A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  A lady is never afraid to admit to a mistake, Kade always said. Inos assumed her most regal air. “I should watch my tongue. I admit I would prefer raising babies in a palace to raising them in a hovel.”

  “You might not raise them there. You might bear them and watch them die. Many more of them. And field work is hard on the fingernails.”

  She glanced up ruefully, seeing the scorn. So much for a private chat! She almost preferred being ignored. “Once again I must say that I am sorry.”

  “You’re not beautiful when you’re sorry. You must learn that monarchs never apologize.” He nudged Dread into a canter.

  They visited seven villages that day, seven that had obviously been selected with care, for the royal procession took a winding route along the byways of Arakkaran. Yet this was not merely a pretense staged to impress Inos—Azak had done this before. In one village he inspected fencing he had ordered, and in another a new well. Kar tasted the water.

  Olives, dates, citrus fruits, rice, horses, goats, shellfish … Inos saw a wide range of Arakkaran’s agriculture, all of which was strange to her. Mostly it was a poor land, every crop scratched from the rocks by the fingernails of its people. The valleys were lush, but even there the peasants were thin and often diseased. The children … she did not like to look at the children. Almost every headman risked royal displeasure by mentioning taxes and then suffered for his temerity. One village had failed to obey an earlier royal command to repair the road. The family men executed the headman on the spot, while Inos fought nausea and horror behind her veil. Azak accepted twelve petitions and bought twenty-three girls.

  After the fourth hamlet, the royal progress halted in an orange grove to dine on fresh oysters, jellied lamb in pastry, and many other treats. Inos sat on shaded grass with prince and sultan, while the family men stood guard at a distance. In the limp heat of noon the leaves hung drooped motionless on the trees. She thought that no place in all Pandemia could be less like her homeland of Krasnegar. And surely no ruler could be less like her father than Azak was. She had no appetite. Azak noted her distaste with evident amusement, then ignored her.

  “The arrow,” he said with his mouth full.

  Kar smiled and produced the arrowhead.

  Azak inspected it. “Hak?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  Azak nodded and tossed the evidence over his shoulder.

  That was too much for Inos. “What happened to the punishing-the-guilty procedure?” Honest as a djinn.

  The red-brown eyes moved to study her. He stroked a finger along the fringe on his jaw—another petty habit that irked her. “Too late. Hakaraz ak’Azakar died last month.”

  She glanced at Kar and his inevitable boyish smile. “Snakebite,” he said happily. She shivered at the ice in his eyes. They were discussing one of their brothers. Yesterday she had admired his collection of riding boots.

  “A premature end to a most interesting career.” Now Azak was taunting her. “But his archery was erratic. So were his loyalties.”

  After a few minutes of silent and desultory nibbling, Inos stoked up her courage and asked, “And what about the petitions you accepted?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll throw them in the tinder basket with the others. We monarchs are beset with petitions, are we not? I must get a dozen a day delivered to the palace. My women line shelves with them.”

  He spent his days in hunting and feasting. She tried raising one eyebrow, although she lacked his skill at the move. It amused him, but he quaffed wine from a drinking horn and did not comment.

  It was the softly smiling Kar who spoke. “Queen Inosolan, he deals with every one of them. Every petition is answered within two days. He works half the night, exhausting whole teams of scribes. He never seems to—” The contents of the horn splashed in his face, silencing him.

  Azak was scarlet with fury, menacing as a naked blade. “You are calling me a liar, your Highness?”

  Kar made no attempt to wipe his dripping face. He continued to smile. “Of course not, Majesty. That would be a capital offense.”

  “Once more and you’re pig feed!” Azak sprang bodily to his feet and yelled at the retainers to saddle up again. He went striding off. The food had been hardly touched, yet obviously the picnic was over. Kar gazed at Azak’s retreating back, but Inos could not tell whether his continuing inscrutable smile implied brotherly affection or incipient murder.

  If that episode had been staged for her benefit, it had been very well done.

