Oath of Fealty

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Thank you, my lord. I will do my best.” Then her expression changed. “I can’t help remembering how my family used it,” she said, then after a pause went on. “Some things I could not say—that I can say now.” She stopped.

  “Do you need to tell me?” he asked gently. Dorrin had never confided much about her past, just that she was estranged from the family.

  “Yes. If you have time—”

  “For an old comrade? Always.”

  The tale she told matched his own in ways he had not imagined: the suffering she’d endured, as a child, the final determination to flee at any cost. He thought back to his first impressions of Dorrin at Falk’s Hall—a difficult, moody girl, not much liked by the other women for what they called her sullenness, her refusal to enter into easy friendships, her distrust of others. Like the other older students, he had dismissed her as likely to fail, as having none of the graciousness Falk’s followers were supposed to show. He had said as much to the Knight-Commander.

  “When we older students complained of you,” he said when she’d finished, “the Knight-Commander said we did not understand, and such hasty judgment meant we ourselves were unfit for the ruby. He told us nothing specific, only that our opinions were the opinions of—let me see if I can remember—’rash, callow youths lacking wisdom or mercy, who could be judged as harshly by those without discernment.’ He bade us fast a night and a day for our ungraciousness. It did not, I’m afraid, change many opinions, though we did learn to keep them to ourselves.”

  “And yet you hired me.”

  “It was seeing you covered in mud, working away in that ditch to get the wagon out, and then the look in your eyes—you still expected me to refuse. There, I thought, is a true Knight of Falk, whatever she seemed before, and I must honor that. As you have honored me, these many years.” Kieri felt tears on his own cheeks and did not brush them away. “You and I, Dorrin, had more in common than either of us knew. I sorrow for your suffering, and I am sorry for my early arrogance, that assumed no one else had also suffered.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Dorrin said. “I was—I was not an easy person to like, back then.”

  “No … but now you are, as you have been for years, a Knight of Falk, grave and courteous to all, and I do not think Mikeli could have chosen anyone better able to save what can be saved of Verrakai. Go with my blessing, and know you have always a friend at this court.”

  She nodded, and then bowed; when she had gone, Kieri was immediately immersed in the myriad details that now filled every day before his coronation.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  People poured into Chaya for the coronation: Siers and their families, merchants and craftsmen, musicians and jugglers and dancers and mimes. The crown prince of Tsaia sent his regrets, owing to the unsettled times, nor could the Regency Council members attend, for the same reason. Kirgan Marrakai, he wrote, would represent him, and was on the way with a squad of his father’s militia. Aliam and Estil Halveric had already arrived, to stay with Sier Halveric.

  Every inn bulged with travelers, packed as many to a room as they could manage, and anyone with space on the floor to let could make a quarter’s living from it.

  “Some families are moving into their outbuildings and renting the house,” Sier Belvarin said. “Not ours, of course.”

  “Of course not,” Kieri said. He did not smile; Sier Belvarin had already demonstrated a very limited sense of humor.

  “Are your relatives staying with you?” Sier Halveric asked Belvarin. “I’ve got Aliam and his wife and two of their children and gods know how many grandchildren.” Belvarin nodded.

  The Pargunese had been informed, with cool courtesy, but not actually invited; to Kieri’s surprise, their king dared send a representative, an elderly woman who arrived in Riverton in a boat with white and gold ribbons fluttering from every possible attachment. She was, she told the alert and very nervous port militia, Hanlin Orenalt, the king’s wife’s oldest sister.

  “Pargunese arrogance,” Halveric said, when the report came that she was on her way from the port.

  “She’s not likely to get drunk and assault us all,” Kieri said. “Pargunese women don’t drink alcohol. And who else could he send? A boatload of women was the only possible envoy we wouldn’t kill or turn back.”

  “I didn’t know they had women who could handle a boat,” Belvarin said.

  “Fisherfolk, along the river,” Kieri said. “I imagine every fishwife can row, at least a little. Well, if they mean to show courtesy, so must we. A guest is a guest—but the host is allowed to be wary, though not inhospitable.” Given the lady’s age, he insisted she must be housed in the palace. The Council protested.

