Benard nodded. “My blood. But if you want to keep me as your husband, love, then I must come with you.”
Ingeld wondered how many of Cutrath’s childhood friends would be in that death squad. Felicitous Memory was coming alongside, bearing Hordeleader Guthlag, Speaker Ardial, and more than a dozen Heroes. Ardial had seemed quite happy-insofar as any Speaker could ever seem happy-to accept the post of justiciar and return to Kosord. He would be no help in a fight, though, unless he could bore the enemy to death with texts.
More than the horde would be waiting to welcome her. Most of the extrinsic population would turn out, too, wanting to cheer. She dreaded the possibility of them getting involved. But surely Veslih would have warned her if a bloodbath was likely? And if she put up no resistance at all, then Benard would be forever banished from the city, and she would be back to being the wife of a Werist. Oliva needed better than a Werist stepfather. Benard was right. For someone who normally seemed to drift along slightly above the ground, he was wrong surprisingly rarely.
The boats came together with hardly a bump and the crew held them there with boat hooks.
“Hordeleader,” she told Guthlag, “Flankleader Yabro reports that Jarkard is certainly planning violence. You are too badly outnumbered to do more than throw your lives away. Speaker Ardial, I wish you to accompany me. Apart from the Speaker and my husband, I will go in unescorted.”
It took a little while, but she eventually overruled Guthlag’s protests.
For the next pot-boiling or so, Ingeld just sat with her eyes closed and prayed. Praying to Veslih in an open boat was extremely difficult. The sense of warmth and comfort she normally experienced was erratic and intermittent there, but she could hardly ask the riverfolk to build a fire for her. She must return today, because the Festival of Demern had ended and the skies were clear. These were the Dark Days, unofficially regarded as belonging to the Evil One. She was convinced that Nartiash would rise tomorrow, and the city needed her there to declare the turn of the year as her foremothers had done for six sixty years. And then Consort Benard could proclaim the feast.
Even in the Dark Days, it was exceedingly rare to see the city frontage deserted, and yet Joy of Return passed not a single moored boat as she came in. There were people, more people than Ingeld could ever remember seeing. The entire population of the city seemed to be standing along the levee, starting well outside the city proper. They knew her robes and her red hair dancing in the wind, and they sang for her. It began unevenly, a single childish voice barely audible in the wind, completely unplanned, but at once other voices took up the refrain. It swelled as she passed the hovels of the poor on the outskirts. By the time she was level with the first of the great trading warehouses, it was a steady, unanimous choir.
They sang none of the great hymns to Veslih, neither a joyful welcome nor a triumphant victory song. Over and over they sang “Ambilanha,” an old and simple folk song calling for a lover taken by the river, ambiguously vague as to whether the singer was man or woman, and the lover gone on a journey or simply dead. It seemed strangely inappropriate, and yet it filled her eyes with tears.
Captain Mog had no choice of berth. The river was at its lowest now, so only the main traders’ docks were accessible to even the smallest riverboats. Moreover, there was only one place his passengers could easily disembark because the bank was everywhere walled with people except for a gap in front of the Temple of Ucr in the center of the trading district. In this gap, a decorated arch of welcome stood forlorn and pathetic with its feathers and gaudy bunting fluttering in the breeze. The steps below it had been kept empty for the dynast’s return-some effort had even been made to wash them. Two boys stood ready to catch the lines and bend them to the bollards.
Ardial and Benard helped her disembark. Oliva was already making Ingeld unsteady on her feet, and the stairs seemed unnecessarily long. She took them slowly, leaning on Benard’s arm. At their side walked Speaker Ardial in his black robes and permanently bloodless expression. A Speaker was safe enough. Even Stralg had been content to drive Ardial out of the city, when he would have put an extrinsic ruler to death. Witness Tranquility followed them up, carrying her distaff and spindle to record the dynast’s return.
Still the people chanted “Ambilanha.”
Ingeld paused at the top to catch her breath, to survey the enemy, and to smile at the crowd. The arch proved that someone had planned a public welcome. Beyond it, a band with trumpets and drums stood in glum silence, making no effort to overrule the “Ambilanha” dirge. And there was a wagon with a throne on it, all brightly decorated, the sort of contrivance the Lamb Queen rode in at the Festival of Nastrar. The ropes that would draw the wagon lay deserted on the roadway, and the children who would pull them were nowhere to be seen. There was no sign of Sansya or the senior priests and priestesses, the heads of cults and guilds and senior families, all of whom should have been here to greet her.
The great crowd was held back, upstream and downstream, by walls of massed Heroes, at least six deep, perhaps a mustering of the entire city horde. And in the center of the open space stood the self-proclaimed horde-leader, Jarkard Karson, backed up by a dozen Werists-presumably the Benard execution squad, Yabro’s hard cases who didn’t like Florengians. They were all smiling eagerly.
Benard’s hand on her arm was steady, but icy cold. He kept it there as they walked forward and the chanting crumpled away into silence.
Ingeld stopped several paces back from Jarkard. “Return your men to barracks, Huntleader. They are not required.”
Jarkard was big, of course, but more bloated than beefy. Either he had practiced long and hard, or his face had come with a built-in sneer. “They are here to witness our marriage. I see you brought a Speaker. How considerate!”
“He is here to administer your oath of loyalty.”
“Then he will be disappointed.” He pointed at Benard. “You, boy, will leave now. I will count to three.”
“And I,” Ingeld said, “shall count to two.” No need to delay. Either the goddess would support her or She wouldn’t.
“You can count anything you like, my sweet,” the Werist said. Was there a hint of hesitation in his puffy eyes?
Nasty though he was, Ingeld would prefer not to kill him. “Do not provoke my wrath!”
Jarkard’s sneer remained unruffled. “One!”
“One!” Ingeld echoed. “I warn you for the last time.”
“Two!”
“Two!”
Jarkard opened his mouth to say “Three” and Ingeld laid the curse of Veslih on him. He did not so much burn as erupt, as if he had been struck by lightning. His pall and skin charred instantly. A tower of red flame hurtled upward, then his head and belly exploded in fire and steam. His escort leaped back in horror, and every throat in the city cried out-except Be-nard’s, because he had been forewarned, but his grip nearly crushed Ingeld’s forearm. The crowds, even the Werists, fell to their knees in the presence of the goddess. In moments Hordeleader Jarkard was reduced to a smoking, reeking litter of charred bones.
Ingeld was shivering with the relief of tension. She had never cursed a human being before. Once she had dealt with a mad dog, but she had not been certain that she could bring herself to kill a man. Her grandmother had done so twice, reputedly. The crowd was moaning and weeping.
“Dramatic!” Ardial said dryly. “Twenty-seven years ago you did not treat Stralg so harshly.”
Ingeld bit her lip. What could she respond to that? I love Benard but did not love you? Or perhaps, Horold was handsome and you were not? Even, I was only a child back then? She said, “Oliva will need her father, Ardial.” That felt nearest the truth.