Sword of Waters

by Hilari Bell

  Yallin sighed. “Yes, he fired her. But young Edoran didn’t just ask—he threw a screaming fit! You could hear him all over the palace, and him usually so quiet. A mouse of a boy, creeping here and there. But not that day.”

  “But why? Just because she was laying out arcanara cards? Why would he care?”

  He hadn’t cared when Arisa laid out her cards. He’d objected at first, but soon he’d gotten involved in it.

  “In fairness to the prince,” said Yallin, “he’d forbidden anyone to lay out the cards, first in his presence, then anywhere in the palace, many times. But the fool girl refused to take him seriously and kept on with it. They say that he was so hysterical the regent feared he’d make himself ill. And they also say Edoran calmed right down once he got his way.” Her lips primmed disapprovingly. “It was a hardship for the lass, no mistake.”

  Arisa frowned. “I also heard that the servants never forgave him for it. If he did it deliberately I can see why, and he was wrong. But if he was only ten…”

  “Just turned ten,” said Yallin. “His birthday ball had been held a week before.” Her needle flashed in and out.

  A formal ball wasn’t something most boys wanted for their tenth birthday, but that was beside the point.

  “Why did he do it?” Arisa asked. “Why would he care so much about her laying out the cards? About anyone laying out cards?”

  “I don’t know,” said Yallin. “Not for certain, though I’ve a guess or two. But I can tell you that that temper fit was an extreme action for the young prince. And when people take extreme actions, it’s usually because they’re very angry, or very frightened. Or both.”

  It lent more weight to the Falcon’s admonition for Arisa to watch her step with the prince. But Arisa owed him, and he’d agreed to come, so later that afternoon she tracked down Sammel, whom she found brushing horses in the stable.

  When he asked why she needed a room for fencing, when the prince already had a whole salon and the best master in the realm, she told him. Only the occasional stamp of hooves disrupted the stillness, and it felt natural to tell Sammel her troubles. If she’d closed her eyes, they might have been back in one of the bandit camps where she’d spent her childhood. She had no hesitation about exposing the prince’s ineptitude, for she knew Sammel would never reveal or exploit it. Not that her mother would, of course, but Sammel was… Sammel.

  “Seems to me,” he said calmly, “that if that’s how royalty’s supposed to be taught, then you’ve no call to interfere.” The brush in his hand moved smoothly over the mare’s brown rump.

  “I don’t care about supposed,” said Arisa. “It’s not working. And I think it would do him good to know he could defend himself—even if he never needs to do it.”

  “It does most good to be able to,” said Sammel, “whether they use it or not. I’m just surprised, given what I’ve heard of the lad, that he wants t’ learn.”

  “What you’ve heard from the servants,” said Arisa slowly. “They don’t think much of the prince, do they?”

  Sammel snorted. “That’s putting it mild. And servants know their masters better than any, or so they say.”

  “They don’t always tell the truth,” said Arisa. “What do you think of the prince, Sammel?”

  “Of my own knowledge, you mean? I don’t know much,” the groom admitted. “He’s a good rider, and handles a horse well. Gentle hands, and never needs the spur. He’s a light weight in the saddle too, which horses like.”

  The soft swish of horses’ tails filled the silence for a time.

  “It seems odd,” said Sammel slowly, “that a lad that rides a horse so light would ride his servants hard.”

  “It does, doesn’t it.”

  Sammel sighed. “All right, I’ll find you a place. I’ll have to check ’em out—and likely clean it as well!—but I can think of a couple of places that might do.”

  Three days later Arisa received a message from “the groom Henley” that the bridle she’d asked for would be ready the next time she and the prince went for a ride.

  Arisa passed the word to Weasel and Edoran in court that evening. It worked out well, for the next day was Mansday, when they had no lessons, although Edoran was supposed to attend the speaking of the court’s priest.

