Текст книги "The Wide World's End"

Автор книги: James Enge

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

CHAPTER TEN

Scenes of the Crime

Aloê and Denynê recovered seven force anchors from Earno’s jaw and chest. It was messy and difficult work, but there was a grim satisfaction in it. Now they stitched the body back together like an old shirt. It was a shirt nobody was ever going to use again, but Aloê was impressed by the care Denynê took in repairing the wounds their autopsy had made. Even when healing the dead, the shriveled orange-brown woman dropped no stitches, never said and never seemed to think, “Well, that’s good enough.” It was only good enough when it was perfect. Whether it was from pride in her work or respect for the dead, Aloê rather liked her for that.

“So,” Denynê said, holding the toothlike anchors in her bloody hand, “the murderer put a wilderment on Earno, established the stasis, cut his throat, then sealed up the wounds with the stasis field itself. When Earno woke, he knew nothing of what had happened.”

“At most, he would have thought it a nightmare,” Aloê said.

“How could the murderer hope to act unobserved?” asked Denynê. “Did Earno not have companions on the road?”

“At least one—perhaps two, depending on when the murder was committed,” Aloê said. “Perhaps the murderer also cast a wilderment on them. Or,” she added reluctantly, “perhaps they were part of a plot.”

Denynê put the anchors carefully into separate jars and sealed them. “You don’t like to think that,” she observed eventually, when Aloê said no more.

“No,” admitted Aloê. “The one companion is Deor syr Theorn, adoptive kin to my husband. The other is Noreê Darkslayer.”

“Ah.”

They went to wash their hands in the stream where Earno had died and sat in silence beside it for a while.

Before they had occasion to say anything else to each other, they heard a rumble of wagon wheels and hoofbeats on the Road. It was the Arbiter of the Peace, Ulvana, with a pair of her servants. Aloê had expected Oluma to be with them, but she was not.

“Fate on a dungfork,” swore Aloê quietly.

Denynê looked at her, eyes wide with surprise.

“Just when we could use a gravedigger,” Aloê said.

Denynê shrugged, nodded.

“Good night and greetings, Vocate,” Ulvana said formally. “I understand you can use my assistance.”

You unspeakable trull! Don’t you see how he hates you?

“Yes, Arbiter Ulvana; many thanks. I see my other second did not choose to return with you.”

Ulvana shrugged. “She said she had some other business.”

“A glut of corpses in town?” Aloê said acidly. “No—forget I said that, please. I’m always speaking before I think, Arbiter.”

“It’s a common enough complaint,” said Ulvana coolly.

“Can your servants help my other second to bring the body back into town? I’ll tend to the incineration myself later on if Oluma is disinclined.”

“I can do it,” Denynê said, her orange-brown lips pale in the coldlights of the wagon.

“No, thank you, Binder Denynê,” Aloê said. “Just tend to the body and keep it safe. At least one of his friends should be there when his body is given to the flames.”

“I was his friend as well,” Ulvana said slowly, “and I would like to be present.”

“There you have it, Denynê. Wait for our return, please. It may be a day or two, perhaps longer.”

The body, dripping cold blood, was lifted gently into the back of the cart and wrapped there with a shroud of kyllen. Denynê and the Arbiter’s servants climbed aboard and drove the cart back down the Road. Aloê and Ulvana stood without speaking until they could no longer hear the cart or its horses, its lights merely a glimmer southward on the Road.

“Do we have words to say to one another?” Aloê asked at last.

Ulvana shook her head. Aloê shrugged, guessing that these words would be said in time, but not now. They mounted their horses (Ulvana taking the one that Denynê had left) and rode northward on the Road.

It wasn’t long before they came to the first encampment. They dismounted and, without speaking, walked around the site. It was easy enough to find the perimeter: the Khnauronts had pissed and shitten where they lay in the night. Someone—Deor, Aloê suspected, from the neat uniformity of the digging—had buried most of the piles of dung, but there were feces smeared on the dry grass and the searing stench of urine all around the camp.

