Year of the Griffin Read online

  Corkoran sighed. “I’ll see them after lunch in the Council Chamber,” he said, and sent out for lunch at once, before anything else could happen. But he and his lunch had barely arrived in his rooms before he found one of the secretaries showing an Empire centurion through his door. This man saluted him, Empire fashion, with a violently outflung arm that made Corkoran start backward, and announced that the two noble senators of the Empire, Antoninus and Empedocles, were presently in the city and craved instant audience with him. Corkoran irritably decided to see them at the same time as he saw the dwarfs. Get both lots over with at once. “After lunch,” he said. “In the Council Chamber.” This way he might save at least a quarter of the day to get to work in.

  The centurion flung an arm out again and departed. Corkoran ate his lunch slowly, making notes about his moonship as he ate and wishing he had stayed longer with his students. Ruskin had not said nearly enough. He would have to arrange some kind of special tutorial and get Ruskin to talk about the moonship some more. Eventually, sighing at this waste of his time, Corkoran set off down the stone stairway to go to the Council Chamber.

  He was halfway down the stairs when the legionaries, followed by the senators, followed by more legionaries, began streaming extremely quickly across the hallway to the Council Chamber. These were followed by a slow and stately group of dwarfs. Corkoran stopped where he was, struck by how magnificent they all were. He had intended to interview them all in his usual T-shirt and his comet-decorated tie, to show them how busy he was. But now he had serious second thoughts.

  These people are rich, he thought. I sent both lots a request for money, and this is probably why they’re here. I have to meet them looking as stately as they do, to show them what a fine and august place they’ll be giving their support to. He sighed again as he conjured his official robes to him and climbed into them on the stairs. Ever since the tours, when Mr. Chesney had insisted that wizards all wear robes all the time, Corkoran had hated the wretched garments. Nevertheless, he went grandly down the rest of the stairs, wearing the red of a Third Level Wizard, with the hanging hood of ermine that showed he was a high official of the University, and feeling hot and disgruntled.

  In the Council Chamber they all bowed to him, and he was glad he had bothered with the robes. The two senators were in the full pomp of their Imperial senatorial purple, red borders, laurel wreaths and all, and the spacious chamber seemed crammed with all their legionaries. The dwarfs took Corkoran’s breath away, with their gilded, jeweled armor, ceremonial weapons, and the precious stones swinging in the braids of their hair and beards. Two of them, whose hair was white, wore exquisite platinum coronets on their snowy heads.

  Corkoran was awed by all this wealth, though he tried not to show it. He went briskly to the other side of the Council table and sat down facing them all. At this the two senators creakingly lowered themselves into seats, while the legionaries stood in massed ranks behind them. The two white-haired dwarfs also climbed into chairs, jingling faintly, and the other dwarfs crowded behind them on foot. So these standing ones were there to make the sitting dwarfs look important, just like the legionaries, Corkoran thought.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said pleasantly, but in a brisk, I’m-really-very-busy tone. “What can I do for you?”

  “Who are you?” demanded one of the dwarfs who were standing up.

  Corkoran blinked a bit. “I’m Corkoran, Wizard Chairman of the Governing Board of the University. And you are?”

  “I am Antoninus,” said the left-hand senator, deftly cutting in, “Senator of the Empire. Beside me sits my colleague Senator Empedocles, and we have urgent business—”

  Corkoran nodded pleasantly and turned to the dwarfs. “And you gentlemen?”

  “We,” said the right-hand dwarf with the coronet, “are all forgemasters from Central Peaks fastness, and we are our own soldiers.” His green eyes swept sneeringly over the rigid legionaries. “We have no need to bring protection with us. I am Dobrey, son of Davelly, son of Dorkan, son of Dwain, who was founder of the tribe of forgemasters. Beside me sits Genno, son of Gart, son of Graid, son of Dwain, and behind me to my right stands Hordo, son of Harnid, son of Hennel, son of Haman, son of Dwain. And to his left stands Clodo …”

  Corkoran listened unbelievingly as every one of the ten dwarfs was introduced by name and by descent. Senator Empedocles leaned toward Senator Antoninus to whisper, “This need to recite one’s pedigree puts one in mind of a horse fair.”

