TheBird of the Tide moved with the same heavy ease as the rolling sea. Ilna didn't like boats, but theBird was a part of the sea in the same fashion that her shuttle became part of the fabric it wove. The oarsmen kept up a deliberate pace that nonetheless drove them toward Terness with surprising speed. The Queen of Heaven and the barges looting it were already out of sight.
"Captain Ohert had doubled the watch," said Pointin, sitting with his back to the deckhouse. He'd sipped from the sack of wine Chalcus offered him as soon as they got aboard, but now he was cradling the sewn goatskin like it was all that kept him from sinking into the deeps.
"The regular sailors, I mean," he went on; mumbling, exhausted from fatigue and fear. "Half the guards were awake too, and the other half were sleeping armed and with their boots on."
"Land in sight, sir," called Kulit from the bow. Hutena stood near enough to Ilna, Chalcus, and the supercargo that he could have helped if called to, but not so close that he had to overhear.
Ilna smiled faintly. The crewmen had conducted themselves all this night with skill and quiet courage, but they were deathly afraid of wizardry. Hutena didn't want to hear the details of what had struck theQueen of Heaven, and the oarsmen let their eyes rest anywhere but on Pointin's face.
Chalcus had chosen his men well. Of course.
"I was asleep," Pointin said. "Why shouldn't I be? I didn't think that thieving rogue Lusius would dare anything since he knew we were on our guard, and anyway I wouldn't have known what to look for."
He lifted the wineskin, then stared at it as if he wasn't sure what it was or what its purpose might me. He lowered it again, frowning and silent. His eyes had gone unfocused.
"What awakened you, Master Pointin?" Chalcus asked in a mild voice. He hadn't spoken much, letting the supercargo tell his story in bits and pieces as they came to the surface of his mind. Imposing a form on the telling might have thrown the man into shock and locked his tongue.
Ilna could see that Pointin was on the verge of collapse, even with delicate handling. She'd said nothing at all, but the patterns which her fingers knotted in the light of the now-risen moon were as soothing as the glow of embers to an awakened sleeper.
"It was the light," Pointin said, frowning now with concentration. "It came through the walls of my cabin. It was blue; I guess I'd call it blue, but I've never seen anything like it."
He looked up with a desperate expression. "I don't know how to describe it!" he said.
"We know the sort of light you mean," said Ilna quietly. She spread a pattern, then folded it between her palms and began to unpick the fabric as quickly as her touch had formed it. "We know why it would awaken you."
"I heard people shouting on deck," Pointin went on. "I ran out immediately; I thought the ship had caught fire and I'd burn."
He shook his head, then deliberately raised the wineskin to his lips and sucked at its contents. He looked calmer as he lowered the skin, but a muscle in his left cheek was twitching.
"It was worse," he said. "Fire I could've understood."
The rocks framing the entrance of Terness Harbor loomed ahead of theBird of the Tide; the oarsmen had stroked their way back with no more than an occasional glance over the shoulder. Kulit began calling low-voiced directions; Hutena lifted the boarding pike which lay on the deck beside him and held it ready for fending off.
"Wefell," Pointin said. His plump face grew taut again and his arms began to tremble. Hutena had given the supercargo his bad weather cloak to cover the silk sleeping tunic, but the fellow still trembled uncontrollably.
"It wasn't really falling, not at first anyway," he said, "but it felt like…"
He looked from Chalcus to Ilna and back. "Did you ever take a step in the dark and the ground wasn't there?" he said. "That's what it was like, the feeling in your gut that the ground wasn't there."
Pointin drank again, this time slobbering wine over his face and throat. "The sky was dark and yellow," he said, his voice rising. "The sea was gone. There were rocks around us and the air was hot, blazing hot. It stank of brimstone. I can still smell it on my clothes. I can still smell it!"
"Yes," said Ilna, spreading a new pattern before the supercargo. "We can smell it too, but you're safe now."
She wondered if that was really true. Pointin was as safe as the rest of them were, she supposed. That was enough forher sense of honesty.
Pointin nodded three times with seeming determination. "The deck tipped and threw me against the cabin again," he said. "If it had tipped the other way it might've put me over the railing, but it didn't. We were on dry land and the ship had rolled to one side of the keel."
