Mercedes Lackey - 500 Kingdoms 2 - One Good Knight

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MERCEDES LACKEY
One Good Knight
www.LUNA-Books.com
Dedicated to the memory of Andre Norton,
friend, exemplar, and mentor
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EPILOGUE
About the Author
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Coming Next Month
CHAPTER ONE
Princess Andromeda stood on the very edge of a ledge three-quarters of the way up the cliff above the
Royal Palace of her mother, Queen Cassiopeia of Acadia, holding out her arms to the wind. The same
wind flattened her tunic against her body, and sent strands of her hair flying about her face as they
escaped from the knot at the back of her neck. She raised her face to the sun, closing her eyes.
I wish I had wings—I used to dream about flying when I was little.It would be so glorious to simply step
off this rock and fly, to escape the dreariness of being a Princess, with the din of “musts” and
“must-nots,” day in and day out, from governesses, tutors, her mother’s ladies and, of course, her
mother.
Especially the “must-nots.”
There was an almighty number of “must-nts.” You mustn’t laugh too loudly. You mustn’t speak your
opinion unless it’s asked for. You mustn’t talk to anyone below the rank of noble, unless it’s to give an
order. You mustn’t be seen reading in public. You mustn’t frown in public. You mustn’t smile at anyone
below the rank of a noble, and you mustn’t smile at any young men, ever. You mustn’t let anyone call
you “Andie,” nor refer to yourself by that name. You mustn’t be seen moving at anything other than a
graceful walk…the list was endless. It seemed that all she ever heard was what she shouldn’t be doing.
No one ever told her what shecould do—aside from look decorative, wearing the serenely stupid gaze of
a statue. No one ever came to her and said, “Princess, there is a task you and you alone can perform.”
One “must” along those lines would have been countered with a hundred distasteful “must-nots”—but
one never came.
Surely that had never been her mother’s lot. Cassiopeia had begun her life as Crown Princess and then
Queen with responsibilities. In no small part because her husband, at least according to gossip, had been
so good at avoiding them. That was why the old King, Andie’s grandfather, had handpicked her out of
the daughters of his nobles. He had wanted a girl with ambition, since his own son clearly had none, and
a girl who would see that things got done.
Who ever would be foolish enough to envy the lot of a Princess with all of that hanging over their head?
Nothing but restrictions without responsibilities.I’m less free than a slave, and not allowed to do anything
that has any meaning to it.
She took a deep breath of the sea-scented air, and sighed it out again. At least her mother was not going
to be plaguing her with one of her unannounced inspections this afternoon, inspections that inevitably
ended in well-mannered murmurings of disappointment and the appointment of a new governess. Queen
Cassiopeia was holding a very, very private audience with the Captains of the Acadian Merchant Fleet,
followed by another with the foreign merchants who plied Acadian waters, and the meetings were
expected to last all day and well into the night. Trade was the lifeblood of Acadia. Without trade, this
Kingdom would probably die. Anything that threatened trade and the taxes it brought in, threatened
Acadia as surely as an army. Despite her mother’s being asked, begged, by her daughter to be allowed
to attend, Andie had been told to “run along.” Under any other circumstances, she would have been
happy about the freedom from her governess’s supervision and the opportunity to get out in fresh air and
to make a raid on the library. But being treated like a child put a bitter taste on the treat.
She pushed at the stiff wires crossing the bridge of her nose, part of a contrivance called “oculars,”
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making sure they were firmly on her face, then curled the wires of the side-pieces securely around the
backs of her ears. They were a bit of a nuisance, but she loved them, because without them, she’d be
half blind. The Royal Guard’s own Magician had made them for her when he’d realized, watching her try
to hold a book right up against her tiny nose as a child, that she was terribly nearsighted. He’d been
pleased enough to do so, though the Queen had been less than happy the first time she saw her daughter
scampering about with the wire-and-glass-lenses contraption perched on her face. “It’s unnatural!” she
had complained. “It looks like a cheap mask! What need has a Princess to see clearly, anyway?”
She had finally given in only when it was made demonstrably clear that Andie’s never-ending series of
bruising falls came to an abrupt end once she could see where she was going.
