• • •
“Li-Gallant, I want to apologize.” The words tasted like gall. D’Embry didn’t care for Vingi’s office, didn’t like the discomfort in her chest and the headache with which she’d awakened, didn’t enjoy the half-smirk on the Li-Gallant’s face. “I don’t know how that disturbance happened last night, but I’m damned well going to find out.”
“There is an old adage on Neweden about closing the cage after the moonwailer has gotten out.”
D’Embry watched as the Li-Gallant laced thick fingers together. All of his face frowned except for the eyes: they openly laughed at her. She tried to find a comfortable position in her floater; the movement threatened to split her head. A hammer thudded behind her skull. Damn it, symbiote, do something. “Li-Gallant, we thought that the security arrangements we had were more than sufficient, and we were on the Center grounds, as well. That’s Alliance territory.”
“Evidently your captains were wrong about the security, and lassari don’t care for territorial semantics.”
Fine, be difficult about this, you bastard. You’re enjoying it. Gods, symbiote, aren’t you going to ease this throbbing? “What can I say, Li-Gallant? From what we’ve reconstructed so far, the lassari knew the layout and location of the guards perfectly. We’ve made the assumption that one of the guards—or one of the guests—was sympathetic to the Hag’s Legion or was bribed. All of the Diplo staff are undergoing psych evaluation—we’ll get our subversive and punish him to the full extent of Alliance law. They couldn’t have gotten in and out without help.”
“That fact worries me more than the rest, Regent.” His slow regard moved down to the sea-wash illumination of his desk terminal. Green light swirled the lines of his face. Then he looked at her again. “You look pale this morning. I trust that the excitement and apprehension haven’t been too much for your, ahh, condition.” He arrayed himself in comic concern.
Bastard. She forced herself to ignore the ache in her head, the catch in her breathing. “I’m not that delicate an individual,” she said, unsmiling. “I never have been. I don’t allow infirmities to rule me.”
“Ahh, but sometimes we have to realize that they limit us.”
You’re so obvious with your baiting, fat man. Stuff your limitations. She forced a smile that was as false as his solicitations. “It’s the mind that matters, not the body, as you must know, Li-Gallant.” There, mull on that for a bit.
He did. He didn’t seem to enjoy it. He peered back into the terminal, idly touching a contact. “I understand the symbiote puts its own natural drugs into your bloodstream. It must dull the pain considerably, Regent.”
And the mind; right, Li-Gallant? “Not as much as the available treatments would. You misunderstand the purpose of the symbiote. It’s a regulator, not something to debilitate me. A regent, a li-gallant, anyone in a position of power, can’t afford to have a fogged mind.”
“In Neweden culture, one is supposed to submit to the inevitable. I’m afraid your symbiote is useless for me, should I ever be in a position to need such a thing. I would lose all respect from guilded kin for my avoidance of the commands of Dame Fate. I would be ousted, and the parasite taken from me. One should not hide from Hag Death, Regent.”
“Are you telling me that you fail to respect me, Li-Gallant?”
He smiled. “I’m a product of my culture, inescapably, Regent. But I do understand that your mores are not Neweden’s, that different rules apply to you. Perhaps other guilded kin cannot make that distinction, but I can.”
D’Embry’s brows tightened with pain; she hoped it resembled concentration. The headache was making her sick to her stomach, as well. She promised herself an hour’s nap—later this afternoon. Just let me get through this. Damn, if Niffleheim would have sent me someone competent for seneschal . . . “Li-Gallant, I can only offer my apologies again for the dinner, and my assurance that we will do everything we can to apprehend those responsible. It won’t happen again.”
Vingi nodded. “Your apology is accepted, Regent.” Again, he stared down at the terminal, lips pursed. “But you must admit that a question might cross the minds of the guilded kin here: if the Regent can’t protect us, maybe her Seneschal could have. Or, if there’s nothing at all the Alliance could have changed, then possibly the Family Oldin would be more effective.”
His smile was that of a predator. “An interesting speculation, isn’t it?” he said.
• • •
Helgin threw the knife down on the floor before Renard. It stuck there, quivering. Micha, flanking the larger man, stared down at the blade. Renard raised an eyebrow quizzically. His left hand slowly stroked the plant-pet around his shoulders.
