Inos pulled her blouse closed, then enveloped her daughter in a tight hug. It made no difference. Kadie was working herself into hysterics. Not unexpected. Overdue, really. “Hush!” Inos said. “This isn’t going to help, dear.”
“Lice! Oh, Mother! Lice! Ugggh!”
“Hush! There are guards outside, remember. Lots of people have lice. There are lice in Krasnegar. And fleas.”
“Bet mine are bigger than yours,” Gath said.
“You keep out of this! Kadie, stop it! You’ve been very brave, dear, and I’m proud of you. And of Gath. But you’ve got to keep on being brave.”
Kadie gulped stridently for breath, then resumed howling.
Inos released the hug, took hold of her daughter’s shoulders, and shook her, hard. “Stop it!” she shouted. Shocked, Kadie fell into wide-eyed, shivering silence. “That’s better.” Hug again, tightly. “Now listen! We’re in great danger. You know that, and I won’t lie to you. All we can do is try to be as brave as we can. Think of your father and try to do what he would be proud of. Think of Eva and Holi, back home in Krasnegar. One day we’ll go home and tell them of all our adventures. But that isn’t likely to happen if you start behaving like a crybaby.” It wasn’t very likely if she didn’t, either, but one must not say such things. Innocent bystanders caught up in one of the worst wars in Pandemia’s bloody history had very poor prospects for survival.
Kadie sniffled, dribbling tears on Inos’ shoulder. She was still shaking violently, and the cheek she pressed to her mother’s felt colder than the wash water.
“That’s better,” Inos said. What else could she say? “I’m afraid real adventures are not as nice as adventures in story-books. You’re not the Elven Queen of Giapen, dear! In real life people die or get hurt. They go hungry and they get lice. Now, look on the bright side.”
“Is there a bright side?” Gath inquired from the background. It could have been Rap speaking. He sounded absurdly like his father when he managed to display his manly new tenor.
Inos must remember to tell him so.
“Yes, there is. First, Death Bird is our friend. He owes your father a lot, and he knows it.”
“I killed his nephew,” Kadie whimpered.
“Served him right! Don’t worry about that. I don’t think the goblins will hold that against you, dear.” They were more likely to take it as a challenge. Who would demand the next try at taming the killer virgin from Krasnegar? Don’t even think about that . . . “And second, we have magic. All three of us have magic. That’s very lucky.”
“Three of us?” Kadie wiped her eyes and her nose with the back of her hand. “My sword? Gath’s prescience? You?”
“I told you,” Inos said gently. She thought the fit was over. ”Long ago, when your father helped me drive out the jotnar, he put an occult glamour on me. When I give royal orders, people have to obey me.”
“Then why don’t you just order them to send us home?” Kadie sniveled.
For one thing, goblins became so infuriated at being ordered around by a woman that they might easily react by killing her. Don’t say so.
“I could, but how can they? I crossed the taiga in winter once with a band of impish soldiers. That was bad enough—I don’t want to try it with goblins. We’ll have to wait until summer and then go home by sea. Meanwhile, we have other problems, don’t we? Gath, what can you foresee now?”
“They come for us soon,” Gath said. He was dressed again, his bony face pale in the gloom, and he was hovering nearby—longing to be included in the hugging and unwilling to admit such unmanly sentiments even to himself. He was a kid trying to be a man under conditions few men could have handled.
In a sense, both Gath and Kadie were protected by their innocence. If they had any concept of how the world should be, they would not be withstanding this nightmare transformation of it nearly so well. All that two fourteen-year-olds really could understand was that this was not Krasnegar.
Inos detached one arm from her daughter and pulled her son into the joint embrace. “But you’re sure about the imperor?”
“Yes. Usually he recognizes me, too.”
“What do you mean usually?”
“Mean it’s fuzzy. Not certain. May not happen that way.”
”Thank you, dear. And I tell Death Bird that his prisoner is Shandie?”
“That’s solid enough.”
Who needed a seer to know that much? How could Inos ever just stand by and watch the imperor being tortured to death without even trying to save him?
“Then what happens?”
“Then they argue.” Gath sounded grumpy. Either he disliked being questioned about his prescience or he was unsure of the fall of events.
But again, who needed a seer? Death Bird and his green horrors might choose to torment a royal victim, but dwarves would never squander a valuable hostage. Argument was almost certain. How durable was the coalition? Suppose the argument became a quarrel?
Gath could not foresee the outcome yet, apparently, or at least Inos found she could coax nothing more out of him. She wished his range was days or weeks, instead of only an hour or two.
“How could the goblins have captured the imperor?” Kadie sniffed. ”And how can they not know it?”
“I don’t know, dear. Perhaps he was leading one of the legions they ambushed.” Inos did not want to speculate, even to herself. She did not think the imperor would ever lead a single legion, or even two. It was only three months since the old Emshandar had died, and Shandie ought to be in Hub, tending his inheritance. Why should he be here, in northwest Julgistro, hundreds of leagues from his capital? Could he have been on his way to Krasnegar? Gath had seen him in a vision; Rap had speculated that Shandie might similarly have seen Gath. She hoped the imperor had not been coming to consult his old sorcerer-friend Rap. That would mean that Rap, when he headed off to Hub, had failed to meet up with Shandie. Sorcerers did not make mistakes like that. The implications would not bear thinking about.
Then she heard the guttural jabber of goblins outside, mingled with the subterranean rumble of dwarves. She was summoned to the feast.
The leaders of the coalition were still holding court within a burned-out shell of a barn, but there had been changes in the last couple of hours. The central bonfire roared even larger, and there were more chiefs in attendance. They were sitting in a ragged circle on boxes and barrels instead of the littered floor, which meant that dwarvish customs had prevailed over the goblins’. They alternated—mailed gray men and half-naked greenish men.
Inos sensed a new antagonism. Weapons had disappeared, no one was smiling. The negotiations had not gone well, then.
She was led to an unoccupied nail keg between Death Bird and Karax. Possibly that was intended to be the place of honor. More likely, both wanted to know why she was there and neither trusted the other alone with her. Gath was given a patch of dirty floor on the opposite side of the fire, the smoky side. Kadie had not been included in the invitation. After some grumbling, she was allowed to remain, sitting in a corner by herself. Fair enough!
Inos thought Death Bind looked tired, although the heavy tattooing on his face made it hard to read. His bulky torso and limbs shone greasily, and every now and again she would catch a stomach-turning whiff of rancid goblin unguent. He gnawed on a meat bone in ominous silence.
The dwarvish general was older than she had realized. There was silver in the natural gray of his beard, and his rough-hewn face bore many tiny wrinkles, like cracks in weathered sandstone. Even for a dwarf, he was surly. His table manners were no better than Death Bird’s.
Nor were hers, of course. She bit listlessly at her own hunk of meat, wiping her mouth with her hand and her hands on her robe. The fire crackled and sprayed sparks up into the night sky. There was very little talk anywhere in the company, and where there was, goblins were conversing across dwarves and vice versa, not to one another. Language was part of the problem, but distrust was playing a part, also. Again she wondered how long this unlikely coalition could survive.
Gods, but she was tired! Every bone ached. Six days in the saddle!
Eventually the diners began tossing their discards into the embers. She copied them with relief. Then she licked and wiped her forgers as best she could and waited for the greater ordeal to begin.
She wished she could see Gath more clearly. Being an hour or two ahead of her, he could give her hints, were the fire not between them. Sometime soon she was going to be asked what her mission was. To confess that she had blundered into this disaster by sheer accident would leave her very little status to bargain with.