Split Heirs (25 page)

Chapter Twenty
-
Nine

A small but pungent group of Gorgorian women was assembled outside the palace in the cool light of morning. They had been sent as a formal delegation to greet the liberation of the lady Ubri, and as such wore their most ceremonial garb. Good Gorgorians all, they had spent most of their lives in tents, and as a result, when they decided to dress up, they chose to resemble tents as closely as possible. From head to foot they were draped in layer upon layer of richly brocaded and embroidered cloth, diaphanous veiling, and plain old headscarves until they looked like the floor of Queen Artemisia's closet when she was in one of her I-haven't-a-
thing
-to-wear moods.

“I don't think she's going to come out, Bungi,” said one pile of cloth.

“Yes, she will, Jigli,” another replied. “My man told me to get my ass out here to greet her. It's not every day they let a woman go free for a crime she didn't commit.”

The other fabric mounds muttered agreement. When it came to women, traditional Gorgorian justice worked on the principle
Well, even if she didn't do
this,
she's probably so pissed now that she's sure to do something
worse
later on, so let's kill her anyway and play it safe.
There were very few female criminals among the Gorgorians, or at least none stupid enough to get caught. Ever since they'd received the news that Ubri was to be let go, every Gorgorian
—
male and female
—
had been most impressed.

“I'm so happy they caught that wizard!” The mound named Jigli fairly trembled with relief.

A third heap of splendid remnants scuttled over to ask, “Has he turned the prince back yet?”

“He claims he can't.”

“So does this mean we're going to have us a queen?”

It was impossible for a bundle of cloth to sneer, but Gorgorian women had ages of experience pushing body-language into the outer world through twenty-nine layers of clothing, so Jigli managed. “You're a married woman, Crosbi, and you ask
that
?”

“Oh. Right.” Crosbi's swathed body sagged. “Still, it'd be nice. All our men being forced to take orders from a woman.”

“They'd cut her head off, first.”

“From what I hear, that wouldn't be so easy. Prince Arbol's a demon with a sword, and his Companions are as murderous a bunch of brats as you'd ever want to meet. Faithful, too. They all took the Oath of Blood and Spitting in Your Palm when they became the prince's Companions, and they're clean scared to death of him besides.”

“That was when he was a
he,
” Bungi pointed out. “Do you think any young warrior, Hydrie or Gorgorian, would ever admit he was scared of a
girl
?” Her eyes added,
That's
their
mistake.

“So what's been done with the prince, then?”

The cloth rose and fell as Bungi shrugged. “That's something Lady Ubri will have to tell us. At least now she's free, there's an end to all the riots these fool townies were pitching about the rest of us.”

“Silly nits,” Jigli remarked. “One little magical unmanning of their prince and the whole kingdom goes on a witch-catching binge! It's not like they knew what to do with a witch even could they catch one. Half wanted to burn any Gorgorian woman they found, the other half went sneaking around the back of our tents trying to hire our great magical services to unman their enemies.”

“I earned almost enough to buy a reliable assassin to cut my man's throat,” Crosbi said demurely.

“You lying bitch, you never did!”

“Did so.” She jumped up and down in place, jingling with the coins secreted everywhere upon her person. The other women cocked expert ears to gauge the worth of the sound.

“Crosbi, love, you're being too modest,” Jigli said. “For that much you can buy a fine killer. Just go 'round to the Wheelwrights' and Gravediggers' Union Hall and ask for a recommendation. You've got more than enough to cover the fee.”

“Aye, but I'm a heavy tipper.”

Before Jigli could reply, the door in the palace's great gate opened and Lady Ubri emerged. She was still dressed in her palace garb, which looked both scandalously indecent and chilly to her Gorgorian sisters. They immediately began pelting her with layers of cloth torn from their own costumes until she felt as if she were caught in a ring of self-stripping artichokes.

“Stop that!” she commanded, flinging aside the veils. “I'm perfectly all right.”

“Just looking at you makes me shiver. Put something on!” Bungi directed.

Crosbi sidled up to Ubri and with much effort got a hand free to touch her dress. “Couldn't you make them give you back your clothes?”

