"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 three 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."
Sharina's eyes narrowed. Garric wasn't the sort who pretended to know all the answers, but—always, and especially since he'd become regent of the kingdom—he'd picked a path and proceeded along it. He knew that he might be wrong but he knew also that he was better off acting than dithering.
Cashel stood, taking his empty mug and Sharina's by the rims in one hand. He walked to the serving table at the side, out of earshot of the diners. Across it was a line of Blood Eagles, and beyond them stood servants in nervous frustration at not being able to dispense the dishes and cups themselves. The guards let them reach through to the table to exchange full platters for empty ones, but Garric and his friends were serving themselves.
Sharina winced to see her lover carry the mugs that way, then smiled faintly. Cashel had taken most of his meals alone on a hillside while he watched his sheep; the rest were with his sister Ilna who cooked and washed for the pair of them. Nobody'd ever told him not to stick his fingers into the cups and bowls he was carrying.
Sharina wouldn't have to either, because Ilna had seen the incident. She'd explain the etiquette to her brother, in private because she loved him. Nobody needed a second explanation when Ilna had provided the first one, though. Sharina's smile widened.
To Garric she said, "Judging from the crowd in the harbor, the people here are at least as enthusiastic as those in Valles that there's really a kingdom again. Are you worried about how the other islands will react if you're crowned on Haft?"
"My sources say that folk on Sandrakkan and Blaise understand that because Garric's of the old royal line of Haft, it's appropriate for him to be crowned here," said Liane, speaking as Garric's spymaster rather than merely as a friend; though a friend too, of course.
She smiled broadly. When she didn't have to be formal, Liane had a boisterous sense of humor well matched to Garric's own. "While the Earl of Sandrakkan has his own view of his island's proper place in the restored Kingdom of the Isles," she continued, "I would not recommend Prince Garric be crowned in the Earl's palace in Erdin."
Twenty years before, the uncle of the present Earl of Sandrakkan had claimed to be King of the Isles. The royal army—the army of Ornifal—had defeated and killed him, but his heir and the Sandrakkan nobles more generally hadn't lost the notion that they were better men than those snivelling merchants from Ornifal.
"They're more pleased than not, the ones I've talked to," said Chalcus said as he refilled his cup from the beaker he'd brought to the dining table. He, Liane, and Tenoctris were drinking wine; the others stuck to beer as they'd been raised on in Barca's Hamlet—though here it was brewed with hops instead of the dark germander bitters of home. "They're not the nobles, as you'd guess, but sailors and shopkeepers...."
He grinned, swigged, and went on, "Nobody minds that it's Carcosa, so long as it isn't Valles. You're one of theirs, Prince Garric, not somebody who's on the throne because an ancestor owned twenty acres of pasture on Ornifal."
Cashel settled himself again between Sharina and Tenoctris, setting down the mugs without spilling them. He licked ale from his thumb. Sharina hugged him.
There was no formal requirement that Garric be crowned prince, here or anywhere else. King Valence the Third had publicly acknowledged 'Prince Garric of Haft' as his son and heir apparent; that was sufficient for legality. The government and royal army had accepted Garric as regent as well, which gave him the real authority—so far as Ornifal went.
For the past several hundred years the King of the Isles had been little more than a Duke of Ornifal to whom the rulers of other islands paid lip service. Garric was determined to reform the Isles into a real kingdom with unity and a degree of universal peace unknown since the fall of the Old Kingdom, so he'd decided to be crowned Prince of Haft in Carcosa where King Carus and his predecessors as Kings of the Isles had their coronations.
His friends, his formal advisors, and even the officers of the army led by Lord Waldron, a stiff-necked noble from northern Ornifal, had agreed with the plan. Sharina didn't understand Garric's apparent hesitation now.
"The problem is deciding who'll offer me the diadem," Garric said, still frowning into his beer. "It was always the Chief Priest of the Lady. It never crossed my mind to wonder about it."
He looked around the circle of his friends with a fierce expression. "But here in Carcosa, that'd mean I was joining a gang. And I'm not going to do that."
The anger faded back into the previous look of troubled doubt. "If I can't be crowned by the priest of the Lady or the priest of the Shepherd...," he continued.
Liane turned and stared at Garric with dawning horror. Sharina had seen Liane face a demon with equanimity; her present expression was completely inexplicable.
"Then I thought, maybe the third aspect of God," Garric said. He was barely muttering, obviously ill at ease. "I thought I could be crowned at the shrine of the Prophesying Sister. Liane says the priest is just a functionary; the temple doesn't have any part in the politics of Carcosa."
