“Papa!” the imperious voice of a born tyrant said as Kadie rustled up behind Inos in her Allena-the-Fair gown. “This will not work!”
“What won’t work, sweet?”
Allena the Fair stamped her foot. “Iggi as Warlock Thraine. He can no more act than a horse!”
Rap said, “I have known horses with considerable dramatic ability. ”
“You know what I mean!”
“Well, why don’t you play Warlock Thraine and I’ll stand in as Allena the Fair?”
Kadie uttered a royal scream of fury that upset her younger brother. Inos soothed him and scolded her daughter. Rap looked sick to his stomach, which was what always happened when he was trying not to laugh.
“I need Gath!” Kadie declaimed, plumping down between her parents to sulk. Being respectably clad now, Inos moved around to the other side of the bench so she could face the hall and broil her back for a change. Besides, the royal family should set a good example of domestic harmony by all pointing in the same direction. She noticed that her jewel box had been raided again and Allena the Fair’s gown of purple velvet bore an ominous resemblance to the drapes in the best guest bedroom.
Rap had been inspecting the theatrical company, which was now being shooed away by servants wanting to lay tables. “Where is Gath?”
“I don’t know! He won’t say.”
The king’s eyes widened. “He’s not going to be in your play?”
“No.” Kadie continued to pout. “He won’t! He disappears half the day and won’t say where he’s been! And Mom won’t let me follow him to find out!”
Rap whistled silently and then said, “Hey, Pret!”
A passing footman flashed the king a smile and detoured closer so that Rap could grab a tankard from his tray.
“If Holi can drink all day long, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t!” Rap raised the tankard in a toast before he drank, grinning at Inos. She wondered what had made him so gleeful all of a sudden.
“There isn’t going to be any stupid play!” Kadie said. “With Iggi being Thraine, everyone would laugh at us! So it’s canceled.”
“That’s a shame, dear,” Inos said tactfully. “Perhaps you could rewrite the Thraine part so that Iggi can handle it?”
“No! It’s hopeless!” The princess sulked in silence for a moment, apparently contemplating the void thus left in the cultural life of the kingdom. But then she said sweetly, “Daddy?”
“When you call me that, like that, I know you want something you know I know you shouldn’t have!” Rap took another swig of ale and smacked his lips. “Yes, my beloved?”
“Is Corporal Isyrano the best swordsman in the kingdom?” Her father shot Inos a perplexed glance over the top of Kadie’s head. “Without a doubt,” he said warily.
“Better than you?”
“Me? Kadie, as a swordsman, I make a fair bandmaster! I’m no fencer! But Isyrano’s very good indeed, so far as I can judge.”
“I want you to tell him to give me fencing lessons.”
“Fencing lessons.” Rap considered the matter, looking somewhat dazed. “May I ask why you want fencing lessons?”
“Does a girl need more reason than a boy would?”
The two of them could keep this up for hours. Inos adjusted Holi’s blanket while she waited to see who was going to give up first. She wondered if Rap realized that Corporal Isyrano was the sort of man a girl might find good-looking. She wondered if Kadie was starting that already. She wondered if Rap appreciated that his Kadie troubles had barely begun.
The king was redeploying on more strategic ground. “Well, I don’t see why not. Very good exercise. By all means ask the corporal to give you fencing lessons.”
“I did. He won’t.”
“Ah. Did you ask politely?”
“Of course!” Kadie said, much too quickly.
“Or did you try to order him to give you fencing lessons? Kadie, I have told you a hundred times that you are not to go around throwing orders at everybody! You don’t give orders to anyone, no one at all! And I have told everyone in the kingdom that they are not to obey you if you try! Everyone! ”
Ignoring the opportunities presented by this obvious exaggeration, Kadie said grumpily, “Then how do I get fencing lessons?”
“You ask. Politely.”
“Can I say you said he—”
“No. You don’t mention me at all.”
“Then he still won’t!” Kadie cried despairingly. She jumped up from the bench and went rushing away as fast as she could move in the velvet drapes.
