King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  Inda stepped back abruptly, his earrings winking bloodred.

  But Inda’s reaction was not nearly as intense as Evred’s own self-loathing: thinking with his own prick, wasn’t he, with all that agonizing over the angel-faced fellow he’d dismissed with the women? Who mounted the wrong horse first?

  “As do Marlovans,” Evred said, breathing out hard. All the tension went out of his manner; he forced his voice to neutrality. “And probably Venn as well. Tell me about this woman. Why you brought her.”

  Inda groped for words. “Signi can’t be a spy—her life is forfeit if she ever goes back. You know about their deep water navigation, right?”

  “I remember Barend speaking of it.” Evred’s heart was beating fast.

  “Well, she was on her way to Sartor to offer that knowledge to the Sartoran Mage Council, who in turn could give it to the world. Level things up on the sea. And circumvent Prince Rajnir’s plans. He’s the Venn heir, you know. He doesn’t just want us, he wants our entire continent.”

  “So your mage is a traitor to her own people?”

  Inda shook his head. “It’s not betrayal, don’t you see? It’s a greater cause. She was chosen, by one of their own, and lost everything in trying to see it through. Because I caught her. And then, well, by the time I learned all that, events brought us here.”

  Evred now stood with his hands clasped behind his back, as he studied the weatherworn stones of the street. Reassured that the king was not in danger, the wall sentries turned their attention away and resumed their pacing.

  Evred’s thoughts, accustomed now to the never-ending pressure of kingship, picked up the race yet again. He scouted ahead of Inda, because he must, but the first unreasoning rush of joy had been muted. “I see that there is far more here than I assumed, but we will have the time to explain. And your other woman? Is she also a mage?”

  Inda laughed. “Jeje! No, Jeje came along to protect me against the wiles of kings.” Inda’s delight was the old transparent Inda—he expected his academy mate to share the jest.

  Evred forced a smile. “I see! Behold me rabbiting with fear. Listen, Inda. I need to give some orders. Rearrange the day’s events so that we can discuss our plans, and you must watch the horsetail drills. You must also,” he added, “speak to Tdor.”

  They had reached the great gate, where the next watch’s perimeter patrol riders reined in at the unexpected sight of the king, some stroking the tossing heads of their impatient horses.

  Inda stopped to let them ride past, but they waited. Evred walked past, head bent and expression absorbed—another reminder that Inda was back among Marlovans, where everyone had a rank and a place.

  “Tdor,” Inda repeated as he followed. “Is she here?”

  “You did not see her? She was there with Hadand and me.”

  Inda’s smile was rueful. “I saw Hadand, and you, and next thing I knew we were at Daggers.”

  “You will see her anon,” Evred said, his plans now made. “Come, let’s go through to the academy. I have business that cannot wait, but I will give you an escort, and rejoin you the moment I can.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  SIGNI had begun to compose herself for the inevitable. Jeje answered Shendan’s rapid questions, which switched to Marlovan and back again like stormy wind shifts at sea. Jeje had picked up a lot of Marlovan on the ride from Cherry-Stripe’s. While she talked, she watched Signi, who seemed more and more still and silent.

  Jeje finished with, “Finally there was the mystery rescue. Inda got captured when scouting the Venn in Ymar, and Fox went in alone and got him out. By the time the news got to Bren, before the Venn cut off anyone leaving Ymar, the gossip was that the two of ’em set fire to half the kingdom.”

  “Good,” Shen stated, and then gave a fierce laugh. “I hope they burned it all down.”

  Signi pressed her hands together; Tdor felt a wave of compassion when she saw tension in Signi’s fingers.

  Jeje shrugged. “Dunno. All we know is the Venn are coming.”

  “Coming after Inda and Fox?” Shen asked.

  “More like after all of us. Marlovans, too. Invasion.”

  “What exactly happened in Ymar? Before they torched it, I mean?”

  “Inda won’t say.” Jeje’s voice was unexpectedly deep. “Anyone who dares ask Fox gets a nasty ‘Convince me it’s your business first’ for their pains.”

  Shen laughed again. “That’s my brother! So what is Foxy doing now? Why didn’t he come home?”