He giggled. "One side or the other, and it didn't throw me out."
"Did you know where you were?" Chalcus said, loudly enough to drag Pointin back from the brink to which his rising laughter was rushing. "Was it a land you'd seen before, my fellow?"
"Land?" said the supercargo. "It was no land, it was the Underworld! There was almost no light and what there was came came from the whole yellow sky. Clouds swirled all around us-thicker or thinner but neverthin. There wasn't any sun, that I know. I saw spires of rock, and the wind was blowing. I saw red fire on the horizon. I think it was a volcano, but I don't know for sure."
He slurped wine, then choked and sneezed some out of his nostrils. Chalcus whipped off the bandanna he used as a headband and offered it to Pointin. The fellow mopped himself, then handed the bandanna back with a grateful smile. Chalcus folded the cloth one-handed at his side.
"I saw something coming toward us," Pointin said. "Out of the fog, out of the shadows. It was on two legs but…"
The silence lingered. "Was it a man?" Chalcus asked softly.
"It wasn't human," said Pointin. "I don't think it was human. It glittered, even in that light, and it was huge. I… I went into my cabin and hid in the specie chest."
He looked up fiercely again. "We couldn't fight demons!" he shouted. Lowering his eyes he went on in a less angrily defensive tone, "Anyway, I'm not a soldier. I couldn't have done any good that way. But the chest was iron and iron has strength against demons, so I've heard."
"So I believe," murmured Chalcus, but the way his fingers stroked the eared pommel of his sword showed Ilna that he wasn't simply agreeing with the supercargo. "Could you hear what was happening before you got into the chest?"
Pointin shrugged. His shoulders were hunched and his knees drawn up as though he was still trying to hide in the iron box. "I heard shouts," he said. "Captain Ohert called something about getting the cover off the stern hold. The covers were cleated to stay firm in a storm; I doubt they'd have been able to get one open in time to hide below."
"Nor would it have done them much good if they'd managed," Chalcus said, his lips smiling faintly but his eyes focused on another time, another life. "There's always some who try, though, thinking it better to hide than to fight."
TheBird of the Tide had reached the harbor narrows. Ilna heard an oarblade scrape rock and a muffled curse from Nabarbi, but neither Hutena nor Kulit needed to push off with their pikes.
"I'd just closed the lid over me when I heard my cabin door open," said Pointin. "There'd been screams from on deck. I thought… whatever it was, whatever it was had come for me. I hadn't had time to tie the lid yet."
He licked his lips feverishly. His hands clenched the flaccid wineskin, squeezing an occasional drip onto his tunic. He didn't notice it.
"It wasn't that," Pointin continued, "it was men-two of the guards, I think. I couldn't hear the words but they were talking with Blaise accents. And then the door broke in and…"
He shrugged again. "There was shouting," he said. "The words didn't mean anything, just, you know, shouting?"
"I know," whispered Chalcus.
"There was a fight," Pointin said. "I could hear things breaking. And there were more screams and, and…"
Ilna spread her latest pattern before the supercargo. When his eyes finally took it in, he lost some of his pallid tension and began to breathe normally again. "I heard crunching," he said. "It must have been very loud for me to hear it. And after a while the screaming stopped. Then there was nothing. I don't know for how long."
"How were you able to breathe?" Ilna said. What room there'd been in the treasure chest was scarcely enough for Pointin's doubled-up body.
"I'd tied the lid closed," he said, casual about the question because his mind was reliving horrors instead. "The silk had enough stretch for the lid to raise a crack when I needed to breathe. The air stank of brimstone, but I had to breathe."
Ilna wouldn't pretend she liked Pointin, but he was smartand quick witted, which was a different thing. The fact that he'd used his wits solely to preserve his own life shouldn't matter to her, since she couldn't imagine there was anything he could've done to affect what happened to the rest of those aboard theQueen of Heaven.
It did matter, though. Ilna knew other smart, quick witted people who wouldn't 've made the decision Pointin did. No more than she'd have done that herself.
He looked up, his expression puzzled again. "There was anotherchange," he said. "A fall like before, only a splash and I could feel the ship was floating again. And then I heard voices, but I was afraid t-t-to…"
"Did you see the wizardlight?" Chalcus said, his voice calm and calming. "Like what awakened you?"
