by Amy Bai
They thundered past, dividing around him like water around a rock, and met the two men Hewet was fending off. Those men flew out of their saddles and landed on the ground, and the four coming up behind them drew up hard. Devin wrenched his horse around, pulling at the reins when the damned animal went lightfooted and then tried to launch off in a different direction with another wild burst of speed—it had less sense than he did. He wrestled them to a halt a safe distance away. The sword tried to fall out of his lap. The flute was digging into his hand. He could feel the beat of his pulse in every part of him.
Everyone stopped.
"Lovely day for a ride," said one of the new arrivals. Half the air in Devin's body blew out of him in a furious gust as his father pulled off a wide-brimmed traveler's hat to survey the mess. "Where are you headed, sirs? Sarmin? Or is it perhaps points east?"
The Western band clustered together under the watchful eyes of the soldiers. The two who had fallen mounted carefully, moving as though it hurt.
"We spotted them at Savvys village," one of them said, defensive and angry. "We thought they were poachers."
A plausible claim, Devin thought—except nothing they'd done suggested they were chasing law-breakers, nor that they themselves were keepers of laws.
Hewet rode up, running a worried eye over Devin. Devin gave the look right back, and tore some of the wrapping from his sword to toss to his guard. "You're bleeding," he said, pointing to the man's temple.
The words earned a measure of quiet from the rest of the gathered men. Sixteen pairs of eyes locked on the slow trickle of blood making its way down Hewet's jaw. Devin realized what he'd said, and what it suggested, and he shut his mouth with a click of teeth.
"Just a rock thrown up during the ride, my lord," Hewet said, his voice soft and cool despite the sweat running down his skin.
"I should hope so," Devin's father said, just as soft, but ever so much colder. "I would hate to think the king's peace had been broken on so fine a day as this."
One of Westerners in the huddled group rode forward. He wore nothing to distinguish him from the rest, but he carried himself like he was accustomed to giving orders and having them followed. It was a look Devin was all too familiar with. This man didn't manage it nearly as well as his father did. "It was, as he said, only a rock. No one here has drawn." His eyes narrowed, raking over the general's face. "Who are you?"
"Niall Corwynall."
The name blew through the small band like a wind over a field: they all moved, and blinked.
"Far from your lands, great lord," the man said, venom and curiosity mingling in his voice. "Quite far." Devin held his breath, feeling the burning weight of that man's eyes when they fell on him. He was very glad the horse Duchess Armelle had lent him for this journey possessed such a bent for speed. He didn't want to think about how this might have turned out otherwise.
His father leaned back easily in the saddle, as though this were a discussion among friends, and waved a hand expansively. No one there could mistake it for anything but sarcasm.
"It is, as I said, a fine day for a ride," he said. "You seem to agree, sir, being out here as you are, enjoying the border road and the fine, eastern province of Syndimn. I've no wish to interrupt; I'll let you get back to it. I'm sure you have someplace to be. I suggest it is across the Deepwash. Good day."
They stared at one another. The man's gaze flicked to Devin, flicked away. Devin held very still, feeling like a mouse under a cat's eye. Then the Western leader made a curt gesture and the six of them marshaled into a tight formation and rode off without a word, looking almost indifferent, except for the stiffness of their backs.
Devin let the breath he'd been holding slide out of him slowly, and slipped the flute back into his pocket.
"Padraik, Vanyel, see that they make it across safely," his father said, still perfectly cold and soft, which was the general about as angry as he ever got. Two men rode away without a word, keeping a careful distance from the Westerners. The rest of them turned in mutual agreement and began riding north.
"Sarmin Mill," Devin said, remembering.
"We took the bridge decking down," his father said calmly, putting the hat back on his head. "You weren't expected, son of mine."
"And yet, here you are."
"Armelle sent a courier when she couldn't talk you out of this notion. As I had no time to send you an escort, it seemed prudent to meet you on the road. I trust you've a good reason for this, boy."