  Arisa, who’d been raised in the countryside where the worship of the One God was a casual affair at best, preferred to avoid the cold stone chapel. Weasel, who’d been raised in the city, usually went—though Arisa thought that was more to “support” Edoran than from faith. Weasel had once told her that the One God hadn’t treated him so well that he owed him any prayers.

  Arisa would have spent a fair morning walking or riding in the palace park, but the cold rain discouraged walking, and might discourage the prince from riding out as well.

  Still, Arisa ignored Katrin’s scowl and changed into her britches when the time arrived. She also refused her good jacket and pulled her shabby, but much warmer coat from the wardrobe. If the rain stopped Edoran and Weasel, she was restless enough to ride without them.

  But when she reached the stable yard, they were already mounted and waiting for her.

  “I thought the rain might keep you in,” she said, walking around the puddles to join them.

  “He rides in almost any weather,” said Weasel, jerking his head to indicate the prince. “Idiot that he is.”

  Edoran smiled slightly. “It will let up in less than an hour.”

  Arisa looked at the sky. It didn’t look like it was letting up, but Sammel was leading Honey out of the stable.

  “So, Master Henley,” said Arisa, in her best lady-voice. “Where can we ride in this muddy stuff?”

  Sammel’s lips twitched. “You might head round the old wing of the palace. The ground’s a bit higher there. Not so much mud. Of course, you’d have to avoid the old stable. Not that it’s not sound. In fact, the gardeners keep a couple of mules there, but there’s not much gardening this time of year so you’d likely not meet them.”

  Several other grooms frowned at this—the palace gardeners would keep out of the prince’s way wherever he rode. And if they didn’t, Arisa was sure Sammel would arrange something to keep them away.

  “Thank you,” she said. “We’ll give it a try.”

  Edoran took the lead, for there was no bridle path through the rocky ground around the old wing, only a few tracks—probably made by the gardeners’ mules.

  “I already knew where the old stable is,” Edoran told them as they drew near the shabby-looking building. “Though I haven’t been inside for years. I used to play around the old wing when I was young, exploring and such.”

  Had he gone on those youthful expeditions alone? If he’d had any friends before Weasel, Arisa hadn’t heard of them. And even Weasel, like Arisa herself, had been ordered to befriend the prince. Of course Justice Holis had probably guessed that Weasel, who had a much softer heart than he’d ever admit, would soon befriend the prince in earnest. Either that, Arisa had thought, or murder him.

  When she first met Edoran, Arisa had believed that hanging for regicide was probably the better choice of the two. Sometimes Weasel was wiser than she was.

  She pulled Honey to a stop at the stable door. “Let’s check it out.”

  There were no walls inside the building, just one big room with stalls lining the far end, and open space in front of the doors.

  “We can put our horses in the empty stalls,” said Edoran, leading his mare forward. One of the three mules already stabled there brayed a greeting, and Honey pranced.

  “This roof is thatched,” city-bred Weasel complained. “And it’s leaking.”

  “Not badly,” said Arisa. “There’s nothing wrong with thatch, if it’s maintained. Well, it attracts mice, but they won’t bother us.”

  “Look at that hearth.” Weasel examined the huge fireplace that occupied most of the end wall. “This was a kitchen once, wasn’t it?”

  “It was turned into a secondary stable when the ki
tchens were moved inside,” Edoran confirmed. He finished loosening his saddle girth—something Arisa was surprised he knew how to do—and then led Weasel’s gelding into another stall. “It was mostly abandoned when the new stables were built.”

  The new stables had been built centuries ago, but this place, like the old castle, had been constructed to last. The thatch might leak—there was a puddle several inches deep in one corner—but the floor was solid. It would do, Arisa decided. She lifted the blanket that covered something in one of the drier corners and discovered half a dozen crudely carved practice swords.

  It would definitely do.

  “This is heavy,” Edoran protested, lifting one of the swords. “It’s heavier than a metal foil.”

  Arisa grimaced. “At our level of skill”—or lack thereof—“that doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s better that it’s heavy and unbalanced, because controlling it will strengthen our arms and wrists. And with wood there’s less chance we’ll hurt each other.”

