Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [210]
“Will they see it, do you think? Here, now, is the moment to turn Joen’s strategy about—to sweep down, all unexpected, into Jokona while it is so disrupted, and turn Visping’s flank—and the campaign could be done before it was even expected to start.”
“It does not take second sight to foresee that outcome,” said Ista. “If it works, dy Palliar will doubtless be showered with the acclaim for his grand strategy.”
Illvin smiled grimly. “Poor Joen, she even loses that credit. She should have been a general.”
“Anything but the frustrated puppeteer she was constrained to be,” Ista agreed. “What will become of Sordso? I think he is not quite mad, for all that he sniveled and kissed my skirt hem when I passed him in the forecourt yesterday. His soul is his own now, though it will be long before his nerves are anything but shattered.”
“Yes, one scarcely knows if he would be of more use to us as a hostage, or set loose to be a very bad enemy leader.”
“He spoke of a religious vocation, and conversion to the Quintarian faith, actually. I’ve no idea how long the fit will last.”
Illvin snorted. “Perhaps his poetry will grow better hereafter.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised.” The castle’s battlements stood stark and pale in the bright light, concealing the damage being repaired within; Ista could hear a faint echo of hammering. “By the time Liviana’s future husband succeeds to the command of Porifors, it will have become a quiet backwater, like Valenda. This place has earned its peace, I think.” She glanced at Illvin, who was smiling down at her. “There are two thoughts in my mind just now.”
“Only two?”
“Two thousand, but these are uppermost. One is that my roving court needs a royal seneschal: a competent and experienced officer, preferably one who knows this area, to direct my travels and secure my person.”
His brows twitched up, encouragingly.
“The other is that Marshal dy Palliar will need an experienced intelligencer, an officer who knows Jokona and the Jokonans better than any other, who speaks and writes both court and vile Roknari, possessing trunks full of maps and charts and ground plans, to advise his strategies in this region. I greatly fear that these are two mutually exclusive posts.”
He touched one finger thoughtfully to his lips. “I might mention, it has occurred independently to several military minds here that any army presently wishing to march north would be very, very happy to possess a cure for sorcerers, to carry close at hand. Should any further enemy sorcerers be encountered on this campaign. Resources devoted to the protection of such a sorceress-saint would not be considered wasted. So the saint’s seneschal and the marshal’s intelligencer might not find themselves working so far apart as all that.”
Ista’s brows rose. “Hm? Perhaps . . . If it is clearly understood that the saint serves not Chalion, not even the Temple, but the god, and must go as the god directs. Alongside the marshal’s tents for a time, but not in them. Well, well, dy Cazaril will understand that part; and I think he could drill it into dy Palliar’s head if anyone could.”
He stared thoughtfully up the valley road. “A week, you think, till they arrive?”
“Ten days at most.”
“Huh.” His long fingers rattled the keys at his belt. “Meantime . . . I actually walked over here to invite you to take rooms within Castle Porifors again, now we are in slightly better order. If you wish. The weather’s due to change, judging by the wind; we may have a bit of welcome rain by tomorrow night.”
“Not Umerue’s old chamber, I trust.”
“No, we’ve lodged Prince Sordso and his watchers there.”
“Nor Cattilara’s.”
“Dy Caribastos and his retinue have taken over that whole gallery.” He cleared his throat. “I was thinking of the ones you had before. Across from mine. Although . . . I fear there is not enough space to also house all of your ladies.”
Ista managed not to grin, or at least not too broadly. “Thank you, Lord Illvin; I should be pleased.”
His dark