Queen of Demons (69 page)

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Authors: David Drake

BOOK: Queen of Demons
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Garric turned the desk over and refolded its legs. “I told Tenoctris that I'd find time to take her to the queen's mansion,” he said as his mind wrestled with other things.
Valence had been King of the Isles in name and ruler of Ornifal in all truth. Now …
Because Garric was dealing with the portable desk, Liane walked to the corner and picked up the quirt. Valence could get another one, of course. Or he could hang himself with the belt of his horsehair tunic if he wanted to, and then where would they be?
Garric followed his companions into the anteroom, closing the beautiful door softly behind him.
Will the same
thing happen to me when the strain gets to be too much?
he thought.
“Not until the sun goes black and all the seas dry up!”
thundered the voice in his mind.
“And not even then!”
 
 
“Oh!” Cashel said, tossing his quarterstaff vertically and balancing it for a moment on his upright index finger. When it tilted farther than he could allow for, he let it drop and caught it at the balance in his right hand. “Doesn't it feel good to have some room again, Zahag?”
The ape squatted, scratching his ribs with his right hand while his head rotated farther to either side than a human could have managed. The Pandah bireme that had landed them at Valles' outer harbor was already on its way home.
“Room is fine,” Zahag said without enthusiasm. “I don't like the feel of this city, though. I think we ought to go someplace else. Fast.”
“Oh, it's all right,” Cashel said; though the truth was, he felt a sort of overhanging pressure himself when he let himself think about it. Also, his skin prickled. “Anyway, I'm going to have to find work before we can eat. I thought it'd be easy to get a job loading ships till we learn what's where, but …”
Compared to the bustle of Erdin and Divers on Pandah, the harbor of Valles was dead though not quite deserted. Less than half the many slips were occupied, and most of the vessels which
were
present looked unserviceable even to the eyes of a landsman like Cashel. There was no cargo on the quays, and the taverns and stalls which sold rough clothing and the trinkets dear to a sailor's heart were mostly shuttered. The business of the evening should have been just getting under way.
“Well, where are we going, then?” the ape asked in a peevish tone. “We didn't have enough to eat on shipboard to keep my ribs apart, and I'm
not
going to miss another meal.”
“Then get it for yourself,” Cashel growled. He set off
up the nearest street because he figured it was as good a direction as any. He was hungry, too. Now that the first joy of returning to land had passed, he felt the cramps and stiffness from a day's confinement aboard a ship where there wasn't room to turn around.
A trio of middle-aged women came in the opposite direction, each carrying beer in a leather pail. They'd been talking, but they fell silent and slanted to the other side of the street when they saw Cashel and Zahag approaching. Cashel would have asked them about where he could get meals and a place to sleep—to be paid for in the morning—but their suspicious behavior made him bite his tongue.
Things like that made him wonder if he should've left Barca's Hamlet. Of course he'd had to, because Sharina was leaving; but sometimes he wished
she
hadn't had to go. Cashel had been hungry often enough in Barca's Hamlet, and cold, and tired, and he'd been laughed at for being slow. But he'd never wondered where home was until the day he left it.
“Aria would have given you money,” Zahag said bitterly.
“Why should she do that?” Cashel said in surprise. “Anyway, Aria didn't have any money. She was Folquin's guest just like we were.”
“Right,” the ape said, “and he'd have given you his whole treasury if you'd said you'd stay if he didn't. You're about—”
“Zahag,” Cashel said in a hoarse rumble.
“Right, chief,” the ape said quickly. “Right, I don't know what I was thinking about to talk that way.”
A man wearing two tunics layered to show the gilt embroidery—tatty by now—on the inner one had been standing in a door alcove. He stepped forward and said, “Say, buddy. Did I hear that monkey talk?”
“You may have heard the ape speaking, my good man,” Zahag said in a tone he didn't use often in Cashel's hearing. “If you did, you noticed his diction was much
better than that of a pimp from the docks district.”
“Hey!” the man said in delight. “Say, would you like to sell him?”
Zahag bristled, then looked up at Cashel in frightened surmise. Cashel put a hand on the ape's hairy shoulder. “No,” he said, “but I'd like if you could tell me where I could find work, bed, and a meal, sir.”
