This is a disaster, Hibern thought, and to fill the awkward silence, began blabbing about how difficult it was to find histories about parts of the world that didn’t have humans. Clair aided this limping conversation.
Because both girls turned toward her, Atan fell back on the politeness with which she’d been raised, and agreed, but she was waiting for CJ to apologize for her crack against Rel.
CJ fumed, wanting to explain, to justify, but she didn’t know how to get around Atan’s statement, which sounded like an imperial declaration from the Queen of Sartor. So she grinned, and agreed heartily with everything Hibern and Clair said without listening to a word of it, and pretended nothing had happened, hoping everyone else would, too.
Clair had no idea how to resolve the tension she felt, so she kept on talking about magic until her mouth felt dry, and somehow it never seemed right to mention the alliance again.
The hour ended. Hibern and Atan vanished, after the latter thanked them formally for the tour. Just as formally Clair told her she was welcome, and even then, she couldn’t bring herself to talk further about the alliance.
Well, Hibern had said Atan would join. There would be other times for figuring out what it all meant, she told herself as everybody went off to eat.
* * *
—
In Sartor, Hibern spotted the approach of the inevitable steward, and said quickly, “I don’t think you saw the Mearsieans at their best.”
A pause grew into an uncomfortable silence.
Atan frowned at her hands. “Thank you very much for the tour,” she said a little too politely.
Sick with a sense of failure, Hibern took her leave, and Atan turned to the steward with an equally intense sense of relief.
As she changed into the proper set of formal robes for a third-circle reception, she struggled with her emotions. She recognized that, aside from the impulse to dislike that CJ for those remarks about Rel, her disappointment at finding the Mearsieans so ignorant was prompted by jealousy. They were such friends. The stories they all shared, even those stupid jokes they all laughed at. You could call them a family.
They didn’t realize what they had in any sense, she thought as she stalked out of her bedroom, twitching her brocade over-robe into place. Further, they were self-satisfied in their ignorance, pigging it in a stuffy cavern rather than living in that airy, pretty marble palace, and doing the Child Spell to play, rather than as a defensive measure . . .
What possible use was an alliance with them?
The bad mood she had tried to scold herself out of was worse by the time she reached the antechamber where the duty page awaited her. She was in a thorough stew of righteous indignation when she glanced down at her golden notecase on the table, and as always, touched it. To her surprise, the cool brush of magic on her fingertip indicated a letter inside. Her mood lightened to anticipation.
All of her correspondence as Queen of Sartor was handled by the scribes. This was her own personal notecase, and few of those she regarded as friends had one. Rel didn’t. So she never carried hers, but she’d trained herself to check it when entering the room, though it was usually empty.
Since the duty page was standing there looking expectantly at her, she tucked the notecase into the pocket of her under-gown, and went off to do her duty. It was a reception for the weights and measures branch of the scribe guild, which had finished touring all of Sartor to make certain that officially recognized scales had been calibrated to current international standards.
Atan was glad that some people liked such exactitude in their lives enough to go around seeing that people got honest measure, but she found their anecdotes excruciatingly boring. She saw no reason why she had to preside. The guild could just as easily celebrate on its own. But she had to be there because the high council put her there. It was they who ruled Sartor. She only provided a warm body with the right face to decorate Star Chamber, while they did the real work.
Nobody could really think she understood all the weights-and-measures scribes’ arcane references, and she was aware that these people were talking at her, not to her.
But she smiled and made the appropriate formal gestures, and as soon as everyone had had their say, she invited them to partake of refreshments. In the general movement that ensued, she retrieved her letter. It was a note from Tsauderei.
My dear Atan:
Until you command me otherwise, I will claim my privilege as your old tutor to speak up when I feel that you are in error. Though I will admit that the fault is probably my own for having kept you sequestered during your childhood. The need for secrecy prevented you from learning simple, yet vitally important, rules of social engagement, one of the first being: do not neglect your friends until you find you have a need for their service.
I was very glad to meet your friend Rel, yet a month and more has passed, and you have not found another free hour to visit your first and oldest friends outside of my valley, Lilah and Peitar Selenna. I never visit Sarendan without either Peitar or Lilah asking for news of you.
Atan crushed the note into her pocket, her face burning with guilt.
Chapter Five
Two weeks later in the world
Hours later in Chwahirsland
THE alliance, still a vague idea to most, and a negative one to Atan, might have died right then, but for two people: Jilo, and Rel.
* * *
—
Jilo had learned to shift out of the magic chambers whenever he noticed his fingernails turning gray. He just had to remember to check.
When he did remember next, a distant pang of shock accompanied the thought, whose hands are these? The nails were ragged, the beds gray. In the dull magical light of the chamber, they looked like old man’s hands.
He’d finished the trap removal on another shelf, but none of the books there were the least use. Most were old records. Of the magic books, all he found were magical histories—lists of wards done and by whom—and plenty of elementary spell books. Nothing about binding time.
What was he missing? He stood in the room trying to think until he found himself struggling to remember why he was standing there. The effort to penetrate the fog closing around his skull like an ironmonger’s vise reminded him of those days when he’d had that spell on him.
