The Kyst troops, she explained to Elot of the Scholars Guild as he sat baffled before his fire, claimed that Guld of Mayne was twice, if not three times, the poet that Elot would ever be. The Dalmorat Shadeen objected and Kieve, hoping to avert a bloodbath, had come to beg Elot to accompany her to the barracks and favor all present with a recitation of the Saga of Huiel, after which the Kyst’s warriors were sure to retreat in shame. As would Guld, when he heard about it. In addition, she added, a great deal of money rode on the outcome and Elot might see some of it find its way into his own pockets.
The poet needed no further persuasion. He hauled out his manuscript and grabbed for his cloak. While his back was turned Kieve reached into his wardrobe, secured his wide, crown-less scholar’s cap, and stuffed it into her tunic.
In a fever to maintain his reputation and increase his wealth, Elot scurried through the yard ahead of them, preceded by his belly and followed by his braids. Leyek touched Kieve’s shoulder.
“The dog, Rider! Where do we get the dog?”
“Peace.”
Soldiers crowded the barracks doorway and cheered as Kieve, partner, and poet strode in.
“First team!” Pren said. Leyek crowed.
“Where are these Kystani illiterates?” Elot demanded through the uproar. Ilach, appearing behind Pren, looked at him and blanched.
“Kieve. You didn’t.”
Kieve smiled and asked for a cup of wine. Braith came in next, the line on her face scarlet, and unwrapped a scrawny dog from her cloak. Her Bergdahl partner leaned against the wall, panting. When Dunun appeared at the door he surveyed the other teams, snorted, and pushed his way into the hall. His partner followed.
“Tokens!” Pren demanded, clearing people away from one long table.
Leyek bounced on the balls of his feet. Kieve smiled around her winecup. “A rose, a rock,” she declaimed. Leyek pulled the bruised rock-rose from his pouch and put it on the table.
“Cheat!” Dunun yelled.
“Is this a joke?” Elot demanded.
“Allowed,” Pren said. Braith put a bud of the evergreen called winter rose on the table, and a pebble. Kieve snorted. At Dunun’s gesture his partner produced a hand-sized hunk of pavement from Lord’s Walk and a piece of cloth which, unfurled, proved to be a woman’s shift, embroidered with delicate flowers.
“That,” Braith said, “is only a representation of a rose.”
“And that,” Dunun retorted, pointing to Kieve’s offering, “is only a reference to a rock.”
“Agreed,” Kieve said. “I won’t challenge it.”
“Accepted,” Pren said. The soldiers shouted and cheered.
“You shouldn’t give in,” Leyek whispered. “You’ll give it all away.”
Kieve ignored him. “A ring.” She produced Elot’s hat, stuck her arm through its empty center, and spun it. The poet bellowed, grabbed it, and jammed it on his head, where the collection of paws and tails swung erratically around his face. Dunun’ partner threw the metal wall ring on the table and Braith, looking smug, held up the chaplet of silver mesh that was Fercos the minstrel’s most cherished possession. The cheers were deafening.
“Who’s winning?” Leyek demanded. “And why isn’t it us?”
“It depends on how difficult the tokens are to find,” she said, “and how far you can interpret the clues without being disallowed. We’re even. I won the rock, Dunun the rose, and Braith the ring.” She emptied her cup.
“This,” Elot said with indignation, “is a disgrace.”
Kieve clasped his shoulder, stilling him. “A rhyme,” she cried. “Master Elot, would you start now?” She slid a coin into his palm.
Elot shook his head, sending paws and tails lashing, and launched into the plodding, double-rhymed, interminable saga of Lord Hueil, builder of much of the castle on Sterk. He had worked on the poem without cease for almost thirty years. It was full of architectural details and managed to rhyme “crenellate” with “immoderate,” albeit not very well. Once started, nothing could stop him. Ilach, before putting his face in his hands, mouthed silent imprecations at Kieve.
Braith unrolled a love poem written, according to the inscription, to the eyes of Mistress Livia, the seductive and very fickle daughter of Balor Cook, and signed by Adwyr’s page Anfri. It was a very bawdy poem, as was the one Dunun had made up during the race and now recited, to Elot’s fury, but Master Elot took the prize by simple acclaim.
