Senrid’s astonishment wiped away all the other reactions. Jilo was fingering his nails, which were an unhealthy shade, even for someone so leached of normal skin tones.
Senrid said, “How many times did you sleep?”
“I don’t know. Two or three . . . I don’t remember.”
“Did you go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning?”
Jilo flushed. “I know it sounds stupid, but I really don’t remember.”
“How many times did you eat?”
“In Chwahirsland? Um, I didn’t. Yes, once. When I first got there. Then I got to work. Then a couple more times. I remember that. But it’s been a few . . .” Jilo reddened to the ears as he said on a questioning note, “Hours?”
“Weeks? Months?” Senrid drew in a breath as his nerves tingled cold. “Jilo, unless you’re dreaming right now, it sounds like your king managed to distort time’s flow.”
“What?” Jilo said.
“You can do that?” Clair asked, her green eyes wide.
“It’s difficult magic. Probably the most difficult there is,” Senrid said. “Think of it this way. It’s like creating a piece of Norsunder all of your own. Because that’s what Norsunder is. That is, not the Norsunder Base down south below Sartor, but what they call Norsunder-Beyond. It’s a place beyond time and temporal constraints.”
Jilo said, “I can believe that Wan-Edhe was busy creating a Norsunder of his own. He’s been resisting time as hard as he could.”
“But that kind of magic needs tremendous power,” Senrid said. “So what are you here for?”
Clair said, “Senrid, you’re the one who said we should know what dark magic can do, so we can defend ourselves. And this is our chance to see if our alliance will actually work.”
“Right.” Senrid had completely forgotten the alliance. He said to Jilo, “It looks to me like you need sleep, and in a place outside that magic chamber. Eight months.” He shook his head. “Clair and I were there a sand—” He pointed to a small sandglass. “And I felt like I was swimming in mud. Especially my head. How did you endure that? You must be made of iron.”
Jilo’s ears burned the more. He was so used to insults, derision, and humiliation, that he tried to understand Senrid’s words within the context of mockery, then gave up.
“Sleep,” he heard himself say. “Oh yes.”
Senrid gave him a sardonic grin. “That, I can give you.” He touched a stack of reports, on top of which lay a smooth, heavy paper different from the rest, a very expensive, fine paper made from silk and rice. “If I was my uncle, I’d be seeing conspiracies, especially this week. First this letter from someone claiming to be a Renselaeus, and in the name of our supposed mutual ancestors, wanting to send his son to the academy. And the day after I receive that, here’s someone I’ve never met who walked in and took a throne . . .”
He looked up, but saw only polite disinterest in Clair’s face, and non-comprehension and exhaustion in Jilo’s. It was clear that neither of these two knew anything about the Renselaeus family, whose descendants in the former principality of Vasande Leror had spearheaded the treaty forced on Marloven Hess by its neighbors a couple generations ago. They not only didn’t know, they clearly didn’t care.
Conspiracy there might be, ten conspiracies, but these two were obviously not part of any of them.
Senrid promised Clair a report, turned Jilo over to a runner to be put in a guest chamber, and dipped his pen, wondering if life would ever be normal again . . . and if it did, if ‘normal’ would seem unusual.
Chapter Thirteen
YOU must be made of iron.
Was that sarcasm? Maybe it was just an insult, like Wan-Edhe used to use, when he’d strike him across the face and snarl, “Get that into your rock-thick skull.”
Jilo woke up ravenous and light-headed, but he knew what time it was: morning. He knew that he’d slept all through the night. And he remembered that conversation the day before, with the king of the Marlovens. A boy his age.
There was a cleaning frame in the room, and also a vent that brought in warm air. He’d been raised to scoff at these things as waxer weakness, so how did that fit the ferocious reputation of the Marlovens?
He made a wager that the food would be as good as the Mearsieans’, and, after stepping through the cleaning frame, poked his head out of the room. There was the tower stairway, right where he’d remembered it. Senrid had said something about his being not far from the dining room. Dining? Did the Marloven warriors dine instead of mess?
