A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [110]
“I’ve always liked my demesne,” Pertyc remarked absently. “So remote here on the border. Nice and quiet. Easy to stay out of trouble in a place like Cannobaen.”
“You can’t stay out of this. That’s what you don’t understand.”
“Indeed? Just watch.”
Danry sighed again. He was a tall man, with a florid face that usually simmered on the edge of rage, and thick blond mustaches that were usually damp with mead. Lately, however, Danry had been withdrawn, and the mustaches had a ratty look, as if he’d been chewing on them in hard thought. Perfyc had been wondering what was on his friend’s mind. Now he was finally hearing. Ever since the forced joining of the two kingdoms some sixty years before, there’d been plenty of grumbling in Eldidd, a longing for independence and past glory simmering like porridge over a slow fire. Now the fire had flared up; the porridge was beginning to boil over.
“I’d hoped to come around to this slowly,” Danry said at last. “But it’s hard to believe you’d be too blind to see the ale in your own tankard.”
“I’ve never much liked sour ale. What does it matter to me if I pledge to a new king or an old one?”
“Perro! It’s the honor of the thing.”
“How are you going to have a rebellion without a king to rally round? Or have you ferreted out some obscure heir?”
“That’s a rotten way to speak about him, but we have.” Danry picked up a leather dog collar from the cluttered writing desk and began fiddling with the brass buckles. “The lad is related to the old blood royal twice over on the female line, and there’s a lass who’s related on the male line. If we marry them, well, it’s claim enough. They’re both good Eldidd blood, and that’s the true thing.” He ran the end of the collar through the buckle and pulled it tight. “You know, my friend, your claim to the throne is as good as his.”
“It’s not! I don’t have a claim at all. None, do you hear me? My most honorable ancestor abdicated; I’m descended from his common-born wife, and that’s that! No priest in the kingdom would back a claim on my part, and you know it.”
“There are ways of handling priests.” Danry tossed the collar aside. “But you’re right, no doubt I was just thinking of a thing or two.”
“Listen, even jackals pull down the kill before they start squabbling over the meat.”
Danry winced.
“When I came to my manhood,” Pertyc went on, “I swore an oath to King Aeryc to serve him well, serve him faithfully, and to put his life above my own. Seems to me I heard you and the rest of our friends swear one like it, too.”
“Ah, by the hells! No oath is binding when it’s sworn under coercion.”
“No one held a sword to my throat. I didn’t see one at yours, either.”
With a curse, Danry heaved himself up from the table and began trying to pace round the cluttered chamber.
“The coercion lies in the past. They stripped Eldidd of its rights and its independence under threat of open slaughter. It’s the honor of the thing, Perro.”
“If I break an oath, I don’t have any honor left worth fighting over.” Idly Pertyc touched the device on his shirt.
“Ah, curse your horseshit Badgers! If you don’t come in with us, what then? Are you going to run to this false king with the tale?”
“Never, and all for your sake. Do you think I’d put my sworn friend’s neck in a noose? I’d die first.”
Danry sighed, looking away.
“I wish you’d stay out, too,” Pertyc said.
“And I’d die before I’d do that. You can trumpet your neutrality to the four corners of the world, but you’re still going to be in the middle of it. What do you think we’re going to do, muster our warbands right down in Aberwyn? When the spring