Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  He stiffened as she spoke, and she waited for the outburst she knew would followed her words.

  It never came.

  "Why is it that you're here, Kerowyn?" he asked slowly. "All I know is that you're Lady Kethry's granddaughter. I thought—I guess I thought you were just playing at this business of learning from Tarma, but you're talking about really going out and selling your sword—"

  "I'm not talking about it, I'm going to do it," she told him firmly. Her stomach growled, reminding her that it had been a long time since she'd last eaten. "I don't have much choice in the matter, not unless I want to live on my brother's good will until he decides to find an appropriate husband for me. If anyone would take me at this point; there's no telling. I've certainly scandalized all of Dierna's family. And of course that assumes I'd sit right down and marry whoever he found for me, like a good little girl, which I don't think I'm minded to do."

  And if some of the hints about the Baron that Grandmother's dropped are true, I suspect he'd have an interest in keeping me from producing any competition for the Keep. Kethry had never actually accused the Baron of anything, but Kero was perfectly capable of putting facts together for herself, including a few that Kethry didn't know about. The Baron had been quite interested in the proposed marriage, and had sent a very handsome set of silver as a gift—yet had sent no representative to the wedding. Which argued for the fact that he might well have known that something was going to happen.

  And he was in an excellent position to plan for it to happen. She was very glad that Tarma had hired all those guards, those very competent guards. Doubtless Kethry was keeping a magical eye on the place as well, since the promises she'd made to Rathgar were void with his death.

  "I don't know why your brother would have any trouble finding a husband—" Daren began.

  Something about the way he said that crystallized the problem that had been going around in her head for weeks. She interrupted him. "What if I don't want him to 'find me a husband'? What if I'm perfectly happy without a husband? Why should everyone think I'm supposed to be overjoyed about getting wrapped up in ribbons and handed off to some man I've never even met? I'm not so sure I'd want to be handed off like a prize mare to anyone I have met!"

  "But I thought that was what every girl wanted," he said, with what sounded like honest bewilderment. "My sisters all do, or at least, that's all they talk about."

  "Not Tarma," she reminded him. "Not Grandmother. Not your Aunt Idra. And not me. Does every man drool at the idea of going out and hacking people to bits?"

  "Well," he admitted, "No. My cousin—"

  "Well, nothing," she interrupted again. "Every man doesn't want the same thing. Then why should every woman want the same thing? We're not cookies, you know, all cut out of identical dough and baked to an identical brown and sprinkled with sugar so you men can devour us whenever you please." She was rather proud of that simile, and preened a little in the dark—but the talk of cookies made her hunger all the worse.

  "No," he replied. "Some of you are crabapples."

  For once her mind was working fast enough. "At least crabapples don't get devoured," she snapped. Though I'd eat crabapples right now, if I could find them. She'd have turned her back on him, if she could have, but there wasn't room in their shelter.

  "It's not any easier on a man, you know," he said after a sullen silence broken only by the steady pattering of rain on dead, soggy leaves. "We get presented with some girl our parents have picked out for us, we have no idea what she's like, and we're expected to make her fall deliriously in love with us so that she goes to the altar smiling instead of crying. And then we're supposed to live up to whatever plans our fathers have for us, whether or not we actually fit what they have in mind. I'm just lucky. Faram's the best brother in the world, and I don't want the crown—he thinks I'd make a good Lord Martial, and I've always been pretty good at strategy, so I'm not going to have to do anything I hate. And since I'm the youngest, nobody's going to be expecting me to pick out a bride until I want one. Poor Faram's got to choose before Midsummer, and the gods help him if there isn't at least a sign of an heir by Winter Solstice."

  All this came out in a rush, as if he'd been holding it in for much too long. Kero realized as she listened to him that she felt oddly sorry for him.

  Maybe too much power and position is as bad as too little.

  "So what are they forcing you into?" she asked quietly. "There must be something."

