“Peace, peace! I am not your enemy!” he cried.
Kiya seized him by the front of his robe and shoved him outside into the sunlight.
With much injured dignity, he swept shell fragments and dirt from his red silk robe. He was a tall fellow, and thin, with tightly curled sand-colored hair and a short beard. Every finger bore an ornate, jeweled ring.
“There’s no need for violence,” the Red Robe said. “I told you, I’m not your enemy!”
“That’s for us to decide. Who are you?” asked Kiya.
He refused to say. Several kender hands began reaching for his rings, and he drew back, closing his fists tightly. “Each and every ring is warded! Touch them, and there will be dire consequences!”
Now he had his audience’s undivided attention. The kender demanded they be allowed to see “dire consequences” immediately. Only Kiya’s threats silenced them long enough for her to continue her questioning. The wizard still would not tell her anything about himself or his purpose, but kept insisting he was not their enemy.
He began fingering the large opal ring on his left forefinger. The kender perked up, obviously hoping for a dire consequence, but Kiya laid the flat of her sword tip on his wrist.
“Stop what you’re doing, or I’ll chop off your hands.”
Her calmly delivered threat shook him, but he hissed, “You have no idea who you’re meddling with, barbarian!”
“No, I don’t. So tell me your name.”
Heavy silence ensued. Surrounded by armed, insatiably curious kender and a forester woman with a thirsty blade, and with bands of hostile nomads in the vicinity, the Red Robe made his decision.
“I am Helbin, chosen chief of the Red Robes of Daltigoth. You mentioned Lord Tolandruth; you may take me to him.”
Kiya recognized his name. “You’re not one of Husband’s enemies,” she said, sheathing her sword. “What are you doing so far from the city?”
“I cannot divulge my purpose, except to Lord Tolandruth himself.” \
Kiya shrugged, secure in the knowledge that Tol would know how to handle the mage.
After Helbin gathered his possessions and was put under guard, the army prepared to move on. Several kender lifted the still-groggy, soot-covered Rufus onto a horse. Casberry returned to her sedan chair. Immediately an argument erupted between the queen and Bonny Waterwide. Bonny claimed her payment of a day’s ride in the Royal Conveyance. The queen reminded her no particular day had been specified.
“So you’ll just have to wait,” Casberry finished with a satisfied smile.
When they were finally underway, Kiya ruminated on the fact that half a dozen nomads had failed to draw the wizard from his hiding place, but a single kender had succeeded. Maybe Tol’s idea to recruit Casberry and her army wasn’t as ridiculous as it seemed. But what was Helbin doing in these parts? Whether or not he was a respectable member of the Red Robe order, Kiya distrusted anyone from Daltigoth. In her opinion, people from the capital were either Ackal V’s lackeys or his collaborators.
She would keep an eye on Helbin. At the first hint of treachery, she would act. There would be no humiliating red paint for the Red Robe. If he played her false, he would die.
Chapter 12
The bakali were across the Dalti.
The news flashed through the streets and squares of Daltigoth. No one knew who first delivered the awful tidings, but within a day, everyone in the capital had heard them. Prices of food, wine, cloth, leather, and other commodities tripled in a single day. A family’s carefully horded savings evaporated before their eyes. For the common folk of Daltigoth, there was only one recourse: they rioted.
Hundreds of people spilled out into the streets and market squares, smashing sellers’ stands and assaulting merchants. The city guards were quickly overwhelmed. In the Canal District, warehouses were broken open and looted. This encouraged hundreds more to take to the streets and make their way to the waterfront to join the plundering.
Ackal V, wrapped in furs despite the summer heat, listened stone-faced as anxious representatives of the merchants’ guilds recited the growing chronicle of lawlessness. When they finished, silence descended on the audience hall. The interval lengthened, grew awkward, and the guildmasters and merchants nervously shuffled their feet.
“Summon the city garrison, Your Majesty!” urged the chief of the goldsmiths. “Give the rioters a taste of imperial iron!”
Still, Ackal V said nothing. He seemed lost in a dream, eyes staring into the distance. Valaran, seated at his side, prompted him almost inaudibly. Her veil, white this time, allowed her to do this without attracting the notice of the assembled commoners. Ackal V glanced at her and smiled. The empress drew in a breath. The closest ranks of petitioners recoiled from the deceptively benign expression on Ackal V’s face. They knew only too well that when the emperor smiled, blood would flow.
“The garrison is arrayed to protect the Inner City,” he said. “There it will remain.”
The merchants and guildmasters dared not protest. Valaran did so on their behalf, albeit most tactfully, her voice low.
“Sire, please reconsider. The safety of the city depends on order being kept.”
“Oh, I shall put Daltigoth in order.” He raised his voice. “Tathman! Captain Tathman, where are you?”
The Wolf stepped forward and bowed stiffly.
“Captain, you and the Wolves will stop the rioting,” Ackal V said simply.
Equally simple was the reply: “As you wish, Majesty.”
Tathman’s sepulchral voice always made the hair on Valaran’s neck rise. The assembled guildmasters were stricken. The thought of the Emperor’s Wolves set loose on the city stunned and terrified all.
The emperor said, “You want order, don’t you? You want an end to the looting, don’t you? My Wolves will pacify the city in one day-maybe less.”
They had come to beg for protection, so the merchants and tradesmen could hardly protest, yet all knew the Wolves were capable of any atrocity. Recruited from the poorest, most distant provinces of the empire, they owed nothing to Daltigoth and everything to their patron.
Ackal V stood abruptly. In a body the guildmasters shrank back from him.
“You see? You have only to ask, and your emperor responds!” He folded his arms and glowered down at the cowering men. His words laced with irony, he added, “I know you’re anxious to return to your shops. Go, and spread the word that peace will soon return to the city-peace guaranteed by the Emperor’s Wolves.”
They managed to depart without actually trampling each other, but no one could mistake their desire to be elsewhere.
Ackal nodded to Tathman. The captain and the other Wolves followed the guildmasters and merchants out.
The next order of business was the emperor’s council with his warlords. Lackeys struggled forward with a carpet-sized map of the land east of Eagle’s Ford. They unrolled it at the emperor’s feet, and the leaders of the Great Horde lined up along the map’s edges. The warlords saluted Ackal V, but there was a notable lack of fervor in their greeting.
Consternation gripped Valaran as she realized she didn’t recognize a single face among them. The warlords from her first husband’s reign were gone-slain by bakali or nomads, or executed by their own emperor for failing to win victories. Only two commanders of experience remained, Lord Tremond and Lord Regobart. Tremond governed the city of Thorngoth, on the south coast. He and his hordes guarded the mouth of the Thorn River, doorway to the heartland of the empire. Regobart commanded the garrison at Six Dunes, the imperial fortress near Tarsis. The empire’s longtime enemy had been quiet so far, but Ackal V did not dare withdraw Regobart’s hordes, for fear the Tarsans would join against the empire.
Most of the new warlords were quite young. There were a few graybeards, men loyal to the Ackal line who’d been recalled from home and hearth to serve in this time of crisis. But not one of them had ever commanded more than a handful of hordes, much less an army.