"No," said Pointin. "I was in the chest, though. Perhaps the iron…?
"Perhaps the iron," Chalcus agreed softly.
"Ship the starboard oars!" Hutena ordered. TheBird of the Tide was easing back to the slip she'd left hours before. The eastern sky was almost bright enough to read by.
Ilna smiled. If you could read, of course; which the supercargo alone of those aboard the vessel was able to do.
"Well, Master Pointin," Chalcus said, "we're here in Terness. While I won't tell you what to do, I think you'd be wise to stay aboard theBird, cramped though you'll find her, until we've stepped our mast and are able to sail for Valles. We'll do that tomorrow morning, nothing else appearing."
"But what about Commander Lusius?" Pointin said. "When he comes back, won't he try to take me away?"
"That one?" said Chalcus as theBird of the Tide thudded gently into her berth. Kulit and Nabarbi hopped up to the dock, holding lines. "Not openly, not even in Terness. He thinks we have Prince Garric's ear, and he knows word would get out if he slaughtered us. Something will come, I think; but not openly, and not till late night."
Chalcus laughed. He drew his dagger and threw it up, juggling it from hand to hand while he continued to watch the supercargo.
"He knows that his business is with us, now, not just you, my good fellow," Chalcus said.
"Yes," said Ilna as she looped her hank of cords away in her sleeve for use at another time. "And our business is with him!"
The crystal vessel-the Queen Ship, Alfdan had called it-was only a little more comfortable to sit on than it'd looked to Sharina from outside. The planes of blurry light were solid, but they were also slick as ice. The deck's slight angle-the beach sloped, and the ship hadn't nosed straight into it-meant that Sharina had to cling to the mast or she'd have slid back onto the shingle as surely as sunset.
Holding on wasn't easy either. The mast was of the same immaterial solidity as the deck, so it tried to slip through her fingers.
"I'm a wizard," Alfdan said, sounding more defensive than he had any reason to be. "A real wizard!"
He'd placed himself on the high side of the deck and braced himself against the mast with an outstretched foot. Sharina was sure that if she tried the same technique she'd slide just as she was doing now; it was a matter of practice and perfect balance.
"I never doubted it," she said. "You-you and your men, you were completely concealed. Even from Beard here."
"It wouldn't have stopped me from killing every one of them!" the axe muttered-also in a defensive tone, and with as little cause. "Arrows indeed! Beard would've drunk all their blood beforethey could bring my mistress down!"
Sharina smiled. The axe showed more enthusiasm about the prospect of her bleeding to death atop a mound of mangled corpses than she could muster, but that was true of many of Beard's enthusiasms.
"Yes, well…," said Alfdan, lowering his eyes. "I didn't want you to think that because I use devices like the Cape of Shadows-"
He plucked the hem of his sleeve. When he moved, the cape fluttered like an ordinary garment, but though the shape changed Sharina couldn't see folds or wrinkles. It was a swatch of blackness, not fabric.
"-and the Queen Ship, that I'm not a wizard. But it's true that my power would be… not great… without them to aid me. Except in one thing."
Up close, Alfdan was an ordinary looking man. He was thin and nervous, but so was Franca; so were most people in this world, Sharina supposed. Most of the few who survived.
"I can find objects of power," the wizard explained. "See them, feel them, know where they'll be. I knew the axe Beard would be coming here, so we waited for it."
He nodded. The axe lay across her lap with her left hand on the grip.
"Do you know what Beard is?" Alfdan said, his deep-set eyes focusing on hers.
"She knows that Beard could split you scalp to crutch, little man," the axe said with unexpected venom. "She knows that he'll beglad to drink your blood, thin and sour though he knows it'll be!"
"I know that Beard's the reason that we're still alive, most of us," Sharina said, "after the fauns attacked. That makes him my friend. I don't need to hear anything about him that he doesn't choose to tell me."
"Whatever you please," Alfdan said, licking his lips and turning his head to the side. "I hadn't expected the fauns. Did you…"
He met her eyes again.
"Had you seen the fauns before?" he said. "Had they been pursuing you?"
Beard cackled with glee. "Do you think you're the only one who can see things before they happen, wizardling?" he said before Sharina could reply. "They weren't following us, but they may have been waiting just as you were. Or they may have been waiting for you!"
