Blood of Ambrose (28 page)

“Of course,” Morlock said, ignoring the sarcasm. “Ambrosia and I expected you—or someone from the Graith—long since. The Protector may respect your neutrality, but not if you assist me in evading capture by his forces. If that will be important to you we must part company now.”

“Well, I don't know,” Aloê said slowly. “Do you think it will be useful to us, Morlock?”

“Candidly, no. The Protector is merely a pawn of the adept, some of whose powers you have seen or felt. The adept himself is, I believe, in the Old City. But the choice is yours, Guardians.”

The three red-cloaked vocates each glanced at the other, and Jordel said finally, “I think we'll string along with you, Morlock. If this adept is a threat to the Wardlands, we may be able to use your help in stopping him. If not, we can always duck out the back door of Ambrose and head for home.”

Aloê looked annoyed at this last comment, but let it pass.

“Then,” Morlock said briefly, and continued to lead the way.

They came finally to a little shop with an apartment above it, a few blocks south of the Great Market. Morlock pounded on the shop door until a window on the second floor was thrown up and Genjandro's irritated face appeared. “Just what is your so-urgent need—” Genjandro began querulously. His voice broke off as he saw Morlock standing there among the taller Guardians.

“I told you I'd pay you next bright call!”
^*
Genjandro screamed.

“We need money now!” Jordel screamed back, always ready to take a hint. “We'll take half if you pay us today!”

“Half, eh?” Genjandro said, more amenably. “Wait a time. I'll be down.”

The window slammed shut, and presently the shop door opened. “Come in, come in,” Genjandro said. “We'll drink tea. We'll talk. We'll make a deal.” He swung the door shut and bolted it. Then, ignoring the others, he addressed himself to Morlock. “Well?”

“They're with us.”

Genjandro nodded and made a gesture with his hand. Five shadowy figures rose up around the dark shop, carrying a variety of weapons: bows, clubs, knives.

“You take no chances,” Jordel said admiringly.

“I beg your pardon, but we take dozens every day—far, far too many,” Genjandro disagreed politely if briskly. “Had we any brains at all we would go into a different line of work. Hopefully, we'll soon have the chance. Morlock Ambrosius, it is long since we met.”

“Good morning, my friend, and well met.”

“The King is well, I hope, and my friend Wyrth?”

“I don't know.”

“You have a story to tell, I see. What is it you need? Perhaps we can have breakfast while we wait for it.”

“A cart, two black horses, needles, and red thread.”

“Oh ho. No red cloth?”

“I'll take it if you've got it. I had planned to use my friends' cloaks.”

“Hey!” Jordel shouted.

Aloê waved him to silence. “I think I know what he's got in mind—a good plan, Morlock. It may well work.”

“Trivia, madam, trivia,” Genjandro disagreed. “You should have seen the dodge we pulled on the Protector two years since—I think I may say ‘we,' although my part was very small—”

“Essential,” Morlock disagreed.

“Be that as it may, I can tell you the tale while we eat. Vora, our guests will be breakfasting with us. Kell: you heard the man. He needs a cart, two black horses, and some red thread. The rest of you may go about your business as we planned, but if any of you hear a rumor that Morlock is abroad in the city you should send me a message. Let's see, what should the code word be?”

“Seventeen,” Morlock suggested.

“Superbly meaningless. Thank you. You see, my friends, he is a master of many crafts, including yours. Should you hear any rumor of Morlock's presence in the city, send me a message containing the word ‘
seventeen
.' Throw in whatever else you like, so long as it's of no consequence. Good day: we meet at the appointed time.”

The others left, some by the front door, others through a trapdoor behind the counter.

“Your servants?” Aloê guessed, when they were gone.

“My fellow spies, madam. I have the honor to be the King's spymaster in the occupied city of Ontil.”

“Indeed. May I know your name?”

“I don't think so, madam, but you may address me as Alkhendron. That's what I go by these days.”

