Lady Viridina's pale brow wrinkled with puzzlement, with a faint frown on a face that was attenuated by long illness. "Why are you bothering to do that?" she wondered. "They already tell you everything, don't they?"
"That, my dear, is what I am ascertaining for myself." Lady Moth put her eye back to the eyepiece, and continued to make mental notes on the movements of the Young Lords' slaves outside the Great House. "In point of fact, I rather doubt that they are telling me everything. For instance, there seems to be some disagreement down there about just who is in charge of what. Just during the time I have been sitting here, I have seen one hapless group of slaves herded from one uncompleted task to another by three different Young Lords." She chuckled, and her laughter was echoed faintly by her companion, who patted the knot of long, silver hair at the back of her head self-consciously. "That is what comes with age, Viridina; suspicion. I stopped taking things at face value a very, very long time ago."
"So did I—but the difference between us, I think, is that you found other ways of finding out what you needed to know, and I didn't even try," Viridina said ruefully, twisting her hands in
the fine silk of her flowing and many-layered violet gown. "If I had, perhaps—"
She didn't finish the sentence, but Lady Moth was not about to allow her to sink into self-recrimination. "If you had, I doubt that it would have materially changed anything. You and I were firmly under the thumbs of our unlamented Lords, and no knowledge or even foreknowledge would have allowed us to change what happened to us. Knowledge is not always power." She smiled again. "If it was, fond as I am of my Tower, it would be Lady Moth who ruled the manor down there, and not that rabble of Young Lords."
Lady Moth had known very well that there was going to be a slave revolt when the Young Lords staged their own revolution against their elders. Her own slaves had told her. She had already taken herself out of her disagreeable husband's home; she had made a bargain with him—if he gave her the lady-keep, which had been the Dowager-House attached to his estate, she would make no trouble for him when he filed a divorcement with the Council. He had his eye on a very young Elven girl— his tastes had begun to run to the barely-pubescent in the past few years—and he was heartily tired of the wife who could not or would not take him as seriously as he thought he should be taken.
"I wish you had managed to take the Manor," Lady Viridina sighed wistfully. "I hate to think what damage those careless boys are wreaking to your beautiful home."
Lady Moth only shrugged. "I have an equally beautiful home here—and much more manageable," she pointed out. "It's probably just as well that I didn't try."
For her part, she had been so heartily tired of her lord that— given that she would not be required to remarry and could have an establishment, however small, of her own—she was prepared to allow him to say whatever he pleased about her in order to obtain his freedom. She suspected that he would claim she was pleasuring herself with human slaves—but as it fell out, he never got the chance, so her reputation survived intact.
"May I look?" Viridina finally asked, allowing her curiosity to
overcome her reticence. Moth just laughed, showed her how to focus the instrument, and rose so that Dina could take her seat.
Moth's husband had not even lived to encounter the revolt, though without a doubt, if he had, he and his son would have been on opposite sides of the conflict. Her son, who had suddenly become as conservative as his father once he was in the ruling seat, had managed to be slaughtered almost immediately, and her daughter had fled after an abortive attempt to rule the manor herself had failed miserably. Lady Moth, as was the tradition in her family, had always treated her slaves with consideration and respect, entirely as if they were servants, not slaves, and as if they were free to leave her service if they chose to. She had taken all her slaves with her to the Tower, every slave for which she could concoct even the remotest excuse to have with her— a fact which probably would have provided ample fodder for her husband's accusations. Once there, she had deactivated the elfstones in all of their collars, making them merely decorative shams, and told them frankly that they now were free to go or stay. They all, to a man and woman, chose to stay. When the revolt was at the breaking-point, her slaves had told her. They had fortified the place, she had armed those who knew how to use weapons. Together, they had outfaced rebellious ex-slaves and Young Lords. In fact, her burly young guards called her "little mother," and took as much care of her as if she had truly given birth to them—unlike her own offspring.
"Why not use scrying instead of this device?" Dina asked, moving the telescope to gaze at another part of the valley.
"Because, my dear, the place is adequately shielded against scrying—oh, not by magic, by all that iron and steel they've managed to collect." She stared down at the valley, one finger tapping her lips thoughtfully. "Very clever of them, actually; there aren't three of them together that are a match for a single one of the Old Lords, but the metal does their work for them."
Needless to say, her son's magic had not been enough to save him from enraged and mistreated humans who came in the middle of the night to beat him to death in his own bed—especially not when they arrived bedecked in thin iron armbands.
During the chaos of the revolt itself, some of her son's slaves had escaped to her; the rest fled to the Wizards and the wilderness. When more armed bands of escaped slaves had come upon the Tower, her people protected and guarded her while she stood ready to use deadly war-magics if it became necessary. She knew about the effects of iron and steel; she would not have made any attempt to blast attackers, unlike those foolish Elvenlords like Dina's husband. She planned to blast holes into the earth beneath their feet—or to use her magic to launch large and heavy objects at them. Most of her anxiety had not been for herself, but for her people, if they could not convince their fellow humans to go away peaceably. She didn't want them hurt on her behalf, and she didn't want them to have to witness what she might have to do to protect them all.
Dina stood, and relinquished her seat with a smile. "Very clever of you to know the things that can't be interfered with by that metal," she said, as Moth took her seat again.
"Not clever, dear, only resourceful. If I were clever, I'd have managed to find a way to eavesdrop on them." That irritated her; she still hadn't managed to insinuate a reliable spy into their slave-stock.
