The Gods Return (29 page)

"Not serious?" Sharina said in amazement.

Tadai waved a hand. "Your highness, we must keep the matter in proportion," he said. "There've been that many knifings in the dives that the drovers and rivermen frequent. And soldiers, I'm afraid. For the most part a scorpion sting is merely unpleasant."

"Yes, your highness," said Dysart. He stretched out his right leg and pointed to a welt the size of a thumbnail just above the inside of his ankle. The swelling was red, but the center was dead white. "It's numb, is all. Though I'd rather it hadn't happened."

For an instant Dysart's eyes rested on Burne, grooming the base of his tail. He continued, "We made a sweep of the offices after this happened and found seven more, but they keep creeping back in the nighttime."

"Is it possible that the priests of this new scorpion god control the scorpions themselves?" Tadai said, frowning in concentration. "That they have real power, in other words?"

"I think . . . ," Sharina said, pausing to consider how much to say. If Liane were here, she'd discuss her dreams fully; but though Sharina trusted these men's ability, she didn't care to disclose her secret fears to them. "I think that there's someone or something beyond the priests. I think if we question a priest, though, we'll get . . . closer to the source of the plague."

"Right," said Tadai, nodding agreement. "I'll give orders to the city patrols to report to their district headquarters immediately if they see signs of another gathering, and for the watch officers to report to me."

"If I may suggest, your highness and milord?" Dysart said, running the tips of his pudgy fingers over the document case.

"Speak," Sharina said, this time with icy calm.

"Rather than the uniformed patrols, let my department locate the gathering," Dysart said. "If the Prefect would keep a strong body of his patrolmen ready to respond at once, I think we may have better results."

"What about the city garrison?" Sharina said. "Milord, you have four regiments, do you not? Have one company ready to move instantly with the rest of the regiment to follow in ten minutes."

"Yes," said Tadai, nodding and frowning. "Yes, a very good idea. I'll have to talk with Lord Quernan, my military advisor, however. Though the city garrison is under my command, quite frankly I don't know very much about soldiers."

"If I may suggest—" Sharina said.

Burne, crouching on her right thigh, snickered. She realized that she'd just used the form that Dysart had irritated her with.

"Of course, your highness," said Lord Tadai—of course. But the matter really was in his department, and Sharina didn't want to seem to be acting arbitrarily.

"You might use Lord Baines's regiment for the purpose," she said.

"If you have confidence in Lord Baines, that's quite enough for me, your highness," Tadai said.

"I have nothing against Lord Baines," Sharina said with a wry smile, "but as I chance to know his Camp Marshals, men named Prester and Pont. They'd probably be in charge of a task like this, and I have a great
deal
of confidence in them."

"Then if we're agreed on a plan . . .?" said Tadai.

Burne launched himself from Sharina's lap to her shoulder, then sprang to the top of the closed door. His long chisel teeth
click
ed as he bounced back onto the bed between the two men.

Tadai started sideways. Dysart thrust his arm out to protect the rat, then withdrew it when he saw that Tadai hadn't tried to strike.

Scorpion legs spurted from the edges of Burne's mouth. "Scarcely a mouthful," he said, "but it could have sent word to whatever wants to know. I heard it on the top edge of the door, but I had to wait till it came out enough for me to snatch it."

Sharina rose to her feet. "Thank you, Master Burne," she said. "I'm going to be very pleased when we've found the source of this problem."

* * *

"You've become an exceptional horseman," Reise said in muted surprise as he and Garric trotted in the midst of the escort. They were within half a mile of Barca's Hamlet, but only the tall slate roof of the millhouse was visible. Since the Change a pine forest covered what had been the Inner Sea east of Haft.

"Thank you," said Garric. Carus was almost as skilled a rider as he was a swordsman, and there'd been no better swordsman in the kingdom while he ruled it. "You've learned to ride well too."