Not that her mother cared if I she fell, except that all the bruises were an embarrassment to her. Andie
sighed again.I can never please her, no matter what I do, so I wish she’d just get used to that and make
use of what I actually can do.
Queen Cassiopeia wanted a pink-and-white, sugarplum Princess, a lovely daughter who as a child
would have been all frills and giggles, big blue eyes and golden curls, and as an adult (or nearly, anyway)
would be the younger image of herself, immaculately groomed, impeccably gowned, graceful,
lovely—not to mention quiet, pliant, uncomplaining and unthinking. A marriage pawn, who wouldn’t
argue about anything, or ask awkward questions, or want to do anything except to look as beautiful as
possible. There had been nibbles of marriages over the years, but nothing ever came of them. Cassiopeia
had enough ambition for two; she didn’t see the need of it in her daughter.
Andie gave herself a mental slap. Maybe notunthinking. But—certainly more obedient than Andie was.
And assuredly much prettier, much neater and much more concerned with her personal appearance than
Andie could ever bring herself to be. So far as her mother was concerned, looks were one more weapon
in the arsenal of a determined woman.
Cassiopeia never spent less than two hours in the hands of her maidservants before first appearing
outside of her rooms. Andie could barely tolerate having the maid comb her hair and put it up, and she
insisted on bathing herself, without all the oils and perfumes her mother seemed to think were necessary.
Cassiopeia went through as many as six gowns before choosing one for the day, and it was always
something so elaborate it took at least two maids to help her into it. Andie threw on whichever of her
tunics the maid gave her, and if forced into a gown, made it the simplest draped column of fabric with
cords confining it at her waist. Cassiopeia wore enough jewelry to finance an expedition to Qin for the
most ordinary of days. Andie never wore any ornaments but a hair-clasp.
Cassiopeia had a lush figure that caused poets and minstrels from Kingdoms hundreds of leagues away
to come write songs about her, and a face that had inspired fifty sculptors. Andie’s figure was straight up
and down and no gown could disguise that fact, and as for her face—well, as her mother often sighed,
who would look past the lenses that took up half of it?
So how could the Queen ever be anythingbut disappointed in her daughter?
Andie had long since resigned herself to this, burying the hurt a little deeper each time Cassiopeia made
some unconsidered remark. At least there was one area she could achieve success in—anything
intellectual. And the Queen did seem to take some small pleasure in that, though she might bemoan the
fact that Andie’s nose was almost always in a book. The trouble was, she didn’t seem to think that all of
this study had any useful applications.
Even though I’ve quoted her facts and figures about Acadia until I’ve run out of breath. Every time she
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was going to have an important audience or meeting and I was able to find out about it, I did all the
research on the subject anyone could ask for.Today at breakfast, Andie had detailed the revenues on
import-taxes, given her historical background on inter-merchant disputes…but she might just as well have
been telling her Godmother tales. The Queen just said, “How interesting, dear,” as if she wasn’t even
listening.
She probably wasn’t listening, actually.She probably thinks I’m just reciting my lessons for her. Once
Cassiopeia had realized that her daughter was not going to develop into a miniature copy of herself, she’d
left Andie’s upbringing to nurses and governesses, who mostly passed in and out of Andie’s life without
making much impact, for none of them had lasted very long. Not because Andie was a difficult child, but
because even when they were competent, and a shocking number were not, the competent ones sooner
or later ran afoul of the Queen and were replaced. The incompetent, of course, were soon found out and
sacked.
Not that it had ever mattered. The ones she’d had as a child, when it might have made her unhappy to
lose a nurse she had become fond of, had, one and all, been rather horrible. Horrible in different ways,
but still horrible. Some had been strict to the point of cruelty, some had been careless to the point of
danger, some had been neglectful, or had scolded and criticized until Andie was in tears.
If it hadn’t been for her loyal Guardsmen and Guardswomen, she would have spent a lonely and very
miserable childhood. But they had been everything that the nurses should have been and never were. The
same set of Six had been standing watch over her safety since she was an infant, and when nursemaids
were asleep, or drunk, or in the bed of their noble lovers, or lording it over the lesser servants, or off
flirting with stable boys, the Guards were the ones who saw that she drank her milk, wiped her tears
when she fell, and told her stories at bedtime.
