King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  They stood directly across from Daggers Drawn, the tavern belonging exclusively to the academy boys. There was the weather-worn fox sign with its oddly raptorish face, the same face on Inda’s fleet foresails: the academy fox banner.

  “It’s strange,” Evred said, expelling his breath in a not-quite-laugh, “but I have never looked inside that place.”

  Inda acted on impulse. “Then you shall now.”

  Chapter Eleven

  THE custom in those days was for boys new to the academy to be introduced to Daggers Drawn by their fathers. In the cases of boys invited as a result of superior service on their fathers’ part, they were introduced by the nearest relative of the Jarl in whose territory they lived. When Inda came to the academy, it was the first year younger brothers were invited, so older brothers (or cousins) were expected to introduce the newcomers.

  Aldren-Sierlaef, Evred’s brother, had so resented this change in tradition he had refused to introduce his brother, and no one else had dared to bring Evred, or to prompt the king, who never thought of it, as he’d had no interest in the place when he was young.

  Inda hadn’t thought about Daggers Drawn since he was a homesick sea rat on the Pim Ryala, but now, as he looked at the worn sign with the fading fox face, all the emotions of those days crowded back into his mind.

  “I’ll introduce you.” Inda took Evred’s arm. The muscle tensed under his fingers. Puzzled, Inda said, “It’s all right.” Though he had been long away from the customs of home he didn’t make the mistake of pointing out that Evred was king, that the entire city obeyed his will. “You haven’t a father now, or a brother, except me, through marriage. Let’s see if old Mun’s still alive. I was only there once, as it happens. The day Tanrid introduced me.”

  “I know. I saw how you and the others never went.”

  “You did? But we were so careful not to say anything. Well, and it wasn’t like a great vow or anything. We, that is, some of us didn’t want to be all gone and you alone in the scrub pit. Did they all stay with it, then, after I was taken away?”

  As if I hadn’t noticed, Evred thought, and the memory of their innocence, their uncalculating good will, was a knife-strike of bittersweet anguish.

  Aware of the stiffness of his hands, Evred clasped them tightly behind his back. “Oh, more or less,” he said. “Kepa sneaked over whenever he thought the others didn’t notice, usually taking Lassad. But the others, I think, never got into the habit. We made our own secret meeting places. And when we got older, I could always bring food. Nobody was going to punish us for that.”

  Inda plunged across the street, moving with a slight stiffness in his walk that made Evred wonder if he carried more severe wounds not visible to the eye.

  Inda paused outside the Daggers door. “I don’t hear boys.”

  “No, the scrubs would be in the stable picking hooves, the pigtails out with the scout dogs, now that the weather’s finally broken—” Evred shook his head. “Never mind.”

  But Inda looked surprised and delighted. “You run ’em all now, right?” He sniffed the air. “And a very late spring. Those pits must be pret-ty chilly.” He grinned in remembrance, using the old slang word, pit, for barracks.

  “Winter was reluctant to let go this year. The boys have been shivering here for a month, and the last snow melted scarcely a week ago.”

  Inda gave one of those “Hah!” laughs of memory as he swung inside the tavern, his head barely clearing the low door. Evred ducked his head and followed.

  “Mun! You here? Maybe you won’t remember me—”

  “I do. Indevan-Laef.” Kethan Mundavan was the proprietor, a retired lancer the boys were privileged to address by his academy name, Mun. He was grayer, stiffer, but very much alive, his eyes alert as he and his grand-nephew polished glasses. “You’ve got a look of your brother.”

  Was every reminder of Tanrid going to hurt like stepping on glass? Inda opened his hand. “I’m here to present my brother-by-marriage, Evred-Harvaldar Montrei-Vayir.”

  Tau might have smiled; Jeje would have laughed, believing them to be participating in an elaborate joke, but to the Marlovans everything was as it should be. The city answered to the king, yet this little tavern within the city was Mun’s kingdom, and they were there by his leave.

  Mun indicated a table with his gnarled hand, and the two sat down by the fire, at the table reserved for the teenage horsetails, top of the academy ranks. Though neither had actually ridden as a horsetail, he made it plain that in his view they had earned that right.

