The reports from his old rebellion were waiting when Ederras returned to Vaneo Celverian.
He carried them to the library’s desk and broke the string with a flick of Othando’s letter opener. His brother had kept a Taldan dagger for the purpose. With its filigree crossguard, solid gold hilt, and green tourmalines embedded in a line along the center of the fanciful blade, it certainly looked impressive. But its balance was abysmal, its poor steel couldn’t keep an edge, and that golden grip would slide out of its wielder’s hand as soon as it got slippery with the first splash of blood.
It was, all in all, a fine example of the state of Taldan weaponry. Ederras supposed it was a measure of Othando’s gentle life that his brother had never noticed.
Setting it aside, he fanned out the pages that Jheraal had sent him. In keeping with government convention, the infiltrator’s name didn’t appear anywhere on the reports. Their anonymity was meant to instill a sense that anyone could be watching, anywhere in the world, and so spies and informants used coded numbers as identifiers instead.
He didn’t need a name to identify her work. Velenne’s handwriting—small, neat, and emphatic—hadn’t changed a bit. He’d know it anywhere.
Ederras took a breath, steeling himself. He’d never wanted to look at any of these old things again. These pages held the stupid, blind, foolish infatuations of youth, and the disaster of his first attempt at leadership, dutifully recorded in ink and paper and set forth for the entertainment of the empire. All of his worst failures had been immortalized in the court chronicles of Imperial Cheliax.
The humiliation was crushing. But he had to know. How badly had she used him?
Abadius, 4700.
That was two full months before he’d met her. She’d been patient in setting her snares, but not overly so. Velenne never was.
The hours slipped by, unnoticed, as he read. By the time Ederras reached the last page and looked up, the library’s skylight was purpling with sunset, and the vaneo’s enchanted lights were beginning to awaken.
He shuffled the pages into an untidy stack and set them squarely in the center of the desk. Then he leaned back in the chair and stared at them without seeing a word.
Velenne had lied for him. More than that: she’d lied to protect his friends. The reports held less than half the information he knew she’d possessed, and fewer than a third of the names. The most damaging accusations were aimed at those already dead or discredited, with little or nothing said about people he knew had plotted violent treason against House Thrune. She’d managed to make his own role sound like a series of unfortunate coincidences and ill-considered friendships that led to a mistaken impression of involvement, when in fact he had been one of the rebellion’s ringleaders.
None of that was obvious from the reports. To an outside reader, Velenne’s work must have seemed exhaustive in its detailed observations. She’d amassed mountains of evidence to crush the conspirators she’d named.
But she hadn’t named many of them, and those mountains of evidence were a thimbleful of sand next to what she could have produced.
Why would she have risked herself to protect him? Back then, Velenne had been barely more than a girl, without any real power or influence to exert. House Thrune had dozens of unknown, untested scions, and none of them were worth anything to their family until they’d proved themselves. She would have been gambling any hope of a career, and very possibly her life, by lying to hide his transgressions.
She’d done it all the same. And he had never known. The reports had been public for years, but Ederras had been too caught up in his own shame to look.
A knock sounded at the door. “Come.”
It was Belvadio. “Lord Tilernos would be glad to accept your invitation to visit. A late morning call?”
“That would be ideal.”
“I shall send your reply at once. Additionally, ah, you have an unannounced visitor, my lord.” There was a hint of extra formality in the steward’s bearing, and a reserved note in his voice, that warned Ederras of exactly who that visitor had to be.
He wasn’t ready to deal with Velenne yet. But, as usual, she hadn’t left him a choice. “Where is she?”
“In the lower study, my lord. She has been here for some hours, but I did not wish to disturb your reading.”
You wanted to keep her waiting, you mean. Under other circumstances, that insult to a guest of Velenne’s stature would have cost Belvadio his position—at the least—but, of course, the circumstances were exactly why he’d done it. “Thank you. Have dinner set for two.”
Belvadio inclined his head in a stiff, correct nod that made no secret of his displeasure. “Shall I have a guest room prepared as well?”
“It couldn’t hurt.” He had a suspicion that if she stayed the night, however, she was not likely to do so in a guest room. Ignoring the steward’s audible—and entirely calculated—sniff of disapproval behind him, Ederras went to the library to find Velenne.
She was curled up in an armchair by the fire, a fur-trimmed blanket over her lap and a book laid across her knees. Her dark hair hung loosely about her shoulders, filtering the firelight into a ruddy halo. It was such an absurdly domestic vision that Ederras paused for a moment in the doorway, trying to wrap his mind around what he was seeing.
