A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

  “I carry Ylo’s child!”

  He nodded. “So Inos told me. And Rap told her. And Rap says it’s a girl, so it — she, I mean — she won’t come between Maya and the throne. And if we —” He stopped and swallowed. “If I later have a son, then he will take precedence, so it will matter even less. Bring forth Ylo’s daughter, darling, and we shall raise her as our own.” He smiled sadly, as if hurt by her astonishment. “Did you think I would abandon a child of Ylo’s? Or of yours? Never! Nobody will know. As far as the world is concerned, you and I have been living together as man and wife all these months, so she will be another princess, Maya’s sister.”

  He held out his hands. She took them. Her fingers were icy and his were hot. He stood up, raising her. She braced herself, thinking he would kiss her, but he led her across to one of the two matching, overstaffed chairs, then turned and went to sit on the other. He stretched out his legs, crossed his ankles, and studied her.

  “I have much unhappy news,” he muttered.

  “My lord?” She saw him wince. “I mean, what news?”

  “Well, first, your sister is far from well. Emthoro’s in even worse condition. They have both had an Evilish, terrible time. I got a couple of sorcerers to help, and they did help them a bit, but they’re both in need of a lot of care.” He glanced around the friendly, cozy parlor. “I wonder if Queen Inos would take Ashia in? A quiet little refuge like this may be exactly what she requires.”

  Ashia? In a backwater hickdom like Krasnegar? Boggle!

  Shandie scratched his cheek and studied his boots. “You want to stay here for a while? You and Maya?”

  “I haven’t thought about it.” She had expected to be told what to do, as always. Was this Shandie’s own idea, or Inosolan’s?

  “It might be a good idea, you know! Eshiala, I had no inkling — The Impire’s in chaos! Not just Julgistro and Pithmot — all of it! The army’s wandering all over the place, there’s famine and riot and…” He shook his head. “…and chaos! Why open revolution hasn’t broken out already, I have no idea. Thank the Gods we now have sorcery to help us. At least I hope we do! Rap’s working on the wardens and this new council of his right now.” He thumped a fist on the arm of the chair and a cloud of dust rose. “Gods! I hope he can pull it off!”

  “King Rap? Pull what off?”

  Shandie looked up again, and she saw a worry there she had never seen before. “Don’t you understand? If votarism reappears, then all the sorcerers will vanish again. And if that happens, then everything’s going to fall apart! We need them desperately! Zinixo may not have been the prophesied disaster at all. He’s gone, but the millennium will still happen. And it’s all my fault!”

  “Yours? But that’s not fair!”

  He shrugged. “Who ever said anything about fair? As far as the people are concerned, I’ve been imperor for half a year and just about destroyed the Impire! They’re burning me in effigy.”

  “Shandie, that’s terrible! Awful! Can’t you explain?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” she demanded.

  “Who would believe me? It would seem like the most absurd excuse ever invented. ‘That wasn’t me, it was my cousin, and he couldn’t help what he did, either’? The Senate would chain me up in the violent wing. No, it’s going to take years to put things back together.” He sighed, and she saw how tired he was.

  “The Senate?” he muttered. “Oh, the Senate! And the consuls!” He cursed bitterly. She had never heard him use such language. Perhaps he was only thinking aloud, but she had never heard him do so before. He had never, ever, mentioned anything to do with politics in her hearing. “Those consuls have got to go! Oh, by the way — I postponed the coronation. The treasury can’t stand anything like that just now. Even the rich…”

  He scratched his chin and looked at her quizzically. “Something Ylo said once… He told me you don’t enjoy formal balls and parties?”

  “Enjoy them? I detest them! You mean you didn’t know that?” How could he possibly not know the terror she felt? Some nights she had been almost ill beforehand.

  “No, I had no idea! I never guessed… You fooled me!” He grinned sheepishly. “I hate them, too, you see — rather fight a battle any day! I suppose I was always in such a cold sweat…”

  “You?”

  They stared at each other, and very slowly they both began to smile.