  “What can one expect of nonhumans?” Senator Antoninus whispered back, shrugging.

  Corkoran began to see he might have made a mistake to put these two groups together.

  “… And we have come here—” continued Dobrey.

  “No doubt on a very great errand,” Senator Empedocles slid in deftly. Corkoran could see he was a senior veteran of committees. “But ours is pressing, Wizard. As you must know, our great Empire is the cradle and nurse of democracy, throughout all its classes and many distinctions. The Senate, to which I have the honor to belong, is but the highest of our democratic institutions, being selected by the votes of all the people on a five-yearly basis and thus being the supreme voice of the will of the people. The Emperor himself, not being so elected, on many occasions discovers the aforesaid will of the people through the votes of the Senate and is of course swayed by it. Thus I may say—though with all due diffidence, Wizard—that I and my senatorial colleague beside me represent the revealed will of the Emperor. If you follow me.”

  Corkoran did not follow Empedocles. He had no idea what the fellow was on about. Dobrey, sitting with his massive braceleted arms folded over his breastplate, said contemptuously, “He means his Emperor hasn’t told him to come and probably doesn’t know he’s here. Right, Senator?”

  Empedocles’s wrinkled mouth pinched furiously at the corners, but he inclined his head politely to the dwarf. “This being so”—Antoninus smoothly took over—“it follows that it is imperative that you, Wizard, understand our position, or stance, if I may put it that way. Our nobly democratic institutions can only keep their integrity, integrity that is our most precious asset, if they preserve the integrity of the entire people, of our whole Imperial family, by ensuring, for their smooth operation and the maintaining of our high standards, that we take such measures toward cleanliness, unity, and normalcy as we can. Any tinge—I will not go so far as to call it a taint—of what might loosely be called anti-Imperial is to us a thing to be deplored and expunged at all costs.”

  Antoninus was worse than Empedocles. Corkoran looked involuntarily toward Dobrey. Dobrey’s eyebrows were up, wrinkling his bulging forehead all the way up to his coronet. “Lovely,” he said. “Intricate. Wizard, I think this one’s on about not wanting to mix their breed. But he’s said it so tangled up that he could turn around and tell you he was saying just the opposite if he needed to.”

  Antoninus gave Dobrey a steady snakelike stare. “My good dwarf, do you wish to make my statement for me?”

  Dobrey waved a massive hand. “No, no. Carry on. This is amusing.”

  “We don’t like half-breeds either,” Genno remarked from beside him.

  Corkoran suddenly discovered what they were talking about. “You mean, you’ve come here about Claudia,” he said.

  Two laureled heads gravely bowed at him. “An understanding having been reached,” Empedocles said, “we can now proceed to outline our position more precisely. Our Imperial ruler, gracious Emperor Titus, is still quite young and has so far regrettably failed to provide for the advancement of the griffin through another glorious generation—”

  “Emperor won’t get married,” Dobrey translated.

  “And as matters stand”—Empedocles continued, ignoring this—“the chief person to profit from the reversion of the Imperial title and honors is this most unfortunate half sister. You see our problem, Wizard. Without in the least wishing to go against the august preferences of the Emperor, we would want rather to preempt them by ann
ihilating any threat of mixed blood at the heart of the Imperium.”

  “With this in view,” Antoninus put in, “we in the Senate were exceedingly interested in the discovery that this University is currently, and we hope temporarily, suffering a slight shortfall in its funding. The Emperor would, I am sure, in the right circumstances, be happy to put it to the vote in the Senate that the Empire relieve, to some extent, the embarrassments of a worthy institution, so that matters can be adjusted to the satisfaction of all parties.”

  Dobrey chuckled. “And now he’s offering you a bribe.”

  “To hand her over so that they can snuff her,” Genno explained.

  Two laureled brows turned and lowered at the dwarf party.

  “Or you can snuff her yourself if you’d rather,” Genno added.

  “This is infinitely crude,” said Antoninus.

  “But moderately accurate,” said Empedocles.

