Mistress of the Catacombs (4 page)

* * *

Princess Sharina of Haft spent most of her public life wearing the formal garb of an Ornifal aristocrat while receiving deputations from the provinces in place of her brother Garric. Thanks be to the Lady, there was no need of such rigid, stifling state at this meeting of the royal council—the real, working government of the kingdom.

Having said that, the dozen or so heads of the civil and military departments were all aristocrats. In Barca's Hamlet, casual dress meant an undertunic alone—worn without a sash on a summer day like this. Here the civilian councillors wore court robes of silk brocade with a sash, while their military colleagues replaced the sash with a sword belt bearing an empty scabbard. The Blood Eagles didn't allow anyone but themselves to enter Garric's presence armed, and the chief of the Blood Eagles—Attaper bor-Atilan—accepted the limitation himself to avoid friction with Lord Waldron, the equally high-born head of the army.

Sharina stifled a wan smile. To avoid worse friction, rather; Waldron, thirty years Attaper's senior, believed in his heart that he himself should be king. He was at best on stiff terms with Attaper, who didn't bother to put a diplomatic gloss on his disagreement with that opinion.

"There's more to this 'Confederacy of the West' than hick rulers on Haft, Cordin and Tisamur deciding they want to secede from the kingdom," said Chancellor Royhas, seated at Garric's right hand.

"Begging your pardon sir and lady—" Royhas nodded to Garric and Sharina, a cursory apology for the implied slur against the island of their birth "—but all the force of those islands isn't enough to delay the royal army any longer than it takes to sail there."

"They've got more force," said Attaper forcefully. "They're hiring mercenaries. We knew that even before this latest spy came back with the numbers."

"They still couldn't stand against us," Waldron snapped, though it didn't seem to Sharina that Attaper had suggested otherwise.

"And that's why I say there's more to it than just these three islands!" Royhas said. "Why, they scarcely know they're part of the kingdom as it is. When's the last time enough taxes came out of Carcosa to pay the salary of an underclerk here in Valles?"

"They may be concerned about the future," said Lord Tadai. "We—by which I mean Prince Garric—have given Ornifal a real government for the first time in generations. They may realize that in time, we—"

The plump, wealthy nobleman had been royal treasurer until his rivalry with Royhas meant one or the other had to go for the sake of the kingdom. He'd accepted his removal with the good grace of a patriot and a man of great intelligence, but no one would deny him a seat on the council so long as he remained in Valles.

He nodded to Garric in smiling—but real—homage.

"—will unify the whole kingdom again, and they'll no longer be able to apply their own notions of justice and tax policy."

"Count Lascarg never thought beyond trying to keep Carcosa quiet and spending the revenues of the estates that he took over when the previous rulers of Haft died," Garric said with harsh assurance. "Died in riots it was his duty to put down as commander of the Household Troops. His foresight isn't behind this secession."

Sharina nodded, in agreement and in understanding for her brother's bitterness. The parents who raised them, Reise and Lora, had served the former Count and Countess of Haft until the night of the fatal riots; that much she and Garric had known since childhood. Only during the disruptions of the past months had they learned the other half of the story: that Count Niard was Sharina's father, and that Garric was the child born to Countess Tera, who traced her ancestry back to King Carus and the royal line of the Old Kingdom.

Niard had been an Ornifal noble, which explained for the first time Sharina's blonde hair and slender height. She'd always felt something of an outsider among the darker, stockier folk of Barca's Hamlet, but she'd still been shocked to learn the truth.

"They're getting money from outside," said Attaper, leaning forward with his hands clasped before him on the burl walnut tabletop. "The wages of the mercenaries gathering on Tisamur run to more than the revenues of all three rulers combined. And the troops are being paid—they're not staying on in hope of future loot."

"The Earl of Sandrakkan's behind it!" said Lord Waldron. "That's the only place the money could come from. Earl Wildulf doesn't dare face us directly, so he's setting up this confederacy as a stalking horse to see what we'll do!"

Waldron was an active, passionate man who was rarely comfortable sitting down. Now he rose so abruptly that his chair clattered over behind him. Normally a servant waited behind a seated noble, but Garric—though in truth Liane, Sharina suspected—had instituted a policy of greater privacy during discussions of such moment.

The noise startled everybody, even Waldron, who grimaced and tried to pick the chair up. He got the legs tangled in the robe of Lady Vartola, Priestess of the Temple of the Lady of Succor and today representing religious interests before the council.

