Goddess of the Ice Realm (8 page)

“Lord Attaper!” Garric said. “My duties as prince require me to greet local dignitaries. Hold your tongue now, or you'll find your duties will involve running the Valles city administration five hundred miles from here.”

Attaper paused, his face blank. Then he gave Garric a grim smile and an officer's salute, crossing his right forearm over his chest with the fist clenched. A regular soldier would clash his spear against his shield face instead. “I understand, your majesty,” he said.

The
Shepherd of the Isles
bumped against the dock. The starboard rowers had shipped their oars to keep from breaking the shafts, and the deck crew had hung straw-stuffed leather fenders between the outrigger and the stonework. Despite the crew's skill, Garric heard the ship's timbers complain. Lightly-built warships weren't intended to be tied up against stone quays; every extra ounce had been pared from the
Shepherd's
hull to increase her speed and the endurance of her oarsmen during battle.

“If you're agreeable, your majesty,” Attaper said in a formal voice, “my men will conduct the locals past you as you stand on the dock, rather than you climbing the plinth to join them.”

Garric smiled with a mixture of humor, amusement, and pride. “Thank you for the suggestion, Commander,” he said with equal formality. “I believe your plan will be more consonant with the dignity of the Prince of Haft.”

A pair of Blood Eagles on the dockside were struggling to fit a makeshift boarding bridge between the quay and the quinquereme's deck. It'd started life as a door and wasn't long enough to reach the deck safely because of the outrigger for the upper banks of rowers.

Instead of waiting for the soldiers to figure out an answer, Garric stepped on the outrigger and hopped up to the dock. The ship shuddered, rolling to boost his departure. Sharina had Tenoctris to look after, so she stayed where she was.

Attaper swore—under his breath this time—and followed Garric. Drawing his sword, he bellowed to an officer wearing a captain's red plume, “The prince will receive them down here. Start our distinguished hosts moving!”

Two aides—they'd been clerks of Lord Tadai—came quickly toward Garric. Attaper raised his bare weapon by reflex.

“Please!” one of the aides said. Both carried notebooks of thin boards hinged with leather straps. “We're his highness's nomenclators! We have to be at his side to tell him who he's meeting!”

“Let them pass, milord,” Garric said, again irritated by the bodyguard's caution; the nomenclators could scarcely have
looked more harmless if they'd been mice scurrying on a pantry floor.

He remembered what he'd just said to Sharina, though, and kept his tone level. Whatever his rank now, Garric knew very well that he was nervous about meeting those who'd been his distant rulers while he'd grown up in Barca's Hamlet.

“The first will be Count Lascarg,” the aide on Garric's right murmured. His index finger marked a place in the notebook, though he didn't bother referring to it. “His twin children, the honorable Tanus and Monine, were to accompany him, but they don't appear to be present.”

The Blood Eagles had started the line of dignitaries moving before Attaper bothered to ask Garric about the plan. That was all right; good subordinates had to be able to take initiative—within limits.

Count Lascarg's scabbard was empty and a guard walked to either side of him. They were more likely to have to support the count than to restrain him: he was a tired old man, overweight and—Garric had served in his father's taproom since childhood—more than half drunk.

Lascarg knelt before Garric, bracing himself with his hands to keep from falling over. He looked up, avoiding Garric's eyes, and said in a rusty voice, “Your highness, I offer the loyal submission of Haft to the Kingdom of the Isles.”

“Rise, Lord Lascarg,” Garric said. “The officials who've preceded me have made arrangements to allow you and your personal servants quarters in the west wing of the palace. So long as you remain there until I've made permanent dispositions, I can guarantee your safety. Of course you're to take no further part in the government of the island.”

“Of course,” Lascarg muttered. He didn't sound regretful; perhaps he was even relieved. He rose to his feet more easily than he'd knelt and walked away straight-backed.

Garric watched him go without expression. Lascarg had been commander of the Household Troops the night riots in Carcosa had led to the death of the Count and Countess of Haft; afterward Lascarg had seized the throne himself. That didn't prove he'd been behind the riots in the first place, but
the best that could be said was that the Household Troops hadn't protected their employers as they were sworn to do.

