The Oathbound

by Mercedes Lackey

  She ended exactly where she had begun, slowing her movements down again to end with the reshea thing of her blade, as smooth and graceful as a leaf falling. As it went home in the scabbard with a metallic click, the applause began.

  Startled, Tarma glanced in the direction of the noise; she’d been so absorbed in her exercises that she hadn’t noticed her watchers. There were three of them—Hadell, and two fur-cloaked middle-aged men who had not been part of the Guard contingent last night.

  She half-bowed (with a wry grin), and let them approach her.

  “I’d heard Shin‘a’in were good—Swordlady, you’ve just proved to me that sometimes rumor speaks truth,” said the larger of the two, a weathered-looking blond with short hair and a gold clasp to his cloak. “Lady, I’m Justin Twoblade, this is my shieldbrother Ikan Dryvale.”

  “Tarma shena Tale‘sedrin,” she supplied, “And my thanks. A compliment comes sweeter from a brother in the trade.”

  “We’d like to offer you more than compliments, if you’re willing,” said the second, amber-haired, like Kethry, but with blue eyes; and homely, with a plowboy’s ingenuous expression.

  “Well, since I doubt it’s a bid for bed-services, I’ll at least hear you out.”

  “Lessons. We’ll pay your reckoning and your partner’s in return for lessons.”

  Tarma leaned on the top bar of the practice-enclosure and gave the notion serious thought. “Hmm, I’ll admit I like the proposition,” she replied, squinting into the sunlight. “Question is, why, and for how long? I’d hate to miss a chance at the only short-term job for months and then have you two vanish on me.”

  Hadell interceded for them. “They’ll not vanish, Swordlady,” he assured her. “Justin and Ikan are wintering here, waiting for the caravans to start up again in spring. They’re highly valued men to the Jewel Merchants’ Guild—valued enough that the merchants pay for ‘em to stay here idle during the lean season.”

  “Aye, valued and bored!” Ikan exclaimed. “That’s one reason for you. Few enough are those willing to spare with either of us—fewer still with the leisure for it. And though I’ve seen your style before, I’ve never had a chance to learn it—or how to counter it. If you wouldn’t mind our learning how to counter it, that is.”

  “Mind? Hardly. Honest guards like you won’t see Clan facing your blades, and anyone else who’s learned our style thinking he’ll have an easy time against hirelings deserves to meet someone with the counters. Done, then; for however long it takes Keth to earn us the corn to reprovision, I’ll be your teacher.”

  “And we’ll take care of the reckoning,” Justin said, with a sly grin. “We’ll just add it to our charges on the Guild. Odds are they’ll think we’ve just taken to drinking and wenching away the winter nights!”

  “Justin, I think I’m going to like you two,” Tarma laughed. “You think a lot like me!”

  Three

  Yellow lamplight made warm pools around the common room of the Broken Sword, illuminating a scene far more relaxed than that of the night before. The other residents of the inn were much more cheerful, and certainly less weary, for there had been no repetition of yesterday’s riot.

  The two women had taken a table to themselves at the back of the room, in the corner. It was quieter there, and easier for them to hear each other. A lamp just over the table gave plenty of light, and Kethry could see that Tarma was quite well pleased with herself.

  “... so I’ve got a pair of pupils. Never thought I’d care for teaching, but I’m having a rare good time of it,” Tarma concluded over fish stew and fried potatoes. “Of course it helps that Ikan and Justin are good-tempered about their mistakes, and they’ve got the proper attitude about learning swordwork.”

  “Which is?” Kethry asked, cheered to see a smile on Tarma’s face for a change. A real smile, one of pleasure, not of irony.

  “That inside that enclosure, I’m the only authority there is.”

  Kethry sniffed in derision; it was quiet enough in the back-wall corner they’d chosen that Tarma heard the sniff and grinned. “Modest, aren’t you?” the mage teased.

