Bright Swords of Serena

Chapter 4

 Candlefish stew, a dish of mashed turnips, a loaf of bread and for dessert a compote of dried fruit and honey flavored with rosewater—all of it very good, one of the privileges of staying at the Palace. When they had finished eating and Devran's runners had removed the (few) leftovers, they moved to the social area of his quarters. Gardner plopped down on a couch and put her feet up on the table.

"I'm so full I think I'm going to burst. The problem is I'm going to be hungry again in a few hours."

"I hate to tell you, Camille, but you're going to have to get used to it," Hollander said, thinking of his mother. "Eat smaller meals, more frequently. And keep something by the bed for when you wake up starving in the middle of the night."

"Your mother was a midwife, yah?"

"Yes." Was was the operative word; Mama Nell had died years ago. But Hollander had learned a lot from her.

"So people never lied to her," Gardner said.

"They didn't dare. She'd taken the birth oaths for half of Litchlind."

"Must have made it hard for you to lie to her."

Hollander smiled. "Nearly impossible."

"Can we get back to business?" Clark said. "Geordie, you were offering us the run of your liquor cabinet?"

"Oh, so it's business, but you want a drink first?" Devran said good-naturedly, moving toward the cabinet. "Rhea, whiskey?"

"Thank you."

"Don't need to ask about you, Anders—you and your perverse fondness for redbriar liqueur."

"Nicky likes it too," Hollander said, accepting a small glass of the tart product of Losindar County.

"Yah," Devran said, pouring his own blackberry brandy, "but she's from where it's made. Camille?"

"I brought raspberry leaf tea, if you don't mind putting the kettle on."

A few minutes later Devran said, "A toast, anyone?"

"Here's hoping we get out of this mess alive," Clark said, raising her glass, and no one dissented.

"All right, just to make Ree happy, down to business," Hollander said. "We have to have a majority for this question, and it has to be a strong one. Eight to seven isn't going to be good enough. There's the four of us, and Zina said yes. That's five. Let's leave Daren and his people alone, if only because it wouldn't do any good, and concentrate on the people who were equivocating—Quen, Marina and Norean. And Nicky."

"And Farra," Gardner said. "She was looking very thoughtful on the way out. I'll take her if you want."

"All right, that's your job for the night. Rhea, I'm leaving Norean to you. Geordie and I will take Nicky—she doesn't like us, but she doesn't like anyone, so it won't matter. We'll go see Marina after that. We meet back here when we're done."

*******

Fanning was predictably inhospitable, but she agreed to vote for the mobilization. Saledy, looking tiredly into the fire on her hearth, said, "I don't like it, boys, but you have my vote. Just make sure it works when you get there, will you?"

"We'll do our best," Hollander promised. "How are you feeling?"

"Do this cup of fennel tea and my swollen feet up on the fender not tell you? Go bother someone else now."

They left her to tend her arthritis in peace. In the hall Devran said, "'Boys'?"

"She's old enough to be our mother, if she'd started young. Let's go see how the others are making out."