Goddess of the Ice Realm (13 page)

Cashel joined in the laughter—but Sharina didn't. She and Liane stared at each other across the table with identical worried expressions.

Ilna set her cup back at the corner of her empty platter, precisely where it had been before she raised it to drink the toast.
“To the Isles!”
were fine-sounding words, no doubt, but what did
the Isles
mean? Not a string of islands, surely; and not the people on those islands either, with their own wishes and plans and anger. People weren't a thing or even a thousand things: they were every one of them as different as the spools of yarn from which Ilna wove her fabrics.

She smiled coldly. Most people thought wool was all the
same except for the color it might have been dyed. They were wrong. And maybe Ilna os-Kenset was wrong in not seeing the great fabric of the Isles that someone, perhaps Garric and the rest of them here at this table, were weaving out of individual people.

It wasn't dark yet, but servants were bringing out lanterns to hang from hooked poles. Chalcus would probably suggest they hire a chair to take them to the house they were renting . . . and Ilna would probably agree, because she disliked the feel of cobblestones underfoot and in the dark of unfamiliar streets she might well slip in filth and turn an ankle.

Across the table Cashel, Sharina, and Tenoctris—with Cashel's help—were rising. Ilna rose also, but as Chalcus stood he touched a hand to her elbow for attention and said, “Prince Garric, might I have a talk of a private nature with you and Mistress Ilna before we're off about our business for the evening?”

“Yes, of course,” said Garric, his tone friendly but guarded. He didn't have any idea what Chalcus wanted to discuss, but he knew it wasn't a slight thing if the sailor requested privacy.

Ilna didn't have any idea either. What she
did
know was that surprises were usually unpleasant.

“Though you won't mind,” Garric continued, making a statement rather than asking a question, “if Lady Liane stays with us to take notes.”

Garric seemed much older than he'd been when he and Ilna both left Barca's Hamlet. He'd been a happy boy and a friendly youth; now—he was often happy and usually friendly, but he was beyond question a man.

Ilna smiled, though the expression didn't reach her lips. She didn't think she'd ever been young herself, but she regretted her old friend Garric's loss of childish playfulness. No doubt “the Isles,” whatever they were, were better for the change.

“I have work to do with the reports, your highness,” Liane said calmly. Her eyes met Ilna's and she made a respectful half-curtsey of acknowledgment. “Good evening, Mistress Ilna, Master Chalcus.”

She slipped into the line of guards before Garric could
protest, if he'd intended to. Chalcus didn't want her present—he would've worded his request another way if he had—and Liane didn't choose to be where she was an embarrassment. Ilna could have liked the girl if circumstances had been different. Maybe she liked her anyway.

Chalcus watched Liane go with a speculative grin, then returned his attention to Garric. “So, your highness,” he said. “There's trouble in the Strait, monsters from the air preying on shipping. Lascarg's Commander of the Strait, who is now your Commander of the Strait, one Lusius, does nothing but count the bribe money he squeezes from the shippers. Is this old news to you?”

“I'm listening,” Garric said; and so he was, with a hard expression which Ilna could read no more than she could look through a block of granite. “Though if you're bringing information, you'd do better to have offered it to Liane directly. She handles that aspect of the government.”

“Aye, the pretty Liane learns things for you,” Chalcus said. He was poised, standing on the balls of his feet. He was generally tense when he talked with Attaper or Lord Waldron; men of war who never lost the awareness that Chalcus was one of them, but was not necessarily on their side. And the new Garric was one of them as well . . . “But you, I think, are the one who acts or does not act. Is that correct, your highness?”

“I make the final decisions, Master Chalcus,” Garric said evenly. “I have wise friends and good advisors; but
I
am the prince.”

“Then shortly, when the Northern Shippers' Association asks you to send someone to deal with the monsters, your highness,” said Chalcus, “I suggest you send Mistress Ilna and my own self in place of some commodore or other with a squadron of wallowing great warships. That is what I would ask—if Ilna is willing, and if you can spare us from the wedding preparations, which I'm sure must be absorbing much of your time just now.”