Alfdan played with his hem again, staring intently as if he saw something important in its lack of being. "I found the Cape of Shadows," he said, "in a casket among the roots of an ancient tree that had fallen that morning. The roots pulled the casket up from the ground with them, and I was there to find it!"
"And this ship too, I suppose?" Sharina said. She'd have tapped the deck, but she needed both her hands. She felt Beard quiver with words too faint to hear; it was like having a purring cat on her lap, a cat of sharp-edged steel.
"Yes, the Queen Ship," the wizard agreed absently. "It was in a cave on Ornifal. The entrance had been under water for millennia, but I found it when the sea receded. In another day-"
He looked up fiercely again. Sharina wondered how much of Alfdan's jumpy behavior was from fatigue and how much was simply madness.
"-a glacier would have covered it and locked it away for all time. Except that I found it!"
"I see that," Sharina said quietly, stroking the axe in her lap as she thought of glaciers on Ornifal. "What has that to do with me?"
She wasn't afraid of Alfdan. She wouldn't have been afraid of him even without Beard, but she knew that Alfdan, like an injured dog, might snap at her out of pain and blind fury. She didn't want that to happen, but there's no way to control what a madman may do. She'd deal with whatever happened.
"The Queen Ship sails over the sea, not in it," Alfdan said, calm and seemingly reasonable again. "Over the sea or the land either one-it doesn't matter to the ship."
"All right," said Sharina. Her fingers were slipping. She shifted her grip, snatching at the mast before she could begin to slide off the deck.
What does this ship of light weigh? Could a man or a hundred men lift it from the beach using ordinary muscles instead of wizardry?
"We're searching for the Key of Reyazel," Alfdan said, lifting his head and speaking in a consciously portentous voice. "Will you come with us, Sharina os-Reise?"
Sharina frowned. "Why should I?" she said bluntly. Did Alfdan think he could compel her by his art, now that his men had refused to use force on her?
Couldthe wizard compel her by his art, whatever he thought?
"You're alone," Alfdan said. "We are many, and-"
"Franca is with me," Sharina said.
Alfdan sniffed. "Yes, I saw him," he said. "A sturdy help, I'm sure!"
"And Beard is with her, wizard," said the axe with ringing clarity. "Mistress, let me kill him now. The others will follow you, see if they don't!"
"We are many," Alfdan repeated, wetting his lips with his tongue again. "And I have the treasures which allow us to flourish even in this world. The Cape of Shadows, the Queen Ship; other objects now, and perhaps in the futuremany more objects. If you slew me… if you wereable to slay me, as this one wishes… they'd be quite useless to you."
Sharina looked at the wizard. She neither liked nor trusted him, but he was certainly right that she couldn't use tools which required wizardry; nor, she suspected, was she likely to meet another wizard-in this place or anywhere-whom she'd like or trust any better than she did Alfdan.
She smiled. If she hadn't met Tenoctris, she'd have believed all wizards were arrogantly self-willed, and that most were actively evil besides.
Alfdan misunderstood her expression. "Do you doubt me?" he demanded. "Do you think-"
"I know you're a wizard," Sharina said, raising her voice enough to ride over his. "I know I'm not and that I could no more use your cape than I could fly. But I'm still not convinced that we should join you, Master Alfdan."
The wizard leaned back and chuckled, suddenly at ease again. "Well, mistress," he said. "The fauns were looking for something, were they not? Or do you believe it was chance that brought a pack of them here, now?"
Sharina kept a strait face. "I don't suppose it was chance," she said. "I don't think it was, no."
"So they might have been looking for me, but nothing of the sort has happened to me in the past," Alfdan said. "Never in the ten years since She came. But you, mistress… you just came to our world, you say. If their friends or many more of their friends come looking for you again, would you rather run from them on your two legs? Or would you sail away with us on the Queen Ship?"
"I see," said Sharina, her hand motionless on Beard's helve. "Yes, that's a reason to join you. Now, Master Alfdan, tell me why youwant us with you?"