  Weasel snorted. “There’s not much chance of that, anyway. What next, Sword Mistress Benison?”

  “Now,” said Arisa, “we work on drills, just like the ones Master Giles has Weasel and me doing. Except you, Edoran, are going to do them with your left hand, which means Weasel will have to modify his parries. Do you remember the exercises you did when you first started learning?”

  Edoran’s face was closing down. “I never did drills.”

  Arisa felt her jaw sag. “Never? Not even in the beginning?”

  Edoran stiffened. “I don’t lie.”

  The full arrogance of the royal house infused those words, but… had someone accused him of lying in the past?

  “No matter,” said Arisa. “You’re going to do them now. Take a stance and extend your blade, leading with the left foot, since the sword’s in your left hand. Good. Now, when Weasel thrusts high, you parry like this.”

  The few left-handed moves she knew soon came back to her—simple ripostes to the most basic right-handed thrusts. She wouldn’t need anything more complex for some time, Arisa realized as the lesson continued, for Weasel was a rank beginner, and fighting left-handed, Edoran was too. He not only had no practice with the hand he should have been fighting with from the start, but…

  “This isn’t working,” Edoran panted. He put down his sword and rubbed his wrist and forearm—again. “This is worse than fighting right-handed!”

  “That’s because you don’t have much strength in that arm,” Arisa told him. “You haven’t been using it, so your right arm is actually stronger and more practiced than the left. It takes time to build up. Time for the moves to become automatic, to become part of you.”

  “How would you know?” Edoran grumbled.

  Was she going to lose him? If he wouldn’t do the work she’d lose him anyway, and the sooner the better.

  “I know,” said Arisa, “because—”

  “’Cause she’s a better fighter than you’ll ever be.” Sammel’s voice came from the open door. “That’s no shame to you, lad,” he added, as Edoran flushed. “She’s one of the best fighters any of us… Ah, Your Highness, I mean. My apologies for interrupting, but you’ve been gone almost two hours and the head groom’s beginning to wonder. He’ll be sending someone to look for you soon.”

  “Has it been that long?” Arisa’s gaze flew to the doors. The overcast sky gave little clue to the time, but the rain had stopped. Stopped some time ago, she realized. No wonder Edoran’s arm was tired. “We’d better go! But you did well, Edoran. Really well, for the first day.”

  She meant to encourage him, but it was also true. He wasn’t a natural fighter, as her mother’s men had claimed she was, but he wasn’t a disaster. What had Master Giles been thinking, making him train right-handed all these years?

  Arisa and Edoran tightened up the horses’ girths, and Sammel checked on Edoran’s—but he kept it from being obvious by checking hers as well.

  Edoran watched him in frowning silence. Arisa thought he might take offense, for no one likes to see someone checking their work, but then the prince spoke. “This is far beyond your duty, Henley. I thank you for it.”

  Sammel shrugged. “My duty is t’ do what Your Highness wants done.”

  “Will you answer a question then?” Edoran asked. “A question for a man who knows horses?”

  Sammel glanced at him warily. “I know horses.”

  Edoran drew a breath. “How could someone make a horse fall?”

  Sammel looked down, making a quite unnecessary adjustment to Weasel’s stirrup. “There’s a couple of ways. A rope across the path, at about knee height, is the most common. But even if no one sees the rope at the time, it would mark the horse’s legs. There’s no way I know of that leaves no marks at all.”

  The prince’s obsession with his father’s death was clearly known to the servants, too. Arisa couldn’t suppress a flash of pity. But his father’s death was a proven accident, and even if it wasn’t, the man Edoran thought had arranged it was dead!

  He was the one who needed a real job, Arisa thought, as she mounted Honey and rode out through the tall doors. Something to get his mind off his fantasies, something important to do… In short, he needed a cause!

  She grinned as Honey plodded onto the muddy track. At least the rain had obeyed Edoran’s prediction—and that was downright creepy!

