"We've been three months since the ships were overhauled in Carcosa," Sharina said, frowning. "I don't see that a few more scrapes are going to be noticed."
Sailors tended to carry out their business as though the officials travelling as passengers didn't exist. She and Garric had been taught to keep their affairs-the inn's affairs-secret from the guests. This slanging match the officers of the two ships offended Sharina's sense of propriety, though the curses themselves did not.
"I think what he's saying is that we're fine people from the palace in Valles," said Cashel, quietly but with something solid in his tone that wouldn't have been there if he were better satisfied with the situation. "And they're just nobodies from the sticks. Only we're not, not all of us; and I guess that fellow'd have been as quick to call me a nobody back before Garric got to be prince and it all changed."
"Not to your face, Cashel," Sharina said-and kissed him, surprising herself almost as much as she did her fiancé. It was the perfect way to break his mood; Cashel's face went the color of mahogany as he blushed under the deep tan. They were in the shelter of the jib boom, though, and everybody else was looking toward the stern where the delegation was swaying aboard on a rope ladder. Nobody was likely to have noticed.
"Do we know why these people are meeting us at sea?" Tenoctris said.
Sharina jumped. The older woman had been so thoroughly lost in her own thoughts that Sharina'd forgotten her presence.
"Ah, no," she said. "We could join them in the stern if you'd like, though. They're certainly an official delegation, so I guess it's our duty to be there."
"Right," said Cashel, turning and starting down the walkway stretching the length of the ship between the gratings over the rowers. There wasn't much room, but the sailors on deck would get out of his way though they might be so busy they'd ignore the women.
Sharina motioned Tenoctris ahead of her and brought up the rear. She didn't have Cashel's bulk, but her tall, slender body was muscular and she had reflexes gained from waiting tables in rooms crowded with men.
"They may have nothing to do with what I feel building around us," Tenoctris said quietly, perhaps speaking to herself as much as to her younger companions. "But their meeting us at sea is unusual, and the way the forces are building is very unusual; almost unique in my experience."
"'Almost unique'" Sharina said, delicately emphasizing the qualifier.
"Yes," said the wizard. "I felt something like this in the moments before similar I wwas ripped out of my time and the island of Yole sank into the depths of the sea."
* * *
One of Garric's guards gave his spear to a comrade so that he had a hand free to reach over the railing to the twelve-year-old climbing the swaying ladder ahead of five adults. "Here you go, lad," he said.
"Have a care, my man!" cried the puffy looking bald fellow immediately behind the boy. "This is Prince Protas, the ruler of our island!"
"All the more reason not to let him fall into the water, then," said Garric, stepping forward. "Since I'm told that right around here it's as deep as the Inner Sea gets."
He took the boy's right hand while the soldier gripped him under the left shoulder, and together they lifted him aboard. Protas tucked his legs under him so that his toes didn't touch the rail. Though he didn't speak, he bowed politely to Garric and dipped his head to the soldier as well, then slipped forward to get as much out of the way as was possible on the warship's deck.
The plump official reached the railing. Garric nodded a guard forward to help him but pointedly didn't offer a hand himself.
"That would be Lord Martous," Liane whispered in his left ear. "Protas is King Cervoran's son, but Cervoran was ruler as of my latest information."
Among Liane's other duties, she was Garric's spymaster; or rather she was a spymaster who kept Garric informed of events from all over the Isles, whether or not they took place on islands which had returned to royal control. Her father had been a far-travelled merchant. Liane of her own volition-Garric wouldn't have known what to ask her to do-had turned his network of business connections into a full-fledged intelligence service. It'd benefited the kingdom more than another ten regiments for the army could've done.
Lord Martous had an unhappy expression as he struggled aboard in the soldier's grasp. Garric shared his mind with the spirit of King Carus, his ancient ancestor and the last ruler of the Old Kingdom. Now the image of Carus grinned and said, "If I know the type, he looks unhappy most of the time he's awake. Being manhandled over the railing just gives him a better reason than usual."
