“Ha!” Kalkor crowed. “She does not recognize me as King of Krasnegar!”
“You be silent!” Ythbane shouted. He glanced around. “Where is he? Ambassador Krushjor! Come and remove this naked savage. Wash him and clothe him decently, or throw him back in his cage if you prefer, but get him out of my—”
“Watch your tongue, upstart!” Kalkor snarled. “Does this female recognize me as King of Krasnegar? For if not, then I challenge her to a Reckoning.”
“You’ll do no such thing!” Ythbane shouted. “We have had quite enough of that murderous nonsense.” Azak’s harsh djinn voice boomed out. ”Your Imperial Highness, the jotunn assaulted my wife in your presence. Can you not apply suitable discipline?”
The court drew breath at the effrontery. Ythbane’s pallid face flushed bright. “Unfortunately, not easily. He has diplomatic immunity. We could have him shipped across the border in fetters, and that is beginning to seem like a very good idea.”
“There is a prophecy,” Kalkor said.
Ythbane looked startled. “What prophecy? Prophesied by whom?”
“Ask the woman.”
Everyone looked back at Inos.
“My ancestor, the Sorcerer Inisso,” she said, “—he left a magic casement in his tower in Krasnegar. It prophesied for me. It prophesied that Thane Kalkor would fight a duel, a Reckoning.”
“He just did,” the regent snapped: The Kalkor affair was entangling his court like a net, and his anger was both obvious and understandable.
It was also starting to make Inos jumpy, or perhaps it was all the eyes on her doing that, although that was even sillier. “Not against a t-troll. And for me. In the p-p-prophecy, his opponent—”
“Magic casements do not prophesy,” Rap said. Now all eyes went to him.
“And what do you know about magic casements, young man?” the regent growled.
“I have some power,” Rap admitted.
The watchers quivered. Suddenly, although no one visibly moved, there was a gap around him. Even Inos felt a shiver of alarm—Rap had met a dragon, and dragons belonged to the warlock of the south. It had been Lith’rian who had sent him to Arakkaran. Who or what was this strangely somber Rap?
He was Rap, wasn’t he? Really Rap?
Kalkor broke the silence with a chuckle that raised the little hairs on the back of her neck. “He is the one I fight.”
“We want no more Reckonings,” the regent said, but he sounded less confident than before.
For a moment there seemed to be an impasse, as if no one knew what should happen next. The crowds were leaving, streaming over the bank and out of sight; the legionaries were falling out and slumping on the sodden grass to rub their shoulders and mutter curses. The rain was starting again.
And Inos was thinking furiously. The casement had shown Rap fighting Kalkor, and then it had shown him dying in the goblin’s lodge. If he did fight Kalkor, then he survived, surely? Of course she didn’t want Rap to die at all, but if both prophecies were inevitable, then she couldn’t do anything to stop them. And if they weren’t inevitable, then she wanted to let this one happen and stop the second. That was logical, wasn’t it?
If he didn’t fight Kalkor, then she was going to have to yield her kingdom to the thane. She could not bear the thought of the decent, humble folk of Krasnegar being handed over to that monster.
And as if he could read her thoughts.
“Do you recognize me as King of Krasnegar?” Kalkor asked, blue eyes mocking.
“No!” Inos said.
“Then, by the God of Truth, I—”
“Stop!” the regent shouted. “We have had one murder committed here today, and we want . . . want to make it perfectly clear that . . .” He paused. Then his voice dropped. “That, if there is indeed a prophecy, then we are going to have another.”
Senior courtiers hid astonishment behind welltrained nods. Ythbane drew himself up on his throne, scowling. The lesser onlookers glanced at one another in worried surmise. A whirl of.wind flapped cloaks and buffeted the awning. The shower drummed harder on it.
“But who will be the lady’s champion?” Kalkor asked with a cynical smile. “Sultan Azak?”
Azak’s face flamed dark mahogany. “Not me!”
“He spat on your wife,” the regent said.
The sultan glared murder at him, but he folded his arms and kept himself under control. “Not me. I care nothing for Krasnegar.”
