Tuyo

by Neumeier, Rachel

  Except maybe he had put that into my mind.

  A breeze came across the water, fragrant with the scents of cut hay and damp earth. The moonlight was dim, the Moon looking partly away from the summer country, but I turned on my side and gazed up at her until I felt calmer again. Then I thought again over everything that had happened. Finally I decided, no, probably he had not needed to make me trust him. I had been glad to trust a man who chose not to put me to a tuyo’s death, a man who treated me kindly ... a man who seemed to trust me.

  I should have guessed after the fengol. He had trusted me far too much, with far too little reason. He had believed my warning at once. He had let me hold him under the water even when he was a heartbeat from drowning. I should certainly have realized from that. What man who could not see into my mind would have trusted me so much?

  I thought of how I had asked him those days ago, How could you trust me to keep an oath? He had said, I know whom to trust. Of course he did.

  I should have realized from so many things. His king had sent him to deal with a sorcerer. Who better for the task than another sorcerer? I should have guessed from that.

  He had known exactly where and when to set traps, first for my brother and then for Hokino inKera. I had thought that merely cleverness, but no warleader, however clever, could have guessed so accurately where an opponent would come. He must be a very powerful sorcerer indeed, to see the movement of men at such a distance and know what they meant to do. But I had no doubt he was very powerful.

  He had asked Hokino inKera many questions, but had not been angry when Hokino refused to answer. A sorcerer does not need a man to answer in words.

  None of his people had advised him to make the inKera warleader answer his questions. None of them had suggested he promised too much to Hokino for too little return. Maybe all the Lau knew what he was. Maybe I was the only one who was so ignorant. Perhaps they all laughed at me because I did not know.

  No. I dismissed this idea almost before I thought of it. I might believe Esau could conceal that kind of awareness, perhaps Geras, but certainly not Suyet. I might have difficulty understanding Lau expressions, but not that much difficulty. They did not know.

  Had he made me like my guards, or made them like me? Perhaps, but I thought of everything I knew of them and I began to believe probably he had not needed to do that. Suyet was so easy-tempered, he would be friends with anyone who did not hate him. Esau did not care whether a man was a Lau or an Ugaro; he judged every man by what he could do and what he chose to do. Geras ... everyone trusted him, not just me. Geras was that kind of man. Besides, if Lord Aras had made my guards wish to be friendly, why find men who had seen me bring him across the river, men who had reason to be generous to the Ugaro who had done that? Any of his soldiers would have done as well.

  And for me ... I had wanted to like them; of course I had. Sorcery had not been necessary for that either. What man, alone as I had been alone, would not want to be friends with his guards if they showed themselves willing? I thought Lord Aras had not forced me into that friendship either. That made me feel a little better.

  I had knocked him down—I had cracked his ribs. I did not understand how I could have done that to a man who saw into my mind. But it did not make me think I was wrong. Only that I did not understand everything.

  He had been extraordinarily forbearing after I had tried to kill him. Now I knew why. I had not been mistaken after all, and it would have been unjust to punish me for an accusation that was true.

  But I frowned at this thought. No Ugaro tale I had ever heard, no Lau tale I had ever read, spoke of a sorcerer who cared whether his own actions were just or unjust, or who held back from any cruel act. It was the nature of sorcerers to be cruel and to use ordinary men in any way they pleased. Sorcerers held back from nothing.

  But that did not seem to be Lord Aras’ nature. Could I have mistaken him so completely? Had he put that kind of mistake into my mind?

  He had said, I swear before the gods, I have every desire and intention to return good for the good you have already done me. I had believed him. Had he made me believe that? Had he put it into my mind that I must do as he asked? But why swear his good intentions to me, if he could make me take an oath to him?

  I thought of everything he had said, everything he had done, and slowly it came to me that he had not done such things. Or if he had, he had done it in strangely complicated ways. Why would he say I swear I will keep faith, if he could use sorcery to make me do as he wished? It made no sense for him to make me believe he had returned my oaths with his own if he had not done it. Why should he go to the trouble? No matter how I looked at it, I thought he must really have made those oaths to me.

  The gods hate an oathbreaker. Lord Aras had known that when he asked me to take oath to him. But he had also known it when he took oath to me. I could not see how anything had required him to do it. But he had done it, and in a way that answered my greatest fears. I turned that realization over in my mind.

  He had said, I swear I will not willingly permit any sorcerer to harm your people. If he had truly sworn anything to me, he had sworn that. Any sorcerer, he had said. That phrase struck me now. Had he meant to include himself in that oath? Why would he do such a thing?

  Sorcerers always tried to make everyone their slaves. The curse always caused that kind of madness. Could Lord Aras possibly be an exception? Could he wish to bring down the other sorcerer, but not wish to try to seize power himself? Might he truly be as generous a man as he had seemed to me?

  He had been kind to me after I cracked his ribs. When he persuaded me to take oath to him. When he chose guards who wanted to be friends. When he defended me against insult. I could not believe all of that had been false.

  It came to me that this also explained why he did not like torture. He would know exactly what suffering he inflicted—and he was a man who did not like such things. That was not by any means the ordinary nature of sorcerers. But I could not have misunderstood him so thoroughly.

