The Children of Kings

  “Garrin.” Merach said the name slowly, as if tasting its truth. He bowed again, an abbreviated gesture this time, and with a few decisive gestures, swept his party back into the night.

  The boy Alric was soon scampering about, preparing hot water and bandages. Tomas and Korllen must be attended to, but the caravan master and his apprentice had escaped unscathed. Cyrillon drew Gareth aside. “You have no idea what you have done in allowing that man to live.”

  “I could not butcher him after he had yielded to me,” Gareth said. His thoughts jumped and tangled with each other like maddened dogs. “Are these bandits so lacking in honor that he would attack us again or carry a blood feud against me?”

  “Just the opposite.” Cyrillon looked grave. “Don’t you know who he was?”

  Gareth shook his head. “Merach of Shainsa, that is all. Did he lie?”

  “Merach is no ordinary Dry Towner, but a lord of Shainsa with kin ties to the Great House. I don’t know why he was leading such a small raiding party. It must have been a matter of kihar, either his own or that of a member of his family. Now he owes you a debt that he can never repay.” Cyrillon lowered his voice. “It might have been kinder to end his life, rather than leave him without any hope of regaining his honor.”

  8

  The last part of their journey took longer than expected because of the two wounded men. Korllen recovered enough to resume his duties as cook by the second night, although his face tightened whenever the wagon wheels rolled over a rut. Tomas could not walk, but at least his thigh wound had not gone bad.

  At the end of the third day, they crested the last hill. The sun, redder than usual in the lingering dust, slanted into twilight. Three moons clustered overhead like a pale bouquet. From his position near the front of the caravan, Gareth looked down on a wide plain, where Carthon squatted in a bend in the River Kadarin, a great jumbled heap of bleached rock and brick. In one direction, dusky shadows marked the foothills of the Hellers mountain range. In the other, a tenday’s ride away, lay Shainsa.

  At one time or another, Carthon had been occupied by either Dry Towns or Domains forces. Its dilapidated, much-broken walls and mixed architecture presented a face that was neither one culture nor the other, but an uneasy amalgam. In these days, its primary importance was as a meeting place and trading post, often used for outfitting expeditions. Its markets were known for the filigree butterfly clasps prized by women in the Domains.

  Cyrillon’s caravan trudged through the outskirts, where other traders had already set up camp outside the city gates. One called out a greeting in Dry Towns dialect, and Cyrillon responded.

  Teams of men stopped everyone seeking to enter the city. To Gareth, the guards looked outlandish and fierce, with their bearded faces, flaxen hair, and strongly arched cheekbones. They carried their swords and many knives openly, as if their manhood was measured in the number of their weapons.

  Cyrillon halted his wagon and identified himself, greeting one of the men by name. Past the gates, the main road led them to the central plaza of the city. Even by Thendaran standards, the space was huge. An enormous structure of opalescent stone dominated the open area, surrounded by beds of brilliantly hued flowers. More fair-haired, visibly armed men patrolled in front of the double doors.

  A train of merchants hauling sacks of grain and dried fruit in ponderous carts had preceded them into the square, adding to the riot of color and sound. Pedestrians clustered around several fountains, one of which was clearly reserved for the watering of livestock. In the haze of dust, Gareth could not make out much more than the general shapes of the stalls and spots of color—greens, purples, a dozen shades of brown and tan. Awnings shaded the fronts of shops. Canopied booths and blankets spread with trade goods and produce sprawled across the far end of the plaza. The air smelled of spices and alkali. Gareth felt as if he had stumbled into the pages of a romance.

  Race Cargill, Special Agent, gazed out over the city of adventure . . .

  When Cyrillon gestured a halt, Korllen retrieved his pack of personal belongings from the second wagon. Cyrillon handed him a battered leather purse that clinked softly, and the two exchanged a few words regarding travel to Shainsa. Rakhal led up Gareth’s packhorse and held out the lead line. Gareth stared at the rope.

  “This is the end of our journey,” Cyrillon said. “By law and tradition, the care of a caravan ends in the center of the city of destination. Now I must see Tomas to his family and secure my goods and wagons.”

