Ivory Lyre (11 page)

The four pages stopped at the foot of the
cobbled street where it met the quay, and Kiri turned to look back.
Their eyes met again for a moment; then he saw Accacia watching,
and looked away. If this girl was Accacia’s scapegoat, it had not
seemed to quell her spirit.

They took a different route returning to the
palace, through a nearly abandoned part of the city where a few rag
people camped between the broken walls in rooms without roofs. They
circled the huge, stonewalled gaming stadium, flanked by a tangle
of paintless cottages pushing so close to one another there was no
room for animal pens. Accacia had begun a monologue about the
intricacies of her family background, to which Teb hardly listened,
when suddenly ahead a door opened, and a man with red hair and red
beard threw a bucketful of dirty water into the gutter. Teb jerked
Seastrider’s halter and stared.
Garit.
It was Garit. He
swallowed back a shout and looked away. It was all he could do not
to gallop ahead, leap down, and fling his arms around Garit.

Garit stood filling the doorway with his
broad shoulders, his red hair and beard like flame, his eyes
following the four pages. He hardly looked at Teb as he passed,
surely did not recognize him, grown up. Memories flooded back,
Garit teaching him to ride when he was five, holding his horse
while he mounted, Garit saddling his mother’s mare and bringing a
newly broken colt for her to ride. Garit’s reassuring voice, the
night he helped Teb escape from Sivich’s army.

Teb leaned down to adjust his boot so he
could look back. Garit returned his look seemingly without
recognition. Yet was there a spark deep in his eyes? Teb could not
be sure.

It had been four years. Teb had been only a
child when he escaped from Sivich that night. He had grown, filled
out, his face changed maybe more than he guessed. Teb stared ahead,
filled with excitement. Garit
was
here in Dacia. Then maybe
Camery was, too.

He made note of where he was in the city.
When the entourage turned up a side street, Accacia was still
talking, as if her pedigree was infinitely fascinating to him.

“. . . and her mother was my aunt
Rhemia, so of course that makes me cousin to Abisha and in direct
line of the throne in my own right, even if I were not to marry
him.” She stopped speaking long enough to smile. Teb thought her
vanity served her in one way. It had helped her retain her own
history, even though her view of it was narrow and dull. Prince
Abisha, riding ahead, did not turn to look back, though he must
have heard her remarks. Accacia prattled on, seemingly unaware of
her tastelessness. “That is on my father’s side, of course. I lived
with my mother’s sister after my own parents died—with my aunt and
cousin, the little page up there, Kiri. When my aunt died I saw to
it, of course, that Kiri. . .”

Teb had ceased to listen and was watching
Kiri. She was walking with a tighter gait, as if held by some new
tension, as if she wanted to break away running and kept herself
steady with effort. As the horses stepped out faster, heading for
home, she swung out ahead of them as if relieved.

Had he seen her turn to look at Garit as she
passed him? Garit’s hand had come up just then to stroke his beard,
and Teb’s mind had been filled with his presence, so he was really
not aware of Kiri.

Now tension filled Teb as the possibilities
teased at him. Could there be a connection between them? He thought
of the way the dragons responded to Kiri, of seeing her in the
candle shop that he thought could be a rebel meeting place. He
thought of seeing her return to her cottage late one night, despite
the dangers of the city. He watched her striding ahead, his mind
filled with possibilities. He meant to find out about Kiri. Just as
surely as he meant to return to Garit.

Kiri burned with impatience after Garit
signaled her. The slow march back through the city seemed endless.
What could be so urgent that he would stand in plain view of the
king’s entourage the whole time it was passing? The traps the king
had set around the city? But she had told him about the traps, and
together they had sprung seven and destroyed them. Had they missed
one? Had one of the cats been caught? Her heart lurched. Elmmira?
But it did no good to imagine such things.

When at last they reached the palace stable,
she ducked away from the other pages, into a storeroom beneath the
horsemaster’s dwelling to wait until the pages had gone on. From
the shadows she heard Roderica’s voice and Accacia’s as the two
young women mounted the stairs above her head, probably to comb
their hair and repair face coloring in Roderica’s room, after
sweating in the morning sun.