Sharina sprang to her feet and stepped around Vartola. Waldron was about to fling the chair into the paneled wall in fury. She took it from him. With the skill of one who'd been serving in an inn before she could read, Sharina set the chair upright again and gestured Waldron into it. The old warrior obeyed, his hard face maroon with embarrassment.

Sharina sat down also. She kept from smiling, but only with difficulty.

"I believe Lord Waldron has the right idea," said Pterlion bor-Palial, the new treasurer, "but he's wrong about the source. The money's coming from Blaise, not Sandrakkan."

He stopped, waiting with a smug smile to be asked why he was sure. The treasurer was a clever man, but rather too fond of showing how clever he was instead of just getting on with the job.

"Explain," said Garric, his sharpness wiping the satisfaction from Pterlion's face. "And in the future, Lord Pterlion, please recall that there are no fools at these council meetings—and no time for foolishness either."

"That would be a good idea," said Lord Waldron, glowering as though he'd prefer to rip the treasurer's throat out with his teeth instead of using a sword on the fellow. "A very good idea."

Pterlion grinned in embarrassment. "Yes, ah, Prince Garric," he said. "Ah. There are two items of evidence. Merchants coming from Cordin and particularly Tisamur are paying their port duties in Blaise coinage, much of it fresh-minted—and I might add, with more lead than silver in the bullion. Whereas reports from Blaise itself indicate that trade is suffering because of a lack of currency on the island. Lerdoc, Count of Blaise, is behind this secession."

"I never thought Wildulf had the sophistication to mount a plan like this," Tadai agreed, tenting his fingers before him. "Successfully, at any rate."

"They haven't succeeded," said Garric. "They won't succeed. And thank you, Lord Pterlion. Knowing where the trouble started will make it easier to end it."

"I want to know about this Moon Wisdom you mentioned," Lady Vartola said in a rasping wheeze. She was the color of old bone and so thin that Sharina wondered if she had a wasting disease. There was nothing wrong with Vartola's mind, however, save that she focused it wholly on the betterment of her temple rather than the common good of the kingdom. "Are they usurping ownership of temple property?"

Garric glanced over his shoulder. Liane's formal position was amanuensis to Prince Garric, so she wasn't qualified to sit at the council table proper. Instead she waited at Garric's right elbow, her lap desk open and her fingers ready to withdraw whichever scroll or codex might be required.

"We don't have direct information on that as yet," Liane said without bothering to consult the records this time. "The evidence suggests that may be the case."

Sharina's mind ticked back over a file of appointments already in her schedule for the next two weeks. For the most part they involved providing a high-ranking ear to which aggrieved citizens could complain: salt merchants protesting the new tariff on their product, the clothmakers guild demanding higher tariffs on silk from Seres, and a thousand variations on the theme of what the government was doing wrong.

Occasionally there was an exception. For example—

"An assistant inspector of temple lands has returned recently from Tisamur," Sharina said, loudly enough to cut through Admiral Zettin's question about the confederacy's naval forces. When everyone was looking at her she continued, "He's been demanding an audience with Prince Garric—"

Royhas snorted angrily at such presumption in a junior member of a department tangentially under his direction.

"—and gathered enough support from his superiors to be shunted to me, whenever I manage to get around to him," she continued. "I'll see him this afternoon."

A thought struck her. She added, "Unless you would like to see him yourself, Garric?"

He looked at Liane who gave a tiny shake of her head. "No," Garric said. "But I will want to know what you learn, Sharina. This Moon Wisdom may be more than—"

He glanced at the priestess. "Than a scheme by opportunists to defraud the temple of its proper revenues," he concluded. Only the slightest hesitation suggested that he'd intended to say something a little different from the words that actually came out.

Garric stood, ending the meeting. "Lords Waldron, Attaper, and Zettin," he said. "I'll need a report on the current readiness of the forces you command. By the end of the day, if you please."

He turned his eyes to the Chancellor. In the same tone of command, so different from anything Sharina had heard from her brother's lips during the years they grew up together on Haft, he continued, "Lord Royhas, I want all the information we have on the property and perquisites of the individual rulers of this confederacy. I realize that—"

Someone nearby shrieked like a hog nose-clamped for slaughter.

"What's that?" bellowed someone else, a guard because during the meeting nobody else was permitted near this building and the smaller one adjacent where her brother had interviewed a spy. "What's the matter in there!"

Garric was the first to the door and out it, drawing the sword that he alone wore in the council. Attaper and Waldron had the same instinct to run toward trouble, but Garric was younger and already standing.

Another scream.... Sharina followed Attaper, leaping over the chair Garric had flung aside as he moved. Waldron was at the other end of the room, fighting his way through civilians who'd risen also but weren't as quick to learn for themselves what was causing such terror.

