Servant of the Dragon (10 page)

* * *

Tenoctris seated herself on the bare stone pavement. She moved with a jerky suddenness, like a tree that rot has finally overcome. She was too old and brittle to be graceful when she tried to move fast. Ilna reached to help her, but Liane was standing between the two of them and was quicker yet.

There was nothing wrong. Even as she sat, Tenoctris was fumbling out a bundle of the bamboo slivers with which she often worked her incantations. Other wizards used specially made tools, often an athame forged with the help of spells and inscribed to increase the power of incantations. Tenoctris made do with simple wands—bamboo, twigs; a stalk of grass—and discarded them after one use so that she didn't stain a spell with the residues of a previous one.

Ilna approved of her care. If Tenoctris had been a weaver, her designs would be small, tight, and absolutely perfect in execution.

Tenoctris drew a figure on the grime of the pavement—the cobblestones were so irregular that Ilna couldn't be sure whether it was intended for a square or a circle—and wrote around the outer edge. There wouldn't be any unintended results from the spell she was preparing to work.

Ilna returned her attention to the tracery of blue light which wavered above the river. Sometimes it touched the knees which once had supported the first arch of the ancient bridge. Individual flickers had no more direction than the glow of a single lightning bug, but if Ilna let her eyes absorb the pattern she could visualize a smooth curve mounting toward not the other shore of the Beltis but rather the distant horizon.

She wasn't sure she'd have thought of it as a bridge except that everybody else called it one. It felt to Ilna more like a fishing line cast from somewhere else to here. It wasn't a threat, precisely, but it was here for a purpose—and that purpose wasn't to benefit Ilna or those close to her.

"And who are
you
, my pretty?" a man said. His tone made the hairs on Ilna's nape bristle even though the words weren't directed at her. She turned her head while her right hand twitched the hank of cords out of her left sleeve.

The youth who'd spoken was no older than Sharina, whose neck he was fondling. His blond hair would have been shoulder length if it was hanging down, but tonight he'd had it slicked with scented oils and worked up into a chaplet of roses. He wore a diaphanous silk tunic next to his skin. Instead of an ordinary outer tunic, he wore a cutwork garment of gilded leather over it.

The fashion was new to Ilna but obviously expensive. The fellow had come over from a group—a gang—consisting of three similar youths, four women with the patina of highly-paid professionals, and a dozen servants. The youths all wore swords, but any serious violence would come from their quartet of bodyguards.

Ilna expected Sharina to slap the perfumed
worm
; instead she shook her head and moved back behind Cashel as though he were a boulder on a plain. "Return to your own party, sir," she said.

The youth stepped after her. Tenoctris was mumbling an incantation with her eyes closed, unaware of what was going on around her. Liane spread her arms between the older woman and the youth, trying to protect Tenoctris from being trampled. Garric threw the right flap of his cape over his shoulder, displaying the hilt of his long sword. His hand didn't touch it.

Cashel picked up the youth by the neck and lifted him back to where he'd been standing. It was quite a gentle gesture, rather like a mother cat carrying a kitten. Ilna had seen her brother crack pecans between his fingers.

"Go away," Cashel said. He sounded amused rather than angry. A little fellow like this was just a yapping puppy to Cashel. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Emrich!" the youth shrieked to his bodyguard. 'Dispose of this rabble!"

People—including the whores and ordinary servants of the noble party—had spread away from the altercation. Sharina and the rest of Garric's party were dressed simply for choice and didn't have servants along, so the youth had taken them for poor folk from this district. That meant he could do as he pleased with them. The notion was so foreign to what Ilna was used to in Barca's Hamlet that it shocked her.

A smarter man—or a more sober man, at any rate—might have noticed that while Garric wore a plain tunic, his sword was worth a year's income for a farm in the borough. The four bodyguards
had
noticed that, but they'd started to draw their own blades anyway. They might try to talk things out, but they'd do so from what they thought was strength—four men to two.

Ilna didn't doubt that Garric and her brother could handle the matter, but she could handle it better herself. She'd knotted four cords together. The pattern formed when she tossed them spinning in the air.

She'd have preferred better light, but the bleached wool caught enough of the moon to draw the guards' eyes. As one they cried out and fell to the pavement, clutching at their faces and torsos as though they'd been caught in a net.

"Don't let the spider get me!" Emrich screamed, "Don't let it get me!"

The youth turned and goggled at the writhing guards, their weapons forgotten. His three fellows watched with more interest than concern; one swigged from a silver-mounted drinking horn. They'd come for a spectacle, after all, and this was proving even better than the supernatural display they'd been expecting.

The youth touched his own sword, probably for lack of any other thought in his head. Cashel closed his own left hand over the youth's, squeezing it for an instant and then lifting it from the hilt. Garric stepped forward and took the swordbelt in both hands. He twisted, snapping the silver buckle like a dry cornstalk instead of bothering to unbuckle it.

"What are—" the youth said. Cashel gave him a little push backward. The youth's feet pedaled for a step or two; then he fell over with a thump. Garric tossed the sword—belt, scabbard and all—into the Beltis.