Now Sharina understood Liane's look of horror. Her own face probably mirrored it.
"Garric, you can't be crowned by the Sister," Sharina said, controlling her voice with an effort. "If you're worried about what people will think, they'll think it's disgusting!"
"The Sister rules death and the underworld," Garric said, straightening and speaking with obvious anger. "Death isn't evil. Death is a part of life!"
"That's words!" Sharina said. "People don't swear by the Sister, they curse by Her."
Liane nodded firmly. "Sharina's right," she said. "It isn't politically conceivable that you'd be crowned in a shrine of the sister. Besides, it's a little place on the side of the High City, the old citadel. The only reason the shrine still exists is that its an oracle. I doubt there'd be room for twenty people to stand in it."
She looked around the table. "Am I wrong?" she demanded. "What do the rest of you think? Mistress Ilna?"
Ilna looked at Liane without expression. "I don't know," she said, as calm as ice over a stream. No one could guess how swiftly the current might be tumbling beneath that frozen sheet. "Mistress, I don't believe in gods and I don't know anything about how cities are run. I just don't know."
Sharina glanced back at her brother, set-faced and grim. Garric was much more fiercely determined about this than she could understand.
Thinking that, Sharina looked into her own heart. She didn't understand why she was so strongly opposed to the idea, either, but she began to shiver.
Cashel put his left arm around her. Sharina smiled. There was danger and there would always be danger; but evil would never be as strong as the good that supported her.
Cashel tore another chunk from the round loaf of bread with his teeth so he could sop the last of his sauce. Since he started to travel he'd learned to eat a lot of new things. He wasn't fussy, but generally he'd rather have had the simple fare he'd been raised on. The wheat bread he got whenever he ate with rich people was a treat, though. He'd gotten used to rye and barley loaves the same way he got used to sunburn, but they weren't things he looked forward to.
Liane wrung her hands, then laid them flat on the table and managed a laugh. "I'm sorry I'm so vehement," she said, letting her soft smile slide across the faces of her friends. "The truth is I had a dream while I was napping this afternoon. It isn't...."
She reached over to squeeze Garric's hand without looking up from the empty platter in front of her. In the silence Tenoctris leaned forward slightly and said, "Did you dream of the Sister, Liane?"
"I don't know," Liane fiercely. The words came tumbling out as though the old wizard's question had loosened the keystone of an arch. "I think I dreamed about the Underworld. About Hell, ice and demons and someone in the middle of it all."
She looked at Garric with a desperate expression. "It was evil," she said. "She was evil, Garric. Not just death. I didn't tell you about it because...."
Liane brightened, suddenly the educated, sophisticated noblewoman again. She grinned at all of them. "Because I was afraid," she said, enunciating carefully, "that saying it would make it come true. I haven't felt that way since I was three years old."
Cashel chewed his bread as he listened to the others. He didn't understand why Liane and Garric and Sharina—who still occasionally trembled—were upset. There were lots of things Cashel didn't understand; that was all right. Eventually there'd be something for him to do, either that somebody else told him about or what he figured out for himself.
Until then he'd wait, and watch, and listen. Life in general was a lot like herding sheep.
Garric continued to hold Liane's hand. "I had a dream too," Garric said, "though it wasn't a bad one."
In a businesslike tone he added, "Tenoctris, what do you think about holding the coronation in a temple of the Sister?"
He'd stopped being worried and angry; Cashel was glad of that. Garric was back to being the man Cashel had grown up with, the fellow who figured he could do most jobs and willing to give even the impossible ones a good try.
"Like Ilna...," Tenoctris said carefully. She held her left hand palm in front of her and touched it with her right index finger as if she was counting. "I don't believe in the Great Gods."
She smiled at the company. She seemed decades younger when she smiled, and she smiled often.
"I've never seen Gods, you see, so as a matter of faith I believe that other people haven't seen them either." She cleared her throat and went on, "But I do believe that places of worship can be repositories of power. And—"
Tenoctris smiled again. This time her expression held a touch of the cynicism Cashel had heard when the wizard talked about what a long life had taught her about people.
"—some of those who've worshipped the Sister over the years may not have thought of Her merely as the symbol of life's natural end. Whether or not Liane's dream was prophetic or connected in any way with the Sister—"
She nodded toward Liane; Liane nodded back.
"—I believe there could be danger."
No one spoke for a moment. Cashel found the squabbling of finches in the cedar tree behind him familiar and soothing; it helped him think. It was funny to be up on the roof of a building and have full-sized trees growing out of planters beside you, though.
