Goddess of the Ice Realm Page 8

  She caught the officer’s eye as she went on, “I hope you’ll be a regular member of my escort in the future, Lires.”

  If she let herself feel anything, then she’d fly into a screaming fury that wouldn’t, that couldn’t, change anything for the better. She’d go back to the palace and in a quiet corner scratch an image of the Lady on a stone wall to receive her prayers. It’s what Nonnus would’ve done in the first place.

  Lires bent to pick up his shield. He looked back over his shoulder and said musingly, “The building kinda grows on you, though, don’t it? Especially the girls on the roof.”

  Sharina coughed, then began to laugh aloud. “Yes,” she said. “Yes they do. Now, if we could only find some way to install the statues as priests!”

  ***

  Garric knew he was dreaming, but the scene was as real to him as memories of his life in Barca’s Hamlet. The sun beat down on a grassy hillside; there was a grove of oaks on the crest, and the higher slopes in the middle distance were covered in forest.

  “Greetings, Chief Garric,” called the eldest of the trio waiting for him. His name was Anda and he owned one of the larger flocks in the community. He was priest of the Lady as his father had been before him. Also as his father had done, Anda lent money on the only security poor men could provide: their bodies. All his herdsmen were bond servants, working off the debts they’d incurred. “We bid you welcome in the name of the Gods whom we serve.”

  “Greetings,” echoed Mistress Estanel, the butcher’s wife and the priestess of the Shepherd. She looked a jolly woman, but everybody in the borough felt the rough side of her tongue on a regular basis. Her husband’s business required him to make a progress of the surrounding communities. Folk believed he spent as little time at home as he could manage, a plan which all applauded. “The Gods have blessed us already with the weather they’ve sent for the midsummer sacrifice.”

  The kid sprawling across Garric’s shoulders twisted. Its fore and hind legs were tied; Garric held the hooves to keep it from kicking. Though the kid’s jaws hadn’t been strapped, the only sound it made was to pant through distended nostrils.

  “Greetings, Chief Garric,” said Short Horan, the priest of the Sister. He had a field of barley and a nut grove, as well as being the community’s thatcher. Horan roofed new-built huts and sheds and also beat old roofs firm in Spring so that they continued to shed the rains. “We’re prepared for the sacrifice. Do you come with clean hands?”

  “I come with clean hands,” Garric said, echoing the ritual phrase. “I bring this kid to the Gods in the name of the communities of Wastervale.”

  Garric lifted the sacrifice over his head and laid it on the turf altar, then stepped back. It began to bleat. Estanel felt for a point at the back of its jaw, and pinched. The animal fell immediately silent, though its eyes spun in abject terror.

  Several hundred people stood near Garric on the hillside; some had come from more than a day’s hike away. Not only was the sacrifice important for the health of crops and cattle, there would be a fair in the afternoon with mummers and peddlers from other islands. Some of those visitors watched at a little distance from the locals, remarkable for bright, outlandish clothing.

  Because this was a peaceful sacrifice, Garric carried neither his shield of seawolf hide nor his heavy, bronze-bladed spear; the knife thrust through his sash was simply a piece of male attire. His tunic had an embroidered border and his short wool cape had originally been red; it had faded to a rusty color. Because of the ceremony he wore a headdress made from tail feathers of the black sea eagle instead of his usual broad-brimmed leather hat.

  “May the Lady accept the sacrifice of our community!” Anda said. All the priests wore a fillet and sash; his were yellow, the color of the Lady, made of wool dyed with the pollen washed from beehives in the Fall. Turning, he took an obsidian-bladed knife from the servant who was assisting him. The stone had a greenish cast and was almost transparent.

  “May the Shepherd bless the flocks of our community!” said Estanel, taking the kid by the muzzle. Her fillet and sash were black linen. She wore gold combs and rings set with garnets and sardonyx. The jewelry had nothing to do with the sacrifice save that it gave her an excuse to display her wealth.

