Upland Outlaws (26 page)

But Efflio continued serenely, “And I note that the next item on the agenda is the Timber Moot. I realize that the purpose is to acquire building lumber, but trees do burn, ma’am. Surely we can negotiate supplies of firewood from the goblins?”

The Council’s sudden silence spoke volumes. Why had no one else thought of that? It had been Rap’s idea to appoint the crafty old sailor to the council, and Inos breathed a silent word of thanks to him, wherever he was.

“We are grateful for your observations, Captain! The goblins will trade the shirts off our backs, I am sure, but we may have to pay the price. I appoint you a committee to investigate the reserves of fuel-peat and all possible substitutes-and estimate the town’s needs. Co-opt whoever you want to help you.”

Efflio wheezed louder. “I’m not as mobile as I should like, ma’am. “

“Send the guard. They have nothing better to do. ” Inos heard a sniff of protest from Sergeant Oopari on her left, and ignored it. “Lin will find you a room in the palace if you want. You have my authority in the matter, Captain. Report to our next meeting.”

She pressed on quickly. “Let us discuss the Timber Moot, then. We’re a month past Winterfest already. A week or so from now the goblins will arrive. In the king’s absence, whom do we send to trade?”

The room went very still.

“Well?” she said. “Can anyone here speak goblin?”

Even stiller. Foronod could, she knew, but probably not well and not for a long time. In any case, he was far too frail to ,struggle across the ice-packed causeway. He obviously knew that, or he would have volunteered by now.

The continuing silence surprised her, though. Goblin was not truly a different language, just a dialect, more a matter of primitive grammar and barbarous pronunciation than of vocabulary. As a child, she had played at speaking pidgin goblin with her friends, probably not very accurately. She would have expected someone in the room to know it.

“Then we shall have to appoint an agent. Nominations?” The door creaked behind her. She felt a cold draft on her spine-and yet that was impossible. Everyone else was looking to see who had the unprecedented temerity to interrupt a meeting of the royal council.

She peered around the back of her chair. Kadie stood in the doorway, her face as pale as a jotunn’s.

Oh, Gods!

Inos jumped up and scanned the table. Who? Who could she trust with the imp and jotunn still breathing fire at each other? Technically her deputy was probably Bishop Havermore … “Captain Efflio? Take the chair, please, until I return. “

The old sea captain blinked at her in astonishment. “Me, ma’am?”

“And see that all the blood is mopped up afterward! “

That raised a laugh. She swept out to discover what the disaster was.

It was Gath, of course.

He was being borne in on a stretcher, a footman at his head and the head groom at his feet. Two cooks and a chambermaid flustered around uselessly. The procession was apparently bound for his bedroom, but that would be icy at this time of day.

“To the parlor!” Inos snapped. Her heart was beating in her throat; she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs.

Gath was limp, apparently unconscious. Walking alongside, she took one of his hands. “Gath?”

Nothing happened. His knuckles were bloody and swollen, but his face was unmarked except for a red swelling on his chin. He had apparently suffered no more damage to his teeth. Then she saw a dribble of red creeping out from the golden cockscomb of his hair. She always had nightmares about head injuries.

From the look of his hands, his assailant or assailants would be well marked.

Excellent!

God of Mercy, stand aside!

This had gone on too long. This time she was going to wreak vengeance. This time someone was going to pay, and if the culprits were too young to be punished she would flog their fathers instead.

She looked at Kadie’s pale terror and forced a motherly, queenly, reassuring smile.

“Looks like he lost this one, doesn’t it?” Kadie sniveled. “He’s hurt bad!”

“Can’t be sure. It may be no worse than a headache. Someone’s sent for a doctor?”

“Yes. I’m sorry I broke into your meeting, Mom.”

Inos could not recall the last time she had not been “Mama” or even “ma’am” to Kadie. She put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders as they walked-and those shoulders were not far below her own now.

“A year ago—maybe even six months ago-I’d have bitten your head off and burned you at the stake afterward. Now I knew right away you must have a very good reason. You did exactly right.”

Kadie swelled a little. She deserved the praise. She had probably been the only one around brave enough to interrupt the queen in her council meeting. All the usual authorities had been in the meeting themselves, people like Lin to whom Kadie would normally defer in an emergency. Inos made a note to find out exactly what had happened. There ought to be an alternative chain of command, and she had never thought to create oneand now she didn’t need to, of course. From now on everyone would rely on Kadie.

