A Sword Named Truth

by Sherwood Smith

  “There is no reason you should remember me,” Derek said earnestly. “But I will never forget you, the person who saved my brother and me.”

  CJ blanched as pale as the shirt collar above her black vest.

  Derek turned to his orphans. “Some of you had parents who did not believe young people could be useful. To them I always said, ‘black wool and ambition.’ It was this girl who proved that people your age have smart minds, and brave hearts.” And to CJ, “I see that you still wear the vest made from the wool of a black sheep. I never understood what you meant when you said that you were that kind of person, but when I spoke of a uniform for my orphan brigade, here, I thought it should include such a garment, as it symbolized those stout of heart.”

  CJ scowled at her bare toes, red to the ears, and when Ruddy said, “Tell us what happened!” she muttered, “I hate even thinking about that mess with Kessler.”

  “I’m starved,” one of the other Mearsieans said loudly, sending a worried glance at CJ, who stalked away, then looked back with the oddest expression, a mixture of regret, embarrassment, and concern.

  “Is your brother all right?” CJ asked Derek.

  Derek said, “He’s up north in western Khanerenth, trading for horses. He’ll regret not having been here to meet you.”

  Senrid could see how every word made CJ flinch. Mentally resolving he would get that story out of someone, he drew Derek’s attention by saying, “I don’t understand using two sticks.” He pointed at the pair resting on the grass beside each orphan. “One would be a practice sword, but two?”

  Derek smiled. “Welcome! I didn’t see you there in the back. No, we do not use swords. The weapons are these sticks. Any sticks. The art of the two sticks comes from Khanerenth. Like many things in that kingdom, it is said to have originated as a form of marine warfare, on ships.”

  “Oh?” Senrid said innocently, knowing very well that his own ancestor, Inda-Harskialdna—known elsewhere in the world as Elgar the Fox—had spread double-stick fighting to mariners, more than eight centuries previous.

  CJ didn’t trust Senrid’s earnest, inquiring air as far as she could throw him, but she recognized his distraction of Derek away from an embarrassing moment, and flashed him a grim smile of gratitude as she took off.

  Derek bent to pick up a pair of double-sticks. “I brought a simplified form here before the new king came to the throne, as commoners were forbidden to possess steel. But any hand can pick up a stick from field or road.”

  Derek paused, and motioned a pair of his orphans forward to demonstrate. Senrid stood with his hands behind his back, and what he hoped was an interested look on his face. He knew the basics, but until his uncle was deposed, the only hard training he’d had was in archery and hand-to-hand knife fighting. He could tell that Derek had gotten decent training somewhere, though he wasn’t very practiced.

  * * *

  —

  Atan offered space in the cottage loft for Hibern, which she instantly accepted. She could hardly wait to get at that library. By afternoon, when thunder heralded a brief storm, she and Atan sat on either side of the leaping fire, absorbed in study.

  Or Hibern set out to study. She discovered that the library was mostly handmade copies of Sartoran histories and magic books that she was already familiar with, and a few personal records by unknown mages, obscure and difficult to read. She earmarked the oldest ones for priority reading, but sat back, reflecting on what she’d seen so far.

  The alliance was gathering for the first time. But instead of cleaving together in order to combine knowledge and strength, they seemed to be separating out into disparate groups. They had little in common but a shared hatred of Norsunder, she was thinking. And hatred was never a good way to bind people together.

  Part of being a mage was trying to negotiate between people. As Hibern stared down at her cup of wild berry juice, she wondered where to begin.

  Why not with what she knew? She turned her gaze up to Atan. “Shall we start our studies again? Only not just us. Senrid, you’ve met. Tsauderei tells me that Jilo is interested, and in desperate need of light magic guidance. I think that kind of help is exactly what the alliance is for. Also, I think you’ll like Leander Tlennen-Hess. He loves history, especially how language forms and changes. And he knows as much magic as either of us.”

  “Study,” Atan said, “is exactly what I need. Shall we go find them?”