Velenne raised her head, greeting him with a smile. “I was wondering whether you ever planned to come down from your tower.”
“What if I hadn’t?”
“I would have waited. At least until morning.” She closed the book. “I probably wouldn’t have waited quite that long for dinner, though. Your servants have been tormenting me with the smell of that chicken for over an hour.”
“It’ll be ready momentarily.” Ederras paused, trying and failing to find a way of making the subject sound less fraught. He went for directness instead: “I’ve been reading your reports. From the rebellion. Before my exile.”
Her smile flickered, froze, and then smoothed into her usual self-possession. “Those old things? Why? It’s all long past changing.”
“I’d never read them before. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“If I spent all my time trying to correct your ignorance, I’d never get anything else done. Besides, it was more fun the other way. You hit harder when you’re angry.” She lifted a hand in a wave of perfect, airy indifference. Her ring flashed in the firelight. Diamond and white gold, the one he’d given her. Had she ever taken it off? “Anyway, you weren’t missing much. My early literary endeavors were not, alas, very good.”
“I missed everything. You lied to cover for me. To protect my friends.”
“Out of sheerest pity for your incompetence. It’s unsporting to send halfwits to the hangman, my love.”
“I begin to suspect you’re more sentimental than you let on.”
“You’re the only halfwit I take pity on. Still, you might be right.”
“Then pity me enough to tell the truth. Why did you do it?”
Velenne sighed. “Because I’m fond of you. Don’t ask me why. Obviously some things defy all rationality and common sense. But I am. Can I be allowed that?”
“I suppose so.” Ederras extended an arm with mock-grave courtesy. Mirroring his exaggerated formality, Velenne dropped a small curtsy and twined her hand across his forearm.
It felt right, having her there. Comfortable. Which was its own seduction, Ederras knew, in some ways more insidious than the more overtly sensual ploys she’d used on him before.
Was it possible that they hadn’t been ploys? It seemed unlikely, but doubt was beginning to crack his confidence.
What did she want? Him? The chain? Both?
With the diabolist on his arm and turmoil in his mind, Ederras led the way to dinner.
It had been ages since Vaneo Celverian’s formal dining room had seen use. Othando had been in the habit of taking his meals alone and irregularly, often while immersed in his studies. Ederras had followed his late brother’s custom, when he’d eaten at the vaneo at all. It seemed a waste to set the table or use the good silver when there were no guests to honor.
Despite the lack of recent opportunities to practice, however, Belvadio’s skills remained sharp. The steward had set the table with the gimlet eye of a master tactician.
Two brass candelabra burned on the table, each holding three beeswax tapers: too bright for romance, but stopping well short of grandeur. Ederras was quite sure they were the cheapest candlesticks his family owned. Between them, a single vase served as centerpiece. It was glass, not crystal, and it held nothing but a handful of chamomile flowers, probably cut from the kitchen garden—an arrangement so sparse and ordinary that it paused only briefly on the precipice of insult before leaping right in.
“Your steward really doesn’t want me here, does he?” Velenne sounded tremendously entertained. “He tried to throw me out before you came down, you know. Several times. With the utmost politeness, of course. But no subtlety at all.”
“He thinks you’re a bad influence.” Ederras escorted her to a chair and pulled it out, pushing it back in after she’d sat. Her perfume touched him as he bent over her. Amber and rich incense and smoke, the same scent she’d worn at the mayor’s party.
“He’s right. So, were you planning to spend the entire evening discussing these dull and dusty old reports, or might you prefer to talk about something more current? The immediate investigation, perhaps?”
Ederras took a seat at the table’s adjacent corner. “We could do that. What do you know about Lictor Shokneir?”
Velenne laughed, but it didn’t touch her silver-dusted eyes. “Lictor Shokneir. A graveknight in a cursed castle? Do you suspect him in these murders?”
He couldn’t tell if her disbelief was genuine. “Indirectly, perhaps. Our investigation suggests he has some involvement in these crimes. Can you think of any reason why he might want hellspawn hearts?”
“No. I know very little about him, really. I can surmise that the late lictor must have been a thoroughly unpleasant fellow for the gods to curse him with undeath. I also know he had a particular hatred for my house. Of course, lots of people did back then, so that doesn’t mean much. Devils! Damnation! Fie upon the Thrice-Damned House of Thrune! Sore losers, the lot of them. But the Order of the Crux was particularly determined about their spittle-flinging. Tiresomely so.”
