the voice: Neso of Ygrath, a minor nobleman from overseas who had recently arrived at Brandin's court on the first ship of the season, solely in the hope of becoming a major nobleman in the colony. He was, so far as Dianora had been able to tell, talentless and venal.
She smiled radiantly at him and allowed him to touch her hand. "My dear Neso, how kind of you to lie so skillfully to an aging woman."
She rather liked saying that sort of thing: for, as Scelto had shrewdly observed once, if she was old, what did that make Solores?
Neso hastened to offer all the emphatic, predictable denials. He praised her gown and the vairstone, noting with a courtier's eye and tongue how exquisitely the stones of her chalice echoed her colors that day. Then, lowering his voice towards an unearned intimacy he asked her for the eighth time at least if she happened to have heard anything further about the planned disposition of that very trivial office of Taxing Master in north Asoli.
It was, in fact, a lucrative position. The incumbent had made his fortune, or enough for his own purposes evidently, and was returning to Ygrath in a few weeks. Dianora hated that sort of graft and she had even been bold enough to say so to Brandin once. A little amused, which had irritated her, he had prosaically pointed out how difficult it was to get men to serve in places as devoid of attraction as the north of Asoli without offering them a chance at modest wealth.
His grey eyes beneath the thick dark eyebrows had rested upon her as she'd wrestled and then finally come to terms with the depressing truth inherent in this. She'd finally looked up and nodded a reluctant agreement. Which made him burst into laughter.
"I am so relieved," chuckled Brandin of Ygrath, "that my clumsy reasoning and government meet with your approval." She had gone red to the roots of her hair, but then, catching his mood, had laughed herself at the absurdity of her presumption. That had been several years ago.
Now all she did was try, discreetly, to see that positions such as this one did not go to the most transparently greedy of the motley crew of petty Ygrathen courtiers from whom Brandin had to choose. Neso, she had resolved, was not getting this posting if she could help it. The problem was that d'Eymon seemed, for inscrutable reasons of his own, to be favoring Neso's appointment. She'd already asked Scelto to see if he could find out why.
Now she let her smile fade to an earnestly benevolent look of concern as she gazed at the sleek, plump Ygrathen. Lowering her voice but without leaning towards him she murmured, "I am doing what I can. You should know that there seems to be some opposition."
Neso's eyes narrowed on the far side of the curl of smoke rising from her khav. With practiced subtlety they flicked past her right shoulder to where she knew d'Eymon would still be standing by the King's door. Neso looked back at her, eyebrows raised very slightly.
Dianora gave a small, apologetic shrug.
"Have you a ... suggestion?" Neso asked, his brow furrowed with anxiety.
"I'd start by smiling a little," she said with deliberate tartness. There was no point in intriguing in such a way that the whole court knew of it.
Neso forced an immediate laugh and then applauded stagily as if she'd offered an irresistible witticism.__網_
"Forgive me," he said, smiling as ordered. "This matters a great deal to me."
It matters a great deal more to the people of Asoli, you greedy bloodleech, Dianora thought. She laid a hand lightly on Neso's puffed sleeve.
"I know it does," she said kindly. "I will do what I can. If circumstances . . . allow me to."
Neso, whatever he was, was no stranger to this sort of thing. Once more the false laugh greeted her nonexistent jest. "I hope to be able to assist the circumstances," he murmured.
She smiled again and withdrew her hand. It was enough. Scelto was going to receive some more money that afternoon. She hoped it would come to a decent part of the vair