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After Brennan hunts down Jovian, or fails to, he's going to head for one of his normal haunts when he's got things to think about and irritations to quash: Up on one of the battlements or roofs, the highest he can reach. The fresh air and the higher view are soothing, even if Brennan runs the risk of having a lightning bolt strike him.

After he has done his fair share of gazing broodingly into the middle distance like Hamlet on Elsinore battlements (or whatever else it is he proposes to do up there), he becomes aware that he is not alone. Standing next to him is Lucas, wearing (over his existentialist black polo neck and jeans) an Astrakan coat of the type favoured by early Soviet commissars (only rather better cut) and an irritated expression.

"I was wondering," he says, "whether this morning's brouhaha is some hideous new form of post-Chaosian reveille that we're to be subjected to on a daily basis like that bloody dawn bagpiper Vicky and that pompous prat Albert insisted on having at Balmoral, or if there were some singular and particular reason for it that you might care to share with me."

He reaches inside his coar and lifts out a gold cigarette case with the St Vire crest, flicks it open, and offers it to Brennan.

Despite the amazing regenerative properties of his lungs, it's not a habit Brennan formed. He shakes his head.

"It is the result," Brennan says, "of having given a friend enough rope to hang herself by the neck until dead, and watching others treat it flippantly."

Most if not all of Brennan's anger is gone, but the last part of that is enunciated carefully enough to be a warning shot across the bow.

Lucas is not high water for nothing - but he also feels that someone who was merely splashing in the puddles of water levels could pick up on that note in Brennan's voice.

As is right and proper.

Lucas simply nods as he takes a cigarette for himself and lights it with a match dragged across the rough hewn stone of the wall on this level.

"So," he says. "You feel her betrayal is personal, as well as political."

Brennan gives a sidelong look at that, but in the Family tradition, addresses only the part of Lucas' speech that he chooses to.

That being:

"Do you think she's dead?"

"I don't know. But I know she's heading that way in a handbasket. If she isn't a traitor, then she is very high up on Dara's list for assimilation. She'll end up like that member of the guard, and Dara will have that much more information to use against us.

"If she is a traitor..." He lets that trail off into an ellipsis of perfect clarity.

"In either case," says Lucas, first surreptiously checking that he has space to move if Brennan makes a sudden grab for his throat...

This amuses Brennan, in a distant way. Cold realities are fine, and unpleasant conclusions.

"...from our point of view - in the sense of the Family - death might be the safest solution. A calculation that I am sure our Uncles - well, some of them, have doubtless computed."

"No, not necessarily," says Brennan. "First, there's the manner of death. If she dies by Dara's hand, or this Cleph she's running around with, that's the least safe solution. And if she were to die by Amber's hand, we might not know the truth behind the situation."

"I must admit," says Lucas, "I would not have been surprised had Caine informed us at that meeting that Aisling was dead - whether or not he dessed it in the time-honoured euphuemisms of 'shot while trying to escape'. And of course it is possible that she is dead, and Caine has, for reasons of his own, cried havoc. But I doubt that. We are in peril enough without sowing deliberate seeds of confusion."

"I would have been surprised," says Brennan. "Caine is cagier than that, and he understands the value of knowing what it is Aisling knows, and knowing what she divulged. We don't have Dara's end-game advantage, there. Having been burned once, though, he'll probably be wearing asbestos next time around.

"And, yes, we have enough confusion to last a generation."

"However ... it is one thing to talk coolly of the logic of a situation, and another to deal with the feelings that lie behind the facts." [Lucas] glances now at Brennan. "Some of the Knights, I gather, feel this more strongly than others."

"That would be an astute guess."

"I have that reputation," says Lucas - and then he smiles. "There are also your own words, and the draconic wake-up call that drove me from my bed. It is a little unfortunate, would you not agree, that the most volatile of your companions should possess the most vociferous of emotional barometers? At all events, both powerfully suggest where the fault-lines lie."

He takes a long draw at his cigarette.

Brennan takes the opportunity to consider whether or not that crossed his lines of flippancy. Subtracting Lucas' normal sarcasm, he decides it does not.

"It is even more unfortunate that you will be leaving us so soon if this division remains unresolved," he continues quietly. "While I am fully cognizant of the pull of family loyalties, to say nothing of the attractions that a visit to remoter parts will no doubt offer at this time of year, I cannot help but feel you might be of more use defusing what appears to be an explosive situation here in Amber." He shrugs. "That is merely my perception. But I doubt whether Ossian and I - or even Cambina - would carry quite the same weight if we tried to intervene in a quarrel between the knight commanders."