  * * *

  —

  At first Atan was distracted by the chiseled beauty of the green-eyed, dark-haired Leander Tlennen-Hess. His manner reminded her of Arthur: scholarly, a little absent about his environment. He has no idea how beautiful he is, she thought, and turned to the sallow, awkward Jilo so Leander wouldn’t think she was staring.

  Though Jilo didn’t talk, he soaked in every word of that first discussion.

  The day after that, Hibern brought Clair, who was quiet, polite, and burning with interest.

  The study group was a success beyond Hibern’s hopes. After a shy first day, except for silent, listening Jilo, they began talking so fast their words tumbled over one another as they flung history and magic record citations at one another to bolster their admitted lack of experience. Hibern rejoiced when she saw Atan leaning forward, elbows on knees, arguing with Senrid.

  Senrid enjoyed it, too. He considered giving mornings to the study group, but Tsauderei’s library seemed to be mainly composed of musty old tomes. Senrid’s primary motivation was to research Erdrael, but he hated the thought of anyone discovering what he was doing and asking nosy questions.

  Since it sounded like the mages were planning to dispense the antidote to the Siamis spell soon, he would take a short leave from magic studies.

  Over the next few mornings, he flew down early to drill with the orphans. By now he was convinced that Derek’s double-stick form was a variant of the ancient Marloven plains’s snap-staff fighting, an artifact of Inda-Harskialdna’s seafaring days. He kept that to himself, and continued to stay in back so he could observe better. But he couldn’t hide how well he moved, after all his years of drill in close-in fighting with knives.

  Derek, experienced enough now to spot military training, was as interested in Senrid as the latter was in Derek. At the end of the week, on a warmer-than-usual morning, Derek dismissed the brigade early. They promptly stampeded to swim in the lake.

  Senrid was going to go with them. Like most Marlovens, any swimming he got was in rivers or ponds at the height of summer, and that rarely. The lake was almost as good as flying.

  But when Derek said, “I have some questions,” Senrid’s interest sharpened.

  “So do I,” he said. Swimming could wait.

  They flew up to sit on the emerald grasses beside one of the two waterfalls filling the lake, under the shade of resiny-smelling, soughing pine.

  Derek said, “Ask away!” He proved to be very ready to talk about Kessler Sonscarna’s assassination training camp. Senrid learned that Derek had not been abducted, like Puddlenose and Rel—he’d actually been recruited. “I was seventeen, and I thought it was a perfect plan,” Derek admitted, the residue of his fanatical fervor bombarding Senrid on the mental plane. “Promotion through pure merit, not birth! The world would be far better, would it not?” he asked mockingly, and then laughed somewhat bitterly.

  The problem came when Derek had found himself being promoted rapidly (he had to be a natural leader, Senrid thought, remembering Keriam’s lessons on the subject), and of course his popularity was his downfall.

  Derek bitterly and lengthily described being set up for betrayal by Kessler’s trusted lieutenant, the near execution, and then CJ’s intervention.

  “Wait. CJ was there? In a military camp?”

  Derek nodded. “All of them. Except the white-haired one, who later broke Dejain’s magic. Kessler made no distinction between boys and girls, and the younger the
better. Fewer bad habits to be trained out of, so he said. He favored the Mearsieans because the King of the Chwahir hated them. There was even a rumor that Kessler wanted to make CJ his heir. But Kessler’s second in command, a nasty piece of work who’d called himself Alsais, took against anyone Kessler favored. When she was supposed to prove herself by assassinating the white-haired girl, the Mearsieans disrupted the deployment by interfering with Dejain’s magical business—and then Dejain turned on Kessler. That boy they call Puddlenose went for Alsais,” he finished up. “Near as I can tell, he got him, too.”

  Senrid whistled. No wonder easy-going Puddlenose had never talked about that experience.

  Part of Derek’s gift for leading was understanding that you give before you demand. Senrid saw this, appreciated it, and let himself talk more than he might have when Derek began his own questions. Especially when Derek didn’t react with disgust or distrust at the word ‘Marloven.’

