But Branid was determined. He bullied, whined, and bribed his way into finding out Inda’s customary paths until at last he cornered him down in the stables.
“Cousin Inda!” Branid yelled, enjoying how heads turned all over. “Cousin Inda,” he said again, reveling in not having to append ‘Harski aldna’ to his name. “Heyo, you’re impossible to find. Commanding any wars?”
Inda forced himself to respond politely as he mentally sorted excuses for getting away.
Branid sidled a look around. “I need to talk to you privately.”
Inda gave up. “Come on, let’s go see the academy. No one will be there and we can talk without ears.”
Branid turned out his hands in a semblance of indifference, trying to hide his intense curiosity about the place he’d heard about but had never set foot in.
Within a hundred paces beyond the first arch Inda got that sick-gut sense that he’d made a mistake. Branid looked around with his lip curled, his voice full of scorn. “Look how worn those buildings are! I’d thrash the house staff with my own hand for that kind of neglect at home, I assure you. Are those willow toys in that barrel really practice weapons? Why, we were using steel at home, remember?”
Only on the sneak, Inda thought, but he resisted saying it. Why should he have to defend the academy to Branid? He finally cut through it all. “What did you want to say?”
But now that he’d been offered his chance, Branid hesitated, his shoulders coming up in the familiar slinking hunch that made Inda grit his teeth.
Would it really have made any difference if Cousin Branid had come to the academy to be trained? Inda had only been there two years. Maybe Branid would have found friends. Or allies . . . Inda sensed that Branid would have joined up with Kepa and Lassad. Would that have been any improvement?
Inda stopped, gazing around at the weather-and-boy battered equipment, the plain buildings. Maybe Branid would have thought so. Mates . . . friends . . . allies. It’s here that men make their true alliances, not at home. Uneasy—he knew he needed to think about that—he said, “Well, shabby as it is, I assure you your son will learn to love it.”
Branid scowled. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Dannor made me promise. She won’t have children unless they can inherit. What good is it to send my son here if he’s not a laef? Dannor says a prince and princess can’t have their sons be mere Rider or dragoon captains, it insults our rank. And I’m supposed to remind you that if your son is raised here, how’s he ever going to know anything about Choraed Elgaer?”
Inda thought he’d reached the limit of discomfort, but this question stabbed even harder. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Same way men appointed to new positions get accustomed. It’s the king’s will, d’you see? If you want a change, you must talk to him.”
They walked back in silence.
Goatkick was still ruminating on rank, heroes, and ruby earrings when he went to Piwum Harbor for his home visit just before spring.
He was never quite sure how it happened, but somehow he got singled out from the tumble of cousins by Ma Noth herself. She sat him down in the alcove where she worked on hand-smoothing a new bow, and said, “Talk.”
Out it all came, in a disjointed morass of self-serving excuses, empty threats, and a headlong cry, “Why did they put that girl in with us?”
Ma Noth pointed a calloused, gnarled finger at him. “Why not? Ye know she earned it, or the queen wouldn’ta put her there. And they need good Runners. Ye know too many died.”
“But a girl!”
“So? Ye don’t think she’s tough enough? After what she did up north? And, I wager my chitlins, being fed a steady helpin’ o’horse-apple biscuits by y’ young hounds ever since, what ye call ‘stings.’ But she seems to be sticking to the saddle.”
“What if they start making us stay on the walls, and send girls out to ride?” When his aunt cackled so hard she dropped her bow, he said defensively, “They could, you know!” And, in a grumble, “I hate change.”
She cackled again. “If there wasn’t change, I’d be scrapin’ fish scales off me granny’s fisher. And you’d be scrapin’ out stalls! It’s ‘change’ only when ye didn’t want it, but ‘bettering’ if you do.” She attacked her bow.
He was still fuming over that a month later, as spring shoots fuzzed the plains below the royal castle. During the past couple of weeks the cold winds still blowing out of the east had stopped freezing his nose and ears to ache at first blast, and the air even felt almost warm once the sun was up. Goatkick had decided that Auntie Noth was wrong, though she meant well. Change was good when you’d earned it. Like a promotion.
