The Balance Ch. 22-24

Ariana nodded. Brokenly, she told them of their trip into the town, and what happened at the temple.

Prince Alan cursed roundly, "My fault! If I hadn't asked you to go there to deliver a letter..."

"Then I would have gone there anyway, and the same thing would have happened," Ariana said tiredly. "I meant to visit Pathia today anyway. The fault is not yours, my prince."

"Then all of our hopes cling to Sister Angela," said the king. "What say you, Abiron? Do you think the fact that she asked for a night's respite is an indicator that she may be wavering?"

Abiron shook his head sadly, "She told me this afternoon that I had no hope of swaying her. She does not dare to let emotion guide her. It has treated her too cruelly before. And logic has no place, either. She needs proof. And that is the one thing I cannot provide." He swore viciously, causing Hannah to jump. "I am a priest! And now the one thing that cannot serve me is faith!"

"Even gods have their limits, young one," said the queen sadly. Prince Alan poured wine for all of them, and Ariana drank deep.

"The Deity told me as much once myself," Abiron agreed. He tried the wine, made a face, and asked for a mug of ale. When it came, he took a deep swallow and wiped the foam from his lip.

"The Deity told me..." muttered Hannah quietly.

"So what do we do after we lose tomorrow?" said the king.

"Keep calm and soldier on," said Ariana, taking another swallow of wine. Abiron watched her worriedly. He hoped she was not going to get too deep into her cups tonight. The last thing he wanted was to have to deal with a hungover High Priestess in the morning. "We keep our relations with the Christians polite and cordial. We allow their emissaries entrance. We do not molest them. We do not forbid our people to worship their god, but we do not encourage it."

"The Deity told me..." repeated Hannah. She closed her eyes and shook her head, pinching the bridge of her nose with her fingers.

"In the meantime, I have taken steps that will ensure that we have a steady supply of new priests and priestesses coming up through the ranks."

"How will you do that?" asked the prince. "Pay a bounty?"

"I HAVE IT! I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED!!"

They all stared at Hannah. Her face was shining with joy. She rushed forward, words tumbling over one another in her haste to get them out.

"Lady Ariana. When you told us what happened in the temple you said that Priestess Pathia told you that she had been instructed to send Brother Paul to Diana by the Deity, right?"

Ariana frowned. "Yes, but..."

"And when you found Diana and Paul together, you told us that Diana told you that she had done as she was bid by the spirit of the Wanton, correct?" Hannah blushed as she went on.

Ariana blinked through a fog of wine. "Yes."

"Then what Paul and Diana did was blessed by the Deity Himself! He would never work against us. When Paul went to Diana it was part of the Deity's plan!"

"Well-reasoned, child, but do not get too excited," said the king gently. "If it was part of the Deity's plan, why did Paul treat Lady Ariana so harshly when he was found with Diana, exactly as one would who was overcome by guilt?" Despite his words, Ariana could tell that the king was intrigued. The others sat back, mulling Hannah's logic.

"Mother, when you found Paul, did he look guilty or embarrassed?" Abiron asked.

Ariana thought back to those terrible moments.

"No," she said softly, "his face was a blank. Like someone who had locked all his emotions away. It was only later on that he treated me with contempt."

"So if it wasn't his actions with Diana, what else could it be?" asked the queen.

Suddenly, Ariana knew. She laughed aloud, cursing herself for a fool.

"The spy!"

"The spy? What spy?" asked Benedictos.

"Paul and his guards found a spy trailing him. They brought him back with us, but with the uproar Paul caused when we returned, it is not surprising no one noticed it."

The king frowned. "No one noticed it," he mused. "Why would he wish for a captured spy to not be noticed? Could it be one of his?"

"No," said Cassieopeia. "If it was one of his, why capture him?"

"One of ours?" asked Alan.

"Our spies don't get caught," said the queen, "and even if he was, he would have been able to provide proofs to the guards that would have made them let him go."

"So he isn't his and he isn't ours," said Abiron. "Who will read this riddle for us?"

"He's Lambert's," said Hannah. They all looked at her.

"Paul is an innocent, you have all said so. So an innocent man finds out he is being trailed and spied upon. He catches him. He finds out the spy was set upon him by his superior, a man who was supposed to guide and protect him. Who can blame him from being outraged?"