  Jeje turned a helpless look Signi’s way, struggling to find diplomatic words.

  Shen flung up a hand to forestall her. “Never mind. I can see the shuffle coming. Save your breath for your soup. I will ask Inda himself.”

  Dread tightened Signi’s neck at the casual reference to impending war. Her own chief Dag, Brit Valda, had said years ago, It is a shame when we must regard a people as an enemy. It is a shame and a regret when the two peoples share so much. And it is a shame, a regret, and a tragedy when those peoples meet as individuals and find much to admire. Signi knew that if Inda were to meet Fulla Durasnir, the commander of the Southern Fleet, they would probably become fast friends. If they could meet anywhere but in battle, that is, when they would do their best to kill one another because duty to king and country and honor required it.

  Signi no longer regarded the Marlovans as enemies. So she cherished the spring-green glow around Hadand when she observed her with the Yaga Ydrasal, the Inward Eye of the Golden Tree. Green was good, it was the new life of the bud; so too was the rich tree-bark brown of Tdor’s spirit. These were good women, Signi could see it in their spirits, even if she could not yet understand many of their words to one another.

  Shendan had just asked where Inda was when another of the women in blue entered. She spoke softly to Hadand, with a fast, revealing peek Signi’s way.

  Comes my trial, Signi thought. Here was the first hard rock in her road, as inevitable as rain.

  Tdor watched uneasily as Signi rose in a swift, dignified manner, put her palms together, and followed Tesar out.

  Hadand observed Signi’s resignation, and wondered how much she’d understood, despite Jeje’s assurance that Signi did not comprehend Marlovan. Was it possible she was a spy?

  As soon as the door shut behind Tesar and Signi, Hadand took a deep breath. “It seems that she is a Venn.” And turned a questioning look Jeje’s way.

  Jeje said, “Inda trusts her. Well, she’s the one who got us free o’ the Venn, there, when we fumbled into the whole soul-sucking fleet. She’s a renegade. Inda can tell you more. Or I guess she’s going to tell you herself, right? Is there some kind of trouble here?”

  Hadand’s hands vanished into her sleeves. “Trouble, not necessarily, but questions, yes. I will attend. If Inda trusts her, then I owe it to him.” She turned to Tdor. “First, Evred requests you to finish showing Inda around. Give him news of home. He’s at the academy now. He might want to see . . . other things. Jeje, Shen, please feel free to rest here before we all meet at dinner.” She left.

  He might want to see other things—but not Evred questioning his mage, Jeje thought.

  Shen put out a hand to stop Tdor, saying in Marlovan, “I will not be stabled here like an old mare. You and I are going to find Inda together.”

  Tdor signified agreement, and they left.

  Jeje turned to the untouched food. Over her years of sea-roaming she’d learned that, just as you could not command the wind, you never pass up a good meal, much less a chance to catch a nap. You never know what the next watch will bring.

  Evred met Vedrid on his way inside. Vedrid reported that Inda’s Runner was getting a tour. Evred spared a heartbeat to mock himself for his earlier heart-gnawings. The golden-haired fellow was Inda’s First Runner, not his lover. Proof again that emotions were not only useless, but dangerous.

  He sent Vedrid to show Inda the academy.

  He sent another Runner to summon the mage.

  He chose hi
s study over his more formal (and formidable) rooms in an attempt to mitigate the circumstances, which Signi took as a well-meant gesture, though it failed its purpose. He might as well have summoned her to the throne room amid armed guards, for she saw in the great raptor furnishings, the crimson-as-blood rug worked with golden-winged predator birds, the silence and shut door, mute testimony to kingly supremacy.

  But she was not powerless. She had her brains and her magic.

  Evred studied the small, sandy-haired older woman walking with smooth grace between two of his most trusted armsmen, Hadand just catching up. This was Inda’s lover? His inward vision of a tall, pale-haired version of the staggeringly beautiful Joret Dei vanished, leaving him puzzled indeed. The mage had to be ten years older than Evred himself, who had two years on Inda. She was ordinary in all ways, except in the manner she moved, neat and curiously compelling as she stepped forward, hands pressing together then opening. She bowed her head gravely.