"No, you don't," Devin muttered, and rolled his eyes when his father bent that look on him: the look stubborn soldiers and slow servants and misbehaving children received. It promised scathing politeness, delivered in the same tone that had worked so well on the Westerners, followed soon after by grim impatience, and eventually by a temper that never involved shouting but scattered people before it nonetheless, like a hard wind.
It felt oddly like home, and seemed far less terrifying that he remembered from just half a year ago, and he smiled fondly back. His father tipped his head curiously and raised an eyebrow.
"When did it get this bad?" Devin asked instead of trying to explain himself. He didn't really have an explanation, just an impulse, and now that the sheer fright of the past hour had begun to fade, he only had the same ache in his guts that he'd been living with for the past few days.
"Before your sister left, young fool," his father shot back, then frowned at the road ahead. Or at the very faint line of the mountains, little more than purplish shadows far in the distance. Kyali was somewhere in them, batting at things with that ridiculous sword of hers, shouting at whatever got in her way, scowling at whatever didn't immediately bend itself to her will, and writing the occasional pithy letter home.
He wasn't sure which of them missed her more, but he suspected it was his father.
"I think I'm keeping this horse," Devin said thoughtfully, a statement related to nothing in particular. He patted the sweaty, black-maned neck, and the contrary animal kicked out with a back leg and shook its head. He grinned. "He suits me."
"Twelve tempers for every moment and an amazing reliance on blind luck, you mean?" his father asked dryly, and one of the men at their backs snorted a hastily smothered laugh. "Perhaps he'll learn to sing and break the crockery, as well. What in hells were you doing, Devin?"
"Running," Devin said, unrepentant. "Somehow it seemed the thing to do."
"You might have asked yourself if there was a chance of ambush ahead."
"That occurred to me."
"Oh, did it."
"It occurred to me a bit late," Devin admitted; his father made an exasperated noise, which he hadn't known he'd missed hearing until just now, and shook his head. "Well," he added. "I did try to clear the way."
"With shadows and a breeze?"
He could feel a flush beginning to creep out of his collar. Gods damn it. "If you were hoping for a son who could call down lightning and crack trees, Father, you should probably have sent me north, not south. All I learned in Orin was how to make Armelle turn purple with fury."
The look his father sent him this time was both irritated and weary. "Nothing more."
"I can recite the name and course of every star in the heavens and brew you a transformative tea, if you like. And I do believe I've learned a new verse to 'Under the Haystack'." The soldiers behind them were definitely laughing now. "But that's not why you sent me there," Devin added, nearly sure of that. The laughter fell off into quiet as his father sighed and scanned the land ahead of them.
"It's certainly one reason why I sent you there," he said.
"But not all of it. Not nearly all. You wanted me out of the way. Is Taireasa all right?"
He'd worried over that many nights. She wrote—certainly more often and more honestly than his little sister ever would—but Taireasa never told anyone her great troubles, not unless she was caught in the middle of dealing with one. She was much like Kyali in that.
His father eyed him askance and Devin huffed,
knowing the answer he had to give to get the news he'd asked for. Father hadn't changed at all.
"I have no idea why I left," he said curtly. It was more than a little embarrassing. "I just woke up with a head full of odd dreams and a belly full of odd aches, and I had to come home, and here I am."
Strangely, that didn't result in the annoyed look he was quite sure it deserved; instead, the general went expressionless and serious. "And that's done now, is it?"
"What's done?—Oh. No," Devin said. "Or, well... I don't know. Not very. It's better than it was. I can think. Don't say it," he sighed as his father opened his mouth, no doubt to issue some clever witticism about how seldom his son thought under the best of circumstances, and the general flashed half a smile. "Not yet, I suppose. Why are you asking me about this? It's not anything but—but vapors, or a bad kettle of stew."
"Your sister will be heading this way soon, I expect," his father murmured, and Devin felt his jaw drop. He shut it after a moment.