"There's danger in everything," Garric said mildly. He wasn't angry and defensive any more, just saying what they all knew already. "We can't make our plans based on what's safest, Tenoctris."
He grinned. "That's not safe. Not with what's loose in the world now."
"Tenoctris?" Cashel said as his thought finally formed itself into the right words. "Could you tell about the temple, the Shrine of the Sister, if you were there? Tell whether it was, you know, a bad place to be?"
Tenoctris frowned thoughtfully. "I could tell... many things," she said. "I could determine what powers are focused on it, and I think I'd be able to tell what uses they'd been put to in the past. Cashel, would you like to escort me to the Shrine of the Prophesying Sister in the morning?"
"Sure," said Cashel. "Or right now, if you like."
"I think I'll be more useful after a night's sleep," the old woman said with a wry smile. "I'm not at my most comfortable on shipboard, and I haven't wholly recovered yet."
"All right," said Garric, nodding three times for emphasis. "Cashel and Tenoctris will view the shrine tomorrow. Does anyone else want to join them? Sharina?"
Sharina shook her head without speaking. Her right arm was around Cashel's waist; she squeezed harder.
"Liane?" Garric went on. "I could go myself if—"
"No!" Liane said. "Garric, please don't go. Humor me in this!"
"Very good," said Garric, his voice calm. "Tenoctris, I'll await your report before making any decisions on the matter. And now—"
Chalcus came sauntering back from the serving table with a pitcher in either hand. He'd been standing there to remove himself from the discussion without making a fuss about it. Cashel smiled. The same as I did by filling my mouth with bread, he thought.
"And now, my friends," Chalcus said, lifting the pitchers to call attention to them. "I think a toast to the Isles is called for, if folk will let me fill their glasses."
Cashel joined in the laughter—but Sharina didn't. She and Liane stared at each other across the table with identical worried expressions.
Ilna set her cup back at the corner of her empty platter, precisely where it had been before she raised it to drink the toast. "To the Isles!" were fine-sounding words, no doubt, but what did 'the Isles' mean? Not a string of islands, surely; and not the people on those islands either, with their own wishes and plans and anger. People weren't a thing or even a thousand things: they were every one of them as different as the spools of yarn from which Ilna wove her fabrics.
She smiled coldly. Most people thought wool was all the same except for the color it might have been dyed. They were wrong. And maybe Ilna os-Kenset was wrong in not seeing the great fabric of the Isles that someone, perhaps Garric and the rest of them here at this table, were weaving out of individual people.
It wasn't dark yet, but servants were bringing out lanterns to hang from hooked poles. Chalcus would probably suggest they hire a chair to take them to the house they were renting... and Ilna would probably agree, because she disliked the feel of cobblestones underfoot and in the dark of unfamiliar streets she might well slip in filth and turn an ankle.
Across the table Cashel, Sharina, and Tenoctris—with Cashel's help—were rising. Ilna rose also, but as Chalcus stood he touched a hand to her elbow for attention and said, "Prince Garric, might I have a talk of a private nature with you and Mistress Ilna before we're off about our business for the evening?"
"Yes, of course," said Garric, his tone friendly but guarded. He didn't have any idea what Chalcus wanted to discuss, but he knew it wasn't a slight thing if the sailor requested privacy.
Ilna didn't have any idea either. What she did know was that surprises were usually unpleasant.
"Though you won't mind," Garric continued, making a statement rather than asking a question, "if Lady Liane stays with us to take notes."
Garric seemed much older than he'd been when he and Ilna both left Barca's Hamlet. He'd been a happy boy and a friendly youth; now—he was often happy and usually friendly, but he was beyond question a man.
Ilna smiled, though the expression didn't reach her lips. She didn't think she'd ever been young herself, but she regretted her old friend Garric's loss of childish playfulness. No doubt 'the Isles', whatever they were, were better for the change.
"I have work to do with the reports, your highness," Liane said calmly. Her eyes met Ilna's and she made a respectful half-curtsey of acknowledgement. "Good evening, Mistress Ilna, Master Chalcus."
She slipped into the line of guards before Garric could protest, if he'd intended to. Chalcus didn't want her present—he would've worded his request another way if he had—and Liane didn't choose to be where she was an embarrassment. Ilna could have liked the girl if circumstances had been different. Maybe she liked her anyway.
Chalcus watched Liane go with a speculative grin, then returned his attention to Garric. "So, your highness," he said. "There's trouble in the Strait, monsters from the air preying on shipping. Lascarg's Commander of the Strait, who is now your Commander of the Strait, one Lusius, does nothing but count the bribe money he squeezes from the shippers. Is this old news to you?"
