“Of all the presumption . . . he dares to judge me? Father will have his scarf when I tell him. No more a high and mighty war-leader, Sheth! Cut someone else with your self-righteous tongue, if you can.”
Then he saw Tori standing in the doorway and stopped short, jaw agape. “You!”
“Here I am. Remember me?”
“Are all the unburnt dead coming back to haunt me? Well, I won’t have it, d’you hear me? I won’t!”
Genjar snatched up the knife and lunged toward Tori, but his foot snagged in a silken coil and he fell. He picked himself up gingerly with more sheer fabric festooned over him in loops. The knife was lodged in his side. He pulled it out and stared at it, then at the blood staining his now ruined coat.
“Look what you made me do, you . . . you bastard!”
His legs started to give way. He stumbled backward onto the balcony, into the railing which caught him at waist height. Fabric clung to his legs. He kicked petulantly to free himself, tottered, and fell over the handrail. A bolt of silk skittered across the floor, unwinding. Its board lodged between the bars and the silk went taut with a snap.
Tori picked up the knife and walked out onto the balcony. He looked down at the swinging figure, shrugged, and tossed the blade over the railing.
Shouts of alarm started as he gained the stairs and descended, again unobserved. Where had he been going? Oh, yes. To the infirmary to . . . to see Harn. It had nothing to do with the throbbing, infected burns that laced his hands. He shoved them into his pockets. If the surgeons saw, they might cut them off. He couldn’t have that.
The great hall was silent after Torisen finished his tale. They were all staring at him.
“You mean,” said Kindrie at last, “that he simply tripped and fell?”
“‘Simply’ rather understates the situation, don’t you think?” Grimly said. “Why, one could say that his own vanity tripped him. Nonetheless, the story should never leave this room.”
“But it was an accident!” Kindrie protested.
“Did I say anything else? Think how Lord Caineron would react to it, though. As it is, the only comfort he can take out of the whole debacle is that he thinks his favorite son died honorably by the White Knife, if with embellishments.”
“At least you kept your hands,” said Kindrie. “A healer might have prevented the scars, though.”
“No!”
In that snapped word, the barrier went up again between them.
Torisen sipped his wine, cursing himself. Just when he thought he had finally overcome his loathing of the Shanir, it sprang back at him. The wine had cooled. His scarred hands hurt anew at the encroaching bite of the cold.
“Enough of that,” he said. “Sing for us, Grimly. In your own language. I promise we won’t laugh.”
Grimly considered. “All right,” he said, and his muzzle returned to its lupine form. He began to sing them a summer’s night in the Holt. A long howl, fading, swelling, fading again, traced the curve of a full moon. Yce rolled upright. Her soft yips were branches etched against its disc. Grimly paused and gave her an approving look. Together they traced the black lace of twig and leaf, the strong trunks between which fireflies danced. Wind stirred the grass. Sharper notes defined the bones of the ruined keep and a burble in the throat became the stream that wound its way down the broken hall, glinting under the moon.
Yce stopped suddenly. Her growl shattered the image and her hackles rose. Grimly also stopped and leaped to his feet.
Somewhere out in the dark, snowy night, a deep-throated howl had answered them.
XVI
Lost Children
The child sat in a puddle in the middle of the road and beat at it with his small fists. He had cried himself to whimpers. Still, no one had emerged from any of the towers lining the street to rescue him. The rain had ended and a wan moon shone in the sky. A lean dog slunk out of the shadows, curious or hungry, but fled as the ten-command approached.
Jame picked up the boy.
He was about three years old, wearing a torn, wet smock with a row of daisies carefully embroidered around the yoke. It seemed unlikely that anyone had abandoned him, yet here he was, a picture of misery with tears and snot running down his face. At Jame’s touch, he wailed anew and beat at her chest. She held him, dripping, at arm’s length.
“Somebody, come and take this child!”
The towers rang at her challenge, but all stood dark and silent, as if untenanted. However, most of their occupants were there behind locked doors and windows, praying that the wandering mobs would pass them by. One such group staggered past an intersection with a neighboring street, raucous with drink.
“Come out, come out!” they cried, and smashed empty bottles against tower walls. “Sing with us, dance with us, drink with us! Tonight no god watches, no sin counts, no crime is punished. We are free!”
“Yes, to make fools of yourselves,” muttered Brier. Like most Kendar, she found such civic disorder distasteful and deeply disturbing, maybe with a presentiment of what the Kencyrath might be like without the bonds that held it together. On the other hand, perhaps she was reminded of Restormir when Lord Caineron’s too-tight grip had passed on his own drunkenness and subsequent hangover to his defenseless people.
A door opened a crack and scrawny, disembodied arms hung with wrinkled skin reached out from the dark interior. Jame climbed the stairs, but hesitated near their top. Was this the boy’s grandmother, great-grandmother, or no relative at all?
“Do you grant this child guest rights?” she demanded.
Knobby fingers impatiently snapped and beckoned.
“Do you?”
“Of course,” came the toothless grumble of an answer. “Tell ’em that Granny’s got ’im.”
“Tell whom?”
“’Is parents, idiot.”
Forced to be content with this, Jame held out the boy. He was snatched from her hands and the door closed, stealthily, behind him.
The ten-command had been on patrol since sunset, with midnight and the end of their tour approaching. During that time, they had seen considerable havoc, not all as innocent as the roving bands of drunks. The city was every bit as unsettled as Graykin had said it had been during the last Change. Looters were abroad, and arsonists, and assassins. All over Kothifir, scores were being settled.
Raised voices sounded around the curve of the street and torchlight flared on stone walls. Jame went to investigate with her ten-command close behind her.
Quite a crowd had gathered in front of a lit tower whose door, for a change, gaped wide open. Closest to its steps stood perhaps two dozen burly men with torches, facing a smaller clutch of men, women, and children. Jame recognized the tall, bald man in charge of the latter as the former Master Paper Crown, stripped of his apprentices by the Change. What was his name? Ah. Qrink. The rest must be his family.
“What’s going on?” she asked a woman intently watching the proceedings while she clutched the hand of a child. “Why, Lanek! What are you doing here?”
The Langadine boy looked up at her with solemn, frightened eyes, his thumb in his mouth. The woman stared down at him, apparently astonished that he wasn’t someone else.
“Lanek? Where is your cousin? Where is my baby?”
“Is he wearing a smock embroidered with daisies?”
“Yes, yes. He’s always wandering away . . .” She looked about frantically but, to her credit, didn’t cast Lanek off.
“Granny asked me to tell you that she has him.”
“Oh.” The woman sagged with relief.
“It’s simple enough,” the leader of the torchbearers was saying to Qrink with a broad grin. “Either swear your allegiance to Prince Ton or pay us off. Preferably both.”
Jame recognized the patch of rose-colored velvet on his chest as the prince’s emblem. All of his followers wore it. So this was his much vaunted militia, which he had said would replace the Kencyrath as the guardians of Kothifir.