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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Queen of Demons
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The ice men stopped. The Elder Romi turned deliberately. “Ask your question, Ilna os-Kenset,” he said.
“Sir,” Ilna said. Her tone was clipped and assured. “What do you fear?”
Romi laughed, a rumbling sound that the sky gave back as thunder. “I feared nothing when I was alive,” he said. “I fear nothing now!”
“Do you fear your own anger and the evil it allows you to do?” Ilna said.
She stepped down toward the wizard. Most of the halted courtiers watched her, though no few remained hunched over their private desperation.
Ilna waved toward the line. “They're not innocent,” she said. “None but the babies, perhaps. But you know that they've done nothing to deserve this. Not even—”
Her eyes and the scorn in her voice identified Robilard.
“—that boy!”
The Elder Romi's face twisted in fury. He struck the butt of his staff on the stone-paved roadway. Lightning blasted upward.
The moonless sky had been clear. At the flash clouds boiled up from the four corners of the horizon. Further lightning stabbed between thunderheads, and a downpour like none Ilna had seen before slashed the ground.
None of the rain fell on the figures in front of Robilard's palace. Ilna crossed her arms and met the Elder Romi's hawk-fierce gaze.
Romi laughed and made an absent gesture with his staff. The clouds vanished. The rain stopped with the suddenness of a lightning stroke, though pools of water stood in every hollow except those among the figures.
The icy servitors dissolved like will-o'-the-wisps caught in a sea breeze. Lady Regowara, no longer supported by the figures at her sides, fell to the ground laughing hysterically.
The Elder Romi began to bow. His form thinned to mist, then empty air. His laughing voice, full and strong, boomed, “When I had flesh, Ilna os-Kenset. When I had flesh!”
The echoes lasted a hundred heartbeats. After that Ilna heard only the last of the rain spewing through the gargoyles on the palace roof, and the sobbing joy of courtiers now alone on the road that would have led them to a tomb before their times.
She staggered with relief. There was a sound behind
her. She looked over her shoulder to see Halphemos coming down the steps. His face was drawn, but he seemed to have made an adequate recovery.
The eastern horizon was lighter. The sun would rise soon.
Lady Cotolina, still holding the infants, threw herself on the pavement before Ilna and tried to kiss her feet. Ilna stepped back in angry embarrassment. “Stop that!” she said.
Baron Robilard came forward with Hosten at his side. Robilard put a hand on his wife's shoulder. She cried out, then looked up and saw that the touch was human. Hosten helped her rise, though she refused to let him take one of the babies from her.
Halphemos tried to step between the baron and Ilna. Ilna gestured him back curtly. The youth hesitated, but her glare finally convinced him. Did he think
she
needed protection?
Baron Robilard knelt. “What do you want?” he said. He'd aged a decade in the past hour. “Anything,
anything
.”
Before Ilna could speak—she hadn't thought beyond her confrontation with Romi—Robilard went on, “I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I swear by the Lady, I didn't know!”
“It never crossed my mind that you did know,” Ilna said. She gave a sniff of amusement.
Ilna looked around while she gathered her thoughts. A few servants reappeared, one of them the nurse. She paused for a moment, then broke into a bovine gallop toward Cotolina and her charges.
“Stand up,” Ilna said to the baron sharply. It was worse being knelt to than facing somebody who thought Ilna os-Kenset should kneel to them. “Do you think I like looking at the top of your head?”
The courtiers all watched her and the baron, though for the most part it was from a safe distance. They seemed as much afraid of Ilna as they'd been of the Elder Romi.
Her smile spread. And perhaps the courtiers had as much reason for fear.
Aloud Ilna said, “My companions and I want to go to Valles, Baron. If you can advance us passage money, I would appreciate it. You needn't worry about being repaid, at least—”
Ilna's smile returned.
“—if I survive.”
Robilard stood up as she'd directed him to. Ilna noted with amusement that he winced as his knees came off the pavement; perhaps he'd learned a lesson more general than that he shouldn't invent famous ancestors for himself.
“There's no question of you repaying me anything, mistress,” he said. His voice strengthened with every word, and he gave no indication of having spent the night drinking. “I—”
He glanced behind himself to include his courtiers.
“—all of us will be in your debt for as long as we live. I can't offer you passage on a merchant vessel, because none will sail to Valles since the troubles there, but—”
“What troubles?” Ilna said, interrupting before she could catch herself. Sudden fear for Cashel—for Cashel and others—drew the question. She knew she should have waited for the baron to finish what he was saying.
“There've been riots,” Hosten explained. He'd remained at the baron's side. Cotolina and the nurse sat on a step where they were still trying to quiet the infants. “There's been wizardry and worse. We have agents on all the islands where we do major business, and those on Ornifal have warned us not to risk cargoes until things settle down.”
“But of course that won't matter for you,” Robilard resumed briskly. “We'll go aboard one of my warships.”
He looked at the man beside him. “The
Erne
, I believe, Hosten?”
The courtier nodded. “Her or the
Cormorant,”
he said. “We don't have crews available for both at the moment,
though in a few days I can gather something.”
“I'll accompany you, of course,” Robilard said nonchalantly. “Now, when would you like to leave?”
Ilna started to protest, then realized she had no cause to. She had wanted to get to Valles as soon as possible. News of the troubles confirmed her intention—and if Robilard thought he owed her his life … well, he was right about that.
