“But I—”
“Don’t you think you will be a target? If I were the Venn, I’d be watching for you, especially if your name is on everyone’s lips.”
Inda looked surprised, then his brow cleared. “Right.”
Evred rose from his wingback chair. The weak morning sun highlighted the tension sharpening the bones of his face. His voice was calm and deliberate, but Inda heard the strain of the old days at Andahi. “We’ve got almost four weeks until Convocation, and a lot to do before then.”
The women took the news in characteristic ways: Hadand resigned to Inda’s being sent off again, but busy with her son and her own enormous workload. Tdor’s resignation was far sharper, driven by fear that she would never see him again, that the distant seas would swallow him, sped by Venn steel.
She held him tightly to her all the next night, and after he fell asleep she lay awake watching over him, with only the cold metallic disk of the moon to witness when she wept.
After supper the next night, when an early snow whirled in crazy patterns outside the windows, Signi sought Tdor out in her workroom that overlooked the white-quilted roofs of the queen’s guard barracks.
“Do you have time to speak in private?” she asked in her accented Iascan. “About Inda,” she added.
Tdor set aside her pen.
“I am here to beg of you a thing of terrible cost, I know, and it will be worse when you realize that I will then do a more terrible thing.” Signi pressed her fingers against her lips, her eyes closing for a moment.
Tdor’s curiosity chilled to fear. “Speak, Signi.”
“I-I have reason to believe that when Inda leaves, I will probably get the signal I have waited for that will send me to Sartor.”
“I assumed you’d go with him,” Tdor said, not hiding her regret. “You’re a ship dag, you are free to go.”
Signi touched her fingertips together. “I am not free.”
“What? Why?”
The mage looked worn and almost ill; Tdor realized she had not slept. “It is harder than I thought, this conversation. He goes north, to lead a war against my people. My path lies south. And after that . . . I do not know. Much depends on what occurs in the strait. But I do not believe I will ever return here.”
Tdor slid her hands over the knife hilts in her sleeves.
Signi pressed her misshapen fingers against her lips again; even the distortion of protracted pain had not taken away the neatness of her movements, grace without flourish. “My path seems to lead elsewhere. But I would have this one thing.” She faced Tdor. “I would take with me a child of Inda’s begetting, if I can.” Her voice suspended. “My cycle was last week. I could this day begin to drink birth-herb.”
Tdor said gently, “Should you not be discussing this matter with him? I don’t see my place in it.”
“Because I do not want him to know. That is what is so terrible, a moral trespass in both our cultures—all the cultures of the world. But I do not want him to worry about a child he will never see. You will know and make a place in the records, for I also know that secret children of those in power beget future problems. I will make certain we are together in the time of my cycle likeliest to make a girl.”
Tdor signed agreement. Though no one had any control over if or when the Birth Spell worked (other than desire of a child) she’d been taught how, when conceiving children the ordinary way, girls most often resulted from mating before the egg white appeared, and boys that day, or a little after. Not always predictable, but as close as human endeavor could contrive.
“She will know wherefrom she comes, and you will have her name, Tadara Jazsha Sofar, in your family scrolls.”
Tadara: a version of Tdor. A gesture of goodwill that would ramify through the future. Tdor had just enough vision to perceive it.
There was only one answer to be made to that. “So shall it be.”
Signi placed her palms together in the gesture that Tdor had come to understand was akin to the fist to the heart. “If there is a thing I can do for you, who never asks anything for herself, I will.”
Tdor breathed slowly, her palms damp despite the cold. “All right. If you truly mean that. I have a question, though I know you don’t like to speak of battles. And I know this will probably sound frivolous, but, well, I’ve wondered all my life. Is it true you, um, see ghosts?”
Signi’s face altered, her pupils huge. “It is part of our training, to see what is there.”
“Supposedly there was a ghost at Inda’s castle. I never saw it. I never believed that ghosts were possible. I don’t understand how, or even why, they could be. Were there really ghosts on that battlefield in the Andahi Pass?”
Signi walked to the window, staring out. The cold white light revealed light gray strands in her hair. Tdor sustained a little shock, and then Signi turned.
