As the students departed, Nakor came over to where the beggar squatted, and hunkered down to gaze at the man’s eyes. Where, for a brief instant, something powerful and wise had been glimpsed, prince.qxd 9/4/02 10:38 AM Page 427
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now only a vacant pair of orbs were seen. Nakor sighed. “My friend,” he said, “just what are you?”
After a moment he stood and turned, to find Sho Pi, as he had expected. “I wish I were a smarter man,” he told his self-appointed student. “I wish I knew more.”
“Master?” was all Sho Pi said.
Nakor shrugged. “Wish I knew what’s happened to Calis, too. I’m getting bored here, and besides,” he said, looking into the blue western sky as the sun cleared the horizon behind him, “something’s going on. We’re going to have to leave soon, whether or not someone from Krondor comes to run things here.”
“When, Master?” asked Sho Pi.
Nakor shrugged. “I don’t know. Soon. Maybe this week. Maybe next month. We’ll know when it’s time.
Come on. Let’s get some food.”
At the mention of food the mindless beggar jumped up and with grunting and hooting sounds started shambling toward the dining hall. Nakor pointed after him. “See, our very basic friend there understands the relative importance of things.”
Then to Sho Pi, in the Isalani tongue, he said,
“And he hits like a Grand Master of the Order of Dala.”
Sho Pi answered in the same language, “No, Master. Harder. Whatever else, that man has more cha” —he used an ancient word for personal power—“than any priest I ever saw when I was a monk in the temple.” Lowering his voice, he said,
“He could have killed that boy, I think.”
Nakor said, “Had he wanted to, no doubt.”
As they entered the dining hall, both men considered what they had just witnessed.
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Roo awoke to a grey, predawn light showing in the window. He realized that he would barely be able to return home before Karli awoke. He knew it possible the baby had slept through the night and Karli might be convinced he had returned earlier, but he would have to move quickly.
He left the bed as quietly as he could, regretting the need. The memory of Sylvia’s body and her urgent demands throughout the night aroused him despite his fatigue. He dressed and quietly left the room, moving down the stairs and out the door. He approached his coach, where his driver was dozing, and woke the man, instructing him to head for home at once.
Inside the house Sylvia lay awake, smiling to herself. In the darkness, she thought, the little troll wasn’t too difficult to take. He was young, enthusiastic, and a lot stronger than he looked. She knew that while he thought himself in love with her, he had barely begun to experience the depth of obsession she would bring him to. Within a month he would be willing to compromise some minor business matter for her. Within a year, he’d betray his business partners.
She yawned and stretched in satisfaction. Her father wouldn’t be returning for a few days and she knew she’d receive a note from Roo before midday.
She’d ignore him for a day or two, then invite him back to the house. For a sleepy moment she wondered how long she should wait before her contrition scene, when she announced to Roo that she couldn’t continue to see a married man, no matter how much she loved him. As she started to drift off to slumber, prince.qxd 9/4/02 10:38 AM Page 429
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she considered there were a couple of young men in the city she should invite to the house before her father returned.
Roo tiptoed upstairs and slipped into the bedroom. The dawn was now breaking, and in the half-lighted room she could see Karli was asleep. He slipped out of his clothing and into bed next to her.
Less than a half hour later she awoke, and Roo pretended to be asleep. She arose and dressed, then went to where the baby was quietly singing to herself. After waiting awhile, Roo arose and went down to the dining room.
“Good morning,” said Karli, feeding the baby.
Abigail giggled and said, “Da!” at sight of Roo.
Roo yawned.
“Did you get much sleep?” asked Karli, looking at him with a neutral expression on her face.
Roo pulled out a chair and sat, while Mary came from the kitchen with a large mug of coffee for him.
“I feel like I slept for five minutes,” he said.
Karli asked, “Late night?”
“Very. I don’t even know what time we finished.”
Karli made a noncommittal sound as she spooned mashed vegetables into the mouth of the hungry child.
After a few minutes, Karli said, “I have something to tell you.”
Roo felt his chest tighten. He wondered for a panic-stricken moment if somehow she knew he had betrayed her, and then forced the thought aside. She hadn’t suspected anything when he returned from Ravensburg after having tumbled Gwen, and he decided she had no reason to suspect anything now.
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Calmly he said, “What is it?”
She said, “I wanted to tell you last night, but you were in such a rush . . .”
“What is it?” Roo repeated.
“We’re going to have another baby.”
Roo looked at Karli and saw her eyes were searching his face, looking for a reaction. And he sensed she was fearful of what that reaction would be.
“Wonderful!” He forced himself to sound pleased. He stood, came around the table, and said,
“This time a boy.” He kissed her cheek.
“Maybe,” Karli said softly.
Trying to sound jovial, Roo said, “It has to be a boy. Otherwise I’m going to have to have all the signs changed to ‘Avery and Daughters,’ and wouldn’t that be something to see?”
