“Yes, my lord.”
Arian followed the Duke to the house as Gwenno led her troop toward the stables.
“You’re a Knight of Falk, too,” the Duke observed, touching her own ruby. “Well met, Sister, and Falk’s grace to you.”
“And Falk’s honor be upon this house,” Arian said. She reached out, and they clasped hands in the Falkian greeting.
“You travel light for this season,” the Duke said, glancing at the light pack Arian carried.
“It’s my years as a ranger,” Arian said.
“Enter, and welcome. If you’ve been traveling for days, I expect you’d like a bath.”
“Yes, thank you, my lord,” Arian said.
The Duke beckoned to a neatly dressed servant with a light blue tabard. “Bel will show you to a chamber and make sure you have what you need,” she said.
Arian followed the servant upstairs and along a corridor to a room that looked out over a walled garden and orchard. She could hear shrill voices of children at play and looked out to see them scampering up and down paths at some game, their nursemaids standing by.
“The Duke’s children?” she asked Bel, wondering how a woman soldier had borne so many.
“No, lady. These are the old … the former … they were too young to be attainted, I mean. The Duke’s responsible for seeing they grow up good.”
Arian saw one—a boy, she thought—throw a lump of frozen mud at another and thought the Duke had her work cut out for her.
“The bathing room’s just along here, lady. I’ll have the water hot in no time.”
Soon Arian was bathed, dressed, and settled in a comfortable chair near the fire with a pot of sib and a plate of pastries; dinner, she’d been warned, would be some hours yet. “Someone will call me?”
“Oh, I’m sure my lord will come to you sooner,” Bel said. She had gathered up Arian’s clothes. “I’ll just take these downstairs to wash, and they’ll be ready for you in the morning.”
“Thank you,” Arian said. Shadows dimmed the garden and orchard below; she could hear shrill voices in the house now. She relaxed, muscle by muscle, letting her taig-sense reach out to the orchard. Fruit trees, some espaliered on the walls, answered her touch. A few, at one end of the orchard, were unhappy about something else … she concentrated. Bones? Children’s bones? And something else—the roots were turning back from whatever it was.
A knock on her door; she pulled her attention. “Come in,” she said. The door opened, and the Duke stood there without her chain of office.
“If you’re rested, I thought you might give me what message you brought before dinner.”
“Certainly,” Arian said. The Duke sat down in the chair on the other side of the fireplace. This close, Arian could see silver strands in her black hair. The ruby in her ear flashed red in the firelight.
“You look part-elven,” the Duke said.
“Half-elven, my lord,” Arian said. “My father was elven; my mother old-human, a farmer in western Lyonya, only two days from the border.”
“What news do you bring, then?”
“Six Verrakai trespassers attacked Lyonyan rangers; rangers killed them.” Arian repeated the descriptions. “They were buried with all their belongings, including horned chains.”
“That is good news,” the Duke said, “though it may shock you to hear me say it. They were under attainder. If I could put a name to them, I could tell the king they are dead. I’ve worried they might come back and cause trouble here.”
“Is that the last of them?”
“Almost certainly not.” The Duke sighed. “My relatives could transfer their own minds and souls into another’s body. The family rolls give some hint to the pretransfer identity of these, but I’m not sure they were ever all recorded. Most horribly, they killed children—sickened them to near death, and then forced themselves into the child’s body, dislodging the original spirit.”
“Falk’s Oath!” Arian said. She thought of the orchard. “Did you—are any such children buried in the orchard out there?”
“Yes. The first I found. You cannot imagine—or perhaps you can—how horrible it was to realize that these children were not children at all, but ancient evil souls in children’s bodies.”
“You killed them.”
“Yes.” The Duke’s eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I had to, to save the others. But it haunts me still.” She took a deep breath. “Thank you for your news, Arian. At least there are six no longer a menace. Do you think I might gain permission to exhume the bodies and send proof to the king that they are dead, perhaps even identify them?”
