want, Ulath? A signed confession from Gerrich himself?’
‘Do you have one handy? All I’m saying is that we ought to keep an open
mind. I don’t think we should close any doors yet, that’s all.’ There was a
firm knock on the door, and it opened immediately afterward. Mirtai looked
in. ‘Beveier and Tynian are here,’ she announced. They’re supposed to be in
Render,’ Sparhawk said. ‘What are they doing here?’
‘Why don’t you ask them?’ Mirtai suggested pointedly. ‘They’re right out
here in the corridor.’ The two knights entered the room. Sir Bevier was a
slim, olive-skinned Arcian, and Sir Tynian a blond, burly Deiran. Both were
in full armour. ‘How are things in Render?’ Kalten asked them. ‘Hot, dry,
dusty, hysterical,’ Tynian replied. ‘Render never changes. You know that.’
Bevier dropped to one knee before Ehlana. Despite the best efforts of his
friends, the young Cyrinic Knight was stil painfully formal. ‘Your
Majesty,’ he murmured respectfully. ‘Oh, do stand up, my dear Bevier,’ she
smiled at him.
‘We’re friends, so there’s no need for that. Besides, you creak like a
rusty iron-works when you kneel.’
‘Overtrained, perhaps, your Majesty,’ he admitted. ‘What are you two doing
back here?’ Sparhawk asked them. ‘Carrying dispatches,’ Tynian replied.
‘Darrellon’s running things down there, and he wants the other preceptors
kept abreast of things. We’re also supposed to go on to Chyrellos and brief
the Archprelate.’
‘How’s the campaign going?’ Kalten asked them. ‘Badly,’ Tynian
shrugged.’The Rendorish rebels aren’t really organised, so there aren’t any
armies for us to meet. They hide amongst the population and come out at
night to set fires and assassinate priests. Then they run back into their
holes. We take reprisals the next day – burn vilages, slaughter herds of
sheep and the like. None of it really proves anything.’
‘Do they have any kind of a leader as yet?’Sparhawk asked. ‘They’re stil
discussing that,’ Bevier said dryly. ‘The discussions are quite spirited.
We usually find several dead candidates in the alleys every morning.’
‘Sarathi blundered,’ Tynian said. Bevier gasped. ‘i’m not trying to offend
your religious sensibilities, my young friend,’ Tynian said, but it’s the
truth. Most of the clergymen he sent to Render were much more interested in
punishment than in reconciliation. We had a chance for real peace in
Render, and it fell aPart because Dolmant didn’t send somebody down there
to keep a leash on the missionaries.’ Tynian set his helmet on a table and
unbuckled his sword-belt. ‘I even saw one silly ass in a cassock tearing
the veils off women in the street. After the crowd seized him, he tried to
order me to protect him. That’s the kind of priests the church has been
sending to Render.’
‘What did you do?’ Stragen asked him. ‘For some reason I couldn’t quite
hear what he was saying,’ Tynian replied. ‘All the noise the crowd was
making, more than likely.’
‘What did they do to him?’ Kalten grinned. ‘They hanged him. Quite a neat
job, actually.’
‘You didn’t even go to his defence?’ Bevier exclaimed. ‘Our
instructions’were very explicit, Bevier. We were told to protect the clergy
against unprovoked attacks. That idiot violated the modesty of about a
dozen Rendorish women. That crowd had plenty of provocation. The silly ass
had it coming. If that crowd hadn’t .hanged him, I probably would have.
That’s what Darrellon wants us to suggest to Sarathi. He thinks the church
should pull all those fanatic missionaries out of Render until things quiet
down. Then he suggests that we send in a new batch – a slightly less
fervent one.’ The Alcione Knight laid his sword down beside his helmet and
lowered himself into a chair. ‘What’s been happening here?’ he asked. ‘Why
don’t the rest of you fill them in?’ Sparhawk suggested. ‘There’s someone I
want to talk with for a few minutes.’ He turned and quietly went back into
the royal apartment. The person he wanted to talk with was not some court
functionary, but rather his own daughter. He found her playing with her
kitten. After some thought, her Royal little Highness had decided to name
the small animal ‘Mmrr’, a sound which, when she uttered it, sounded so
much like the kitten’s purr that Sparhawk usually couldn’t tell for sure
which of them was making it. Princess Danae had many gifts. ‘We need to
talk,’ Sparhawk told her, closing the door behind him as he entered. ‘What
is it now, Sparhawk?’ she asked. ‘Tynian and Bevier just arrived.’
