Free The Tower of Fear by Glen Cook

me. He didn’t used to send me away when he wanted to meet with somebody. But the last six months…”
    “You distrust his reasons?”
    “No.”
    “Does he distrust you?”
    “No. Of course not. How could he and live with me?”
    “You don’t think it’s the normal course of security?”
    “No.”
    “You do talk where you shouldn’t.”
    Bel-Sidek looked at her sharply.
    “Here. To me.”
    “I’m sure you’ve been checked every way he can imagine.” He knew she had, knew the General trusted her almost as much as he trusted her himself.
    “Should I be flattered? Is it just that your feelings are hurt, then?”
    “No. Maybe. I guess that’s part of it. But I’m worried for him, too.”
    “And have you considered the chance that his ego is involved, too?”
    “How so?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know what he’s up to. I do know he thinks enough of you to have made you his adjutant. Of all those who would have taken it. To me that says he values your opinion. Maybe that’s why he’s shutting you out.”
    “I don’t follow that.”
    “He’s a sick old man. He doesn’t have much time. He knows that. He’s desperate for results before he goes. Maybe he has a scheme he knows you wouldn’t approve.”
    “That’s possible.”
    She really was quite a remarkable woman, so inept in some ways and so damnably competent in others. In a culture wholly dominated by males she had established her independence, if not equality. She had managed that because she understood money, power, and the power of money.
    The one truly daring thing she had done was, on hearing the first grim whispers from Dak-es-Souetta, to assume that her husband was among the dead. She had moved instantly to assume an iron grip on both his fortune and her dowry, and had not been the slightest bit hesitant to use force and terror to stay the claims of both families. They said she had had her own father beaten.
    And yet … she could not cope in the society into which her wealth had propelled her.
    Nor did she care, apparently. Apparently all she wanted was the power to make half the human race leave her alone.
    Amazing contradictions these days, bel-Sidek reflected. Meryel was a boil on the face of all the old man held holy, yet he must approve of her, if not for bel-Sidek’s sake, then for the sake of the coffers of the Living. She was one of the movement’s strongest supporters.
    What a tangle of ethics and traditions had come out of one day’s dying.
    “That could explain it,” bel-Sidek admitted. “But I don’t like it.”
    “Of course you don’t. If you were going to like it you’d know everything there was to know already. Wouldn’t you?”
    “I suppose.” He opened the filigreed doors and stepped out onto the balcony. Qushmarrah had not changed in his absence. The tide of fog had risen a little higher, that was all. The air was so damnably still that the boundary between fog and not-fog was as sharp as a saber’s edge. As he watched, a man came striding up out of it like some thing of dark legend marching out of the mists of nightmare.
    What a turn of mind tonight, he thought. The man was probably a baker on his way to work.
    Meryel said, “Since you aren’t in a mood for anything else, why not talk business? I have two ships coming in from Benagra. I’ll need reliable men to unload them.”
    It was how they had come to meet. He was khadifa of the waterfront. She had strong interests in shipping, gently helped to grow by the gentlemen of the Living. Her captains imported the arms that dared not be smithed anywhere in Qushmarrah.
    *   *   *
    As Azel strode up out of the fog he was thinking that there was still a chance he could get some sleep tonight, but he’d have to forget about getting away for any fishing or hunting. He had been out of touch in several directions and it looked like things were going to happen. A week away and he might return to a chaos he could not unravel.
    He glanced at the hulking