“That I do not know,” Arian said. “I know which rangers buried them, though I did not visit the grave site myself. It is our custom, as perhaps you do not know, to leave bodies in the ground until Alyanya has taken their flesh to replenish the earth, and then raise the bones. I think you do not have the same rites—”
Dorrin’s brows had gone up. “No. We do not. We raise a mound, after a battle, or bury in permanent graves otherwise. What—” She looked worried. “What do you do with the bones?”
“Paint them with the life’s story of the dead, and place them with honor,” Arian said. “What else?”
“Old humans—you mean those whose people were here before the magelords?”
“Yes,” Arian said. She could see that Dorrin was upset but could not imagine why. Surely a seasoned soldier would not be afraid of bones.
“My people were magelords,” Dorrin said, her voice rough with emotion. “I think—I know—that magelords had a different use for bones, or some of them did. Nothing so benign as telling the stories of lives.” She swallowed, then shook her head for a moment, and when she spoke, her voice had eased. “But tell me now—you say you were formerly a forest ranger—how do the rangers, or part-elves in general, regard your new king? You know, of course, that I served under him most of my life.”
Arian shifted in her chair. “He is the king we hoped for,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “He has already begun bringing elf and human closer together, and his taig-sense and magery—”
“Magery? I never knew him to have magery.”
“Had he grown up in Lyonya, he would have received it from both parents, elven and human both: the royal magery was always joined.”
“I wish I’d been able to attend his coronation,” the Duke said. “I heard about it from Paks—the Girdish paladin you may have heard of.”
“Yes,” Arian said. “I met her once.”
The Duke went on. “She changed his life for certain—she changed all of us, will or nil, when she returned to us as a paladin, and took Tammarion’s sword off the wall—”
Arian said nothing, trying to gather her thoughts, and the Duke went on talking about Paks. The tale was long; the Duke had just worked her way up to Kieri’s summons to the Tsaian court when a bell rang below.
“Good heavens, I’ve talked far too much,” the Duke said. “Cook will be annoyed if we don’t get downstairs at once.” She grinned. “I may be a duke, but Cook is convinced dukes shouldn’t be late to meals.”
Downstairs they found Gwenno waiting in the small dining room. “All’s settled, my lord,” Gwenno said. “Troops have been fed, horses are all groomed and stalled, and no alarms.”
“Excellent,” the Duke said. As they ate, she asked her squire about the patrol; Arian listened without commenting. Gwenno’s report was organized and concise, lightened with humor aimed mostly at herself. Afterward the Duke said, “We were talking about Paks before dinner, Gwenno. Arian here met her as well.”
“Did you? Where?” Gwenno went on without waiting for an answer. “My father had met her at court, before Duke Phelan was found to be king. My brother Aris knew her in Fin Panir. And she was here when I arrived; she crossed swords with me—”
“And,” the Duke said, interrupting this spate of enthusiasm, “she proved to all three of my squires that they still had somewhat to learn about swordp
lay.”
“She gave me a huge bruise,” Gwenno said, as if that were a reward. “And showed me how to improve my offside parries. And the next day I got a touch on her.”
“Gwenno,” the Duke said dryly, “is not deterred by mere bruises.”
“I had brothers,” Gwenno said, shrugging. “Bruises are just bruises.”
“Until the blade’s sharp,” the Duke said. “Then they’re wounds and blood and infection.”
“Yes, my lord,” Gwenno said, calming down.
“I’m not scolding,” the Duke said. “But I’d prefer to send you back to your father in one piece.” She turned back to Arian. “You said something about Kieri taking Paks as an example. You probably know she helped restore my own magery—did she help him recover his?”
“Not that I know of,” Arian said. “I heard it was his elven tutor, Orlith.” She felt breathless suddenly. She had hoped to find out more about Kieri’s past before revealing anything about his present, or her relationship with him. But the challenging look the Duke gave her now, woman to woman, made it clear she suspected Arian was keeping something back.
