On this cloudy spring morning the surface of the Barb, ruffled by the south wind, had the dull, broken shine of an incised glaze. Along the lonelier, southeastern shore, from which pasture land, enclosed within the city walls, stretched away up the slopes of Crandor, a flock of cranes were feeding and squabbling, wading through the shallows and bending their long necks down to the weeds. On the opposite side, in the sheltering cypress gardens, men were strolling in twos and threes or sitting out of the wind in the evergreen arbors. Some were attended by servants who walked behind them carrying cloaks, papers and writing materials, while others, harsh-voiced and shaggy as brigands, broke from time to time into loud laughter or slapped each other's shoulders, betraying, even while they tried to hide it, the lack of ease which they felt in these trim and unaccustomed surroundings. Others again clearly wished to be known for soldiers and, though personally unarmed, in deference to the place and the occasion, had instructed their servants to carry their empty scabbards conspicuously. It seemed that a number of these men were strangers to each other, for their greetings as they passed were formal--a bow, a grave nod or a few words: yet their very presence together showed that they must have something in common. After a time a certain restlessness--even impatience--began to show among them. Evidently they were waiting for something that was delayed.
At length the figure of a woman, scarlet-cloaked and carrying a silver staff, was seen approaching the garden from the King's House. There was a general move in the direction of the gate leading into the walled road, so that by the time the woman reached it, forty or fifty men were already waiting there. As she entered some thronged about her; others, with an air of detachment, idled, or pretended to idle, within earshot. The woman, dour and stolid in manner, looked around among them, raised in greeting her hand with its crimson wooden rings, and began to speak. Although she spoke in Beklan, it was plain that this was not her tongue. Her voice had the slow, flat cadence of Telthearna province and she was, as they all knew, a priestess of the conquerors, an Ortelgan.
"My lords, the king greets you and welcomes you to Bekla. He is grateful to each of you, for he knows that you have the strength and safety of the empire at heart. As you all know, it was--"
At this moment she was interrupted by the stammering excitement of a thickset, lank-haired man who spoke with the accent of a westerner from Paltesh.
"--Madam Sheldra--saiyett--tell us--the king--Lord Crendrik--no harm has befallen him?"
Sheldra turned toward him unsmilingly and stared him into silence. Then she continued,
"As you all know, he intended to have received you this morning in audience at the Palace, and to have held the first meeting of the Council this afternoon. He has now been obliged to alter this intention."
She paused, but there was no further interruption. All were listening with attention. The distant idlers came closer, glancing at each other with raised eyebrows.
"General Ged-la-Dan was expected to reach Bekla last night, together with the delegates from eastern Lapan. However, they have been unexpectedly delayed. A messenger reached the king at dawn with the news that they will not be here until this evening. The king therefore asks your patience for a day. The audience will be held at this time tomorrow and the Council will commence in the afternoon. Until then you are the guests of the city, and the king will welcome all who may wish to sup with him in the Palace an hour after sunset."
A tall, beardless man, wearing a fox-fur cloak over a white, pleated kilt and purple damask tunic blazoned with three corn sheaves, came strolling elegantly along the terrace and turned his eyes toward the crowd as though he had just noticed them for the first time. He stopped, paused a moment and then addressed Sheldra across their heads in the courteous and almost apologetic tone of a gentleman questioning someone else's servant.
"I wonder what might have delayed the general? Perhaps you can be so kind as to tell me?"
Sheldra made no immediate reply and it seemed that her self-possession was not altogether equal either to the question or to the questioner. She appeared to be not so much considering the question as hoping that it might go away, as though it were some kind of pestering insect. She betrayed no actual confusion but at length, keeping her eyes on the ground, she turned, avoiding the tall man's gaze in the manner of some governess or duenna in a wealthy house, out of countenance to find herself required to respond graciously to unsought attention from friends of the family. She was about to leave when the newcomer, inclining his sleek head and persisting in his kindly and condescending manner, stepped smoothly through the crowd to her side.
"You see, I am most anxious to learn, since if I am not mistaken, the general's army is at present in Lapan province, and any misfortune of his would certainly be mine as well. I am sure that in the circumstances you will excuse my importunity."
