“He’ll win, but it will cost him the use of his left arm for about a month.”
“Everything I’ve heard about the Bastard of Dagarra says he can take care of himself,” Reynald said.
“Yes, but I don’t want to take a chance on Solentine being stabbed in the throat instead of his shoulder. I was thinking of asking Will to sneak the message into the Three Moons.”
“You feel something for Solentine,” he said.
“I know what drives him. He is a horrible bastard, but if you earn his loyalty, he will fight for you till his dying breath. I don’t want that breath to happen any time soon. He is useful.”
And that sounded a lot better thanI spent too much time watching him struggle and now I’m emotionally invested despite my common sense.
“I’ll take care of it,” Reynald offered.
“Thank you. As you can see, Solentine is at his wits’ end. We can sell the secret of iron to the Shears. It would earn us some coin and let us keep the element of surprise. Hreban would continue his present course for a while, unaware that he was being targeted.”
“I sense abutcoming.”
“We could also leak the existence of the iron to the Throne. We would lose the surprise, but we’d rattle Hreban’s cage. He’s been too comfortable for too long. Planning to kidnap Galiene’s daughter, killing a man and paying the city guards to watch the body . . . He thinks he is untouchable.”
It rankled me.
“I think I know why that is,” Reynald said. “Silveren.”
“You think Hreban and the Redeemers are already allied?”
He nodded.
“Why? When Hreban approaches Silveren after coming to power, Silveren seems to be conflicted about it. He hesitates.”
“Because Hreban is not a strategist, but Silveren is. I fought with Silveren once, years ago. The man is sly, subtle, and guarded. He doesn’t seek personal recognition, he avoids it. I watched him formulate the plan of assault and then nudge the commanders in the room toward it until they saw it, and when they claimed it, he congratulated them on their superb strategy. He observes, he waits, and he strikes only when he is sure. I doubt he’s changed in the last few years. I cannot see him throwing his lot in with Hreban on a whim.”
In the books, after Hreban claimed his top-dog spot, he made a grand show of traveling to the Redeemer Tower and asking Silveren in front of the entire order to be his sword for justice and protection of the kingdom. But that could’ve been staged. In fact, it probably was. Hreban wouldn’t have risked public humiliation of being turned down. He had to know in advance that Silveren would agree to aid him.
An existing alliance with Silveren would explain why Hreban was feeling bold. He had an entire knight order at his disposal. If things went badly, Silveren’s people had many ways of solving inconvenient problems.
Reynald leaned back, his expression thoughtful. “I understand Hreban. Gaining the support of a knight order would go a long way to helping him climb up. The Defenders and the Conquerors each have a Great Family behind them. Allying with them is more complicated, while the Redeemers have no backing. I know what he gets out of it. But what’s in it for Silveren?”
“The Redeemers rise in status above other holy orders.”
Reynald grimaced. “Status they would lose immediately if either Arvel or Bors decide they care. Too much risk for too little gain. No, it’s bigger than that.”
“So Silveren is using Hreban? To what end?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
Estol Silveren wasn’t a POV character. He didn’t have a lot of page time either. He was the son of a baron from the southwest. His family was well-off. He came from a long line of knights, and like his father, he had distinguished himself on the battlefield. In war, he was clever and demonstrated flashes of brilliance.
When he was twenty-three, he was sent overseas on one of Rellas’s foreign campaigns. The detachment of the army under his command had taken a small town and burned it to the ground. It was unclear how the fire had started, but many people died, and Silveren was deeply affected by it. He resigned and joined the Order of Redeemers, seeking forgiveness and absolution. His rise through their ranks was meteoric. Within five years, the aging Preceptor passed him the reins. Silveren was thirty-one now, and so far, he’d stayed completely neutral, surfing the sea of political intrigue without getting his hair wet.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “Hreban holds him in high regard, which for him means refraining from openly sneering in Silveren’s direction. When chaos starts, publicly the Redeemers act mostly as one would expect. Once Hreban’s private troops are done rampaging, they put out the fires, keep the peace, and obey Sauven’s commands.”
“And privately?”
“They do things that would turn your hair white. Especially Silveren. You’re right, he must have some kind of plan, but what is it?”
“I don’t know, and that troubles me.”
It troubled me as well.