  He sighed, and winced halfway through as the sigh moved ribs that probably hurt. "I like the idea of planning things, and I like fighting practice," he said. "It's like a dance, only better, because in court dances you spend an awful lot of time not moving much. But—I've never—actually killed anyone—"

  "I have," she said without thinking. "It's not like in the ballads. It's pretty awful."

  She felt him wince again. "That's what I was afraid of," he confessed. "I'm afraid that—I won't be able to—" He swallowed audibly, then seemed to realize what she'd said. "You've killed someone?" he said, his voice rising again,

  "Well, the sword did—"

  "You're that Kerowyn?" he squeaked. She couldn't tell from his voice if he was pleased or appalled.

  "I'm what Kerowyn?" she asked. "I didn't know there were more of me."

  "The one the song's about, the one that rescued the bride for—" he faltered, "—for her brother—with her grandmother's magic sword."

  "I guess I must be," she said wearily, "since there can't be too many Kerowyns with magic swords around. The sword did most of it. It was more like it was the fighter, and I was the weapon."

  "If I'd known you were that Kerowyn," he began. "I wouldn't have—"

  "You see?" she said through a clenched jaw. "Why should it have made any difference in the way you treated me? Deciding that someone's serious just because they've had a bloody song written about them is a pretty poor way to make judgment calls, if you ask me. Grandmother and Tarma had plenty of songs written about them, and most of them were wrong."

  "It's just—just that when I heard the song—I wished I could meet you," he whispered. "I thought, that's a girl that I could talk to, she doesn't have any stupid ideas about honor, she just knows what's right. And then she goes and does something about it."

  "Well, you're talking to me now," she replied sourly, hunching herself up against the bed of leaves, wishing she could find a position that hurt a little less.

  "I guess I am." Another long silence. "So what was it really like?"

  "If I hadn't been sweating every drop of water out of me, I'd have wet myself," she told him bluntly. "I've never been so scared in all my life."

  Somehow it was easy to tell him everything, including things she hadn't told her grandmother, the anger she'd felt at Rathgar for being so stupid as to die and leave them all without protection, the same anger at Lordan for being unable to take up the rescue himself. She didn't cry, this time; she wasn't even particularly saddened by the losses anymore. It might all have happened to someone else, a long time ago, and not to her at all.

  He told her about his father, his brothers; quite a bit about Faram, not so much about Thanel. She guessed, though, from what little he did say that Thanel was a troublemaker, a coward, and a sneak. The worst possible combination. Fortunately, their father seemed well aware of that; Kero just hoped he'd considered the possibility that Thanel might well try to arrange for an "accident" to befall his older brother. Daren didn't say anything about that, and Kero decided that it wasn't her business to bring it up.

  They dozed off sometime during the night; for Kero it was an uneasy sleep, she woke every time he moved, and every time one of her bruises twinged. And it was hard to sleep when her stomach kept gnawing at her backbone. When the sky began to lighten, she just stayed awake. The moment it was bright enough to see, she nudged him; he must have been as awake as she was, because he pulled the cloak off them without a single word, and they both crawled out of their shelter.

&nb
sp; The rock they'd hidden under was no longer pig-shaped; it was a very familiar castle-shaped outcropping that Kero had seen a hundred times. They were no more than a few furlongs from the Tower.

  Daren blinked stupidly at the rock; undoubtedly he recognized it, too, but he didn't say anything. So far as Kero was concerned, this only confirmed her suspicion of last night, that Kethry had cast some kind of glamour over the area that wouldn't lift until they cooperated.

  Well, they were cooperating now.

  She caught Daren's eye; he nodded. They got themselves as straightened up as possible, then dragged themselves back to the Tower, figurative tails between their legs. Kero wasn't sure what Daren was thinking—and saw no reason to try and find out—but she had to admit that they'd pretty much brought this whole mess on themselves.

  And she had a shrewd guess as to what was going to be awaiting them.

