Read The Seer King: Book One of the Seer King Trilogy for Free Online Page B

full explanation. I did, but it was as odd as his behavior.
    “Have you ever known a man who suddenly decided all the world and all the gods had turned against him and were conspiring to destroy him?”
    I had, at the lycee. One of the more promising cadets had gotten the idea the staff was trying to poison him, and he was warned by secret messages from the gods who wrote in private letters of flame across the sky. Seers and herbalists tried to treat him, but with no success, and he was returned to his sorrowing family. A few months later we were told that he’d killed himself, in a frenzy of terror because he now believed even his own blood was involved with the plot. I nodded.
    “Good. So then be aware some of what I’m going to say may well sound mad. I will only ask that you keep your judgment of my madness to yourself, and do nothing about it until I’m completely irrational — or else proven to be right.”
    I was looking at the Seer Tenedos with a bit of alarm by now. That sun-smile flashed again, and I felt warmed, and somehow
knew
Tenedos was sane, perhaps more so than I was.
    “I’ll start my argument at the beginning.
    “Don’t you consider it odd a seer like myself has been appointed to the position of resident-general?”
    I did, but assumed Tenedos had some friends in the government, and this was a political payment, even if most Numantians would consider it as valuable a gift as a quadruple amputee would think scabies.
    “That’s hardly the experience one would wish a man to have for such a posting, unless it were to a land ruled by sorcerers, which Kait is not,” Tenedos went on. “The reason I was chosen for this post, most dangerous and as far away from Nicias as it is possible to get, is I am an unpopular man with radical ideas.”
    That, just from his behavior, I might well have assumed. I guess my opinion was obvious, because again Tenedos smiled.
    “I was sent out here so honest Nicians would no longer be exposed to my heresies. I also now believe I was intended to die, considering those ‘special’ orders I received telling me to leave at once without waiting for my military escort, and of the obviously nonexistent safe passage.
    “I could now suggest more evidence. I mean no offense, Legate Damastes á Cimabue, but I find it
very
unusual to see a full troop of cavalry commanded by a very junior officer, let alone if his column includes infantry, with a captain at its head, almost as if that legate were being set up to be the skittle the balls will be rolled at.”
    I kept my face stony.
    “Very good, Legate,” Tenedos approved. “I would have been surprised and disappointed if you’d made any response. Let me ask a few questions. You only need respond if the answer is yes to any of them: Are you a particular favorite in your regiment? Has your unit suffered a lot of casualties recently among the officer corps? Are you known as having any great skills in dealing with obnoxious and arrogant emissaries such as myself?”
    Perhaps a smile came and went at that last, but I remained silent.
    “Also as I expected,” Tenedos said. “Let us make some assumptions. The first is the Rule of Ten was accurate when they said Kait, the Border States, is preparing to rise once again. Let us further suppose,” Tenedos continued, “the Rule of Ten might wish to crush this unrest with an iron boot heel, such as has not been done for a generation or more. If that were the case, would not the death of their envoy be a perfect reason for sending the heavy battalions, not merely a punitive expedition, into Kait?
    “With that as Numantia’s reason, the Kaiti could appeal to Maisir all they wished, but it would be unlikely King Bairan would respond. Ah, I see you are unaware the Kaiti have always played Numantia and Maisir against each other, so neither country can bring the Border States into its dominion without the risk of offending its great neighbor.
    “The murder of a resident-general might