“Say, for your trained monkey I can find you a bed and somebody to warm you in it!” the local said. “I can find a couple somebodies for a gentleman of your discernment and I'll pay you cash to boot. What sort of price were you—”
“No,” Cashel said. He didn't raise his voice, but he tapped his staff on the pavement so that the ferrule struck sparks. He'd taken “pimp” as just an example of the ape's usual bad temper, but apparently Zahag knew more about these things than Cashel did—or wanted to. “All I want is a place who'll hire me for work.
Honest
work.”
The pimp grimaced and turned away. “Go to the palace,” he threw over his shoulder. “They're hiring strong backs to haul rocks.”
“Sir?” said Cashel. He didn't know where the palace was. The pimp kept walking away.
“Sir!” Cashel repeated at a level that rattled shutters. The pimp stumbled, then faced around again.
“How do I find the palace, please?” Cashel said in his normal voice. At his feet, Zahag slapped his thighs and cackled enthusiastically.
The pimp managed a professionally bright smile. He pointed in the direction Cashel was already going. “Three blocks up there's a boulevard with a median and statues on it,” he said. “That's Monument Avenue. You turn left and keep going till you hit the palace.”
Cashel looked at his hands, frowning in concentration. Zahag plucked the hem of Cashel's tunic. “I know which way left is,” the ape said. “Let's get going. In Pandah, they feed the king's table scraps to beggars at the gate. Maybe they're civilized here too.”
“It wouldn't kill us to miss a meal,” Cashel muttered. Still, the idea of food sounded better and better, maybe because Zahag kept on about it. The sun was getting low, so he lengthened his stride to arrive before the king barred his house for the night.
Zahag fell into a four-legged lope. If his knuckles minded the cobblestones, at least it didn't slow him down.
Cashel chuckled. The ape looked up and said, “What do you find so funny?” His voice was sour; likely the hard pavement
did
hurt.
“I was thinking the only time I've moved like this,” Cashel explained, “was following an ox team to the water after an afternoon's plowing. Anybody who thinks oxen can't move hasn't seen them when the yoke comes off.”
“Don't you know any smart animals?” Zahag grumbled.
Traffic increased as Cashel and the ape got away from the harbor. The problems in Valles seemed to have affected sea trade more than they had ordinary life. Though—they passed a number of buildings on Monument Avenue that had been burned out recently. Smoke, and not just clean woodsmoke, tinged the air around them.
“Umm,” Zahag said. “People have been dying here. Can't you smell it?”
“Yeah,” Cashel said. “I can.”
“I told you we ought to go someplace else,” the ape muttered. He was so close to Cashel now that his shoulder brushed the youth's calf at every stride.
A large body of troops filled the half of the avenue Cashel was following. They walked faster than the same number of sheep would have, but …
When a narrow cross street joined the avenue at the right angle for a sighting, Cashel cocked an eye at the sun. Unless the palace was closer than he had any reason to believe, the troops weren't moving fast enough for his purposes.
“Let's go over,” he said to Zahag. The other side of
the avenue was crowded with traffic mostly moving in the opposite direction, but maybe he and the ape could cross back when they'd gotten around the troops. The median itself was choked with peddlers' stalls where there weren't bronze statues on squared stone bases.
Zahag slid beneath a produce cart while Cashel squeezed between it and a flimsy stall from which a shrill-voiced woman sold fried fish on bamboo skewers. As he and the ape pushed into the crowd on the other pavement, Zahag turned his head to view the troops they'd just skirted.
“Hey, look at their livery,” the ape said. “They're not from here. Blue and sea-green are the colors of Third Atara. We worked there a week when I was with the kid and the cripple, but the collections barely amounted to our rations. The baron didn't leave any money loose for other people.”
Zahag walked on three limbs while he fed himself a banana with the remaining hand. He ate it skin and all, and Cashel guessed it was too late to ask where the fruit had come from.
“I've never been there,” Cashel said, because politeness required a response. He'd never heard of the place until this moment. Between the two divisions of soldiers there was a pair of hired litters. A number of men and women on foot walked beside the rich folk being carried. “Looks like it's some nobles, don't you think?”