“Is that why the Crux is gone? Because they offended House Thrune?” Or was it because you wanted what they had?
She sat back in her chair, smoothing the linen napkin over her lap. “Yes, darling. Isn’t that why you’re so astonished about those old reports? As a rule, we’re not so forgiving to those who plot against us. You’re lucky that you chanced across the softest-hearted—or maybe softest-headed—member of my house.”
“Was that the only reason?”
Velenne shook her head, parting her lips to say something, but then the first course came in, carried by a liveried manservant who maintained a resolutely formal air. He set silver bowls before each of them and poured an opaque, spicy-smelling broth over the fresh herbs, crumbled white cheese, and toasted croutons that had been laid in artful designs at the bottoms of the bowls. After each bowl was full, he inclined his head correctly and departed, having never said a word or glanced at his master’s guest.
“Such gracious service,” Velenne murmured, tasting the soup. “The steward’s campaign against me continues. I’d complain that he refused to send out any wine, but I’ve never cared for wine anyway.”
“No. I remember. You only ever liked sweet ciders and punches. Much too sweet for me, however much I tried to acquire the taste.” Ederras stirred a spoon into his own bowl, momentarily wistful for the easy comfort of those days.
He cleared his throat. “Anyway, you were saying? About the Order of the Crux?”
“I was saying that they were bloody-handed heretics, and that’s why they’re gone. Not, in fact, merely because they offended my house. Although they did.” Velenne’s gaze was cool and inscrutable through the prickly steam that rose from her soup.
“Do you know what that heresy was?”
“I know what’s in the records. I know what the historians of House Thrune claim. But as you appear to have finally discovered for the first time today, my cherished halfwit, what’s written is not always what’s true.”
That night she stayed. Not in the guest room.
Having her there, in his own bed, was a strange thing for Ederras. She’d never visited his family home when they’d known each other before. Back then, he would never have dared to bring Velenne under his parents’ roof. Given his position, an unaccompanied female visitor of her age would have caused a minor scandal. In good society, one’s paramours were always kept at a respectable remove from one’s family name.
That was part of the reason he’d never invited her to the vaneo. The other—and greater—reason for his secrecy, even then, was the nature of those dalliances. Paladins of Iomedae were not supposed to hit their lovers.
But Velenne demanded that. She always had. Fighting excited her, and pain inflamed her, and although Ederras didn’t pretend to understand what it was in her soul that drove her to such extremes, it had been there for as long as he’d known her. She liked to hurt and be hurt, and her desire was so intense that it ignited his, too.
That night in his vaneo, however, marked something different: the first time Ederras understood both what she was and what she wasn’t, and the first time he let that guide what happened between them.
He wanted to hurt her. He hated her allegiance to House Thrune, her diabolism, and her penchant for sadism, which was hardly restricted to the bedroom. If they’d met anywhere else, in any other way, Ederras might have tried to kill her—as in fact he had, all those years ago. And she would very probably have tried to kill him, too.
Instead they’d come together as lovers, and the tension between them found flame in other ways. It was tempered, for him, by the discovery of what she’d written after he’d caught her original deception. Velenne had risked herself to show him mercy, however much she tried to shrug off what she’d done. Beneath her cold and bladed edges ran a thread of kindness. He knew that now.
But that didn’t entirely extinguish his desire to punish her sins, nor did it remove his unspoken conviction that he deserved the same for accepting her. It made for a strange kind of intimacy, feverish as battle, laced with a tenderness that lacerated.
There was tenderness in it, though. Ederras no longer doubted that. Velenne’s gentler touches were layered and leaved with cruelty, but he felt them keenly—perhaps more so for the contrast. It wasn’t purely violence between them, not anymore.
Afterward, Velenne lay curled beside him, nestled against the side of his chest. She traced idle patterns across his skin, following the lines of the scratches and welts she’d left on him. Appreciating her handiwork, he thought.
Ederras lifted his head, watching her. “Why me?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you here? Why did you come back? Is it really just about tormenting me?”
She clicked her tongue in chastisement, raising herself onto her elbows to regard him more evenly. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, black in the moonshadows. “Do you always have so many questions of your bedmates?”
“There is no ‘always.’ There never has been. There’s only you.”
“Really?” Velenne’s eyes widened in surprise. She laughed in delight and disbelief, running a hand along his side. “You do flatter me.”
“I’m glad you’re pleased.” Rolling away from her touch, Ederras filled a glass of water at the bedside table. She’d bloodied his lip earlier. The water stung the cut.
