Authors: Dave Duncan
The clouds were dazzling white on limitless blue and they trailed their shadows over the sunlit hills. Below them, straight as an arrow, the Great East Way ran onward to the horizon, pointing the way to Hub. It was the most welcome sight Shandie had seen in months. The horse's hard muscles moved smoothly between his legs, iron shoes rang on the stones, and the wind cooled his face. At the end of the road was home, with his wife and the daughter he had never seen and soon the Opal Throne.
Up front rode Ylo with the shining standard. Hardgraa followed, flanked by two others. Then came Shandie and fifty on his tail. Other traffic heard the hooves and saw the glitter of bronze and made way. As the company thundered through hamlets or toll gates, small boys waved and citizens cheered. Probably few of them noticed his emblem on the standard; perhaps few even knew that he wore a legate's insignia. They were cheering the idea of Impire.
He was going home at last!
The passes had opened at last, and Shandie's party had been the first to cross, fighting through drifts. Unwelcome business in South Shimlundok had delayed him another month, but now he had reached the Great East Way, which ran from Hub to the Morning Sea- "a thousand leagues without a bend," one of his ancestors had boasted. That was an exaggeration, but not much of one. Only five hundred leagues separated him from Eshiala now.
Already the fields on either hand were turning gold and the hay had been gathered ... a good crop, too.
Eshiala, with her serenity, her sweet voice, her perfect features! Her body was smooth as a rockdove's breast and flawless. There was not a mole on her skin anywhere. Her hair is black as the raven's wing ... He had never seen a woman move as she did-she floated.
His favorite memory of her was the first time she came to court. Amid all the frippery and ostentation, she had wom a simple apricot-colored sheath and a thin coronet of diamonds. She had drifted through the aristocrat rabble in all their finery and she had cut them down like a scythe.
Others might think her cold, but he knew she was merely shy. She was not a passionate person, but then neither was he. Passion made him uncomfortable; fire and ice would not do well together. They were well matched and they had shown they could make children together, which was what mattered, especially for a future imperor. And perhaps there would be a little passion when they were reunited ...
Common sense said he should be taking his time on this journey, inspecting the cities and garrisons, because it might be years before he could make a personal tour through these parts. Common sense be damned!
As soon as Shandie shouted to him, Hardgraa seemed to know why. He let his mount drop back and the two cantered side by side. The centurion was scowling already.
"You're going to make a run for it?"
"Did you ever doubt I would?" A company of fifty could not travel at top speed, for no post ever held fifty good mounts. Tonight Shandie was going to push on ahead with just a handful of men.
"You're being predictable," Hardgraa growled, "and that's asking for trouble."
All his life Shandie had been guarded and it was true that there had been attempts on his life, although never anything very efficient. On the road he was far more vulnerable than he was in camp or palace. A couple of times he had outwitted conspiracies accidentally, by sheer speed, only to learn of them later. But now he had a reputation for speed.
"How much warning would you need to set up an ambush against a troop like this?" he demanded, shouting over the hooves.
Hardgraa spat while he thought over the problem. "Don't need to. Just one good bowman."
"Good suicidal bowmen are scarce. But it would still need time and a fair idea of when I'm due to ride underneath, wouldn't it? You can't keep bow or man strung tight for days on end."
Hardgraa grudgingly nodded agreement to that. "So?"
"So we'll outrun our news."
Even the imperturbable centurion was shaken by that suggestion. "Outrun the mail?"
A fit rider with money and good weather could ride three posts a day. If he was desperate enough, he could even fourpost, although few could keep that up for long. By law the imperial posting inns were supposed to stand eight leagues apart, and on average they did. A man on foot could walk from one post to the next in a day, and even a pack train could usually manage two. Four-posting meant more than thirty leagues a day, usually employing eight or even twelve horses; it was fast travel and slow suicide.
The Imperial Mail went faster than that, but a mail pouch changed men as well as horses. A courier blew his post horn to warn of his arrival, and another rider grabbed his sack before he even slowed down. No mundane rider could outrun the mail.
