Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  "He's up to it," she said firmly. "I wouldn't turn him loose if he wasn't. Remember, I held him back when Thanel went north because he wasn't ready."

  "Good enough, I'll let the word leak into the Council. Take care, Mother." The man bowed once, and the light in the bowl winked out.

  Kethry raised her head, slowly, as if it felt very heavy. "Thank the Windlady I'm an Adept," she said feelingly. "The Pool of Imaging took it out of me when I was young. I hate to think what I'd be feeling like these days."

  What—oh, right. Adepts can pull on energy outside themselves to work magic, Kero remembered. Learning the capabilities of the various levels of mages was something both Kethry and Tarma had insisted she and Daren learn. "Knowing what your enemy's mages can and can't do may help you win a fight with a minimum of shed blood," Tarma had stressed. "Daren, that blood should be as precious to you as your own, if only because each fighter lost is a subject lost—Kero, you're talking about the fighters to whom you are obligated in every way, and they in turn are your livelihood, so a fighter lost may well represent next year's income lost. Sounds cold, I know, but you have to keep all of that in mind."

  "What was that?" Kero asked carefully.

  "It's a spell only Masters and Adepts can use," Kethry said, pulling her hair off her forehead and confining it with a comb. She looked terribly tired, and her eyes were as red as Daren's had been. "It's basically a peacetime communication spell—it's draining, it's as obvious as setting off fireworks, and it leaves both parties open to attack. But the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages to my way of thinking."

  "You can talk to the other person as easily as if you were face-to-face," Kero said wonderingly. "I had no idea that was possible."

  "Like a great many spells, it's one we tend to keep quiet about," Kethry told her with a wry twist to her lips. "There are a fair number of war-leaders out there who wouldn't care how dangerous the spell was to the caster, if that was the kind of communication they could get."

  "I can see that—was that really my uncle?"

  "In the flesh—so to speak—and kicking," Tarma said. "He's the one that took over your grandmother's White Winds school and moved it up near the capital. He's got a fair number of friends on the Rethwellan Grand Council, so as soon as anything happens, he knows about it. Useful sort of relative."

  "I just wish he was a little less interested in politics, and more in the school," Kethry said a bit sharply. "One of these days he's going to back the wrong man."

  "Maybe," Tarma replied evenly. "Maybe not. He has unholy luck, your son. And he's twice as clever as you and me put together. Besides, you know as well as I do that to keep the school neutral the head has to play politics with the best of them. The only reason you survived down there was because you were protected by the crown, and if that wasn't playing politics, what is?"

  "I yield," Kethry sighed. "You're right, as usual. It's just that I hate politics."

  "Hate them all you want, so long as you play them right," Tarma replied. "All right, little hawk," she continued, turning to Kero, "Now you know as much as we do. Need anything else?"

  Tarma hadn't said anything, nor had Kethry, but Kero sensed that they wanted to be alone. She had no idea how well they had known the King, but he had been Tarma's pupil, and they had known his father very well. All things considered, it was probably time for a delicate withdrawal.

  "I don't think so," she said. "Thank you."

  "How's the lad?" Tarma asked as she turned to leave.

  "He's probably fallen asleep by now," she said, recalling that she'd left him sprawled over his bed in a state of exhausted numbness. "I think he'll do a little better knowing Faram wants him. From what he's said, he's a lot closer to his brother than he was to his father."

  "Not surprising," Tarma said cryptically. "Well, I'll let him know the news when he wakes up."

  That was a definite dismissal, and Kero left as quickly as she could without actually hurrying. It was with a certain relief that she closed the door on Kethry's workroom. She walked slowly toward the fireplace, feeling at something of a loss for what to do next. She was the only person in the Tower—except, perhaps, for the seldom-seen servants—who was left entirely untouched by the King's death. Untouched, though not unaffected, for this affected Daren—

  She went up to her room, pulled a chair up to her window, and sat gazing out her window at the snow-covered meadow below the Tower, not really thinking, just letting her mind roam. She sat there the rest of the morning and on into the afternoon, before thoughts crystallized out of her musings. Uncomfortable thoughts.

  The King was calling in his brother, and Daren would be leaving in the morning, which left her the only student at the Tower. There wasn't much more that Tarma could teach her now that she wouldn't learn just as quickly through experience. There were things she needed to learn now that only experience and making her own mistakes would teach her.

  In short, it was time for her to leave as well.

  Leaving. Going out on my own. The thought was frightening. Paralyzing.

  At that moment, someone tapped on her door, shaking her out of her trance. "Yes?" she said still partially caught in her web of thoughts, and the visitor opened the door slowly and cautiously.

  "Kero?" Daren said softly, shaking her the rest of the way out of her inertia.

  "Come in." She turned away from the window, searching his face, though she really didn't know what she was looking for. "Are you—"

  "I'm all right," he said, walking toward her, slowly. As his face came into the light, she saw that he looked a great deal calmer. In fact, he looked as if he had come to terms with the news, and with his own feelings. "I really am. They told me that Faram wants me home."

