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AMBER
Boadice’s diary,
Session 87
Played on the 15th of April, 1999
Written by Jopie Schekkerman, based on a campaign by Astrid Tops.

House under siege.

     used to have better ways of opening a casket. When I was Black Cobra the pirate, a mate of mine owned a heavy sabre called Master-key. With it, he could break any lock in two blows tops. I sincerely regretted I could not use that sabre on Trisha’s precious power-sink casket. The awful thing needed to be opened with patience and dexterity and without leaving a trace of tampering or the Chartins would know what I had been up to. So here I was, in shadow, in a rented jeweller’s workshop, with no Pattern or magic to help me and only my skills to fall back on. Fortunately, in my long life before I found Amber, I learned some of the jeweller’s arts. Those were gentler, quieter times, when I still had time to learn and create. Ah, the good old days… Just as good as those days when I was up to my knees in blood and gore. Sweet memories.

But back to the present. With the coal fire blazing and the tools inspected and ready, I turned to study the casket. It was not made of silver as I initially thought, but of a silvery metal with silver decorations. That the decorations were added onto the casket itself was a windfall. I could remove the silver studs, the filigree and the gems, saw through the bottom of the box and put the decorations back to cover my tracks. This, I did, using a tiny saw blade and taking great care to follow the decoration as closely as possible. It took me eight hours to take the bottom out of the casket; the metal was very hard and my saw blade very small. The box was lined with velvet so I could only use the tip of the saw. It took another hour and the advice of a dressmaker to remove the lining, but then I had the contents of Trisha’s box in my hands.

How disappointing. At first I saw only jewels: very fine and valuable pieces but ordinary jewellery. I could hardly believe that Trisha was so shallow as to keep that in her anti-magic box. How unsatisfactory! I had hoped for a little black book of addresses, a diary, secret letters, codebooks! But then two pieces of paper fell out. They were letters, rather old and tatty, and if Trisha had kept them they had to be important. I settled down and read them.

The first and newest was also the shortest. It read:
“Dear Trisha. It looks like your plans have been successful. I must admit to having some doubts earlier whether it would really work out, but the vendetta is registered and already I notice the effect in my little private war. I hope your relatives are aware that I need her to be alive for a long time. She will become the nail in his coffin. As for your reward, I am afraid we will have to wait, of course, until matters are fully settled to our convenience and you can safely return to the Courts. My father has promised me that the change we all hope for is now closer than ever. You have served me well. Mist.”

Who the hell was Mist? Carefully, I read the letter again. ‘Your plans have been successful’. That means that the faked death and the vendetta were Trisha’s idea, not her family’s as Yurgo would have me believe. Or Trisha was claiming the family’s plans as her own, or just presenting a united family front.

Interestingly, the expression ‘a nail in your coffin’ is commonly used by parents to chide their children. It’s like saying ‘you’re giving me grey hairs’ or ‘you will be the death of me’. I associated this with my father. Also, ‘my little private war’ sounded to me like machinations in Overshadow. Come to think of it, there was a woman in Overshadow who went by the name of Mist. And the time of the vendetta, all that was known of my father’s identity was his Overshadow alias. But this was just speculation. ‘The change we all hope for’ could refer to the installation of the Nexus and the foundation of Galoria, or the fixing of the Logrus and the civil war in the Courts, or something entirely different. No, all this letter told me was that the vendetta the Chartins called against me was part of a greater design and that someone called ‘Mist’ was involved. Bugger them all. Frustrated, I put the letter aside and reached for the other one.

The second letter was longer and more worn, and it looked older. I will not copy it out here. It was a rather passionate love letter, addressed to Trisha and signed only with ‘yours forever’. The handwriting was somehow familiar though… It was not Gran’s handwriting, nor Bleys’ or Frewar’s but I had seen it before. I re-read the letter for hints to the identity of Trisha’s lover but found nothing; no familiar turns of phrase, no idiom, no tell-tale misspellings. Still, I had the impression that I knew the author of this letter, not intimately perhaps but somewhat. Trisha’s lover had been a master of shadow, --I could not make out if Trisha had been too--, and there was something else… The phrasing of the letter… It suggested that the author was not a denizen of the Courts of Chaos.

