Emperor and Clown

by Dave Duncan

The thought of sitting a horse was very unpleasant so soon after yesterday's formal court function. "I never . . . almost never ride."

  "Why not?" Thorog looked thoroughly disbelieving. "You're not scared of horses, are you?"

  "Course not!"

  The nasty glint did not leave Thorog's eye. "Sure?"

  "Sure!"

  "Then why not?"

  Shandie shrugged. "Just don't have time. Too many f-f-f-formal functions." He plunged ahead loudly. "Now that Grandfather's birthday's finally over, there won't be so many f-formal things I have to go to."

  "What do you do at them?" Thorog demanded, standing up and squeezing his feet into his silver-buckled shoes without unbuckling them.

  "Just stand beside the throne." And I always fidget, no matter how much I try not to. But this wedding isn't that sort of function, so I won't get beaten. I hope.

  "Shandie," Thorog whispered with a quick glance around the obviously empty room, "does Grandfather ever say anything now?"

  Shandie shook his head. "Not in weeks. Why?"

  "Mum asked me to ask you. Don't tell."

  "Course not." Shandie shook his head again.

  "When are they going to proclaim a regency?"

  "About a month, I think. They want to get the wedding over first. Why are we whispering? The whole court knows all this."

  Thorog said, "Oh!" and looked disappointed.

  Suddenly there was a gap in the conversation. Now might be a good time to try to get an answer to a question that was really bothering Shandie. He had been dying to find someone he could ask. His books were vague on the matter, and Court Teacher was evasive. He took a deep breath and decided to risk it.

  "Thorog . . . what d'you know about puberty?"

  "Puberty's what I'm in the middle of," Thorog said, drawing himself up straight and looking challengingly at the mirror.

  Shandie sniggered. "You mean like messing up a cravat?"

  "No, I mean like growing hairs on my lip — and other places," he added mysteriously.

  "What hairs on your lip?"

  "Well, once it starts it comes very quickly, Dad says. And it's started!" Thorog looked even more mysterious.

  "Where?"

  "Down here."

  Now came the problem that had been really torturing Shandie. "Thorog, what color is it?"

  Thorog stuttered and said brown, what color did he expect it would be?

  "It isn't . . . blue, is it?"

  A very strange expression came over his cousin's face. He clumped over to where Shandie was sitting on the edge of the bed. "Why, Shandie?"

  Surprised, and a little nervous, Shandie said, "Well, it can be blue, can't it? Hair down there?"

  "Who has blue hair there? I won't say you told me, honest. Except to Mum, and she won't tell anyone."

  "How should I know?" Shandie said quickly, alarmed now.

  Thorog dropped his voice. "The only people with blue hair are merfolk. Their hair is blue, all of it. Very pale blue. Even eyebrows, I suppose. They're very unhairy people, legs and arms, but I expect their grown-ups have hair down there like any others. If a man had some merman blood in him, he might have blue hair, and then he'd have to dye his hair so people wouldn't know. But I don't suppose he'd bother dying the bit down there. All right?"

  Shandie nodded gratefully. That explained things, although it was odd that Thorog was so knowledgeable about merfolk. "And what's wrong with having merfolk blood? I mean, is it worse than troll blood, or elf blood?"

  "Nothing wrong with a little elf blood," Thorog said snappily. "Dad says jotunn wouldn't be too bad, either. But merfolk . . . you know why Grandfather doesn't rule the Kerith islands, young fellow?"

  "Because they don't fight fair," Shandie said. "Mermen won't stand and fight. They pick us off with cowardly attacks in the dark, one at a time. It's happened . . ."

  "Fight fair?" Thorog went back to his mirror. Amazingly, he seemed to be satisfied with his cravat, for he set to work on his hair. "If someone invaded your country, would you care about fighting fair?"

  Shandie had never considered the question.

  "And why do the centurions let the men run around to be killed one at a time in the dark? They don't do it fighting dwarves in Dwanish, or elves in Ilrane. Why fighting mermen? Never asked your books that question?"

  "No," Shandie said in a small voice.