"State of emergency," Shandie said with a grin. "A proconsul can stop the mail. "
What he was suggesting was so close to blasphemy that he seemed to have shocked his chief of security, for the first time ever. Shandie jerked a thumb to indicate the men following. "You think Okratee can handle it?"
Hardgraa nodded confidently. Optio Okratee was his handpicked deputy, so of course he could handle anything. "How long? "
"Three or four days will do it," Shandie said. "Then the government stuff will take precedence, so any private letters will be held up longer. "
The centurion was grinning now, as the idea seized his imagination. "Who do we take?"
"Sir Acopulo and Lord Umpily, of course."
Neither looked capable of surviving one of Shandie's mad rides, but he knew them of old.
Acopulo, his political advisor, was a small, birdlike man, but his white hair made him look older than he really was, and he had one of the sharpest minds in the Impire. He could trace a strand of spider web a thousand leagues and name the spider. Acopulo could read all the patterns.
Umpily, the chief of protocol, was twice Acopulo's size. He was riding near the rear, with the billows of his gray cloak making him look even more bladderlike than usual. The fat man had more curious sources of information than the entire imperial bureaucracy in Hub. Young Ylo thought he knew everything that was happening in the Impire because he read all the official correspondence, but those told only the official facts. Shandie learned many more important facts from Umpily's gossip, just as he learned what those facts really meant from Acopulo's devious reasoning. The flabby Umpily would find the trip hard, but he was much tougher than he appeared.
"And me?" Hardgraa said, suddenly wary. "Of course."
Shandie would not omit his bodyguard and chief of security, nor a couple of good swordsmen to back him up. They should not be required to do anything except look dangerous, but to travel with no guards at all would be plain stupidity-and also unkind to Hardgraa, the paradigm of the fighting man, old campaigner, ex-gladiator and loyal as they came. He ate granite for breakfast and bronze for lunch.
"And Ylo."
"Him? " Hardgraa barked, astonished and obviously wanting to add, "Why?"
"Think of him as a mascot," Shandie said, smiling.
Ylo was undoubtedly enjoying himself up front, holding the standard high and letting the ends of his white wolfskin flap in the breeze. The promiscuous young demon reveled in his good looks and his reputation for heroism because they brought him women. He probably did not realize how his legend inspired the legions, also, and thereby aided Shandie. If he did know, he did not care. There were very few things Ylo did care about, except Ylo. Ylo was loyal because he chose to be, but Shandie had some thoughts about using Ylo when they returned to Hub.
Hardgraa, Acopulo, Umpily, Ylo. Yes, those few. At the next posting inn Shandie would stop the mail and leave Okratee and the troop behind to see that it stayed stopped. He would carry on with his chosen few and Evil take the saddle sores!
These same few were going to be the nucleus of the next imperor's court, the inner circle. The Impire was moribund and due for a shakeup such as it had not known since the morning his great-great grandmother Abnila threatened to abolish the Senate. Shandie was ready to do the shaking, with the help of his friends. He would start by winning justice for Ylo, so that there could be no doubts about what the next imperor stood for. The chosen few.
A handful of men.
Oak House, official residence of the Prince Imperial, was located just within the northern wall of the palace complex, on the edge of a steep scarp. Its balconies offered a magnificent view of the city, with the ghostly towers of the White Palace in the distance and a silver glint of Cenmere on the horizon beyond. Eshiala had counted twenty-two temples visible from there, but she might have missed dozens more. Half of Hub lay spread out before her like a marble forest and it was very splendid, if one cared for great cities.
She was not looking at the view at the moment, though. She was leaning on the balustrade with her sister and being nagged as usual.
Ashia's idea of a suitable gown for a summer afternoon involved incredible quantities of taffeta and lace and whalebone. It represented months of work by skilled seamstresses. It was encrusted with pearls and intricate embroidery. Naturally, a lady could wear such a dress only once and must then discard it. Her hair was emblazoned with seashells and silk bows and more gems.
The summer day was baking hot. Eshiala wore a simple cotton shift, with almost nothing underneath it, although no one knew that but she.