  4

  The sun that beat so savagely on Zark had not yet begun to shift the morning mists in far-off Faerie. As first light gloomed in the east, Rap finished shaving and nudged Thinal.

  “Now you,” he said.

  “You think I’m crazy?” The thief snorted. “In the dark? I’d cut myself to ribbons.” But he sat up and stretched, growling.

  The settled farmlands around Milflor had been much harder going for fugitives than the empty beaches farther north. Without Rap’s farsight they would surely have blundered into guards or dogs, but he had persuaded the others that they must rest by day and trust him by night. The moon had helped, of course, but he had led the way along narrow trails, staying as much as possible within patches of woodland and scrub. Now there was no more good cover; they had reached a land of larger houses and dairy farms, signs that the city was close.

  They had stolen a few hours’ rest in a hayloft. Dawn was near and they must make themselves respectable, or relatively so. Somewhere Thinal had acquired a razor. With that he and Rap had already trimmed each other’s hair. Little Chicken flatly refused to do anything about the straggly bristles round his mouth and Rap knew better than to suggest a haircut for him. No goblin would submit to that, and probably nothing less than an Imperial cohort could now impose it on this one. He had agreed to hide his face under a wide-brimmed straw hat. That would have to do, although he would be a conspicuous rarity in Faerie. Fortunately his beloved silk pants had failed to survive another day in shrubbery, and now he wore peasants’ hessian like the others.

  Their shabby assortment of clothes would attract no comment, having been acquired locally by the greatest burglary team in all Pandemia—Thinal the scrounger and Rap, the dog’s best friend. There had been no further work for the third member of the group, the troll-killing strong-arm man.

  Rap rose and went down the ladder to visit the bushes. He wondered where in his travels he had lost his conscience. At Raven totem, perhaps, when he had been driven by starvation to the larder? Or maybe it was still present and merely too ill-used to speak up; he hated this vagabond existence. He would have felt happier had Thinal confined his attentions to the rich in their grand plantation houses, but mostly he had preyed upon the humble. Those scrawny, overworked folk must be hard-put to feed even their own children without having to provide involuntary charity to a gang of robbers.

  By the time he returned, Thinal had scraped some of the stubble from his face and seemed content to keep the rest. Shaving made his acne bleed.

  “Ready?” he said, glancing around. “We can leave all this stuff. We’ll buy better at the market.”

  “Not ready,” Rap said. “I think we ought to have a word with Sagorn first.”

  Thinal considered that, his rodent eyes narrowing. “Not much point yet. Wait till we’ve got some money and decent clothes—that’s what he’d tell us to do. Then we can see what he suggests.” He leered. “Me, I’ll go for a comfortable bed and a couple of girls, I think. Haven’t had any of that since before you were born, laddie. You do realize I’m old enough to be your great-grandfather, don’t you? No, Sagorn can wait. Let’s go.”

  He sprang up and headed for the ladder. Rap followed uneasily. Trekking through woods and jungle was over. Ahead lay Milflor—and ships—but he distrusted this new cockiness in the imp as much as he distrusted the goblin’s amused disdain. No matter what his birthdate had been, Thinal was physically no older than Rap and now he was taking a juvenile pride in his new a
ccomplishments as a woodsman, and also relishing a return to his accustomed city environment. If overconfidence led him into making an error in the town like the one he had made with the troll, then even Little Chicken would not be able to produce a miracle rescue.

  No, Rap’s conscience was still there. It hadn’t forgotten the troll.

  5

  As the sun was cowering low over the distant ranges, Azak led his troop northward along the coast from the dilapidated fishing village that had been its last stop. Inos was becoming worried, very worried. She had learned enough of the geography to know that the palace lay a long way from the sea. Obviously she was not going to be returned to the palace that evening. Azak never explained his plans and she would not inquire, but today’s unusual interest in her company was beginning to seem very ominous. He had been paying her compliments, even if he had insulted her a few times, also. If he thought her beautiful when angry, then how angry—or frightened—did he plan to make her?

