4

King Carus leaned on the balcony rail, his fingers laced and an unusually somber expression on his face as he watched events below the vantage point he shared with Garric's dream self. Six women in white pleated robes and white headgear of varied height and complexity faced a younger Carus on the throne. In the midst of the court's glitter and plush, the straight-backed women looked like so many daggers of ice.

"The Abbess of the Renounced Daughters of the Lady," Carus said, pointing toward the elderly head of the delegation. Two younger women had supported the abbess when she came forward; they waited now to catch her if she swayed. "Land willed to the temples wasn't taxed. My advisors told me I ought to change that custom—it wasn't law. It seemed a simple enough thing to me."

The abbess began to speak. It was amazing that so frail a body held a voice and spirit of such iron strength. Garric would rather have taken a whipping than had that cold scorn directed at him. He looked at his dream companion.

Carus smiled ruefully and shook his head. "A lot of things seem simple until you think them through, lad," he said. "If the temples were to be taxed, then would the state care for the sick as the Renounced Daughters had been doing?"

He met Garric's eyes. For Garric it was like seeing his reflection among the leaves of a woodland pool, distorted but clearly himself. "Fighting comes naturally to me," Carus said. "I was good at it and men followed where I led. Ruling was another thing."

The figure on the throne was fidgeting. Men in fur-trimmed robes whispered into his ears from either side. One of them held a sheet of parchment as if trying to shield the young king's eyes from the petitioner. The abbess continued to speak, and her words were a saw on stone.

"I decided to deal with the Duke of Yole in the way I knew how to deal," said the figure on the balcony softly. "I decided to crush him like a bug."

"Maybe there was no other choice," the dream Garric said.

His companion nodded. "Maybe there wasn't," he agreed. "But I didn't even think about other ways. I took the easy route, and it took me straight to the bottom of the sea."

The man on the throne stood, his face a mass of frustration. The abbess pointed her bony arm; one of the advisors plucked the puffed sleeve of the king's court doublet. The king shouted in fury and stamped out through a doorway behind the throne.

"Maybe this time we can do a better job ruling the Isles, lad," said Garric's companion. "And I will crush the Duke of Yole like a bug."

He laughed his familiar ringing peals as the throne room dissolved and the balcony dissolved and the dream Garric merged with the aching form of the youth awakening on the bed of a room lighted through a west-facing window above Carcosa's South Harbor.

Pale smoke with a pungent odor drifted in the sunlit air. Charcoal burned in a brazier on a brass tripod beside the bed; the legs were paired serpents twining. Tenoctris dropped pinches of herbs on the fire with one hand while the other swung the boxwood twig through the smoke in an intricate pattern. She noted Garric's eyes opening with a nod, but she continued to chant and stroke the air.

Garric lay on his belly. He started to lift himself onto his left elbow. "Don't move!" Liane said sharply.

Garric jerked his head around. He'd been stripped bare; Liane was rubbing ointment into the gashes on his back and thighs. The ointment's touch was tinglingly warm, but it quenched the sharper pain of the wounds the way a backfire blocks a dangerous blaze.

Strasedon hadn't left much of the tunic anyway. Cutting the remainder off him didn't make any difference for modesty. Garric still turned his face resolutely toward the window and tried not to blush.

There was a quick knock at the door. "Mistress Liane?" a voice called. "There's a boy from Nuzi the Apothecary with the drugs you ordered."

"Yes, bring them in," Liane said as her strong fingers continued to work on Garric. "I can't get money out right now, so pay him and put the charge on my account. I'll settle it with my bill."

The mistress of the Captain's Rest bustled in with a packet wrapped in oiled paper. A pimply boy of twelve or so stared at Garric through the doorway until the woman shooed him back angrily and closed the door behind her. Garric's proper bed was in the common room; this was one of the private apartments on the inn's second floor. From its size and location it was probably the best in the house.

"Ah . . ." he said, meeting Liane's eyes again. He supposed his father would send money if he had to. . . . "Do you know how much this is going to cost?"

"It very nearly cost your life!" the girl said in a savage tone. "Now just don't move!"

Garric blinked in surprise before he realized that Liane's anger was directed at herself, not him. He didn't speak, but his muscles had gone hard when she snapped.

"I'm sorry," Liane whispered. Tears began to fall from her eyes. She continued to dab ointment from a stoneware pot and work it in instead of just smearing it lightly onto Garric's skin. "Oh, Lady help me, I'm so sorry. It was my fault it all happened. I should have stopped him. . . ."

