Mistress of the Catacombs (26 page)

"Lord Zettin?" the king said with an eyebrow raised in interrogation.

"He can have two thousand men in an hour if he needs them," the admiral said. "We'll have every ship you point out down to a bare hull if that's what you want."

Zettin blinked, suddenly aware that he was posturing again. In a rush of decision he blurted, "No, by the Lady! We really can! I mean it!"

Carus nodded dismissal. "Is the City Prefect here?" he demanded. "Lord Putran, isn't it? Where's he?"

A middle-aged, balding, terrified man in a gray robe stood against the wall in a corner; he had a large document case at his feet. He raised his hand and squeaked, "Milord?" before slapping a hand over his mouth in horror.

"Don't worry about the bloody form of address!" Carus roared. "What have you got to say? Where's Putran?"

Sharina reached for his arm again but there was no need. The king's sinewy left hand closed over hers affectionately, gave her a pat, and released her while his attention remained centered on the man in gray. Several of the aides along the wall goggled at the way Prince Garric showed his affection for his sister.

"I'm Lord Putran's chief clerk, your highness," the fellow said. "The lord is, well, we're not sure where his lordship is. He, ah, doesn't come to the office very frequently. But I usually handle...."

Carus turned his head to glare past Sharina toward the chancellor. Royhas gestured curtly. "I'll take it in hand, your highness," he said. "There'll be three possible candidates for the post before you tomorrow morning."

"Not before me," Carus snapped. "Give them to Liane. But that isn't the business for now anyway."

He crooked a finger toward the clerk. "All right, how much grain is there in the city now? Enough to feed fifteen thousand men for ten days?"

"Not in government warehouses, your highness," the clerk said. His eyes bobbed up and down toward the document case. He wanted to open it, but if he squatted to do so he'd drop out of the king's sight over the table.

He paused, then went on, "Even if we add rye and barley to the stores of wheat, there'd only be full rations for four days."

Carus smiled grimly. "I didn't say 'government warehouses,' he said, but he didn't snarl. Competence counted with this king, and the clerk's answer had put him on a plane with Lord Waldron. "I said the city. For this emergency, I'll let the residents of Valles eat rats for a week if that's what it takes to supply my troops."

"Oh!" the clerk said. "Well, in that case.... Yes, that easily, even by the tax declarations. And I know for a fact that those are low, disgracefully low!"

His face grew worried. "But milor... ah, but your highness," he said, "these are private property and—"

"Royhas, draft an emergency decree," Carus interrupted. "We'll promulgate it when we leave here."

"Done, your highness," the chancellor said. The aide who'd been kneeling at his side as Royhas whispered hopped back to the wall, scribbling with a blunt stylus on a waxed board.

"Pterlion, they'll be issuing chits on the treasury," Carus continued, turning his attention to the treasurer. "These will be honored. Do you understand?"

Lord Pterlion, a diminutive man with the manner not of a mouse but a shrew, glared across the table. His lips were pursed into a beak. He dipped his head twice, nodding agreement, but he obviously didn't trust what would come out if he opened his mouth.

"But if there's undeclared goods in the warehouses," Carus added, no longer eyeing his treasurer as a possible next meal, "then the chits come due in a quarter, not at the month. All right?"

Pterlion smiled, an expression his face hadn't practiced often. "Much better, your highness," he said. "If I can't find the money in ninety days, then you need another man in this ministry."

"Waldron, they'll need escorts," Carus said. The way his head turned disconcerted Sharina; it was like watching a weathercock in a gusty storm. "Provide—"

He looked at the clerk again. "What is your name, anyway?" he snapped. "You from the prefect's office?"

"Hauk, your highness!"

"Right, provide Hauk with however many men he thinks he'll need."

"I'm going to use the four regiments of heavy infantry to carry the grain," Waldron said, meeting the king's eyes. Liane, seated between them, leaned back in her chair with the look of someone who'd found herself between duelists. "It'll give them exercise, and it'll show me how they'll react to an order they don't like. Especially their officers."

For a moment Carus was bow-string taut, reacting to the "I will," rather than "May I?" in Waldron's statement. Sharina and Liane reached out simultaneously, their mouths open in fear of the king's reaction.

Carus shrugged them aside, almost angrily, but he said in a growl, "Aye, a good plan, milord. A fine plan."

"Your highness?" chirped Hauk. "I wonder—will you be wanting dried vegetables, wine, and cheese as well? Because we could get those supplies at the same time."

