“But what does that mean exactly? Why would they bond themselves to a metal?”
“Well,” Tomaz said clearing his throat, “it gives you certain advantages. The metal lends you strength, for one—it’s harder to wound a Spellblade, and they heal faster. At least, when they’re in contact with their weapons that is. And they can command their weapons to a certain extent—like you’ve seen Leah do.She can’t make it dance or anything, but she can make it do things that no normal dagger should be able to do. Fly farther, hit a target more accurately, return to her if it’s close by. Oh, and if anyone she doesn’t approve of tries to pick it up, it gives them a nasty burn.”
The Prince instinctively closed his hand into a fist—the hand that had been burned by the girl’s dagger when he’d escaped to Banelyn. The burn had healed well, and there was hardly any mark left behind… but the memory was still clear and strong.
“Usually they’reeshendai, like I said, and usually they’re Rogues, not Rangers. Rangers tend to, like me, like to use the weapon that suits the situation if they can. Though we all have our favorites of course.”
“What’s the difference between a Ranger pair and a Rogue pair?” the Prince asked, hoping more conversation would drown his thoughts, or else re-submerge them. The big man didn’t even turn from stirring the pot, simply spoke in his rumbling mountain-slide voice, knowing it would carry in the cabin no matter how softly he spoke.
“Rangers, like Davydd and Lorna, are sent out to patrol certain areas, scout out and relay troop movements, sometimes set ambushes or raid along the border if the Empire is mobilizing, as the Prince of Oxen does every few months. Rogues on the other hand, that’s Leah and me, work much more subtly. Where Rangers actively fight the Empire, Rogues do so passively. Indirectly is the better word. We gather information. On members of the High Blood, the Most High, and the Children themselves. We are saboteurs as well, if the need arises.”
“Saboteurs?” the Prince asked, interested in spite of himself.
“Yes. Most of it goes unnoticed. Little things, such as delaying this or that project, or convincing certain members of the Empire not to look too closely into the affairs of the Kindred.”
“Convincing?”
Tomaz looked over his shoulder and smiled wickedly.
“Euphemisms are sometimes for the best way.”
“Right.”
They lapsed into silence again, Tomaz stirring the stew and the Prince sitting on the couch, staring into the fire. He really did feel like a child: his feet dangled a good six inches off the floor, even when he was slouching, and the high back went up over his head. As the silence lengthened, the Prince once more felt tension creeping into his shoulders and chest. His hands started to ball up into fists, and he had to make a conscious effort to lay them flat on his lap.
“So you and Leah are Rogues. Have you been a part of one of those?”
“Sabotage missions? I’ve been part of a few. It’s useful to have a big man on your side to deal with… crowd control.”
He winked at the Prince as he used this euphemism, and the Prince smiled, knowing Tomaz thought himself exceedingly clever for coming up with it.
“You said most of the sabotage goes unnoticed, but what about the things that do go noticed?”
“Ah, yes. You’ll most likely have heard of some things, though they were no doubt concealed in propaganda. Your brother Geofred is quite the master of turning disaster into opportunity.”
The Prince felt a swell of anger at this, but it quickly faded. First, because Tomaz was right. One of Geofred’s main responsibilities—and indeed talents—was keeping the citizens of the Empire informed about events throughout Lucia. And second, because he realized he didn’t care anymore what he thought of the Children, or what he said about them. In the Empire, it was death to voice a negative thought about one of the Children in public. But here, in the woods, with just a stew and a giant for company, such things seemed remarkably unimportant.
“All right, so try me. What have you done?”
“Personally, I’m responsible for the ongoing problems in expanding the granaries in Tyne.”
“What?” the Prince asked, shocked. Tomaz nodded, still watching the stew.
“Of course, it’s passed off as the Exiled Kindred burning crops and killing farmers, and I know that’s the story you’ve been brought up with. But for the past ten years I’ve done something very simple that’s suspended the granary construction, and I haven’t need to kill a single farmer in order to do it.”
“What?” The Prince asked, warily. He was unsure if he wanted to know.
“I break the dams. Easy enough. Bloodless—unless a guard tries to gut me, like what happened a few years back. I nearly didn’t make it out; some hotshot captain had set an ambush. Too bad he wasn’t expecting an ex-Blade Master. In any case, break two or three dams and the crops below them fail, flooded with water or else parched. It’s a common enough thing to happen by accident. We just make sure to target the ones that Rikard is planning to use for one of his special projects.”
The Prince, who had known for years that a certain number of dams broke every year in the Tynian Fields that produced wheat and other grains for the rest of the Empire, was shocked. The official story had always been that the dams were poorly constructed, or else that they had been torn down by the Empire in order to make way for better ones.
“That’s incredible. But… how could you do that? The grain shortages that were caused in some years… you’re responsible for that.”
Tomaz was shaking his head.
“There are no grain shortages,” he rumbled. “In Tyne there are nearly ten acres of silos full of grain stored every year by the merchants and farmers for sale and distribution across the Empire. The extra grain, the grain we won’t allow them to grow, is the grain needed to feed an increased military under the command of Rikard.”
“But there’s been no military increase in nearly half a century,” the Prince protested. “Not since Rikard attacked—”