  “Tell me about Tanrid,” Inda said, aware of Mun’s presence; the man made no pretence of not listening as Evred unlocked the memory of Tanrid’s death. He described everything he had seen, heard, thought. And what he had promised at the last.

  Inda had thought he’d wept out his grief back at the Marlo-Vayir castle that first night. Elation and sorrow chased through him now, choking up in his throat. He could so clearly see Tanrid at the end, there, saying “Inda” with his last breath.

  He rocked on his bench, deep in memory—regret—re newed grief, unaware of the lengthening silence, until the thump of two mugs of clear amber ale on the table startled him back to the present.

  Evred had fallen into watchful silence.

  Inda’s first sip caused a sudden, indrawn breath—this time of pleasure. The grief began to recede.

  “Bad ale?” Evred asked.

  “No. Good.” Inda closed his eyes, then opened them; the bright sheen of unshed tears reminded Evred of Hadand at rare, unexpected times.

  Inda set the mug down with a sigh. “So good. But why is it tastes and smells and sounds gravel you harder than sight? My scrub memories are back, and kicking like a wild colt.”

  “All the ancient Sartoran records maintain that where you experienced the most pain, or joy, plants the deepest memories.” Evred gripped his hands together under the table. He found the emotions that Inda expressed so easily impossible to ward, so that sounds were too distinct, the light sharp, his skin hurt.

  Mun carried a tray of glasses into the back, and they had the room to themselves: an old, somewhat stuffy room, smelling of boys and old drink, with its knife-scarred tables and the atmosphere of boyish presence. Both their fathers had once sat here.

  Inda said, “The last time I saw Tanrid, he came in his horsetail coat—all dressed for parade—and begged me to take that beating. I thought he was going to thrash me, sick as I was. For family honor, you see.” Inda’s gaze went diffuse as he stared into the past. “I didn’t really know him. Too busy trying to avoid his discipline. Is it right, what we have brothers do to brothers?”

  He glanced up, and Evred turned his own gaze to the fire. “I vowed to myself on my long ride home from the north that I would change everything. I would raise my own sons so they would not see me only as a distant figure to be saluted but never spoken to about things that matter. So they would not see one another as enemies.” He smiled briefly. “Barend warned me that if I expected him to raise any boys I might have, he’ll send them to sea.”

  “I was so glad to find out Barend’s alive,” Inda said. “He left us right after the pirate battle. We’d found out about his father hiring those pirates—well, you know all that, of course,” Inda finished awkwardly, remembering the quiet determination in Evred’s cousin Barend, who was usually easygoing. Barend had left Inda’s fleet determined to confront his father about this treachery that cast dishonor on the family name: Inda found out only recently that Barend’s quest touched off the Conspiracy at Hesea Springs and the deaths of nearly everyone in Barend’s family.

  “Barend nearly killed himself, trying to get back up to Lindeth to rejoin you. He’ll be glad to find out you are back home. As for raising sons, when will I do it? I understand my father a lot better now: you can rise earlier than your cooks, and go to sleep with the night watch, but you never quite stay the pace of duty.”

  The Marlovan verb understand carried connotations of forgive. But there w
asn’t time to consider Evred’s boyhood with the king. Kings were too far beyond Inda’s experience. Brothers were not.

  “We talked about it, Cherry-Stripe and Cama and I, before I left. They won’t change anything, they said, much as we used to whine and moan. How else to get tough enough to face the constant wars?”

  “Wars.” Evred fingered his mug, frowning into its glinting amber depths. Then he glanced up. “So you did not know about Tanrid’s or my father’s deaths before you left your ships and the sea. What brought you back?”

  Inda shook his head, his smile rueful. “Forgot, soon’s I saw you again. Can you believe that? Got one thump too many. The Venn are coming, Sponge. I think they’ll launch as soon as the winds make the summer change.”

  “The Venn,” Evred breathed.

  “Here’s what’s bad: they’ve been training in the plains of Ymar. I saw them a year ago. And they’ve had spies here for several years.”