“Oh, don’t sound so wounded. I meant it. I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. It wasn’t out of devotion. Quite the opposite. After you betrayed me—”
“But I never did.” Velenne reached past the water glass, pressing a finger to his lips. She touched him directly on the cut, splitting it open again with a sharp sting of pain. The note of impish mockery had faded from her tone. Something else shone in her dark eyes, bright as the moonlight that fell through his windows. “You know that now, so remember it. I never did. Even after you stuck a knife in me and left me for dead.”
“It was a sword.”
“Why yes, so it was. Much better than a knife. Do you still have the same one?”
“No. Leave off the absurdity for a moment. I need to know this. Why are you with me?”
“I’ve answered that question a thousand times,” Velenne said, sighing, “and you never seem to hear me. Which makes me wonder why you keep asking.”
“Because you never really answer. You dodge and deflect. Why can’t you just say it?”
Velenne didn’t answer for some time. She plucked the water glass from his hand, drained it, and silently offered it back. When he took it, closing his fingers over hers, the diabolist finally met his eyes again. The armor of cynicism that she showed the world—and that she wore even here, alone with him—slipped away, and for a moment Ederras glimpsed what was underneath.
“Some things are tremendously unwise to say, my love,” she murmured. “My loyalties are what they are. What they’ve always been. I have my house. You have yours. I have my god. You have yours. I admire your passion, your faith, your dedication to your causes … but you must surely see that those very same things mean we’ll be on opposite sides of the blade eventually. As we were before. What’s the point, then, of putting voice to something we can’t have?”
He’d never seen Velenne so vulnerable, or so openly longing. This was more than transient desire, more than a game she was playing to entertain herself. The fragility of the moment, and the sense that something great hung in the balance, arrested him.
If he could make her say the words, Ederras thought, it would be real. Words had that power sometimes. If she said it, he could bind her. “So we’ll know it was there.”
“We already know. Well. I already know. You, we have established, are considerably slower.” She smiled, a little sadly, and trailed her fingertips along his wrist. Down and up and down again, following the path of his veins. “Of course I care for you, Ederras. I love you. I always have. You’re the only one I’ve ever been able to trust entirely, the only one who didn’t want something else from me—money, power, prestige. Safety, sometimes. They all fear me, and they all want things, and they’re all waiting for the first sign of weakness. Except you.
“You have no idea how rare that is for me. How much of a comfort it is to have one person, just one, who would never put a knife in my back to climb a step higher at court. No one like you exists in my world.
“So yes, I came back for you. Of course I came back. I adore you, you great confounding idiot, and you have no prayer of keeping yourself safe in Cheliax. I will protect you as best I’m able, and I will stay with you as long as my position allows. But eventually it will take me from you, or yours will take you from me. We both serve greater masters than ourselves. This is all the happiness we’re allowed.”
“Lord Kajen Tilernos,” Belvadio announced. Pride shone from the steward’s voice and puffed his chest a little, despite his best efforts to hide it. A visit from a preeminent lord was a rare occasion at the vaneo, and a considerable honor.
Ederras couldn’t remember the last time Vaneo Celverian had been graced by a guest of such importance. His mother had hosted occasionally, but by the time he was old enough to remember anything about those events, she’d lost her stillborn daughter and fallen into her long grief.
After that, the parties stopped. Abello Celverian had seldom hosted anyone other than his dwindling handful of friends for card games and drinking sessions, and since liquor sharpened the old lord’s tongue past its normal lacerating edge, he usually ended each of those nights with one fewer friend than he’d had at the beginning. Ederras didn’t know as much about Othando’s habits, but it hardly seemed likely that his brother, modest to a fault, had been a favorite of the social set.
Lord Tilernos’s visit didn’t mark a turning point in that pattern, precisely. But some of the servants seemed inclined to interpret it as a promising harbinger.
They might be right. Ederras had been thinking hard about his house’s fortunes over the past few days, and more after the past few nights. If he was going to fulfill his obligations as heir, he had to do better.
“When you first asked me to go through the church’s archives, I must confess, I didn’t expect to find much,” Lord Tilernos said. He’d worn a plain riding outfit of cambric and leather, unadorned except for a light cloak in his house colors of purple and silver and a clasp worked with the Tilernos shield-and-blades crest. The relaxed nature of his dress signified a friendly visit, not a formal one, and added to the honor being done them. “Not that I minded, of course. It was a welcome chance to relive some of the intrigues of my youth. The spice of mystery, all that. But I wasn’t especially convinced that anything would come of it.”
