He paused in the doorway to give the crowded room a quick scan. He recognized the old timers, each in his or her usual place, and moved his gaze past; all over the continent, regardless of kingdom, locals who met regularly seldom welcomed interlopers, and never liked it if someone presumed to take a seemingly empty chair, if that chair was in the middle of their invisible boundary of privacy.
“Welcome, tall stranger,” one of the oldsters called, beckoning Rel to the table.
Rel hesitated only a heartbeat. Now everyone was looking his way. He saw no signs of hostility. Curiosity, yes. The empty chair the man indicated was not a place he would choose—he hated having his back to the door—but he shrugged away instinct. Whether he had actually been followed or not, it was highly unlikely he would be attacked in this mob.
So he took the chair, touching fingers to his heart as he swept his gaze around the circle. He spared a thought to the irony that the exact same gesture considered respectable for a stranger would be perceived as a dismissive insult between high-circle acquaintances.
“Haven’t I seen you passing through here before?” the oldest, a tall, gaunt man, asked.
“Might have,” Rel said.
“Tried to get work with the guard, have you?” a gray-haired old woman asked, as she worked swiftly at a piece of crewel. She chuckled, shaking her head. “We coulda told you nothing but moths in the guards’ pay, is what we hear from Eidervaen.”
The oldest man shook his head slowly.
“The mages are fools. It’s an invitation for brigandage,” a balding glazier said, making a spitting motion, as the innkeeper brought a plate of the day’s meal.
The vegetables might be withered, but the rice was fluffy and the braised fish smelled of wine and garlic. Rel dug in as the glazier went on, “These hills yonder are full of brigands, ever since the soul-rotted magic lifted. Now everyone wants guarded caravans.”
“Where can a fellow go to get work as a caravan guard?” Rel asked.
The old folks laughed. They’d clearly established Rel’s intention the moment he walked in. “You go over to the Main Square Hostelry. You’ll get snabbled up quick enough.” He jerked a gnarled thumb over his shoulder back toward Sartor. “And if you like it, why, the Duchas of Oneh Kaer will be looking for hires soon’s he declares himself king.”
“He’s going for a crown, is he?” Rel asked, when he saw expectancy in the faces.
A miller at the other end of the table said, “A lot of talk about loyalty and honor and that, but what it comes down to, and everybody know it, if the duchas makes himself a king he can keep the taxes. Then maybe we’ll see the roads cleaned up at last.”
Rel didn’t pause in his eating. “Is that a fact, or rumor?”
“Everyone knows,” the woman said comfortably. “As much as we know this: if Siamis comes marching back at the head of an army, Sartor won’t even be able to protect Sartor, so they won’t be looking out for anybody else. That’s for certain.”
* * *
The next month
After Hibern’s visit to Tsauderei’s house, Atan dutifully wrote down what she’d said about the alliance in her private daybook, but in memory she returned most frequently to Tsauderei, the dragon cliff, and to the freedom of talk when she was away from the palace she was supposed to be reigning over.
The girls met the next week, Hibern thirsty for knowledge, reveling in the fact that Atan could summon any mage book she willed, and Atan determined to learn twice as much to make up for their escape the week previous. They met three more times after that.
On the fourth visit, Hibern arrived to find everything changed.
As soon as the door closed behind the young page who always conducted Hibern to Atan’s little study, Atan gestured for Hibern to come close, but instead of inviting her to sit down, she reached behind her chair, pulled out two very heavy coats, and silently handed one to Hibern.
Wondering—curious—excitement quickening her heartbeat—Hibern complied, and when Atan pulled from the capacious side pockets of her coat a scarf, a knit hat, and gloves, Hibern checked hers and discovered that she was similarly equipped.
The only sound was the soft rustle and hiss of cloth as they wintered up, then Atan smiled, and held out on her gloved palm a transfer token. Hibern looked from that to Atan’s eyes, which gazed back at her, straight dark brows lifted in question.
Hibern opened her hand in assent, remembered that nobody outside of Marloven Hess gestured a ‘yes’ in the same way, and brought her chin down in a nod.
The magic shifted then released her with such a powerful buffet that she fell to her knees. An icy wind shrieked overhead, and her eyes stung when she tried to open them. She fumbled the scarf over her face, pulling it up tighter as the wind tried to rip it away.
By then the transfer magic reaction was gone and she steadied herself, still on her hands and knees, and lifted her head. Atan was scarcely more than a shadow a few paces away, also crouched on all fours.
“This way,” Atan shouted.
She crawled farther into the gloom, Hibern following. The icy stone ground had long been scoured smooth. They rounded a stone outcropping and the wind lessened abruptly.
“I think we can stand now,” Atan said. Her voice echoed.
Hibern got to her feet, shivering inside the bulky coat. Then she forgot the cold when Atan muttered something and glowglobes lit.
Hibern gazed up in amazement at the vaulted ceiling overhead. At first it was difficult to make out the proportions, due to the black stone curving most of the way overhead, shiny as glass.
“You know where we are?” Atan asked. “We’re inside the dragon caves. A dragon cave. Is this not amazing?”
