Goddess of the Ice Realm Page 6

  Attaper swore—under his breath this time—and followed Garric. Drawing his sword, he bellowed to an officer wearing a captain’s red plume, “The prince will receive them down here. Start our distinguished hosts moving!”

  Two aides—they’d been clerks of Lord Tadai—came quickly toward Garric. Attaper raised his bare weapon by reflex.

  “Please!” one of the aides said. Both carried notebooks of thin boards hinged with leather straps. “We’re his highness’ nomenclators! We have to be at his side to tell him who he’s meeting!”

  “Let them pass, milord,” Garric said, again irritated by the bodyguard’s caution; the nomenclators could scarcely have looked more harmless if they’d been mice scurrying on a pantry floor.

  He remembered what he’d just said to Sharina, though, and kept his tone level. Whatever his rank now, Garric knew very well that he was nervous about meeting those who’d been his distant rulers while he’d grown up in Barca’s Hamlet.

  “The first will be Count Lascarg,” the aide on Garric’s right murmured. His index finger marked a place in the notebook, though he didn’t bother referring to it. “His twin children, the honorable Tanus and Monine, were to accompany him, but they don’t appear to be present.”

  The Blood Eagles had started the line of dignitaries moving before Attaper bothered to ask Garric about the plan. That was all right; good subordinates had to be able to take initiative—within limits.

  Count Lascarg’s scabbard was empty and a guard walked to either side of him. They were more likely to have to support the count than to restrain him: he was a tired old man, overweight and—Garric had served in his father’s taproom since childhood—more than half drunk.

  Lascarg knelt before Garric, bracing himself with his hands to keep from falling over. He looked up, avoiding Garric’s eyes, and said in a rusty voice, “Your highness, I offer the loyal submission of Haft to the Kingdom of the Isles.”

  “Rise, Lord Lascarg,” Garric said. “The officials who’ve preceded me have made arrangements to allow you and your personal servants quarters in the west wing of the palace. So long as you remain there until I’ve made permanent dispositions, I can guarantee your safety. Of course you’re to take no further part in the government of the island.”

  “Of course,” Lascarg muttered. He didn’t sound regretful; perhaps he was even relieved. He rose to his feet more easily than he’d knelt and walked away straight-backed.

  Garric watched him go without expression. Lascarg had been commander of the Household Troops the night riots in Carcosa had led to the death of the Count and Countess of Haft; afterwards Lascarg had seized the throne himself. That didn’t prove he’d been behind the riots in the first place, but the best that could be said was that the Household Troops hadn’t protected their employers as they were sworn to do.

  Garric wouldn’t have had much liking or respect for Lascarg under any circumstances, so nothing important changed when Garric had learned that Countess Tera was his real mother. He’d been born the night she died, and Reise had carried the infant to Barca’s Hamlet on the opposite coast with his wife and her own newborn daughter.

  The next dignitary through the wall of Blood Eagles was an older man in priestly robes of the traditional gleaming white. Instead of the bleached wool which priests in Valles wore in at least the affectation of modesty, this man’s garment was of silk trimmed with ermine.

  “Lord Anda, Chief Priest of the Temple of the Lady of the Sunset,” said the left-hand nomenclator, “and head of the congregation of the Lady on Haft.”

  Anda knelt before Garric with the deepest respect, but as he did so he looked over his shoulder with a sneer of triumph toward the next person in line. He said, “The prayers of the servants of the Lady are always with you, your highness.”

  “He and Lady Estanel, Priestess of the Temple of the Shepherd of the Rock, nearly came to blows over precedence!” the other aide added in shocked amazement. “Can you imagine that? Of course the priests of the Lady have precedence!”

  “Rise, Lord Anda,” Garric said. “My friend Lord Tadai will shortly discuss with you the means by which the office of the Chancellor in Valles will improve its oversight of the temples here on Haft.”

  “In fact if you have a moment, your highness...,” Anda said, rising smoothly. He had the sharp features and bright eyes of a falcon. “My associates and I have a proposal which you as a Haft native yourself will find very—”

  “I do not have a moment,” Garric said, suddenly so angry that his vision blurred. “Lord Tadai will instruct you.”