“You seem angry, Motsognir,” he commented.
“You’d damned well better believe it,” Helgin roared. His fury contorted his bearded face. Legs widespread, hands on hips, he glared up at Renard, eyes flaring under thick brows. “I got Micha and her bunch of goons in, and it was perfect—until someone decided to throw that.” He pointed at the knife. “Renard, we’d agreed that an entirely peaceful demonstration was what we needed to impress them. What the hell did you have in mind with that damned knife, and who was supposed to be hit?”
“An accident, Motsognir,” Renard purred, his deep voice resonant. “A mistake.”
“Then I want the man that threw it. I want to know why he aimed at me, and I want to see how he’ll look with that knife sticking up his ass.”
“Micha’s already talked with him. He threw at the Li-Gallant.”
“Then he’s as blind as a cave-fish. The fat man’s a big target, and he was halfway down the table.” Helgin spat on the floor; Renard looked from spittle to dwarf. “Don’t play me for a fool, Renard,” Helgin growled. “Let me talk to this myopic knife-flinger.”
“He’s dead,” Micha said. She could not keep her gaze from the knife-hilt protruding from the floorboards. It seemed to fascinate her. “An argument with someone in Dasta. Yesterday.”
“Awfully convenient.”
She shrugged. “True.”
Helgin rumbled disgust. A bare foot stamped the floor.
Renard smiled over to Micha. “I don’t think our little co-conspirator believes us, Micha.”
“Your little co-conspirator is wondering whether he should beat the truth out of the two of you,” Helgin answered.
Renard’s eyes went hard. His hand ceased caressing the plant-pet and went to his side. He drew in a long breath, filling his chest. “I wouldn’t make a threat you can’t keep, dwarf.”
“Oh, I never do.” Helgin smiled into Renard’s stare. He flexed powerful arms, folding them across his chest. “Never.”
For a moment, the confrontation held on edge, caught by tension. Micha held her breath, waiting. Then Renard’s stiff posture relaxed. He bellowed a rich laugh, and his hand sought the beast around his neck once more. “Maybe next time I’ll ask you to prove that boast, Motsognir.”
“Why delay my pleasure? I haven’t had a good fight in days.”
“As you’ve pointed out to me before, FitzEvard has his own interests, and he doesn’t care to see his agents at each other’s throats.”
“Then remember who’s in charge here.”
“On Goshawk and with the Alliance, you rule, Motsognir. Here, on Neweden territory, I have the final say. Oldin has given me his orders, and, curious as I might find them, I carry them out.”
“The same way your people end a simple demonstration? With a thrown knife—treachery?”
Micha started to speak again, but Renard’s upraised hand stopped her. “Dwarf, you begin to sound like that Sula of yours—everything words with no action. Are you afraid of blades, like your pet Hoorka? Does the stench of blood bother you, as it bothers Hermond?”
The smile seemed cemented beneath the cover of Helgin’s beard. His feet rasped against floor, and he crouched lower, tensing. “One more word, Renard, that’s all it will take. Leave Gyll out of this—he’s an honest and admir
able man, better than either one of us.”
Renard spread his hands wide. He shook his head. “So you keep telling me.”
“Believe it, or I’ll teach you to say it—ungently.”
“FitzEvard wouldn’t like your tone.”
“Then let’s talk about something he would like.”
Renard nodded agreement. In slow stages, Helgin relaxed. He strode over to the knife in the floor and pulled it loose from the boards. He touched the tip to his forefinger; flesh cratered around it. Looking at the weapon, he spoke to Renard. “A pity we’re both so loyal. I’d enjoy being your enemy.”
“Maybe later.” Renard smiled back. “You might yet get your chance, neh? But until then, let me tell you what else we have planned . . .”
