Soul of the Fire

It seemed the person writing the message had seen healers going to the Sovereign's residence. He wasn't able to talk to the healers, but said they were in the Sovereign's residence — the whole night.

It could be someone other than the Sovereign needing help. The Sovereign had a huge household, after all-nearly the size of the Minister's estate, except it was exclusively for the use of the Sovereign. Business, what there was of it for the Sovereign, was conducted in a separate building. There, too, he took audiences.

It wasn't uncommon for a healer or two to spend the night with a sick person at the Minister of Culture's estate, either, but that didn't mean the Minister himself was in need of healing. The greatest danger to the Minister was from a jealous husband, and that was highly unlikely; husbands tended to earn favor through their wives' trysts with high officials. Raising objections was unhealthy.

Once Bertrand was Sovereign, the possibility of injured feelings would no longer be a concern. It was a great honor for a woman to be with the Sovereign-it approached being a holy experience. Such divine couplings were widely believed to be blessed by the Creator Himself.

Any husband would push his wife into the Sovereign's bed, were she solicited. The prestige of this privilege conveyed along with the holiness a peripheral effect; the husband was the principal beneficiary of this collateral sanctity. Where the holy recipient of the Sovereign's carnal notice was young enough, the blessings embraced her parents.

Dalton returned to the previous message and read it again. The Sovereign's wife hadn't been seen in days. She failed to show up for an official visit to an orphanage. Perhaps she was the one who was sick.

Or, she might be at her husband's bedside.

Waiting for the old Sovereign to die was like walking a tightrope. The wait brought sweat to the brow, and quickened the pulse. The expectation was delicious, all the more so because the Sovereign's death was the one event Dalton couldn't control. The man was too heavily guarded to risk helping him to the afterlife, especially when he only hung to life by a thread anyway.

All he could do was wait. But everything had to be carefully managed in the meantime. They had to be ready when the opportunity came.

Dalton went to the next message, but it concerned nothing more than a man who had a complaint against a woman for supposedly casting spells to afflict him with gout. The man had been-publicly-trying to enlist Hildemara Chanboor's help, since she was universally recognized for her purity and good deeds, by having sex with him in order to drive out the evil spell.

Dalton let out a brief chuckle at his mental image of the coupling; the man was obviously deranged, besides having no taste in women. Dalton wrote down the man's name to give to the guards and then sighed at the nonsense that took up his time.

The knock came again. "Yes?"

Rowley again stuck in his head. "Master Campbell, I told the butcher, Inger, as you said. He says it isn't about kitchen matters." Rowley lowered his voice to a whisper. "Says it's about trouble at the estate, and he wants to talk to you about it, but if you won't see him, he says, he'll have to go to the Directors' office, instead."

Dalton opened a drawer and swept the messages into it. He turned over several reports that sat on his desk before he rose.

"Send the man in."

Inger, a muscular Ander, perhaps a decade older than Dalton, entered with a bob of his head.

'Thank you for seeing me, Master Campbell." "Of course. Please come in."

The man dry-washed his hands as he bobbed his head again. He looked surprisingly clean, compared with what Dalton expected of a butcher. He looked more like a merchant. Dalton realized that to supply the estate the man probably had a sizable operation, and so would be more like a merchant than a laborer.

Dalton held out a hand in invitation. "Please, have a seat, Master Inger."

Inger's eyes darted about the room, taking it all in. He did everything but let out a low whistle. A small merchant, Dalton amended to himself.

"Thank you, Master Campbell." The burly man clamped a meaty hand on the chair back and flicked it closer to the desk. "Just plain Inger is fine. Used to it being Inger." His lips twitched with a smile. "Only my old teacher used to call me Master Inger, and that was just before I'd get my knuckles rapped. Usually when I neglected a reading lesson. I never got my knuckles rapped for numbers lessons. I liked numbers. Good thing, as it turns out. Numbers help with my business."

"Yes, I can see where they would," Dalton said.

Inger looked off at the battle flags and lances as he went on. "I have a good business, now. The Minister's estate is my biggest customer. Numbers are necessary for a business. Got to know numbers. I have a lot of good people working for me. I make them all learn numbers so I don't get shorted when they deliver."