The princes rode through Marlovayir (where they were royally entertained by Knuckles, who was very much like a jovial uncle), then Khanivayir, and by the time they crossed the great Tirbit, the northlands were in spring bloom. On both sides of the road they frequently passed farmers busy planting, and singing as they worked.
These songs, Lineas reflected, were not Marlovan, though some were adapted. They were far older, from before the restless outcasts from the Venn moved in to take this land.
The accent changed as they traveled northward, interesting to her sensitive ear. Meanwhile Kendred recovered apace, doing his work so fast that Lineas withdrew, sensing that her help had ceased to be useful and was deemed intrusive. She saw nothing of him after that, as Cabbage Gannan prudently kept himself and his runner well clear of Connar, except when Noddy oversaw lance practice and asked for him.
And so, at length, the cavalcade spotted the three hills of Nevree.
They camped out on the plains where the Olavayir Riders usually drilled, and the two princes rode in alone to visit their cousin Tanrid.
They were duly presented by the jarlan, their Aunt Tdor Fath, to the senior jarlan, their grandmother Ranor, who was now partially blind; they missed meeting Tanrid’s wife only because she was at Lindeth. But Tanrid urged them upstairs to observe his son, a sturdy toddler with his father’s short upper lip. He was at that moment concentrating fiercely on smashing small pebbles with his fat, dimpled hand through the tiny hole on top of a noise-box, to watch them clatter on the hidden mechanism that caused tiny paper flags to whirl.
They were then taken to meet their Uncle Jarend—who, they were amazed to see, made Noddy look short and slender. Though Connar knew Da didn’t lie, there was always a question in his mind, the result of Hauth’s poison. As Jarend made conversation, his voice a low rumble that sounded like a rockfall, Connar looked at his huge hands, thinking that one blow from that fist really could have dropped Mathren Olavayir like a rock.
But it was also clear that Uncle Jarend was aging a lot faster than the king. Jarend asked after Arrow (saying that he received regular runners, but he liked hearing from them, too), chuckling in deep, genial rumble as they spoke. He told them that they should find the north peaceful and easy, “And my son tells me they make excellent barley-wine up there, where the winters are fierce.”
They thanked him, and when Aunt Tdor Fath made surreptitious motions toward the door, they said they had to get back to their camp before dark, and bade him farewell.
Tanrid walked them out to the stable. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “Da tires fast these days. But he’s been looking forward to your arrival ever since we got word you were destined for Larkadhe. What he doesn’t know is that there’s been trouble up the peninsula at the Nob, and occasionally horse thieves along the hills east, as always—though we’re not sure if they’re Jendas Yenvir’s gang or not.”
“Jendas Yenvir,” Connar said. “I heard that name last year.”
“No surprise.” Tanrid made a spitting motion to the side. “He’s the boldest of the gangs of horse thieves. Price on his head from four kings, last I heard. Including ours. There’s also been trouble up the Andahi Pass, though the Idegans seem to be dealing with it, according to the merchants who come down. The timing of the trouble on our side seems suspicious, as if someone wants to divide us between too many distractions. You only brought a wing?”
“We’ve got two companies coming,” Noddy said.
Tanrid looked relieved. “That’s good. Two with what you have at Larkadhe won’t strip Lindeth too badly. If you take the east patrol, then that frees Lindeth to deal with the Nob, specifically Ovaka Red-Feather attacking our supply wagons going north. It takes a full company out of rotation for that long journey up and down the peninsula, just to protect treaty-mandated supplies, while their own people attack us from behind masks. And then dare to squall if they don’t get their stuff...but I’m sure you already know the Nob complaints.”
This, both princes assented to.
“Oh. Last thing.” Tanrid flashed a grin at Noddy. “Neit asked to be transferred to Larkadhe as one of your long runners while you’re there. She knows Lindeth well, and can serve as liaison with Nermand.”
Noddy blushed. “Neit,” he repeated, grinning shyly. “I haven’t seen her for an entire year, I think.”