  “May the Sister make the way of our community easy in the coming year!” said Short Horan, stumbling a little over the formula. He’d been chosen for the priesthood this Spring when Voder died. Usually priests were the wealthiest members of the community, but after a day of arguing by supporters of two rival landowners the assembly had finally picked Horan. Everybody liked him personally, and he was known to be devout. That was more the exception than the rule among priests, but Garric was among those who thought it was a good thing.

  Horan gripped the kid’s hind legs and stretched them back. His white fillet was coming loose and he’d smudged his sash by unconsciously wiping his sweaty hands on it.

  “In the name of the community!” Anda said and expertly cut the kid’s throat. Its blood fountained for a moment, soaking into the sods of the altar as part of the ritual. When the animal had bled out, two of Anda’s servants carried the carcase aside to be cleaned. A pot was already heating to seethe it for the feast.

  “We give this gift to the Gods that they may look kindly on us!” Garric said. “Bless us, Lady! Bless us, Shepherd! Bless us, Sister!”

  “May the Gods bless us all for our gift!” the assembly cried, the voices echoing from the other side of the valley.

  As Anda lit the fire with a coal from the hollow gourd a servant carried, Garric felt the scene tremble away like reflections in the water when the wind rises. Sunlight slanted through shutters onto the bed. He’d been napping....

  Garric sat up abruptly. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he muttered, angry with himself. There was so much to do, especially on the first day on another island.

  “You needed your sleep,” said Liane, raising her arms to let the silk undertunic shimmer down over her like pale blue water.

  “There’s never time to do everything a king needs to do and sleep,” said the image of Carus. He appeared to be looking out over a landscape that wasn’t part of the vision in Garric’s mind. “But you have to sleep.”

  Garric pulled on his own inner tunic. He wore silk robes in court, but his undergarments were always wool because he felt uncomfortable with smoother, harder, fabrics next to his skin. He grinned: Duzi knew that he was uncomfortable enough at public functions as it was.

  “I’d have awakened you shortly,” said Liane as she looked critically at the robe she’d laid on a chest, then put it on again. “You asked your friends to meet with you for dinner.”

  “Right,” said Garric. “I trust my council, but I’m not an Ornifal noble and most of them are. They don’t have the same instincts that I do—and frankly, I prefer my instincts.”

  “And mine?” Liane said, smiling sidelong.

  Garric took her in his arms and kissed her; with love if not with the passion of a few hours earlier.

  “Liane?” he said, turning to choose an outer tunic from the rack; he wouldn’t wear his cuirass to dinner. He cocked the shutters farther open as he mused. Then he went on, “Is there a shrine to the Sister here in Carcosa?”

  “I think there probably is,” Liane said. If she was surprised, her calm face didn’t betray it. “If I can’t find it in the gazetteer I brought, I’ll check with my local agents. How public is your interest?”

  She made sure her dress was presentable, then walked toward the adjoining room of the suite where servants had laid out the luggage she’d brought from Valles. Most of her gear consisted of document cases, generally in code. Liane’s father had been a far-travelled merchant, and she’d turned his shipping contacts into an intelligence service which reached into every major city in the Isles.

  “It’s not a secret,” Garric said, strapping on his right sandal. His footwear was functional, not a pair of court slippers. He’d sooner have been barefoot in thi
s weather, but that would’ve shocked the palace servants—though not his friends. “I just had a thought.”

  He was glad Liane didn’t question him about his interest; he wasn’t sure what he would answer.

  But just maybe, maybe, his dream had solved a problem that he’d known he’d face as soon as he decided to come to Carcosa.

  Chapter 5

  “The chamberlain suggested we eat in the roof garden,” Liane explained as Garric opened the door to the corridor. “He says we can move under the marquee if it starts raining again.”

  The squad of Blood Eagles jumped to attention. It was Garric’s whim not to have guards or even attendants in his rooms while he was present. He wasn’t as fiercely hostile to the idea as Ilna was, but he’d been too long waiting on others in his father’s inn to be able to ignore the fact that servants were people who saw and who heard and who spoke to their friends.