“I wasn’t, either. My great-grandfather was a secretive man. So was Ferdieu Oberigo, apparently. They didn’t tell anyone much of anything, and they wrote down even less. It seems the march on Citadel Gheisteno attracted a stoic sort.” Ederras led the lord into the lower study.
Gone were the too-warm blankets and insipid books with which Belvadio had tried to bore Velenne out earlier. The steward had replaced them with more appropriate furnishings. He’d unlocked the liquor cabinet, too.
“It did. But your intuition was correct: a crusade of that size, involving that many disparate forces, doesn’t get organized without some recordkeeping. And those records were in the Dorjanala’s archives.” Lord Tilernos settled into an armchair. He took a paper-wrapped bundle out from under his cloak and set it on a nearby table. “As was a recitation of the crimes for which Lictor Shokneir was condemned.”
“Excellent.” That was one of the things he had most hoped Lord Tilernos would find. “What did it say?”
“Not very much, actually. Rote recitations of ‘heresy’ and ‘offenses against the crown.’ They were accused and convicted of violating the Measure and the Chain, and of subverting the Hellknight code of ‘order, discipline, and mercilessness’ to suit their own needs rather than the strict letter of the law. Understandable enough, if abstract. But there’s no detail as to what the Crux actually did. Odd, given the recordkeepers’ enthusiasm for recording all their murders.” Lord Tilernos tapped the paper-wrapped packet. “I brought you a copy. Most of that is the list of their victims’ names. Hundreds of them. The ones I could identify were mostly hellspawn. But beyond that, it’s silent. There are no details beyond the names of the crimes. No mention of any devilheart chain, or cells full of bodies without hearts, or any of the other things you mentioned.”
“Peculiar.” The Dorjanala, Iomedae’s largest temple in Westcrown, was one of the few repositories of information in the city where Ederras had thought they’d have a fair chance of finding unedited records. While the Rack Hellknights and the official historians of House Thrune were prone to constantly revising their accounts to reflect the political winds of the day, the Iomedaeans still believed in making—and maintaining—as complete and impartial a record as they could.
Given that Lictor Shokneir had been an outspoken and vicious enemy, it should have been in House Thrune’s interest for the Iomedaeans to keep a detailed litany of his offenses. No one could doubt that the Lady of Valor’s servants would be truthful in their telling, and the horrors of what the Crux had done could only make House Thrune look better for standing against them. There was no reason for Cheliax’s ruling powers to force Iomedae’s faithful into silence. Not about that.
So why wasn’t that information in the Dorjanala?
“There were a number of such oddities,” Lord Tilernos agreed. “Another is that what few records I found of the Crux’s membership didn’t list any positions along with the names. No distinctions drawn between even armigers and Hellknights, let alone between officers and the rank and file. The only ones who had their positions listed were the Master of Blades, the paravicar, and, of course, Lictor Shokneir himself.”
“Any useful information in that?”
“Not especially. It’s what you would expect. Most of their members were either foundlings raised by the Hellknights or scions of the noble houses. The Master of Blades was Behrion Khollarix, and the paravicar was Corellia Leroung. Neither of them was noted for anything else in their careers, as far as I could tell from the records in the Dorjanala. Only this.”
Ederras nodded. Khollarix and Leroung were among the old noble lineages, and both had been much more successful in navigating the turbulence of Chelish politics than his own family had. House Khollarix remained prominent in Westcrown and maintained holdings across Cheliax. House Leroung had soared even higher: it was among the leading families of Egorian and had placed influential members in high places across the continent.
Most noble families, if they could, sent members into the various Hellknight orders. It gave them a certain amount of insight and influence in the orders’ doings—which was virtually impossible to obtain otherwise where Hellknights were concerned—and the orders were glad to receive recruits who’d already been trained by the best possible tutors in spell- and swordplay. There was nothing unusual about the fact that members of Houses Khollarix and Leroung had stood high in the Order of the Crux. The only real surprise was that Lictor Shokneir hadn’t been of noble birth himself.
Lord Tilernos paused, watching Ederras for a moment. “Speaking of names, your great-grandfather’s came up. In an entirely different context, of course.”
“Oh?”
“The Dorjanala keeps a list of all the knights who serve Iomedae in Westcrown. The records include each knight’s prominent deeds. Their squires, too, at least if they’re nobly born or otherwise noteworthy.” The older lord hesitated again, uncharacteristically cautious. “Kelvax’s name was in the record. So were his squires’.”