  She was feeling considerably better herself. No spies of Wethes or Kavin had leapt upon her during the day, and nothing that had occurred had brought back any bad memories. In point of fact she had frequently forgotten that she was in Mornedealth at all. All her apprehension now seemed rather pointless.

  “No, seriously,” Tarma replied to her japing. “That’s the way it is; no matter what your relationship is outside the lessons, inside the lesson the master is The Master. The Master’s word is law, and don’t argue about the way you learned something before.” Tarma wiped her plate clean with a last bit of bread, and settled back against the wall. “A lot of hire-swords don’t understand that relationship—especially if it’s a woman standing in the Master’s place—but Ikan and Justin have had good teaching, and got it early enough to do some good. They’re able, and they’re serious, and they’re going to come along fast.”

  “What if you wanted to learn something from one of them?” Kethry asked, idly turning a ring on her finger. “Wouldn’t all this Master business cause problems?”

  “No, because when I become the pupil, my teacher becomes the Master—actually that’s already happened. Just before we wrapped up for the day, I asked Justin to show me a desperation-counter he’d used on me earlier.” Tarma sighed regretfully. “Wish you knew something of swordwork, Greeneyes—that was a clever move he showed me. If you knew enough to appreciate it, I could go on about it for a candlemark. Could get you killed if you tried it without timing it exactly right, but if you did, it could save your getting spitted in a situation I couldn’t see any way out of.”

  Kethry shook her head. “I don’t see how you keep things straight. Back at the School, we only had one Master for each pupil, so we didn’t get mixed up in trying to learn two different styles of magery.”

  “But half of your weaponry as a hire-sword is flexibility. You’ve got to be able to learn anything from anybody,” Tarma replied. “If you can’t be flexible enough mentally to accept any number of Masters, you’ve no business trying to make your living with a blade, and that’s all there is to say. How did your day go?”

  “Enlightening.” Kethry wore a fairly wry smile. She raised her voice slightly so as to be heard above the hum of conversation that filled the room. “I never quite realized the extent to which polite feuding among the Fifty goes before I took this little job.”

  “Ah?” Tarma cocked an inquiring eyebrow and washed down the last bite of bread and butter with a long pull on her mug.

  “Well, I thought that business the fellow at the Hiring Hall told us was rather an exaggeration—until I started using mage-sight on some of the animals my client had picked out as possibles. A good half of them had been beglamoured, and I recognized the feel of the kind of glamour that’s generally used by House mages around here. Some of what was being covered was kind of funny, in a nasty-brat sort of way—like the pair of matched grays that turned out to be fine animals, just a particularly hideous shade of muddy yellow.”

  “What would that have accomplished? A horse is a horse, no matter the color.”

  “Well, just imagine the young man’s chagrin to be driving these beasts hitched to his maroon rig; in a procession, perhaps—and then the glamour is lifted, with all eyes watching and tongues ready to flap. ”

  Tarma chuckled. “He’d lose a bit of face over it, not that I can feel too sorry for any idiot that would drive a maroon rig.”

  “You’re heartless, you are. Maroon and blue are his House colors, and he hasn’t much choice but to display them. He’d lose more than a little face over it; he wouldn’t dare show himself with his rig in public until he got something so spectacular to pull it that his embarrassment would be forgotten, and for a trick like that, he’d practically have to have hitched trained griffins to overcome his loss of pride. By the way, that’s my client you’re calling an idiot, and he’s pay
ing quite well.”

  “In that case, I forgive him the rig. How long do you think you’ll be at this?”

  “About a week, maybe two.”

  “Good; that will give my pupils their money’s worth and get us back on the road in good time.”

  “I hope so,” Kethry looked over her shoulder a little, feeling a stirring of her previous uneasiness. “The longer I stay here, the more likely it is I’ll be found out.”

  “I doubt it,” Tarma took another long pull at her mug. “Who’d think to look for you here?”