The problem there was, he couldn’t find any reason to say that Han Tlen hadn’t earned her place next to the hawk-nosed Fera-Vayir brat (named Pirate-Prow because of his connection to Inda-Harskialdna’s mother) as second-year Runners-in-Training.
That morning he was on duty as third Runner outside the king’s government office; only staff was allowed inside, hearing the king’s business. But the Runners-in-Training were responsible for greeting any newcomers who made it this far and sorting out their business, often directing them to the guilds or heralds or guards.
A mud-splashed foreigner in a shaggy coat appeared at the top of the stairs, yawned gapingly, then plunged forward, a husky boy of sixteen walking just behind. The boy was clearly sweat-sticky with nerves, big as he was.
The first two duty Runners were gone. Goatkick was the senior Runner-in-Training over fourteen-year-old Pirate-Prow and Han Tlen. He’d been talking to Pirate-Prow so he didn’t have to talk to the girl.
“You have business with the Harvaldar?” he said to the newcomers.
Of course they did, or they wouldn’t have been passed by the sentries at the gate, or the lower level Runners. But Goatkick and his mates were the last gate to the king and many was the privately expressed hope that they might discover an assassin among the few foreigners ever sent this far.
“Message from Queen Wisthia,” the stranger with the shaggy wool coat said in careful Iascan. Then a jerk of a mittened thumb toward the boy just behind him. “Man along the border given me room and board if I bring his son to your King’s Shield.”
The boy wrenched his hands together, then muttered in Marlovan, “Harskialdna told my dad. At Lindeth. To send me when I turned sixteen.” In a lower voice, tremulous with his awareness of his own temerity, “I want to go for a guard.”
Well, that was easy enough. “If you wait right here, when the door opens, that means the king is ready for whatever’s out here.” Goatkick motioned to Pirate-Prow. “Fera-Vayir, you take this fellow over to guard-side, to the watch captain.”
Their footsteps vanished, then the red-eyed messenger swayed. “Huh.” He yawned so fiercely that Goatkick and Han felt that jaw-hinge, back-of-the-tongue gape of sympathy. “How long is the wait?” the man rasped. And yawned again.
“Don’t know. Some days, all morning, some—”
“The ambassador didn’t say ‘in his hands,’ so I can trust you, can’t I? Right outside his door? I don’t think I can wait without falling over. We got caught by a snow storm east of the river, and haven’t had a bite for almost two days.”
Goatkick hesitated, eyeing Han Tlen, who stood against the wall, gaze down at the scuffed toes of her boots. He could send the stranger off with her. No one would say anything. Hand-delivering important messages was as cherished a privilege as drumming the second gallop at Restday Drum for the entire castle. When you got to hand-deliver messages inside the office you often got to watch the king open them, and hear him talk about important stuff.
Goatkick was going to give the messenger to Han. He knew she’d obey. But the turmoil inside him every time he saw her had changed to something closer to guilt than to the old resentment, though he couldn’t explain why.
And so he snarled at her, “You stay here with the message. I’m going to see to this fellow.” He smacked the message into her chest.
Han hastily clutched it, then looked up, startled. She’d been in training long enough to understand the unspoken privileges; her face drained of color, then flushed to the tips of her ears.
Goatkick plunged past. “Heyo! Come along, Runner. Don’t sleep on the wall there.”
He stalked down the hall, the stranger plodding wearily after.
Han held the weather-worn, heavy sealed packet tightly against her body, wondering if this was another sting. One of the big Runners-in-Training surely lurked somewhere to lure her away from her post on a false duty, so she’d get beaten. She planted her feet, clenched her jaw, and hugged the bulky message, determined to stay right there until that door opened, even if the entire Venn army galloped down the hall. Even if it took a year.
She’d scarcely had time to imagine trying to protect her charge against a horde with winged helms, like she had seen in the pass, when Vedrid opened the door to let one of the staff Runners out. As the man strode past, Vedrid smiled at Han. “What have you there?”