Genjandro/“Alkhendron” led them upstairs to his living quarters, where a small if cheerful dining room was laid, rather awkwardly, for five. The thread came; breakfast came; Morlock drank tea and sewed as the others ate and talked.

Genjandro amused them with the story of the silken dragon, eliciting the names of his guests (without seeming to ask for them) as he told the tale. It amused the three vocates enormously—Jordel laughed until he wept, and even Aloê grinned a few times. In turn, Morlock—amusing his audience less, but interesting them even more—told what had happened the previous night, beginning with the departure of the spider from Ambrose through his meeting with the vocates in the dead quarter. (He did not mention Wyrth's terror: he blamed himself for that.)

“Don't like the sound of this,” Genjandro said, when he heard about the corpse-inhabited quarter. “How much of the city have they taken over? What do they want?”

“We'll need to know as much as your people can tell us,” Morlock said. “Next to this, the Protector is nothing.”

“Almost literally, perhaps,” Genjandro said musingly. “But I still don't understand how our friends here found you, or what their role in this is.”

“We were following Morlock,” Aloê said flatly.

Morlock glanced at her and glanced away. There were several ways to locate someone through magic. The easiest was if one had some sort of connection with the person through blood, or some other close tie, such as marriage. From her tone of voice, Morlock guessed that they had used this method to follow him. He could tell she liked it no better than he did.

“When we saw what was going on,” Aloê continued, “we decided to follow from a distance. But when the zombie-riot started we thought we should get him out of there, if we could.”

“And so you did,” Genjandro said heartily. His eyes met Morlock's; he had not failed to notice that Aloê had not explained why she and her companions were following Morlock.

Morlock nodded and shrugged. He held up the red mask he had been making. “What do you think?”

“Very convincing,” Genjandro approved. “Who gets to wear it?”

“I vote for Morlock,” Jordel said. “He has the authentic air of a gravedigger, if you know what I mean.”

Morlock grunted. “You'd smell the same if you'd been fighting corpse-golems all night.”

“Well, we all have our favorite amusements. I suppose the three of us are to portray the unliving dead.”

“The silent majority,” Aloê remarked. “You might try easing yourself into the role.”

Jordel, offended, threw up his hands. “You won't get another word out of me!”

Morlock donned the red hood, red gown, and red mask he had made while the others ate breakfast. He would hold the reins of the horses with his hands muffled by the sleeves of the gown—risky, but not as risky as waiting to stitch a pair of gloves.

The cart and horses were waiting in front of Genjandro/Alkhendron's shop.

“A thousand thanks, Alkhendron,” Morlock said, shaking both his hands. “You've been a friend in need, as so often before.”

Genjandro actually blushed and said, “It was nothing. Always a pleasure. No, really.”

Morlock carried the Guardians to the would-be death cart for greater authenticity. Baran went first: a heavy burden. Jordel was as tall, but not nearly so heavy. However, he held his body stiff with all his limbs awry in an implausible imitation of rigor mortis; Morlock hoped no one was watching. Finally he carried out Aloê.

“Just like our wedding night—eh, Morlock?” she whispered through nearly motionless lips.

He grunted, dumped her in the back with the others, and covered them with a rough blanket. Then he jumped into the driver's seat and shook the reins. His mask was cut from Aloê's cloak, and it smelled like her. The soft velvety strength of her burned on his arms and chest: he had forgotten how much he longed for her. But, unfortunately, he could not forget how useless that longing was.

No one attempted to detain him as he drove straight through the Great Market and past it. The Protector's Men on duty “besieging” the City Gate of Ambrose simply stood aside when it was clear he intended to cross the bridge.

When they were out of direct line of sight, he pulled off the mask and hoped the guards on the other side of the portcullis would recognize him. Evidently they did, as he was not shot at while he approached. They raised the gate and he drove the cart in. On the far side he reined in and dismounted; the three vocates threw off the blanket and jumped down beside him as the portcullis rattled down to seal the gate.

“Welcome to Ambrose, Guardians,” Morlock said as the Royal Legionaries stepped forward to receive them. “You'll pardon me if I leave you in the care of these soldiers—these are honored guests, Hundred-Leader; ambassadors from the Wardlands.”