  “She’s where?” The incredulous voice echoed in the high vaulting and bounced from the walls of the expensively appointed, blackwood paneled office.

  “At one of the foreigners’ inns; the Broken Sword. It’s used mostly by mercenaries,” Kavin replied, leaning back in his chair and dangling his nearly-empty wineglass from careless fingers. He half-closed his gray eyes in lazy pleasure to see Wethes squirming and fretting for his heirloom carpet and fragile furniture. “She isn’t using her full name, and is claiming to be foreign herself.”

  “What’s she doing there?” Wethes ran nervous fingers through his carefully oiled black locks, then played with the gold letter opener from his desk set. “Has she any allies? I don’t like the notion of going after her in an inn full of hire-swords. There could be trouble, and more than money would cover.”

  “She wears the robes of a sorceress, and from all I could tell, has earned the right to—”

  “That’s trouble enough right there,” Wethes interrupted.

  Kavin’s eyes narrowed in barely-concealed anger at the banker’s rudeness. “That is what you have a house mage to take care of, my gilded friend. Use him. Besides, I strongly doubt she could be his equal, else she’d have a patron, and be spending the winter in a cozy little mage-tower. Instead of that, she’s wandering about as an itinerant, doing nothing more taxing than checking horses for beglamour ing. As to her allies, there’s only one that matters. A Shin‘a’in swordswoman.”

  “Shin‘a’in? One of the sword-dancers? I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “They seem,” he continued, toying with a lock of his curly, pale gold hair, “to be lovers.”

  “I like that even less.”

  “Wethes, for all your bold maneuvering in the marketplace, you are a singularly cowardly man.” Kavin put his imperiled glass safely on one of Wethes’ highly-polished wooden tables, and smiled to himself when Wethes winced in anticipation of the ring its moist bottom would cause. He stood up and stretched lazily, consciously mirroring one of the banker’s priceless marbles behind him; then smoothed his silk-velvet tunic back into its proper position. He smiled to himself again at the flash of greed in Wethes’ eyes; the banker valued him as much for his decorative value as for his lineage. With Kavin as a guest, any party Wethes held was certain to attract a high number of Mornedealth’s acknowledged beauties as well as the younger members of the Fifty. It was probably time again to grace one of the fat fool’s parties with his presence, after all, he did owe him something. His forbearance in not negating their bargain when Kavin’s brat-sister vanished deserved some reward.

  Of course, their arrangement was not all one-sided. Wethes would have lost all he’d gained by the marriage and more had it become known that his child-bride had fled him before the union was a day old. And now that she’d been gone more than three years—by law, she was no longer his wife at all. That would have been infinitely worse. It had been Kavin who had suggested that they pretend that Kethry had gone to stay on Wethes’ country estate. Kethry was unused to dealing with people in any numbers, and found her new position as Wethes’ helpmeet somewhat overwhelming—so they told the curious. She was happier away from the city and the confusion of society. Kavin was only too pleased to represent her interests with Wethes, and play substitute for her at formal occasions. They’d kept up the fiction for so long that even Kavin was starting to half-believe in Wethes’ “shy” spouse.

  “The Shin‘a’in will be no problem,” Kavin said soothingly. “She’s a stranger in this city; she doesn’t know it, she has no friends. All we need do is take your wayward wife when she’s out from under the swordswoman’s eye, and the Shin‘a’in will be helpless to find her. She wouldn’t even begin to know where to look. Although why you’re bothering with this is beyond me. Kethry’s hardly of an age to interest you anymore. And you have the connections you want without the burden of a real wife.”

  “She’s mine,” Wethes said, and the expression in his eyes was cold and aquisitive. “What’s mine, I keep. No one robs me or tricks me with impunity. I’ll keep her in chains for the insult she’s done me—chains of her own body. She’ll do to breed a dozen heirs, and they tell me no pregnant mage can work her tricks while so burdened.”