  “That is exactly what Sarendan needs,” Derek exclaimed after Senrid described the academy. “Under the old king, they only studied for a season, then they spent the summer playing games.”

  “Wargames have purpose,” Senrid said.

  Derek waved a hand. “The way you describe, yes. Without a horde of servants to do all the actual work.”

  Senrid grinned. “We train people to be self-sufficient because there were never servants on the battlefield. At least, in our ballads, nobody holds up his hand and declares, ‘Wait,’ to his enemy. ‘I need to send someone to fetch my second-best hat.’”

  Derek slapped his knee and laughed. “Oh, yes, this is exactly what we need here in Sarendan. I trust we can come to some arrangement, as soon as we rid ourselves of these soul-suckers.”

  Senrid thought to himself that Retren Forthan would probably love to come work with Derek, and adapt some basic training for Sarendan’s infant army to use—Senrid assumed he was talking to a fellow monarch, though Derek thought he was talking to a Marloven academy trainee.

  As he flew away, Senrid reflected back, puzzled. He knew there’d been a revolution in Sarendan. Only if Derek was the new king, then who was the anchor for Siamis’s enchantment?

  Chapter Ten

  Off the coast of Drael

  WHEN Christoph was a youth in a very small part of Flanders, before the turn of the eighteenth century, he’d learned a motto: carpe diem, or ‘seize the day.’

  A brush with death resulting in a trip through the world-gate had strengthened this attitude. There were mysteries unexplained at work in a universe that he could not understand. So why try? His next brush with death might hurl him into yet another world, or it might smite his body into the four elements and his soul into the ethereal, a prospect that seemed almost as mysterious.

  Life therefore was for having as much fun as one could, and on this world, he’d found the next thing to a brother in Puddlenose of the Mearsieans, whom he’d met on his travels. They began traveling together, sharing similar tastes in food, tastes in jokes, tastes for comfortable surroundings with people who knew how to laugh. They talked about everything except serious things. Sometimes they talked around serious things, though never for long. He was fine with that.

  They were fresh from one of their favorite midsummer festivals, having discovered the Mearsiean privateer Tzasilia in Breis’s harbor, off The Fangs at the northeast corner of the long Sartoran continent.

  Captain Heraford had promptly hauled Puddlenose along on errands as a convenient message runner, telling Christoph to report on board. Having tossed his knapsack onto a hammock, Christoph was up on deck enjoying the brisk breeze in the sunshine, and regaling his friends among the crew with their recent adventures. “. . . and if the prentices win the games, see, then they get to command their masters. I assure you, there is no finer sight than a parcel of windbag city aldermen having to hop to the meeting hall on one foot, hooting like owls—”

  Heads turned, gazes shifting beyond Christoph, who abandoned his tale to see what caught their attention. On the quay adjacent to their pier someone was shoving through the crowd of lounging mariners, passengers, workers, pie-sellers, pickpockets, and patrollers, judging by the way people staggered, jumped, and dropped things; in the wake of the force burrowing its way faint shouts of protest rose.

  The crowd boiled, parted, and . . . it was Puddlenose shoving everyone aside, and running at top speed. Puddlenose bounded up the ramp, skirting a line of dock workers bearing the last of the supplies to stow in the hold.

  Puddlenose rarely moved faster than a slope-shouldered amble, except when confronted with three circumstances. One was war, and the second and third were persons who happened to be related, though they would kill one another if they could: Wan-Edhe of the Chwahir, and Kessler Sonscarna, his grandson, or grandnephew, or whatever-he-was.

  “Uh-oh,” Christoph said under his breath.

  Puddlenose spotted Christoph’s sturdy form and sun-bleached hair.

  He galloped straight to him, then leaned over, hands on his knees as he fought for breath. “Kessler.” He expelled the word like a curse. “Sure it was him. Description matches, black short hair, pale eyes, black clothes. Wiry build. On some kind of ship with a weird bow. Leading a fleet of five. Weird tree on the foremast sails.” He flung a hand upright, hooking the fingers like a dragon prow. “Everyone’s talking about it. Passed outside two days ago, heading north. Should have reached The Fangs by now.”

