Emperor and Clown (28 page)

He
was very big. Not quite as big as Azak, but certainly big enough to intimidate.
She had to bend her head back to see his beaming smile, and the stench of blood
on him made her nauseous. Fists on hips, the infamous murderer and rapist
surveyed her gloatingly.

“So
you have arrived, Inosolan! What a hideous mess you have made of your face.
That excludes one option, anyway. And where is that raccoon-eyed faun of yours?”
He glanced around, and his height let him scan the whole court party.

The
courtiers were at a loss. Ythbane was seething at being thus ignored. The rain
grew steadily more persistent.

Inos’s
whirling wits grasped onto one solid thought-Epoxague’s guess had been correct.
Kalkor knew of the prophecy. He even knew of Rap’s tattoos, and he had picked
out Inos so easily that he must have been given a detailed description of her.

He
had also passed through the line of guards with no apparent effort.

“Dead!
Rap’s dead,” Inos said, tugging her cloak around her and fighting a need to
shiver. Everyone but Azak was quietly backing away from the murderous madman.

The
sapphire eyes came back to hers in a flash. “Oh, that was very careless of you.
You have spoiled my fun.” He flashed a smile, white teeth in gory mask. “Quite
sure?”

“Yes.”

He
accepted that without hesitation. His mood became petulant. Rain was thinning
the blood on him, running in red trickles down his chest and face. “Very
annoying. And who will be your champion now? Anyone worthwhile?”

“Come
here, Nordlander!” Ythbane roared from the throne.

Kalkor
ignored him, his glittering gaze rising to rest on Azak, who was marginally
taller, but perhaps only because he was wearing boots.

“This?”
The jotunn laughed scornfully. “A camelloving djinn?”

“My
wife withdraws her claim,” Azak said with astonishing calm. “Keep your rotten
little kingdom.” Ythbane jumped off the throne and came striding over.
Praetorians rushed to follow. His wife moaned and put a hand to her mouth,
staring after him. The little prince just gaped as if he were halfwitted.

Inos
said, “Azak-”

“Be
silent, wife! You need not challenge, Thane. She acknowledges you as King of
Krasnegar.”

“No,
Azak!” Inos shouted. “I said I withdraw my claim only if-”

Azak
roared, “Silence!” at Inos, just as the regent arrived beside her and Kalkor
spat in her face. She cannoned back into Epoxague, shocked speechless.

“Stop
!” the regent snapped. “There will be no more of this!”

Kalkor
turned the ice-blue glare on him. “Hold your tongue, imp! I am a Nordland
thane-violate your own safe conduct and I promise you the coasts of the Impire
will burn for a generation.” His bare shoulder was higher than the regent’s
fine plumed hat.

Shakily
Inos wiped her cheek with a linen kerchief. Before either Ythbane or Azak could
speak again, Lady Eigaze uttered a loud shriek from the background.

Kalkor’s
scowl had just come back to Inos . . . suddenly it became a broad smile.

Inos
looked past him to where three people were arriving at the bottom of the slope beyond
the line of legionaries: a hussar leading his horse and escorting a
well-dressed elderly lady, and a ...

It
was not the hussar she saw. Nor the lady. Only the youth at the back.

Only
he registered, a nondescript young man in the simple brown garb of an artisan.
Bigger than an imp, smaller than a jotunn. Tangled hair already dripping wet.
Stupid, stupid tattoos around his eyes.

Inos
screamed, “Rap! It’s Rap! He’s alive! Rap’s alive!” She jostled through between
the regent and the thane and flew down the bank with her cloak streaming high
behind her and her arms spread out in welcome and her feet barely touching the
ground.

It
had been late the previous evening when Rap had dropped in at the hostelry to
check on Foggy and Smoky. He had spent the day in gathering news, which meant
snooping, which meant applying occult charm to make people talk of what they
didn’t necessarily want to discuss. What they did want to discuss-particularly
some of the women-had often shocked him considerably.

The
task had left him feeling cheap and soiled, and the only relevant thing he had
learned was that Kalkor was in Hub. Impossible, but confirmed by many.

