The Stricken Field - A Handful of Men Book 3

by Dave Duncan

  She raised her voice. “Shandie would not agree!” The words came out too blustery, and the old man remained unmoved.

  “With respect, ma’am . . . He left no instructions for this event. I must therefore use my discretion and best judgment. I have known him all his life. He always placed his duty to the Impire before anything else, and I believe he would expect the same dedication from his family.”

  Meaning, A grocer’s daughter cannot understand how aristocrats think. She felt her face burn like the noonday sun.

  “And I? Do I relieve my sister of her temporary promotion?” She held his gaze, and it was the proconsul who looked away. The roses were ugly blotches on his face now.

  “That must be your own choice, ma’am.” His voice was growing harsher. “We do not know what sort of magic has been used. The prince and your sister may be their usual selves, except for their appearance. They may be collaborating willingly with the Covin out of a sense of duty, to maintain the rule of law and order. Or they may have been coerced. At the extreme, they may actually be convinced in their own minds that they are who they seem to be.”

  Her anger flashed out then, but it could find no more useful weapon than an unfamiliar vulgarity. “Either way, I shall likely end up under Emthoro!”

  “Your decision, ma’am. If you do not wish to accompany the child, I shall not force you. I can see what might await you.”

  Eigaze spoke up for the first time, her voice dry and bitter. “Of course, when the usurper is done with her, she may not realize it is Emthoro at all. He may look just like Shandie down to the mole on his toe, and she may have forgotten that the original died. What a wonderful chance to undo tragedy and regain a lost marriage!”

  Eshiala had never heard the countess use sarcasm before.

  “Be silent!” the count snapped furiously. “Ma’am, I have made my decision about your daughter. Whether you choose to accompany her is up to you. My wife and I can testify to her identity. You are free to depart if you wish. I am preparing a letter to send to the palace. Please advise me of your decision as soon as you can.”

  “How long have I got?” she asked. Her throat was so tight that every word hurt.

  “A day or so at most. There may be panic in the streets if the goblins head south. Who knows how close on Ylo’s heels they may be? We must act swiftly.”

  Countess Eigaze surged to her feet. “Ion, you know what I think! Write your stupid letter! Then read it over and try to find the honor in it. Eshiala, my dear, let’s you and me go and have a cup of tea and talk this over.”

  Eshiala rose, also, feeling grateful. She wondered what Ashia would say in her place. The mind boggled.

  As they reached the door, Eigaze seemed to have second thoughts. She turned. ”What are you going to do about Ylo?”

  Her husband frowned. “We need him to certify the imperor’s death.”

  “I know you do. And I expect he does.”

  “He isn’t going anywhere. He can barely walk.”

  “He can ride, can’t he?”

  Metal jangled from the direction of Centurion Hardgraa. He held a large bunch of iron keys. “The stables are secure, ma’am!”

  “Ah!” Eigaze nodded. “You think that will stop Ylo, do you?”

  Hardgraa scowled. “What do you suggest?”

  “Me? I’m only a fat old woman, Centurion. As I recall, there are some rusty fetters down in the wine cellar, but it really is not my business. Come, then, my dear.” She ushered the impress before her.

  As they went out, she heard the count say, “He is a material witness, I suppose.”

  The two ladies walked together across the Great Hall. Eshiala could barely see it. Her head was spinning and she felt close to panic.

  Eigaze stopped suddenly. “I have been married to that man for forty-two years, and we have never had a cross word! Now, all of a sudden, he is behaving like a drunken mule!” Her chins wobbled with outrage.

  “Ylo?” Eshiala said suddenly. “If they are going to turn him in, as well, shouldn’t we warn him?”

  “Bah! Ylo can look after himself.”

  “But . . .” It was a terribly slim hope. “If I appealed to Ylo—”

  “Never appeal to Ylo!” the countess said firmly. “He would only despise you, although he might not realize that himself. Regardless of what they think, my dear, the Ylos of this world are far more interested in the race than the prize. The worst thing you can do is to throw yourself on their mercy, because that ruins the sport. They don’t have any anyway—mercy sours the fruits of victory. With men like Ylo you must always play hard to get.”