  Kade would be alarmed when Inos failed to return, and also scandalized. Kade worried about appearances. Inos cared more about realities, and the realities of this situation were becoming disturbing.

  The road had almost vanished, as the horses plodded wearily between sand dunes matted with coarse grass. The air was humid and salty. Nearby, but out of sight, waves fell on a beach with regular roars that were hypnotic after a long day’s exertion. She ached from a long day in the saddle, her face burned from wind and sun.

  He broke the long silence. “So I have shown you the sights, Queen Inosolan. What do you think of them?”

  “I … I was thinking more of great buildings and scenery.”

  “Buildings? Scenery? A kingdom is not made of those. A kingdom is people! Now answer. And be honest.”

  Honest? “They are wretched—sick and overworked. Half starved, some of them.” She waited for the earthquake.

  “Exactly.”

  She blinked with astonishment. He was staring bleakly ahead, not looking at her.

  “Are the taxes really so high?” she asked, marveling at her own courage.

  “Obscenely high.”

  “Why don’t you reduce them?”

  “The taxes are needed to support the palace.”

  She had guessed that. “All those princes?”

  “Parasites?” He sneered down at her. “Yes, princes are expensive and produce nothing. I should cut costs, you think?”

  Heart in mouth, Inos said, “Drastically.”

  “Then I should be fortunate if the last thing I felt was merely Kar’s fingers on my eyelid.” He laughed at her expression. “I can’t fight them all. I would not survive a week.”

  “Is there nothing you can do? They are your people.”

  “I know that, wench! Do you think I don’t care? Yes, there is something I could do—if I can ever get the bitch sorceress out of my palace and be a free man again.”

  For a moment conversation became impossible as they urged their mounts up a steep dune. Inos caught a glimpse of water to the west, also, and her fear grew markedly.

  “What would you do?” she asked, when she was able to reach his side again. “If you were rid of Rasha, what would you do?” Her neck was stiff with looking up at him so much.

  “Make war.”

  Inos was both shocked and disappointed. She had thought better of him, somehow. “War? War never helps the people! Death and destruction and rape and …”

  “War on Shuggaran—the next kingdom north. They can endure the death and so on. It is a bigger land, although less fair.”

  “Then they will smash you.”

  He shrugged. “It is possible, but my people would still be better off, I think. The two kingdoms could be ruled as one, easily. Shuggaran’s royal family is even more bloated than mine. I would extirpate them. Then twice as many peasants support half as many princes. Taxes could be cut.”

  “They might extirpate you.”

  “If I lost, that would be their right. The peasants gain either way. Besides, the bazaars hum with talk of an Imperial campaign in Zark. That would mean my war would have to wait. Buildings, you said?”

  He halted and sprang from his horse. Inos dismounted more circumspectly.

  They had come to the end of a headland, with water spread out in three directions. To the north, dhows were slipping in through the harbor mouth, wafted by the evening breeze. Eastward, with perfect timing, a full moon was rising huge from the sea. To the west lay the sparkling waters of the bay, and beyond that the city of Arakkaran clambered up the hillside on steps and ledges, shadowed already. At the high edge of the plateau, the domes and spiky towers of the palace stood dark against the sunset and the jagged outline of the desert range.

  For a moment sheer beauty left Inos speechless. Then she said, “Oh, Azak! It’s gorgeous!”

  “Wait until dawn. Then you will see the glory of my city.”

  “Where do we …”

  Azak pointed down to an encampment of silken tents on the beach facing the harbor. A small boat was unloading people at a decrepit old jetty, but already a fire crackled and smoked on the sand and she could identify a goat on the spit. This had all been very carefully arranged. Even to the moon, perhaps.

  “The small tent is yours, Inos.” His eyes flickered in mockery and amusement. “Zana will take care of your needs.”

  “Zana is here?”