When he reached the lower level, he found a pair of guards. The older one said, “You’re the guest, aren’t you? If you go down that hall there, you’ll find a runner. But if you don’t see one, just follow your nose.”
Guest. He was a guest. Jilo tried to get his mind around the word. He knew what it meant in language, but not in behavior. Chwahir in his experience didn’t have guests. They weren’t guests. He had no idea what was expected of him.
A runner appeared, a boy his own age. He carried a basket. “If you want breakfast, just duck through that arch there, and you’ll find the dining room.” The runner passed by on his errand.
Jilo stepped inside, and discovered a room with a table, chairs, and a sideboard laden with dishes, some covered so the food inside would stay warm.
He carefully lifted each lid to sniff the treasure inside. Then he went back and just as carefully picked up one item each from inside those dishes, though one or two burned his fingers.
His first bite into a hot rye biscuit, the crunch of the crust, the softness inside, the delicious sharpness of the rye blending with a trace of sweetness in the bread . . . the explosion of tastes in the potatoes and cabbage topped with crumbled cheese . . . the way the astringent coffee spread over his tongue . . .
Though he savored every bite, his emotions swooped from pleasure to shame. Why shouldn’t the Chwahir eat this way every day? Or did they, and he didn’t know it? But how could they, when the laws required half of every crop to go to the army, and so much of it was storehoused, then cooked together in a mass . . .
He was so very ignorant. Surely someone was going to walk into the fortress at Narad and have him shot for his temerity. Maybe someone had already taken the throne, and was waiting for him to come straight back to execution.
While Jilo struggled mentally, Senrid rammed his way through his expected tasks so he could leave for the day, if Jilo wanted him to look at that chamber again. Though he wondered—if he left, would he come back to find an assassin waiting? Or a delegation of jarls to demand that he abdicate in favor of one of them? They were probably still arguing over that, elsewhere in his castle. If they weren’t plotting an overthrow.
Senrid climbed up to the tower room where Commander Keriam’s office was located. One nice thing about being king: when he was tired and full of anxious questions, he didn’t have to wait to talk to someone.
Keriam’s office was crowded with tall, strong third-year seniors, several flushed, one or two white-faced with anger. Great. More trouble among the academy boys. Jarend Ndarga wasn’t among them. Bad or good? Both, probably.
When they saw Senrid, most of them snapped their fists to their chests, one or two belatedly. Senrid made sure he met each of those boys’ eyes, and yes, there was anger and resentment. He didn’t have to listen on the mental plane. If he did, it would feel like a hammer on his head. Or his heart.
He forced himself to do and say nothing. He was not his uncle.
He had said that a lot to himself over the past year.
“Dismissed.” Keriam turned a thumb outward at the boys.
Senrid prowled the perimeter of the room as the seniors clattered out.
Keriam looked tired. “Want a report now?”
“Trouble with the exhibition?”
“Trouble because they’re listening to those . . . to t
he jarls.”
Senrid flat-handed the subject aside. “Unless it’s academy business, or a direct threat, I don’t want to know what they say.”
Keriam understood the tremendous conflict Senrid had gone through to speak those words. No spies, he’d said after he took the throne. But that had been in the euphoria of winning. No spies, no punishments for speaking their minds, he’d said after the Siamis enchantment was over, and people got their will back, because it had been what Senrid’s father Indevan-Harvaldar had said. Although after he’d said it all those years ago, he got a knife in the back. From his own brother.
Indevan was gone, but not forgotten: two days ago, Senrid faced his jarls on the first day of Convocation and told them that he was upholding Indevan’s Law, which meant they no longer had the right to execute citizens without royal dispensation. The jarls listened in silence at the time, but now it seemed every corner was filled with angry liegemen talking in knots.
But Senrid had said, No spying.
“I understand,” Commander Keriam said. “This problem is going to carry to the academy, Senrid, so be prepared.”
