David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

Valence had just thrown the dice and was moving his pieces on the board, playing Bandits with two cronies. One was a former courtier named Geddes who hadn't been important enough either to promote or to imprison when Garric became prince, the other a very old man named Rylon who'd been chamberlain a decade before. At a sideboard stood Lord Lichter-still the royal chaplain, Sharina supposed, since nobody'd bothered to replace him.

The four men looked around in dull surprise. Valence frowned, then reached again for the game piece he'd begun to advance.

Ascor sized up the situation and thumped his heels on the thick carpeting. "Princess Sharina of Haft!" he announced loudly. That brought two startled servants out of a side chamber, tripping over one another. The male still held the jam-filled pastry his face showed he'd been in the process of eating.

Sharina pointed at them. With the anger of a woman who knew from personal experience how servants were supposed to behave, she said, "You two! Report yourselves to the chamberlainnow. I'll discuss your situation with him later."

She knew it was a trivial thing to become exercised about, but the room was filthy and the servants obviously thieves as well as lazy pigs. Part of the reason the kingdom was in its present dreadful state was that for too long people had shown as little concern for Mankind as a whole as a ewe has for the pasture where she grazes and voids her bowels.

The male servant opened his purple mouth to protest. The woman, though wearing silk tunics which she couldn't have purchased on her salary, at least showed the judgment to slap him on the ear and pull him back into the room from which they'd come. Presumably there was a back hall to the anteroom.

"Well, well, well," said Rylon, chuckling. "About time somebody put'em in their place. Yes, indeedie."

Sharina curtseyed to the king. "Your majesty," she said, "please forgive this intrusion. I want to ask some questions about your father."

"Do I know you?" Valence said, blinking at her. He leaned back in his chair and finally took his hand off the game piece.

The room was dim, though it'd be hours before there was a need to light the hanging lamps. The windows were shuttered but the large skylight was open; the cypresses planted around bungalow screened but didn't block the westering sun.

"Of course you know her, Valence," Lord Geddes said. "She's the sister of the boy who's running things now, Prince Garric."

Geddes' bland face clouded. "That's right, isn't it, dear?" he said. "Prince Garric's sister?"

"Yes, milord," Sharina said. It wouldn't do any good to lose her temper in frustration. Besides, the situation was better than she'd thought it might be: Valence could've sunk too deep in prayer and flagellation to respond to her at all. He'd certainly been headed in that direction when she'd seen him most recently, some months earlier. "A man claiming to be your half-brother Valgard is stirring up trouble. Witnesses say he looks very much like Stronghand. Did you ever hear your father speak of another son?"

"Another son?" Valence said, frowning. "I don't think so. But to tell the truth, I kept away from my father as much as I could. He was an angry man. He threw things a lot, though he couldn't throw them very well."

He tittered. "'Stronghand' indeed!" he said, lifting the wine carafe from the tub of water on the fourth side of the table where they were playing. "Half the time he trembled so badly he had to have a servant hold the cup to his lips. Stronghand!"

The carafe was empty. "Lichter!" Valence said peevishly. "Dip us some more wine, won't you? That's a good fellow."

The chaplain took the carafe in his left hand and with the other pulled open the lower portion of the sideboard. It was a large drawer instead of a door-panel. Inside were two open storage jars with wine thieves, narrow bronze pitchers with vertical handles, hanging from their rims.

"More Caecuban, Valence?" Lichter asked. He began to dip red wine into the carafe without waiting for an answer.

"Stronghand," Geddes said in a musing tone. "Goodness, it's been years since I thought about him. And you say-"

He turned quizzically to Sharina.

"-that he had another son, dearie? Goodness, goodness."

"I asked if you'd everheard of Valence Stronghand having a son named Valgard," Sharina corrected the courtier firmly. "Even a rumor or a joke about a younger son. Supposedly Valgard was born to a female prisoner captured after the Battle of the Tides, though those present say all the People were men."

"Afterthe Battle of the Tides?" Rylan said. "Oh, my goodness me! Well, it wouldn't really matter if the prisoners were men or womenafter the battle, would it? Oh my goodness, no!"

The old chamberlain started to laugh but quickly collapsed into a paroxysm of coughing. He raised his goblet; it was empty. Patting his chest with his left hand, he held the goblet out demandingly. Lichter took it from him, poured wine from the refilled carafe, and set the goblet in front of Rylan before passing the carafe to Valence.

"What do you mean about it not mattering whether the prisoners were men or women?" Sharina said. She didn't let her voice rise, but she knew her tone had lost the pleasant warmth with which she'd begun the conversation. "Your majesty, gentlemen, this is really very important. There's a serious danger to the kingdom. And thus to your lives, you see."

Lord Lichter cleared his throat, turning toward one of the frescoes set in the center of decorative frames. This particular one was a male centaur carrying a woman over his shoulder as he galloped away. The woman, bare-breasted with the remainder of her garments streaming behind her, reached out desperately toward the viewer.

"Well, you see…," he said. "It's not the sort of thing that got talked about, of course, but many people knew. In a palace, well, things get around. Theplace Stronghand was wounded, you see…"

Valence drank deeply. When the chaplain's voice trailed off, the king looked directly at Sharina.

"Whatever else my father might be doing after the Battle of the Tides," he said in a harsh, challenging voice, "he wasn't fathering children. Because that spearblade didn't leave him anything to father them with. Do you understand?"

Lord Geddes shook his head sadly. His eyes were on the game board, but his mind was in a distant place. "You can't really blame the old fellow for being angry most of the time, can you?" he said.

"By the Shepherd!" said Lires. "You sure can't."

Ilna finished warping the table loom she'd borrowed from Malaha and Mostera, the sisters who squatted across from her staring. They were the chief weavers at the manor-the Abode of Ramelus, according to Ramelus himself and his henchmen, though Ilna'd heard others call it only 'the big house'.

The sisters were short, dumpy women past middle age, dressed in hooded black robes. There was little to choose between them in appearance, but Malaha seemed excited by the chance to see what the outsider was going to do, while Mostera glared with the fury of a priestess watching her altar defiled.

Ilna smiled faintly. Though she wasn't going to defile anything, what she planned to make fabric do today was at the edge of what she considered proper. She'd promised to bring a feeling of joy in those who viewed the result and so she would, but…

The manor house was a sprawling thing that tried to look like more than it was. Originally it must've been a rectangle of one story and perhaps a loft. Ramelus had built it to two stories and a false front to the north with pillars all the way up; wings had since spread to either side. Ilna couldn't imagine who Ramelus expected to impress, but perhaps it was just for himself. He seemed like a man who thought about himself most of the time, if not all of it.