  But I think I’m going to need Claudia for my moonshot! Corkoran thought. I’ve never seen anyone calculate as fast as she does. This morning he had felt nearer to getting to the moon than he had ever felt before. On the other hand, there was no denying that the University needed money badly. The two different needs pulled Corkoran this way and that like the rope in a tug-of-war. He could tell Claudia to work for him or he’d let the senators have her. But there was no guarantee that Claudia was as good as she seemed. He could take the senators’ money and use some of it to hire someone else who could calculate equally swiftly. But there was no guarantee that he could find anyone who could. No—hang on! There might be a way to keep Claudia and get the money. The senators, thanks to the dwarfs, had let him know that the Emperor had no idea they were here.

  Corkoran raised his head with a regretful, sad smile. “Alas, gentlemen. You should have come and talked to me a week ago, before my fellow tutors discovered that the young lady in question, though a half-breed, is their most promising student for years. The University has already decided to award her a scholarship. Talent counts over blood here, you know. We have to retain the young lady on our books.”

  The senators turned and looked at one another. Antoninus raised an eyebrow. Empedocles nodded. Both old men got up. “Then we won’t waste any more of your valuable time, Wizard,” Empedocles said, “but merely remind you, in view of your resolve to retain the young person in question, that the Empire never sleeps, never rests.”

  Bother! Corkoran thought, watching the legionaries form up smartly in squads and smartly march out of the chamber with the senators pacing in their midst. That was a warning. It almost certainly meant more assassins. Still, they had dealt with one lot of assassins, so they could probably handle another—except that this time Corkoran was determined that the Emperor was going to help them do it. Just get rid of the dwarfs first. He waited until the doors had boomed shut behind the last legionary and turned to the dwarfs.

  Dobrey grinned at him. “Oddly enough,” he said, “we’re here on a rather similar matter.”

  “But we don’t beat about bushes,” said Genno. “We want that Ruskin back. We’ll pay in treasure or in gold bars, whichever you prefer. So how much?”

  Now that the senators had left, the other eight dwarfs clearly felt no need to pretend to be an honor guard. They pulled out chairs and hopped up into them with sighs of relief. “Oh, my poor feet!” said one, Hordo, Corkoran thought, and leaned his elbows on the table. “Name your price, Wizard. You need the money. Everyone in town was telling us that your roofs leak and about how Bardic College and Healers Hall both refused you a loan last summer.”

  This was true, unfortunately. Corkoran was still smarting, when he thought about the matter, about how rude the bards had been. He could see no way out of this demand. And he was exasperated because he was fairly sure that he needed Ruskin to work on the moonship even more than he needed Claudia to calculate its course. He thought of losing the chance of all the exquisite dwarf handwork Ruskin could do for him and almost ground his teeth. He could make Ruskin do the work by threatening to sell him to these forgemasters, but only if he could see some way of inducing these dwarfs to let him keep Ruskin here. It was fairly clear that they were too blunt and shrewd to believe him for a moment if he suggested another scholarship for Ruskin. “Why?” he asked, playing for time. “What do rich, high-caste dwarfs like you want with a measly runt like Ruskin?”

  “That’s the nubbin of it,” Dobrey said. “We’re all Sons of Dwain here. Forgemasters. Artisans like Ruskin are our slaves—legally. They belong to us, Wizard. All the lower tribes do.”

  “And we can’t have a slave running off like this,” Genno explained. “He has to be taken back and publicly executed as an example to the rest, or they’ll all think they can run off.”

  “Yes, I see that,” Corkoran said. “But I met a lot of dwarfs while I was on the tours, forgemasters and artisans, too, and nobody ever suggested the artisans were slaves.”

  “Western dwarfs,” Dobrey said dismissively. “Different customs. Dwain made our customs when he took over Central Peaks five hundred years ago. Did it legally, too, with Wizard Policant for witness. Came all the way here to this University to make sure it was lawful.”

  “Look in your library,” said Hordo with his elbows on the table. “You’ll find that agreement in your Inventory. We brought our copy with us, just to make sure. That Ruskin belongs to us, and you’ve got to give him back.”

  “Let’s see your copy then,” Corkoran said, still playing for time.

