by David Drake
Garric frowned. "You wouldn't be concerned that he might think making common cause with Count Lerdoc would be a better bargain for him?" he said.
"If anything," Tadai said, "Warroc is more of a chauvinist than his brother is. Hard though you may find that to believe. He wouldn't do anything that would hurt his standing with the only people he really regards as people--the great landholders of Northern Ornifal. Becoming Count of Blaise himself wouldn't repay him for that."
Tadai rose and dipped a fresh goblet in the urn. "On the other hand, my friend Garric, you should watch your back if Warroc returns a hero for the arrangement he's managed with Blaise."
He held the goblet to Garric, adding, "Though clever as Warroc is, I rather doubt he'll make a better job of it than I will in Erdin. I know things about the Earl of Sandrakkan's finances that he probably doesn't know himself. And he really needs to, for reasons that I'll make quite clear to him in our private discussions."
And to think he'd been secretly afraid Tadai would turn down the offer! Garric gave a bellow of laughter of a sort that probably wasn't often heard in chambers as delicately appointed as these. Well, maybe it should be!
"Lord Tadai," he said, "you'll know better than I do what the requirements for your mission will be. Give me a list and I'll see to it that it's filled."
Garric took the sherbet from Tadai's steady hand and tossed it down. He was acting more unconsciously than not, but the astringence and tiny portion shocked him into awareness of what he'd just done.
"I'll bid you good night, then," he said. "I have--"
He and King Carus laughed together. "Right, we all have a great deal to do. The kingdom is fortunate to have a minister as resourceful and intelligent as you, Tadai."
"And fortunate to have a prince of your quality, Garric," Tadai said, taking the empty goblets and setting them on the table for a servant to clear when the room was empty. "Qualities, rather; remarkable ones in a man of any age, I should have said, let alone someone of your youth."
As Garric turned with a smile toward the door, Tadai added to his back, "And you've certainly managed to make my life more interesting than if you'd never appeared in Valles!"
The bird's wings stroked. A frozen plain shivered into reality with the speed of a tropic dawn. The sun far to the south was bright but tiny, and the wind cut Sharina marrow-deep.
The bird glided parallel to the face of a glacier stretching from horizon to horizon. Dirt and boulders lay on the white surface of the broad ice-river, but through cracks in its face Sharina could see crystal as pure and blue as the finest sapphire.
The ice was receding, if slowly. A coarse scree covered the plain south of ice face, the debris of past millennia released when the glacier carrying it dissolved. Tunnels at the base of the ice oozed meltwater. It meandered in braided streams through the rocks and gravel that finally vanished in the emptiness.
Occasionally the sun glinted on metal--a gilded helmet, the silver boar's-head boss of a round shield; an ivory swordhilt wound with electrum wire. Verdigris had concealed the blade in the blue-gray shadows stone until Sharina's eyes caught the rich mountings and traced the weapon's full lines.
There was clothing, too; brocades and fabrics embroidered with gold and silver. Metal cups sewn to the fabrics held jewels. Light winking from them woke counterfeits of life in the bleak expanse. Wind-driven grit had shredded furs and woven goods.
Occasionally Sharina caught a glimpse of wood: a broken spearshaft, an axe helve sticking vertically from the gravel where the head moldered. Nowhere did she see a body or even a scrap of bone.
The bird continued its swift progress, the huge left wing tilted minisculy higher to catch the updraft from the escarpment of ice. Sunlight shining through the lifted van showed unexpected mottling in scales on the skin stretched between elongated fingerbones.
This was the longest the bird had remained in a single reality since it snatched Sharina from among her friends. Did it nest here in this lifeless--
There was life after all. A shape hunched out of a tunnel and stood, staring at the bird with faceted eyes. Despite the foreshortening from Sharina's vantage point, she could see that it was big: eight feet tall, perhaps ten. The creature had an exoskeleton like an insect and six limbs, but it was standing upright on the back pair.
The other four limbs held human bodies, long-dead soldiers it had dug from the ice. They wore rich accouterments, and the hands of one were frozen to a cross-staff holding a a silver boar's head on a red field.
