Chapter 1738: Hedging Bets (Part Two)
Chapter 1738: Hedging Bets (Part Two)
"Well," Brighde said as she sipped her tea. "I’ll give Valeri this much at least. I didn’t think he had it in him."
"But you see how foolish it is," Telent said, picking up a soft roll from his plate and tearing it into smaller pieces. "Moving against Her Dominion and her witches is all but suicide. I’ve been thinking that we should go to her now, to let her know what Valeri intends, but if we do, he’ll expose other things we’ve done..."
"I don’t think that Lady Ashlynn is as unassailable as you think she is," Brighde said, frowning at how quickly her husband seemed to be willing to kiss the ring of the march’s current master. "She’s putting on a good show at the moment, but she’s also overplayed her hand."
"She... what?" Telent said, momentarily startled enough that his hands froze on what was left of the roll. "Overplayed her hand?"
"Yes," Brighde said coolly. "And if you’d been thinking instead of reacting, you’d have realized it too. Even Valeri seems to have recognized it, which is impressive all things considered, but you really do need to keep up, or Lady Ashlynn will walk over you in the days to come."
"Perhaps you should leave talking to her to me," Brighde mused. "Considering how well your ’conversation’ with her went at yesterday’s breakfast, it might be for the best if you leave things concerning her to someone who knows her better."
"I didn’t realize that you and Lady Ashlynn were acquainted," Telent said dryly as he retrieved a knife to butter the pieces of roll he’d scattered across his plate. "When did this happen between our audience with her yesterday and now?"
Their ’audience’ yesterday seemed to be one of the briefest offered to any of the lords. Beyond speaking of her hopes that their children would attend her academy and asking for their patience as she reorganized the march, there’d been very little substance to their conversation. Yet somehow, in a quarter of an hour of conversation, Brighde seemed to think she’d gained great insight into the witch who now ruled their realm.
Telent found it hard to believe.
"I don’t mean that I know her personally," Brighde said, frowning at her husband as if he’d just said that water wasn’t wet. "I mean, I know her kind, and our audience made it clear exactly what sort of woman she is."
"Oh?" Telent said around a mouthful of buttered roll. "And what kind of woman is she?"
"One who has a great deal in common with me," Brighde replied. "You forget that Blackwell is just as old and storied as Keating is. You can’t hide breeding like that, and Count Rhys clearly invested in her education even if she never attended an academy. She’s powerful because she’s a witch, but she also has a vision, a strategy to realize it, and the ambition to see it all through."
"Not just the ambition," Telent said, tapping on the table to emphasize his point. "She has the power to realize it. Witches, vampires, armies... She has the power to defy the Church and the Crown at the same time. Making an enemy of her is the height of foolishness."
"Perhaps," Brighde said, sighing as she realized how badly Ashlynn had managed to shake her grip over her husband. After so many years, she’d become complacent in her position, but it seemed like he needed a reminder of where his ’clever ideas’ needed to come from.
"Lady Ashlynn and I are much the same," Brighde said. "We both see further ahead than the people around us, and our ambitions exceed our resources by a tremendous degree. The difference is that I’ve already learned what happens when your vision exceeds your grasp, and she’s still young enough that she hasn’t learned that lesson."
It had been a painful truth for her to learn when she’d arrived in Rundel Barony, but the resources of the frontier couldn’t compare to the world she’d left behind. Every gold sovereign needed to work twice as hard, and there were times when she had to trade heavily on her reputation and connections to achieve the same results that a small bag of silver would have accomplished at home.
"Lady Ashlynn made a big show of announcing herself as the ’Commander of Four Armies’ but where are those armies?" Brighde asked. "Yesterday, she claimed to be supported by four witches with the power of Exemplars, and almost twice as many vampires, but have we seen them?"
"Part of the reason I spent so long in the Chapel last night is that it gave me a chance to hear the concerns of the household staff while the High Inquisitor addressed the faithful," Brighde explained. "But it also let me discover a few other facts. ’Sir Ollie Heartwood,’ the man that Serle couldn’t wait to sell his daughter to, was nothing more than a kitchen boy in the kitchens of Lothian Manor a year ago. Not even Master Bodin’s apprentice or successor, he was little more than a pot scrubber and spit turner," she sneered.
"And yet, he defeated Sir Franc in a duel," Telent reminded her. "And he saved a dozen people or more from the Lothian Throne. Whatever he was, he’s something else now."
"I don’t deny that," Brighde said. "But think about what it means. The Evil Queen, the most terrifying Great Witch to ever threaten the Kingdom of Gaal, only had two witches in her coven. Now, Lady Ashlynn has shown us her two witches, and one of them is a kitchen boy she picked up in the Summer Villa, while the other one is a merchant master from Blackwell."
"You think she’s lying about the strength she has and the size of her forces?" Telent asked. "Even if she is, what difference does it make? High Priest Aubin stands with her and calls High Inquisitor Ignatious ’brother.’ Abbot Recared is dead, and his Inquisitors are captives. There’s no one in the march who can stop her from doing as she pleases," he said.
"If no one could stop her, why has she locked us all up in Lothian Manor?" Brighde countered. "She had enough strength to launch a decisive strike against the heart of Lothian March, but does she actually have the strength to hold it?"
"She has the Demon Lady of the Vale for an ally," Telent said. "And she’s conquered Airgead Mountain too, something Bors could never do."
"And in a hundred years, the Demon Lady of the Vale has never driven the Lothians from their lands, and she nearly fell to Cellach Lothian and the Church a century ago," Brighde said. "I’m telling you, Telent, she’s not as strong as she appears to be and she’s doing everything she can to project an aura of strength while she plies us with promises of opportunities that have as much of a chance of becoming reality as Lothian March had of becoming Lothian Duchy."
"She’s powerful, but she’s not invulnerable," Brighde concluded. "We would be fools if we acted as though she were."
"So you think we should actually help Valeri to escape and participate in his scheme?" Telent said, staring at his wife in shock.
"I’m suggesting that we have an opportunity to demonstrate our loyalty to king and country in a way that will protect our family should Lady Ashlynn’s nascent kingdom die in the cradle," Brighde said. "Once we’ve sent Valeri on his way, we can become compliant little country lords, doing as Lady Ashlynn wishes. At least for now."
"If Valeri succeeds and the Kingdom retakes the march, we can look for ways to become a knife already held against Lady Ashlynn’s neck," Brighde said as she returned to sipping her tea. "And if he fails, then we’ve succeeded in sending him away before he could damage our positions here."
"Either way, we win, Husband," she said with a slow smile. "And as long as you do as I say, even if we don’t win, I’ll make certain that our family never loses," she promised.
Telent himself might lose, but so long as she made sure that he was the only one who ever made moves that were counter to Ashlynn’s wishes while she played the role of the dutiful wife, then both she and her children would be safe... And that was what really mattered.
"Now, tell me," Brighde asked. "Do we still have a few loyal men among the household staff that we can entrust with one last job? If we act quickly, it shouldn’t be too hard to make Valeri go away..."