Liane gasped with relief; Sharina felt herself relax blissfully. She’d been poised to grab the king’s arm if he started to slap his army commander, but she didn’t think she was either fast enough or strong enough. She wondered what sort of reward would be suitable for the clerk who’d accidentally prevented a crisis.
King Carus laughed with the booming joy of a man who loves life and lives it fully. He rose to his feet, putting his hands on the shoulders of the women seated beside him.
“Yes, Master Hauk,” he said, “we’ll want those other supplies as well. And by the way”—his gaze, sword-edge hard again, stabbed Royhas—“you’ve just become City Prefect. Royhas, I won’t need those names, but take care of it if Hauk has to be ennobled or some such nonsense. Eh?”
Royhas nodded. Faces—noble faces—around the table showed shock, and some of the aides looked worse than that, but nobody objected aloud. Which was just as well….
“I…” said Hauk. He looked like a carp sucking air. “I…I…”
“Your highness?” said the grizzled aide who’d offered Waldron the morning reports. “Normally the troops wouldn’t carry their supplies, they’d—”
He stopped, suddenly aware of what he was saying and who he was saying it to. The man facing him might have a youth’s body, but the soul looking out through the eyes wasn’t one which had to be told how an army moved.
“Aye, normally we’d land every night on a major island and buy food for the next day,” the king said. “We’d reach Tisamur some time next year that way.”
He smiled, not a gentle expression, as he swept the room with his eyes.
“Maybe a little sooner?” he went on. “But we’re not going to do that. We’re going to strike straight across the Inner Sea, overnighting on islets where nobody lives and nobody can warn that we’re coming. We’ll carry enough food to get us to Tisamur.”
He pointed across the table to a plump man in an immaculate blue robe, his fingers tented before him. Lord Tadai had no formal appointment at the moment, but his presence in the council had surprised no one. He was wealthy, powerful, and extremely intelligent.
“Lord Tadai,” Carus said, “I want you to go to Pandah and embargo the shipping there.”
“Go ahead of the fleet, you mean, your highness?” Tadai said, laying his hands flat on the table. Pandah, the only large island in the Inner Sea, was a stopping point for much of the traffic between distant islands.
“The fleet’s not going by way of Pandah,” Carus said with a broad grin. “We’re striking straight to the Sidera Atoll north of Shengy to regroup. You’ll send all merchantmen with cargoes of food to join us there, or stage on to Tisamur if we’ve left already. I don’t care who they are or where they’re bound, they’re supplying the royal army now.”
“For which they’ll be paid?” Pterlion asked.
“For which they’ll be paid,” Carus agreed, nodding, “but Zettin will make sure Lord Tadai has enough marines with him to put a squad aboard every ship he sends south. To remind the citizens of outlying parts of their duty to the Kingdom of the Isles.”
Lord Waldron snorted. Like most landowners from Northern Ornifal, he regarded himself and his peers as the upholders of the kingdom and its only real citizens. Everyone else, even the merchant nobility of Valles, were on a lower plane. As for the status of mere sailors from other islands—well, indeed!
“Three galleys to Pandah, your highness?” Lord Zettin asked.
Carus frowned. “Four, I think,” he said. “Under an officer who’s a seaman himself—”
“Because I assuredly am not,” said Tadai, smiling comfortably, with his fingers tented again. His oval nails were gilded. “As I’ve proved, I’m afraid.”
The king set his balled fists on the table and leaned onto them. “If anybody doesn’t know his job, come to me,” he said. “If anybody’s trying to do his job and runs into somebody who’s getting in the way of that, come to me.”
He grinned like a really happy leopard. “But I give extra credit to the folks who don’t bother me,” he added, “because I have my own job to do. Does everybody understand?”
There was no sound save the rustle of documents and the whicker of sandals on the tiled floor as councillors prepared to rise.
“Then, gentlemen, go do your jobs!” the king thundered. “And know by my oath on the Lady that I will do mine!”
He gestured to the door. Attaper hauled it open, barely in time to let the first of the hastening councillors out unimpeded.
Carus watched them go. In a voice that only Sharina and Liane could hear, he said, “I sent Ilna into trouble. By the Lady! My sword will get her out again—or I’ll die trying!”
Garric awoke to the pressure of a hand on his shoulder. He sat upright, rousing Tint; she whuffed at his feet.
Garric half smiled, half frowned at memory of the time he shared his mind with King Carus. In those recent days he’d have come out of his sleep with a drawn dagger in his hand. Carus wasn’t with him now, and an innkeeper’s son doesn’t have reflexes honed by slaughter and assassination.
The ancient king’s experiences might have been a better preparation for the life Gar the Bandit was leading now.
Vascay had wakened him. Moonlight trickling through chinks in the wattle-and-daub walls provided the only illumination, but Gar’s eyes saw clearly by it.
The other bandits lay sprawled on the straw, snoring or not as their habit was. Alcomm alone seemed wakeful, huddling in a corner and squeezing the biceps of his severed arm with his remaining hand.
“The wizard went out a little bit ago,” Vascay whispered. “I waited till he was away before I got you up. I thought you’d want to follow him just to see what’s going on. He looks to be heading back to the boathouse, but I guess your ladyfriend—”
He nodded toward Tint. His tone was matter-of-fact, with nothing of a sneer in it.
“—could track him wherever he went, right?”
Garric got to his feet and pulled on the outer tunic he’d been using for a bedcover. He didn’t have boots or sandals to worry about. Gar hadn’t worn footgear since the seawolf chewed on his skull, so the soles of his feet were as tough as oxhide.
“Yes, all right,” Garric said. “Are you coming too?”
Vascay snorted a quick laugh. “It’s not worth me putting my leg on, lad,” he said. “Not when I’ve got you to take care of things.”
The chieftain grimaced, stroking the stump with hard hands. He’d have been sitting cross-legged if he’d had both legs.
“Clamping to a horse’s flank makes the stump swell worse than if I’d hiked the way on the peg all these miles,” he said. “Cursed if I know why. One of the mysteries of life, I suppose.”
Garric nodded. He glanced at his sword belt, hanging from a tack hook in the empty stall where he and Tint had bedded down. He drew the dagger and thrust the bare blade under the sash of his tunic, then said to Vascay, “I’ll borrow a javelin. All right?”
“Aye,” said Vascay in a subdued voice. He didn’t look up. His hands continued to knead his stump.
The valves of the stable’s double door were ajar; Garric glanced through them. Metron was out of sight, and the night was silent. He slipped out with the beastgirl following as smoothly as a stream of oil.
“I want to follow the wizard, Tint,” Garric said. “Can you take me the way he’s gone?”
Tint ambled off on all fours. “We kill Metron, Gar?” she asked.
Garric lengthened his stride to keep up with the beastgirl, though she wasn’t really in a hurry. “No, Tint,” he said. “Metron’s on our side. Or we’re on his. He likes us.”
“Metron like Gar?” Tint said. She made a sound with her teeth. “Metron like Gar for food, maybe.”
That was pretty close to Garric’s own judgment on the wizard, but he didn’t say so in case Tint misunderstood it. Garric had known even before he became Prince of the Isles that sometimes you had to ally with people you’d rather not have met.