Had he just been invited, in the nicest way possible, to leave?
Thoroughly uncomfortable, he resumed his walk into the southern half of the second district, which was shared between the mages and the garrison in a silent struggle that went back centuries.
At the old garrison, he found Mendaen, another of the Rescuers, a tall, weedy fellow with clubbed black hair, who was verging on adulthood.
Rel always exercised with the guard, which had been severely diminished not only by the war, but also by edict of the royal council.
As with his previous visit, Rel stood in the back of the yard, knowing that his size drew the eye. Though Mendaen was a couple years older than Rel, everyone assumed it was the opposite. It was easier to go to the back, to avoid attention. From the back he could also see the interactions of the others as they worked through a warmup drill set more than a century ago, everyone’s breath clouding the cold air.
Mendaen took his place next to Rel. As they swung their swords to loosen up muscles, and stamped to waken their feet and legs, Mendaen said, “I’ve applied for leave to go to Khanerenth’s military school.”
Rel hid a grimace, then spoke the truth. “Not a good idea.”
Mendaen gave him a pained glance as he switched the hilt to his other hand. “But it was your idea. Leastways, I remembered you telling me you had a season there.”
“And I should have had longer,” Rel said ruefully.
“You’re better than most of us,” Mendaen said.
“Mainly because I’m bigger than most of you,” Rel said. He sensed by the cants of heads, and the stiffness of arms, that many were listening. “I’m good enough to fight off a brigand or two. Which is my only aim. I’m not going for a life in the military.”
“But you do get people trying to recruit you?”
Rel couldn’t prevent the flash of memories: on his first journey being jumped by Kessler Sonscarna’s recruitment gang, and waking up to Kessler’s mad blue stare as he talked about killing off the decadent, useless world leaders who got crowns through inheritance, and replacing them with people promoted by merit—these meritorious new leaders trained and promoted by Kessler. Though Kessler had also hated Norsunder, Rel was secretly relieved that Kessler ended up there after he was defeated.
Rel had encountered him again when Kessler was sent by Norsunder to kill Atan before she could end the century-long enchantment. Rel still had nightmares about losing his fight with Kessler. The only thing that fight accomplished was winning Atan enough time to end the enchantment . . .
Rel shook away the memories, recollected the question that had prompted them, and said easily, “What do you expect, when you’re my size?”
Mendaen sighed. “I’d love someone to recruit me.”
Rel knew that Mendaen would hate being recruited by force, but kept his peace.
“Reaaaaaady!” the drill captain called from the front.
Mendaen and Rel began working through what Rel thought of as the standard set of block-and-lunge, feint-and-backswing moves that were common all across the continent, even Chwahirsland, which he’d been to a couple times, disguised as a flatfoot, the common infantry soldier.
The front rows wore livery, not uniforms. The back rows were a mix of guards-in-training, like Mendaen, and guild guards sent to exercise with the palace guards. The Royal Guard was all but gone, having been the first line of defense when Norsunder had invaded. None of the many dead had been replaced, because the mage guild had decided that they were useless, and that the only real protection was magic. So the bulk of defense spending went to the mages, who labored to find ways to thwart Norsunder’s magic. Meanwhile, many of the former guard had gone to the guilds, which didn’t bother trying to fight the council. They simply beefed up their private security—as evidenced by familiar Guard faces now wearing those guild colors.
When they broke up to work in pairs, everybody separated off into their own particular groups. Mendaen looked at Rel expectantly, and as they pulled on their practice pads, Mendaen said, “Tell me, why isn’t it a good idea to go to Khanerenth?”
“I left because there was political trouble,” Rel said. “Reaching into the school. Not a good time to be a foreigner.”
“Oh,” Mendaen said, disappointed. Then, “Well, seems to me we need more training, because as our captain says, what if Siamis comes back again, only this time at the head of an army? The mages all think magic is the answer, but it wasn’t, was it?”
“What about the military school at Obrin, over the mountains? Isn’t the trouble ended in Sarendan?” Rel asked.
