Lora of Two Worlds

After Harvest Home, the Count took Gareth and Carl off to Thornford.

At court the events came thick and unending — and no man marked the thread that ran between them.

In the rooting-out of the Windsor power: Felix made Lord Treasurer, the purse of the realm in his hand; and Roland made Vice-Marshal of the War Office — the choosing and the moving of officers, the voting of pay and grain to every march.

And then the middling and lesser officials Felix had sounded out on his return to the capital: like Corbin Tate of the White Guard, every one of them slipped quietly into a radish-hole the Windsors had left standing empty.

All of it coming to pass without one sound.

The one man with any feel of it was Voss.

Where the wrongness sat, exactly, he could not have said. Only this: von Klein had begun to stand out at his elbow. Before this, he had barely marked the man — that utility steward, forever planted at the King’s flank.

Wine poured, paper laid, ink ground. If the King happened to name him, out came two sentences; unnamed, he might as well have been a mute.

That von Klein meant to wrest power with him — he would not have believed it under beating. Besides, the new chamberlain-strength the King was growing now was Mortimer. There was his true rival.

Von Klein? What little onion did he count for?

For the hour, the Western Capital’s dust had settled.

Felix, Roland, von Klein, Greene, Dr. Osler, Horn — and with them the ones who had read the cards and stepped aboard on their own: Corbin Tate of the City Watch, Lord Marshall of the Crown Court, Lord Stanton of the King’s Works, and the rest — the shape of a party stood faintly drawn at last.

At court they stood out no more than plain porridge — but neither were they lost in it, for they knew: a man stood ready somewhere to roll up one great wave, and set them down at the cutting edge of the Empire’s power.

The Eastern Capital lay quiet too, basking in deep-autumn sun — and the man who would raise that wave sat obedient as you please in his wheeled chair.

Linn pushed the chair along, making his report on the progress at Little Penn.

While Leon’s eyes never once left the little woman bent over the cotton bolls, studying them closely, seed by seed.

”Good. The gold in the Navel Hollow stays untouched, for now. The village smithy keeps to farm tools and common blades — nothing more. Once everything is handed over to Claude Sheffield, you and Lorne Chase wait at Little Penn.”

A smile rose on Linn’s face: ”The young lady means to move?”

”Mm. Best to have the ground prepared before the snows. Lyle makes it back today — we set out tomorrow.”

Linn followed his young lord’s gaze: there stood the young lady, pointing gleefully at the bolls, giggling away with the few servants set to tend the White Floss.

And by the look of it, this second blooming of the White Floss had done well — plump seeds were the mother of good cotton.

Harper Hale, the gardener, had gone back to Augustburg.

He knew every garden in which the unremarkable White Floss grew. His father, Barnaby Hale, was a master grower of roses by lifelong craft — those few stems in Augustburg that carry flowers of two colors on one root were his father’s masterwork.

Father and son had gone in and out of the great houses’ gardens for years; every rare flower and strange herb in every one of them was on their fingers’ ends.

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This time the young lady had sent Harper Hale back for just this: quietly, and as far as might be, to gather in White Floss seed.

Past this one ripening season, to go hunting it again meant waiting out another year.

”Look — cotton seed!”

Lora Odenheim opened her palm: cotton seeds, each wrapped in its thin floss. True, this was Gallowscap’s planting — but no long-staple of the modern sort; the herbaceous cotton, the old kind.

But what of that? This time next year, they should be bringing in their first crop of cotton planted wide by the acre.

The very thought of it made her happy.

”If only we could buy up those two Windsor farms flanking East Manor! Plant our cotton in between, and nobody could find us out.”

Leon folded her hand closed, laughing:

”Hard, that. As I have it, the owner of those two farms would never sell — for he means to plant them with Southland rice, and he would as lief not be found out either.”

”What? Truly? You’ve bought the farms already? However did you get them to sell?”

Surprise and delight together — this suitor of hers was coming along nicely, more and more up to the mark.

At the flower of her smile, Leon’s own heart went bright as a willow in a brushing wind:

”Only the thrashing of a drowning dog. Hugh Kestrel’s body Corin’s men burned — and for my brother the King, a day without that killer found is a day without peace. The old Minister of Rites banished to Quartzford suited him very well.

Six hundred leagues, to be come to alive — how does a man manage that without turning his land to cash? Who knows whether he ever finds his way back. Two great farms to be liquidated in a hurry — and who in the realm has the deep purse our Lohenheim Vault has?”

That pair — coins in their very eye-sockets, round without and square within, this young lord and his lady — laughed on, heartless and light. They did not know the business had already turned to grit in a watcher’s eye.

Plenty of folk were asking under breath: who, at the bottom of it, stood behind the Lohenheim Vault?

Lora had already put it to her mother: she meant to go look over the Odenheims’ two mountains — if they could fetch some silver, the mother might recoup a little of her losses.

The Countess had been against her daughter’s going from the first. A thing like that, if it must be done, was Brendan’s errand.

But the two mountains were worth little; every copper they fetched would go home to his mother, not a coin to skim — so who wanted the tramp? Wasn’t a table of tarocchi with his friends the better bargain?

It was as well, then, that Leon came forward: he had a farm of his own on the Loene tributary, a river boat ready to hand — he could see his little cousin on her way himself.

The cousin was a prince of the blood; the proprieties would be seen to; and he was no such innocent as Yvonne, so easily cozened. The Countess, with a face still half against it, gave her nod.

For winter stood at the door: the whole household, and the household troops at their several posts, must have winter clothes found, and the Winter-Solstice charcoal allowance paid out. The Countess truly needed that mountain-silver — and soon.

Lora, of course, had no true mind to sell the mountains. But to ”hide” those hills — the cleanest way was to strike them off the Odenheim register of property; then no eye would ever find its way to that place.

Before the gates shut, Lyle’s fast horse came through them.

He carried Roland’s letter, and the letter carried nothing but good news. Come next month’s Robing Holiday, he and Felix could both come home to Lohenheim on family leave — only the soldiers, father and brothers, would get no such holiday.

One line it ended on: because of the fright at the Serene Palace, the King had ordered Mortimer to comb through the close-body guard from end to end — and better than half of Voss’s men were combed out.

Voss, old as he was, had gone sick with pure fury over it; and Mortimer, with the King’s hand under him, stood for the moment without a rival in the wind.

The palace will never run short of chamberlains in the sun.

And because of the assassination, the King’s ”Double-Ninth climbing on the Roaming Heights” — with the out-of-capital kin he had meant to call back for it — was sent round as cancelled. Leon had feared the calendar pinching their journey somewhat; now, at last, his heart sat easy.

They went out by water, on the Baron of Charnwood’s official barge. The fourth brother came down to the Loene docks to see them off, waving with a face full of spring:

”Careful on the road! Come home soon!”

Lora gone — one watcher the fewer. Mother never meddled with the outer house from her back courts. Was he not, at last and in truth, master in his own mansion?

Watching the river boat dwindle off, Brendan turned round, well pleased with life — and there stood Lilac, Keane, Channing, and Conan at his back. He jumped out of his skin:

”You — why aren’t you gone along with her?”

Keane bowed with folded fist: ”Fourth Master — the young lady laid it before the Countess. While she is away from the house, Channing and Conan attend your person, close as your shadow; and myself and Mistress Lilac are to assist in the keeping of the household. Whatever your needs, you have only to set us on them.”

The fourth brother ground his teeth:

Fine going, Lora Odenheim. Playing your little tricks on your own elder brother?

As if I’d listen! As if I’d give you the time of day!