She was not entirely certain what her people had told marauders during those first weeks of the Revolt to dissuade them from attacking the Tower; there probably had been several different stories, specifically tailored to each group. It was true enough that a few, select escapees had decided to swell the ranks of her own folk—no doubt, because they were unwilling or unable to make the strenuous journey over the mountains to an uncertain and probably uncomfortably barbaric existence in the wilderness.
Not that she blamed them in the least. She had always had an ample portion of "Lady-magic," and although her husband had not been aware of the fact, she was his equal in the realms of Elven magic usually taught only to men. Had it been necessary, she could have defended the Tower as well as many Elvenlords, and probably better than most. Now, her magic went to ensuring the continued survival of her diminished estate. She did everything needed to ensure exactly the right weather for the farm-
fields, she went over the fields and gardens daily to monitor and encourage growth and health in plants and animals. She had the knowledge and the long memory to tell them what they needed to do, and when. They trusted her, her learning, her judgment, her experience. That was what she had brought to the table; they had brought their labor. Returning to the grand tradition of her family, they had worked together to make sure that Elven-blood and human-blood prospered.
"Is there anything you'd like me to do this afternoon?" Dina asked, diffidently.
Moth examined her friend carefully. There had been moments, in those first days after Viridina took refuge with her, that she truly felt that Viridina would never be entirely sane again. But Dina was stronger than Moth had first thought; even after escaping murder at her Lord's hands and seeing her Lord incinerated virtually at her feet, she had not truly had a breakdown of her senses. It took time and careful tending, but she had recovered. Moth decided that it was time for her to help do her part here.
"Would you make the rounds of the kitchen-gardens for me, dear? I would really appreciate it, and I know you must have tended your own gardens thousands of times. I needn't tell you what to do." Moth felt herself both justified and rewarded when Dina's face lit up.
"Gladly! I have been feeling so—" she gestured frustration with both hands "—so useless. And a burden on you."
"You have never been a burden," Moth lied gracefully. Dina only smiled, recognizing the lie, and the graciousness behind it, and turned to go back down the stairs, her sleeves and trailing hem fluttering behind her.
After most of the escaping slaves were gone, but before Moth had a chance to move herself and her people back to the Great House, the Young Lords had moved in. Occasionally, even now, she cursed herself for hesitating—but on the other hand, the Great House was much less defensible, and even with her new followers, she still had really not enough people to adequately staff and run a property that was ten times the size of that attached to the Tower.
The Young Lords had taken over the abandoned estate; they had brought their own slaves with them. Lady Moth was not entirely certain where they had gotten those slaves; many of them seemed terribly young for the work they were required to do. She suspected that the Young Lords had raided the breeding-farms of some of the Old Lords while the latter were occupied with the fighting, carrying off hordes of confused and frightened creatures barely out of childhood.
Poor, poor things, she thought, taking one last look through the telescope, her lips tightening. Well, at least there are enough of them to do the work they are ordered to do, and they are saved one horror. Their masters are too busy with their own concerns to abuse them; confusion is the worst they have to face.
The reason she had asked Dina to take her place in "working" the garden was that she had an appointment with the Young Lords quite soon, and it was bound to be stressful. She had come up here in the first place to get a little more information before she faced them; now it was time to change into a riding-habit and make the short journey over to their stronghold.
She chose her clothing carefully: a tailored, severe habit of stark black, with only the barest hints of silver at the cuffs and throat. She dressed to intimidate; the last thing she wished to be thought was "feminine." Her groom brought her horse around, along with her guards, and she mounted and made the short journey to what had once been her home.
She was accompanied by four burly young men—humans, not Elves, and humans that wore scale-armor of iron, not bronze, and had ostentatiously bare necks. Moth had played the game of wits and treachery for centuries before these striplings had ever been born.
They were, one and all, less than a century old; when she swept into the meeting-chamber in her trim sable-silk riding habit, her hair in an uncompromising knot bound in a black silk snood, with all four of her escorts flanking her, they found themselves rising from their seats despite whatever their original intentions had been in the way of greeting.
She paused at her seat, looked gravely up and down the table
with an unreadable expression, and only then did she sit— which in turn, allowed them to resume their seats. She might not be the leader here, but in their hearts, they all acknowledged her power.
Which is more than their fathers would. Then again, she probably wouldn't ever use tactics this crude with their fathers.
She listened without comment to the reports of their progress—or lack of it—against their fathers. The situation was clearly at stalemate, and had been for some time now. This was not necessarily bad, and had they asked her opinion, she would have advised patience. When there is stalemate, it is often possible for frustration to drive one side or the other to make a crucial mistake.
But, of course, they didn't ask her opinion, and she didn't offer it—since it was clear that they would not believe a mere female would have any experience relevant to the "man's work" of warfare.
As if they have any! she thought, without amusement. But warfare was not why she had come to this meeting. Eventually they got around to the topic she wished to cover, in the form of a single casual comment by one of the least intelligent (to her mind) of the lot, occasioned by one of her bodyguards stifling a cough at one of the more fatuous suggestions.
"Lady Morthena," said Lord Alrethane, with a frown on his face, "I really do not know what you are thinking, allowing armed and uncontrolled slaves to continue in your service."
"They are not slaves, they are my willing servants," she countered smoothly. "I find that I sleep better, knowing that my sleep is guarded by faithful people who serve me from loyalty and not because they are forced to."
"Loyalty? Loyalty?" Alrethane exploded. "Are you actually ascribing a civilized emotion to these simple-minded barbarians? They're a bare step above the beasts!"
Another discreet cough reminded him that he was insulting people who were freemen, armed, and protected with armor that would stop both magic and blades. He stopped, abruptly, and averted his eyes.