"Perhaps it could be arranged."
The warhorse-turned-statesman barely raised an eyebrow at that. "Not well advised."
A white dog ran before the gate. Pinch noted it, though it was completely unimportant. The incongruity of it caught his eye, the mongrel's unmarred coat against the scrubby gray of faded whitewash. "You've got me here without a hold. Do you think I care enough about those three you dragged along with me to toe your line? Kill them if you want. I can always find more." The footpad scratched at a dried patch of dirt on his cheek.
Cleedis glanced back at the trio, squabbling among themselves. "What do I care about them? I have you."
"If you kill me, your outing's been a waste."
"Still think I'm an old fool, don't you, Janol?" With a grin the chamberlain prodded Pinch with his sheathed sword. "You're as replaceable as they are. Let's just say I had some hope of bringing you back into the fold. Besides, you're more convenient, seeing as you know the ground of the battlefield."
While he spoke, the brass embossed gates cracked with a faint burst of sparkling motes as the magical wards placed on them were released. The doors swung into a shadowed arch lined by royal bodyguards, resplendent in wine-and-yellow livery.
Just as the horses were about to move, Cleedis's bare blade slapped across Pinch's reins. "One more thing, Master Janol." And then the chamberlain ordered his aide, "Bring the priestess here."
In short order she trotted her stallion to their side. Cleedis slid the blade away and pretended not to have a thing more to say to Pinch, even though the rogue knew every word was for his own benefit. The old man's crabbed body shriveled even more as he gave a perfunctory nod from the saddle.
"Greetings, Worthy. Here is where we must part anon, you to your superiors and I to affairs of state. I wish you to understand that I, Lord Chamberlain, know you seek a thief and extend my hand in any way I might to give you success. Should I learn any morsel that would aid your duty, it will be faithfully brought to you."
"Your lordship is most generous," Lissa murmured as she bowed stiffly in her rigid armor.
The old noble made slight acceptance of her obeisance and continued. "Let our contact not be all duty, though. In these days, I have been charmed by your company. You must consider yourself a guest in my household. I will arrange an apartment for you in the palace. Accept, milady. The approval of your superiors is already assured."
Lissa blushed, a freckled shade against her curled hair. "I'm… I'm honored, Lord Chamberlain, but surely one of my masters here would be of better standing. I've no knowledge of courtly things."
"Precisely my goal-a refreshing bit of air. Besides, your superiors are crushing bores. Now, forward men!" With a cavalryman's bellow, he set the whole column in motion, leaving the flustered priestess behind.
As they passed under the gate, the Lord Chamberlain spoke, as if things were of no consequence. "Priests lead such limited, suppressed lives. All those passions and thoughts, penned up in such rigorous souls. If their passions were given free reign, can you imagine the types of punishments priests could devise for apostates and blasphemers? Fascinating possibilities. I think I'll keep the worthy Lissa close at hand."
The chamberlain said nothing more as the entourage passed through the outer palace, exchanged escorts, passed gates, crossed courtyards, and finally entered the cream-white compound of the inner palace. By this time, Maeve and the others were agoggle. They had passed servants in better finery than most of the freemen they knew. In their world, they had seen only glimpses of this life through keyholes, by scrambling through windows, and in the tumbled mass of their booty. Pinch wondered just how well they would be able to restrain their larcenous souls.
At last they entered a small, private courtyard turned off from the main processional route, a guest wing attached to the main household. Pinch remembered this section of the compound as particularly secure, bastioned by a bluff to the rear and deep enough into the palace grounds to make unnoticed departures nearly impossible. Short of the dungeons, it would have been his choice for housing a crew such as his, although Cleedis was wrong to think this would contain them. Pinch and his gang had escaped from lock-ups more determined than this in their years spent looting Elturel.
A resounding chorus of yelps and howls greeted their arrival, and disabused the regulator of any hope that Cleedis had underestimated them. While they handed off their mounts to the waiting grooms, a chaos of sulfurous fire and smoke boiled from dark kennels on the east wall. At first it seemed a wild pack of hounds charged, until one saw the beasts' chops drooling embers and each yelp a belch of flame. The hounds were things of hellish fire, coal-black coats seared with eyes and breaths of flame. The horses kicked and reared with fearsome fright, dragging the boy-grooms with them.
"Gods' pizzle on the heads of the ungrateful!" blurted Therin in an old Gur curse. With a slick hiss his sword cleared the scabbard. "Pinch, strike right. I'll take the center. Maeve, your spells at ready." It was for moments like this that Pinch kept the Gur around, ceding battle command to him.
Just as the four set themselves for the slaughter- theirs or the beasts', they could not be sure-chains clanked as a trainer single-handedly dragged the lunging beasts backward across the smooth flagstones, coiling the iron leashes around his arm. Lumbering from the shadows of the wall, he was a brute, not quite a giant yet greater than a man. He was bare skinned save for a steel codpiece, scabrous fur and warts stretched over grotesquely knotted muscles. Everything about him was disproportionate. His ears and nose-a broad, corded thing-dominated his head, overpowering the weak eyes buried in ridges of bone. His arms were greater than his legs, which were mighty, and his forearms greater than the rest of his arms. Even while straining with the hellhounds, the ogre swaggered with the dim confidence of muscle.
"Surrabak hold them, small chief." It was a voice burned by bad firewine and cheap pipeweed and stretched harsher by three days of carousing, but it was his natural voice.
"Rightly done. Take them back to their kennel." Cleedis boldly stepped forward, holding a hand out to stay Pinch and the others. "Stay your hand," he said sotto voce. "He can be unpredictable."
Although he wondered how much of that was for theatrical benefit, Pinch made a quick gesture to the others, the silent hand language of their brotherhood. With slow, wary care the weapons were put away.
"Surrabak do. Hear small chief come back. Bring Surrabak orders from great chief?" The hellhounds were now within reach of the ogre's cudgel, and he unhesitatingly laid into them until their snarls became yelps of pain.
"The great chief is honored to have a killer like Surrabak. He says you must always obey… little chief." The last words bit against Cleedis's pride. Nonetheless, he pointed to the four foreigners and continued, "Little chief-me, Cleedis-tells you to guard these little ones. Do not let anyone come here unless they show my sign. Do you remember the sign?"
With the hellhounds in a tense pack at his feet, the ogre scowled, flaring his lumpy nose as he tried to remember. Tusks curved out from under his thick lips. His dim eyes sank farther in as he pondered hard.
"Surrabak know little chief's sign."
Cleedis gave a sigh of exasperated relief. "Good. Guard them well, or big chief will become angry and punish you."
"Surrabak guard. No one get in." With that, the ogre barked to the pack and slouched back to the kennels, half-dragging the iron leashes still wrapped around his arm.
"Little chief, big chief… That thing doesn't know Manferic's dead, does it?"
Cleedis ignored Pinch's question and stopped at the entrance to the wing, a small cluster of rooms once the queen's summer rooms. "The servants will show you to your quarters." As Sprite and the others stepped to go inside, the royal bodyguards stopped them. "Not you three. There are other rooms in the west hall for you." As if to reassure them, the chamberlain nodded across the way to another colonnaded building.