If only she weren’t so ignorant! She glared at the little town she’d built, wishing she were smart. It had been fun until her mind filled with all these questions. If she could make up answers for herself, it stayed fun, but she knew the real world surrounded her little play town, and in the real world people called her Sartora, as if she knew all the answers to their questions.
Senrid found her sitting there beside the play city, rocking back and forth on the floor, thumbs digging at her cuticles, her skinny arms wrapped tightly round her legs and her chin grinding on her kneecaps. “Liere?”
“Maybe reading every book on the shelves is the wrong way to go at it. Maybe I should start with something like a history of towns,” she said. “How they grow.”
Senrid sighed, knowing that her anxious mood had to be related to ‘Sartora’ again.
“I don’t think there is such a book.” He dropped cross-legged to the floor opposite her. “Except maybe in a general history. Or local histories of a specific place. Towns generally grow beside rivers, or at crossroads, I know that much. Then there are walled towns, like in my country. Here, let me turn this into a Marloven town. I’ll show you how we defend them. Did you know that in the old days, the women and girls handled defense while the men roamed around on patrol?”
She watched his quick hands moving the pieces around. She had so little interest in defense that she let his words stream past. Instead, she watched his deft fingers below his wrists with the rope scars. He didn’t wear knives strapped to his forearms when he played with her, so she could see the scars, and his strong forearms, below the sleeves he rolled to his elbows. It was interesting, how differently he saw things. He was defending the town, and he didn’t even know the families she had imagined in the houses.
He looked up, and recognized her distant gaze. He let out his breath, and clapped his hands to his knees. “You don’t want to hear about town defenses.”
She blinked, and ground her chin harder on her knee. She knew Senrid would scoff about the Sartora worries. He already had. Not to be mean. It was just that he didn’t seem to care what people expected of him, or thought about him. No, she knew that was not quite right. He did care, but he was able to do things. She didn’t even know where to start.
How about with what she was most scared of, then. “I want to learn about me defenses. If Siamis comes back, and takes away the sword, everybody will want me to defend them, but he’s sure to kill me with it first,” she said.
“That, we can fix.” Senrid grinned. “Why didn’t we think of sword fighting lessons before? I need ’em, too. I’m terrible at it, because Keriam didn’t dare teach me when my uncle forbade it. Too easy to catch us out, because it’s noisy. Contact fighting is quieter.”
Liere let out a slow breath. “But I don’t have any strength.”
“Same as anything, you start simple and build it up. Come on. Let’s go get the practice blades for the pups, the ten-year-olds in the academy. They don’t arrive until next week, so we have the place to ourselves.”
Something new to learn! Liere followed him. Before long they stood in an empty room, wooden swords in hand. Senrid said, “I’ll show you the basics. We won’t even put on padding. If you take to it, I’ll get you proper lessons.”
Liere knew by the way he looked upward he was counting the things he needed to be doing, and she thought sadly that it was time to return to Bereth Ferian. Senrid was getting behind in his real duties, and she was terrified of becoming a burden.
Senrid was so busy, and yet he always made time for her. Guilt squeezed all the joy away, because she was sure if she listened on the mental plane, the first thoughts she’d hear would be people annoyed because Senrid was spending time with her that he should be spending on them.
“Liere?”
“I’m ready.”
“Here’s the stance . . .” When she got that, he demonstrated the four basic blocks for a foot warrior against another on foot.
She picked it up quickly, laughing with him as they slashed the wooden swords through the air. Already her hand stung a little, and her arms tingled.
Then it came time to try the first block. “I’ll stab, and you block. Slow at first. Very slow. Then we’ll try it a little faster.”
Slow was fine. She knew what to do, but the first real strike sent a sting of pain from her hand to her shoulder.
She dropped the sword and wrung her hand.
“Maybe gloves, until you build up some calluses,” Senrid said. “I’m sorry.”
Liere shrugged. “I asked you to show me.” As she stooped to pick up the wooden sword that was used by boys two years younger than she was, she knew she didn’t want to learn to fight. She didn’t believe that even with practice she’d be any good against a grown man unless she released the Child Spell and grew up.