  The priest opened his mouth to speak further. Garric felt his right hand fall to his sword hilt. If the whale’s attack hadn’t drained him so completely....

  Lord Anda was too good a politician to push on where he could see there was no hope. He bowed and smiled, passing back through the guards with his dignity undiminished.

  Carus was a calming presence in Garric’s mind. The ancient king knew more about gusts of rage than most men did. Garric’s anger didn’t frighten him. “Just priests being priests, lad,” the ghost murmured. “Part of life, like rain running down the inside of your cuirass.”

  “Lady Estanel is next,” a nomenclator said. “She entered the priesthood after the death of her husband, a major landowner to the south of Carcosa.”

  The priestess of the Shepherd was short and round. The collar of her white silk robe was trimmed with sable, and her magnificent ivory combs were arranged to give the impression of a tiara.

  She curtseyed with supple ease; though fat, Lady Estanel was obviously in good health. “We servants of the Shepherd are delighted to greet you, Prince Garric,” she said. “We look forward to discussing methods to reform the current religious situation with you.”

  “Your discussions will be with my agent, Lord Tadai,” Garric said; he heard his voice coming from a thousand miles away. “And milady? You’d best arrange matters so that I don’t have to get involved, because you’d like that result less than anything Lord Tadai tells you.”

  Garric couldn’t see the priestess’ expression through the red haze that clouded his vision, but she passed on quickly. He felt a touch on his right elbow. He turned. Sharina was there. Though relief made him stagger, he could see clearly again.

  Attaper must have signaled to the guards, because the line of dignitaries in embroidered brocade stayed on the other side of the black shields. A good bodyguard observes everything, and Garric didn’t guess he’d ever meet anyone better than Attaper.

  “I’m a little dizzy from the voyage,” Garric called with a cheerful smile toward the waiting nobles. “A moment, please, and I’ll be with you.”

  He turned again and muttered into Sharina’s ear, “We weren’t god-ridden in Barca’s Hamlet, you know that. A pinch of meal and a sip of ale to the household altar at meals—for the people who could afford that. And we gave when the priests from Carcosa came around with the statues for the Tithe Procession every summer. But we worshipped the gods, and these people are just politicians. Politicians who think they’ll make me one of them!”

  “Yes,” said Sharina, holding his wrist as she scanned the nearby spectators with a harsh expression. “Well, they’re not going to do that.”

  Garric looked at the crowd also, really for the first time. He’d been too concerned with the dignitaries on the raised plinth to think about the rest of the folk waiting. Those close by were retainers of the nobles. They stood in discrete blocs of six to twenty-odd men—all men, of course—wearing their employers’ colors as cockades. They weren’t openly armed, but Garric knew their caps had metal linings and there were truncheons—if not swords—concealed under their tunics.

  He’d expected that; there’d have been similar men at a levee in Valles or Erdin or any other community in the Isles big enough to have a range of wealth and therefore rivalry. What he hadn’t expected was that the two largest groups would be those of the priesthoods, big scarred men in white tunics. The Lady’s ga
ng carried censers on the end of three-foot metal rods, while their rivals held similar rods bent into the shape of a shepherd’s crook.

  “If any of them saw a sheep in their life, it was as roast mutton,” Garric grated under his breath.

  Then he straightened, smiled, and said, “Lord Attaper, I’ve recovered from my indisposition. I’ll be pleased to meet the rest of those waiting to offer their respect to the kingdom.”

  Still grinning, he added to Sharina in a voice only slightly less audible, “You know, sister, for the first time since I became....”

  He gestured with his palms upturned. Prince, regent; leader. It didn’t matter what word he used or if he didn’t bother to speak; Sharina understood.

  “Anyway, for the first time I’m really looking forward to making changes in the way a government works!”

  Garric laughed aloud. His sister laughed with him, squeezed his hand again, and then stepped aside so that the horrified nomenclators could resume their duties.

