Chapter#204
Basra was by her side, he had brought Challenger back to her. She took a moment to pat and praise her horse then she was in the saddle and off to the Palladia.
It was a big glittering toy set in formal gardens like a jewel. The building was an expression of glass, whole rooms and corridors were walled only in glass so that light flooded them. Hanya Lein gaped at it but Tashka dismounted in the courtyard and strode into it with a careless familiarity.
She nodded curtly to the frightened servants who scurried to meet her. They were doubtful at first of who it might be; she had been sixteen years old when her father first threw her out of his palace, saying he never wanted to see her unnatural face again. She was not old enough to be a proper officer but because of her great strategic skills they let her go to the troop with her brother. She came with the brother here on leave, both of them smartly turned out in red Sietter uniform. The father threw them out and here she was now in full mail with a H'las surcoat over it and a hard set in the slanted eyes that were so heartbreakingly like her mother's.
A man came running to meet her with bunches of keys in his hands. He went on his knees in front of her, offering them up. She looked into the man's face and gave him a curt nod, took the keys and moved away with her junior officer at her back.
She strode confidently down a corridor. On her left the formal gardens stretched down to a low hedge. Trees cast shadows through the glass onto her thin fine face over the recently healed cut across her nose. She got to a set of doors, turned and said to Hanya: "Go and find the steward. Make him give you whatsoever accomodation takes your fancy. I will have the blue room in the centre of the first floor landing. Tell him to make provision for all of the Commanders and any Captains they want to house here. Come back here in two hours, with the Commanders, for our meeting."
When he had gone she unlocked the doors and walked warily into her father's study.
It was lined with shelves and those shelves were stacked high with boxes. The back wall of the room was made entirely out of small panes of glass which must show onto an inner courtyard. The glass was opaque. It could not be looked through but even so there were huge wooden shutters which could be rolled across to stop prying eyes seeing what Lord van Sietter did not wish even to be guessed at.
There was a splendid soft pink carpet spread across the whole floor. Three luxurious comfortable armchairs and a sofa stood with a cabinet of drinks by the fireplace. In the middle of the room was a massive heavily carved desk with red leather chairs attendant before it.
By the side of the desk lay the body. Blood spilled from the dagger in his side. It did not show on the dark red robe but it had vilely stained the pink carpet.
Tashka walked slowly over to the body. She sat down in one of the red leather chairs and looked coldly at him: her father.
For months she had struggled through bitter winter warfare. She had lost so many friends. She had seen so many valiant generous noble-hearted laughing men fall at his behest. Friends of hers had died on both sides in this war. Their bodies lay in her memory, blood-stained as his was, their faces set in grotesque grimaces as they were flung out on the dirt. Already perhaps plants were growing from their flesh and bones, that was something at least. Whereas she supposed his body would be entombed with the other sworn Lords in a marble crypt to crumble into infertile dust.
He had never offered her any support or love such as a child needs to grow happy and confident into the world. Instead he had tried to use her, to bend her to his own purposes. For years she had lived in a half-terror of the secrets of his that she just knew, in case she let one slip by mistake and was sent to die in V'ta. But for months now she had been free of that restraint. She had been at war but in her heart she had felt securely held in the affection and respect of her marital relations: the el Gaiels van H'las. She had been campaigning with the strategic support of her husband and of her brother. She had been fighting alongside that laughing loving silly old Captain: el Jien van Vail, and two of her brother officers: the Angels of the Sietter army. Her sister by marriage had been willing to throw as much money as she wanted at her war coffers even though Lady el Jien was a renowned pacifist. Friends as different as her scandalous former lover el V'lair van Athagine and her sister by marriage's brother el Jien van Iarve had offered her any assistance she wished to call on them for. Against such a group of friends, close as the fingers of a hand, what influence could one old man hope to maintain.
She stood up and heaved off her silk surcoat, mailcoat and leather undercoat, chucking them onto the floor by the body. She stretched out her exhausted muscles with a yawn then bent and scrabbled in the pocket of her surcoat, fished out some scrappy stained paper from it with lines of extravagant handwriting and also some scribbled pencil diagrams on its pages. Without troubling to look at her husband's carefully penned letter or the victorious strategy she had scrawled, she tucked the paper securely into the pocket of her leather breeches where she would be able to reach it if she wanted it. She sat down again in the red leather chair, set her ankle on one knee and leant back exhausted in the chair, looking dimly away past the body to where the opaque windows let in a little of the bright spring sunlight pouring down outside.
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