David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

"Yes," said Sharina, holding his wrist as she scanned the nearby spectators with a harsh expression. "Well, they're not going to do that."

Garric looked at the crowd also, really for the first time. He'd been too concerned with the dignitaries on the raised plinth to think about the rest of the folk waiting. Those close by were retainers of the nobles. They stood in discrete blocs of six to twenty-odd men-all men, of course-wearing their employers' colors as cockades. They weren't openly armed, but Garric knew their caps had metal linings and there were truncheons-if not swords-concealed under their tunics.

He'd expected that; there'd have been similar men at a levee in Valles or Erdin or any other community in the Isles big enough to have a range of wealth and therefore rivalry. What he hadn't expected was that the two largest groups would be those of the priesthoods, big scarred men in white tunics. The Lady's gang carried censers on the end of three-foot metal rods, while their rivals held similar rods bent into the shape of a shepherd's crook.

"If any of them saw a sheep in their life, it was as roast mutton," Garric grated under his breath.

Then he straightened, smiled, and said, "Lord Attaper, I've recovered from my indisposition. I'll be pleased to meet the rest of those waiting to offer their respect to the kingdom."

Still grinning, he added to Sharina in a voice only slightly less audible, "You know, sister, for the first time since I became…"

He gestured with his palms upturned. Prince, regent; leader. It didn't matter what word he used or if he didn't bother to speak; Sharina understood.

"Anyway, for the first time I'm really looking forward to making changes in the way a government works!"

Garric laughed aloud. His sister laughed with him, squeezed his hand again, and then stepped aside so that the horrified nomenclators could resume their duties.

"Look, you fine folk of Carcosa!" Chalcus called from the bow to the crowd filling the waterfront. "Come look at the dreadful monster which your prince vanquished without so much as mussing his hair! Ah, the kingdom is blessed indeed to have such a ruler as Prince Garric of Haft!"

"Ilna?" said Merota with a troubled frown. She was shouting so that Ilna, holding her hand in the prow of theFlying Fish, could hear her. It was a measure of Chalcus' lungs that much of the crowd was able to understand him over the noise not only of civilians but from the crews and equipment of the royal fleet as it docked.

"Yes, child?" said Ilna, turning to face Merota so that the girl could see her answer. Ilna didn't like either to shout or to be shouted at; a poor orphan gets enough of the latter early on.

Chalcus now openly commanded theFlying Fish. Captain Rhamis huddled amidships with a cloak over his soaked garments; water dripped from the tip of his scabbard to pool on the deck beneath him.

The harbor had scores of unoccupied docks, though many were only rubble cores which'd lost their facing stones. Instead of bringing the patrol vessel to one of them, however, Chalcus had anchored half a stone's throw out from the shore where more people could see it.

The crew, released from the oarbenches, was hauling the great carcase alongside and lashing it to theFlying Fish with a second loop. The whale had begun to sink even before they'd entered the harbor; water was filling the body cavity through the hole the ram had smashed.

Ilna smiled grimly. Chalcus was too fine a showman to lose his wondrous attraction because of inattention.

"Is Prince Garric really as great a man as Chalcus, Ilna?" Merota asked in her high, piercing voice.

The question so shocked Ilna that she burst out with a gust of loud laughter. Merota gaped: Ilna's reaction was almost as unusual for her as a fit of crying would have been.

Ilna's expression settled. A fit of crying was the other alternative. She'd always considered showing emotion to be a sign of weakness; but she'd never denied that she was subject to weakness, either.

Rather than raise her voice, Ilna lifted Merota to speak into the child's ear. Ilna was slightly built-all the bulk in the family had gone to her brother Cashel-but she did much of her work with double-span looms, which often as not she set up by herself. She took her physical abilities for granted.

"Garric is a great man, child," Ilna said. "The kingdom is lucky to have so wise and strong a leader, and Garric's friends are lucky too. As for Chalcus…"

She looked toward the bow. Chalcus stood on the railing, gesturing extravagantly as he described the way Prince Garric had winkled out the monster's brains with one thrust of his mighty sword and then had used his pommel to crush its ribs.

Ilna smiled. It was a lie and shehated lies, but from Chalcus' lips it sounded like one of the ballads he and Merota sang. It was a pattern of the sort that Ilna wove into her fabrics, one that made the listeners a little happier and the world around them better by some small amount as well.

"Chalcus is a great man also," she said. "But in a different way from Garric. As I am different from Princess Sharina, say."

"But you don'tlove Garric, do you?" Merota demanded.

Ilna laughed again. The choice is to cry, and that's not a choice . "I don't know what you mean by love, child," she said, squeezing Merota before she set her back on the deck.

Because she was looking toward the city to avoid meeting Merota's eyes or those of anyone else nearby, Ilna saw the procession enter the harbor area and make its way toward the waterfront where Garric stood. The escort was a platoon of Blood Eagles. They moved forward despite the crowd, using their shields to push people aside and their knob-headed spears to convince those who didn't want to be pushed.

Despite feeling miserable and empty, Ilna smiled wryly. The Blood Eagles had been set a task; they were doing whatever was necessary to get it done. Ilna could appreciate their attitude.

The guards had been sent to Barca's Hamlet. There they'd waited for the arrival of a party from Ornifal to make landfall and come overland to Carcosa. Ilna couldn't see the people in the party who were on foot because the escort's plumed helmets blocked her view, but the two chief members rode horses.

Could you carry a horse on shipboard all the way from Valles to Barca's Hamlet? But of course you could, if you were important enough; and this pair was important.

The middle-aged man rode stiffly. Ilna recalled that he'd been clumsy with any physical task when he was Reise the Innkeeper in Barca's Hamlet. He was Garric's, Prince Garric's, father. He was coming to Carcosa at his son's call to direct the nobleman who'd have the title of Vicar of Haft and Agent for the Prince.

The dark-haired woman beside Reise was supple and perfectly at ease. She looked about the crowd with the pleased smile of a goddess blessing her worshippers. Though she'd had a long voyage and a difficult trek across the across the island to reach Carcosa, she was more beautiful than any other woman Ilna had seen.

She was Lady Liane bos-Benliman, the woman whom Prince Garric was to marry.

I don't know what you mean by love, Ilna repeated in her mind; and hated herself for the lie.

"Does it suit you then, mistress?" said Chalcus as Ilna's left hand gently explored the frame of the loom he'd had erected on the second floor of the building to which he'd brought her when they disembarked. "I chose a house close to the harbor where I could see the water, but if you'd prefer something inland…?"

Ilna sniffed. It wasn't like Chalcus to sound so uncertain. Was she so terrible, then, with her whims and her anger?

Grinning coldly-her anger was indeed a terrible thing, but so was that of the sailor-she said, "Every morning I looked out of my window in Barca's Hamlet and watched the sun rising over the sea, Master Chalcus. The view suits me well, and the building you've taken for us suits me better than I ever imagined."