“Morlock,” said Aloê, stopping him dead by putting her hand on his chest. “Where are you going?”

“I am going to tell Ambrosia what I've learned and what has happened,” Morlock said. “This is her war, more than mine, and she needs to know. And if the King and Wyrth have not returned by the time I'm finished, I am going to go into the city and look for them. If they do return, I plan to take a bath.”

“Well, you have your ducks in a row, as usual,” she said, with a dark warm smile that pierced him to the heart. “We'll catch up with you later.”

Morlock turned and fled into the stone ways of the castle, his heart beating like a boy's.

*
See
appendix C
, section 2.

nd now,” said Ambrosia, leaning back, her iron-gray eyes as cold as death, “it is time for me to pass sentence on the condemned traitor, Karn. Guards, seize him.”

“Ambrosia, a word with you,” Lathmar said urgently.

“Later, Your Majesty.”

“
Now
, my Lady Regent. Or should I say Protector?”

That got her attention, though the look she threw at him was not a warm one.

“As you wish, Your Majesty.” She motioned him forward, then sat him down on the throne and bent forward to hear his whispered words.

“Grandmother, you will spare Karn.”

“No. If that's all—”

“It is all. It is everything. For you, madam, for you!”

“What are you talking about? Please keep your voice down.”

“Once and twice last night, Karn could have run away to save himself. He didn't. When there was no hope, when you weren't there, he saved me. You need to hear that before you pass judgement.”

“Suppose I don't?”

“Then I'm done. You can carry on your damned war for your damned empire without me.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I'll make it known that you acted against my wishes and why. I'll make it known that you killed Karn even though I had personally assured him that his life would be spared. I'll make it known that I'm as much a prisoner of the Lady Regent as I was of the Lord Protector.”

“And you think—what? That soldiers will leap up out of the ground to take your side? That—”

“I think it will make your war against the Protector harder to win. I think it will make the peace that follows impossible to win.”

“You're taking a rather big risk, Lathmar. After all, if you are not an asset to me, you are a liability.”

“I understand your threat perfectly, madam,” Lathmar hissed. “I understood it before you uttered it. Karn pledged his life for me; now I pledge mine for him.”

“You're making a mistake, Lathmar,” Ambrosia said, with unexpected mildness. “Karn is not the man you think him.”

“The mistake is mine to make. Not yours, madam.”

“Stop calling me that. Step back; tell me the tale of last night's doings, in whatever detail you think fit; I'll use it as a pretext for sparing Karn's life. But,” she said, seizing his arm as he began to draw away, “understand that it's only a pretext. We'd all be safer if he were out of the way. He's a weak link in a chain that must not break.”

Lathmar shook loose and stepped down from the dais. His hands were trembling, so he clasped them behind his back before he began. “My Lady Regent, before you pass judgement on Legionary Karn, I wish to speak in his defense.”

“Say on, Your Majesty,” said Ambrosia cheerfully. “I am your least humble servant.”

“Madam,” the King began pointedly, “last night I left Ambrose with certain members of this council to survey matters east of the city.…”

For brevity's sake, he began the tale with their walk through the grave fields. He was weary beyond words, but he kept his voice hard and clear until he had told how Erl and Karn appeared to rescue him when all seemed lost. He didn't mention Wyrth's terror at the prospect of the corpse-golems. Then his voice broke and he found it hard to stand, much less go on.

“If it pleases the regent,” Erl said hesitantly, “I could carry on the story, since His Majesty is—”

“No need,” Ambrosia interrupted. “Thank you, Erl. And I thank you, Your Majesty; your intervention was timely indeed.”

Lathmar nodded, wearily.

“The punishment of treason, as I remarked yesterday, is death. Karn was guilty of treason in that sorry episode, and I fully intended to have him executed this morning, if he was so ungallant as to make it through the night alive. Instead of killing himself, as I had hoped, Karn spent the night earning the gratitude of the King and myself in a selfless act of bravery. I find I cannot now give him the punishment his treason deserves, but neither can I leave him unpunished.”