“Ah!” said Garric, understanding at last; and Ilna understood as well.

Garric's attention had been wholly focused on Chalcus thus far during the discussion. Now he looked at Ilna and
said, “Ilna? Is this what you want? Because if it is, or whatever you want. . . ?”

He smiled at her, a boy again; the boy she'd loved for as long as she could remember.

“This is the first I've heard of it,” Ilna said. “Any of it. And as for your wedding, Garric, I expect to attend with my good wishes. Certainly I'm not looking for an excuse to be absent.”

Her face went cold. She added, “I don't look for excuses.”

If it hadn't been for Garric's smile, she'd have spoken the same words in a snarl—angry at Garric, angry at Chalcus; angry at the world. She chuckled at the notion.
Pretty much as always, of course,
she thought.

“But as for what I want,” she continued, letting the words roll out as her mind formed them, “I want to make the world a better place.”

Her grin was hard, self-mocking. Neither of the men smiled at all.

“If you—” her glance included both men “—or Tenoctris or anyone has a better use for, for
me
than to sit in a room weaving, then tell me. Just tell me what you want me to do!”

“As it chances,” Garric said, “the Shippers' Association has already spoken to me. I said I'd give them a decision in three days after I'd studied the matter. What do
you
know about it, Master Chalcus?”

“Have they indeed?” said Chalcus in a tone of pleased surprise. “What a quick set of lads they are! I thought they'd be a week at least getting through the folk who keep the prince from being bothered.”

He raised the carafe of wine and poised with it as though he considered pouring himself another mug. Continuing, the banter gone, Chalcus said, “I know that it's real, that ships are stripped and the crews gone without a trace.”

Chalcus's smile was as hard as the curved blade of his dagger. “Easy enough to guess where the men are, the sea having so many hungry mouths in it, but the cargoes are another thing.”

“The winged monsters?” Garric said. “They're real?”

“Aye,” said Chalcus, “they're real. And—”

He leaned back against the table, though he didn't let it really
bear his weight. When Chalcus and Garric faced one another, there was always the danger that their poses would become threatening. Because they were the men they were, they both worked to avoid the problem.

Men,
thought Ilna. But she had even less use for the other sort, for all her irritation at the dangerous posturing that was marrow deep in the Garrics and Chalcuses of the world.

“—I can only imagine what your shippers told you about Lusius,” Chalcus continued, “but if they said he's a crook who's dealt with pirates himself in past years . . . well then, they said the truth. To my certain knowledge.”

“I see,” said Garric. He grinned. “Pour me some ale, would you, Chalcus? My throat's dry from all this talking. Ilna?”

“No,” she said without dressing up the word. She wasn't thirsty, so she wouldn't drink; and the offer had been merely for courtesy, as Garric's request was really a place-holder to let him think. Humans wove their lives through the lives of others in patterns; because the patterns worked, more often than not, and you had to suit your fabric to your materials . . .

Garric took the filled mug and met Chalcus's eyes over it. “I can give you a battalion,” he said. “Of any troops you choose, save the Blood Eagles. And some of them if you like.”

Chalcus laughed. “And what do I know about leading soldiers?” he said. “Or fleets either one, eh? There's a ship I've marked out to hire, a trim little vessel, and six men from your army I'll take to crew her if they choose to come.”

“Yes,” said Garric. “And?”

Chalcus still smiled, even his eyes, but the lilt in his voice had an edge. “That much I could do by myself,” he said, “as you well know. What I want from you, your highness, is your blessing; and this is not a small thing that I ask, as you know also.”

“To go off and settle the problem?” Garric said. “I've
given
you that, Master Chalcus.”

“I ask that afterward you accept what I've done, my friend,” Chalcus said. His tone was hard, his words very clear. “That whatever promises I make, you will keep as
though you'd made them. That whatever deeds others do in my name, you say were done in yours; and that you will honor the doers, no matter what those deeds may have been.”

“Ah,” said Garric, nodding again. “No, not a small thing at all.”

