Achmed snorted. “Do be serious.”
Jal’asee’s face lost its natural expression of serenity. “Believe me, Your Majesty, what I have to say to you is very serious.”
“Then get on with it. I have more pressing matters to attend to, such as informing Rhapsody that should she ever invite us to the same event again I shall burn down her almost-completed house.”
“Did I hear my name being bantered about in disrespect?” the Lady Cymrian asked humorously upon entering the garden. “It must be that Achmed has returned.”
“Had I known you planned to ambush me with this academic, I would have gone directly home from my meeting with Gwydion Navarne,” Achmed said, the hostility in his voice unmistakable. “There are three types of people I despise, Rhapsody—Cymrians, priests, and academics. You should certainly know this by now.”
“I see no need to be rude to an ambassador from a sovereign nation who is also my guest,” said the Lady Cymrian tartly. “Perhaps you can at least hear the gentleman out, Achmed.”
“No need to defend my honor, m’lady,” said Jal’asee, a twinkle in his eye. “I have been fielding the Bolg king’s insults for millennia now.” He walked a few steps closer and tucked his hands into his sleeves, crossing his arms. “It is our understanding that you are seeking to rebuild the instrumentality in Gurgus Peak,” he said seriously.
Achmed sighed. “Perhaps I should just have sent a royal notice to be posted in every port of call, every judiciary, and every brothel from here to Argaut,” he said angrily. “Do yourself the favor of making a wise choice, Jal’asee; I didn’t seek your counsel about this originally because I do not care what your thoughts are on the matter. Please do me the favor, therefore, of not sharing them with me.”
“I have no choice in that matter, Your Majesty,” Jal’asee retorted. “That is the precise reason I was sent from Gaematria. The Supreme Council of the Sea Magistrate respectfully asks that you suspend all work on this project until such a time when—”
“Tell them by all means, I will do that,” sneered the Bolg king. “Their opinions are even more edifying to me than yours are.”
Jal’asee’s patience seemed to run suddenly thinner.
“You must heed this advice, Your Majesty.”
“Why?”
The ambassador glanced around the garden.
“Shall I leave?” Rhapsody asked, pointing to the gate. “I truly don’t mind.”
Both men shook their heads.
“I’m really not at liberty to go into the specifics, Your Majesty, but I believe you know the reason, or at least should be able to surmise it.”
Achmed stepped up to the ambassador and stared up into the tall man’s golden eyes.
“Tell me why, or go away.”
Jal’asee stared down at him seriously.
“Just remember the greatest gifts the earth holds, sire.”
Silence fell in the garden. Then Achmed turned and walked past Rhapsody.
“When you have time to speak to me alone, seek me out,” he said, heading for the garden entrance.
Jal’asee coughed politely. “You know, it’s a shame you chose to leave the study of healing behind for another profession. Your mentor had great faith in your abilities. You would have been a credit to Quieth Keep, perhaps one of the best ever to school there.”
Achmed spun angrily on his heel.
“Then I would be as dead as the rest of the innocents you lured to that place,” he said harshly. “You and I do not have the same definition of what constitutes ‘a shame.’ ”
He stalked out of the garden, glaring at Rhapsody as he left.
She stared after him as the gate slammed shut.
“Do you mind telling me what that was all about?” she asked Jal’asee incredulously. In all the time she had known him, she had never seen Achmed become so engaged in a conversation he had stated up front was of no interest to him. Achmed was quite talented at ignoring subjects, discussions, or people in whom he had no interest.
The Sea Mage sighed. “Many years ago, when he was a fairly young man, a terrible tragedy occurred at Quieth Keep, the place of scholarship I mentioned to you several months ago, where I taught,” he said solemnly. “Someone he apparently cared a great deal for—perhaps several such someones—did not survive the mishap. I take it he has never forgiven me.”
“So it would seem,” said Rhapsody. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to be, m’lady,” Jal’asee said. “Just because someone is rude and unreasonable does not mean that he is wrong.”
