“Seems a confusing sort of place,” Haplo pursued. “More like a bee’s hive than a palace.”
“Bee’s hive?” asked the dynast, raising an eyebrow and stifling a yawn. “I’m not familiar with that term.”
Haplo shrugged. “What I mean is, a fellow could get himself lost in here without too much trouble.”
“One learns one’s way around,” said the dynast, amused. “However, if you would truly be interested in seeing a place in which it is easy to lose oneself, we could show you the catacombs.”
“Or, as we know them, the dungeons,” the chancellor inserted, with a snigger.
“Pay attention to your wall, Pons, or we shall be here all night.”
“Yes, Sire.”
Nothing more was said. The walls were completed. Pons noted that Haplo, who maintained that he had never played, constructed his wall with perfect accuracy, although many beginning players found the markings on the bones confusing. It was almost, the chancellor thought, as if the runes said something to him they said to no one else.
“Excuse me, my dear sir,” said Pons fussily, leaning over to whisper to Haplo. “I believe you’ve made a mistake. That particular rune doesn’t belong up on the battlements, where you’ve put it, but down below.”
“Properly placed, it goes there,” said Haplo in his quiet voice.
“He’s right, Pons,” said Kleitus.
“Is he really, Sire?” The chancellor was flustered, laughed at himself. “I—I must have it wrong, then. I’ve never been very good at this game. I confess that all the bones look alike. These markings mean nothing to me,”
“They mean nothing to any of us, Chancellor,” said the dynast severely. ‘At least they didn’t, up until now.” A glance at Haplo. “You have to memorize them, Pons. I’ve told you that before.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. It’s good of Your Majesty to have such patience with me.”
“Your bid, Your Highness,” said Kleitus to the prince.
Edmund stirred restlessly in his chair. “One red hexagon.”
The dynast shook his head. “I’m afraid, Your Highness, that a red hexagon is an improper opening bid.”
The prince sprang to his feet. “Your Majesty, I have been arrested, beaten, insulted. If I had been alone, without a responsibility for others, I would have rebelled against such treatment that is not due from one Sartan to another, let alone from one king to another! But I am a prince. I hold the lives of others in my keeping. And I cannot concentrate on a … a game”—he waved a hand contemptuously at the board—”when my people are suffering from cold and starvation!”
“Your people attacked an innocent village—”
“We did not attack, Sire!” Edmund was rapidly losing control.
“We wanted to buy food, wine. We intended to pay for it, but the people attacked us before we had a chance to say a word! Strange, now that I think of it. It was as if they’d been led to believe we would attack them!”
The dynast cast a look at Haplo, to see if he had anything to add.
Haplo toyed with a rune-bone, appeared bored.
“A perfectly natural precaution,” said the dynast, returning his attention to the prince. “Our scouts sight a large force of armed barbarians, moving toward our city, coming from the outland. What would have been your assumption?”
“Barbarians!” Edmund went white to the lips. “Barbarians! We are no more barbarians than … than this fop of a chancellor is a barbarian! Our civilization is older than yours, one of the first established following the Sundering! Our beautiful city, open to the air, makes this one look like the stinking rat’s warren that it is!”
“And yet I believe you’ve come to beg to be allowed to live inside this ‘stinking rat’s warren,'” said Kleitus, leaning back and looking languidly at the prince through slit eyelids.
The prince’s livid face suffused with a red, feverish flush. “I have not come to beg! Work! We will work to earn our keep! All we ask is shelter from the killing rain and food to feed our children. Our dead and our living, too, if you want, will work in your fields, serve in your army. We will”—Edmund swallowed, as though forcing down the bitter stalagma—”we will acknowledge you as our liege lord .. .”