"Because the axe in your hands is almost better than having it in mine, mistress," the wizard said. He laughed again, but this time the humor trailed off in a giggle that was close to something else. "There's finding the Key of Reyazel, which I can do easily; and there's bringing it up from where it lies. If you and your axe will agree to fetch me the Key of Reyazel, then you're welcome to all the protection to be had from my band and my art, I assure you."
"There'll be things to kill," Beard said in a steely whisper. "Blood to drink, mistress, much blood for Beard to drink!"
"I'll get this key for you…," said Sharina. "If you take me where I want to go in exchange."
"Where is that?" said Alfdan with a frown.
"I don't know," she said. She smiled without humor. "I just arrived. Does it matter?"
Alfdan shrugged. "I don't suppose so," he said. "All right, mistress. But first you must fetch the key."
He and the axe both began to laugh in high-pitched voices.
"Sit in the middle, Lord Cashel," Syl said as she got into the bow of the craft and knelt facing backward. "Getchin will guide the boat. He's good at that."
"He weighs too much," said Getchin, the blond man. He stood in the stern, holding a slender crystal rod about as long as his arms would spread. "You shouldn't come with us, Syl."
"He doesn't weigh more than Elpel and Gromis both," Syl said composedly. "Not quite."
Cashel looked doubtfully at the vessel he was supposed to get into. Not only was it shaped like a pastel pink milkweed pod, it seemed to be equally flimsy. He wasn't much happier about the prospect than Getchin was.
"Are you sure I won't just step through the bottom?" Cashel said.
"It makes no difference to me, since I'll be carried whether you enter the airboat or hike on your own legs, master," said Evne from his shoulder. "But it's three days journey if you walk it, so we'd best be getting on… unless it's your plan to bury Kotia instead of rescuing her?"
"I don't have a plan," Cashel muttered, stepping over the boat's curved side. It had a warm, firm roughness to his bare feet, the feel of a thick, newly-sawn plank. "I just thought somebody ought to…"
Cashel thought somebody ought to give the Visitor some of what he was dishing out to other folks. Saying that-and saying that he meant to be the fellow who did it-sounded like bragging. If things worked out, Cashel wouldn't need talk; and if they didn't, well, at the end he wouldn't have to worry that he'd made a fool of himself in addition to losing a fight.
"Well sit down, then," said Getchin peevishly. "And keep your weight balanced, if you would!"
Cashel looked at the blond man. Getchin was as tall as he was, but he was only of middling build and soft besides. He glared at Cashel, then flushed. No one spoke until Cashel turned and seated himself with his usual care. The boat's interior was hollow with neither thwarts nor furnishings of any kind. Cashel held his quarterstaff across the gunwales before him.
" Getchin hopes to replace the late Farran in Syl's affections, master," the toad said in a voice that folks deep in the circle of spectators could hear clearly. "He regards you as a rival, so he regrets that Syl insists on coming along at the start of your heroic endeavor."
"Look, let's get moving, can we?" Cashel said. He didn't look over his shoulder at Getchin, and he wished that Syl wasn't seated staring right into his face.
"Getchin is a fool," Syl said distinctly. "To believehe has any chance, I mean."
The toad laughed. The boat lifted, jerking forward with a wobbly violence like a skiff rowed by an angry man. Someone on the ground cheered, and then the whole crowd was shouting, "Lord Cashel!" and "Long live the wizard Cashel!"
Syl smiled faintly. Her eyes looked through Cashel, not at him.
The boat slanted upward till it was about a furlong above the ground. It steadied, too; they trembled a little when Cashel turned his head to look around, but nothing serious.
He half expected Getchin to say something anyway, but the fellow just stood there in the stern with his crystal rod held out crossways like a rope walker using a balance pole. He didn't seem to notice Cashel-or Syl, either one.
"At the beginning of the First Cycle…," Evne said. She sounded like one of the priests reading the Hymn of the Lady to the assembled borough at the end of the Tithe Procession. "A moon fell to earth. Its impact formed a great bowl surrounded by ranges of mountains."
"What do you mean, 'the First Cycle'?" Syl asked, looking at the toad on Cashel's left shoulder.
"This is the Seventeenth Cycle," Evne said. "I can't imagine why you would ask, except to satisfy intellectual curiosity… which rather surprises me, given the source."
Syl smiled at her. "Thank you, Mistress Toad," she said. "Pray continue."