With that came a memory that always tightened her stomach with horror: she was nine, listening idly to her mother in the mental realm when another woman said, She’s plain as mud now, but you wait. She’ll one day be a beauty, and you’ll make a fine marriage for her.
Liere rubbed her hand up and down her skinny leg, loathing the thought of people staring at her.
She jumped when Senrid tugged the sword from her fingers. “Maybe we should stop before you get blisters. They hurt.”
“It’ll take forever to learn,” she breathed.
He had become adept at keeping his mental shield in place, but it didn’t take Dena Yeresbeth to hear the fear in her whisper.
“If you don’t want to fight, then you learn to hide,” he said. “Siamis can’t carve you up if he can’t find you. So, let’s talk about hiding places. I know. Let’s play hide-and-find. My cousin Ndand and I used to play it a lot, when my uncle thought we were with the tutors, before he started putting spells on her.”
That was a game she’d begun to be good at, thanks to the Mearsiean girls. She grinned. “I’d love that!”
* * *
Everon
The alliance was spreading slowly, but not all its members defined it the same way. Rel and Puddlenose were the first to realize this, as in Ferdrian, Everon’s capital, the people gathered for a royal exhibition on the royal parade ground.
Trumpets played a sweet fall of notes.
“Wheel left!”
Rel leaned in the saddle, aware of the immediate response from his borrowed mount, aware of his old friends Enthold and Seiran at his left and right, Seiran, his own age, having been a Knight candidate when Rel found himself invited into the elite cadre of military protectors of Everon. He caught her eye. She flashed him the briefest grin, then faced forward, her ornamental lance couched at the correct angle. Rel belatedly adjusted his.
Except for the lance, which he’d drilled with perhaps three times before he turned down the offer to join the Knights, everything else came back as if he’d drilled two weeks ago, and not two years.
It was a brilliant day in early spring, and Rel had enjoyed the journey once he discovered Puddlenose in Erdrael Danara. The two crossed the strait then rode to Everon together, straight to the royal palace in Ferdrian.
Rel knew that in Everon, he would get a hearing. Sure enough, the king listened seriously to Rel’s warning, and Commander Roderic Dei invited Rel to participate in the exhibition.
It was good to feel the spring sun strengthening each day, good to be listened to, good to be with friends. And it was good to ride with the Knights again.
Exhilaration flooded through him as the trumpet raced up two chords, and the captain bawled, “Wheel right!”
As the command echoed from company to company, horses and riders wheeled with thrilling precision. Rel gloried in being part of a mighty whole moving as one. The fresh cheers from the sidelines made it clear that Ferdrian’s citizenry found the sight just as impressive.
The brisk spring air flirted with ribboned horse
manes and tails, and tossed the bright pennants on the pavilions lined along both sides of the grassy sward. This parade ground, generally reserved exclusively for the Knights of Dei, was today open to all, tables of tasty things having been provided by the royal kitchens and the two most popular inns.
The high mood carried Rel through the end of the exercise, and accompanied him to the king’s pavilion, where he’d been invited to join the royal party and their guests.
As Rel stepped up onto the platform, ducking under the wind-tossed canvas awnings, he heard Prince Glenn say fiercely, “Let Norsunder come. In fact, I hope they do.”
Like a pinched candle, Rel’s good mood was snuffed out.
Glenn’s sallow, sullen face eased when he saw Rel. He straightened up from his slouch and waved Rel to a seat beside Puddlenose. “Isn’t that so, Rel? If Norsunder comes, we’ll thrash them.”
Rel lowered himself onto the cushioned bench next to Puddlenose, who had stretched out his legs and was studying his bare, sun-browned toes. Rel took the time to sort his words, shutting out distractions—the rising wind, the changing light promising rain, the fact that this bench was lower than that of the princess and prince—and finally said slowly, “One thing I learned here is that the Knights are all still new.”
