A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  He hated playing monarch, but he did not look too abominably scruffy today. His jerkin was quite respectable, even if his boots were not.

  “No! No! No!” a shrill voice cried from the dais. “You have to put more feeling in it! Try again!”

  “You are the most beautiful woman in the whole world!” an angry boyish treble snarled.

  “That’s a little better. But you still should sound more impressed.”

  King and queen exchanged grins. The castle children were being rehearsed without mercy in a forthcoming dramatic presentation, The Terrible Revenge of Allena the Fair, written, directed, and produced by Princess Kadie. Starring, of course, Princess Kadie in the title role.

  Amateur theatricals were an ancient Krasnegarian tradition, one of the many ways the inhabitants made merry during their long winter captivity. Dancing and madrigal singing and concerts and assorted game tournaments were others. Whether a man’s taste ran to bare-knuckle brawling or lute playing, he could always find something of interest going on.

  Krasnegar held some remarkable talents, for its size. Inos could think of four or five superb singers, a juggler, two or three dancers, and a half-dozen musicians, any of whom would have won acclaim within the Impire. It had not always been so. The change could be traced back to a certain act of insanity by Inos herself, way back in… Gods! Where did the years go? Kadie and Gath were thirteen now, so…

  “Why so troubled, love?” Rap said softly. “Is the little monster sucking all the life out of you?”

  Holi stopped work and rolled his eyes to see where the voice had come from. Inos grabbed the chance to detach him and lay him against her shoulder. “Hook me up, will you, love?”

  “Actually,” Rap said with a gleam in his eye, “I’m much better at unhooking.”

  “Then you need the practice!” she said.

  He sighed and fastened her bodice for her.

  Inos adjusted Holi on her shoulder. “As for being troubled, I was just thinking… Next year will be too early for Kinvale, won’t it? Maybe the year after?”

  Rap scowled. “The year 3000? Does she have to go at all?”

  Surprised by that response, Inos went back to first principles and reconsidered the matter. She had always assumed that Kadie must be packed off to Kinvale one of these days, as she had been, to learn decorum and Imperial manners.

  How she missed Aunt Kade! It was over a year now since the dear old lady had peacefully failed to awaken one morning, her soul gone to join the Good. Aquiala had sent word through the magic portal and Inos and Rap had gone incognito to the funeral, but she still missed her dear, brave aunt. Kinvale would never be the same without her.

  “I suppose we had better settle the succession first, hadn’t we?” she said. “You want Gath to succeed?”

  Now it was Rap’s turn to look surprised. He glanced around to make sure no one was listening; perhaps he was considering that a commons fireplace was not the most suitable location for discussing such weighty matters. Or maybe that wouldn’t occur to him. “Is there a law?” he asked. “Kadie’s older.”

  “Only by twenty minutes! Just custom—the oldest boy. It’s the Imperial way and the way Krasnegar’s always done it. Sisters get traded off for treaties, younger sons are sent to the wars to be killed, and the oldest son inherits. It’s brutal, but it stops argument. I had an older brother, you know. He died in infancy.”

  “Yes, I knew that.” Rap smiled. “What a lot of bother he could have saved us if he’d lived!”

  She pulled a face at him and was distracted by a contented burp from Holi. One of these days they would have to discuss the succession in the council—but Rap was still musing.

  “I have trouble,” he said softly, “imagining Gath imposing his will on the kingdom!”

  True, Gath was extraordinarily placid.

  “On the other hand,” the king added, “it is considerably harder to imagine the kingdom ever tolerating Kadie longer than the first week.” He grinned to take the sting out of his words. “Perhaps we should send Kadie to the Imperial Military College in Hub and send Gath to Kinvale, to learn how to be a gentleman.”

  “I think Gath is a born gentleman. That’s the trouble!”

  “Truly. Gath ruling jotnar just doesn’t fit on the page, does it?” He sighed, no doubt thinking of the bruises and broken bones he had suffered while establishing his own right to be taken seriously as a king in Krasnegar. “But Kadie’s a born tyrant.” He dropped his voice. “Careful. Company!”

