Servant of the Dragon (4 page)

Sharina sighed internally with relief. She'd gotten through to this group, at least. She felt a rush of kinship for the delegates, peasants like herself, who were satisfied to be treated fairly.

Most of the people who came to Lady Sharina—because Royhas and Tadai made sure they couldn't get to Prince Garric—didn't care about what was fair or even what was necessary for the Kingdom of the Isles to survive the crisis it was facing. They wanted more for themselves, and their concept of justice balanced on the belief that the world (and certainly the kingdom) should operate to give them everything they wanted.

"Mistress Alatcha," Sharina said. "Masters—I'll be glad to assure my brother that the Western Region is loyal. For your own part, feel free to communicate with your government either in person as today or by written petition. But I ask for your patience as well, and your awareness that the burdens you and your neighbors carry are there for the kingdom's sake."

Sharina thought about the way the royal income was spent. She suspected there might be a way to run the palace that didn't require quite so many servants standing around with self-important expressions... but maybe not. Her father had made a success of a rural inn where there was no margin for waste. Now he was running the palace, and she didn't imagine he'd changed his principles with his new position.

The palace had requirements that went beyond simple efficiency. It had to cater to the expectations of the people who came here, folk like this delegation and embassies from other islands as well. Maybe you needed a network of servants calling the time for the same reason that Sharina was wearing expensive garments when bare feet and a simple woolen tunic would have answered the demands of decency. How would Mistress Alatcha have reacted to Sharina looking like a peasant?

She grinned. The delegates thought she was smiling at them as they mouthed their goodbyes. Actually, she was thinking about how good it would feel to change into a tunic and take off the high buskins which encased her feet.

Ushers, summoned in some fashion Sharina didn't understand, stood ready to guide the delegates back to the palace entrance. She ought to ask her father how servants, discretely out of sight, suddenly appeared when they were needed.

The delegates moved off slowly, murmuring among themselves. Mistress Alatcha turned and waved where the walkway swept around a bed of osiers in a flooded planter; all of her fellows had to stop and do the same. Sharina held a frozen smile and waved back until the last of the twelve had disappeared.

Sharina's maid Diora came up to her quietly. Sharina lowered her hand and said quietly, "I've never been so glad in all my life to see a stand of osiers."

"Milady?" said the maid, frightened because she didn't understand what Sharina meant. Servants could never be sure how their employer would react to ignorance. Even in Barca's Hamlet, an occasional merchant or drover would aim a blow at a servant who hadn't performed as the guest thought was proper.

That didn't happen twice. Not when the broad-shouldered Garric or-Reise was the innkeeper's son, and every man in the borough would back Garric if the guest's guards took exception to the way their master was being rammed face-first into the inn's manure pile.

"That's all right, Diora," Sharina said. "I was just talking to myself. Can you help me let down my hair right now? I suppose I'll have to wear the rest of this ridiculous outfit until I get back to my suite."

She'd see Cashel as soon as she'd changed. She wished he were here already, not that there was anything he could really do for her. Sharina giggled, imagining Cashel carrying her to her suite like a woolsack. He was strong enough to lift two of her, even in the heavy garments she was wearing, but it would cause as much scandal as if Lady Sharina decided to strip down to her linen undertunic here in the gazebo. People—here and everywhere—worried more about the way things looked than the real decency or indecency of what was going on.

Diora plucked out combs with quick fingers. Sharina hadn't liked the thought of having servants, but there wasn't any choice. She could no more have dressed herself in this garb than she alone could have rowed all hundred and seventy oars of a trireme.

Diora was quietly cheerful, good at her job, and—perhaps the most important thing from Sharina's standpoint—completely a child of Valles, so that she could pilot her mistress through the shoals of palace culture. There were many times that without Diora, Sharina would have been as lost as, well, as the maid would be if dropped into the middle of the common woodland adjoining Barca's Hamlet.

"Ah, milady?" Diora said hesitantly as she removed the last few combs, twisting them slightly so that Sharina's massed hair fell loose instead of following the teeth. Bits gold rang softly and sweetly against other bits. "I wonder if you might have a moment to talk to some... other people?"

Sharina felt her stomach knot. She couldn't take more of this....

But she could. So long as she stayed in Valles, she had to. It was her duty.

"What other people would those be, Diora?" Sharina said in what she hoped was a tone of friendly curiosity. She started down the path toward her suite; the maid quickly stepped ahead of her and took Sharina's hand in the one that didn't carry the bag of combs. Sharina couldn't see her own feet while wearing this stiff, puffed outfit, so she needed a guide to keep from falling on her face.

Newly-hired gardeners were repairing the ravages of years of neglect, but there was a lot of work yet to do. The roots of a stately elm had grown across the walk. Workmen had stacked the flagstones on one side and dumped a load of gravel ballast to the other, but they hadn't gotten around to sloping the ballast over the humped roots and relaying the flagstones.

"Up here, milady," Diora said. "Higher—there, now your left, and high again.... There! You have it, milady."

Once they were past the awkward stretch, Diora released Sharina's hand. The maid continued to walk ahead as they passed between beds of zinnias flaring in vivid pastels, so that her mistress couldn't see her face. She said, "You see, milady, these are people from my old neighborhood. In the Bridge District, where I lived before I got my place here in the palace."

"Ah," said Sharina noncommittally. She didn't know where the Bridge District was—well south on the River Beltis, she supposed, because that was where the only bridge was. Valles had three districts on the west side of the river, she knew, but Sharina understood that only ferries and small boats connected them to the municipality's other fifteen districts.

"You see, milady, they can't get anybody to listen to them!" Diora said. "My mam's near out of her mind with it! I said that you were a real lady, not just a painted statue, and that I thought you'd maybe, you know, if you had a moment free...?"