Just as well that I wasn’t the sort of child to get into serious trouble. They never had to get me out of
anything difficult.
Not that she was spoiled. The nursemaids had strict orders from the Queen on that particular subject,
and no few of them had taken great glee in loading Andie down with punitive punishments at every
opportunity until she was as much of a model of correct and polite behavior as anyone would have
asked. And her Six had too many children of their own to put up with nonsense from her.
From that faithful set of six Guards, she learned to know every member of the Guard assigned to the
Palace as soon as her curiosity led her out of the nursery, Guard in tow. If she hadn’t, she’d never have
gotten her oculars.
Now she was something of a mascot for the entire Palace Regiment, and she did her best to help them
whenever and wherever she could. Not that any of them had ever permitted the slightest slip so that the
Queen learned of the peculiar attachment.
If Cassiopeia ever found out, she’d banish the lot of them to some awful assignments at prisons or
remote Guard-posts, and put Andie in the care of even more horrible governesses.
One day soon, though, her faithful Six would be retired; Demetre and Leodipes were getting very gray,
and the rest weren’t much younger. It was only the fact that duty in the Inner Palace was largely a
sinecure that kept them active. She dreaded thinking of that day, hoping their replacements would be
guards she liked.
Andie looked down at the Palace and the city below it; from here, just below the lookout point for the
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Sea-Watch, it looked exactly like the model in the Great Library. The city of Ethanos was deceptively
peaceful from here, its people reduced to little colored dots moving along the white streets, the striped
awnings and banners too distant to show their stains and tatters, and none of its glorious, brawling
untidiness evident from this height.
Which was, she reflected, probably the way her mother preferred it. Cassiopeia didn’t like
untidiness—not in her Palace, nor her city, nor her Kingdom, nor her daughter.
Unfortunately for the Queen’s peace of mind, the only place she could keep untidiness from intruding
was within the walls of the Palace—and then only within the places where she herself spent any amount
of time.
Andie shook off her melancholy; after all, even if she was still being treated like a child, she had the
whole afternoon to herself, without the intrusion of Queenor governess. She’d finished her set lessons,
even the embroidery she hated, and knowing that the Queen was not going to appear in the Princess’s
Wing today and would be too busy to think of sending one of her ladies to do it for her, Andie’s
governess had gone off for a good long gossip somewhere, leaving Andie free to do as she liked.
She had seized on the opportunity to climb the cliff, and thought that while she was at it, she might as
well take the Sea-Watch Guard’s noon meal up to him. It was a long way up, and she always made a
pause near the top, to survey Palace, town and harbor. Today for her lessons she had just been reading
poetry, which made her wonder, perversely, why the poets always talked about the “wine-dark” sea….
It’s no color of any wine I ever saw. Nor the color of anything I’d ever feel safe drinking.
She turned away from the sea and the view below, and scampered up the last few flights of switchback
stairs cut into the rock of the cliff. The stairs ended in a platform planed as flat as a sheet of paper, with a
three-sided stone shelter square in the middle of it, a shelter that kept the Sea-Watch Guard shaded from
the sun and protected from the worst of the weather. On a gorgeous day like today, Sea-Watch duty
was a pleasant thing, but in bad weather it was something only the strong of will and body would dare to
undertake.
“Thesus!” she called, “I’ve brought up your rations!”
“Come around to the front, Princess!” came the reply. “I’ve got a sail in sight and I don’t want to lose
it.”
“A sail?” She hurried around to the front of the shelter, where the big telescope was mounted—created
by Sophont Balan, the Royal Guards’ Magician who had created her oculars. “Sophont” just meant
“wise man;” there were a lot of them, and most of them actually weren’t magicians. Thesus—a powerful
and sun-bronzed warrior whose fine body beneath the duty-uniform of sleeveless tunic and trews of
brown linen gave the lie to the gray strands in his curly black beard and hair—had his eye planted firmly
on the end of the instrument.
“What kind of sail?” she asked, as he showed no signs of looking up.
“Ah, now, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be standing here with this be-damned thing in my eye, would I?” he
replied. “There’s nothing painted on the sail, and she’s flying no colors I recognize. From her hull, she’s a
merchanter, and maybe come late to the Queen’s meeting, but even if so, she’s a stranger to these
waters.”
