As soon as Foan was within earshot, Shadow called, "Not you."
The duke shrugged and turned to go, then stopped. In spite of the war and the siege and the death, his own mind was full of thoughts of Elosa--and the kid up there was human, too.
"Shadow? Jarkadon did release your parents. I checked when I arrived."
Shadow looked down at him for a while without expression. He was very pale, as though exhausted or in shock. "I had thought my father would have been in the army."
"I don't know what may have happened recently," Foan said, "because I've been kept away, but when I checked, they were at home under house arrest. So perhaps not."
Shadow nodded. "I flew by Hiando Keep, and their eagles told me they were there. It's too late to make friends, Keeper."
The duke spun on his heel and walked away. He eventually found the lord chamberlain. He dragged him back to the court and then along it until they stood together at the end, staring up at the kid high above them. Shadow had moved from the sling to a bench on the balcony and gone to sleep--they had to shout to waken him.
"I have a proclamation here, from the king," Shadow called down to them. "You can fill in whatever name you want; it grants power of regency until the king arrives. Probably tomorrow."
He tossed down a roll. The duke picked it up and held it while the lord chamberlain and he read it together.
Proclaim Vindax VII as King of Rantorra.
Proclaimtemporary regent.
No one to leave the palace.
The following to be held in chains, awaiting the
king's pleasure:
the usurper Jarkadon,
the duke of Foan,
Elosa, his daughter.
Shadow climbed over the wall as the bronze took hold of his sling once more. "Got any questions?" he called down.
"No," the lord chamberlain said.
"I have!" the duke of Foan shouted. "How do you feel?"
The big bird launched, flapped wildly to gain altitude as it flew the length of the courtyard, and narrowly cleared the far wall beside the high mirror. Then it was gone. IceFire followed.
But the question remained behind, unanswered.
Chapter 20
"Birds of a feather flock together."
So it would end where it had begun. Shadow stood at the side of the throne and stared out at the assembled courtiers of Rantorra. One by one the senior nobles were coming forward to kneel and do homage to Vindax.
They had managed very well, those courtiers. The palace was a devastation, its interiors littered with fallen beams and smashed artwork, with plaster, with fragments of plows and cartwheels and chunks of rock. Throughout the grounds bodies still lay in heaps, especially near the gates. Yet somehow the nobility had rounded up its servants and its finery and dressed itself again in grandeur. The coiffures glittered with jewels, and the brocades and silks and laces shone in a thousand hues from doublets and plumes and sashes. They had painted the face of a corpse.
The balconies were deserted. High in the vault of the sky floated the eagle army, faint as gnats, waiting with endless patience. A single bird sat on the far wall, behind the courtiers: IceFire. She was chatting with the watchers overhead and once in a while would pass a message to Shadow.
Sweat trickled down his ribs and face. His legs trembled with the effort of standing, and he wanted to crawl off to bed for a hectoday. Even NailBiter had been exhausted by that journey, that great sweep along the Rand, flying three watches out of three, with Shadow sleeping in the air, grabbing food when he got the chance as towns and castles fell and the eagles flocked to his banner. His plan had worked, worked too welclass="underline" Jarkadon had fallen into the trap and emptied his aeries.
The inside of Shadow's head was ringing like a tolling bell in an empty church, echoing back and forth, and the peals were the words of Karaman:Do you know what you're letting loose, lad?
No, he had not known.
Where it had begun...yet it was not the same. Two hectodays ago that nervous Sald Harl had worried about his coat of arms, how he looked, how to behave. Now Shadow still wore his battered flying suit with its cumbersome sling--his getaway suit, he called it to himself, grimly aware that he might need a fast getaway very soon. In the vertical blaze of sunlight around the throne he sweltered, and certainly he stank. He had not been out of that garment since he had left Allaban, and he had unfastened the front of it as far as he decently could. He did not care. Nor, seemingly, did the courtiers. No eye met his. They were not admitting his existence--long might that last.
There was a new archbishop, holding out the sacred text as each noble repeated the words of the oath.
The portly duke of Aginna, Sald's old neighbor from the robing room, came stumping forward to do homage. Like all those who had preceded him, he looked at Shadow not at all, and very little at the human wreckage now occupying the proud throne of Rantorra.
Vindax had survived his journey well. He seemed to burn with some fierce internal forge. How long could such a cripple live? How long would he be allowed to live?
"Explain," IceFire signaled, "why thisBobaSAsa-neneNOna?"
If only he were not so weary...How to translateBobaSAsa-neneNOna?A dance? Three-dimensional ballet? A romp?
"They are showing," he signed back, "that The-one-with-broken-legs is higher than they are."
No wonder the eagles thought that the human race was mad.
The courtiers had changed. Women outnumbered men by three to two. There were almost no young men. This was a joyous occasion, the throning of a new king. Mourning was not allowed, else that swarm of fireflies would be an army of ants. Husbands, sons, brothers, friends--fourteen thousand had died in the bloodstorm over Rakarr, and unknown hundreds in the bombardment of the palace.
The homage ended, and the last man retired, bowing. Vindax sat for a moment and gazed with satisfaction over the Great Courtyard. He wore royal blue, taken from his brother's wardrobes, and a gold circle shone on his dark hair, but he had made no effort to disguise his injuries. His fingerless hands rested in full view on the arms of the throne, and every senior peer had been required to kiss one of those stumps. The noseless face...he was an ape playing king.
The bell in Shadow's echoing head was knelling the words of Eagle Speaker: "She says what would you do?" It had been a reflex. He had been warned. Again and again he had pleaded with the High Ones, but they had been powerless. They could stop the slaughter afterward--once the birds had been released, there had been no more killing, but whenever one had been freed in flight, it had turned on its rider. Perhaps even Karaman had not realized how hotly burned the resentment of a ridden eagle, the gnawing of lifelong ignominy.
"And now," Vindax said, "we must distribute reward. And punishment."
The court took a deep breath.
There had been no way to turn back. Had Shadow faltered, then the eagles would have done it by themselves. He had believed that he could do it better and faster and therefore, he had hoped, with less bloodshed in the end. And so his juggernaut had thundered along the Rand, gathering freed slaves and wilds by the thousands as it came.
"Sald Harl, known as Shadow!"
Shadow yanked his mind back to the present. He stepped to the front of the throne and knelt. Vindax studied him for a moment.
"Know, my people," the king proclaimed, "that in Rantorra, only one man remained true." Unfair! What chance had the others had of demonstrating loyalty? "Only Shadow was loyal. He made this justice possible; single-handedly he overthrew the usurper." Better that fact not be made public. "We shall reward him as greatly as lies within our Power, and he shall have our favor forever."