  "Well, it's the merwomen who do the damage. They sing, or dance, or just show themselves. And the army falls apart. You know how dogs flock to a bitch?"

  "No."

  "Bees to a queen, then?"

  "No."

  Thorog rolled his eyes. "You spend far too much time reading and hanging around court functions, my lad! You should get out of doors more. But that's why you'll never be Imperor of the Keriths, Shandie. Sex!" he whispered dramatically. "Men go crazy!"

  "Oh!" Shandie said.

  "And that's why merfolk aren't welcome, not anywhere. They bring quarrels. Why don't jotnar ever trade in mermaid slaves?"

  Shandie considered that, then said, "Why not?"

  "Because they can't bear to part with them!" Thorog crowed in triumph. "Now, who do you know with blue hair down there?"

  "Oh, no one! Say, you don't mind if I slip up to my room for a moment?"

  He didn't sleep with Moms anymore. He had a new room now, all to himself, and his medicine was there. He was beginning to feel scratchy-twitchy, and the only cure he knew for scratchy-twitchy was a mouthful of his medicine. He headed for the door.

  "Why," Thorog said, staring, "do you walk that way?"

  “ ‘Cause I peed my pants on your bed," Shandie said, and was gone before his cousin had finished making sure he hadn't.

  3

  Seven hundred leagues to the west of Hub, in a cold and clammy dawn, Ambassador Krushjor shivered under a fur robe on the deck of an Imperial war galley. Fog hung over the sea like a white mystery, and the sea roiled slowly and painfully below it, dark and menacing. In a pouch at his belt lay very imposing documents, rolls of vellum decorated with heavy wax seals — an edict granting safe conduct to the imperor's trusted and dearly beloved cousin and a missive welcoming the thane of Gark to the City of the Gods. Aged clerks, well inured to hypocrisy, had muttered oaths as they penned the words.

  If a jotunn felt chilled, imps froze. Rowers, archers, legionaries, officers . . . their teeth chattered like castanets all around him, and their swarthy hides were a livid blue in the dubious light. Moisture glistened on their armor as it glistened on plank and rigging and sword.

  The possibility of treachery had been evident to both sides right from the start. Thane Kalkor had listed many possible days and sites at which he might appear to learn how the imperor had answered his arrogant request. This was one of the places and one of the days, but not the first, for the wheels of the secretariat had turned with glacial slowness, and even the ambassador's decision to bring the reply himself had not saved it from being delayed by bad weather.

  Krushjor glanced at the sky, contemplated time and tide, and decided to hang around for another half hour in the hope that some of the imps might contract pneumonia. He, after all, knew for certain what they could only suspect — that the documents in his pouch were worthless forgeries. The safe conduct had been carefully phrased so that it became effective only when it was delivered, and there was not one chance in a million that his dear nephew Kalkor would blunder into a trap as obvious as this one.

  A long way to the south, in a fog even thicker, a bonfire crackled and steamed on a reach of rocky coast. A bowshot seaward, a rugged sea stack provided a notable landmark, although it was presently invisible. Shiny, lethargic swells drifted in to the shore, summoning just enough energy as they died to break the surface and slap small ripples of froth on the shingle. Seabirds like toy boats bobbed at the limit of vision. The rocks and grasses were as wet as the sea, the air heavy with scents of weed and the restless ocean.

  Shivering, stamping his boots, and tending the fire, an aging jotun
n named Virgorek cursed his vigil and the Gods who had brought him to such a pass. He was Nordland born, blue-eyed and blond like all jotnar, but burdened with a most atypical fondness for security. Long ago, at fourteen, he had killed a man who had raped his sister. And killed his sister, also, of course, for submitting. The incident might have boosted his career considerably had the man's family not possessed more fighting men than his own. Discovering that his life was worth less than a cormorant's egg, Virgorek had fled from his homeland and sought his fortune in the Impire; and in time he had found himself living in the capital, serving on the staff of the permanent Nordland embassy there.