  “I don’t have time to—”

  “As dear Aunt Kade always used to say, you will be gotten soon enough! Of course that’s the idea, and the only way to play the game, and you mustn’t think he’s not enjoying it just as much as you are.” Why was she standing here, in the middle of the Great Hall, babbling such nonsense? There was a curiously distracted look in her eyes. “They value what they get by what they pay to get it, even if they don’t under— . . . Ah!”

  A faint Boom! rolled through the mansion.

  “What was that?” Eshiala demanded, sensing a sudden gleam of satisfaction in her companion.

  “The cellar door, I expect. Mistress Ukka was standing behind it. Ionfeu will be busy with his letter . . . Come!”

  Eigaze set off as fast as she could move, heading for the main door like a runaway haywain. Bewildered, Eshiala followed, into sudden dazzling sunshine.

  At the foot of the steps stood the gig, with a sorrel mare between the shafts. Ylo was sitting on the bench bouncing Maya on his knee. He was tickling and she was shrieking with glee.

  Eshiala said, “I thought the stables—”

  “Mistress Ukka had duplicate keys, dear,” Eigaze said soothingly. ”Up you get! Ylo, have you got the bags?”

  “Two under my eyes and two under the seat, Aunt. Impress, is this brat housebroken?”

  The countess took Eshiala by the shoulders. “Gods be with you, my dear!” There were tears in her eyes. “I divided the gold in two. Don’t let Ylo cheat!” She smiled bravely and dropped her voice to a whisper, ”And remember to play hard to get!”

  “She knows that!” Ylo said. “It won’t work. Up you get, wench. I don’t think the cellar door will hold Hardgraa for long.”

  Even here, out on the driveway, the cellar door could be heard protesting.

  “Mistress Ukka will keep the servants away,” the countess said, forcing a brave smile, “but Ion isn’t quite deaf enough. Hurry, then!”

  A kiss and a hug . . . a scramble up to the bench . . . take Maya from Ylo . . . a crack of the reins and a final wave to the old lady as the gig went bouncing down the driveway . . . bewilderment . . .

  “Where are we going?” Eshiala exclaimed.

  “I’m going back to Qoble,” Ylo said. “Wonderful climate and a long way from goblins. I’ve got some heiresses in mind there. You’re welcome to come along, or I’ll drop you off somewhere. Please yourself. And I don’t cheat with gold. Virtue, certainly. Always! That’s what it’s for. Gold, never.”

  Escape? Hope glimmered before her like a mirage. Hope sang like a skylark, high out of reach. She saw the long wooded driveway ahead through rainbows of hope.

  “But they’ll chase us!” she said.

  The count would release Hardgraa. The centurion would rally the footmen and the grooms. He would be after the gig with a posse in minutes. Even if Ylo could reach the road, that would only offer a choice of Faintown or Moggly. Moggly was a dead end, and long before . . . “Where are you going?”

  The gig had turned off the driveway onto a side track. “Down to the lake!” Now Ylo’s grin was pure delight. “Auntie didn’t go to Faintown. She went to Moggly. She ordered a boat.”

  “Boat?”

  Maya squealed in gleeful terror as the gig bounced on the ruts. Cenmere came in sight through a gap in the trees, and a small sailboat was gliding toward the jetty.


  “She lied to them!” Ylo added joyfully. “The news isn’t out yet! She made it all up! We’ve got a day’s start on the panic, at least. Quite a lady, isn’t she?”

  The ice had broken, and the pond was only ankle deep. “But . . .” Eshiala’s head swam with the intensity of relief. “That’s why you were such a boor to me? To deceive Hardgraa?”

  Or could it have been to stop her throwing herself on his mercy? Was that what the countess had been hinting? Ylo took a corner on one wheel. “Me? Boor? That was merely a tactical feint—you don’t mean you believed me?”

  She ducked as branches swept low overhead.