  Gareth took the mare’s lead rope. Now he was truly on his own in this strange and mysterious city, where any moment might bring adventure. At the same time, he felt a reluctance to part with the caravan.

  “A word of caution, Garrin of the Domains,” Cyrillon added, with a sidelong glance that hinted for the first time of suspicions that Garrin might be an alias. “Carthon lies on the border between the lands you know and those where ignorance of custom too often leads to unfortunate consequences.” He put a twist into the word, unfortunate, so that it might have meant fatal rather than inconvenient. “If you had arrived at Shainsa or Ardcarran, you would be obliged by the laws of those places to first pay your respects at the Great House. Here in Carthon, we tread a middle path, favoring neither Dry Towns nor Domains. We do not look kindly on those who would disrupt the balance.”

  Gareth followed the trader’s glance toward the massive edifice of sun-bleached stone. That must be the Great House, empty during those years when the city had belonged to the Domains, but clearly inhabited now. Carthon might not be formally part of the Dry Towns, not yet anyway, but it would be wise not to borrow trouble.

  “Thank you for the advice,” Gareth said, and would have gone on, but Cyrillon waved aside any further thanks with the air of one who has done only what decency required.

  Gareth opened his mouth to ask the name and direction of a reputable inn, but then realized that as a lens-merchant’s apprentice, he would have been given local contacts, perhaps customers of his master. He stumbled through a farewell and then watched as Cyrillon turned the wagon and headed down one of the thoroughfares leading from the plaza.

  The mare tugged at the bit, mouthing the metal. Thirsty, she had scented the water at the public trough. Gareth, like all Comyn, had been taught to tend to his mount before seeing to his own comfort. He loosened the reins and let the mare have her head.

  The trough was broad and wide, a circle of stone around a central pillar. Seasons of wind had scoured away the carvings, leaving only a suggestion of decorative figures. Each rider first paused to give a few coins to a man sitting on a pile of cushions beneath a canopy. The man’s face was so darkly weathered that Gareth could not guess his age, but the waist-long beard was pale yellow and the eyes as bright as steel. Such eyes missed nothing and forgave even less. A half-naked boy knelt in the shade, waving a wide, ribbed fan.

  A man in the garb of the mountain folk walked up, leading a pair of mules. Their shoulders and flanks were dark with sweat. He spoke a few words to the bearded man, then dropped several copper rings on the blanket. The water-tax collector lifted his chin and made no move to sweep up the money. Muttering, the mountain man added two more. This time the fee was accepted and secreted somewhere in the collector’s robes. All the while, the boy kept fanning, his rhythm as even as if he were one of the Terranan machines.

  Gareth hauled the mare to a halt, no small matter as she was intent on getting to the water. He slipped from her back, took firm hold of the reins, and turned her slightly to approach the water-tax collector at an angle. She objected, but only for a moment. If he had tried to pull her in a straight line, as he had often seen inexperienced riders do, she would surely have set her feet, humped her back, and refused to budge. The old trick worked, deflecting her resistance and allowing him to present himself in a dignified fashion. The packhorse followed, placid as always.

  “Estimable sir,” Gareth said in Dry Town
s dialect, “as your keen discernment has already revealed, I am a stranger to this city. Eager as I am to show all respect to your customs, I am in ignorance concerning watering rights.”

  Perhaps rights was not the properly diplomatic term when dealing with an official, but it was the best Gareth could manage. He had memorized the flowery compliments that his tutor assured him comprised the normal form of address to one of greater rank or influence.

  The tax collector’s expression did not waver. “For the beasts, ten copper rings.”

  Ten! The mountain man had not paid more than five for his two mules.

  At that moment, Gareth noticed several men moving through the crowd, perhaps the very same who had questioned each party entering the city. He had no doubt that they were aware of him, too, and that there were more such men that he could not see.