The language was free-er, less formalised than you would expect from a Chaosite. In Chaos there are rules of etiquette that dictate the form of a love letter. Whole books have been written on the subject and an admirer would have to be very sure of himself to depart from those rules. No, the author in all likelihood did not hail from the Courts. He also… I read the letter again to be sure. Yes, Trisha’s lover still felt very passionate about her, but their relationship was starting to crumble and he was starting to worry about what she would say about him when their liaison ended. I have had my share of lovers in my time and I have plenty of experience in reading between the lines of a love letter. I didn’t think this letter did Trisha’s mysterious paramour much good; Trisha would have had just as much experience in this as I have and would have noticed the same thing.

Their relationship had been very much a secret, that much I could tell. Could Trisha’s ex-lover have become her murderer? Did she finally use the secrets she had learned against him, and did he kill her to silence her? Again, there was nothing I could take direct action on. If I found a sample of handwriting that matched any of the letters, I would know what to do.

. . . _ . . .

I trumped Gran to share what I found.
“I’ve got it open,” I said when I could see him. “Can you come over and take a look?”
Gran sighed and pulled his ‘I’d rather not do that because it’s difficult’ face. He said:
“Ehm, yes, but is it safe there?” He seemed rather distracted. “Where are you?”
“Somewhere in shadow,” I said.
“Where? Were you followed?”
“Ehm, no?”

Why would anyone want to follow me? When Gran insisted I take a look around, I opened the trump contact wider. It became a window and Gran could see my surroundings, including the opened casket, the jewels and letters.
“I will put these two through a copier before I put them back.”
“That looks awful!” Gran said, looking at the casket and the mess on my workbench. “You can put it back together, can’t you?”
I assured him I could.
“You know what a loss of face it would be to give it back to the Chartins like that, don’t you?”
I assured him again that I could make it so it looked like the casket had never been opened.

Suddenly, Gran asked what was in the letters.
“Well, this one is a passionate love-letter,” I said with just a bit of malicious pleasure. “I will read it to you later. The other one is about—“
“When was it written?” Gran asked, and I thought about it. The love-letter was older than the one about the vendetta but it was not dated, so his guess was as good as mine.
“I have a problem,” Gran said, “But I can’t tell you over trump.”
“I will come home as soon as possible,” I said, “But first I have to…” and I pointed at the casket.
“Just be careful,” Gran said. “Don’t let yourself be followed. Be cautious, there’s danger everywhere.”
I smiled at him.
“I’ll be careful. What’s wrong anyway? O no, you can’t tell me. Never mind.”
“Just be careful.”
I promised I would, blew him a kiss and closed the contact.
Silly boy. He should learn to stand on his own two feet. I wouldn’t come running to him just because he had a bad dream.

Now I had opened the casket from the inside, I needed to repair it without leaving a mark. First, I walked a while into shadow to find a creature that was like the copy-demons we have in Ornach Ways. They are a disgusting but useful breed; they copy any document unto the last detail without reading it. You put the documents in their mouth and they kind of taste what is on there. Then they secrete copies that come out of their back end all warm and smelling of ink. As I said: disgusting.

With the letters and jewellery put away, I turned back to the casket. From the inside I could see exactly how the lock worked, and it was easy to make a key that fit. There had been no traps like I had feared but it was a complicated lock and don’t think I could have picked it. With the metal ‘sawdust’ I had saved, I welded the bottom back in place and put the silver decoration back on. From the outside the casket looked just as it had before, only a little cleaner. I spent an instructive half hour cooking up grime that looked like the other stuff that had gathered in the cracks and corners of the casket’s decoration.

