After a time, “You know what Evred wrote to me?” Inda lifted his head, and it was clear he was quoting exactly. “You remember your first day back, when you took me to Daggers Drawn? There is a new tradition. I had not known until Hastred brought it to my attention. That table you and I sat at is now reserved for the horsetail commander who wins the Banner Game flag, along with his riding captains. The honor the boys perceive there is not mine, but yours . . . ”
Inda leaned his head on her shoulder. “I know he meant it well. But I can’t stop thinking of Dogpiss, and I wonder why we measure glory by the pain of death.”
Tdor said, “Come, Inda. Come inside and rest. Our boys are safe. They will not ride to war, because the kingdom is at peace. Jarend and Hot Rock are not enemies. Kenda will make friends with the other sons at the academy, friends for life. We have raised them well, to be fair, to value what is good in one another, to respect hard work of any kind. There is peace, Inda. You brought it. Evred keeps it. Come. Come inside, where it’s warm.”
Inda came obediently, and they walked inside, where it was quiet, smelling of herb-candles, and down past the nursery rooms where once they had slept and now the children were sleeping.
On the landing Inda paused, looking at Jarend’s room, once his brother’s, and he said, his expression uneasy, “When trouble does come, it will rise first at the academy. We all thought the Fox banner stood for glory, but what if glory is just another word for damnation?”
He was rocking again. Tdor’s throat hurt with grief. “Inda, never forget that you gave us peace when it would have been so easy to go on fighting, on and on. Come to bed.”
They reached the bedroom, and Inda sighed, massaging his shoulder. Tdor’s eyes stung as she helped him out of his wet clothing and into dry, and then made him sit down so she could towel the wet out of his hair and comb it smooth again. She brushed slowly, gently, and her reward was to see the tension slowly smooth from his brow, and he ceased shivering.
“Ah, beloved,” he murmured, his fingers caressing the faint lines in her brow, tracing the shadows at the sides of her lips. “How beautiful you are.”
She couldn’t help a chortle.
Inda heard the unsteadiness in her attempt at laughter, the disbelief, and beneath it, question.
“Joret was never beautiful to me,” he said. “Not ugly, either. She was just Joret. Pleased the eye, but beauty, it strikes you right here.” He closed a fist lightly and thumped it against his breast bone. “Joret was art. Tau was art. But to me, you were always beautiful. Before I really knew what beauty was. It was your face I saw when I was away. Awake and in dreams.”
She laughed again, even more unsteadily, but he heard the genuine humor there, then she wound her fingers in his wet hair, bumped up against him, and said, “Prove it.”
And he did. They loved with passion and with tenderness and with laughter, and when they were too tired to love again, he lay beside her, listening to her breathing, and said, “You make me happy. Don’t say I do that for you, not when I yelp at night, and whine about my arm, and any beauty I ever had was long lost with all these scars. Do I do anything for you?”
“Everybody is beautiful. Life is beauty. Especially the young. But you?” She grinned, and nipped him on the ear. “You make me burn.”
He grinned like a boy again and hugged her tight.
Presently he fell asleep, and this time stayed that way; his face looked peaceful, outlined by the soft golden glow from the torchlight on the walls. His grip on her had loosened.
So she slipped from the bed, ignoring the cold air, and knelt down by her trunk.
I cannot take away our painful memories, she thought as she unsheathed her knife. And maybe we humans need to remember the pain, to help us learn not to cause it. But there are things I can give to Inda. Each day’s small triumphs, moments of laughter. Little stories shared, they will add up and up, into a life of contentment. His greatness was in knowing when to empty his hands of steel and death. Mine shall be in filling his hands with life.
She carved another notch to honor her vow.
Afterward The King Who Was an Emperor
IN the days between Hadand’s sudden death after her horse slipped on black ice, and the magnificent memorial bonfire attended by what appeared to be the entire royal city, all bearing torches, Evred made a decision.
Directly after the bonfire, he walked between his sons from the parade ground, which had not been big enough to hold all who wished to be there. The wintry air glowed with a fiery river of torches, creating a semblance of day as people streamed back through the tunnel and the castle courtyard to the city, many still singing.
