The sky was an iron bowl, with only a few stars showing through the moonlight. The deadly cold prickled in her nostrils and made her eyes water. Her breath was a rainbow-tinted fog, but there was no wind, and the smoke from the houses rose in soft pillars the color of the moon.
“Why can’t you—”
“Shielded.” He took her wrist again. “Indoors again.”
Shock! She stumbled, and he put an arm around her, just for a moment. Her ears popped. A torch spluttered in a sconce ahead of her, and she looked around, seeing rough wooden walls and stone floor and a few closed doors. They were in one of the in numerable covered alleyways that were Krasnegar’s winter arteries. The temperature was much higher around freezing, likely.
“Ready for your big reappearance scene?” Rap’s tone was jovial, but he was eyeing her carefully. She nodded. “Let me get my breath back. It’s all a bit much.”
“Fine,” he said. “No one will disturb us. Open your hood.”
She fumbled with lacing, hearing now a muffled rumble of conversation nearby. A sign on the nearest door proclaimed it to be the Beached Whale, and she could smell fish amid the odor of people and tallow. Now she knew where she was, down near the docks. How small it all was! How cramped, and shabby!
“We’ll pick up some jotnar here, and then go on and collect some imps,” Rap said.
“Suppose they don’t want to come?”
“That’s up to you. Here, let me.”
Brusquely he pushed back her hood as she began unfastening the coat. She was very conscious of his closeness, but he was being businesslike and did not seem to notice. Something ghostly stirred her hair.
“Now look!” Rap held up a mirror. There was her face—pale, but stern, not terrified and bewildered as she felt it should be. Her honey-blond hair sat in waves that might have come straight from the hands of one of Hub’s expert coiffeuses, and an emerald tiara sparkled on it. The gown showing through her open coat was much more ornate than it been when she put it on, glittering with scrolls of seed pearls and sequins. Obviously Rap had his own ideas of how a Queen of Krasnegar should look, but he might be able to judge the local thinking better than she could. Yes, not bad!
And something else . . . Not majesty, surely? Regality? She could not place it, but she could believe that she was looking at a queen. Was she doing that, or was he?
“Rap! This tiara belongs to Eigaze! I borrowed it for the imperor’s ball—”
“No, you’ve got one just like hers now.” The mirror disappeared as inexplicably as it had come. “Coronation present from me. I’ve got the weapons when you ask for them. Now go in there, Queen Inosolan, and claim your inheritance!”
She nodded dumbly. Then their eyes met. “Give me one little kiss? Just one?”
His efficient, businesslike expression faded to one of agony. “Oh, Inos!” he whispered. “Not even your fingers.”
She closed her eyes. “You’re going to explain this to me, you know,” she said. “What you’re afraid of. I won’t stand for it!” When she looked again, he had turned to open the door. She took a deep breath and raised her chin.
As the door swung open, she was assaulted by heat, and tumult, and a reek of cheap beer. The big room was dim, yet fogged by smoke from the oil lamps. Below the rough-plank ceiling, dozens of men were standing in groups or slouched at tables, yammering away in rowdy voices.
She strode past Rap and headed for the brightest spot she could see. A man jumped up from his seat as she approached and wandered off without noticing her. Rap’s arm was there when she reached for it; she raised her skirts with her other hand and stepped nimbly. up onto the stool.
The racket spiraled down into sudden stunned silence. All eyes were on her. Pale faces staring, golden heads and silver. This was a jotunn watering hole, but there were imps present there, also, and perhaps that was a good sign. She must unite the factions, but surely adversity would have already drawn them closer than before?
Men at the back scrambled to their feet to see better.
“The princess!” a voice said in awe, and others picked it up: ”The princess! The princess! . . .”
“The queen!” shouted another in the far corner, and again there were some echoes. A few fists banged on tables. Then silence. She thought the light was brightening around her and dimming elsewhere. Her mouth was parched. No, it wasn’t!
“I am Queen Inosolan. I have returned to claim my realm!” She dared not pause there in case someone started to scoff. “I bring weapons and I call for you to take up arms in my name and wreak vengeance on the jotn . . . on the invaders!”
Rap threw a massive bundle onto the table with a mighty metallic crash. A sudden tug at her waist told inos that she now wore a sword. She reached under her coat and drew it.
She flourished it overhead and the blade struck the ceiling so hard that the hilt almost slipped from her fingers.
“Who is with me?”
The longest two seconds of her life . . .
“By the Powers, I am!” a high-pitched voice cried. A young jotunn sprang to his feet a couple of tables away. He was very lanky, his blond hair almost brushing the ceiling, his face bright pink from too much beer.
Kratharkran, the smith, prompted a voice inside her ear, but she knew Krath. How he had grown! “Mastersmith Kratharkran, you are welcome! I appoint you leader here. Issue these weapons, and bring your squad to the bailey. I shall meet you there with others. The raiders are all gathered in the Great Hall, and we are going to kill them!”
“Aye!” Kratharkran roared in a squeak absurdly ill suited to his size. Others jumped up, also, and then stools were falling all over the room, boots clumping.
“Gods save the queen!” Kratharkran piped, and a chorus echoed him, ”Gods save the queen!”
Rap had gripped her wrist again. She jumped down, and her sword miraculously—and fortunately—vanished as she did so. Invisible hands steadied her when her coat caught on the stool. Rap pulled, and she headed for the door as a great drunken clamor of shouting and falling furniture filled the room behind her.
She was out in the passageway and running, being towed by Rap.
“Beautifully done! Oh, beautiful!” he shouted back at her.
“You did it, not me!” She laughed aloud, and he turned his head to smile at her.
Then he flung open the door of the Southern Dream and dragged her inside before she could draw breath. The ceiling was even lower, the light even dimmer, and most of the clustered heads around the tables were dark. Well, imps should be even more willing to kill jotnar, although it might take more of them.
Again she was up on a stool; again the light seemed to draw in around her. She had her speech readytoo ready, for she began almost before there was silence. “I am Queen Inosolan. I have returned to claim my realm . . .”
The same crash of weapons from Rap, the same shocked silence . . .
Longer . . .
Freezing, horrible silence!
Impish Krasnegarians were less easily aroused than their paler-skinned countrymen. Her new euphoria sank into dread. She saw her tiny amateur rebellion being stomped to bloody pulp by those ruthless young professionals up in the castle. She saw her own armed jotnar victorious but turning on the imps in civil war. She saw all kinds of disaster.
“What, cowards?” she shouted. “I have fifty jotnar behind me. Will none of you come also to avenge your sisters and your daughters?”
Muttering . . .
Hononin the hostler, to your right, said the invisible guide.
“Master Hononin? Where is your loyalty?”
The wizened old man clambered to his feet, more bent and wrinkled even than she remembered. His eyes glinted angrily at being thus singled out. “I am no fighter, Princess.”
“Queen!”
“Queen, then.” He looked unconvinced.
“And neither am I, but I am Holindarn’s daughter, and I am not a coward! Sometimes we must all stand up for the Good.”
“You bring another army like the last one?”
“I brought no one, but I offer you blades. Now, do the imps hide under beds and let the jotnar have all the swords?”
“No!” a few timorous souls somewhere said uncertainly.
“Well, then . . .” Hononin’s angry old eyes settled momentarily on Rap, and paused. Inos wondered what message might be passing there, or what sorcery in use. Then his gaze flickered around the room, and the bent shoulders straightened. “When you put it like that, ma’am, I wouldn’t mind spitting a couple of those young brutes myself.”