Death in Winter - Michael Jan Friedman [41]
And he would have, had his aunt not chosen that moment to make her presence known.
“Cly’rana,” said Eborion, inclining his head as she approached him. “I am sorry you had to witness that.”
“I have witnessed worse,” she told him. “But I wonder… was Assaf Golav the best choice in this case?”
Eborion stiffened. He did not like to be criticized. Again, he had to remind himself that the day when others questioned him would soon be coming to an end.
“And,” Cly’rana continued, “was it appropriate for you to pass judgment on a servant when one of your elders is present in the house? In other words, me?”
“It was my chalice,” he said.
“So it was,” his aunt allowed. “And I am certain it meant the Empire to you. I have seen,” she said, with naked sarcasm, “how attached you are to it. But it is costly to send servants to Assaf Golav, nephew, no matter how much we are offended by what they may have done.”
Eborion shrugged. “I see it as a lesson to the other servants.”
Cly’rana smiled. “And we must not miss out on an opportunity to teach our servants.”
He let the comment go unanswered. What was Cly’rana doing there anyway? Wasn’t she supposed to be in the midst of a holiday on the Apnex Sea?
“If you will pardon me,” he said, “I have research to do. I do not wish to disappoint Claboros.”
“Who would?” asked Cly’rana.
Another provocative remark. She used them to draw people into conversational traps, wherein they would make revelations they did not really wish to make.
But Eborion was clever enough to avoid taking the bait. All he said was “Indeed.”
Then, before Cly’rana could get in another comment, he got up and left the chamber. Heels clacking on the ancient marble underfoot, he made his way down a corridor to the palace’s back door.
There a suborbital craft was waiting to convey him to a weapons research laboratory in the mountains-one of many owned by his family. Without a word to the pilot, he got in, settled back, and watched the palace withdraw into the distance.
Eborion had not lied to his aunt. He was indeed pursuing the research that his uncle had required of him. But he was also pursuing a rather bold and daring plan.
Tal’aura, obviously uncomfortable about pinning all her hopes on the much-vaunted Commander Sela, had hedged her bet with the services of a spy. Sela didn’t know this, of course-she was too far from the praetor’s palace these days to know much of anything.
But Eborion knew. He had more informants at court than he could count on the fingers of both hands, and he paid them all well. There were no secrets from him, nothing that went on in Tal’aura’s palace of which he did not eventually learn.
Certainly, there was a risk in knowing Tal’aura’s secrets. A considerable one. However, Eborion hadn’t stopped there. Once he knew that there was a clandestine agent, he made it his business to find out which one it was. A costly endeavor, that-but then, spies were in the business of being difficult to identify.
Fortunately, Tal’aura had used go-betweens in hiring her spy, and at least one of them was not above selling the information. It was in this manner that Eborion learned who the fellow was, and the role he was playing on Kevratas.
And then, in a master stroke of which Eborion was immensely proud, he hired the spy to serve him as well.
He wondered now how much progress the fellow was making. People in the espionage profession tended to move slowly and carefully, reluctant to take too many chances. After all, exposure wouldn’t just portend the failure of their mission-it would mean death.
Eborion knew how they felt. It was an immense chance he was taking, operating behind the praetor’s back this way. If she were to discover his machinations, his life would certainly be forfeit-no doubt, in a most public and humiliating manner.
However, Eborion was an ambitious individual. He believed he was meant for the highest places in the Empire, if only he could find it in himself to scale them.
That