The Diamond Throne

shield. You’d better hurry They rise early at the palace. It gives them more time for mischief.’
    They went out of the room and on down the stairs to the innyard. The rain for the most part had passed, with only a few last intermittent sprinkles slanting into the yard in the gusty morning wind. The dawn sky, however, was still covered with tattered grey cloud, although there was a broad band of pale yellow off to the east.
    The knight porter led Faran out of the stable, and he and Kurik boosted Sparhawk up into his saddle.
    ‘Be careful when you get inside the palace, my Lord,’ Kurik warned in the formal tone he used when they were not alone. ‘The regular palace guards are probably neutral, but Annias has a troop of church soldiers there as well. Anybody in red livery is likely to be your enemy.’ He handed up the embossed black shield.
    Sparhawk buckled the shield into place. ‘You’re going to the chapterhouse to see Vanion?’ he asked his squire.
    Kurik nodded. ‘Just as soon as they open the east gate of the city’
    ‘I’ll probably go there when I’m through at the palace, but you come back here and wait for me.’ He grinned. ‘We may have to leave town in a hurry.’
    ‘Don’t go out of your way to force the issue, my Lord.’
    Sparhawk took Faran’s reins from the porter. ‘All right then, Sir Knight,’ he said. ‘Open the gate and I’ll go present my respects to the bastard Lycheas.’
    The porter laughed and swung open the gate.
    Faran moved out at a proud, rolling trot, lifting his steel-shod hooves exaggeratedly and bringing them down in a ringing staccato on the wet cobblestones. The big horse had a peculiar flair for the dramatic, and he always pranced outrageously when Sparhawk was mounted on his back in full armour.
    ‘Aren’t we both getting a little old for exhibitionism?’ Sparhawk asked dryly
    Faran ignored that and continued his prancing.
    There were few people abroad in the city of Cimmura at that hour – rumpled artisans and sleepy shopkeepers for the most part. The streets were wet, and the gusty wind set the brightly painted wooden signs over the shops to swinging and creaking. Most of the windows were still shuttered and dark, although here and there golden candlelight marked the room of some early riser.
    Sparhawk noted that his armour had already begun to smell – that familiar compound of steel, oil, and the leather harness that had soaked up his sweat for years. He had nearly forgotten that smell in the sun-blasted streets and spice-fragrant shops of Jiroch; almost more than the familiar sights of Cimmura, it finally convinced him that he was home.
    An occasional dog came out into the street to bark at them as they passed, but Faran disdainfully ignored them as he trotted through the cobblestone streets.
    The palace lay in the centre of town. It was a very grandiose sort of building, much taller than those around it, with high, pointed towers surmounted by damply flapping coloured pennons. It was walled off from the rest of the city, and the walls were surmounted by battlements. At some time in the past, one of the kings of Elenia had ordered the exterior of those walls to be sheathed in white limestone. The climate and the pervasive pall of smoke that lay heavy over the city in certain seasons, however, had turned the sheathing a dirty, streaked grey.
    The palace gates were broad and patrolled by a half-dozen guards wearing the dark blue livery that marked them as members of the regular palace garrison.
    ‘Halt!’ one of them barked as Sparhawk approached. He stepped into the centre of the gateway, holding his pike slightly advanced. Sparhawk gave no indication that he had heard, and Faran bore down on the man. ‘I said to halt, Sir Knight!’ the guard commanded again. Then one of his fellows jumped forward, seized his arm, and pulled him out of the roan’s path. ‘It’s the Queen’s Champion,’ the second guard exclaimed. ‘Don’t ever stand in his way.’
    Sparhawk reached the central courtyard and dismounted, moving a bit awkwardly because of the weight of his armour and the encumbrance of his shield. A guard came forward, his pike at the ready
    ‘Good morning, neighbour,’ Sparhawk said to him in his quiet voice.
    The guard hesitated.
    ‘Watch my horse,’ the knight told him then. ‘I shouldn’t be too long.’ He handed the guard Faran’s reins and started up the broad staircase towards the heavy double doors that opened into the