  He beckoned to Hadand, then dismissed the men.

  “I would like the benefit of your eyes and ears,” he murmured to his wife. “She’s not just Venn, but a mage.”

  Hadand hid her consternation. A mage? So that’s what Jeje meant!

  Evred sat down in the great carved raptor chair one of his ancestors had taken from the Montredavan-Ans after their defeat. “Who are you?” he asked in slow, clear Iascan.

  Signi stood before him, outwardly composed. Evred, whose keen gaze missed little, noted the fast pulse at the side of her temple. The cause of tension could be anything from simple human fear to deviousness, but it meant that her mind would run fast.

  Well, so could his.

  “My name doth be Jazsha Signi Sofar, second daughter of Jazsha Fafna Sofar, Hel Dancer to the Venn. My life-place doth be Sea Dag of the third rank, though outward be that place.”

  Outward be . . . She was using, with great care, the outdated verb forms of Iascan that related most closely to Sartoran. Evred switched languages to Sartoran—“Does that mean you have a public rank and a secret rank?”—and saw her eyelids lift in surprise.

  So Marlovan kings spoke Sartoran! Rumor persisted in the far north that they did not even know how to read. Prince Rajnir had been told by the well-traveled Dag Erkric that they were ignorant in all things except war.

  This king’s accent was the elegant court accent of two generations ago; she had no idea it was the Sartoran the Adrani king had brought home after his service in Sartor and taught to his daughter Wisthia, who brought it west when she married Evred’s father. In Signi’s world Sartoran was the language of magic and scholarship. This king spoke like a scholar. He was subtle, the shimmer around him was the deep blue of midnight that blends with and hides the presence of other colors. A blue deep and vast enough to house the distant stars. Blue was the color of knowledge, magic, the eternity of sea and sky. Deep blue was blue made dangerous: the red of anger and malice was easy to comprehend because its motive was so single-minded, it did not take you by surprise. The motivations of midnight blue could not be predicted.

  “I do,” she replied.

  “Is this doubling of ranks customary?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me,” he said, “how came you to meet Inda.”

  The questions were strange. She had expected a military interrogation, or demands for magic spells: again she saw the shimmer of midnight all around him.

  A young man sat in a corner, writing fast. He was a herald, surely. The Venn had been taught that Marlovans had no written records, only the boasting war songs of warriors.

  A brief spurt of humor prompted her to begin at the very beginning. “I was born in the Land of the Venn, in service to the family Durasnir. When a child I was trained to be a . . . a hel-dancer. It translates as hall dancer, but you could say a court dancer. It is the ritual of the King’s Hall . . .” She frowned; the Sartoran and Venn courts were such very different concepts. And she was not at all certain that Marlovans had a court at all.

  The king returned to what interested him. “How did you become a mage?”

  Signi gazed down the years, flickers of emotion-laden images running rapidly through her mind, evoking all the hopes, anxious competitions, determined training. All for that one goal. To be told at the last level of training but one, when she’d reached an age where most had already begun their life’s work, You will never attain the Hel-Dance. “I was not good enough to be a hel-dancer,” she admitted.

  Not for her the far easier life of the play or pleasure house performer. Dance was art, art was truth, truth was dance, the triune concept so drilled into her that it was impossible to adapt to the notion of dance as mere entertainment or enticement. So she had stopped using the name Jazsha that she shared with her furious mother. She became Signi, and faced the necessity of learning an entirely different way of life, memories not relevant to this moment, definitely irrelevant to these people.

  “I was adept with what we call the small magics as part of the dance. I professed an interest in magic knowledge. And so the Skalt—the person in charge of our training—took me to the House of Blue, where dags are trained, and I learned very rapidly.”

  Rapidly indeed, but that was to be expected when one is surrounded by children half one’s age who think that two bells’ time is a strenuous workday, and she had come from a life wherein two bells of warm-up exercise was the daily regimen before one even had breakfast.