His father chuckled. "I've known how to ride since before you were born," he said. "I was part of the entourage which accompanied the Countess. It wasn't a skill I needed in Barca's Hamlet."

"Ah," said Garric. In the borough where he grew up, plowmen followed oxen and the only horses were those on which a few drovers arrived during the Sheep Fair. He tended to forget that Reise's life extended beyond being a father and the keeper of a rural inn.

"The difficulty wasn't remembering
how
to ride," Reise said. He gave Garric a rueful smile. "It was in managing not to scream from the pain until my thighs got back in shape. Or as close to shape as is possible at my age."

Garric and Carus laughed together. "I'm familiar with the problem," Garric said. Carus provided a horseman's instincts and techniques, but the ghost could do nothing to train muscles which weren't used to gripping the flanks of a horse.

The leading troops of cavalry had ridden into the hamlet and were lining both sides of the only street. Attaper and the first section of Blood Eagles followed, their horseshoes clinking and sparkling on flagstones laid during the Old Kingdom.

"Duzi!" said Garric. He'd never seen the street when it wasn't covered by a layer of dirt, save for the doorsteps of the more fastidious householders. "They've swept it!"

"Mucked it out, rather," Reise said proudly. "The prince is visiting them, you know."

There'd been changes at the mill; indeed, clay soil heaped to either side of a new channel showed that work was still going on. A tall man whom Garric didn't recognize stood in front of the building at the head of his household: his wife holding an infant, three other children in ascending order of age, and a servant boy with the features of Arham or-Buss—a farmer from the north of the borough who raised more children than he did any other kind of crop.

The tall man took off his velvet cap—an Erdin style, like the short matching cape—and waved as he cheered. The whole household did the same, causing the startled infant to begin screaming.

"Mordrig or-Mostert," Reise murmured. "He's the Sandrakkan merchant who bought the mill from Katchin's widow. He had to convert it from tidal operation to a flume brought down from Pattern Creek now that Barca's Hamlet isn't on the sea any more."

There were more people in Barca's Hamlet than Garric had ever seen before, even during Sheep Fairs and the Tithe Processions when priests from Carcosa dragged images of the Lady and the Shepherd on large carts through the hamlet. There were outsiders, the various sorts of entertainers who're drawn to large gatherings the way flies find a fresh corpse, but mostly they were people from the borough and neighboring boroughs.

He recognized many faces, though not always with a name attached; but mostly he recognized the sort of folk they were. They were the same as Garric or-Reise had been, but he didn't belong here any more.

"I didn't expect all these people!" Garric said. It wasn't that the crowd was huge in absolute terms: Valles and now Pandah had larger populations than the whole eastern coastline of Haft, and an address by the Prince brought out a good proportion of either city.

But it was too many for Barca's Hamlet. They were overwhelming the eighteen years of Garric's memories.

"You should have expected them," his father said quietly.

Garric wore his silvered breastplate, but the helmet with flaring gilt wings was miserably uncomfortable to ride in and unnecessary now, even though he was well ahead of the main body of the army. Instead he wore a lacquered straw hat with a wide brim—in the latest Valles style, he'd been told, but practical nonetheless. Hidden beneath the colorful straw, because he
was
the prince and Lord Attaper had insisted, was a leather-padded steel cap.

He didn't want to uncover the armor by waving the straw hat to the crowd, so he waggled his right arm high instead. The saddle raised him as much as a dais would in a more formal setting.

"Fellow citizens of the kingdom!" Garric called. He doubted anybody but Reise and the closest Blood Eagles could hear him, because the crowd was screaming its collective heart out. The sound seemed thin, though: open air didn't give the cheers the echoing majesty that he'd become used to in squares framed by high stone buildings.

Garric swept his arm down, hoping to cut off the shouting. "Fellow citizens of Haft!" he cried.

The gesture worked pretty well. When a few people decided they were supposed to stop cheering, those around them had an excuse to quit also. He wondered if everybody in the borough would be speaking in raw whispers tomorrow morning.

