by David Drake
The 3rd of Partridge
Ilna made her bed on the shop level of Ascelei's dwelling in a cupboard with a slatted door. It had previously I been used for extra storage, but the tags of cut rolls removed to make room for her should have been used long since for garment edgings or to stuff pillows.
She recognized the clatter of iron tires on the stone doorstep. Rising immediately, she donned a daytime tunic over her sleeping garment of fine linen. She'd have gotten up soon anyway; and the anger Ilna felt now was primarily because she knew she'd driven Halphemos to do something stupid.
Ascelei's doorkeeper was supposed to sleep between the inner and outer doors, but he and the cook—a widow—had paired off. He spent most nights in her hut attached to the oven behind the main house. That left Ilna as the real doorkeeper, and Ascelei would never have a better one.
Cerix hammered on the front door. “Open up!” he shouted. “I have to speak to Mistress Ilna!”
The inner panel was of larchwood planed smooth and decorated with rosettes of copper nails. Ilna jerked it open and stepped into the narrow alcove that separated it from the outer door of iron-bound oak. Servants were already chattering in alarm. She heard one of them wonder in a loud voice, “Should someone rouse Master Ascelei?”
Their racket would raise the dead. “Be silent!” Ilna said toward the upper hallway. “I'm taking care of this.”
It was her fault, after all. She'd treated Halphemos like a child, and quite naturally he'd acted childishly as a result. You can weave humans into a pattern as surely as you can wool; but you can't use the same technique, for humans balk at direction in a fashion that threads do not.
Cerix fell silent when he heard Ilna’s voice within. When she threw out the latch cord he rolled his little cart aside so that the outer panel didn't hit him when she pushed it open.
Cerix looked at Ilna. His fear was so intense that it overcast the scowl of physical pain that usually dominated his features. “The baron's men came for him, mistress,” he said. “He'd made an amulet for Lady Tamana to use on Robilard.”
Cerix rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, then went on, “Tamana used to be the baron's favorite, but he's got another friend now.”
Someone tried to open the door Ilna had closed behind her. She slammed it back with her heel. “I'm handling this, if you please!” she said.
Cerix had thrown a rough wool blanket as a wrap over the tunic he'd slept in. In the confusion of Halphemos' arrest, the cripple had managed to make off with part of the inn's bedding. Well, his host probably considered that a cheap price for getting rid of an associate of the criminal.
“Halphemos made an amulet to harm the baron?” Ilna asked without inflection. If that was the case, then Robilard could pull the boy's guts out and drag him through the streets before Ilna would stir a finger to help her former companion.
“He wouldn't do that, mistress,” Cerix said chidingly. “Alos may be a fool, but you know he wouldn't harm anyone.”
He rubbed his mouth again and mumbled, “He might have made a love charm, though. He watched me do that in former days.”
Cerix's chin bobbed in a quick gesture to his stumps.
“And the Lady Tamana would have offered a great deal for a path back into the baron's affections.”
If it weren't for love, there would be far fewer fools in the world,Ilna thought. As I well know.
Aloud she said, “I see. Halphemos sold the pearl pendant to a jeweler. He recognized it, as who on Third Atara would not? The jeweler told the baron a vagabond had a pearl belonging to the baron's former mistress; and the baron asked the lady about the matter in a fashion that brought the truth from her.”
“I saw Tamana when she first came to Halphemos,” Cerix admitted sadly. “I wasn't worried. I thought she just wanted her fortune told or, well, he's a good-looking boy. It's not my place to object to him having a good time.”
Ilna sniffed. “No doubt,” she said. Her tone would have suited a response to someone who'd admitted that he liked to rob blind beggars. “Will the Lady Tamana have told the truth, or will she say that the idea came from Halphemos?”
“That one might have said anything,” Cerix said with a grimace. “I don't imagine Robilard even had to slap her before she started blubbering whatever first came into her head.”
“Yes, there are women like that,” Ilna said without emphasis. “Well, I'll see what I can do.”