“Look!” Zahag shrieked. “Look!”
He stopped in the street and began to jump up and down, gabbling in his own language. Anyway, it wasn't any language Cashel had learned.
“What's the matter?” Cashel said in exasperation. It was bad enough fighting traffic that wanted to go the other way. Having folks bump him because he was standing like a post in the roadway was even worse. Maybe the ape had gotten the last of the banana down the wrong pipe and was choking. He sure hadn't been wasting any time eating it.
“The kid and the cripple!” Zahag shouted. “The kid and the cripple!”
Everyone around Cashel and Zahag was now staring either at the talking monkey or the soldiers on the other side of the median. The soldiers and the civilians in the midst of them turned their heads to see what was causing the commotion on the other side of the street.
A legless man rode in one of the litters. Cashel didn't recognize him, but he was pretty sure the youth in a red robe walking alongside was the wizard from Folquin's court when he and Sharina arrived there originally.
The fellow on the other litter was a nobleman, sure enough. He wore a gilded breastplate which must have been uncomfortable, leaning on the cushion like he had to do, and his matching helmet sat on the litter at his feet. The slim woman walking beside him turned her head.
Cashel hadn't recognized her because it hadn't crossed his mind that she was anywhere within a month's journey. He gaped.
“Good evening, brother,” Ilna called across the median in a tone of cheerful satisfaction. “I was hoping I'd find you here.”
I
lna hugged her brother, feeling a terrible sense of loss. She hadn't realized how much she …
Well, she hadn't depended on Cashel because Ilna didn't depend on anyone but herself; but how much she'd grown up
expecting
the presence of Cashel's calm strength. Having him back made her aware of what she'd missed.
Having him back temporarily. Ilna didn't suppose
Cashel's life would lead him to Erdin, where she'd decided her own duties lay.
Halphemos and Cerix were talking to their monkey. The bearers had lowered Cerix's litter to the pavement. Halphemos and the monkey squatted alongside; the monkey scratched his belly with a hind foot. The three displayed the wariness of separated associates who each think the others may have reason to reproach them.
Robilard had gotten out of his litter. At the dock he'd tried to hire a third vehicle for Ilna, but she'd refused it contemptuously. The baron would probably have dismissed his own litter then, except for a justified fear that Ilna would scorn him as indecisive as well as a pampered fop.
She smiled slightly. Robilard wasn't a bad fellow, for a noble. Someday he might grow up to be a man.
Cashel looked at Halphemos. He asked, “Did that wizard tell you how Sharina's doing?”
Ilna shook her head. “They were separated just after you left Pandah,” she said. “Now that I've found you, we can look for her. One thing at a time.”
She cleared her throat. “I was wondering what you might have heard about Tenoctris and … and the others.”
“Nothing,” Cashel said, shaking his head. “The last I saw, they were being swallowed down by …”
He shrugged. “By whatever it was that ate the ship,” he went on. “A storm, I thought, but that fellow Halphemos said it was something else.”
The troops accompanying Robilard were oarsmen equipped with helmets, javelins, and short, curved swords. They were trained for sea fights, not as heavy infantry, but they still formed a barrier that civilian traffic, no matter how angry, couldn't push aside. For the moment the men waited for their commanders to make up their minds. Judging from their nonchalant demeanor, it wasn't a new experience.
Lord Hosten had marched at the head of the column because he knew Valles. Now he led a middle-aged civilian
back through the ranks. “This is Master Talur, our agent for the port and the southern districts, Baron,” he said to Robilard.
Talur, whose complexion seemed darker than usual in Valles, bowed to the baron. “I didn't expect to see you, milord,” he said. “Ah—things are quite unsettled now, to be frank. I might almost wish you hadn't chosen this moment to visit.”
The agent wore layered tunics cinched by a broad silk sash and covered with a short cape embroidered in geometric designs. Ilna knew the garb was in the latest Valles style, but she was sure she heard a touch of a Haft accent in the man's voice. The thought gave her an unexpected twinge.
“A matter of honor brought me here,” Robilard said stiffly.