“Everybody says Obrin is closed to outsiders.”
“Century-old ‘everybody says’ or recent?” Rel asked, and Mendaen’s lips parted, but he was forestalled by a bawled command to stop yawping and attack.
As the yard filled with fighting pairs and trios, gradually conversation returned. Rel listened, picking up a general dissatisfaction among the Royal Guard, even bitterness about the mage guild’s regarding them as not worth the tax money to maintain.
At the end of drill Mendaen had to go off to duty in the armory, so Rel walked along what the Sartorans called the middle river, his coat pulled up tight to his chin, until he reached Blossom Street, where Hannla Thasis, another of the Rescuers, lived. Hannla’s aunt ran a pleasure house.
Hannla greeted Rel with a happy smile. Hannla was the oldest of the Sartoran-born Rescuers, sixteen or seventeen, and genuinely popular. Rel had discovered on his previous visit that Hannla’s aunt’s pleasure house was the unofficial meeting place for all the Rescuers who weren’t aristocrats. Rel was always assured of a free bed, especially as he offered to turn his hand to any task needing doing.
After he’d finished bringing up the last of the jugs of cowslip wine (the label dated a century ago), carried down stacks of washed and clean old jugs, rotated the barrels of ale, and helped sweep the stone floor, he went up to find a substantial meal waiting, and Hannla sat down to keep him company.
“How’d you find Mendaen?” she asked. “Is he going outside the borders, then?”
“I may have talked him out of that.”
“Why?” Hannla’s face was heart-shaped, her eyes wide, her hair a curly brown. The rest of her was as charmingly round . . . Rel’s gaze caught, then he hitched it upward again, to find her grinning.
She’d always liked his thick, glossy dark hair, a little unkempt above his collar in back, his dark eyes deep set under equally dark brows, the strong bones of his face tapering to a truly heroic chin. The rest of him was both trim and powerful under the old travel-worn tunic and baggy riding trousers.
She put her cheek on her hand and said, “You ready for upstairs, then?”
Rel’s reaction was a mix of curiosity and something else too subtle to define, but which he recognized as attraction, though it still hadn’t warmed into the urgency his guardian had told him about when they’d discussed these matters. “Not yet,” he said.
Hannla’s eyelids flashed up. “Don’t tell me. You, too, did the Child Spell? You?”
Rel chuckled, a low sound deep in his broad chest. “My guardian told me once I’ll probably grow another half-finger before I have to do the beard spell. But yes, I found a mage to do the Child Spell on me.”
“Why?” Hannla put both elbows on the table to support her chin.
Rel lifted a shoulder. “Promise I made to myself when I first set out, to find my father first. That was before I discovered the benefit of being a youth on the Wander. Most places, there’s little prejudice against the young wandering. Whereas a man without a home or employment is often looked at with a suspicious eye.”
“Of course,” Hannla exclaimed. “That makes perfect sense. But . . .” She paused, considering how to express her doubt.
He flashed a brief grin. “No, it doesn’t always work for me. Even though I’m not ful
l age, just because I’m tall, I can’t tell you how many stints in lockups I’ve done for vagrancy, though it’s pretty much always in places where they seem to need free labor for road repair or construction. And in other places you can find yourself summarily recruited into someone’s army.”
Hannla’s eyes widened. “You never told us any of that. All you said was that you weren’t a duchas or a prince in disguise.”
Rel had to laugh. “Nobody asked. Except Atan. Mendaen, too, though at that time, he didn’t have much interest in anyplace beyond Sartor’s border.”
Hannla’s expressive smile turned rueful. “Mendaen. I meant to talk to you about him, then got sidetracked by your pretty face.” When Rel blushed to the ears, she rocked with silent laughter, which faded too soon. She said with an air of regret, “Atan’s told you, right? That the mages now have total control of wherewithal, what little there is, for defense? That the Guard is reduced to patrolling the outer city and the southern border to watch for anyone riding out of Norsunder Base?”