So where now was the overbearing bully-boy of Arakkaran? Where was his prickly djinn honor? Inos felt her lip curl in contempt, and did not care who might notice.
Yet she did not understand what was happening. Only Kalkor seemed to know that.
“You will hire no more trolls,” the regent said. “Not after what happened to Mord. If we allow this affair to proceed, then who will be your champion, lady?”
“Rap?” she whispered.
Rap said, “No.”
Ythbane glanced from Kalkor to Rap and back again, as if he had had a sudden understanding. “Is sorcery permitted in Reckonings?”
“Certainly not,” Kalkor said.
“Then, Sultana, we think you had best yield to Thane Kalkor before it is too late.”
The bystanders had caught the hint. Kalkor had felled the Impire’s best gladiator like a blind farmhand, and this strange young faun had admitted to being a sorcerer.
If not the faun, then who else could accept the match?
Kade’s gentle voice intervened. “Master Rap—”
Rap said, ”No.”
Inos clenched her fists. She knew Rap’s stubborn look, and there it was. ”Not for me, Rap. Think of the people of Krasnegar!”
He shot her a glance of pure agony, then set his big jaw again. He said, ”No,” again.
The wind thumped the awning, and the patter of raindrops speeded up. A few groups of citizens still lingered, chattering or watching the royals in their compound, but the great crowds had gone from the grassy bank, leaving it tattered and muddy. The legionaries were forming up in their cohorts.
“This is so disappointing!” Kalkor said, with a sneer. “Master Rap, what of your destiny?”
Rap said, “No.”
“Well, perhaps I can reassure you. Krushjor!”
The jotnar were huddled at the rear of the enclosure, well back from the awning, being spurned by the gentry. Now the old ambassador stepped forward a pace and called, “Thane?”
“Send over our most recent recruit.”
“Now what?” demanded the regent suspiciously. Bloodsoaked and half naked, Kalkor bowed low, more in mockery than respect. “One of the persons included in your Imperial safe conduct, Highness. An old friend of Master Rap’s.”
The jotnar had opened their ranks to release a short, broad youth. He wore impish garments, but he was certainly no imp.
Inos glanced back at Rap. If Kalkor had hoped to elicit some emotion from him, he had failed. Rap watched without expression as the newcomer walked forward. But even back in Krasnegar Rap had possessed farsight. He must have known who had been hidden in there.
Khaki skin, lank black hair . . . straggly bristles around an oversized mouth spread now in a gruesome smile . . . teeth like white daggers. He was about the shortest person present, except for the prince, but very thick and burly. This was the same young goblin Inos had seen with Rap before, the one Rap had said wanted to kill him. The one who did kill him in the casement’s vision. She had forgotten his name.
Courtiers cleared out of his way with glances of distaste.
“Hello, Flat Nose.” Angular eyes gleamed.
“Hello, Little Chicken,” Rap said evenly. “I sort of expected you would turn up soon.”
The big grin grew wider yet. “The witch gave me a promise!”
“You would be a strong swimmer, I expect; once you learned.”
The goblin nodded cheerfully.
“Would someone care to explain?” Ythbane said in a dangerously low voice. “Witch?”
Rap shrugged. “It is another prophecy, your Highness. The anthropophagi tried to eat him, but I expect he was too tough for them.”
The goblin chortled and the regent flushed furiously.
“We have taken all the insolence we will tolerate. This court will adjourn to the palace, and we will have some real answers if it takes hot irons to get them.”
“But we have a challenge to consider,” Kalkor’s mild protest stilled the fidgeting courtiers. “We were trying to stiffen the faun’s backbone. You did meet the dragon, I suppose?” he asked of Rap.
“Yes.”
“I thought you would. And yet you distrust the casement? Such a shocking lack of faith! Or are you trying to break the chain before our green friend gets his hands on you?”
Rap said, “No.”
“What then of your great love for Inosolan?—the love you confessed to me so touchingly when we had that delightful chat on my ship?”
Rap said, “No,” a little louder than before. Oh, Rap, Rap!
“And where is the courage you displayed so convincingly last summer? Where is the hero who tried to sink me and my crew?”