Sheldra's muttered answer seemed appropriate less to a royal messenger than to some gauche and sullen waiting-woman in a yeoman's kitchen.
"He stayed with the army, I think--I heard, that is. He is coming soon."
"Thank you," replied the tall man. "He had some reason, no doubt? I know that you will wish to help me if you can."
Sheldra flung up her head like a mare troubled by the flies.
"The enemy in Ikat--General Erketlis--General Ged-la-Dan wished to leave everything secure before he set out for Bekla. And now, my lords, I must leave you--until tomorrow--"
Almost forcing her way past them, she left the garden with clumsy and less than becoming haste.
The man with the corn-sheaves tunic strolled on toward the shrubbery by the lake, looking across at the feeding cranes and toying with a silver pomander secured to his belt by a fine gold chain. He shivered in the wind and drew his cloak closer about him, lifting the hem above the damp grass with a kind of stylized grace almost like that of a girl on a dance floor. He had stopped to admire the mauve-stippled, frosty sparkle on the petals of an early-flowering saldis, when someone plucked his sleeve from behind. He looked over his shoulder. The man who had attracted his attention stood looking back at him with a grin. He had a rugged, somewhat battered appearance and the skeptical air of a man who has experienced much, gained advancement and prosperity in a hard school and come to regard both with a certain detachment.
"Mollo!" cried the tall man, opening his arms in a gesture of welcome. "My dear fellow, what a pleasant surprise! I thought you were in Terekenalt--across the Vrako--in the clouds--anywhere but here. If I weren't half frozen in this pestilential city I'd be able to show all the pleasure I feel, instead of only half of it."
Thereupon he embraced Mollo, who appeared a trifle embarrassed but took it in good part, and then, holding him by the hand at arm's length as though they were dancing some courtly measure, looked him up and down, shaking his head slowly and continuing to speak as he had commenced, in Yeldashay, the tongue of Ikat and the south.
"Wasting away, wasting away! Obviously full of tribesmen's snapped-off arrowheads and rot-gut booze from the barracks of beyond. One wonders why the holes made by the former wouldn't drain off some of the latter. But come, tell me how you happen to be here--and how's Kabin and all the jolly water boys?"
"I'm the governor of Kabin now," replied Mollo with a grin, "so the place has come down in the world."
"My dear fellow, I congratulate you! So the water rats have engaged the services of a wolf? Very prudent, very prudent." He half-sang a couple of lines.
A jolly old cattle thief said to his wife, (San, tan, tennerferee)
"I mean to live easy the rest of my life--"
"That's it," said Mollo with a grin. "After that little business of the Slave Wars we got mixed up in--"
"When you saved my life--"
"When I saved your life (God help me, I must have been out of my mind), I couldn't stay in Kabin. What was there for me? My father sand-blind in the chimney corner and my elder brother taking damned good care that neither Shrain nor I got anything out of the estate. Shrain raised forty men and
joined the Beklan army, but I didn't fancy that and I decided to go further. Arrowheads and rot-gut--well, you're right, that's about it."
"Boot, brute and loot, as it were?"
"If you can't steal it, you've got to fight for it, that's it. I made myself useful. I finished up as a provincial governor to the king of Deelguy--honest work for a change--"
"In Deelguy, Mollo? Oh, come now--"
"Well, fairly honest, anyway. Plenty of headaches and worries--too much responsibility--"
"I can vividly imagine your feelings on discovering yourself north of the Telthearna, in sole command of Fort Horrible--"
"It was Klamsid province, actually. Well, it's one way of feathering your nest, if you can survive. That was where I was when I heard of Shrain's death--he was killed by the Ortelgans, five years ago now, at the battle of the Foothills, when Gel-Ethlin lost his army. Poor lad! Anyway, about six months back a Deelguy merchant comes up before me for a travel permit--a nasty, slimy brute by the name of Lalloc. When we're alone, 'Are you Lord Mollo,' says he, 'from Kabin of the Waters?' 'I'm Mollo the governor,' says I, 'and apt to come down heavy on oily flatterers.' 'Why, my lord,' says he, 'there's no flattery.'"