From the inside, the welding I had done was far more noticeable. I polished it away but then the treated areas shone brighter than the rest. So I polished the entire inside of the casket and re-tarnished it with chemicals before I put the velvet lining back in and covered all my hard work. If saw it you would agree: you would have to look pretty darn close to tell that the casket had been tampered with, and even then you would need to know exactly where to look. The lock, of course, was unscratched and the casket itself had cast off every trace of the magic and Pattern we had thrown at it.

As an afterthought, I took another magical look at the thing. Was it really the blue stones that were responsible for the casket’s immunity to Power? I could not tell; the entire casket was magically ‘invisible’. I guess I should have looked when I had the bottom off. The bit of metal dust that was left over seemed to have some of the casket’s power-absorbing qualities, but if it had been the metal, the stones, both of them or the combination of stones and metal, I could not tell.
I wiped my fingerprints from the jewellery and the letters, checked the casket and the contents for smells and other signs of interference and put them back in the same order I found them. I closed the casket with the key I had made (which I kept, you never know), paid the bill for the workshop and tried to trump Gran again.

. . . _ . . .

To my surprise, my lover did not take the call. Frewar did, though. Before the contact cleared I heard his voice, tense and suspicious:
“Yes? Who’s there?”
I hastened to strengthen the contact and show him my face.
“O Boadice, it’s you. Yes, Gran thought it was you but he didn’t dare take the call. It could have been a trap you know.”
I cocked an eyebrow. Frewar was walking through the ways of Escallwyn, armed to the teeth and with a number of guards at his back. I held out my hand and he pulled me through. I found myself facing half a dozen drawn swords until Frewar assured his guards I was only the lady Boadice.

“What’s going on, Frewar?”
Frewar gestured. “Not here.”
“We’re in the Ways, aren’t we?”
“Yes, but not in the safe sector.”
“Where’s the baby?” I asked. “If it’s as unsafe—“
“O the baby,” Frewar interrupted. “She’s around somewhere.”
“Frewar!” I shouted, angry about his disregard for the girl. My friend had the decency to look embarrassed.
“She’s your first, only niece!”
Frewar sighed. “You don’t understand. Yet. He didn’t tell you, did he? No. Let Gran explain it to you, I’m not taking that on.”
I was ready to shake Frewar until his eyeballs rattled.
“Are we talking about the baby or—?“
“Yes, the baby too. That and the other thing. The baby is now… Yes, she’s important too but… Different.”
“Very well,” I said, my teeth clenched. “Take me to Gran.”

We reached Gran’s study. Frewar knocked and a voice from inside demanded a password.
“Mouse in red trousers,” Frewar said. He and the people inside exchanged more nonsensical phrases before they let us in. Gran sat behind his desk and got up when we entered.
“Ah, you’re safe? No one followed you? How did you get in?”
“Frewar trumped me in,” I said.
Gran thought about that and could not find fault.
“Hmm. Okay.”
I felt something ‘tickle’, something eerie was happening and it put the hair on the back of my neck on end.
“Gran…” I said, angry, “I don’t appreciate what you’re doing. Explain. Now.”
“I needed to know if you were really you. And that Frewar had not changed.”
“What did you do?”
“A little scan.”
“Very brave of you.”

It had not been Logrus or Pattern, the tickling that I felt. It had felt more like a psychic scan; very light and superficial. Gran had not read my mind; it had been the signature of a personality he was after, an aura, the way someone is… When I thought about it; he had been scanning for that impression you need to get of someone when you are trying to make a trump of them. Gran had concentrated that into a two-second scan.
“Teach me,” I said.
“I will, when there’s time.”
I nodded and sat down, and the guards retreated to the corners of the room.