Glenn flushed. “It’s not our fault we were enchanted—”
Puddlenose’s gaze flickered, but he didn’t stir, and Rel wondered if he was thinking back to those strange days when evil seemed to shadow them at every turn. Wan-Edhe—Kessler—Norsunder. Only in retrospect was it obvious how many of the things that had befallen them were linked. The only exception being Detlev’s experiment with forcing Everon into the same weird enchantment Sartor had been in, placing them beyond space and time. No one knew why he did anything he did—what he had planned to do with enchanted Everon, had not the experiment failed when the magical dyr thing fell into the wrong hands.
Queen Mersedes Carinna leaned over to touch her son on the shoulder. “Glenn. This same observation was put to us by Roderic this very day. It is no cavil, merely observation. Experience will come. It is the way of things. I’d as lief it comes later.”
Glenn sent an impatient scowl up past his shoulder at his mother on her throne next to the king, and then at grizzled Roderic Dei, commander of the Knights, who stood at the king’s right, where he could signal the trumpeter.
Roderic said, “The queen speaks true.”
Glenn’s scowl altered to brooding puzzlement, then he swung back to Rel. “Just so you understand. We’re not cowards.”
“Opposite,” Rel said. “I know Harn and Seiran, there in Company Ten. Can think of few braver. And everyone respects Lord Valenn.” He pointed with his chin at tall, dark-haired Erhold Valenn of Valenn, who as a newly inherited duchas, was first in rank among the Knights, and usually won firsts in all the competitions. “But each of them will tell you themselves they have yet to face battle.”
Glenn chewed his underlip, then glanced warily back at Rel. “And you have?”
“Not war. Brigands only. I hope to keep it that way as long as I can.”
Glenn leaned forward, about to protest, but was stayed by his father leaning down to rest his hand on Glenn’s shoulder. “No one doubts your courage, my boy,” the wine-flushed king said genially. He nodded at the field, his craggy face looking younger as he grinned at someone among the riders lining up for the mock battle.
Glenn crossed his arms, his mouth going from sulky justification to tightly controlled disgust when a curly-haired knight grinned back at the king, the pure white feather on her helm indicating a captain.
Rel guessed that this merry captain was probably the king’s newest lover, or the latest one in his favor. He never quarreled with the old ones, Rel had learned (hearing far more than he wanted to about the royals’ complicated lives from his friends among the Knights). The king was privately known as ‘the butterfly lover.’ A light touch, a flutter, and he was gone.
Unlike the queen’s lovers, who all seemed to stay in love with her, though none so devoted as Roderic Dei, captain of the Knights.
The queen lifted her hand to the captain, who saluted her respectfully back, hand to helm. Then the trumpet played the charge.
Not hiding his disgust at the secret signaling, Glenn sat back with a snort. “I hope they can beat Norsunder,” he muttered under his breath. “If only they’d listen to Valenn! Mama would have done better to . . .”
He shut his mouth, but Puddlenose and Rel had both heard Glenn on this subject: the Knights were an elite group not many generations old, elite in name as well as prowess, their command granted to the Dei family. The Knights had been confined to well-born males who passed stringent tests, until Mersedes Carinna, wearing male guise, had applied, made her way into the Knights, and into the king’s heart. As queen, her first proclamation had been to open the Knights to women. And now there were plenty of women among them.
Glenn respected his mother as a person, but he resented her influence. It was bad enough that princesses ranked over princes in all countries influenced by Sartor, just because a million years ago, apparently Ancient Sartor only had queens. He thought that some things should belong to men, like warfare, because they were stronger than women. He was sure the women weakened the Knights. After all, they were smaller, and never as strong as the Duchas of Valenn or even Uncle Roderic.
Princess Hatahra, a year younger than her brother, and perhaps even more unprepossessingly narrow-faced and sallow, turned a scowl her brother’s way. Under cover of the adults discussing the complicated maneuver being executed on the grounds below them, she muttered, “Seiran is the second best archer. And the first best is Captain Alstha.” She pointed at the white-feathered captain. Both women were common in birth.
