‘I’ve met him, Polly,’ Asrana told me. ‘His name’s Olburton, and he’s at least as bad as Nerasin is. If either of those two succeeds Mangaran here, Asturia’s going to simply disintegrate into little clusters of warring estates.’ She looked rather coolly at her husband. ‘And there are those in Mimbre who might just decide to take advantage of that, aren’t there, love?’

Mandorin sighed. ‘I do fear me that thou hast spoken truly,’ he admitted.

‘And there are border nobles in Wacune who’ll feel the same way,’ I added. ‘What is it about proximity to a border that brings out the worst in people?’

‘Oh, that’s easy, Polly,’ Asrana said with a cynical laugh. ‘All the world knows that the people on the other side of any border aren’t really human, so whatever they happen to own rightfully belongs to real humans on our side of the line.’

‘That’s a brutal view of life, Asrana,’ I scolded her.

True, though,’ she replied with a saucy toss of her head.

‘I cannot believe this is truly happening,’ Mandorin protested. ‘The hard-won peace which we all struggled so valiantly to wrest from the jaws of unending war is now at the mercy of a pair of Asturian popinjays.’

‘And to make matters worse, there’s not much we can do about it,’ Mangaran mourned. ‘Fortunately, I won’t be around when it happens.’

‘What an odd thing,’ Asrana noted thoughtfully. ‘Peace requires rulers every bit as strong as war does. Mangaran, dear, why don’t you leave a parting gift to poor old Asturia? Put a clause in your will that’ll send both of these incompetent nephews to the headsman’s block. A man with no head doesn’t have much use for a crown, does he?’

‘Asrana!’ Mandorin gasped.

‘I was only joking, love,’ she assured him. Then she frowned slightly. ‘It is a solution, though,’ she mused, ‘but why don’t we do it before Mangaran’s been gathered to the bosom of Chaldan? A little bit of poison in the right places would solve the whole problem, wouldn’t it? Then we could poison our way through the ranks of Asturian nobility until we finally found someone competent enough to rule.’

‘A bit simplistic, Asrana,’ Mangaran chided.

The simple ones are the best, old friend,’ she told him. ‘We’re all Arends, after all, and complications confuse us.’

‘I’ll admit that I’m tempted,’ Mangaran said with a wicked grin.

‘I’d strongly advise against it,’ I told them. ‘The introduction of poison into politics always seems to spur imitation, I’ve noticed, and everybody has to eat now and then.’

‘Poisons are very rare though,’ Asrana said, ‘and very expensive, aren’t they?’

‘Good heavens no, Asrana,’ I told her. ‘I could find deadly poisons growing in flower beds right here in Vo Mandor, if I really needed some. They’re so common that I’m sometimes surprised that half the population doesn’t die off from accidental exposure to them. There are even some ordinary plants that are a part of everybody’s diet that have poisonous leaves on them. If you eat the roots, you’re fine; if you eat the leaves, you’re dead. If you want to kill somebody, use an axe or a knife. Don’t open that door marked “poison”. I’ll keep an eye on things in Asturia, so please don’t all of you rush into exotic solutions.’

‘Spoilsport,’ Asrana pouted.

Since Mangaran was going on to Vo Wacune anyway, Killane and I accompanied him, though my seneschal – if that’s the proper term – was quite uncomfortable in the presence of so many Asturians. Hereditary animosities die hard, I’ve noticed, and peace was still something of a novelty in Arendia.

Mangaran’s ‘Nephew War’ wasn’t too hard to defuse, since the people attracted to either camp were the sort who talked a good fight but tended to fade back into the woodwork when trouble broke out. I had Mangaran track down the more vocal adherents of both Nerasin and Olburton, and after I’d had a few pointed interviews with the more prominent partisans on either side, the whole business cooled down noticeably. One does have a certain reputation, after all, and I was fairly free with some threats that I probably wouldn’t have carried out even if I’d been sure just exactly how to pull them off.

The rulers of the three duchies took that to be some sort of sign from on high, and whether I really wanted the position or not, I became the semi-official presiding officer at the meetings of the Arendish Council each summer.

Things went on in this fashion for some years, and by dint of a mixture of persuasion, threats, and sheer force of will I was able to maintain the shaky peace in Arendia.

Young Alleran grew up during those years, and he was married shortly after his eighteenth birthday. I’d stayed rather close to Alleran during his formative years and had gently led him astray. His parents, Kathandrion and Elisera, had done their very best to raise him as full-bore Arend – all nobility and no brains – but I tampered just enough to keep his strain of common sense intact. Asrana’s observation during the meeting at Vo Mandor was still very apt. A ruler during peacetime must be at least as strong as one who’s presiding over a war, and nothing helps to make a ruler strong quite as much as common sense.

I had an unlikely assistant in my campaign to contaminate Alleran’s pure Arendish understanding. Though Alleran was ostensibly visiting his ‘Aunt Pol’ – that particular title’s been following me around for centuries – I found that more often than not, he spent his time with Killane, and who better to give instruction in practicality than a master builder? Between us, Killane and I turned out a young man eminently qualified to rule. He could ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ with the best of them, but his mind didn’t stop functioning as soon as the first archaic syllable crossed his lips.

No matter what you might choose to believe, I had nothing whatsoever to do with his choice of a bride. That decision was dictated almost entirely by politics. Alliances between equals are almost always cemented by marriages. The bride’s name was Mayasarell – one of those concocted names usually arrived at by mashing the names of several dead relatives together – and she was a lovely, dark-haired girl. She and Alleran were not exactly desperately in love with each other, but they got along fairly well, and that’s a reasonable basis for a good marriage, I suppose.