Aloê felt that such a place was a scar on the face of the Wardlands, and she was grimly aware that there were others and worse ones now. The lockhouse in Fungustown must be particularly nightmarish. The land was changing with the world, and not for the better.

But that was not her task to fix. She was here to look for blood, and there was none here. She didn’t need to lift into rapture to know that this was not the murder scene.

“We may be on the Road for days,” she said to Ulvana at last. “Let’s turn in soon and go on in the morning.”

“I have a timber lodge near here,” Ulvana said diffidently.

“Excellent,” said Aloê sincerely. She had a bedroll and some necessities with her, but she never enjoyed sleeping out of doors when she could avoid it.

Ulvana took her horse by the reins and led it into the woods. Aloê followed with her own. They were deep in the thin harvested woods when they came into a moonslit clearing with a bark-covered lodge in its center.

“Any of your people here?” asked Aloê.

“Should not be,” Ulvana said. “We’ve cut as deeply as we should in these woods. In a few decades, perhaps we’ll return. But I come here sometimes to—well, get away from Big Rock.”

Aloê nodded. They settled their horses with some food and water in the garth and then went into the lodge. Ulvana opened the lock by sticking a long ungainly key into it and turning it with her fingers. Aloê tried not to stare; the process seemed as old-fashioned as sailing ships, but she remembered that not everyone had the master of all makers keying their houses. There didn’t seem to be any protective spell on the lodge at all—not even fire-quell magic. That seemed an especially important omission when Aloê watched Ulvana kindle an open flame and use it to light a wick in a lamp filled with oil.

The lodge had a number of beds scattered around its single room, a wood stove in the center, and some shelves laden with storage jars and bottles up against one wall. There was a pump and a sink against another wall, but no obvious door leading to a privy. Aloê guessed that she would soon be reflecting nostalgically on the comforts of Big Rock Inn.

Ulvana rummaged around the shelves for food and drink and said, “I have a keg of cider and a few jars of wine. No beer, I’m afraid.”

“I just drink water on a job like this,” Aloê said. “I’ll need to ascend into vision from time to time.” Drunkenness did not necessarily prevent rapture, but it did limit one’s control.

She dumped her bag by a bed and walked over to the pump. There were some mugs and drinking cans there. She would have liked to wash one before drinking from it, wash it for a year and a day in bite-foam and boiling hot water, but she didn’t want to seem like a pampered princess. She blew the dust off a mug, pumped it full, drank, and then wordlessly offered what was left to Ulvana, who was watching expressionlessly from across the room. Ulvana came over and took the mug from her, drank what was left, and handed it back.

“I’ll be having some wine, though,” she said, as she turned back to the shelves. “Rapture doesn’t suit me, I find.”

That drink of water was some kind of turning point. Thereafter, Ulvana spoke to her about food, drink, sleeping arrangements, and other practicalities, as well as the task at hand. They ate fairly well: pickled cladroot and dried sleer meat, soaked in oil and fried, exchanging a word or two when needed.

After Aloê had yawned a few times and they both agreed it was time to douse the light, Ulvana said, in the quiet conversational tone they’d been using, “I hated you for years, of course.”

“What I said was unforgivable,” Aloê said. “I’ve always been ashamed of it.”

“No,” Ulvana said. “No. I didn’t find that hard to forgive. You were right, of course, about him. He doesn’t really care about any woman—except perhaps you. And that was what I hated you for. My father’s family, you know, has a little money; they work in road repair and trash removal and that sort of thing. But they aren’t, you know, the thing. But Naevros, although he has very little money and no family—he is very much the thing.”

“Yes.”

“I thought—if I were with him—that would sort of rub off. It seemed to for a while. Then it was gone and he was . . . well, he was rather cruel.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. That’s what I realized, and that’s why I stopped hating you. He probably feels like that about every woman he can have. He doesn’t feel like that about you because he can’t have you.”