Here and there echoed the laughter of the young; Evred shook away irritation. They had showed their respect by their appearance despite the shocking cold so late in the season. Evred could imagine Hadand’s twisted smile, were she here. Just weeks ago she’d said, after yet another of their daughter-by-marriage’s hall-ringing tantrums as she broke with another hapless lover, I finally figured out Fabern Ola-Vayir’s purpose in our lives. She’s living proof that though we can educate the younger generation, we can even command them, we cannot control their lives, much as we think we’d do a better job of it.
He lifted his gaze to Hastred’s tall, dark-haired profile at one side. The ruddy torchlight made him seem older than he was. The heirs were past their wild youth, born early to their parents, a result of those desperate years when Evred was afraid there would be no more heirs left to the kingdom.
On his other side, red-haired Tanrid gave his father his lopsided smile, then made a move in the direction of the stable. He was so seldom still.
“Bide a moment,” Evred said, and his sons paused, Tanrid mid-stride. “Come with me. I’ve something to discuss.”
They walked in silence. It was a companionable silence, but still a silence. Evred had long accustomed himself to the fact that he had nothing in common with either of his sons. Tanrid could not read, though he was a dashing Sierandael—Evred thought with pride of Tanrid’s leading of the restless younger generation to Ghael, where they rid the border mountains of infestations of brigands that had begun preying on the increase in trade. But when Tanrid was at home, he stuttered as much as had the Uncle Aldren he’d never met. Tanrid’s academy name had been Jabber. Evred had hated the cruelty of that, though Tanrid never seemed to mind, except when Fabern sneered it. Hadand talked Evred out of his first impulse, which was to forbid it. By the time Tanrid was a horsetail the name had shortened to Jab, and now in the songs about the Ghael Hills routing of brigands he figured as Jab the Sword-swinger.
There were no songs about Hastred-Sierlaef, who was worthy and dutiful and hard-working. Hastred was only interested in horses during his rare leisure moments.
Evred led the way to his study, seldom used during winter any more. The kingdom had been quiet for so long that Evred had been spending more of his winter in the archives, organizing the family papers, annotating them, translating the Iascan archives into Marlovan. The days of using Marlovan only in the field were over. It was a good language, what matter that it used another tongue’s lettering? He’d learned that that was more common than not.
“Father?” Hastred said, as Tanrid shifted about restlessly.
Evred broke the reverie he hadn’t realized he’d fallen into, and said, “I have decided to lay aside the crown.”
Hastred’s straight brows were as dark as his hair. His coloring was so like his grandfather Tlennen, yet his features unlike. He did not look pleased, or angry. He knew how much work that meant, but he had always squared to whatever task he was set, with a methodical exactitude that had astounded his tutors in the schoolroom. He liked lists, and order. Ruling all of Halia would just require a bigger set of lists. Evred could almost read his thoughts as Hastred’s abstract gaze moved slowly over the crimson rug on the floor to the desk.
Tanrid whistled softly, for once standing still. His gaze shifted between them, and Evred saw hi
s unspoken question, a need for reassurance. “I am not falling on my sword, I just think it is time. Tanrid, you have been Sierandael ever since you left the academy, so nothing will change for you, except that your orders will now come from your brother, as is proper. Hastred, you have sat beside me in council, at Convocation, and in here, since you left the academy. You will know what to do.”
“When?” Hastred asked.
“Tomorrow,” Evred said.
“Oh.” Hastred did not know what to think. His father had always seemed ageless, strong as a tree. Hastred had been content with the quiet rhythm of their lives when Fabern was elsewhere. He liked quiet, and order. The first shock of his life had been his mother’s death; here was another shock, that his father would go away. “Where will you go?”
“To the north.”
Hastred struggled to accept, to comprehend. He had grown up knowing that some things just were, you had to accept them, and live around them. Like the prospect of being married to Fabern Ola-Vayir, accomplished a few years ago.