Garric wouldn't have had much liking or respect for Lascarg under any circumstances, so nothing important changed when Garric had learned that Countess Tera was his real mother. He'd been born the night she died, and Reise had carried the infant to Barca's Hamlet on the opposite coast with his wife and her own newborn daughter.

The next dignitary through the wall of Blood Eagles was an older man in priestly robes of the traditional gleaming white. Instead of the bleached wool that priests in Valles wore in at least the affectation of modesty, this man's garment was of silk trimmed with ermine.

“Lord Anda, Chief Priest of the Temple of the Lady of the Sunset,” said the left-hand nomenclator, “and head of the congregation of the Lady on Haft.”

Anda knelt before Garric with the deepest respect, but as he did so he looked over his shoulder with a sneer of triumph toward the next person in line. He said, “The prayers of the servants of the Lady are always with you, your highness.”

“He and Lady Estanel, Priestess of the Temple of the Shepherd of the Rock, nearly came to blows over precedence!” the other aide added in shocked amazement. “Can you imagine that? Of course the priests of the Lady have precedence!”

“Rise, Lord Anda,” Garric said. “My friend Lord Tadai will shortly discuss with you the means by which the office of the Chancellor in Valles will improve its oversight of the temples here on Haft.”

“In fact if you have a moment, your highness . . .” Anda said, rising smoothly. He had the sharp features and bright eyes of a falcon. “My associates and I have a proposal which you as a Haft native yourself will find very—”

“I do not have a moment,” Garric said, suddenly so angry that his vision blurred. “Lord Tadai will instruct you.”

The priest opened his mouth to speak further. Garric felt his right hand fall to his sword hilt. If the whale's attack hadn't drained him so completely . . .

Lord Anda was too good a politician to push on where he could see there was no hope. He bowed and smiled, passing back through the guards with his dignity undiminished.

Carus was a calming presence in Garric's mind. The ancient king knew more about gusts of rage than most men did. Garric's anger didn't frighten him.
“Just priests being priests, lad,”
the ghost murmured.
“Part of life, like rain running down the inside of your cuirass.”

“Lady Estanel is next,” a nomenclator said. “She entered the priesthood after the death of her husband, a major landowner to the south of Carcosa.”

The priestess of the Shepherd was short and round. The collar of her white silk robe was trimmed with sable, and her magnificent ivory combs were arranged to give the impression of a tiara.

She curtseyed with supple ease; though fat, Lady Estanel was obviously in good health. “We servants of the Shepherd are delighted to greet you, Prince Garric,” she said. “We look forward to discussing methods to reform the current religious situation with you.”

“Your discussions will be with my agent, Lord Tadai,” Garric said; he heard his voice coming from a thousand miles away. “And milady? You'd best arrange matters so that I
don't
have to get involved, because you'd like that result less than anything Lord Tadai tells you.”

Garric couldn't see the priestess's expression through the red haze that clouded his vision, but she passed on quickly. He felt a touch on his right elbow. He turned. Sharina was there. Though relief made him stagger, he could see clearly again.

Attaper must have signaled to the guards, because the line of dignitaries in embroidered brocade stayed on the other side of the black shields. A good bodyguard observes
everything,
and Garric didn't guess he'd ever meet anyone better than Attaper.

“I'm a little dizzy from the voyage,” Garric called with a cheerful smile toward the waiting nobles. “A moment, please, and I'll be with you.”

He turned again and muttered into Sharina's ear, “We weren't god-ridden in Barca's Hamlet, you know that. A pinch of meal and a sip of ale to the household altar at meals—for the people who could afford that. And we gave when the priests from Carcosa came around with the statues for the Tithe Procession every summer. But we worshipped
the
gods,
and these people are just politicians. Politicians who think they'll make me one of them!”

“Yes,” said Sharina, holding his wrist as she scanned the nearby spectators with a harsh expression. “Well, they're not going to do that.”