  “You should have remembered I always lie,” Ylo said happily. ”I worked it out when the daffodils blew away. Nothing like a country walk to clear a man’s thinking! The pool had warned me off Rivermead, but it also trapped me into coming back here. Then I saw how Ionfeu and Hardgraa would react to the news.” He was too occupied with driving to look at her just then, but he smiled at the track ahead. “I realized that this was a perfect opportunity to use my damsel-in-distress gambit.”

  Eshiala’s hair blew in the wind, she hugged her daughter, who was yelling with mingled joy and terror at the wild ride.

  They had escaped from the trap! “Oh, Ylo! I’m so grateful!”

  He flashed his most sinister grin at her. “Gratitude I can handle,” he said.

  Remedies refusing:

  Love is a sickness full of woes,

  All remedies refusing;

  A plant that most with cutting grows,

  Most barren with best using.

  Samuel Daniel, Love Is a Sickness

  FIVE

  Signifying nothing

  1

  “My mission is extremely urgent!” Acopulo bleated. “If you will explain this urgency, then I am sure your departure can be expedited,” Lop’quith said soothingly.

  “I have told you! My business is secret!”

  “How can that be? You are a priest, and while the Gods’ business is naturally confidential to the uttermost in individual cases, in general terms it concerns us all.”

  Balked again!

  Acopulo had been trapped in Ilrane for two weeks. Star of Morning had avoided shipwreck in Dragon Reach, although barely. Battered and leaking, she had limped into the elvish port of Vislawn. When the customs officials had come aboard, they had ransacked her from stem to stern. They had uncovered Shandie’s letters to the caliph. Star of Morning had departed without her passenger.

  An elvish prison was admittedly very pleasant. When forced to build cities, elves concealed them. Vislawn was a great sprawl of islands at the mouth of the river, all its buildings hidden within trees. Acopulo had a pleasant cabana all to himself. He had a whole island all to himself. It had flowers and shade and a silver beach. The meals that were delivered twice a day were the sort of cuisine that Lord Umpily dreamed of. But a prison was a prison. Every few days, someone new would come to interrogate him. Politely, of course—an elf became ill at the very thought of whips or knuckle-dusters. The questioning took place under the trees in bowers of scented blossoms. The present inquisitor, Lop’quith, was fairly typical. He wore nothing but skimpy pants of scarlet and turquoise silk, and had no more fat on him than a dead twig. The skin stretched over his bones was a shiny gold. He claimed to be exarch of the Olipon sept of the senior branch of the Quith clan, and surrogate speaker of law for the Sovereignty of Quole—which might mean a lot or absolutely nothing. He looked no older than fourteen, but one could never tell with elves. He might be exactly what he seemed, a kid playing a practical joke on the foreigner, or he might be what he said, an important government official. In that case, he shaved his armpits.

  Acopulo dabbed at the sweat streaming down his forehead. The priestly robes he wore over his normal garb were very uncomfortable in this hot, sticky climate. He suspected that a genuine priest would wear only the robes, but to him that would seem like a confession of weakness. He shifted on the bench, trying to ignore the cloying sweetness of the flowering shrub at his back.

  “You believe I am lying. Then bring forth a sorcerer, and I shall be happy to repeat my story for him.” Oh, how he would like to talk with a sorcerer!

  Lop’quith shook his head regretfully. “The law does not recognize sorcery. If a judge had to admit that witnesses’ memories could be altered, or the physical universe itself changed on an ad hoc basis, then he could never reach any verdict at all!” His tuneful voice turned the nonsensical words to song.

  “You used sorcery to discover the letter I bore, and my money belt! I expect you have already had the letters read for you, without breaking the seals.”

  The kid’s eyes widened, flickering from rose and aquamarine to cobalt and malachite. “You wish to make this charge?”

  “What if I do?” Acopulo asked uneasily.

  “It will be a serious matter! The Office of Occult Manifestations will have to be advised, and the Mundane Affairs Inquisitor of the gens will certainly want to become involved.”

  God of Torment!

