It was not the hussar she saw. Nor the lady. Only the youth at the back.
Only he registered, a nondescript young man in the simple brown garb of an artisan. Bigger than an imp, smaller than a jotunn. Tangled hair already dripping wet. Stupid, stupid tattoos around his eyes.
Inos screamed, “Rap! It’s Rap! He’s alive! Rap’s alive!” She jostled through between the regent and the thane and flew down the bank with her cloak streaming high behind her and her arms spread out in welcome and her feet barely touching the ground.
4
It had been late the previous evening when Rap had dropped in at the hostelry to check on Foggy and Smoky. He had spent the day in gathering news, which meant snooping, which meant applying occult charm to make people talk of what they didn’t necessarily want to discuss. What they did want to discuss—particularly some of the women—had often shocked him considerably.
The task had left him feeling cheap and soiled, and the only relevant thing he had learned was that Kalkor was in Hub. Impossible, but confirmed by many.
He had found the ponies well content, being tended by a young faun stableboy, who had mostly wanted to know how Rap had managed to grow so big. When that had been explained, he had passed on a dramatic new story about a battle scheduled for the following day.
By the time Rap returned to the house, Andor had just arrived with much the same information, and everyone was talking at once, on a variety of topics.
Gathmor, of course, was gloating. Kalkor was in town, and Gathmor had a wife and children to avenge.
The princess was puzzled and fretting, because there was no word of Inosolan. If the Impire had recognized Angilki as King of Krasnegar, then where was Inos?
Andor was adamant—tomorrow’s spectacle was no place for him, nor his friends, either. “The crowds will be immense!” he insisted. “People will get trampled and crushed. I am not going, and neither are any of you! It is madness.”
Rap was feeling the cold fingers of premonition on his skin. He knew that he at least was going to be there. “What do you want, ma’am?” he asked the princess. There was no doubt what she wanted.
But what she said was, “Advise me, please, Master Rap?”
Foresight he dared not use. He had been two days in Hub now, and the fearful white horror must be very near now. But he thought about going and then about not going, and he compared his premonitions. He sensed danger, yes, and dark menace, but behind all that there was something new—a pure, high note of joy like the song of a flute. It could only be Inos, seeing Inos, and it squeezed his heart and hurt his eyelids.
“I think we should go, ma’am,” he said. “We shall go, then,” she agreed happily. And Gathmor? No need to ask him. “Not me!” Andor said.
“Darad. I think.”
“And I will not call Darad! Not in Hub.”
“Darad!” Rap insisted, and despised the mean satisfaction he gained from seeing Andor flinch.
So it was decided.
Gathmor was content with his footman’s livery, but finding clothes that would fit Darad was a problem, and Rap himself wanted some inconspicuous, noncommittal garments. Clothes produced by magic might attract occult attention. He took a lesson in sewing from the princess, and sat up most of the night, tailoring as if he had apprenticed to the trade for years.
By morning Gathmor was in a rapturous state of mind that Rap distrusted. He tried halfheartedly to dissuade the sailor from coming, but without using power on him the effort was wasted. What bothered Rap most was the dagger concealed in Gathmor’s doublet, although an opportunity to strike at Kalkor seemed highly improbable and Rap could always magic the weapon away if it seemed likely to be used. Kalkor had occult powers of his own, and no mere mundane sailor was going to end his career.
And Darad was no more trustworthy, for he also had a score to settle with the savage thane.
They left at dawn, yet despite Rap’s peerless control the carriage became stalled in traffic and crowds a long way from the Campus Abnila. Reluctantly leaving the horses in the care of a couple of shifty-eyed youths, he set out on foot with his friends.
Darad’s great bulk was a help, but more valuable still was the constant tremor of magic that seemed to infest the capital like a winter dog. It was even more in evidence than usual, so obviously Rap was not the only wielder of power striving to reach the arena. There might be occult cutpurses around also, working the crowd as Thinal would. Seers would be trying to lay bets.
Rap used as little mastery as possible, but he gradually cleared a way for himself and the others. Large men moved aside without quite knowing why they did so, and step by step the princess and her escorts fought their way up the outside of the bank, and across the top, and then down the interior slope, until they had a prime location directly behind the arm-linked cordon of soldiers, close to one of the two little tents. The troll was in there, Rap knew.
And that was as far as they could go. Now all that remained was to wait until the regent’s party arrived and the duel began.
The royal enclosure was empty at first and then gradually filled. Suddenly Rap’s heart began to beat much faster . . .
“Surely I am not mistaken,” Princess Kadolan said. “Is that not the sultan? And Inos!”
Over the past few weeks, Rap had been gently curing her shortsightedness, but so subtly that she had not been aware of his meddling. Her back pains had gone, too, and she had not missed those, either.
“Can’t be certain,” Gathmor grunted. Jotunn eyesight was legendary, a handy trait for sailors, but Rap’s farsight was now well beyond the limits of mundane perception.
“Yes, it is,” he muttered. Tragedy! He could cure those awful scars, but to do so at such a distance would be difficult, and dangerous for him. He would do it, of course, but later, when he could get closer. He would do it for her sake—he didn’t care what she looked like, only what she was.
Her misfortunes had not broken her spirit; her star burned brighter than ever.
Inos! Oh, Inos!
More than anything he wished he had been able to tell her, just once, how he loved her; how he always had. He couldn’t tell her now.
Inos, married.
Standing close to her big, handsome djinn. Being presented to the regent.
Rap did not eavesdrop on what was said, although he could have done so. He just watched glumly. Then the antique trumpets brayed, and battle was joined. It was disgusting. Kalkor used magic. Rap felt the ambience shake as the ax whirled skyward and again during the thane’s murderous attack. He had known Kalkor was a seer, and had suspected even back on Blood Wave that the raider had more than one word of power. Obviously he knew at least three, to be able to control his weapon in the air like that and so easily penetrate the gladiator’s guard . . .
Why not? Words of power were a form of wealth. They could be looted like anything else. The troll had never had a hope.
Kalkor disabled him and then chopped him down like a tree and jeered at him as he bled to death. Then butchered him. Finally he went stalking toward the imperial enclosure, still bearing his ax. So this was the ritual savagery that he had once described to Rap as a sacred ritual?
Gathmor and Darad had begun to twitch with bloodlust of their own, and Rap regretfully laid a trance on both of them, so that they just stood and smiled vaguely at nothing. That was safer for them, he told himself angrily. By the time it wore off, the thane would be long gone elsewhere.
The weary fence of legionaries still struggled against the press of the crowd, because they had orders to do that. The fancy young men on horses were moving around again.
“Ah!” the princess said. “That tall one on the gray, Master Rap! You see? He visited Kinvale last Winterfest—he knows me! Can you make him come this way?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rap said. It was time.
Pilgrim soul:
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
— Yeats, When You Are Old
SEVEN
Whispered word
1
The legionaries had already opened a gap; Inos ran through it. She went by the hussar and his horse, she ignored the astonished Kade, leaving her with hands raised and smile wasted . . .