  She was right. Daren preceded her; he stopped for a moment behind the outcropping that hid the entrance, said something too low for Kero to hear, then went on in. She followed, with the relative warmth of the stable closing around her like a cozy blanket. Tarma stood impassively just inside the stable door, leaning against the rock wall as if she had been there all night and was prepared to go on waiting.

  She looked them both up and down, face unreadable.

  "There's food in your rooms," she said. "Get a hot bath and feed yourselves, then get your rumps back down here. I'll be waiting in the practice ring."

  After the bath and the food, Kero felt a little closer to human. Today wasn't going to be pleasant, but as she climbed stiffly into warm—dry!—clothing, she had to admit that she'd spent worse.

  And I know damn well that if we don't exercise those bruised muscles, we're going to stiffen up. Then tomorrow will be twice as hard.

  She closed the door of her room behind her, and ran into Daren on the staircase down. Daren was bewildered, she could read it in his face—and resentful; she could read that in the way he carried his shoulders, stiff and hunched.

  "What's the matter?" she asked.

  He looked over his shoulder at her, as if he halfway expected her to ridicule him. "If I was home," he said hesitantly, "after something like last night, I'd have been, well, fussed over. They'd have sent servants up with my favorite food, gotten someone to massage me, probably sent me to bed—"

  He stopped, and she realized her expression had probably betrayed some of her disgust. She made herself think about what he was saying, and realized that he wasn't to blame for the way other people had treated a prince of the blood.

  "Look," she said, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. "Do you think that's what would happen in battle conditions? You're going to be in worse shape than that at the end of each day if there's ever a war fought."

  He obviously took the effort to think about what she had just said, in his turn, and stopped on the staircase. "I guess you're right," he replied. "There wouldn't even be any hot baths, much less all the rest. We'd probably be sleeping in half-armor, and eating whatever the bugs and rats left us."

  "Exactly. If this had been a foray during a war, we'd have been lucky to get the food and dry clothes." She looked at him in the dim light, and shrugged.

  "I guess—I guess if I'm supposed to be learning how to command armies, maybe I'd better start getting used to a couple of hardships now and again."

  There was the sound of sardonic applause from below them, as the light from the landing was blotted out. Tarma stood for a moment on the first step, still clapping slowly, then took the stairs up toward them at a very leisurely pace.

  "It's about time you finally figured out why you're here, young man," she said, one corner of her mouth turned up in something that was not quite a smile. "Now, I have a bit of news for you both. Your day is only beginning."

  The exercises she set them were harder than anything she'd given them before, and any resentment or residual anger Kero had felt was lost in the general exhaustion. Daren was in worse shape than she was, since his bruises were deeper and more extensive.

  By the time she crawled—literally—up the stairs to her room, she was quite ready to fall into her bed and sleep for a week.

  But her day wasn't over yet.

  She was as tired as she'd ever been in her life, including when the entire Keep, staff and family, had gone out to get the tenants' harvest in to save it from a storm. Given a choice, she'd have gone straight to bed, stopping just long enough to eat something and drink enough wine so that she didn't ache quite so much.

  But she knew she didn't have a choice; another hot bath would do more good for her bruises and stiff muscles than all the sleep in the world, and unless she wanted to wake up aching a lot more than when she'd gone to sleep, she was going to have to take the time for another bath.

  She'd just eased herself down into that bath when she had a visitor. Not two-legged this time, but four.

  She didn't even realize he was there; when he wanted to he could move as silently as a shadow. She was lying back in the tub with her eyes closed when he Mindspoke her, startling her so that she jumped.

  :Might one ask what, exactly, you thought you were doing out there yesterday? Besides playing the fool, of course.:

  "Me?" she spluttered. "I was the one playing by the rules! He—"

  :By the letter, perhaps. Not the spirit.: The kyree sat like a great gray wolf just out of range of any stray splashes. :You knew very well that I'm not simply some kind of well-trained performing animal. Why didn't you tell Daren that?:

  "Do you think for a moment he would have believed me?" she asked angrily. "Up until last night he didn't think I had a mind, so why should he credit you with one?"