“What are you doing, then?” she persisted, curious. “Why are you still watching her?”
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“I’m counting sailors to see if there are too many. I’m looking at the ones on deck, seeing what they do
and if any are standing idle. I’m casting my eye over the ship, looking for armor, for a place where a ram
can be fixed to the prow, and counting weapons’ ports,” he said. “If she’s a sea-wolf in a dolphin’s skin,
I’ll know it in a moment.”
The port was large, but not that large. A single supposed merchant ship, if loaded with pirates, could
raid it and make off with every other ship and its cargo in the harbor.
She waited, quietly, while he moved the telescope in tiny increments, and peered, muttering to himself.
Finally he straightened and took down the horn hanging from the roof of the shelter. She tensed as he
sounded it four times, then relaxed as he didn’t add the fifth note that would have signaled a possible
enemy approaching. Notes were only sounded for ships foreign to Ethanos’s port. One for a small fishing
boat, two for a large, three for a fast-courier, four for a merchanter, five for a “possible” enemy, and six
for a ship approaching openly armed and apparently hostile.
“Simple merchanter—no armor, no ram, just enough hands to crew her and all of ’em scampering like
monkeys, her captain’s a fat ball of a man who’d probably pop straight to the surface if you pitched him
over-side, and the mate isn’t far behind him in blubber,” Thesus proclaimed with a laugh, hanging up the
horn and rubbing his hands. “Now, where’s that grub?”
“Here!” she said, holding out the basket and leather wineskin. “I thought I would have a picnic on the
cliff, and it didn’t seem fair to make a boy climb up here with your ration since I was already coming.”
“Ah, so that worthless stick of a governess of yours has taken herself off for the day?” Thesus asked
shrewdly, the corners of his eyes crinkling with laughter as he sat down on a stone bench beside the
telescope and unpacked what she’d brought, the standard soldiers’ fare of olives, cheese, garlic sausage
and a coarse loaf of bread. “Well, it’s to be hoped Her Majesty has more of these meetings, then.
You’ve been indoors too much—you’re pale as this bit of cheese.”
“A Princess mustn’t get sunburned, or no proper Prince will ever look twice at her,” she told him as she
sat on the bare stone of the platform across from him.
He snorted. “Then I’d be saying that a so-called ‘proper’ Prince is no kind of proper man,” he retorted,
and though he kept one eye on her, and was making a quick and neat meal of his provisions, he never let
his attention wander from the horizon where a new sail might appear. “But there you are, what do I know
about royalty? Nothing, and there’s an end to it, I suppose.”
“Well, your advice is more sensible than anything I ever got out of a governess,” Andie told him, feeling
a twinge of concern. “Just be careful—”
“No fear of that, Princess,” Thesus chuckled. “I’ve been with the Royal Guard, man and boy, a good
forty years, and I’ve learned who to keep my mouth shut around.”
“I’ll leave you to your duty, then,” she replied, scrambling to her feet.
“Best do that. This spot’s a bit exposed, and we don’t want someone to catch sight of those oculars of
yours flashing in the sun and know who’s bringing me my rations. No harm in you picnicking below, but
plenty of trouble if you’re visiting with riffraff like me. Thankee, Princess. You’re a rare little lass.” His
blue eyes sparkled as he smiled, his teeth very white and strong-looking, framed in the black beard.
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“And you are a true Guardsman,” she said, giving him the Guards’ salute of her closed right fist to her
left shoulder.
He laughed delightedly, and the sound of his laughter followed her back down the stairs.
Now, there was no harm, no harm at all, in the Princess being up on the stairs themselves. They didn’t
lead anywhere but to the observation platform for the Sea-Watch. No one could get to them except
through the Palace. So they were a safe place for her to be, and she was well known for spending entire
afternoons up here, or rather, on one of the landings, sitting in the sun and wind and reading. So once she
was as far down as one of her known haunts she relaxed.
She glanced back down at the Palace again, and made note of the servants moving through some of the
open courts. No one appeared to be looking for her and she relaxed a little more.