“What the hell is going on.”
Gran bit his lips, then gave me a mirthless grin.
“I am a candidate for the throne of Chaos. As is your cousin Murlas.”
“What?!” I exclaimed, and broke out in laughter. “I’m sorry, this is no laughing matter. What, why, how?”
My unbelief covered the fact that I knew a little bit about it already. But I had never expected Gran to be a part of this.
“Voluntarily?”
“No, nominated of course,” Gran said.
“You can’t be. Do you want it, the throne?”
“Of course not,” Gran said. “If we were a stronger house I would not have been nominated. I am just the first candidate.”

I said I still did not understand what was going on. Gran explained, with Frewar filling in the details. Apparently, the council had taken the matter of who was to take the throne of Chaos into its own hands. At their last meeting, the Major Council had set an ancient king-finding procedure in motion, a procedure that was quite different from the usual who-is-first-in-line-and-lives-longest trial. You know what I mean with that: the silent round of assassinations that put Merlin on the throne after King Swayvill died. That one had been going on quietly in the background, spurring a death here and a disappearance there, but it had failed to produce a king so far. The Major Council had realised that the Courts could not afford another massacre among its best and brightest so soon after the last one, so it had decided on a method that was quicker and maybe not quite so dirty.

Jostin Baccaran, head of the house Baccaran and leader of the Progressive Party, had nominated Gran as candidate for the throne of Chaos. Jaill Helgram had nominated Murlas, and as an afterthought and in a desire to be a big player too, Despil Sawall nominated Berice Omega, one of the grand old ladies of Chaos. The first nominations were meant to spark off a round of discussion, and maybe a round of assassination attempts aimed only at the young candidates for the throne. The outcome of this round determined the position of the factions in the Council and the starting position for a new batch of king-nominees. Then they would have several rounds of this with only one or two deaths per round, until eventually the final and serious candidates were nominated and decided upon.

Each round of ‘voting’ was a battle for prestige in which the parties tried to win other houses over to their side. In the end, when the last and final candidates were nominated, the council required a unanimous decision about who would be King of Chaos. When the final vote was about to be cast, the doors to the Major Council’s conference chamber would be locked, and they would not open again until a king had been chosen. The last and only time this procedure had been followed, of the 32 heads of houses that went in only eighteen walked out again. Of course, before the last voting round there were casualties too, especially among the nominees. (I supposed it would do you good if the candidate for the opposition proved unfit for the throne by being unable to survive.) As long as there was no new king, empty seats in the Major Council would not be filled. If it’s spokesperson in the Council died, a Major Family would lose their seat in the Council.

So that was it. That was why the Escallwyns were up in arms and Murlas was seriously pissed off. I guessed Berice Omega wasn’t pleased either, to be nominated by a newbie. Being the first candidate was an insult anyway; the first is usually a runt; a guinea pig to test the water for piranhas. This was just wonderful. I wondered what Ornach was up to. As far as I knew he hadn’t allied with either the conservatives or the progressives, but I was sure he had something up his sleeve.
“Now, we’ll just see if I survive this,” Gran said. “We’ll see if Murlas survives and if we can introduce a new candidate while we still have a shred of dignity left to us.”
“Hence the security,” I said. “For how long?”
“As long as it takes. That one time it happened before, it took a couple of months until there was a king. But I hope it can be quicker this time.”
“Is it really impossible to just beg off?” Frewar asked from his seat on the windowsill. He re-arranged a dagger that was poking him and I noticed the shutters behind him were closed.
“Do you know how badly we would lose face if I declined right now? Let’s hold out for a week and resign then, then we wouldn’t look so cowardly.”
Grand turned to address the both of us.
“Look, if I can nominate someone else in the fraction and the others support me, I am rid of it too.”

“Can you disqualify yourself in an honourable way?” I asked.
It turned out that there weren’t very many honourable ways out. The problem was that if Gran proved himself unfit for the throne, he proved himself unfit to be head of the house Escallwyn and that would leave only Thron and Frewar: a house of two.
“And your child?” I asked.
Gran sighed and I grabbed his shoulders.
“Tell me she’s alive.”
Gran avoided my eyes.
“In fact you should not consider her as such, Boadice.”
“As what?”
“Alive.”
I silently counted to ten. Calling him a spineless cowardly murdering bastard would drastically shorten the conversation and I would not learn what was going on.