Ambrosia seemed to brood for a moment, and then continued, “The man who can't take orders shouldn't be in a position to give them. Karn has proved his fitness as the King's bodyguard, under the supervision of Commander Erl, so that is precisely the rank I assign to him. He is stripped of all seniority and rank in the Royal Legion, and will forfeit a year's pay. I'd sentence him to a beating and a jail term as well, but a beating would not affect a man of Karn's indomitable courage, and he'd only escape from the jail cell. He is to consider himself to have been very leniently dealt with, and he may be assured that if he fails in his duty again, I will personally cut his damn throat.

“I would be pleased to welcome the emissaries from the Wardlands at this time, but I have kept the Protector's people (to use the term loosely) waiting longer than is really civil. I hope you'll join me for dinner—or we should make it supper, perhaps? Some of us will need a good day's sleep. Yes, Kedlidor?”

The Rite-Master of Ambrose and current (and reluctant) head of the Royal Legion had entered the council chamber, his arms full of red cloth.

“I beg your pardon—Your Majesty, my Lady Regent. But Councillor Morlock particularly wished me to bring these to the Guardians of the Wardlands—”

The tall, thin, fair-haired Guardian cried out, “Isn't he a good fellow! Here I was imagining him lolling in a hot tub scrubbing his toes, when he was working away on replacing our cloaks.”

Wyrth, who had been unwontedly silent all this while, spoke up almost grudgingly, “It wouldn't have been so hard. We've had the garments rough-cut for months. He only needed to fit them to your size.”

“Well, mine fits like a glove,” the dark woman remarked. She looked more than regal with her red vocate's cloak across her shoulders, and the King, finding he was staring, forced himself to look away. “And it glows like the dark edge of a rainbow—what talents that man has.”

The big brown-haired Guardian rolled his eyes at this and said, “Thanks,” briefly, to Kedlidor, swinging the red cloak over his broad back.

“And where is my esteemed brother, Kedlidor?” Ambrosia asked. “I expected him here some time ago.”

“He said if you asked, my lady…I'm sorry but I don't understand it.”

“Perhaps you should quote him exactly.”

“He said, ‘If Ambrosia asks, tell her I've gone to get my spider.’”

Lathmar couldn't help it; he burst out in laughter tinged with hysteria. Wyrth muttered a curse and dashed out of the room. On that somewhat chaotic note, the Regency Council broke up.

Supper that night was a formal affair, although the regent wasn't present. Negotiations with the Protector's agents had gone into a marathon session, and Ambrosia wanted to see them through.

“But I believe,” the King said wryly to his guests from the Wardlands as they gathered in the antechamber, “that I am competent to host a supper.”

“You are quite right, Your Majesty—quite right,” Kedlidor said approvingly. “The Lady Regent exercises only your judicial, legislative, military, and civil authority. All ceremony remains within your purview.”

“Well, with Kedlidor's blessing we can chew our beef without any dreadful fears that we are being ceremonially incorrect. He has been Rite-Master of Ambrose from time immemorial, as well as the commander of the Royal Legion, from a more recent date.”

“That's an unusual combination of offices, isn't it?” commented the tall fair-haired vocate they called Jordel.

Kedlidor's wrinkled face took on a pained expression. “A persistent joke of the Lady Regent's, I fear,” he said sadly. “She does most of the work herself, leaving me with administrative trivia.”

“Kedlidor does himself an injustice,” the King remarked to the company as a whole. “When the time comes, he can lead troops and fight with them like a lion. And in a war like the one we have in hand, Gr—Ambrosia rightly says that most of the battle lies in knowing whom you can trust. We trust Kedlidor because we've seen what he can do.”

“A royal ‘we,' Your Majesty?” murmured the dark, gloriously beautiful vocate named Aloê, standing nearby.