“Yes. Result of losing so badly in the war, though I don’t see how the mages did any better, considering they didn’t stop Norsunder’s attack any more than the army did, and they, too, ended up enchanted for a century.”
Hannla shrugged. “That, I can’t tell you. Doubt Atan even hears the inner councils. But this I know. Everyone is looking around the next corner for that horrible Siamis to return, or his uncle, the villain Detlev. That’s the worst of them, they hide in Nightland and don’t die!”
Rel fervently agreed, thinking of his own brushes with Norsunder.
“But with Mendaen, there’s the personal reason he wants to go outside the border for training.”
“Personal?”
“Yes. Like a lot of others, he’s trying to find out if his father had a family. You knew his father was a sailor, right?”
Rel began mopping up gravy with a piece of bread. “Mother in the queen’s guard, killed defending the palace. Father was at sea when the enchantment happened. Right.”
“Well, Atan’s probably told you that the entire kingdom is still trying to fit itself back in the world. When all the poems and songs were over, what was left? As my aunt says, ‘All the vexations of broken families, trade agreements, inheritances.’ For Atan, it means the mages and diplomats and that sort of thing, but for Mendaen, it would cost far, far more money than he or his two orphaned cousins have, trying to trace relatives who were shut out a century ago.”
Rel grimaced. “I never thought of that. And it has to be expensive, paying someone to sort through records. That’s a lot of work.”
“It’s even more work if you have to trace a sailor on a ship, especially if the ship was attacked by pirates. The scribes at the archive told him he might have to apply at a lot of countries, or pay to have the scribes do it.”
“Mendaen didn’t tell me that,” Rel said. “Maybe it’s not for outsiders.”
“He doesn’t talk about it to anyone outside his family. He knows all his friends would give him money if they had any. He doesn’t want them to feel obliged. I know because his younger cousin works at the pastry shop we deal with when patrons order fancy baking beyond our menu, and she talks a lot.”
Hannla got up from the table, dashed off, then returned with a folded piece of paper. “So I’m asking you, and Mendaen will never know and feel embarrassed. But in case you happen to be anywhere where you might find something out,” she said. “On that is written his father’s name, the name of his last ship, and what he did on board. The year they think might have been the pirate attack, and the location.”
Rel slid the paper into his tunic pocket. “It’s easy to check for someone else while I do my own search.”
“So you’re still wandering the world to look for your father?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have a wicked guardian?” Hannla asked, eyes wide.
“No.” He didn’t mind talking to Hannla, who was so ready with genuine sympathy. “Excellent guardian. Like a father in all ways except the one.”
“Well, why won’t this guardian tell you about your father?”
“Because he promised he wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But think about it. Why would anyone keep that secret, especially if he’d gain nothing by it?”
Her brow puckered, then cleared. “To protect him, or to protect you.”
“Right. Here are the clues I’ve gathered: My father does something dangerous. He’s not from any royal family. Actually, there’s some hint about a disgrace. Last and most important: he found me the best place he could before he left.”
Hannla jumped up and kissed his cheek. “Of course your guardian was a good man. A wicked man would not raise a darling! Make sure when you’re ready for upstairs that you come to us, mind. Half of ’em want to be your first, and do you think you like men or women? Both would be charmed.” Hannla chuckled.
Rel didn’t see her. He saw Atan, so earnest and studious and capable, and how her entire demeanor changed with her sudden laughter. He wasn’t sure exactly what the hollow feeling behind his ribs meant—it wasn’t the same as that mild warmth when Hannla leaned forward, or smiled at him.
Rel was fairly certain that his attractions were slanted toward women, but he was reluctant to talk about such things lest the talk somehow point at Atan. Hannla, he knew, was very observant. So he said, “Not sure,” and Hannla sighed, then offered him another slice of cake.
“I don’t need that, thanks, but maybe you can tell me the real meaning behind a conversation I had this morning.” And he repeated the entire exchange with the steward.
