Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (44 page)

It might not, surely it could not last; but for the moment at least, Julianne felt blindingly, blisteringly happy.

If she'd come this far into the palace earlier, she wouldn't have asked Gerla that foolish question about her staying. It was all too clear that the building was half abandoned. They bustled through corridor after empty corridor, and Julianne was just beginning to think they'd have to stand in the great hall and shout for attention when at last they found their way into the kitchens.

Here at least there was life, and activity. In her experience there always was, in kitchens. No Gerla, alas: but a steward with a limp, a staff and a compensating scowl, a couple of women chopping vegetables at one end of a long table, a sullen boy up to his elbows in water, scrubbing pots.

Here was proof positive, Julianne thought as she faced their range of bemused and curious stares, that Gerla had been wrong in one aspect at least. Not everyone still in the palace wanted to be here. The steward, she guessed, would sooner be out in the field, but that his twisted leg prevented him; the boy she was sure of. By the hunched look of him, the steward must have been working out his own temper on the boy's back when the appeals grew too insistent or too impertinent.

'Ladies? May I assist you at all?'

The steward's staff clicked on the tiled floor as he made his slow way towards them. Julianne wanted to gesture, to tell him to be still, not to trouble himself on their account; Sherett said nor did anything, though, and so neither could she.

Just before he reached them, Sherett showed her own pride, in a swift murmur. 'I don't speak your tongue with any ease, Julianne. Ask him for the bathing-chamber, and a change of dress. Say that we don't need hot water, cold will do . . .'

Julianne shivered, at the thought of a hard scrubbing in icy water. Before she could speak, though, the steward smiled thinly, and changed languages with a quiet fluency. 'I understand Catari, my lady. My name is Baris, and I am steward of this house. I do apologise, that you have had to come and seek me out; we are short-handed and distracted today, but that's a poor excuse for neglecting guests. Of course the baths are ready, and the fires hot. Roald will show you where.'

A snap of his fingers and the boy scuttled forward, abandoning his pots and apparently his sulks both at once. Julianne was glad to have the improvised veil to hide her smile as she saw how carefully he kept out of reach of the steward's staff.

His bruises couldn't be that bad, though; they hadn't marked his curiosity, nor his confidence. He shifted his shoulders beneath his loose, grimy shirt of damp linen, found a slouching way to walk that didn't hurt too badly as he led them back up the stairs and demanded boldly, 'Ladies, is
it
true that you flew in here this morning on a magic carpet?'

Ju
lianne choked on a sudden, startl
ed giggle. When she'd recovered, she said, 'I don't know. Is it? I suppose it could be. Didn't you see?' He was the sort of boy who should surely have been watching, staring, pointing, yelling — there had been enough of those, a dozen or more hanging out of the palace windows and streaming onto the terrace to make a circus of their coming, when she'd been so fraught with grief and hope together.

'I was in the stables,' he said disgustedly, 'and everyone else ran off, but I had my hands full with the Princip's brute of a stallion, and I couldn't just leave him loose, could I? By the time I had him stabled, I was the last left, and the master wouldn't let me go.'

'No, I don't suppose he would.'

'And then the Princip wouldn't let me ride out with the other men, even as a messenger. He
needs
messengers
...'

'I'm sure he does. He probably also needs to feel that those in his charge are as safe as they can be. The time will come when he'll have to answer to your family, Roald, for his care of you.'

‘I
haven't got a family, that's why I'm here. The Princip takes us into the palace, until he can find us another home; some of us he keeps. I've been here five years,' which was obviously a source of pride rather than humiliation, except that his voice turned suddenly as he went on. 'I'm not a
child,
though! He sent the
little
ones away this morning, up into the hills, and he tried to send me with them, only I wouldn't go.'

'So what did you do?' Julianne asked, knowing the answer already, feeling guilty already for dragging it out of him.

T hid,' and surely he couldn't get any redder. 'Until they'd given up on me and gone. Then I came out, I was sure they'd let me ride messenger now - but Baris caught me before I got to the Princip, and he took me to the kitchens.'

And beat him into the bargain, but Roald was clearly not going to mention that.

'And then we came.'

'And then you came, and the baths are just here, and I'll build up the fires for you, lady, because the other lady's Sharai and you both came from the desert and I expect you like it really hot — but tell me about the magic carpet? Please?'

Julianne laughed. 'It's not really magic. A djinni brought us here, and there were so many of us, it was just easier' —
easier for me, and Elisande thought of that, even while everything else was happening—
'if it carried us in on a carpet, like half a dozen glasses on a tray. It fetched Sherett for me later, and she flew in with nothing to stand on at all.'

'Oh.' That was obviously something of a disappointment. A djinni was one thing, a magic carpet something else entirely. A boy might dream, she supposed, of finding or buying or possessing a magic carpet, but not a djinni. Emphatically, not a djinni. 'Why was the djinni doing that? They're not usually so
...'

Helpful? Cooperative? Exciting? Involved? A gesture filled the space of the missing word, and she sympathised deeply.

'Never mind why,' Sherett said sharply, as they came into the first cool chamber of a simple hammam. There was a shelf of oils and unguents there; she inspected it while the boy ran off to tend to his fires.

He came back sweating under the weight and hammer-heat of an iron basket full of scorching rocks, which he carried through to the inner chamber. When he came out, following billows of scented steam, Sherett ambushed him with a grip on his elbow, a push towards a long bench and a brisk command: 'Take off your shirt, and lie down.'

'What? Lady, no
...'

'You might as well,' Julianne said, amused. 'She'll do it for you, else. And give you more bruises on the way.'

Sherett snorted. 'I wouldn't beat a boy useless, on a day like this.'

