Lucrezia knew that she had to concentrate on the new situation now, and forced herself to do so. The men who had come to seize them were gold ens --
darker than she was, but unmistakably gold ens that must be why the one who had knocked her down was uncertain as to whether she was friend or foe, although he plainly had no love for dark landers If they had met dark landers south of the river they had probably been attacked as invaders; if so, they might now be desperate to find allies. They were probably a long way from home; perhaps they had not intended to come so far, and were dismayed to find the forest so vast.
"It's all right," she said firmly.
"We're not your enemies. You're quite safe."
"Where do you come from ?" asked the man who stood over her the one who had knocked her down.
"From Xandria," Lucrezia answered, automatically adding: "The greatest city in the world."
There was no flicker of recognition in his wary expression. He had never heard of Xandria, it seemed.
"Where are you from?" she countered.
"Ebia," he answered brusquely.
One of his companions had gone to look at the tethered animals.
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He was inspecting^ them carefully.
"Good horses," he observed eventually, 'except for these two. "
"They're donkeys," Lucrezia informed him, wondering if it : might be a joke.
"Is that what women ride in your land?" asked the man who had || spoken first, in a tone that seemed more contemptuous than |r' bemused.
"Xandrian women ride horses," the princess said stonily, and could not resist adding: "What do your women ride drago mites That wiped the smiles off their faces. The man who stood over her pulled her roughly to her feet. He let go once she was upright, jj but his manner was unmistakably threatening. She knew that she had said entirely the wrong thing.
"Are the mound-women your friends?" he demanded. The question was obviously not trivial.
"No," Lucrezia said, raising her arms in a placatory gesture.
"I've never even seen a drago mite and I never heard of mound-women until you spoke the word. There have been rum ours of drago mite- I. riders abroad in the forest, but I thought they must be false."
The man had already turned his attention to Elema.
"And you?" he said harshly.
"Do you know the mound-women?"
"No," the old woman replied.
"My people have taken up arms to fight the drago mites and their human nest-slaves. Have you not seen them about their work? " The Eblan shook his head.
"Ambers attacked us," he said vehemently.
"First the mound-women attacked, then the ambers, then the mound-women again.
Your people should have greeted us warmly, if what you say is true. We have always been enemies of the drago mites and of any humans who ally themselves with such monsters."
"The dark landers couldn't have known that," Lucrezia said, without getting up. She felt that she ought to do her utmost to soothe their captor's frayed nerves.
"They found you on their land, and assumed that you were allied with all the other invaders. You'll be safe on this side of the river. There are no drago mites here. We can talk at our leisure as friends."
It seemed that he accepted this and there was no reason why he should not but after turning away to exchange glances with his companions he suddenly rounded on Lucrezia and grabbed her
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again. She fought against his grip as
fiercely as she could, but he was too strong. He forced her down on the ground, and held her there while one of his companions produced a length of cord with which to bind her wrists. Elema tried to escape while this was happening, but the man beside her was quick to seize her again, and she made no further resistance while they bound her hands too.
"We are friends," the old woman said reproachfully.
"We do not treat friends this way." Lucrezia noticed, however, that she did not seem particularly surprised by the treatment she had received.
"We won't hurt you," the spokesman assured them, 'but this is a dangerous place. We have too many enemies nearby, and they're far too close for comfort. We can't take chances. We must rest here, where we can watch the crossing-place. "
The Eblans sat Elema down with her back to a bush, and placed Lucrezia beside her. One of them stood guard over them while another went to report back to their fellows on the far bank. The spokesman had removed the knife from Lucrezia's belt and was studying it carefully, although it was a very ordinary knife, much less impressive than Hyry Keshvara's dagger. She noticed that none of them had a knife of his own, and wondered whether iron was in short supply in Ebia, wherever it might be. If so, that was an important thing to know. Xandria's mines supplied the greater part of the empire with most useful metals; had the Thousand Isles been better resourced the empire could not be nearly so large. Lucrezia had been told by one of her stepmothers not Ereleth! that the best measure of Xandria's supremacy over all other nations was the cunning of its smiths in defying the ravages of lust rust and all its corrupting kin.
The Eblans showed considerable interest in the packs which the donkeys had carried, but after some whispered debate they decided not to investigate further for the moment. More men were arriving now, bringing scrawny horses with them.
By the time the company was fully assembled, Lucrezia counted fifteen of them. They seemed very weary. The one who had taken her prisoner explained the action he had taken to the man who was presumably in charge of the entire expedition. He evidently approved.
"Your men didn't need to do this," Lucrezia told the leader, when he had heard everything.
"We're not your enemies."
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"I'd like to believe that," the leader replied, in a low voice, 'but we're in too much trouble already to risk finding more. Can you be quiet, or shall I have to gag you? Some few of our enemies are close behind us, and I'd prefer it if they continued downstream along the far bank rather than crossing the river to search for us on this side.