“These
are
my clothes!” Ubri snapped. “What I couldn't make that cursed Artemisia do was give me back my position in the palace.”

“Artemisia? The queen?”

“Artemisia the bitch on wheels. It was humiliating.” Ubri's brow darkened at the recent memory. “She had me hauled out of the dungeon into the second-best throne room. The throne itself was empty, of course, but there she sat on her fat behind, handing down judgement from a comfy old chair. My jailors dumped me right at her feet. By the time I got the hair out of my eyes I saw that I wasn't the only one there.”

“Where, in the second-best throne room?”

“No, stupid, at Artemisia's feet. Of course the room was packed with
men
.” She made the word sound a lot like
vermin
, only not so tasty. “Gorgorians and Hydries three-deep all around, staring like a bunch of constipated owls. And there in the center of it all along with me was the wizard.”

“A genuine Old Hydrangean wizard,” Bungi mused. “To think there's one still left alive!”

“Not for long,” Ubri said grimly. “Artemisia told me, in that snotty voice she's got, that because the wizard refused to admit I was his accomplice, and in view of the fact that he had worked a transformation spell before witnesses, I was free to leave, and the sooner I left and the farther I went the better. So I'm off the hook but out on my ear.”

“What about the prince?” Crosbi asked.

“The wizard won't turn him back
—can't
turn him back, he claims. At first he said he was willing to try, if someone would only have the kindness to fetch him a gill of virgin's blood and a dragon's liver. But then Bulmuk said that there weren't any dragons around and virgin's blood only works when the donor is older than twelve, so lots of luck there! This is the city, after all.”

“We're so sorry, dear,” Bungi purred. “We heard that you and the prince were, well
—
”

“I
had
him, damn it!” Ubri shouted. “I had him right in my hands.”

“Oh, so that's where you had him,” Crosbi purred.

Ubri ignored the barb. “It was all set: As soon as he was to be crowned king, I'd be named his queen, but now
—
” She spat.

“Engagement's off, is it?” One of the piles of cloth had a sarcastic streak.

“The prince is a
girl.
” Ubri eyed all the piles with equal scorn. “That makes our
—
prenuptial agreement null and void under Old Hydrie law
and
Gorgorian custom. Anyway, one of my jailors came 'round to tell me that when they asked Arbol did he
—she—
want to come down to the dungeons and say goodbye to his
—her—
ex-fiancee, Arbol just asked, ‘Who?' and when my name was mentioned the miserable pup made gagging noises and said he
—she—
wasn't crazy yet.”

“Well, it looks as if the wizard's spell changed the prince's mind, too,” Bungi remarked.

“Or his taste,” Crosbi murmured. “For the better.”

“Did it ever occur to you lot of ragbags what it would've meant could I have made myself queen?” Ubri snarled. “What it would've meant for all Gorgorian women?”

“No.”

“Tell.”

“For one thing, there's plenty of influence a woman can bring to bear on her man, even when her man's a king,” Ubri said, folding her arms across her chest.

“Until he hits you,” Jigli reminded her.

“Arbol's half Hydrie. Hydrie's don't hit.”

“They don't?” Jigli grew thoughtful, a phenomenon which could only be perceived if you listened to her pile of veiling closely enough to pick up a faint
hmmmm
sound. “You know, I've got a little coin put by. Maybe it's time I paid a visit to the Wheelwrights' and Gravediggers' Union Hall myself. These Hydrie men aren't half bad to look at, and they do smell better.”

“Oh, what doors I might have opened for us all!” Ubri exclaimed. “Now it's ashes,
ashes
!” Her scowl deepened and she shook her fist at the palace towers. “Mark my words, Artemisia: If I ever get the chance to do you a mischief, it'll be the sort that ends with your subjects tossing great handfuls of your intestines up in the air and shouting
whoopeee!
”

“Hmph!” Bungi snorted. “Not like you'll get that chance. Things've calmed down now, though for a while it looked like everything was running to chaos. Such a messy thing, chaos. Gets all over everywhere, and next thing you know, people with no taste in clothes are parading through the streets with the heads of royalty impaled on pikestaffs.”

