Ordermaster

LXXXIV

Although Kharl had stayed up until late in the evening, working on and refining a shield to hide the concentration of order around him, he was up early, still worrying about Jeka. When he came down for breakfast, she was not anywhere on the first floor of the residence. Enelya was in the kitchen, helping Khelaya with the egg toast.

“Have you seen Jeka this morning?”

“No, ser. Didn’t see her none last night after supper, either.”

“Thank you.” Kharl turned and walked up the back stairs to the third floor. He could sense that she was in her room.

He knocked.

“Go away.”

“I wanted to talk to you last night.”

“Don’t want to talk.”

Kharl stood there. What exactly was he going to do? He didn′t want to hammer down the door. That wouldn’t help. “I’m not going away until you let me in.”

“Can’t bust in here with horses.”

“I don’t want to break in. I want to talk to you.”

Jeka said nothing.

“Do you think I’d want to do anything to hurt you? Do you think I like what’s happened?”

There was still no answer.

“Do you want patrollers and lancers and mages tearing up all of Brysta-and then Sagana, and wherever else they’ll go?”

Jeka opened the door and stepped back. “Just talk.”

Kharl stepped inside, slowly. The room was neat-spotless. He almost said so, but realized that wouldn’t be good at all.

Jeka seated herself cross-legged on the bed. She was wearing faded gray trousers and an equally faded blue shirt. She was barefoot.

Kharl pulled the side stool out and straddled it, facing her.

“You didn’t say you were going to …″ Jeka shook her head.

“It’s not good,” Kharl admitted. “Everything else is worse.”

“That’s what you say.” Her green eyes flashed.

“I’ve made mistakes,” Kharl admitted. “You know that. Do you think I like making Osten the next Lord West?”

“Another mistake.”

“It might be. But … bad as he might be, the choices are worse. You see how folks feel. Did anyone stand up for you in Sagana when the tariff farmer turned out your mother and tried to get you sold to a pleasure house? Did anyone want to buy my barrels after Egen put out the word on me? I was the only one who even stopped to see if Jenevra was hurt-″

″Jenevra?″

“That was the blackstaffer girl that Egen raped, then had killed while I was fighting the fire.”

“Oh.” Jeka’s brows knit together for a moment.

This time Kharl was the one to be silent, much as he wanted to say more.

“Shouldn’t be that way.” Jeka sighed.

Kharl kept waiting.

“You being a mage. Guess I thought … don’t know what I thought.”

“I can do some things … I’ll do everything I can to make sure Egen doesn’t hurt another girl, doesn’t murder another person. I can′t change the whole land. People have to want to change.”

“Osten. He doesn’t want to change.”

“He will,” Kharl said. “I told him that if he wasn’t a better lord than his sire, I’d come back and kill him. I told him that was something I could do.” He grinned ruefully. “That was why he tried to hit me with his sabre. It broke.”

“Told him that?”

Kharl nodded. “Wasn’t all that smart, I guess. If we win, he’ll try to kill me if he thinks he can. But I wanted him to know that he couldn′t be like his sire or his brother.”

“You’d come back and do that?”

“I came back for you,” Kharl pointed out.

“Not just me.”

“No. But I did.”

Jeka uncrossed her legs and reached for the scuffed shoes. “Need to eat. So do you.”

“Once this is over, we need to get you some boots.”

“See about that, then.” But there was a faint hint of a smile.

As he headed down to breakfast, following Jeka, Kharl realized something else. He still hadn′t seen Werwal or his consort. There was no one he felt comfortable sending to the rendering yard. If he went, he’d need to take at least Alynar or Sestalt, and that would leave the residence poorly protected with Osten’s lancers coming into the city. Jeka was good at sneaking around, but Kharl didn’t want her where he didn’t at least have a chance to protect her. He didn’t want to send anyone, in fact, until he knew that Brysta would remain relatively orderly.

Everything he did, he felt, was some sort of compromise between what ought to be and what could be. Belatedly, as always, he realized, that was why Lyras wanted to stay away from the Great House and the Lord of Austra. There was always conflict, a need for compromise in ruling, and in law, as the clerk Jusof had pointed out to him in Valmurl. Law was not justice,and given people’s differing feelings about what they deserved, and what they wanted, it couldn’t be.

That was another reason why he shouldn’t ever try to be more than he was, a mage and a lord. He’d just make matters worse-or tear himself up inside-or both. He’d precipitated the second revolt in Austra by trying to second-guess what Ghrant had needed. Now, in less than a season, he’d created swaths of death and destruction just trying to do his job as envoy to the West Quadrant.

Still, he fretted about both Werwal and Jeka, for very different reasons.