He basked for a moment in the hot golden delight of her full regard before he realized that some sort of answer was required. “Yes—but, no, not really. That is, I feel that way, and so does the rest of the Regent's Council.”

She nodded, tactfully not taking notice of his confusion, which confused him even more.

“But you needn't worry,” Kedlidor was saying to Jordel. “Though as Rite-Master my rank is far too low to sit at the King's table, as Legionary commander I just merit the honor. You won't lose status by sitting with me.”

Jordel's hazel eyes nearly crossed in his effort to follow Kedlidor's pedantic line of thought, but then his face cleared and he laughed aloud. “Well, perhaps concern should run the other way. I'm nobody in particular without my red cloak, you know. My first job was stealing cowpies.”

“‘Cowpies’?” Now it was Kedlidor's eyes that were crossing. “In the sense of…?”

“Manure.”

“Er…” Kedlidor did actually look as if he were about to question Jordel's right to sit at the King's table.

“I wasn't aware that cowpies were valuable, Vocate Jordel,” the King observed, emphasizing the title slightly for Kedlidor's benefit.

“Well, they aren't usually. But then, they're not especially well guarded either. My semi-dad used to pay me a penny for every dozen I brought him. He wanted them as fertilizer for his farm, which didn't do terribly well, despite my undoubted talents as a coproklept.”

“Semi-dad?” Kedlidor asked, irresistibly attracted by what was apparently a new genealogical term, or perhaps merely afraid to ask for a definition of “
coproklept
.”

“Oh, just someone my mother took up with after my real dad died,” Jordel said airily.

“
Lom bluthian, kreck bloth,”
^*1
said Aloê, quietly but audibly, out of the side of her mouth.

The heavily built brown-haired vocate called Baran grunted. “Watch it. I'm sure the King knows enough of our speech to get by.”

Aloê turned back to the King and smiled. He was thunderstruck by the curve of her rosily dark lips, the flash of her teeth like lightning. “Is that true, Your Majesty?” she asked. “I suppose you call it ‘the secret speech,' as most do in the unguarded lands.”

“Unguh—guh—guh—That is, I know a certain amount.” The King was about to go on, but then he realized that it would be impolitic to address the content of Aloê's muttered comment to her peer. But he was fascinated by it. Neither Morlock nor Wyrth were in the least concerned with status or prestige, as Lathmar had been carefully taught to recognize it, and he had assumed that people from the Wardlands felt the same way—Jordel's comments seemed to imply as much. But Aloê seemed to be genuinely, if faintly, embarrassed by Jordel's reminiscences.

“But, um, this question of status—that is—you know what I mean, Kedlidor?” He was sorry to push the question off on Kedlidor, but he had incautiously met Aloê's golden eyes again, and he found it difficult to string words together.

But the Rite-Master was up to the challenge. “Yes, indeed, Your Majesty; I thank you very much for raising the matter. The trouble is, vocates, that we have been unable to settle which of your number should sit at the King's right hand—the place of honor, you see.”

Baran grunted. “I'm the oldest. Jordel was made vocate first, but we don't count that type of seniority as authority in the Wardlands. I suppose we could flip for it.”

“Oh, come now Baran, don't be dense,” Jordel said lightly. “Surely Aloê is in charge of our little embassy. The place of honor is hers.”

Baran shrugged. “I don't see that she's in charge. But she can sit where she likes, as far as I'm concerned.”

Aloê laughed. “Thanks, B.” She turned to the King and said, “Subject to your approval, Your Majesty. I'm afraid I don't have any interesting stories about stealing cowpies.”

“Oh, that's all right,” he said, awash in confusion, and offered her his left arm. She lightly placed her right hand on his left forearm, and he simultaneously felt a hundred feet tall and totally inadequate.

They walked together through the doors into the dining hall.

This was not the Great Hall. They were too few by far for that echoing monstrosity; also, there were no windows, which the King insisted on whenever possible. So tonight they supped in the High Hall of the North—atop a long, low tower just above and behind the Thorngate of Ambrose. There were windows on three sides, and the roof as well, and the room was unlit as they entered.