  Kavin raised a sardonic eyebrow, but made no further comment except to say, “I wouldn’t believe that particular peasants’ tale if I were you—I’ve had friends thought the same and didn’t live to admit they were wrong. Now, I suspect your next question was going to be whether or not the Shin‘a’in might be able to get a hearing with the Council. It might be possible—but who would believe a foreigner’s tale of abduction against the word of the wealthiest man in Mornedealth?”

  “Put that way, I see no risk of any kind to us,” Wethes put down the gold paper knife. “And certainly I wish above all to have this accomplished at no risk of exposure. There are enough stories about why I mew my wife up in the country as it is. I’d rather no one ever discovered she’s never been in my possession at all. But how do we get her away from her lover?”

  “Just leave that—” Kavin smiled, well aware that his slow smile was not particularly pleasant to look on, “—to me.”

  Kethry woke with an aching head and a vile taste in her mouth; lying on her side, tied hand and foot, in total darkness. It hurt even to think, but she forced herself to attempt to discipline her thoughts and martial them into coherency, despite their tendency to shred like spiderwebs in a high wind. What had happened to her—where was she?

  Think—it was so hard to think—it was like swimming through treacle to put one thought after another. Everything was fogged, and her only real desire was to relax and pass back into oblivion.

  Which meant she’d been drugged.

  That made her angry; anger burned some of the befuddlement away. And the resulting temporary surge in control gave her enough to remember a cleansing ritual.

  Something like a candlemark later, she was still tied hand and foot and lying in total darkness. But the rest of the drug had been purged from her body and she was at last clearheaded and ready to think—and act. Now, what had happened?

  She thought back to her last clear memory—parting with her client for the day. It had been a particularly fruitless session, but he had voiced hopes for the morrow. There were supposed to be two horse tamers from the North arriving in time for beast-market day. Her client had been optimistic, particularly over the rumored forest-hunters they were said to be bringing. They had parted, she with her day’s wages safely in the hidden pocket of her robe, he accompanied by his grooms.

  And she’d started back to the inn by the usual route.

  But—now she had it!—there’d been a tangle of carts blocking the Street of the Chandlers. The carters had been swearing and brawling, laughingly goaded on by a velvet-clad youth on his high-bred palfrey who’d probably been the cause of the accident in the first place. She’d given up on seeing the street cleared before supper, and had ducked into an alley.

  Then had come the sound of running behind her. Before she could turn to see who it was, she was shoved face-first against the rough wood of the wall, and a sack was flung over her head. A dozen hands pinned her against the alley wall while a sickly-sweet smelling cloth was forced over her mouth and nose. She had no chance to glimpse the faces of her assailants, and oblivion had followed with the first breath of whatever-it-was that had saturated the cloth.

  But for who had d
one this to her—oh, that she knew without seeing their faces. It could only be Kavin and his gang of ennobled toughs—and to pay for it all, Wethes.

  As if her thought had conjured him, the door to her prison opened, and Wethes stood silhouetted against the glare of light from the torch on the wall of the hallway beyond him.

  Terror overwhelmed her, terror so strong as to take the place of the drug in befuddling her. She could no longer think, only feel, and all she felt was fear. He seemed to be five hundred feet tall, and even more menacing than her nightmares painted him.

  “So,” he laughed, looking down at her as she tried to squirm farther away from him, “My little bride returns at last to her loving husband.”

  “Damn, damn, damn!” Tarma cursed, and paced the icy street outside the door of the Broken Sword; exactly twenty paces east, then twenty west, then twenty east again. It was past sunset: Kethry wasn’t back yet; she’d sent no word that she’d be late, and that wasn’t like her. And—

  She suddenly went cold, then hot, then her head spun dizzily. She clutched the lintel for support while the street spun before her eyes. The door of the inn opened, but she dared not try and move. Her ears told her of booted feet approaching, yet she was too giddy to even turn to see who it was.