The Duke would hold a secret given under Falk’s Oath … but the girl? Arian turned to Gwenno. “I have things I need to say to your duke under an oath of secrecy, but I have no right or way to bind you to the same.”
“Is this something for which another witness might later be desirable?” the Duke asked.
“I … don’t know. I do know it’s not something to be gossiped about widely.”
“Gwenno’s no gossip,” the Duke said. “But she should not be burdened with unnecessary secrets. What involves the king of a neighboring realm may affect this. As a peer, I have a responsibility to my king—and think of that, Arian, before you divulge anything you do not wish Tsaia’s king to know.”
Arian held her peace until Gwenno had left the room. The Duke cocked her head.
“Well?”
“Some of what I say has to do with both realms, and some does not,” Arian said. “First, what does: Pargun plans an invasion of Lyonya. Troops are gathering on the north shore of the Honnorgat.”
The Duke’s brows went up. “That’s certainly dire news, and something I must report to King Mikeli. What’s Kieri doing about it?”
“He’s moved troops to the river: rangers, Royal Archers, and a cohort of Halveric troops.”
“If so much is known to everyone, the Pargunese must know it, too,” Dorrin said. “Where were you, that you know so much?”
“I said truly that I used to be a forest ranger,” Arian said. “But like many others, I came to Chaya for the king’s coronation, and was offered a position as King’s Squire.” She took a sip of water. “And I accepted. The king expanded both the number and the duties of King’s Squires. We acted as couriers, and the women among us as squires to the foreign princesses who came in hopes of marrying the king.”
“I met King’s Squires,” the Duke said. “Those who came to Tsaia with Paks, and some in Chaya as well. They wore his colors—you do not. Does this mean you have left his service?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Arian said. “Let me tell the tale in order, if you will.”
“Go ahead.” The Duke’s expression was grim.
“When princesses arrived from Pargun and Kostandan, all women King’s Squires were assigned to guard them and learn what we could from them. Both princesses spoke Common well enough. Soon we realized that they knew each other.” Arian went on to describe their demeanor, the messages they wanted passed secretly, and the reports the Squires made to Kieri.
“He wasn’t interested in them as future queens?” the Duke asked.
“Not at all; he was adamant he would not wed any young girls, and not Pargunese, above all.” Arian went on to tell the rest, including sending the girls to Falk’s Hall.
“Their guardians agreed?”
“It seemed so at the time, but in the case of Pargun, that agreement was a ploy. That princess’s guardians told Pargun’s king that we’d sold his daughter to a brothel—”
“What?!”
“And a few tendays ago, Pargun’s king came across the river alone, intent on assassinating King Kieri to revenge the insult.”
“But that’s ridiculous! Kieri would never—not even the Pargunese could believe—”
“They did, my lord. There’s more—” Arian explained about the guardians’ lies to the princess, the Pargunese king’s visit to Chaya, and his return to the north, including the king’s injury, and Kieri’s healing of it.
“That’s like what happened to him,” the Duke said. “That’s what you meant about Paks—she healed his poisoned wound.”
“We were all amazed, you may imagine. Not in living memory of men has a Lyonyan king had such power.”
The Duke frowned. “And yet you are not come as a King’s Squire and his messenger. I do not understand. Nor why any of this should be held secret.”
“So much is not—I agree your king needs to know it, and I expect the king has sent a courier direct to Vérella,” Arian said.
“Why not you?”
“It is difficult.” Arian took a breath and reached to the taig for support. “My lord, how old do you think I am?”
“Somewhere in your twenties—perhaps thirty.”
“My lord, I am over fifty, and am like to live to near two hundred, as will the king. We are nearly of an age.”
The Duke frowned. “You don’t look it.”
