Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [159]
“I thought I had brothers I could trust,” the king said. “Until this.” He scowled at the table.
“Iolin?” Elis asked.
“Perhaps,” the king said. “One of my sons,” he said to the others. “Elis’s favorite brother.”
“Why do you think him reliable?” Kieri asked Elis.
“He never liked my uncle Einar. He even thought—he thought Einar wanted my father’s place. He had been friends with Einar’s son Ailin, but they quarreled over that, last winter, and he said he dared not tell our father, for he thought Einar would hear and do worse.”
“I will have to risk my skin somewhat,” the king said, “because it is not kingly to risk others in my stead. My people think a king is like the captain of a ship—the king must care more for the others than himself. He must risk himself, when risk is inevitable.” He smiled, a grim smile. “We do not have many aged kings.”
“Iolin and my brothers will not live long if Einar is king,” Elis said. “Indeed, he might contrive accidents for them now.”
“We are able to think, Elis,” the Knight-Commander said. “But you are right.” He smiled at the king, and Kieri noticed it was a much friendlier smile. “Sir King, your daughter is more than just headstrong and hasty—she has a head apt for both diplomacy and command, should she submit to training.” His smile widened. “Youngsters like these, once they start gaining their teeth, bite into life with gusto.”
“So she did,” the king said. “Had she been a boy—”
“We would not be sitting here trying to create a peace,” Kieri said. “ ‘If only’ will not serve us. She is what she is, what the gods made her. And we still need to get Pargun’s king back to Pargun.”
“I can see how you led a company all those years,” the king said. “But I cannot see how I will have a chance to speak to my people.”
“If you know someone trustworthy, to whom you could send a message, that one might arrange a meeting with you and some of your nobles. And Elis and the Knight-Commander, and me.”
“In Pargun?”
“No, not in Pargun. I will not cross the river. But here, in one of the river towns.”
A cold wind blew through the trees; the last leaves were falling fast, carpeting the track with crimson, scarlet, orange, and gold, the colors still brilliant even under the clouds.
Kieri and the king of Pargun rode side by side; ahead were half the King’s Squires, and the rest behind. Though they had offered the king mail, he refused it, insisting his nobles would think he didn’t trust them or had turned coward. He carried a sword as sharp as anyone’s. The King’s Squires had protested, but Kieri insisted. The king must be clothed and armed as a king, for this to have a chance at all.
Ahead Kieri saw the Halveric troop from the town’s fort. He greeted Captain Talgan, then they went on into the wind’s teeth; it seemed to sharpen with every stride.
“It’s the river,” Talgan said. “Looks like snow coming, too. There’s already ice in the reeds along the shore.”
Kieri had not visited Riverwash formally before; it lay surrounded by an arc of meadow, with a swampy area downstream before the trees closed in. A road forked off to the east, back into the trees to avoid the swamp. The river here looked like hammered pewter in the dull light, ripples chasing themselves across the surface. Across it, Pargun showed only as a dark mass of trees beneath low clouds furrowed by wind. A small crowd waited outside the town’s wooden stockade and raised a shout as they came near.
Kieri waved to the crowd; so did the Pargunese king, somewhat stiffly. At the gate, two children wrapped in green cloaks and their anxious mothers waited to offer Kieri the only flowers left, pale asters in an untidy bundle, and a basket of fruit. Kieri dismounted and took them, touching each child on the forehead