“Go back there, please. Knock, enter, and ask Captain Efflio if Sergeant Oopari can come here.”

Kadie swelled even more. “Of course, Mama!” She marched off, too dignified to run.

And here was the parlor. Inos hurried ahead, threw the door wide and went to the sofa. Pret the footman took the other end and they pushed it close to the hearth. This was Gath’s fourth beating, they were well practiced.

Fourth and perhaps the worst. Poor, gentle Gath, who never used to get in trouble, who’d never had an enemy … His prescience should have warned him. Perhaps the insight had come too late, perhaps he’d been too proud to run away. Not all bad things were avoidable, he’d told her.

The bearers laid the stretcher on the floor. Before Inos could intervene, they took Gath by legs and shoulders and swung him up onto the couch. He uttered a groan, then choked and said something that sounded like “No more stairs, Mom!”

“Clumsy dolts!” Inos raged. “More peat! Blankets. Hot water. Towels!” Servants fled.

She stared at the youthful form draped on the sofa. He looked longer every time. He was growing incredibly fast, at least a fingerlength since Rap left, his clothes bill bankrupting the kingdom.

She pulled a sleeve over her hand and wiped his forehead. He opened his eyes slightly. “Not stairs, Mom!” he muttered. He grimaced and seemed to fade away. She would have expected more bruises if he had been thrown down stairs.

Then Kadie was back, accompanied by a scowling Sergeant Oopari=a tallish imp, graying now, and permanently worried by his responsibilities.

“Do you know who did it?” Inos demanded.

Kadie shook her head. “I wasn’t there. Jotnar, not imps, I’d say.”

“Why?”

” ‘Cause he doesn’t look like he’s been stomped.” Kadie showed her teeth.

True. Inos shuddered as she thought of a pack of impish brats cornering their victim, starving wolves pulling down a caribou. That would be the next stage, and she was not going to allow it to happen. Meanwhile, this had already gone too far. “Sergeant! Find the culprits and put them in the cells.”

Oopari was a cautious soul. “If it was a fair fight, ma’am?”

“I don’t care if it was one five-year-old gnome and Gath started it! Lock ‘em up! And tell me about it tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am!” The sergeant’s eyes gleamed. He’d wanted those orders the last time and Inos had held him back. He spun around and strode off without another word.

She knelt down. “Gath! Wake up!”

Nothing happened. Oh, Gods! Her anger chilled before a winter blast of fear. Head injuries! She peered at his ears and saw no trace of bleeding there. She tried to inspect his eyes. The lids flickered at her touch and his lips moved.

“Can’t hear you,” Inos said. “Speak up!”

He clutched at her. “No!” he mumbled. “Fire! Smell fire.” He began to struggle. “Fire, Mom! “

She pushed him down. “No, that’s only the peat on the hearth. Just relax. The doctor’ll be here in a minute.”

Much good that would do him. Krasnegar was more renowned for its banana crop than the quality of its medicine. Shed tried for years to coax some decent Imperial medics to come and settle in the kingdom, but with no success. She’d sent promising youngsters south to study, and they had never returned. Looking at the wreck of her son, she knew she could not tolerate the local incompetency in this case. Gath might be in real danger. He might be crippled; he might be dying. Fortunately she had a little sorcery available, but just how she should use it she didn’t know yet-did she take the bucket to the well, or bring the well to the bucket?

Where was that sawbones?

Then everyone arrived at once-the peat and the blankets and Doctor Gundarkan and Eva and Holi, who was walking now and into everything. Pret began stoking the hearth. Eva erupted in screams and Holi began to cry, also, not understanding. Inos sent them off with Kadie. She realized that she had started to depend on her daughter a lot just lately.

Gundarkan was a tall, rawboned jotunn. He was pompous and ignorant, but he happened to be the jotnar population’s favorite physician, so he had extensive experience with fight injuries. The impish doctors were better at treating illnesses.

“I’ll have to do a complete examination, ma’am. ” He looked at her expectantly.

“Everybody out, please!” Inos said. The servants headed for the door. Then she realized that Gundarkan meant her, also. Gath was no longer a child.

She stalked out into the corridor, closing the door just as her daughter came hurrying back.