Eight… Nine… Ten.
“Why not.”
Gran took a deep breath.
“I know you did your very best to save her life, and, well…”
“She isn’t dead, is she?”
“As good as. Maybe not dead in a physical way…”
“You have two more sentences before I go to see her.”
Gran swallowed. I looked him in the eye.
“She is too misshapen to be your heir?”
“She can’t shape shift.”
“She’s still a baby!”
I pushed Gran away. He said:
“A child of a Major House that can’t shape shift cannot be accepted into the family. It cannot be dedicated to the Serpent—“
“She will learn when she’s bigger.”
“She won’t.”
“How do you know?! How can you tell? Tell me—“
“I had her examined!” Gran slapped his hands on the desk. “You stabilised her with Pattern to save her life, but that destroyed her ability to shape shift, if she had any left.”
I put my head in my hands. My fault.
“If we were a strong house I could give her something of a life, maybe in secret. But now it’s impossible.”

“She can always be my child,” I said.
“The problem,” Gran said, “is that she can’t be my child.”
“Give her to me; I would love to have her.”
“Our relationship would still suggest she was also my child.”
“She looks like neither of us,” I said, aware that this was a very weak argument.
“That is not the issue. Now you know why she has no name yet. Maybe it’s better to say goodbye with dignity—“
“NO!” I shouted. “Certainly not! If you don’t want her, I’ll take her. There are illegitimate children a-plenty in Amber, who wants to throw the first stone may do so. But she will have a life!”
“I can’t risk the scandal!” Gran said. “If it comes out that she’s my child: the family can’t handle that.”
“People already know you have a child,” I said. Surely the Chartins knew, and all the gossips. “There are rumours.”
Gran didn’t answer.

After an exhausted silence, I said:
“Gran, you won’t kill her. I won’t let you.”
“It’s not as if I want to,” Gran said wearily. “She is still my daughter. But I can’t recognise her and I can’t… There is no way I can connect my name to hers. Not even in rumour. Officially, she must die. If you can save her life in a way that would make sure no one will find out she’s mine… Please do.”
“Then she will be my child.”
“Everyone knows I’m your lover. If you had a child it would also be mine, in the public eye.”

That’s what you think, I thought. Gran did not know that I had been thinking about taking another lover. I would have one already if I had found a man who was both attractive and interested. I never knew it could be so hard to get laid.

“I would deny it,” I said. Gran did not react and I reached out and touched his arm.
“Gran, you’re tired. Your house is in danger now, but who knows how things are in a month, in two months.”
Gran agreed but with a hint of sarcasm. In two months his house could have ceased to exist. I said I could take the girl to Amber but Gran would not allow it.
“Not to Amber,” he said. “Raise her in a secret place where no-one knows us. You could leave her on the doorstep of an orphanage. It has been done before.”
I restrained myself.
“It should be a safe place, and the only safe place I know at the moment is Amber. There are armies marching through shadow!”

That was not entirely true but I did not want her far away in shadow where I could not visit her when I wanted to. Also: you never know when time will play its tricks and years will pass for her while only a day goes by for me.
“I don’t want your name connected with the child!” Gran insisted. “Because then I will also be, and that can’t happen. I’m open to suggestions but not that one.”
“We will find a way,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
“Let’s sleep on it,” Gran said. “I don’t know what to do either.”