  Before Inda’s eyes his old friend hardened into someone else. Already taller than Inda, he now seemed even larger, his countenance as cold and remote as his brother’s ever had been. He leaned forward. “Then I take it you did not defeat their fleet, as everyone in the north is claiming.”

  Inda snorted. “Defeat? There wasn’t even a battle. If there had been, we would have been sunk. We were a handful against eighty-one big Venn warships.”

  “Eighty-one,” Evred repeated.

  “And that’s only the primary warships. Each has seekers and raiders attached.”

  “You can explain what that means later. So what happened?”

  Inda flicked his fingers out, palms up. “Nothing! We slipped between their lines. They sailed away, and I came south.” Inda’s mug clunked to the table, empty. “We didn’t land at Lindeth—we picked an empty cove west of Marlo-Vayir. But I don’t think that’ll fool the Venn spies. They’ve got to figure I’d come to you.”

  “What do the Venn know about your past?”

  “Everything,” Inda admitted. “Got caught in Ymar. Under kinthus I yapped out everything I’ve done. I’d be there yet, or dead, if Fox Montredavan-An hadn’t got me out.”

  Fox. Evred’s lips shaped the word. Brown eyes met hazel; for Evred the sensation was like staring into the sun, and he shifted his gaze to his ale, scarcely touched.

  Inda had been looking for a sign of invitation to speak further about Fox. Though he didn’t see it, he spoke anyway. “Is there any chance of setting aside that damned treaty?” And he was about to add, Let me tell you what really happened all those years ago, but then he remembered that the villain of the real story was Evred’s own ancestor.

  And to Inda’s dismay, Evred’s features tightened in anger. Within a moment he’d schooled his face again, but Inda had seen that first reaction. And Evred saw to his undisguised shock that Inda had seen it.

  Evred toyed with the glass in his hand, fighting to regain control. He despised himself for his weakness, for revealing the most loathsome and petty of all emotions: jealousy.

  Long habit enabled him to regain an appearance of calm, of neutrality. “This is not the time to be revoking treaties—not when we’re facing the war we’ve been bracing against for years. The only thing I have to rely on with everything else slowly disintegrating is the . . . expectation, let’s call it. The expectation of tradition.”

  And Inda thought, You were right, Fox. Though Sponge is right, too. He regretted his first impulse—it was not only stupid but the worst sort of strut to expect his old scrub mate to wave away four generations of unfairness just because Inda asked him to.

  Inda made a last effort, trying to be practical. “We could probably use their men.”

  “If the Venn make it this far south, the Montredavan-Ans will need their own men, who are limited in number by treaty. They will have to defend their own land, because again, by treaty we cannot do it.” And, to get away from the subject altogether, “What does ‘as soon as the winds change’ mean? I understood you put up various sails to counter winds.”

  Inda drummed his fingers on the initial-carved tabletop, considering his words. “I take it Barend didn’t explain currents and winds and points of sail to you?”

  “He did, but I comprehended only a little, and don’t remember any of it now. Though I do remember that the Venn have ships more seaworthy than everyone else’s. Larger.”

  “All true, but they don’t sail as close to the wind as we do. Anyway, my guess is we’ll see them after summer shifts the winds into a steady stream, out of the north by northwest. Need it right on the beam.” Evred looked blank; Inda smacked his outer thigh. “Beam. It’ll give them the push they need with ships crammed to the captain’s deck with men and horses.”

  “And then what?”

  “All I have for that part is guesses. I never could get close enough to see much beyond maneuvering, but I do know Rajnir is throwing everything he has against us.” The old gestures were there, the enthusiasm for a plan.

  Evred forced his attention away from Inda himself and onto his words. “We had better leave now.” He stood, felt his pockets. His face changed. “I don’t carry coins. I’ll have to send a Runner—-”

  Mun reappeared. “Your brothers left plenty on their shots.”

  Inda and Evred started, wondering what he’d heard. Probably everything, Inda thought, trying not to laugh.

  Evred controlled his annoyance. Already he had accustomed himself to the privacy requisite to his royal rank. But he knew that Mun, an old dragoon lancer, would say nothing, and a wise king would therefore not breach his trust by commanding him to do so.