  The pay was excellent, for few of his countrymen could tolerate indoor work, and they pined without the smell of salt water in their nostrils. He had estimated that a couple of years of such drudgery would earn him enough to return to the sea and buy his own boat so that he could end his days in respectable fishing, brawling, and smuggling. He had overlooked the sheer impossibility of anyone but an imp managing to hang onto money in an impish city.

  After five years of this degradingly honest labor, he was wiser, but also older and poorer and no more content. Indeed, when he contemplated his debts and domestic problems back in Hub, he could think of no sane reason why he should return there.

  Meanwhile he must spend two hours at dawn here, on every one of eleven specified days, in the slight hope that Kalkor would choose this one time and place out of a handful of others. Virgorek had no way of knowing whether the documents he bore were the real ones or merely more of the forgeries. This was the seventh time he had gone through the same useless ritual, and the only good thing about this one was the fog. This was authentic orca weather.

  The dory had crept almost within hailing distance before he saw it. His first sensation was annoyance that some stupid local fisherman had blundered into the rendezvous and would have to be killed in case he gossiped. Then he noticed the solitary rower's gold hair. And finally he registered that the man's back and arms were bare. In that weather, such deliberate discomfort ruled out any normal fisherman. Virgorek's heartbeat speeded up considerably, and he began rehearsing the passwords.

  Just before he beached, the rower expertly turned the dory and backed water for a few strokes. Then he rested on his oars.

  "What do you catch, stranger?" Virgorek called.

  The response took long enough that he had almost given up hope, but the newcomer was merely studying him and the enveloping fog.

  "Bigger than you expect" came the expected reply at last.

  Virgorek held up his pouch.

  "Bring it!" the visitor commanded.

  Reluctantly the ambassador's emissary stepped forward into the icy clutches of Westerwater. He waded out through the puny waves. Before he reached the boat, his teeth were starting to chatter, and the freezing water was almost up to his groin.

  "All blood is red," he said, thinking that his own might be turning blue by now.

  "And beautiful," the rower said. He was wearing nothing but a pair of leather breeches, and his lips were white with cold. Even the damp could not darken his heavy pale hair. His eyes were an intense blue, glittering arrogance. His face was callous — and also clean shaven, which was strange indeed if he was a raider, a sailor on an orca ship. Even more strange, he bore no tattoos. He still looked mean enough to eat trees.

  But the passwords had been correct. With relief that his vigil was over and he need never return to this godsforsaken headland, Virgorek fumbled at his pouch.

  "Get in," the stranger said, waving a thumb at the bows.

  The ambassador's emissary hesitated, and the raider's fingers strayed to the hilt of the dagger in his belt. Virgorek scrambled aboard and huddled himself into a shivering knot. The boatman pulled a few strokes, sending the little craft leaping seaward. Then he hauled the oars inboard and scrambled back off his thwart. "You row. Warm you."

  Virgorek unwound and edged over to sit amidships; then he was toe to toe with the raider. Maybe Hub was not the worst place in the world to live. Maybe a diplomatic career not the worst fate a man could suffer.

  "Give me the pouch," the stranger said.

  "It is for the thane's eyes only."

  The steady sapphire gaze was a nightmare of unspoken threat. "I will give it to him."

  He must be one of Kalkor's men, and one of the most trusted. By definition, then, he was a killer with no scruples at all.

  Virgorek passed over the pouch and took the oars. He had not rowed in years, but a jotunn learned boats before he learned fighting, and fighting before speech. He put his back into it, to show this uppity youngster, and in a few moments he began to feel his blood run warm again.

  The raider's change to inactivity must be chilling him, but he showed no signs of it. He leaned back, a statue of hard muscle and icy stare, and for several minutes said nothing. Then he bent and found a third oar, which he pushed out aft and tucked under his arm to steer. He seemed to have no compass, and the world ended less than a cable length away in all directions. He did not look worried. He did not look as if he ever worried.

  Virgorek pulled and pulled and soon began to feel hot. He had been letting himself get soft — palms, and arms . . . He did not slack the pace he had set.

  "How far?" he panted.

  "Far enough."