Chapter 8
THERE WERE TWENTY-THREE of them, and they were the Dead, a group of lassari who, hopeless, had given themselves entirely to the vagaries of Dame Fate and the claws of Hag Death. They were walking in their endless march to nowhere, far from any of the cities of Neweden. Sterka was three hundred kilometers to the south—they were moving vaguely in its direction. The rolling hills of the Preada Valley spread around them; a river coursed to their right, swelling with more speed and purpose toward the distant city. In a few days more, the small towns that clustered around Sterka like anxious children around a parent would appear. For now, they could be striding through the long grass of Neweden’s primal past. The landscape was gently soothing and, except for themselves (who were, by their own reckoning, already outside the ken of the living), barren of the intruder humanity.
They did not care. The Dead care only for the Hag. They chanted the sibilant phrases of the eternal mantra; they tolled their bells and swung their censers.
The carcass lay in their path—a fairly large animal. It had been dead a few days. The stench of decay hung around it like a foul cloak, and some local carrion-eaters had torn at it. The vanguard of the Dead chanted their way around it, perhaps with an involuntary wrinkling of noses and rolling of eyes. Perhaps some of them even noticed that it was not any beast with which they were familiar; it was not until the midpoint of the line that an older man dressed in the tatters of a cloak stumbled to a halt, eyes wide. Those behind him stopped as well, bumping him. He stared at the dead animal, his filthy head shaking slowly from side to side. The censer he held dropped unheeded to the ground with a soft thud, coals smoldering in the grass.
He breathed a word which rustled like a paean through the ranks of the Dead, spoken louder and louder until it became a shout.
The beast of fable, the long-extinct god-creature of Neweden. Omen, pet of the gods. Symbol, whose very bones meant power.
Ippicator.
• • •
“Well, Thane. Did you meet with him?”
“Yah, Jeriad. I did.”
“And?”
“No. I’m sorry, Jeriad, but I told him no.”
Chapter 9
HE’D BEEN SULLENLY QUIET during the flight to the village of Malcala. She endured his sullenness, his monosyllabic replies to questions until the flitter landed and they clambered out. They could both see the apprentice waiting for them at the edge of the park in which they’d set down, but she held him back.
“What is it, Jeriad?” she demanded.
“What, Thane?” Under the hood of his nightcloak, McWilms looked back at her. His voice was heavy with some emotion, short and clipped.
Valdisa dropped her voice to match his. Her fingers gripped his shoulder tightly. “Listen, Jeriad. I won’t take that tone from you. Not in private, and most certainly not on a contract. Spit it out, kin-brother, if something’s troubling you. I don’t want to play the nasty kin-lord, but I’ll do it if I have to.” She paused. “Well?”
She thought for a moment that McWilms wasn’t going to answer, that she’d have to send him back to Underasgard and finish the contract with the apprentices, for she wasn’t about to go further with his unspilled rancor fouling their teamwork. Too many kin lost their lives that way.
But his mouth worked, though his steady regard remained a challenge. His cerulean eyes watched her. “It’s another contract for the Li-Gallant, isn’t it?”
So that’s it. He’s guessed it, like the rest. She did not deny or acknowledge the charge. “Remember the code, Jeriad. We’re just weapons. It doesn’t matter to us who signed the contracts.”
He shook himself away from her grasp. In the darkness, she heard more than saw his movement. Behind her, the flitter’s engines moaned into silence—she knew that the apprentice piloting it would be watching them, curious; the tale would get back to Underasgard, no doubt well-embroidered.
“It didn’t really matter, once,” McWilms said. “I think you know that, sometimes, who we’re working for does make a difference—when it’s always the Li-Gallant’s signature. It bothers all the Hoorka, especially the older kin.”
“What do you want me to do, Jeriad? The Hoorka would starve without those contracts. And I notice that you’re willing to eat the food we get from those same contracts.”
McWilms rubbed at his right hand, as if a memory of pain troubled him. “Thane, I’m sorry if what I say bothers you, but surely you realize how this troubles all the kin. None of us like the whispered gossip we hear every time you go to Vingi’s keep to collect our money. I do what I have to do, but it leaves a bitter taste.”
“If it’s making you act the way you do now, Jeriad, then I don’t feel safe. If the rest of the kin are the same, then I’m surprised we haven’t lost more kin than d’Mannberg recently.”
McWilms’s face took on a strange aspect between sorrow and anger. “Thane, I hope you don’t place the blame of my kin-father’s death on me. If you do, then we have more to settle than just a few contracts.”