  “So long as you know how to get there,” Garric said, wryly amused. He’d always thought of himself as having a good sense of direction, but that was before he had to get around palaces like this one, which covered as much ground as all of Barca’s Hamlet. While he was outdoors he’d been picking up cues from the sun and stars without ever being conscious of them; in a maze of corridors as lost as if he were trapped in a cave.

  Not that there was ever a likelihood of that he’d be alone in that cave. As soon as the door opened, half a dozen voices chorused, “Your highness, if I could have a moment—” or some close approximation of that. Garric recognized three of the speakers—one was Lord Tadai’s chief clerk—but the others were strangers, and they all had either a document in their hands or some other person in tow.

  “Not now,” Garric said. Carus had been right: there weren’t enough hours to do all the things he was expected to do. Having people pick at him like yarn thrown to a litter of kittens didn’t make the job easier. “See my clerks!”

  The Blood Eagles forced the petitioners back with an enthusiasm that showed they’d been waiting for a chance. They were present to protect Prince Garric, and the crowding civilians—any of whom could be an assassin—made the guards’ job difficult. Add to that the fact that the soldiers thought of all civilians as soft, cowardly parasites, the thumps and shoving of the ball-blunted spearshafts were more than was strictly required to get Garric room to move.

  Garric touched the guard officer’s arm and said, “More gently, Captain Physos. The Shepherd knows it’s as hard to find good clerks as it is good soldiers. Despite that I don’t have time to deal with them right at the moment.”

  He grinned in response to the image of the king in his mind. Carus was nodding in morose agreement.

  The petitioners stepped back; they’d made their attempt, one which at least the courtiers themselves had known was unlikely to succeed. The outsiders fell into agitated conversation with the palace personnel who’d gotten them within sight of the prince but hadn’t been able to breach the final line of black armor. Powerful armies hadn’t been able to get through the Blood Eagles....

  Transoms over the doors to the rooms on either side, and clerestory windows around the half-story above the second floor, were the corridor’s only illumination, so Garric’s eyes were still adapting. The man waiting in an open doorway was only a blurred figure to him until he raised his blackwood staff-of-office; its three gold bands glinted in a shaft of light.

  “A moment, Captain Physos!” Garric said, touching Liane’s shoulder to warn her he was halting. “Councilor Reise, did you need to speak with me?”

  Garric hadn’t had time—hadn’t taken time—to give Reise more than a cursory greeting when the new advisor to the Vicar of Haft arrived with Liane during the assembly on the waterfront. He felt a pang of remorse at not having done more, but he thought Reise could understand why the younger man had set his priorities as he had.

  “I’d appreciate a moment of your time, your highness,” Reise said, bowing and making an elaborate gesture with his left hand. That was Valles etiquette, more complicated than anything required by the court in Carcosa; but it was in Valles that Reise had learned his trade. Several men stood in the room behind him.

  Reise or-Laver was a middle-aged man of average height and appearance. He’d succeeded as a servant in the royal palace and later in the household of Countess Tera of Haft. When the countess died during the riots that put Count Lascarg in power, Reise had bought a run-down inn in Barca’s Hamlet and managed it so ably that he’d become one of the wealthiest men in the borough. There he’d raised a son and daughter who read classical literature and who were fit to rule the kingdom when fate made them rulers.

  The only thing at which Reise had failed was life itself. He was a sad, frustrated man, burdened with a shrewish wife and an indelible awareness of what might have been.

  He was Garric’s father.

  “Yes, of course, Councilor Reise,” Garric said. “Liane, if you’ll go on and tell people I’m on my way...?”

  She squeezed his hand, curtseyed to Reise, and gestured the four Blood Eagles who were her personal escort to proceed. The other nine soldiers and their commander remained with Garric. Captain Physos planted himself squarely between son and father.

  “Captain,” Garric said, feeling his anger mount. “I vouch for this man.”

  “Maybe,” the soldier said. “But there’s the other three.”

