Chương 240: Chapter 261: Parallel Play

That evening was my first Sixthday gala since I become officially designated as the Crown Princess of Meadowtam Duchy. The event had started as a congratulation event for the local garrison commander's eldest son becoming engaged. But all things considered it was co-opted to become my congratulation event in short order. Under some circumstances I might have worried about alienating our host like this, but the garrison commander was a pompous twit.

He does throw a good party, and he does assemble a good guest list, but he is quite unaware that he has been promoted above his ability. Another tragic carrier of the nepotism virus. He is already discussing how he is going to get his son stationed someplace advantageous, just like his father had for him.

I am fortunate that Hearstwhile's regular military has such a clean divide between the humble and hyper-competent veterans who were promoted for merit and valor despite having no titles, and the prancing popinjays who purchased their gold braid with money, favors or flattery and tried to figure out how to do the job after they finished reorganizing the desks. The Captain Maspers of the world, versus the Major Fiorentina Fudlosa type.

And just as fortunate that I can just activate my reticle and tell them apart at a glance. I rarely bothered acknowledging the high-born officers, as they rarely had anything useful to contribute. And, judging from the results, I think my ability to distinguish one group from the other at a single glance was one of the things that generated me the most goodwill among the war-fighters that I was trying to impress. In Hearstwhile's military there is almost no overlap between competence and aristocracy.

Anyone born with a title and any aptitude at all finds something else to do with themselves. Some of them become spies.

"You've been avoiding me," said one of those spies.

"Yes I have," I replied easily.

"And significantly, you did not say 'trying to avoid you'. I've been quite successfully avoiding you for weeks." Nathan nodded, with a good-natured half-toast of his drink, raising his glass to me. He did not drink, just as I do not. My glass takes ice water with a lemon wedge, he drinks tomato juice that most people would assume is alcoholic.

"So, you've relieved me of a throne," he pointed out.

"I intend to give it back," I said truthfully. I cannot serve as both duchess and queen, after all.

"I just need the title for a few months, and then I'll relent any challenge you offer."

"You're so very sure that I want it back?" he teased.

"I thought it was polite to offer since I borrowed it without asking." His laughter sounded very genuine, and did not fade right away. He was still apple-cheeked with mirth when he took his next sip of juice.

"What is Father to think if we toss our family legacy back and forth like a hot potato? Such a disrespectful pair we are." We took a pause and I lowered the sound-muffling effect as three barons walked past on the way to the dessert station. They each tried to find some way to congratulate me on my recent rise, without saying anything to offend Nathan who had just been demoted by the same degree. He and I both gave them blandly unhelpful responses that did not offer them any elegant way out of this faux pas.

They finally broke under the weight of this discomfiture and hurried to get their puddings. And as soon as the sound-muting magics were back we both allowed ourselves a sardonic burst of laughter. Other than our speaking register we still have the exact same laugh. He dabbed the corner of his eye with a napkin, and sighed as he relaxed back again. A pause formed, and stretched, before he broke it again.

"Obviously I'll be taking the Dominionists' side, come Summerhigh." Of fucking course he already knows about the Revolt, and the faction coalition, and the exact timing of the whole thing. I gave that statement a few moments to air out between us before I replied.

"A public role only, I hope? With a prepared exit?"

"Concerned for me?" he nudged. I considered my specific wording before I replied.

"Invested in you." Because, dammit, that contract thing did work out in my favor, several times over. And the birthday party invitations. And, he is my brother. But also because he is the hero and I think there's a significant likely chance that if he dies then Game Over comes early. Which is not to say that I'm not still blindingly pissed off at him.

"I'd like to get a meeting with Gharie, I've got questions for him," I said mildly. He froze up for just a second, caught off-guard. Busted.

"I can forward your questions to him," he said easily.

"Not these questions," I said firmly.

"In person." He nodded and half-toasted an acquaintance of his that was walking past. We stood at a niche under the mezzanine seating, an area of the room that people normally moved through without dawdling, but we had both found to have very good vantage of the room. He was quite tall and with a single step up on the riser he could survey most of the room. I found that almost the entire room and the service corridors was within fifty feet of this spot, so my senses gave me full lookout.

The party was agreeable enough, Trazom would approve of the music. The food was passable fare but served in quantity, and the decorations were really quite well done. There was an extra shimmer of light over the room, from the disco ball hung between the two grand chandeliers. The caterers here were top-notch, half of them were practically friends of mine by now. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Truly this would have been a fine occasion to soak up the adulation due to me for my recent ascendance, except that Nathan had casually stepped in beside me as I was settling in. I could have made any number of excuses to get rid of him, or gotten rid of him without any excuses at all, but even his lies and questions can tell me something about whatever he's planning. And, it suits my needs at this time to make people believe that he and I are not acrimonious.

If people see us behaving amiably, they will believe that he does not resent my elevation. Ergo, not likely to challenge my elevation, ergo my position is secure, ergo I'm a stable leader. I want that perception right now as the Revolt slowly gathers momentum behind the scenes. Why he seems willing to concede that to me, I'm not sure. Unless he's genuinely not acrimonious. It could be that, he's never shown himself to be ambitious and it would be strange to start now.

And yet, he's made sure to verbalize clearly that he and I will be on different teams during the Revolt. And, he's holding out on me regarding Gharie.