Both girls looked up, trying to imagine the huge space filled with a dragon. “This way,” Atan said. “I think either humans or baby dragons might have lived here.” She walked across the smooth stone floor, marbled with thinly branching patterns of minerals glinting coldly. She thought of unknown hands at work here, as she often did when encountering an old road, an ancient building, a crumbling wall with a weathered figure carved in: so many had left their work behind them, but unlike the monuments of Sartoran monarchs, seldom with their names.
The far side disclosed smaller oval chambers that had been scooped or scoured out. These were still sizable—twenty-five or thirty people could have sat comfortably in one—and just as cold, but at least the wind did not reach. They could talk in normal voices.
More glowglobes set around testified to previous visits as Atan said, “I’ve been sneaking here for bits of stolen time all this past month. Something Tsauderei said gave me the idea.”
Hibern said, “To explore these caves? Look for the mysterious writing?” She peered around as she spoke, disappointed not to see any such carvings.
“To get away,” Atan said, mittened hands extended. Her expression was difficult to see because of the shrouding scarf; nothing much was visible but those heavy-lidded gooseberry eyes. “Did you know that the mage council did not want me to have you, a Marloven, as a study partner?”
Hibern opened her mittened hands, not wanting to say that that was no surprise.
“After all our sessions, they convinced me it was my duty to tell them every single thing you and I studied. Everything we talked about. It’s so funny. I’ve known Tsauderei all my life, and he’s so very old, but the high council considers him too young and dangerously wild in his ideas, you being one of those ideas. The mages on the high council wanted me to study with one of their people. Maybe it’s unfair to judge. I know they mean well, but I couldn’t bear having every one of my words repeated, analyzed, discussed. They said it was for safety, that they should know what you were taking away from our sessions.”
Atan’s words chilled Hibern inside as effectively as any mountain wind. Hibern said, “Erai-Yanya warned me when she first began to
train me that people would think a Marloven learning light magic was some kind of spy.”
Atan sighed, watching her breath cloud, freeze, fall. “I don’t believe the problem is your origins so much as your not being Sartoran, one chosen by them. There’s a ledge here, where we can sit. And no one can overhear us.”
“Do they really watch you so closely?”
“Everything,” Atan responded, tipping her head back. “Everything I do. Everything I say. What books I read. Even how much I eat. It’s all for my own good, so what answer can I make to that? I was so very ignorant about court affairs. Tsauderei did warn me that it might be like that. He got all the records he could, of course, but he didn’t have access to first-circle privities.” She made a quick gesture, with thumb and forefinger making a ring shape. “I was so ignorant that I was, and am, grateful to learn. I am! But . . .”
She hugged her arms around herself, and Hibern recognized that shoulder-hunched posture, those tight arms: Atan was holding anger in, the same way Hibern had after being disinherited. An echo of that sick hurt and futile rage pulsed through her, and she tried to breathe it out. Her breath froze and fell before vanishing.
“I know they mean well,” Atan said again. “Sometimes I almost wish they were evil. No, I don’t! That’s wrong. It’s just that everything I do and say seems to have endless possible dire consequences unless it’s precisely what they tell me to do and say. What to think, even. They always sound so reasonable. But I was beginning to have dreams of shrinking so small that I could be locked in a ring box, and thrown down into a vault. So late nights, when they think I’m asleep, I sometimes experiment by myself. The first time I did, I had no nightmare, or not one of those.”
She reached a stone ledge, turned around, and sat. “I’ve also been reading about places you and Rel described. Tell me more about this Clair, and her Mearsies Heili. Rel’s told me a little, but I want your perspective.”
The alliance! Hibern said, “Mearsies Heili is very small, located at the northeast corner of the Toaran continent.”
“About which we know so little. Rel said that Mearsies Heili has no court, and no military, just five or six provinces, each with a governor who pretty much sees to things. One or two market towns to each province, one border is desert, and the middle of the kingdom is forestland. Clair’s family is said to originate in the far north, a wooded area called the Shaer, where morvende and dawnsingers both used to live. Clair’s family has only been on the throne three or four generations. That tells me so little. What is she like?”
“Clair has one cousin who is always on the Wander, and a group of friends, all sort of adopted by her. I believe they are all either orphans or runaways.”
“Ah!”
“They used to patrol to watch for enemy Chwahir at an old outpost, but that’s gone, and now they mostly seem to have fun. Except Clair, who studies magic.”
“It sounds so . . . so free. So jolly,” Atan said, then burst out enviously, “I’m told she even has her grandmother or great-grandmother back again—seemingly her age as she did the Child Spell—so she can be friend and companion, to share the throne.”
“Yes,” Hibern said slowly, recollecting the things Erai-Yanya had said about the mysterious Mearsieanne. She might have escaped Norsunder after being imprisoned for all those years, Erai-Yanya had said, but she was forever scarred.
Hibern wasn’t going to repeat that. More diplomatically, she said, “Mearsieanne was the first of her family on the throne. She was a seamstress originally, but renamed herself Mearsieanne when she took the throne as a compromise in response to an impasse reached by the noble families of that day. When her son reached our age, she was taken by Norsunder, about the same time as the war here in Sartor. She was enchanted by Detlev in one of his evil experiments, and brought back into the world to be put in Everon. Another of his experiments. That failed, too.”