Garric looked at the crowd also, really for the first time. He'd been too concerned with the dignitaries on the raised plinth to think about the rest of the folk waiting. Those close by were retainers of the nobles. They stood in discrete blocs of six to twenty-odd men—all men, of course—wearing their employers' colors as cockades. They weren't openly armed, but Garric knew their caps had metal linings and there were truncheons—if not swords—concealed under their tunics.

He'd expected that; there'd have been similar men at a levee in Valles or Erdin or any other community in the Isles big enough to have a range of wealth and therefore rivalry. What he hadn't expected was that the two largest groups would be those of the priesthoods, big scarred men in white tunics. The Lady's gang carried censers on the end of three-foot metal rods, while their rivals held similar rods bent into the shape of a shepherd's crook.

“If any of them saw a sheep in their life, it was as roast mutton,” Garric grated under his breath.

Then he straightened, smiled, and said, “Lord Attaper, I've recovered from my indisposition. I'll be pleased to meet the rest of those waiting to offer their respect to the kingdom.”

Still grinning, he added to Sharina in a voice only slightly less audible, “You know, sister, for the first time since I became . . .”

He gestured with his palms upturned. Prince, regent; leader. It didn't matter what word he used or if he didn't bother to speak; Sharina understood.

“Anyway, for the first time I'm really looking forward to making changes in the way a government works!”

Garric laughed aloud. His sister laughed with him, squeezed his hand again, and then stepped aside so that the horrified nomenclators could resume their duties.

“Look, you fine folk of Carcosa!” Chalcus called from the bow to the crowd filling the waterfront. “Come look at the dreadful monster that your prince vanquished without so much as mussing his hair! Ah, the kingdom is blessed indeed to have such a ruler as Prince Garric of Haft!”

“Ilna?” said Merota with a troubled frown. She was shouting so that Ilna, holding her hand in the prow of the
Flying Fish,
could hear her. It was a measure of Chalcus's lungs that much of the crowd was able to understand him over the noise not only of civilians but from the crews and equipment of the royal fleet as it docked.

“Yes, child?” said Ilna, turning to face Merota so that the girl could see her answer. Ilna didn't like either to shout or to be shouted at; a poor orphan gets enough of the latter early on.

Chalcus now openly commanded the
Flying Fish.
Captain Rhamis huddled amidships with a cloak over his soaked garments; water dripped from the tip of his scabbard to pool on the deck beneath him.

The harbor had scores of unoccupied docks, though many were only rubble cores which'd lost their facing stones. Instead of bringing the patrol vessel to one of them, however, Chalcus had anchored half a stone's throw out from the shore where more people could see it.

The crew, released from the oarbenches, was hauling the great carcass alongside and lashing it to the
Flying Fish
with a second loop. The whale had begun to sink even before they'd entered the harbor; water was filling the body cavity through the hole the ram had smashed.

Ilna smiled grimly. Chalcus was too fine a showman to lose his wondrous attraction because of inattention.

“Is Prince Garric really as great a man as Chalcus, Ilna?” Merota asked in her high, piercing voice.

The question so shocked Ilna that she burst out with a gust of loud laughter. Merota gaped: Ilna's reaction was almost as unusual for her as a fit of crying would have been.

Ilna's expression settled. A fit of crying was the other alternative.
She'd always considered showing emotion to be a sign of weakness; but she'd never denied that she was subject to weakness, either.

Rather than raise her voice, Ilna lifted Merota to speak into the child's ear. Ilna was slightly built—all the bulk in the family had gone to her brother Cashel—but she did much of her work with double-span looms, which often as not she set up by herself. She took her physical abilities for granted.

“Garric is a great man, child,” Ilna said. “The kingdom is lucky to have so wise and strong a leader, and Garric's friends are lucky too. As for Chalcus . . .”

She looked toward the bow. Chalcus stood on the railing, gesturing extravagantly as he described the way Prince Garric had winkled out the monster's brains with one thrust of his mighty sword and then had used his pommel to crush its ribs.