Cleona slipped her arms around Alaria for a moment and patted her cousin on the back.
Cleona was pleased to see that they knew enough to give her the same horse that had carried her up from the ship. It was a sturdy animal, and it showed signs of being as intelligent as it was beautiful. Alaria should learn who’d had the breeding of it. Cleona had expected interference or questions, but no one, neither the guard Essio, who rode a respectful half a horse length behind her nor the staff in the stables, had seemed to think it at all unusual for their Tarkina-to-be to ask for a horse just as the sun was setting. In fact, one of the stable girls had even asked the guard if a basket was coming from the kitchen. Moonlight rides were apparently commonplace here.
Cleona was as content with that thought as she was with the ready service of the Tarkin’s household. Someone had a good hand on it, whether it was the pretty boy himself, or his uncle, or—as seemed more likely—the female Steward of Keys.
It took only minutes for them to pass through the small double gate of the stable precincts and directly out of the palace grounds. Though the temperature was warmer than she was used to for this time of year, it really was late summer, and the moon would rise, fat and red and clear, while the sun was still in the sky. She could ride as long as she liked and still have moonlight for her return journey.
With discreet indications, mere polite gestures of his hand, Essio the guard soon had them on a smooth wide road, much of it natural stone and the rest hard packed by the passage of many feet. Not a main road, Cleona thought, but clearly a well-traveled one. They skirted the city, the outer wall of Uraklios to their left, and were soon out in the open country, passing through olive groves. Cleona touched her heels to her mount and smiled when the horse trotted up with no signs of reluctance or discomfort. After half a span or so, however, she let the horse slow down and pick its own pace, mindful that, however smooth the road might appear, it was new to her, and the lighting was not the best for a gallop.
The guard stayed a respectful half-length behind her, close enough to give her ready aid but far enough away that she could feel herself private. Cleona had often seen her cousin the Tarkina of Arderon escorted thus, and it struck her, as if for the first time, that she, too, would be Tarkina. This, all that she saw around her, would be her country now, her responsibility.
“Where does this road lead, Essio?” She might as well begin learning as much as she could.
“Ah, well, it’s hunting ground this way, mostly, my lady, once we’ve passed the olives.” Essio narrowed the gap between them but still kept back of Cleona’s elbow. “Deer, boar, and the like. Though there’re goat herds as well, in season.”
“This fine roadway for hunting alone?” A much richer land than Arderon, failed harvests or no.
“Well now, well, no, my lady, not as such.” Essio put his hand to his mouth and coughed. New to noble service, Cleona thought. No harm in that. “The ruins lie this way, my lady. And the Path of the Sun. Caids’ ruins the Scholars say.”
“An old place of the Caids?” A piece of roadway said to be an artifact of the Caids ran straight through Arderon, and Cleona had heard of other, larger remnants of the Ancients, but to have one so close . . . “A holy place?”
“That’s what’s said, my lady. And they say too that there’s Scholars looking there now for artifacts. All I know for certain is the Tarkina—beg pardon, I meant the late Tarkina, Falcos Tarkin’s mother, had a favorite spot where she liked to come and sit in the afternoon with her ladies, and the road was kept up for her pleasure.”
“And now mine,” Cleona said.
The road took several more leisurely turns, and Cleona could well see what a nice ride it would make for the Menoin version of court ladies. They had not gone much farther when Essio sat up even straighter in his saddle and, with a muttered “your pardon,” rode ahead of her toward what appeared to be a small fire burning just a few paces off to the left of the road. Cleona spurred her own horse forward until she was half a length behind Essio, in effect reversing their previous positions. Let the man know that an Arderon princess did not hide behind, any more than his Tarkin would.
The man at the fire could not fail to both see and hear them coming, and he stood as they approached, putting himself just on the far side of the fire, where the light from the flames would strike his features. Paradoxically, as they walked their horses nearer the fire, the night seemed for the first time to be growing truly dark, as if the flames stole their light from what little remained in the sky.
