David Drake: The Fortress of Glass

"We're not fools here," Martous said quietly, proving that he after allwasn't a fool. "We cast ourselves on your mercy. But-"

His tone grew a trifle brighter, almost enthusiastic.

"-I do hope you'll see fit to crown Prince Protas in a public ceremony. That will be quite the biggest thing that's happened here since the fall of the Old Kingdom!"

Garric laughed, feeling the ghost in his mind laugh with him. "I trust we'll be able to come to an accommodation, milord," he said, glancing toward the prince and Cashel. "I'm sure we will!"

Cashel or-Kenset prickled all over like he'd gotten too much sun while plowing. That could happen, even for a fellow like him who'd been outside pretty much every day he could remember, but it wasn't what he was feeling this afternoon.

This was wizardry. He'd known his share of that too, in the past couple years since everything changed and he'd left Barca's Hamlet.

Cashel held his quarterstaff upright in his right hand; one ferrule rested on the deck beside him. He crossed his left arm over his chest, letting his fingertips caress the smooth hickory.

In his tenth year Cashel had felled a tree for a neighbor in the borough and taken one long, straight branch as his price for the work. He'd cut the staff from that branch and had carried it from that day to this.

A blacksmith travelling through Barca's Hamlet on his circuit had fitted the first set of iron butt caps, but there'd been others over the years. The staff, though, was the same: thick, hard, and polished like glass by the touch of Cashel's calloused palms and the wads of raw wool he carried to dress the wood. It'd been a good friend to Cashel; and with the staff in his hands, Cashel had been a very good friend to weaker folk facing terrors.

Just about everybody was weaker than Cashel. He smiled a little wider. Everybody he'd met so far, anyway.

The little boy who'd come aboard with the puffed up fellow and the servants looked uncomfortable as he edged back from the adults talking politics. Getting up on their hind legs, really. The fellow from First Atara was trying to make himself big and Garric was pushing him back, showing him he wasn't much at all. With luck the fellow'd stop making trouble before he wound up with a headache or worse.

A shepherd didn't have a lot to learn about how people behaved in a palace. It was all the same, sheep or courtiers.

Being uncomfortable while folks talked about things he didn't know about or care about wasn't new to Cashel either, so he grinned at the boy in a friendly way. It was like he'd tossed him a rope as he splashed in the sea: the boy stepped straight over to Cashel and said, "Good day, milord. I'm Prince Protas. Are you Lord Cashel? I thought you must be because you're, well… you're very big. I've heard of you."

Protas spoke very carefully. He was trying to be formal, but every once in a while his voice squeaked and made him blush. Cashel remembered that too.

"I'm Cashel," he said, letting the smile fade so Protas wouldn't mistake it as mocking his trouble with his voice. "Not 'lord' though. And I've met bigger folk than me; though not a lot of them, I'll grant."

Protas nodded solemnly. He looked away from Cashel, facing in the general direction of First Atara. "My father King Cervoran died just yesterday," he said. "Lord Martous tells me that I'm going to be king now in his place, or whatever Prince Garric lets me be called."

"I'm sorry about your father, Protas," Cashel said, meaning it. Kenset, his father and Ilna's, had gone away from Barca's Hamlet and come back with the two children a year later. Kenset had never said where he'd been or who the twins' mother was. He hadn't said much of anything by all accounts, and he hadn't worked at anything except drinking himself to death. He'd managed that one frosty night a few years later.

The children's grandmother had raised Cashel and Ilna while she lived. After she died, leaving a pair of nine-year-olds, they'd raised themselves. Ilna always had a mind for things, and Cashel as a boy had a man's strength. When he got his growth, well, his strength grew too. They'd made out with Ilna's weaving and Cashel doing whatever needed muscle and care. Mostly he'd tended sheep.

"I didn't know my father very well," Protas said, continuing to look out to sea. Cashel guessed the boy really didn't want to meet Cashel's eyes, which meant either he was embarrassed or he figured Cashel'd be embarrassed by what he had to say. "He was very busy with his studies. He was a great scholar, you know."

"That's a fine thing to be," Cashel said. He meant it, but mostly he spoke to help the boy get to whatever it was that hereally wanted to say.

Cashel'd learned to spell his name out or even write it if somebody gave him time and didn't complain that the letters looked shaky. He was proud of knowing Garric and Sharina because they read and wrote as well as anybody even though they'd come from Barca's Hamlet instead of a big city. Those weren't skills Cashel felt the lack of himself, though.

"My father King Cervoran was a wizard, lor-l… Master Cashel," Protas said, his voice squeaking three times in the short sentence. He glanced sideways, then jerked his eyes away like Cashel had slapped him. He kept talking, though. "You're a wizard too, aren't you? That is, I've heard you are?"

"I don't know where you'd have heard that…," Cashel said, speaking even more slowly and carefully than he usually did. He cleared his throat, wishing there was room so he could spin his quarterstaff. That always settled him when he was feeling uncomfortable, which he surely was right now. "Anyway, I'd as soon you just called me Cashel with no masters or lords or who knows what elses. It's what I'm used to being called, you see."

"I'm sorry, m-mas…Cashel," the boy said. He sounded like he was ready to start blubbering. "I didn't mean to say the wrong thing. I'm just so, so-oh, Cashel, I just feel so alone!"

Cashel squatted down so that his face was a bit lower than the boy's instead of staring down at him. He didn't look straight at Protas either, because that might be enough to push the boy into tears.

"I'm not a wizard like most people think of wizard," Cashel said quietly. He didn't guess anybody but Protas could hear him over the sigh of the light easterly breeze; and if they could, well, he wasn't telling any more than the truth. "I don't know anything about spells or the like. Only my mother…"

He paused again to figure just how to say the next part. Protas was looking at him straight-on now. He seemed interested and no longer on the verge of crying.

"I didn't know my mother till I met her just a little bit ago when we were on Sandrakkan," Cashel went on. He gripped the upright staff with both hands, taking strength from the smooth hickory. "She was a queen in her own land, and she was a wizard. Not the way Tenoctris is by studying and memorizing old books, but sort of born to it. Tenoctris says my mother is really powerful; and I guess she must be, from the things I saw her do."

He cleared his throat again, then made himself look up and meet the boy's eyes squarely. "I guess I picked up some of that from her," Cashel said. "I did and Ilna did too, only not the same way. Ilna can do things with cloth, weave anything and make a net that catches somebody's mind when they look at it. And Ilna's smart, too, like our mother."

He grinned broadly. "Not like me," he added. "I'm about smart enough to watch sheep, but that's all."

"King Cervoran wasn't a wizard in a bad way," Protas said. He was still facing Cashel but his eyes were fuzzy; looking back into the past, most likely. "He just used his art to learn things. That was the only thing that was important to him, learning things."

Cashel nodded. "There's people like that," he said carefully. It struck him as strange to hear Protas talking about his father so formally, but he wasn't the one to judge. He didn't talk about Kenset much at all.