After perhaps a quarter glass, she reached the crest of the hillside, but she could still hold her contact with the darkness deep below. More time passed before she could find a clearing from which she could look out to the south.
The trees ended at the base of the hills, a good two vingts to the south, over uneven sloping ground, and grasslands stretched farther southward, with widely spaced cots and one more substantial holding. She thought she could see a thin shimmering gray line in the distance, running east to west.
Could she soar above the low treetops and get a better view?
She dropped the personal shield and drew more strongly on the greenish darkness and rose, but as she neared the tops of the pines, she could definitely feel a shakiness to her control, and she quickly scanned the horizon from one side to the other. Back to the east was a town. That she could see clearly, and it was more than a hamlet. She guessed it was a good five, perhaps ten vingts away, and it looked large enough to be Viencet. She dropped slowly to the rocky ground, scattered with patches of grass and scraggly low bushes … and found herself breathing heavily.
For a time, she just stood there in the hazy late-afternoon sunlight, regaining her strength.
Why do you have to be so small? Why?
Complaining to herself wouldn’t help, and once she felt more back to normal, she began to walk downhill, trying to see how far she could go toward the town before she began to sense a weakening of her ability to draw on the darkness.
She walked almost a vingt, and her feet were getting sore, her boots and trousers dusty, before she felt the attenuation of the darkness. The base of the forest was still more than a vingt away, and the road three or four times that. After taking a deep breath, she walked back uphill until she could feel the full strength of the darkness beneath, then called upon it.
The return to Tempre was far easier because she could sense the bluish point of light—that was what it seemed to be—that marked the Table, above the darkness of the path she traveled. Even so, she was shivering and light-headed when she emerged in the formal study.
That didn’t stop her from going to the map folio and immediately studying it. Although she couldn’t be absolutely certain, Viencet was the only large town located on the ancient eternastone road to the west of Tempre … unless she’d taken the black pathway along the more southern road to Zalt … but the flat showed no hills there, and the only town was almost to the border claimed by Southgate. Of course, the hamlet named Meithyl wasn’t on the map, nor was the dirt road it was located beside. But the forest reserve was shown, and it seemed to match where she’d been.
Seemed … appeared … might … Mykella wanted to scream. The black paths underlying Corus didn’t go where she hoped they would, and that was going to make everything difficult. Again.
She shivered and took another deep breath. She’d just have to keep trying … and she definitely needed something to eat.
8
Although all the ministries in the palace were closed on Decdi, leaving the lower-level corridors empty and quiet, except for the guards, Mykella didn’t sleep all that much later than usual, possibly because she’d gone to bed early. She was up with the sun and in the breakfast room while the morning shadows were still completely cloaking the palace courtyards. She was finishing a cheese omelet, along with greasy ham strips when Salyna sat down across from her.
“You ate all of that?” asked her youngest sister.
Mykella nodded, then took a bite of dark bread slathered heavily with orange molasses preserves.
“You’ve never eaten that much,” observed Salyna. “Ever.”
“I was hungry.” Mykella took a swallow of hot tea, and another bite of bread.
“From studying maps?” Salyna shook her head “You had Zestela clean your boots. They were covered in mud, she said. What did you do? Tromp around the gardens in the rain in the middle of the night?”
“I’ve had a lot of thinking to do.” Mykella forbore to point out that it hadn’t rained that much, especially on Novdi night.
“Things won’t happen that quickly. Other rulers don’t even know you’re Lady-Protector yet.”
“That’s why I have to think now. If I wait to figure things out, it will be too late.” That’s what happened with Father and Joramyl. By the time I understood, Father was dead.
“You have to worry, but I think you’re worrying too much.”
“Do you want to go for a ride today?”
“I’m always interested in getting out of the palace. Where? In the Preserve?”
“No. I want to take the north highway toward Viencet and explore some side lanes.”
“I can do that. Could I ask why?”
“I’ve discovered there are too many things I don’t know about, except what I read and what people have told me. I need to see more.”
Salyna raised her eyebrows.
“I am Lady-Protector for all the people of Lanachrona, not just of the factors and Seltyrs … and those with golds.”
“If those with golds do not support you, you will not remain Lady-Protector.”
“If those without golds do not support me as well, I will not remain Lady-Protector that much longer. They are the ones who bring goods to market, who toil in the fields, who are servants in the palace and elsewhere, and who join the ranks of the Southern Guards.”
“They don’t count,” said Rachylana from the door to the breakfast room. “They’ve always done what others have told them, and they always will.”
“Like the women of Tempre?” asked Mykella gently.
“I suppose you’ll have to find out for yourself, won’t you?” replied the redhead. “As always. Except everyone else will keep paying while you try to make your romantic tales come true. They usually don’t, you know?”
Salyna could not quite conceal a wince.
Mykella merely replied, “Some things each of us has to find out for herself, and they’re often very different things. Would you care to join us on a ride?” She rose from the table.