  As he said that, his face changed, and there was hope and a bit of excitement beneath the mourning.

  "That—I was kind of afraid Faram had forgotten me," he said shyly. "It would be awfully easy to. And—and I thought, he's had one brother turn on him, he might not trust me anymore either. I wouldn't blame him, you know, and neither would anyone else. I'd be tempted, if I were in his place, and I knew he was safely tucked out of the way with two of my father's old friends keeping an eye on him. I thought that might even be the reason Father sent me out here in the first place, to get me out of the way, with someone he trusted making sure I didn't turn traitor on him. I thought maybe that was why he didn't send for me when Thanel went off to Valdemar."

  Kero nodded, slowly. That was sound reasoning; in fact, in his place, she'd probably have suspected the same thing.

  "But Faram wants me. More than that, he wants me to apprentice to the Lord Martial." There was suppressed excitement in his voice, and a light in his eyes. "It's just about everything I ever dreamed of, Kero—"

  "And you deserve it," she interrupted him, with as much emphasis as she could muster. "You've worked for it: you've earned it. Tarma herself would be the first to tell you that."

  "And now you can come with me," he continued, as if he hadn't heard her. "There's nothing stopping me from having you with me. Faram studied under Tarma, he knows Kethry, we won't even have to go through that nonsense of getting you ennobled so we can be married—"

  Married? "Whoa!" she said sharply. "Who said anything about getting married?"

  That brought him to a sudden halt. His eyes widened in surprise at her vehemence. "I thought that was what you wanted!" he said, in innocent surprise. "I want you with me, Kero—there isn't anyone else I'd rather be married to—"

  "Do you want me enough to have me apprenticed alongside you?" she asked pointedly.

  He stared at her in shock, as if he could not believe what she was saying. "You know that wouldn't be possible!" he exclaimed. "You're a girl! Women can't do things like that!"

  "I'm your equal in blade and on horseback," she replied with rising heat. "I'm your better with a bow and with tactics. Why shouldn't I work at your side?"

  "Because you're a girl!" he spluttered. "You can't possibl
y—it just isn't done—no one would permit it!"

  "Well, what would I be able to do?" she asked. "Sit on the Council? Act as military advisor?"

  "Of course not!" He was shocked—despite all their talking, all the things they had done together—by the very idea. Not so enlightened as we appeared to be, hmm?

  "Well, will I be able to keep in training?" She waited for him to answer, and didn't much care for his long silence. "All right, what will I be able to do?"

  "Ride some, and hunt—genteel hunting, with hawk and a light bow," he said, obviously without thinking. "Nothing like the kind of hunting we have been doing here. No boar, no deer, good gods, that would send half the Court into apoplexy! You can't offend them."

  "In other words, I wouldn't be able to do a single damned thing that I've been trained and working at for the past three years," she pointed out bitterly. "I can't offend them—by 'them' I assume you mean the men—by competing with them. You want me to give up everything I've worked for all this time, and even my recreations."

  "You could advise me in private," he said hastily. "I need that, Kero, just like I need you! And we could practice together."

  "In private, so no one would know your lady wife can beat the breeches off you two times out of three," she said acidly, deliberately telling the truth in the most hurtful way possible."

  "Of course, in private!" he replied angrily. "You can't do things like that where people can find out about them! After all, you won't be a common mercenary! Do you think I want anyone to know—"

  "That I'm your equal, and their superior. How good I am." She stood up. "In short, you want a combination of toy soldier and expensive whore; your delicate lady in public and whatever else you want out of me in private, with no opinions or thoughts of my own—except in private. Thank you, no. I told you that night we first talked that I wasn't prepared to sell anything other than my sword. That hasn't changed, Daren. And it isn't likely to."

  She rose to her feet and stalked toward the door, so angry that she no longer trusted her temper with him and only wanted to be away from him so she wouldn't say or do anything worse than she already had. She grabbed her cloak as she passed the door, and he made no move to stop her.

  She was walking so fast, and was so blind with suppressed fury, that she didn't realize until she was down in the dimly lit stables and on her way out the tunnel to the rear entrance that she had also snatched up Need on her way out.

  She paused. For one moment that startled and alarmed her. Was the sword controlling her—had she so lost her temper that she'd lost her protections against its meddling? Then common sense reasserted itself. Just good reactions, she decided. Finally I've gotten to the point where, when I head out of my room, I snag a weapon without thinking about it. She flung the cloak over her shoulders, fastened the clasp at her throat, and belted the sword beneath it. Doesn't it just figure, she thought angrily, as she strode out into the chill late-afternoon sunlight, that when I finally get to the point that I'm reacting like a professional fighter, Daren pulls this on me? Offering me anything I want—as long as I don't do anything that embarrasses him. Like act like a human being capable of thinking for herself.

  Another thought occurred to her, as she pictured the kind of pampered pet Daren seemed to want her to become. Dierna would have given her soul for an opportunity like this....

  Suddenly she stopped dead in her tracks, just outside the hidden entrance to the stables, the wind molding her cloak tight to her body. So what's wrong with me? Why don't I want this easy life on a platter?