When the creature saw the great bird, it dropped the corpses and spread its four upper limbs. The hands had crab pincers, toothed to mesh like a crocodile's jaws. Its mandibles swung sideways and gave a rasping cry.
Similar creatures shambled from nearby tunnels. They projected a mindless malevolence, a desire to feed at any cost.
The bird's wings stroked again and the scene dissolved. In the empty grayness Sharina continued to think of the frozen world she had just escaped.
It had been like watching worms writhe in hog manure....
Chapter Six
Ilna looked back through the atrium when she heard the front door open. The guard who'd entered--the pair on duty this morning were new to her--called, "The chamberlain's here, mistress. Want to see him?"
The Blood Eagles lacked the air of solemn formality that Sharina's doorkeeper projected--Ilna tried to imagine that self-important fellow shouting across the hall instead of approaching his mistress and murmuring the name of the caller--but they didn't seem to resent doing servants' work for lack of anyone else being around. Ilna wondered if the Blood Eagles had been warned that she hadn't wanted them either, and that she was likely to tell them so if they objected to doing what their presence made necessary.
As indeed Ilna would have done, in a fashion those listening would remember.
"Reise's here?" Ilna said, smiling at the thought of dealing with people who thought there was any honest work that they were too good for. She walked toward the door. "Yes, I'd be glad to see him."
Her mouth pursed in wry disgust. She often wished that the thoughts that gave her pleasure had more to do with joy and kindness; but correcting fools did make the world a better place. Presumably there were other folk who dispensed joy and kindness.
Garric's father entered. He'd been a tallish, awkward fellow in Barca's Hamlet; respected for his learning and the success he'd made of a run-down inn, but loved by no one. Here, though dressed in the gray of a palace servant, Reise was a different and much more impressive man.
He bowed and made a complicated hand flourish, not because Ilna demanded it but because his position did. Ilna knew that she could no more have stopped Reise from giving her the marks of respect due any palace resident than he could have made her accept a chambermaid to tidy her baskets of yarn. Ilna didn't like court ceremony; but she very much liked the determination with which Reise followed his principles wherever they led.
As he always had, she knew. And as he'd raised his son and daughter to do.
"I'm intruding because of a personal matter, mistress," he said as he straightened.
"Garric?" Ilna said, her muscles suddenly cold and very hard.
"I misspoke," Reise said. His wince of embarrassment meant that he understood more than Ilna wished he did. But after all, the whole world seemed to; except for Garric himself. "Your uncle Katchin visited the palace yesterday. He met your brother, but I thought you should be told directly as well."
Ilna sniffed. "You're not intruding," she said. "Come out in the garden, won't you? I'll show you the work I've just finished."
As she stepped into the columned walk she added, "And you were right that I hadn't heard Katchin was here. Cashel tends to forget things that aren't important, and neither of us consider our uncle very important."
Ilna hadn't stitched the three pieces together because she didn't have a room high enough to hang the arras complete. Instead she'd arranged the portions for temporary display on the west--sh
aded--side of the colonnade. The theme of the action was consecutive through the three bands anyway, so it was much easier to view the details here than it would be when the tapestry hung as a whole before the statue of the Protecting Shepherd.
Reise strolled along the arras. Initially he had his fingers tented, but after a few steps he crossed his wrists behind him as if to prevent himself from touching the fabric. When he reached the end of the third--the bottom--section, he turned and walked back to Ilna. He didn't speak, and his face had no expression.
"You're the first person to see it complete," Ilna said carefully. She wasn't one to demand praise, but she'd certainly expected some reaction. "Do you have any comment?"
"Why do you ask that, mistress?" Reise said in a trembling voice. "I feel exactly what you wanted me to feel. You know that! Anyone who sees this will feel all those things that you made them feel."
"I...," Ilna said in embarrassment. People didn't expect emotion from Reise the Innkeeper. Well, they didn't expect it from Ilna, the orphan who lived next door to the inn either. "With something this complex, I didn't know...."
