by Glenda Larke
Ardhi slipped his arm around her shoulders as they stood on the path and stared ahead at the leaves of the greatest oak of all. His breath shifted the strands of her hair as she leaned into him.
“The kris is aware of the ancient sakti of that tree,” he said. “The wood is alive and strong and true.”
“But we are only flesh and blood.” She feared, but didn’t want to give words to her dread. What if the ternion died? What then, for Piper?
His arm tightened about her, the hardness of his muscles both a comfort and a tantalising seduction. “Together we are strong,” he said as he wiped away a tear on her cheek with his thumb. “I will never leave you.”
Fritillary, standing in front of them, turned. “Come,” she said, “let’s find out what’s been happening in Vavala.”
Sorrel grasped Ardhi’s hand as they stepped under the canopy of the Great Oak.
In Proctor House, Horntail and Gerelda were training, yet again. Day after day, always training, honing their fighting skills. Horntail had taken it upon himself to teach her what he called a battle mind.
Perie watched as they fought each other with practice swords they’d found in the basement. Lunge, parry, thrust, interrupt the beat… Try this, try that, go for the unexpected, expect the bizarre…
In war, Horntail said, there were no rules. Everything was not only possible, but desirable. If you could cheat, deceive, kick, bite, scratch or throw boiling water at your opponent, then you did it. What mattered was winning, not rectitude. What mattered was surviving to fight another day, not dying heroically.
Come to think of it, that was a philosophy Perie had once agreed with wholeheartedly, but no more. Now… he wasn’t so sure. There’d been too much killing. Too many deaths. Now he just wanted it all to be over. More than anything, what he desired now was peace and rest in a place where there were no more sorcerers. In his bleakest moments, he dreamed of a quick death. When he confronted those thoughts, though, he found the idea of an overgrown grave beneath an oak tree more comforting than gloomy.
“No, no, no!” Horntail said. “Don’t wait for your opponent to recover. Catch him off-balance!”
Poor man, he still didn’t know who he was and he swore black and blue that he couldn’t possibly have a name like Buttercup. When he wasn’t practising with her, he prowled the rooms like a frustrated cat looking for a way out.
“How much longer?” Horntail asked, as he brought the practice bout to an end. He rubbed his already dirty sleeve over his sweaty brow. “Proctor, I’m be lard-bloated if I have to stay inside a moment longer. When is this confounded Pontifect of yours coming back? Yesterday, you said today. The day before that, you said yesterday…”
“You know as much as I do,” she lied, examining the damage he had inflicted on her knuckles. “She got my message and said she’d contact me in about ten days. Which was up yesterday.”
“She knows where we are, though.”
“Yes, Buttercup. I sent a message. And I’m just as impatient as you are. I think we’ve found out all we can about the palace without actually going inside. I don’t think you’d be so impatient to leave the building if you knew what the streets are like out there.” Fear saturated the city. No one smiled in Vavala any more.
That night, as the three of them sat around the fire in the common room in gloomy silence, someone rapped at the brass knocker on the main door.
Horntail gave a grunt that could have meant anything. “So,” he asked as he strapped on his sword belt, “how do we tell if that’s friend or foe?”
“Open it?” Gerelda suggested.
Perie snatched up his staff and made sure his spiker was accessible. “It’s not a sorcerer.”
They all trooped out into the main hall. Gerelda and Horntail stepped to either side of the door.
“You’re the sacrificial chicken,” Horntail said to Perie, grinning. “Open it and then get out of the way.”
The precautions were not needed. Fritillary Reedling stood in the doorway, with two people behind her.
“Good evening, Perie Proctor,” the Pontifect said. “May we come in?”
Even as she asked, she was already stepping into the hallway, the two others close behind her.
Peregrine’s first thought was Pox, she’s got so old!
He didn’t know the other two people. One of them was a woman and the other was brown-skinned and barefoot.
“We’ve been walking all day,” Fritillary said. “So, as you can imagine, we’re tired. We just stopped long enough for me to find your message at the shrine. This is Mistress Sorrel Redwing of Ardrone, and Ardhi, from the Summer Seas. Friends of Saker Rampion.”
The woman’s face broke into a smile as they followed Gerelda to the common room. “Sergeant Horntail! Prince Ryce has been worried about you. He will be so glad to know you are still alive.”
Horntail looked at her blankly. Gerelda explained and there was an awkward silence before he mumbled, “I have no idea who you are.”
“Oh, nobody important,” she said. “You probably never knew who I was anyway, but I remember you. You headed Prince Ryce’s personal guard.”
Horntail continued to look blank.
“Maybe you can settle an argument for us,” Gerelda said as she gestured for them all to precede her into the room. “Is his first name really Buttercup?”
“What? Whose? Buttercup? Sergeant Horntail, is that true?”
He sighed.
The mattress on Sorrel’s bed had a musty smell of damp. She picked up the pillow for a closer look, which revealed it was covered in mildew. She pulled a face, threw it across the room and decided it was better not to examine the rest of the bedding.
Hoping Ardhi would seek her out if he saw a light under her door, she left her candle burning, climbed into bed – and woke hours later when the morning sun streamed in through the long windows.