Liane gasped with relief; Sharina felt herself relax blissfully. She'd been poised to grab the king's arm if he started to slap his army commander, but she didn't think she was either fast enough or strong enough. She wondered what sort of reward would be suitable for the clerk who'd accidentally prevented a crisis.

King Carus laughed with the booming joy of a man who loves life and lives it fully. He rose to his feet, putting his hands on the shoulders of the women seated beside him.

"Yes, Master Hauk," he said, "we'll want those other supplies as well. And by the way—"

His gaze, sword-edge hard again, stabbed Royhas.

"—you've just become City Prefect. Royhas, I won't need those names, but take care of it if Hauk has to be ennobled or some such nonsense. Eh?"

Royhas nodded. Faces—noble faces—around the table showed shock, and some of the aides looked worse than that, but nobody objected aloud. Which was just as well....

"I...," said Hauk. He looked like a carp sucking air. "I.... I...."

"Your highness?" said the grizzled aide who'd offered Waldron the morning reports. "Normally the troops wouldn't carry their supplies, they'd—"

He stopped, suddenly aware of what he was saying and who he was saying it to. The man facing him might have a youth's body, but the soul looking out through the eyes wasn't one which had to be told how an army moved.

"Aye, normally we'd land every night on a major island and buy food for the next day," the king said. "We'd reach Tisamur some time next year that way."

He smiled, not a gentle expression, as he swept the room with his eyes.

"Maybe a little sooner?" he went on. "But we're not going to do that. We're going to strike straight across the Inner Sea, overnighting on islets where nobody lives and nobody can warn that we're coming. We'll carry enough food to get us to Tisamur."

He pointed across the table to a plump man in an immaculate blue robe, his fingers tented before him. Lord Tadai had no formal appointment at the moment, but his presence in the council had surprised no one. He was wealthy, powerful, and extremely intelligent.

"Lord Tadai," Carus said, "I want you to go to Pandah and embargo the shipping there."

"Go ahead of the fleet, you mean, your highness?" Tadai said, laying his hands flat on the table. Pandah, the only large island in the Inner Sea, was a stopping point for much of the traffic between distant isles.

"The fleet's not going by way of Pandah," Carus said with a broad grin. "We're striking straight to the Sidera Atoll north of Shengy to regroup. You'll send all merchantmen with cargoes of food to join us there, or stage on to Tisamur if we've left already. I don't care who they are or where they're bound, they're supplying the royal army now."

"For which they'll be paid?" Pterlion asked.

"For which they'll be paid," Carus agreed, nodding, "but Zettin will make sure Lord Tadai has enough marines with him to put a squad aboard every ship he sends south. To remind the citizens of outlying parts of their duty to the Kingdom of the Isles."

Lord Waldron snorted. Like most landowners from Northern Ornifal, he regarded himself and his peers as the upholders of the kingdom and its the only real citizens. Everyone else, even the merchant nobility of Valles, were on a lower plane. As for the status of mere sailors from other islands—well, indeed!

"Three galleys to Pandah, your highness?" Lord Zettin asked.

Carus frowned. "Four, I think," he said. "Under an officer who's a seaman himself—

"Because I assuredly am not," said Tadai, smiling comfortably with his fingers tented again. His oval nails were gilded. "As I've proved, I'm afraid."

The king set his balled fists on the table and leaned onto them. "If anybody doesn't know his job, come to me," he said. "If anybody's trying to do his job and runs into somebody who's getting in the way of that, come to me."

He grinned like a really happy leopard. "But I give extra credit to the folks who don't bother me," he added, "because I have my own job to do. Does everybody understand?"

There was no sound save the rustle of documents and the whicker of sandals on the tiled floor as councillors prepared to rise.

"Then, gentlemen, go do your jobs!" the king thundered. "And know by my oath on the Lady that I will do mine!"

He gestured to the door. Attaper hauled it open, barely in time to let the first of the hastening councillors out unimpeded.

Carus watched them go. In a voice that only Sharina and Liane could hear he said, "I sent Ilna into trouble. By the Lady! my sword will get her out again—or I'll die trying!"

* * *

Garric awoke to the pressure of a hand on his shoulder. He sat upright, rousing Tint; she whuffed at his feet.

Garric half-smiled, half-frowned at memory of the time he shared his mind with King Carus. In those recent days he'd have come out of his sleep with a drawn dagger in his hand. Carus wasn't with him now, and an innkeeper's son doesn't have reflexes honed by slaughter and assassination.