“I don’t care what they say about me, as long as they obey regs.”
“I know. The problem really lies in how they handle being disagreed with. You might say the biggest problem is not with you, though they’re getting plenty of that at home, but with one another. How do we handle disagreement among peers, if not by duel? Except for your father’s too-short reign, it’s been generations since we could disagree without it being a matter of steel. Jarls have been ruling like little kings off and on since the Olavairs, encroaching on the throne a little more with each weak king. Your uncle was the weakest in two centuries.” Keriam lifted his gnarled hands in a vague circle. “Those seniors? Nothing is going to rein them in short of assembling for punishment. I know you wanted to stop that, but they all expect it, and if we don’t, we’ll lose them.”
Senrid kicked the wall lightly with the toe of his riding boot. “How can watching someone get caned into bloody pulp be ‘expected’?” Senrid waved his hand. “I know, I know, we can argue it later. We’re all mad, and bad, and dangerous, especially to ourselves. Speaking of that, I’m expecting to have to leave for a glass or two.”
Senrid laid a transfer token down on Keriam’s desk as he explained briefly about Jilo. Keriam (of course) had heard about the surprise guest. Marloven kings seldom had guests. Tdanerend, as regent, certainly hadn’t. But last summer Senrid had brought a famous one, the Little Girl. She’d come a few times since. Everyone had gotten used to the Little Girl who had rid the world of Siamis through some kind of magic. It seemed fitting that she would visit their king.
Keriam liked the Little Girl not because she was famous, but because with her, for the first time, Senrid could be a boy. He’d never had a chance to roust about like other boys, but with the Little Girl, he built big cities out of books and a jumble of items as they argued back and forth and laughed, or they rode, or they just chattered, even if their chatter was in a different language. It was their laughter. Keriam couldn’t remember ever hearing Senrid laugh like that, before the Little Girl came.
Senrid finished up, “. . . so if I don’t show up within a glass of the exhibition practice, which I very much wanted to see, hold this token and say my name.”
Keriam had considered canceling the exhibition and sending the new seniors home, like recalcitrant little boys. But it was so good to see Senrid acting like a normal boy, wanting to see the exhibition. “That will be after the midafternoon bell,” Keriam said, making the decision. He’d slam the lid on the seniors’ strut some other way.
“Then I’d better go soon.”
“Why go at all?” Keriam said, and regretted it. Senrid had probably just told him, somewhere in all that gabble about Chwahirsland and Mearsies Heili that he hadn’t really listened to.
Senrid stilled, his lips parted, his gray-blue eyes startled. Then his gaze went diffuse, and Keriam suspected that the question had struck Senrid differently than he’d intended.
He was right.
Senrid stared at Keriam, thinking that he wanted the real reason.
So what was the real reason? Senrid knew the real reason. It was both simple, and impossible, to say out loud: I’m going because Clair of the Mearsieans asked me to.
It would sound so sickening, maybe even sentimental. But there was no sentiment about Clair. She was offering to trust him, by coming to him in this alliance he’d agreed to so carelessly months ago, figuring it was more lighter hypocrisy that would be forgotten as fast as the self-righteous speeches about great Us battling nasty Them. (He did agree about Norsunder’s being nasty.)
“Jilo seems to have no one. Can you believe that? No one, except that bunch of Mearsiean girls. And they’re his enemies, at least former enemies. At least I have you.” Senrid’s words tumbled quickly. “Here’s the irony. I have you, because I know you’re the only one who wouldn’t conveniently lose the token if I vanish into whatever awaits in that chamber. And it makes me afraid. Yet, here’s more irony, you’d be a better king than I am.”
“You will be a great king,” Keriam said, careful not to show how profoundly Senrid’s quick words moved him. “Besides, I’ve got the wrong name. We both know who of those fools arguing about their inherited rights, as if those haven’t changed at least once a century, would try to take this castle if he thought the others wouldn’t fight him.”
