“You do, indeed, my gracious one, always grant me your ear. But where you listen, others listen as well. And I would warn you of treachery and have only you hear my warning.”
“Treachery?” The word was dry on his tongue. The pounding of his heart was becoming painful. Too many threats in too short a time; courage alone could not sustain a weakened body. He looked down at the man still kneeling before him. “Get up, Ellik. I need water. Please.”
The chancellor lifted his eyes and then his head. “Of course.” Without ceremony, he stood and walked across the chamber. It was a man’s room, hung with weaponry and tapestries that recalled famous battles. The work-scarred table in the center of the room held a large ledger, a pot of ink, and a scatter of pens. The Duke had not been in the chancellor’s study for years, but it had changed little in that time. Beyond the table was a cupboard. Ellik took a bottle of wine and glasses from it. “This will do you better than water,” he informed the Duke. With adroit efficiency, he pulled the cork and filled the glasses. As he returned, he walked as a warrior would and presented the glass without formality.
The Duke took it in withered hands and drained off the wine. He felt welcome warmth course through his body. Without asking, Ellik refilled the glass from the bottle he still held. Then he sat down cross-legged on the floor by the pole chair as easily as if he were a young man settling down by a campfire. “Hello,” he said, as if they were old two friends come together in a chance meeting. And perhaps they were. Ellik watched the Duke steadily until he spoke.
“You know why it’s necessary. The bowing, the formality, the harsh order. It’s not to demean you, Ellik. It’s to enforce discipline and maintain distance.”
“So they only think of you as the Duke,” Ellik said.
“Yes.”
“Because if they thought of you as a man among them, you are not the man they would choose to follow now.”
The Duke hesitated. “Yes,” he admitted finally. “A harsh evaluation, but an accurate one.”
“And it works,” Ellik conceded. “For most of them. For those young enough not to question the order. It works not so well for your old comrades who warriored beside you in the early days when you were coming to power.”
“But not many of them are left,” the Duke pointed out.
“That is true, but a few of us remain.”
The Duke nodded gravely.
“And a few of us remain loyal to the man you were, as well as to the present Duke of Chalced. And so I have come to warn you of treachery, though the nature of the warning may cost me my life.”
“And so I listen to you, Ellik, man to man, warrior to warrior, knowing what you risk to serve me. Be brief. What treachery threatens me?”
Ellik tossed his wine back, considered a moment longer, and then replied, “Your daughter Chassim. She wants your throne.”
“Chassim?” The Duke shook his weary head, annoyed that the man had discomforted him just for this. “She is discontented, widowed thrice, a woman unfulfilled. I have known this for years. I have no fear that she has any ambitions of her own.”
“You should.” Ellik spoke brusquely. “Have you read her poetry?”
“Her poetry?” Now he felt insulted. “No. Girlish yearning for a handsome man to grovel before her charms, I suppose, or musings on a hummingbird hovering by a flower. Ponderings on love and daisies, all done in blue brushstrokes and ornamented with posies and ivy. I haven’t time for such things.”
“No. Her poetry is more like a trumpet call to arms. A rallying of women to rise up in Chalced, to help her inherit your throne so that she can lift other women to the status they once held. It’s fiery stuff, my lord, more fit to a fanatic in the market than a woman living a quiet, cloistered life.”
For some time, the Duke regarded the other man in silence. But his chancellor’s face remained grave. He was in earnest.
“Women rising up . . . nonsense! You know this how? When would you have had cause to encounter my daughter’s poems?”
“In my wife’s chambers. Two days ago.”
The Duke waited.
“I entered without warning, in midmorning, an unusual time for me to call on her. She quickly tried to conceal a handful of scrolls she had been reading. So, of course, I wrested one from her to know what secret a woman sought to keep from her husband.” He scowled. “The scroll was tatter edged, well worn from being passed hand to hand, with many additions on the bottom and back of it. To the casual eye, it was a girlish poem just as you have described, ornamented with flowers and butterflies. But only for the first two verses. Then the words became scholarly and martial, citing historical references to times when the women of Chalced’s noble houses ruled alongside the men and governed their own affairs and properties and chose their own husbands. The little vines and flowers framed nothing less than a call to revolution.