Candlemas remembered each of his fingers being pricked to draw blood. Assassinations?
"… I'm a prime target, of course, the choicest of the nobility. They're all jealous of my beauty." She preened in the mirror as she spoke, her forearm jiggling with fat. "Everyone hates me for my beauty, but they love me too. Or pretend to. They all want my secret, but they shan't have it. But poor Baron Onan. He was disemboweled and strangled with his own guts. Hung from the bedpost. That won't happen to me! Have you been strip-searched?"
"Yes," Candlemas told her again. Ye gods, was every noble in this city insane?
"Good. You'll need to be searched each time you enter. I'll abide no assassins near me, and you can't trust anyone. They all hate me, and love me. But you'll need to fashion that scrying glass. There's a ball tonight at the House of Danett. There'll be candle matching, and cards, and only the spyglass can help me win. I've got my eye on Mika's stable of race horses."
Candlemas nodded absently. Among the histories he'd read, he'd seen the name Polaris once or twice, marking how she'd made fabulous wagers, and often lost. Fifty years ago, she'd lost Castle Delia wagering on a yacht race. It was Castle Bello now, a hunting lodge for some other noble.
He'd read more facts, none of them pretty. Like Lady Polaris, the empire had declined immeasurably in the past three hundred years. Growing problems had been ignored, had reached the crisis point, then gone beyond.
While there had always been a huge gap between noble and peasant, lately it had grown insurmountable. A tiny cadre of wealthy and decadent archwizards brutalized the starving poor. Food riots were crushed with clubs. Down on the ground, unchecked blight, excessive taxation, and mismanaged and stolen funds had forced even prosperous folk to abandon farms and wander. In the wake of the blight came famine. Mills and mines crumbled, fields reverted to briars and weeds, and as the human populace suffered, they blamed outsiders. Dwarves, gnomes, and half-elves were persecuted atrociously, or killed outright.
Yet despite losing the source of their wealth, the Neth had grown even more callous and barbaric. They'd increased the Hunt, slaughtering whole villages and roads full of destitute pilgrims. Any sane voice of reason within the nobility had been silenced by assassination or banishment. The once proud Netherese had only three preoccupations: gambling, garnering status and wealth, and avoiding assassination, which was commonplace and ghastly.
In short, Lady Polaris was a perfect representation of the Empire of Nethericlass="underline" self-consumed, bloated, ingrown, oblivious to rampant decay, and fuzzy minded.
For a while, reading, Candlemas had considered returning to Castle Delia, and his own time-if that were possible. Troubles hadn't seemed so insurmountable back then. But the castle, his home, though he'd never thought of it that way before, was gone, sold off.
Another thing disturbed him, too. Nowhere in any book did he find any mention of his name. Which meant he'd never been famous, never amounted to anything. Which meant working for Lady Polaris had netted him exactly nothing.
Dropping her mirror for more sugared dates, she interrupted his musing. "Well, why are you sitting here? Get busy on that glass!"
Grunting free of the pillows, Candlemas gained his feet. Bowing, he stated, "My pardon, milady, but that's not possible. I'm in the employ of Karsus the Great now. I'm his"-not special friend-"confidant, in a matter of great importance. One that will allow him to finish his experiments."
"You work for Karsus?" The fat lady's voice went small as a frightened child's. She cast about in the dim room. "Karsus? Did he send you? Are you here to assass-Get out! Get out, now, before I have you killed! Get out, get out!"
She screamed in her raw, raspy voice. Frightened by her insanity, Candlemas fled for the door. As a maid yanked it open, he sailed past and ran down the corridor. Heart pounding, he ran all the way until he stood in the evening street, bent over and wheezing. And weeping, though he didn't know why.
Chapter 7
Sunbright dreamt.
Before dawn, exhausted by the long, confusing day, he'd found a park and crawled under some bushes to catnap. Jumbled dreams immediately seized his mind-images of women in many forms.
Greenwillow was there, walking in an ethereal forest, first in her green shirt and black armor, then in a misty gown, then naked, as he'd seen her only once. But this was no erotic dream, for she kept moving, shifting like the mist itself, cool and serene as a mountain waterfall. Where was she?
Later, as night rolled over the vision, she grew taller, her eyes sparkling like stars, until she loomed across the sky, filling it from horizon to horizon, not smiling now but frowning. What had he done?
But suddenly she was small, scarcely coming to his breastbone, close enough to touch, yet slipping behind him again and again so he couldn't catch her. As he stupidly craned his head, he could glimpse only one green, sparkling eye, for the other was shaded, or dull, or milky white, and she'd turned shy and hiding. What did that coyness signify?
And where was she going, this ever changing Greenwillow? Whenever Sunbright got close to her, she skipped away, light as a fawn, leading him on. On to something. But what? There wasn't anything he wanted except Greenwillow, yet she evaded him. Was there something or someone else here? How could there be, when he knew no one in this world?
Chasing the elf's shifting, lithe form, he begged her to wait, grabbed at her, but she slipped behind a laurel bush with a giggle. He batted it aside, brush thrashing, crashing, whipping in his face, stinging his hands — and woke himself up.
He lay in the park, with the sun leaking over the horizon, in a city high in the air, far from home. Alone.
As the wind died just before dawn, Sunbright halted to sniff. Something was up. Trouble brewing.
Treading the early morning streets toward the jumble of Karsus's compound, he passed unmolested, as he had all night. The few night dwellers had steered well clear of the tall barbarian loaded with weapons and spattered with others' blood. City guards had studied him, but his noble bearing and firm stride gave them pause, and he was leaving their blocks, which suited them fine. As the east tinged red, the roisterers of the night stumbled home under city guard escort, like vampires fearing the sun. Now the only folks abroad were merchants with pony carts or porters with barrows: fruit sellers, bakers' apprentices, butchers' boys, dealers in frozen fish. (How fish could be frozen solid in warm weather Sunbright didn't understand.) They converged on the central market with its tables and corrals and stalls and kiosks, settling into traditional spots and setting out their wares. Yet filtering in came city guards in polished lobster-tail helmets and blue-green tabards emblazoned with the K for Karsus. All of them carried silver-tipped maces, and they grunted from the sides of their mouths. The merchants also whispered, uneasy at the large number of guards.
In all the nervous preparations, Sunbright was mostly ignored, and had tramped halfway across the marketplace when he felt the first hint of danger. It was a whiff, a scent, a prickling along his neck that warned him he was being watched. Something was lurking like wolves in the bush, or a panther braced to spring from a tree. The feeling was all around. Yet turning a circle, he saw only stalls and pennants and slit-eyed guards with ready maces.
Then the sun topped a mountain peak, the bright yellow splintered by a thousand distant trees. A dome upon Karsus's mansions burned golden as if ignited by the rays.
And a roar went up from the shadows around the marketplace.
Instinctively Sunbright drew his sword, which he'd paused to hone by the light of a street globe, and surveyed his surroundings for shelter and escape routes. Behind him lay a long line of wide-eyed frozen fish. Opposite were bushels of wheat and corn, and fresh loaves of bread like fat swords. The marketplace floor was square tan cobblestones. The stalls were flimsy, mere poles and canvas, with the occasional small wagon, a maze of sticks and canvas. It was hard to pinpoint the roar-whatever it was-as it came from all around.