  Garric opened his mouth, not quite sure what his next words would be nor where the business was going to end. Reise is my father! But all the guards cared was that Garric not be murdered—or at least not be murdered while they personally were on duty.

  “There’s no reason soldiers shouldn’t be present,” Reise said calmly. He motioned the men accompanying him back into the chamber so that four of the guards could push through and check it for threats. The room was servants’ quarters for a suite; the connecting door was barred from this side, and the men with Reise were no assassins.

  One of them was elderly and the other two were well into middle age. They were expensively dressed, though with a degree of flashiness that suggested they’d made their money rather than inheriting it. The scar across the cheek of the balding man wasn’t the result of a shaving accident, though it might well have been done with a razor.

  “These gentlemen are Masters Tartlin, Bennerr, and Wates, representing the Northern Shippers’ Association here in Carcosa, your highness,” Reise resumed. His tone was pleasantly modulated, though seemingly without emotion. “I had dealings with Master Wates—”

  A man of Reise’s age nodded. He was a close physical double for Garric’s father, except that his features were as hard as an axe blade.

  “—some years ago when I needed to leave Carcosa quickly with my family. Without Master Wates’ help I might not have succeeded, so when he asked me to arrange a meeting if that were possible...?”

  “Understood,” Garric said, suddenly hard-faced. Since the newborn Garric had been part of that family, Reise wasn’t the only man present who owed Wates a favor. He looked at the eldest delegate, assuming he was the leader, and said, “If you can do it quickly, tell me what you need from me, Master Tartlin.”

  “These past three years, there’s been winged demons preying on the shipping coming down the passage between Haft and Sandrakkan,” the old man said. When he turned his head slightly, Garric saw that his left ear had once been pierced; the hole had scarred over in the time since Tartlin stopped wearing a ring there. “Lascarg appointed a Commander of the Strait, that’s Lusius. If we pay through the nose for Lusius to put his own guards on our ships, they get through; but if we don’t, well, there’s just as many attacks as before.”

  “Commercial houses here have been switching to ships doing the southern route,” Wates put in. “I don’t blame them—but we can’t eat Lusius’ charges, we’d be bankrupt in a month if we did. The old count wouldn’t listen to us but we’re hoping you will, your princeship.”

  Garric nodded. “I have listened,” he said. “Give me thr
ee days—”

  He’d learned when he first became ruler that nothing was as simple as it looked when one of two interested parties described it. Reise had brought these men to him, but even so Garric would take the time to understand the problem before he promised to act.

  “—to study the matter and I’ll take the action that seems good to me.”

  “You mean—” said the scarred delegate, Bennerr.

  Reise touched the end of his staff to Bennerr’s lips, a perfectly calculated gesture that startled Garric as much as if he’d heard his father start to sing.

  “His highness means,” said Reise, “that he will take the action best suited to the needs of the kingdom. You all, as good citizens and supporters of the crown, will be grateful for that action whatever it may be.”

  “Right,” said Master Wates. “That’s exactly right, your highness.”

  Garric turned. “Captain Physos,” he said as he started for the door, “do you know the way to the roof garden or do we need to find a guide?”

  “If you don’t mind I’ll take you there myself, your highness,” said Reise unexpectedly. Garric turned and faced his dry smile.

  “I should remember the way quite clearly,” Reise continued. “Countess Tera was fond of dining there whenever the weather permitted.”

  Garric made a brusque gesture of agreement. He didn’t trust himself to speak, because he was afraid if he did he’d say something to embarrass both himself and his father.

  ***

  Sharina chewed her second bite of meatloaf with a carefully neutral expression. It wasn’t bad; it was good, in fact, once she got her mind around the fact it wasn’t mutton as she’d assumed but rather beef. They raised cattle in the north of Haft; Count Lascarg came from there, so the palace cooks and their larders emphasized beef dishes.

  “I’ve been thinking about my coronation,” Garric said, staring into his tankard as he swirled the last of his beer. He seemed oddly unsure. “As Prince of Haft, on the site of the old royal palace down by the harbor.”