The Warlord's Domain Read online

  At least it was nothing like this. She had seen many, many human bodies reduced to glistening tatters; but she had never before seen wounds that refused to bleed, or heal, or kill. Giorl did indeed want to know which of the Bodyguard's regimental surgeons had cobbled Voord back together; but this had little to do with her anger over what looked more like clumsy sail-making than sutured wounds. She wanted to find out what the injuries had looked like when they were fresh, and she had a suspicion that they had been no different from the way they appeared right now. At least he had stopped screaming.

  At last Giorl finished and straightened her back, grunting slightly as her muscles made known their complaint right up her spine. Tweezering out the shreds and fragments of rotted sutures was not, perhaps, as noisy, nerve-racking or downright nasty as many of the things she had done, but she could still think of a great many things that she would sooner have been doing. Caring for her youngest daughter was one of them; the child had been unwell for the past couple of days, feverish and off her food. The instruments clinked faintly as she returned them to their padded clamps in the metal case.

  And Voord groaned faintly as she stood up and turned to walk away from him.

  Giorl froze in mid-stride, not wanting to believe the sound and yet knowing she had heard it. "Teü-acht ha'v-raal," she swore, very softly. "Father and Mother and Maiden make it not so." The prayer must not have been heard, for when she looked back over her shoulder it was so: Voord was still alive.

  Any drug whose purpose was to induce the peace of anaesthetic sleep was a systemic poison which could, in a sufficient quantity, induce the far more permanent peace of death. That had been Giorl's intention, anyway. The poppy distillate which she had given Voord had been of such a concentration that it should have stopped his pain and then his heart in a matter of a few minutes. However, it had done no more than render him a little drowsy, and that drowsiness was already wearing off to let the pain come back. Such a thing was medically impossible; but then, his continued survival of such obviously fatal injuries was just as impossible, and he had survived those for twenty days. Both impossibilities stared at her with agonized eyes and hoped silently that she could do something—anything—to help.

  Giorl concealed her shrug and returned to Voord's bedside, wondering what in the name of Hell she could do. The most obvious thing to do, she had done already; and it hadn't worked. As for the alternatives… Giorl looked at the gaping holes in Voord's face and body and wondered what the alternatives might be. And if there were any.

  "The stitching helped." Voord's weak and shaky voice cut through her indecision. "When they were closed, the… the wounds didn't hurt as much."

  "Stitches don't work," said Giorl gently. "You've seen already. If these don't heal—and I've seen they don't— then the severed tissue will just outlast the sutures the way they did today and you'll be right back where you were when I came in… and facing the same prospect. Your choice." Voord cringed visibly. "But maybe if you told me how these happened"—inside her head Giorl was smiling grimly as, like it or not, she slipped into the surgeon's customary bedside manner—"I might be able to work out what to do about them."

  Voord met her steady gaze for a few seconds, then very pointedly turned his face away, stifling the moan that the movement provoked.

  "That won't help. Don't forget, I'm good at getting questions answered." Giorl saw a shudder raise gooseflesh on his naked skin. "I'm good even without using pressure, so why not talk about it? Eh?" She reached out one hand and laid it gently on his chest, absently noting the movements of heartbeat and respiration— both over-fast—as she did so. "Talking might help for all sorts of reasons, Voord Ebanesj." The rapid rise and fall of his rib cage faltered as he held his breath, whether in reaction to the use of his full name or hearing a voice that had honest, if merely professional, sympathy in it. And then the words all came tumbling out.

  Aldric and Kyrin rode into Drakkesborg late in the afternoon, through the main gate in the western wall, the Shadowgate, with the fast-setting midwinter sun at their backs stretching their own shadows long and dark across the snow. The guards at the gate seemed preoccupied with other matters than the searching of baggage, and after the most cursory of inspections were quite willing to accept impressively signed and sealed scholarly passes at face value, without any curiosity as to why two foreign "scholars" should be so well armed and armored. Or perhaps the guards knew perfectly well why anyone would want to have weapons and battle harness close at hand. Neither the Empire nor its cities were especially peaceful places, and right now Drakkesborg was no exception.