  “Yes, me!” Shandie said. “All that dressing up, standing around… But we shan’t have to worry about sumptuous parties for quite a while! Even the richest families have been battered to the ground.”

  Truly, as the priests said, there was some good in every evil. Without that awful burden, the palace would not hurt so badly.

  “Which reminds me,” Shandie said. “Count Ipherio? You sat next to him at Ishipole’s one night… Would he make a consul, do you think?”

  “You are asking me?”

  He blinked. “Well, you had to listen to him for three hours. Did he make any sense?”

  “No. He was drunk before we sat down and got drunker as the meal went on.”

  “Trash him then,” Shandie said offhandedly.

  Had he been testing her judgment or had she really just mined a man’s political career? Did the king and queen of Krasnegar sit around on the long winter nights, tossing affairs of state back and forth across the great hearth like this? And Shandie was still talking —

  “You know there are packs of starving people running like wild dogs in Julgistro? Reports of feral children! Gods, what a mess! I must do something about the children, but what? If I order the army to round them up, they’ll use dogs or nets or something and throw them in cages…” He paused. “I’ll have to put someone on it right away, but who can I trust to deal with children?”

  Perhaps he wasn’t really asking her, but she answered.

  “A woman.”

  He pouted. “Good idea, but I’m no judge of women! Name one!”

  “Lady Eigaze.”

  He grabbed. “Is she competent?”

  “Extremely. She and Ylo ran circles around her husband and the centurion to get me away, but I think she did most of it.”

  Shandie’s smile was almost a smirk. “Excellent! Wonderful! Well, that’s one thing settled. That leaves two million, nine hundred thousand et ceteras! Ylo would surely be useful now!” he added wistfully. He moved as if about to pull himself out of the chair.

  “If I can help —”

  He sank back. He studied the fireplace and chewed a knuckle, which was a very exuberant gesture for him. “Help? Of course you could help! I can think of a hundred things you could do. Make a list of the competent and incompetent people you know, for instance. Organize a relief fund for the homeless, nurse your sister back to health… but… if you wouldn’t mind… Umpily’s already picking up rumors of coups being plotted, you see, and at the moment sorcery’s completely out of control, which is something our predecessors never had to worry about…”

  She had never heard him so hesitant. “What are you getting at?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind… I honestly think you could help best — just for the next few weeks, at least — by staying right where you are, darling! I know you’re safe, then, and Maya’s safe. I can announce that you’re paying a state visit. And you’re pregnant, of course. Great excuse.”

  “I won’t mind.” Marvelous! Stay in Krasengar? Peace to heal after all those months of flight! This must be Inosolan’s doing.

  He smiled, looking relieved. “Good. I am very grateful! But I shall come and visit you every day. Or at least I shall come and visit Maya, because I want to get to know my daughter before I march her down the aisle to marry some chinless aristocratic miracle. If you choose not to see me, then I shall just visit with Maya.”

  She stared.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.

  “Nothing. I mean, of course there’s lots of things wrong, but… Nothing.”

  Shandie chuckled, lookin
g pleased. “Not quite the old Shandie? I have changed, Eshiala! I really have! Ylo started it. He lectured me about taking life too seriously. Maybe the bar girls helped, too. I certainly learned a lot of surprising things about, well, you know.”

  The bar girls were starting to irk.

  “About what, my lord?”

  He colored again. “All right, I’ll say it! The first woman I took to bed called me a clumsy, impatient, inconsiderate oaf!”

  After a long silence, Eshiala said, “Gracious! Did she really?”

  Now the imperor’s face burned as red as any schoolgirl’s. “I don’t suppose Ylo was, was he?” he said through his teeth.

  “Ylo was a revelation.”

  Shandie nodded grimly. “Very well. I deserved that. I learned! I learned quite quickly, I think, although I’ll never come up to Ylo’s standards. I kept thinking of you. I don’t mean… What I mean is, then the goblins caught me. For two days I was sure I was going to die very horribly. Believe me, please, but one of my greatest regrets was that I had never made love to you as you deserved! Maybe one day… And then I met Inos.”

