David Drake: The Fortress of Glass

Sharina stepped into the suite. Tenoctris and Cashel, the latter carrying the satchel with the paraphernalia of the old wizard's art, followed her and Martous at a polite distance. Cashel was his usual calm, solid self, but Tenoctris was as silently tense as a cat sure there's a mouse hidding somewhere nearby.

The suite had a short entrance passage, three main rooms, and a curtained alcove for a servant; she and Cashel wouldn't be needing that last. There was a hint of mildew in the air, but the walls were freshly washed. They were age-darkened oak wainscoting below a waist-high moulding with frescoes of fanciful landscapes from there to the ceiling. The damp had lifted out patches of plaster, leaving white blotches.

Cashel smiled. "I like wall paintings," he said.

"I'm sorry about the water damage," Martous said in a tight voice, "but there wasn't time to order repairs. The funeral and coronation had to be the first priority, I'm sure you see."

"I like where the plaster's gone, too," Cashel said. "It looks kind of like clouds are drifting over the hills."

Sharina didn't let her smile reach her lips. Lord Martous almost certainly thought Cashel was being sarcastic. Cashel was never sarcastic. Moreover, he had the perfect innocence that protected him from other people's sarcasm. What somebody else would recognize as a cutting remark struck Cashel as praise, often from an unexpected quarter.

"Yes, this will be satisfactory," Sharina said in a coolly neutral voice. She knew the chamberlain's type well enough to be sure that he'd want to talk-and argue-longer than she'd want to be in his company. That meant the less said, the better.

Sharina'd been raised in a garret of her father's inn, and during her travels since leaving Barca's Hamlet she'd slept rough in hedges and on the bare stone floors of dungeons. She'd been in bigger, better appointed palaces than this one, but it was nonetheless a palace.

The central room was lighted by a glazed dome in the ceiling; the two smaller rooms on the north wall had beds, the only furniture in the suite. Martous probably assumed that the royal party travelled with complete furnishings. That wasn't correct: Prince Garric's expedition from Ornifal to the islands of the west and north was diplomatic, a Royal Progress rather than a military campaign-but it could become a military campaign in a heartbeat. Garric travelled as light as his ancestor King Carus had. While his aides and servants might complain about the simplicity, his sister didn't mind in the least.

"Where does that go?" Tenoctris asked, looking at the door in the west wall. With her fingers tented before her, she looked more than ever like a cat hunting.

"That leads to King Cervoran's apartments," Martous said heavily. "I've assigned them to Prince Garric, though I really wish he'd found time to approve the choice. Now, princess, I hope you'll come with me and-"

"In a moment, Lord Martous," Sharina said. She walked to the door and opened it, finding another door behind it. That wasn't locked either; she pushed it open. Beyond were royal servants arranging chests they'd brought up from the harbor. Trousered local people looked on and tried to help.

Sharina moved aside as Tenoctris stepped briskly past with Cashel at her elbow. He grinned at Sharina as he went by, as placid and unobtrusive as a well-trained pack pony. Of course if trouble arose, Cashel was more like a lion.

Ignoring Lord Martous' chatter, Sharina surveyed Garric's suite. She found herself frowning. There was nothing she could point to, but "I won't speak for my brother," Sharina said, "but personally I don't think that I'd be comfortable in these quarters. What other rooms can he use?"

At the moment Garric was with Liane and his chief military and civil advisors in what'd been a courtroom in an adjacent building; they were consulting with Ataran finance officials. Part of the reason Martous was peevish was that he had nothing useful to add to such an assembly. Lord Tadai had told him so in a tone of polished disdain that'd crushed his protests more effectively than the snarling ill-temper Lord Waldron had been on the verge of unleashing.

Sharina could've been present if she'd wanted to be. She hadn't, and seeing to living arrangements and plans for Lord Protas' coronation the next morning was a better use of her time from the kingdom's standpoint besides. Tenoctris had asked to accompany her, and Cashel had joined them after he handed Lord Protas off to his tutors. Cashel's own lack of education had made him more, not less, convinced of its value.

"I don't understand what you mean!" the chamberlain said. His horrified reaction was the first time Sharina recalled hearing something that could be described as high dudgeon. "Why, these are the finest rooms in the palace, the finest rooms in the kingdom! They were the king's rooms!"

"They were a wizard's rooms," said Tenoctris, seating herself cross-legged on the floor. Cashel set her satchel beside her, open; she took from it a bundle of yarrow stalks wrapped in a swatch of chamois leather. "The work Cervoran did here leaves traces behind which can be felt by people who aren't themselves wizards. It affects Princess Sharina, and it might very well affect Prince Garric."

The queen's suite had a floor of boards laid edgewise and planed smooth, solid and warm to the feet even without a layer of carpets over it. The king's side of the building had probably started out the same, but at some point a layer of slates had raised it an inch. Words and figures had been drawn on the floor in a variety of media: chalks, paints, and colored powders. The fine-grained stone retained them as ghostly images.

"Really!" said Martous. "It wouldn't be proper to place Prince Garric anywhere else. These are the royal apartments!"

"Protas said his father didn't use spells to hurt other people, Tenoctris," Cashel said. "Was the boy wrong, then?"

Tenoctris held the yarrow stalks in the circuit of her right thumb and forefinger. She cocked her head quizzically toward Cashel with a expression.

"No," she said, "I think Cervoran was interested in knowledge for its own sake rather than for any wealth or power it could bring him. I'm of a similar mind myself, so I can sympathize. Only… only I've gained most of my knowledge by reading the accounts written by greater wizards than I. Cervoran searched very deeply into the fabric of things himself. He gathered artifacts as well as knowledge-"

She nodded toward a rank of drawer-fronted cabinets against the west wall. Above them hung a tapestry worked mostly in green. It showed a garden in which mythical animals strutted among the hedgerows.

"-and stored them here. To me these rooms are a clutching tangle, like being thrown into briars. Even to laymen, at least to a sensitive layman like Sharina, I expect this would be evident and uncomfortable."

"It's like shelling peas in bed," Sharina said, speaking precisely to emphasize her point, "and then lying down on the husks. Milord, I've becomequite sure that my brother will require other accommodations."

"This is very unfortunate," the chamberlain said, hugging himself in obvious discomfort. Sharina couldn't tell whether he was complaining about her decision or if he felt the whirling sharpness of ancient spells also. Martous might not know himself. "Very. Well. I'll give orders. There are rooms in the west wing, though that'll mean…"

He caught himself and straightened. "Be that as it may," he resumed in a businesslike tone. "Are you ready to go over the arrangements for the apotheosis and coronation, in lieu of the prince?"

"Tenoctris?" Sharina asked. The old wizard was looking into a drawer she'd just opened, holding her hands crossed behind her back as if to prove that she had no intention of touching the contents. The yarrow stalks lay on the floor where she'd been sitting. So far as Sharina could see, they'd fallen in a meaningless jumble.