  After a period of "not noticing" the riots in the hope that the outburst of initially justified protest would burn itself out, notice had formally been taken two days earlier by Authority in the shape of the city's Chief of Constables. Warnings had been posted after the first day and read aloud by official criers at the height of the second day's trouble. Nobody had paid the criers any attention, except to pelt them with offal and with serious snowballs—frozen, and cored with chunks of broken paving.

  Notice had progressed to action fairly rapidly after that. Ten squads of troopers from the urban militia had moved out of barracks at first light, and by mid-morning they had restored order of a sort in their own inimitable fashion. It was only because of lenience promoted by the Midwinter holiday season that no lives were lost, but there were aching skulls and broken limbs enough to suppress the fire of civil disobedience in even the hottest head. So complete was that suppression that by the time Aldric and Kyrin were cleared to enter the city, Drakkesborg was restored to at least a veneer of normality— for all that the veneer was not quite thick enough as yet to make them feel entirely comfortable…

  "I told you, didn't I?" Kyrin's voice was low; the things she was saying were not the kind of things she wanted overheard. "I said I didn't like the sound of this place. And now we're, here, you say that you don't like the feel of it. Very perceptive, Aldric my love. But just a little slow."

  Aldric smiled to himself at her unease—a thin smile, without amusement. He had been wondering how long it would take to come out, and was too much the gentleman to make comment about how she had come to be in the city in the first place. "At least the passes worked," he said mildly.

  "They got us in, dear. I'd feel happier if I was convinced they'll get us out again."

  "Marevna made certain that they showed no bias to either faction."

  "Meaning you get picked on by both, not neither. I for one would like to get in off the street, with a bolted door between me and whatever's been going on here."

  "Faction fights or something. Tuenafen was like this and—"

  "I don't want to know what happened, Aldric." Kyrin was growing more twitchy with each passing second, regardless of the way ordinary people went about their ordinary business around her. Or perhaps because of it, and because of the way it failed to ring quite true. "I want to find a place where I can avoid it if it happens again. Now, where?"

  That was the problem. Neither knew much about Imperial Drakkesborg apart from their own preconceived opinions, and opinions were of small use in suggesting where to stay, much less how much they would be expected to pay for the privilege. Enough, and more than enough, most likely; the cost of a room for the night had increased steadily and steeply as they approached the city, and the risk that they no longer had sufficient coin to live on had become a nagging worry at the back of Kyrin's mind. However, the problem seemed not to concern Aldric.

  "I have no idea where. But first we need some cash money." He spoke with nothing like the gravity their situation warranted, and Kyrin looked at him as if he had left good sense behind.

  "Just where do you plan to find it? Buried in a snowdrift? Or will you just use the Echainon spellstone to conjure it out of a handful of gravel?"

  "Don't be sarcastic, love, it doesn't suit you." As he spoke, his face became an icy mask that warned her she was going just a little bit too far. "And don't mention It.
Not here. Just… don't. I know the Imperial coinage isn't worth a lot, but there are some limits." Aldric reined Lyard to a standstill and glanced at the citizens walking past, looking for the mode of dress that would indicate the sort of person he sought. "There. That's the kind of man we need."

  He indicated a passerby whose noble curve of belly and rich robes might have produced a cheerful demeanor, but whose face had more the appearance of someone who lived on pickled lemons. Kyrin followed the direction of his gesture, then pointedly raised her eyebrows as Aldric dismounted and began a brief, onesided conversation. He was doing most of the talking— none of which she could make sense of through the background buzz of other people—while the fat man's responses were a mixture of monosyllables and silent head movements. His sour expression had deepened when he was accosted about his presumably lawful occa-sions by a complete stranger who had both a foreign accent and a sword, but as Aldric continued to speak in what, from his frequent grins, must at least have sounded pleasant, the man's eyes became a touch less flinty. As he pointed out what were presumably directions, Kyrin could see the movement of facial muscles trying to assume the long-forgotten configuration of a smile, but only succeeding in suggesting that the last meal of lemons was fighting back.