“I think not. Even the common folk might find that … frivolous, so soon after so much tragedy.”
Clad in black … I think not. But Mykella did not voice that
After she left the breakfast room, Mykella stopped by the two guards at the top of the wide stairway and asked one to convey a message to the duty section leader that she and Salyna would be taking a ride to the southwest. Then she returned to her quarters and finished dressing, not that what she wore to ride in was any different from her daily wear, except for a riding jacket and gloves, both of nightsilk.
Salyna met her in the main upper corridor, and they headed down to the lower level, then to the eastern door to the courtyard.
Mykella was more than a little surprised to find Commander Areyst mounted and waiting in the palace courtyard, but she concealed—she hoped—the feeling and smiled. “Good morning, Commander. I hope I’m not taking you away from other duties.”
“On a Decdi … that I can manage, Lady.” He inclined his head, then smiled at her.
The warmth behind his smile almost halted her, but she mounted the gray quickly. Behind her, Salyna mounted the big chestnut she favored.
As they rode out of the courtyard, with Mykella in the middle flanked by Areyst to her left and Salyna to her right, and toward the avenue fronting the palace, Areyst said mildly, “You didn’t tell the duty-squad leader the purpose of this ride.”
“No, I didn’t. It’s a ride of exploration … or of looking at Tempre and the highway and what lies beside and around it in a different way.” That was certainly true, if on two levels. “I’ve doubtless been too sheltered, and I need to spend some time seeing things with my own eyes.”
“On horseback, you’ll still be sheltered in some ways.” His voice was pleasant.
“That’s true, but I’ll have to try to look beyond that.” She guided the gray to the right and westward onto the avenue that led to the Great Piers before it turned and angled so
uthwest through Tempre. At the same time, she raised her shields. Given the reactions of the late Commander Nephryt, Seltyr Porofyr, and even her own father’s feelings about women in power, she had no doubts that she offered a target every time she appeared in public.
Two Southern Guards rode around the three and took station a good five yards ahead.
“Commander … I have a favor to ask.”
“Yes, Lady?”
“Do you recall Majer Allahyr?”
“Quite well. He was a good soldier, excellent grasp of tactics. Why?”
“I would like to request that his survivor’s stipend—the stipend that should have gone to his widow—be reinstated and paid to his daughters. Until they are wed, of course.”
“Do you intend to make that a practice, Lady?”
“I would think it should be in the case where both the Southern Guard and his widow have died, leaving sons or daughters too young to fend for themselves properly. I cannot imagine that this happens often enough to cause a drain on the accounts.”
“It has not.” Areyst nodded. “It might be more likely if the princes of the west attack.”
“If we prevail, we can afford it. If not…”
“Then I will draft a change to the stipend rules for your signature, Lady.”
“Thank you.”
“It is a good idea. Many have felt that Majer Allahyr and Majer Querlyt were forced to take early stipends because they had no choice after the deaths of their consorts.”
“If there are other changes you think would improve matters with the Southern Guards, please don’t hesitate to let me know.”
“What about women in the Guards?” asked Salyna.
Areyst grinned before replying. “Lady Salyna, there are but a handful of women with your ability with arms, and that is far too few to comprise a squad, let alone a company.”
“They could be trained,” persisted Salyna.
“They could,” agreed Areyst, “but not in time for the battles to come this year.”
“What if … after we deal with the west … Salyna began to train women?” asked Mykella. “Couldn’t they be used as auxiliaries … or for other duties, such as reinstituting the tariff stations on the highways?”
Areyst’s eyes turned on Mykella. “That might prove useful, but only if you are successful in maintaining your rule.”
In short, if you find a way to beat down and back Northcoast and Midcoast, you can do anything you want. But not until. Mykella smiled pleasantly and turned to Salyna. “I think the commander has given the most generous reply possible.”
Salyna frowned, then nodded abruptly.
Mykella looked to her left at the park that fronted the palace on the other side of the avenue. Some of the trees were ancient, but their limbs sagged, and the borders of the walks were ragged. Is all Tempre like that? If it’s like that across from the palace … She almost sighed.
Beyond the park and the palace grounds began the trading quarter of Tempre, with the crafters’ shops and the buildings that held smaller traders. The size and exterior appointments of the buildings they passed improved as they neared the Great Piers, although the worn stone walks flanking the avenue were largely empty, as was normal for midmorning on Decdi.
A gray-haired woman quickly grasped the arms of a small boy and girl—possibly grandchildren—to keep them from running across in front of the horses. Mykella smiled and nodded to the woman. The only response was a stone-faced stare.
Are even the women dubious? Mykella almost snorted. Was there any doubt?
From the shoreward side of the Great Piers extended a stretch of pavement where, during the week, peddlers and itinerant merchants set up stands and tents—provided they paid a copper a day to the portmaster. Not a single tent was visible. Mykella glanced past Salyna to her right at the Great Piers, where she’d often stood beside her father and brother in the reviewing stand for the regular season-turn parades. The last time she had stood there had barely been a tenday ago, for her father’s memorial procession. It seemed so long ago … and yet like yesterday.