"Friends!" Garric said. "Not only because I see the faces of many who have been my friends since childhood, but because all those who stand firm against evil and chaos are my friends. My duties will carry me away soon—but please, since you
are
my friends and neighbors, give me a chance to visit the inn where I grew up. I'm not here for reasons of state: I'm here because Barca's Hamlet was my home and is still the home of my heart!"

Garric thrust his arm skyward again; the cheers resumed as he'd hoped and expected. He clucked to his horse and gave it a touch of his left knee, turning it toward the gate arch of the inn.

He didn't have to worry about the crowd respecting his privacy: the troops of his escort would make sure of that. Making it a matter of courtesy which the soldiers were merely enforcing was better policy than giving the impression of being an aloof brute, however. And as for claiming that Barca's Hamlet was still home to him—

I lied to them
, Garric thought bitterly.

The ghost of his ancestor shrugged. "
Sometimes kings have to lie
," Carus said. "
I didn't mind that—or mind killing people, to tell the truth—nearly as much as I minded sitting through arguments on tax policy. But sometimes kings have to do that too
."

Laughing, Garric rode under the archway. There was room for two horsemen—or a coach, not that there'd been a coach in Barca's Hamlet since the fall of the Old Kingdom—but Reise held his mount back for a moment to follow rather than accompany the prince.

Bressa Kalran's-widow, who'd sold their poor farm when her husband died and supported herself—poorly—with spinning and whatever else she could find, and her son—he must be fifteen now; he'd gotten his growth since Garric left the hamlet—stood to either side of the well in the center of the yard. The boy bowed so deeply that his carrot-blond forelock almost brushed the ground. Bressa threw herself onto her knees and elbows gabbling, "Your highness! Your royal highness!"

"Get up, for Duzi's sake!" Garric said. Shouted, rather; he was shocked and disgusted.

"Arise, Mistress Bressa," said Reise, swinging from his horse to lift the widow by the hands, politely but firmly. "You honor neither your prince nor your old neighbor Garric by this sort of antic. We're free citizens of Haft, you and I and Prince Garric."

Bressa got up with a stunned expression. She dabbed her face with the kerchief pinned over her bosom, a poor woman's alternative to an expensively embroidered outer tunic. "Begging your pardon, your highness, I'm sure," she said in a frightened whisper.

Of course Lara would need to hire help for the inn
, Garric realized.
She couldn't run it by herself with Reise and both children gone. And where is—

His eyes went to the door of the inn. His mother stepped out as though she'd been listening to his thoughts. She was wearing a light gray tunic over a white one. Both were so well made that they might have been Ilna's work were it not for the cloth-of-gold borders appliquéd at the throat, cuffs, and hems. Even so, they were excellent examples of peasant dress, not a peasant's garish idea of what the nobility wore.

Lara lifted her skirts and dipped in a perfect curtsey. She didn't raise her eyes or speak, because one didn't do either of those things when greeting royalty. Lara knew the correct etiquette because she'd been maid to the Countess of Haft.

Garric dismounted. He—Garric or-Reise, not Carus—had first ridden a horse here in the innyard, a guest's mount being exercised. He'd been bareback and used a rope halter. At the memory, he was eight years old again.

Lara was smaller than he remembered, a doll of a woman. Even after decades of work in a rural in, her face and figure would allow her to pass for a beauty at any distance at all. When she was younger . . . . Well, it wasn't a surprise that the Count of Haft had found his way into her arms.

"Mother," he said, stepping toward her. Could it really have been only three years?

Lara looked up with an expression of anger and pain. "Pardon me, your highness," she said, "but I'm not your mother. Your father, Lord Reise, has made that abundantly clear to me!"

Garric looked at her for a long moment. No one who'd known Lara for even as much as a day would deny that she was a shrew: utterly focused on appearances and in lashing others with her barbed tongue until they did her will. Garric and his sister had been under her control for their first eighteen years, so they knew her personality better than most.