On the way up, she had left a few things of her own here, and now she collected them: a blanket, a
cushion, and a basket containing a book and her own lunch. Short of being able to sneak down into the
city itself, which, on a day when the port was full of foreign ships was simplynot going to happen, this was
the best place for her to spend the afternoon. Not even her friends in the Guard would let her slip out of
the Palace when the city was full of foreigners. They might be anything in the guise of common
merchants—kidnappers, assassins, spies. Whereas up here, no one was going to be able to get to her
without going through several sets of Guards—and even then, she’d see whoever it was coming up the
stairs in plenty of time to take refuge with Thesus.
Not that anything that adventurous was likely to happen. No one ever attacked Ethanos. No one wanted
to. You’d first have to get past the harbor town and its regiment of Guards, then up the cliff to the city
itself, where the City Watch would greet you with a hail of arrows and missiles. Then you’d have to fight
your way through the streets, all of which twisted and turned like a tangled ball of yarn, to get to the
Palace, which had its own walls and the Royal Guard to protect it. It was like a sea urchin; maybe the
meat inside was sweet, but to get to it, you had to get past a thousand spines, all sharp, and all poisoned.
She spread out her blanket and flopped down on it, stomach against the warm stone, with arms crossed
and her chin resting on her forearms as she stared down at the city.
It rankled that, once again, Cassiopeia had refused even to consider her presence at these
meetings—and after she had gone to such pains to study the latest reports on every single merchant in the
domestic fleet! She could quote import and export figures, tax revenues, profit margins and losses for the
past ten years! Or—well, not exactly quote them, but she had all of it noted down and within moments
could put her finger on any figure needed. And all she’d asked was that she be allowed to observe—not
to participate, merely to watch and listen! After all, she was nineteen, and she still had very little notion of
what it meant to rule. The only time she ever saw the Queen exercising her authority was in formal
audiences that required the attendance of the entire Court. Those were as scripted as any play, and gave
her no idea of just how Cassiopeia employed diplomacy, strategy and negotiation. The Queen wasn’t
going to live forever (even if sometimes it seemed as if she might) and when she was gone, Andie did not
want to find herself at the mercy of “advisers” and “councilors” who did the actual ruling, while she
served only as a figurehead on the throne.
It was all terribly frustrating. Maybe everything she knew was out of a book rather than real life, but at
least she knewsomething. Her mother’s Chief Adviser, Solon Adacritus, didn’t even bother withthat
much; he depended on his secretaries to find out everything for him. That, by Andie’s reckoning, was
cheating.
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Solon had been Cassiopeia’s right-hand forever, though Andie could not imagine what her mother ever
saw in him. Oh, he was handsome enough, in a rather limp and languid way, but he was the butt of a
hundred jokes in the Guard for his manners and the superstitious way he hung himself with good-luck
charms and amulets, fiddling with them constantly.
Not for the first time, she wondered if Solon was her mother’s lover. Well, if he was, he was certainly so
discreet and careful about it that there had never been so much as a hint of it her entire life. And there
were plenty of people looking for information like that, she had no doubt. Information was leverage, and
the game of inter- and intra-kingdom politics was played largely on the basis of leverage.
Acadia might be small and rocky, but it had the only protected, deep-water harbor for leagues and
leagues, as well as one very good road that led straight to the heart of the Five Hundred Kingdoms and
was safe and well patrolled, and that put it squarely on one end of an extremely lucrative trade route.
Where there was money, there was power. Where there was power and money, people who didn’t have
it would be scheming to get it. Knowledge of who, if anyone, was Queen Cassiopeia’s lover would be
one more weapon to be deployed by those people.Which is one more thing all my reading has taught me.
You couldn’t read history for long without seeing the patterns.
Without that deep-water port, Acadia would have been the poorest of the Five Hundred Kingdoms.
Although the sea did well by those who dared the waters to fish, the sea took as well as gave, and fishing
was a dangerous profession. The rocky hills could not support grazing for much except goats and a few
sheep, the only fruits that flourished were olives and grapes, and the grain harvests were just enough to
keep the populace fed without any surplus even in the best years. There were pockets of richer soil, but
not the broad, flat pastures and huge fields of waving grain that other lands boasted. Acadia didn’t even
have a Godmother—hadn’t had one in so long that plenty of nobles who never left Ethanos thought
Godmothers were as mythical as centaurs and fauns.