"I'm listening," Garric said; and so he was, with a hard expression which Ilna could read no more than she could look through a block of granite. "Though if you're bringing information, you'd do better to have offered it to Liane directly. She handles that aspect of the government."
"Aye, the pretty Liane learns things for you," Chalcus said. He was poised, standing on the balls of his feet. He was generally tense when he talked with Attaper or Lord Waldron; men of war who never lost the awareness that Chalcus was one of them, but was not necessarily on their side. And the new Garric was one of them as well.... "But you, I think, are the one who acts or does not act. Is that correct, your highness?"
"I make the final decisions, Master Chalcus," Garric said evenly. "I have wise friends and good advisors; but I am the prince."
"Then shortly, when the Northern Shippers' Association asks you to send someone to deal with the monsters, your highness," said Chalcus, "I suggest you send Mistress Ilna and my own self in place of some commodore or other with a squadron of wallowing great warships. That is what I would ask—if Ilna is willing, and if you can spare us from the wedding preparations which I'm sure must be absorbing much of your time just now."
"Ah!" said Garric, understanding at last; and Ilna understood as well.
Garric's attention had been wholly focused on Chalcus thus far during the discussion. Now he looked at Ilna and said, "Ilna? Is this what you want? Because if it is, or whatever you want...?"
He smiled at her, a boy again; the boy she'd loved for as long as she could remember.
"This is the first I've heard of it," Ilna said. "Any of it. And as for your wedding, Garric, I expect to attend with my good wishes. Certainly I'm not looking for an excuse to be absent."
Her face went cold. She added, "I don't look for excuses."
If it hadn't been for Garric's smile, she'd have spoken the same words in a snarl—angry at Garric, angry at Chalcus; angry at the world. She chuckled at the notion. Pretty much as always, of course, she thought.
"But as for what I want," she continued, letting the words roll out as her mind formed them, "I want to make the world a better place."
Her grin was hard, self-mocking. Neither of the men smiled at all.
"If you—" her glance included both men. "—or Tenoctris or anyone has a better use for, for me than to sit in a room weaving, then tell me. Just tell me what you want me to do!"
"As it chances," Garric said, "the Shippers' Association has already spoken to me. I said I'd give them a decision in three days after I'd studied the matter. What do you know about it, Master Chalcus?"
"Have they indeed?" said Chalcus in a tone of pleased surprise. "What a quick set of lads they are! I thought they'd be a week at least getting through the folk who keep the prince from being bothered."
He raised the carafe of wine and poised with it as though he considered pouring himself another mug. Continuing, the banter gone, Chalcus said, "I know that it's real, that ships are stripped and the crews gone without a trace."
Chalcus' smile was as hard as the curved blade of his dagger. "Easy enough to guess where the men are, the sea having so many hungry mouths in it, but the cargoes are another thing."
"The winged monsters?" Garric said. "They're real?"
"Aye," said Chalcus, "they're real. And—"
He leaned back against the table, though he didn't let it really bear his weight. When Chalcus and Garric faced one another, there was always the danger that their poses would become threatening. Because they were the men they were, they both worked to avoid the problem.
Men, thought Ilna. But she had even less use for the other sort, for all her irritation at the dangerous posturing that was marrow deep in the Garrics and Chalcuses of the world.
"—I can only imagine what your shippers told you about Lusius," Chalcus continued, "but if they said he's a crook who's dealt with pirates himself in past years... well then, they said the truth. To my certain knowledge."
"I see," said Garric. He grinned. "Pour me some ale, would you, Chalcus? My throat's dry from all this talking. Ilna?"
"No," she said without dressing up the word. She wasn't thirsty, so she wouldn't drink; and the offer had been merely for courtesy, as Garric's request was really a place-holder to let him think. Humans wove their lives through the lives of others in patterns; because the patterns worked, more often than not, and you had to suit your fabric to your materials....
Garric took the filled mug and met Chalcus' eyes over it. "I can give you a battalion," he said. "Of any troops you choose, save the Blood Eagles. And some of them if you like."
Chalcus laughed. "And what do I know about leading soldiers?" he said. "Or fleets either one, eh? There's a ship I've marked out to hire, a trim little vessel, and six men from your army I'll take to crew her if they choose to come."
"Yes," said Garric. "And?"
Chalcus still smiled, even his eyes, but the lilt in his voice had an edge. "That much I could do by myself," he said, "as you well know. What I want from you, your highness, is your blessing; and this is not a small thing that I ask, as you know also."