I When they've gone by, we can talk until then . . . " H He left the sentence hanging.
"We can be quiet," Elema said calmly.
"But we have friends close behind us, and if they find us like this they will not like it."
"Then I must hope they won't find us," the Eblan said, 'at least until our pursuers have gone by. "
Well, said Lucrezia to herself, here's adventure and no mistake but how I wish that Hyry were here to share it! How shall I ever survive it without her?
Thought of Hyry reminded her that she had not yet had the time to mourn. Now that she was still, with her hands tied, she was suddenly overcome by a black tide of grief.
Silently, helplessly, she began to weep.
She kept her head stubbornly bowed, lest her rude captors mistake the reason for her emotion. She did not want them to think that she could be easily reduced to tears; she was, after all, a princess, and must behave like^ one even though these savages had not bothered to discover her rank or her name.
But she made no attempt to hold back the tears;, partly because she didn't think that she would be able to, and partly because she thought that Hyry Keshvara was fully entitled to have them shed on her behalf.
If it is within my power, dear Hyry, she thought miserably, I'll finish what you started. I'll carry through your mission, or die trying that I swear.
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i8 the seated giant looked up as Jacom Cerri and Koraismi approached.
She seeme
d oddly forlorn and faded to Jacom; she was clearly exhausted and deeply disturbed by the fact that Ereleth still lay unconscious in Phar's wagon.
To Koraismi, however, the giant must still have seemed terrible.
Jacom could see that he regarded her with naked awe and trepidation.
The boy probably would not have dared go near her in normal circumstances, but he had come to think of his golden friend as a secure protector against all things uncanny. Jacom liked to think that this was a sound judgment- or, at any rate, not an entirely foolish overestimarion.
Dhalla looked up at Jacom from her good eye. The other had been injured-according to Checuti's testimony- when she pulled the night cloak off Andns Myrasol, after he had pulled it off Ereleth. It was by no means ruined, and she would be able to see out of it soon enough, but for the time being it had been firmly closed by a swelling that was oozing yellow pus from the places where Aulakh Phar had stitched a four-sim gash. Bacteria again, Jacom thought. What busy creatures they are, toiling away in their invisible world so that they might export a due measure of pain and ugliness into ours.
"Captain Cerri," she said un enthusiastically
"What can I do for you?"
"How are you?" he asked awkwardly.
"Well enough," she grunted, in typically terse fashion. She had a few claw-scratches on her bare arms as well as a bad eye, but they were healing cleanly. Her one-eyed stare was strangely disturbing; the eye was so big, and the pupil so large in the dim purple light that Jacom felt as though he were peering into a black pit of infinite depth. If there is any Absolute Night to be encountered in this
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forest, he thought, it is in the eyes of
persons who are accustomed to live in brighter light. He was uncomfortably aware of Koraismi, who was half-behind him, grasping the tail of his jacket in one hand while peering around his waist.
"You did a good job," Jacom said carefully.
"In catching Checuti and the amber, I mean. If we can find the princess we'll have a clean sweep. We'll both be feted in Xandria when we return.
I'll make sure that you get your full share of the credit."
Dhalla stared up at him, with an irritatingly enigmatic smile about her lips.
She was finishing off the vestiges of a meal, and she used her tongue to pluck out some morsel between her enormous molars, then proceeded to swallow it.
"You will help me bring Checuti back, won't you?" Jacom said, this being the matter which he had come to investigate, not altogether confidently.
"Dead or alive it doesn't much matter. Your duty and mine are exactly similar, are they not? We both owe allegiance to King Belin."
"We have to find the princess first," she said dismissively.
"Of course but you have an interest in bringing the thief to justice too. He stole your wages as well as mine."
"If we don't find the princess," the giant said laconically, 'he's a dead man. Maybe he's a dead man anyway. He won't be spending any more of the coin he stole -p rest assured of that. "
Jacom didn't know how to read the coldness of her tone or the stoniness of her temporarily cyclopean gaze. He couldn't take it for granted that she was just like any othet- human being but larger.
After all, she belonged to a distinct "species that was in some respects quite alien. He had no idea how far one could trust the dirty jokes people told about the ways giants might become pregnant, but he trusted the common knowledge which assured him that it couldn't involve male giants because there were none. Giants were in demand in Xandria and in those of the Thousand Islands which preserved similar kinds of kingly privilege, but they were native to some mysterious land in the far east, beyond the Spangled Desert.
They spoke the same language as everyone else, but as an old adage warned people who used the same language didn't necessarily mean the same things by the same words, y "He seems peculiarly cheerful for a dead man," Jacom observed 296
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uneasily.
"He seems to think that he knows something I don't. Is that mere bluff, do you think?"
"Probably," said Dhalla dully.