He
had found the ponies well content, being tended by a young faun stableboy, who
had mostly wanted to know how Rap had managed to grow so big. When that had
been explained, he had passed on a dramatic new story about a battle scheduled
for the following day.

By
the time Rap returned to the house, Andor had just arrived with much the same
information, and everyone was talking at once, on a variety of topics.

Gathmor,
of course, was gloating. Kalkor was in town, and Gathmor had a wife and
children to avenge.

The
princess was puzzled and fretting, because there was no word of Inosolan. If
the Impire had recognized Angilki as King of Krasnegar, then where was Inos?

Andor
was adamant-tomorrow’s spectacle was no place for him, nor his friends, either.
“The crowds will be immense!” he insisted. “People will get trampled and
crushed. I am not going, and neither are any of you! It is madness.”

Rap
was feeling the cold fingers of premonition on his skin. He knew that he at
least was going to be there. “What do you want, ma’am?” he asked the princess.
There was no doubt what she wanted.

But
what she said was, “Advise me, please, Master Rap?”

Foresight
he dared not use. He had been two days in Hub now, and the fearful white horror
must be very near now. But he thought about going and then about not going, and
he compared his premonitions. He sensed danger, yes, and dark menace, but behind
all that there was something new-a pure, high note of joy like the song of a
flute. It could only be Inos, seeing Inos, and it squeezed his heart and hurt
his eyelids.

“I
think we should go, ma’am,” he said. “We shall go, then,” she agreed happily.
And Gathmor? No need to ask him. “Not me!” Andor said.

“Darad.
I think.”

“And
I will not call Darad! Not in Hub.”

“Darad!”
Rap insisted, and despised the mean satisfaction he gained from seeing Andor
flinch.

So
it was decided.

Gathmor
was content with his footman’s livery, but finding clothes that would fit Darad
was a problem, and Rap himself wanted some inconspicuous, noncommittal
garments. Clothes produced by magic might attract occult attention. He took a
lesson in sewing from the princess, and sat up most of the night, tailoring as
if he had apprenticed to the trade for years.

By
morning Gathmor was in a rapturous state of mind that Rap distrusted. He tried
halfheartedly to dissuade the sailor from coming, but without using power on
him the effort was wasted. What bothered Rap most was the dagger concealed in
Gathmor’s doublet, although an opportunity to strike at Kalkor seemed highly
improbable and Rap could always magic the weapon away if it seemed likely to be
used. Kalkor had occult powers of his own, and no mere mundane sailor was going
to end his career.

And
Darad was no more trustworthy, for he also had a score to settle with the
savage thane.

They
left at dawn, yet despite Rap’s peerless control the carriage became stalled in
traffic and crowds a long way from the Campus Abnila. Reluctantly leaving the
horses in the care of a couple of shifty-eyed youths, he set out on foot with
his friends.

Darad’s
great bulk was a help, but more valuable still was the constant tremor of magic
that seemed to infest the capital like a winter dog. It was even more in
evidence than usual, so obviously Rap was not the only wielder of power
striving to reach the arena. There might be occult cutpurses around also,
working the crowd as Thinal would. Seers would be trying to lay bets.

Rap
used as little mastery as possible, but he gradually cleared a way for himself
and the others. Large men moved aside without quite knowing why they did so,
and step by step the princess and her escorts fought their way up the outside
of the bank, and across the top, and then down the interior slope, until they
had a prime location directly behind the arm-linked cordon of soldiers, close
to one of the two little tents. The troll was in there, Rap knew.

And
that was as far as they could go. Now all that remained was to wait until the
regent’s party arrived and the duel began.

The
royal enclosure was empty at first and then gradually filled. Suddenly Rap’s
heart began to beat much faster ...

“Surely
I am not mistaken,” Princess Kadolan said. “Is that not the sultan? And Most”

Over
the past few weeks, Rap had been gently curing her shortsightedness, but so
subtly that she had not been aware of his meddling. Her back pains had gone,
too, and she had not missed those, either.

“Can’t
be certain,” Gathmor grunted. Jotunn eyesight was legendary, a handy trait for
sailors, but Rap’s farsight was now well beyond the limits of mundane
perception.