She groaned at her tactless inability to stay awake and hoped desperately that he had not come after all. How could she have been so – so feeble as to fall asleep the moment they had a chance to be alone? Someone had been in the room already that morning; there was a ewer of hot water steaming on the washstand. When she poured it into the washbowl, white scented flowers floated to the surface. She touched the petals with a finger, blushed, then laughed.
After flinging on her clothes, she hurried downstairs to find Gerelda in the kitchen chatting to Ardhi. Outside the door, Horntail was talking to Fritillary in the kitchen yard, his heavy frown an indication that the conversation was giving him trouble.
Gerelda had an odd expression on her face, as though she was not sure if Ardhi was making fun of her. Sorrel shot a look at him. His innocent smile told her that Gerelda was right to be suspicious.
“I think your friend here,” Gerelda growled, “should’ve been a lawyer. He is an expert at saying a lot without actually telling you anything.”
“Oh, he probably did study law! He seems to have done everything else: oceanography, hydrography, cartography, navigation, astronomy—” She glanced at him. “What have I forgotten?”
“Pilotage.”
“Right. So you were having fun at my expense.” Gerelda glared at Ardhi. “He told me he was a swabbie.”
“That too, for a time. Also third mate on Lord Juster’s privateer. Do you have anything to eat? I’m ravenous.”
Gerelda cut her some bread and cheese. “Fritillary told me you’ve been with Saker. I haven’t seen him in so long, not since before he was nulled. We went to university together, you know.” The smile that lit her face spoke of pleasant memories.
She hadn’t known, and felt a moment’s pique, as if no one had the right to have known Saker longer than she had. Ninnyhead. “You were good friends?”
“The very best at one time. We squabbled a lot too, as I remember. Fun student days, you know. And I met him once since too. Let me think… three years or so back? No, more. Just before he went to Throssel Palace as spiritual adviser to the young royals.�
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“He’s coming here with the prince and Lord Juster Dornbeck – and an army. Soon, we hope. In the meantime, we have to rescue Princess Bealina and Prince Garred,” she said.
“Just like that?” Her sarcasm was undisguised. “How? I mean, we haven’t had any luck at finding out where they’re being kept, let alone worked out a way to rescue them.”
“Oh,” said Ardhi wearing his innocent expression again, “that’s Sorrel’s job. She’ll just walk in the front gate. It’s what she usually does.”
Gerelda’s eyes narrowed. “Why, oh why do I have the idea that I really ought to believe that?” She sighed. “Who the pox are the two of you?”
“The answer to your prayers,” said Fritillary, appearing in the doorway.
29
The Rescue Begins
Fritillary Reedling’s knowledge of the layout of the palace was key to their preparation. Gerelda unearthed rolls of used parchment from a chest in Proctor House and the Pontifect drew up detailed plans of every storey on the back of the sheets. She took them through the diagrams, room by room, detailing what they might reasonably expect to see in each.
The building, erected in stages over three hundred years, had started as a castle and evolved into a much more elegant edifice, with glass windows instead of arrow slits, and charming archways and statuary instead of a portcullis and drawbridge. The original curtain walls remained only along the river edge. The wall that divided the palace grounds from the city was more decorative than protective, topped as it was with a stonemason’s delicate lacework.
The palace interior, a maze of floors at different levels, had its integrity interrupted by the later addition of five elegant towers of varying heights, the tallest of which, built originally as a prison, was in the centre of the building. Fritillary thought that was where Princess Bealina was most likely to be incarcerated.
Peregrine, armed with a scoop and a broom from the Proctor House stables, posed as a street sweeper and kept watch on the main gate of the palace. He reckoned the busiest time was first thing in the morning.
“Of course it is,” Fritillary said. “That’s when the functionaries arrive to start work in the city’s administration offices on the ground floor and when the palace servants return from the market. Then there’s an influx of palace clerics from early morning services at the city chapel. Perusal of those entering will be perfunctory. Don’t be too confident, though, Sorrel. They’ll know almost everybody who comes and goes on a regular basis. If they see you, there will be questions asked.”
“They won’t see me.” Although Valerian Fox might.
Ardhi, studying the walls, concluded that the most vulnerable area was the most visually formidable: the ramparts of the curtain wall along the river. “There are no guards there,” he said. “The rest of the walls are patrolled, day and night, by men with firearms.”
“They assume attackers won’t come from the river,” Gerelda said, “because boats would soon be noticed.”
“Tides to worry about, too,” Ardhi said. “Certainly, they don’t think in terms of a single swimmer being a danger.”
“What are you considering?” Fritillary asked.
“Climbing up from the water during the darkest part of the night. From the top of the wall, I can get on to the roof.”
“Only if you can climb sheer stone,” Horntail said, not bothering to hide his scorn.
He shrugged. “I can.”
“He’s already done it,” Sorrel said. She’d found that out when she’d gone to his room on their second night in Vavala, only to find him gone. He’d returned at dawn, his hair still wet from his swim.
Fritillary looked thunderous. “What? You jeopardised this whole endeavour by—?” Words failed her.