Garric wore his sword always in public during this tour of the kingdom's western islands; Ilna supposed he was reminding people that they were part of the kingdom, and that the royal army was available to enforce anything that its prince couldn't manage with his own right arm. Ilna understood the value of symbols, after all.

Though Garric had worn the weapon to dinner, he'd unbuckled it and hung it, belt and all, over the back of his chair while he ate. Now, moving with a deliberation that showed he wasn't making a threat of any kind, Garric drew the blade and let lantern light quiver along its patterned steel.

“The sword hasn't any guilt for the things it's done while I wielded it,” he said quietly to Chalcus. “Nor will I punish the men who act for me. But you're right, Chalcus; it's not a promise I would make were I not sure of the folk I send to act in my place.”

He turned to meet Ilna's eyes; and, smiling, still holding her gaze, he shot the blade back home in the scabbard.

Chalcus laughed. “Oh, I wish I'd had a few of your sort in my crew in the bad old days, my princeling!” he said. “Well, never mind. I'll be for you what you'd have been for meand in a better cause, I'm sure!”

Garric stepped forward and clasped his right arm with Chalcus, each man's hand gripping the other's elbow. They backed apart and Chalcus moved to the side, only a hairbreadth but enough to take him out of the way. Ilna met Garric's eyes again.

“Ilna,” Garric said, “I would rather lose my right arm than to lose you from my life. Go and teach whoever's behind the trouble what it means to do evil when there's a force for good like you in the world. And then come back to me and your other friends, because we need you.”

A force for good?
But yes, she supposed so. It was an odd way to think about herself, though.

Ilna extended her arm to Garric. As he'd done before, as she'd hoped he'd do again but never would have asked him to do, Garric stepped closer and hugged her with the delicate care of a very strong man for a woman half his size.

They stepped apart; Chalcus moved to her side. “Travel safely,” Garric said to both of them. “Though—I know there're risks, but there'll never be a day I wouldn't feel safer at your side than I would facing you, either one.”

“Never fear, good prince,” said Chalcus with a laugh as he turned away, his hand on Ilna's waist. “We'll bring the ears back for you!”

“We will
not,”
said Ilna crisply; knowing that it was probably the sort of joke men share, knowing also that with these men there was no certainty that it was a joke at all.

“Ah, then we will not, dearest,” agreed Chalcus cheerfully as he handed Ilna through the line of Blood Eagles. In a more businesslike tone he went on, “In the morning, I'll ask you to come with me to see the factor who handles the Serian trade in Carcosa. His name's Sidras or-Morr, and you'll be no end of help to me dealing with him.”

“I'll come, of course,” Ilna said without emphasis. “But I don't see what I can do that you can't. I don't know the man—I don't know anybody in Carcosa.”

“Ah, you'll see, dear one,” the sailor said. This back staircase was too narrow for them to walk abreast. Without asking or probably considering the question, Chalcus stepped ahead of her and sauntered down. Behind them on the roof were friends and bodyguards, but who knew what might be waiting below? In all likelihood nothing whatever of a hostile nature; but if something was there, it would have to get through Chalcus before it reached Ilna.

“And another thing, sweetest,” he added over his shoulder. “Do you think that your friend Sharina would be willing to join us for the outing?”

Ilna thought for a moment. They reached the landing and Chalcus touched her waist again as they continued.

“You'd have to ask her, of course,” she said at last, “but yes, I think she would. She won't be going with Cashel and Tenoctris, and I think she'd like something to take her mind off whatever it is that's worrying her.”

“Then we'll indeed ask her, before we leave the palace tonight,” Chalcus said with satisfaction. “And if it's why? you're wondering, dearest—let's just say that from all reports this Sidras is a canny fellow who'll recognize a hawk however many swan feathers it drapes itself in. Were I to go alone to see him, the interview would be very short and not at all to my liking. But with a pillar of unquestioned rectitude like yourself, and with the sister of the prince on my other side—then I think he'll listen even to an old pirate long enough to hear that he's reformed!”