The Sapphire Rose

‘Do you have any idea of what he’s talking about, Sparhawk?’ Dolmant asked in perplexity.

‘Yes, Your Grace.’

‘But you’re not going to explain it to me, are you?’

‘No, Your Grace, I don’t think so. How’s Ehlana?’ he asked his squire.

‘Difficult,’ Kurik grunted. ‘Unprincipled. Abrasive. Wilful. Overbearing. Demanding. Sneaky. Unforgiving – just your average, run-of-the-mill young queen. I like her, though. She reminds me of Flute for some reason.’

‘I wasn’t asking for a description, Kurik,’ Sparhawk said. ‘I was inquiring as to her health.’

‘She seems fine to me. If there was anything wrong with her, she wouldn’t be able to run that fast.’

‘Run?’

‘She seems to feel that she missed a great deal while she was asleep, so she’s trying to catch up. She’s had her nose in every corner of the palace by now. Lenda’s seriously contemplating suicide, I think, and the chambermaids are all in a state of despair. You can’t hide a speck of dust from her. She may not have the best kingdom in the world when she’s finished, but she’s certainly going to have the neatest.’ Kurik reached inside his leather vest. ‘Here,’ he said, pulling out a very thick packet of folded parchment. ‘She wrote you a letter. Give yourself time to read it, My Lord. It took her two days to write it.’

‘How’s the home guard idea working out?’ Kalten asked.

‘Quite well, actually. Just before I left, a battalion of church soldiers arrived outside the city. The battalion commander made the mistake of standing too near the gate when he demanded admittance. A couple of citizens dumped something on him.’

‘Burning pitch?’ Tynian surmised.

‘No, Sir Tynian,’ Kurik grinned. ‘The two fellows make their living draining and cleaning cesspools. The officer received the fruit of their day’s labour – about a hogshead full. The colonel – or whatever he was under all of that – lost his head and ordered an assault on the gate. That’s when the rocks and burning pitch came into play. The soldiers set up camp not too far from the east wall to think things over, and late that night a score or so of Platime’s cut-throats climbed down ropes from the parapet and visited their camp. The soldiers didn’t have too many officers left the following morning. They milled around out there for a while, and then they went away. I think your queen’s quite safe, Sparhawk. As a group, soldiers aren’t very imaginative, and unconventional tactics tend to confuse them. Platime and Stragen are having the time of their lives, and the common people are beginning to take a certain pride in their city. They’re even sweeping the streets on the off chance that Ehlana might ride by on one of her morning inspections.’

‘Those idiots aren’t letting her out of the palace, are they?’ Sparhawk exclaimed angrily.

‘Who’s going to stop her? She’s safe, Sparhawk. Platime put the biggest woman I’ve ever seen to guarding her. The woman’s almost as big as Ulath, and she carries more weapons than a platoon.’

‘That would be Mirtai, the giantess,’ Talen said. ‘Queen Ehlana’s perfectly safe, Sparhawk. Mirtai’s an army all by herself.’

‘A woman?’ Kalten asked incredulously.

‘I wouldn’t recommend calling her that to her face, Kalten,’ the boy said seriously. ‘She thinks of herself as a warrior, and nobody in his right mind argues with her. She wears men’s clothes most of the time, probably because she doesn’t want to be pestered by fellows who like their women large. She’s got knives attached to her in some of the most unexpected places. She’s even got a pair built into the soles of her shoes. Not much of those two knives stick out past her toes, but it’s enough. You really wouldn’t want her to kick you in certain tender places.’

‘Where did Platime ever come across a woman like that?’ Kalten asked him.

‘He bought her,’ Talen shrugged. ‘She was about fifteen at the time and hadn’t reached her full growth. She didn’t speak a word of Elene, I’ve been told. He tried to put her to work in a brothel, but after she’d crippled or killed a dozen or so potential customers, he changed his mind.’

‘Everybody speaks Elene,’ Kalten objected.

‘Not in the Tamul Empire, I understand. Mirtai’s a Tamul. That’s why she has such a strange name. I’m afraid of her, and I don’t say that about many people.’

‘It’s not only the giantess, Sparhawk,’ Kurik continued. ‘The common people know their neighbours, and they know everybody who has unreliable political opinions. The people are fanatically loyal to the queen now, and every one of them makes it his personal business to keep an eye on his neighbours. Platime’s rounded up just about everybody in town who’s the least bit suspect.’

‘Annias has a lot of underlings in Cimmura,’ Sparhawk fretted.

‘He used to, My Lord,’ Kurik corrected. “There were a number of messy object lessons, and if there’s anyone left in Cimmura who doesn’t love the queen, he’s being very careful to keep that fact to himself. Can I have something to eat? I’m famished.’

The funeral of Archprelate Cluvonus was suitably stupendous. Bells tolled for days, and the air inside the Basilica was tainted with incense and with chants and hymns solemnly delivered in archaic Elene, a language very few present could still comprehend. All clerics wore sober black in most situations, but such solemn occasions as this brought forth a rainbow of brightly-coloured vestments. The Patriarchs all wore crimson, and the Primates were robed in the colours of their kingdom of origin. Each of the nineteen cloistered orders of monks and nuns had its own special colour, and each colour had its own special significance. The nave of the Basilica was a riot of often conflicting colours, more closely resembling the site of a Cammorian country fair than a place where a solemn funeral was being conducted. Obscure little rituals and superstitious hold-overs from antiquity were religiously performed, although no one had the faintest notion of their significance. A sizeable number of priests and monks, whose sole duties in life were to perform those rituals and antiquated ceremonies, appeared briefly in public for the only times in their lives. One aged monk, whose sole purpose in life was to carry a black velvet cushion upon which rested a dented and very tarnished salt-cellar thrice around the Archprelate’s bier, became so excited that his heart fluttered and stopped, and a replacement for him had to be appointed on the spot. The replacement, a pimply-faced young novice of indifferent merit and questionable piety, wept with gratitude as he realized that his position in life was completely secure now, and that he would only be required actually to do any work once every generation or so.