Braith produced a stone toad from the store-rooms of the White Tower and it appeared that she would win the round, until Kieve’s toad woke up and proved that it was alive by croaking and crapping on Leyek’s hand. Dunun had no toad at all. Whatever explanation he had was shouted down. Kieve won the round and Dunun, cursing, was out of the race. Leyek wiped his hand clean and resumed bouncing.
“A king,” Kieve said, holding the clock aloft. Enameled on its back was a portrait of the Vernal King, extravagantly male, done in green and gold and gaudy enough, Pren said with approval, for a whorehouse. “And a chime,” Kieve called. The clock hand touched the hour and a cascade of bells rang counterpoint to Elot’s recitation. Kieve drank another cup of wine. Dunun sulked.
Her king was preferred to Braith’s king, a doll filched from the playrooms, but her chime took second place to the shimmering windchimes produced by Braith’s partner and stolen from the gravetrees in the Garden of the Lady. Leyek grew dangerous with excitement, arms waving and fair hair a nimbus around his face. Kieve maintained a serene silence.
“Aha!” Braith shouted, lifting the bedraggled kitchen dog onto the table. “The dog, Rider! Show your dog or forfeit!”
Leyek groaned but Kieve, still smug, opened her tunic. Warmed by her body, protected through the long run, a flat-faced dog snake stuck its head into the light, flicked its tongue, and proceeded to curl around Kieve’s neck and across her shoulders. Leyek fainted.
“I call forfeit!” Kieve yelled across the shouting and laughter. The voices tumbled into a relative quiet, during which Kieve looked at Elot. The poet stood, eyes closed, one hand waving in inexorable cadence. Braith glanced from Kieve to the poet and back again.
“You don’t mean it,” she said.
“Every. Last. Stanza. Unless, of course, you can persuade him to stop.”
Elot grabbed a stave and leaped onto a table, from which he protected honor with recitation and person with an artful blend of jabs and thrusts against a wave of yelling soldiers. Kieve, laughing, leaned against a wall and allowed Pren to deprive her of her tokens.
“I should have you thrashed,” Ilach said. “All of you.”
“Forfeits wasn’t my idea,” Kieve said. “Go thrash the loser.”
“I’ve had two reports of a Trapper cry tonight. Did you hear anything?”
“Yes,” she said. “I thought it a prank. It can’t be more than that.”
“Perhaps,” Ilach said. “But I’ll have to increase the patrols anyway, just to reassure everyone. If I find the prankster, I’ll have him drummed off Sterk. Or her.” He looked at Kieve again. She shrugged.
Braith came up to lean against the wall by Ilach and put her arm around his waist. “Your partner is reviving,” she told Kieve. “You didn’t tell him about the snake, did you?”
“No.” She yawned. There were no snakes in Uruk, although the Inguruki knew of them and feared them.
Braith said, “You know that the Lady Isbael is on Sterk?”
“I’ve been told that piece of information three times today, and can’t say that I’m fascinated.”
“What about this, then,” Braith said. “I heard a rumor that you fought your way through a blizzard on a glacier, stole a kid, murdered a cottager, robbed an innkeeper, and offered to poleax a couple of constables at the ferry dock. Any of that true?”
“Not a word of it.” Leyek stood on a table, searching for her. She slouched lower against the wall.
Braith hesitated. “I also heard a rumor about Gadyn.”
Ilach shook his head
at Braith and moved into the hall. After a moment Braith followed. Kieve frowned after them before returning her attention to the room.
Elot had added a pouch of smooth stones to his arsenal, hurling them on occasion and with vicious accuracy against his unwilling audience. Decades of teaching Sterk’s unruly children had given him a more than passing acquaintance with the management of fractious listeners, and neither thrust nor fling marred his shouted iambs. Nor did the glittering quent Kieve threw to him. He snatched it from the air without missing a beat, whacked an attacking soldier across the shoulders, and bellowed his refrain. Kieve headed for the cloak room.
“But you can’t leave.” Leyek came into the room behind her, his eyes sparkling. “It’s early still, the Gate is just risen. And you owe for that trick with the snake.”
