A Crown for Cold Silver Page 2

  Sir Hjortt ignored the mayor’s wife, following Portolés through the gate onto the walkway of flat, colorful stones that crossed the yard. They were artlessly arranged; the first order of business would be to hire the mason who had done the bathrooms at his family estate in Cockspar, or maybe the woman’s apprentice, if the hoity-toity artisan wasn’t willing to journey a hundred leagues into the wilds to retile a walk. A mosaic of miniature animals would be nice, or maybe indigo shingles could be used to make it resemble a creek. But then they had forded a rill on their way up from the village, so why not have somebody trace it to its source and divert it this way, have an actual stream flow through the yard? It couldn’t be that hard to have it come down through the trees there and then run over the cliff beside the deck, creating a miniature waterfall that—

  “Empty,” said Portolés, coming back outside. Sir Hjortt had lost track of himself—it had been a steep march up, and a long ride before that. Portolés silently moved behind the older woman, who stood on the walk between Sir Hjortt and her house. The matron looked nervous now, all right.

  “My husband Leib, Colonel Hjortt. Did you meet him at the crossroads?” Her voice was weaker now, barely louder than the quaking aspens. That must be something to hear as one lay in bed after a hard day’s hunt, the rustling of those golden leaves just outside your window.

  “New plan,” said Sir Hjortt, not bothering with the more formal Azgarothian, since she spoke it anyway. “Well, it’s the same as the original, mostly, but instead of riding down before dark we’ll bivouac here for the night.” Smiling at the old woman, he said, “Do not fret, Missus Mayor, do not fret, I won’t be garrisoning my soldiers in your town, I assure you. Camp them outside the wall, when they’re done. We’ll ride out at first”—the thought of sleeping in on a proper bed occurred to him—“noon. We ride at noon tomorrow. Report back to me when it’s done.”

  “Whatever you’re planning, sir, let us parley before you commit yourself,” said the old woman, seeming to awaken from the anxious spell their presence had cast upon her. She had a stern bearing he wasn’t at all sure he liked. “Your officer can surely tarry a few minutes before delivering your orders, especially if we are to have you as our guests for the night. Let us speak, you and I, and no matter what orders you may have, no matter how pressing your need, I shall make it worth your while to have listened.”

  Portolés’s puppy-dog eyes from over the woman’s shoulder turned Sir Hjortt’s stomach. At least Iqbal had the decency to keep his smug gaze on the old woman.

  “Whether or not she is capable of doing so, Sister Portolés will not wait,” said Sir Hjortt shortly. “You and I are talking, and directly, make no mistake, but I see no reason to delay my subordinate.”

  The old woman looked back past Portolés, frowning at the open door of her cabin, and then shrugged. As if she had any say at all in how this would transpire. Flashing a patently false smile at Sir Hjortt, she said, “As you will, fine sir. I merely thought you might have use for the sister as we spoke, for we may be talking for some time.”

  Fallen Mother have mercy, did every single person have a better idea of how Sir Hjortt should conduct himself than he did? This would not stand.

  “My good woman,” he said, “it seems that we have even more to parley than I previously suspected. Sister Portolés’s business is pressing, however, and so she must away before we embark on this long conversation you so desire. Fear not, however, for the terms of supplication your husband laid out to us at the crossroads shall be honored, reasonable as they undeniably are. Off with you, Portolés.”

  Portolés offered him one of her sardonic salutes from over the older woman’s shoulder, and then stalked out of the yard, looking as petulant as he’d ever seen her. Iqbal whispered something to her as he moved out of her way by the gate, and wasn’t fast enough in his retreat when she lashed out at him. The war nun flicked the malformed ear that emerged from Iqbal’s pale tonsure like the outermost leaf of an overripe cabbage, rage rendering her face even less appealing, if such a thing was possible. Iqbal swung his heavy satchel at her in response, and although Portolés dodged the blow, the dark bottom of the sackcloth misted her with red droplets as it whizzed past her face. If the sister noticed the blood on her face, she didn’t seem to care, dragging her feet down the precarious trail, her maul slung over one hunched shoulder.