  Christoph said, “Wasn’t that the same kind of ship that everyone said brought Henerek and the eleveners to attack Everon?”

  Puddlenose didn’t wait for an answer. “We’ve got to warn Everon.”

  Captain Heraford, a weathered man, spare of form, had been right behind Puddlenose. He looked from one boy to the other. “Clair gave you one of those notecases. Now would be the time to use it.”

  “Lost it.” Puddlenose grimaced. “And you know Rel. Travels light.”

  The captain gave a short nod. “Take the boat,” he said. “We’ll meet up later.”

  * * *

  Off the coast of Everon

  “What do you fight for?”

  Kessler leaned against the taffrail next to Luka Orm, the captain of the Grebe’s Crest, his fingers in reach of one of his knives.

  It had been a fast, smooth journey, and he liked the taciturn Venn, even if he didn’t understand all that about Venn Doom and damnation. But if this man thought for a heartbeat that Kessler must sustain interrogation before he and his command would be put ashore, he’d kill the man right now, heave him over the side, and take the ships. It wouldn’t be easy, but he had no doubt he could do it.

  “What do you fight for?” Orm said again, his eyes a paler shade of blue than Kessler’s own. Strange, how little they had in common, and yet there was that, and the familiar smell of fish in vinegar, a staple in coastal Chwahirsland. He hadn’t eaten it since he’d run from Wan-Edhe, but he remembered the shore villagers who had sheltered him and fed him before he’d managed to escape . . .

  A fine splash of spray brought his thoughts back.

  “You do not answer. It is orders, then?” Orm persisted. “You do not think beyond orders?”

  “They don’t think beyond.” Kessler tipped his chin toward the foredeck, where his warriors drilled by turn. One command—no more than a raised fist—and they’d turn on the Venn sailors.

  “This is why they chose Norsunder to cleave to, because they do not think?”

  “Norsunder chose us,” Kessler retorted. But that veered too near the personal, so he said, “Many of them like to fight. Most of them like to kill. At least half were adjudged criminals before some court or other, given stone spells and planted in a Court of Shame.”

  “A what?”

  “Ah, that’s right, you come from the old Venn,” Kessler said with a sardonic twist to his mouth. “You either killed your criminals, or put iron torcs around thei
r necks and made them into thralls. Well, you will discover as you travel about in this enlightened time—” His teeth showed on the word ‘enlightened.’ “You will discover that in the interim, many kingdoms conceived a way to deal with violent criminals tried and convicted: put a stone spell on them that would last for a century and set them up in a Garden of Shame, as a reminder to the rest of the populace. These Gardens of Shame have gone out of fashion in most places. You can still find them here and there. Norsunder mages recruited by releasing the stone spell and then using an enchanted knife to cut the recruits. Bind them by their own blood.” Like me. “Such retain free will, but no free rein. Then there are the soul-bound, who are essentially dead, but their bodies kept alive by magic. I don’t have any of the soul-bound to show you as example. They’re obedient, but profoundly stupid.”

  Orm listened to the half-understood words, appalled. This was the result of oath-breaking. He must serve such a person.

  To ward the question he could see in Orm’s expression, Kessler said, “I’d like to take a look at your maps—your charts—again.”

  Brine dripped off the creaking ropes into Kessler’s face, stinging his eyes as they made their way down to the captain’s cabin. Orm spread out the chart that displayed the right-hand side of the continent of Drael. Kessler took a moment to appreciate the complication of navigational lines that the Venn had apparently used by magic, and overlaid on these, in different colors, beautiful lines showing the track of the sun in different seasons. It was by these that this captain now navigated, bringing them in sight of The Fangs, off Chwahirsland.

  Orm ventured a remark. “Our Drenga would land with the sun behind them. If your enemy is surprised, he cannot count you.”

  Kessler gave a short nod. Surprise was unlikely. But he would never waste an advantage. “I always fight with the sun behind me if I can. How long before we reach Everon’s harbor?”