The ancient king's experiences might have been a better preparation for the life Gar the Bandit was leading now.

Vascay had wakened him. Moonlight trickling through chinks in the wattle-and-daub walls provided the only illumination, but Gar's eyes saw clearly by it.

The other bandits lay sprawled on the straw, snoring or not as their habit was. Alcomm alone seemed wakeful, huddling in a corner and squeezing the biceps of his severed arm with his remaining hand.

"The wizard went out a little bit ago," Vascay whispered. "I waited till he was away before I got you up. I thought you'd want to follow him just to see what's going on. He looks to be heading back to the boathouse, but I guess your ladyfriend—"

He nodded toward Tint. His tone was matter-of-fact, with nothing of a sneer in it.

"—could track him wherever he went, right?"

Garric got to his feet and pulled on the outer tunic he'd been using for a bedcover. He didn't have boots or sandals to worry about. Gar hadn't worn footgear since the seawolf chewed on his skull, so the soles of his feet were as tough as oxhide.

"Yes, all right," Garric said. "Are you coming too?"

Vascay snorted a quick laugh. "It's not worth me putting my leg on, lad," he said. "Not when I've got you to take care of things."

The chieftain grimaced, stroking the stump with hard hands. He'd have been sitting cross-legged if he'd had both legs.

"Clamping to a horse's flank makes the stump swell worse than if I'd hiked the way on the peg all these miles," he said. "Cursed if I know why. One of the mysteries of life, I suppose."

Garric nodded. He glanced at his swordbelt, hanging from a tack hook in the empty stall where he and Tint had bedded down. He drew the dagger and thrust the bare blade under the sash of his tunic, then said to Vascay, "I'll borrow a javelin. All right?"

"Aye," said Vascay in a subdued voice. He didn't look up. His hands continued to knead his stump.

The valves of the stable's double door were ajar; Garric glanced through them. Metron was out of sight and the night was silent. He slipped out with the beastgirl following as smoothly as a stream of oil.

"I want to follow the wizard, Tint," Garric said. "Can you take me the way he's gone?"

Tint ambled off on all fours. "We kill Metron, Gar?" she asked.

Garric lengthened his stride to keep up with the beastgirl, though she wasn't really in a hurry. "No, Tint," he said. "Metron's on our side. Or we're on his. He likes us."

"Metron like Gar?" Tint said. She made a sound with her teeth. "Metron like Gar for food, maybe."

That was pretty close to Garric's own judgment on the wizard, but he didn't say so in case Tint misunderstood it. Garric had known even before he became Prince of the Isles that sometimes you had to ally with people you'd rather not have met.

Metron might not be a trustworthy friend, but the Intercessor was a deadly enemy. If Tint's long jaws tore Metron's throat out, it was hard to see how Garric and his new colleagues would survive the efforts of Protectors of the Peace guided by wizardry.

The trail Tint followed led around the back of the U-shaped villa, past outbuildings and a litter of broken vehicles and equipment. Geese, roosting for the night, quacked nervously awake. Garric expected a watchman to appear, but the only response from the house was the squeak of a shutter being eased open enough for an eye to peer out.

Garric frowned, wondering if the noise would warn Metron. He snorted. No, of course not. The wizard was neither a countryman nor—from what Garric had seen—interested enough in anything but his own desires.

Besides, Garric had nothing to apologize for even if Metron learned he was being watched. The wizard was the one who needed to explain where he was sneaking off to.

The track led toward the boathouse in the grove as Vascay had guessed. Garric saw a flicker of light through the willows. It could have come from a fire, but he thought there was the peculiar rosy tinge of wizardlight.

Maybe that was just nervousness. He grimaced and checked the javelin's balance.

Tint rose to a half-crouch and sniffed the air, then dropped back on all fours to enter the grove. Wizardry didn't seem to bother the beastgirl the way it did many men.

Garric's concern wasn't so much for what Metron intended to do—which for the moment at least could be expected to advance the plans that the bandits had agreed to—but rather for what the wizard might do if he blundered. In Garric's experience, most wizards had more power than judgment; they were like blind men swinging swords.

He thought of Tenoctris and smiled. Tenoctris used the slight power she had to carve minute changes into the cosmos. The Kingdom of the Isles stood today because of the consummate skill with which Tenoctris worked.