  No, I was not wrong. I thought again about the inKera. As soon as he had defeated them, he had looked for a way to make them surrender so that he would not have to kill them all. As soon as he had them in his hands, he had looked for a reason to spare all their lives. He had made up reasons to do it. But he must have known, even before I said so, that Koro inKarano would listen to any message regarding sorcery. He had been far more generous than any necessity could require.

  He had told me to promise the inKera nothing, but he had not been angry when I promised he would not torture them. No wonder he had said so distractedly, You may promise that. He had not realized that he should tell me to make that promise because it had not occurred to him anyone might fear torture at his hands. That had been a mistake.

  Long before that, at the very beginning, he had made me fear he might pursue and kill my brother and all our warriors. I saw now that had been the same kind of mistake: it had not occurred to him I might think he would do such a thing. This was the kind of mistake that would only be made by a man who was by nature generous rather than cruel. I thought again of how he had said, I am sorry I frightened you. He had said, The mistake was mine.

  There were no tales among my people about sorcerers who would flinch from torture, who would apologize for their own mistakes, who forgave the mistakes of others. There were no tales about sorcerers who would ask a man to take oath to him instead of putting obedience into his mind and heart.

  By this time, dawn had come to the summer lands. I tilted my head back, looking into the sky. In this land, the dawn was luminous with gentler, warmer colors than the silvery colors of the winter dawn. Then the Sun stepped into the sky above the summer country, and the whole world turned gold. The Sun is not calm and peaceful; that is his wife. But enough calm had come into my thoughts that the beauty of the morning brought unexpected quiet into my heart.

  I was very hungry now. I had not really eaten anything since yesterday morning, and then only a
porridge of sweetened grain. I felt better; less horrified by the thought of what Lord Aras might have done to me, more certain he had not actually done any of the more terrible things I had feared. I ate the apples I had picked and the grain, raw as it was, and thought about oaths, and oathbreakers, and sorcery, and the gods.

  I had sworn to Lord Aras that I would accept his authority as though he were my father. I had sworn to obey him as though I were his son. I had sworn by my father’s honor. Now I finally realized that if I went home and told my father of that oath and admitted I was forsworn ... if I told him Lord Aras was a sorcerer, he would understand why I had broken my oath. He would not be angry or set fault against me for the act. But he would still put me to death. He would have no choice, because I had set his own honor as well as mine behind my oath.

  I could not possibly do that to him. I could not force my father to put a son of his to an oathbreaker’s death. Nor would I want that death for myself. Worst of all to force my mother and my sisters to witness such a terrible thing.

  If I did not tell my father, still, the gods would know. When the time came for an accounting, they would not hold me alone to account for that broken oath. They would hold my father to account, because I had set his honor behind my oath. Keeping silence would be as bad as parricide, and that was an even worse sin than oathbreaking.

  I thought of one solution that would work better. Rather than going to my father, I could seek out Hokino inKera and tell him everything. He and his people would probably still be close to the borderlands when I came there; I doubted the Lau would escort them back toward the river at any great speed. Or if they had gone faster and farther into the winter country than I expected, I could always track them. Hokino could put me to death with none of my own people to witness it. I would even have a chance to ask him to send a different letter to my mother. He would do me that kindness. I had no doubt of it.

  I thought of that while the Sun climbed to the heights of the sky and the world brightened. I turned on my side and trailed my hand in the water, thinking of the inKera warleader and of my father and of Lord Aras. Of oaths given and received, and of honor, and of war, and of sorcery. I did not want to decide what I should do. Such is the foolishness of a man who has no good paths before him, and so must choose one he knows is bad, and then endure what it brings him.

  Though all my choices were bad, at least I thought I saw those choices more plainly. And I did not have to decide at once. I had no intention of leaving my shelter until dusk came again. The heat lulled me, and the feeling that I was hidden and safe. I slept for some time, and woke, and slept again. Cattle went by; I heard the bells the Lau put on them. I might have heard horses go past as well, but they were at a much greater distance and I was not certain I heard them at all.

  A bright kingfisher came, and stayed for some time, darting down to catch minnows and then going back to his perch to eat them. A snake came down to the water and slid into the creek and swam away. Later an animal a little like a muskrat came, but it was some other small beast that I did not recognize, with longer legs and no tail and a different shape to its head. I might have thrown a rock to knock it down, but I did not want to risk a fire and I was not hungry enough to eat the meat raw. Besides, I had no knife with which to skin or butcher small game, because I had cast aside the knife Lord Aras had given me. I gently turned over stones to find crayfish. These were better raw than the little beast would have been.

  At last dusk came again, and I crept out of my shelter, pulled myself up the bank to the edge of the pasture, and stood still beside a tree, looking at the land and listening. I was stiff from running a long way the previous night and from lying still for so long, but I did not mind that. The evening sky stretched high and clear from one edge of the world to the other. The Sun had almost gone, but tonight the Moon had turned almost her full face toward the summer lands, so her silvery light flooded down.