  “Papa!” the imperious voice of a born tyrant said as Kadie rustled up behind Inos in her Allena-the-Fair gown. “This will not work!”

  “What won’t work, sweet?”

  Allena the Fair stamped her foot. “Iggi as Warlock Thraine. He can no more act than a horse!”

  Rap said, “I have known horses with considerable dramatic ability.”

  “You know what I mean!”

  “Well, why don’t you play Warlock Thraine and I’ll stand in as Allena the Fair?”

  Kadie uttered a royal scream of fury that upset her younger brother. Inos soothed him and scolded her daughter. Rap looked sick to his stomach, which was what always happened when he was trying not to laugh.

  “I need Gath!” Kadie declaimed, plumping down between her parents to sulk. Being respectably clad now, Inos moved around to the other side of the bench so she could face the hall and broil her back for a change. Besides, the royal family should set a good example of domestic harmony by all pointing in the same direction. She noticed that her jewel box had been raided again and Allena the Fair’s gown of purple velvet bore an ominous resemblance to the drapes in the best guest bedroom.

  Rap had been inspecting the theatrical company, which was now being shooed away by servants wanting to lay tables. “Where is Gath?”

  “I don’t know! He won’t say.”

  The king’s eyes widened. “He’s not going to be in your play?”

  “No.” Kadie continued to pout. “He won’t! He disappears half the day and won’t say where he’s been! And Mom won’t let me follow him to find out!”

  Rap whistled silently and then said, “Hey, Pret!”

  A passing footman flashed the king a smile and detoured closer so that Rap could grab a tankard from his tray.

  “If Holi can drink all day long, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t!” Rap raised the tankard in a toast before he drank, grinning at Inos. She wondered what had made him so gleeful all of a sudden.

  “There isn’t going to be any stupid play!” Kadie said. “With Iggi being Thraine, everyone would laugh at us! So it’s canceled.”

  “That’s a shame, dear,” Inos said tactfully. “Perhaps you could rewrite the Thraine part so that Iggi can handle it?”

  “No! It’s hopeless!” The princess sulked in silence for a moment, apparently contemplating the void thus left in the cultural life of the kingdom. But then she said sweetly, “Daddy?”

  “When you call me that, like that, I know you want something you know I know you shouldn’t have!” Rap took another swig of ale and smacked his lips. “Yes, my beloved?”

  “Is Corporal Isyrano the best swordsman in the kingdom?”

  Her father shot Inos a perplexed glance over the top of Kadie’s head. “Without a doubt,” he said warily.

  “Better than you?”

  “Me? Kadie, as a swordsman, I make a fair bandmaster! I’m no fencer! But Isyrano’s very good indeed, so far as I can judge.”

  “I want you to tell him to give me fencing lessons.”

  “Fencing lessons.” Rap considered the matter, looking somewhat dazed. “May I ask why you want fencing lessons?”

  “Does a girl need more reason than a boy would?”

  The two of them could keep this up for hours. Inos adjusted Holi’s blanket while she waited to see who was going to give up first. She wondered if Rap realized that Corporal Isyrano was the sort of man a girl might find good-looking. She wondered if Kadie was starting that already.
She wondered if Rap appreciated that his Kadie troubles had barely begun.

  The king was redeploying on more strategic ground. “Well, I don’t see why not. Very good exercise. By all means ask the corporal to give you fencing lessons.”

  “I did. He won’t.”

  “Ah. Did you ask politely?”

  “Of course!” Kadie said, much too quickly.

  “Or did you try to order him to give you fencing lessons? Kadie, I have told you a hundred times that you are not to go around throwing orders at everybody! You don’t give orders to anyone, no one at all! And I have told everyone in the kingdom that they are not to obey you if you try! Everyone!”

  Ignoring the opportunities presented by this obvious exaggeration, Kadie said grumpily, “Then how do I get fencing lessons?”