She croaked, “Messenger from Wisthia-Queen.”
“The king’s mother? The border passes are open early this year, it seems. Come inside.”
The word “mother” still hurt, but Han was so relieved to discharge this important duty (and to the king!) she felt it less than usual.
Evred had heard his mother’s name, which evoked a brief image of her watchful face, the expression of her eyes—so loving, but sometimes inexplicably perplexed. That blurred into a vivid image of Tau, who lived with her now. How strange that was.
He cast an absent smile at Han before dismissing her, and turned the bulky packet over in his hand. Someone had wrapped it in several layers of thick paper, and there was something inside.
Evred pulled his knife and slit the seals, noting that they did not seem to have been disturbed.
The letter was written neatly in Old Sartoran. Evred grimaced. He’d never read it fluently, though he’d come close many years ago, during his command at Ala Larkadhe. But he hadn’t had the time since.
He bent over the heavy paper, puzzling out the letters and realized that the actual language was new Sartoran, just framed in the ancient lettering.
It was quite short.
Evred: I am here in Bren, name and reputation having preceded me. That means I am surrounded by Estral Mardrics. Queen Wisthia assures me the accompanying (assuming it reaches you) is what mages call “clean”—meaning guaranteed to be uncorrupted. Let me know when you have it, and I will assay a more particular report. Here’s how you make the magic work . . .
Below the instructions he’d signed his name in the language of his ancestors, Taumad Dei.
Estral Mardric? Evred recovered the name: the murderer of Flash Arveas. She’d been a spy for the Resistance under the guise of an Idayagan poet. Why would Tau bring her name up? Because he is surrounded by spies.
Evred poked at the paper-wrapped object and discovered a slim golden case. He grimaced, feeling world politics stoop from the mountainous border and dive at him like a hawk on the hunt.
Chapter Three
JUST before midnight, Fulla Durasnir stood on the highest tower of Saeborc contemplating the meaning of words.
Overhead the first thunderstorm of the year crackled, hissed, and roared. His extremities were slowly going from painful shivering to numb, but that did not matter because he was shortly about to step off into . . . what?
Millennia ago, a walk to the far shore meant putting the old into a shallow boat and sending it into the winter ice. The early Venn sent their dead heroes out in burning boats, and the old and weak into the winter darkness, in order to make place for the strong. That custom persisted even after they settled, spread, and encountered the Sartorans, who called their practices barbaric.
The practice persisted until a king, wise as well as strong, discovered on getting old that the juices of life, though thinned, still ran. He also discovered that some elderly folks had vanished to the south rather than freezing to death—and some wily oldsters had even managed, with willing cooperation from their families, to take some of their wealth with them. This discovery gave an ironic twist to the expression “walk to the far shore.” A self-proclaimed exile was not an outcast, especially if they cast their wealth and wit with them, to the eventual benefit of Venn’s enemies.
The wise old king appealed to hearts as well as to heads when he spoke of the wisdom of age balancing the strength of the young. As his son was impetuous and arrogant, no one was in any hurry to see him inherit, and so the custom of the winter ice ended with him when he died peacefully in bed. But traces of the grim legacy lingered in idiom and song. Fulla Durasnir’s mother had said when he was young, Down at the taproot of Venn thinking is the concept of the undiscovered country on that far shore, the dark sea between being death.
As Durasnir contemplated stepping off the tower into the unseen waters crashing far below, he wondered if going a-viking had been his ancestors’ way of going to war against death.
While he meditated, his wife Brun sat at her table six flights below, checking her list. She’d spent two days personally overseeing the delivery and stowage of Fulla’s belongings aboard Cormorant, so that Erkric’s minions couldn’t introduce spiderwebs into them; the old captain’s cabin, now that Rajnir and his entourage were established across the stern suite, had been inspected by one of the ship’s trusted navigators.