“Well met, well met,” the man was calling out. “Are you benighted? Can I offer you any assistance?” His accent was strange—at least, stranger than the Menoin accents Cleona had been listening to all day.
“You can explain your presence here so close to the road,” Essio responded. But though his words were stern, Cleona noted that Essio’s tone was relaxed, and indeed, the set of his shoulders, so martial a moment before, had rounded again.
The man gave a warm chuckle, as if he knew why Essio was taking these precautions and was already looking ahead to the moment when they would all laugh about it. “I’m a trader, sir—and lady—as you can see from my packs.” True, there were two well-stuffed packs sitting back away from the fire, where Cleona had not noticed them at first. “Unarmed,” the man continued, “except for the knife you see at my belt. But with provisions enough to offer you both supper if you are hungry and a cup of fine Imrion wine, if you thirst.”
Cleona relaxed even further. This was like the beginning of one of those tales of adventure that her cousin the Tarkina was so fond of. A moonlit ride, a chance-met stranger who would unfold a secret of mystery and honor that would set the heroine on her path.
“I would love a cup of wine,” she said.
“The hour is already late, my lady, and you have much to do tomorrow.” Essio spoke as one who gave necessary information, not as someone who had the right to tell her what to do. But somehow, though she knew the guard was right and she should even now be heading back, there was something in the smile of the trader that made Cleona swing her leg over her mount’s back and step down, in the Arderon fashion, to the ground.
“My lady?” the trader was saying. “Tomorrow? But you are not—you can’t be—” The man looked more closely at Cleona’s clothing and then to Essio as if to read on the guard’s face the answer to his unspoken question.
“The Lady of Arderon?” He had been faintly smiling all along, but the smile that now passed over the trader’s face was at once humbler and yet more proud than it had been a moment before. And somehow genuine, as if before he had only been going through the motions of courtesy required of all honest folk on the road, but now those feelings of hospitality and friendship were real, and came from the heart.
“I would be honored beyond measure if the Lady of Arderon—the Tarkina of Menoin I should say—would take a cup of my wine. What a story for my wife! For our children!” As the man scurried over to the farther of his two packs, Cleona caught Essio’s eye. The guard grinned, shrugged, and dismounted, joining her on the ground.
“We won’t be long,” she promised him. “A cup of wine for the man to tell his children of, and then we’ll be on our way.”
Alaria went early down to the Tarkin’s stables. The sun was not yet up, and the night’s chill clung to the air, but even so people were there before her. It was strange to see so many women and girls among the lower servants, but, she supposed, there were just as many men and boys. It was one thing to be told that here in Menoin she would find the division of labor more equally distributed between the sexes; it was quite another to see it with her own eyes. She could only hope she’d get used to it.
“You’d be the lady companion to the new Tarkina?”
It was the sharpness of the voice that startled her, but Alaria managed not to jump. This was the tone and, when she turned to view the man, the stance of authority. A man in charge of the horse stables. Something else she would need to get
used to. Alaria cleared her throat and drew herself up; as Cleona would say, she might as well begin as she meant to go on and make her position clear right from the start.
“Only in a manner of speaking,” she said. “I’m Alaria of Arderon. The Princess Cleona is my first cousin, once removed, and I am here to have the care of the horses she has brought as her bride gift. To see to their breeding and to manage the new herd.”
“Then you’re welcome, lass—I mean, my lady, very welcome.” Alaria drew back a little, blinking, as the man grasped her hand and moved it up and down as though it were the handle of a pump. “I’m Delos Egoyin. If I spoke a bit sharp, it was only that I wondered where your grooms were. I looked after your four beauties myself this morning, but I wouldn’t have time every day, you see.”
“There are no grooms,” Alaria began. She hesitated when she realized she was explaining herself to what was essentially a servant—and a male servant at that—but then she remembered what her mother had always told her. Courtesy costs nothing and purchases goodwill. “Only myself, and the queens were fine when I looked in on them before sleeping.”