  “My husband,” the matron whispered, and, turning back to her, Sir Hjortt saw that her wide eyes were fixed on Iqbal’s dripping sack.

  “Best if we talk inside,” said Sir Hjortt, winking at Iqbal and ushering the woman toward her door. “Come, come, I have an absolutely brilliant idea about how you and your people might help with the war effort, and I’d rather discuss it over tea.”

  “You said the war was over,” the woman said numbly, still staring at the satchel.

  “So it is, so it is,” said Sir Hjortt. “But the effort needs to be made to ensure it doesn’t start up again, what? Now, what do you have to slake the thirst of servants of the Empire, home from the front?”

  She balked, but there was nowhere to go, and so she led Sir Hjortt and Brother Iqbal inside. It was quiet in the yard, save for the trees and the clacking of the bone fetishes when the wind ran its palm down the mountain’s stubbly cheek. The screaming didn’t start until after Sister Portolés had returned to the village, and down there they were doing enough of their own to miss the echoes resonating from the mayor’s house.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Everything was dull dull dull, until the princess snuck away from the interminable Equinox Ceremony taking place in the Autumn Palace and went in search of spirits in the pumpkin fields surrounding the Temple of Pentacles.

  Ji-hyeon Bong wasn’t really the princess, only a princess. At home in her familial castle at Hwabun she was one of three, and the middle one at that. And here, in the capital, with all the court gathered, there must be more princesses than there were stars in the sky, all crammed into a multiplicity of ballrooms. Even without being the sole princess in the palace, however, getting away had proven difficult, since Princess Ji-hyeon was here in part to formally meet her fiancé for the very first time. Prince Byeong-gu of Othean, fourth son of Empress Ryuki, Keeper of the Immaculate Isles, seemed every bit as stuck-up as his title had implied, and so Ji-hyeon set herself to escape at all costs, but she never would have managed it without the help of her three guards (especially her Spirit Guard, Brother Mikal, much as he had protested the plan initially). Now the fifteen-year-old woman traipsed through tangled vines under a moon as fat as the gourds at her feet, the hubbub inside the palace walls reduced to a drone much softer than the rasping of fuzzy leaves against silk skirts.

  “Your Highness,” Brother Mikal called from where he and Keun-ju, the princess’s Virtue Guard, strolled along one of the straight paths that cut through the field. “I wonder if you might favor to walk with us here, between the rows rather than across them? Keun-ju is concerned for your gown.”

  “If Keun-ju would prefer to carry my dress for safeguarding, I have no objections to walking naked on such a pleasant eve,” said Ji-hyeon, happy to hear the reserved boy splutter by way of response. He hardly minded such joking when they were alone in her chambers, but in front of Brother Mikal and Choi was another matter.

  “In all seriousness, Princess, I wonder if he might have a point—” Mikal began, but Ji-hyeon cut him off.

  “Wonder no longer, then, for I favor my own approach,” she said, but the wit of her riposte was spoiled as she tripped over a pumpkin. She would have gone down if Choi hadn’t been there to catch her arm; Ji-hyeon grinned at her Martial Guard, and Choi warmly flashed her shark teeth in response. Stitched up in her own slick black gown at the ceremony, Choi could have passed for human, a princess even, if not for her petite horns. She had also looked about as comfortable as a lobster sitting on the edge of a pot, and no more talkative. Ji-hyeon preferred her wildborn guard when the woman was relaxed enough to open her dec
eptively small, fang-filled mouth; apparently guests to her home at Hwabun sometimes assumed the woman was mute, so rarely was she at her ease.

  “Do you think we’ll find one?” Ji-hyeon asked eagerly.

  “The moon’s full and the equinox is near,” said Choi in her gruff, quiet voice. “I’ll be surprised if you don’t, this near to a hungry mouth.”

  Ji-hyeon liked Choi’s sharp teeth, and her ebony horns, and her sometimes frightening speed, and even her sword lessons, exhausting though they were, but most of all the princess liked the way Choi would use the wrong words for things. It was never an error in vocabulary, Ji-hyeon knew, but rather that the wildborn thought the Immaculate tongue was often misused even by native speakers—every cat was actually a trouble, every sword a tusk, every arrow a disgrace… and every Gate a hungry mouth. Looking at the tall pearl walls of the Temple of Pentacles shining ahead of them like a lighthouse across a vegetal sea, Ji-hyeon shivered with delight. She liked being scared, a little, which was part of why she loved Choi so much.