“But we're interested in the local situation so that we can avoid needless danger,” Hosten put in. When he saw his young master start to frown, he quickly added, “Consistently with honor, of course. Obviously we want to spare Mistress Ilna from unnecessary risks while she's under our protection.”
Ilna felt a smile tug the corners of her mouth. She didn't imagine her opinion of humanity as a whole would ever change, but in the course of her travels she'd met a surprising number of individuals she could respect. Lord Hosten was one of them.
“Yes, of course,” Talur said, noticeably relieved. “The riots that expelled the queen are over, but there's rumors of Admiral Nitker invading Valles with the Royal Fleet and also that the queen plans to retake the city by wizardry.”
“But these are only rumors?” the baron said. “Certainly I was treated courteously when we docked. Not as a potential enemy.”
“Rumors,” Talur agreed, “but very credible rumors, both of them. Still, the new government has the city in a
posture of defense, and as for wizardry—well, they ousted the queen to begin with.”
He looked around reflexively, then added, “And not before time. If she hadn't been stopped—”
He turned his hands palms-up.
“Yes, well, none of this changes our plans,” Robilard said. “I have to pay my respects to King Valence, of course, and then I'll see if he can help me locate the friends for whom Mistress Ilna here is looking.”
He nodded to introduce Ilna to the agent. Ilna found herself frowning; she knew the baron was trying to help, which rubbed her the wrong way. What prevented Ilna from objecting aloud was her knowledge that Robilard's access to the king might well help locate Tenoctris and Liane … and Garric … faster than Ilna and her wizard companions could do unaided.
“And we'll want to discuss quartering the crew, sir,” Hosten added.
“Yes, of course,” the baron agreed. “It would scarcely be courteous to march into Valles and put up a hundred armed men in the local inns without informing King Valence.”
“We'll be in sight of the palace when we pass the temple of the Lady of the Boundaries,” Talur said, nodding agreeably but with a slight frown. “That's just ahead, as you see.”
He nodded toward the squat, sandstone building with pillars on the sides as well as along the stepped front face. “But you'll probably be treating with representatives of the new government. Valence remains king, but he's delegated many of the duties of office to his heir presumptive, Prince Garric.”
Ilna didn't speak. She felt the threads of the pattern coming together, but the human part of her couldn't accept what was so much to her desire.
Cashel didn't have any such hesitation. “Garric?” he said. “Garric or-Reise from Barca's Hamlet, is that who you mean?”
Talur turned to look at Cashel for the first time. He said, “Prince Garric was Garric bor-Haft before his elevation. That's what the palace clerks put around, anyway, though I'll admit my concerns were more what his elevation meant in the future than where the gentleman came from.”
“Is he with an old lady named Tenoctris?” Cashel continued. “And a girl named Liane os-Benlo? She's near as pretty as Sharina.”
Ilna winced at her brother's delight and certainty. Both of Kenset's children saw things in simple patterns, but Ilna could only look from a distance on the sunlit beauty of Cashel's world. She saw clearer than her brother did, of that she was sure; but sometimes Ilna thought it would be a relief occasionally to lose sight of the truth in happy illusions like Cashel's.
“Why yes,” Talur said in amazement. “Do you know Prince Garric, good sir?”
“We used to,” Ilna said decisively. “We were on our way to the palace anyway, and—”
She smiled, half in self-mockery. “—I think we should get on with our business.”
 
 
“Mannor was Earl of Sandrakkan when Vales the Fifth was King of the Isles … ,” Liane said as she repinned Garric's brown cape closer at the neck than he had. “He used to go out at night in disguise along with his chancellor to learn what his subjects really thought about his rule.”
The two of them stood with Tenoctris in a ground-skeeper's hut near the main gate of the palace. The compound had a dozen lesser entrances, postern gates as well as spots where the wall had crumbled or been dug away by servants who wanted a quiet route for their own purposes, but so long as Garric was disguised there was no reason not to use the formal one. Tenoctris was too frail to pull herself up a rope to a tree branch, after all.