  However, he had also sensed something to the south, and as far as Arisa knew there had been no storm in that area, no building-breaking snow, no ship-sinking winds. So he wasn’t always—

  Helverton was to the south.

  Edoran had sensed the pirate raid.

  Arisa lay awake in the darkness, staring at the ceiling above her bed. It might have been because the rain had kept her from walking, and she hadn’t expended much energy leading Weasel and Edoran through the forms. It might have been the tea the maid had served at the dinner they’d shared, just Arisa and her mother, since there was no evening court on Mansday.

  It might even have been guilt at the number of things she hadn’t told her mother, that kept Arisa lying wakeful long past the time she usually slept.

  But mostly, it was because Edoran had sensed the pirate raid. A few questions had confirmed that the raid had begun at exactly the same time Edoran’s head had swiveled toward the south and stayed there. Or at least, his attention had stayed there.

  If he’d known what was happening, or even that something was very badly wrong, why hadn’t he spoken up? If he’d raced his horse back to the palace, ordered out troops and aid… no one would have believed a word of it.

  Arisa shivered. How horrible, to sense something terrible happening and not be able to help. But if he’d tried, if he’d insisted, if he’d issued commands as the prince who in seven years would be king, might some of those lost lives have been saved?

  He should have tried!

  Arisa turned onto her side, giving her pillow an irritable thump.

  He should have tried, no matter what it cost, no matter how crazy people would think him.

  So why hadn’t she revealed his gift to her mother?

  He would have denied it, and she would have looked like an idiot, but shouldn’t she have tried? It seemed unfair to blame him for cowardice when she…

  A dark form flitted across Arisa’s balcony, swung a leg over the railing, and vanished.

  For a moment she lay still, unable to believe what she’d seen, then she flung off the covers and raced to the balcony doors. Her eyes searched the moon-drenched lawns. Nothing stirred, but Katrin might still be climbing down the vines. Or wearing too-tight corsets might have turned Arisa’s brain and she was hallucinating the whole thing, including Edoran’s gift for sensing pirate raids, her maid’s treachery, and that nagging feeling that the old king’s death might not have been an accident after all.

  She pressed down the door handle to step out onto the balcony and make sure, but even as the latch clicked, a dark cloaked figure hurried across the lawn toward the trees of
the park.

  Arisa smiled grimly and went to get her clothes.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Six of Waters: the stranger.

  Someone arrives, welcome or not.

  By the time she came out onto the balcony, the dark figure had vanished into the trees. Arisa would have been frantic, if she hadn’t had a pretty good idea where she could catch up with her maid. She swung her leg over the balcony rail and groped for hand- and footholds among the vines.

  It was harder climbing down than she’d expected, and she was wearing britches and boots! She couldn’t imagine doing it in skirts, as Katrin had. Finally she was able to release the rough, tangled vines and jump down.

  She raced across the lawn and into the trees. If she didn’t catch up with Katrin at the wall, where Weasel had once showed her the easiest place to climb over, she’d never be able to find her.

  And if Katrin used some other route to escape the palace grounds, the chase was over already.

  It was hard, alone in the dark, to find the place where the ancient stones had crumbled enough to give a determined climber a couple of good holds. It was even harder to climb it without Weasel’s helping hands, but when Arisa pulled her head over the top, the cloaked figure was just turning into a side street, two blocks away.

  Arisa scrambled up to the top of the wall and dropped to the other side, stumbling on the rough cobbles. Then she ran.

  When she reached the street where Katrin had turned, Arisa slowed to a walk before skidding around the corner. Her maid was walking swiftly, about a block and a half ahead of Arisa. In this quiet neighborhood there was no one else on the street. If she stayed back far enough to keep Katrin from recognizing her face, she’d probably be taken for a shop boy coming home from a late delivery. Still, Katrin would be suspicious if the same person followed her for too long.

  But the maid never looked back, and as they traveled into the commercial streets more people appeared. The shops were closed, but some of the craft yards still echoed with voices, thuds, and clangs as men worked to complete an urgent order. The taverns were open, doing a thriving business.