  She loved all of them so much, the three complementing one another every bit as much as they complemented their ward: Choi was serious, but Mikal was very funny and charming and handsome for an older foreign man, and Keun-ju, well, Keun-ju was Keun-ju, her best friend since forever, pretty much. Her Virtue Guard was almost as comely as Mikal and almost as good at swordplay as Choi, plus Keun-ju was better at dressmaking than either, which Ji-hyeon enjoyed just as much as fencing.

  And once she was married to Prince Boring, she would have to leave them all behind and accept whatever new guards her husband provided for her. It made her heartsick, and she turned her mind from it, hard though it was to do when she had just met the man who would take her closest friends away from her. None of the others mentioned it, either, their numbered days the proverbial whale in the carp pond.

  “Is there anything else we can do?” she asked. “Other than walk around, hoping we get lucky?”

  “Luck is an excuse,” said Choi. “If you kept a better vigil you would have already succeeded. I’ve seen three so far.”

  “Nuh-uh!” cried Ji-hyeon, imitating her younger sister’s imitation of some yet younger cousin. “Choi! Why didn’t you show me?”

  Choi’s eyes flashed like rubies even in the colorless pall of the moon, and she gestured to the plants at their feet. “Keep a better vigil.”

  “Mikal!” Ji-hyeon called a good deal louder than was necessary, knowing how much Choi despised an excess of volume… or an excess of anything, really. Other than vigilance. “Mikal, can you do something to make them appear?”

  “Ji-hyeon, the brother’s function is the very opposite of that, as you well know,” said Keun-ju huffily. “Stop trying to get him in trouble.”

  “If my parents find out he bribed the palace guards to spirit me away from the festival, I think that will cause a lot more embarrassment than if he fulfills the dearest wish of a darling daughter,” said Ji-hyeon. “Don’t you think?”

  “Princess, do you believe I am making sport with you when I profess my ignorance of the spirits of your land?” The path Mikal and Keun-ju followed was taking them away from Ji-hyeon and Choi, and so the pair began tramping over to their noble ward. “I would be reluctant to make any assumptions as to their character or, for that matter, their humor at being addressed by a foreigner. Why not return to the palace and ask one of your priestesses if—”

  “If I wanted to talk to the nuns I would have stayed at the party,” said Ji-hyeon, wishing every night could be this perfect, just she and her guards questing beneath a full moon. “I want to see a harvest devil.”

  “Then hush your mouth and be vigilant,” said Choi.

  “I am being vigilant, I just—oh!” Ji-hyeon froze, her heart plunging into ice water as if she had noticed a snake underfoot, her muddy silk shoe suspended in the air above a twisting coil of black vines. The round pumpkin at its center rolled backward in its nest, revealing the triangular eyes and jagged mouth of its face—a faint yellow glow emanated from within the gourd, pouring from maw and eyes to illuminate the gilt hem of Ji-hyeon’s jet gown, shining off the silver buckle of her shoe and the abalone inlay of her dress sword’s scabbard. Then, fast as she’d seen it, the saffron light faded, the eyes and mouth closed over, and it was just a pumpkin again.

  Ji-hyeon squealed in delight, looked up to see if the others had seen… and then gasped, stumbled back, dumbstruck by what reared up in front of her, twenty feet tall, rasping, churning, spiraling. Maddening.

  “Back to the palace, Princess,” Choi hissed as she put herself between Ji-hyeon and the cobra-swaying monolith of vines and leering jack-o’-lanterns that had erupted from the fertile soil of the temple fields. “Now!”

  CHAPTER

  3

  While the copper kettle came to a boil, Sir Hjortt insisted on a tour of the house. Not bad. The interior wouldn’t need too much work beyond redecorating (the tacky old tapestries had to go, and fast). The wall between the kitchen and the living room ought to be punched out, though, to make the ground floor more of a hall. The mayor and mayoress had a surprisingly impressive library, no fewer than fifty tomes crammed onto a beautifully turned fir shelf, so it wasn’t all doilies and bric-a-brac, although there was certainly a bit of that, too. The mantel was cluttered with wooden tubāq pipes and horsehair pottery. He would have to pick out a nice pipe for Aunt Lupitera and a vase for his father. The rest could be trashed.

