David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

“Then you’d kill him with your left hand!” Merota said, giggling.

Chalcus looked down at her. “Aye, perhaps I would at that, child,” he said. “Now leave us, if you will.”

Instead of arguing as Ilna had half expected the girl would do—expected until she heard the tone Chalcus used this time—Merota said, “Yes, Chalcus.”

She turned and curtsied to Ilna. “Mistress Ilna,” she said, then reentered the bungalow at a swift but ladylike pace.

Chalcus bent away from Ilna as though to smell the purple-tendriled mint along the east wall. “I’ve been thinking over where I might go next, mistress,” he said. “There’s little use for my sort in a place like Valles, you know.”

He turned and smiled at her. “You’ve a fine crop of herbs growing here,” he added in the same negligent tone. “Those who you cook for are lucky folk indeed.”

Ilna allowed no servants in the bungalow, though with the child’s tutors traipsing in and out there was work enough to keep the place in proper order. Ilna hadn’t met the cook or maid yet who performed to her standards; and in truth, even if such a paragon appeared, Ilna wouldn’t want to share her dwelling with a servant.

“The garden’s well enough,” Ilna said. “If I were to stay here, I’d want a dovecote, though. I’ve never liked chickens running around my ankles.”

What did Chalcus expect her to say? Her! Did he think Ilna os-Kenset would beg?

Instead of speaking, Chalcus took out his dagger and spun it from hand to hand. He caught it each time by the point, then spun it back.

“I wonder, mistress…” he said as though to the shimmering steel. The blade was slightly curved and sharp for a finger’s length along the reverse edge. “If you were on a ship about to sink, would you save the tall man…or the short man….”

There was a rhythm to the blade, as crisp and regular as the dance of Ilna’s shuttle across her loom. She found she was holding her breath; she grimaced angrily.

“…perhaps a middle-sized man like myself?”

The dagger slipped back into its scabbard as surely as water finds the drain hole. Chalcus met her gaze. His lips smiled, but his eyes did not.

“I don’t like ships, Master Chalcus,” she said, chipping her words out like hatchet strokes. “The last time I was aboard one, there was a crew of a hundred but only one man: you yourself, as you well know.”

Ilna turned away, wishing she believed enough in the Gods that she could curse and not feel she was being a hypocrite. “Master Chalcus,” she said to the man behind her, “I regret to say that I don’t know my own mind. Or perhaps I do, and I don’t have the courage to act on it.”

“Ah,” said Chalcus, an acknowledgment in a tone stripped of all implication. “Well, mistress, I haven’t met the person whose courage I’d trust further than I would your own. We’ll talk again before we act, either of us.”

Ilna spun to face him. “Chalcus,” she said, “there are things I’ve done—”

“Aye!” he said, the barked syllable breaking off her confession. “And I have done things as well, mistress. But we won’t have that conversation ever, you and I, for we each already know the truth the other knows. Now, go to your loom and settle your mind—”

He did know her; not that Ilna had doubted that before .

“—while I chat with your guards and perhaps open a jar of wine. In a while we’ll talk about what we will do, leaving the past to take care of itself. Eh?”

Chalcus smiled; and he kissed her, which no one before in this life had done, and he swaggered back into the house calling to the pair of Blood Eagles at the entrance. Chalcus the sailor; Chalcus the pirate and bloody-handed killer.

Ilna swept the cover from her loom and resumed her work, pouring her soul into the pattern her fingers wove.

Chalcus the man.

Ilna’s fingers played the threads without her conscious consideration while her mind grappled with questions that were beyond any human’s certain grasp. A spindle of rich brown yarn was nearly empty. She replaced it with a full spindle, and as she did her eyes glanced over the fabric she’d woven.

To another it was merely a pattern of subtle hues and textures, an image that made the person who viewed it a little calmer, a little more happy. What Ilna saw in the muted shades…

She slid from her stool and strode into the bungalow’s central hall. She heard the sailor from the porch beyond, his voice lilting a complex joke to the pair of guards on duty. Even at this moment Ilna found herself hoping that Merota wasn’t listening in also.

“Chalcus!” she called. “Garric will be in the water garden. We’ve got to warn him. Now!”

She swept out the front door. The Blood Eagles stiffened to attention; Chalcus by contrast looked as supple as the long silken cord around Ilna’s waist, a sash for now and a noose at need.

Ilna wasn’t much of a runner, but she broke into a trot. This accursed palace was bigger than the whole of Barca’s Hamlet, and she didn’t know the terrain nearly as well.

Chalcus was just as quick and agile on dry land as on shipboard. He swung along beside her. The only sign that he too felt the tension was the way his left hand reached down to steady the curved sword that he wasn’t wearing at the moment.

Chalcus didn’t ask what the danger was, only grinned at her as they ran through a tunnel of pleached ironwoods. Maybe he didn’t care.

What Ilna saw in her fabric was Garric frozen in a cavern. Around him, holding him so there was no escape, were the eight legs of a huge female spider.

And her mandibles were poised to suck Garric’s life out.

“A quarter past the seventh hour!” said the crier standing like a colorful statue on his podium beside the flagstoned pathway. As Sharina waited for Garric, she glanced through the columns of the pergola toward the call. The servant turned his eyes aside so that he wouldn’t seem to be spying on Prince Garric and his companions even though it was his job to call the time in their direction.

On hot days Garric often worked in this corner of the compound with its tall hedges and fountains. Now he bent over the table, signing short parchment documents one at a time as Liane put them before him. A gaggle of aides and runners waited against need just outside the pergola, and a dozen Blood Eagles stood just beyond.

Half the guards were turned outward, watching for threats which might lurk among the structures and plantings; the other six kept their eyes on those inside the pergola. Sharina smiled sadly. It wouldn’t occur to Garric to worry that his sister might try to assassinate him; it wouldn’t occur to a Blood Eagle not to worry.

Fountains on each of three superimposed terraces splashed and gurgled as they fed a stream running in a channel of cut stone. The landscaping was as old as the palace compound, but recent repairs meant that some blocks of the soft volcanic rock were clean though most wore beards of moss that wobbled in the gentle current.

An ascetic-looking man in sea-green silk knelt on the other side of the streamhead, apparently in prayer. He was a stranger to Sharina but from his dress not a servant.

Garric finished the last of the patents and looked up; his eyes followed Sharina’s. “That’s the ruler of Laut,” he said. “My next meeting.” He shook his head in frustrated wonder. “I’m supposed to be talking to him now.”

“Echeus, the Intercessor of Laut,” said Liane, amplifying Garric’s statement rather than correcting him. She filed the sheaf of completed documents and closed her little desk. “I’ll ready the next group for your signature while you’re with Echeus; those will be the judicial appointments for the three Ataras.”