David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

The landowner's face settled into a scowl. "Food, yes," he said. "Food for your further journey."

He took from his belt a purse of embroidered silk, obviously prepared for this moment, and shook its contents into his palm. "A barley corn, a lentil, and a chickpea," he said loudly. "We didn't discuss quantity, you'll recall!"

"I recall," Ilna said, smiling a little broader. "This is your choice, Master Ramelus?"

"It's the bargain we made!" Ramelus said. He tossed the three seeds on the table beside the empty loom. "If you didn't think about what you were saying, that's no business of mine."

Ilna raised the chickpea between her thumb and forefinger, looked at it, and set it back on the tabletop. "Then we've each kept our bargain according to our codes," she said. She nodded toward the throne, flashing the smile again. "I expect my pattern will bring a good deal of pleasure for as long as it remains here."

She glanced at her companions. "Let us leave this place," she said. She walked forward; Chalcus fell into step, keeping between Ilna and the guards surrounding the landowner.

Instead of joining them, Davus stood arms-akimbo. In a clear, challenging voice he said, "This is injustice, Lord Ramelus."

"I kept my bargain!" Ramelus said. "If I'm too smart for you, that's too bad for you!"

"This is injustice," Davus repeated. The peasants, all but an old woman who still stared at the fabric, watched the interchange in a mixture of fear and anticipation. "In the days of the Old King, you would be a block of basalt and a warning to others."

"He's threatening me!" Ramelus said, his voice rising. "Gallen, he threatened me! Deal with him!"

"I don't threaten you," Davus said, upright as a stone pillar. "We'll all leave this place, because that's the desire of Mistress Ilna whom you cheated by your injustice. That is so, mistress?"

"Yes," said Ilna. "And I would prefer to be leaving now, Master Davus."

"Leave him be, friend Davus," Chalcus said in a tone of quiet urgency. "It's the lady's choice. And Davus? I won't have you puther life at risk for anything so empty as justice."

Davus laughed suddenly. "Indeed, friend," he said, sauntering out from behind the table and touching Chalcus by the shoulder. "Though I'm less ready than you to call justice empty."

"As am I," said Ilna tartly, "but we've done all we need to preserve it here."

She looked at Ramelus. He responded by stepping behind Seifert and tugging another guard over into an actual human barrier. The utterfool .

"Master Ramelus," Ilna said. This wasn't a man whom she would address as 'Lord', not though the choice was impalement. "I wish you all deserved pleasure from the panel I've woven for your community."

Then to her companions, "Come." She strode off along the path curving around the house and continuing north through the barley and wheat. The men fell in step-but behind her, not at her side.

"I didn't see any bows, did you, Davus?" Chalcus said in a cheery voice. "Though I didn't see any sign of them having the balls to try us, either."

"With this sash I can outrange a bow," Davus replied in similar apparent unconcern. "But I too doubt we need worry."

But they were walking behind her. Just in case. Ilna's mind wavered toward anger at being coddled, then decided to see the humor of it and chuckled instead.

They were past the house; none of the peasants or servants were close enough to overhear. Without turning her head but loudly enough for her companions to catch the words, Ilna said, "I suppose you're wondering why I walked away from that?"

"Yes, dear one," said Chalcus. "But I knew you had your reasons."

"Yes," she agreed. "If Ramelus had kept the spirit of the agreement instead of the word alone, I'd have told you to turn the fabric over so that the other side was toward those looking at it."

"But mistress," Davus said with quiet puzzlement in his voice, "the pattern's everything you said it was. To me, at least. I don't know that it'd please others as it did me, but I couldfeel a grotto in the side of a mountain with a waterfall rushing past the opening."

"That was what you saw?" Chalcus said in surprise. "I was on a ship. We'd come through a storm, and a rainbow filled the horizon ahead."

"Yes, you're both correct," Ilna said. She took the hank of yarn from her sleeve and began knotting a pattern that would show them what she meant. "For now. But the design on the back of the cloth is in permanent dyes. The pink on the front will fade into the natural gray of the yarn in a few weeks, there in the sun as it is."

"Ah, you lovely darling!" Chalcus said. "So for his cleverness, Lord Ramelus will be left with no pattern in a short time, is that it?"

Ilna snorted. "Oh, no," she said. "There'll still be a pattern, and it'll still give pleasure, I'm sure, to most of those who see it. But what that pattern is-"

She straightened her hands out, stretching taut her knotted design. Swinging it left, then right, she showed both men what she'd done.

Chalcus caroled in delight; a moment later, Davus burst out with a guffaw of laughter so loud that it startled into flight a covey of quail which'd been hiding unseen among the dark green barley till that moment. Still laughing, Davus bent to pick up a pebble.

"Lord Ramelus himself!" Chalcus said. "And naked as the day he was born!"

"Yes," said Ilna, picking her design back to bare yarn with quick, fastidious movements. "The woven pattern takes effect more slowly, and I don't think Ramelus himself will ever see it. But everyone else will, and once they've seen that image they'll never be able to look at Ramelus without seeing it again."

In a cool tone Ilna added, "I thought he might change his mind there at the very end. After all his own people were angry, and what did a few firkins of pulse and grain matter to him? But in truth, and though I'm sure I should wish I was a better person-Idon't mind missing a meal or two for the sake of serving out that self-important toad."

The men laughed again. They continued laughing in bursts until the manor's pompous facade had dipped beneath a rolling hill of barley behind them. After a time Chalcus began to sing, "From this valley they say you are going…"

"We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile…," Davus chimed in, to Ilna's great surprise. His baritone made a pleasant undertone to the sailor's light tenor.

Though her mounted escort was quite willing to clear a path, Sharina was content that the carriage proceed back to the palace at the speed of ordinary traffic. They were returning by the next radial street to the east of the river. That was partly to spread Princess Sharina's public presence more widely through the city-but also partly, Sharina suspected, because Under-Captain Ascor hadn't wanted to risk an enemy preparing an ambush along the route they'd taken before.

Tenoctris sat on the opposite bench of the compartment with a lap-desk across her knees. She'd checked several documents from her satchel as they rode along. Sharina had her finger in a scroll even now to mark a place, though she was pretty sure the old wizard didn't need it any more.

At present Tenoctris was murmuring an incantation bove a seven-pointed figure she'd sketched on her desk. It must take enormous concentration to manage that in a rocking vehicle, but Sharina had already learned that doinganything well took concentration. A fuzz of scarlet wizardlight pulsed above the heptagram, barely visible even in the shade of the compartment.

Sharina smiled and drew a bamboo sliver from the wizard's satchel. She marked the place in the scroll with it, then leaned out the window. By supporting herself with an arm, she kept from being bounced hard into the frame. Even at a walking pace, the iron-shod carriage wheels banged sparks from the cobblestones. She'd as soon have been on foot, though that wasn't comfortable on stone either.