David Drake - The Gods Return

"The town was very suitable for our researches, as you might expect.

There's a peculiarity in the laws of the community, however, which has created a difficulty for me." As she spoke, she toyed with a silver athame. The reflections on the flats of its blade didn't seem to show the room in which Ilna stood. "As I told you, my husband died three days ago." Ilna nodded curtly. She expected there would be a point, and she'd learned that they wouldn't reach that point any more quickly if she said, "Why do you imagine I care about the death of someone I'd never met?" or even some more polite form of words to the same effect.

"In expectation of his death, Hutton placed his most valuable tool of art in a casket which he bound to his breast with a single hair,"

Brincisa said. "He then walked out of the house and died in front of the municipal assembly building. Even I couldn't prevent him from being buried with his casket." She flung the athame at the stone floor. It rang musically away, its point bent. Ingens whimpered faintly. "That was his," Brincisa said mildly. She continued to smile, but the fury in her eyes was obvious to anyone. "My fellow townspeople fear me, as they should," she said. "But they are more afraid of violating their burial ordinances… and in that too they are wise.

Nothing I could do or say would change their minds." Ingens opened his mouth, then closed it again with a shocked expression. Ilna glanced at him, looked at Brincisa, and said, "Master Ingens, did you have a comment?" Ingens licked his dry lips. His eyes shuttled quickly between the two women. He didn't speak. "Master Ingens," Ilna snapped,

"your place is whatever I say it is! If you have something to say, say it!" She glared at Brincisa. Brincisa bowed politely. "If Master Hutton knew he was going to die," Ingens said in a perfectly normal voice, "why did he choose to do it in a public place, Mistress Brincisa?" "To spite me, of course," Brincisa said with an undertone of fury. "All those who die in Gaur are immediately interred in the clothes they die in, in the cave on Blue Hill. That's the bluff that you may have noticed at the head of High Street." "Immediately?" Ilna said. Brincisa shrugged. "Within four hours," she said. "Though I doubt that I could have untied the casket's bindings regardless of how much time I had." Her gaze focused on Ilna. "Youcan untie them, mistress," she said. "And in exchange, I'll see to it that you and your companion-" She nodded to Ingens. "-reach your intended destination more quickly than you would've done had your vessel not been damaged in an earthquake." "You want me to rob a grave for you,"

Ilna said. Brincisa shrugged. "Yes," she said. "I'll help-the entrance to the cave is always guarded, but I'll put the whole town to sleep so that you aren't inconvenienced. But you'll go into the cave alone to remove the casket. After all-" She smiled coldly. "-you never met the man, so why should you care about him now that he's dead? I assure you, mistress, you wouldnot have liked him in life." Ingens gestured with one finger to call silent attention to himself. Ilna nodded to him. "I'm sure Mistress Ilna can untie this hair," the secretary said,

"but I'm perfectly willing to go into this tomb and cut the casket free without worrying about the knot. Wouldn't that be simpler?"

"Cutting this particular hair would not be simple, no, Master Ingens,"

Brincisa said with amusement. "Not though you used a sword of diamond.