When he finished, he could see by the way Hannla looked down at her hands that he’d actually guessed right. “What is it?” he asked. “Did I break some rule of etiquette? I know Atan wants me to stay.”
“And that’s the problem,” Hannla said.
“Then all that about cherishing the heroic Rescuers is a lie after all?”
Hannla made a quick gesture. “No, it’s true. But. You have to remember who Atan is. The high council has to be talking about whom she will marry.”
Rel shifted in his seat, but the hollow feeling in his chest now felt more like a stone had taken up residence. A boulder. “I know that one day she’ll be expected to make a dynastic marriage, and that those have nothing to do with personal choices. But that’s a long way off, yet.”
“Not for them.” Hannla shook her head. “I’ll wager you anything they’re up there right now, worrying about when she’ll lift the Child Spell. And watching all her relationships. Especially with foreigners.”
“And so that’s why all those questions this morning,” he said, and with reluctance, “This is the fourth day of my stay as her guest. I’m going to guess that three days is their limit. I guess I’d better leave.”
“Perhaps it’s best. But come back next season. Really, if you turn up now and then, stay for two or three days only, then they won’t fret so much,” Hannla said earnestly.
“Thanks,” he said, not wanting to load her with his bad mood.
He walked back toward the palace, determined to get control of his annoyance before he saw Atan again. Much as he might have liked to rant to Atan, he knew she already felt hemmed in, and it wasn’t as if the high council was a bunch of Norsundrians in disguise. They meant well, and they had a wreck of a kingdom to deal with, along with a very young queen who hadn’t been raised to her job.
The council was going to plan Atan’s future, because that was what Sartoran first circle nobility did.
He waited patiently until he caught Atan between scheduled activities, said he had to get on the road before the weather changed, grabbed his pack, and walked out.
“You’ll come back when you can?” she asked.
“I will,” he promised.
* * *
—
That chest boulder resolved into the ache of loss as Rel walked away from the city a day later. He paced steadily northward, already planning his return.
In spite of his mental turmoil, habit ever since the days of Kessler Sonscarna’s recruitment attempt kept him wary. As he climbed and descended the gently rising hills toward the border mountains, he always found a vantage from which to look ahead and back without being seen, and discovered among the various carts and coaches and travelers on horse and foot a single constant over three days: a lone figure, male in silhouette, matching his pace. It was quite likely that he was being followed.
He kept watch until he reached the last market town before the steep road to the pass that marked the border. The possible tail was still there, but too far back to be seen.
Rel looked around the widening road as he plodded through the slush. It was far too cold up this high for sleeping under the stars, so taking off cross-country was out. As he walked past the slant-roofed buildings edged with icicles, he reflected on how often he traveled this road, knowing which inns had beds long enough for him. He chose his favorite, a large place bustling with custom.
His tail had blended into the city traffic, as expected.
Rel wasn’t worried about being attacked in Sartor. The roads were busy, the patrols intermittent but frequent enough. But Oneh Kaer on the other side was another question, for an old treaty required Sartor to patrol the three roads that branched from the border pass. But Sartor was not patrolling.
The traffic along the three roads, most of it north toward Mardgar and the biggest harbor on the Sartoran Sea, or northeast toward Colend, and a very few west toward the ancient aristocratic estates along the rough coast, abandoned after the war, tended to move in well-guarded caravans, which made the lone traveler vulnerable to attack.
Rel opened the door to a hostelry he’d used before and liked. He breathed in the warm complexity of human scents and spices. After a polite exchange with the boy at the counter, he paid down his money for a bed, adding a coin for the tuft-haired urchin who offered to take his knapsack upstairs. From the common room, the hubbub punctuated by the clatter of cutlery indicated the evening meal had begun, so Rel hung up his hat on one of the pegs inside the porch to avoid issues of etiquette involving whom he should doff to and whom he shouldn’t. Sartorans could be prickly about customs that had changed up north.
A Sword Named Truth Page 24