Go outside. Breathe. It was less a thought than an unconscious urge, insistent enough to penetrate his mental fog.
He walked out, down the hall, and down the stairs.
When he reached the side court, he blinked. The air wasn’t cold, the light daytime under the ubiquitous cloud cover. His hands looked more like normal hands, though his nails were still a dull color. And he’d have to trim them. He wondered if that gray was happening more often, but then time didn’t seem to mean anything anymore. He only knew that once he got outside the palace it seemed easier to breathe, and his stomach woke up. He felt real hunger. His thoughts were clearer, or at least he could remember them.
Since the air wasn’t cold, he set out to walk into the city. The guards all knew who he was—that is, they took him for Wan-Edhe’s mouthpiece—because they snapped rigid when they saw him, eyes straight forward, hands tight on their regulation weapons, or hanging down, open and empty.
When he reached the city, he slipped into a side street and no one paid him any attention. It had always been that way, but before, he’d been under that magical fog, so he hadn’t noticed much. Now he could see the uniformity of buildings, all gray granite, the sounds of footsteps or the occasional clop of hooves echoing along the stone canyons. No one spoke unless it was for business, and no woman spoke at all.
For the first time he wondered if people really did obey Wan-Edhe’s insane laws. Jilo grimaced at the cobblestoned street, worn almost smooth by ages of tramping boots. He struggled with anger and a sense of humiliation, not wanting to believe that the Chwahir had been reduced t
o the status of worms, blind to injustice, their entire lives spent in mindless toil as Wan-Edhe’s evil perpetuated itself on the strength of invasively malevolent spells.
Jilo’s stomach rumbled again. He gave in to impulse and picked a street at random. There were no street signs, but he could orient easily enough on the castle’s highest tower, looming above. At the street’s end he found what he expected, a way station, for restaurants and inns of the sort to be found in other kingdoms had also been forbidden. Everything in Chwahirsland existed to service the army.
Jilo had no shoulder flashes or armbands. He had never changed out of his probationer’s uniform, which Wan-Edhe had required him to wear to remind him of his place.
He ducked his head and sniffed at himself, wondering if he stank as badly as Wan-Edhe. He imagined the stale whiff of old sweat and unwashed laundry trailing after him, after his long toils in Wan-Edhe’s chambers, but he also remembered what the barracks had smelled like on a normal day in the Shadowland.
Nobody was going to say anything.
He walked into the way station, and as he expected, the cowled women behind the counter only glanced at his uniform, then away. He moved to the counter. The women waiting to serve rotated in a practiced circle as they ladled boiled oats, boiled beans, and vinegar-dressed spinach onto a plate, then a girl handed him a regulation shallow-bowled wooden spoon wrapped in a napkin.
He took them without meeting anyone’s eyes, of course; he did not want to alarm them. In Chwahirsland, meeting the eyes of a superior was rarely a good thing. But as he turned away, he glanced to the side. That snub-nosed girl reminded him of one of Clair’s gang, only he caught a glimpse of a ruddy dark braid inside the cowl. The Mearsiean’s short hair was light brown, streaked by the sunlight, because in Mearsies Heili, people only wore hats in winter, or for formal occasions.
Jilo found a table at the back and sat down.
The place was nearly empty. He’d caught either the early or the late portion of a service shift, which, he knew, ran counterpoint to the military watches by which the entire kingdom was governed. No one spoke, of course, as Wan-Edhe had strictly forbidden public chatter on pain of a hundred lashes. And he’d enforced it by having his spies also turn in anyone who didn’t report infringements.
That had been a sore point between the brothers, Jilo recollected as he dug into the tasteless oats, always getting the worst over with first. Kwenz kept reminding Wan-Edhe that he hadn’t enough guards in the Shadowland to have most of them in the lazaretto recovering from punishments, and whom would he put in the field if there were an emergency? Wan-Edhe had always said, Force them to take duty anyway, and let ’em bleed. It enforces the necessity—the wisdom—of obedience. Idle talk is what leads to conspiracy. There should be no time for idle talk, as well as no place.
Jilo set his spoon down, aware for the first time of scents, of the food, other people, dust. The small noises of wooden spoons clattering against clay bowls, the hissing shift of a foot, but what was that tiny sound, almost like rain against a window?
He knew better than to look directly. It took a moment or two to figure out what to do. He dropped his spoon, and in the process of retrieving it, got a sideways look at the four people sitting at the table on the other side of the room. They were all in uniform, of course: a grizzled oldster wearing the brown armband of a stable troop, and two youngish men, one wearing the shoulder flash of a horse troop and the other that of a squad leader in the infantry. The youngest, a boy Jilo’s age, wore an unmarked gray-black uniform similar to Jilo’s own. A trainee.
At first Jilo thought the older man had something wrong with him, the way one shoulder twitched, then the other. It took a second look as Jilo got up to get a biscuit from the bread basket and walked back to notice what was going on: finger taps on the table or one’s arm, twitches, touches to chest. All quick, furtive. He would not have noticed if he hadn’t been staring. It seemed to be some kind of sign language.