The girl was speaking faster than she normally did and clipping her syllables. That was the way people talked in the streets of Valles, not here in the cultured sanctity of the palace.

Sharina smiled faintly. She was trying to avoid the Haft lilt that came into her voice when she spoke without thinking. The lilt made her sound different from everyone around her, though of course nobody would mention it to her face.

She'd noticed her brother didn't seem to care if courtiers thought he sounded like a Haft countryman. Well, maybe it was easier to be yourself if you were strong as well as smart, and a better swordsman than any of the Blood Eagles you sparred with using wooden swords....

Sharina had been smiling; her face sobered. She didn't underestimate her brother's duties. She knew the sheer volume of Garric's work was crushing and the responsibility must be even worse. The decisions Prince Garric made would decide whether the Kingdom of the Isles returned to peaceful unity for the first time in a thousand years. Otherwise the terrors following the collapse of the Old Kingdom would be repeated—only worse this time, and forever.

But Garric's duties were real. Sharina's job was to figuratively hold the hands of all the thousands of people who wanted something from the government that they weren't going to get.

The staff of people around Garric decided who might be permitted to petition the prince directly. There was only so much time in a day. Garric set the priorities for the government as no king since his ancestor Carus had done, but he couldn't spend an afternoon explaining those priorities to a delegation from the Western Region.

Still, somebody had to listen to the various groups and interests who wanted to put their points to Prince Garric. They were citizens, and they were important: all government depends on the consent of the governed, and Garric had neither the stomach nor the strength to compel that consent with the edge of a sword.

Petitioners had to be sent away believing that Garric cared about them, even if he wasn't able to grant their immediate desire. Parish leaders like the delegation just dismissed—or guild presidents, rich landowners, priests, or a hundred other sorts of important citizens—would be insulted if only some minor official, some hireling, bothered to listen to them.

Lady Sharina, Prince Garric's sister, was tall, blond and the image of an Ornifal aristocrat to look at. She was a perfect choice for someone to soothe with words that were completely empty despite being true.

The delegates would have gone away happy if Sharina had claimed that tomorrow the rivers would run with wine and pies would grow on trees. The important thing was that Lady Sharina had listened to them, had talked to them, and they could carry that memory back to their parishes with as much joy as if it had been a casket of golden crowns fresh from the royal mint.

Sharina knew that was she was doing was important, but it felt as empty as trying to sweep back the tide with a broom. There were other people who could have taken her place—King Valence himself might have done so—but so long as Garric's sister remained in Valles, the job would be hers.

And now her maid was bringing a deputation to her. Well, Reise hadn't raised his children to shirk their duties.

Diora risked a glance over her shoulder; Sharina's silence had worried her. They'd almost reached the building that was Sharina's own, a suite of neat little rooms about a central atrium with a skylight over a little pool. The janitor had removed the glazed cover for this hot weather; rain sent the pool's lacy-finned carp scurrying about the lily pads.

Sharina thought of asking if she could change clothes first, but that would be an insult—a way of saying that Diora's kin and friends weren't as important as the delegates who'd just left. Sharina's job was to make people feel good about their government.

Anyway, she'd been miserable all afternoon. Being miserable for another hour or however long wasn't going to kill her.

"Of course I'll see your neighbors, Diora," Sharina said. "Will your mother be among them?"

"Oh, no, milady!" Diora said in amazement. "My mam wouldn't think of pushing in to a business like this. I said to send the leading men of the neighborhood, six of them, and that's who's waiting on you now... if that's all right?"

"Of course it's all right," Sharina repeated. Diora didn't seem to see anything incongruous about only men being fit to meet with the Important Personage... who happened to be a woman. She thought of what Ilna would say, and as a result Sharina was giggling as she entered the hall to greet the delegation from the Bridge District.

Quite apart from simple decency—and Sharina hoped she was as decent as the next person, certainly the next person here in the palace—she knew that she'd be better off having enemies among the nobility than she would with enemies in the palace staff. The number of ways 'mistakes' by Diora and Diora's friends among the servants could make Lady Sharina uncomfortable—or a laughingstock—was legion. Sharina would have known that even without the personal experience of being an inn servant.

The delegates waited in the atrium with their backs to a mural. Sharina's doorkeeper watched over them with a carefully neutral expression, ready to bellow at them as intruders if Lady Sharina showed displeasure at seeing them. The men themselves couldn't have been more frightened if they were waiting to be thrown to real gryphons and chimeras like those painted against a black ground behind them.

"Good afternoon, masters," Sharina said with a smile. "I'm glad to meet friends of Mistress Diora. She's been a wonderful help to me since I came here."

There was a general sigh. Sharina thought the big fellow with welts burned into his forearms by flying sparks—a farrier, beyond doubt—might faint from relief.

"Master Alswind," Diora said. The oldest man nodded stiffly. He wore a purple tunic which might have fit him twenty years before, when the noble to whom he was in service gave it to him as a castoff. That had been a good forty pounds ago, and if Alswind made a full bow he or the garment would burst.

"Master Rihholf, Master Aldern, Master Dudo—" the farrier "—Master Demaras, and Underpriest Arpert."

Each bowed as his name was called. Arpert, a little man with a wedge-shaped face, was wearing the unsewn wrapper of white wool—the formal wear of the Old Kingdom—which marked him as a priest, but officiating at religious ceremonies in the Bridge District was probably an honorary position rather than a full-time job. Sharina suspected Arpert kept a tavern, or perhaps not quite so exalted an establishment.

Sharina made the slight bow that was all the movement her stiff bodice allowed. Alswind wasn't the only one here trapped by clothing. "I'm pleased to meet you gentlemen," she said. "Will you be seated?"