Something was wrong, despite her care. Instinct had been prodding at her all day. Lacking an identifiable cause, she’d decided that something had to be missing from Fulla’s sea gear. She bent over her list yet again as, outside her door, Dag Ulaffa paused after the long climb to the Oneli Stalna’s rooms, midway up Saeborc. Ulaffa leaned against the wall with a hand pressed against his side. Climbs are not for the old, he thought wearily. But this entire life was not for the old.
Despite the cold his brow and upper lip were slick with sweat. That and the pain in his side were not good signs, he knew. He must not drop dead. Must not! He tapped at the door, and when the servant brought him into the warm chamber where Brun Durasnir sat at the desk, he sank wearily into the guest chair.
“I went out on . . .” He gestured wearily upward, toward the towers. “Fulla is up on your tower.”
“He’s on board the Cormorant. Or at the chart house—”
Ulaffa made a negating motion, and swiped a hand across his eyes. “Saw him. When I. Went outside to talk with Agel.”
Brun’s mouth whitened. Here was her something wrong.
Leaving the dag to recover in the guest chair, she ran out, heedless of cape or gloves, and propelled herself up the last spiral of steps, her skirts bunched in her fists. If he dares to leap off the tower . . . I’ll murder him myself!
Oh, that makes such good sense, she thought with the hilarity of desperation. She dashed into the bastion, thrust shoulder to the door, and saw her husband poised at the edge of a crenellation, staring into the blackness below.
“Fulla!” Brun shouted with all her strength.
The wind snatched it away, but Fulla Durasnir’s head turned.
Their eyes met.
Reluctantly—Brun could feel the effort Fulla made—he stepped back. Just a little, as wind screamed around the stones, and rain slanted in stinging spears.
Not for Brun the heart’s cry, How could you do this to me, to your son? He would obliterate himself despite them, he would do it to protect them, he would do it because all honor and meaning had gone from his life.
“I deny you this luxury.” Her voice rose above the shriek of the wind.
Durasnir’s head dropped back, his anguish illuminated in the glare of lightning. When the long rumble of thunder died away, he said, “I cannot bring myself to speak to the empty shell of a king. He’s the living, breathing emblem of the emptiness this kingdom has become. And I lent myself to it, with my forcing you into that pretence when we arrived home.”
“I was glad to—” A gust of wind belled her skirt like sailc
loth and nearly blew her off the wall. Durasnir lunged forward to catch her, but his numb hands only slid over her, unable to grasp.
So he threw himself on her. They crashed onto the tower stones in a clumsy tangle of limbs.
Durasnir levered himself painfully up, and they helped each other regain their feet. “You, unlike the king, have volition,” Brun gasped, fear sharpening her voice. “Use it.”
“I was so doing.” Durasnir leaned his head down so it almost touched hers. His tone was dry, too bleak for humor. “When I chose to end a life that mocks everything I swore to uphold.”
Brun clawed her hair out of her eyes. “This is not a good death. It is a coward’s death.”
He bowed his head; she’d only told him what he already knew. So try again, woman. “Fulla. Your death on the eve of launch will bring nothing but disaster for us all.”
“There is no path out of Rainorec, Brun. At most I hoped my death might postpone it. Long enough that someone stronger, smarter, might prevail.”
“That’s stupid.” Brun grimaced. Wrong again. “No, that’s exhaustion. Fulla, this last year would have ruined a man of twenty. If you’ve slept at all these past two weeks, it was not in our bed.”
He lifted a hand, which could have meant anything.
“Dag Ulaffa reminded us just after Rajnir’s coronation that what little meaning is left is in our hands. Can’t you see? The fleet will launch come morning’s tide. Your death will not halt it because Erkric needs to get the king away. And we’ve all conspired to keep knowledge of Rajnir’s empty head from the people because we know that the streets will run with blood if anyone finds out.” She paused, and slowly Durasnir turned toward the tower edge, staring out.
“Maybe . . .” He did not finish the thought.
Maybe it was time to unleash the Rainorec. She knew he was thinking it: how could life become worse than it was?
It’s worse for you because you are bearing all the pain that everyone would feel if we were engulfed in civil war. “You say you hoped someone smarter would lead, but that will not happen because Erkric would control the promotions.”
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