"The manors are built on the peaks," Evne said. "The streams which flow inward drain into the bowl and form a swamp because there's no outlet. More than water sinks toward the center and collects, so human arts aren't sufficient to allow the airboats to fly into the swamp. You will go on foot from the edge, master."
"There's power in the air above the Great Swamp, Lord Cashel," Syl said. "Our boats rise or fall or simply come apart if they venture there… But of course there's no reason to go there at all."
"There's no reason to leave the manor!" Getchin snarled. Lapsing into a desperate whine he added, "Oh, why did this happen to me?"
"One answer might be that it spared some useful person from discomfort," said Evne. "Though I don't expect that that's true."
Cashel smiled. When he noticed that Syl was smiling also, at him, he blushed.
Clearing his throat he said, "But the Visitor flies there?"
"The Visitor does as he wills," Evne agreed. "Or so he has always done."
They'd risen considerably higher. Cashel could see the ridges curving beneath him the way ripples spread on a pond. There wasn't enough forest to color the general gray rock background, but creeks glittered jaggedly. On more peaks than Cashel could count with his fingers stood manors built of a variety of gleaming materials.
Several of them were in ruins. The manors had no enemy except the Visitor, but he seemed sufficient.
A sea of fog rose over the ridge ahead. "The Great Swamp," Evne said. "You'll find the air there warmer, master. A great deal of power has settled in the basin."
"There's monsters in the swamp," Syl said. "Sometimes the mist clears and they've been seen. But you slew the dragon of Portmayne, Lord Cashel. You don't fear monsters, do you?"
Cashel smiled. "I don't guess I do," he said. Maybe it was bragging to say that, but he wasn't going to lie; and anyway, Syl was a pretty thing in her way.
"I'm setting us down," Getchin said in a hoarse voice. "I don't dare go any closer. It isn't possible!"
"Not for him, at any rate," Evne said with an audible sniff. "But this is good enough, master. The ground here on the south edge of the basin is firmer than that to the east and north, though there's little enough to choose."
The boat slid downward and past the tops of trees clinging to cracks in the rock. There were hardwoods here, oaks and beeches, and down on the valley floor grew a few tall, straight-trunked trees with shiny, oval leaves and big flowers.
Ahead was a patch of warm mist. They drove into it, slowed, and set down on a plain of pulpy grasses. There were low banks a stone's throw to either side. The trickle meandering down the center of the plain must be a roaring freshet in the spring.
"All right, get out," Getchin said, standing with his wand upright before him. "Please, Mas… that is, Lord Cashel. It's not safe here!"
Cashel rose and stepped out of the boat. Though it rested on a narrow keel, it didn't topple over the way an ordinary ship would do if the tide left it on dry ground. He wondered how they made it do that.
"Wait," said Syl, getting out behind him. She untied her hair ribbon, a pretty violet color like the last band of the rainbow. Cashel had never seen cloth of that shade before.
"Syl, we mustn't-" Getchin whined.
"Shut up, you fool!" said Syl, stretching the ribbon between her hands. Evne laughed from Cashel's shoulder.
"Lord Cashel," the girl said. "Stretch out your left arm, if you would be so good."
"Ma'am…?" said Cashel, but he obeyed. Syl looped the ribbon over his sleeve above the biceps and tied it into a quick square knot. It wasn't tight around his arm, but the friction of cloth to cloth would hold it against his tunic unless things got too active… as of course they might.
"I'd like you to wear this token as you go forward," Syl said. "In memory of Manor Bossian, let us say. It shouldn't get in your way."
Cashel frowned. "It's likely to get lost, mistress," he said. "I'll have other things on my mind, and-"
"Then it gets lost!" Syl said. "It's only a ribbon, after all. But you'll wear it till then?"
"I guess I will, yes," Cashel said. "Evne, I think we'd best-"
"Am I holding you up, master?" the toad snapped. "Are you waiting for me to pick you up and walk off with you?"
"Right," muttered Cashel as he turned, giving his quarterstaff a slow spin. Glancing back over his shoulder, being careful not to meet Syl's eyes, he said, "Thanks for carrying me this far. I hope things go well for you."
He started off, walking faster than he'd usually have done. He didn't want any more conversation. He heard Getchin ask Syl to get back into the boat-and her snarl at him in a voice like an angry cat.