“Yes,
it is,” he muttered. Tragedy! He could cure those awful scars, but to do so at
such a distance would be difficult, and dangerous for him. He would do it, of
course, but later, when he could get closer. He would do it for her sake-he
didn’t care what she looked like, only what she was.

Her
misfortunes had not broken her spirit; her star burned brighter than ever.

Inos!
Oh, Inos!

More
than anything he wished he had been able to tell her, just once, how he loved
her; how he always had. He couldn’t tell her now.

Inos,
married.

Standing
close to her big, handsome djinn. Being presented to the regent.

Rap
did not eavesdrop on what was said, although he could have done so. He just
watched glumly. Then the antique trumpets brayed, and battle was joined. It was
disgusting. Kalkor used magic. Rap felt the ambience shake as the ax whirled
skyward and again during the thane’s murderous attack. He had known Kalkor was
a seer, and had suspected even back on Blood Wave that the raider had more than
one word of power. Obviously he knew at least three, to be able to control his
weapon in the air like that and so easily penetrate the gladiator’s guard ...

Why
not? Words of power were a form of wealth. They could be looted like anything
else. The troll had never had a hope.

Kalkor
disabled him and then chopped him down like a tree and jeered at him as he bled
to death. Then butchered him. Finally he went stalking toward the imperial
enclosure, still bearing his ax. So this was the ritual savagery that he had
once described to Rap as a sacred ritual?

Gathmor
and Darad had begun to twitch with bloodlust of their own, and Rap regretfully
laid a trance on both of them, so that they just stood and smiled vaguely at
nothing. That was safer for them, he told himself angrily. By the time it wore
off, the thane would be long gone elsewhere.

The
weary fence of legionaries still struggled against the press of the crowd,
because they had orders to do that. The fancy young men on horses were moving
around again.

“Ah!”
the princess said. “That tall one on the gray, Master Rapt You see? He visited
Kinvale last Winterfest-he knows met Can you make him come this way?”

“Yes,
ma’am,” Rap said. It was time.

Pilgrim
soul:

How
many loved your moments of glad grace,

And
loved your beauty with love false or true,

But
one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And
loved the sorrows of your changing face.

Yeats,
When You Are Old

Whispered Word

The
legionaries had already opened a gap; Inos ran through it. She went by the
hussar and his horse, she ignored the astonished Kade, leaving her with hands
raised and smile wasted ...

She
would probably have thrown her arms around Rap and very likely have kissed him,
except that she seemed to stumble into an unseen feather bolster that brought
her to an unexpected, gasping halt. His eyes were big and gray and unreadable. “Rap!”

“Hello,
Inos.”

“Oh,
Rap, Rap! I’m so glad to see you!”

“Me,
too. To see you.”

“You’re
well?”

“Yes.
You?”

“Fine.”

Why
were they whispering?

“Rap,
I thought you were dead again ... Oh, Gods!” She laughed. “I mean, again I
thought you were dead.”

Alive!
Rap was alive!

He
was not smiling, not even that bashful little grin she remembered so well. He
had not bowed to her, as he had at their other dramatic meetings. He was just
regarding her with a wistful sad stare, as if trying to fix her in his memory.

“No.
Not dead. Not yet, anyway. How was your journey?”

“Fine-no
it wasn’t. Horrible! Yours?”

“Not
bad.”

They
were standing in the rain, staring, mouthing nonsense like morons. Or she was,
anyway, and why was he so solemn?

“How
did you come?” she asked. “I mean, did you come by sorcery, or really travel,
like ordinary folk?” Argh! She should not have said that.

“I
traveled. With your aunt. And Sagorn. And Gathmor, but you don’t know him.”

No
need to ask why he had come. The God had told her that. “Not the goblin? Sagorn
and the others, of course. You all survived the imps, then ... Oh, Rap! I do so
want to hear it all.”

“Inos,
I think we’re keeping some important people waiting.”

She
backed away a step. He looked like Rap and sounded like Rap, and yet somehow he
didn’t, either. “You are Rap? Really Rap? Not a wraith, or some horrid magic
trick? Azak said you were dead. He said awful, terrible things and I believed
him and oh, I’m so glad you’re all right and how did you escape from the jail?”