Valdisa could hear the pain in his voice. She softened her words. “No, Jeriad, I don’t. That was Dame Fate’s whim and a cowardly ambush from that Hag-kin Vasella. Still, we have to hunt tonight, and I don’t want you slow to react because it’s the Li-Gallant’s enemy we look for.”
“Then it is Vingi’s contract?”
She shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“I suppose not.” The answer was a second too slow.
“Then let’s go meet the apprentices, or the dawnrock will call us too early.”
They moved away from the flitter into a fragrant night. Boots shushed against sandy grass. Malcala was a collection of a few houses and buildings on the eastern edge of the Sterkian continent. They could smell the tang of salt water and rotting fish, hear the boom of surf. The sea was Malcala’s life. Everyone here was tied to its moods, its tides. A quiet place with homes where people retired early and woke with the sunstar.
Usually.
The long, gangly form of the apprentice Ritti waited for them at the edge of the village. A crowd stood behind him at a short distance. The lights of Malcala threw their shadows at the Hoorka. Valdisa glanced from the onlookers to Ritti. “Trouble?” she asked.
The boy’s voice wavered between tenor and baritone. “Not yet, Thane, Sirrah McWilms. But the Shipmaster would like to speak with you.” Ritti sounded uncertain, vacillating between hilarity and fear as his voice did between child and man.
One of the spectators stepped forward. Even in the dimness, the Hoorka could see his weathered skin, the thick muscles of his shoulders and chest. The scent of salt was on his clothes. “I’m Shipmaster Le Plath,” he said. The voice matched the frame: thick, ponderous.
Valdisa bowed, kin to kin. Beside her, McWilms did the same. “Shipmaster, I can’t wait here. Forgive my abruptness, which is not worthy of you as kin-lord, but what is your reason for delaying us on our contract?” Valdisa’s words were polite but laden with the Hoorka aloofness. Le Plath didn’t quail, as she had seen others do. He simply planted his large feet in the sand and scratched at his armpit through his tunic.
“We have a problem,” he said.
“We?”
“The Hoorka and Malcala,
” he answered. His hands plunged into his pockets; at her side, she felt McWilms suddenly tense at the gesture, his hand going for his vibro hilt. Le Plath noticed, as well. His thick eyebrows knotted over his splayed nose. “You got to tell the Li-Gallant he can’t have Pauli.”
“Pauli Shroyer? Shipmaster, he’s our victim, and the Hag will have him or not as Dame Fate and She of the Five will. It’s not up to you or me.”
“Ain’t talking about you or me. I’m talking about the Li-Gallant; I want you to tell him.”
“You misunderstand the Hoorka, Shipmaster,” McWilms broke in. He shot a strange glance at Valdisa. “We’ve no communications with the Li-Gallant other than any contract we might have, nor, in any case, do we reveal the signer of a contract until after the hunt.”
“That ain’t what people say,” Le Plath continued doggedly.
“Then people are wrong,” Valdisa declared harshly, all attempts at kin-politeness gone. “And you’re delaying us too much, Shipmaster.”
Le Plath did not move, did not react. The Hoorka began to see the crowd as something more than just a passive irritation. If these onlookers chose to resist, neither McWilms nor Valdisa nor the apprentices could really stop them, not without better weapons and more kin—the apprentice’s report had told them that Shroyer had armed himself only with vibrofoil, and the Hoorka had given themselves the same weapons. Enough determination from these people and they would go down; with an entourage to parade before the Hag, but they would die. Valdisa wondered whether they shouldn’t retreat to the flitter and call Underasgard.
Le Plath sniffed and swallowed.
“Pauli Shroyer has a mouth that speaks the truth too much,” he said. Stolid, slow, plodding, the words came. “Pauli knows that the Li-Gallant taxes us too much. He said that to the wrong people. That’s his crime, Hoorka. Would you kill him for that, leave all his kin weeping? He’s a good man. I need him.”
“You may still have him—if the Dame wishes.”
Le Plath’s smile was as slow as his speech. “The Dame is like the sea, always changing. I don’t trust Her.”
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