  “You ask. Politely.”

  “Can I say you said he —“

  “No. You don’t mention me at all.”

  “Then he still won’t!” Kadie cried despairingly. She jumped up from the bench and went rushing away as fast as she could move in the velvet drapes.

  “God of Madness,” Rap muttered, raising the tankard. It stopped halfway as he turned to his grinning wife. “Fencing?”

  “The Elven Queen in The Valor of Giapen, I expect.”

  “Ah, my literary ignorance showing again… And what’s this about Gath? He has finally broken free from bondage?”

  She thought she’d told him. Motherhood was making her forgetful, perhaps. “Before you left. Gath has taken up good works.”

  “Now I have heard everything. What sort of good works?”

  “What I usually do. Hot soup to the sick and so on. He came and said that since I wasn’t able to do it while Holi was still small, then maybe he should.”

  The king swelled with pride. “His own idea?”

  “Apparently. He’s been doing it for about two weeks now, I suppose.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Rap said, looking awed. “He thought it up all by himself? And didn’t ask his sister’s approval? And he’s sticking with it—you are making sure the soup goes where it’s supposed to, aren’t you?”

  “Of course! I have learned something in thirteen years of mothering.”

  “Great!” Rap said. “That’s great! I must congratulate him.”

  “Yes, you should show approval,” Inos said. “He was a bit upset yesterday. Old Thrippy is dying and —“

  “God of Fools!” Rap’s tankard crashed to the floor, sending frothing ale everywhere. He stared at Inos in horror. His face had gone ashen, as if he had just seen a dragon.

  4

  Rap paced to and fro. Inos settled herself in one of the big leather chairs by the fireplace and waited until he calmed down enough to speak. They had cleaned up the beer, handed Holi over to the nursemaid before he woke up demanding his first lunch, and retreated to their private parlor. Now Rap was presumably going to explain. The peat glowed, and the room was toasty warm, a rarity in Krasnegar in winter.

  She studied him, being careful not to let him notice. He always seemed big, unless there were jotnar present. Clumsy, almost. A cautious, well-meaning man, unaware of his own strengths. Very few former stableboys could ever have persuaded a kingdom to accept him as a ruler, but Rap had, and she was certain he had done it without using sorcery. Very few men could have refused what he had refused—godhood, infinite power. She owed everything to Rap and she thanked the Gods daily for him.

  If Gath was a born gentleman, then he had inherited the trait from his father.

  “Corporal Isyrano,” Rap said, still pacing. “He went off to the Impire… when? Ten years ago? Got homesick and came back… last year?”

  “Year before.”

  “Right.” Rap fixed a beady look on Inos. “Did you know he’d deserted from the Imperial Army?”

  She’d suspected. “Does it matter?”

  “Not at all. Bleeding smart thing to do. I would.” He began to pace again. “He was in one of the good legions, though. And he was on the fencing team! And he’s no aristocrat, either.”

  Rap was probably just working it all out in his own head, not deliberately trying to be mysterious.

  “Yes?” she prompted.

  “Legionaries don’t fence. They throw their javelins and then they bash things with their swords, but they don’t fence.”

  “No, dear.” What did the corporal have to do with Gath?

  “But every legion has its fencing team. They have tournaments and people gamble thousands on them. To get on a legionary fencing team you have to be damned good!”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Damned good,” Rap muttered to himself. “Gentlemen, most of them, of course, but I think Isyrano was the lead man on his team. Brunrag left her husband and went south… don’t remember when. She’s been back three years, or is it four? You’re more qualified than me—how’s her singing?”

  “Hub would fall at her feet.”

  The king threw himself down in the other big chair, dislodging a cloud of dust. “I wonder how many didn’t get homesick? How many have we lost forever?”

  “It’s all my fault, you mean?”

  “Of course it isn’t your fault, but it was your doing. You’re the one who scattered magic everywhere.”