“Queens? Is that what you call your mares in Arderon? Well, I’m not surprised. Here they are.” Alaria followed the man through a door much wider than she was used to into the stable building proper. The first section of the interior was brighter than she expected, with oil-paste lamps standing before well-placed rounds of highly polished metal. Beyond this lighted area, however, the barns were dark and empty, large enough that their voices echoed. Of course, Alaria thought with a shiver. Cleona had said the royal herd was dying out.
“You’ll see I’ve moved them into the large front stall, as they’ll be wanted this afternoon for the ceremony.”
The sides of the stall were higher than Alaria was used to, but there was a step that enabled her to look over the top. Four long white faces turned to look at her. The stall was clean, each mare had been brushed already, and fresh hay and water had been placed in the feeders.
“They are beautiful,” Delos said. “I’ve only ever once seen their match, and that was when I went with a caravan to the west as a lad. It’s a pleasure even to touch them.”
Alaria smiled, unable to resist the warmth in the man’s voice. “This is Star Blaze,” she said, stroking the first long nose that presented itself. She pointed to the others in turn. “Moonlight, Sea Foam, and Sunflower. They represent the best of our Tarkina’s stable.” She looked at Delos Egoyin out of the corner of her eye. “I thought you might be afraid I was here to displace you.”
“Not a bit of it,” he said, almost laughing. “There’ve been Egoyins in the Tarkin’s stables, parent and child, seven generations. It was my aunt before me, and it’ll be my son after me, since my daughter’s gone into the Tarkin’s Guard.”
“Parent and child,” he’d said. Not “mother and daughter,” as they would have said in Arderon, nor “father and son,” as she had expected. Very curious. But he was still speaking.
“No, the way I see it, my lady, is that you’re in charge of the new blood, the management of the new line of Menoin horses—that’s your plan, isn’t it? To restore the line?”
Alaria found herself warming to what was so obviously a kindred spirit. “Exactly,” she said. “My grandmother used to tell me that horses from Menoin were once the most valuable in Boravia, and even in the west, in the lands of the Great King. But it was generations ago ...”
“Not quite in the times of the Caids, but some people think it’s that far back, indeed.” Delos scrubbed at his hands, dislodging a bit of straw.
“And are there still wild horses in the hinterlands that might be descendants of those ancient lines?”
Delos rubbed his chin. “That’s your thinking, is it? There are some wild herds out there, that’s certain. But whether they’d be of any use—well, there’s no time for that now, more’s the pity. You’ve things to do today to get ready for the ceremony. Come down here when it’s time, and I’ll have the queens ready.” He grinned and winked at her. “And I’ll pick out a couple of likely assistants for you to have a look at in the next few days. You’ll have your hands full trying to do everything yourself, especially once the foals come.”
But having her hands full was exactly what Alaria wanted, she thought as she walked back across the stable yard to the doorway that would lead her back to the central portion of the palace. She didn’t come to Menoin just to stand behind her cousin at court events. Alaria nodded at the pleasant-faced young guard who fell into step behind her. The young woman wore the Tarkin’s crest of black, blue, and purple on her shoulder and had been waiting outside Alaria’s door this morning. She wondered . . .
“Are you Delos Egoyin’s daughter, by any chance,” she asked.
The woman grinned, revealing a gap between her front teeth. “I am,” she said. “Julen’s my name. I traded another guard all my desserts for two moons to get your assignment, Lady. When we heard there were horses coming, I knew my dad would want me looking after you.”
Alaria smiled, noting the sidelong glances of the servants and pages they were passing. She strode forward with confidence until she suddenly found herself in an unfamiliar hall. Alaria looked around, momentarily disoriented. She’d never thought of Arderon as a small country, but there seemed to be more corridors and turnings in Falcos’ palace alone than there were streets and alleyways in the whole of Arderon’s capital.
“If you wanted to return to your rooms, Lady Alaria, you should have turned left at the last corridor.” Julen stepped to one side and gestured in the direction they’d just come.