Atan rubbed her mittened hands over her face. “I only know the gist, that the enchantment was the first one broken by that dyr thing that Liere used against Siamis.”
“True enough,” Hibern said slowly, remembering what Erai-Yanya had also said: Two queens, even as girls, will eventually be a problem. I hope later than sooner. I’m glad Mearsieanne spends most of her time in Everon and Wnelder Vee at present.
Hibern did not understand why the rediscovering of a missing relative should be a problem, queen or no, and to bring it up felt like gossip.
“I want to meet them,” Atan said. “I want to meet them all.” She got to her feet. “The mage guild thinks it a waste of my time for me to keep up my studies of magic, now that I have them.” She spread her hands.
Hibern grimaced in sympathy.
Atan said in a rush, “Here’s what I truly wanted when I asked for you: someone who’ll show me the world that the council will not let me see. And, keeping your alliance idea in mind, we can begin with these Mearsieans.”
Chapter Three
Spring, 4738 AF
Marloven Hess
SENRID had discovered that the jarls, seated on their benches a few steps below his dais, couldn’t see his butt scootched to the edge of the throne so that his feet could be pressed flat against the floor instead of stupidly dangling.
As the captains finished giving their well-practiced reports, Senrid watched the jarls watching him. There wasn’t much to be seen in their straight figures, but he was aware of each flicked glance above his head at the enormous black and gold screaming eagle banner that once had been the Montredaun-An’s house banner, and now belonged to the kingdom, and at the impassive guards at their stations at either side of the dais, the only people bearing arms inside the throne room. Senrid hoped these reminders bolstered the aura of authority that he knew he so sadly lacked.
He held firm to his determination not to listen to surface thoughts, a determination strengthened by his awareness of his lack of skill. He dreaded discovery. They would, quite rightly, consider it the worst sort of invasion.
Besides, there didn’t seem to be any surprises waiting. Everyone knew what was going to happen, but they’d all come as summoned, though they’d come a few months before, for Winter Convocation. But hearing capital cases concerning jarls was their right.
They listened as the captains of West Army reported, followed by both jarls’ captains mumbling and stuttering through their reports, all of which established a clear line of command that pointed straight to David-Jarl Ndarga. Torac had owed the Ndarga family allegiance, which technically exonerated him. Senrid wished he could send Torac into exile. He thought the man just as much of a weasel as Waldevan. But he didn’t dare.
At the end, Senrid stood, and delivered his carefully prepared speech. “You are foresworn, David-Jarl Ndarga of Methden. As you have broken your fealty to me, mine to you ends. You are now David Ndarga. Methden reverts to the crown, and Marloven Hess is closed to you. I shall detail a riding to accompany you to the border, which you shall not recross on pain of death.”
After a silence that seemed to last forever, the former jarl said, “My son?”
Senrid let out the breath he discovered he’d been holding. He hoped his voice wouldn’t squeak as he delivered the second part of his speech. “I shall appoint an interim captain for the remainder of the year, at which time the question of Methden will be revisited in time for Oath Day during New Year’s Week. Jarend Ndarga, who had no part in oath-breaking, will continue to serve as is.”
The former jarl’s eyes closed for a heartbeat, his face full of pain. His fist came up, froze halfway to his chest, and then he laid his hand flat, the salute of the civilian, and his expression shuttered. The scrape of a foot, an audible indrawn breath, the shift of clothing among the jarls indicated their reactions, and how silent the room had been. Senrid wondered if he had not been alone in holding his breath.
The captain of the guard motioned his chosen escort into place around
the former jarl, and out they walked.
Senrid rose, indicating that the convocation was over. He spoke the words inviting the remaining jarls to a meal, seeing in their faces that no one wanted to stay. Good, because if he didn’t get out of that room by the count of ten he was going to puke.
When he knew he had himself under control, he walked into his study and dropped onto the floor next to Liere, who scrambled up, her book falling unheeded from her lap.
“You didn’t do anything about that nasty Jarl of Torac?” Liere’s thin shoulders were tight, hunched up under her ears. “He told a man to shoot you!”
“You listened.” Senrid tapped his head.
Liere was small and thin, her single prominent feature a pair of large eyes so pale a brown they looked gold. So when she rolled her eyes, it was a very effective expression. “He was thinking it right at you!” Her chin came up. “And it scared him, how you raised the shield to stop the arrow. But Senrid—”
“I can’t do anything without visual evidence or witnesses.”
Liere’s fingers gripped her elbows. “That other one, he thinks you had spies to find out his plot.”
“That’s better than the truth,” Senrid muttered. If Jarend Ndarga hadn’t ratted his father out, a whole lot of people would have died. Including the jarl. Because Senrid would have had to throw the entire army at them, or lose the kingdom. And Jarend had known it.
But he didn’t want to load Liere down with those worries. “Methden is used to raids, which means a lot of spying back and forth.” Senrid sighed. “There’s a lot of trouble on the border, mostly horse thieving. Our horses bring a fortune in other lands, especially trained.”
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