Glenn crossed his arms. “Having royal favorites never is good for discipline,” he muttered back.
Tahra glanced skyward, sighed, then said, “True. But Uncle Roderic is fair.”
Whenever Princess Hatahra spoke, she was listened to: she was, all knew, the royal child who had broken herself free of Norsunder’s evil spell all on her own. Her parents, the nobles, Roderic Dei—everybody in Everon respected her for that. They respected the fact that when the evil Siamis and Detlev ranged over the world searching for Liere, it was Princess Tahra they came to first. Even though she did not have Dena Yeresbeth, she was respected as if she did have special mind powers, and she was the one spoken of most often as the possible royal heir.
Tahra, aware of that respectful silence, sat back, and shut up.
She would never tell anyone the real reason she’d broken the spell was through happenstance, just because she hated to be touched. Strong emotion broke the illusion, that much she’d learned in her magic studies since. And illusions were like spider webs—if you broke one, the entire web of illusions tore. It had been the flimsiest of enchantments. Norsunder kept trying to find ways to control minds, she had learned, but all they could do was distract or fool people with these various experiments—Detlev’s, Siamis’s. All of them broken in the end. Worthless.
She smiled grimly.
Glenn said to Puddlenose, “I really wish you’d join the Knights, even if Rel won’t. I’ve seen you in the practice field. I know you can handle that sword.”
“Only if someone threatens to air my innards,” Puddlenose said, patting his stomach. “And itch-feet don’t make good knights.”
“You’d have to change your name, of course,” Glenn said louder, aware of the adults listening. “But you should anyway. Pick something honorable, and when you make your oath, you’ll no longer be mistaken for a vagabond.”
“I like my name.” Puddlenose reached into the basket of fresh apricot tarts. “I’m the only one in the world who has it. What could be a finer distinction than that? Even kings can’t claim such exclusivity!”
The Queen of Everon chuckled, glancing cover
tly at her son, whose behavior increasingly worried her. “There is no finer, ha ha!”
Queen Mersedes Carinna was probably the plainest woman there, except when she smiled or laughed, which she did often. That laugh, a gusting waterfall of sound, seemed to come up from her toes, curving her thin lips, turning her close-set eyes into crescents of mirth, and flushing her sallow skin that had been privately sneered at by Colendi visitors as surely inherited from some Chwahir ancestor.
King Berthold also laughed, though only because his wife did. He kept to himself his conviction that it was irresponsible for a prince to shrug off inherited duty, but Puddlenose had aided his children when he himself was under enchantment, and so Puddlenose would always have a welcome in Everon.
The laughter ended when Tahra muttered, “I hate war.” She sent a wary, accusing glance Rel’s way, as if he’d been encouraging her brother.
The adults were quiet again, considering her words for extra significance.
Puddlenose said, “We all do, Tahra. At least, anyone sane does. Me, when someone wants to throw a war, I do my best to be two kingdoms away, snoring in bed. And if the eleveners come galloping out of one of their black rifts, I’d like to be a continent away.”
Everybody laughed, of course. Rel laughed as well, but as he glanced from Puddlenose to the queen, who slapped her thigh and stamped one foot, repeating, “Snoring in bed! Or doing something in bed!” Rel reflected that she wasn’t the only one whose entire identity seemed to be bound up in laughter.
But Puddlenose could be serious. Rel had seen him so. Once. Deathly serious, with the deliberate intent to kill. So unfamiliar had been that familiar face that Rel would have walked right past him, had he not recognized the ragged, blood-stained prison clothes he’d been looking at for weeks, and smelled the prison stench: the moment they’d been freed from the prison in Kessler’s assassin camp, Puddlenose had headed out, weak as he was, his purpose to kill Prince Kessler’s chief lieutenant, who’d renamed himself Alsais, after the capital of Colend. Alsais’s penchant for petty cruelty had escalated to torture and murder among the prisoners. Puddlenose could not have survived a fight. He’d had barely enough strength to throw a knife. Which he’d done.
A Sword Named Truth Page 31