“Kadie, I want you to do something secret, all right?” Kadie’s eyes widened at this hint of intrigue. Her romantic soul would be thrilled. “Of course, Mama!”

“Get outdoor clothes for you and me-boots, cloaks, everything-and wrap them up in a couple of thick blankets. Put them in the room above the Throne Room. Try not to let anyone see. “

“But … ?”

“No questions! And bring a set of clean clothes here for Gath. “

Kadie gave her a very odd look as she left. The Throne Room was off the Great Hall, and a long way from outdoors.

Inos went back into the parlor and stood just inside the door. Gundarkan was bending over Gath, on the couch. Gath was whimpering and mumbling protests as he was prodded and flexed. The doctor looked up with a frown, then spread a rug over his victim and straightened.

He wiped bloody fingers on a dirty rag as Inos went over.

“There’s a bad bang on the back of his head.”

“I saw that, thank you. “

He pulled a face. “He has concussion, certainly. Did you see his hands? And these?” He pulled one of Gath’s skinny arms out from below the blanket. From wrist to elbow, it was already turning yellow. “I’d say he fought a good fight, ma’am.”

“I don’t give a whistle whether he did or not! How badly is he hurt?”

Gundarkan sniffed, disapproving of her attitude. “Against a very powerful opponent, or maybe two. They may have only laid that one blow on him.” He pointed to Gath’s chin. “Then he hit his head in falling. Nothing to be ashamed of, I’d say. ” Idiot! “How badly is he hurt?”

The doctor shrugged. “Too early to say. He may just have a fractured skull.” To a jotunn, of course, scrambled brains were unimportant. “I find no other bones broken, except possibly in his hands. They’re too swollen to tell. He won’t be able to fight again for a week or two.”

It would be ironic if Gath had broken bones in his hands. After his last beating, Inos had bullied Gundarkan into diagnosing a cracked wrist and encasing Gath’s arm in a plaster cast. That, she had assumed, would stop the fighting jotnar would attack smaller opponents without scruple, but not injured ones. The deception hadn’t worked for long. Gath had endured the cast for three days and then removed it, explaining cheerfully that his prescience had told him his hand would be all right without it.

Gundarkan picked up his black bag. “There may be internal trauma. It could be serious. “

She did not need a doctor to tell her that. “So what do we do?”

“Keep him resting and warm. Try to waken him once an hour or so. He may fade in and out quite a bit after he starts coming around. Give him plenty to drink if he wants it. I’ll look back this evening and probably bleed him to relieve the swellings.”

Inos restrained a sharp retort. Krasnegarian doctors loved to bleed their patients. Bloodletting seemed to be the only treatment they knew, and it probably kept the victims bedridden a lot longer than they would have been otherwise. She made a polite response and escorted the pompous dolt to the door.

As the latch clicked shut, a groan from the couch made her rush back.

Gath stared up at her, as if in terror, trying to rise. He mumbled, “Goblins, Mom! There’s goblins here! ” Obviously he was delirious.

“Yes, dear. Don’t worry.” She pushed him down and laid gentle fingertips on his lips. “Shh! Try to rest.”

Gath sank back; his staring eyes wobbled and then closed. Soon his twitching slowed, and he seemed to go to sleep, breathing heavily.

Well, at least he had started to come around. She hoped Kadie would return soon. She wanted to make her move before everyone collected in the great hall for lunch. The council would have to complete its business without her.

Doubtless a man of fourteen years and two months would be very embarrassed to be dressed by his mother, but Gath merely mumbled vaguely, not knowing what was going on. Inos made Kadie turn her back on the performance, though.

The bucket to the well, or the well to the bucket … If she fetched a competent doctor through the magic portal from Kinvale, then the great state secret would be hopelessly compromised. Even if the doctor himself was discreet, the palace staff would wonder where he had come from. Moving Gath in his condition was a real risk, but a necessary one. Moreover, he could then be kept away from Krasnegar until Rap returned and the problem was solved.

Fortunately it was almost noon, and there was daylight.

She would have to let someone else in on the secret, and Kadie was the obvious choice, as she would have to know eventually. She was old enough to respect a confidence now, and almost as tall as her mother. Surely Gath wasn’t all that heavy … If the two of them couldn’t manage, then they would have to enlist Krath or someone; but she thought they could.