“Oh.” The old woman looked down at her knees, and announced, “I fell down.”
“You knelt,” Tabaea explained. “When you speak to an empress, you must kneel.”
“Oh.” She showed no sign of rising, of leaving; the line of other petitioners was growing restless, Tabaea could see it and smell it and hear it.
“Is there anyone taking care of you?” Tabaea asked.
“No.”
“That’s too bad,” Tabaea said. “I think you could use some help. But you’ll have to go now.”
“Will you take care of me?”
“No, I’m too busy. I’m the empress.”
“Hike you.”
“That’s nice. Go away, now, and let someone else have a turn.”
“But I didn’t get to sit in the pretty chair.” Tabaea stared at the old woman, frustration beginning to overwhelm her determination to be patient and understanding. She wished someone else would come and drag the old fool away, that there was someone she could signal, but Arl was much too busy keeping order among the others, and she had no one else there to help her. Her other new appointees had been sent off about their various businesses, and what with desertions and confusion she didn’t have all the guards and servants that the overlord had kept close at hand.
To get rid of this nuisance she would either have to call for help or use her own two hands, either of which seemed beneath her dignity as empress.
Tabaea began to see that mere was a contradiction here, between her desire to be an absolute ruler, honored and respected, and her desire to avoid oppressing her people. She might want to be a fair and reasonable empress, but obviously, there were people in the city who wouldn’t be fair and reasonable subjects.
And with people like that, soldiers would be very useful.
Even if she had had a thousand soldiers in the palace, Tabaea realized, in her determination to be a good and kind and fair and accessible ruler she would have sent them away while she was holding court. She now saw that this would not have been a good idea. She resolved that when things were more organized, when she had a proper city guard of her own, she would keep a couple of soldiers nearby.
For now, she had to improvise. The warlock power reached out and pinched the old woman’s nostrils shut.
“Go away,” Tabaea told her, as the woman gasped for breath.
The invisible grip vanished, and the woman got to her feet.
She did not leave, however, instead she reached out and slapped Tabaea across the face. “You nasty!” she shrieked. “You squeezed my nose!”
Tabaea, with her animal responses, had seen the blow coming and ducked aside; what should have been a resounding blow was just a gentle brush across one cheek.
Still, it could not be tolerated; in an instant, Tabaea was on her feet, picking the old woman up by the throat, one-handed.
She looked up at the astonishment on the ancient face and said, “You should die for that. The person of your empress is not to be touched. Because of your age, because my reign is new and you understand little, you won’t die this time, but don’t ever let me see or smell you again.”
Then she flung the woman out onto the marble floor of the audience hall. Brittle old bones snapped, and the woman lay in a heap, moaning softly.
“Get her out of here,” Tabaea said.
No one moved.
“Get her out of here!” Tabaea shouted, pointing at the line of waiting petitioners.
Two men from the back ran to obey; a few of the others abruptly decided that whatever requests they might have had could wait until a more propitious time, and scurried away down the side stairs.
Tabaea settled back on the throne, touched her unmarked cheek, then turned to Arl and snapped, “Next!”
CHAPTER 31
It had been Lady Sarai ’s own suggestion that she not stay at the same inn as Tobas and his wives; she had been worried that such a group would be too distinctive. Instead, she had gratefully accepted a loan of a dozen copper rounds and had found herself lodgings at the Fatted Calf, an inn on Soldiertown Street, a block south of Grandgate Market. The rather inept painting on the inn’s signboard had given it the nickname the Bloated Beef, and that had seemed to imply a cheerful good humor.
That was not, Sarai discovered, reflected hi the urn’s rather tense atmosphere. Her night there was an uneasy one; whenever she had set foot outside her own room she had been in constant fear that someone would recognize and denounce her.
The conversation in the common room had been strained for almost everyone; two burly men had announced that they were friends of the new empress, members of the new court, and as such entitled to the best oushka in the house, at no charge. The innkeeper had been inclined to refuse, and a former guardsman—at least, he wore no sword, though he was still hi the traditional red and yellow and had spoken of fighting Tabaea’s mob on Harbor Street—had supported that refusal, whereupon the two thugs had beaten the guardsman soundly and thrown him out into the street.
Those others among the guests who might have been inclined to help found themselves badly outnumbered by those who were cheering the thugs on and had declined to intervene, thereby avoiding an all-out brawl.
The thugs got their oushka. They also got the company of a frightened young woman. One of them eyed Sarai herself, but when Sarai bared her teeth, in as threatening a snarl as she could manage, he turned away and didn’t pursue the matter.
And Sarai stayed the night, as she had planned, since it was too late to go elsewhere and she had nowhere else to go, but the next morning she left quickly, taking a pastry with her for her breakfast.
Like anyone strolling in that part of the city with no particular destination hi mind, she found herself wandering into Grand-gate Market. For a while she strolled about, nibbling her pastry while looking over the merchants’ goods and the farmers’ produce; superficially, it all appeared quite normal, unchanged by Tabaea’s accession.
On a closer look, though, anyone reasonably observant—and Sarai knew herself to be at least reasonably observant—would notice that there were no guards at the gate.
There were subtler differences as well. The great gates themselves stood open, but the doors that led into the towers did not; they were instead locked and barred. The familiar yellow tunics and red kilts of soldiers were not only not to be seen at the gate, they were nowhere in sight, not in the gate or the market or the streets.
The rather sparse crowd hi the marketplace did not seem particularly troubled by the guards’ absence; in fact, if anything, Sarai thought the buyers and sellers looked somewhat more prosperous than usual.
That didn’t seem right; she looked again.
There was a real difference, she realized, but it was not that the merchants or farmers or their customers were attired any better than their usual wont. Rather, the difference was that there were no beggars. In all of Grandgate Market, no one wore rags, any more than anyone wore the red kilt of the overlord’s service.
Sarai wondered at that. Tabaea might well have promised to eliminate poverty, but how could she have possibly made any significant change so quickly!
And for that matter, where did all the soldiers actually go! Ten thousand people—well, seven or eight thousand, anyway; she knew that the guard had not been up to its full authorized strength for decades—could not simply vanish.
Or could they? It was a big city, after all. There were hundreds of miles of streets and alleyways out there, and all a soldier needed to do to hide was to get out of uniform.