"So it's magic?" His father only looked at him. "I'd have bet on stew," Devin grumbled. A thought occurred to him, one worth almost as much fear as the mad chase of the last hour. "Kyali's coming, you say? Does that mean they'll be holding the vote soon?"
"Within the fortnight."
Gods. Poor Taireasa. He scowled at his horse's ears. "How many more Western barons have come to the capital?"
"All of them."
And between them, he and Kyali, they had left Taireasa alone to deal with this. She would spend the rest of her life dealing with it, in one way or another, and she did it far better than anyone else he knew, but still. Guilt crept over him, stealing some of the warmth from the day. He had no idea what to do to help her. He had no idea what to do, at all.
He wasn't sure his father did, either. Undecking the bridges suggested he was braced for something rather worse than a political ambush, but what, exactly, Devin didn't think any of them knew.
"What should I do?" he asked, and heard the echo to an hour ago and a very different set of circumstances that had the same cause, but a far simpler solution.
He got no answer, which was the answer he'd expected.
CHAPTER 8
Crickets murmured to each other and hidden tree frogs sang to the faraway hazy stars. The barley rustled in the night breeze, standing out eerily in the dark against the distant trees and the sky. There was a scent of straw and earth in the cool air.
The nose knew it, as ears knew the creaking of the old oak—as bare feet remembered the feel of dew-wet grass and hard-packed dirt still holding the heat of the day. Nose and ears and feet informed heart, which beat harder, and knew itself home. Kyali pressed a hand to her lips, frozen in place for a breathless, glad moment. A guard turned the corner. She melted into the shadow of the house, suddenly feeling foolish with her boots in her hand. She dodged her way to the kitchen entrance, appalled at how easily she skirted the watch, and slipped inside.
Once in, she set down her boots and padded barefoot into the dining room, meaning to creep to her bed and leave all homecomings and explanations for morning.
She met, instead, a faint silhouette sitting at the table in the dark. Her hands dropped to the daggers at her hips. She froze again, wishing she'd thought to duck under the window; the faint moonlight would mark her clearly.
The figure turned, became a profile that pushed the breath out of her lungs.
Her father stood quickly. The chair scraped over the floor with a clatter. In the next instant, his arms were hard around her, and that all-but-forgotten scent of leather and horse and ale was everywhere. She put her own arms around him, helpless to do anything else. The ache that had sat in her throat for days spilled into her eyes. She swallowed, refusing to let it get past that. They stood, pressing the air from one another, for a long moment. Then he set her back from him and looked her over in the dark.
"Well," he murmured. "Well. You've grown. You surprised me."
And that, she supposed wryly, was all the welcome she would get. But his fingers bit fiercely into her shoulders and his eyes glowed like candles in the gloom. Hers surely did the same. "The impulsiveness of youth," Kyali said, finding her voice. "Has it been quiet here, then?"
Her father gestured her to a chair, taking another as she sat. She could feel his gaze on her. There was no need for a light to tell her it was there.
"Quiet enough, though your brother has done his best to mend that state of affairs. He arrived a few days ago. Most of the commotion is at the capital these days. Farrell was kind enough to allow me to retire to the estate for the duration of negotiations."
The lightness in his voice was less irony than strain. The last courier hadn't overstated things, then—not if her father couldn't brush her off with his usual equanimity. She wondered what else had come apart in the careful dance of power and threat that was the East’s relations with their Western cousins, and the dread coiled in the pit of her stomach put down roots.
With an effort, she matched his tone. "And the guard over the house?" she asked, fearing the worst.
His low chuckle shook the table. "Ah, now, I had need of more soldiers around, being such an important man. Though I fear you've missed most of them; I sent them off a few days ago."
She nodded as some of the tension left her shoulders. King Farrell still trusted him, then. And did not trust this incursion of Western barons. Taireasa's father was a cautious man who preferred negotiation to action. And her father was just the opposite. "To the border, I hope."
"It seemed prudent."
They sat in silence. Kyali stretched in defiance of the sense of threat all about, waiting to fall upon them.
