Mother Unonini backed away and the moonlight died beyond the glass.
Little Chicken grunted angrily. Abandoning the east casement, he began stalking round to the south, one hand on the dagger in his belt, his shoulders bent forward, looking very much like Fleabag investigating a porcupine.
“Stop!” both Rap and the chaplain said at the same moment. But Little Chicken kept on, walking slowly on the balls of his feet. The casement began to glow again, and this time the light was different; it was warmer and restless—not the moon, but firelight? Firelight at the top of a tower, seven stories above a castle that itself stood a hundred spans or more above the sea?
“Stop!” Rap said again, more urgently. He laid down his own burden—it held cups and food and useful things that might make a noise if dropped—and he hurried forward.
The light changed again, dramatically. By the time he had reached Little Chicken and grabbed his shoulder, the window was a blazing, seething brilliance, too bright to look at—surges of ruby, emerald, and sapphire stabbing amid flashes of ice-white like the facets of a giant diamond. Now certainly the symbols were changing more rapidly, flickering in the corners of the eye. Even to study a single pane was impossible against that glare.
Rap pulled and the goblin yielded. They backed away and the brilliance faded again until they were standing once more in the glimmer of the lantern. Rap’s eyes hurt and the insides of his eyelids were stained with blurs of many hues.
Stiffly the chaplain rose from her knees, where she had been praying. Her face was pale and drawn in the gloom. “Magic!” she declared unnecessarily. “A magic casement!”
“What does it do?” Rap asked, still keeping a firm grip on Little Chicken.
“I don’t know! I’m a priestess, not a sorcerer. But I think you had better stay well away from it.”
All Inisso’s other secrets had gone, but that one was built into the walls and could not be removed. Was this why the mysterious Doctor Sagorn had come up here with the king, to a room Inos had never been told about?
“Oh, I agree. Keep away!” Rap added in goblin.
Little Chicken nodded. “Bad!” He turned his back on the offending window.
“You still want to stay here?” Mother Unonini asked.
Rap nodded. “It’s the safest place. And I can use my farsight from here.” He would have to sit on the stairs to do so, below floor level, but she did not need to know that.
“Yes, but what can you do?” She had asked that question a dozen times.
He gave her the same answer as before. “I don’t know. But somehow I must warn Inos that Andor is not what he seems.” She came close and lifted the lantern to study his face. “For her sake, or yours?”
“Hers, of course!”
She continued to stare. “If the people want a king instead of a queen, then they are not likely to accept a factor’s clerk, you know.”
Rap clenched his fists. “I was not suggesting that they would!”
“Do you think you can overhear what he says to Inosolan?” Fury flared up in Rap, and evidently his expression was answer enough. She lowered her lantern. “No. I apologize, Master Rap. That was unworthy.” She pulled her cloak tighter. “I shall go, then. You had better come down and replace the dresser.”
Rap nodded. “And we’ll push the door closed behind it.”
The chaplain nodded. “Of course—but remember that it creaks. I shall return tomorrow night, if I can, and bring some oil.” She shivered. ”I must be crazy! I hope that I am interpreting the God’s words correctly . . . and that They were a benevolent God, on the side of the Good. Kneel and I will give you a blessing; I wish I had someone to bless this night’s work for me.”
Casement high:
A casement, high and triple-arched there was,
All garlanded with carven imagaries
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splended dyes,
As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damasked wings . . .
— Keats, The Eve of Saint Agnes
NINE
Faithful found
1
The worst moment of that whole terrible day was Inos’s first glimpse of her father, the sight of the poor withered relic that was all remaining of the exuberant, vital man she remembered. Compared to that, nothing before or after was as bad—none of the murder or horror or sorcery that followed, not even the news of his death, for that was a release.
Of the morning she was to retain only confused images, a few fitful glimpses and recollections. She had left Krasnegar in summer drizzle, sitting in a landau with her father and Aunt Kade, cheered more or less sincerely by amused but affectionate townsfolk. She returned on a blustery spring morn, in sunshine mingled with flurries of snow, riding with Andor on one side of her and the despicable Proconsul Yggingi on the other. Now the citizens huddled in their furs to watch, or peered around shutters, their faces reflecting shock and anger at an invading Imperial army desecrating their streets.
The palace staff and the officers of the realm had been hurriedly assembled in the great hall that now seemed like a shoddy barracks to Inos. They, also, glared in impotent fury. Their greetings were curt, their welcomes insincere. Familiar faces bore unfamiliar expressions-old Chancellor Yaltauri and the much older Seneschal Kondoral, Mother Unonini and Bishop Havyili, and the tall, stark figure of Factor Foronod, his livid face almost as pale as the silver helmet of his hair.
How small Krasnegar was, how bleak, how shabby after Kinvale! The palace was a barn. And when she was ushered politely up into the withdrawing room she looked around at the gilt and rosewood furniture that Aunt Kade had brought back—three years ago now—and it seemed pathetic, a bitter mockery of what comfort and elegance ought to be. Yet it had not changed and she hated herself because it was she who had changed.
The way she spoke to them, the way she moved, the way she returned their looks-she had gone, but she had not returned. She never would return. The place was the same place. She was another person.
Then the doctors, bowing and mumbling and making excuses. His Majesty was conscious and had been informed.
It was at that moment that Inos issued her first command.
“I shall see him alone!” she stated, and she silenced their protests with the best glare she could muster. Even Andor. Even the hated Yggingi. Even Aunt Kade.
Astonishingly, it worked. They all agreed and no one was more surprised than Inos herself.
She climbed the familiar curving stairs alone, noting with surprise that the treads were dished by centuries of footsteps, noting how narrow the way was, and how the very stonework of the walls was glazed by the caress of innumerable garments. Kinvale had all been so new. She came to the dressing room and remembered it as it had been in her childhood, with her own bed against the northwest wall, although now there was an ancient wardrobe standing there. Nurses and doctors came trooping out the far door and bobbed politely to her and hurried across the room and off down the stair behind. And when the last of them had gone, she pushed unwilling feet to the steps and began to climb once more.
The drapes of the bed had been pulled back, the room was bright with transitory sunshine, and at first she thought there had been some terrible mistake, some macabre joke, for the bed looked empty. Then she came near and . . . and smiled.
She sat by him for many hours, holding his hand, making conversation when he was capable of it, else just waiting until he awoke again or the spasm of pain had passed. His mind wandered much of the time. Often he mistook her for her mother.
Aunt Kade came at intervals, tiptoeing and doleful. She spoke to him, and sometimes he knew her. Then she would ask if Inos wanted anything, and slip quietly away again. Poor Aunt Kade! Weeks on horseback . . . she had ridden all through the wastelands, bravely insisting that this was the greatest adventure of her life, not to be missed. It had not done a damned thing for her figure. She was just as dumpy as ever, and today she looked old. The lucid moments were at once the best and the worst. “Well, Princess?” he asked in his whisper. “Did you find that handsome man?”
“I think so, Father. But we have made no promises.”
“Be sure,” he said, and squeezed her hand. Then he began to mumble about repairs to the bandshell, which had been torn down before she was born.
Her mother’s portrait had been cleaned and moved to one side. Alongside it hung Jalon’s pastel sketch. It made her look absurdly young, a mere child.