  Once the herbs or roots or whatever had steeped and been deemed safe for consumption by Brother Iqbal, the witchborn fatass took his tea on the deck overlooking the valley while Sir Hjortt and the mayoress convened at her kitchen table. Under the heavy walnut board dozed a lean mutt that looked as old as the woman and bore more resemblance to a coyote or bearded jackal than it did to a hound. Through the open shutters the aspens gossiped away, their inscrutable whispers as relaxing as strong fingers kneading the knots out of Sir Hjortt’s saddle-cursed buttocks.

  “I wish that you would speak plainly with me, sir,” said the matron, all business now that the tea was poured and she was back in her domestic element. Not even the bloody satchel sitting next to the plate of scones she had put out could shake her up, the hard old cow. “All this stalling is beginning to grate.”

  “Is it?” said Sir Hjortt, frowning into his tea and returning the terra-cotta cup to its saucer. It smelled bitter, whatever she’d put in the pot disagreeing with his nostrils. No tea, then. Bother.

  “Is that… is my husband in that bag?”

  “No, not your husband,” said Sir Hjortt, annoyed that she was leaping to such conclusions, stealing his show. The best he could come up with to reassert his dominance of the situation was to abruptly stand, grab the satchel, and upend its contents onto the table in front of her. It dropped out and, even better than he’d expected, bounced off the table into her lap. “Just his head.”

  Rather than screaming as the knight had hoped, or at least pitching it away in understandable disgust, the woman shrunk her broad shoulders inward as her callused fingers went to the severed head, turning it over to look at her husband’s face. That was a cold draught, it was, seeing this grey hen gently stroke the disgusting, matted hair and gaze lovingly into the wide, horror-frozen eyes of a dead man. The smell was strong from the warm ride, and it turned Sir Hjortt’s stomach.

  “Go ahead and cry if you need to,” said the knight, hoping to prod a more appropriate reaction from the biddy. “Perfectly understandable, given… well, obviously.”

  She looked up at him, and he was satisfied to see her pallid blue eyes shine with emotion. Hatred, maybe, but it was better than nothing. So quietly he barely heard her, she said, “Tears enough in time, Colonel.”

  The woman set the head back on the table, nesting it in the discarded satchel to keep it from rolling off again, and slowly stood. She was half a foot shorter than the knight, and more than twice his age at a minimum, but Sir Hjortt nevertheless shivered to see the wrath on her fac
e.

  A loud bark at groin level made Sir Hjortt start, but rather than attacking his codpiece the mutt shoved its muzzle out from under the table and nosed it against the knight’s bare palm—he had taken off his gauntlet for tea, naturally. He was far more of a cat person, but there’s only so much one can do when confronted with the pleading, rheumy eyes of an ancient dog in desperate need of a petting. He dug his fingers in behind a floppy ear, drawing forth a contented whine, but as he did he kept an eye on the mayor’s widow lest she try something stupid with teapot or butter knife.

  It seemed the enormity of the situation had finally sunk in, for her face fell as she watched him scratch the dog, all her rage replaced with bald terror. Sir Hjortt made no attempt to hide his smirk, and only ceased giving the beast his attention when it licked his fingers and happily tottered away of its own accord. He watched it go to the old woman, but she made no move to pet it, looking back and forth between the animal and the knight with features so wracked that Sir Hjortt wondered if she was having a heart attack right there in front of him.

  Then the dog looked back over its shoulder and smiled at him, its chops curling back to reveal black, rotting teeth and a grub-white tongue. The ugly expression on the mutt’s snout gave Sir Hjortt the chills, and then the dog circled behind the trembling woman and hobbled through the kitchen doorway, wagging its tail as it went. Wiping its now-cold slobber off his hand as he heard it nose the front door open, the knight silently repledged his allegiance to the far less disquieting feline race and decided that prolonging this affair wasn’t so enjoyable after all.