“I didn’t ask her for an apple,” Dennis snapped back.
Then he said, “I feel foolish walking about with a shopping bag, Chester. I’m sorry.”
A group of children were playing around a pool of lantern light in the street, watched by an old woman in a mob cap. “Good evening, your highness!” the woman called, trembling back and forth on her rocking chair as she waved a hand in greeting. “A fine evening to you!”
“Good evening, lady,” Dennis responded in a cheerful voice, waving his own free hand as he and Chester passed. The children stared, whispering among themselves in voices that occasionally rose with high-pitched awe.
“I don’t know who she is, Chester,” Dennis muttered to his companion as darkness covered them again. “I didn’t think anybody could recognize me in the dark anyway.”
He looked down at the clothing he’d chosen: a cloak, a plain cotton tunic, and drab blue trousers.
Of course, the bag did have the royal seal on it. And—
“It may be that I can be recognized though you are not, Dennis,” said Chester, putting words to the thought that had just struck the youth.
Well, it wouldn’t matter in the jungle.
They’d had to tramp almost all the way around the harbor, since the Tomb of the Founder was on the landspit opposite the palace. Even now, Dennis wasn’t willing to disobey his father by crossing the harbor the easy way—on one of the many water taxis available at the piers.
Wasn’t willing, or wasn’t able because of the sea hag’s magic.
Most of the bars and entertainment areas for seamen were concentrated near the end of the harbor, but one brightly-lit establishment was doing a cheerful business next to the wall separating the village from the graves and solemnities of the cemetery.
A woman sat on the rail of the third-floor roof with her back to the street, singing to an invisible audience and accompanying herself on a one-string lute. As Dennis passed the tavern, the singer paused, stretched, and looked down at him. Her eyes gleamed as her jeweled combs in the light of the sconces at the tavern’s entrance; her breasts were deeper shadows within the pink froth of the chemise she wore.
The singer smiled down. Dennis blushed and walked away quickly.
“He who knows how to hold his heart,” murmured Chester, “knows the most important thing of all.”
“Just leave that, all right?” Dennis said.
For a wonder, Chester said nothing more on the subject.
The cemetery was closed from the remainder of the landspit by a fence and gate. Five years before, Hale had replaced the wooden palings of Dennis’ youth with wrought iron. Sections of the fence were already skewed at slight angles from one another, but the gilt spikes on top glittered bravely in the starlight.
The gate was open. Emath was crowded, but there was no need to lock squatters out of the graveyard. King Hale’s law forbade anyone sleeping within the fenced area; and King Hale’s protector, hidden in the deep sea, supported the law with her own powers.
A high swell rumbled against the land, silhouetting the tombs against a phosphorescent mist. The Founder’s Tomb stood out in rough-hewn majesty from the lesser monuments. It had been easy to imagine that this pile of red rock was the creation of the earliest men on Earth, far removed from the crystal refinement of Emath Palace.
I built it, Ramos had said, and your father beside me.
One of the dragons coughed a challenge to the jungle; the sea slapped a wave against the headland again in response.
“Let’s go in, Chester,” Dennis said quietly. “And leave.”
Serdic’s black marble mausoleum lay beside the path to the old rock tomb. Dennis kept a tight hold on his emotions as he strode past the entrance, but the tomb didn’t give him the thrill of fear that he’d expected—that he’d felt in the wizard’s suite of the palace.
None of what was frightening about the Wizard Serdic lay here.
The door of the Founder’s Tomb was wooden. Salt air had shrunk the wood and bleached it gray, so that it shone like a patch of the skyglow as Dennis approached. The straps, hinges and latchplate were rusted the same color as the rock, and the black keyhole was the size of the last joint of Dennis’ thumb.