"This...," Reise said. He looked over his shoulder at the hanging, then twisted his head away with an effort of will. "The image of my, my s-s... of Prince Garric fighting the Beast made me...."
Reise rubbed tears from his eyes and added, "Mistress, I didn't believe in the Great Gods. Oh, I'd make the usual offerings--I had to in a place like Barca's Hamlet, after all. But now I thank the Lady; and I thank you."
"I don't believe in the Great Gods now," Ilna said harshly. "And anyway, the place I learned to weave the way I do now had nothing to do with the Lady or anything you could call good."
She laughed; the sound was brittle, but she couldn't help that. It was all she could do to avoid letting the sound trail off into hysteria as she remembered the gray place and a tree with limbs like snakes writhing.
"Mistress?" Reise said. Then, sharply, "Ilna."
Ilna blinked. Her body swayed like a slowing top. The chamberlain offered his arm; Ilna gripped it. Funny to be getting support from clumsy, hen-pecked Reise! She laughed, with amusement this time, and that steadied her properly.
"I've been working hard," she said in apology. That was true, and she supposed it was part of the reason as well.
Ilna had wanted to finish the arras quickly so that she could leave Valles. She didn't grudge Garric and Liane the happiness they found in one another--she didn't! Each was a wonderful person who deserved someone as wonderful as themselves.
But though she wasn't sorry for their happiness, it tore her heart out to watch them. Besides, Ilna had debts to pay in Erdin where she'd ruined lives with the skills she'd learned in Hell.
"The arras shows the world the son you raised, Reise," Ilna said, looking with a critical eye at the neighbor she'd known from her first youth. "You can be proud of him, and he of you."
"Prince Garric," Reise emphasized. "Whom I fostered."
"Don't tell me that!" Ilna snapped. "Do you think I can't read lineage as surely as I can tell you the kind of mulberry trees that fed the worms who spun your robe? No doubt Garric is the offspring of Countess Tera and heir to the blood of the ancient Kings of the Isles; but no doubt he's Garric, son of Reise, as well."
Reise made a sound that was halfway between a bark and a gasp. "May I sit down?" he said, gesturing to one of the benches placed between alternate pairs of columns.
"Of course," Ilna said, though she was a little surprised. "I have beer, bread and cheese, if you'd like."
She grinned tightly. "Though the beer isn't as good as your own."
Reise smiled vaguely, a polite response to words he hadn't really listened to. His eyes were on a patch of wall that had been frescoed in a brick pattern; the sheathing was badly cracked, and a portion had flaked away from the rubble core.
"Tera was a lovely woman," Reise said. He looked toward Ilna. "There was nobody I could say that to, you know. I couldn't talk even to you if we'd both stayed in Barca's Hamlet."
You don't have to talk to me now, since it's of no interest to me, Ilna thought; but she stopped the thought short of her tongue by an effort of will. Back in the borough Reise had treated her and Cashel exactly as he treated anyone else: with brusque, carping honesty. He hadn't been a friend to the orphans--or to anyone else in the world--but he hadn't tried to take advantage of them either. Reise wasn't easy to like, but his virtues were real and his flaws were ones that Ilna found easy to understand.
"And Count Niard?" Ilna said; out of kindness, she supposed. She'd created a chance for Reise to speak as he felt he needed to because he'd treated her decently when others did not.
"He was Sharina's father," Reise said quietly. Now he was looking at the tapestry again, viewing the figure of the tall, blond woman who danced through beastmen and fiends of living flame. "Not a bad fellow, Niard, though we used to joke that every time he had a second thought in the same day, one of his ears fell off... and he still had both ears. He ordered me to marry Lora as cover for his affair with her; and I did, because it was protection for Tera as well."
He shook his head at ancient memories. "Lora does the best she can," he said.
"And a poor enough job it is!" Ilna said. Lora with her palace airs and shrewish temper had been harder to take even than Uncle Katchin.
Reise turned his head toward her. "Yes, a poor job," he said. "But she fostered another woman's child without complaint."