  “We can also watch her better here,” Kieri said. “If the Pargunese have agents in Chaya, as they well may, she cannot meet them without one or the other coming through the gates.”

  The lady’s carriage arrived under guard; Kieri watched from a window to the courtyard as she climbed down, with help from her two attendants, both middle-aged, sedate women in plain dark dresses with the Pargunese king’s crest in brilliant embroidery. She herself was a hand taller than they, almost as tall as Kieri. White-haired, moving a little stiffly, dressed in sumptuous clothes of the Pargunese style, she had the regal carriage of someone who has never had to ask someone to step out of her way. Kieri watched as his steward gave her formal welcome and offered an arm, which she refused for that of one of her women.

  Once settled in her room, Hanlin of Pargun seemed—compared to others—to be the perfect guest. She asked for little, praised what she was offered, and made her formal bow to Kieri along with the other foreign ambassadors at a reception that evening. Close up, she had remnants of beauty, her ice-blue eyes not at all dulled by age. The lines of her face suggested someone who laughed easily, and indeed she had a merry twinkle in her eye as she was introduced and the herald stumbled over her Pargunese title.

  “It would be a delight to my old age,” she said, in the brief seconds allowed each guest, “to see peace between our lands. I am only an old woman—” Patently false, Kieri knew. “—but I have seen faults on both sides, begging your pardon.”

  “War brings anger, and anger brings ill judgment,” Kieri said. What a clever man the king of Pargun was, to send an old woman as his envoy of peace! He smiled at her. “I have no delight in war, though I am good at it.” Offer and warning.

  “Indeed you are,” she said, smiling up at him. “May peace bless both our houses.” Then she turned, and the long train of her Pargunese dress rustled along behind her.

  Kirgan Marrakai scowled at her, being young and rash, Kieri noted, but most others remained coolly polite. Kieri’s elven grandmother spoke to Hanlin of Pargun, but Kieri could not hear their brief conversation. He hoped his grandmother would tell him later.

  The talk he could hear concerned the coming ceremony or—annoyingly—his marriage prospects. On the edge of his hearing, quickly hushed if he neared, were speculations about what he might like, which style of beauty, which accomplishments. He noticed that every Sier had brought along a daughter or granddaughter or niece, and he wondered about the young elven woman at his grandmother’s side.

  He sought out the Kirgan Marrakai, with whom he could talk horses at least, but that young man was all too obviously interested in the young women. They did talk horse breeding, and the kirgan had ideas about which strains of Lyonyan horses the Marrakai blood would nick with, but his eyes kept straying to one girl after another. “I’m boring you,” Kieri said at last.

  Kirgan Marrakai turned red. “No—no, my lord king, not at all. I’m sorry—I just haven’t seen—”

  Kieri laughed. “At your age, I was the same. Tomorrow there will be dancing, and you can meet them there—or I can introduce you.”

  The kirgan shook his head. “No, my lord, please! I am not here to—to prance about with foreign women—”

  “That’s what your father said, am I right?”

  “
Yes.”

  “Well, when else will you have the chance? You’re a well-bred, mannerly young man; you won’t do anything stupid. Have your fun—meet them, talk to them. They know as well as you that it’s not serious.”

  “But I’m supposed to be Mikeli’s envoy—”

  “And you are, and I’ve accepted you as such. Now go enchant some of my younger subjects and keep them from making sheep’s eyes at me.”

  The kirgan grinned. “As it is a royal order—”

  “It is.”

  “I obey with pleasure.” And he was gone, intercepting three who had been heading for their corner, no doubt to flirt with Kieri.

  “What do you think of her?” Sier Halveric said, with a nod to the lady of Pargun.

  “A good choice,” Kieri said. “If she does nothing overt, we can’t kill her. She’s obviously intelligent, and as people trust an old woman with her personality, they will tell her everything we wish they would not. She will go home stuffed with information like a southern date with chopped nuts. We can do nothing about that but note who talks most.”

