The struggle between rage and a love for food was obvious in Pater’s features. Finally he grabbed for the bell pull again and jerked it several times. “Tars!” he called. “Bring my traveling coat and boots!” He glowered at Vounn. “You play foul. Write your note. There’s pen and paper on the desk.”
By the time Vounn had scribbled down a message to the noted baker of Sentinel Tower-along with a request that Pater also be served up the best Karrnathi ale and sausages available-another servant had appeared with a pair of boots and a pale coat embroidered with the crest of House Orien.
“Tell the staff and my wife that I’ll be back in the morning,” Pater told the servant as he pulled on boots and coat. “And show Lady Vounn out once I’m gone.”
The servant nodded, then pulled out a handkerchief and wiped a spot of grease from Pater’s face. The viceroy ignored him and instead gave Vounn one final glare. “You owe me, Deneith,” he said. “This bread better be good.”
He glanced at her note, tucked it into a large pocket along with the bundled letters, and took a step back. He closed his eyes, and a distant expression crossed his face, as if he were picturing some far away place. After a moment, his nose wrinkled in concentration as he invoked the power of House Orien’s dragonmark. He took a step-and vanished.
He would already be in Karrlakton, probably stepping out of the air in some Orien waystation and sniffing the air for sausages and vedbread. The essence of diplomacy, thought Vounn, was using what people wanted to get what you needed. She felt a warm glow of satisfaction.
“This way, lady,” said the servant, ushering her to a door.
She was a little surprised to discover that night had fallen while she’d been inside. Olarune was just rising, its orange disk fat and full, though the moonlight would be little help against the shadows of Rhukaan Draal. The Orien compound was lit, but the street beyond the gate was very dark. Vounn found Aruget waiting where she had left him. The hobgoblin was pacing back and forth. His ears rose when he saw her. “You’ve been too long,” he said in his own language.
“I did what I came to do,” she said. “Take me back to Khaar Mbar’ost.”
He held something out to her. At first she thought it was a blanket stolen from one of Orien’s horses, then she realized it was a cloak, speckled with straw and heavily patched. Her mouth turned down in disgust. Aruget bared his teeth.
“It’s cleaner than it could be,” he said. “I bought it from a carter. Put it on.”
Vounn raised an eyebrow. “I don’t need a disguise. I can defend myself.”
“You haven’t been in Rhukaan Draal at night.” He shook out the cloak and thrust it at her. “Wear it or we stay here until morning. Lhesh Haruuc assigned me to protect you. I will not fail him.”
Grimacing, she took the cloak and threw it around her shoulders. Aruget had been right-it didn’t smell as bad as it could have. The hobgoblin had purchased a torch as well. He lit it from another torch beside the Orien gates and they left the compound for the shadowed streets. Vounn looked around as they walked. While the streets may have been dark, they were far from abandoned. Goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears went about their business without light, as did a fair number of dwarves, elves, and shifters. A few humans and halflings were abroad as well, but most of them walked in the darkness rather than use torches or lanterns. Fixed light sources were few and far between, and unlike in the cities she knew best, they were open flame rather than cold fire.
“You walk too proudly,” Aruget growled at her.
“Do you want me to shuffle like a slave?” Vounn asked. “I’m being escorted by one of Haruuc’s soldiers. No moth-eaten cloak is going to hide that!”
“If you walk with less pride, you will go unnoticed. Right now, you are attracting attention.”
Vounn knew better than to look around, but she couldn’t help thinking of the Gan’duur attack on the road to the Gathering Stone. She slouched a little and shortened her stride. “Who’s watching?”
“No one special,” said Aruget. “Only the usual thugs and thieves. Harmless enough if they keep their distance.”
His hand stayed near his sword, though.
They were almost halfway back to Haruuc’s fortress when Vounn heard the noise. At first it seemed like nothing more than a murmur, but it quickly grew into the swollen rumble of a crowd. Chanting voices. Marching feet. A high, shrill voice swirled around the noise, but Vounn couldn’t make out what it was saying. She wasn’t the only one on the street to notice the sound, though. All around them, people were looking in the direction-ahead and to the left-of the noise. Many of them looked concerned and began to vanish into buildings or away down alleys and sidestreets.
Aruget’s ears flicked and his jaw tightened.
“What is it?” Vounn asked him.
“A famine march. There have been rumors among the guards that one might be taking place.”
“What’s a famine march?”
He looked at her. “A response to the food shortages. A rite of the Dark Six.”
Vounn’s stomach knotted. In civilized lands, ordinary people might invoke the names of the Shadow, the Keeper, the Traveler, or the other sinister counterparts to the gods of the Sovereign Host in order to stave off misfortune. Outright worship of the dark gods was only for the cruel and the mad, though, and no matter how evil or deranged the worshippers, it was never conducted in public. There would have been an uprising.
But if she needed another reason to remember that Darguun, for all of Haruuc’s efforts, was not yet a civilized nation, she had it. For centuries before Haruuc had forged them into a nation, the goblins had followed the Six. Popular tales of Darguun painted lurid pictures of massacres in the name of the Fury and torture in the name of the Mockery. She’d seen nothing of the sort since she’d arrived, only the rites to the Sovereign Host conducted within Khaar Mbar’ost, but apparently the faith of generations wasn’t far below the surface.
Vounn swallowed and returned Aruget’s gaze. “What do we do?”
“We run,” said Aruget. “We don’t want to be caught out in the open, but we might still be able to make it past the march and back to Khaar Mbar’ost.”
Vounn lifted up the skirt of her dress. “Lead,” she said.
They were hardly the only ones running on the street, but they were among the very few running toward the noise of the march-and they were the only ones running toward it that didn’t wear expressions of beatific anticipation. The march was drawing in new participants. Vounn ran harder and cursed her age. Aruget slowed to keep pace with her. She was grateful he didn’t just leave her behind.
The sound of the march grew louder, words in Goblin condensing out of the chant. Devourer, leave us be! Let our sweetest offerings soothe your hunger! Devourer, pass us by!
“They’re on the wide street ahead,” said Aruget. “We’ll be past them in just-”
His words cut off. Vounn raised her eyes and looked ahead. The street they ran along was blocked on its other side. Carts had been drawn across it and figures stood across the makeshift barricade, watching in the direction of Khaar Mbar’ost. There was no easy way across.
Aruget bared his teeth. “They’re trying to block Haruuc’s soldiers from interfering,” he said. “We need to go around them.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her around the corner onto the wide street-and into the path of the famine march.
For an instant, Vounn had a glimpse of the marchers, a mob that filled the street from side to side. Some among them carried torches, and the leaping flames cast color onto the moonlight-washed crowd. Most of the marchers were hobgoblins, but there were goblins and bugbears, kobolds and crazed humans as well. At the head of the mob was a bugbear. Riding like a child on his shoulders was a wizened old goblin woman. Above her head, she held a cluster of bloody bones with their ends sharpened to points-the symbol of the Devourer, the most primal god of the Dark Six. Hers was the shrill voice Vounn had heard earlier, and it rose again.