Jilo became aware of his empty plate. He’d eaten his food without noticing. He rose to get another biscuit, and this time took a sideways glance at the women. They stood still, waiting to serve, except for the one who came out from the kitchen with another tureen of oats. Before she turned away, one of the others brushed her sleeve, and the tureen woman rippled her fingers, then wiggled her forefinger three times. She turned away, and vanished back inside the kitchen.
He walked out, and took a long tour of the city, pretending to look at shops, but using the occasional reflective surface to see behind him. Twice he caught forefingers turned his way, making a tiny circle, as someone else turned an empty palm up. Question, and answer? They wanted to know if he was a spy.
Jilo wondered why he hadn’t heard about this—why the Court of Rule wasn’t lined up with people waiting for punishment. The people must know who the spies are, Jilo thought, and question became conviction when he walked along an armory street at the same time an otherwise undistinguishable man wearing a lowly green suppliers armband appeared. Only because he was watching did Jilo perceive heads dropping minutely, as if a chill wind had blown down the street; gazes dropped streetward, quick as the eye. Hands hung at sides, except when executing business; all words spoken had to do with orders given and received.
They knew who the spies were, and they had a secret language.
Joy suffused him as he walked back to the palace. They had a secret language! He spared a sympathetic thought for the Shadowland Chwahir, now surely absorbed into the massive army structure. He hoped that someone was teaching them the secret language.
Jilo examined his emotions as he trod toward the castle. Pride, and a sense of isolation. He had to do his part, and unravel Wan-Edhe’s web of spells. His determination renewed, he turned his mind to reviewing the search he’d made so far. Outside, he could think more clearly. In fact, he could remember his painstaking search among the books, one by one, first to remove wards and traps. He could remember the shelves, even in large part what was on the shelves; yes, he must catalogue everything that was there.
He paused in the forecourt, frowning down at the stones. Wait. Why was it that he could recollect so clearly the archives, the old lists of wards, the elementary spells, but other places were a blur? He’d been over every part of the archive at least three times.
Hidden language, hidden things. We Chwahir hide things. What if Wan-Edhe had hidden his chief treasures where nobody but he could see them, much less touch them?
Oh, yes.
Wherever he had slid past without paying attention, that was where he must begin to search.
* * *
Along the caravan route from Sartor to Mardgar Harbor
Rel stood in a circle with the other caravan guards. From the uneasy sideways glances and the uncertain stances, he suspected that most were even more inexperienced than he was.
A scruffy woman faced them. She appeared to be somewhere between fifty and sixty. She was short, reminding Rel of a gnarled old apple tree toughened by years of hard weather. She said, “Now that it’s just us, here’s the truth. Fact is, I been running caravans for forty year, twenty as leader. Been no problems to speak of until lately, after the border opened. Don’t mistake me. I’m glad Sartor is in the world again, but.” She turned her head and made a spitting motion. “Instead of picking right up with their side o’ the treaties, they send us nothing. And so our woods is filled with brigands. Came across ’em twice, now, in only four trips.”
Rel knew he should keep silent, but he couldn’t bear to have his friends maligned. He didn’t want to cause trouble with his new boss, so he raised his hand.
She paused, and nodded curtly. “Something to say, Shorty?”
Some of the others chuckled, apparently never tired of the joke.
“Only that I just came from the Royal Guard at Eidervaen. Have to remember that the war for them was recent. Aren’t enough of ’em left alive to
defend the kingdom, much less patrol.”
“Nobody’s forgot when the war was for them.” The woman grunted. “But this is what I’m thinking. If they wouldn’t hire the likes o’ you, then they must indeed have moths in their purses.”
The others chuckled louder, and a weedy fellow said, “It’s true. I heard it over in Mandareos. They got no treasury. No hiring at all.”
Rel didn’t correct the misapprehension that he’d gone into Sartor to look for a job, as the woman said, “Well, that’s a big problem, and they have my sympathy that side o’ the border, yes they truly do, but the fact is, these here woods north o’ us are mostly full o’ former border riders who got shorted their pay when the guilds up and decided they weren’t going to pay Sartor the old taxes. So here we are, with a lot of ’em lookin’ to turn brigand, because it’s easier to carry on doin’ what you’ve always been doin’ than to look for new work.”
She paused, and when nobody argued, she said, “Now the truth is, most of ’em aren’t much better than us. So far it’s been, make some noise, look tough, and they ride off, looking for easier pickings. But one of these days we’re going to come across something better run, and I tell you honest, I know pretty much everything there is to know about tending the horses—I was first a farrier—but as for leading a real defense, well, if any of you has some real training, speak right up.”
And all heads turned expectantly toward Rel.
He suppressed a sigh, wondering what would happen if he claimed that his only training was in maintaining Colendi orchid conservatories. But the problem was a real one, and he was the biggest and tallest there. He suspected he would always be the biggest and tallest. So he said, “I did get a bit of training here and there. Can’t say I know how to command.” He didn’t mind mentioning Khanerenth, but he hated mentioning Everon, as he still had regrets about turning down a Knighthood. And he knew he’d sound like he was swanking.
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