“Is one of those squires in the city?” If so, and the squire was still alive, that might provide another useful avenue to investigate.
“No. One of them was Corellia Leroung.”
“I see.” So his great-grandfather had marched on his former squire. Not, perhaps, as grievous as going to battle against one’s own child, but close. A knight wasn’t merely responsible for teaching a squire to handle arms and armor. He was supposed to instill the values and virtues of chivalry, shaping the youth into a champion of the faith.
In Corellia Leroung, it seemed, his great-grandfather had failed. Profoundly. As paravicar of the Crux, she would have commanded all arcane and divine spellcasters in her order. Any magical contributions to their crimes would have been hers, or undertaken at her direction. Given what he knew of the Crux’s deeds, Ederras guessed that those would have been no small atrocities. “Do you suppose that’s why he went? To absolve himself of that dishonor?”
“I would have,” Lord Tilernos said. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. I suppose I’d have to.” If one of his junior officers at the Worldwound, someone he had personally trained and promoted, had betrayed his comrades and gone over to the demons’ side … then yes, Ederras would have felt responsible for correcting that wrong. Even across the distance of decades, he felt a ripple of Kelvax’s shame. “No wonder he never spoke of it.”
“It wouldn’t really have been his fault, but no one could be proud of that. Still, Kelvax did what he had to do. He joined the march. You shouldn’t feel that this brings any dishonor to your name.”
“I don’t. I’m just sad for him. It couldn’t have been easy.” Ederras paused reflectively, then remembered himself and turned a hand to the silver bell that would call Belvadio. “Forgive my poor manners. Might I offer you anything?”
Lord Tilernos shook his head slightly at the bell, smiling. “Too early for brandy, and I’ve had all the tea I need for the morning. But if you’re inclined to humor an old man’s presumption, I’d welcome a receptive ear.”
“You could never be guilty of presumption.”
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken about that.” Lord Tilernos tipped his chin at the doorway, casting a meaningful glance at the stairs that led up to the vaneo’s second floor. “Word has it that you’ve been entertaining a guest recently.”
Ederras inclined his head, trying to ignore the heat that crept up his collar. He was glad Velenne had already left for the day, conducting her own researches on graveknights and tactics that might serve against them. “Lady Velenne. Yes.”
“She is worthy of her family name.” Which was, Ederras knew, as explicit a warning as even Lord Tilernos could make in open company without risking accusations of treason.
“Maybe not as much as I’d thought before.”
Lord Tilernos fixed him with a penetrating stare. “Yes, I suppose she might have convinced you of that. And I suppose you’re still young enough to want to believe it. But innocents don’t have devils walking at their heels, and the creature that follows her is no mere imp.”
“I know.”
“Then, if you’ll pardon my bluntness, what are you doing?”
Ederras ran a hand through his hair. There was no hope of concealing his flush any longer. He got up, took a step toward the liquor cabinet, and then thought better of it and sat back down. “Neither my father nor my uncle was a good steward of this house. My lord father is a small and bitter man, and uncle Stelhan just … left. Othando might have been able to revive our ailing fortunes, but he never had the chance. Our line is nearly at an end. I want to do better. I have to do better. I have an obligation to the family, to our servants. To Westcrown.”
“You’re not going to serve any of them by handing them over to House Thrune.” Compassion tempered the lord’s tone, but his conviction was unwavering.
“I don’t intend to. But neither do I have the skills to keep them safe myself. The courts, the opera, these games the lords and ladies play with poisoned words and daggered smiles—those aren’t battles I know how to fight. Velenne does. It’s easy for her. It’s natural. That’s what she was born to do. One of the things I learned at the Worldwound was that a wise commander knows when to assign tasks to operatives who can do what he can’t. Another was that a good commander can win loyalty from the unlikeliest recruits. Not always. Not from everyone. I’m not naive enough to think that. But sometimes. It can be done.”
“So you’re going to try to … to what? To treat Velenne Thrune like some cattle thief shipped out to Mendev?” Lord Tilernos shook his head in mystification. “I don’t know whether to applaud your audacity or cringe at your misplaced trust, my friend.”
“I don’t think it is misplaced,” Ederras said. Not if what she said was true. He held up a hand to forestall the lord’s protest. “In any case, I need her. I agree with you: she’s no innocent. But no innocent would be able to lead a great house in Cheliax. And a woman with a devil at her heels might.”