“Vedrid is arranging things,” Evred said, watching comprehension work its way into Hastred’s expression. Comprehension and decision. First the little things, then the cascade that would build to the greater ones. He must go away, leaving Hastred the freedom to make them. “Vedrid will ride with me; the other Runners I leave to you. The Jarls would hate riding back to another Convocation in the worst winter we’ve had since I was young, so I suggest you summon them to make their vows at midsummer, like I did.” Evred caught himself. I am no longer king. “But do as you think best. I want to depart quietly. I would rather you tell no one until after I am gone.”
“It shall be as you wish, Father,” Hastred said.
He and Tanrid turned toward one another uncertainly. There was no custom for this moment. Most Marlovan kings had died by violence, only one by old age. Evred sensed constraint as Tanrid faced the window, fingers tapping nervously at his thigh, and Hastred looked down at the rug. All three knew that the moment she discovered she would be Gunvaer in fact, Fabern would be up in the royal suite, ordering the women to pull apart Hadand’s rooms to be reorganized to her satisfaction.
And of course she would have the right.
Evred embraced his sons there in his study, then left them alone to talk it out in what would be the new king’s room. He walked back to the royal suite, which seemed larger and emptier than ever.
He still had his old academy coat, though it had gone so threadbare he had laid it aside some years ago, saving it for an occasion he then could not quite define. He would wear it again on the morrow.
He looked around at his few personal possessions. The magic rings he had given to his sons; Hastred and Tanrid seemed to like knowing where the other was. On the mantel in his private chamber he still had the carved box that had once held his horsetail clasp. Since then he’d stored in the box his few treasures, mainly a ribbon-tied roll of Inda’s letters. There were a couple of scraps left from his boyhood days, and there at the bottom Tau’s last letter, written in Old Sartoran: Don’t force Inda to fight his friends. How many times had he written answers to that in his mind, to reject them in the light of day?
Evred took the box down and laid it on the fire.
It had not quite burned away when there was a quick knock at the door. One he recognized. “Enter,” he called.
In came his cherished daughter-in-law, Liet. For years everyone had exclaimed over Fabern’s beauty—so much like her father Cama—but Evred had only seen the Ola-Vayir calculation in her eyes, the smirk of meanness that had appeared when she was scarcely able to speak.
Liet was tall, with the Toraca sloped shoulders, her large ears pushed forward by heavy braids. She looked so much like her father, Nightingale—and sometimes there were echoes of Noddy in her face—that her appearance transcended trite terms like beauty, in Evred’s eyes.
“Papa Evred,” she said. “I smelled something odd out in the hall.”
“Merely some tidying.” He rose, dusting ash from his knees. “I told Hastred and Tanrid, and now I tell you: I am laying aside the crown.”
Her eyes widened, then her brow crimped with unhappiness. “What will you do?”
“I plan to ride north.”
She bit her lip, but as always, did not remonstrate. “I was writing to Ki,” she said. Evred thought of his daughter Tdor-Kialen, living up in the north with Cama’s son. How much she resembled her mother!
“I waited to add in about the memorial. I think the news will hurt less, when I tell her all the good things people said about Mama-Hadand. Will you be going that far?”
“I don’t know,” Evred said slowly.
“It’s all right. I’d planned to send my letter with—oh, it doesn’t matter, I just thought—oh, Papa-Evred, I will miss you.” She opened her arms, and he hugged her wordlessly. As he looked down at the neat parting in her brown hair, he thought, You will be Gunvaer in all but name, and you will be as good as you have proven to be a good Harandviar, young as you are. But such things were better left unsaid.
He and Vedrid departed at dawn the next day, and Hastred kept his word: there were no bells, no trumpets, though the sentries on the walls, men and women, saluted when they saw the king riding. He saluted them back, meeting eyes with grave deliberation. They would find out after he was gone that the gesture was a farewell.
He had not realized how melancholy he had felt until the royal city sank behind him, leaving crackling snow lying in broad, pale blue layers all the way to the horizon. It was good to be riding again. How many years since he had taken to horse? Since the desperate days he rode beside Inda to defend the kingdom.
