souls.
At last they entered a small, private courtyard turned off from the main processional route, a guest wing attached to the main household. Pinch remembered this section of the compound as particularly secure, bastioned by a bluff to the rear and deep enough into the palace grounds to make unnoticed departures nearly impossible. Short of the dungeons, it would have been his choice for housing a crew such as his, although Cleedis was wrong to think this would contain them. Pinch and his gang had escaped from lock-ups more determined than this in their years spent looting Elturel.
A resounding chorus of yelps and howls greeted their arrival, and disabused the regulator of any hope that Cleedis had underestimated them. While they handed off their mounts to the waiting grooms, a chaos of sulfurous fire and smoke boiled from dark kennels on the east wall. At first it seemed a wild pack of hounds charged, until one saw the beasts' chops drooling embers and each yelp a belch of flame. The hounds were things of hellish fire, coal- black coats seared with eyes and breaths of flame. The horses kicked and reared with fearsome fright, dragging the boy-grooms with them.
'Gods' pizzle on the heads of the ungrateful!' blurted Therin in an old Gur curse. With a slick hiss his sword cleared the scabbard. 'Pinch, strike right. I'll take the center. Maeve, your spells at ready.' It was for moments like this that Pinch kept the Gur around, ceding battle command to him.
Just as the four set themselves for the slaughter- theirs or the beasts', they could not be sure-chains clanked as a trainer single-handedly dragged the lunging beasts backward across the smooth flagstones, coiling the iron leashes around his arm. Lumbering from the shadows of the wall, he was a brute, not quite a giant yet greater than a man. He was bare skinned save for a steel codpiece, scabrous fur and warts stretched over grotesquely knotted muscles. Everything about him was disproportionate. His ears and nose-a broad, corded thing-dominated his head, overpowering the weak eyes buried in ridges of bone. His arms were greater than his legs, which were mighty, and his forearms greater than the rest of his arms. Even while straining with the hellhounds, the ogre swaggered with the dim confidence of muscle.
'Surrabak hold them, small chief.' It was a voice burned by bad firewine and cheap pipeweed and stretched harsher by three days of carousing, but it was his natural voice.
'Rightly done. Take them back to their kennel.' Cleedis boldly stepped forward, holding a hand out to stay Pinch and the others. 'Stay your hand,' he said sotto voce. 'He can be unpredictable.'
Although he wondered how much of that was for theatrical benefit, Pinch made a quick gesture to the others, the silent hand language of their brotherhood. With slow, wary care the weapons were put away.
'Surrabak do. Hear small chief come back. Bring Surrabak orders from great chief?' The hellhounds were now within reach of the ogre's cudgel, and he unhesitatingly laid into them until their snarls became yelps of pain.
'The great chief is honored to have a killer like Surrabak. He says you must always obey… little chief.' The last words bit against Cleedis's pride. Nonetheless, he pointed to the four foreigners and continued, 'Little chief-me, Cleedis-tells you to guard these little ones. Do not let anyone come here unless they show my sign. Do you remember the sign?'
With the hellhounds in a tense pack at his feet, the ogre scowled, flaring his lumpy nose as he tried to remember. Tusks curved out from under his thick lips. His dim eyes sank farther in as he pondered hard.
'Surrabak know little chief's sign.'
Cleedis gave a sigh of exasperated relief. 'Good. Guard them well, or big chief will become angry and punish you.'
'Surrabak guard. No one get in.' With that, the ogre barked to the pack and slouched back to the kennels, half-dragging the iron leashes still wrapped around his arm.
'Little chief, big chief… That thing doesn't know Manferic's dead, does it?'
Cleedis ignored Pinch's question and stopped at the entrance to the wing, a small cluster of rooms once the queen's summer rooms. 'The servants will show you to your quarters.' As Sprite and the others stepped to go inside, the royal bodyguards stopped them. 'Not you three. There are other rooms in the west hall for you.' As if to reassure them, the chamberlain nodded across the way to another colonnaded building.