"To go off and settle the problem?" Garric said. "I've given you that, Master Chalcus."
"I ask that afterwards you accept what I've done, my friend," Chalcus said. His tone was hard, his words very clear. "That whatever promises I make, you will keep as though you'd made them. That whatever deeds others do in my name, you say were done in yours; and that you will honor the doers, no matter what those deeds may have been."
"Ah," said Garric, nodding again. "No, not a small thing at all."
Garric wore his sword always in public during this tour of the kingdom's western islands; Ilna supposed he was reminding people that they were part of the kingdom, and that the royal army was available to enforce anything that its prince couldn't manage with his own right arm. Ilna understood the value of symbols, after all.
Though Garric had worn the weapon to dinner, he'd unbuckled it and hung it, belt and all, over the back of his chair while he ate. Now, moving with a deliberation that showed he wasn't making a threat of any kind, Garric drew the blade and let lanternlight quiver along its patterned steel.
"The sword hasn't any guilt for the things it's done while I wielded it," he said quietly to Chalcus. "Nor will I punish the men who act for me. But you're right, Chalcus; it's not a promise I would make were I not sure of the folk I send to act in my place."
He turned to meet Ilna's eyes; and, smiling, still holding her gaze, he shot the blade back home in the scabbard.
Chalcus laughed. "Oh, I wish I'd had a few of your sort in my crew in the bad old days, my princeling!" he said. "Well, never mind. I'll be for you what you'd have been for me—and in a better cause, I'm sure!"
Garric stepped forward and clasped his right arm with Chalcus, each man's hand gripping the other's elbow. They backed apart and Chalcus moved to the side, only a hair's breadth but enough to take him out of the way. Ilna met Garric's eyes again.
"Ilna," Garric said, "I would rather lose my right arm than to lose you from my life. Go and teach whoever's behind the trouble what it means to do evil when there's a force for good like you in the world. And then come back to me and your other friends, because we need you."
A force for good? But yes, she supposed so. It was an odd way to think about herself, though.
Ilna extended her arm to Garric. As he'd done before, as she'd hoped he'd do again but never would have asked him to do, Garric stepped closer and hugged her with the delicate care of a very strong man for a woman half his size.
They stepped apart; Chalcus moved to her side. "Travel safely," Garric said to both of them. "Though—I know there're risks, but there'll never be a day I wouldn't feel safer at your side than I would facing you, either one."
"Never fear, good prince," said Chalcus with a laugh as he turned away, his hand on Ilna's waist. "We'll bring the ears back for you!"
"We will not," said Ilna crisply; knowing that it was probably the sort of joke men share, knowing also that with these men there was no certainty that it was a joke at all.
"Ah, then we will not, dearest," agreed Chalcus cheerfully as he handed Ilna through the line of Blood Eagles. In a more businesslike tone he went on, "In the morning, I'll ask you to come with me to see the factor who handles the Serian trade in Carcosa. His name's Sidras or-Morr, and you'll be no end of help to me dealing with him."
"I'll come, of course," Ilna said without emphasis. "But I don't see what I can do that you can't. I don't know the man—I don't know anybody in Carcosa."
"Ah, you'll see, dear one," the sailor said. This back staircase was too narrow for them to walk abreast. Without asking or probably considering the question, Chalcus stepped ahead of her and sauntered down. Behind them on the roof were friends and bodyguards, but who knew what might be waiting below? In all likelihood nothing whatever of a hostile nature; but if something was there, it would have to get through Chalcus before it reached Ilna.
"And another thing, sweetest," he added over his shoulder. "Do you think that your friend Sharina would be willing to join us for the outing?"
Ilna thought for a moment. They reached the landing and Chalcus touched her waist again as they continued.
"You'd have to ask her, of course," she said at last, "but yes, I think she would. She won't be going with Cashel and Tenoctris, and I think she'd like something to take her mind off whatever it is that's worrying her."
"Then we'll indeed ask her, before we leave the palace tonight," Chalcus said with satisfaction. "And if it's why? you're wondering, dearest—let's just say that from all reports this Sidras is a canny fellow who'll recognize a hawk however many swan feathers it drapes itself in. Were I to go alone to see him, the interview would be very short and not at all to my liking. But with a pillar of unquestioned rectitude like yourself, and with the sister of the prince on my other side—then I think he'll listen even to an old pirate long enough to hear that he's reformed!"
Chalcus laughed merrily. As they started down the hallway to the suite Sharina shared with Cashel, he began to sing, "Dig a hole, dig a hole, in the meadow, dig a hole in the cold, cold ground...."