She pulled the latch cord, but someone pushed the door open from the inside before she started to tug on the ornate iron handle. Ilna’s tongue was ready to snap a comment until she saw Ascelei silhouetted against the rushlights the servants behind him held.
“Master Ascelei,” she said with a contrite nod. She'd been about to snarl at her host. “I apologize for this disruption. I have to go out and I don't know when I'll be able to return.”
“I heard,” the mercer said gravely. “Ilna, I have a cousin with an inn on the west of the island, a quarrying village. If you'd care to stay there for a few days until you know more about the situation, that would be all right. No one would have to know your real name.”
“Hide, you mean?” Ilna said. “It hasn't come to that, thank you, nor will it while I'm still alive.”
Ascelei stiffened. Ilna heard her angry words play back in her memory. She knelt on the threshold, took the mercer's right hand in hers, and said, “Master Ascelei, your offer was meant as a kindness and I behaved as my uncle Katchin might have done. I apologize.”
She rose to her feet again and added, “If you knew my uncle, you'd understand how sincere that apology was.”
The mercer gave a nod of satisfaction. “I never doubted your sincerity, Ilna,” he said. “And while I don't apologize for making the offer, I should have known better than to imagine you might accept it.”
Ilna glanced down at the cripple. “Ascelei,” she said, “could you shelter Master Cerix while I'm gone? This is none of his doing, but I doubt he'll be welcome at his lodgings.”
“I should go with you,” Cerix said in surprise. “I can help—”
“No,” she said sharply, “you can't. I'll have enough to worry about without you to push around also.”
Ascelei winced. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Cerix, if you'd care to come in...?”
The cripple looked stricken. Ilna wasn't going to apologize for her comment, though. Cerix would have been in the way, and if the older wizard hadn't shown the boy how to make love charms then none of this would have happened. Love charms were abominations.
Ilna smiled. Ascelei had stepped out as Cerix poled himself into the dwelling without further comment. “Mistress?” the mercer said, surprised at Ilna’s expression.
“I'm tempted to say that love itself is an abomination,” Ilna replied; an honest answer if not a particularly informative one. “But this isn't the time to talk philosophy—if there ever was one.”
She took a deep breath. “I'll be off to the palace, sir,” she said. “I appreciate your actions on my behalf and wish I were able to better repay them.”
“There's money owing you,” the mercer said as she turned. “And would you care to use my litter? It won't take a moment to rouse the bearers.”
“An honest woman like me would look a complete fool riding in a litter,” Ilna said, more tartly than she'd intended. “You can give any money I'm owed to Cerix. Or keep it yourself, Ascelei.”
She reached into her sleeve to check that the hank of yarn was there. “I have everything I need,” she called over her shoulder as she strode along the Parade.
Servants were up in most of the houses, sweeping and emptying slops. The majority of buildings had a residence above and shop below; from these, night soil was carried out to the central gutter. Folk who didn't expect customers to be entering their front doors were less fussy about what their servants dumped where.
Ilna’s nose wrinkled in disgust—at the practice, not the smell. In a decent community like Barca's Hamlet where folk kep
t house gardens, manure wasn't wasted.
She walked briskly. There were other pedestrians out already. The sky had grown pale enough to tell black from white, so folk who didn't care to pay for lantern light were on the road.
Baron Robilard's palace was half a mile south on the Parade; no distance at all to walk, though Ilna found the gravel unpleasant. Folk in Divers wore slippers with soft leather soles, adequate for this coarse crushed limestone.
It amused Ilna that she and Ascelei had been talking as though Ilna wasn't coming back from her meeting with the baron. Anything was possible, but Robilard didn't have a reputation for wanton cruelty. The baron had every right to be furious with Halphemos, but in her heart of hearts Ilna was sure that she'd find some way to buy the boy free. They'd have to leave the island, of course, but they'd been planning to do that anyway.
The palace of the Barons of Third Atara was a more modest structure than Ilna had expected. Oh, it was more building than the ego of any one than should have needed, but she herself had lived in a larger mansion in Erdin during the days when evil had no more skillful craftsman than Ilna os-Kenset.
