“Yes, Captain.” Jepp winked at me from behind Ursula.
Ursula pointed at me. “But you make time to get a better set made. These offend Danu’s eyes.”
“I’ve already spent hours with the seamstresses, and I have so many things to—”
“Consider it payback for all the times you dressed me to your standards,” she snapped. Also cranky. Now that we’d set the wheels in motion, Ursula had started to worry. It hadn’t been a full day since our conversation and already she’d given me more advice, cautions, and caveats than I’d be able to stuff into my memory given twice as many days.
“I’ll make time,” I told her.
“Speaking of time,” Harlan gently intervened. “Shall we proceed with the lesson?”
Ursula rolled her head on her shoulders. “Yes. We should. All right, librarian. We’ve no time to teach you Danu’s forms, which would be the foundation of what you need to know as a fighter. Instead we’re going to show you the tricks—all with the intent of you gaining time to escape should you be attacked. For the most part, your aim will not be to kill or permanently disable an attacker. You don’t want to be that close for that long. Instead you will focus on hurting a person enough that they can’t chase you. We’ll lay the groundwork this morning and then Jepp will take over after you leave tomorrow, helping you refine the skills and build on them. Does that make sense?”
“You’ve no time to teach me the entire alphabet so you’re giving me the equivalent of conversational phrases that I can practice and add to as I learn this language.”
Her frown cracked and she laughed. “Exactly. You’ll do just fine. I know you will.”
I knew she meant more than just with knife work and I nodded, hoping to reassure her.
“The first thing you’ll learn is what to do when someone grabs you. Jepp, demonstrate. Let Harlan catch you, and break free.”
Jepp sauntered up to Harlan and gave him a saucy grin of challenge. “Captain Harlan can catch me anytime.” She turned her back, and he launched himself at her, dwarfing her slim form, muscles bulging in his sleeveless shirt as they flexed to restrain her. She seemed to fold in, then burst out, spinning in place and halting with a sharp blade at his throat.
He grinned at her. “Lucky indeed would be the man who could both catch and hold you.”
“Stop flirting, you two,” Ursula said. “Now you try it, Dafne.”
“I can’t do that!”
“You can and you will.” She pressed a short knife into my hand, much like the daggers she and Jepp habitually carried, but made of wood with blunted edges. “Harlan?”
He advanced and I took an automatic step back. “I can’t get away from a man that size!”
“You’re going to a place where they are all that size,” she emphasized. “Better to learn with someone you know and trust.”
“Maybe I should start with Jepp?” I offered weakly, but Ursula shook her head, a determined set to her jaw.
“Jepp is here to see what we teach you. Today you’re working entirely against Harlan and me. You have to experience what it’s like to be up against someone bigger and more skilled.”
I wished for some of the thrill I’d felt yesterday when I accepted this mission. Being called to adventure turned out to involve a great deal of unpleasant challenges.
I nodded in resignation and turned my back. Harlan’s big arms closed around me, trapping my arms against my sides, sending a flutter of panic through me. Trapped in the dark. Unable to move. My throat on fire. Can’t breathe. I whimpered and his arms loosened.
“Tighter than that, Harlan. Don’t go easy on her,” Ursula’s voice whipped out.
“She’s afraid.” His voice rumbled against my back, an oddly comforting sensation that worked some to lessen my rising fear, but only a little. “She doesn’t like being trapped.”
Of course he’d remember, from that story I’d told him, of the fall of my family’s castle. Ursula bent over so her eyes were level with mine, bright steel. “Use it,” she commanded. “Everyone feels fear at some point. That’s healthy self-preservation. It’s also the fuel that will drive you to survive. You’ve called on it all these years. People underestimate you—use that, too. Now, let him think he has you, collapse a little, like you’re fainting. He senses your fear so he’ll believe it. Let your weight sag, so he’s forced to support you, then call on that will to survive. Picture it like a sun burning in your heart. Push up from the ground and rise. Burst up and out. Do it.”