“And the Chartins?” I asked after a period of silence. “Won’t they demand to see the baby?”
“Not if it’s dead,” Gran answered. “It has to die officially anyway.”
“So, do you have any plans?”
“Not directly. Dig in and hold out.”
I asked if he would mind if I helped design a better security. Gran agreed, as long as I kept him informed about the changes. Yes, you may wonder why I kept putting effort in this house and this man when it and he were so callous towards the baby I loved. But you must remember that the Escallwyns still held my sister, and the influence I had here and there in this universe were my tools in my struggle against the Enemy from Outside.
I reminded myself that I really had to needed to set out on my quest for Ornach’s black and white trump, and soon if I wanted to keep my position in Ornach Ways.

“Of course I will keep you informed about the new security,” I said. “You will have to live with it. What were your own plans for your daughter?”
“I never wanted to think about it,” Gran said. “I was always afraid that she couldn’t. Even in less difficult circumstances it is… A child that cannot shape shift in Chaos is… isn’t alive, do you understand?”
On a certain level I did.
“It’s a… she will be a social outcast, a freak, someone who can’t function in her world. And certainly not in a Major House. It would be a liability we can not afford.”

I took several deep breaths. It was so stupid, so callous, so unfair. And logical, and true. Without saying another word I left the room. Frewar and much of the guards followed me.

. . . _ . . .

I gathered Frewar, his father Thron and some of the warriors of the house, and we sat down to work out a new defence for Escallwyn Ways. The old security measures had been ruefully inadequate.

What they needed was a total overhaul of the house’s security, both magical and physical. If Trisha’s assassin could trump in, hang around for a few hours, kill and get away with it Escallwyn had a problem. I introduced my friends to a thing called brainstorming; something I had learned from king Random. It worked and after a bit of prompting from me the ideas started flowing. We made a plan and set to work. We could not put up a permanent shield against Pattern, Logrus or Nexus because that would cost far too much energy. Instead, we installed ‘detectors’. Logrus was an excellent ward against Pattern, and a hint of Pattern in the system made it possible to detect the presence of Logrus. Pattern also warned –to a lesser extent- against the use of Nexus but we could not test that.

To my surprise, using Gran’s trick of scanning someone’s personality in the security system was not only possible but also feasible. It made for a fail-safe identification of visitors. Eyva had another good idea: we could detect psychic activity; not just magic or power but simply the presence of a sentient being. I loved this and decided to use it in my own home in the Carth Islands if I got a chance. We used this to stop the last gaps in our defence. While working on the requisite spells and wards, I pointed out to Thron that losing Yaslin would be a sure way to alienate me from the house Escallwyn. Thron nodded, taking this as given, and said that he had her transferred to a hidden shadow that was still near the centre of the Ways. We added her special prison to the general security scheme.

When most of the work was done, I snuck away to take a look at the baby. Breastfeeding has its drawbacks: my boobs felt about ready to burst. I had this little pump to milk myself when I was in shadow but that was an uncomfortable thing to do. I heard the girl before I could see the nursery. My breasts reacted to her weeping and they felt even fuller than before. Odd thing, that. I sprinted the last couple of meters, threw open the door, pushed a woman away who was fussing with a bottle, unbuttoned in haste and soon Gran’s daughter was drinking contentedly. I took a deep breath and relaxed.

Elanor, I would call her Elanor. It means something like ‘light’. A long time ago I knew a woman called Elanor. She was strong and clever. This little girl would need to be strong and clever and much more than that. How dare Gran even think of abandoning her! I imagined kicking him repeatedly in the groin.
Elanor waved her green fists and suckled contentedly. Curse Gran, curse him twice! Again he did not have the strength to love in adversity. First he married Trisha instead of holding out for me, and now he did not dare to raise his own daughter because of the danger she posed to his house. But I would have to abide by his rules. If he said the Escallwyns could not raise his girl, they couldn’t. It was his decision to make; this was not my family even if it felt that way.

No, Elanor could not stay in the Ways of Escallwyn. We could hide her but who would teach her and be her friend? We could not abduct governesses and playmates for her and kill them when we didn’t need them anymore. Well, we could, but it would be a hassle and a security risk and not good for Elanor in the long run. I imagined my little girl standing in a dark hallway, seventeen years old and as deformed as she was now, listening to faraway music but forbidden to come to the ball. No, she deserved better.