'I'm not useless!' A furious protest from Roald, even as he clung desperately to his dignity and his shirt, wrapping his arms tight around his body in an effort to keep them both together.

'You will be when you start to stiffen up, unless you let me at your muscles now. I found a salve here that'll help to soothe the burning, and don't tell me it isn't burning now. I know all the stages of a beating, me.'

Of course she did, and from both sides, most likely. The boy was mulish, though, eyeing the door in hopes of a getaway, determined to keep his clothes on and his privacy secure; it was Julianne who found the weapon to break down his resistance.

'If you won't be medicined, you'll need to be healed; there's no room here for a boy who can't work. Can Gerla do it, do you think, or must I ask the Princip?'

The horror of such an idea struck Roald mute, as it seemed; he made no answer. Slowly, though, very slowly he unlaced the neck of his shirt and pulled it off over his head.

Julianne deliberately turned her head aside, not to increase his mortification, and didn't look back until Sherett was done with him, until he was easing his shirt on again and flinching as the worn linen fell against his skin. She thought the salve might be doing some good, watching as he straightened his shoulders cautiously, as he looked a little surprised that it felt no worse than it did; she thought she had a salve for his soul, which might do even better.

'Roald, come here.'

He came, bristl
ing with suspicion, wary of some further degradation. She smiled and said, 'I have a task for you. A secret task, can I trust you not to shout it?'

'Of course, lady!'

'Good. Who guards the Princip, with all the men gone to the war?'

'The Princip never has a guard, lady. He is . . .' Again a gesture,
in
lieu of the word he didn't have; the gesture seemed to mean all-powerful, invulnerable, perhaps simply 'Princip'.

'Well, he may need one now. There is more than one army in Surayon, and creatures more
subtle
and more evil than men; even the Princip may have his mind distracted, and his eyes not watching his back. I want you to do that for him, as much as you may. The older boys have gone, his little page is too young for this, and who else is there? Baris would be too slow, even if he had no other duties, and it is no task for a woman. Here, take this.'

Roald eyed the blade that she offered him, with something close to yearning on his face. All he said, though, was a stout, 'Lady, I have my own knife.'

'I'm sure you do.' She was sure she knew its type, too: a nocked blade handed down through generations of lads, hollow from too many years' rough sharpening on any convenient stone, its handle split and bound with fraying string. No doubt he cut his meat with it, and his nails too when he thought to cut them; she doubted strongly whether it was good for much besides. 'This knife is special, though, for more reasons than you can see,' and he should be able to see plenty in the chased steel blade, the wicked double edge, the haft inlaid with mother-of-pearl that must be vanishingly rare in this country, must have been more rare still in Rhabat where Elisande had found and claimed it and its sister. 'It has been blessed by priests, to be proof against 'ifrit and other spirit-creatures. This blade will protect the Princip, where perhaps nothing else can do it. Will you take it? For him, and because I ask you to?'

She pressed it into his hands before he could answer, to let him feel the cold smoothness of the hilt, the vicious edge. Even so, he hesitated.

'Lady, this is too good for a kitchen-boy . . .'

'Yes, it is. But it's not too good for the Princip's ward; and it's essential for the Princip's chief bodyguard, his
secret
bodyguard
...'

And to overcome his last wavering doubts, she unknotted the ties of her robe and began to slip it down off her shoulders.

The boy fled, taking the knife with him.

A minute later she was pouring a dipper of water over stones so hot that they cracked in their iron cradle, she was breathing deeply and sighing luxuriously as steam engulfed her and she felt the sweat start to break through her ingrained crust of dirt. She could sit here and lose more than the stink of her prison cell; she could lose all the distress of the last weeks, all the darkness that had gathered in the corners of her mind, wash it all away and be pure, clean, her father's proper daughter
...

Sherett cut across her thoughts with a question. 'Why did you give that boy your knife?'

'Because he needed it. Everyone in Surayon needs something today,' and she wished that everyone's need could be so easily satisfied, or satisfied at all.

'You'd best warn the Princip, or he'll wonder why he's being shadowed everywhere by a kitchen-boy with a dagger in his hand.'

'I will. If we see him. He may ride out again, when he and Elisande are finished . . .' And then, because that reminded her of what he and Elisande were doing, which reminded her in turn that she couldn't after all wash or sweat the world away no matter how hot the bath or how dense the steam, she said, 'Sherett, what's it like out there? The djinni brought you over in daylight, you must have seen . . .'

'Aye, and been seen in my turn
’
the woman said, with half a smile that was clearly for something that might have been half funny, on another day. 'But yes, Julianne, I saw. I saw what my people are doing, bringing the dry desert to this wet country, covering the green with ash and smoke. They are burning crops and villages, and slaying where they ride: my greedy people, destroying what they cannot take away. And doing all in the name of God, Julianne, to recover the holy places. We say that God chose us from all the people in the world, and set us in the Sands to test us, to keep us pure. If that is true, then perhaps God is using us now to test the people here, fetching in the fire and death that we live with daily to see if they are soft or strong.'

'Or perhaps that's a thin excuse
’
Julianne said bitterly, 'to justify theft and cruelty and murder, because it was these people who took these lands from your possessing, and you want your revenge.'

She expected a sharp rebuttal from her sister-wife, and didn't get it. Sherett only nodded slowly, and said, 'Perhaps so. But it is not only the Sharai who are making war in Surayon
’

'No, I know. I heard that. There is an army led by Ransomers, come in from the north.'

'And more, a party from the east too, following the tribes. A small party, but I saw them. They saw me, too,' and that difficult smile was there again, more heard than seen. 'They are led by the man you were married to, before.'