It helped not to fight the panic. Use it. I let myself collapse as she said, feeling Harlan’s arms tighten to keep me upright. That dark space. Trapped. The fear burned like a sun indeed, and I wondered how Ursula knew. It wanted to break free, so I let it. Harlan grunted, his hold breaking.
I’d done it!
“Good,” Ursula said, “but don’t just stand there. Break, stab him with the knife, and run. Hold her again.”
Ursula was a relentless taskmaster. I’d seen her badgering Andi all those years to learn to defend herself and also witnessed Andi’s wary attempts to avoid the lessons. Ami had stubbornly refused and appealed to Uorsin, who had, of course, indulged her. Which was no doubt why she found herself needing lessons from Ash so many years later.
Over and over, Ursula made me break free, showing me which vulnerable spots on Harlan were in easy reach of my short blade. Due to my much smaller stature, that usually meant somewhere in his groin area. Ursula made me put my hand up between Harlan’s massive thighs, to feel for myself the hollows where the arteries ran shallow and where his man jewels hung heavy and vulnerable. Harlan stoically endured it all, but I blushed furiously.
“Get over it,” Ursula ordered. “This isn’t about niceties. This is about saving your life. Now, break away, and if your position is good, shove your blade as hard as you can up into his balls.”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
Harlan gave me a reassuring smile. “It won’t be the first time—and I’ve been hit there by people much bigger than a nyrri.”
He called me that deliberately, to make me mad, but it worked anyway. Experimentally, I called on that, too. When I broke away, I did as Ursula bade me and brought the wooden knife up hard between his thighs, slicing edge up.
To my shock, Harlan dropped to his knees gasping out a Dasnarian curse. Ursula surveyed me with a delighted grin. “Excellent! Imagine if that had been a sharp blade. He’d be bleeding out. But you still forgot to run. Do it again.”
Harlan gave her a sidelong look. “This time, I’m wearing protection.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
“Don’t be.” He held out a hand for me to help him to his feet. A gesture of courtesy, as he surely didn’t need it. He inclined his head. “Be proud of besting me.”
“Only because you let me.”
“Someone who doesn’t know you won’t expect this from you,” Ursula said. “The element of surprise will make up for it. Once you have this down, we’ll work on you not being grappled in the first place, which will be your first and best strategy.”
For the next several hours, we worked it, until running as soon as I struck began to feel like second nature. I learned more spots to knife Harlan and then they switched up, having me defend myself against Ursula, with Harlan and Jepp offering pointers. That felt completely different from Harlan’s overwhelming strength. With her I learned to stay out of range—not at all easy with her uncanny speed. Faster than a snake heated by the sun, Harlan had said, and I fully understood the analogy.
When I missed staying out of her reach, her grip was more like being tangled in a living vine, her body wiry, the vulnerable points never quite where I expected them to be. That shape-shifter magic. No wonder the Tala were so difficult for our troops to meet in battle.
By the time Ursula relented—mainly because she could not postpone the other pressing tasks required for launching our expedition—the sun stood high, and though the air was crisp, I dripped with more swea
t than I’d thought my body possessed.
“It’s a start,” Ursula conceded. “Jepp will teach you how to hide your knives where you can draw them quickly. Practice that. You can’t practice that kind of thing too much. Get in the habit of sleeping with your knives.”
“I don’t have any knives.”
“We’ll take care of it,” she replied in an absent tone, thoughts already going to her next task. “Go clean up. I’ll see you in a bit for the meeting with Kral.”
We assembled to leave the following morning. I wore one of my new traveling dresses, along with a lovely fur-lined hooded cape. The weather had turned quite chill, so I appreciated the warmth. We’d all ride, so as to go faster, with the most critical emergency supplies also on horses. I wasn’t an excellent horsewoman like Andi, but I’d kept up with the Hawks when we rode from Windroven. Another test of newly acquired skills.
Ursula and Harlan saw us off in the quiet outer courtyard. When I hurried out, fearing I’d be the last to arrive, Kral and Harlan were in quiet conversation, Ursula standing well back, giving them privacy. The two men parted, then stepped together for an awkward hug. Kral turned on his heel and left to assemble his men into a ready formation and await us outside the walls. Harlan strode toward us, raw emotion in his face. A kind of grief, perhaps. But he smiled for Ursula’s assessing look and turned pointedly to me.