  Evred leaned forward. “Learned what, exactly?” He gave her a near smile. “Do not be afraid that too much detail will bore me.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  IT amazed Vedrid to be pacing side-by-side at last with the infamous Elgar the Fox. His reputation was not as real to Vedrid as the memories of the small, scruffy boy who vanished in disgrace from the academy years ago, or as the terrible memory of the more recent long, difficult, and nearly mortal search in Bren.

  But he must no longer think of him with the foreign name. Elgar the Fox was gone. No, he had come home. He was once again Indevan-Dal Algara-Vayir, Laef of Choraed Elgaer.

  Indevan-Laef chose the pace—slow—and paused often, sometimes staring into empty courts or at jumbles of worn willow-swords and old gear, sometimes listening to the childish voices through the open windows of the barracks. Once or twice he stopped without looking at anything; he shut his eyes and breathed deeply. Clearly Vedrid would not have to exert himself to keep this exile-returned-home occupied. Indevan-Laef’s own memories did that.

  The first court with activity contained pigtails at staff practice. Inda halted outside the narrow archway, watching from an angle that kept the thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys from noticing him.

  The preliminary drills were the same, right down to the remembered drum cadences. But the boys looked slow, their movements sloppy. Without focus. The sights, the smells, brought back memories of slouching through drill, especially when it was raining and cold after a night of short sleep.

  The boys paired off. Again, as in Cherry-Stripe’s castle drill, they were so slow, so clumsy, not at all like Inda had remembered the older boys looking to his ten-year-old eyes. During training sessions on Freedom Island—first with Dun and then later with Fox—he’d exhorted the crew to speed up, to think ahead, to refine skills and measure up to remembered standards.

  He had to laugh at himself. His recollection of the older boys’ skills had obviously receded like a mirage. No matter how good he got, he always saw them as far better. That was before Fox Montredavan-An took over the training. Fox really was superlative. His boys and girls of similar age back on the deck of the Death were much faster, stronger, and more skilled than these pigtails. But then they also had been seeing action.

  “What are the horsetails doing?” Inda asked Vedrid.

  “Lance practice.”

  “Take me there.”

  They crossed to the side of the academy Inda had only glimpsed as a boy: the senior riding field, where the horsetails were doing lance evolutions.

 
; Inda peered under his hand, blocking the sun, and trying to see past the clods of mud kicked up by the horses’ hooves. The lances were warlike, but seemed worthless except for a charge. Or did you use them like a boom? From horseback?

  The boys’ riding was as good as he remembered. Inda had adapted his early training in riding and shooting to riding the upper masts and shooting at sea. Could he readapt fast enough? More to the point, could he adapt his shipboard tactics to horse?

  A familiar voice broke his thoughts. It was a man’s voice, but he recognized the intonations.

  A lean fellow his own age, wearing the academy masters’ plain coat over riding trousers and boots, led boys toward the stable. Inda’s gaze scarcely touched on the boys, who shoved and poked and scuffled like groups of boys the world over. The man turned his head to see who they were. A narrow, snub-nosed, fire-scarred face and familiar eyes.

  “Lassad?”

  It was! It was Smartlip Lassad! A master? Oh, hadn’t Cherry-Stripe said something—

  “Olin is waiting,” Lassad said to his charges. “Run.”

  They ran.

  Lassad said slowly, “Algara-Vayir?”

  Inda opened his hands. Lassad’s gaze flickered over him: earrings, scruffy old boots, weapons, back to Inda’s face, searching, searching. Waiting. Though he no longer hunched his shoulders, or slunk, Inda saw the apprehensive Lassad of old who had lived for others’ approval.

  “You saw some action,” Inda observed.

  Lassad flushed. “Pirates. Fire arrows, here and here.” He indicated his jaw and the top of one shoulder. His constantly moving gaze flickered toward Vedrid again. “They said you’d become one. A pirate, I mean. Went up against the Brotherhood.”

  “I never thought of myself as a pirate, but I took some pirate ships. Rest is true enough as well,” Inda said. “You’re a master.”

  Lassad’s shoulders hitched tighter. He was defensive, though Inda couldn’t imagine why. He assented with an open hand, then whipped the hand behind his back.