Garric walked cautiously after Tint. The path wasn't overgrown but branches had encroached from either side, narrowing it to the width of a single person. The woods of the borough where timber was a valuable commodity were never so ragged as this. This undergrowth would've been pruned back, for kindling and to prevent it from crowding the roots of the great trees whose dead branches were the hamlet's major source of firewood.

Tint clicked her teeth and halted. She stood with a hand on the trunk of the beech that had been planted to shade the boathouse. Garric looked past her.

Metron knelt on the dock where Garric had pulled him up from the water. He chanted in time to the motions of his ivory athame, but his words of power were muted by the distance.

A ball of red light formed in the air over the dock. It shrank down to a vivid pinpoint but didn't vanish as Garric expected. For a moment the light waxed and waned like a candleflame with the athame's rhythm; then it steadied, angry and bright.

Metron stopped chanting and sagged. Tint growled deep in her throat. Garric placed his left hand on her shoulders, the way he'd have calmed—steadied, at least—a dog.

At first Garric thought that Metron had finished his business when he ceased chanting, but after a pause the wizard gave a sigh of exhaustion and brought something out of the purse hanging around his neck. Distance kept Garric from being sure, but he guessed it was the ring he'd watched Metron place there when Vascay handed it over.

Instead of resuming his incantation, Metron held the ring out between thumb and forefinger. Garric's eyes narrowed in puzzlement.

Light winked from the outstretched hand. Metron was positioning the ring so that his bead of wizardlight shone through the tiny sapphire, casting the pattern of its facets onto the pond's still surface. He adjusted the jewel carefully, looking onto the water beside him.

"We go now, Gar?" Tint asked. "Catch goose and eat, maybe?"

Her voice shocked Garric, though it probably didn't carry to the wizard. Without thinking, Garric pinched the beastgirl's long muzzle closed. She jerked away with a snarl, baring her fangs.

Garric stepped back, putting the big beech between him and the wizard. He raised his left hand empty and held the javelin out to the side. He'd treated the beastgirl with disrespect; she'd responded as she'd have done to a member of her tribe who overstepped proper bounds.

But Garric's body wasn't as sturdy as those of the beastgirl's siblings. Tint would be very sorry if she nipped off Gar's finger, but it could happen regardless.

Horrified at what reflex had made her do to her dominant male, Tint flung herself on the ground and squirmed to Garric's feet. "Tint sorry!" she moaned. Misery kept her voice low, though she'd obviously forgotten that Garric wanted silence. "Gar hold Tint? Tint sorry!"

Garric knelt and stroked her. "Hush, now, Tint," he whispered. "Stay quiet for now, then we'll go back to the stable."

The beastgirl continue to whimper quietly, but the sound was no more disturbing than her belly rustling on the dry leaves. Garric leaned past the treetrunk again to watch Metron.

The wizard still held the ring. The pond stirred where its patterned light fell. A head and then its torso as well rose from the water. Metron spoke in a voice like the squeal of a hinge binding.

The chitinous figure chirped back in reply. It had four arms and a triangular head that seemed too small to hold a brain. Garric knew that slender, deadly praying mantises wreaked havoc with fellow insects who devoured garden plants, but he'd always found them frighteningly alien. This creature looked like a mantis the size of a man.

Tint watched also, crouched on all fours. Garric felt her body tense; he put his hand on her shoulder again, gripping this time lest his mere touch not be enough to restrain her. She growled like ice sliding from roof-slates in the dead of winter.

Metron and the creature continued to converse. The wizard's screeches were unpleasant, but the replies were worse. It was as though a star had chosen to speak from the night sky.

The creature raised its lower pair of arms in a signal; the upper set were edged and toothed for weapons. Metron bowed and swiped his athame through the bead of wizardlight.

It winked out. Metron lowered his hand, then dropped the ring back into his pouch.

Garric expected the creature to sink into the water the way it had risen; instead it went translucent and lost structure as it vanished. It was like watching a dustcloud disperse. For a moment a shadow showed on the still water; then it too was gone and with it the last sign of the thing that Metron had summoned to him.

The wizard remained where he was, drained by his art. When Metron got his strength back, he'd return to the stable and the bandits with whom he had allied himself.

Garric let out the breath he found he'd been holding. "Let's go, Tint," he murmured. He stroked the coarse fur of her back. "Let's go back to our friends."

He guessed he'd let her snatch a goose on the way. It wouldn't be theft: Ceto's purse had enough copper in it to stand the cost of the bird, and Garric figured the beastgirl had earned more than that today.

Besides, Garric wanted somebody to be pleased about the events of this night.