“Possibly.”

“Or possibly not, of course. But that was my thinking. And then I thought: what if it had been different? What if I had fucked my way into, I don’t know—being the thing? It still wouldn’t be about me. I’d be nothing—just part of him, not anything in myself.”

This struck close to Aloê’s fears about herself—that she was not Aloê Oaij anymore, but only Morlock’s wife. She said, “I understand.”

“So I left. Came up here and worked in timber. Had my own crew after a while. I became an Arbiter a few years ago because we needed one and no one else wanted to do it.”

“That’s the best reason.”

“So they say. It’s been more good than bad. I don’t call myself ‘honorable’ or any of that fake stuff anymore. If people think I’m honorable, I won’t need it in my name. If they don’t, they won’t think it because I say it.”

“Truth.”

They were silent for a long while. Aloê repressed a yawn, understanding that Ulvana had something else to say.

In the end she said, “I was angry that they sent you at first. I thought it was a deliberate insult. Now I see. . . . I’m glad it was you. You’re tired; we should sleep.”

“I’m glad we’re in this together,” said Aloê, a little more warmly than she really felt. She felt some guilt about Ulvana, and that feeling had grown rather than diminished because of Ulvana’s forgiveness.

She crawled into the bed closest to her bag, and it seemed as if Ulvana was going to say something again. But instead she just doused the light and got into another rack.

Aloê wondered if she’d happened on Ulvana’s favorite bed and her hostess was going to ask her to switch. But that seemed unlikely: the bed was not terribly comfortable and not terribly clean. In fact it had an odd reek to it . . . an oily muskiness, mixed with something like sour milk.

It smelt like a man, in fact—one of these greasy young things standing outside wineshops trying to impress each other and anyone impressionable who happened by.

Ugh. Aloê almost climbed out of her own accord to try another bed. But for all she knew the next would be worse. And she was tired. She hoped her nose would go to sleep with the rest of her.

Deep in the night, she dreamed someone was deep in her. She felt his weight on her, the oily slickness of his hairless chest sliding against her as he thrust himself into her, grunting the way men sometimes do, haloed with cheap musky scent. Her dream-eyes focused on his dream-face in the dream-shadows and she realized he was Naevros syr Tol. And from the glazed expression on his sweaty face he was coming inside her.

Fuck, no! she wanted to say, and woke up as she was actually coughing out the words.

“Excuse me?” asked Ulvana. Aloê opened bleary eyes to vaguely see Ulvana standing in a doorway filled with morning light.

“Nightmare,” Aloê said thickly.

“Want to talk about it?”

“Absolutely not.” Aloê rolled out of bed, hawked, spat out of a convenient window, and set about her day with a deliberate fury. This was real and that was a dream—and a terrible dream, at that. Somehow the filthy scent in the bed and Ulvana’s evening talk about Naevros had mingled in her mind, and the little dreammaker who lived in the basement of her brain had sent that thing up to annoy her. That was all that it was. There was nothing else about it that was real. Nothing.

They breakfasted on salted meat, pickled vegetables, and fresh mushrooms, all fried in oil. It was good, but afterward Aloê drank half her weight in water before she was free of the taste of salt in her mouth. After a minimum of ablutions, she moved with Ulvana toward the garth, where the horses were contentedly awaiting them. Ulvana had watered and fed them when she got up before dawn, and then went looking for mushrooms in the wood. A valuable companion, clearly: Aloê didn’t think she could have had better luck, and she told Ulvana so. It was interesting to watch Ulvana blush at the compliment: the embarrassed girl was still alive in there, inside the lumber merchant and Arbiter.

They were travelling up the shining pale stones of the Road much faster than the captive Khnauronts had travelled down them. Before midday they came to another vile campsite. Aloê knew without sniffing around (which did not promise to be one of life’s great pleasures, anyway) that this was not the murder scene. They rode on without dismounting.