Untying the knot will not be simple either, but I think Mistress Ilna will find it possible." Ilna shrugged. "It seems straightforward enough," she said. She felt her lips curl up in a kind of smile. "If it's a bit of a test, well, I don't mind a test." "Then we'll go to the tomb tonight," Brincisa said with satisfaction. "For now, I had dinner prepared against your arrival. You'll have plenty of time to eat and prepare." Ilna thought, but she said only, "Yes, I could use something to eat." It wasn't a surprise that Brincisa had known to prepare for Ilna's arrival; but as the wizard had said, she and Ingens would reach Caraman more quickly this way. Ilna supposed it didn't matter. *** Before the Change, the Kolla River had flowed from Haft into the Inner Sea no more than thirty miles south of Barca's Hamlet, where Garric had lived for his first eighteen years. This was the first time he'd seen the Kolla, now a tributary of the North River. In the normal course of Garric's life as an innkeeper, he might never have gone thirty miles from Barca's Hamlet in any direction. A similar thought must have occurred to Reise, standing beside him on the bank as they watched boatmen poling the grain barges downriver to the army. He gave Garric a twisted smile and said, "Everything has changed." Reise plucked the sleeve of his silken inner tunic. "I've changed. But nothing has changed more than you have." He cleared his throat; an ordinary man, not particularly impressive even now that he'd lost the stoop with which he'd stood all the years Garric was growing up. He said, "I hope it isn't presumptuous of me to say this, but I'm very proud of you, son." Garric put his arm around his father's shoulders, hugged him quickly, and stepped aside again. "I don't know how I came to be…," Garric said. "To be what I am now. But your teaching is the reason I've been able to handle it as well as I have." "I didn't teach you how to be king, Garric," Reise said, his smile even more lopsided than before. He was now Lord Reise, advisor to the Vicar of Haft-a hereditary nobleman whose only sign of ability lay in his willingness to do what his humbly born advisor said. "And I certainly didn't teach you how to be agoodking," said the ghost of King Carus with a familiar chuckle. "Though I suppose you could have used me as a bad example." "Let's say that I have a number of advisors," Garric said. "One of the things I got from my father was the ability to tell good advice from bad." A herd of sheep was being driven eastward along the opposite bank of the river. Garric estimated the size with quick professionalism, flashing tens with his fingers and counting them out loud: "Yain, tain, eddero…" He'd reached, "… eddero-dix, peddero-dix," before he completed the count: seven score sheep, and from two separate flocks. There were two rams, and the boys badgering the animals-rations on the hoof for the army-had their work cut out because of it. Garric grimaced. "Duzi!" he said. "They'd have done better to leave one of the rams back in its district-or butcher it there, either one. If they had to combine the two herds to drive them, which I don't see that they did." "I'll make inquiries, your highness," said Reise, jotting a memorandum to himself on a four-leaf notebook of waxed birchwood. The company of Blood Eagles who'd escorted Garric were divided into sections standing ten double-paces to east and west. Troopers of the cavalry squadron that had swept ahead were watering from the river by troop. Tenoctris sat on a rock nearby. She seemed to be observing the sky, though Garric found the high, streaky clouds unremarkable. Lord Reise's camp was a village on a rise a quarter mile back from the river. The knoll had been wooded before the accompanying regiment had stockaded the encampment. Reise followed Garric's glance and said, "I brought a senior clerk from each department and from the twenty borough offices. I wanted to be ready to provide whatever information you need." "Borough offices?" Garric said. He smiled and shook his head in amazement. "I didn't know there were borough offices on Haft." "There weren't, your highness," said Reise. "But there are now. If you were wondering, Barca's Hamlet lies in Coutzee's Borough according to the last notation in the records in Carcosa. Your Vicar, Lord Worberg, has seen fit to change the name to Brick Inn Borough." Garric laughed. "I wonder how Lord Worberg came up with that name?" he asked ironically. The oldest building in Barca's Hamlet was the mill, built like the seawall of hard sandstone at the height of the Old Kingdom. The inn that Reise had bought and renovated when he moved from Carcosa to Barca's Hamlet was slightly more recent, dating from the years just before the Old Kingdom collapsed in blood and ruin. Uniquely for the east coast of Haft, the contractor had used brick. He'd fired them on the site, using workmen he brought in from Sandrakkan. "I believe one of his advisors suggested it," Reise said with a deadpan expression. "I can look into the matter if you'd like, your highness." Shifting to a quietly serious tone he added, "Lara has been managing the inn for the past year and a half. I'm told that she was very pleased when she heard the pronouncement." "Ah," said Garric with a nod. So that he didn't have to meet his father's eyes, he turned toward the men whom regular soldiers were marshalling on the bank just upriver of where he stood. He said, "Those are the Haft militia?" "The first influx of militia, yes," said Reise. "The call-up was very successful, my military officials tell me. All Haft is proud that for the first time in a thousand years, one of their own sons is on the throne of the Isles." He coughed slightly into his hand and added, "Pardon, your highness. I of course meant the vicar's military officials." Carus observed the recruits through Garric's eyes, though by now Garric himself had seen enough soldiers to come to the same conclusions. There were about three hundred all told, but they stood in many separate groups. "They're all volunteers, you know," Reise said. "Yes," said Garric with a cold smile. "That's fine so long as they don't think they'll be going home again till I release them." A few men carried swords and had at least a helmet; often there was a bronze cuirass besides. Those were prominent farmers, men with several hundred acres who owned their own plows and draft animals instead of sharing them with neighbors or renting them as required. Each had a retinue of up to a half dozen of their farm workers. The retainers had either a spear or a bow, but only one wore a metal cap. A scattering of others had plaques of horn sewn onto a leather backing. The remainder, at least two-thirds of the total, were smallholders, tenants, and herdsmen carrying whatever they thought might be a weapon. Garric saw flails, scythes, quarterstaffs, and wooden sickles with flints set on the inner edge to cut grain. More useful were the bows, though few of the archers had a full quiver of arrows, the slings, and the men who had proper spears. "Duzi!" Garric muttered, more in horror than disgust. To Reise he said, "I'd originally planned to assign the militia to Lord Zettin, since they're used to hard work and sleeping rough. I changed my mind, though, because they wouldn't like working with the Coerli as they'd have to in the scout companies.