When they had gone she went quickly through
the palace and servants’ quarters, then through the side gate and
down to her own cottage, where she changed into rags. Gram forced
two oatcakes at her and some hot tea, which she gulped. The old
woman’s bright eyes questioned, but Kiri could only say, “Garit
wants me—I don’t know why.” She tangled her hair, hugged Gram and
kissed the old woman’s wrinkled cheek, then was off through narrow
back streets toward the core of the city.

Perhaps Garit’s urgency had to do with the
new child slaves. The children must have been brought by the three
new boats that rode in the harbor. The youngsters looked so thin
and hopeless. She could imagine what they were fed, and how they
slept at night, squeezed together for warmth in their thin
garments. The loads they had carried looked far too heavy. Those
children would grow up bent in their bodies as well as their
spirits, cowed and unresisting. There were the blinded wolves, too.
The memory of them sickened her. They were not of Dacia; there had
been no speaking wolves in the country for years. These poor
animals had come by ship, just as the slave children had.

When she reached Garit’s lane just past
noon, it was busy and crowded. Three women whispered and laughed as
they gathered laundry from fences, half a dozen beggars rummaged in
a heap of trash, and on the corner two men argued, swearing, over a
stack of cured goat hides. Kiri sauntered like any other street
urchin, gawking idly at the arguing men. She began to poke through
a pile of trash beside Garit’s front step. When no one was looking,
she slipped around quickly to the back door. It opened at once, so
Garit had been watching through a crack.

One candle burned in the shuttered room. She
could smell tea brewing and could smell cat. She saw that in the
far corner Mmenimm, the chocolate-colored tom, slept with little
crippled Marshy sprawled between his heavy front legs. Marshy’s arm
was flung around Mmenimm’s thick neck, his twisted leg bent at an
awkward angle. The shadows of the room took shape; Garit’s cot and
patched blanket; the wobbly table and two wooden chairs; the iron
stove and crowded shelves; Garit’s clothes, hung on pegs; a stack
of scrappy firewood in the corner. Kiri sat down on the smaller of
the two chairs and watched Garit pour out tea into cracked mugs.
Everything about the cottage was old and dingy, not because Garit
liked it that way, but because anything else would have been hard
to come by and would have looked suspicious, as well. He passed her
a basket of warm seedcakes that did not match the poverty of the
hut. She took two, sipped her tea, and waited, watching Garit over
the rim of her cup. He
was
like a great red bull, his
flaming hair and beard shaggy, his shoulders broad, his face
square, and his nose a bit flat. But his eyes were alive with
kindness. She could see anger in his face, now, but something more,
as well. She could see a stir of excitement deep down.

“That was a grand parade this morning,” he
said, scowling. “The king seems bent on impressing this young
prince from Thedria.”

“It is Accacia who would impress him.”

“Oh,” he said. “And you saw the lines of new
slave children and the captive wolves?”

“Where have they come from? So many small
children. And the poor wolves all blinded.”

“No, not blind. They only seem to be. A wolf
can move very well by scent and hearing.”

“And the children?”

“They are slave, all right. They are drugged
with cadacus, as well as with the powers of the dark.”

“Yes. I saw their faces. What is happening?
Why were so many brought here? What do the dark leaders plan?”

“Things are changing, Kiri, and quickly.
Something has happened on the far northern islands, something that
will affect all our own plans.” Garit poured more tea, and she
realized she had gulped hers.

He laid a hand on her arm. “The children are
from Ekthuma, from Edosta, and even from the dark continent. More
will be coming. They were brought with boatloads of arms and
supplies—you saw the boats.”

She nodded.

“The child slaves will be used to shift the
cargo and to wait on the soldiers that will be arriving. Dacia,”
Garit said evenly, “will be headquarters for raids on more than
just Bukla and Edain. Headquarters now suddenly, Kiri, in an attack
far greater.” His eyes filled with challenge. “Something is
happening in the north.” He paused, his face alight. “The outer
islands, Kiri—the outer islands have rebelled.”

She sat staring.

Garit nodded. “Yes—Meron, Wintrel, Liedref.
Birrig and Burack. Even Elbon. The outer islands are with us now.
The islands of the north are with us.”

“But how did it happen? They were so far
beyond help. Summer’s messages all say—”

“Something has changed the folk of the outer
lands. Something has brought them awake, and it has happened only
recently.” Garit emptied the teapot into her mug and pushed the
basket of seedcakes at her.

