Page 40 of Into the West

Kordas sighed. Not that he wasn’t expecting this, but it was going to be an annoyance. But not a disaster, thanks to Isla. “Lord Hayworth is not going to know what to do when you turn up with your accounts and lists,” he said, with a bit of grim satisfaction.

“Lady Hayworth does not have the training to run a Duchy that your mother gave me,” she said serenely. “Frankly, I’ll be glad to see him gone. I wish he’d stayed back at Crescent Lake.”

“I’m glad he didn’t,” Kordas replied. “I actually like the people who stayed. No, I wish that he had stayed back in Valdemar. He’d be fine there. He might actually have been persuaded to be of some help to Merrin.” At her incredulous look he grimaced. “I actually understand him. When he was faced with ‘flee or lose everything’ it was an easy choice. But then things changed, and he’s been second-guessing his decisions ever since. He’s used to being an autocrat in his own little domain and he does not understand and does not like being ‘one among many.’ And I don’t have the time, the patience, or the inclination to cosset and coax him until he comes around.”

“Nor should you,” she agreed. “If he’s lucky, most of his household will either be of like mind, or be convinced that money will still be of worth out here. And if he’s not—”

“Then he’s not our problem anymore.” He reached across the table and gently caressed her hand. “And I want to think of other things, now that I know you aren’t going to emasculate me for putting your sister in danger.”

I did not expect Isla’s prediction to come true so soon, Kordas thought with utter resignation, seeing a stone-faced fellow wearing a tabard with Lord Hayworth’s device elaborately appliquéd on the front and back approaching on pony-back. At least Hayworth hadn’t had the unmitigated gall to pull one of his horses off barge duty to mount his herald “properly,” but had assigned him what looked like one of his household’s aging ponies. The pony was so short that you could not see its legs for the wooly backs of the sheep it was pushing its way through.

Did Hayworth have any idea how ridiculous this looks? That’s going to reflect on his standing in the mind of anyone who sees this. Probably not. In fact, Hayworth was probably laboring under the delusion that his herald was properly mounted, and the mere presence of such a functionary, resplendent in the trappings of the Imperial Court, was going to impress Kordas and make him uncertain.

When what had probably happened was that the herald got his orders, trotted off to the horsemaster and demanded a mount, and the horsemaster had given him one of the only beasts that wasn’t sick or towing. And no matter how the herald would have protested, it would have been in vain. Horses couldn’t be taken off towing without slowing everything behind them down, so it was a pony or walk.

He would have been laughable, with his knees up to his chin thanks to the short stirrups, but Kordas did not have the enthusiasm needed to muster a laugh right now. “Rose, please have Ivy tell Isla that I am going to need her and her books at the barge, because Hayworth is about to air his grievances. And then tell the other Dolls with my Councilors that I am going to need them there too for the same reason.”

His nose was uncomfortably cold, and he sniffled a little, and caught the herald surreptitiously doing the same while trying to scrape together a few shreds of dignity. Then he rode forward to meet the poor man—it wasn’t his fault that his master was about to pull a temper tantrum—and saluted him gravely. “It beats walking,” he sympathetically offered to the fellow. The herald sighed, as if hearing an unwelcome truth.

“My master, Lord Hayworth, lately Baronet of Hayworth, begs the favor of your attention, Baron Valdemar,” the herald said, putting just enough emphasis on Kordas’s new title to convey an entire world of meaning. To begin with, how the mighty have fallen, through you’re only one very short step above my master, you know, and I know it, and you know I know it, to end with you got us into this, and we’re not happy about it.

Well, there went any sympathy I was going to feel for him. He’s about to become a fireside joke. “Remember how Hayworth’s herald showed up with his knees at his chin mounted on a pony that was practically swimming through sheep?” Now, as he’d pointed out to Isla, most of the people who felt that way had gone straight back to the Duchy—was it still a Duchy? He supposed it must be, since Merrin was a Duke now. He had the sneaking suspicion, however, that Hayworth had seen this not as an escape or an exile, but as an opportunity. Hayworth had always had ambition, but had been unable to satisfy that ambition, either through advantageous marriage or through trade alliances. Hayworth had his own little private army, and he had been extremely put out that Kordas had not leapt to arm them with Spitters, but had, in fact, forbade them to carry anything that was lethal at a distance. This was in no small part because Hayworth had refused to relinquish them to help form the new Guard. Now, a charitable man would have assumed that this was because Hayworth was planning to take over guarding his entire section of the convoy.