But she didn't call to Cashel, and he was just as happy about that. He wouldn't have answered, but he wouldn't have been happy not to
"Atten-shun!" bellowed a voice with the twanging accent of Northern Ornifal as Garric walked into courtyard of the barracks of the 4^th Company of the Carcosa City Watch. A squad of Blood Eagles were in front of him, another squad behind, and the remainder of the demi-company had taken key positions in the barracks before Lord Attaper would permit Garric's visit to go ahead.
"Permit!" snorted Carus in Garric's mind. "Every bodyguard is born an old lady, it seems to me."
Perhaps, thought Garric. But it's generally easier to go along with them, and in this case Attaper may have a point.
Liane walked primly to his left. A Blood Eagle-one ofher guards-was a pace behind her, carrying the travelling desk with her documents. The guards had explained that they'd rather carry the gear themselves than worry about a servant being that close, and everybody from Liane on down had insisted that Prince Garric couldn't do servants' work in public.
"Generally easier to go along with them," Carus parroted back with a gust of laughter.
"Your highness!" shouted the commander, a former cavalry decarch named Pascus or-Pascus. "The 4^th Company is all present to receive you!"
Garric smiled faintly. Normally the report would' ve been, "All present or accounted for," because there were always men on sick leave or detached service. Not today: every man on the muster rolls of the newly-constituted company was here to greet their prince.
"Some of them look like they'll be on their backs in bed as soon as you've left the compound, though," Carus noted with amusement. That was true enough, and their commander himself had a febrile brightness that suggested he was still suffering from his injuries.
Pascus had been among the first troopers to batter their way through the back wall of the Temple of the Mistress in Donelle; he'd lost half his left foot in the fighting there. His family had been retainers of Lord Waldron's family for as far back as parish records went, but even without the army commander's enthusiastic recommendation Pascus would've been an obvious choice for promotion to a job in the City Watch.
"Captain Pascus," Garric said, "tell your men to stand easy."
His voice rang across the courtyard loudly enough that Liane winced. Garric hadn't learned to call orders through the clangor of a battlefield the way Carus had, but a shepherd shouts most of the time if he expects to be heard by another human being.
"Stand easy!" Pascus ordered, just as loudly. "Your prince will address you!"
Until the morning before, these barracks had been the stables and servants quarters of one of the private houses owned by the priesthoods-the priests of the Lady, as it happened, but it made Garric's blood boil to attach Her name or the Shepherd's either one to gangs of thugs. Lord Anda had donated the buildings to the kingdom on behalf of his priesthood; without protest, which was just as well.
A part of Garric and the whole of King Carus wanted to hang the man whose gift had snatched Sharina away to the-Shepherd-knew-where. It wasn't entirely fair to blame Anda for that, because the urn wasn't really his gift-but that same part of Garric wasn't in a mood to be fair, either.
The buildings were easy to come by. Filling them with men who'd act to defend the law and the citizenry rather than this or that individual who believed wealth and strength made them the law-that was more difficult. The process had brought Garric here to the northern corner of the city.
Garric stepped through the line of Blood Eagles and surveyed the new members of the City Watch. The members of the new City Watch, in fact; Carcosa hadn't had a public force to maintain order since the fall of the Old Kingdom.
"You men haven't worked together before," Garric said. He wore his silvered breastplate and the helmet with the gilt wings flaring to either side. This was a public occasion, one on which his job was to beseen. "You're starting out with fresh companions and officers to protect the safety of all the residents of this city. Not just the rich ones, not just the ones who can afford to hire muscle… though them too, so long as they're behaving as good citizens."
The company was lined up in four ranks of twenty five men each. They wore linen cuirasses and protective headgear, though there hadn't been time to standardize that as yet. For the most part they were in iron caps confiscated from the temple thugs, but some men wore leather hats and those who came from the army-Pascus among them-had generally kept their bronze helmets.
"You don't work for me," Garric said, his voice echoing. "You don't work for the Vicar of Haft, either, though your salaries will be paid through his office. And you particularly don't work for an individual nobleman any more, those of you who used to be in private households."