“It’s late,” Kieve replied, settling the cloak across her shoulders. “The Gate has been up for hours and I owe you nothing for the snake.”
He laid one long, delicate hand on her arm. “Come with me, Rider,” he whispered. “I know atguka, magic. I can make your body span the mountains and your soul fly. I promise.”
She shook her arm free. “Good night, soldier.”
“I’ll play you for it.” He pulled the gaming bones from his pocket. He was, Kieve thought, most annoyingly pretty. “Two out of three. Winner takes me. Yes?”
“No!” She headed out the door. Leyek grabbed his cloak and followed her.
“It’s a pity,” he said, catching up with her. “I gamble almost as well as I make love. I can tell you why I’m in Dalmorat. Do you want to know that?”
She pulled her hood up around her ears. “Will you tell the truth?”
“I always tell the truth,” he said. “And Korth is south of the border, almost. My father is the headman, and he has talked to Lady Esylk’s counselors about a treaty.”
“Between the village of Korth and Myned Province? That’s a generous offer.”
Leyek bristled. “Not only for Korth but for all Uruk and all Inguruki, everywhere. When the lady heard that your Lord Cadoc was dying, she said she had to come and I wanted to come with her, so my father said I could and Lady Esylk said I could be one of her men-at-arms.” Leyek flung one arm around her shoulders. “There, and all of it the truth. Do you believe me?”
She stopped and turned to him, frowning. “Leyek of Korth, any of those soldiers would kill you if they knew you were an Inguruk. Commander Ilach has already increased patrols because of your foolish scream. Shout the akefin Uruk and tell strangers about your father the headman and this wonderful treaty, and you’ll be dead within the hour.”
“But Rider.” Leyek spread his hands. “You’re a—”
“I am not,” she said. “I never was.” And left him in the ward.
The boy was clean and damp and asleep on a pallet tucked between the map cabinet and the wall. Skirting a pile of packing crates, Kieve went into her own room, struggled into a heavy nightshirt, and crept under the piled furs.
She woke to the faint sound of the boy’s sobs, quiet and unceasing. She lit a lamp, shoved her feet into slippers, and padded to his pallet. When she pulled the quilt from his face he turned from the light but didn’t waken. His shoulders jerked as he sobbed. He wept, she realized, at his dream.
“Pyrs, wake up.”
He didn’t respond. She pressed her lips together, then folded her legs and sat beside him on the pallet. He curled around himself more tightly. She touched his shoulder, then put her hand under the quilt and rubbed his back, feeling the bumps of his spine along her palm. After a while the sobbing lessened, and after a longer time he sighed and was quiet. She sat still for a moment. She had dreamed, as a child, but since coming to Dalmorat her sleep had been empty. Just as well, she thought. She went back into her room and found, rolled at the bottom of her clothespress, a dressed fox fur. She tucked it around his shoulders. He didn’t waken, but one hand came out of the quilt, touched the fur, and closed around it. When he didn’t move again, she went back to her own bed, burrowed into the furs, and fell asleep.
Chapter 4
She woke in the darkness before dawn and lay in the deep furs, thinking about running forfeits and Cadoc and Gadyn and Leyek’s engaging grin. Her eyes hurt and her muscles ached, and she remembered that she would meet Taryn tonight in the bathhouse. That, she thought, should relieve any number of tensions. She rolled from the bed and dressed, gasping a little in the sharp cold, and broke the ice along the top of the water pitcher. The sting of water on her face and neck made her gasp again. Even her cloak felt cold, but warmed as she went down the stairs and across the yard. The salve on her cheekbones crackled a little in the cold.
In the barracks soldiers crowded around the largest fireplace, where Braith ladled vedsuppe from a huge pot. As Kieve came in she caught Dunun’s eye and nodded toward the Tower. Dunun shrugged and shook his head. Kieve took a mug and sipped at it. The hot, thick beverage smelled of toasted barley and beef broth, and warmed her. She took the mug with her to the practice yard and while the sun rose Ilach’s practice master pursued her about the yard with stave and sword and, when that was over, allowed her to throw him a few times. She thought she had grown used to the eye-patch but the practice master blamed it for her worse-than-usual performance. She nodded, grateful for the excuse.