There were pockets of all sorts of so-called “mythical” creatures, little colonies in the wilderness that the
country-people traded with. Thesus had grown up playing with centaur colts and faun-kids as his friends,
before he’d come down out of the high hills and joined the Guard. He’d told her stories, and the tales
had the ring of truth about them, in no small part because they were not tales of great adventure, but of
the same sort of mischief that any children got up to. The only difference was that when Thesus and his
friends teased a bull or a he-goat, his friends’ parents could grab him up and take him to safety on their
backs, or speak the same language as the goat and make the patriarch of the herd back down.
Plus, the history of Acadia was full of treaties with the “Other-folk,” or Wyrding Others, treaties that
were on file in the library—and how could one write up a treaty with things that were mythical?I would
so like to see some of them…fauns, sylphs, centaurs, dryads and nymphs.
She’d have liked to see a Godmother, too. But it was clear from everything she had read that Acadia
didn’t have one. Probably Acadia was too insignificant. After all, when had Cassiopeia ever hosted a
ball? Or a masquerade? When had other Royals even visited? Not so much as a sixth- or seventh-son
Prince had ever ventured across the border or into the harbor. Nothing of any consequence had
happened here in more than a generation.
No wonder the Godmothers ignored them in favor of Kingdoms that actuallydid things.
But—if we had a Godmother here, I bet she’d see to it that Mother started educating me in my duties.
Leaving me ignorant like this is just making a big fat hole for The Tradition to stick an evil Prince into.
Someone who’d come sweep me off my feet, then oppress my people.Or was the fact that she was
already aware such a thing could happen enough to prevent it from happening? Maybe Acadia was so
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quiet and small that even The Tradition ignored it.
Acadians themselves ignored The Tradition. Of all the people she’d ever mentioned it to, only a few
seemed even vaguely aware of such a thing. Maybe, again, because things were so quiet here that the
only thing The Tradition did was to ensure that there were enough poor-but-honest peasants, worthy
orphans, hearty fisherman, nosy gossips and that sort of thing.
Or maybe The Tradition is satisfied that we’ve got our quota filled with Queen Cassiopeia, beautiful and
wise,she thought a little cynically.It doesn’t need to waste its time on anything else.
There certainly didn’t seem to be a great deal of anything you could call “real magic” employed in and
around Acadia. Even the Sophont Balan, for all that he had the title of Guard’s Magician, seemed mostly
to tinker with purely mechanical things like telescopes and oculars.
She turned over on her back and closed her eyes, listening to the gulls crying below, finally able to put a
name to her restlessness.I’m bored, but it’s worse than just being bored. Nothing ever happens to me.
Nothing is ever going to happen to me. I am going to sit in my wing of the Palace and do nothing for the
rest of my life. Mother will probably even outlive me. Or else she’ll marry some handsome fool who’ll be
happy to have the title of Consort with none of the work, have a son, and he’ll become King—and then
what? I’ll still sit in my wing of the Palace, and the only thing that will ever change is that eventually I
won’t have to put up with governesses anymore.
Would being played as a diplomatic marriage-pawn be any better? It would at least be a change…but it
could be worse, she realized bleakly.
But before she sank into despair, she gave herself another mental shake.There has to be a solution.
Mother doesn’t take me seriously—so working through Mother is no answer. So who else is there?
And she sat bolt upright as the solution occurred to her. Much as she disliked the man, there was
someone who might. Chief Adviser Solon Adacritus, who already relied on others to give him the facts
he needed to properly inform the Queen. So what if she started writing up reports for him? It would be
easy enough to do—easy enough to give them to him. Easy enough even to flatter his ego while she did it.
Say something like, “You have your finger on the pulse of this situation, Lord Solon. Can you see if I’ve
grasped it properly?”I think it will work. He might even startto rely on me, give me access to information
I can’t now get. If he starts to take me seriously, it won’t matter that Mother doesn’t. If he starts to need
my reports and research, he’ll make sure Mother never marries me off.
