Kade removed her lap robe. “Thank you. That is much better.”
Master Odlepare had turned milk white. His mouth hung open.
“A faun?” He gurgled. Coachmen were often fauns, but the worthy secretary should have realized that a team of eight could not normally be driven from the perch, with no postilion.
“A faun,” Kade remarked calmly. “You were the duke’s secretary, were you not? I have here a copy of the accounts submitted with the latest tax remittance from Kinvale, and some of the figures strike me as a trifle odd. Did you have any part in preparing this?” He gurgled again, nodding.
“Assuming,” Kade said, “that further building activity is curtailed or even discontinued, how many retainers do you estimate could be struck from the estate workforce?”
Stifling an unbearable desire to snigger, Inos turned to the window and wiped a small viewing area clear. Kade had run Kinvale before, periodically, when Ekka had been sick or bearing children. If Master Odlepare had expected the new imperial protector to be as addle-headed as she normally pretended, then he was in for a harrowing awakening.
The carriage picked up speed, the snow became thicker. The coachman never stopped to change horses. Shortly before lunchtime, he slowed to turn off the highway. Inos took another peek through a fogged-up, rain-washed window and recognized the gates of Kinvale.
7
Kinvale was strange and eerie. No guests graced its lofty halls, no orchestras played for afternoon tea or evening banquets. Much of the furniture huddled under dustcovers, and the grates were dark.
Rap and the goblin bedded down the horses and then were seen no more. The servants and the duke’s daughters greeted Kade with cries of joy and great relief that the long suspense was over. The imperor could not possibly have found a guardian more welcome, nor more efficient. She took charge easily, calming fears and issuing polite requests that sent men and women running to obey.
Inos wandered the damp and empty rooms like a ghost, the last of the great army of unmarried ladies of quality who had come there over the years to find matches suited to their station. Had her father taken Sagorn’s advice and consulted the magic casement, she would never have been one of them. She had a heartstopping vision of herself holding a brownish, widenosed baby with unruly hair . . .
No, that would not have happened, but with his daughter at his side, surely Holindarn would have recognized his own failing health and taken proper steps to groom her and ensure her succession? Perhaps not. She had been a wayward, ignorant child in those days. Foronod and the other jotnar might still have balked at a juvenile female ruler. They would certainly have vetoed Rap as consort.
“Might have been” was a useless exercise.
What would the people say now? Was Foronod still alive? The bishop? Mother Unonini?
On the following morning, Inos summoned a carriage and went into Kinford to shop. Hubban clothes would be useless in Krasnegar; none of them would be warm enough and many would be thought indecent. She bought wools and furs, in simple, practical styles.
That afternoon she began to pack a trunk, but for the rest of the day, and for the two following days, she had little to do except pace the echoing corridors in an agony of apprehension.
How dare he desert her like this? A few times she went into the steamy, pungent stables and yelled, “Rap! Come here at once! I need you.” She tried it in some others places, also, but it never worked.
The servants began to look at her oddly.
On the third day Kade emerged from her bookkeeping waving a guest list she had prepared for spring. Six months of mourning were plenty, she said brightly, and the duke might benefit from genteel company. Nonsense! Kade wanted company for Kade, but Inos saw that Kinvale would soon be its cheerful self again, and her heart fluttered with fears for its own strength of purpose.
Then she wondered if Rap had planned this ordeal to test her nerve. That thought stiffened her will as nothing else could have done—doubting her, was he? How dare he!
The third evening arrived with no sign that Rap still existed, or Little Chicken, either. A full moon rose in the twilight, huge and orange and ominous in the northeastern sky. Inos shut the drapes on it. She joined Kade in a private supper made horrible by their nervous efforts to cheer each other up.
But Inos did not doubt that he would come. Whatever else he was—and she had an extensive list of his shortcomings on the tip of her tongue at the moment—Master Rap was a man of his word.
She retired to her room and dressed for Krasnegar, in a long wool gown of cypress green. She could expect to find the town cool even indoors, but her thick dress and thicker underwear felt unbearably hot in Kinvale. She rang for a footman to rope up her baggage. Then she was ready.
Carrying a fur coat and thick mitts, and sweltering even in the unheated dankness of the deserted mansion, she went down to the library to wait. There was a cheerful fire burning there, and he could find her when he was ready.
As she opened the door, she heard voices.
The library was a big room, gracious and comfortable—usually. Tonight it was filled with shadow and a strange sense of something uncanny that prickled the back of her neck. White-shrouded furniture made eerie humped shapes like ghosts of bison. At the far end, by the light of the fire and a single jumping candleflame, Rap lounged at his ease in a big armchair. Facing him in another was the goblin.
Automatically Inos turned to leave. Then she remembered her father saying that no one could eavesdrop on a sorcerer. She decided she had been summoned, so she stood and listened, her hand still on the handle.
“ . as queen,” Rap said. “That will be tonight. I’d like a couple of days to see her settled.”
A couple of days?
The goblin grunted and mumbled something at his big fists, which were clenched together on his knees. “No,” Rap answered. “You can stay here and wait, if you like. Or come with us. It makes no difference. Just a couple of days, and then I’ll be ready to keep my promise.”
Inos’s hands began to shake.
Little Chicken sat back and stared stonily at Rap. “You tell me now? Tell me what the big secret is? What you wouldn’t say?”
“I’ll tell you after we get to Raven Totem. We’ll have time, won’t we? You’ll need a few days to invite the neighbors to the barbecue.” Rap chuckled at his own black humor, and shivers ran all over Inos.
“No!”
“No what, Death Bird?”
“Don’t want to be Death Bird. Don’t want your promise anymore.”
Inos thought a silent prayer to the Gods—all the Gods!
“You must become Death Bird!”
“Don’t want to kill you.”
“You must!” Rap sighed. “I suppose I do have to tell you. Remember the witch and the warlock used foresight on you? They saw your future. You have a destiny, and now I can see it, too. It’s mind-boggling! There’s no escaping a destiny like that one.”
“Tell!”
“The imp with the fancy helmet? Yggingi. He did what no imp had ever done—he attacked your people in force. He marched through the taiga, looting and burning. The Impire has never done that before, Little Chicken, never! The legions go where there’s loot to pay for their upkeep, and the north never had anything worth looting.”
His companion laughed, a heavy, brutal noise. “Goblins got mad?”
“Did they ever!” Rap chuckled softly. “But it was a turning point. The Impire won’t forget. This time they’ll settle for holding the pass at Pondague and be happy with that. There will be peace, then—for a while. But the legions never forget a slight. They will be back!”
“Goblins don’t forget either. Be ready for them!” Rap rose and turned to stand with his back to the fire. He did not look at Inos, but of course he must know she was there. He was telling this to her, also. His face was shadowed, but it wouldn’t show anything, anyway.
“Yes, the goblins will be ready for them. The goblins may even move first—I haven’t bothered to check exactly. But the goblins have got to start preparing soon, Little Chicken, my friend!”
There was a thoughtful silence, then the harsh goblin voice said, ”Prepare how?”
“You’re going to need all the men you can get. Warfare is a wasteful business.”
Grunt! from Little Chicken.
“The goblins will have to change their ways, and soon, so that those boys can live and grow up to bear arms. They’ll have to practice archery, and discipline, and marching. Above all, the tribes must be unified.”