“You seem to have made quite an impression—it was her idea.”
Noddy laughed. “Thank you, Cousin.”
“What Da said about the barley-wine is true. I’ll visit when I can. Save some for me.”
He flipped up a hand and retreated toward the castle. The princes turned away, Connar thinking about Jarend’s huge fists. Hauth had dropped hints that he believed Mathren had been murdered unawares, as he had always been as alert as he was fit.
Connar didn’t give a spit about Mathren, much less Mathren’s son Lanrid, Connar’s progenitor. But he felt a sharp urge to locate that boy runner who had been witness (no boy; Tarvan had to be in his thirties now) just to satisfy his own mind.
He thought about Tanrid’s slow voice, his lazy but watchful gaze. Connar still didn’t completely trust this cousin, so he wasn’t going to ask about that runner Tarvan. He’d find a way on his own. After all, he had two years.
FOUR
Though the north was that much closer to the warm belt of the world, Larkadhe, lying in the shadow of great mountains during winter, did not feel the effects of spring until the sun had risen high enough on its daily trip from east to west to thaw the sloping lands below.
Then the weather warmed quite rapidly. It was a ripe spring day when they arrived in Larkadhe at last, and Steward Keth Dei (known to everyone simply as Steward) took Lineas and Vanadei through the castle.
Lineas had met him ten years before, when she was brought as a beginning magic student. He looked mostly unchanged, maybe a little whiter at the temples. He was a tall, weedy, pleasant-faced man, descendant of the Dei family of the south, and a connection to the Montredavan-Ans of Darchelde—Quill’s family
Being royal runner trained, he spoke to Lineas and Vanadei in Old Sartoran as he whirled them through spaces Lineas recollected in vivid bits, always from the vantage of a very small child. The castle seemed larger than she remembered, but the rooms looked smaller—she remembered them as vast, cold caverns.
Then they entered a tower built of a different stone than the usual honey-brown. This milky white stone felt older, separate somehow from the rest of warren of levels and rooms that comprised the rest of the castle.
They toiled up another spiral of steps worn gently in the middle by uncounted generations of feet, and paused on a landing. On the other side stood a pair of doors carved with flowering trees.
Lineas gasped, and turned to Vanadei, who grinned—he’d visited once before as a teen. “This is it, the famous morvende archive. Or, was.”
“Storage,” Steward said, palms up. “The morvende moved everything out in my grandda’s time, or at least, that was when someone came up here and discovered the doors standing open, and nothing inside. Now we put all the winter gear in there. Lineas, I put you directly above,” Steward said as they climbed to the next landing. “It’s a pleasant room, you’ll find, and it puts you conveniently between the residence down that passage—” He pointed off to the left “—where the princes will stay, and Yvana Hall, a collective name for the civilian wing of governance.”
“Yah,” Vanadei repeated, his bushy brows rising. “You said Yah-vah-nah, not Eee-vana.”
“Well, that’s how they pronounce it up here,” Steward said, winged brows slanting up. “You’ll get used to the accent. Like treacle, someone once said. The Hall was named for the hero Hawkeye Yvanavayir by his brothers, each of whom governed here. It was they who knocked out the ancient, moldering walls, which some said never truly dried out after the Great Flood, and rebuilt those rooms to be more comfortable. Though the Idegans among us insist that Marlovan-style can never be called comfortable.�
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“It’s a beautiful room,” Lineas said, looking at the round chamber with its slit windows that viewed the mountains above, the valley sloping away below, and in the west, a thin strip of winking light on dull blue—the sea.
Steward chuckled. “We’re told that the great Evred-Harvaldar preferred this room so that he’d have access to the archive, before it was closed. The princes will of course have the grand suite.”
Lineas gestured acknowledgment, aware of that internal sense of misstep. She had nearly forgotten her disastrous magical studies, which now rushed back with all the old intensity, making the inside of her head feel as if it didn’t fit.