  Gareth affected a foolish little laugh, well-practiced in the court at Thendara. “Alas, this poor person has been deficient in the foresight to supply himself with such currency.” Moving slowly, hands well away from the hilt of his sword, he poked two fingers into the purse he wore openly and withdrew a couple of reis. He wasn’t sure of their exchange value in copper rings, four or five, still more than what he thought was reasonable.

  The reis pieces clinked as they landed on the carpet at the tax collector’s feet. For a moment, nothing happened beyond a faint deepening of the official’s scowl. Then, with a movement so swift as to be almost a blur, the coins disappeared.

  Keeping his own expression impassive, Gareth bowed and retreated, walking backward the first few steps until a boy with pair of dust-brown goats took his place.

  The mare and the packhorse thrust their muzzles into the trough, gulping greedily. Gareth dipped his fingers. The water, although filmed with dust and grime, was surprisingly cool. Before the horses had drunk their fill, his own thirst threatened to overwhelm him. He offered a prayer of thanks—to which god, he wasn’t sure—when the horses allowed him to lead them away.

  The plaza was clearing out, the crowds noticeably more sparse. Vendors were folding up their booths. The water-tax collector appeared to have fallen asleep, lulled by the boy’s fan. People still congregated in the area around the second fountain, some of them women. Some had the dark hair and modest dress of mountain women, moving quietly and talking among themselves as they filled their pottery jars. Among them, Gareth spotted other women who must be from the Dry Towns. They carried their heads proudly, swaying their hips to the bell-sweet clashing of their chains. Jewels glinted at their wrists and waists and dangled from ears only partly hidden by veils of butterfly-hued gauze. They cast sidelong glances at him and murmured phrases in Dry Towns dialect, speaking so low and rapidly, he could not follow their meaning. He caught the repeated word, charrat, perhaps akin to chaireth, stranger. They noticed him watching but did not pause in their errands. He had never in his life seen anything so beautiful and mysterious.

  Gareth tied his horses to a ring set in a post of weathered pink granite. He dipped his hands into the fountain’s clear water and drank deeply, over and over again until he could hold no more. Then he refilled his waterskins. The water gave him a burst of energy, but he was too excited to feel hunger. There would be time to seek out an inn and stabling for his animals, and the evening was yet young.

  The cooling dusk turned the air sweet and mild. Never had he felt so daring. He had played at the adventures of Race Cargill, Terran Secret Agent, but now he was living an even more vivid tale.

  A group of Dry Towns women approached the fountain, chattering. They seemed no less mysterious than at first glance, wrapped in layers of brilliantly colored veils. A gust of the freshening night breeze carried their musky-sweet perfume.

  He could not take his eyes off their chains. By Dry Towns custom, each woman’s hands were fettered with a metal bracelet on each wrist; the bracelets were connected with a long chain, passed through a metal loop on her belt, so that if she moved either hand, the other was drawn up tight against the loop at her waist.

  Although Gareth knew that the Dry Towners chained their women in this manner, the reality shocked and fascinated him. He had grown up surrounded by powerful, independent women—both his grandmothers had been forces in their own right, and Domenic’s mother, Marguerida Alton, had done more to shape her times than any ten ordinary men.

  What kind of woman allowed herself to be shackled as the property of a man who was in all likelihood not her equal?

  Repelled and curious, he strolled up to the nearest woman. A veil of pink translucent gauze, threaded with gold and blue, covered but did not hide her face. She met his gaze boldly, almost insolently. She had the pale, almost colorless eyes and flaxen hair of her people, and her exposed skin was lightly bronzed. With supple grace, she turned to dip her jar into the well. Drawing her chains through the loop at her waist so skillfully that they did not impede her movement, she swung the jar up to rest upon one shoulder.

  Encouraged by the woman’s direct manner, Gareth came closer. He caught a hint of her perfume, roses and musk. He wondered what her voice would be like, whether she would drop her gaze when she addressed him, whether she would smile in return.

  Smiling, he greeted her in Dry Towns dialect, taking care to use the respectful mode.

  The lady in the pink veil froze. One of the other women gasped aloud. A water jar crashed to the ground. It shattered, the sound unnaturally loud.