Martous straightened his clothing with quick pats of his hands while he waited for the remainder of the delegation to climb onto the deck, aides or servants from their simpler dress. One of them carried a bundle wrapped in red velvet.
The delegates wore baggy woolen trousers and blouses, felt caps, and slippers whose toes turned up in points. Martous and Protas had long triangular gares of cloth-of-gold appliqued vertically on their sleeves and trouser legs; those of the other men were plain. The wool was bleached white, but it was clear that First Atara's society didn't set great store on flamboyant personal decoration.
Garric preferred simplicity to the styles of the great cities of the kingdom, Valles and Erdin on Sandrakkan or even Carcosa which now was merely the capital of the unimportant island of Haft. It'd been the royal capital during the Old Kingdom, and it remained a pretentious place despite its glory being a thousand years in the past.
Garric grinned at Lord Martous: a balding little fellow, a homely man from a rustic place who was incensed that he and the boy on whom his status depended weren't being treated with greater deference. That implied that pretentiousness was one of the strongest human impulses.
"Come along, Basto, come along," called Lord Martous to the aide struggling with the bundle. Then on a rising note, "No, don't you-"
The latter comment was to Lord Attaper, the commander of the Blood Eagles and a man to whom Garric's safety was more important than it was to Garric himself. Attaper, a stocky, powerful man in his forties, ignored the protest just as he ignored all other attempts to tell him how to do his job. He plucked the package from the aide's hands and unwrapped it while the aide came aboard and Martous spluttered in frustration.
"I'm sorry you had to scramble up like a monkey, Prince Protas," Garric said, smiling at the boy to put him at his ease. Protas was obviously nervous and uncertain, afraid to say or do the wrong thing in what he knew were important circumstances. "I'd expected to meet you-and your father, of course-on land in a few hours."
"King Cervoran is dead, sir," Protas said with careful formality. He forced himself to look straight at Garric as he spoke, but then he swallowed hard.
"Yes, yes, that's why we had to come out to meet you," Martous said, pursing his lips as though he were sucking on something sour. "His highness died most unexpectedly as he was going in to dinner last evening. Quite distressing, quite. He fell right down in his tracks. I was afraid the stewards had dropped something on the floor and he'd slipped, but he just-died."
"I probably could give you advice on housekeeping in a large establishment," Garric said, smiling instead of snarling at the courtier's inability to come to the point, "but I really doubt that's why you've met us here at the cost of discomfort and a degree of danger. Is it, milord?"
Martous looked surprised. "Oh," he said. "Well, of course not. But I thought-that is, the council did-that since you were arriving just in time, you could preside over the apotheosis ceremony for King Cervoran and add, well, luster to the affair. And of course we needed to explain that to you before you come ashore because the ceremony will have to be carried out first thing tomorrow morning. The cremation can't, you see, be delayed very long in this weather."
"Apotheosis?" said Liane. She didn't ordinarily interject herself openly into matters of state, but Lord Martous was obviously a palace flunky, and not from a very big palace if it came to that. "You believe your late ruler becomes a God?"
"Well, I don't, of course I don't," said Martous in embarrassment. "But the common people, you know; and they like a spectacle. And, well, it's traditional here on First Atara. And it can't hurt, after all."
"This doesn't appear to be a weapon, milord," said Attaper dryly. "Shall I return it to your servant, or would you like to take it yourself?"
The velvet wrappings covered a foiled wooden box decorated with cutwork astrological symbols. Inside was a diadem set with a topaz the size of Garric's clenched fist. The stone wasn't particularly clear or brilliant, even for a topaz, but Garric didn't recall ever seeing a larger gem.
Protas, forgotten during the adults' by-play, said in a clear voice, "We brought it to your master the prince, my man. He will decide where to bestow it."
Garric nodded politely to the young prince. "Your pardon, milord," he said in real apology. "We've had a long voyage and it appears to have made us less courteous than we ought to be."