Ardhi shrugged, not at all contrite. “If they caught me, what would have happened?”
“You’d be dead, that’s what!” Horntail folded his arms and glowered at him. “No guard is going to believe that a lascar has any business scampering about the Pontifect’s palace! You’d be killed on the spot.”
“No one will see me up on the roof, even during the day. Most of it is not visible from the ground. I just wanted to see if it was possible, and it is.”
“And what good can you do up there?” Horntail asked, still dismissive.
“Look, the problem is not how Sorrel will enter, or leave. The problem is how do we get a woman and a child out of there.”
At last Horntail began to look interested. “And your giddy-brained idea is—?”
“Lower them by rope into the water. Have a boat waiting. At night.”
“Hmm.” Horntail considered that. “Go on.”
That night, Ardhi took Sorrel up on the roof of Proctor House through a dormer window. Once they were sitting on top of the ridge in the moonlight, she asked, “What’s all this about?”
“I miss having the rigging to climb. There’s nothing like being up high. Look at the view!” He’d lapsed back into his own language, as he so often did with her. He waved a hand at the dark shapes of the rooftops, at the palace towers which were now just shadows blocking the stars, and at the river, slick and black. “When I was a boy, I was always up in the trees. Anyone who wanted young coconuts sent me up the trunk to twist the fruit down.”
They sat in companionable silence for a while, her head on his shoulder.
“You know what I envy Saker most for?” he asked some time later. “Being able to see the world from up there, in the sky! What I wouldn’t give to have his witchery…”
“He hates it.”
“No, he doesn’t. He hates taking command of a wild creature and making it a slave to his wishes. That’s different to hating flight.” He sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if witcheries are not granted as a test, as much as a gift. Saker recognises the potential of the power he commands over birds. In a war with this sorcerer and the Grey Lancers, he could have an army of birds darkening the sky… His dilemma is that as a witan and a believer in the Shenat Way of the Oak, he is supposed to care for your animals and trees, for the – what’s the expression?”
“‘Oak and acorn, field and forest, farm and flow’.”
“Yes. And yet, if he commands such an army and wins a battle, how many birds would die? If he doesn’t, how many of us will die? That’s his dilemma. His test.”
She thought about that, and felt a little sick. “And your test?”
“How much should I help you all, knowing I risk Chenderawasi’s future. If your nations grow strong and are not threatened from within by internal conflict, will you turn on us to seize our spices and our magic?”
“We will all do our best to stop that. Prince Ryce and Regala Mathilda will have reasons to help us, as well.”
He smiled at that. “Ah. Yes. You and Saker can be very… persuasive.”
“And my test? What is mine?”
“I think you already know.”
A whisper, because it was too difficult to say the words out loud. “Piper. And Prince-regal Karel. Two sorcerers who cannot be permitted to live…”
He reached out and wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “We will find a way. We must.” He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. It was she who deepened it, took it to another place where there was nothing but themselves and the stars. Enclosed tight in his embrace, she felt them both start to slide down the slate tiles and abandoned the kiss for laughter, never doubting that he would keep her safe. Their feet hit the pitched roof over the dormer window, and they came to a halt.
“I think we had better go inside,” she said, rolling on to her back. “I have to sleep tonight. And you—Oh, look! A shooting star! And there’s another one!”
He looked up. “In Pulauan Chenderawasi we say the giant who sleeps on the moon, guarding his wealth, has rolled over and kicked some of his jewels into the sky. Those that fall to earth burn as they travel and become the sky-iron we find in our mountains. Some of that is in Sri Kris.” He touched the tip of her nose
with his forefinger. “Be careful tomorrow, Sorrel. I’ll be watching.”
“I’ll be all right. I’ve memorised the layout of the whole palace, I swear.”
“Take care.”
“You take care, not just because we need the ternion…”
He smiled and whispered, “… but because we’ve barely begun our journey together.” He kissed her again, leaving no doubt in her mind of what he meant.
When she stood outside the gates the next morning, her heart beating wildly, she found her trepidation oddly pleasurable. It made her feel alive, bringing back memories of her time at court when spying for the Lady Mathilda had been her one escape from the tedium of court life.
She shot one last glance over her shoulder to make sure that Peregrine was there, leaning on his broom, watching her. After sidling along the outside wall until she was close to the gate, she waited until the guards were distracted by a couple of cloth merchants wanting to gain entry, then slipped through.
The forecourt of the palace would have been bewildering if not for Fritillary’s coaching. The broad marble stairs on the left led up to the open terrace in front of the Pontifect’s quarters. The archway directly ahead led into a long barrel-vaulted passage through to the stables, the kitchens and the servants’ quarters. To the right of the archway, there were three smaller entrances, one to the administration areas, one to the Grand Hall and public audience rooms, and the third to another stairway that led to four of the five towers and all the private rooms.
All these entrances to the building were guarded.
She stayed close to the outer wall, watching for the right moment to move across the forecourt. Glancing upwards to the roof, she couldn’t see Ardhi anywhere, but from the configurations of the towers, ramparts, walkways, windows and balconies, it was obvious that there were plenty of corners and nooks out of sight from the ground.