She smiled weakly. “If a son will make you happy, I hope it’s a boy.”
He said, “If it’s as wonderful a child as this one, then I’ll be happy.”
Karli didn’t look convinced, and as Roo started to leave the room, laying his half-drunk cup of coffee on the table, she said, “Aren’t you going to eat?”
“No,” he said as he took down his coat from the peg on the wall next to the outer door, “I have to make straight for the office. I have an important letter to write, then I have to come back over here for a meeting at Barret’s.”
Without waiting for her to say anything else, he left the house and Karli heard the door slam. She sighed as she attempted to keep most of the food going into the baby’s mouth and not onto the floor.
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Time passed and life took on a strange but steady tempo. Roo conspired to steal away to Sylvia once or twice a week, while spending a like number of nights each week with his business associates. There had been a horrible scene when she had claimed remorse because he was married, and he had to beg for weeks to get her to agree to see him again. She had at last relented when he had sent her a diamond and emerald necklace that had cost him more gold than he could have imagined only two years before. Sylvia finally admitted she loved him, and Roo had fallen into a routine of illicit love and lying to his wife.
His strengths as a businessman emerged quickly, and rarely did he enter into a bad bargain, and those few he did become enmeshed in created little financial hardship. Over the course of months the Bitter Sea Company grew and prospered.
Roo also learned how best to deploy the skills of those working for him. Duncan was most valuable at ferreting out rumors and keys to trading opportunities among the inns and taverns of the caravansaries and docks. Jason was proving adept at the single most confounding element of business to Roo, the management of funds. There was far more to being a merchan
t prince than merely buying and selling.
Such odd concepts as cross-collateralization and mutually shared risk among non-members of the company, where best to invest gold not being used for purchases, and when to seek safety by simply letting the gold sit—all these were areas of knowledge where Jason showed an uncanny knack, while Roo could barely follow along. Six months after he first bedded Sylvia, Roo’s company took control of a countinghouse and began its own banking.
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Luis was proving to be a treasure to Roo. He could be as gentle with an angry woman customer as he could be merciless with the toughest teamster.
Twice he had to prove to one of the more belligerent that even with one crippled hand he was more than able to enforce his orders.
Dash was the mystery to Roo. He seemed indifferent to any personal gain, but was pleased by the growth of the Bitter Sea Company as much as Roo was. It was as if he was serving the company for the sheer pleasure of seeing it thrive rather than to benefit himself. And upon occasion, he even contrived to involve his brother in some scheme or another.
Between the two of them, Jimmy and Dash could be a formidable pair against whom Roo wouldn’t wish to find himself pitted.
As Karli grew with what he hoped was his son, Roo felt life could hardly be better save for two sour notes: the continued existence of Tim Jacoby and the absence of his friends from the old days.
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Disasters
Roo sighed.
The baby squirmed in his arms as the priest droned through his incantations and poured scented oil on the baby’s forehead. While he was thrilled at having a son, Roo decided that nothing would ever make the naming ceremony any more bearable.
“I name you Helmut Avery,” said the priest at last.
Roo handed the child to Karli and kissed her upon the cheek. Then he kissed little Abigail, who was squirming in Mary’s arms, and said, “I must rush to the office for a while, but I’ll be home in two hours at the latest.”
Karli looked dubious, knowing as she did that her husband often worked impossibly long hours, sometimes throughout the night and the next day, before returning home. “We have guests coming,” she reminded him.
“I remember,” he said as his family left the temple. Walking down the steps, he left Karli behind, saying, “You take the carriage. I’ll walk from here.”
Roo made his way along the streets until he was 433
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clear of Temple Square, when he found a public carriage and hired it. Within minutes he was leaving the city, on the road for the Estherbrook estate. He wondered at his foul mood. Sylvia had become such a source of wonder for him that any anger or frustration was left behind. And for reasons he hadn’t pursued, her father never seemed to be at home these days, so within minutes of his arrival for supper—or like today, a surprise midday visit—Sylvia would welcome him with open arms and quickly lead him upstairs. Roo was astonished and delighted to discover her appetites matched his own. Occasionally he wondered who had first taught a well-bred young lady like Sylvia so many inventive lovemaking tricks, but she had never volunteered anything of her past before meeting Roo, nor had she asked about his previous experiences.
As the carriage rolled into the Esterbrook estate, Roo realized the cause of his foul mood. Of those who attended Helmut’s naming ceremony this day or who would attend the celebration that evening, the one Roo most wished could be there wasn’t.
Erik signaled and the column of riders halted. By hand signs, the order to dismount was passed. Erik rode at the head of the column next to Miranda and Bobby de Loungville, while Calis and a man named Renaldo scouted ahead.
The boat had been beached at the location Calis had planned on, and the Captain had been visibly relieved when agents from the distant City of the Serpent River had appeared within days. News from the front was grim.