  “I’m still worried about your safety.”

  “True, old ladies don’t fear death,” Kieri said. “If she wanted me dead—and she might—she would not hesitate to strike though it meant her own end. But I think her plots are subtler than that. She wants to know me, and take word back to Pargun of my weaknesses. It will be an interesting few days.”

  “If she asks a private audience—”

  “Alas, my time is already committed, since I did not know she was coming, and I cannot ask one of those already promised an audience to yield to her.”

  “Thank the gods for that much,” Halveric murmured.

  “You’re really worried,” Kieri said.

  “Yes. Perhaps the Lady will know why.”

  The Kostandanyan envoy bustled up and Kieri greeted him; Sier Halveric slipped away. Count Arpad began the chat with a question about the two Kostandanyan mercenary commanders Kieri had known in Aarenis—such different personalities. Kieri agreed: Sofi Ganarrion, flamboyant and socially ambitious, had been nothing like Count Visan Vladiorhynsich, grim and controlled. Arpad went on: And the Ganarrion girl marrying a southern noble, was that true?

  “Sofi was trying to arrange it, but I hadn’t heard lately.”

  “Well. You know what he claims—”

  Kieri nodded. Sofi had dropped hints many times of his royal connections. Arpad talked on, finally bringing the conversation around to Alured the Black, the pirate-turned-forest-brigand-turned-ally who now claimed to rule a third of Aarenis.

  “He’s a very ambitious man, Alured,” Kieri said. His mind wandered to Arcolin, now in Alured’s reach with only one cohort. Would he remember how dangerous Alured was?

  “You’ve met him, then.”

  “Oh, yes. Much younger than I, with a gift for command but also for cruelty.”

  “No danger to us in the north, of course, but for alliances,” the envoy said.

  “I would not be too sure,” Kieri said. “I deem Alured dangerous, wherever he may be.”

  “Then surely it is unwise for any blood close to ours to become involved down there.” The envoy stopped and gave Kieri a meaningful glance.

  Kieri stifled a chuckle. “What cause have you to interfere?” he asked instead, though he began to see what might be coming. “If her father approves—”

  “We are supposed to give permission—”

  Admission enough that Sofi’s occasional boasts were probably true.

  “But I’m sure if someone with a more illustrious title were to offer for her—” the envoy went on.

  Kieri raised his brows. “More illustrious than the ancient title of Fall?”

  “Well, there is one.” The envoy gave him a meaningful look. Kieri almost laughed.

  “I’m afraid Sofi and I have had words too often,” he said instead. “And besides, isn’t the girl already in the south? I could hardly leave Lyonya to go pluck her out of the Duke of Fall’s castle before the wedding.”

  “We have others,” the envoy said, a bit sulkily.

  “It is too early for me to think of marriage,” Kieri said.

  “It is never too early to secure the succession,” the envoy said. Kieri remembered that the Kostandanyan princes were usually married off before they reached majority.

  “I’m sorry,” Kieri said, nodding across the room as if in answer to someone. “But I must see my seneschal—”

  Out of the room, in the passage, it was quieter and cooler. Kieri went on, flanked by his Squires, to the small parlor he’d had readied in case he needed it. Here, where he expected solitude, he found the Lady of the Ladysforest, his elven grandmother. As at their first meeting, he was at first struck dumb by her beauty and power; she appeared no older than a maid of twenty but carried with her the silvery radiance of the elvenhome kingdom, a glow that expressed her power. She smiled.

  “If you need solitude, Kieri, I will go, but I was hoping to talk to you about the Pargunese lady.”

  “As long as you do not talk to me about marriage, I am content,” Kieri said. “I just escaped from the Kostandanyan envoy, who would like me to marry one of Sofi Ganarrion’s daughters.”

  “Isn’t he—”

  “A mercenary commander in Aarenis who claims some connection to that throne, yes.” Kieri sank into one of the chairs. “I know Sofi. I would not marry one of his get for all the gold in the mountains.”

  “Then let us speak of the lady of Pargun,” his grandmother said. “A subtle woman, for a human; more layers than an onion. What did you think of her?”