Gerald Owen stirred the boiling syrup in the large cauldron of black iron, ignoring the rising noise of the children and some excited adults who were anxiously awaiting the pouring of the next batch of Sugar Snow. He had been conveniently deaf to such noise for many years; Lord Stephen’s father had introduced the custom of drizzling hot liquid sugar onto clean snow that had been harvested on large trays to cool the caramel syrup into crisp, hard squiggles of sweetness that had come to be hallmarks of the winter carnival. Lord Stephen had added the extra sin of dipping the hard candy in chocolate and almond cream; Gerald Owen was the festival’s traditional candy cook, as well as the guardian of the secret recipes.
The elderly chamberlain of Haguefort finally signaled the readiness of the syrup to be poured; he stepped back out of the way, allowing the assistant cooks to position the pot as the snow boards were brought forward. He wiped his sugary hands on his heavy linen apron and crossed his arms, allowing himself a small smile of satisfaction.
The solstice festival, despite his misgivings, seemed to be going well. Owen had served the family for two generations, and it gave him great satisfaction to see the traditions Lord Stephen had cherished being carried on by his son, whom Owen had cared for since his birth.
He was secretly glad that Gwydion was about to take on his title in full; the presence of the Lord and Lady Cymrian, however consoling it had been in the aftermath of the loss of the duke, was an uncomfortable fit in the small keep of Haguefort. The heads of the overarching Alliance belonged in a more central, grander estate; from what he had heard of it, Highmeadow was at least central, if not particularly grand. But Haguefort had been built originally as a stronghold for the families who had settled the wilds of the province of Navarne early in the Cymrian Age, and had always been a modest keep, not a palace or even a castle. Once it went back to being the seat of a duke, not the home of imperial rulers, life would be closer to normal.
He sat down wearily on a cloth-covered barrel, suddenly winded, and watched the mad tussle of children vying for the fragile sweets. Gerald Owen, like the duke he served, was of Cymrian lineage, long diluted, and had lived many years more than the human friends with whom he had been raised and schooled, now long dead. He had watched many of the parents and grandparents of the children competing for his candy do the same thing in festivals past; there was a cyclical harmony to it all, this sense that life was passing by for others faster than it was for him, that left him occasionally melancholy.
The grip of a hand on his shoulder brought him out of his reverie. He looked up, squinting in the sunlight above him, to see the face of Haguefort’s soon-to-be master smiling down at him.
“Is it almost time, Gerald?” Gwydion Navarne asked.
Owen rose quickly, the spring back in his step.
“Yes, indeed, sir, if you are ready to begin.”
“I will be, once you have checked me over to make certain I haven’t missed anything. Once I pass muster with you, I will feel ready.”
Gerald Owen took the young duke by the arm and led him back into the Great Hall, where a table had been laid with the tools for his final preparations.
“Not to worry for a moment, young sir,” he said fondly. “We will have you turned out in a manner that will make you and everyone who loves you proud this day.”
Ashe, true to his word, kept the ceremony by which Gwydion was invested brief and elegant. Rhapsody watched as the boy she had cla
imed as her first honorary grandson four years before, bowing at her feet, raised his eyes with a new wisdom in them, the wisdom of a young man now bearing the mantle of his birthright squarely on his shoulders. Her heart swelled with pride at his calm mien, the prudent and respectful words of acceptance he spoke. After Ashe handed him the ceremonial keys to Haguefort and Stephen’s prized signet ring engraved with the crest of the Navarne duchy, Gwydion had turned and thanked the assemblage, then bade them to return to the festival, citing the sledge race trials that were about to begin.
As the crowd began milling back to the tents and the fields of competition, she felt a strong, bony hand clamp down on her elbow.
“If you are ready now,” Achmed’s sandy voice said quietly in her ear, “we have something important to discuss.”
Without turning around, Rhapsody nodded, allowing Achmed to maneuver her out of the crowd of excited people shouting congratulatory salutes, to a quiet enclave inside of the keep.
