Free Honor's Paradox-ARC by P C Hodgell

than he had heard.
    Jame’s token was still in his hand.
    “I keep thinking of her as the wild-haired child whom our father drove out of the Haunted Lands keep where we were both born. We were inseparable before that . . . most of the time.”
    He drew a small, wooden figurine out of his pocket—a cat, perhaps an Arrin-ken judging by the power of its head and shoulders, caught in mid-leap. Like most Kendar work, it had astonishing vitality. However, one of its hind legs had been snapped off.
    “Our nurse Winter carved this for us, or rather for one of us, I forget which. We were very young at the time. Of course, we fought over it . . .”
    Two young savages wrenching the carving back and forth between them, as if it embodied the love that each of them craved.
    Mine, mine!
    No, mine!
    “. . . and it broke.”
    “Yet you kept it.”
    “Yes, all this time, tucked away in my gear. I only came across it again the other day.” He looked from the damaged carving to the glass token and back, holding one in each hand as if weighing them against each other, the past versus the future. “And now she is to be confirmed as my lordan. Can we share such power without breaking everything?”
    “You’ve grown, lad. So has she.”
    “True enough.” He returned the token to Marc and dropped the cat back into his pocket.
    Marc drained a scooper of water through heat-chapped lips and shot a sideways look at Torisen. “By the way,” he said, carefully offhanded, “I’ve heard a bit of news from my Ardeth friends. Lord Adric’s grandson Dari wants to be made lordan regent. That would effectively make him Lord Ardeth, wouldn’t it?”
    “In all but name, yes.”
    “And you can do that?”
    “Under certain conditions, if the health of his house demands it. As I confirm lords, so I can unseat them. Damned if I want to, though.”
    Everyone knew how much he owed to Adric. If the Ardeth lord hadn’t hidden him in the Southern Host, he would never have survived to claim the Highlord’s seat. The current breach between them made things doubly awkward, but what could Torisen do? The Highlord must not be an Ardeth puppet as the commander of the Southern Host had felt himself to be. Still, he had promised to look after his former mentor’s interests.
    “I also hear,” said Marc, emboldened, “that Lord Ardeth is on his way north to attend the High Council meeting.”
    “Is he, by Trinity?”
    He should have known that, Torisen thought, chagrinned. Ironically, it was because Ardeth had used Torisen’s friends to spy on him in those early days that he had such an aversion to spying on anyone now. As a result, the Knorth possessed the poorest intelligence network in the Kencyrath, and Marc knew it. No wonder the Kendar was trying to impart his information so diplomatically. Torisen glanced at the stained glass map. Somehow, the thought of using it didn’t agitate him the way using human agents did. How valuable it could be, if only it worked properly. Instead, he was reduced to allies casually passing on news.
    “I thought Adric was going to wander the Wastes forever,” he said.
    “Not now that he believes at least one of Pereden’s bones is in the Riverland.”
    Torisen stared at him. “Why in Perimal’s name would he think that?”
    Harn had put the boy’s body on the common pyre at the Cataracts, he thought. It should be ashes on the wind. He had felt guilty about Ardeth’s futile search of the Wastes and wondered how to end it. Now, however, he remembered his dream and was chilled. This was an ending unlike any he had ever envisioned.
    “Well,” Marc was saying, “the thing is that Lord Ardeth found the site where the central column led by Pereden clashed with the Waster Horde. Where else should he look for his son’s bones? But they weren’t there. At the same time, his Shanir sense told him that at least one still existed. Frustration was like to drive him mad, and his people with him. So he took one of his