"Yes, that makes sense, princess," said Abiron. "So we now know that he found a spy, and we suspect the spy was set by Lambert. But why hide that fact? Why demand to see the king and queen, rather than confronting Lambert?"

"Something the spy said scared him, and he wanted to pull attention away from the fact that he had him," said Alan.

"A threat?" asked the queen.

"Against who?" asked the king.

"Him?" asked Alan.

"A foundling. No family. And his faith is so firm he would be a willing martyr. No." said Abiron.

"Against us," Ariana breathed. She looked at Hannah, who nodded agreement, and took another swallow of wine. "Who else could he threaten? Angela? Two-a-penny spies don't threaten the offspring of Saxon nobility, no matter how far in disgrace they are. Especially not to a houseless orphan like Paul. All Paul would have to do would be to warn her, and her family would crush him, and anyone associated with him.

"But consider Paul. He wishes nothing more than to serve his god, but he is also a good man with a gentle heart. If this spy made threats against us, if he or his masters has somehow subverted our subjects so that violence would somehow be done against us, or the royal family, or our people, would Paul not be moved to try to protect us?

"So he causes a great commotion. He draws attention away from the spy he has captured, focusing all eyes on him. Meanwhile the spy languishes unnoticed and his master is distracted.

"It is brilliant."

"It's not just brilliant, it is textbook tactics," said Prince Alan. "Keep your enemy's attention focused elsewhere, blind to all else that moves, while you muster resources that will destroy him."

"So what do we do now?" asked the princess.

"We have suspicions. Now we must check them. If you were Lambert and you knew that your spy had been captured, what would you do?" asked the king.

Prince Alan shuddered in mock-horror, "I have no wish to pretend I am Lambert," and Abiron, despite the tension they were all under, smiled. "But if I was, I would remove the threats."

"Which are the spy, this Titus, as he is called," said Ariana.

"And Paul himself," added Alan. "Lambert has no idea what he knows or was told."

"And the guards who helped catch him," said the king. "But it would be a rare fool indeed who tried to remove two guards in the king's own castle."

"So we set a watch on those four, and make sure they are protected. After the audience tomorrow and we have lost, we hold Titus and find out what he knows and who among our people is set to betray us." He looked at his daughter approvingly. "Well done, child. Because of your quick mind, tomorrow's events will only be a disaster for this country, rather than a catastrophe," he smiled bitterly. "Well, I suppose I had better see to it. This has to be the greatest jest in the history of this kingdom. That the ruler would be at his wit's end trying to protect an enemy spy and a christian monk."

"My lord?" Abiron's voice was soft.

"Yes, lad?"

"If our suspicions are true, we must take care that we do not warn our enemy by enlisting his pawns. Choose only those you trust completely for this task."

The king nodded. "Captain Diogenes, I think. I have known him since I was six. He is the most cynical bastard that has ever walked this earth, but he would slit his own throat before he took a bribe or betrayed his king." He left the room.

Abiron slumped in his seat, exhausted. By the Deity, thinking and planning were far more tiring than working the fields! He had felt far fresher after a long day of caring for the stock back home than he felt now. He turned to his wife.

"Mother, I'm going back to our rooms to prepare for tomorrow. Will you come with me, or do you wish to stay here?"

Ariana shook her head and drained her wineglass. Even after the skull-storming session which they just had, and the meager hope for survival which came with it, she was pale and drawn. "I'm not fit company for you right now, my love. I'll sit and have another glass or two with Cassieopeia, and then I'll join you." With a smooth motion she stood and hurled her wineglass into the fireplace, where it burst into fragments.

"Damn her," she grated between clenched teeth. "How could she have done this to me?"

"If she was guided by the Deity, I don't think she really had any choice in the matter, my lady," said Princess Hannah, who had been woken from a doze by the shattering glass. "I beg you not to judge Pathia too harshly."

"I wasn't talking about her," said Ariana as she poured herself another goblet and sat down again, "though if you turn out to be wrong and Paul isn't planning some last-minute stratagem to try to protect us from his own church, I am going to make sure she is busted down to novice, transferred to an orphanage, and spends the next five years washing dirty diapers without a virile man in sight.

"I was talking about Diana. How could she have been Paul's first? It was supposed to be me!"

Abiron smiled and kissed his wife, tasting wine on her lips. He found he had no jealousy of the young man at all.