  “The same,” Kieri said. “She spoke to me of peace between our realms, and laid fault on both sides for past conflicts.”

  “So also would we, if we were asked,” the Lady said. “Though I suspect we would apportion it differently than she. Was it then an offer of truce or an end to war?”

  “Not really,” Kieri said. He glanced at the table where he had arranged refreshments; before he or a Squire could move, the Lady poured water into two goblets and brought them to hand—all without moving. Kieri repressed the shiver he felt. He had seen her use greater magicks, but this homely familiarity chilled him. “We agreed that war is unpleasant, that peace is preferable—but that is all. I find it hard to trust such statements from a Pargunese.” He took a swallow of water.

  “She may find it hard to trust them from you,” the Lady said. “I think it is a good thing that the word was so much as mentioned between you. If this enmity could end—do you truly want it to end, Grandson?”

  “I do,” Kieri said.

  “Then you must make the effort.”

  “Without risking the security of the realm.” On that he would not yield even to the Lady.

  “I do not ask you to do that,” she said. “But security is not just a matter of armies and weapons. It is also a matter of friendships.”

  Kieri tried to imagine being friends with the king of Pargun and failed. “I understand that,” he said. “Yet the Pargunese and Tsaians have been enemies for a very long time.”

  “And you are not Tsaian. This is a chance for a new relationship, Grandson. Do not waste it.” She rose and was out of the room before he could say more, withdrawing her light.

  Kieri looked at his Squires, both of whom looked alarmed. “I have been scolded,” he said. “And perhaps she has the right of it.”

  “The elves always want peace, Sir King,” Edrin said. “And peace is a good thing; nobody questions that. But sometimes … sometimes it just can’t be.”

  “They can withdraw to the elvenhomes,” Panin said. “It’s easy for them to avoid conflict.”

  “They are as the gods made them,” Kieri said. “After a lifetime of war, I am finding that I, too, yearn for peace. And I don’t think it’s entirely my elven blood.”

  “Yet every day you find time for sword practice,” Edrin said.

  “Of course,” Kieri said. “Wanting peace does not bring it
… and if trouble comes, a king or a realm must be prepared.” He stretched, and stood. “Besides—I like swordwork. It’s like riding, that way—it forces concentration, and thus opens up the world. But now, it’s time to return, before someone thinks I’ve fallen asleep.”

  The reception was just as noisy as ever, but the room quieted as he entered. “My friends,” Kieri said, “I am reminded that tomorrow is the coronation and I, at least, must have some rest and the palace must prepare a feast. I would not stint your pleasure, but perhaps—”

  “Of course, Sir King,” Sier Halveric said, picking up the cue neatly. “We also have duties tomorrow and it would be well to rest now.” He collected his family, and the others, the nobles and the envoys, all found a place in the line that snaked past Kieri, bowing and speaking farewell. At last they were gone, and Kieri went upstairs to his own chamber.

  Out the window, a clear night, heavy with stars. He stood there awhile, smelling the fresh air, the sweetness of the first flowers just coming into bloom, looking at the stars, memory and hope melding as he thought of the next morning. He had come home, but too late for his family; he had become what his father had once hoped, but by a path that might make him fail … no, he would not think of that. He went into the bathing room without lighting a candle, stripped, dipped some of the cold water waiting for morning and a fire to become his bath, and washed off the sweat and smell of the evening. He still found Lyonyan nightclothes strange; he pulled on his old nightshirt, hung the sword on its hook by the bed, and stretched only once before falling asleep.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Dorrin Verrakai rode into Harway at the head of her cohort, still wearing Phelan’s maroon and white. She had briefed Selfer on what she expected, and on what her new powers were. She told him what Paks and the Knight-Commander had said about the melding of her years of military experience with the magery, about Falk’s blessing. Selfer nodded, though he said little; she thought he was less worried than before about the magery. She repeated what she’d told Kieri, that in their last session, she had held an entire Field of Falk motionless at once and stopped arrows in flight so they hung in the air.