  With his free hand, the stranger opened the pouch. He took out each roll in turn, staring hard at the seals and inscriptions as if he could read them. Almost certainly he would be faking . . . he wasn't even moving his lips! Very few jotnar ever learned to read, because their eyes were not good at close work.

  But then he returned the safe conduct to the bag and tossed the imperor's letter overboard unopened. Virgorek considered a protest and then thought better.

  Then the third scroll, the letter from the ambassador, followed the second. That was too much.

  "Hey!" Virgorek said, lifting his oars from the water. The vellum would float, and the ink might not wash out if it were recovered quickly.

  "Hey what?" the stranger said, unwinking.

  "That's important!"

  "No it isn't. It would merely warn Kalkor that the Impire plans to set a trap for him. He knows that."

  Suddenly the raider smiled.

  Virgorek dipped his oars again quickly. He didn't like that smile. A few years among imps made a man feel tough, but now he wondered if he was any more important than those discarded scrolls. That sort of thinking untoughened a man awfully fast.

  "Why is he doing this?"

  "Doing what?" The blue eyes widened; the smile widened.

  "Going to Hub! Putting himself in the Impire's clutches! They'll never let him escape!"

  Still smiling . . . "Who knows? I've never met anyone brave enough to question him."

  Oars creaked. Water hissed by the planks. The pace was telling on Virgorek now, and he regretted his initial enthusiasm.

  The raider leaned slightly on his steering oar and the dory veered, and yet nothing showed in the ubiquitous white fog.

  "Why don't you ask him?" he said. "When we get to the ship?"

  Virgorek wondered if he had ever known real fear in his life before. "No! I don't think I will."

  "Then you may even see land again," Thane Kalkor said pleasantly, "but only if you row much faster than this."

  4

  Autumn rains always brought on Ekka's rheumatics, and this year they were especially painful. Ominously bad. Reluctantly she had taken to her bed, and she lay there now, buttressed by warm bricks wrapped in flannel, sprawled back on a heap of pillows, and wishing she had not demanded to see her face in a mirror that morning. A gray complexion definitely did not go with her amber teeth.

  And just as a final, unbearable irritation, here was her idiot son, fatter and more incompetent than ever, shifting from shoe to shining shoe at the foot of her bed and tugging his pendulous lip. An impeccably dressed nincompoop! The thought of Angilki ever trying to manage Kinvale without her was enough to make a God blasphe
me.

  "It's from the imperor!" he wailed again.

  "I can see that, dolt!" Even her old eyes knew that imposing seal, and she could make out enough of the crabbed scribe's hand.

  "He wants me to come to Hub!"

  "So?"

  "So what?"

  "So, what are you waiting for? Or are you planning to refuse?"

  Angilki's already sallow face turned even paler. Perhaps he had hoped she would write a note to excuse him? He had never been more than two day's ride from home in his life.

  "But why? Why me?"

  Because the imperor had recently granted his gracious leave for this lumpkin to style himself King of Krasnegar, that was why, and now the bureaucrats had found some law or reason — the two were rarely compatible — requiring the pawn to move to the center of the board. The purpose might be as trivial as a public homage or as terminal as attainder for high treason. The only certainty was that Angilki was now involved in Imperial politics and must do as he was told.

  She could not face the thought of trying to explain all that to him. The less he knew the happier he would be.

  When she did not speak, he added, "And the foundations for the new west portico . . ."

  "God of Worms!" she muttered. "Give me strength! Go and pack your bags and saddle a horse. And you'd better take a lunch."

  "One lunch? It'll take me weeks and weeks!"

  Ekka shut her eyes and waited impatiently for the sound of the door closing.

  5

  Far to the east of Zark, below the hazy white of a maritime sky, Unvanquished dipped her bowsprit in salute to an advancing green mountain. The wind was boisterous, just right for sailing.

  The crew were cheerful, not realizing how far from land they really were, and Rap was moderately content — no sorcerer was likely to detect his cautious experiments this far out in the Spring Sea, or wish to investigate if he did. He was learning. He could even adjust the weather now, within limits, and without rippling the ambience very much. Since his injuries had completed their healing, he had almost caught up on his sleep. He still had nightmares, though, and probably always would.