“Kral will watch over you, librarian. There’s none better.” He dipped his chin to Ursula. “I asked it, as part of his amends.”
“Thank you,” I told him, moved that he’d asked. Ursula gazed at him for an extended moment and I realized he’d done it for her, as much as for me.
“I have something for you,” Ursula said, and handed me a soft leather package. “A gift.”
I took it in surprise. “A gift?” I echoed stupidly. “You’ve already outfitted me and hidden gold and silver everywhere you can think of in my possessions.”
“What? I’m sending you off to face Danu knows what dangers, knowing full well you don’t truly wish to go. Those are supplies. This is something else. Open it.”
I undid the ties and unrolled the leather. Inside lay a set of exquisite, deadly sharp daggers. Slim like the ones she and Jepp used, chased with a script down the blades. I turned one so I could read it. This is why it’s perilous to ignore a librarian.
“Andi said you said that to her, when you found the designs of the tunnels beneath Windroven, so she could escape.” Ursula gave me a narrow look for that and I tried to appear chagrined for what had likely been a traitorous act. But truly the thoughtfulness of the gift left me so astonished I couldn’t muster much. “A good reminder for you to have,” Ursula continued, “that you’re as dangerous as anyone, in your own way. Whether by knife’s edge or your mind’s.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s one piece more.”
She had a funny sound in her voice as she prompted me. I rolled the delicate blades up and unfolded the other half, which was heavier. Another dagger, bigger, worked with the same designs as Ursula’s sword, with a shining bloodred ruby in the hilt. One of Salena’s.
“You can’t give me this,” I breathed. “The rubies were your mother’s.”
She was watching me with turbulent gray eyes. “Yes, and we decided they should be divided between her daughters. It’s clear to me now, as it always should have been, that Salena considered you an adopted or fostered daughter. This one is for you to take. The rest of your shares will await your return.”
My heart had clenched and I found myself weeping a few silent tears. How had she known I needed this when I hadn’t known it myself? “This is a gift beyond measure, my Queen. I can never express how much—or repay it.”
“Yes, you can. By coming home safely.” She embraced me in a sudden gesture of rare physical affection, hard and fierce. “If you don’t,” she said against my ear, “I’ll hunt you down and you’ll be responsible for me abandoning my duties to the High Throne.”
I laughed, watery, and hugged her back. “A severe threat indeed.”
She let me go. “I mean it, too. Don’t make me start a war with Dasnaria over you. Go. Get the information. Come back safely.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” I said it with much the same love Harlan put into the title, with all the same exasperation for her impossible orders. Jepp and Zynda had arrived while we spoke, standing a few polite paces back, so I wiped my tears and started to roll up the knives.
“No.” Ursula plucked out the dagger and handed it to me hilt first. “Wear it. All the time. Jepp has my permission to smack you over the head if she catches you without it.”
Jepp gave me her easy grin. “I love my job.” Unlike me, she wore no cloak, just the leather layers of her Hawks uniform, her head uncovered, so she looked sleekly lethal. By contrast, Zynda had her own hood pulled up, the white fur framing her black hair and golden skin, making her deep-blue eyes startlingly bright. Exotic traveling companions for my dowdy self.
“I’ll be glad to travel south,” Zynda remarked. “A few hours back in Annfwn reminded me how much colder it is here.”
“Has the climate there seen much impact from the barrier shift?” I thought to ask her. Our meetings the night before had focused entirely on Andi’s extensive dissertation on her theories of how the Heart worked to control the barrier and what she could and could not do to adapt it so people could pass through, particularly those with no Tala blood. Thank Moranu for the Tala gift for memory. Zynda had been sworn to secrecy and memorized it all, repeating it word for word, uncannily sounding exactly like Andi at times.
“At the pass, yes, as you saw when we traveled through. Deeper in it feels just as warm, but there have been odd storms. Almost a mix of tropical rain and magic.”