And Kordas, being charitable, had assumed precisely that, until the Dolls informed him otherwise.

Nor were Hayworth’s servants joining everyone else in hunting, foraging, fishing, and wood-gathering for the common stores. Granted, Kordas had not specifically said this was supposed to happen, but most of the wealthy and nobly born were sharing out their excess with those whose luck was not so good, or who were busy with dawn-to-dark work.

Not Hayworth. The Doll Peridot had reported that any excess food was preserved by an increasingly irritated chief cook, and stowed away in unlikely places, as if Hayworth feared someone would come looking for it—and any excess wood mysteriously vanished into the “bilge storage” under the floorboards of the barges.

And Hayworth had made things very, very clear to his underlings that if he had been in charge, the whole convoy would have stopped right after they crossed the Gate, taken over that village by force of arms, and settled down right there with the former villagers reduced to serfdom.

Yes, Hayworth had somehow gotten infected with the “Imperial Disease.” He had realized that his ambitions would no longer be constrained by boundaries he dared not trespass as they had been back in Valdemar. In this wilderness, he could take over as much land as he and his household could hold. He could style himself whatever he wanted. Viscount? Earl? Duke?

Prince?

King?

None of these titles were out of reach. And he thought, because he was rich and accustomed to thinking that way, that the silver and gold he surely had stored away (given the steady guard on one particular barge) was actually valuable out here. And very likely, because they had not missed so much as a single meal yet, his men thought the same. It didn’t occur to any of them that in the situation in which they all found themselves, you couldn’t eat or burn money, and the good will of your fellow travelers was going to be the coin you traded in.

Well, don’t let him see he’s irritated you.

“By all means,” Kordas said, genially. “I will be happy to see him on my barge immediately. I will meet him there.”

And then he rode away before the herald could counter with a demand for Kordas to come to Hayworth.

Hayworth’s strings were near the tail of the convoy, which gave Kordas plenty of time to assemble mage Dole, Isla, and the rest of his Councilors, and have some of his own tail-riding guards discreetly move in on Hayworth’s people as soon as he and his escort were out of sight. And Dolls. Lots of Dolls. And Ponu, Wis, and Koto. They were all going to be carrying out orders Hayworth did not anticipate. Hayworth might even think there was going to be a coup. And if so, he would be right—but not about who he thought was going to come out on top.

Lord Hayworth arrived wearing completely inappropriate Court garb of the sort that Kordas had been forced into wearing at the Capital. Not as rich or as elaborate, but it was ill suited to the cold of this late-autumn day, and his Lordship arrived shivering in his saddle, sniffling just as Kordas had been a moment ago, and looking thoroughly miserable. He was riding a rather delicate palfrey, as were the men of his entourage. At least he’d had the sense not to take towing horses off the barges. He and his entourage started to dismount. From the deck of the barge, Kordas interrupted them.

“Just you, your Lordship,” he said politely. “I was just having a meeting with my Councilors and there simply isn’t room for your people.”

Hayworth, a strongly built man of late middle age whose personality inclined him to the sort of extremely “masculine” activities, like daily fighting practice, that kept him fit—mostly so that he could boast about how fit he was—looked as if he was about to object, then shrugged, rode a little ahead of the moving barge, had his herald hold his horse while he dismounted, waited for the barge to get to him, and climbed aboard, disdaining Kordas’s outstretched hand.

He looked a bit taken aback when he saw how many people had squeezed into the first two rooms of the barge, but the welcome warmth of the place took him off guard, and he made the mistake of allowing the heat to relax him. Kordas read it in the slight slump of his shoulders, and knew at that moment that the battle was over and in his favor.

About half of his Councilors were seated, either on the bed or on folding stools in the walkway. The rest stood. Kordas took the second seat at the tiny table—Isla had the first one—and did not offer Hayworth a seat.

Hayworth puffed out his chest a little and smoothed down his dark hair, and the tone of his voice when he began to speak was that of someone admonishing a child. “Now see here, Baron,” he began. “What the hell are you doing, dragging us past perfectly good land into gods only know what kind of forsaken wilderness is ahead of us?” His cold gray eyes narrowed a little, perhaps in anticipation of a fight he was certain he would win.