I spent the next couple of hours drifting around the hall and listening to snatches of conversation. I soon gathered that Duke Oldoran was not held in very high regard. ‘Drunken little weasel’ was probably the kindest thing I heard said of him. I further gathered that Oldoran was almost completely in the grasp of the counterfeit Tolnedran at his side. Though I was fairly sure that I could sever that particular connection, I couldn’t for the life of me see any advantage to be had from it. I could probably change Oldoran’s opinions, but I couldn’t change Oldoran himself. He was a petty, self-pitying drunkard with very little intelligence and with that sublime belief so common among the truly stupid that he was the most clever man in all the world. I had a problem here.

The sodden little Oldoran kept calling for more wine, and he eventually lapsed into unconsciousness.

‘It would appear that our beloved duke is a trifle indisposed,’ an elderly courtier with snowy hair, but surprisingly youthful eyes, noted in a dryly ironic tone. ‘How do you think we should deal with this, my lords and ladies? Should we put him to bed? Should we dunk him in that fishpond in the garden until he regains his senses? Or, should we perhaps adjourn to some other place where our revelry won’t interrupt his snoring?’ He bowed to the laughing throng ironically. ‘I shall be guided by the collective wisdom of the court in this matter. How say you, nobles all?’

‘I like the fishpond myself,’ one matronly lady suggested.

‘Oh, dear, no, Baroness!’ a pretty young lady with dark hair and mischievous eyes objected. ‘Think of what that would do to the poor carp who live there.’

‘If we’re going to dump Oldoran in his bed, we’d better wring him out a little first, my Lord Mangaran,’ one half-drunk courtier bellowed to the ironical old nobleman. “The little sot’s soaked up so much wine that he’s almost afloat.’

‘Yes,’ the Lord Mangaran murmured. ‘I noticed that myself. His Grace has an amazing capacity for one so dwarfed.’

Then the pretty lady with the mischievous eyes struck an overly dramatic pose. ‘My lords and ladies,’ she declaimed, ‘I suggest a moment of silence out of respect for our poor little Oldoran. Then perhaps we’d better leave him in the capable hands of Earl Mangaran, who’s performed this office so often that he doesn’t really need our advice. Then, after his Grace has been wrung out and poured into bed, we can toast the good fortune that’s removed him from our midst.’

They all bowed their heads, but the ‘moment of silence’ was marred by a certain amount of muffled laughter.

I’m sure that Lelldorin, and indeed all Asturians, will be offended by what I’ve just set down, but it is the truth. It took centuries of suffering to grind the rough edges off the crude, unscrupulous Asturians. That was my first encounter with them, and in many ways they almost seemed like southern Alorns.

The young lady who’d just proposed that moment of silence laid the back of her wrist theatrically to her forehead. ‘Would someone please bring me another cup of wine,’ she asked in a tragic voice. ‘Speaking in public absolutely exhausts me.’

The Murgo who’d been at Oldoran’s elbow had faded back into the crowd, and so he was nowhere to be seen when a pair of burly footmen hoisted the snoring duke from his throne and bore him from the hall.

I withdrew to a little alcove to consider the situation. My original plan when I’d left Vo Wacune had been to expose the resident Murgo here to the duke and then let him deal with it, but Oldoran wasn’t in the same class with Kathandrion, and I’ve observed over the years that stupid people rarely change their minds. I fell back on logic at that point. If Oldoran wouldn’t suit my purposes, the simplest course would be to replace him with someone who would.

The more I thought about that, the better I liked the idea. The Murgo wouldn’t be expecting it, for one thing. My father and uncle Beldin had described the Angarak character to me on many occasions, and Angaraks are constitutionally incapable of questioning authority of any kind. The word ‘revolution’ is simply not in their vocabulary.

The course of action I was considering was certainly not new. Arendish history is full of accounts of what are called ‘palace coups’, little disturbances that had usually resulted in the death of an incumbent. I didn’t want it to go that far here, but I did want Oldoran off that throne. What I’d seen that evening strongly suggested that most of the nobles here at court shared that desire. My only problem now was the selection of Oldoran’s replacement – and a means of getting to him on fairly short notice.

I napped briefly in an unoccupied sitting-room and went back to the central hall early the next morning to ask some questions about the clever, dark-haired young lady who’d humorously proposed that moment of silence. I described her to the servants who were cleaning up the debris of the previous evening’s festivities.

‘That would be the Countess Asrana, my Lady,’ a sober-faced cleaning man told me. ‘She’s a notorious flirt and very witty.’

‘That’s the one,’ I said. ‘I think she and I were introduced some years back, and I thought I’d look her up. Where do you suppose I might find her?’

‘Her apartment’s in the west tower, my Lady, on the ground floor.’

‘Thank you,’ I murmured, gave him a small coin, and went looking for the west tower.

The countess was just a trifle indisposed when her maid escorted me into the room where she lay on a divan with bleary eyes and a cold, wet cloth on her forehead. ‘I don’t believe I know you,’ she told me in a tragic voice.

‘Are you unwell?’ I asked her.

‘I’m feeling just a little delicate this morning,’ she confessed. ‘I wish it were winter. If it were, I’d go out into the courtyard and stick my head in a snow bank for an hour or so.’ Then she looked at me more closely. ‘You look awfully familiar, for some reason.’

‘I don’t think we’ve ever met, countess.’

‘It’s not that we’ve met, I don’t think. It’s something I’ve heard about.’ She put her fingertips to her temples. ‘Oh, dear,’ she groaned.

‘We need to talk, Asrana,’ I told her, ‘but I’d better do something about your condition first’ I opened the small reticule I carried and took out a glass vial. I poured the contents into the bottom of a cup that was standing on a sideboard and then filled the cup with water. This won’t taste very good,’ I warned.




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