“Tell me,” she said tersely as soon as they were out of earshot of Haguefort’s servants. “And tell me why it was necessary for you to be so ungodly unpleasant to one of our most distinguished guests.”
“It was necessary to be unpleasant to him because I don’t have any other temperament,” Achmed replied irritably. “You of all people should know that by now. He’s an arse-rag, and I have very little patience with arse-rags. Now, as for what I need from you, and how you can help the Bolglands, do you remember this?”
He handed her a thin locked box fashioned in steel and sealed around the edges with beeswax.
Rhapsody’s brows drew together. “Yes; wasn’t this the container for an ancient schematic of Gwylliam’s?”
“Indeed. And I need it translated, completely and accurately.”
“I believe I did this for you once before,” Rhapsody said, her own ire rising. She opened the box, and carefully moved the top document, written in Old Cymrian, aside from the sheaf of even more ancient parchment below it, graphed carefully in musical script. “Oh, yes, I remember this poem now:
“Seven Gifts of the Creator,
Seven colors of light
Seven seas in the wide world,
Seven days in a sennight,
Seven months of fallow
Seven continents trod, weave
Seven eras of history
In the eye of God.”
Achmed nodded impatiently.
“I understand the poem,” he said. “It’s the schematic and all the corresponding documents I need translated, and carefully.”
“When?”
The Bolg king considered. “What are you doing until supper?”
“I was actually planning to attend the sledge races,” Rhapsody replied archly. “And after that I thought I might attend the rest of the winter carnival, thank you. What sort of time do you think this kind of thing takes, Achmed? I can assure you, there are many days’, if not weeks’, worth of translation time here. This is more than just musical script; it requires the composition to be played, and to be referenced in later parts of the piece. It’s not something I can sit down and do after noonmeal.”
“I am willing to wait until teatime,” Achmed said wryly.
“You will have to wait until teatime next year,” Rhapsody answered. “Additionally, didn’t I tell you at the time you last showed me this that I worry about your rash experimentation with ancient lore?”
“You did, which is why I have decided not to experiment, but rather to get a careful and accurate translation, then assess for myself what to do with the information. Surely you can’t object to that?”
She thought for a moment. “Well, I suppose not.”
“Good. Then perhaps when this folderol is finished, you can turn your attention to this. As I’ve explained, if it works the way the one I knew of in the old world worked, it might be precisely what we need to keep the Bolglands, and consequently the Alliance, free from subversion or attack. Your ward, the Sleeping Child, all your Bolg grandchildren, and the ‘people’ of Ylorc are certainly worth that, aren’t they?”
“Of course,” said Rhapsody uncertainly.
“Well, just in case you still think this is ill advised, know this: While I was off pulling your charming arse out of a sea cave, my kingdom was being infiltrated by the mistress of the assassin’s guild of Yarim, the very same folks you talked me into helping by having the Bolg drill them a new wellspring for Entudenin, for which we have not received payment in full, by the way. Consequently, said guildmistress not only destroyed Gurgus Peak, but also poisoned a good deal of the kingdom with picric acid.”
“Oh, gods!” Rhapsody exclaimed in horror.
Achmed considered. “No, I don’t believe she got them, but it may have only been by accident if she didn’t. Suffice to say that at least a thousand of the Bolg have died or been terribly ill with symptoms like dysentery, bleeding out the eyes, bleeding internally—”
“All right, that’s enough,” Rhapsody said, fighting back nausea and losing. She ran to the nearest potted plant and retched.
Achmed waited smugly until she returned.
“So I trust I can count on your help in this matter?”
Rhapsody sighed, still pale and woozy.
“I will do what I can, Achmed, though I can’t promise that I will be able to give you the information that you seek,” she said, leaning against the enclave wall. “But if it is of any encouragement, know that I expect to have some time to work on it very shortly.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I need to consult with Ashe and see if he agrees first, but it’s my hope to leave and spend some time with Elynsynos shortly.”
Achmed’s eyes widened. “You are going to a dragon’s lair while pregnant?”