  Dobrey, who was obviously the senior forgemaster, fetched a folded parchment from the front of his ornamental gold breastplate. It was brown with age and almost clattered with stiffness as Corkoran took it and spread it out. Yes, there it was, all in order, with Policant’s crabbed black signature beside the University seal at the bottom and a swirl that deciphered as “Dwain” at the other corner. “Artisans, miners, drudges … agree to form clans, these clans to be the sole property of forgemasters … this agreement in exchange for certain spells of protection donated by the University in consideration of one ton of gold … said spells only known to forgemasters and of proven value against the demons of the deep....”

  So this was why the low-caste dwarfs sold themselves, Corkoran thought. Silly thing to do. But it clearly brought the University quite a profit. Wizard Policant must have been a smooth operator. “Do you still have the spells, or much trouble with demons?” he asked, wondering if he could offer to renew the spells in exchange for Ruskin.

  Dobrey coughed. “Er-hem. Naturally we’ve still got the spells, but between you and me, Wizard, those demons were what you might call a legal figment. A lot of the dwarfs thought there were demons in the lower galleries, so it came to the same thing. And that doesn’t alter the agreement one bit.”

  “Of course not,” Corkoran agreed. So the only thing for it seemed to be to operate as smoothly as old Policant and ask for a ton of gold this time, too. Then give half of it back in exchange for a team of artisans to work on the moonship. Who might do the work much faster than Ruskin on his own, anyway. “Well, then …” Corkoran began.

  The big doors of the Council Chamber swung open, and Lukin came in. Olga was with him, very stately in her fur cloak. Lukin had a stately air to him as well, even more than Olga did. Knowing how important this was, Lukin had struggled against his usual desire not to be prince or king of anywhere and had managed to pull over himself all the royal magnetism he usually left to Isodel. “Good day, forgemasters,” he said, every inch a prince.

  “Oh, go away!” Corkoran said irritably. “Two of my students,” he explained to the interested dwarfs.

  “My business,” Lukin stated firmly and majestically, “is with the forgemasters.” Before Corkoran could say any more, he said to the dwarfs, “I am the Crown Prince of Luteria, and I find myself in need of a servitor in this place. By an oversight, I left my man behind in Luteria. I’ve come to buy Ruskin from you as a replacement.”

  The dwarfs all put back their braided an
d helmeted heads and bellowed with laughter. “And what, lad, do you think you could offer us that we don’t have twice as much of, anyway?” Dobrey asked, with his face all creased up in amusement. “If you’re talking gold, forget it. Precious jewels, fine work, the same goes.”

  “I’m serious,” Lukin said. “I’ve come to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

  Corkoran prudently decided to keep out of this. He could hardly lose. If Lukin won, he had Ruskin to work on the moonship and money from the Emperor Titus, anyway. If the forgemasters refused the bargain, whatever it was, there would be even more money and a team of artisans into the bargain. He sat back.

  “You’d have to be offering something pretty valuable, lad,” Genno observed.

  “I am,” Lukin said with his chin haughtily raised, and hoped mightily that this was true. It was a mad gamble that he and Olga were trying, from a plan hatched with difficulty while Ruskin was almost incoherent with terror, and Claudia just as bad and no help at all. It all depended on Elda’s sudden conviction that the small golden notebook was very valuable indeed. Why else, Elda said, had it been among Olaf’s hidden treasures? At which Felim had looked thoughtful and asked Olga why she had kept it instead of selling it with the rest of the treasure she had taken. Olga was not sure, except that she felt drawn to it somehow. At which Felim nodded to Elda and said it was quite probably some sort of magical virtue in the notebook that made Olga feel this way.

  The plan they hurriedly hatched after that depended on the senators’ leaving before the dwarfs. Because, as Felim pointed out, senators were rich people, too, and they didn’t want the matter confused by a senator becoming covetous and wanting either Ruskin or the notebook for himself. So would the senators be likely to get their word in first? “Oh, they will, they will!” Claudia had cried out, with her teeth chattering. “They always do.” Felim had sped off to watch and returned with the welcome news that the senators were just leaving. Lukin and Olga had sprinted to the Council Chamber with only the sketchiest notion of what they were to say.