"He has no reason to be cheerful that I can see."
She came to her feet. Her body seemed to take an unnaturally long time to unfold. When she had raised herself to her full height she was looking down at him at much the same angle as he had been looking down at her.
"Fraxinus and Phar don't want my men to go back to Xandria at all,"
he said.
"They're careful about what they say, but they really want us to join the expedition. They've both dropped hints about there being a greater service I could do the empire than returning a princess to the Inner Sanctum or even a prince of thieves to just punishment. They'll want to keep the amber, of course, even after he's re-drawn that precious map which you seem to be holding tight to your chest. I'm prepared to compromise on that, if he really wasn't involved in Checuti's robbery but I'm not prepared to compromise in the matter of Checuti, or in the matter of the princess. Can I rely on your help, if necessary, to bring them both safely back to Xandria?"
The way the giant stared steadily down at him, without answering, seemed to Jacom to be confirmation of his worst suspicions. She wasn't here on the king's business at all she was here on Ereleth's business, whatever that might be. Why did things have to be so complicated?
"I'm your superior officer," he said, wishing he didn't sound so querulously tentative.
"From now on, you're under my orders.
I want to make that perfectly clear. "
The dark abyss that was her eye seemed darker still now that it loomed above him, and even her blonde hair seemed night-dark, silhouetted as it was against the purple canopy.
Jacom wilted under the oppressive gaze. His voice faltered as he forced himself to recognise defeat.
"You don't intend to go back, do' you he said.
"You're not in this as an agent of the king you're in it out of personal loyalty to the princess. Checuti was telling the truth when he said that she was desperate to run away. Neither you nor Ereleth has the slightest intention of trying to persuade her to go home. Do you realise what will happen to me if she won't go back?
Do you have any idea what a mess I'll be in? "
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Dhalla's jaw moved again as she rescued yet another stranded morsel, but she eventually said: "Not my problem."
Jacom sighed. I'm a captain in the king's guard, he said to himself silently. That's supposed to mean something. It's a position of trust and responsibility, which ought to command the respect of every citizen of the empire. Am I really so unconvincing in the role that no one except a dark lander boy will take a blind bit of notice of what I think or what I want?
"Earlier today, Koraismi spoke to some men who came across the river yesterday after helping to drive the drago mites out of the forest,"
he said.
"They talked to an old woman at the ford, but they didn't see Keshvara or the princess. Koraismi says Keshvara wouldn't have crossed over if she had any sense he says that she must still be behind us. It looks to me as if we're going to have to go north again if we want to find the princess."
For the first time, Dhalla's stare showed a flicker of interest not concern, just interest. She shifted her gaze to look contemplatively at Koraismi, as if she were carefully weighing his minuteness and insignificance.
"We'll see," she said finally.
"The queen will decide." She addressed the boy directly aild he was quick to move further behind Jacom, as though shielding himself from the baleful gaze.
"Ereleth may not be able to decide," J
acom said sourly, 'even though she's sleeping normally now. She's an old woman, after all. Myrasol might not have pulled the night cloak off her in time though why he did it at all 1
can't imagine. Fraxinus isn't going to hang on here waiting for her to make a full recovery. He'll go on, now that he's heard that the drago mites are on, the run. You might have to choose which way to go, and who should go with you. Personally, I'd rather head north than head into a war-zone. I'm not so sure the drago mites are on the run- and even if they are, that might make them all the more dangerous. Koraismi says that Serpents have been seen in the forest too. Have you ever seen a drago mite Dhalla? "
"No," she admitted.
"Or a Serpent?"
"My people know Salamanders," she countered. She obviously didn't like to be at too much of a disadvantage in a contest of implied insults.
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"That's not the same thing at all," Jacom insisted, taking care to sound as dismissive as he could although he himself had never seen a Serpent or a Salamander, and knew next to nothing about either species.
"The princess has Serpent's blood," Dhalla retorted.
Jacom felt Koraismi stiffen, and the clutch of the little hand upon the jacket of his uniform tightened. He knew that the statement meant nothing in literal terms, of course one of the few things he did know about Serpents was that they couldn't possibly interbreed with humans but he also knew that in terms of dark lander superstition it might mean a good deal.
I'm losing control of this argument, he thought furiously.
"That's not true, Dhalla," he said firmly.
"It's just something they made up in the citadel- malicious gossip, probably invented because she seemed overly assiduous in listening to Ereleth.
Anyway, the point is that we don't know what we'll be heading into if we cross the river, and given that we have reason to believe that the princess is still in the north . . ."
"It's not gossip," Dhalla contradicted him belatedly.
"It's true. The princess inherited Serpent's blood from her mother." The giant was still watching Koraismi, and had observed his adverse reaction to her claim. Taciturn and ponderous of manner she might be but she was by no means slowwitted.
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