Rod's heart lifted, and he found himself, suddenly and silently, close to tears.
So this was what it was to be revered and genuinely looked up to. He'd written plenty of fictitious, heart- wrenching scenes down the years, in book after book, but this… this was real. There wasn't a shred of fear in those faces; this was no tyrant coming home and marking who genuflected and who did not. This was real.
'Jesus,' he whispered under his breath, shaking his head in awe. To be so, well, 'loved' probably wasn't the right word for it at all, but…
Then they turned into a huge archway into a narrowing stone chute, a rising cobbled ramp between walls bristling with stark, menacing arrow-slit windows, that led to a second arch.
Rod glanced up and found himself looking at a forest of massive spikes; rows of portculli just waiting to thunder down, and beyond them, just before the inner arch, a massive wooden scoop or hinged basket full of what Rod thought were ball bearings could be seen. To pour down the ramp and make every foe and their horse fall, yes, but where did Falconaar get ball bloody bearings?
Not from
So did that mean that ball bearings appeared magically, in smiths' back rooms and castle armories and market stalls? Or that overnight some Falconaar conceived of them, and how to fashion them round and nigh perfect, and awakened driven to make some, and not cease until they were being snapped up all over the Falcon Kingdoms? How did this… what had Tay called it? Oh, yes, 'shaping.' How did this shaping reaily work, anyway?
Beyond the inner archway, the way widened into a huge open space where many cobbled streets met. A busy moot was fronted by three guardposts where hard-eyed guards manned crossbows as large as wagons that hurled quarrels larger than the knights' lances. The crossbows were aimed right at the archway, to fire down the throats of anyone trying to storm the castle gates. Beyond, the crowded, many-balconied buildings of the city rose like a dirty gray-brown wall, but one broad street ran on through them, straight and true, rising at its far end into…
'My home,' the velduke said, pointing. At a large, spartan-looking stone keep up on a hill, crowning the highest point of the hill covered by the city, right at the back, beyond all the crowded roofs.
'Jesus,' Rod hissed again, as the knights started the long trot down the avenue. It was one thing to blithely write about tall buildings and crowded cities and reeking dung-wagons, but quite another to ride through the heart of it all gawking around, seeing and smelling and…
He saw washing hanging from balcony rails, and stout women with weathered faces securing it with wooden pegs bristling from their mouths. He saw scores of men and children trudging or even struggling under the weight of laden caskets and coffers and sacks; the trade in every shop seemed to involve carrying lots of things. And everywhere Rod saw folk pause in what they were doing to glance down at the procession of riding knights, recognize the bareheaded velduke, and straighten to smartly bring their hands to their chests in salute. Jeez, that was impressive.
He glanced over at Deldragon; as before, the velduke was nodding back to everyone he saw saluting him.
Flies were everywhere, and horse dung underfoot, though children with scoops or using just their hands and stained old sacks were darting out between horses and hurrying folk to scoop up the steaming droppings. Rod turned in his saddle to see where one of them-a dirty-faced girl in a rag of a dress-went, and saw her hasten down an alley and in at a door.
Then they were past, and he could see that alley no more, and the streets were rising and growing broader and less crowded. The houses were grander, now, some of them having little stone walls and arched metal gates enclosing tiny garden-yards, rather than opening directly onto the street. He'd seen nothing that could be called a sidewalk, nor…
A sudden, strident war-horn fanfare jolted him upright, blinking.
He was in time to see the knights in front of them parting, turning aside and bringing their horses to head- tossing halts, to let the velduke and his honored guests enter Deldragon's castle first.
They rode through an arch wide enough for six riders abreast, in a crenelated wall perhaps thirty feet high, into a wide cobbled area in front of a grand door at the top of wide stone steps, with another archway into the gloom of some sort of interior coachyard, beyond.
Uniformed servants were waiting for them on those steps, and grooms to take the reins of their horses, crimson dragons bright on many steel-gray breasts. It was impressive; Rod sat uncertainly in his saddle until Taeauna and the velduke both started to dismount. Then he promptly discovered how stiff and sore his legs were as he tried to do the same and ended up half dismounting and half falling out of his saddle, wincing.
The horse was led away while he was still limping over to Taeauna, and in a sort of daze Rod found more smartly uniformed servants than he could count bowing low to him in unison and then whisking him up the steps with the Aumrarr at his side. To his confused, wonderstruck look she replied with a wink and a grin, and Rod found himself being smoothly conducted along dark, grandly paneled passages where countless servants averted their stares to bow low, up a grand-bannistered flight of stone stairs to ornate double doors that waiting servants in daggercoats flung wide, and into a suite of brightly lit rooms where the grand procession suddenly ended, leaving him blinking in the sudden stillness.
'Your rooms, gentles,' a grandly liveried servant murmured from behind Rod and Taeauna, as he withdrew, softly drawing the double doors closed again as he bowed and departed behind them.
More servants stood waiting in the doorways of five-no, six-inner rooms, and now smoothly bowed in unison, and… and…
Taeauna stepped forward, and then saw something (what, Rod could not tell) and stopped dead.
She whirled to face Rod, eyes flashing a 'be still' warning, and as swiftly spun right back the way she'd been facing, turning her head to look intently around at all the servants. She clapped her hands briskly, and announced, 'We thank you very much for your kind attendance, but now most urgently require you all to depart and leave us.'
No one moved.
The Aumrarr drew herself up and said curtly, 'Go. Now. All of you.'
Rod saw heads turning, junior servants looking to those ranked above them. Taeauna saw who they were looking to, and leveled her own cold gaze on those four senior servants.
They coughed, nodded, and kept their reddening faces carefully expressionless. One by one, they bowed again to Taeauna and then to Rod, and slipped away, the other servants melting away with them.
Rod tried as hard to keep from looking puzzled, as all of them obviously were; try as he might, he couldn't see anything in all the luxury surrounding him that should spur Taeauna to suddenly act as she was.
He could see nothing at all alarming or unusual.
'I dismissed all of you,' the Aumrarr said firmly, her voice colder than ever. She raised it a trifle to add, 'Including you who watch and listen in the walls. Just go, and tell your master that I ordered your withdrawal. For your own protection.'
Rod shook his head, bewildered. 'What-?'
Taeauna's hand closed on his, quellingly, as she said to the walls around them, 'I jest not. Now go.'
Rod heard the slightest of sounds off to his left, and a faint stirring, clear across the room. Then silence.
'Staying, still?' Taeauna asked, her gaze fixed on just one wall now. 'Well, I warned you. Your doom is of your own choosing.'
She turned then and embraced Rod Everlar like a lover, her body melting against his, her lips nuzzling his ear.
'Is this your 'right place?'' she breathed.
Rod kissed her jaw just above the chin, and let his lips trail along it to her ear, heart pounding. (Hey! I'm like a suave secret agent, kissing the girl! Not that he could recall many stories where the beautiful Russian lady spy was sporting the stumps of recently clipped wings.) 'No,' he whispered, as quietly as he knew how. 'What's up?'
Taeauna's arms went up and around his neck, as if in quickening lust, so she could bury her lips in his ear