She dropped to her knees beside the bed as though her legs could no longer hold her. She clasped her hands, shiny with the ointment. "But he was my father! He said he needed my help because there was nobody else he could trust."

"Anybody would have done the same thing," Garric muttered, lacing his own fingers and looking out the window again. "I would have done it if my father asked me."

Except that Reise wasn't arrogant. Liane's father had been arrogant and worse: he'd been the sort of man who would unhesitatingly put his daughter at risk simply because she was available.

Tenoctris finished her soft chanting. She put the cutwork lid on the brazier with a sigh and settled herself on the window ledge. There was sweat on her forehead. Whatever she was doing involved more than merely waving a twig in circles, though that might be the only visible aspect of it. Garric's mind was alert but he felt a numb detachment from his body: he was aware of physical pain, but he didn't really feel it.

He smiled at Tenoctris. "I thought you said Benlo's athame was too dangerous to use?" he said.

She smiled back. "Too dangerous to do magic with, certainly," she said. "As a dagger it proved very useful."

Tenoctris touched her left fingertips to the palm of her right hand, the hand with which she'd stabbed the demon. "I'm having all manner of experiences I'd never dreamed of in my own time."

Liane filled the pewter mug with water from the pitcher on the washtable and added powder from the apothecary's packets. She set the mixture to warm on the lid of the brazier.

Noticing Garric watching her, she said, "It's lettuce cake, a mild dose. It'll help you sleep."

Perhaps because he didn't react she added in a defensive tone, "I'm quite competent to treat you. The Daughters trained us in both medicine and in surgery."

Garric smiled. Liane's face hardened, thinking that he was mocking her for her pretensions. Quickly he said, "The Renounced Daughters of the Lady, yes, you'd said. Do you know if they pay taxes to the Earl of Sandrakkan?"

"What?" Liane said. She was as flustered as if he'd asked her what clothing the inhabitants of the moon wore. "Well, I really don't have any idea."

She fiddled with the rag on which she'd wiped her hands. It was a strip of Garric's tunic; he wondered if it would be all right to put something on, but he didn't guess he'd say anything to call attention to the fact he was buck naked.

"My father had sufficient funds," Liane said toward the rag. "More than sufficient for my purposes."

She looked at Garric. Her expression was set and her tone clipped as she continued, "I've arranged to have my father embalmed here. I'll take him back to Erdin; the tomb is still ours, he told me repeatedly. I'll place him beside my mother. That's what he'd want."

Garric nodded, avoiding the girl's eyes. She'd watched her father being killed; it'd been shocking enough just to see the drover's gutted corpse afterward. He didn't know if he ought to say anything. He surely didn't know what to say.

"I'll carry back the flock as he contracted to do," Liane said. Fiercely, coldly she continued, "I'll find the person who sent my father here. And I'll learn why my father died!"

Tenoctris watched the girl. The old woman's face was never closed, but neither did her minute smile give any suggestion of the thoughts beneath it.

"My father's guards have left me," Liane said. "I don't blame them particularly, and in any case it's their right. I'd like to hire you to accompany me, Master Garric. You can set your own wage."

Tears were running down her cheeks again. She ignored them for a moment, her face as stiff as a marble statue's; then she wiped the back of her bare arm across her eyes with a deliberately exaggerated motion.

"Mistress . . ." Garric said.

"I don't need to tell you how very dangerous it may be to be around me," Liane said harshly. She started to wipe her eyes again. Instead she covered her face with both hands and sobbed openly into them.

"Does Ilna know what's happened?" Garric asked Tenoctris, his voice slightly lowered. Part of him wanted to help Liane; but home was already far away, and the thought of what Ilna would say if he went off made him uncomfortable.

The two women exchanged glances that Garric couldn't read. "Ilna followed us to the tomb, Garric," Tenoctris said quietly. "She hasn't been seen since then—last night. I've made a search of sorts for her; not a complete one because I was dealing with your injuries too, but complete enough."

"I'm very sorry, Garric," Liane said. She laced her fingers firmly together. "Your friend may be dead."

Garric's mind tried to get around the thought. It was as if he'd been told that the inn and his family had fallen into the sea. He said nothing.

Tenoctris handed Garric the mug from the brazier. He drank the bitter fluid mechanically, then set the empty vessel on the floor beside him.

Everything was changing.

"I think I'd like to be alone for a while," Garric said without looking around. The women left the room silently. He heard them murmur together as the door closed behind them.

Garric began to cry.