  “Then I withdraw the accusation. Please, sir—”

  “Do just call me by my name, or ‘Deputy,’ if you prefer.”

  “Please, Deputy, then. I did not intend to disembark at Vislawn. All I ask is to board a southbound ship as soon as possible. I do not see where Ilrane need be at all concerned with my affairs.”

  “But you are carrying letters from the sovereign of a realm with which we are bound by the Treaty of Clowd, 2998, to the ruler of one with which we may in this instance be in alliance under the Concord of Gaaze, 2875, as amended by the Covenant of Seven Liberties, Clause 18, Paragraph 14.b(i). As a cleric, you are also subject to the Law of Religious Harmonies of the Syndic of Elmas, 2432, or specifically to a codicil—”

  “Enough!” Acopulo wanted to weep. “I don’t suppose there is any chance of appealing to Warlock Lith’rian, is there?”

  The kid gasped. He ran the fingers of both hands through his curls of shiny gold wire. His voice soared an octave. “The warlock? The Supreme War Leader of the Eol Gens? Have you any idea of the bureaucratic complexities that you would invoke if you filed such a request? Indeed, I am not at all sure that even by raising the possibility, you may not have already—”

  “Forget it!” Acopulo screamed. If the complexities alarmed an elf, they terrified him. “Is there any way at all that I can just . . . What’s wrong?”

  “There!” Lop’ exclaimed, sitting up suddenly. “Did you see?”

  “See what?” Acopulo twisted around to stare where the golden finger pointed.

  “A Serene Ocarina! I have never seen one so early in the year!” The opal eyes flamed in sienna, cerulean, and ivory. Lop’quith’s childish face had flushed bright copper with excitement.

  “A what?”

  “A Serene Ocarina! A butterfly.” Oh, God of Scorpions!

  2

  The Imperor summoned the Senate at last. For days the capital had boiled with rumors of goblins and dwarves and disasters. Umpily had gathered up all the theories being circulated at court and reported them to Shandie as he was supposed to. Maddeningly, Shandie had just listened and grunted, but not confided in him.

  Without question, Shandie had changed since ascending the throne. The old intimacy Umpily had treasured so long was missing now. Some nights he awoke in screaming terror, shattered by nightmares in which he had been right the first time and the ruler was the imposter and the missing fugitive the genuine imperor. In the clear light of day such ludicrous fancies were untenable, of course, and especially so when he was in Shandie’s presence—although those occasions were much rarer now than they had been.

  A turnout of the full Senate would almost fill the Rotunda, leaving very few seats for other dignitaries. With the court still in mourning, though, many aristocrats had retired to their country estates to catch up on personal affairs. There were more spare seats available than usual, and Umpily was able to order his toga brought out of storage and
squeeze his generous bulk in among the lesser nobility.

  By chance or craft, it was an East day, which was traditional for military matters. The Senate all sat on that side, therefore, a solid bank of scarlet togas behind the Gold Throne, so that the imperor would be facing them from the Opal Throne in the center. The minor peerage had to settle for the western seats, in back of the Red Throne. Umpily was put very high, near the back, where he would look down on the proceedings, but he had the Marquis of Mosrace on his right and the Duke of Whileboth on his left. Whileboth was frail now, but a shrewd soldier in his day. His comments would certainly be worthwhile if he managed to hear what was being said. His many acid remarks about old Emshandar had kept him out of the Senate, but he had slaughtered more than his share of dwarves in his time, had Whileboth. The legions had called him “Ironjaw.”

  As always, the proceedings failed to start on time. The audience fidgeted and muttered. Both Mosrace and Ironjaw were convinced that Umpily must know what news would be announced. He parried their queries as well as he could without actually admitting his ignorance. They gave up on him at last and pointedly fell into talk with their other neighbors, leaving him isolated.

  He wished he could tell them that they need not worry. Whatever the truth behind the rumors, the evil, scheming wardens were gone forever. The Almighty had replaced them, guaranteeing that the Impire would prevail. Umpily could not say so, of course. He could not mention the Almighty to anyone, no matter how hard he tried.