In midafternoon they came to another of the old camps. Aloê felt the unpleasant sting of insight here. She dismounted and walked some distance from the campsite and the Road, ignoring Ulvana’s puzzled query. She lay down on a cold patch of grass and ascended into vision.

It took a timeless time to find it, but she stayed aloft in the visionary state because she knew it was there—she could feel it. Burning with contaminated tal, some drops of blood lay on the ground, wrapped in a shadow of absence that felt like Earno.

She descended to the world that women and men think of as real and lay there on the grass reflecting. The blood was Earno’s, shed in his sleep—enough to imprison the shape of his dream self there. And the taint in it. . . . It stank like the spell anchors that they had dug out of his body.

There was not enough blood present for this to be the murder scene. But they were getting closer: Earno’s wound had still been fresh when he lay here.

She stood up and walked back to Ulvana. “We ride on,” she said, and they did.

Before nightfall they came to the place itself. Aloê knew before dismounting. They were just beyond the woods, and the tidy heaps of earth covering the Khnauronts’ dung stood out clearly against the dry green-gold grass of the plain. Sun and rain had washed away the stink of piss, thank God Avenger.

Aloê dismounted without speaking and walked away from the scene. She sat cross-legged in a field, with her head in her hands, and left her body behind.

The dry, empty field blazed with talic light in her vision: there was life everywhere: grass, bugs, worms, the long shimmering light of the living land itself, life everywhere.

Except there.

She drifted toward the clot of darkness in the shining web of light and life. It was another shadow of Earno, haloed here in poisoned blood.

The talic aura of the blood trapped another shadow: Earno’s killer. The image was too distorted to be identifiable; it was a twisted shape overlain with many twisted shapes. The murderer had moved around Earno’s body as he or she killed him.

The unheard thrum of a binding spell was still in the air. The killer must have spellbound Deor and Earno before beginning the grisly work. When they woke, perhaps they thought they’d had a nightmare.

The murderer would have established the wilderment over the two Guardians and the sentinel mannikins then cut the summoner’s throat. The murderer must have quickly sealed up the wounds and established the anchor spell holding the seal. All that was clear. Then the murderer seemed to have spent some time going through Earno’s clothes, or fondling his body, or something—their shadows were oddly mingled.

Repelled, Aloê’s mind drifted away. She longed to ascend further, lose herself in the bright arc of the living sky. But if she did that, she might never return to her body.

She turned away from her vision, rejecting it and the world full of life’s light. She opened her eyes on a coarse void of matter and energy: the real world, as some called it.

Aloê sighed and wearily rose to her feet. It was terrible to lug one’s greasy flesh around after one has been floating free between heaven and earth. But that was what life was all about, apparently.

Ulvana had dismounted and was stretching her legs on the field when she caught sight of Aloê returning.

“It was here,” Aloê said in reply to the unspoken but obvious question in Ulvana’s eyes.

“Do you want to look around?” Ulvana asked.

Aloê almost answered, I just did, but then she reflected that the killer might have left something physical behind. Perhaps a signed letter expressing his intent to kill the summoner or something very helpful of that sort.

In the event, they found nothing, not even a decent set of footprints. It was after dark by the time they stopped looking.

“Let’s make camp across the Road,” Aloê said to Ulvana. “I don’t like this place. Unless. . . .”

“As a matter of fact,” Ulvana admitted, “I do have a lodge on the edge of the woods. You can see it from here.”

Aloê could not see it from there, in the dim light that was leaving the world as they spoke. But she followed Ulvana’s lead, both women leading their horses, and they soon came in sight of a round bark-covered lodge. There was no open garth, but there was a neat little horse barn in back.

Ulvana seemed less happy with the food in this lodge, but Aloê didn’t care. The thought of squeezing more mass into her flesh was disgusting to her. She just drank some water from her bottle and staggered off to fall in the nearest bed.

And after a moment leapt out of it cursing. “Chaos bite me on both elbows!”

“What is it?” Ulvana asked, quite concerned.