"If it was indeed Diana who led him over the border, Ariana, then I don't think Paul had much choice either," said Cassieopeia. "From the tales I have heard, the hand of the Deity has touched her, and the only way Paul could have avoided her grasp would be if he was one of those who prefer to lie with men. And maybe not then."

"Well," Abiron heard as he closed the door to the royal suite behind him, "that makes me feel a little better. My goodness, Cassie, this is really good wine."

&&&

Sergeant Kristopher Zsurdenk sat on a stool in the dungeon, watching the sand trickle slowly through an hourglass. Behind him, Titus snored softly in his barred cell, asleep in the flickering torchlight.

Four times since he had arrived down here he had turned the glass. Four hours gone. It was midnight. In eight hours, eight more turns of the glass, he would wake the prisoner and walk him up to the audience chamber, where, when the time was right, he and his best friend and a monk from a church he hated would use him to save his adopted country from invasion.

He thought of the farm boy from Pskov he had been, long ago, and what that boy would think if he could see him now..

He heard bootsteps approaching. Warned by Paul's suspicions, he was unsurprised when the form of Bishop Lambert turned the corner. Seeing Kris sitting in front of the cell, he paused, then smiled benevolently and walked slowly forward.

"Good evening, sergeant. I am Bishop Lambert."

Kris nodded.

"I understand that there is a prisoner here who has claimed to be in my employ. May I speak with him?"

"Prisoner's sleeping," he grunted. "Come back tomorrow." He found that he was beginning to enjoy this.

Lambert's smile grew a little forced. "Well, there's no reason to worry too much about his comfort, is there? Be sensible, sergeant. Let me in to talk to him for a minute or two, and then I'll be on my way." he stepped forward, clearly intending to brush past, though how he intended to get into a locked cell was beyond Kris' guess.

Kris drew his dagger and lifted a whetstone from the table beside him. He slowly ran the tool down the side of the dagger, honing the edge. Lambert stopped abruptly.

He had discovered that the sight of a naked blade made many people nervous, for some reason. He stood and leaned against the table, looking Lambert square in the eye. "Prisoner's sleeping. Come back tomorrow."

Lambert's smile was thin and bitter. "Sergeant Zsurdenk, isn't it? Yes, I've heard of you. You're the one who wanted an annulment because your wife couldn't stand your touch, weren't you?"

Kris' hand froze on the whetstone. He stood motionless.

"I could help you out, sergeant. Wouldn't cost you a thing. Just let me in, take a little walk, and I'll be gone before you get back. And maybe you'll get that annulment you want and be able to marry again."

"You bastard," Kris breathed. "You're right. It wouldn't cost me a thing. It would cost me everything. Including my life. Because I couldn't live knowing I had let a slug like you buy me."

Steps sounded in the corridor. A lot of them. Kris dropped the whetstone and drew his sword. If this was some of Lambert's bought-and-paid-for friends, they would have to kill him before they got to Titus.

A full squad of guards rounded the corner, led by Captain Diogenes.

"Hullo Captain," said Kris, "Where's your lamp?"

"Didn't match my armor," said the Captain. He was a tall, spare man with short graying hair. He looked at Lambert. "What's he doing here?"

"Oh, don't mind the bishop," said Kris. He grinned like a shark. "He came down to give me some marital advice, but he was just leaving, wasn't he?"

Lambert's hands twitched. He looked from Kris to Diogenes and back again, clearly trying to think of a card he could play which would allow him to talk to Titus. Finally re relaxed and gave a curt nod. "Yes. I'm leaving. Remember this night, sergeant. I believe that one day you will have cause to regret it."

He turned and stalked out of the cells. "Ye gods, that was trite. Too bad he didn't have a little mustache he could twirl while snarling, 'You'll rue the day'!" Kris giggled. He looked at Diogenes. "What in the world are you doing down here at this time of night, Captain? It's a little late to be doing an inspection of the cells."

Diogenes gave an order to his squad. Half of the eight men peeled off and waited in the corridor. The other four sat at the table with an air of professional dangerousness. He gave a jerk of his head and walked with Kris into a corner.