“That was the story he told for an excuse,” said Garric. “I'll bet what he was really doing was hiding so that he could get a meal or a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, which he knew wasn't going to happen so long as there was anybody who knew where to find him.”
Liane stepped back and surveyed Garric's appearance, critically but with final approval. She smiled and said, “A young drover from Haft, sightseeing in Valles after bringing a selection of blood stock to Ornifal.”
Liane's expression grew more somber. “Are you sure you're up to this, Garric?” she said. “You look awfully tired.”
Tenoctris was going through a case of powders: minerals, herbs, and animal products as well, all ground to the finest dust and segregated within copper-mounted containers made from the tips of cattle horns. She looked up and said, “Garric, someone else could—”
“I don't trust someone else!” Garric said. He blushed. He really was close to the edge when he let his temper out that way.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “Anyway, that isn't really true about me not trusting a couple Blood Eagles to tend you just as well as I could, Tenoctris. The truth is, I just need to get away and feel that I'm doing something instead of—”
Garric's smile spread. “Instead of talking to people about maybe something being done by somebody, someday,” he went on. “Which I know—”
His left hand tapped the coronation medallion on his chest in ironic salute to the king in his mind.
“—is really important and I'm not going to stop doing it. But I'm not going to do
only
that, because I'll start babbling and dance naked in the street. I need to get away from being king once and a while.”
“Come back safe,” Liane said with a smile that didn't fully conceal the real concern behind it. She'd never argued against Garric and Tenoctris going out unescorted,
but she'd wanted to go with them as the three of them had done in the past.
“We'll do that,” Garric said. He hung Tenoctris' satchel over his left shoulder and offered her that arm for support. His right hand remained free—just in case.
Things were different in the past. Now someone in the palace had to know where Prince Garric was in case a real crisis occurred. Liane was the only person Garric could trust to summon him from the queen's mansion if it was a real crisis, but not to disturb him simply because an envoy from Blaise had arrived or a northern landholder had rolled a royal justiciar in a manure pile before expelling him from his domains.
They walked toward the gate, though Liane let herself fall behind the other two. There was always a bustle at the entrance. The business of government required staff and supplies, including the staff's food and drink. Besides that mundane traffic, more people than Garric could have imagined—though Carus, laughing, had warned him—wanted royal justice or royal monopolies or royal appointments.
At Liane's suggestion, both Tadai and Royhas had provided clerks to screen visitors: the jealousy between the households made it unlikely that a would-be office-seeker would succeed in bribing his way to access. A detachment of Blood Eagles guaranteed that those refused entry took no for an answer.
Besides people trying to enter the palace on business, there were any number of folk who were simply spectators. They in turn attracted small-scale entrepreneurs whose barrows sold everything from meat pies to silver amulets in the shape of the winged monster on which the queen had made her escape (an infallible remedy against violence and defeat in lawsuits, according to the hawker). A woman as lovely as Liane got attention. If Garric was at her side, he was likely to be recognized.
The sun had fallen below the horizon, though the sky still brightly silhouetted the compound's western wall and
the tallest of the buildings beyond. The gates were open, as usual; servants had just finished hanging oil lamps from brackets on either door valve so that the entrance clerks had light to work by.
There was more than the usual commotion in the street, though. All twenty Blood Eagles were on their feet. As Garric neared the gate, the officer in command sent a runner back for instructions from higher authorities.
Just outside the gates stood a large body of troops. They'd forced their way through the normal crowd of idlers, but the men in civilian clothes at their head were speaking politely to the commander of the guard detachment. The foreign troops were escorting dignitaries who waited in their litters for the underlings on both sides to reach a conclusion.
“They're from Third Atara,” Liane said. When Garric slowed to take in the situation before getting involved in it, she'd come up beside him again. “See the seahorse and the blue borders on their tabards?”
“I saw them,” Garric said, “but they didn't mean anything to me.”
Reise had given his children an excellent education in the classics, but he hadn't bothered to teach them the details of current precedence and politics. He'd known them; certainly. Reise had been an official in the king's palace and later at the court of the Count and Countess of Haft. Such matters weren't part of a general grounding for life as Reise saw it, and they had no bearing on running an inn in Barca's Hamlet.

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