The pair of Blood Eagles posted at the door of the smaller conference room were banging their fists on it, apparently trying to get the attention of the man inside. He had other things on his mind, to the degree that fear let him think at all.

"Break it down!" Garric shouted. Before the guards could act, he slammed his own right bootheel into the latchplate. Sharina knew her brother wasn't Cashel for strength, but nobody who'd seen Garric lift free a bogged ewe would doubt he was a powerful man by most standards.

The bronze catch inside flew out of its staples. Garric rebounded from the impact, so the guards burst into the room ahead of him.

The spy, his face contorted, was wrestling with nothing at all. And yet there must be something, because both the man's feet were off the floor....

A Blood Eagle thrust his spear past the spy's ear; the steel point met only air. His partner dropped his weapon and tried to grapple with the screaming man.

The spy vanished with a sort of twisting motion, like the last of the foam being slung from the rim of a wash basin. There was an odd odor; it reminded Sharina of the way a stone might smell in the dead of winter.

For a moment she thought she could still hear the screams; then they too vanished.

CHAPTER TWO

"Swing me on your arm again, Chalcus!" Merota demanded. "I want to go all the way over this time!"

Ilna didn't let her face react. In the sailor's presence the girl was sometimes either younger than her nine years or very much more mature.

"And so we shall," said Chalcus, glancing up at the square funnel that slanted rainwater from the roof into the pool here in the center of the entrance hall. "In the garden, though, for you're growing to such a fine woman that I fear your heels would smudge the ceiling."

He gestured the women ahead of him and out the south doorway, adding a little bow to Ilna. "And then," he continued in the same cheerful lilt, "you'll go back to your room and the lessons I've no doubt your tutors have set you. Mistress Ilna and I will speak alone after that."

They stepped past the loom, covered for the moment. In Chalcus' company, Ilna took in the colors and sounds of the brick-walled court, the richness that she generally ignored because it had nothing to do with her work.

Five generations in the past, Duke Valgard of Ornifal ruled the neighboring islands outright and claimed with as much justice as any other could to be King of the Isles. Valles was the kingdom's greatest metropolis then, while the palace compound housed thousands and was a city in its own right.

Those times were over, but workmen were restoring the buildings and grounds at the same rapid tempo as Garric rebuilt the government itself. The bungalow Ilna shared with Cashel and now Merota was meant for a senior gardener. It was a detached structure rather than part of a barracks housing the families of twenty clerks or servants, but it was neither spacious nor expensively decorated.

Ilna had chosen the residence herself, mostly for the garden courtyard that gave her good light on clear days. Even that was a needless luxury: she could weave in the dark with perfect assurance. The chamberlain—he'd been replaced since then—had tried to insist that someone of Lady Ilna's stature must have more luxurious accommodations.

Ilna's expression at the memory could have cut glass. There were many things that Ilna os-Kenset felt she must do, but none of those duties were imposed by others.

Chalcus extended his left arm, bare except for its scars. He wore as usual only a single short-sleeved tunic. Because he was in money, the present garment was of linen dyed with first-pressing indigo. The hem and sleeves were embroidered in gold thread, and the sash was of fine black silk.

He wore it with a swagger; but then, Chalcus did everything with a swagger.

Merota gripped the sailor's thick wrist and the forearm. She jumped and Chalcus added a little toss, giving the girl the boost she needed to go over, shrilling delight as her tunics flapped like flags in a storm.

"Why do you always swing her with your left arm, Master Chalcus?" Ilna asked suddenly. He'd said he was here to have a private interview with her. One result of the discussion could be that they'd never see each other again.

"Swing me again, Chalcus!" Merota said.

Chalcus hugged the child to his left side, but it was Ilna he faced with a broad grin. "Indeed, what would happen if some ill-wisher sprang from the lemon balm there—"

He nodded to the bed of herbs with tiny white flowers. None of the stems were as tall as Ilna's knee.

"—and my swordarm was all tangled with a lovely woman, eh?"

Chalcus wasn't wearing a sword, and the short curved dagger thrust through his sash was no bigger than the knife every man in a rural village carried for routine tasks. The steel of the blade, however, was as incomparably better than that of knives forged by travelling blacksmiths as Chalcus himself was superior to the common run of sailors.

"Then you'd kill him with your left hand!" Merota said, giggling.

Chalcus looked down at her. "Aye, perhaps I would at that, child," he said. "Now leave us, if you will."

Instead of arguing as Ilna had half expected the girl would do—expected until she heard the tone Chalcus used this time—Merota said, "Yes, Chalcus."