'We should be with him,' Sprite snapped. 'We're his friends and it's up to us to stay together.'
'Objections, Pinch?'
For a moment nobody said anything as Pinch looked to his companions. The Gur had his hand to sword, ready for the word if it were given. Maeve looked to Pinch for protection, while Sprite glared back with cold defiance. The Lord Chamberlain let a devil's smile seize his lips and turn up the corners.
'Well?'
'Take them. They're not a damn to me.'
The bodyguards sidled forward, eager for the fight. If the wind had blown a leaf a different direction across the courtyard, there might have been battle, but it didn't and there wasn't. The three stood frozen as their regulator turned his back on them and went inside.
'We're not done with you, Pinch, you bastard!' Therin bellowed as the door slammed shut.
Inside, Pinch paused, waving off the valet who hustled forward. He strained his ears for the sounds of trouble, fearful there would be a fight. It was part of the playact to turn his back on them, but as he pressed himself against the wall, the rogue was assailed by doubts. Was he playacting? He might need them; that was as much as he understood friendship. The thought of risking his life to save them simply because they were his gang… They know the game, he reasoned to himself. They'll know the playacting from the real. And if they don't…
Pinch didn't know what he would do.
Finally, when it was clear nothing would happen, Pinch followed the servant to his rooms. A bath had been drawn and clothes already laid out: a fine, black set of hose with burgundy and white doublet and pantaloons of the best cut.
It wasn't until he was washed, shaved, trimmed, and dressed that a runner arrived from Lord Cleedis with orders to attend in the west hall. The timing was no accident, Pinch knew. No doubt the servants assigned him reported directly to Cleedis's ear. The rogue had no illusions about the degree of freedom and trust the Lord Chamberlain was allowing him.
Sauntering through the halls, the rogue took his time. No doubt everyone expected his appearance with whatever eager maliciousness they possessed. Certainly his dear, dear cousins were hardly reformed; kindness, love, and generosity were not survival skills in Manferic's court. The rogue guessed that things were only worse now; while he was alive, the fear of Manferic had always been a great restraint.
So Pinch ambled through the halls, refreshing his memory for the layout of the palace, appraising old treasures he once ignored, and admiring and appraising pieces new to him. It was almost fun, looking at his old life through the eyes of another. Portraits of the royal line, with their arrogance and superiority, were of less interest for him now than the frames that held them. Vases he rated by what a broker would pay, furniture by the amount of gilt upon it. Always there was the question of how to get it out of Ankhapur, where to find the right broker.
The tip-tap of feet across the age-polished marble broke Pinch's reverie. 'Master Janol, the court awaits you in the dining hall,' said the prim-faced Master of the Table, a post identified by his uniform.
Let them simmer in their pots. Without changing his comfortable pace, Pinch nodded that he would be coming. He was not about to be dictated to by a petty court functionary-or by those who sent him. He would arrive late because he chose to.
Then the stone corridors echoed with a crackling chuckle as Pinch laughed at his own conceit. There was no choice for him. He would be late because they all expected him to be late. Anything else and the royal ward Janol would not be the prodigal scoundrel they all envisioned-rebellious, unrepentant, and unsubtle. Let them imagine him how they wanted; he'd play the part-for now.
By the time he pushed open the ridiculously tall doors and strode into the magically lit dining hall, the diners had dispensed with acceptable gossip and were now trapped listening to the Lord Chamberlain describe his journey. The old chamberlain looked up as the doors creaked open and, barely breaking his tale, nodded for Pinch to come to the center of the great curved table and present himself to the royal heirs.
The old rogue, a man of steady balance on a rooftop, icy nerve in a knife fight, and sure wit to puzzle but a magical ward, felt the thick, slow-motion dread of stage fright. It was a decade and more since he'd last been in such company, and suddenly he was worried about forgetting all the subtle niceties and nuances of courtly etiquette. It's not that he minded insulting some portentous ass, it's just that doing so accidentally took all the fun out of it.