“It was Summer who brought the news,” he
said. “She was overheard and nearly captured in Ekthuma, and had to
get out fast. She knows something has happened on the outer
islands, but she isn’t sure what. She is filled with excitement,
for whatever it was woke the island folk. They have killed their
dark leaders or driven them out. On Wintrel, Yesod and his four
consorts were forced over a cliff into the sea.”

“Yesod was so powerful. How
. . .?”

“The reports were strange and garbled. In
Birrig the townsfolk seem to have killed all nine dark leaders. On
Liedref the tale is that a woman took the dark leader with her when
she killed herself. I don’t know how it has happened. It’s
amazing.” Garit’s eyes were afire. “The folk of the outer islands
have risen. They made their way across the channel three nights ago
in heavy seas, sailed and paddled every craft that would float.

“They sacked Lashtel, Kiri. Yes. They burned
the city and sent the whole tribe of the unliving—Quazelzeg,
too—fleeing back into the interior.”

Kiri gaped. “Quazelzeg?”

“Yes. But only because he was unprepared.
That won’t happen again. I think he had grown complacent with so
many victories. He will be twice as vicious now, twice as hard to
destroy.”

She shivered. It was hard to imagine him as
more
vicious. She wished the rebels had been able to kill
him. “I heard nothing in the palace, no messenger, no hint of
it.”

“I think the dark leaders might not tell
this to King Sardira so eagerly. It puts them in a bad light.
Sometimes I think Sardira knows a secret that half frightens the
dark forces. How else could Dacia have remained neutral so
long?”

She was silent for a moment, thinking.
“Once,” she said, “Accacia told me that the dark would never
enslave Dacia. That it could not. Accacia laughed about it.”

“What could she have meant?”

“She would say no more. I thought it was one
of her exaggerations. But maybe it wasn’t. If the dark can’t
conquer Dacia, and if it is losing to the outer islands
. . .”

“No, don’t think the dark is on the run
everywhere, Kiri, and certainly not from King Sardira. Summer says
they plan to use him, as we have supposed. That soon the dark
leaders will converge here to see to the arms and supplies. They
mean to attack not only Bukla and Edain but all the outer islands
and destroy them, then march on all the continents of this
hemisphere. They are livid with anger at this attack. Dacia will be
their headquarters. Maybe that’s why they let it stay partially
free. Perhaps it is more useful that way. Dacia is the central
point. With Sardira’s cooperative ways, it is the perfect base.
This move, now, the sudden arrival of soldiers and supplies in a
push for all-out war, is simply much sooner than they planned.

“I saw a runner come down from the palace to
investigate the new arrivals, as if the king didn’t know they were
coming. He went among the ship captains, then returned hastily,
this morning at first light. It was not until late last night that
we
knew, when Summer came slipping to my door. She sailed a
small boat down from Igness, fleeing Vurbane’s troops under
darkness. She is sleeping now in the sanctuary, guarded by
Elmmira’s sisters.”

“Is she all right?”

“Only bone tired.”

Kiri sighed. “There will be hundreds and
hundreds of soldiers besides the dark leaders. How can we win
against such an army? There are so few in the city who care, who
will join us.”

“There is the power of Gardel-Cloor to help
us. We will have reinforcements when troops from the outer
countries arrive, likely with animals, too. The white fox—the
queen’s friend,” he said, grinning, “has sent word by some of the
younger foxes and otters for the animal nations on all the
continents to prepare for war.” Garit shook his head. “That Hexet.
Sometimes I think he knows even more than he tells us. As if he has
some secret too personal to trust even to the resistance.”

“You don’t trust Hexet? Oh,
Garit. . .”

“I trust him, Kiri. I get the feeling
sometimes that it is a personal confidence. Something that would
not affect the war. Or perhaps something he feels it better to deal
with alone. Oh, yes, I trust Hexet without reservation. He has led
all the stealing parties where the animals have been so successful.
They will continue to steal and to sabotage the dark wherever they
can. We have excellent supplies of food, thanks to them, and to the
stores you located. And we’ve cleaned out two of Sardira’s caches
of weapons, hidden them in the usual places, Gardel-Cloor, and the
trusted shops . . . you know the places.”