The bed was polluted with the same greasy musk that had haunted her last night. Did every lumberjack in Easthold use the filthy stuff?

“Not worry,” she said incoherently to Ulvana, and staggered off to another bed.

This, fortunately, only smelled like the sweat of a thousand dead pigs. She drifted off to dreams of murder—one murder after another, all of them committed by a cunning pig in quest of vengeance for the invention of bacon.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Among the Vraids

The dark, spiralling towers of the castle glittered with the force-wefts that held their stones in place. Moving over them, pointing out various features of defense or offense, was Ambrosia’s long-fingered hand. Its shadow fell on the blue brightstone trail meant to represent the River Tilion. Ambrosia leaned over the castle in her enthusiasm and invited Morlock to look at details in the courtyard.

But Morlock was stuck on a broader issue. “Is there an island in the river where you’re planning to build this?”

“It’s worse than that—much worse! There isn’t even a river. We’ll have to divert it after we dig a decent port some distance away from the Old City of Ontil.”

“What will you call the new city?”

“Ontil, obviously, Morlock. Don’t be so dense. We will get people to accept this new empire by pretending it is the old one returned.”

“Which it will not be.”

“Obviously not. Obviously not. We wouldn’t want any follies like the Ontilians committed in the Fimbar Dynasty.”

“Er.”

“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? Honestly, brother. You people in the Wardlands never study any history but your own, and since you don’t really have any history. . . . What do you do with your time, again?”

“We enjoy dancing and other amusements.”

“I’ll bet you do. I’ll just bet you do. Go choke on your own elbow, you supercilious son-of-a-bitch, or at least give me some advice on the supports for these walls.”

“Eh.” Morlock looked at the model again. “I’ve never constructed something on that scale. There’s nothing like it in the Wardlands. I’d want Vetr’s opinion: he’s a good builder; it was his mastery before Oldfather Tyr died.”

“It’ll be something new then.”

“Everything in your empire will be new. Except the name.”

“And it won’t be my empire. These fat-headed Vraids won’t accept a woman ruling in her own name.”

“Hm.”

“Don’t grunt at me. Do not do that. I’m warning you for the last time.”

Morlock grunted dubiously and then went so far as to add, “But you seem to be ruling it now, while this Lathmar the Old occupies himself with breeding heirs.”

“People tolerate that because it will all come to end when Uthar becomes king. Whichever Uthar it is.”

“I don’t understand that.”

“You’re not stupid enough, is the problem. If you were it would be obvious that the King of the Vraids must be named Lathmar Utharson or Uthar Lathmarson.”

“It must make their history confusing.”

“They don’t really have history, either—just chronicles and myths.”

“In the future, they will have a history.”

“Yes.”

“And it will be of the Second Ontilian Empire—not the Kingdom of the Vraids.”

“Yes.”

“Why not an Empress Ambrosia then?”

“Stop mocking me, Morlock. The fact that you’re the only one who would dare do it does not mean that you get to do it all the time.”

Morlock held out his hands and opened them. “I’m not mocking you. I’m saying the future is not the past. That’s all.”

“All right, then. Now that I’ve showed you my toy, tell me about this dragon business again. I don’t think I like it.”

Morlock told it to her again.

“Good fortune to you, Prince Uthar. I’m here with Prince Uthar to see Prince Uthar. Could you send Prince Uthar to ask Prince Uthar where Prince Uthar might be?”

“Which Prince Uthar?” asked Prince Uthar.

“Well, there you have me, I’m afraid,” Deor admitted. “This lad and me are supposed to see the Prince Uthar in charge around here. The Regent requires it.”

“Oh,” said the Prince Uthar who was lounging behind the table. “That’ll be Uthar-Null Landron.” He turned to a young boy in a gold-worked tunic standing by the door of the booth. “Prince Uthar—”

Kelat drew his stabbing spear. “The next man or dwarf that says the name ‘Uthar’ will get this spearblade through his nose. And it you think I’m joking, remember what happened to Magister Harbim.”