He smiled faintly. "That was perhaps the only thing in this world or the next that she didn't complain about, I'll grant. And of course she didn't realize that Sharina was her own daughter and that Garric was the fosterling; only the midwife and I knew that."
"She treated Sharina like royalty," Ilna said bitterly, "and Garric as badly as she did...."
She stopped that thought short of her tongue also, but only just. She met Reise's eyes with a grimace.
He laughed and rose heavily from the bench. "As badly as she did me?" he said. "Yes, more or less. But it's a sign of Sharina's strength that Lora's treatment didn't ruin her... and I'm afraid that strength isn't something the children got from me."
Reise nodded toward the arras. "Mistress Ilna, I appreciate being shown your work. I am honored to know you."
Ilna sniffed, leading the chamberlain back into the house. He was ready to leave, and she had to join the others shortly to see Cashel off on his search for Sharina. "Katchin was after a job, I suppose?" she asked as they crossed the atrium.
"Yes, I assume so," Reise agreed. "A position with a great deal of show and public honor, at any rate. He'll not find it here, not with my son in charge."
Reise made his formal bow and flourish, then paused with his hand on the latch lever. "Katchin should go back home," he said. "I did."
He gestured broadly, indicating the palace where he'd worked as a youth and the city beyond where he was born. "And I'm much happier here."
Ilna chuckled as she followed her guest onto the front porch. It was easy to say that Reise had enormous power in the royal palace whereas all Katchin had to look forward to was being the leading man in a rural borough of an island nobody cared about nowadays. But the chamberlain's duties combined real power with outward subservience, which Katchin wouldn't have been able to manage. And Reise had made a remarkable success in Barca's Hamlet, for all that no one imagined that he belonged there.
Reise started down the path, then turned. The Blood Eagles to either side of Ilna shifted minisculy, though it wouldn't quite be correct to say that they tensed. "I hope you learn where home is, Ilna," he said.
"My home is my work, Reise," she called back. She knew the words were true as soon as she spoke them.
She just wished that the truth made her feel happier than it did.
"I never saw the Altar of Harmony myself, lad," King Carus said as the group made its way up Straight Street--which wasn't, unless you viewed it in half-block sections. "I'd heard it was supposed to be really fancy--it was ancient even in
my day, of course. But when I visited Valles, I had more pressing business than sightseeing."
Through Garric's mind flashed a montage of Carus' memories: a banquet in the Hall of the Combined Guilds--it still existed in the center of Valles, though it'd been converted to a shopping arcade in the past millennium; a meeting of the Ornifal nobility in a temple, the chairs set up in arcs beneath an enormous chryselephantine statue of the Lady; a dozen of Valles' top bankers in a sumptuously-appointed conference room, their faces giving away nothing.
"Though I might just as well have stayed on Haft for all the good I did trying to convince people here that they couldn't stay neutral when I was trying to hold the Kingdom together and twenty-odd usurpers wanted to tear it apart," Carus added. "Ornifal was so sure it could buy peace by paying off every pirate or usurper--the Kingdom go hang!"
"Hey, watch where you're going there!" shouted a water-seller who carried his two jugs on a short staff over his left shoulder. He'd paused to dip a drink for a housewife from the smallest of the three graduated cups chained to a collar that he could shift from the neck of one jug to the other. The staff stuck out into the crowded street, and one of the leading Blood Eagles had bumped it.
"Shut up and get out of the way of your betters!" the soldier replied. He and the man in the next rank grabbed the waterseller by both arms and walked him backward into pavement racks selling old clothing and old--definitely old--vegetables. The waterseller and the two old women minding the racks squalled in unison.
"Enough of that!" Garric shouted. "Sir, we didn't mean to jostle you, but this is a street. And Captain Besimon, remind your men that we take up a good deal of room ourselves, so a little charity toward the encroachments of others is called for."
Liane grinned at Garric and squeezed his hand.
They were a lot more of a procession than Garric would have liked, but he didn't see much way around it. There were ten Blood Eagles in front and ten more behind. They'd need the troops for a cordon at the altar where Tenoctris had decided to speak the incantation that would send Cashel off in his pursuit of Sharina.