King Rap had shrugged. “A week if we’re lucky.”
So everyone was busy except Ylo, who had nothing to entertain him except the realization that it was almost twenty-four hours since he last ate. Of course he could ask one of the sorcerers to magic up a meal for him, but he wasn’t going to. He would get himself laughed at for oversleeping and missing breakfast.
The best way to take his mind off his stomach was just to study Eshiala. Guard her? Oh yes, he would guard her most jealously! That would be his role in the war! She was listening intently to Countess Eigaze, her profile showing the perfect classic beauty of the statue in the Imperial Library, with an expression as inscrutable. He remembered her happy smile in the pool’s preflection. He would make her smile like that, often. All the time! The pool had promised her with daffodils, but that did not mean he could not have her now, at midwinter, and still be her lover at daffodil time. He’d never tried a really long relationship like that before. It would be an interesting experience, and she was certainly worth it.
The door slammed as Warlock Raspnex came in. Countess and impress looked up briefly; no one else seemed to notice. The little man clumped across to a table near Ylo and then glowered at him. “Come here, lad.” He laid his elbows on the table, and had no need to stoop to do so.
Ylo felt shaky as he rose to obey the order—not from the motion of the ship, just from lack of food. But he was certainly not going to beg from a dwarf, not even a warlock dwarf. “Your Omnipotence?”
“Bah! I told you that rigmarole’s defunct! You know my name; use it. ”
“Of course, Raspnex,” Ylo said. “Do please call me Ylo.” He rested fingertips on the table and smiled down at unfriendly gray eyes colder than pebbles on a shingle beach.
“I’ll call you anything I want. Now, I need your help.”
In return for a snack, perhaps? “Help?” Ylo inquired uneasily. ”What help can I give to a great sorcerer?”
“Well, not much.” Raspnex ran fingers like chisels through his iron-gray hair. “And I’m not a great sorcerer, I’m a middling-good sorcerer. What I meant is I need to use your memory. I’d rather you agreed to let me do it than make me use force on you, but I will if I must. We need a conferral.”
“Huh?”
“A deed, a charter. Something imposing-looking with the imperial seal on it, transferring land. Shandie said you’d handled a thousand of them recently.”
“Er, yes. But I’m no scribe! And it takes days to do all that lettering and illumination and—”
“No, it doesn’t. Can you remember one where a sizable estate was gifted directly from imperial domain?”
Feeling very uneasy, Ylo said, “Emshandar deeded the Honor of Mosrace to the Marquis of—”
The dwarf slapped an oversize hand on the table. “Look there!” He removed his hand. “Now, think of that document. Pretend it’s lying there and you’re reading it.”
“I haven’t got that kind of memory!” Ylo felt panic rising. ”Yes, you do, you just don’t know how to use it. Keep looking. Think about the deed. Don’t think about anything else.” Ylo was shaking and sweating. He didn’t want this ill-shaped little monster prying around in his mind, seeing things he shouldn’t, secrets like the preflecting pool and—
“For Evil’s sake get your mind off that woman!” Raspnex rumbled. “Can’t you at least wait until her husband’s gone? Your skull sounds like elk pasture in rutting time. Now think about that deed or I’ll make you think about it.”
Gods preserve us! Wasn’t this the sort of misuse of sorcery the new protocol was going to stamp out?
“I expect it is.” Raspnex sighed roughly. “But we don’t have it in place yet. You’ve got a mind like a butterfly, know that? No control, no discipline. I’ll give you one more chance. How does it begin?”
Ylo closed his eyes and thought. We, Emshandar the Fourth, by . . . He opened his eyes. Yes! Very faintly, he could see the big historiated capitals and the black text following like smoke. He began to read the words aloud, and even as he did so, they flowed and solidified on a sheet of vellum congealing underneath. Incredible! He would never have believed he had remembered so much of something he had merely glanced at months before. He stumbled a few times when he came to the finer print, but that was mostly a description of Mosrace itself, which would not be important to the warlock, who only wanted the general pattern and would obviously change the details to suit his own . . .
“You’re daydreaming again,” Raspnex growled. “But it’s good enough. I can tidy it up.” He snatched the parchment and began rolling it.
“That’s quite a trick,” Ylo said admiringly. “You could deed me title to any estate in the Impire!”
“Can’t think why I d want to.”
“Of course, you’d have to put a matching copy in the Imperial records. ”
The little man looked up at him sourly. “I won’t risk it at the moment, because of the Covin, but it’s been done often enough.”
“What! You’re serious?”
“You ever heard of a dwarf joking?” Raspnex stamped off to join the male discussion party, leaving Ylo with his mouth open, wondering how many of the papers in the state archives were occult fakes.
At that moment, Eshiala rose and headed for the door. She glanced at him as she went by. He thought she was going to speak, then she changed her mind and swept by him as if he did not exist, being the Ice Impress. She seemed unaffected by the sudden stress of becoming an outlaw, but then she was probably under much less strain now than she had been the day before, playing for an audience in the Rotunda.
Gorgeous creature! Maybe even worth a dukedom. He knew if he were offered a clear choice now, he might yet take the woman. Even if he could enjoy only one long, lingering session of lovemaking he might. The very thought of her made his flesh burn. And Shandie was going to go off and fight his impossible campaign and leave his signifer to guard the royal family in his absence. From now until the daffodils bloomed—there was a challenge to speed a man’s heart!
Now the countess was alone, minding Maya and quietly munching candies. Well! She must have asked one of the sorcerers to produce those for her. Trust Eigaze! His mouth watered. He went across to the shabby armchair Eshiala had just left.
“May I join you, Aunt?”
Her plump face creased in a smile. “Of course! Have a chocolate?”
He accepted eagerly. “You are bearing up very well, if I may say so.”
“Oh, but this is exciting! I have never seen history being made before. I’m old enough, of course, but I’ve never been involved.”
“Not that old,” he countered automatically. He hoped that it was history that was being written in this grubby saloon, and not farce. “The historic Conference of the White Impress?”
“Winterfest, 2998!” She chuckled.” `Who was present at the conference? Why was it held on a ferryboat? Discuss how Emshandar’s Protocol differed from Emine’s.’ Generations of school children will curse us for adding to their labors!”
“Can you tell me where we’re going?” he asked.
She looked surprised and automatically reached for another candy. “I suppose so—now Lord Umpily’s gone. Rap said it was better if he did not know . . . just in case. It’s not that they don’t trust him, of course.”
“Of course.” But Ylo wondered if that was true. Umpily’s loyalty was unquestionable, but he was not the most discreet of men. In a war against the Covin, one careless word would bring disaster.
“Have another chocolate. Not his fault, you understand, but no one can keep secrets from sorcerers.”
“Yes, I understand.”
Eigaze moved back to safer conversational territory. “As to where we’re going, you know the place.” Her eyes twinkled. “In fact, it probably belongs to you! It’s called Yewdark House. Remember it?”
“Vaguely.” He recalled sunny childhood days and misty memories of ponies and sailboats.
“That’s why Shandie wants you to accompany us, I think. You can be our host.”
“One of my aunts lived there?”
Eigaze nodded wistfully. “Lady Onnly. She and I were at school together. I visited her a few times at Yewdark. I remember you and your mother there once, when you were very small. But she didn’t live there very long, Onnly didn’t. It has rather a bad reputation, you know.”
Aha! More memories surged to the surface. “What sort of reputation? ”
“Er . . . It’s supposed to be haunted.” Eigaze chuckled and quickly ate two chocolates.