I could not take her to Amber to live as my ward. Gran was right; people would connect her with him in a thrice. Besides that: if I claimed that she was mine, sooner or later someone would make her walk the Pattern. Perhaps I could put her in one of the orphanages on my islands? I founded a number of them in my duchy. With the number of women dying in childbed and men dying at sea, the islands have their share of orphans. The orphanages give Children who would become street urchins or corpses a home, an education and a chance of adoption. Lately, unmarried mothers had started leaving their babies on the doorstep of the orphanages with half a playing card or some other token in the basket. Most of the time they would collect their child after a year or two, when they were able to take care of it. Sometimes they even visited when they could, in secret. Two priests and a squire stated their protest against this practise, accusing me of encouraging vice in young women. I scolded them and asked if they would prefer it if the babies were drowned like they were before. They piped down and apologised. Maybe I could disguise myself as a woman in trouble and leave Elanor at an orphanage? No, I couldn’t. She would be taunted and snubbed because of her handicaps. Children can be merciless, and adults too. She couldn’t have a life on the Carth Islands either.

I looked down and forced myself to look at the girl objectively. She was really very ugly, with a scrunched up - pulled out look to her limbs. Her head was still bald but on her calves sleek green hair had started to grow. Her eyes and ears were set unevenly, her hips were crooked, one of her feet pointed sideways and she had a tiny third nostril. Her chubby little hands were a bit claw-like and she had eleven toes. And she was green, of course. A band of sleek green scales I had not noticed before ran from her ribs over her left hip to her chubby little thigh. If I left her in a place like Amber, a childhood of loneliness and merciless taunting would break her. On the other hand; putting her in a shadow where everyone looked exactly like her would not prepare her for life in the Real worlds. What I needed was a place where every tenth or fifteenth person was deformed in some way. That way she would learn that she was different and get used to being teased about her looks but she would have role models who coped with their handicap, and she would learn to deal with it. I could easily find a place like that in shadow. The Escallwyns are lucky, as far as I know you can’t make a shadow like that with Logrus. But finding exactly the right shadow would take me a long time and I had to start working on finding Ornach’s daughter.

Suddenly I remembered something! I already knew a shadow that would fit the requirements: a version of Li-tin Two would be perfect for my girl! Li-tin is the shadow where I learned a bit of philosophy and a lot of hand-to-hand (and foot-to-face) combat. I used to go there when I got hurt. It has a monastery of kindly but practical monks. When Gran was suffering from his shape shifting disease, I took him to a variation on Li-tin: Li-Tin Two. In that shadow some of the monks had tentacles or odd deformities and they did not look strangely upon a man who tended to go blobby and wriggly once in a while. In fact: Li-tin Two would be perfect. Yes, I would take her there. She would be loved and taken care of and still learn the harder facts of live. I smiled down on my little green demon-frog-maggot, the most beautiful baby in the world. Elanor hiccupped and I let her change breasts. Her nappy needed to be changed. I looked around but the nanny had left in a huff when I pushed her away. After the feeding I opened the diaper, cast a ‘clean-and-dry’ spell and closed it all up again. Easy as pie.

. . . _ . . .

When I had finished cleaning Elanor’s diaper, I felt the trump at my left wrist grow cold. It was Murlas’ card. I put Elanor in her crib to eavesdrop on my cousin’s conversation. The last time I did this it had been very interesting and I was ready for more.
“…and then I’m only the first candidate,” Murlas said.
Good, so they were talking about the king-finding procedure. Unfortunately none of the other cards in my trump deck was active, so I had to be content with only one side of the discussion.
“None yet,” Murlas said and was silent.
“Yes, but I don’t think they intend to finish me off just yet, and if they do I don’t intend to make it easy for them. And I haven’t heard of attempts on the lives of any of the others either.”
I settled down to listen and to guess. Whom was Murlas talking to?