“Yes, actually. She is the only one I can think of who truly knows what it is like to be carrying a wyrmkin child. So I will make you an offer: If Ashe agrees I will take the manuscript with me and work on it when the nausea allows. I will do what I can with it, though again I make you no guarantees. You, in turn, will bring Krinsel to me at Thaw, so that I can keep her with me until my baby is delivered.”
She could tell that the Bolg king was smiling behind his veils.
“So you trust yourself to a Bolg midwife before all the vaunted healers of Roland?”
“In a heartbeat. Do we have an agreement?”
“We do,” Achmed said. “Just make certain you hold up your end of the bargain.”
Faron stared down in silence at the merriment below him.
His awareness did not include the concept of holidays; having been kept in the dark basement of the Judiciary all of his life in Argaut, he was confused and upset by the noise and celebration taking place just beyond the hill on which he was standing.
23
JEHVELD POINT, SOUTH OF
JEREMY’S LANDING, AVONDERRE
“A good solstice to ya, Brookins.”
The burly fisherman broke into a gap-toothed smile but did not pause from tying his lines.
“Glad to see you’re feelin’ better, and a good solstice to you as well, Quayle,” he said, watching the snow in the distance whip about in the wind that rippled the water below the docks. The warmth of the ocean kept the air clear here, on the point of the jetty south of town. He winched the last of the ropes, then pulled his hat down over his red ears. “You up to helping me and Stark haul the traps in?”
Quayle wiped the mucus from the tip of his red nose with the back of his worsted sleeve, then dried his similarly red eyes with it as well.
“Let the lobsters wait another day,” he muttered grumpily as Stark, another dockmate, approached, dragging the crates for the catch. “A storm’s brewin’; you can tell by the sky it’s gonna be a cracker.”
Stark spat into the ocean and shook his head.
“Been two days since baitin’ already,” he said, his voice scratchy from the wind and disuse. Stark rarely spoke; when out in the harbor with both him and Quayle, Brookins occasionally f
orgot Stark was even in the boat. “An’ a whole village waitin’ to eat ’em tonight.”
“He’s right,” Brookins said to Quayle. “You go home and get yourself a grog; we’ll haul in.”
“You’re daft to go out now; it’s almost sunset.” Quayle jammed his hands inside his sleeves, as if they were a lady’s muff. “Don’t want to be spending the holidays consoling your widows.”
Stark scowled and climbed into the boat.
“Go back to bed,” he said. “Come on, Brookins. My supper’s waiting.”
Brookins looked from Quayle to Stark, then back to Quayle again.
“He’s right,” he said finally. “Get some rest. Stark and me will split the take from this catch with you; you baited, after all. We’ll celebrate the holiday tomorrow, then have a whole lovely catch to pull in the next day. I’ll drop you by a few for your pot on the way home.” Quayle nodded gloomily. Brookins lit the oil lantern that lighted their prow, then set out into the harbor with Stark.
For a long time Quayle stood, watching the bobbing light on the waves as his friends emptied the traps of their catch. The breeze whipped off the waves and stung, sending sand and salt spray into his eyes. Finally, when the boat’s light was too far out to see anymore he turned his attention north to the twinkling candles that shone in the windows of Jeremy’s Landing, and the bonfires that were beginning to light the village square in anticipation of the solstice.
Merry music began to drift toward him on gusts of the icy wind. Quayle’s bitterness at the thought of lost profit drifted away with it, and his humor began to rise in the anticipation of the celebration at hand. He was too far away to catch the aroma of the stewpots yet, but if he hurried, he could be there in time to sample each of the entries in the village’s contest. And, as on every solstice night, there would be bread and ale and singing, with the promise of other pleasures of the flesh later, in warm brothels or cold stables. The season’s excitement seeped into his nostrils along with the cold salty wind, chasing his malady away. He unhooded his lantern, turned away from the dock, and started across the salty marsh dunes at the edge of the bay, dark as pitch in the winter night.