"You do realize," Ashia said in her most venomous tone, "that when you become impress, everyone will have to dress as you do? "
Eshiala mulled over the question and decided it was nonsensical. "No, I don't see that at all."
"Well, you should! It is obvious."
"Then let them. What I wear is a great deal more comfortable, I'm sure."
Her sister drew a deep breath of disbelief. Whalebone creaked. "Comfort is not the point! If everyone takes to dressing like a grocer's daughter, then what happens to all the maids and seamstresses? What happens to the hairdressers and jewelers? You'll ruin half the workers of Hub!"
Eshiala had no answer to that, never having considered the problem. She privately considered that Ashia herself would look a great deal better in something simple, instead of being primped and painted like a figurine. She had always been on the plump side, but surely she did not need quite so much scaffolding to contain her figure. She seemed to flow out of it at the top. Perhaps that was the idea, though.
Maya would waken from her nap soon. She was always brought to her mother then; today she would be a welcome distraction from her nagging aunt.
"You know what they think of you, don't you?" Ashia inquired snidely, gesturing with a thumb to indicate the door from the balcony. "Your gaggle of goslings?" She was referring, of course, to Eshiala's maids of honor. Those genteel maidens were at the moment waiting for the princess and duchess to return to the tea party and undoubtedly having a good gossip about the pair of them in the meantime.
"I know very well what they think of me," Eshiala said patiently. "They think I am a grocer's daughter." They undoubtedly thought the same of her sister, of course.
"Pah! They wonder why you insist on behaving like a grocer's daughter. "
The maids of honor were perhaps the worst of Eshiala's burdens, in the continued absence of her husband. Of course a princess and future impress must be attended by maids of honor, however much she might prefer not to be. Normally being a lady-in-waiting was a great honor, and the lady so attended would see that the girls chosen were taught the ultimate refinements in courtly behavior. When their duenna was little older than they were and knew a great deal less about the curriculum, the relationship became sadly skewed. They disapproved of Eshiala because their matronly mothers did, and they sniggered behind their fans at her.
She was miserably aware that she was failing them and doing an atrociously bad job of keeping them virtuous and safe from the predatory attentions of their male counterparts, the gentleman dandies of the court. Two had been forced to leave her household in disgrace already, and she was astonished that it was only two.
"They're even worse than they were when I was here, " Ashia commented with a satisfied smirk.
"You were a great help. " Certainly, those first terrible months in Hub, Eshiala had been glad of her sister's company. On the whole, though, life had been easier since Ashia's marriage to the old senator.
"You know what they call you? The Ice Impress."
Eshiala did not care what her maids of honor called her behind her back, but she said nothing. Surely Maya must be awake by now?
"Tell me," Ashia said, turning in a swirl of taffeta, "how painful is labor?"
"Darling! You're not! How wonderful!"
"No, I'm not! " her sister admitted, looking slightly abashed-which was a great rarity for her. "But I have been advised that `nativity would be fiscally expedient.' "
"Fiscally?" Eshiala repeated, bewildered.
Ashia smiled as a cat might show its claws. "When the old goat dies, the entailed estates will go to his son, naturally, and there is going to be a battle imperial over what is and what is not entailed! If I have provided another heir, the courts will look upon my arguments with more favor. I shall expect considerable pressure to be applied from above, of course, darling, but even so."
Eshiala was appalled. "Interfere with a court of justice?"
"Oh, don't be so tiresome and provincial! I'm sure, Shandie will understand, even if you don't. But, just as insurance, I think I may have to make the necessary sacrifice and produce a son for Old Frosty. "
Eshiala knew her face was turning pink. "Is it, er, possible? " Ashia roared with laughter, momentarily forgetting the courtly demeanor she cultivated so painstakingly. "In the way you mean, it's . . . well, `improbable' would be a charitable description. But there are other ways to arrange such things and I'm sure he won't query. "
"You wouldn't dare! "
"Oh, you poor innocent! Well, never mind. You survived the consequences, so I'm sure I can. Revolting, messy business, undoubtedly. Better to travel hopefully than arrive. "