  It was, in short, their own fault for discussing the kingdom’s affairs in a tavern set aside for boys. But it had seemed right at the time.

  “There is much to be done,” Evred said only, and he saluted Mun, who saluted him back, fist to heart. And then, with equal deliberation, Mun saluted Inda. Inda returned the salute—a gesture he’d had to fight against using for nine years. It felt good down to his bones to have the right to use it again.

  They left. Inda matched Evred’s quick pace, but there was that wince again.

  Evred’s mind, given free rein, was galloping ahead: invasion, the magical communications locket, Nightingale in exactly the right position. Barend on the north coast to oversee defense of the harbors. Hawkeye Yvana-Vayir holding down the headquarters at Ala Larkadhe. All of them courageous and reliable within their limits, but not a one to defend the land against the Venn . . .

  Unknown spies—information—map—Barend, who cannot lead an army—

  —Mun’s salute to Inda—to a commander—

  —to a Harskialdna—

  Harskialdna.

  Which of them had shifted the subject away from Evred’s uncle’s actions nine years ago? Sustained through all these ideas skirmishing for precedence was guilt, intensified by the faint grimace that occasionally narrowed Inda’s eyes as they walked: Evred attributed it to the nine years of his unkept promise of justice.

  He said, speaking low and rapid, his heartbeat loud in his own ears, “You have the right to demand justice of me.” The answer was clear, as clear and right as sun and wind and life. “My uncle ruined you because you were loyal. My brother killed yours. It is right, it is just, that you shall lead the army against the invaders.”

  Inda jerked round to face him.

  There. The words were spoken, Evred could not call them back. Not that he wished to. His sudden joy, the dizzying sense of rightness, was far too intense for that. A glance. There was no answering joy in Inda’s face—

  You have the right to demand justice . . . Inda stared back, stunned. That wasn’t justice, it was something so different he could not define it, or even express his reaction. Yet Sponge stood there in the street, his hazel eyes wide, unblinking, awaiting an answer.

  Inda tried to gauge him, why he’d done that, and discovered that he couldn’t really gauge Sponge. He’d never been able to. He’d never had to, when they were boys. Sponge had talk
ed so freely about everything, excepting only his family, and his feelings. Now “Sponge” was Evred-Harvaldar, and wasn’t it treason to gainsay a king?

  “It was your uncle, not you, who denied me justice,” Inda began slowly. “And your brother who had Tanrid murdered.”

  Evred flushed. “But I was the one who made a vow.”

  Inda realized that Evred felt guilty. Why? He had done his best for Tanrid and Inda both, Inda could see that. If only Cherry-Stripe’s damned boots didn’t rub the damned blisters so!

  “We will ride north together. You will command the defense. Who better to fight the Venn than one who has already fought them?”

  Evred’s voice took on authority in Inda’s ears; Evred himself was only aware of the overwhelming sense of rightness that Inda ride at his side to defend their homeland.

  Inda expelled his breath. “If Barend agrees.”

  “He will.”

  Evred spoke with conviction; Inda heard a royal order.

  And so he struck his fist against his heart, and Evred laughed with pleasure, and said again, “There is much to be done.” Adding, “We will do it together.”

  Chapter Twelve

  THE yip-yip of boys echoed through the open windows of the tower the women ascended before entering the residence portion of the castle. To Signi it was a barbaric, horrible sound, like foxes on the hunt, only more horrible because of the intelligence and anticipation shaping those shrill voices.

  She followed the Marlovan women upstairs and along a narrow hallway, her hands folded on her bag, eyes downcast, her posture one of deference, though her muscles were tense as a humming string. Inda was gone, leaving her alone among enemies in this bewildering castle, and she could not understand more than occasional words or phrases of the quick, strange-accented Marlovan, their shared Venn roots notwithstanding.

  She was not angry with Inda. She had seen in the tautness of his body as they approached this city, and in his joyful welcome of those he had loved longest, that at that moment there was no room in his mind for anyone, or anything, else.