“As Kral said the Nahanauns encountered,” Ursula said thoughtfully.
Zynda nodded. “I thought so, too. I shared his tales with Andi and Rayfe, so far as I could recall.” Which meant perfectly. “They have been working to stabilize the weather patterns and I’m to tell you, High Queen, only if you asked, but I believe this counts, that yes, yes, yes—she remembers about sending rain to Aerron, to stop fretting about it because she can feel you thinking at her.”
“Does she mean that literally?” I wondered.
“Probably,” Ursula replied in a dry tone, then bared her teeth in a malicious grin. “I shall have to think at her harder and see what kind of results I get.”
She made us laugh, no doubt as she intended. Then she embraced Zynda and Jepp in turn, saying something to each, likely another iteration of her exhortation to me to return safely. After that, there was nothing to do but mount up and ride out. I looked back over my shoulder to see Ursula watching us go, leaning against Harlan’s bulk for comfort as he held her under one arm, his head bent over her.
I tucked the image away firmly in my memory, so I’d remember I had family back home, at Ordnung.
6
I’d journeyed out of Ordnung twice before in my life—once to Windroven and again to Annfwn. This time, I followed a third road, broader and busier than the goat track to Annfwn or the trade route to Windroven. Teeming with carts laden with the precious fruits of late harvests and watched over by soldiers wearing the uniforms of Mohraya and Ordnung, with former Vervaldr mixed in with each, notable for their height and fairness, this thoroughfare led in a straight, fast line to the Danu River.
Uorsin had improved the road from the backcountry lane it had been in the days of my youth at Castle Columba, first to bring the armies and supplies of Duranor to lay siege. Then, as one of his first acts to demonstrate the prosperity brought by the peace of the kingdoms unified under his power, he expanded it into the primary trade route it had become, running across the continent to the coast of Biah, distributing the goods ferried up and down the Danu River from Avonlidgh to Erie.
I’d read about all of it but never seen it with my own eyes. As we rode, I made notes in my journal. If nothing else, this jou
rney would add to the history I would someday write. I’d even exercised some of my new authority in a completely self-indulgent way and had one of the scribes copy over a miniature map of the original Twelve for me. I kept it folded in the pages of my journal, so I could note where I’d been. Our maps ended to the west with the mountains of the Wild Lands and didn’t show Annfwn or the Onyx Ocean north of the Crane Isthmus. Though I lacked good cartography skills, I hoped to add to it as we sailed.
Once relations with the Tala stabilized, perhaps we could ask them to fill in the details of Annfwn.
“I’ve never seen a woman with her nose so much in a book.”
I jumped a little at Kral’s comment, unaware he’d pulled his horse up next to mine. To increase our speed, Ursula had provided mounts for the Dasnarian battalion also. We’d leave the horses that the Vervaldr returning to Ordnung wouldn’t need in Ehas, to be distributed to other parts of the Thirteen. Better to distribute Ordnung’s hoarded wealth, she’d commented, with the added benefit of allowing Ordnung to feed people instead of horses.
“You are not the first person to say so,” I told him.
He grunted, whether in agreement or dissent I wasn’t sure. “You seem an unlikely ambassador.”
“Because I’m small and female?”
“That, too.” He scrutinized me, like a shark circling. “More because you do not behave as a proper lady ought. You speak your mind baldly. Even a man sent to the Dasnarian court would be more careful of his words.”
Stung, I bit back a retort. I would have to improve my cover. “I’ll keep that in mind, General Kral of Dasnaria and Imperial Prince of the Royal House of Konyngrr.”
He let out a booming laugh, so like Harlan’s but without his spontaneous joy. “See? You have adopted your High Queen’s way of wielding a title to slice like a blade. But you are no queen, nyrri.”
I set my teeth. “I am well aware of that.”
“So, my brother has asked me to tutor you in speaking to King Nakoa KauPo and the ways of the Dasnarian court. I understand the latter far better than the former. I am not the most glib of courtiers, but I shall do my best to teach you the correct words and phrases you will need to cloak your true nature.”
The Pages of the Mind Page 7
