Helga felt her shoulders begin to shake with reaction. Adrian laid his hand on her back again, gently—cautiously—but firmly.
“And now, if my lord King will excuse me,” he said.
“By all means, my Iron Limper,” Casull said, referring to the lame smith of the gods. “Keep the vixen, if you want her. I’d say not to turn your back, but—” he gave another shout of laughter “—that didn’t do Lord Sawtre here any good, did it?”
He raised a hand and shouted over the court’s merriment. “And now, my lords and gentlemen, we have a city to sack!”
* * *
“An’ here’s to lord Adrian, the favored of the Gray-Eyed, victory-lucky, best lord a fightin’ man could follow!” Simun shouted, raising his cup.
The arquebusiers of the Lightning Band—they’d come up with the title on their own—raised a deafening cheer. Adrian smiled and nodded; it was rather like having a pack of pet direbeasts: alarming at times, but it certainly beat having them against you. The long palace hall was full of them, and of servants and women—the latter volunteers, or mostly, considering their alternatives—and the smells of food and wine and hastily washed mercenary rubbed with scented oil, and incense from braziers, perfumed lanterns, garlands. . . . Light flickered on hard battered faces, on ranks of bundles of plunder stacked against the walls, neatly wrapped in canvas and inked with their owners’ names, and on the unit’s equipment. They were ready to move out in the morning.
“Here’s to his brother, who’s Wodep come again,” Simun said loyally. “Yer can’t go wrong with leaders who’re favored of the gods—smart, too.”
“Long live lord Adrian, who taught us to wield the lightnings!” someone else yelled.
“Long live lord Adrian, who’s brought us to a place where we can swim in gold!”
That brought a really enthusiastic cheer. The wine cellar they’d gone through had turned out to be a subtreasury or something, probably the ready funds for the management of the Director’s hareem. Strictly speaking it should have gone into the general pot, but everyone had agreed that that would be taking the rules to a ridiculous extreme. It had come out to about a year’s pay for every man in the unit, not counting what they’d picked up elsewhere the rest of the day.
“And now I’ll leave you to your well-earned feasting,” Adrian said.
There was another good-natured cheer. They didn’t resent him not taking part in the celebration; they’d come to take a certain pride in the oddity of a Scholar of the Grove commanding them, now that nobody could doubt he had balls enough despite it. It had worked; it was lucky; and if it wasn’t broke, they weren’t going to try and fix it.
“Won’t be a gentleman’s symposium, no, sir,” Simun said. He leered cheerfully. “Watch out for ‘er sword before you show ‘er yours, too, sir!”
He left the chamber in a roar of bawdy advice, flushing and smiling a little. His own chambers had probably been a royal guard captain’s rooms, up a flight of stairs, with half a flat roof as well, enclosed by a head-high wall except where a low balustrade overlooked the courtyard-drillyard, and set with plants in pots, tumbles of blossoming vine falling down to the brown tiles. The scent of the flowers was faint and cool, after the heat and smells of the main hall; the walls blocked out flames and sound from the rest of Vase, leaving only the stars above, many and bright.
“Ah—” he caught himself before he said Lady Demansk; the Gray-Eyed knew he didn’t want Helga to know he knew that. “Freewoman Helga.” There, at least he’d gotten across that he regarded her as a free citizen of the Confederacy, not a slave who’d changed owners. She nodded, taking note of the title, and he went on: “I’ve had some things gathered up for you, and you can have that chamber by the stairwell; we’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
“Well, yes, I’d sort of wondered about that,” Helga said, stepping forward into the puddle of yellow light a brass globe full of oil with a cotton wick cast on the tiles.