  Inos shivered at the memory of the day she had been a sorceress—for about an hour. As soon as she had bullied Rap into telling her four words of power, she had summoned her loyal subjects to the castle and shouted the words for all to hear. It had been the worst experience of her life. The pain had almost killed her, but she had done it.

  The lamps flickered faintly and one of the casements rattled. Snow was packed tight over the glass.

  “It didn’t work for long, of course,” Rap said. “You know that.”

  They had never discussed it, but she had guessed, then wormed the story out of her aunt. “Kade told me, roughly.”

  “I’ve been lying, all these years,” he said glumly. “I keep insisting I’m not a sorcerer. But that’s like a man saying he hasn’t any money, meaning he left it all at home today. What I mean is ‘I’m not a sorcerer just at the moment.’ I’m an out-and-out liar!”

  “No, you’re not! You just avoid the question—I’ve heard you do it. It’s nobody’s business but yours.”

  If he’d ever once admitted to having magic powers, then people would have always been bringing him sick babies and dying relatives and they would have shunned him the rest of the time, because the simple folk of Krasnegar feared magic.

  “It almost worked,” he said. “You did destroy one of them—Little Chicken’s. It was so weakened that it just stopped existing. I don’t know why, because it was probably the strongest. You shattered the others. They had so little power left that people forgot them. Most people.”

  His face was drawn and stiff already. The sorcerous suffered when they talked of magic.

  “Not you.”

  “No. I have this knack for magic, so I remembered them better than others. As they recovered their strength, I was the one who remembered best. They homed in on me. So I am a sorcerer, after a fashion. A very weak sorcerer, though, because me words are spread so thin. I have three ghost words and one good one—the one I got from Sagorn, the one I didn’t tell you.”

  “And where does Corporal Isyrano come in?” she asked, although she was fairly sure she knew the answer now.

  “He must have been present in the bailey when you did your big scene. He would only have been a kid then. He remembered one of the words.”

  “And he already had a knack for swordsmanship?”

  Rap nodded. “Plus a knack for magic, like me. So he remembered a word. He became an occultly gifted swordsman. Once he discovered his ability, of course, then he headed off to the Impire to get coaching, because nobody here could teach him properly.”

  And how many others? Brunrag the singer and a dozen or two more she could think of. And, as Rap had said, unknown others who had traveled south and not returned.


  “We may have adepts and mages, as well? Maybe even a sorcerer or two?”

  Rap was staring glumly at the red glow of the peat. “No sorcerers. You spoke four words and one seems to have died. So only three survived. I haven’t noticed any mages or adepts around, but they could be lying low. If they have any sense they are.”

  Inos rose and went across to sit on the arm of his chair. She stroked his tangled hair. “And now they’re dying off?”

  “Some of them. Words are passed on deathbeds. Anyone may have one. For all I know, old Thrippy has one. Now you see the problem?”

  “You think Gath is trying to learn a word of power?”

  Rap groaned and rubbed his temples.

  “Maybe. Someone may have told him about them—Gods know who may know about them. It’s just… I don’t know. Gath’s always seemed such an honest, open kid.”

  She didn’t say what they were both thinking—that Rap’s son might have inherited his gift for magic.

  “Could he be doing it by instinct, do you suppose?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t sound likely. Even powerful sorcerers, even the wardens, can’t detect power unless it is being used. So how could he be attracted to it by instinct?”

  For a moment they sat in silence. Rap leaned his head against her, weary with worry.

  “Is it so serious, though, love?” she said. “Even if he picks up all three and becomes a mage—is that so terrible? You’ll pass on your words to the children when you die, won’t you?”

  “Hadn’t planned on dying yet, but I suppose so. I might do what Inisso did and give one to each child. Gath’s far too young to be trusted with power. But that’s not the point.”

  She had missed something and obviously it was serious. “What is the point, then?”

  “The point is that they’re very weak words. Yes, three will make a mage, but a very weak mage.”

  “What can a very weak mage do?”

  “Not much, I suspect. If he tried to turn you into a frog, you’d just go green, or something. I don’t know.”