Страница 28 из 111
"Klaedra, you're a wonder!"
The Mistress of the Pantry smiled again, smugly this time. "I know. The Serpent-priest said the same thing." She drew open her bodice-and the cook gasped.
Klaedra always wore a black silk ribbon about her throat; from it a number of keys hung on fine cords, riding within her bodice. Maelree knew those keys-but she'd never before seen so many gleaming golden coins as the row of punched and laced-together Carraglan zostarrs that hung down from one cord between Klaedra's full, ta
She shivered suddenly, wondering how long he'd leave Klaedra alive to spend it.
7
Fangs in the Dark
Embra raised anxious eyes across the table to her father, but said nothing. She'd been vigilant with her magic-in fact, she was clutching her Dwaer under the table now, and setting her veins afire with yet another scouring-spell. Yet something was not right, inside her. Something that clenched and then wriDied, moving deep in her gut, climbing… into her chest, leaving a trail of twinges, as if something with sharp claws was moving within her…
Blackgult grimly gave her the slightest of nods. Embra drew in a deep breath-yes, she did feel odd-and tossed her head to take her hair back out of her eyes. Air. She needed air.
She felt… warm. Warm and numb. She reached for her goblet and turned her head with apparent casualness to look at Tshamarra, whose eyes-just for a moment-flashed back alarm.
A warning that meant her fellow sorceress was feeling the same discomfort. So they might not have much time left, if she didn't-
"Your arrival at our gates somewhat surprised us," Seneschal Urbrindur was saying in the lightly jovial ma
"Someone's using magic," the Lady Silvertree told him said shortly, "or perhaps just overly vivid imagination. We haven't been through Gilth this season."
"Oh, now!" the seneschal protested with a smile. "Your secrets are safe with us! I hardly think a herald of Flowfoam is apt to invent a meeting with all the Overdukes of Aglirta, however passing, or mistake your faces."
"Which herald was this?" Blackgult asked quietly.
"Thorntrumpet. He passes through Stornbridge often-so often, in fact, that we've often suspected him of keeping a very close watch on us for some reason. To report to the King, of course, but our loyalty-"
"Is above question," Embra said firmly. "At Flowfoam, Lord Stornbridge's regarded as one of the most diligent and loyal of tersepts."
The Tersept of Stornbridge blinked at her in delighted surprise, and grew a broad smile. "Well, my lady," he said grandly from the head of the table, "it gladdens my heart to hear you speak so highly of my conduct. I assure you that Stornbridge stands ready, and ever shall, to… toooooo…"
Embra turned her head in time to see the Lord of Stornbridge Castle, already nodding over his sinking goblet, topple in earnest-and land nose-first, splashing gravy in all directions, in his roast boar.
"My lord?" she asked politely, as if minor nobles of Aglirta fell into their food and started snoring at table every evening in her presence. Embra took some small satisfaction in seeing the startlement of the four Storn officers, even the hitherto imperturbed Coinmaster. Seneschal Urbrindur even looked scandalized again-and for real this time.
For a moment she thought Stornbridge was dead, or at least in the process of suffocating in his food, but he promptly gave the assembled diners proof that he wasn't, in the form of a soft and fluttery snore.
It was followed by another, succeeded by many more. They didn't stay gentle or muted, by any means.
"Sounds like a boar in rut," Craer commented amusedly, saluting the snoring tersept with a raised goblet. Hawkril and Lornsar Ryethrel chuckled politely, but the seneschal looked enraged again, and the Tersept's Champion seemed scarcely less hostile.
Seneschal Urbrindur lifted one hand in an obvious sign to the chamber knaves, who advanced in silent unison.
Blackgult and Hawkril clapped hands to sword-hilts, and Embra made her visible hand glow with sudden warning fire-cold flames that scorched nothing, but proclaimed ready power.
The seneschal shook his head sourly. "Such won't be necessary, revered Overdukes. We mean you no harm, but we do desire that you retire to your chambers now, as shall we. Our Lord Tersept has been taken ill, and ‘twould be the height of rudeness to continue our feasting and chatter with him lying stricken in our midst."
He nodded gravely to the lornsar and then the Coinmaster, both of whom rose, nodded farewells, and strode out.
Eirevaur spoke to someone unseen as he entered an archway, and four cortahars hastened forth from it to lift Champion Pheldane, chair and all, and convey him from the chamber. By his startled movements and furious expression, this assistance took the Tersept's Champion entirely by surprise.
"Until the morrow, then?" Seneschal Urbrindur asked Stornbridge's guests, in tones that were not-quite-a firm dismissal, as the overdukes rose and glanced at the chamber knaves they each seemed to have suddenly acquired. Those servants carefully looked over overduchal shoulders, never meeting the eyes of Tshamarra or the Four.
"Until the morrow," Blackgult agreed, showing no outward sign of the faint nausea that was now clear upon the faces of his daughter and Lady Talasorn. Craer and Hawkril both wore unreadable expressions, but their unaccustomed silence bespoke their own troubled i
As the overdukes and their silent escorts set off together, the Golden Griffon asked the seneschal, "We're bedded in adjacent rooms, I trust?"
"Ah, I fear not," Urbrindur replied, his voice archness laid soothingly over quiet triumph. "The architecture of Stornbridge Castle unfortunately makes such a courtesy impossible."
"I'll bet," Craer commented in clearly audible tones, and noticed a fleeting smirk come and go on the face of the nearest chamber knave.
"No strangers to impossible courtesies, we," was Blackgult's formal reply. Uneasy silence fell, and in its throes they were led up a spiral flight of worn stone steps, in an echoing shaft that reached from an undercellar past six or seven floors to unseen battlements above.
Ascending two levels, the overdukes were conducted down a long, dimly lit passage. Its walls were studded with arched, magnificently carved doors, some of which were flanked by pairs of lit lamps hung from ceiling-rings, each with a cortahar standing guard beneath. "Behold me clearly, for I'm a target," Craer murmured to Hawkril, who smiled almost as tightly as the chamber knaves who bent close to hear.
Embra was ushered through the first such guarded door, and had just time to give Hawkril a silent look of alarm and appeal as she left them. Tshamarra was taken through the next, some sixty paces on and around a slight jog in the passage from Embra's chamber.
The servants took their three male guests up a back stair to another level; Blackgult's door awaited them across the passage at the top of it.
"Sleep well, my lords," he told Craer and Hawkril dryly, as he left them.
The procurer and the armaragor traded glances and shifted their gaits, Hawkril striding ahead so that his chamber knave had to hasten to stay with him, and Craer slowing so that the servant accompanying him unhappily fell behind his fellow.