  “No!” Eshiala exclaimed.

  “No,” he admitted. “I was tempted to try a time or two, though. Amazing woman, that! But Inos taught me some things, in a less intimate way. Ylo taught me how men could be friends. Inos taught me how a man and a woman could be friends.”

  His dark eyes gazed solemnly at her as if that were an earth-shaking revelation. Maybe it had been, for Shandie. He had had a very strange childhood. And why was he telling her all this? Inos had warned her that he was a very clever man.

  Shandie rose, gesturing to stop Eshiala when she would have risen. He walked over to the bell rope and tugged it. Then he came to her and sank down on one knee.

  “Inos said to ring if I needed food. I haven’t eaten all day. You won’t mind watching me guzzle? And I have a request to make.”

  “Request?” She tried to pull her wits together. They refused to come. “You have only to command. Sire.”

  He shook his head impatiently. “Request. Petition. Plea. I know you are in mourning for the man you loved. I respect that. I mourn him, also, dearly.”

  Those could not be tears in his eyes, could they? Shandie’s eyes?

  “But, after the baby… In a year or so? When you have had time. No hurry! No hurry at all! I know it sounds callous to say this, but time does heal, Eshiala! When it does — I want your permission to pay court to my friend’s widow.”

  “I don’t understand!” she cried. Nothing had happened as she had expected.

  “It’s quite simple. I don’t deserve you. I never wooed and won you. The contest was never fair. Do you suppose your mother learned who I was by accident? Oh no! — I cheated! Now I want to play by the rules and win on my own merits, as a man, not as prince or imperor. You married Ylo for love and I respect that. Ylo won you! Ylo died saving you from the Covin. You need time to adjust, I know. Lots of time! But you are a young woman yet. I ask only that I may be your first suitor, when you are ready to consider suitors. That is all I ask of you. And if I cannot win your hand honestly, then I do not deserve you. May I hope for that? And until then, may we be friends?”

  It was the most generous offer he could have made, and far beyond her dreams. It was too good to be sincere.

  “You mean that for the first time in my life I would actually be free to make a decision for myself?”

  He winced, then nodded.

  She felt Ylo’s presence. She felt him at her side.

  She felt as she had when she rode the horse at the hedges in Qoble, fleeing the soldiers, knowing that she was risking her life and the life of her daughter. She had survived that — she could survive this.

  What would Ylo say now? Ylo would ask what was in it for him.

  Her mouth was almost too dry for speech. “And what if you do not win me, my lord? Do we go back to rape? Do I get to choose between that and giving up my children? Do I also have a chance to win something?”

  Shandie stood up. He went back to the big chair opposite and sat down, stretching out his legs. He smiled lazily, confidently. She noticed that his fists were clenched, though.

  “Inos warned me that the kitten was growing tiger stripes. Name the stakes, ma’am.”

  “Divorce.”

  The darkness of his eyes burned brighter. “On what grounds?”

  “Failure to give the imperor a son. There are precedents.”

  “There are,” Shandie admitted grimly. His knuckles showed white now. “And the children?”

  “I remain at court as their governess. They will be in my charge, completely, whether or not you remarry. Or I remarry.”

  He bared his teeth. “By the Gods, you drive a hard bargain, my lady!”

  “So your wooing will be all pretense? However I choose, I lose?”

  “By the Gods!” he muttered again. “Anything else?”

  She could hear Ylo’s laughter.

  “That’s if I refuse you. I may have conditions for accepting you, you understand — a limit of one formal function a month, perhaps… And I shall require at least two years to decide.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all for now.”

  He sighed. “I accept the stakes. I can refuse you nothing.”

  Their eyes met. He smiled. Could he actually be pleased by her new assertiveness? “I mean it! I will swear any oath you ask. I will pay any price and risk anything to win your love — when you are ready to love again.” Suddenly the smile became a mischievous grin. “I did warn you that Ylo had given me lessons, didn’t I?”