A great fleet was nearly half completed, and the prince.qxd 9/4/02 10:38 AM Page 435
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armies of the Emerald Queen now held total control of the continent, save the small region south of the Ratn’gary Mountains and some of the western coast.
Otherwise, the reports were uniformly dreadful. The Emerald Queen’s host was ravaging the entire continent. They were stripping the land of every resource as they sought to create the great fleet they needed to cross the ocean and invade the Kingdom. The deaths of thousands of slaves captured during the war were ignored.
Several minor rebellions among the host of former mercenaries had been crushed mercilessly, with the rebels publicly crucified or impaled before elements of the army. As further punishment, one man in a thousand had been selected by lot to die by being burned alive before his comrades, a further warning that any sign of disobedience would bring only utter destruction.
Erik had thought about the time every man in his squad was held accountable for the other five. Each member of the squad had effectively seen that no one failed, because it would have returned every one of them to the gallows.
The only good news in all of this for Calis’s company was that the Emerald Queen’s whole attention was turned to the immediate area around the City of the Serpent River, the city of Maharta, and the Riverlands. The area in which Calis and his company were to operate was almost devoid of any sign of her army.
Calis observed that that would probably cease to be the case as they neared their destination. Horses had been secured and brought to the boat. Local clothing had been exchanged for their Brijaner gear, prince.qxd 9/4/02 10:38 AM Page 436
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and six of Calis’s agents took the Brijaner longship and moved it down the coast to a fishing village where they had made arrangements to hide it in a large drying shed until the time to escape came.
No one mentioned that few felt that possibility likely.
Now they were in the mountains, having moved through the foothills for a week, and had yet to encounter anything remotely dangerous. Erik had been one of those to flee the Saaur through the tunnels occupied by the Pantathians, and knew some of what they were likely to find, for once it had been determined that Calis’s Eagles—whom the Pantathians thought to be only a rebel company of mercenaries—had entered the mountains, a full-scale Saaur occupation of the area had resulted. Erik knew only the bold deception in pretending to be one of the human companies replaced by the Saaur, and moving directly to the front, in the opposite direction from that which logic dictated they take, had saved them on that prior journey.
Renaldo ran up, and between pants reported to de Loungville. “The Captain’s found a safe campsite and says we’re done for the day.”
Erik glanced around and saw several hours of daylight were left. De Loungville saw the same thing and said, “We’re close?”
Renaldo nodded. He pointed through the trees.
“There’s a ridge there, and from there you can see both the river gorge and the bridge. I take the Captain’s word for the latter.”
Erik understood. Calis’s vision was far more acute than any human’s. But if they could see the gorge, they were but a day’s ride from the bridge and prince.qxd 9/4/02 10:38 AM Page 437
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from there to the entrance to the mines, another day’s ride. If they decided to abandon the horses, it would be an extra two-day march from the bridge to the caves.
Erik dismounted, feeling mixed emotions; if they rode, things would be easier on the men, but to abandon the horses near the mines was a death sentence for the mounts. They were unlikely to cross the bridge by themselves and on the other side there was no fodder. Some might even fall to their deaths. Erik considered for a moment the irony of worrying more about the horses’ s
urvival than his own.
He shrugged off the thought as orders were passed to make camp. The men fell to with the discipline beaten into, taught to, and expected from them.
Alfred had been recently promoted to corporal and was reminding Erik more each day of Charlie Foster, the corporal who first made Erik’s every day a living hell at Bobby de Loungville’s whim. Now, years later, Erik understood that making these men obey without hesitation or thought ensured the best chance for each man’s survival and, more important, the achievement of the mission’s goals.
When camp was readied, a rotation of guards was established and each man went to eat—trail rations and a cold camp, so as not to risk anyone seeing a fire. Winter was rapidly approacing, so it would be an uncomfortable night for everyone.
While everyone else was eating, Erik inspected the horses and made sure every mount was sound.
He also saw that every man was where he was expected to be, then moved to where de Loungville, Calis, and Miranda sat.
Calis indicated Erik should sit. “Horses are fine,”
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Erik said. Calis said, “Good. We’re going to have to find a place around here to leave them.”
Miranda said, “Why bother?”
Calis shrugged. “I don’t discount the chance we may get out of this and need a quick route out of the mountains. If there’s a canyon around here with enough grazing for a week or two, I’d like to put the horses there. The heavy snows are not yet upon us, and the horses may prove useful.”
Erik said, “When we passed around the peak at midday, I saw a small valley below us.” He indicated the general direction. “I can’t be sure, but I think there is a route down from the trail. A goat path, at least.”
Calis said, “We’re going to rest here for a couple of days, so investigate it tomorrow. If there’s a way in, put the horses down there.”
Erik was still not comfortable with the Captain, though he had spent enough time with Bobby to speak his mind when he felt the need. Still, if anything, the Captain appreciated direct talk when it concerned the mission. “Captain, why are we waiting? We run the risk of discovery each day we delay.”
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