“Pikestaves,” Jigli corrected.

“Sit on one, then tell me,” Bungi suggested.

Ubri said a word that was dirty even in the mouth of a male Gorgorian. Then she burst into tears. The clothstacks gathered around and patted her on the back until she got the hiccups.

“There, there, dear, don't you fret,” Crosbi said. “I'm sure something will turn up.”

“Like what?” Ubri's voice was flinty. The hiccups vanished like dew in the desert.

“Oh, I don't know. Like something awful to upset the queen or at least you finding somewhere to lay your head tonight. I was just saying it as empty words of comfort, you know. I haven't got a dog's notion of what will cheer you up, or even if anything ever will.”

“DRAGON!” bawled the horseman who galloped past the knot of Gorgorian women and almost slammed into the great gate of the palace. His steed reared and pawed the air, its iron-shod hooves gouging huge splinters from the closed portal.

“Here! You watch that beast, will you?” a guardsman shouted down from a handy turret window. “We just had that gate sanded and shellacked.”

“DRAGON!” the rider reiterated, still at the top of his lungs. “Over there!” He gestured wildly with his riding whip.

“Where?” The guard shaded his eyes.

“Over where all that black, oily smoke is rising, you idiot! The city outskirts beyond the walls!”

“Not the poorer sections?”

“There
are
no poorer sections of the city outskirts, dolt! You pay that much extra for a cottage so you get the privilege of being as far from the government as possible and still have public fountains! Now open this damned gate!”

The guard's face vanished from the window. He was muttering something about dragons being not part of his job description. By the time he reached the gate, he had been joined by several other men-at-arms, a few of them Old Hydrangeans.

“You want to say all that again, slow?” the original guard asked of the rider. “Just so's the natives get a chance to hear about it?”

“I said
—
” the rider drew a deep breath “
—
DRAGON!”

All the guards, Gorgorian and Hydrangean alike, agreed that there was no need to shout. The rider, very red in the face, proceeded to give the details of the story while Ubri and her escort of Gorgorian women drew near to eavesdrop, unnoticed and unmolested.

“It was off in the Exhalations of Persistent Happiness quarter, outside the city gate, where it happened,” he said.

“Ah, yes,” a Hydrangean commented. “Near the tanneries.”

“It's quite a nice little section of town
—
or was, before it got charred to ashes. I run a livery stable out there and I was just seeing to the horses when what do I spy ambling down the road big as my wife and twice as ugly but a dragon.”

“What, just the one?” The Hydrangean snickered. “Not accompanied by any other magical critters of myth and legend, was it? No pink elephants? No yellow-striped wolverines? No wombats?”

The rider's glare would have peeled paint. “All this dragon was accompanied by was a corps of the scruffiest, dustiest, most ragtag bunch of itinerant road-scum as I ever laid eyes on. All footsore, they were, and complaining about blisters to the high heavens.”

“Why didn't they just ride the dragon, then?” a Gorgorian asked, and clasped his sides as he shook with laughter.

“I'd like to see any man ride a dragon!” the horseman spat. “It's not likely to happen in
this
world. At any rate, the dragon's companions caught sight of the trade sign over my stable and one of 'em came sauntering up, bold as you please, to demand I make him a sandwich in the name of freedom.”

“A what in the name of which?”

“Well, I told him I didn't run any sort of an eating house. He pointed to the trade sign and said when a man displayed that end of the horse, he was either advertising authentic Gorgorian cooking
—
which he didn't like, but he was too hungry to be fussy
—
or else philosophy lessons. When I set him right, he turned around and demanded I give him a
horse
in the name of freedom.”

“Cheeky bastard!”

“I don't need to tell you what I
did
give him in the name of freedom,” the rider said, looking very satisfied. It only lasted an instant before his face fell and he added, “Then they were all around me, all demanding horses, and meanwhile no one's minding the bloody dragon! The Exhalations of Persistent Happiness quarter isn't that heavily populated
—
not many people feel secure living beyond the capital walls, you know
—
but it's no desert either. While this rabble was swarming me, the neighborhood kids came out to have a gander at the beast.”