“Well, at least I gained some support from Minor houses that are good at that sort of thing… The house Pardai, they have the expertise. In fact they have the strength of a major house so I intend to let them use it for a change.”

Unicorn save us, Murlas had recruited Pardai’s part of the ex-Hendrakes! That house has had its eye on Escallwyn’s seat in the Major Council from the word go! They had made one attempt on Thron’s life already. This was not good news. Unfortunately Murlas said no more on the subject but instead chatted a bit about interior design. The one he was talking to turned out to be Samall. I had a trump memorised of Samall, Murlas would be using the trump I had painted for him. But I will bite my foot off before I use Samall’s trump; that mind is just too scary.

Samall had retired to Sherwyn after Ornach disowned him, and I heard Murlas promise to come visit and see his lover’s new house. The conversation turned to more serious matters.
“Yes, I heard of it,” Murlas said, and then: “Oh?” in a questioning tone. “That’s not like Adrian.”
I guessed Samall agreed.
“At least you would have more fun doing it.”
A moment of silence.
“That’s right, that’s what life is for.”
Another moment.
“Well, as long as you’re having fun.”
This was getting eerie.
“Consider it a foothold,” Murlas said, “where you can retire and take it easy. Travel around to places where they are a bit less tolerant… Or else you visit Amber once in a while. Very little is allowed there.”

Why did this make me fear for the safety of Amber’s commoners? Samall is bad news when he wants to have fun. I was not pleased ho hear Murlas say:
“I’ve got a couple of things set up there, so you don’t have to start from scratch. But if you want to amuse yourself… Yes, you work on that. I don’t mind.”
A long moment of silence passed.
“Just a spot that’s yours. But a nice spot, one that doesn’t require a lot of attention… So if you want to indulge… Sherwyn can be your little vacation spot. It’s nice as a sally-port, I mean, even Flora’s uses it.”
I longed to hear details of the crimes they planned but had to do without. Murlas listened in silence for a long time.

“Yes, if things go wrong here,” Murlas finally said and I heard him laugh. “Of course I’m careful. I intend to survive this. More, I intend to get out of this stronger.”
“All I can say is this: take any trump call. If there’s an emergency I need to be able to trump out.”
“No, I don’t want to get directly involved. … Yes, let them fight it out. I’m not anxious to see Jaill get crowned either, I can always switch to another party. … Yes, that’s what I think too. Jaill did me no favour by making me a first candidate. After all I did for him.”
This was valuable information! I wondered if I could use it to my advantage. Too bad the conversation was drawing to a close.
“Yes, that’s what I’m doing,” Murlas said. “And you have fun too.” The trump went dead.

. . . _ . . .

Good gracious, this was marketable information! Murlas was very serious about switching alliances. I had heard gossip (gathered by Illea and therefore reliable), that Murlas was courting Margot of house Baccaran, not out of love of course but because an alliance with Baccaran would strengthen the Ysarns. Jaill had been trying to dump his niece Livia Helgram on Murlas; a woman who outlived three husbands already and not by accident. He would not be happy that Murlas had been making other plans.
Of course Jaill Helgram knew about Margot too but I would bet he was not aware of the exact scope of Murlas’ feelings. Someone could use the information for barter; Ornach for example. I sat down and wrote a short note to my employer detailing what I had heard.

The letter to Ornach gave me an idea. Random would love to know about these recent political developments. This time, my rapport to him covered both sides of three sheets of paper. I included every detail about the king-finding procedure I could remember. For desert, I added the info about Murlas switching alliances. This way my eavesdropping made three people happy: Ornach, Random and myself, for if Murlas cut his ties with the conservative party the Escallwyns were off the hook. Of course I told neither my king nor my employer how I heard what I heard. Ornach could guess because he himself had taught me trump spying, and Random did not need to know.

. . . _ . . .

To be continued.

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