“Yes, I saw ghosts. How could I not? The sun was vanishing then, but in its last light they were there, like a mist rising, a light seen here,” she touched her heart, “and here.” A touch to her eyes. “As I watched, the mist wavered upward like smoke, taking human form all over the vale between the cliffs. Young men. Some as children. Bewildered, sad, angry, or lost, Venn and Marlovan together, their annihilation of one another forgotten.” Her voice dropped, rough with empathetic grief. “And though the sun set, there came to pass a sense of light in that direction, west and north, and most turned and together drifted like smoke on the wind, vanishing through rock and brush and the fires being lit by the living. Some did linger, though there is no future in this world for their bodies conceived in joy, and fair by nature made, then desecrated by the violence of human will.”
Tdor eased her gripped fingers knuckle by knuckle.
“By morning their number had dwindled, except for the rare ones who still drift about that place, seeking and seeking. What do they seek? That I cannot tell you. Whatever meaning our souls descry beyond our physical lives, the truth is, we the living cannot legislate eternity anymore than we can the human heart.”
“Thank you,” Tdor said as Signi bowed, opening her hands in peace mode, and left.
And so that answers my question about ghosts, but where do they go? And if someone answers that, will there be another question behind it? And another behind that, and out, and out, beyond the world and light? Tdor remained where she was, suspended between tears and laughter and wonder.
Chapter Eleven
INDA was the only one surprised when the Jarls responded almost unanimously not to set aside the exile treaty.
Cama was disgusted, but he held his peace until Inda sat with him, Evred, Rat Cassad, Tuft Sindan-An (Rat and Tuft riding along with their brothers to Convocation after hearing a rumor that Inda was off to war again), and the Marlo-Vayir brothers at a private banquet at the end of New Year’s First Day.
“I thought they’d vote the treaty rescinded,” Inda said, looking around at his friends. “Here’s Fox, going to war for us, and what’s he get in return?”
Once the oaths were finished, Evred had done his best to speak in favor of relaxing the treaty so that the Montredavan-Ans could join Convocation, but he’d seen in the closed faces before he even asked for a raise of arms that the Jarls did not want the Montredavan-Ans among them again. No one knew them, but they knew their history: they were troublemakers, their sons would strut in the academy. Let them see that when Marlovans made treaties, they kept them. He didn’t have to hear the individuals to know what was being thought.
“His family will be granted the command of our navy,” Evred stated, bringing Inda back to the present. “I will invite the heir to be a King’s Runner while he is an heir. And Hadand-Gunvaer suggested that their daughters be permitted to become heralds or royal scribes, if they choose, since part of the treaty forbade their marrying out.”
Despite the universal approval (“More than generous!”) Inda doubted that Fox would like any of that, but he had decided to deal with such discussions face-to-face. Fox had only asked h
im to come back and command a sea battle. The future—if they all survived—could be dealt with later.
Cama grinned. “Jarls might like Fox a whole lot better if he helps you bring Rajnir’s head back, carried on a pole.”
“Hear him!” Tuft roared, lifting his cup in both hands. “Inda-Harskialdna Sigun!”
That shout echoed the next day, when Evred addressed the assembled Jarls. “We have been at peace for five years, which means for five years I have refrained from making a war speech before we begin our own debates and judgment. But I am still a Harvaldar, and not a Sieraec, because we have all suspected that what we won at so dear a cost five years ago was a respite.”
He paused for the curses and comments to die away.
“This year, we have been called to the north to defend the strait from the Venn invasion. Indevan-Harskialdna will command the defense, which will be made up of seagoing allies from all over the southern continent.”
Cherry-Stripe leaped to his feet, fist in the air. “Inda-Harskialdna Sigun!”
“Inda-Harskialdna Sigun!”
“Death to the Venn!”
“Death to Rajnir!”
“Here are my orders. Indevan, I order you, before the eyes and ears of Convocation, to go north as my Voice and my Will. You shall defend the southern continent against the invaders.”