  Aldric saw the man on his way with a courteous half-bow and an inclination of his head that Kyrin noticed was covering a chuckle, then swung back into the saddle. His grin was very wide and white, and seemed somehow to be stuck in place. "Silly old bastard," he said pleasantly. "You try to be charming and what do you get?"

  "Do tell," said Kyrin. The question didn't really need an answer that she could provide.

  "Information. Old vinegar-face wasn't exactly chatty, but at least he told me what I wanted—where to find some money." Heeling Lyard into a leisurely walk, he swung the big courser around in the direction his informant had indicated.

  "How much money?"

  "Enough," he said over his shoulder, "to make the question of what we'll have to pay for a room one we don't need to worry about."

  "Are you feeling all right, Aldric?" It was only halfway to a joke, because there was nothing in the baggage they could sell except for the two ponies which carried it, and he knew as well as she how little else they owned that could be turned into coinage. As an urgent heel in gray K'schei's ribs brought her level, Kyrin could see that his wide grin had relaxed to an ordinary smile.

  "Oh, yes." He stared over Lyard's ears and kept on smiling. "I feel just fine—and so will you, soon." He flicked one finger at the tooling of his saddle as if chivvying a fly—except that there were no flies in a Drusalan winter. "Listen: once there was a man who was asked to do a favor. It was the sort of favor that—"

  "Come to the point, will you! What so-crafty scheme have you got to pull out of your sleeve this time, eh?"

  "Not a scheme, and not a sleeve. Scrip and saddle are the words you need. There's a letter of credit sewn into the welting just here"—again the fly-swatting flick— "and we're heading for the mercantile quarter of the city to find the guild which honors it."

  Kyrin blinked, then grinned, then laughed aloud. "You! I should have guessed! Your sour friend was a merchant, then?"

  "No friend of mine, love. Yes—and a wealthy one."

  "He didn't look to enjoy life much."

  "Each to his own delight in life. I've found mine."

  "I know." She leaned over, reaching out to touch his hand. "And I'm glad."

  Aldric returned the pressure of her fingers, the pinkness about cheeks and ears not entirely a result of the cold air. He could still be very shy, sometimes, about the most innocent public displays of affection; and Kyrin could remember other times when he was not shy at all.

  "One thing you didn't ask."

  "Mm?"

  " 'How much is the credit letter worth?' Unless you're not really interested." With finger and thumb he eased the letter itself from the saddle-stitching—it was superfine parchment, rolled small as a quill—and waved it in front of her nose before tucking it into the deep cuff of his glove.

  "Uh, no. I mean, yes. I mean, how much is the credit letter worth?" She could tell already, from the glitter in his eyes, that he wasn't carrying small change.

  "Does a value of thirty thousand deniers make you feel a little happier? Because that's what we have, if we need it."

  Tehal Kyrin, Harek's daughter, had suffered many shocks and surprises since she took up with this young Alban nobleman, but she had never been the butt of jokes and wasn't pleased at being used as one right now. Then, as he began to explain the system which made the letter work, a system which her own family had used in their foreign trade dealings, she realized that he wasn't joking after all.

  "But why so much?"

  "No more than a precaution. I'd sooner have more available funds than I'd ever need to call on than be without enough—especially with the direction the Empire's currency has been taking of late." He extended an index ringer, then stabbed it toward the ground. "Downward all the way. At least bullion gold is still reliable."

  "However did you get so much? I…" Kyrin hesitated, not sure how he would take what she was about to say, then ventured the observation away. "I never thought you were so rich."

  Aldric seemed to find her confusion funny rather than offensive. "What you mean is that you never dreamed you'd see me with more than a handful of silver to my name. Eh?" Somewhat shamefaced, Kyrin nodded. "Uh-huh. Well, all you need is to remember what my name is… and the rank, and the style, and the title that go with it: Ilauem-arluth inyen'kai Talvalin. Once in a while it's pleasant to find all of that's worth more than just a point of aim for other people's weapons."