A porch with huge columns of striped marble was under construction. If Robilard ever got around to rebuilding the rest in scale with his new porch, he'd have a residence larger than that of the Earl of Sandrakkan.
She turned down the semicircular drive to the porch. Here pavers of patterned limestone replaced the gravel. Grit clinging to Ilna’s soles crunched against the slick, chill surface.
She grinned. Not as slick or as chill as the mud of early spring at home in Barca's Hamlet, though. Things weren't necessarily better simply because they were familiar.
There was light and bustle within the palace. The glass in the small-paned windows wasn't clear enough to show details, but figures moved by lamplight with more agitation than Ilna imagined was the usual thing at this hour of the morning.
Beneath a lantern fashioned in the form of a three-headed dragon, two soldiers guarded the door. The lamp's appearance made Ilna’s guts tighten for no reason she could fathom; she scowled at herself.
The soldiers watched Ilna long enough to be sure that they didn't recognize her. One of them then knocked on the wicket set into one of the huge, bronze-plated door leaves. An officer came out, settling his plumed helmet on his head as he and the men murmured among themselves.
Ilna drew the hank from her sleeve, measured a sufficient length of yarn, and snapped it between her index fingers. That left the ends frayed, but this was no time to flash a knife even for the purpose of cutting thread.
The officer's breastplate was rnolded into the form of a demigod's muscled torso; the dawn light gleamed on it and on the tips of his waxed mustaches. He stepped forward and said, “Sorry, mistress. There's no peddlers being admitted today.”
“I'm not a peddler,” Ilna said as she walked to within arm's length of the man. “I'm here to talk to the baron about the wizard he's arrested. I think that after he talks to me he'll be willing to release the boy.”
“Especially nobody sees the baron about the wizard, mistress,” the officer said in a noticeably colder tone. “And if you've got anything to do with him, then I suggest you use what time you've got to leave the island. Swim if you don't find a better way.”
“If she wants to come back after midday when we're off duty,” one of the soldiers said, “I might find the price for what she's got.”
The other soldier and the officer laughed. Ilna’s expression didn't change as she worked the yarn among her fingers.
She raised her eyes. “Look at me,” she said crisply.
“What?” said the officer, turning toward Ilna again. She spread her hands, drawing the yarn into the pattern she'd chosen. The officer gave a smothered “Urk!” and went stiff.
“Take me to Baron Robilard,” Ilna ordered. The officer bowed, turned, and marched toward the wicket. He'd left it open when he came out.
“Hey!” said the soldier who'd joked about enjoying Ilna’s favors. “What's happened to the captain?”
The soldier snatched at the halberd he'd leaned against the marble doorframe. He fumbled the weapon, which fell with a ringing crash on the lintel. He knelt to pick it up.
“Nothing that will harm him,” Ilna said. “If you act the fool by getting in my way, I'll deal with you in a different way. Do you understand?”
The soldier stared up at Ilna as his fingers felt for the halberd shaft. The other guard gripped him by the shoulder and pulled him out of the way. Neither man spoke as Ilna followed their officer into the palace.
The anteroom was empty except for the chair where the officer had sat with his back to the door, watching events in the audience hall. The latter was a room of some pretensions, rising the full height of the building to a vaulted ceiling. The pillars along both sidewalls were decorated with bands of low reliefs portraying scenes from the island's history.
Ilna assumed it was history, in any event—there were no obvious deities among the figures. The carvings were very ably executed, a fact that made her feel better disposed toward Robilard. She knew it was foolish to assume that decency was connected with appreciation of craftsmanship—but emotionally she did assume that.
Dawn streamed between the support pillars on the east side of the hall, but oil-fed sconces flared on the walls as well. Servants were still lighting the last of these. The scores of people present didn't fill the large room, but their shuffling and whispers echoed like cicadas on a summer night.