Steward started downstairs, saying, “Now, for the civilian side....”
He led them back down the spiral, talking rapidly. Lineas had already memorized the lists of guild representatives, runners, and auxiliaries, which steadied her as they passed down a hall with windows cut into a wall.
She glanced out to see Connar and Noddy being led across a court, Connar striding along, princely and handsome. The princes’ clothes were made by the same tailor, but Noddy always looked sort of bulky in his coat, whereas Connar’s sash at his trim waist contrasted with his straight shoulders, the skirts swinging with every stride of his glossy boots, his blue-black hair swaying down his back.
The sound of his voice rose, warm and golden. She couldn’t make out the words as he was walking in the opposite direction, but she could see people turning to watch him.
Despite the decorative words of poets and balladeers, few of us beam like the first sunny day after a long winter, when we are happy. Some turn brick red. Others gasp and stutter. Connar was one of those few who seem to radiate warmth and light, on this, what he considered the happiest day of his life. Command at last, with Ghost Fath and Stick Tyavayir—the best seniors of his year—on the way, under his command. The only thing that could make the day more perfect would have been Stick and Ghost already arrived, their picked men with them.
But he was happy enough to spark all in reach of his voice, kindling a general sense of celebration. The castle servants had already begun putting together the expected banquet when the two-day scouts arrived, but now everyone set to with renewed enthusiasm.
And so, after a long day of tour and talk, they gathered in the great hall where once Evred-Harvaldar and Inda-Harskialdna had celebrated their triumph over the now-sequestered Venn. Various guild chiefs delivered welcoming speeches, to which Connar responded with ringing warmth, meeting the expectant, admiring, speculative gazes of all those faces, noting the comely ones vivid with invitation.
It had been a very long day, full of new faces and spaces. Lineas entered the great hall from the side chamber where the runners had their own meal, within call of the great room. When she heard the hall emptying, she slipped to the arched doorway with its carvings of birds, and glanced down to see the head table on the dais empty. She then caught sight of Noddy’s big, broad-shouldered form exiting through the far archway, his arm around Neit, who was nearly as tall. That was the way to the residence wing, Lineas had learned.
Connar was gone.
To be expected that habits of the royal city would not extend here. She walked slowly up the spiral stairs in the white tower, tiredness pressing down on her at last.
Her room, so high up, was quiet, the shutters open in the windows, letting in balmy spring air. Someone had thoughtfully lit a lamp for her, and turned down the coverlet.
She had bathed before dinner, so she undressed and climbed into the bed. She blew out the lamp and lay back, looking up through the window at the stars, and listened to the wind sough. At first she thought it was trees, except there were no trees around the castle. Then her heart beat faster when she recollected the windharps, and sure enough a subliminal, crystalline sweetness hovered at the edge of sound. She closed her eyes, listening hard as the singing stone faded, then strengthened, sliding up a chord.
The harps had been considered a failure by those long ago creators, she remembered being told. Whatever great art they’d tried to emulate, she found this song so soothing that the sense of other ears nearby, ones impossible to see, merely made her feel content with their company, even if it was beyond the living world....
When she woke in the blue of dawn, she enjoyed that sense of lying warm in a clean bed. She opened her eyes to the shapes and shadows of a room she did not remember. The blue walls resolved into a round room, and it all came back. Including the fact that she woke alone, early as always, though there was no need, no Connar slumbering next to her, no necessity to bathe, dress, and fetch fresh water and breakfast for Bunny.
Excited to begin her new life, she rose anyway, worked hastily through the Fox drills, then grabbed her clothes and descended the long spiral to the ground floor. The back entrance opened onto another stairway leading to the underground caverns she’d found the evening previous.
The baths lay in a chamber full of natural archways made of glistening, striated stone. The chambers used by Marlovans had a gender divide, which she had assumed was universal, but to her surprise she heard Iascan in the farther chamber, both male and female voices. She discovered a huge hot spring at one end of a pool, where the Iascans of the city bathed mixed.