The atmosphere in the tent grew perceptibly chillier. The Uthar behind the table lounged more stiffly, at any rate, and glared at Kelat. The Utharling at the door suppressed a snorted laugh.

“You don’t take your heritage seriously enough, young Pr—Kelat,” the Uthar behind the table said sternly. “You there—Glennit. Quit your giggling and find out where Landron is. If he can’t come here, come back here and lead these . . . these two back to him. Regent’s orders.”

“As the Regent commands!” shouted Glennit enthusiastically, and ran like a shurgit out of the booth into the dim day.

“What happened to Harbim?” Deor asked, when the silence became uncomfortable—which was right away.

“He could tell you himself,” said the Uthar behind the table grimly, “if your friend there hadn’t broken his jaw.”

Kelat sheathed his sword and looked ashamed and angry.

“Never mind it, my friend,” Deor said. “I bet it was a rotten jaw that deserved breaking.”

“I don’t know,” Kelat said guiltily. “He was always riding me about something. Saying I wasn’t good enough to be the next King of the Vraids. As if anyone ever said that was going to happen.”

“How many of you are there, anyway?”

“Too many.”

“Three hundred and fifty and three,” said table-Uthar proudly, “as of this morning, when the King’s ninth alternate wife gave birth to a son.”

From the crazy look in Kelat’s eyes, they were about to see the color of his spearblade again. Deor silently said a prayer to Oldfather Tyr for something to calm down the young man or at least distract him. Then he readied himself to tackle Kelat if he drew his weapon again. Prayer was all right, but Deor strongly believed that Those-Who-Watch helped those who helped themselves.

A new shape darkened the doorway of the booth: a very tall man, broad-shouldered, his back straight, and with a majestic mane of gray hair and a beard to match. Deor took beards seriously, and he felt immediately that this was a man to respect.

“My boy!” cried the old man and rushed in. “I heard you were back! We were so worried about you, your mother and I.”

“You don’t even remember my name. Or my mother.”

“Your name’s Uthar, of course. And you mother was Kyllia—is Kyllia. We had a late supper just last month. A very late supper! I think we understand each other, oh? Oh? Oh?”

“I understand you perfectly, sire.”

“She’s as fertile a cow as any I’ve put in kindle. How many of you are there? Seven?”

“Five brothers and four sisters, sire.”

“Oh, the girls don’t matter.”

“I disagree, sire.”

“Shut your mouth, you insolent little prick!” hissed table-Uthar.

The king’s pale face also darkened with anger, but then he smiled. “Not at all, not at all!” Lathmar said. “The next King of the Vraids will have to think for himself.”

Kelat said evenly, “I’ll mention it to him when I see him, sire.”

Deor felt it was time for a diplomatic stomp on Kelat’s toes. He narrowly missed—the boy had superb reflexes—but his action drew the king’s attention to him and away from the misbehavior of the Prince Uthar called Kelat.

Lathmar the Old looked Deor up and down and said, “Hm! You’re not one of mine, are you?”

“No, sire,” Deor said politely. “I’m Deor syr Theorn, Thain to the Graith of Guardians, harven-kin to your regent, Lady Ambrosia Viviana. I’m honored to meet you.”

“Hm! From the Wardlands, eh? Wardic dwarf?”

“Yes, sire,” said Deor, though he didn’t really like the sound of that.

“Well, we do very well for ourselves out here, you know,” the great king said. “Lady Ambrosia has hundreds of dwarves down from the mountains sometimes. They do a lot of our digging, you see.”

“Yes, sire.”

“I don’t understand all of the digging, as a matter of fact, but the Lady Ambrosia assures me it is necessary and that it might as well be done by a pack of filthy dwarves as by honest Vraidish gentlemen.”

“Majesty,” whispered table-Uthar nervously.

“Oh? Oh? Oh?” the old king said in evident confusion. “Oh? Oh? Oh? Oh? Have I said something untoward? Set me straight, boys. Set me straight. Keep me honest. What was I saying?”