"His majesty came to my quarters about an hour ago," he said quietly. "Said that you and Corporal Dealrach caught a spy who might be willing to talk, but that Lambert might be happier if he never said anything ever again. Said there might be dirty work down here and that I should make sure the prisoner was safe, along with you and Dealrach and that christian priest who helped catch him.

"Also said that if anything happened to the four of you he would make sure I never saw the light of day again," he shuddered. "I've known the man since he was knee-high, and I have never seen him more serious, not even when he was about to propose to the queen and was scared stiff she would turn him down.

"So I'm glad you're here. Sounds like one of you figured out that maggot," he said with an old soldier's disgust for spies, "might have a short life span once the bishop found out he was down here with a loose tongue. I'm going to leave these four lads with you. I don't think that any of my boys are disloyal, and I know there is no way under the Deity's sun that all them are. They'll watch each other, and you and the spy. The rest of us are going to make sure Dealrach and the priest are safe."

He gave Kris a soldier's nod; one professional to another, "Deity's blessings be on you, guardsman." He left the cells, trailing four shadows.

Kris looked into the cell to see Titus watching him with bright mocking eyes. "Thanks for my life, sarge. I wouldn't have given tuppence for my chances if you had let Lambert in. He carries quite a few knives, you know, and your jailers took all mine away. Rather unsporting, wouldn't you say?"

"Knives on a bishop? Pull the other one, it's got bells on," scoffed one of the guardsmen, a beefy man named Pollo.

"Wasn't always a bishop, though, was he? Got his start in Normandy as a foot soldier, if what I hear is true. Developed a taste for loot and some of the fun that comes with it. Got a little careless in one of Duke William's little wars and had a choice between taking the cloth or getting a short haircut. With an axe.

"So anyway, much obliged, sarge. Kept me alive for one more day."

Kris looked at the man with disgust. Who would choose to give his loyalty to a man like Lambert? He joined the other guards at the table, taking care to keep his back to the wall and his dagger loose in his belt. One of the guards produced a deck of cards.

"Want in, sarge?"

"Sure. One way to pass the time."

"Sarge, can I ask a question?" One of the younger guards, Festus.

"Sure, private. What do you want to know?"

"Why do some of you keep asking the captain for his lamp?"

Kris smiled, "Oh, it's an old joke with all of us who have served with the captain. There was an old philosopher named Diogenes. He used to go 'round with a lamp, even in daytime. When folks asked him what he was doing, he said that he was looking for an honest man. Claimed he never found one. You've served with the captain, private. Doesn't that sound like something he would do?"

Festus and the other guards laughed, and the cards were dealt.

&&&

In the small section of the palace which had been given over to the christian priests, Corporal Sean Dealrach flexed his hands and cursed softly. He hoped no trouble would come this evening, because he was in no condition for a fight. He had not had time to see the physician about his hand, and his unsplinted finger was aching and swollen. He knew he would not be able to wield his two-handed sword with anything approaching his usual skill, such as it was.

Instead, he kept his dagger in hand as he carefully paced his route, taking care to keep Paul's room no more than a few steps away. He had seen Lambert leave a short time before, and then return in a towering fury, slamming the door to his suite shut. Ulf had skulked by once or twice but before he could do more than try Paul's door, Sean had wandered by, making plenty of noise, and giving Ulf a foolish smile.

Flickering torchlight at the end of the hall revealed several shapes approaching. His heart in his throat, Sean planted himself squarely in Paul's doorway. Was this a group of traitors come to deal Paul death in order to keep his suspicions quiet?

His breath slowed as he recognized Captain Diogenes. With a few words the captain explained how the king, his family, and the priesthood had put the pieces of the puzzle together, and had decided to send Diogenes and his squad to make sure that those who knew of the spy were kept safe until after the audience the next day. Sean sighed in relief.

"Well, captain, I've been manning the front here. But I'm only one person and I've got a bum hand. Perhaps if you sent two out to the garden out back so you can make sure no one tries to get in from the rear through the windows, and left one with me, that would leave you and one other man to keep an eye on Kris downstairs and our group here."

Unnoticed behind them, Lambert opened the door of his suite and slipped away down the hall.

Diogenes nodded. "That sounds like a good idea, Corporal." He gave a few quick orders and two of the guards left to watch outside. A third, an old campaigner named Lucien, gave Sean a nod and settled into an alert pose several yards away from Paul's door, apparently prepared to stay there until hell froze over.