doesn't have anything equivalent to your Council, and hasn't had since the Rebellion. Alizon has a good idea who is against Jakoven, but the problem is most of them won't be interested in replacing Jakoven with Kellen: To them, one Tallven is as bad as the other." He paused as someone hit Farrawell—I couldn't be sure who because I'd been looking at Garranon.

Garranon raised his voice and said pointedly, "Some of them don't know whom to fight." But none of the combatants paid him any attention.

"Does Haverness still have enough power to get the most important people together at Callis?" I asked, keeping a weather eye on the escalating battle.

Garranon shook his head. "Sure he has the power—but he's the leader of the faction that doesn't support war against Jakoven."

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Where's Tisala?"

Garranon raised his eyebrows in surprise and shook his head. "I don't know. What does Tisala have to do with this?"

The door to the room opened and Kellen stood in the doorway and watched as Beckram and Kirkovenal dragged Farrawell off of Danerra.

"Well," Kellen observed in icy tones. "When we get tired of fighting my brother, we can just kill each other instead."

A sheepish quiet fell on the room, and my uncle helped Danerra to his feet while Beckram and Kirkovenal released Farrawell gingerly. Only after everyone had taken their seats again did Kellen step all the way into the room with Rosem and Tisala flanking him.

"This is what we are going to do," said Kellen. "Tisala's father, Haverness, will call a meeting of the Oranstonians. She thinks he can get most of them to his keep at Callis without alerting Jakoven since the Oranstonian lords have grown good at keeping my brother's spies from following them. Haverness, Tisala tells me, keeps pigeons. She thinks he can have them together in two weeks."

"She exaggerates her father's importance," said Farrawell. "Why would we listen to a woman?"

"I have no idea," I said. I don't know what they heard in my voice, but there was a general shift away from me in the room. "Maybe it's because she knows what she's talking about—unlike most of what I've heard this afternoon." I looked at Farrawell. "And she's competent. For instance, if she'd hit Danerra, he would have stayed down until he woke up. But she wouldn't have hit him unless it served some purpose other than self-aggrandizement, gentlemen."

Farrawell's hand went to his hip where his sword would usually be.

Kellen leaned toward me. "Enough."

I bowed "As you ask, sire." As I straightened, I caught Tisala rolling her eyes at me.