  ***

  “Look, you fine folk of Carcosa!” Chalcus called from the bow to the crowd filling the waterfront. “Come look at the dreadful monster which your prince vanquished without so much as mussing his hair! Ah, the kingdom is blessed indeed to have such a ruler as Prince Garric of Haft!”

  “Ilna?” said Merota with a troubled frown. She was shouting so that Ilna, holding her hand in the prow of the Flying Fish, could hear her. It was a measure of Chalcus’ lungs that much of the crowd was able to understand him over the noise not only of civilians but from the crews and equipment of the royal fleet as it docked.

  “Yes, child?” said Ilna, turning to face Merota so that the girl could see her answer. Ilna didn’t like either to shout or to be shouted at; a poor orphan gets enough of the latter early on.

  Chalcus now openly commanded the Flying Fish. Captain Rhamis huddled amidships with a cloak over his soaked garments; water dripped from the tip of his scabbard to pool on the deck beneath him.

  The harbor had scores of unoccupied docks, though many were only rubble cores which’d lost their facing stones. Instead of bringing the patrol vessel to one of them, however, Chalcus had anchored half a stone’s throw out from the shore where more people could see it.

  The crew, released from the oarbenches, was hauling the great carcase alongside and lashing it to the Flying Fish with a second loop. The whale had begun to sink even before they’d entered the harbor; water was filling the body cavity through the hole the ram had smashed.

  Ilna smiled grimly. Chalcus was too fine a showman to lose his wondrous attraction because of inattention.

  “Is Prince Garric really as great a man as Chalcus, Ilna?” Merota asked in her high, piercing voice.

  The question so shocked Ilna that she burst out with a gust of loud laughter. Merota gaped: Ilna’s reaction was almost as unusual for her as a fit of crying would have been.

  Ilna’s expression settled. A fit of crying was the other alternative. She’d always considered showing emotion to be a sign of weakness; but she’d never denied that she was subject to weakness, either.

  Rather than raise her voice, Ilna lifted Merota to speak into the child’s ear. Ilna was slightly built—all the bulk in the family had gone to her brother Cashel—but she did much of her work with double-span looms, which often as not she set up by herself. She took her physical abilities for granted.

  “Garric is a great man, child,” Ilna said. “The kingdom is lucky to have so wise and strong a leader, and Garric’s friends are lucky too. As for Chalcus....”

  She looked toward the bow. Chalcus stood on the railing, gesturing extravagantly as he described the way Prince Garric had winkled out the monster’s brains with one thrust of his mighty sword and then had used his pommel to crush its ribs.

  Ilna smiled. It was a lie and she hated lies, but from Chalcus’ lips it sounded like one of the ballads he and Merota sang. It was a pattern of the sort that Ilna wove into her fabrics, one that made the listeners a little happier and the world around them better by some small amount as well.

  “Chalcus is a great man also,” she said. “But in a different way from Garric. As I am different from Princess Sharina, say.”

  “But you don’t love Garric, do you?” Merota demanded.

  Ilna laughed again. The choice is to cry, and that’s not a choice. “I don’t know what you mean by love, child,” she said, squeezing Merota before she set her back on the deck.

  Because she was looking toward the city to avoid meeting Merota’s eyes or those of anyone else nearby, Ilna saw the procession enter the harbor area and make its way toward the waterfront where Garric stood. The escort was a platoon of Blood Eagles. They moved forward despite the crowd, using their shields to push people aside and their knob-headed spears to convince those who didn’t want to be pushed.

  Despite feeling miserable and empty, Ilna smiled wryly. The Blood Eagles had been set a task; they were doing whatever was necessary to get it done. Ilna could appreciate their attitude.

  The guards had been sent to Barca’s Hamlet. There they’d waited for the arrival of a party from Ornifal to make landfall and come overland to Carcosa. Ilna couldn’t see the people in the party who were on foot because the escort’s plumed helmets blocked her view, but the two chief members rode horses.

  Could you carry a horse on shipboard all the way from Valles to Barca’s Hamlet? But of course you could, if you were important enough; and this pair was important.