He paused for the cheering, reveling in the ring of conviction in their shouts. Even Horsebutt yelled, fist in the air, “Death to the Venn!” They all knew that if the strait fell to the invaders, Halia would be next.
Evred smiled, triumph singing along his nerves. “There has never been a commander like Indevan,” he said and laughed at the louder shout the Jarls and brothers and sons sent up, ringing against the stone. “He shall prevail, and he shall secure the strait against all enemies, so I have ordered.” He used the old future-must-be modality, which caused a frenzy of yipping, shouting, and drumming on benches.
When he could be heard, he turned to Inda. “Indevan-Harskialdna, I call upon you, so do you swear before me, and before your peers convened?”
“So I do swear,” Inda said, fist up in the air.
“Then ride to the north, and victory.”
“Return in triumph! Rajnir’s head on your sword!” roared the irascible old Jarl of Jaya-Vayir.
“Rajnir’s head!”
“Victory!”
“Inda-Harskialdna Sigun! Three times three!”
As the accolade reverberated against the walls, Evred picked up the sword he’d set beside the throne, and Inda drew his Harskialdna blade, once Evred’s. They clashed the blades together, sending up an arc of sparks.
Runners handed each another blade, and as the Runners-in-Training above enthusiastically pounded out the galloping rhythm of the war dance, he and Evred flung down their swords, east-west crossed north-south. Grinning at one another over the steel, they began to dance as a single body of sound and voices and drums resonated through bones and blood and nerves.
Inda walked downstairs with Cama the next morning. Cama said, “We’ll ride out soon as the sun is up. Good riding while this thaw is on. So you say your farewells today.”
“Good.” Inda endured another pang of impending parting. “About the thaw, not the farewells. I hate riding in snow. Got enough of that coming home from the north last time.” As Cama uttered his growl of a laugh, Inda grimaced. “One thing for certain. If I have to be organizing a lot of patrols and so forth to guard the strait after we turf out the Venn, at least nobody will expect me to be bringing home any heads in bags.”
Cama snorted another laugh.
“What is that with heads, anyway? And what would you carry it in? A basket would leak, and who’d want the fellow’s nose poking through the weave?”
Cama paused midstep to let out a guffaw, then wiped his eyes. “Wait till I tell Cherry-Stripe.”
“I’m serious,” Inda protested, hands on hips.
They sobered when Evred appeared, Hadand and Tdor behind him. Tdor’s robes still hid the firm mound of her belly, but Inda had kissed that warm skin earlier in the morning, after feeling a faint flutter under his palm that she insisted was the babe moving, and not just her breakfast digesting.
Signi had said her good-byes in the Harskialdna suite, amid tears and tenderness, and an odd formality that Inda did not understand. Some Venn thing, he’d decided as he kissed her and grabbed up his gear bag.
Evred stepped aside when Inda would have clapped him on the shoulder. Inda turned away, remembering that Evred did not like being touched. That was fine. Inda still hated anyone touching his head unexpectedly.
So he kissed the little Sierlaef, who waved mittened hands, then Hadand, and last and most lingering, his wife.
Evred said, “You will speak with my Voice.” He opened his palm. On it lay Hadand’s locket.
He stretched the chain between his fingers, lifting it toward Inda’s head. But then he clenched his fingers and tossed it instead.
Inda caught it, his mind already galloping into the future. “You’ll use this thing when the baby is born, right?” He turned from Evred to Tdor.
“I promise,” Evred said.
Inda looked up, but did not see Signi anywhere, only the faces of his friends among the Guards and Runners, all of whom saluted, fist to heart. Inda’s throat tightened as his gaze lingered on the people he loved most. It hurt just as much to leave voluntarily as to be sent away; tears stung his eyes as he mounted up.
Cama gave the signal to ride out. They thundered through the gate, horns pealing from tower to tower where youngsters enthusiastically rang the bells. Inda wiped the tears away so they wouldn’t freeze.
In Bren, Tau was just returning to Adrani House from a party.
As he mounted the stairs just inside the queen’s suite, two voices blended with intimate laughter: Wisthia’s and that of the baron she’d recently taken up with. He looked a lot like his nephew Prince Kavnarac and had a similar genial manner.