Garric and Cashel started laughing. Cashel passed his quarterstaff from his right hand to his left so he could clasp arms with his friend. They worked together like the two stones of a mill....

"Do you know what that sword was worth?" shrilled a servant, shocked beyond concern for his own safety by his amazement at what had just happened.

"It was very nearly worth this little ponce's life," Garric said, toeing the youth. The fellow began hunching backward across the cobblestones, staring up with eyes as wide as a frog's.

Smiling lazily, Garric turned to Ilna. "Are they going to be all right?" he asked, flicking the fingertips of his left hand in the direction of the guards. His
left
hand, Ilna realized, because his right was clenching and unclenching as though it wanted to grip his sword.

She looked at the guards. They'd grown still. For a frozen moment Ilna thought that her fingers had added one knot more to the pattern, the knot her brain hadn't meant to tie....

The men were still breathing. They'd simply exhausted themselves in struggling with the web that only they could see. Ilna's knees buckled with relief.

"Garric, catch her!" shouted a voice, Liane's voice, and Ilna wasn't falling any more. Garric's arms, strong as hoops of hickory, encircled her and she felt his heart hammering with the fierce anger that had ruled him as it had Ilna herself.

* * *

"They'll be all right when the knots are loosed," Cashel heard his sister moan from against Garric's broad chest. "But oh! I was ready to kill them. I almost killed them!"

Cashel squatted beside the guards and looked them over. Their eyes stared back at him. None of them moved; their arms were close at their sides, as though they were wrapped in wet sheets. Emrich, something of a dandy in silver-studded harness and a silk neck scarf, mouthed the word, "Please...."

"You didn't kill them, though," Garric said, patting Ilna's back with his right hand. "And because of you, Cashel and I didn't have to kill them either."

Garric's eyes had been a thousand miles away right after the trouble, but they were coming back to normal now. Cashel himself hadn't been that worked up about the business. It had all been so silly.

He picked up the cords Ilna had knotted. The pattern didn't mean anything to him—it seemed as random as the way wind might have whipped the four bits if they'd been dangling alongside one another. He started to hand them to his sister. He saw she was still sobbing with reaction, though, so he picked the knots apart himself.

Cashel knew how much it took out of you to do what Ilna had done. It wasn't wizardry the way Tenoctris did it, with words and written symbols, but it did some of the same things.

And more. Cashel had faced real wizards, and when they'd each taken their punch it had been Cashel or-Kenset who was still standing. He didn't understand what it was he did—it was different from Ilna's tricks with fabric, that was certain—but there were powers they both tapped when they needed to.

Cashel chuckled at a further thought: it was harder work than rolling a boulder uphill all the day, that was for sure. Well, he didn't mind work, nor did Ilna.

Though the knots were tight, they came apart easily under the touch of Cashel's big fingers. Ilna saw patterns, Cashel saw the way things balanced against one another. It was close to being the same thing, he guessed.

He stood. The guards shuddered as Cashel smoothed the cords straight in the palm of one hand with the index finger of the other, the hand that held his quarterstaff. He wondered if it really would've come to killing except for what Ilna had done. It could have at that: the guards had swords and there wouldn't have been time for delicacy.

Cashel shook his head in wonder. So silly!

Ilna was standing on her own, now; Liane offered her a hand, but Ilna shook it away.

Garric walked over to the nobleman who'd started the trouble. The fellow started to get up, then changed his mind and lay back on the cobblestones. He put his hands over his private parts, of all things!

"Who are you?" Garric asked, in friendly enough fashion but sounding like he expected an answer. Being king or the next thing to it surely did suit him!

"I'm Lord Mos bor-Moriman," the fellow said in a squeaky voice. "My friends and I—"

He glanced backward, desperately looking for support. The other nobles and their entourage watched the fallen man like gulls waiting to peck a stranded fish to death.

Cashel kept an eye on the guards, though, just in case one of them decided to try Garric from behind. That'd be a pretty dumb thing to do—Garric saw everything around him when he got keyed up, and Ilna was watching with a grim expression and another selection of cords—but enough dumb things had happened already that Cashel didn't take the risk.

"Well, Lord Mos," Garric said, "do you know who I am?"

One of the guards sprawled at Cashel's feet muttered, "May the Sister drag me down! He
can't
be."

"By the Lady!" Emrich said. "He is! Prince Garric, we didn't know!"

Emrich hunched his arms under him and glanced toward Cashel; Cashel nodded, giving him permission to get to his feet. Emrich at least was smarter than a sheep, though Cashel wouldn't say as much for his noble master.

Having risen, Emrich knelt again before Garric. "Your majesty," he said, speaking to the dirty pavement, "our lives are yours, but we didn't know."

The other guards were rising cautiously. Cashel noticed with amusement that two of them were more worried about the cords in Ilna's hand than they were about his own iron-shod quarterstaff. They might be right about that, too.

"You're Prince Garric of
Haft
?" Mos said. Then he said, "You're Prince Garric! Well, I don't see how you expect people to—"

"Hush," Garric said. "Or I'll toss you in after your sword, as I'm rather inclined to do already."