  The middle-aged man rode stiffly. Ilna recalled that he’d been clumsy with any physical task when he was Reise the Innkeeper in Barca’s Hamlet. He was Garric’s, Prince Garric’s, father. He was coming to Carcosa at his son’s call to direct the nobleman who’d have the title of Vicar of Haft and Agent for the Prince.

  The dark-haired woman beside Reise was supple and perfectly at ease. She looked about the crowd with the pleased smile of a goddess blessing her worshippers. Though she’d had a long voyage and a difficult trek across the island to reach Carcosa, she was more beautiful than any other woman Ilna had seen.

  She was Lady Liane bos-Benliman, the woman whom Prince Garric was to marry.

  I don’t know what you mean by love, Ilna repeated in her mind; and hated herself for the lie.

  Chapter 4

  “Does it suit you then, mistress?” said Chalcus as Ilna’s left hand gently explored the frame of the loom he’d had erected on the second floor of the building to which he’d brought her when they disembarked. “I chose a house close to the harbor where I could see the water, but if you’d prefer something inland...?”

  Ilna sniffed. It wasn’t like Chalcus to sound so uncertain. Was she so terrible, then, with her whims and her anger?

  Grinning coldly—her anger was indeed a terrible thing, but so was that of the sailor—she said, “Every morning I looked out of my window in Barca’s Hamlet and watched the sun rising over the sea, Master Chalcus. The view suits me well, and the building you’ve taken for us suits me better than I ever imagined.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she added, “How did you come by it, then? Because a place like this—”

  It stood in a row of brick buildings with shops on the ground floor and the merchants’ quarters above. There were two full stories, a garret, and a railed walk around the roof of sheet lead. In back was a walled courtyard behind with grape arbors.

  “—shouldn’t have been empty for us to walk into.”

  “Nor was it,” Chalcus agreed with a touch of irritation, “till my agents rented it last month from the owner and ousted the business being conducted here at the time; which was a brothel, mistress, since you’re so suspicious that you might think I’d put a whole flock of innocent orphans on the street in my arrogance. And as for the money I used for the purpose, the Children of the Mistress had amassed a fine collection of plate and jewels in the course of their child-murdering monster worship. When I left Donelle, some part of that left with me. Perhaps this offends you?”

  Ilna stood wit
hout expression. I’ve been a fool many times; but perhaps never so great a fool as I’m being now....

  Rather than speak—for she’d say the wrong thing, she always managed to say the wrong thing—she took two steps to Chalcus, put her arms around him, and squeezed as hard as she could. It was like hugging a tree till Chalcus put his arms around her also and held her as gently as if she were spun glass.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She wasn’t crying because she never cried; or almost never. “If you’d cut the throats of everybody in the building I’d support you, I know you’d have had a good reason. I’m sorry.”

  “Now mistress,” Chalcus said lightly. She loosened her grip on his torso but didn’t push away; his touch remained the same. “The pirate who might have done such a terrible thing as that is long dead, buried in southern waters and the past. I’m a simple sailor and a loyal supporter of Prince Garric.”

  In the garret above, Merota caroled, “I never will marry, nor be no man’s wife....” The child couldn’t have been happier to have a house on the waterfront instead of being shut up in the palace as she’d expected.

  Merota was happy more times than not, but Mistress Kaline—who’d sleep in one garret room while her charge had the other—was bustling about in a good humor also. Ilna smiled faintly into the sailor’s shoulder. Chances were that Mistress Kaline would’ve been cheerful in a dungeon, so long as it wasn’t on shipboard.

  Ilna’d expected to be lodged in the palace—a suite or perhaps a separate bungalow if it was a sprawling complex like the royal palace in Valles. Where she lived—or what she ate and other questions most folk worried about—didn’t matter a great deal to her, but here Chalcus had arranged a place where she wouldn’t stumble unexpectedly into Garric, or Liane; or Garric and Liane. This was much better.

  Ilna squeezed Chalcus again before stepping back, embarrassed for half a dozen good reasons but refusing to show it in her expression. “We’ll need to get cleaned up,” she said. “There’s to be a dinner with Garric tonight. And I’ll need to tell my brother that Merota and I are—aren’t in the palace as he’ll expect.”