  It was so much what Ylo might have said that it brought tears to her eyes, but she laughed in spite of them.

  “And me, too!” she said, and then fumbled hastily for a handkerchief.

  Moments later, a footman delivered a loaded tray. Thereafter Shandie sat and ate like a starved man, and talked. Mostly he spoke of Ylo.

  5

  Meanwhile, in a corridor of the castle…

  Krasnegar had not changed at all. Not a thing. World capital of dull. The same soup bubbled in the same pots, the same seagulls stood on the battlements, the same dogs erupted all over a long-lost friend. The only difference was that Kadie was not around to share it. Kadie was never going to be around again. When Gath mentioned her to their friends, they became confused and upset and changed the subject.

  Friends? The imps seemed devious, curious, and garrulous to him; domestic jotnar were a wishy-washy imitation of the wild variety he had come to know. All this peace and serenity was going to take a lot of getting used to, an Evilish lot! Gath had not faced death even once in the last hour. What he needed was exercise and entertainment to stop him moping about Kadie.

  This was the most promising future he could find.

  “Gath!” exclaimed the burly redhead.

  “Oh, hello, Brak!” Gath said airily, rising from the bench he had been waiting on. Yes, he was a handsbreadth taller than Brak! He had known, but it was good to see. Wonderful! Best thing yet!

  Behind Brak stood Arkie and Koarth. They had grown, too, but Brak was in front and clearly still the leader.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Oh, all sorts of places,” Gath said modestly. “Helping my dad the warlock, mostly.”

  “The what?”

  “Warlock.” Gath flexed his arms hopefully. There was a fifty-fifty future of Brak calling him a liar now, and Gath slaughtering him. Arkie and Koarth exchanged interested glances.

  But Brak peered up at the returned traveler for a long, cautious moment and apparently disliked what he saw.

  “That’s great news for Krasnegar,” he muttered.

  “This is Longday. I was at the Nintor Moot this morning. Very interesting.”

  “This morning?”

  “You heard what I said.”

  This time the pause was longer. Arkie coughed. Koarth hummed and tapped a boot on the flagstones.

  Brak wiped hi
s forehead. “We’d like to hear about that, Gath,” he said faintly.

  Gath sighed. Hopeless! “That’s a fantastic ear you’ve got, lad. I wonder you can hold your head straight. Did I do that, or has someone else been giving you lessons?”

  “That was you.” Brak pulled a grin, although it displayed hints of desperation. “We both put up quite a show that day, didn’t we, Gath? The guys talked of it for weeks. I know I knocked you out in the end, but you did a lot more damage to me than I did to you… we could kinda call that one a draw, couldn’t we?”

  Gath’s mouth felt full of tooth, because an hour or two ago Jaurg had replaced the piece Brak had broken off. Maybe Brak wasn’t too bad really, especially compared with Vork or some of the men of their age in Gark. It was sort of good to see him again. Gath returned the grin. “I suppose we could.”

  Brak released a long breath of relief. Arkie and Koarth welcomed Gath back. Gath said it was good to see them all.

  “Er, which throne did your, er, the king, get?” Koarth asked.

  “The gold.”

  “Why not north?”

  “Wasn’t available. Of course, as East, he runs the Imperial Army. Keeps him busy, you know. And he’s rewriting Emine’s Protocol. With the help of some pixies. Funny people, pixies.”

  Three sets of blue eyes blinked, but no one questioned.

  Gath yawned. “I’m heading down to the Beached Whale for a beer or two. Wanna come along and hear about the Nintor Moot?” And there would be action there later…

  “They won’t let us into the Beached Whale!” Brak said.

  Puke! No, they wouldn’t! This was Krasnegar. Mom made all the rules here. Gath frowned and reached for prescience. Oh, of course! “Then let’s go and find my friend Jaurg. He’ll get us in.”

  The game again:

  And many a broken heart is here and many a broken head;

  But tomorrow, By the living God, we’ll try the game again!