‘Yes. I know.’
‘Are you playing with things again? Are you deliberately gathering all our
friends here?’
‘Of course I am, father.’
‘Would you mind telling me why?’
‘There’s something we’re going to need to do before long. I thought I’d
save some time by getting everybody here in advance.’
‘You’d probably better tell me what it is that we have to do.’
‘i’m not supposed to do that.’
‘You never pay any attention to any of the other rules.’
‘This is different, father. We’re absolutely not supposed to talk about
the future. If you think about it for a moment, I’m sure you’ll see why.
Ouch!’ Mmrr had bitten her finger. Danae spoke sharply with the kitten a
series of little growls, a meow or two and concluding with a forgiving
purr. The kitten managed to look slightly ashamed of itself and proceeded
to lick the injured finger. ‘Please don’t talk in cat, Danae,’ Sparhawk
said in a pained tone. ‘if some chambermaid hears you, it’ll take us both a
month to explain.’
‘Nobody’s going to hear me, Sparhawk. You’ve got something else on your
mind, haven’t you?’
‘I want to talk with Sephrenia. There are some things I don’t understand,
and I need her help with them.’
‘i’ll help you, father.’ He shook his head. ‘Your explanations of things
always leave me with more questions than I had when we started. Can you get
in touch with Sephrenia for me?’
She looked around. ‘It probably wouldn’t be a good idea here in the palace,
father,’ she told him. ‘It involves something that might be hard to explain
if someone overheard us.’
‘You’re going to be in two places at the same time again?’
‘Well – sort of.’ She picked up her kitten. ‘Why don’t you find some
excuse to take me out for a ride tomorrow morning? We’ll go out of the city
and I can take care of things there. Tell mother that you want to give me a
riding lesson.’
‘You don’t have a pony, Danae.’ She gave him an angelic smile. ‘My
goodness,’ she said, ‘that sort of means that you’re going to have to give
me one, doesn’t it?’ He gave her a long, steady look. ‘You were going to
give me a pony eventually anyway, weren’t you, father?’ She gave it a
moment’s thought. ‘A white one, Sparhawk,’ she added. ‘I definitely want a
white one.’ Then she snuggled her kitten against her cheek, and they both
started to purr.
Sparhawk and his daughter rode out of Cimmura not long after breakfast the
following morning. The weather was blustery, and Mirtai had objected rather
vociferously until Princess Danae told her not to be so fussy. For some
reason, the word ‘fussy’ absolutely enraged the Tamul giantess. She stormed
away, swearing in her own language. It had taken Sparhawk hours to find a
white pony for his daughter, and he was quite convinced after he had that
it was the only white one in the whole town. When Danae greeted the stubby
little creature like an old friend, he began to have a number of
suspicions. Over the past couple of years, he and his daughter had
painfully hammered out a list of the things she wasn’t supposed to do. The
process had begun rather abruptly in the palace garden one summer afternoon
when he had come around a box hedge to find a small swarm of fairies
pollinating flowers under Danae’s supervision. Although she had probably
been right when she had asserted that fairies were really much better at it
than bees, he had firmly put his foot down. After a bit of thought this
time, however, he decided not to make an issue of his daughters obvious
connivance in obtaining a specific pony. He needed her help right now, and
she might point out with a certain amount of justification that to forbid
one form of what they had come to call ‘tampering’ while encouraging
another was inconsistent. ‘is this going to involve anything spectacular?’
he asked her when they were several miles out of town. ‘How do you mean,
spectacular?’
‘You don’t have to fly or anything, do you?’
‘It’s awkward ‘that way, but I can if you’d like.’
‘No, that’s all right, Danae. What I’m getting at is would you be doing
anything that would startle travellers if we went out into this meadow a
ways and you did whatever it is there?’
‘They won’t see a thing, father,’ she assured him. ‘i’ll race you to that