  Zandru’s demons! What have I done? His words had been impeccably courteous, even by court standards.

  The next moment, he found himself surrounded by armed guards. By their elaborately gilded tunics and plumed helmets, they most likely served some powerful local lord. Their faces were grim, their hands ready on the hilts of their swords.

  With a great swirl of veils, cries like the cooing of rock doves, and clashing of chains, the other women swarmed around the lady and hurried her away.

  The foremost of the guards strode up to Gareth. Gareth was not short, but this man topped him by at least a head and was correspondingly broad in the chest. Gareth noticed a lacing of whitened scars over the man’s upper arms and deep parallel grooves on one high cheekbone.

  “What dust beneath the lowest gutter-sweeping offal dares to cast his eyes in the direction of the concubine of the Lord Yvarin?”

  Gareth’s guts clenched as he realized this Lord Yvarin must be the head of the Great House of Carthon. He had but an instant to reply before those swords left their scabbards. Above all else, he must do nothing to impugn the guard’s honor.

  He thought of the ambush, how easy it had been to jump into the fray. Then his sword had seemed a fluid extension of his body, both moving instinctively. He had had neither time nor need for thought. The fight had been upon him before he realized it. He had moved—acted—without considering the odds.

  He had not faced three opponents at once, men who outmatched him in size and who clearly relished the idea of watering the dust with his blood.

  I’m not here . . . You don’t notice me. . . .

  Although he wanted nothing more than to turn and run, or at very least to become invisible, he clapped both hands to the sides of his head, as he had seen traders do in order to exaggerate their astonishment.

  “Truly, I am astounded, O most wise and venerable sir! I thought I was in the presence of a goddess, a dream sent as a foretaste of the afterlife for the faithful! Is she truly a living woman?” Some demonic spirit took over his brain as one phrase after another spilled out. “The most fortunate of men must be the Lord Yvarin, who may look upon such divine beauty whenever he likes! Oh, what have I done, to so presume? Such a vision cannot be suitable for ordinary men—”

  The next idea that popped into his head was to beg the guard to put out his eyes, rather than have the memory of the High Lord’s concubine besmirched by any lesser object. His tongue would not shape the words. There was an excellent chance
the guard would take him up on it.

  In Thendara, playing the fool had always succeeded because no one took him seriously. Here, it obviously did not lessen the gravity of his offense. The guards did not appear impressed with his performance. The scarred one frowned even more deeply. His enormous hand tightened around the hilt of one of his two swords.

  Gods, what would Race Cargill have done? He wouldn’t have gotten himself into such a mess in the first place, that’s what!

  Gareth’s heart hammered so loudly, surely the guard must hear it. His breath rasped in his throat. He wondered if anyone at home would ever learn of the ignominy of his death. Still, he must fight, and most likely die, with what honor he could. He took up a fighting stance and reached for his own sword. If Avarra was merciful, it would be quick.

  “There you are!” chimed a boy’s high voice.

  A figure in trail-dusty clothing darted between Gareth and the guard.

  Rakhal?

  Grabbing Gareth’s arm, the apprentice threw both of them to the dust at the guard’s feet, chattering away so fast that Gareth caught only a phrase here and there.

  “. . . noble and sagacious warrior . . . most merciful . . .”

  “What’s this?” growled the guard’s voice from somewhere above Gareth’s head.

  “. . . my unworthy brother,” Rakhal rushed on, “. . . sun-touched, given to wild fancies . . . no harm in him . . . my dereliction of duty . . . allowing him to thus assault the sensibilities . . .”

  “Boy! You are responsible for this scum?”

  “. . . generosity bestowed hereafter as in life . . .” Rakhal babbled on, launching into a discourse on the virtues of condescension to those less fortunate, and showed no signs of pausing even to draw breath.

  “Eh, leave them, Sarn,” came a voice from somewhere in front of Gareth, lighter and more nasal than that of the scarred guard. Over Rakhal’s unceasing pleas, Gareth made out, “They’re not worth the effort of cleaning your blade afterwards.”