An hour or so later, the road came to a bridge. Rap reined in at the toll gate. At once a half-dozen legionaries appeared from nowhere to surround the carriage, and his heart began to thump with rare enthusiasm. They were looking at him, not the door, so their interest was in the driver, not the passengers. That was very bad news. He needed no occult talent to see the suspicion in their gaze. Zinixo controlled the Imperial army, and could have issued warrants for the arrest of all oversize fauns. Normally mundanes could be no threat to Rap, but the Covin would still be listening for any use of power near the capital.
The centurion drew his sword as his men took hold of the reins. “You, boy! Down!”
“Master?” Rap exclaimed, trying to look stupid, and thinking that it would be altogether appropriate under the circumstances. He began tying the reins, although legionaries were holding the lead pair’s cheek straps. He moved clumsily along the bench, taking his time so he could analyze the situation. The closer he could come to the centurion himself, the less power he would need to use to influence him. And then, amid the sparkle of sunlight on chain mail, he saw a faint shimmer of sorcery on the man.
It might be a loyalty spell, in which case he was one of the dwarf’s votaries. That seemed unlikely, for this was a very minor road, one of hundreds in the Capital District. Zinixo could not possibly have enough manpower to post sorcerers on them all. The centurion did not show in the ambience, not at the moment, so probably he was just a bespelled mundane. Rap dared not pry deeper, to discover what the magic did. It might make the wearer immune to mastery, or sound alarms if it was used near him, or . . . or . . . Holy Balance! Now what?
Then the side window of the carriage clicked open, revealing the rubicund face of Master Orbilo.
“What’s happening? Oh, it’s you, Uggleepe!” Startled, the centurion saluted._ “Uncle!”
“Well? What’s going on?”
“Just a routine check, sir.”
“Well, you’ve checked. You know me, I hope?”
“Of course, Uncle!”
“Good. Then clear the road.” Orbilo disappeared. Uggleepe backed up quickly, sheathing his sword and shouting at his men to stand clear.
Saved! Rap climbed back on the box and took up the reins again. “Have a nice day, Centurion,” he murmured quietly. Thinal was going to be unbearable over this incident when he got Rap alone—bless him!
6
Shandie roused himself as if he had been riding in his sleep. He stared at the gates of the city ahead and then turned in the saddle to fix an angry gaze on Ylo.
“Newbridge?”
“That’s right.”
Apparently he was only now registering the bustle of traffic on the highway—coaches and wagons and groups of riders—and yet it had been all around him for the last half hour. “I thought we were going to stay on side roads and avoid crowds?”
“Where else can we cross the Ambly?” Ylo said patiently. “I don’t fancy swimming it in this weather.”
“There are ferries!” Shandie’s eyes were dark slits of suspicion.
Ylo sighed. “We discussed this.”
“Discuss it again!”
“We agreed we’d be more noticeable on a ferry than crossing a bridge in a crowd, and more easily remembered.”
“I don’t remember discussing that at all!”
“Well, we did. You don’t listen,”
Shandie grunted and fell silent, absently chewing a fingernail. Soon he seemed to sink back into the black brooding that occupied so much of his time now. Every day was worse than the one before. Distance had brought no lessening in the Covin’s hold over him; if anything, his doubts and depression were increasing. He rarely spoke, except when he had found yet another reason to turn back and surrender to the usurper. Hub was calling him, and either the call was growing stronger or his resistance was fading.
Ylo also was rapidly sinking into despair. He was exhausted by Shandie’s arguments, depressed by his lethargy, and worried sick by his unpredictable fits of temper. He hardly dared let the imperor out of his sight for fear the madman would disappear. Emshandar had died after a fifty-year reign, the wardens had been overthrown after three thousand—fine! Ylo could accept those changes as being no more unexpected than weather. But to find Shandie, of all people, behaving like a sulky child was enough to unseat the heavens. As well expect trees to walk or fish to sing.
