Upland Outlaws Read Free Page A

recognizing the imperor, although he was merely a young man in doublet and cloak, with nothing remarkable about his appearance. Physically, the puny little boy had grown into a nondescript adult, cursed with unsightly acne like so many male imps. Royal responsibilities had expanded his psyche, though. A sorcerer could pick him out immediately as a man worthy of notice, one who burned brighter. He was staring at Rap with his mind racing, weighing risks and probabilities and possible deceptions.
    “Rap!” he whispered. “Really Rap?”
    Rap said, “My, Shandie, but you’ve grown! I’ll bet you can’t wriggle through that transom into the Imperial Library anymore. “
    “Ah, Rap!” The imperor strode forward and enveloped his old friend in an embrace of welcome.
    Yes, this was a worthy young ruler and trained warrior-he was cautious, yet he could make fast decisions. Even as a child, he had possessed charm. Rap was reassured. If he could like the new imperor as a person, that would make cooperation easier in whatever trouble was brewing.
    On the other hand, by remaining in his capital, Shandie was ignoring the warnings of a warlock, and that was plain pigheadedness, whatever Raspnex’s motives had been. Rap would have to pound some common sense into the imperial skull, and quickly. He had no mundane authority to wield. He detested the thought of using sorcery to impose his will on other people, although in this case the stakes might be high enough to justify even that obscenity.
    Little Princess Uomaya was asleep in her mother’s lap. Impress Eshiala did not attempt to rise; regarding the newcomer gravely, she held up fingers to be kissed. She was very young, breathtakingly beautiful, and terrified out of her wits. She was concealing that fact totally from everyone else.
    Rap bowed, kissed, murmured polite greetings. Did Shandie not realize that his lovely wife was teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown? Gods! Who would want to be a sorcerer? Whatever evil was rending her was more than the handiwork of a single stressful day, though, and it would have to wait.
    There was something oddly familiar about her face. Perhaps it was just the perfection of classical beauty, and yet Rap had a strange hunch that he had seen her before somewhere. She had certainly never visited Krasnegar. Kinvale, perhaps? She was not the sort of woman a man would forget meeting.
    He turned to greet Sagorn. In a room full of imps, the old jotunn towered like a spruce tree in a bramble patch, a head taller than anyone else. His rugged face was winter pale and twisted in a familiar sardonic sneer, ice-blue eyes glinting below an incongruous dusty skullcap that sat awry on his thin silver hair. The deep clefts framing his mouth were as marked as ever. His robe was shabby and in need of a wash; he wore nothing under it. He seemed no older than Rap remembered, but that would be because Rap’s own sorcery had put much of the last eighteen years out of his reach.
    Shandie’s associates were waiting. The strengths and weaknesses of the new imperor’s most trusted confidants would reveal much about his judgment and ability. The first was a well-dressed fat man, beaming nervously at the renowned sorcerer. Instead of presenting him, Shandie began to pontificate about returning to the palace.
    Not likely! Not only might that move be suicidally dangerous, but it would envelop them all in a swamp of courtly pomp and protocol, and Rap had no intention of enduring any of that rigmarole. Granted, Shandie had been born to the purple, and the king of Krasnegar was only an erstwhile stableboy with a knack for magic, but even with his sorcerous abilities pruned to a stump of what they once had been, in the present circumstances he must still be the senior partner. He would have to convince Shandie of that as soon as possible.
    “This is an excellent place for a confidential meeting,” Rap said firmly. “The building is shielded against sorcery. It is one