“Yes, thank you.” A little flustered, Alaria retraced her steps, recognized the staircase she’d been looking for, and ran up to the second landing. Julen, she was pleased to note, had no trouble keeping up with her. The young guard rejoined her counterpart as Alaria threw open the doors to the large suite of rooms that were the Tarkina’s and crossed to the door of the private sitting room. She frowned when she saw that Cleona’s bedroom door was still closed. Alaria had not heard Cleona return from her ride, but given the thickness of the walls, she hadn’t expected to. Just how late had her cousin been? Surely Cleona wouldn’t pick this day of all days to start lying in.
Grinning, Alaria flung open her cousin’s door, but the derisive comment she had been ready to make died on her lips. The bedchamber was empty, the bed made. Alaria crossed to the door of the dressing room. The elaborate dress that Cleona was to wear for this afternoon’s ceremony was hanging on a long pole against the wall farthest from the door. And there, arranged in the order in which it would be put on, was Cleona’s wedding jewelry, her hair combs, and the high-soled sandals with their delicate gold-painted straps. The wedding dress itself was still in its box, though the box was open.
“Don’t be silly,” Alaria told herself, trying to ignore the pounding of her heart. “Cleona’s here, she’s just in the privy or ...” Telling herself to stay calm, Alaria searched through every corner of the suite, finally startling two girls who were bringing hot water into the bathing room. Alaria hesitated. She’d look like a fool if Cleona was only out admiring the gardens. She swallowed. Better to look like a fool than to let some danger pass by unremarked.
“Have you seen the Princess Cleona?” she asked the two maids.
“No, Lady.” The girl set down her container of water and looked at her companion, who shook her head without speaking.
Alaria ran for the main door. Julen spun around, her hand going to her weapon when she saw Alaria’s face.
“The Princess Cleona,” she said. “I can’t find her, she’s not in the rooms.”
Julen turned to her fellow guard. The man raised his eyebrows. “Who did you relieve?” she asked him.
“No one,” he said. “I didn’t expect to, the rota wasn’t changed until this morning.”
But Julen was shaking her head. “Essio should have been with the princess. I’m sure I heard him say he had the duty.”
Alaria looked from one stiff face to the other. “Take me to the Tarkin,” she said. “Now.”
Alaria paced up and down in the Tarkin’s morning room, twisting her hands, not seeing the ganje and pastries that sat on their silver plates on the table near the window. She was an idiot. She should have asked for the guard commander—the Steward of Walls as the position was called here—not the Tarkin himself. Precious time was being lost.
The outer door opened, and a slim man with a dark beard walked in.
“Princess Alaria,” he said, holding out his hand to be shaken. “I am Dav-Ingahm, your Steward of Walls.”
She shivered as she took his hand and shook it. Nothing to worry about. Just because the Steward was a man, it didn’t make him any less competent. She was in Menoin now. Men had been ruling here since the time of the Caids, and things functioned.
“I’ve started a search of the palace grounds,” Dav-Ingahm said. “If we have no luck we’ll widen into the city.”
“How ...?”
“Julen Egoyin sent me word as soon as she delivered you here,” he said. “Even if it turns out the Tarkina is only in the garden or gone for a walk on the hillside, her guard should have reported it.”
That’s right, Alaria thought. They’d had guards at their heels since they’d arrived, though they wore so many different colors she’d found it bewildering. The Steward of Walls, for one, dressed like any noble but had the black, blue, and purple Tarkin’s crest on his shoulder. Julen and the other fellow, the male guard, wore the same crest but on black jerkins with purple sleeves, colors she thought were those of the Palace Guard—and she thought she had also seen blue tunics with purple sleeves. Julen and the man had been outside in the hallway when Alaria went out this morning. And they thought that Cleona must have had a guard with her as well. Perhaps there was nothing to worry about after all.
Except the Steward of Walls looked worried. Before she could ask him anything further, the inner door opened and Epion Akarion came into the room, followed by two pages. He was handing a scroll to one of them as he crossed the threshold. He came directly to Alaria and put out his hands. Before she knew what she was doing, Alaria had put her hands in his.
Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno Page 8