Garric wore heavy-soled boots now, as always when he went onto the hard streets of Valles. He pointed the toe of one at Mos' lips, just short of touching him. Mos hushed.

"Lord Mos," Garric went on, "your choice is to endow a hostel for the orphans of this district. A representative of the chancellor's office will call on you tomorrow to discuss the details."

"A choice?" squeaked Mos. He looked like a beetle on his back, which was close enough to the truth. "What do you mean a choice? You're just giving orders!"

Garric grinned. "It's a real choice, milord," he said, "but you
won't
like the other option."

Just so they got the point—not that Garric's tone hadn't been clear enough—Cashel rapped the lower ferrule of his staff on the pavement with a sparkling
crack
!

Garric winked at him, then turned to the group of nobles with a face as threatening as a thundercloud and said, "You will leave now, taking your toad of a friend here with you." His boot prodded Mos in the side; not hard, but hard enough to be noticed. "I recommend that you not come back."

He looked at the four guards. "Not you," he added. "I have something more to say to you."

The nobles exchanged glances. One of them snapped an order to a pair of servants. They in turn eyed Garric, then leaped forward and helped Lord Mos to his feet. The entourage moved back through the crowd, silently at first but with a gabble of mutual complaints as they got out of sight.

"Prince Garric?" Emrich said. His face was set with fear of what Garric was going to say next. The four guards stood stiffly, as though they were being inspected by their commander.

"In the morning," Garric said easily, "you're to report to Lord Waldron's office in the Arsenal. You'll probably see one of the adjutant's clerks rather than the commander himself, but that won't matter. Tell him that you're reporting for assignment to one of the new regiments."

Sharina moved close to Cashel, though she didn't cling to his arm as he'd half-hoped she would. That could get in the way if he needed to use his staff, but he was sure by now that he wouldn't. Sharina had pulled the edge of her cape forward again, covering the big knife which she'd resheathed.

"You'll be paid on a scale determined by your skill and experience," Garric continued, "but I don't suppose the wages will be as high as what you were making until tonight."

"You'll be working for a man, though," Ilna put in, her words clacking out like boards striking together. "You may find that a pleasant change."

"You trust us to appear, your majesty?" another of the—former—bodyguards said; an older man than Emrich. His moustache and sideburns were very full. His cap still lay on the pavement where he'd been squirming, revealing that he was completely bald.

"You'll appear or you'll have left Ornifal before tomorrow sunset," Garric said. "I trust you to know that you can't hide on this island from me and my friends here."

Ilna grinned like a skull. She dangled her hank of cords before the men for a moment, then replaced them in her sleeve.

"May the Shepherd shield me with His crook," whispered a guard. His face had gone sallow. "May the Lady cover me with the cloak of Her mercy."

"Come on," muttered Emrich to his fellows. The older guard picked up his cap. Instead of putting it on at once, he faced Garric and slapped it against his chest with his arm at a stiff angle.

To Cashel's surprise, Garric responded by thumping his clenched right fist on his opposite shoulder. It was a military greeting of some sort, Cashel supposed; a salute, or maybe two different kinds of salute. Garric had become a wonder since his father gave him that medal to wear!

The guards moved off, close together and silent. The trouble had cleared twenty feet of open space around Cashel and his friends. Cashel grinned. That mightn't have been enough. The Shepherd alone knew how far a sword might have spun if Cashel's quarterstaff had whacked it out of somebody's hand.

Garric surveyed the watching crowd and called, "Is this sort of business frequent? Rich fools coming here to swagger about and use their guards to punish anyone who objects?"

Nobody spoke for a moment. A girl stepped forward. Cashel had seen her before, though dressed fancier than she was now: Sharina's maid Diora. She dragged an older, rounder woman out of the crowd with her.

"Come on, mam!" Diora said. "Tell him! Tell Prince Garric the truth!"

The older woman opened and closed her mouth several times, but she couldn't force the words out. Diora turned from her mother with a look of disgust and anger. Shrilly she said, "Not every night, but them and their sort come here to do as they please, and nobody does anything about it!"

"They like poking a chained dog!" a male voice shouted from anonymously farther back. "They know if a few of us get together with cobblestones for an answer, the army'll march in to put down the riot!"

Garric nodded. "All right," he said. His voice echoed from the tenement facades. "I'll have a discussion with the City Prefect tomorrow. There'll be a detachment of the Watch stationed here of nights to ensure courteous behavior by
all
citizens of the Isles."

Garric laughed aloud and looked about him, his fists on his hips. At his moment he was older than the lad Cashel had grown up with, and he looked very, very strong.

"And if that doesn't work," he shouted, "there'll be a new City Prefect, and he'll
live
in District Twelve until he's found a way to solve the problem. This is a kingdom of all citizens, not just of fools with money and a title!"

People started cheering. Garric looked startled and embarrassed, as though he'd suddenly remembered who he was.

Cashel grinned in delight at his friend. He was Prince Garric, that's who he really was. Nobody could listen to that speech and doubt it!

Garric raised his arms to acknowledge the cheers, then put his back to the crowd. "And one way or another," he added quietly as he viewed the apparition hanging above the river, "we're going to deal with this thing too. But I hope somebody else can tell me how!"