“You were insulting my friend, sire,” said Kelat coolly.

“Uh, what? No! No! I don’t think so. Was I?” The doddering old man turned to Deor with a tear in his eye.

“Don’t mind it, your majesty,” said Deor. “We do like to dig. And it’s no fun if you stay clean while you do it; that’s a fact.”

“Fun, is it? Fun. Hm. I would like to have fun, I think. Perhaps I should try it. Yes, I think I will try it. You—you there. You—Prince Uthar. Get me a shovel. That’s what you dig with, isn’t it? I’m going to have some fun, for once.”

“Alas, sire, I believe it’s time for your nap,” gurgled table-Uthar in a fit of desperate invention.

“Nap,” said Lathmar, Great King of All the Vraids, quietly. “Nappy nap nap. Yes. I would like a nap. Where—where’s my nurse? Where’s Magistra Gullinga? I—I—”

The old king wandered out as abruptly as he had wandered in, and both of the Prince Uthars present drew a sigh of relief.

“They shouldn’t let him wander around alone,” Kelat said.

“That Gullinga frail is no better than a paper hat in the rain,” said table-Uthar.

“If she has a son he won’t be named Uthar,” Kelat agreed.

“Don’t be so sure. He wasn’t joking about that late supper with Kyllia, although it was Kyllia from Fishtown, not your mother.”

“My mother’s dead.”

“And resting undisturbed. I thought you’d want to know. There’s not much the old fool won’t stick his penis in, except—”

Table-Uthar’s voice faded to a whisper, faded out entirely.

Deor turned to see his old friend Ambrosia in the doorway. He was about to speak to her when she drew the sword at her hip and struck at the gaping prince behind the table.

Kelat uttered an inarticulate cry of protest and, drawing his spear, leapt between Ambrosia and her intended victim. The blades clashed and Ambrosia stepped back, on guard, watchful.

Morlock walked into the booth and said dryly, “Kelat. Deor. Prince Uthar. Ambrosia, what are you doing?”

“What are you doing, Uthar Kelat?” Ambrosia said. “Unless I’m mistaken, you and Uthar Olthon detest each other. Yet here you are risking death for him. You are risking death—aren’t you aware of it? Before your mother’s grandparents were born I was learning to fence against the best swordsman in the world.”

“Second-best,” Deor said firmly. He admired Morlock very much, but the truth was the truth. (Morlock favored him with a rare smile, but no one else seemed to notice he had spoken at all.)

Kelat shook his head and held his ground. “I can’t let that. . . . I have to do something about it.”

“All right,” said Ambrosia patiently. “But why?”

“He spoke the truth!” shouted Kelat. “Someone should make that old man keep his pants on! You can’t kill someone for telling the truth!”

“A disappointing answer,” Ambrosia said, sheathing her sword. “Of course I can kill someone for speaking truth. If I had killed your half-brother for doing so, he wouldn’t have been the first man I killed for that very reason. A ruler of men does what she must, Kelat. You must learn that, or you will never be a ruler of men.”

“So what?” muttered Kelat, and sheathed his own sword.

She shrugged her crooked shoulders and turned to open-mouthed, motionless table-Uthar. “Prince Uthar Olthon, remind me of your task here.”

The hapless prince closed his mouth with a snap, opened it and closed it again without speaking, and finally managed to say, “Lady Regent, I keep track of the whereabouts and well-being of all the princes.”

“And you do that from in here?”

“Lady, I recruited a cadre of the younger princes to run messages for me around the camp. They either know where everyone is or know who knows. You called it an ingenious system once.”

“And so it is. From now on, though, you have a single task. You are to keep track of King Lathmar at all times and keep him out of trouble. That does not mean—” she paused to glare at Kelat “—making him keep his pants on. It does mean making sure he takes them off only in private, and does not otherwise tarnish the majestic name his grandfather wore so proudly in another age of the world.”