“The sooner the better,” Ilna said. She looked at Halphemos. “When can you be ready?”
“Cerix and I have nothing to ready, mistress,” he said. “You're the only reason we have even our lives.”
“We'll leave in an hour, then,” the baron said crisply. “That is—can we have the crew ready by then, Hosten?”
“The crew will be ready,” Hosten said with a grim smile. “Or else I'll find a better use for the cage than the one you made of it, Baron. And we'll be in Valles before sunset.”
He trotted toward the back of the palace, shouting for grooms and a horse.
 
 
Garric bumped the jamb as he tried to follow Royhas through the doorway into the king's private apartments. Liane steadied him. Royhas turned with a look of concern and said, “Are you all right?” in a sharper tone than perhaps he intended.
“When this is over,” Garric said, “I'm going to sleep for a week.”
He chuckled and added, “That's assuming we aren't sleeping for all eternity, the lot of us.”
Liane winced. She'd come to recognize Garric's new sense of humor. She didn't fully appreciate it, though.
“The only humor there is on a battlefield, lad, is gallows humor,”
Carus' voice whispered. “
Or on a gibbet
,
I shouldn't wonder, though there I
haven't
been.
”
The four Blood Eagles in the anteroom remained in front of the inner door when Royhas entered; when Garric
appeared behind the chancellor they stepped to either side. The watch commander clenched his fist in salute and said, “He's in with the priests again, sir. He said not to let anyone through.”
He nodded Garric toward the door in implicit rejection of the king's orders.
Garric knew the Blood Eagles would without hesitation die to protect Valence. Protecting the king no longer meant obeying him when his orders conflicted with the wishes of the real ruler of Valles. He tapped on the burl panel, then pushed down the latch bar before one of those inside tried to wedge it shut.
Garric smiled. He was indeed ruler of Valles and most of Ornifal; and he had a start on ruling the whole Kingdom of the Isles, at least if he survived the next few days. It made herding sheep—stupid, contrary sheep that kept you out in all weather—seem an idyllic existence.
Valence bleated petulantly, “I said no one—” He fell silent when he realized that Garric was responsible for the intrusion. Instead of court robes or the thin silks a nobleman might wear in private apartments, he wore a horsehair tunic that must be almost as uncomfortable as rolling naked in a bed of nettles.
Garric had already dealt with the two religious figures who were closeted with the king. The Arch Hierophant of Ornifal was a seventy-year-old priestess with skin like ivory and eyes of chilled steel. Before her elevation she had founded a healing order which now maintained nearly a hundred hospices across the island. Her companion was director of the temple of the Shepherd Who Maintains Valles. He was a fat man with a mind that let nothing go—and hands similarly able to keep any wealth that they grasped.
“Your Majesty,” Garric said, “we have business to discuss with you.”
The priests were already leaving the room. The first time Garric had come for an interview with the king, the
priests had expected to stay. They'd learned they were wrong.
Valence shook his head despairingly. “Must you?” he said. “You don't understand how important it is that the Lady forgives me!”
Garric felt his lip twitch, but he suppressed the sneer. In the literal sense, Valence was correct: Garric didn't think it was important whether the king received forgiveness from the Great Gods. But what Valence really meant was “You don't understand how much evil I've done.” That wasn't true at all.
“The restoration of your government is going as well as we could have hoped, sir,” Garric said, ignoring the king's whine. “In the west of the island we're receiving more of the queen's councillors under our warrants than I'd like to, but in most cases these are families who've led their vestries for generations. They'll have to be watched, but there isn't a great deal of choice.”
Though Valles had accepted the new government, the rest of the island was a more difficult matter. The fact that Waldron and his fellow northern landowners supported Prince Garric was reason enough for the smallholders of the island's south and east to hang back and even threaten to secede from Valles' authority under their own county councils. Valence's signature on the orders Royhas and Tadai drafted did at least as much to keep Ornifal united as the threat of Waldron's army could.
Liane unfolded the legs of the portable desk in which she transported the latest set of documents. It was an intricate piece of cypress cabinetry with bronze fittings, originally the property of her far-traveling father.
Royhas was present to answer questions about details of the documents, not that in the past days Valence had seemed to care about anything beyond his own afterlife. Royhas was the king's longtime friend, but that didn't matter anymore to Valence either.
Garric had to attend the sessions because the Blood Eagles wouldn't admit anyone else against the king's orders,
and because Valence would by and large listen to Garric as to no one else.
Garric heard laughter in his mind.
“It doesn't matter which of us gets the credit so long as the job's done,”
his ancestor murmured down the ages.
“If you'll sign—” Liane said, putting the first of the documents on top of the desk.
Valence brought up the leather quirt he'd been concealing behind him and lashed himself across the back. The thongs popped against the stiff black horsehair. “The Beast will eat us all!” he cried.
Garric grabbed the king's wrist with one hand and the quirt with the other. Valence struggled feebly. “The Beast will take me!” he said.
“Stop that!” Garric shouted, flinging the quirt against the wall. He shook Valence without meaning to; when he realized, he let the king go and stepped back.
“Sir!” Garric said in gasping anger. “You need to be a man. Men have died for you!”
Valence shrank to the floor and began sobbing. The three others looked at one another with a mixture of disgust and discomfort.
Royhas shrugged. “There's nothing that can't wait a day,” he said quietly. “I'll have a word with the guards so that they inform me when, ah, the time might be more propitious.”

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