“No. It is my elven blood. I have lived all my life in Lyonya, where the taig nourished me. And that leads to the core of what I would have you hold close in Falk’s Oath, Knight to Knight.”
“If it does not harm those I love, I will hold it so,” the Duke said, touching her ruby.
“The king chose many half-elves, men and women both, to be King’s Squires,” Arian said. “Because he himself is half-elven, and looks younger than his human years, we did not realize that he saw us all as younger than we are. Too young when he considered whom to marry.”
The Duke’s brows went up. “You love him.”
“Yes. From the first, but he showed no sign that he cared for me. I am not a rash youngster to go chasing a man.”
The Duke nodded. “I have trouble seeing you as my elder, looking so young, but I can believe a woman of fifty would not act like a girl of eighteen.” She laughed a little. “I was a girl of eighteen when I thought he was the hero of my life. As he was, but differently than I’d imagined.”
“All the spring, all the summer, into the fall,” Arian said, “I respected him, as our king, and admired him for what he was doing, and my affections … grew. I said nothing; he showed nothing; I was careful not to hint. Then the morning after we came back from the north, I took him down in the salle.”
“You took Kieri down?” This time the Duke looked startled. “I’ve sparred with him; I think I’ve taken him only four times in twenty years.”
“He wasn’t attending. Our armsmaster signaled me.” Arian did not mention that she’d taken Kieri down before. “Everyone at the palace had been pressuring him to find a wife—even Armsmaster Carlion, that morning. So when he said he wanted to find a woman with a sword, my heart leapt, because he had smiled at me. And then he said, still looking at me, if only we Squires were not all so young, and left it unfinished. So … I told him I was not so young.” Arian stopped. Her throat had closed; she could feel tears stinging her eyes. It had been so frightening to say that, to risk his scorn or his indifference, and then so wonderful … and then so terrible. The Duke said nothing. Arian managed to swallow at last.
“We saw each other, our hearts and our souls face-to-face. We felt the taig, and I was sure it rejoiced. And we were happy … but then …” She told the rest of it, knowing her voice was uneven, knowing that Dorrin could not possibly understand. When she was done, she stared at the grain of the tabletop in front of her.
The Duke sighed, a long noisy breath. “That is … incredible. I want to say stu
pid, but you’re not stupid or Kieri wouldn’t love you. But it’s exactly what a youngster would do, balked in a first love affair; yet you say you’re not a child. Why in Falk’s name run away?”
Arian looked up to meet an expression both puzzled and amused. She had not expected that.
“The taig,” Arian said. “It’s the life of the land, more important than anything else. The king and the Lady, as joint rulers, must cooperate to keep it healthy. Their quarrel tore it, and I felt its pain. I cannot be the cause of that. If I’m not there, they won’t quarrel, and if they make peace, the land may live.”
“But … you want to marry him and he wants you.” The Duke’s voice was gentler; Arian did not look up.
“Only if it helps the taig. I can wait; the Lady may consent later.”
“Can he?”
Arian said nothing. That question had pierced her every moment since she left. That he could wait, she was sure—but would he? Or would he think her faithless, for leaving? “That is the reason I came here,” she said finally. Dorrin raised her brows; Arian went on. “You have known him for years; you know him better than I could in the short time he’s been our king. I know it was necessary to care for the taig more than myself, but I do not know if he will understand. He was not brought up with the taig as I was; he discovered his taig-sense only this year.”
“I do not understand how this—this tree-love, as it seems to me—would force you to leave. You said this taig rejoiced with you at first—”
“It has been my care my whole life,” Arian said. “My happiness does not matter compared to the health of the taig. Think of Falk: He could have gone free and never ransomed his brothers.”
The Duke shifted in her chair. “I am trying to understand, Arian, truly. Clearly you feel your duty to the taig strongly, but to my mind this calls for clear thinking. And you will excuse me, but you have not had my experience abroad in the world. Think back to Falk’s Hall and those lectures on tactics and strategy.”
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