Raldnor turned with an irrepressible brutal laughter.
“Ryhgon taught us our trade immaculately,” he called to Yannul. “A harsh but an excellent master.”
Then he looked fully at the second Guard the Lan had felled and saw from the angle of him that his neck was broken.
Yannul stood staring at the body, his face pale.
“He’s dead, Raldnor. I wasn’t as elegant as you.”
“The blame’s mine,” Raldnor said sharply. “My fight. You came to help me.” Yet a dark and dismal quiet had settled in that place. Who knew better than he that death was promised to any who killed one of the Storm Lord’s Chosen? It had been Dortharian law for a thousand years or more. But he took Yannul’s arm. “Out of here. Who saw?”
“She did.”
Raldnor turned and noted the Lowland girl standing motionless at the grate.
“She won’t tell any tales.” Harshly he shouted out to her: “Go back to the Plains before they eat you alive in this stinking city.”
But her golden eyes stared blind as stones into his, though he felt a curious fluttering like a bird in his brain. He turned, put his arm over Yannul’s shoulders and drew him out into the cold and empty streets.
“Well Ryhgon, what is this so urgent news?”
“Your pardon, my lord. There’s been a brawl in Lin Abissa. The Storm Lord’s Guard. And two of my men. One of the dragons is dead.”
Kathaos’s face was blank.
“You have this on good authority?”
“Would I accept it otherwise? The owner of the wine shop reported the incident. A sniveling sot, frightened of what would be done to him, spying behind a curtain. He described your guard—the Lannic acrobat was one. The other—a pale-eyed man, missing a left finger.”
“The . . . Sarite. Is he the killer?”
“I don’t know as yet, my lord.”
“Discover. What began the trouble?”
“The Xarab fool who runs the shop keeps a Lowland mare as a slave. The dragons were unlacing. The Lan and the Sarite were pleased to take exception to rape.”
“Something you find hard to believe,” Kathaos remarked.
Ryhgon said: “You know my views on women, my lord.”
“Her race is at present more interesting than her sex. How many Vis defend Lowlanders with Amrek here?”
“Xarabs and Lans have soft ways for the Plains.”
“Yet our hunter may not be Xarabian, as we discussed before. Where have you put the two?”
“A cellar room below the palace.”
“Let them sample a night there. Bring me the hunter here at noon tomorrow. Find out what you can between now and then, but restrain your arm. Is there any word from Amrek?”
“None.”
“As well. But not illogical. No doubt he would dislike the incident widely broadcast. The Guard of Kings, after all, is supposed to be invincible, and myth should never be reduced to a mere technicality.”
After the darkness of the cellarways, the midday light in the upper rooms of the mansion hurt his eyes. His guards had left him in a small bright chamber, unbound, and presently Kathaos entered.
It was the first time Raldnor had come close to him, this man who had owned him through these three months of hard-bought living. Ryhgon had been the harsh symbol; here stood the actuality. A well-controlled face, blood lines too mixed to give him any hint of his royalty beyond the finecast good looks.
He seated himself and observed Raldnor with an unfathomable expression that might have been the mask for anything and was almost unarguably the mask for something.
“Well, Sarite, what have you got to say to me?”
“Whatever you want me to say, my lord, to amend my fault.”
“An elegant speech won’t mend anything, Sarite, I assure you. Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve offended the King. Of all men, the Storm Lord’s Dragon Guard can do as they please; their rights are second only to his. And you, hunter, have hung them up by the heels. Not a good thing to do.”
“Your lordship is, I believe, aware of my reasons.”
“Some wine girl . . .”
“Little more than a child, my lord. They’d have killed her.”
“She was a Lowlander. The King tells us Lowlanders are of no importance.”
“A child—” Raldnor broke out.
“Instruct me,” Kathaos said, and his voice had grown harder, “which of you broke the dragon’s neck?”
“It was my pleasure.”
“Your pleasure. Why kill this one man and leave the rest alive?”
“He was their leader.”
“He was not.” Kathaos paused deliberately. “The shopkeeper saw the Lan catch the guard’s neck in his hands and break it like a fowl’s.”
Raldnor did not speak. At last Kathaos said: “You extend your altruism too far, and anything stretched too far loses its edge. Nevertheless, I am not going to make you the meat for Amrek’s anger. Yannul the Lan will do well enough for that. Ryhgon will see that he’s punished for his offense. You will shortly receive a pardon.”
Raldnor stared at him.
“Punish me too. The fight was mine.”
Kathaos lifted and rang the small bell at his elbow. Doors opened and guards reentered.
An empty disdain shook the last dregs of hope out of Raldnor. Buried in his own guilt for Yannul, he ignored what Kathaos offered him, finding it valueless.
“I thank your lordship,” he said quietly, “for this impartial justice.”
It was enough to hang him, but did not. The guards merely marched him back to his dungeon, from which Yannul was gone.
Yet Kathaos sat on in the upper room for some while. The whole episode had seemed curious; who knew what lay behind it? From the first he had considered it best not to thrust the man in the path of royal fury. That would be to force Amrek’s hand, and if the Sarite were a spy, then he would only, at some future time, be replaced by another, less detectable one. As things stood, he had become a sort of game piece between the King and his Councilor, and there might be uses for him later.
“And I was not mistaken,” Kathaos now thought. “This naïve fighting cock is one of the princes of Koramvis.”
It was the sudden icy gust of imperial arrogance that had convinced him. A fool might be stupid enough to spit in his lord’s eye, as Raldnor had done, yet not with that aura of incredible assurance and contempt. Kathaos knew that look very well. He had endured it from his earliest conscious hours. That look had, in part, been the foundation of his lifestyle, and now, coming unexpectedly as it did from the eyes of a man who should by rights have been pleading for his life, it had breached all defenses. And Kathaos Am Alisaar had inwardly cringed, a fact that interested rather than distressed him.
The night passed in a black fever as Raldnor paced his prison, half mad with anger. More guilt. Had there not been enough guilt for him to bear? The rat thoughts scuttled and gnawed.
In the morning he woke out of a stupefied sleep and saw the iron door left open for him.
He climbed the stairways up into the light. He passed guards and servants with blank faces. In an upper corridor he saw one of the barrack whores, a pretty sloven, who normally liked him well enough. But when he caught her arm and asked her: “Do you know where Yannul is?” she shook her head and hurried off.
In the dormitory he and Yannul used he found a man untidily penning a letter, who looked up immediately and said: “You’ve heard how Yannul was punished?”