He took the diadem. The gold circlet was thicker and broader at the back to help balance the weight of the huge stone, but even so it had a tendency to slip forward in his fingers.
Cashel had led Sharina and Tenoctris to the stern, butt now he stepped aside and let the women join the group of officials. When he caught Garric's glance over Tenoctris' head, he smiled broadly. Cashel stayed close to Sharina, but he wasn't interested in what the locals had come to discuss and didn't pretend otherwise.
Cashel wasn't interested in power. He was an extraordinarily strong man, and he had other abilities besides. If he wasn't exactly a wizard himself, then he'd more than once faced hostile wizards and crushed them. That alone would've gained him considerable authority if he'd wanted it. Add to that his being Prince Garric's friend from childhood and Princess Sharina's fiancé, and a great part of the kingdom was Cashel's for the asking.
But he didn't ask. Cashel wouldn't have known what to do with a kingdom if he'd had it, and anyway it wasn't something he wanted. Which of course was much of the reason he was Garric's closest friend: Garric didn't want power either.
"That may be," said Carus. "But the kingdom wants you; needs you anyway, which is better. Otherwise the best the citizens could hope for is a hard-handed warrior who knows nothing but smashing trouble down with his sword until trouble smashes him in turn. Somebody like me-and we know the bad result that leads to."
The ghost in Garric's mind was smiling, but there was no doubt of the solid truth under its lilt of self-mockery. Garric grinned in response; the delegates saw the expression and misread it.
Lord Martous stiffened and said, "The crown may seem a poor thing to you, milord, a mere topaz. But it's an ancient stone, very ancient, and it suits us on First Atara. We were hoping that you would invest Prince Protas with it following the ceremony deifying his father."
Garric glanced at the boy and found him chatting with Cashel. That probably made both of them more comfortable than they'd be in the discussion Garric and Martous were having.
Both the thought and the fact behind it pleased Garric, but he politely wiped all traces of misunderstood good humor from his face before he said, "I'll confer with my advisors before I give you a final decision, milord, particularly Lords Tadai and Waldron, my civil affairs and military commanders. That won't happen until we're on land."
"But you're the prince-" the envoy protested.
"That's correct," said Garric, aware of Carus' ghost chuckling at the way he handled this bit of niggling foolishness. "I'm the prince and make the final decisions under the authority granted by my father King Valence III."
Valence was so sunk within himself in his apartments in a back corner of the palace that servants chose his meals for him. He wasn't exceptionally old, but life and a series of bad choices had made a sad ruin of a mind which on its best day hadn't been very impressive.
"But I have a staff to keep track of matters on which I lack personal knowledge," Garric continued. "The political and cultural circumstances of First Atara are in that category, I'm afraid. I have no intention of slighting you and your citizens by acting in needless ignorance. We weren't expecting King Cervoran's death, and it'll take the kingdom a moment to decide how to respond."
"Well, I see that," said Martous, "but-"
"I'd have tossed him over the railing by now, lad," Carus said. "By the Lady! it's a good thing for the kingdom that you're ruling instead of me."
Garric looked into the big topaz. There were cloudy blotches in its yellow depths. The stone had been shaped and polished instead of being faceted, and even then it wasn't regular: it was roughly egg shaped, but the small end was too blunt.
It was a huge gem, though; and there was something more which Garric couldn't quite grasp. The shadows in its heart seemed to move, though perhaps that was an illusion caused by the quinquereme's sideways wobble. Only a few oars on the uppermost bank were working, so the ship didn't have enough way on to make its long hull fully stable.
Liane touched his wrist. Garric blinked awake; the eyes of those nearby watched him with concern. He must've been in a reverie....
"I'm very sorry," he said aloud. "It was a long voyage, as I said. Lord Martous, while I won't swear what my decision will be until I've consulted my council, I can tell you that I intended to grant the rank of marquess within the Kingdom of the Isles to the ruler of First Atara-whom of course we believed to be Lord Cervoran."