“God of Madness,” Rap muttered, raising the tankard. It stopped halfway as he turned to his grinning wife. “Fencing?”
“The Elven Queen in The Yalor of Giapen, I expect.”
“Ah, my literary ignorance showing again . . . And what’s this about Gath? He has finally broken free from bondage?” She thought shed told him. Motherhood was making her forgetful, perhaps. “Before you left. Gath has taken up good works.”
“Now I have heard everything. What sort of good works?”
“What I usually do. Hot soup to the sick and so on. He came and said that since I wasn’t able to do it while Holi was still small, then maybe he should.”
The king swelled with pride. “His own idea?”
“Apparently. He’s been doing it for about two weeks now, I suppose. ”
“That’s wonderful,” Rap said, looking awed. “He thought it up all by himself ? And didn’t ask his sister’s approval? And he’s sticking with it—you are making sure the soup goes where it’s supposed to, aren’t you?”
“Of course! I have learned something in thirteen years of mothering. ”
“Great!” Rap said. “That’s great! I must congratulate him. ”
“Yes, you should show approval,” Inos said. “He was a bit upset yesterday. Old Thrippy is dying and—”
“God of Fools!” Rap’s tankard crashed to the floor, sending frothing ale everywhere. He stared at Inos in horror. His face had gone ashen, as if he had just seen a dragon.
4
Rap paced to and fro. Inos settled herself in one of the big leather chairs by the fireplace and waited until he calmed down enough to speak. They had cleaned up the beer, handed Holi over to the nursemaid before he woke up demanding his first lunch, and retreated to their private parlor. Now Rap was presumably going to explain. The peat glowed, and the room was toasty warm, a rarity in Krasnegar in winter.
She studied him, being careful not to let him notice. He always seemed big, unless there were jotnar present. Clumsy, almost. A cautious, well-meaning man, unaware of his own strengths. Very few former stableboys could ever have persuaded a kingdom to accept him as a ruler, but Rap had, and she was certain he had done it without using sorcery. Very few men could have refused what he had refused—godhood, infinite power. She owed everything to Rap and she thanked the Gods daily for him.
If Gath was a bom gentleman, then he had inherited the trait from his father.
“Corporal Isyrano,” Rap said, still pacing. “He went off to the Impire . . . when? Ten years ago? Got homesick and came back . . . last year?”
“Year before.”
“Right.” Rap fixed a beady look on Inos. “Did you know he’d deserted from the Imperial Army?”
Shed suspected. “Does it matter?”
“Not at all. Bleeding smart thing to do. I would.” He began to pace again. “He was in one of the good legions, though. And he was on the fencing team! And he’s no aristocrat, either.”
Rap was probably just working it all out in his own head, not deliberately trying to be mysterious.
“Yes?” she prompted.
“Legionaries don’t fence. They throw their javelins and then they bash things with their swords, but they don’t fence.”
“No, dear.” What did the corporal have to do with Gath? “But every legion has its fencing team. They have tournaments and people gamble thousands on them. To get on a legionary fencing team you have to be damned good!”
“Yes, dear.”
“Damned good,” Rap muttered to himself. “Gentlemen, most of them, of course, but I think Isyrano was the lead man on his team. Brunrag left her husband and went south . . . don’t remember when. She’s been back three years, or is it four? You’re more qualified than me—how’s her singing?”
“Hub would fall at her feet.”
The king threw himself down in the other big chair, dislodging a cloud of dust. “I wonder how many didn’t get homesick? How many have we lost forever?”
“It’s all my fault, you mean?”
“Of course it isn’t your fault, but it was your doing. You’re the one who scattered magic everywhere.”
Inos shivered at the memory of the day she had been a sorceress—for about an hour. As soon as she had bullied Rap into telling her four words of power, she had summoned her loyal subjects to the castle and shouted the words for all to hear. It had been the worst experience of her life. The pain had almost killed her, but she had done it.