Now came a new worry, for Newbridge was an obvious trap. Here the Great West Way crossed the mighty Ambly and here, surely, Zinixo would have sorcerers watching the traffic. As Ylo and his ward rode in through the gates, he offered a prayer that there would be safety in numbers.
Winterfest was coming and the Impire was on the move. Imps went home at Winterfest as bees sought their hives at sunset. Highways were solid with horses and carriages as half the population headed to family reunions with the other half. In the rainy gloom of a winter evening, Newbridge was packed. Immobilized traffic jammed the narrow streets. Angry coachmen shouted and argued, demanding right of way, proclaiming the importance of their passengers. Women and children wailed in fear as they were crushed tight by the press of the crowd. At the best of times this road would be shadowed, and now it was almost dark. Ylo struggled to keep his horse close to Shandie’s, aware that his legs were going to be black and blue from the battering they were taking.
“Yshan?”
The imperor grunted. “Humph?”
“If we get separated, wait for me at the North Gate.”
“Humph.”
“Crushed a couple of dozen yesterday,” a cheerful voice at Ylo’s elbow remarked.
He glanced around and decided he had never met the young man whose horse was crowding into his. Danger was making normally taciturn strangers talkative. ”Should be able to do better than that if we try.”
The youngster sniggered nervously. “You’re not wearing spurs, are you? Saw a yokel back there with spurs on.”
“Ought to be a law,” Ylo agreed. One horse pricked unexpectedly could create a disaster. “What’s the delay?”
“The army tries to limit the numbers getting on the bridge. They don’t have much luck at this time of year.”
“They close down at sunset?”
“Uh-huh. Well, usually allow an hour or so longer. Frightened of a riot if they’re too early, my dad says.”
The crowd edged forward. Ylo urged his horse after Shandie’s. His new friend followed. He was obviously a local, probably an apprentice.
“Going far?”
“Mosrace.”
“You sure won’t make that by Winterfest.”
“At this rate I won’t make it by Harvesthome,” Ylo agreed, with a mental note to revise his cover story. Mosrace must be farther west than he’d thought.
Shandie glanced around. “Ylo?”
“Yes, Yshan?”
“The bridge here is too narrow. It needs widening. Remind me when we get back to Hub.”
Ylo sighed. “Yes, Yshan.”
Shandie set to work chewing another fingernail. “Who’s he?” asked the youngster. “Looks familiar.”
“Sh! He’s very sensitive about it.”
“Oh.”
Shandie might have passed through Newbridge a dozen times or so in the last few years. Once or twice he might have been conspicuous at the head of troops, but usually he would have been fast and anonymous, and his was not a memorable face. Almost certainly the boy was mistaking him for someone else altogether. The crowd surged forward a few paces and the talkative youth was detached. In a few moments Ylo found himself trading chaff with a buxom housewife looking out of a carriage window. She had a nice line in innuendos.
Nothing lasts forever, and eventually the crowd oozed out of the alleyway and onto the approach to the great Emthar II Bridge. There it slowed down. The bridge itself snaked away as a ribbon of darkness across the silvery brightness of water, and the far bank was invisible in the misty winter evening. Ylo was horrified when he saw how many guards there were. Perhaps they were only regulating traffic, but he suspected they were inspecting the travelers, as well. Nothing he could do about it now, though—with Shandie at his side, he was being borne forward by the crowd as irresistibly as a boulder on a glacier.
“Yyan!” Shandie exclaimed, jerking alert again. “I’ve got it!”
“Got what?”
“The real story! Listen to this. It was all the faun’s doing! Why didn’t we see how unlikely it was—that he would turn up on the very evening Grandsire died? That’s got to be more than coincidence!”
“I don’t see why. You suggesting he assassinated your grandfather?” Personally, Ylo could imagine no less likely murderer than King Rap.
“Possibly!” Shandie’s eyes were gleaming with excitement. “He used sorcery on Grandsire once before, remember! And got away with it! Then he faked that scene in the Rotunda. That wasn’t Raspnex we saw at all, it was the faun!”