The terrible winter was ending at last when he reached the outskirts of Ala Larkadhe. When he approached the castle, he was pleased to see alert guards. He and Vedrid rode with no markings on their coats, so again there was no fanfare.
Word had gone ahead, of course—they had shared an inn with a few of Hastred’s Runners—so Evred’s arrival was quiet, his welcome by the new commander genuine, though he could see that they were uneasy. No one was quite sure how to behave around a king who was not a king.
When he was done with the expected interview and meal, at last they left him alone, assuming he was going to one of the guest chambers to rest. His heartbeat drummed as he trod the back corridors of the castle to the white tower. He had hoped that time and a peaceful approach would once again grant him access to the morvende archive, where he had hoped to live out his days in peaceful study.
But when he crossed the well-remembered landing and laid his hand to the door, he found it closed.
He stood there on the landing, head bowed. When he had got control of the almost devastating disappointment, he realized he was not alone: from behind came the rustle of cambric and silk, then a quiet step. He breathed a long familiar scent, a little like sage and wild thyme.
He turned.
Taumad Dei stepped out from the archway adjacent. “I caught ship when I got word about Hadand, and landed last week at Lindeth. I thought you might come here.” He stretched out his hand. “Your work is done, and well done. Whatever the Morvende think.”
Evred made the old flat-handed gesture of negation on the word “Morvende.” Then faced Tau. “There are many things I regret. Most I made peace with. But this one I cannot, how I disclaimed your honor in that treaty you made.”
“But you accepted it anyway.” Tau smiled. Age had only refined his splendid features. His golden hair had lightened to silver. “You did right by your Marlovans and by the rest of the world at the last, and I know what that cost you. You gave us peace.” He stretched out his hand. “So now it’s my turn to give a gift. Are you ready to see the world?”
Evred drew in a slow breath, and the tension left him as he lifted his own hand. “Yes.” Their fingers closed and tightened. “Show me the world,” Evred said.
Characters and Ships in TREASON’S SHORE
MARLOVANS
Algara-Vayir F
amily
Jarend, Adaluin (prince)
Fareas Fera-Vayir, Iofre (princess)
Tanrid, Laef (heir), killed by secret order of Sierlaef, 3910
Joret Dei, betrothed to Tanrid, then to Inda, married Prince Valdon na Shagal of the Adranis
Hadand, betrothed to Sierlaef, married Evred-Harvaldar and became Gunvaer (queen)
Indevan, (“Inda”), future Randael, exiled nine years, appointed Evred’s Harskialdna, eventually Adaluin
Branid, son of former Randviar Marend, two generations previous, became Adaluin after Jarend
Arveas Family (now Arveas-Andahi)
Kendred, (“Dewlap”), former Cavalry Captain, Jarl of Olara, died defending Sala Varadhe Castle in the Venn War
Liet Tlen, Jarlan, died defending Andahi Castle in the Venn War
Tlennen, (“Flash”) Randael, died by the hand of a spy in the Venn war
Ndand, Jarlan, daughter of a guardswoman, so “of Tlen” or just Arveas, wife of Flash,
Kethadrend, (“Keth”), much younger brother of Flash, now future Jarl, name changed to Arveas-Andahi
Gdir Tlen, once Keth’s betrothed, killed by Idayagans in the Venn War
Radran, baker’s son, survived the Venn attack
Hadand Tlen, (“Captain Han”), survived the Venn attack
Lnand, cook’s apprentice, survived the Venn attack
Haldred Mon-Davar, (“Hal”) (brother Moon), survived the Venn attack
Ingrid Tlennen, serving as interim Randviar until the Andahi girls grow.
Cassad Family
Senrid, Jarl
Ivandred, Randael
Ndara, second cousin to Jarl, married to Anderle-Harskialdna
Tanrid, Laef
Carleas Ndarga, betrothed—later wife—to Tanrid, the heir
Jarend, (“Rattooth” or more commonly “Rat”), future Randael
Kialen, intended Harandviar to Evred-Laef Montrei-Vayir, took her own life after the Hesea Hills Conspiracy
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