The City Watch-the whole body, not just this company, though Liane had seen to it that the individual companies were widely mixed also-came from assorted backgrounds. Some-including all those who started out with rank in the new organization-were former soldiers from the royal army who'd been pensioned for age or wounds or who simply wanted to retire. Many of those would be abandoning families on Ornifal or elsewhere, but right now Garric and the kingdom had more pressing problems.
Others had been members of Count Lascarg's household troops, but most were former retainers of the city's noble families. King Carus smiled broadly. "If I'd had a fellow as clever as your Lord Tadai," he remarked, "I might not've gotten myself in so much trouble by solving all my troubles with a sword. Though I'd probably have thrown a table at him for disagreeing with me and he'd have left. The Shepherd knows I didthatoften enough; that or worse."
Liane had drawn up the rosters with the help of her spies and a group of non-coms seconded from the royal army and the Blood Eagles both; Lords Waldron and Attaper had checked the results. She'd suggested that households be limited to four bodyguards apiece to create an immediate pool of personnel for the Watch.
Lord Tadai had suggested a refinement: anyone appearing in public with more than four male attendants between the ages of 18 and 45 was taxed at the rate of a hundred gold Riders per man, per year, payable immediately. After that had been enforced-reasonably politely, but with the royal army stationed in Carcosa there wasn't going to be resistance-a few times, the nobles had released most of their guards. If you couldn't display them in public, there wasn't any point in having them.
"You serve the citizens," Garric said. "Everyone who wants to live in peace with his neighbors. Your job is to make it possible for them to do that-and my job is the same as yours!"
Each watchman had a sturdy three-foot club of oak or hickory. They weren't quarterstaffs, but they weren't mere batons of office either. A quarterstaff was a wonderful weapon-a wonderfultool -in trained hands, but training took time, and even so it was awkward to use in a building or a narrow alley.
Besides clubs, the watchmen carried short, slender swords like those of the troops of the royal phalanx. The phalanx used long pikes as its primary weapon, but at close quarters or in an ambush the men had their blades. Carcosa was too dangerous a city at present for Garric to expect men to patrol it with a club and a rattle to summon good citizens to their aid.
"You've been chosen because my advisors and I believe you're responsible men," Garric said. "You have a responsible job. And be very clear, fellow soldiers, that I willhold you responsible for the way you perform this job!"
He put his hands on his hips. The company cheered-the cheers led, he noticed, by the veterans of the royal army, but joined quickly enough and with equal enthusiasm by the rest of the watchmen.
Garric saluted, thumping his right fist against his left forearm-the gesture made more sense if you knew that it had originated among soldiers with a spear in their right hand and a shield on their left arm-and turned on his heel. The company continued to cheer as the prince and his considerable entourage left the compound.
"We'll go to the barracks of the 1^st Company now," Liane said, her fingers flipping the boards of a notebook whose contents she had memorized, "then back to the palace for meetings until the tenth hour. We'll visit the 6^th Company before we eat, then get the rest tomorrow."
Garric grimaced as he handed Liane into her sedan chair; she couldn't possibly walk any distance wearing thick-soled court buskins. Everyone-everyone concerned with protocol-would've been happier if Garric had ridden in another chair or at least on a horse, but he wasn't a good enough horseman to risk that on the cobblestone streets. As for being carried in a sedan chair-he'd have died first.
"I'd rather be doing something real," he muttered to her.
Liane touched the side of his chin to get his attention. "Your highness," she said, her tone formal despite the intimacy of her gesture. "If you sail from island to island crushing opponents and public order collapses behind you as soon as you leave, the kingdom will fall just as surely as if you never left your palace in Valles. Thisis real. This is telling the men that you depend on that youdo depend on them. Nobody else could tell them that and have them really believe it. And they need to believe it, or there'll be no more peace in Carcosa when you leave than there's been for the past thousand years."
Garric patted her hand, then set it in her lap. "To the headquarters of the 1^st Company of the City Watch, Under-Captain Houil," he said to the commander of the escort.
The bearers lifted Liane's chair. The whole procession set off at a stiff pace through streets bordered both by modern buildings and the ruins of far more impressive ones.
"It's easier to go along with them, lad," said King Carus when he got control of his laughter. "Especially when they're dead right. As I know to my cost from having done it wrong a thousand years ago whenIwas king!"