Two more guards stood outside the gates.
“It’s the scholar the princeps is expecting.”
The guards looked Quaeryt over, but said nothing. The space under the archway between the two towers was effectively a walled tunnel some five yards long. A second set of gates was recessed into the inside walls of the guard towers, and beyond them was a large open courtyard at least seventy yards on a side.
To the right of the capacious entry courtyard were severe stone buildings some three stories in height, looking like troop barracks, and farther to the west were the stables. Behind them were the walls, only a handful of yards higher than the barracks roofs. To the left and directly beyond the entry courtyard were gardens, and the scent of flowers was almost overpowering to Quaeryt.
Gardens? Given the grimness of the stone walls, he hadn’t expected gardens.
A single stone-paved lane, edged by a knee-high wall, led through the middle of the gardens, and the escort guard rode toward it. Again, Quaeryt followed. The terraced gardens were far more than ornamental, he soon realized, with apple, plum, pear, and sour cherry trees bordering herb and vegetable gardens, and an intricate series of stone conduits and miniature aqueducts between the gardens and trees.
The lane ended abruptly in a circular paved area, with that part of the arc beside the palace building itself bordered by a covered rotunda. Another pair of guards stood under the angled roof and before a set of polished oak doors bound in polished brass.
“The scholar’s here to see the princeps.”
“You can tie your mount at the end, the iron post,” said one of the guards.
“Thank you.” Quaeryt rode over to the post, where he dismounted and tethered the mare to the post, then walked back toward the doors. He had to assume that his mount and gear would be safe, but, if they weren’t, those would be the least of his worries.
The lower gate guard was already riding back eastward toward the upper palace gates when Quaeryt reached the two guards.
“Tell the squad leader inside why you’re here.”
“Thank you.” Quaeryt stepped between the two and opened the door, only to find a second door two yards on, another sign that the winters were indeed long and cold.
When he stepped beyond the second door, he stood in a foyer, a circular space some fifteen yards across, but without the high ceiling he half-expected. The walls were half-paneled with wainscoting up to chest height, above which was white plaster. There were neither paintings nor hangings above the paneling, although vacant niches set into the walls above the paneling and spaced around the foyer once had likely held statues or other decorative items.
Set in the middle of the foyer was a table desk, and seated at the desk was another soldier, this one wearing undress greens, the uniform most officers and aides wore when they met with Bhayar. Quaeryt walked to the desk and stopped.
“Why are you here, scholar?”
“Lord Bhayar sent me. I’m Quaeryt Rytersyn. I was sent to be scholar assistant to Princeps Straesyr.”
The squad leader pointed to a bench on the left side of the foyer, but closer to the door than the table desk. “You’ll need to wait there while I check with his assistant.”
Quaeryt sat, then watched as the squad leader walked past the two guards stationed at the archway leading from the foyer. He was still waiting a quint later, but shortly after that, the functionary finally returned.
”He’ll see you shortly. One of his aides will come and take you to his study.” The squad leader resumed his position behind the desk.
Another half quint passed before yet another squad leader-this one graying-appeared and said, “Scholar … this way.”
Quaeryt stood and followed the squad leader past the soldiers guarding the main hallway leading from the foyer. He was beginning to feel as though he had been passing through an endless series of guards. A somewhat worn deep blue carpet runner ran down the center of the polished slate floor, and a series of paintings adorned the walls-in between the doors, all of which were closed. Most of the paintings appeared to be likenesses of past Khanars.
After some thirty yards the corridor opened onto a high ceilinged hall, with a grand marble staircase leading up to the second level and what appeared to be a railed gallery above circling the hall. As he followed the aide up the steps, Quaeryt noted that other corridors branched off the hallway on the lower level … and again on the upper level. Quaeryt noted a smaller staircase on the east side of the gallery, whose entry door was open, and he wondered where that led. At the top of the staircase, the squad leader turned right, moving parallel to the stone-pillared railing.
About a third of the way around the circular gallery was another corridor that the squad leader followed. At the end, another forty yards along past other doors, was a set of double doors, one of which was open. Another narrower hallway fronted the doors and extended east and west for about twenty yards in each direction.
Once he was inside the anteroom, Quaeryt again sat and waited for perhaps half a quint before being ushered into the princeps’s study-a large room with bookcases on the left-side wall, and an archway on the left, with recessed pocket doors half-open, leading to a room with a long table and chairs. A large and ornately carved desk was set before the waist-high north-facing windows, windows that were closed. The princeps stood behind the desk. Unlike everyone else Quaeryt had seen since he’d ridden up to the lower gates, Straesyr was not wearing a uniform, but a light blue tunic over black trousers. Yet the way he wore them suggested a uniform.
“Good morning. Please be seated.” The princeps followed his own words.
Quaeryt sat down in the center chair facing the desk. Straesyr wasn’t at all what he had anticipated. He’d pictured the princeps as a slender and bookish figure, but the man who had greeted him was as tall as Quaeryt himself, broad-shouldered, and his voice was warm and pleasant. Only the eyes resembled Quaeryt’s preconception, and they looked like pale blue ice, as though Straesyr regarded everything as something to be weighed, measured, or counted.
“You claim to be someone I’m expecting. Can you prove it?”
“I’m most certain that Lord Bhayar has sent you a thorough description of me. I’m Quaeryt Rytersyn, and I have been a scholar to him.” Quaeryt eased the document case from his jacket pocket, leaned forward, and extended it.
The princeps took it. “It looks rather worn.”
“It’s been through a storm and a shipwreck, sir.”
“What ship?”
“The Moon’s Son, out of Tilbora here. She was the first vessel I could get out of Nacliano.”
“There weren’t any Telaryn ships you could take?”
“Except for the ship that sailed just before I got to Nacliano, not a one that anyone knew of. The port people said that most of the ships that traveled regularly from Nacliano to Tilbora were ported out of Tilbora.”
“That’s regrettable, if so. It’s something I wouldn’t know.” Straesyr opened the case and extracted the appointment letter, then opened the leather folder on the desk and compared the two. Next, he looked at a second sheet and then at Quaeryt, alternating glances between paper and Quaeryt. Finally, he nodded. “You do seem to be the one Lord Bhayar sent, with an appointment to last until the end of Fevier, if necessary…”
He didn’t put that date in my letter. The end of Fevier … I do hope not. Quaeryt had no intention of staying in Tilbor even into winter, let alone all the way to the end of that frigid season.
“… I must say that both the governor and I are at a loss why he would send a scholar from Solis to Tilbora. I hope you can enlighten me.”
Quaeryt smiled pleasantly. “Lord Bhayar asked me if the people of Tilbor were different because no ruler in the history of Lydar has had so much difficulty in maintaining order so long after a conquest. I made the mistake of saying that I could not offer an opinion because I had not been to Tilbor and because there were no recent histories of Tilbor.” Quaeryt offered a helpless shrug. “And so … here I am.”