"I've already explained the reasons that my associates can't be associated with you," he said smoothly.

"High profile, volatile."

"It's all right," I said, smiling.

"I can travel. Simply tell me which city you've moved him to and I'll make the trip." Again, the slightest pause.

"You already know where he is."" Yes," I hissed, barely throttling back my rage enough to maintain a pleasant facade for onlookers.

"Fucking why, Nathan?! Cutting him loose to go straight back to them?!"

"I know that you are much more familiar with the working of magic and natural philosophy than you are the mechanisms of the clandestine, but surely you have heard of a double-agent?"

"It's called tradecraft," I said absently.

"Wait, a double agent? Gharie? Working for you against Kralcit? That cannot be possible."

"It wasn't easy but it was far from impossible," he told me.

"Weeks of specific training. And plenty of expensive sigil-work to help him in his mission. And before you ask, yes I did consider telling you but there was also a distinct chance that you might be asked about this and -" And famously, Natalie Harigold cannot tell a lie, I filled in the blanks. Frustratingly, there is a very real and practical explanation for why he would keep covert plans secret from me specifically.

Or, this is just a very plausible cover story that fits the facts like a cover story should, and does not provide me any information I didn't have already.

"And coincidentally, not telling me you were doing this did not give me the chance to object," I said with a mocking mildness.

"Because it is intolerably foolish! Nathan, he's a wimp! He folded as soon as Kralcit put pressure on him, he folded as soon as you put pressure on him, and now you've put him back where Kralcit can put more pressure on him. Unless you've stocked him up with false information for her to wring out of him and lure her into a trap, you've only set up your next disappointment." He smirked.

"And if that is what I did?"

"Merely foolishness of a different brand," I scolded my brother.

"She would not fall for a ploy like that. She'll know what it means to send out an operative, who fails their mission, and then returns unharmed. You told me weeks ago that his contacts were going to give him an unremarkable death and an unmarked grave. So she'll have every suspicion up when he returns."

"Good, now take the next step," he said. That would have sounded patronizing from anyone but him. He just sounded like he was watching me open birthday presents, revealing the surprise.

"So, you, what, fed him real information so that she will assume it's a lie and disregard your real plans?" I said, sounding this out. It just sounded so stupid I could not believe I was saying it.

"Oh, no, that would be amusing but it would never work at all," he said.

"Grade is careful and thorough. Whatever information I gave him would get wrung out of him and then exhaustively examined. If I gave him good information she would test it and use it. No, we just gave him bad information that she is going to examine thoroughly."

"So why?" He cocked his head at me.

"It accomplishes enough. It wastes her time and resources. It makes her second-guess operations. She will invest more into security and contingencies. She will not likely attempt a direct action against you. She will abandon whatever plan she had that involved sympathetic magic and stolen hair. And she will wring Gharie quite thoroughly for every scrap of information before she kills him." He said that like the value was self-evident.

I made sure that my facial expression informed him that this was not self-evident.

"He tried to hurt my sister," he pointed out.

"And I'm not going to torture him myself now am I? So, I found an answer."

"And you hid this from Bruce?"

"Anything I told to Bruce would come back to you," he said apologetically.

"So, for all the same reasons I couldn't tell you directly..." I considered this. Ruminated on it, while I watched the party cycle past. The nods of approval, the muted murmurs of greeting. Bouffant hairstyles on middle-aged ladies, somber jackets on the gentlemen. Some waltzed, some walked, some promenaded and some skulked. People I knew from dozens of parties, in different combinations. And of course always a smattering of hangers-on, also-rans, plus-ones and stowaways.

"Nathan," I told him, "everything you've said makes sense, and it does answer all my questions quite nicely. Credible and sensible. Internally consistent. And if you had brought me any of this information before I confronted you with it, I would now be grateful and confident. If any of these issues had been volunteered of your own free will, we would right now be fully of an accord. And yet I had to catch you out, pin you down, and demand explanations, for which you glibly had answers to everything."

It was disappointing. I could see from here how easily this could have all been cleared up. A slight change of timing, and I would have the opportunity to trust my brother again. Unfortunately he has done all of this in such a way that I cannot possibly validate his actions with anything but his word and his earnest, honest eyes. If he was telling the truth he could have easily proven it. But he didn't. But the fact that he didn't doesn't quite actually prove that he's lying. He was sipping his juice.

"It's probably for the best."

"That I don't trust you?"

"We're about to get involved in some very big events. And we won't be side-by-side for that. Imagine if we were in that position and still trusting each other?" he said, sounding disappointed, or perturbed. Almost like he was worried for me. Like he didn't like the idea of what would happen to me in that scenario. We were about to enter the Revolt arc. Or, as he would know it, we're closing in a well-choreographed "spontaneous" civil revolt against the king and queen.

He would be championing the Dominionists, and I was the touted leader of the opposing coalition. So, it's plenty fair to say that he and I are going to be fighting, at very high stakes, very soon. My main weapons are magic, technology, authority, military alliances, criminal networks, prophetic visions of the future and a lot of hammers. I represent nine houses to his four. His main weapon is lying. And he's worried that if I'm not deliberately mistrustful of him, that this will be a mismatched battle in his favor.

Good ol' Nathan. Always thinking of others.