"Well, it will be pleasant to rest at home in all this evident peace and quiet."
"You haven't lost your penchant for understatement, I see."
"You talk as little as I remember."
"And you seem to have learned a bit more about listening. That's good. Go to bed. We’ll head to the capital tomorrow after breakfast."
A second's thought told her that sleep was the wisest course. There was no possible retort to this last statement, and the general never did dally once he decided a conversation was finished. She rose, and he did, and she gathered up the bundle on the floor.
"Good rest to you, Father."
His silhouette made a mocking bow in her direction.
She found her room by memory in the dark. She would rather save her brother for morning, when she hoped to be more settled. But Devin's door, at the other end of the hall from hers, stood open, a slightly darker darkness exuding a whiff of the oil he used on his gitars. Devin himself was no more than a glitter of eyes in that shadow. She paused, and heard him sigh.
"Is it well, then?" he mumbled, half-asleep.
"Is it ever?" she quipped, grateful for the dark.
A snort. Devin turned, knocked some part of himself on the door, hissed a drowsy curse. "I missed your pancakes," he said, and shuffled back into the dark, toward his bed. Kyali leaned a moment against the threshold of her own door before slipping inside.
Her rooms stood as they had on the night she had left, two years ago. Oddly touched, she removed armor and clothing, found an old and comfortable nightgown that no longer fit, and curled gratefully under the covers.
* * *
There was something crawling on her nose. She was sure of it.
A review of recent events informed her that she was indeed home, and that, being home, spiders were a reasonable assumption when one awoke from a sleep in this fashion. One of her hands flew up to flick away the crawling thing. The other, grown too independent in two years of training, had her sword drawn in an instant. There was a yelp from nearby, and Kyali came fully awake in horror and pulled back.
The sword fell to the floor with a clatter and her brother scrambled back from the bed, wide-eyed with alarm, tangling himself in the chair in his haste. He fell with a much greater clatter, and a breathlessly obscene exclamation. A large barn spider skittered up the wall.<
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She shuddered and turned to shout at her brother—but the sight of Devin’s slipper-clad feet pointed skyward sent her into a helpless fit of laughter instead. He pulled himself to his knees and glared. She wheezed and flapped a hand at him, unable to speak.
His scowl trembled into a reluctant grin: Devin was nothing if not able to laugh at himself. He leaned against the mattress, snickering, and Kyali fell back into the pillows and threw an arm over her face, trying without success to stop laughing.
"Gods," her brother finally moaned. "I'd forgotten how quickly things take a turn for the absurd when you're in residence."
Kyali wiped her eyes. "I? It was you who ended up on the floor."
"Your memory always was uncertain. Two years have done nothing to improve it, I see. Pity."
"Oh, so that was deliberate! Was it a new dance step?"
"Hush, you starry-eyed Síog brat. What business had you defending yourself from a spider with a sword? Were you going to cut off your own nose? Though it's long enough, I'll grant you, to warrant trimming. Is that really what they taught you?"
She hugged a pillow, stung in spite of herself. Devin’s look was amused and wondering, and she remembered with weary resignation the stares of the fieldhands—the expectations of strangers. She wanted none of that from Devin, who bore the same sort of weight, but (though she could never say it) with more grace.
He was taller. And broader. His skin was sun-darkened, and there were secrets in his eyes that hadn't been there before. She imagined he was seeing more or less the same thing, in a different form.
And between them the words of a dead prophet still hung, heavier than stone.
The locket at his throat winked sunlight from the window and she suffered a sudden chill, remembering how she had stared at her own as she felt for the wound that should have killed her. It was hard to believe that was only two days ago.
"Among other things," she muttered, trying to find her balance.
Devin leaned forward, clearly expecting more. "What?" her brother gibed. "Didn't we learn the secrets of creation? I've awaited revelations by letter. Your last was uninformative, to say the least. Though pithy." His tone gentled. "I thought I ought to give you a proper welcome before we expect you to conquer the world."