When the practice master finished with her she watched while the master and Ilach parried and thrust and moved each other around the yard in the pale light of dawn.
“Look at him,” Pren said with disgust. “For all the workout he gave you, it didn’t even wind him.”
The two men could have been dancing, caught in the rhythm of their art.
“Ilach’ll never beat him,” another soldier said.
“Doesn’t have to,” Pren remarked. “The master can’t command worth shit, but Ilach can.”
A moment’s quiet. A Moel soldier said, “Our commander says my Lord of Moel petitions the Koerstadt Council for permission to use firearms within Cherek.” Kieve thought about that. The Smith Guild’s unreliable harquebuses were, by Council agreement, used only beyond Cherek’s borders.
Ilach had backed the practice master against the curtain wall where nothing but hard, precise sword work would get him out again.
“Does your commander say why?” Pren said.
“He speculates. So do we.”
The practice master steadily beat aside Ilach’s sword.
“My Lord of Moel seeks to speak with the leader of your Lord’s Guard,” the Moel soldier said.
“To hire him,” Kieve said.
“Aye. It is cheaper, he says, than paying taxes to support the garrisons along the border. And if he can give them firearms, he need not pay for this sort of training, either.”
Nobody spoke. Only the Shadeen Guild was allowed the arts of war and only they could function as a provincial Lord’s warriors. In addition, each province paid a levy to the Guild in Koerstadt to fund the garrisons that secured the borders. What Moel’s Lord proposed was to break their monopoly.
The practice master leaned into his work and step by step drove Ilach back from the wall.
“He’ll regret it when Trappers sit at his table and drink all his wine,” Pren said.
“Why should they, he says. The land-barons along the border will not let them through, he says. He will move his capital to the south of the province. He will be safe.”
Pren made a quiet, sarcastic noise. “If Moel’s border land-barons have to protect their province alone, they’ll take up arms and invade it themselves.”
“And who would keep the peace in Cherek?” Braith had joined them. “If Brodveld’s Lord wished to move against Yost to steal whatever it is they have worth stealing in Yost, he could do just as he pleased, with no sanction and no oversight. No mercenary company has the people or training to protect an entire province, they hold no oath to the country herself. Who in Cherek would be safe then?”
The practice master feinted, turned, and sent Ilach’s
sword skittering across the sand toward them. The two men faced each other motionless before, laughing and out of breath, they put their arms around each other’s shoulders and staggered toward the watching troops.
Kieve turned before they arrived and walked back to her own quarters. The stable doors were open and horse shit steamed where the stableboys shoveled it into barrows in the yard.
Pyrs was awake and sitting on his pallet. Gaura transferred her glare to Kieve.
“Will you want a meal, mistress?” she said.
“Yes. And something for the boy.”
“The boy!” Gaura stood in the middle of the room, flapping her apron in agitation, before saying, “He is a bondslave!”
Kieve looked at her.
“You have had me serve a bondslave, as though he were free! It is—it is an insult, mistress! You didn’t tell me, and I treated him like a—like a lord!”
The boy put his arms around his knees. Kieve looked from one to the other and shrugged.
“Very well then, don’t feed him. Boy, get your shortcoat and come with me. Gaura, finish packing.”
As she walked out she heard Gaura snort and slam a door. The boy scrambled after her, pulling the shortcoat around him.
“Mistress?” he said.
She didn’t reply. He followed her down the icy stairs and diagonally across the yard. She pushed open the kitchen door. Pyrs hesitated before following her in.
“What’s that?” Balor Cook yelled, turning from the ovens and glaring. He saw Kieve and thrust his chin up, toward the Tower.
She shook her head. “Master Cook, you gave me no errands to run for you in the country, so I have come empty handed.”
“And expect to leave with your hands full? Out! I’ve nothing for either of you. Scat! Or by the Father’s armpit, I’ll have you turning spits for a week!” He advanced across the room, snatching up buns and firing them at her. “Out!”
Kieve caught the buns and led Pyrs from the kitchens, stopping in the passageway to give one to the boy. They were hot and studded with pieces of meat and melted cheese.
“Baker’s boy,” she said. “Shall I sell you to Balor?”
Mapping Winter Page 13