"You flatter me," he says with just a touch of bitterness. Just a touch. "Even assuming that's true, I already promised Fi whatever help she might need taking Brita back. Which turns out to be," Brennan frowns, "A family picnic."

"Doubtless a challenge in itself," says Lucas. "The thought of such an event for moi, combining - as it would - my mother, my belle mere Lady Vesper, the obligatory sand in the sandwiches, bawling children and copious wasps ... well, I think there would be less unpleasantness to be shivering on the meadows in the early light of dawn, with a sick realisation deep in one's stomach that in one's cups the night before one had managed to challenge Jerod."

A duel with Jerod evidently doesn't hold the same sense of dread and foreboding for Brennan, but he takes Lucas' point. "And you haven't even met Grandmother," he says.

[Lucas] stabs out his cigarette. "Do you have any suggestions of what might be usefully done if things fall apart here in your absence? I am thinking specifically of a quarrel amongst your Knight Commanders. Riots and mayhem on a more domestic scale I trust we shall prove able to deal with."

Brennan smiles faintly at the idea of the whole of Amber falling into riots and mayhem in his absence.

"Wait for them to come to their senses and remember that they fought together. I wouldn't step between them, if I were you."

"Interposing my body between enraged combatant has never seemed the most sensible use of the Lucan form," agrees Lucas drily.

"Luckily for all concerned," says Lucas, "I'd be shocked if it ever came to that."

Pause.

"Lucas? Are you trying to be... helpful?"

"I am invariably helpful," Lucas says bitterly. "It is my lot in life that my endeavours are almost habitually mis-interpreted as officious interfering, jealous carping or indolent bitching which actually tells you more about the prejudices that I am continually confronted with than they do about my own shining endeavours. But I have been given to understand that such undeserved calumny is the lot of those who strive to bring a little light to other's bleak and desolate lives." He glances at Brennan. "To say nothing of the services of a really good hair stylist."

Brennan surpresses a smirk, but not the glimmer in his eye. "Of course, cousin. Your reputation is always safe with me."

"Tell me, though, in the absence of plagues, riots, and quarrelling Knights, how shall you be occupying your time?"

Lucas sighs. "My appalling mother-in-law fancies that I might embroil myself in the confusion and acrimony that is raging over the Hardwind estate. As though we do not possess ample family quarrels among our nearest and supposedly dearest, she believes that I will be the oil to pour on their troubled waters, the emollient that will soothe their raw wounds, the embrocation that will ease their aching joints. I should be flattered - being held to be the family's closest approach to a peacemaker does make a pleasant change from being seen as the gadfly, if not the blowfly. But I fear it will involve long and tedious interviews with dreary little accountants who will be determined to initiate me into their arcane and unpalatable arts."

"Maybe we could arrange a trade. Do you think your mother-in-law would find my solutions to the affair more palatable?"

He looks suspiciously at Brennan. "Why? Do you have a little task for me to while away my copious idle hours?"

Brennan looks hurt. He's really not, though.

"Simply being sociable, cousin. I trust my reputation is safe with you, though.

"Why, do you want a little task?"

"That depends," says Lucas with caution, "on the nature of the task. You must remember that I have a highly developed sense of self-preservation, combined with an appreciation of my creature comforts that has been known to occasion unfavorable comment from the grosser spirits that it has been my painful lot to dwell among.

"Although, perhaps, I do have a few longer term interests of my own. Such as finding a way to keeping the citizens of Amber from tearing each other apart for the present. A little practical economics.

"I understand you're trying a few ventures in this field as well."

"Yes, actually," Brennan responds, "although time hasn't permitted me to go as far with it as I might have liked. The construction of the Knights' Chapterhouse is intended to get some of the construction and industry working, and at least some coins moving from place to place.

"What were your ideas?"

"Much the same as yours," says Lucas, "although with a different outcome. Get the money flowing, give the construction industries a kickstart - on the basis that other industries would follow ...

"However, the project I was contemplating was - characteristically enough, I suppose you'd say - concerned more with pleasure than with utility. An attempt to provide circuses rather than just bread." He shoots another sidelong look at Brennan. "And to avoid supplying them with another reminder of this unsettling military presence in their midst."

He allows Brennan to absorb that and then adds quietly, "Although - at times I feel we're patting the patient's hand and applying sticking plaster to a superficial cut - while the internal injuries are horrendous. And those are the ones we should be treating."

 

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X: A Silken Encounter | Index | XII: A Visit from Lady Hardwind