David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

Tenoctris pushed the drawer shut. She looked up and said, "I'm done for the moment. There's nothing acute to be dealt with, though-"

She turned her head toward the chamberlain with her usual birdlike quickness.

"-Lord Martous, I suggest you have these rooms closed until I've had time to go over the collection. There's nothing that I'd consider dangerous in itself, but there are a number of items which could be harmful if misused. Also there's a chance they could drawactively dangerous things to them."

The servants had stopped working and moved to the south wall when Cashel and Sharina entered. Sharina made a quick decision and said to the steward in charge, "Master Tinue, please move Prince Garric's impedimenta back out of here and carry it to the west wing. Lord Martous will give you specific directions. I'm ordering this on my authority."

"I'll take them!" one of the locals said eagerly. She looked at Martous and said, "You want them in the rooms over the old banquet hall, that's right, isn't it?"

"Yes, yes," said the chamberlain unhappily. The locals were already grabbing chests with far more enthusiasm than they'd showed previously. "If the princess insists, we have no choice."

He shook his head as the servants bustled out. "It won't be hard to keep them away from this suite if that's what you want," he said in a low, bitter tone, the first hint that Sharina'd heard that he had normal human emotions. "The problem was getting them to go in and clean the suite decently. And King Cervoran was no help, no help at all! He didn't seem to care if cobwebs and dust covered everything!"

"I can imagine that would be frustrating," Sharina said with honest sympathy. "Regardless, the real uncleanness was a result of your master's art rather than mere dirt, so the lack of ordinary cleaning didn't make much difference. There'll be time to correct the problem after Lord Protas becomes marquess."

Sharina'd been chambermaid in her father's inn while she was growing up. It was a job you could only do well if you convinced yourself that it mattered, that you were really making the world better instead of performing a meaningless ritual which the events of the coming night would completely undo. Martous didn't have her personal experience with the work of cleaning, but they could agree that it was a worthy end in itself.

"Yes, of course," the chamberlain said. He opened both hands in a gesture that was just short of shooing the visitors to the connecting door. "We'll do that now."

Tenoctris bent to retrieve her yarrow stalks; age asserted itself and the motion caught halfway through. Cashel touched her shoulder to indicate he was taking over, then swept up the spill with his left hand. He handed the stalks to Tenoctris, then lifted the satchel while she wrapped them again.

Martous opened and closed his mouth. He was obviously fuming, but he had enough control not to say something which, when ignored, would underscore his complete lack of importance.

"I thought a divination might direct me to the source of the power that surrounds us here," Tenoctris said, shaking her head wryly as she put the stalks away. "It completely overwhelms me. I can't determine a direction."

"You mean which object in Cervoran's collection is causing it?" Sharina said as they returned to the queen's suite. Her servants were opening the sole chest of clothing that accompanied her.

"Cervoran didn't have any talisman of such weight as this," Tenoctris said. Her voice was carefully emotionless, which probably meant that she was worried. "This is… a very serious business. I don't call it a threat, but the thing around us is so enormously powerful that we're in danger even if it isn't hostile."

She smiled cheerfully, breaking her own mood. "A hailstorm isn't hostile to the flowers in a garden," she added. "But it will flatten them anyway."

"You'll find a way out, Tenoctris," Cashel said calmly. It wasn't bravado when he spoke: it was the belief of a mind so pure and simple that no one listening could doubt the truth of the words. "And we'll help you, like we have other times."

Sharina gripped Cashel's left biceps and hugged herself to him. It wasn't the conduct expected of a princess in public, but it was what she needed just now.

"Not that way please," said Martous as Sharina and her companions moved toward the door to the stairs. He gestured toward the north facing room with the bed. "I can explain better from the balcony."

Sharina led. The chamberlain seemed to expect it, and Cashel as a matter of course brought up the rear-unless he thought there might be trouble ahead. It was the position from which he'd badgered flocks along the road. Sharina suspected Cashel felt much the same way about her and Tenoctris as he had for the sheep for which he'd been responsible back in the borough.

The balcony ran the full breadth of the room, but it was narrow front to back. It was plaster-covered, but the way it creaked under even Sharina's slight weight suggested that it was built from wattle and daub; the hollow clack she got from a rap of her knuckles confirmed the suspicion. An outside staircase led down to a plaza.

"Cashel?" she said doubtfully, looking over her shoulder as Tenoctris and the chamberlain joined her on the balcony.

Still standing in the solid-floored bedroom, he grinned. "I guess it'd hold me," he said. "But I don't see that it needs to now."

"I had a stand built for the gentlemen and ladies of the kingdom," Martous explained, gesturing toward the plaza. "Now that you're here, I suppose some of you Ornifal nobles will share it. And of course the two princes will be in the center of the lowest tier. I'm having another throne built for Prince Garric."

By'gentlemen and ladies of the kingdom', he means the gentry of First Atara, Sharina translated mentally. She kept her lips neutrally together. It wouldn't be proper to snarl at the chamberlain's pretensions, but that might be less offensive than laughing at him as she'd come close to doing.

The plaza spread broadly, covering perhaps ten acres without permanent buildings. On three sides of it were tents and kiosks, and to the south were bleachers-the stand Martous referred to.

In the center of the plaza was a pile of brushwood nearly as big as the palace. On top of it, just lower than the eyes of those on the balcony, lay a corpse on a bier of gold cloth.

Despite the distance, Sharina could see that the dead man had been middle aged; he was balding though not bald, and plump without being really fat. His cheeks were rouged, but the flesh was already beginning to slump from them. Silver coins covered both eyes.

"When Lady Liane has a moment, she'll give you direction as to the seating arrangements," Sharina said firmly. "She has an excellent grasp of protocol, and I do not. She'll consult with Lord Attaper, the commander of the royal guard, and I advise you not to argue with the decisions they make."

She cleared her throat. "There will be provision for guards," she added. "Probably more guards than you think-"Or anybody not himself a bodyguardthinks, Sharina added in her heart "-is necessary or even conceivable."

"If you say so," the chamberlain said. He added fretfully, "Time is very short, you realize."

Sharina realized that perfectly well, so she didn't comment. It was proper that the chamberlain should have his own priorities, but those weren't the priorities of the Kingdom of the Isles as personified in Prince Garric and his closest advisors.

Tenoctris glanced at the corpse, then turned her attention to the shacks and tents around the edges of the plaza. Country folk had raised them for shelter, in some cases forming little hamlets of half a dozen families around a single cook fire. Peddlers and wine sellers moved through the crowd, either carrying their stores on their backs or accompanied by a porter or a donkey. The gathering had more the atmosphere of a fair than a funeral.