Baron Robilard sat on a throne of patterned marble. It looked uncomfortable but old, and Ilna could appreciate the value of tradition. This morning Robilard had dressed in a doublet and trousers of velvet, well-cut and worn with a flair. Even though the emotion that animated him was anger, the baron looked far more attractive than he had as a supercilious statue in the procession of the day before.
In his left palm Robilard bounced a small wash-leather sack; he glared at the dark-haired woman who knelt between two soldiers before the dais on which the throne stood. Tamana, past a doubt. She was blubbering, and her broken sentences were scarcely intelligible anyway.
To the left of the baron's throne sat his wife, Cotolina. During the procession she'd ridden directly behind Rodilard's chariot in a chair with an azure awning. Her hair was pale blond, and her perfect features remained composed as she pretended to watch the twins under the care of a nurse beside her.
Lady Regowara, a buxom brunette in the same mold as Tamana but younger by five years, stood with her left hand on the throne's armrest in a gesture of ownership. She watched Tamana with an expression of greedy delight. That showed Ilna that the baron's current mistress was as great a fool as the former one had proved herself. A woman with any sense would have seen her own future in Tamana's present. Few women had any sense—and fewer men, so far as Ilna could judge, at least as far as their taste in women went.
The folk in the hall were soldiers, servants, and courtiers, in equal proportions. They watched with nervous anticipation. The soldiers flanking Tamana had the grace to look embarrassed. The poor woman seemed barely capable of standing, much less posing a threat that required her to be guarded.
The soldiers who held Halphemos were much more serious about their job. The boy's arms were tied behind his back, and he'd been knocked about enough to blacken one eye and cut the cheek below the other.
The guard captain pushed a path through the spectators, though the crowd wasn't so dense that Ilna couldn't have made her own way to the front. The slight commotion caused Halphemos to glance around. “Ilna!” he cried. “You shouldn't have come here!”
One of the guards hit the boy in the pit of the stomach. Halphemos doubled up, gasping, and would have fallen except for the soldiers gripping his arms.
Ilna looked at the man who'd struck Halphemos. The soldier opened his mouth to snarl at her, then got a good look into her eyes. He turned his head abruptly.
“Snuggles,” Tamana whimpered toward the floor on which her
tears were dripping, “it wasn't to harm you, it was just a little something so you'd love me the way you used to. And I wouldn't have taken it, only he bewitched me to get my pearl pendant. You know I'd never have parted with any of the jewels you gave me except for a wizard's spell!”
“Lift the wizard's face up,” Robilard ordered in a voice of cold anger. A guard seized a handful of Halphemos' hair, but the boy had already managed to straighten despite the blow to his stomach. He met the baron's angry glare with a quiet pride that did something to redeem him in Ilna’s opinion.
Robilard dropped the amulet onto the dais and stood to grind it under his heel. Objects within the wash leather crunched. “You polluted my court with your wizardry,” the baron said. “I'll put you where the fish will end your pollution forever.”
He gestured to one of the front rank of courtiers, an older man and the only noble wearing a breastplate as well as a sword. “Lock him in an iron cage, Hosten, and dump him into the sea. Well beyond the harbor mouth.”
The courtier bowed in agreement. The cicada-rustling of whispers rose to nearly a roar.
Ilna stepped forward and said, raising her voice to be heard, “Baron Robilard, I understand and share your anger, but we both know that Master Halphemos is guilty of nothing more than being a fool. If you'll release him to me, I will see to it that he works no more wizardry here—and I'll provide you with something of value in return. Certainly greater value than fish food.”
“Who is this?” Baron Robilard cried into the sudden tumult. “What's she doing here?”
“She is Ilna os-Kenset,” said the guard captain in a toneless voice. “She has come to see you.”
Ilna smiled faintly. The captain staggered as he completed her injunction, then looked around him in growing incomprehension. He had a horrified expression, as though he'd found himself in court wearing nothing but a ribbon on his private parts.
“In a week,” Ilna said across the shocked babble, “I can weave you a panel that will force everyone who comes before you to speak the truth.”