Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [133]
He eyed her with shrewd interest. “It’s mostly still the cadre of older men he inherited from his father. His first chancellor was his paternal uncle, though he’s lately died. The present general of Jokona has served for years. Sordso’s own friends and boon companions are a much younger lot, but he hasn’t had a chance to put any into positions of power. Too soon to tell if any of them will prove fitted for war or government, though they seem to run largely to rich men’s sons with too little chance, or drive, to learn their own trades. Arhys and I have speculated which will move up when the old men finally start to die off.
“Oh, and his mother, Princess Joen—Dowager Princess Joen. She was Sordso’s regent, along with his uncle and the general, until he came of age. I wanted to probe down that way when she took the reins a few years ago, but Arhys was seized with a fit of deference for her sex and sad widowhood. And anyway, in the midst of what proved to be Roya Orico’s final illness and death, we feared Cardegoss might not be able to rescue us from our mistakes. Or worse, might fail to support a victory.”
“Tell me more of Joen,” said Ista slowly. “Did you ever meet her? If Umerue had held to her initial plan, she would have become your mother-in-law.”
“Daunting thought. It is a measure of Umerue’s powers that such a drawback never troubled my mind. I’ve never met Joen face-to-face. She is some ten or fifteen years older than I am, and had more or less disappeared into the women’s quarters by the time I was old enough to notice the politics of the princedom. I will say, she was the most continually pregnant princess in recent Jokonan history—certainly did her duty by her husband. Though she was not entirely fortunate in her children, for all her efforts. Out of a dozen or so, only three sons, and two of those died young. Some miscarriages and stillbirths, too, I think. Seven girls lived to marry—Sordso has family alliances all over the Five Princedoms. Oh, and she takes her descent from the Golden General most seriously. Makes up for the disappointments of her husband and son, I suppose—or maybe it creates them, I don’t know.”
The Golden General, the Lion of Roknar. For a time, back in Roya Fonsa’s reign, the brilliant Quadrene leader had looked to unite the Five Princedoms for the first time in centuries, and roll like a tide over the weak Quintarian royacies. But he had died untimely at the age of thirty, destroyed by aging Roya Fonsa in a work of death magic, during a night of towering self-immolation. The rite that killed both leaders had saved Chalion from the Roknari threat, but also spilled the curse that would haunt Fonsa’s heirs down to Ista’s day, and beyond. The Golden General had left only renewed political disorder in the princedoms for legacy, and a few young children, Joen the least and youngest.
No surprise, that she might grow up regarding him as a lost hero. But if Joen could not follow in her great father’s striding steps, barred by her sex from war and politics, might she have at least sought to re-create him in a son? All those pregnancies . . . Ista, who had experienced two, did not underestimate their brutal drain on a woman’s body and energy.
Ista frowned. “I was thinking about what Catti’s demon said. She is coming, it cried, as if this were some dire event. I had taken it to refer to me, for I believe my god-touched state is a consternation to demons, but—I wasn’t coming. I was already there. So that makes no sense, really. Not that much of what it had to say made sense.”
Illvin remarked thoughtfully, “If someone in the court of Jokona is indeed dipping into sorcery for the purpose of moving against Chalion, I must say, it is not going all that well for him. Both his demon-agents—sad Umerue and the column’s commander—were lost in the first two trials of their prowess, if your guess is good.”
“Perhaps,” said Ista. “Yet not without advancing Jokonan goals. The saint of Rauma is dead, and Porifors . . . is much