David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

Her eyes narrowed and she added, " How did you come by it, then? Because a place like this-"

It stood in a row of brick buildings with shops on the ground floor and the merchants' quarters above. There were two full stories, a garret, and a railed walk around the roof of sheet lead. In back was a walled courtyard behind with grape arbors.

"-shouldn't have been empty for us to walk into."

"Nor was it," Chalcus agreed with a touch of irritation, "till my agents rented it last month from the owner and ousted the business being conducted here at the time; which was a brothel, mistress, since you're so suspicious that you might think I'd put a whole flock of innocent orphans on the street in my arrogance. And as for the money I used for the purpose, the Children of the Mistress had amassed a fine collection of plate and jewels in the course of their child-murdering monster worship. When I left Donelle, some part of that left with me. Perhaps this offends you?"

Ilna stood without expression. I've been a fool many times; but perhaps never so great a fool as I'm being now…

Rather than speak-for she'd say the wrong thing, she always managed to say the wrong thing-she took two steps to Chalcus, put her arms around him, and squeezed as hard as she could. It was like hugging a tree till Chalcus put his arms around her also and held her as gently as if she were spun glass.

"I'm sorry," she said. She wasn't crying because she never cried; or almost never. "If you'd cut the throats of everybody in the building I'd support you, I know you'd have had a good reason. I'm sorry."

"Now mistress," Chalcus said lightly. She loosened her grip on his torso but didn't push away; his touch remained the same. "The pirate who might have done such a terrible thing as that is long dead, buried in southern waters and the past. I'm a simple sailor and a loyal supporter of Prince Garric."

In the garret above, Merota caroled, "I never will marry, nor be no man's wife…" The child couldn't have been happier to have a house on the waterfront instead of being shut up in the palace as she'd expected.

Merota was happy more times than not, but Mistress Kaline-who'd sleep in one garret room while her charge had the other-was bustling about in a good humor also. Ilna smiled faintly into the sailor's shoulder. Chances were that Mistress Kaline would've been cheerful in a dungeon, so long as it wasn't on shipboard.

Ilna'd expected to be lodged in the palace-a suite or perhaps a separate bungalow if it was a sprawling complex like the royal palace in Valles. Where she lived-or what she ate and other questions most folk worried about-didn't matter a great deal to her, but here Chalcus had arranged a place where she wouldn't stumble unexpectedly into Garric, or Liane; or Garricand Liane. This was much better.

Ilna squeezed Chalcus again before stepping back, embarrassed for half a dozen good reasons but refusing to show it in her expression. "We'll need to get cleaned up," she said. "There's to be a dinner with Garric tonight. And I'll need to tell my brother that Merota and I are-aren't in the palace as he'll expect."

"Aye, the prince and all his chiefs and nobles," Chalcus said with an unreadable smile.

He turned to play with the door latch, a heavy arrangement that could be locked from outside but not from within; probably something to do with a the building's former use as brothel. Ilna'd known many sorts of hardship and discomfort; but notall sorts, and if she'd believed in the Great Gods she'd have thanked them for that mercy.

"Not an assembly I'd ever expected to be part of," Chalcus continued, now looking out the bank of casements facing east over the courtyard. He glanced sidelong at Ilna. "Of course if you're determined to greet all your friends and the new lot from Valles…?"

Ilna's smile was grim. Did he think she was a child who knew nothing of his tastes? Chalcusloved gatherings of the great and powerful, as surely as he loved clothes that focused all eyes on his swaggering form. But he was trying to be kind, and that was no cause for anger.

"I'll go to the dinner, Master Chalcus," she said, "and I'll go to Prince Garric's wedding when that's held in a few weeks time. There's nothing forcing me to be elsewhere, and I'm not afraid to recognize the truth. Any truth."

"No, nobody'd be fool enough to think you were afraid, dear one," Chalcus said very softly to the open windows.

He turned to meet her eyes and said, "Do you have regrets, Mistress Ilna?" His voice was flat, stripped suddenly of the lilt that was as much a part of him as the smile generally crinkling his eyes.

"Chalcus," she said, " things are as they should be-for the kingdom, for Garric. For me as well! I wouldn't change a bit of it if I could."

She smiled like a demon carved from ice. The skills she'd learned in Hell gave her powers beyond the imagining of anyone but Tenoctris of those who knew her. Shecould force Garric, and in time she could force the whole world, to her desire; but shewould not.

"I'm glad for the way things are, Master Chalcus," she said. "Though because I'm often a fool, it tears my heart out to see them."

Ilna opened her arms. Chalcus came to her and swept her up, kissing her; gentle as a cat with her kitten, for all the strength in his scarred body.

Merota continued to sing as she came down the stairs. She'd reached refrain again, and her voice trilled like springwater, "I'll always be single, the rest of my life…"

"Well, said Cashel, looking around the overgrown garden, "the palace seems a nice place, doesn't it, Tenoctris?"

"It's quiet," the old wizard agreed. She was being agreeable, at any rate. "I'd hoped the building might have a library that would give me some guidance about the creature that was loosed on us, though."

The palace of the Counts of Haft was brick and three stories high on the front where pillars rose from the ground to the roof. Back here in the private areas there were only two stories and all the rooms looked out on little gardens like this one. Sparrows and finches hopped about on the ground, picking at seeds; a pair of gray squirrels were chasing each other up and down the ancient dogwood tree by the back wall, changing places for no reason Cashel could make out; and in a basin filled by the shower earlier in the day, frogs chirped furiously.

The garden wasn't home, exactly, but for Cashel it seemed more homelike than any place he'd been in Valles, let alone shipboard. He didn't mind ships, but he was glad to be on solid ground again.

"Maybe the library's in the part where the count's still living?" he said, nodding toward the back wall. Garric had taken over the front and east wing of the palace, but the count and his personal servants still occupied his private apartments in the west wing. The other side of the back wall here was also a garden-Cashel could see the tops of what he thought were redbuds and a huge weeping willow-but it was part of the west wing, with no entry from where Cashel stood.

"No, I asked some of the older servants," Tenoctris said. "The library burned in the riots when Count Lascarg came to power. There were volumes in it dating back to the Old Kingdom, the chamberlain thought."

She smiled wryly. "Volumes as old as I am," she added.

The Old Kingdom fell when a wizard drowned King Carus-and drowned himself as well in the backlash of the forces that he couldn't control. An event so enormous had distant effects, the way a stone flung into a pond makes waves slap the far edges. One result had been to throw Tenoctris a thousand years into her future, to fetch up on the shore of Barca's Hamlet where Garric had found her.

Cashel cleared his throat, letting the thought form fully before he spoke. Then he said, "I guess you were sent here for a purpose, Tenoctris. And I guess that means you're going to stay while you're needed. Which I guess is going to be a good long while yet."