  She shivered, and pulled the cloak closer about her as another whip of breeze nipped at her. Why am I going out to fight for a living? Why do I want to? What kind of fool am I, anyway?

  She resumed her walk, but at a much slower pace. She paced the hard-packed path through the forest with her head down, eyes fixed on the frozen snow, but not really seeing it. If he's offering this to me, it pretty much negates what I first told him, that I'm going to be a mercenary because no one is going to keep me fed and clothed... he's offering that. I don't have to do this. So why do I still want to?

  She raised her head, and looked around, half hoping for some kind of omen or answer. There were no answers coming from the silent forest, only the mocking echoes of crows in the distance and the steady creaking of snow underfoot. There were no answers written against the sky by the bare, black branches, and no revelations from the clouds, either. She walked onward, following the familiar path to the river out of habit, her nose and feet growing numb and chill.

  Well, she decided finally, I suppose one reason is that I'm good at fighting. It would be a damned shame to let that talent go to waste. It would be stupidity to let someone else do the job who isn't as good at it as I am....

  The wind died to nothing, and her cloak weighed down her shoulders as if embodying all of her troubles. That thought led obliquely to another. I'm good at fighting. Of course, it would be nice if there wasn't any fighting, if bandits would stop raiding, and people would stop making war on each other, and everyone could live in peace. But that isn't going to happen in my lifetime—probably not for a long, long time. So it makes sense for people who are good at fighting to go out and do it—because if they're good at it, that means the fewest number of other people die.

  That was essentially what Tarma had said to both of them, a hundred times over; that her job and Daren's was to learn everything they could about advance planning, to protect those serving with and under them, to keep their casualties to an absolute minimum.

  But there are going to be people like bandits, like the Karsites, who don't care how many people die. People with no conscience, no honor. I know that a lot of folk think mercs don't have either—but if that's true, then why the Codes?

  It was all beginning to come together, to make a vague sort of sense. She stopped again, and squinted her eyes against the westering sun. There's always going to be fighting. I can't see the world turning suddenly peaceful in my lifetime. People of honor have to be a part of that, because if they aren't, the only ones fighting will be the ones who don't care, who have no honor, and no concern for how many others die. Right. That's why I'm doing this. In a funny kind of way, it's to protect the Diernas and Lordans, the people who would be the victims. Even if I'm getting paid to do it, it's still protecting them.

  Because if all the fighting is done by people with no conscience, there won't be any safety anywhere for the people who only want peace.

  That was the answer she was looking for. She felt tension leaving her, as she turned her back on the setting sun, and headed home with her shadow reaching out before her, black against the blue-tinged snow.

  I'm good now, but I have to become very good. Special. So special that I can pick my Company and my Captain, pick someone with a Company so good he can choose when he won't take a job, because it's for the wrong side and the wrong causes. Just like Grandmother and Tarma did.

  And that was why she wouldn't give in to Daren, and to what he was offering. The love he was offering came with restrictions, restrictions on what made her unique. If he truly loved what she was, rather than what he thought he saw, he would never have placed those restrictions on her.

  And last of all, I don't love him, she thought soberly. I like him, but that's not enough.

  If she took him up on his offer of marriage, she would be offering him considerably less than true coin. She didn't love him, she didn't think she could ever learn to love him. In time, she might even come to hate him for the lie he was making her live.

  What if one day he outgrew this infatuation, and found someone he really did love? That would be a tragedy as horrible as anything in any of the romantic ballads. Worse, really; there they'd be, living double lies, and trapped in the agreements they'd made when neither of them was thinking particularly clearly.

  What if she found someone?

  But that notion made her grin, sardonically. Right. Me in love. About as likely as having my horse decide to
talk to me. I may not be she'chorne, but I don't think there's been a man born that could be my partner, and I won't settle for anything less than that.

  No, liking Daren was entirely the wrong reason to go through with this charade of his. It would be just as false as putting on a dress and pretending to be something she wasn't for the sake of appearances.

  And it was ironic that the things that made her so different—and that he now deplored—were the things that had attracted him to her in the first place.

  If he wants a woman to be different, why does he want her to be the same as every other woman? she asked herself, as she stood just inside the stable door, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dimness inside. Men. Why can't they ever learn to think logically?

  Daren found himself caught between anger and bewilderment. First Kero stormed off and left him standing in the middle of her room, torn between frustration and feeling foolish. He couldn't understand what was wrong with her; why couldn't she see that she was going to have to adjust herself to what people expected of her? The world wasn't going to change just because she was different! He'd offered her something any woman in her right mind—and certainly every single woman at Court—would have pledged her soul to have, and she stormed off because he'd told her the truth of the matter, and how she would have to change.

  He waited for her to come to her senses and return, to apologize and take his hands and say she never wanted to fight like that again—

  But she didn't come back, and she didn't come looking for him after he returned to his own room. Tarma showed up, toward sunset; she looked older, somehow, and he guessed that his father's death had hit her pretty hard.