  He chuckled then, a low and very masculine noise that she had not heard from him before. “You needn’t worry about being royally raped.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “You’ve been turning greener and greener for the last hour.”

  “We must make a striking couple, Red Face!”

  He bellowed with laughter, and she felt herself blush, even as the knot of her anxiety fell loose. She ached, she was grubby and weary, and she felt wonderful.

  “Azak, it’s been a marvelous day!”

  “And you hated most of it. Don’t argue. I promised you a lesson in ruling, the seamier side of the business.”

  He was not so very many years older than she, but in experience she was a child compared to him. She was a ruler in name but not in fact, and he in fact and not in name.

  One of the family men bowed and took the reins. As the horses were led off down to the camp, Inos was left standing at Azak’s side on the little hill. He turned to face the sea.

  “I love this place. A pity it has no water.”

  His changes of mood baffled her, but overall he seemed to have mellowed since leaving the palace that morning. Was that a result of her civilizing conversation, or was it release from the constant peril of brothers and uncles? She stretched, aware that she also felt oddly content, despite her weariness. “I shall never forget this day. I am very grateful to you, Azak.” She reached out a hand to him, but he began strolling seaward through the rough grass. She followed.

  “I love the sea,” he remarked pensively. “It never gives up.” He stopped and stared down at the patient, mindless waves following one another to destruction. “The bathing is good here. Go ahead. I will send Zana with towels.”

  “Did you ever slide down sand dunes when you were a child?”

  He peered at her oddly. “No, never.”

  “Then try it now! Come on!” She ran to the edge and launched herself down the shadowed slope on her seat, starting an avalanche of sand. There had been dunes near Krasnegar, but this sand was still so hot it almost burned through her jodhpurs. Stilt-legged birds on the beach ran and then took flight, low over the water.

  She came to a halt when the angle lessened, her feet buried. In a moment Azak went sliding past. He stopped a little way lower and turned to grin at her, suddenly looking almost boyish.

  “Yes, that’s fun! I shall declare it a royal prerogative, and behead any commoner who tries it!”

  She laughed—this was a much pleasanter Azak than the tyrant of the hunt. If the water was as hot as she suspected, a dip would be heavenly. He was right, this was a glorious spo
t. It was a great relief just to be out of the sun.

  Azak had risen to his knees. Although he was lower than she, their eyes were level—the size of the lad! His face was curiously solemn, but Inos was not feeling solemn. She felt weary, but also glad the long day was over at last, and happy to be away from the eternal crowding of dozens of men; especially glad to be away from the confines of the palace. He must be feeling the same, of course, and more so. Here he need not fear the hidden archer or the poisoned flask.

  She pulled off her headcloth and unfastened her hair, shaking it loose to fall heavy on her shoulders. She stretched and lay back against the slope, gazing up at pink wisps of cloud, running sand through her fingers, listening to the surf pounding on the beach below. “How many wives do you have, anyway?” she asked dreamily.

  “None,” Azak said, very softly. “I have many women in my household, and many men, also. I don’t know how many. Not all the women are designated for the sort of personal service that bothers you so much. Cleaners, cooks, seamstresses … Dancers, singers, glovemakers.”

  Inos snorted to indicate disbelief. “And when did you start … collecting?”

  “At my coming of age, my thirteenth birthday. A boy’s education is completed by a woman. She was much older than I, of course, but not too old, as I demonstrated.”

  Maybe! That could have been faked, whether he knew about it or not. “But you never have queens regnant. What is a sultana?”

  “The wife of a sultan. One day, when I am free of the odious sorceress, I shall marry—one of my women, or a royal daughter from elsewhere, to seal a treaty. She will be sultana and have charge of the palace. At the moment I have sisters to look after those things.”

  “Only one wife?”

  “Only one. And she may be spawn of prince or peasant, as I choose.”

  “But you still keep all the others, just for fun.”

  “And for sons.”

  She sighed and dribbled more sand through her fingers.