For the second time she wished she could linger and explore, but she meant to be outside the princes’ suite, waiting, when they rose. She bathed swiftly, raced by the kitchens to grab a biscuit hot from the oven, and ran upstairs.
She had just enough time to eat the biscuit before she heard Noddy’s deep voice beyond the big double doors, and there they both were, with tall, dashing Neit behind Noddy, laughing at something someone said.
Neit flashed a grin at Lineas before loping down the passageway. Lineas said to Noddy and Connar, “The queen’s orders were to aid you in the judgment chambers. Since we didn’t have a chance to set up anything yesterday, I thought—I wondered—I learned as much as I could when Steward showed Vanadei and me over Yvana Hall. I can show you, if you didn’t see it....” Aware that she was getting more tangled, she choked herself off.
Noddy said, “I didn’t see it.” He turned to Connar. “Did you?”
Connar had been reflecting that this was the other side of command. It had been killingly boring sitting in with Noddy when Da met with guild chiefs, petitioners, stringers with their reports on money and credit, and the like, but maybe it would be different here, with them in command.
“I was down in the garrison all day. Show me,” he said to Lineas, laughing a little at how bright a red her face had gone.
He extended his hand, slipped his fingers through hers, and tugged her gently down the hall.
Her emotions soared. She took a moment to gather her wits, and then launched into a summary of all she’d learned.
Connar listened as she led the way to Yvana Hall’s main judgment chamber, with its small central table—place for the commander, now with two eagle-claw, wingback chairs, side by side—and the two longer side tables facing each other. Beyond them, the rows where petitioners and witnesses sat, and behind them, the tables for the scribes.
She explained earnestly, while he looked down on the top of her bright red head, at the frizz she never quite tamed, and heard just enough to comprehend that he and Noddy wouldn’t really be in command after all. That is, they were in the military sense, but in here, it sounded very much like they’d be back to what they’d done for the past five years—listening.
“...including the three Idegans.”
That caught his attention. “Idegans!”
She looked back over her shoulder, surprised to see his surprise. “Yes, all guild people. To oversee anything that has to do with trade up and down the Andahi Pass.”
“Do these spies live here in the city?”
“Spies! Well, I suppose they could be considered spies, in that they live here and must report everything they see, but Connar, there hasn’t been any trouble with Idego’s king since the slaughter in the Pass, before
we were born.”
He looked into her earnest face. “I know, I know,” he said. “I’m not looking for trouble. Go on.”
She explained that expert witness was expected to be heard by all before anything was decided, she detailed who had votes, who didn’t, under which circumstances...and by the end he only heard the sound of her voice, always so pleasant, but his internal dialogue took all his attention: this wasn’t command at all. It was more of what the king did, only in one city instead of an entire kingdom, and what sounded like far more fussing with details.
And everything fell into place, a heady sensation. He startled Lineas, interrupting her scrupulous explanation by taking hold of her shoulders and kissing her soundly.
She reddened with pleasure as he exclaimed, “Lineas, you’re so good at this. Look, I won’t be able to report it to Noddy half as well as you. Do you mind repeating it all for him?”
“I don’t mind at all,” she said softly. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“Then wait here. So you won’t have to run all over the castle. I know where he is, and I don’t think you’ve been over to garrison-side yet, am I right? Thought so. Wait here for him.”
Connar kissed her again, elated with certainty. Damned Hauth! Just because that shit Lanrid got himself killed up Andahi Pass, that was no reason to stick Connar with the tedium of Yvana Hall. As crown prince, Noddy should be presiding over there, disentangling squabbles over money exchange, trade, and the value of kind and time. Connar, as second prince and future commander of the army, had a duty to hunt down soul-eaters like Yenvir the Skunk!
At the garrison, he spotted Noddy’s head above all the others, and men melted to either side. Connar reached Noddy, grinning in surprise when he recognized Ghost Fath’s pale hair at Noddy’s right. “Finally!”
Time of Daughters II Page 5