At the end of the piers, the avenue turned to the southwest. From there it was so straight that not a trace of a curve was visible. Mykella could still sense the darkness beneath the piers, but that dark path felt as though it was diverging ever so slightly from the eternastone highway.
South of the piers, the dwellings on the north side of the avenue, those almost backing up to the towpath of the river, were all of two stories; but they were older, and worn, with the whitewash over the plastered stone showing a dinginess in places, and chipped areas where the less expensive dark stone and yellow brick showed through. In places, the shutters hung less than straight. Once the houses might have been the homes of smaller factors and more successful crafters. Now, each looked to hold several families.
From a sagging second-level balcony several blocks farther from the piers, four small children peered at the riders over a white railing whose whitewash was flaking and dingy gray. Their faces were gaunt, their eyes not quite vacant, and the wind from the west carried definite unsavory odors, presumably from the alleyways behind the slowly decaying structures.
“This isn’t the best section of Tempre, Lady,” offered Areyst.
Mykella knew that, but she hadn’t looked quite so closely at the houses the few times she’d ridden past the piers. Most of the time she had ridden through the city, it had been on the other main avenue, the one to the east that led to the villa where Joramyl had lived.
In less than half a glass, they reached the low wall that had once marked the edge of Tempre—and still did, if not absolutely, since a few handfuls of huts and small dwellings dotted some of the fields to the southwest.
“I’d like to follow that lane to the right—the one short of the orchard,” Mykella said.
“It probably doesn’t go very far,” said Salyna.
“It may not, but that’s something I need to know.”
Mykella did recognize the trees on the left side of the lane—apricots, one of the better orchard crops of Lanachrona.
Surprisingly, the lane did not end but curved westward around the back of the large orchard and over an old timbered bridge, under which ran an empty irrigation canal, diverging gradually from the eternastone road, so that Mykella could sense the darkness beneath although it was still too far to the north of her to be able to draw on it easily.
“You’re trying something with Talent, aren’t you?” murmured Salyna. “Is that why we’re here?”
“Partly,” replied Mykella in an equally low voice.
There were no more lanes that branched farther north toward the river, and in the end, they had to ride down an overgrown path to return to the main highway. Although Mykella sensed a greater divergence between the eternastone highway and the darkness beneath, she kept riding for another glass and a half before turning back.
In a few places, holders were beginning to work on fields and orchards, but most holdings looked barren and dreary, and despite just a slight chill in the air, Mykella saw no signs of spring growth. The return through the west side of Tempre was even more depressing than the ride out had been, most likely because she saw more and more signs of neglect in all-too-many buildings.
When they returned to the palace in early afternoon, it was clear to Mykella that she could not draw fully upon the deep darkness from the main highway, not unless her abilities improved, or unless there was a dark pathway nearer the highway farther to the west. The underground travel of the day before had suggested that, but she had needed to know more clearly.
When she reined up in the palace courtyard, she turned to Areyst. “Thank you, Commander. I do appreciate your company and solicitude. I will be taking more rides through Tempre this coming week, most likely one every day until I have seen more of what I need to see. While I appreciate your company, I would not wish to impose on you personally.”
“I understand. I appreciate your concerns, but for the time being,
either Captain Maeltor or I will ride with the squad accompanying you.”
Mykella nodded, then dismounted, handing the gray’s reins to the guard who had stepped up. She felt guilty in not grooming the gelding, but insisting on doing so at a time when it didn’t matter would only have been an empty gesture. “My thanks, again, Commander.”
“My pleasure, Lady.”
Salyna didn’t say anything until they were inside the palace and walking the empty lower corridor back to the staircase. “You’re going to keep doing this? All over Tempre?”
“How else will I learn the condition of things?”
“What did you learn today?”
“That part of Tempre is very shabby, and that it didn’t used to be.” And that the blackness doesn’t follow the highway even close to Tempre.
“That bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“Mykella … I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but there aren’t enough golds in all Corus to pay to keep everything painted and repaired.”
“That part of town once was … If too much of Tempre is like that, something’s wrong, and has been for a while. That’s why I need to ride through all the city.”
“If you find it too much that way, then what will you do?”
“That depends on what I see in the areas where the Seltyrs and High Factors live.”
“Mykella…” Salyna broke off her words as she looked at her sister, shaking her head.
After several moments, as the two passed the guards and started up the steps to the upper level, Salyna spoke again. “The commander likes you, but he’s very proper.”
“He’s cautious … very cautious.”
“With you, that’s wise.”
Because he knows I can kill him without a weapon … or because he might feel something for me and doesn’t wish to be rejected? Mykella hoped it was more of the second than the first, but she stifled a rueful laugh, brought on by the realization that, if Areyst truly felt the first, he was only experiencing what all too many women had felt for too many years. “With any ruler, that’s wise.”
Lady-Protector Page 9