Tau paused, listening not to the words—they were too muffled to perceive—but to the qualitative change in voices that happiness made. How to characterize it? As always with difficult things, his senses mixed curiously. The sound tasted like wine, glimmered like polished gold in sunlight. When he told people that, they looked at him as if he’d gone mad.
He laughed when he thought back to the previous year’s sober New Year’s Week. I’ve never been in love, Wisthia had said before they departed for an obligatory royal party. One of the fine things about adulthood is realizing you can have a good life without the emotional catastrophe. In fact, judging from the throes and woes I so often see around me, a better life. There was nothing wrong with finding satisfaction in a life without a love-mate, but not half a year later this fellow had inherited his bar onetcy and come to court. Within a week he and Wisthia had fallen for each other as hard as any two teenagers.
Tau clapped on his light and in the same movement brushed his fingers over his scroll-case though he didn’t expect anything. Evred wrote very rarely and his messages were always short.
The tingle of a message startled him. He sat down abruptly, careless of his black brocade court clothes. From his golden case he extracted a thin scrap, written in Evred’s fine scribal hand.
Inda is on his way north, after swearing before Convocation to restore order to the strait.
Tau tucked the note away, dismissing “restore order” as a surprising lapse into empty rhetoric on Evred’s part. Why not write “to save Bren”? The most compelling thing was the realization that Evred had let Inda go.
He got up to report the news to Queen Wisthia, remembered that she had company, and waited until the next time they met alone.
“Evred sent Inda,” Tau later reported. “With orders to ‘restore order’ in the strait. I hope that means we will be seeing Inda before spring is over.” Tau shook his head. “You’d think someone would have got one of those transfer tokens to him so he could spend the winter and summer drilling instead
of traveling.”
Wisthia tipped her head. “Taumad. Do you really think any monarch will trust the famed Elgar the Fox with his force for longer than it will take to win a battle? No, don’t protest about how long it takes to drill. I know that, though I wouldn’t have before being forced to live among Marlovans as long as I did. I can assure you, Kliessin wants your Inda to walk in, lead Bren’s navy to a spectacular victory, and then go home again. Preferably in a day.”
“Well that won’t happen,” Tau retorted.
“No, and I’m afraid to find out what will.” Wisthia began to pass, then halted and looked back. “What did Evred say? ‘Restore order.’ ” Her expression was difficult to interpret. Then she smiled. “I do hope whatever happens, that young man comes here at some point. I confess to an almost overwhelming desire to meet him.”
The world was made of silence and lay outside of time.
Language had failed Rajnir, and so he abandoned it, straining toward the ceiling of gray ice in hopes of another window. He cherished the last window, examining it minutely again and again as he reveled in sensory memory: how his lungs expanded of his own volition, without the constraint of the vile whisper. How heat pressed upon him so that sweat trickled down his brow into his ear, ran down his inner thigh. How the white silk squeaked when he moved his arms. The press of his loosely-laced armor under his arms when he arched his back.
He remembered hearing words. Not the vile whisper. He heard Uncle Fulla. He understood the words! “My king.” That is I! I am Rajnir! He held onto the meaning of those words, saying them over—sensing a window—turned and turned until he found it, and there it was! He used his eyes—his eyelids lifted, and he reveled in the cold air on his eyeball, the itch along his lashes, because it was so very good to feel! He cherished the tearing of bright light. There was the table, with a chart on it. There were inward slanting ship windows, with a green sea moving outside. There he was, the vile whisperer, but giving orders to his dags, and so Rajnir relished the cold flow of air against his face, and the sweat inside his clothes. The expansion of an indrawn breath, the shape of his own lips and jaw and tongue. He moved them! His throat worked, and he spoke words! “I want the fleet to win sea room.” And when the vile whisperer spun around, eyes and mouth three circles, Rajnir thought, I am king! and said, “Order the signals, my Dag.” He said them! He thought the words, and his own lips and tongue and breath shaped them! What pleasure, what glory, to choose to speak and then to do it!
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