Besides, she didn’t dislike him all that much. It was only that he was such a fop. It wouldn’t be hard to
pretend to respect him.
It was not only a plan, it was agood plan. Workable, logical. And if Solon was as ineffectual as she
thought he was, as long as she acted the shy and mousy bookworm, he’d be likely to take what she gave
him and look no farther than the surface, figuring that a word or two of praise would be all the reward
she needed.Huh. Maybe it’s not so bad a thing that no one looks past my oculars.
For that matter, this might pave the way to ridding her of governesses…because if Lord Solon wanted
her to do research, he’d want her to have her time free, and to do that she’d have to do without all those
stupid lessons in precedence, genealogy and the Royal Houses of the nearest Kingdoms. Not to mention
the dance lessons, etiquette lessons, deportment and posture lessons, embroidery and so on…
This is better than a good plan. I’ll not only have something to do, I’ll be effective.
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It was with difficulty that she kept herself from leaping up and running down the stairs to press the notes
she had written into Solon’s hands. For one thing, he would be with the Queen in those meetings. For
another, she wanted to go over them and make fair copies before she gave them to him. This might be
the most important bit of scholarship she ever did in her life. If she was going to convince him of her
usefulness, she had to be sure that what she gave him wasbetter than what he was getting from his
secretaries.
So instead of pelting down the stairs, she sat quietly and ate her lunch while mentally reorganizing how
she was going to present her work, and decided that a bit more digging in the library would not be amiss.
For one thing, she hadn’t included anything about the foreign merchants, and that would be a gaping hole
in an otherwise presentable report, a hole that she could not, at this point, afford.
By the time she had finished eating, she felt she was ready, and she gathered up her things with a feeling
of determination.
At least, in this battle, she was going in well armed. And as she headed down the stone stairs to take up
her “weapons” of pen and paper, she felt herself grinning—because this was exactly the kind of battle she
was best suited to win.
CHAPTER TWO
The Queen paid little attention to her luncheon, concentrating instead on the notes from yesterday’s
conferences as she ate. The morning had been occupied with purely Acadian concerns, but this afternoon
she would be dealing with the Merchant Captains again. She hoped Solon’s secretaries had managed to
unearth more information, particularly on the foreign merchants. The men had been rather opaque and
difficult to read, and had not been at all forthcoming with responses in the initial negotiations. Worse still,
when she had made certain purposefully offhand remarks, there had been no reactions. The Merchant
Captains were worse than professional taroc players. In her experience, most men let down their guard
at least a little around a beautiful woman—but not these.
She heard Solon’s familiar footsteps, as always, accompanied by the soft rattling of his myriad charms
and amulets, and did not bother to look up. A stack of papers appeared beside her notes.
“I suggest you read this,” said Solon, his soft and pleasant voice with a dry edge to it that told her there
was something about this report that was of particular interest to him.
Still without glancing up, she shoved the notes aside and took his stack. At once, she knew this one was
not from one of his usual sources. The handwriting was different from that in any other report she had
seen—neat, precise, academic. Not an agent, then. A new secretary?
If so, this was the most competent secretary Solon had found yet. She did not permit her eyebrows to
rise, since such incautious expressions made wrinkles in the forehead, but she did nod approvingly. This
person, whoever he was, not only duplicated everything she already knew, he provided her with a few
facts and figures that were new. Nothing earth-shattering, but useful, especially the information on the
foreigners who had been so opaque to her.
“Well!” she said, when she had finished. She looked up at her Chief Adviser. Solon was not particularly
tall, but he was well-proportioned—nothing like her muscular Royal Guards, but she happened to know
that beneath his embroidered linen robe, he had a very fit body. His face was a little too long for classic
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MERCEDESLACKEYOneGoodKnightwww.LUNA-Books.comDedicatedtothememoryofAndreNorton,friend,exemplar,andmentorContentsCHAPTERONECHAPTERTWOCHAPTERTHREECHAPTERFOURCHAPTERFIVECHAPTERSIXCHAPTERSEVENCHAPTEREIGHTCHAPTERNINECHAPTERTENCHAPTERELEVENCHAPTERTWELVECHAPTERTHIRTEENCHAPTERFOURTEENCHAPTERFIFTEENEPILOGUEA...

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