“There will be many of those, I fear,” Mandralisca said.
“The Coronal, you mean?” asked the Lord Gaviral.
“That will be later. I mean others like the Vorthinar lord. Local princes, who see themselves as having a chance to break away from everyone’s authority. Once they behold lords like yourself openly defying the Coronal and the Pontifex and succeeding in that defiance, they see no reason to continue to pay taxes to other administrations. Including your own, my lords.”
“You will burn them for us, then, as you burned this one,” Gavahaud said.
“Yes. Yes. So he will!” cried Gavilomarin, and gleefully clapped his hands again.
Mandralisca threw him a quick baleful smile. Then, tapping his fingertips to the golden paraclet of his office that hung at his breast and glancing swiftly from one brother to the next, he said, “My lords, I have had a long journey this day, and I am very weary. I ask your permission to retire.”
As they made their way toward the village a little distance south of Gaviral’s palace where the highest-level retainers lived, Jacomin Halefice said hesitantly to Mandralisca, “Sir, may I offer a personal observation?”
“We are friends, are we not, Jacomin?” said Mandralisca.
The statement was so far from the truth that Halefice had difficulty hiding his astonishment. But he recovered after a moment and said, “It seemed to me, sir, that the brothers, when they were speaking with you just now—and I have noticed this before, in truth—you will forgive me for saying so, I hope, but—” There he hesitated. “What I mean to say—”
“Come out with it, will you?”
Halefice said, “Just that they are so very patronizing when they address you. They speak to you as though they are grand and mighty noblemen and you are insignificant, treated like nothing more than a vassal, a mere flunkey.”
“I am their vassal, Jacomin.”
“But not their servant.”
“Not precisely, no.”
“Why do you abide their insolence, then, sir? For that is what it is, and, forgive me, your grace, but it pains me to see a man of your abilities treated that way. Have they forgotten that you and only you have made them what they are?”
“Oh, no, not so. You give me too much credit, Jacomin. It was the Divine that made them what they are, and also, I suppose, their glorious father Prince Gaviundar, with some help from their lady mother, whoever that may have been.” Mandralisca flashed his quick frosty smile again. “All I did was show them how they could make themselves lords of these few unimportant provinces. And, if all goes well, lords of all Zimroel, perhaps, one day.”
“And it troubles you not in the least that they treat you with such contempt, sir?”
Mandralisca surveyed his bandy-legged little aide-de-camp with a long, slow, curious look.
He and Jacomin Halefice had been together for more than twenty years, now. They had fought side by side against the forces of Prestimion at Thegomar Edge, when Korsibar had perished at the hands of his own Su-Suheris magus, and the Procurator Dantirya Sambail had been defeated and made a prisoner by Prestimion, and Mandralisca himself, who had fought to the last stages of exhaustion, was wounded and taken prisoner also by Rufiel Kisimir of Muldemar. And the two of them had been near each other again at the time of the second great defeat, among the manganoza thickets of Stoienzar, that time when Dantirya Sambail was slain by Septach Melayn: Halefice had helped Mandralisca slip off into the underbrush and vanish, when Navigorn of Hoik-mar was pursuing him and would have put him to death. It was with Halefice’s assistance that Mandralisca had been able to make his escape from Alhanroel and find his way into the service of Dantirya Sambail’s two brothers.
Halefice’s loyalty and devotion were beyond question. He was Mandralisca’s right hand, as Mandralisca had been the right hand of the Procurator Dantirya Sambail. And yet, in all their time together, Halefice had never dared to speak so intimately with Mandralisca as he had just done. In its way that was, Mandralisca thought, somewhat moving.
He said carefully, “If they seem to treat me with contempt, Jacomin, it’s because their manner is ever a coarse one, as is the style of their whole clan. You remember their elegant father Gaviundar, and his beautiful brother Gaviad. Nor was their uncle Dantirya Sambail known for the gentleness of his tongue. Where you see contempt, my friend, I see only something of a lack of tact. I take no offense. It is in their nature. They are crude rough men. I forgive them for it, because we are all players in the same game, do you take my meaning?”
“Sir?” said Halefice blankly.
“Apparently you don’t. Let me put it this way: I serve the needs of the Sambailids, whether they know it or not, and I think they do not, but also they serve mine. It is the same between you and me, as well. Think on it, Jacomin. But keep your findings to yourself. Let us not discuss these things again, shall we?” Mandralisca turned away, toward his own simple cottage. “Here is the parting of our ways,” he said. “I wish you a good day.”
10
The lights remained on and the steward Falco stayed with Prestimion while he calmed himself. Diandolo brought him something cool and soothing to drink. The master of the lodge, virtually beside himself with chagrin that his royal guest had undergone so terrifying a dream under his own roof, produced such an outpouring of solicitousness and fuss that Falco had to order him from the room. Young Prince Taradath, who had accompanied Prestimion to Fa and had a suite of his own across the courtyard, now made a belated appearance, aroused at last from the deep sleep of adolescence by all the furore in the halls. Prestimion sent him away also. His father’s nightmares need not be any concern of his.
This was the third day of Prestimion’s state visit to Fa. Things had been going predictably thus far, the banquets, the speeches, the conferring of royal honors upon deserving citizens, and all the rest. But for the first two nights running he had had the lost-in-unknown-levels-of-the-Castle dream, although, the Divine be thanked, without the additional anguish of having Thismet entering into it. But this time the thing in all its full ghastliness had descended on him.
“You were shouting something like, ‘tizmit, tizmit, tizmit,’ my lord,” Falco said. The name of Thismet would mean nothing to him, of course. There were no more than six people in all the world who knew who she had been. “It was so loud I could hear you from two rooms away. ‘Tizmit! Tizmit!’ ”
“We are likely to say anything in dreams, Falco. It doesn’t have to make sense.”
“This must have been a very bad one, my lord. You still look pale.—Here, give me that,” he said, reaching behind him to take the flask that Diandolo had just brought into the room. “Can’t you hear how sore the Coronal’s voice is?—Another drink, my lord?”
Prestimion took the flask. It was brandy, this time. He gulped it down like so much water.
Falco said, “Shall I summon a speaker for your dream, lordship?”
“No one speaks the Coronal’s dreams except the Lady of the Isle, Falco. You know that. And the Lady is nowhere within reach.” Prestimion rose, a little unsteady on his feet, and went to the window. All was dark outside. It was still the middle of a moonless night here in lovely Fa, that gay and ever-charming city of tier upon tier of pink hillside villas with lacy stone balconies. He braced himself on the windowsill and leaned outward, seeking the cool sweet night air.
Twenty years, and Thismet still haunted him.
She and her brother both were long dead, dead and forgotten, so thoroughly forgotten that even their own father had no idea that they had ever lived. Prestimion’s team of mages had seen to that, on the battlefield at Thegomar Edge just after the great victory, when by a colossal act of sorcery they had blotted all knowledge of the Korsibar insurrection from the memory of the world.