  :It was your job to convince him,: Warrl said coldly. :That is what teamwork is about. If you have knowledge your fellow does not, you are obliged to enlighten him.:

  "Why?" she retorted. "It would have wasted time. I knew what you were, that was enough."

  :Why? Because withholding information could get both of you killed. What if something incapacitated you? What if I, as the enemy, used the fact that you withheld that information to split the two of you up? That was exactly what happened, didn't it? You let him follow a wild hare and sat down and waited. If I had been a real enemy, I would have disposed of him, then come up behind you and disposed of you. But you were too busy feeling superior to worry about that, weren't you?:

  "Me? I—" The accusation was as unfair as anything else that had happened in the last day. She was trapped between anger and tears, and the tears themselves were half caused by anger.

  He continued to sit, and stare, an immovable icon of conscience. :You finally get in a position where you have the upper hand, and you misuse your opportunity. You could have found a way to convince him that you knew what you were talking about, and you could have done it in such a way that he would have felt surprised and grateful. After that, he would have been much more attentive to any suggestions you made. Instead you jeopardized him, yourself, and the mission, all out of pique.:

  "No, I couldn't! I—" She was completely unable to continue; she tried, and choked up.

  :When you become a mercenary, whether you work alone or with a Company, you will often be forced to cooperate with those you dislike. You will find yourself working for those who hold you and your skills in contempt. If you continue on in your present pattern, you will, if you are lucky, succeed only in getting yourself killed. If not—you may bring down hundreds with you.:

  Warrl's eyes glowed, blue as ice and hard as the finest steel. :I advise you to think about this,: he said, after a long pause during which she wasn't even able to think coherently. He waited again, but when she didn't reply, he simply rose to his feet. So smoothly did he move that not a hair was disturbed; he could easily have been a statue brought to life by magic. He pierced her with those eyes once more, and padded out as silently as he had arrived.

  She pulled the plug on the bath, too upset and tense now to relax. The water flowed out
smoothly, with scarcely a gurgle as she climbed out. She seized the waiting square of cloth and jerked it from the hook beside the tub, then toweled herself dry, rubbing hard, as if to rub those unkind, untrue accusations out of her mind.

  Unkind, untrue, and unfair. She stalked out of the bathing chamber and flung herself down on her bed, seething. I'm not the one that went pelting up the trail, leaving tracks and traces a child could read! I'm not the one that decided he knew what was happening without bothering to consult his partner! I'm not the one that decided to divide the party—he wanted me to go downstream while he went up!

  She turned over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. The more she thought about Warrl's little lecture, the angrier she became.

  What gives him the right to sit in judgment over me anyway? What gives an overgrown wolf the right to dictate what I should and shouldn't have done? How could he possibly understand? He isn't even human!

  She was still simmering when exhaustion finally caught up with her and flung her into sleep.

  Daren appeared the next morning at the common room; breakfast was a self-serve affair she sometimes shared with Tarma and her grandmother. Daren sported sunken cheeks and enormous dark circles under his eyes. Since she didn't have a mirror, Kerowyn couldn't have said if she looked the same, but she was very much afraid that she did. It had not been a restful night, to say the least.

  "Well, you look like hell," Kero greeted him over the buffet table, handing him a piece of hot bread.

  "Thank you," he replied. "If you're curious, it's mutual. Where in hell does she get all this food? I haven't seen a single servant since I got here."

  "Magic, I suppose," Kero replied. "Although... you know, not that much of it has to be cooked. Just the bread and the oat porridge. Everything else could be set beside the bread ovens to warm. I've never seen the kitchen; it could be just on the other side of that wall. I have no idea how they'd vent ovens this deep in the cliff—that would be magic, but I've seen stranger things in this place."