She turned and curtseyed to Ilna. "Mistress Ilna," she said, then reentered the bungalow at a swift but ladylike pace.

Chalcus bent away from Ilna as though to smell the purple-tendrilled mint along the east wall. "I've been thinking over where I might go next, mistress," he said. "There's little use for my sort in a place like Valles, you know."

He turned and smiled at her. "You've a fine crop of herbs growing here," he added in the same negligent tone. "Those who you cook for are lucky folk indeed."

Ilna allowed no servants in the bungalow, though with the child's tutors traipsing in and out there was work enough to keep the place in proper order. Ilna hadn't met the cook or maid yet who performed to her standards; and in truth, even if such a paragon appeared, Ilna wouldn't want to share her dwelling with a servant.

"The garden's well enough," Ilna said. "If I were to stay here, I'd want a dovecote, though. I've never liked chickens running around my ankles."

What did Chalcus expect her to say? Her! Did he think Ilna os-Kenset would beg?

Instead of speaking, Chalcus took out his dagger and spun it from hand to hand. He caught it each time by the point, then spun it back.

"I wonder, mistress...," he said as though to the shimmering steel. The blade was slightly curved and sharp for a finger's length along the reverse edge. "If you were on a ship about to sink, would you save the tall man... or the short man...."

There was a rhythm to the blade, as crisp and regular as the dance of Ilna's shuttle across her loom. She found she was holding her breath; she grimaced angrily.

"... perhaps a middle-sized man like myself?"

The dagger slipped back into its scabbard as surely as water finds the drain hole. Chalcus met her gaze. His lips smiled, but his eyes did not.

"I don't like ships, Master Chalcus," she said, chipping her words out like hatchetstrokes. "The last time I was aboard one, there was a crew of a hundred but only one man: you yourself, as you well know."

Ilna turned away, wishing she believed enough in the Gods that she could curse and not feel she was being a hypocrite. "Master Chalcus," she said to the man behind her, "I regret to say that I don't know my own mind. Or perhaps I do, and I don't have the courage to act on it."

"Ah," said Chalcus, an acknowledgment in a tone stripped of all implication. "Well, mistress, I haven't met the person whose courage I'd trust further than I would your own. We'll talk again before we act, either of us."

Ilna spun to face him. "Chalcus," she said, "there are things I've done—"

"Aye!" he said, the barked syllable breaking off her confession. "And I have done things as well, mistress. But we won't have that conversation ever, you and I, for we each already know the truth the other knows. Now, go to your loom and settle your mind—"

He did know her; not that Ilna had doubted that before.

"—while I chat with your guards and perhaps open a jar of wine. In a while we'll talk about what we will do, leaving the past to take care of itself. Eh?"

Chalcus smiled; and he kissed her, which no one before in this life had done, and he swaggered back into the house calling to the pair of Blood Eagles at the entrance. Chalcus the sailor; Chalcus the pirate and bloody-handed killer.

Ilna swept the cover from her loom and resumed her work, pouring her soul into the pattern her fingers wove.

Chalcus the man.

Ilna's fingers played the threads without her conscious consideration while her mind grappled with questions that were beyond any human's certain grasp. A spindle of rich brown yarn was nearly empty. She replaced it with a full spindle, and as she did her eyes glanced over the fabric she'd woven.

To another it was merely a pattern of subtle hues and textures, an image that made the person who viewed it a little calmer, a little more happy. What Ilna saw in the muted shades....

She slid from her stool and strode into the bungalow's central hall. She heard the sailor from the porch beyond, his voice lilting a complex joke to the pair of guards on duty. Even at this moment Ilna found herself hoping that Merota wasn't listening in also.

"Chalcus!" she called. "Garric will be in the water garden. We've got to warn him. Now!"

She swept out the front door. The Blood Eagles stiffened to attention; Chalcus by contrast looked as supple as the long silken cord around Ilna's waist, a sash for now and a noose at need.

Ilna wasn't much of a runner, but she broke into a trot. This accursed palace was bigger than the whole of Barca's Hamlet, and she didn't know the terrain nearly as well.

Chalcus was just as quick and agile on dry land as on shipboard. He swung along beside her. The only sign that he too felt the tension was the way his left hand reached down to steady the curved sword that he wasn't wearing at the moment.

Chalcus didn't ask what the danger was, only grinned at her as they ran through a tunnel of pleached ironwoods. Maybe he didn't care.

What Ilna saw in her fabric was Garric frozen in a cavern. Around him, holding him so there was no escape, were the eight legs of a huge female spider.

And her mandibles were poised to suck Garric's life out.