Senrid snapped his fingers. “Then I’d better get to work. While my name still means something besides a catch-all for cursing.”
He whirled around before Keriam could answer, and shot through the door as if trying to outrace time.
* * *
—
Senrid found Jilo in the formal dining room, which had been used exactly once so far in Senrid’s short reign, the first time Liere came to visit. After they sat uncomfortably across from each other for a tense meal, they had both admitted that they’d rather eat in Senrid’s study, or in the kitchens. By her third visit, that was now habit.
But the servants had put this new visitor there. Jilo lurked at a window overlooking the southern part of the city. He was even more unprepossessing in daylight than he’d looked at night, but at least his unpleasantly pasty complexion appeared somewhat more natural, and less like the gray of a corpse.
Jilo glanced up sideways through his lank, unkempt black hair, his manner furtive. Senrid reminded himself that this shambling, slope-shouldered fellow had endured eight months of the poisonous atmosphere of that magic chamber in Narad fortress.
Senrid said, “I’ve made some magical preparations, in case you still want my help. I’m sure you don’t want to get caught again in that time . . .” Senrid didn’t even have a word for it. “Smear. And I can’t afford to vanish that long. I don’t plan on returning in half a year, or longer, to everyone fighting, their only point of agreement that they should execute me.”
Jilo shrugged, like execution squads were part of everyday life. Yes, from what Senrid had heard about the Chwahir, especially in the last century, they probably were.
Jilo’s shoulders didn’t come down out of the shrug, but stayed tense under his ears as he mumbled to the tops of his shoes, “Ah, what is it . . . that you want to do?”
“Find out if there is a time-binding spell. And how it’s bound. If we can.” Senrid sighed. “This is way, way beyond anything I know. But I think it’s the first thing to do.”
Jilo ducked his head in agreement, Senrid stuck out his hand, and Jilo understood that he was to make the transfer. He swallowed. “Brace yourself.”
Jilo stretched out the hand wearing the onyx ring and clamped his fingers around the other boy’s wrist. He muttered the spell, and magic hammered them against a wall, then scraped their components off and flung them into ice to reconstitute. Or that’s what it felt like.
They found them
selves in Wan-Edhe’s magic chamber.
Senrid drew a shaky breath, then nearly choked. He’d forgotten that thin, yet pervasive stench of stale sweat tinged with a musty, animal smell of old, unwashed clothing. There was nothing in the room but the huge central table, made of wood so old it seemed petrified, a chair, and shelves and shelves of books. The stink had permeated the stone, if such a thing was possible. Either that or no one had cleaned the room in decades.
Jilo rubbed trembling fingers across his eyes, then said, “This small book is experimental spells. The large one is Wan-Edhe’s log.”
Senrid had figured that out on his short visit before, but he didn’t point it out to Jilo. It was a way to establish a starting place.
“Here’s where I can help, I think,” Senrid said. “I learned this ward because of my uncle, who had a habit of protecting all his secrets with traps. It’s laborious, but you can find the traps faster than careful feel by fingers.”
“I’ve already searched for traps,” Jilo said.
“You really think you got them all?” Senrid countered.
Jilo didn’t have to think about it. “No.”
Senrid explained his tracer spell. It had to be cast for specific objects as well as specific spells. If there was a hidden fire trap on whatever you touched, you’d see a red flare. A stone spell would make a blue flare. And so on.
Jilo’s forehead eased. “So these kinds of tracers do exist. Neither Wan-Edhe nor Prince Kwenz would have let me near any such magic. Though I tried to find it.”
“I’ll start on this half. You over there.”
Jilo ducked his head again.
Senrid worked fast, the spell having become habit during the bad old days before his uncle turned to Norsunder. His mind was free to run with questions. This was an enormous library; there must be at least a thousand books on the nearest wall alone. Some of the ones on the highest shelf looked crumbled. They were most likely records of various types. But somewhere lay the solution to the lethal atmosphere here.
A Sword Named Truth Page 18
