David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

“Master Chalcus…” Carus said.

“‘Chalcus’ will do,” he interrupted. “Or ‘sailor’…or such name as you choose, soldier, for I’ve had my share and more of different ones.”

“Chalcus, then,” Carus said with a smile rather than a scowl at the baiting. “I know you wouldn’t—and couldn’t—force Ilna to your will; but I’m sure as well that she won’t go to Tisamur if you refuse. I want you both on Tisamur; and I want her especially, because there’s wizardry in that place and worse from the reports I’ve gotten.”

Chalcus laughed. “You know a thing I don’t, then,” he said. Sharina thought she heard bitterness underlying the banter, but it was hard to be sure.

Chalcus took the carafe again, but this time filled a goblet—straight, no water to mix it—and drank it down. He wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand and looked appraisingly at Carus.

“Well?” said the king. He was smiling; with humor, but a sort of humor Sharina found more disturbing than most men’s rage. “Will you go to Tisamur, sailor?”

“You don’t think duty would carry Ilna to Tisamur, whatever I said or said against, soldier?” Chalcus snapped.

Carus walked to the other end of the sideboard and splashed some of the white wine into a goblet. He dipped a double measure of water into the wine, then smiled over at Chalcus.

“If I had the power to convince Ilna that it was her duty to carry a child into such danger,” Carus said with an edgy lilt not so very different from the sailor’s tone, “then I’d be the greatest of wizards, would I not? What I do believe is that if I tell her that Merota is willing to go for duty’s sake, and you—”

“For duty?” Chalcus said, his voice louder than before. “Will you say that, soldier?”

“And you for the sake of adventure,” said Carus, calm and more nearly relaxed than ever since the moment he called Chalcus to him. “And for duty as well, I think, though I won’t push the point with a red-handed pirate…if I can say those two things, then perhaps Ilna will go despite her concern for the child, eh?”

Chalcus fluttered a smile, the normal humor of his expression alternating with something as bleak as the gray steel of his dagger blade. “Aye, she might,” he said. “I don’t doubt you read her as well as I can, friend soldier.”

He stared for a moment at Carus, then said, “If it’s a wizard you need on Tisamur, you could send Lady Tenoctris. Not so?”

“Tsk!” Carus said between his teeth. “Sharina has a knife as long as my forearm, does she not?”

For a moment the present world became a flat, colorless backdrop to Sharina’s vision of Nonnus the Hermit: her protector, her friend; and at the end, her savior at the cost of his own life. Sharina had his memory—and she had the long, heavy knife that had served Nonnus and other hunters from Pewle Island for tool and weapon as needed.

Sharina had used the knife also; for both purposes.

“Nonnus,” she prayed in an unformed whisper, “may the Lady shelter you with Her mercy. And may She shelter me as well.”

“Aye,” said Chalcus with an appraising glance at her. “She has a Pewle knife, that’s so.”

“Which she would use again at need,” said Carus. “Shall I send her out on purpose to give hard strokes, then, sailor? I have Attaper and his hounds for that, do I not? And perhaps I have you.”

He smiled; Chalcus smiled back. Neither man spoke for a moment.

“There’s hard wizard strokes to be given on Tisamur, sailor,” Carus said softly, almost whispering. “Who better should I send? Who better is there?”

Chalcus laughed cheerfully. He poured himself more wine; this time he chose to cut it. As he lifted the ladle a second time from the water vat he said banteringly, “Prince Garric is a bold young man and a clever one besides….”

He straightened, holding the goblet in his left hand. Instead of drinking, he fixed his eyes on Carus. His lips smiled, but his eyes did not.

“Prince Garric is all those things,” Chalcus continued, “but he’d not be making a plan so heedless of the lives of a young child and a childhood friend. Who made this plan…soldier?”

Carus crossed his arms before him. “I’m not heedless, sailor…” he said. The emotion wasn’t on the surface of his words, but Sharina heard it bubbling beneath them. “But a general who won’t risk his troops when needful will lose them all when there was no need. And as for who made the plan—I did. My name’s Carus. I’m not here by my own will; but seeing that I am here, I won’t sit on my hands and let the kingdom go smash for want of a ruler.”

“Are you indeed?” said Chalcus, and he sipped his wine. “Are you indeed.”

He set down the goblet. “May I tell her?” he said, nodding toward the door.

“Yes,” said Carus. “Or I will, if you prefer.”

Chalcus shrugged. “I’ll take care of it,” he said with a wry smile.

The smile broadened into a bark of laughter. “Well, soldier,” Chalcus continued, “I’m not one to sit on my hands either. If Mistress Ilna chooses to go to Tisamur, why, I wouldn’t mind going back. I was only a lad the last time I was there.”

“And you think the survivors have forgotten by now?” Carus said, strait-faced.

“Who says there were survivors, soldier boy?” Chalcus replied.

Sharina watched as the men clasped arms, laughing like demons. They understood one another, those two.

And might the Lady protect her—Sharina understood them also.

Garric’s skin burned. He was bathed in white light and it burned . Consciousness returned with the suddenness of a casement closing; with it came pain.

That was all right. Garric had hurt before, and this time the anger coursing through him burned all other feelings to cinders. He opened his eyes.

The foliage of the palms from which Ceto appeared were still quivering; the bandit must just have brushed his way through on his way back to the camp. Garric was far too coldly angry to rush off after him; he needed to get control of himself first. Then he’d take care of Ceto.

Tint was jumping frantically, making clicking sounds with her teeth. She saw Garric move and started to lift him.

“Hey!” Garric gasped. “Don’t do that!”

“Gar!” Tint cried, the first actual word that’d come from her mouth since he awakened. She sprang into a clump of hibiscus. Voice fading with the distance, she called, “Tint fix ear!”

Garric could breathe again, though the pit of his stomach was numb with a jagged circle of pain around it. Ceto’s punch might have cracked a rib.

He dabbed his ear; his fingers came away bloody. The hobnails had caught the tip, though the damage didn’t seem to be serious.

Garric knelt, then rose to his feet as the beastgirl reappeared with a wad of…of spiderweb! “Tint fix ear,” she repeated, motioning him to bend down.

He obeyed, feeling a moment of vertigo that cleared at once. Instead of wiping his ear, Tint licked him with a tongue that seemed almost prehensile. Garric didn’t jump away because the beastgirl was holding him by the shoulders. Only when the wound was clean did she press the spider silk over the wound.

“Tint fix!” she repeated. The silk stayed where she’d placed it, glued by its own adhesive.

Garric took a deep breath. His ribs still hurt, but nothing was broken.

He grinned at his companion. “All right, Tint,” he said. “Now take me back to the camp. So that I can fix Ceto.”

Sharina watched Chalcus leave the conference room; he moved with the grace of a dancer—which he might be—or a swordsman, which she knew he was. Captain Deghan relaxed visibly to see Carus standing in the doorway unharmed.