  "You're doing this the usual way, with guild authority over existing funds?"

  "Only about one-third of what was available." Aldric smiled crookedly. "I didn't want to be greedy."

  "Oh, Heaven forbid. But if you've had a falling-out with Rynert the King, then can't he take control of your treasury?"

  Aldric shook his head; he'd already considered that risk. It was why his negotiations were with Guild Freyjan rather than with a smaller guild working on a less usurious rate of interest. Guild Freyjan's interest, at least where he was concerned, wasn't merely on him but in him. They liked to take care of their investment at both ends of the transaction; and only if Rynert had gone completely insane would he dare locking horns with a merchant guild capable of bringing all trade both in and out of Alba to a dead stop. "He might risk commandeering the gold I didn't pledge to the guild—if the other lords allowed him to set that sort of dangerous precedent—but if he stole what Freyjans regard as their own property until I surrender the credit note, then they'd lay such trading sanctions on Alba that he'd be forced to back down within a week."

  "Very clever. I applaud you."

  "Quietly, or people will wonder." He reined in and winked at her as he slid from Lyard's saddle to the snow-sprinkled ground. "And we don't want the people in here to wonder any more than they have to already." The elaborate crest of Guild Freyjan worked in brass above the door told Kyrin plainly enough what "in here" was. She nodded at him and patted her gloved palms together very softly, then followed him to the ground.

  They secured both pairs of horses to the hitching-rail which Freyjan had so thoughtfully provided for their equestrian customers, dropped a coin or two into the upturned palm of the liveried guild servant whose duty it was to make sure that the animals weren't stolen or their gear interfered with while their owners were away, and went inside House Freyjan. Inside was lit by good quality oil-lamps, and managed to convey an air of unruffled efficiency which Kyrin supposed made those who came through Freyjan's doors feel that their money was not being put to flippant use. All that efficiency served only to give everyone they met a few seconds' free time in which to look at them, either with frank curiosity or in the more indirect way that passed for manners. Aldric was long since used to the sidelong glances which people directed more or less covertly at him; the bla
ck and silver clothing which he preferred was a statement of faction in the Drusalan Empire, indicating his support for the Woydachul, the Grand Warlord's party. The menacing presence of a combat-slung longsword probably had something to do with it as well.

  "Sir, milady?" The speaker—he was using Jouvaine, but then in the worlds of art and literature, diplomacy and its bastard cousin finance, who didn't?—was hardly the sort of man Kyrin expected to see in a mercantile house. Mid-twenties like Aldric, or a little younger, he towered over both of them and from the set of his face was torn between curiosity and a definite dislike of the fact that they were both wearing swords. For his part, he was wearing not only a sword but a small repeater crossbow, and half-armor besides; though the fact that everything was marked with the guild crest made it all right . . . more or less.

  "Cash conversion," she heard Aldric say, sounding more authoritative then he probably felt. "Credit scrip to Drusalan florins. Cipher code authority kourgath."

  "Sir." The word had a definite "so you say" feel about it, but the guard was courtesy personified as he gestured them to comfortably quilted chairs set by a table which bore a dish of nuts, dried fruits and other small-foods on the same tray as goblets and a flagon of wine. Aldric glanced at the hospitalities and gave a perfunctory nod which managed to suggest that he had expected nothing less, then settled down to take his ease until whoever was to speak to him came out and did so.

  The man who emerged was moving with more brisk enthusiasm than the guard's studied lethargy might have suggested was available in the whole building, but then— small and tubby though he might have been—this newcomer evidently knew what that particular code authority was all about. Gossip travels, even in merchant banks. He bowed nicely to Kyrin, deeply to Aldric, sat down and let it be known that after the customary procedures were complete he was at their disposal for as much cash as they cared to handle. At the usual rate of interest and currency conversion charges, of course…