  Perhaps she had turned to gaze down at a foolish young Ugaro warrior who could not make up his mind what he should do. Except I had decided. I think I had always known I would not go after Hokino inKera.

  -11-

  It took me the whole night to come back to the camp near Kosa Sen. I had to go out of the direct way many times to stay clear of farms. Four times, mounted patrols passed near enough that I had to hide. If I had known they belonged to Talon Commander Ianan’s fifth division, I might have stood up and called out, but I did not know them. So I made my way on foot, slowly.

  It did not occur to me until I saw the tents that the camp might not have been in the place I had left it. Lord Aras had intended to ride on at dawn—yesterday’s dawn, now. But the tents were still there, as they had been. I could hardly believe he had waited for my sake. Probably he had changed his mind for some other reason. Though if he had not, I supposed following would not have been very difficult. Six talons of soldiers leave a very clear trail.

  I was glad I did not have to follow the Lau. I was very tired. Not so much weary in my body, though that was so as well, but tired because I had been afraid for a long time and because I was more afraid now that I had come this far. I might have changed my mind yet again except I could not have borne to work my way again through all the things I had already thought of and all the choices I had already made. I knew if I did so, I would not come to a different decision. It was foolish even to think of it.

  Now that I had come here, I was too tired to bother with any cautious approach, so I simply walked openly across the pasture toward the tents. I half expected Lord Aras to come out of his tent to meet me, and half expected one of the sentries to raise a bow and shoot me, and it was hard to know which possibility frightened me more.

  Neither of those things happened. One of the sentries shouted, and then another, and men at this end of the camp came to see what was happening. But no one lifted a bow. The sentries did not come to meet me, but waited for me to come to them. Before I came that far, Talon Commander Harana arrived. He rode up fast, at a canter. He dismounted, flung the reins to one of his men, and gestured sharply for me to come to him.

  I obeyed the sign he made, coming to stand facing him. I did not know what Harana might say or do, but I did not care. He was not the man I feared. I looked past him, trying to see if Lord Aras was coming. The first light of the Sun now showed above the edge of the world, but I could not see Lord Aras anywhere. This set me off balance and made it hard to think. Perhaps he was too angry to deal with me himself. Or, perhaps more likely, he was busy with much more important matters and had no time for me.

  The talon commander said tightly, “Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused, Ryo? What, by all the gods, were you thinking?” He seized my arm, perhaps because he saw I was not really attending to him, perhaps to hit me or shake me. I knocked his hand away without thinking, harder than I would have if I had thought first. His head jerked up in angry surprise.

  I did not know what either of us might have done after that, but suddenly Esau was there, shouldering a way past the sentries and the other soldiers. I had not realized he was here, but he strode straight up to me, closed his hand in a hard grip on my arm, and jerked me back, stepping in front of me. He said to Talon Commander Harana, his tone matter-of-fact, “It’s all right, sir. I’ve got this.”

  There was a pause as the two men looked at each other. I knew enough of the Lau to know an ordinary soldier could not possibly claim precedence before a talon commander. But Harana said brusquely, “Then this is your responsibility, Trooper. See to it.” He swung away, gesturing sharply for the other man to bring him his horse.

  I was both relieved and unhappy to see Esau. He seemed just as always: stolid and a little bored. I did not know what to say to him.

  “Well,” he said, looking me up and down. “You’ve put us to a lot of trouble. Done with that now?”

  I could not answer that, but I said, “I hope Lord Aras was not angry with you or with the others.”

  “How could he be? Our orders were to
keep you safe, not keep you prisoner. He trusted your oath, I expect.” There was no rebuke in his tone, but I flinched. Esau did not seem to notice, but I knew he would not have said something like that thoughtlessly. He had wanted to see whether I would care that he said it. Now he knew I did care. I could not tell what he thought about that. He merely said, “Lord Aras is in the town. He’ll want to see you straight off. You going to give me any trouble?”

  “No,” I promised. He was in the town. That was why he had not come out to meet me. He might be very angry or very busy, but still I was relieved to know he had not chosen to ignore me; that he was only not in the camp. The feeling of relief made no sense to me, but I could not deny I felt it.

  “Good. Don’t,” Esau told me. “We’ve all got orders now, nothing like grabbing two hairs from your horse’s tail when it’s already away through the gate, but I’ve had a couple long nights with a long day between ’em and I’m too gods-hated tired to wrestle you. This way. I want horses and a decent escort.” He jerked his head toward the lines where the horses were tethered and gave me a little shove. I went in the direction he wished.

  Once we were mounted and riding through the dawn toward Kosa Sen, together with several of the other men of his file, Esau said to me, “We figured you’d gone north, but nope, not a trace, so then we figured we’d better search in all directions. We’ve had a splendid time. It’s wonderful how many farmers’ll think they might’ve seen an Ugaro warrior sneaking around in their orchards or vineyards or cattle pastures, if you ask.”

  I did not know what to say.

  Esau added, “I figured we’d never see you again. I laid money on it. Then there you were, strolling right up to camp, bold as a bull and twice as contrary. Lost my coins on that one. Thought of your oath, did you?”

  “Yes,” I said. It was true, though it was not all the truth. “I am sorry you lost your wager.”