King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  Fox had snagged his own bottle of wine. His usual custom after an action was to get thoroughly drunk. It masked the pain of cuts and bruises he hadn’t been aware of getting, and it also masked the howling, wintry gusts of laughter through his skull, reminding him that no matter what he did, no matter how many fights he won, there would never be justice for him to go home to.

  Or for Inda. He was probably dead. Inda certainly had not been at Parayid. The golden magical transfer case was empty.

  And there it lay on the side table. Fox checked the impulse to fling it into the sea—as usual. Visual reminder of the stupidity of hope, wasn’t it? Or was there still some stubborn kernel of hope down inside him somewhere, bitter as aloe, dry as dust? Well, leave it.

  He thrust open the stern windows to let out the cold stuffy air. Rain hissed on the sea just beyond, numbingly cold, but he smelled a difference in the air: spring was reaching the south at last.

  He slammed the wine bottle down onto the table, dropped into his chair, and stared at the lamp. For a time after the fight he too had enjoyed the sweetness of successful command. But even at the height of enjoyment there had been moments of doubt, or something stronger than doubt. Moments too quick to identify during the swift flow of events.

  He shut his eyes, trying to sort the images. Falthum, Scarf’s nephew—Mutt, dancing and singing in his triumph—Scarf lying dead on the stones.

  Her cabin had surprised him. Not just the neatness, but it was full of old and expensive books, carefully preserved in glass-fronted shelves. The nephew—

  That was it. He leaned over and fingered the books he’d taken from Scarf’s flagship, as Gillor (as the newest captain to earn her command) did not want them. There was not a book anywhere in his own fleet, that he’d swear.

  The—call it anomaly—had begun during that parley, short as it was. The nephew and the aunt speaking so differently. Their accents—no, it wasn’t the accents. He knew smart people who spoke in dockside idiom. He knew stupid people who had been tutored to emulate the Colendi cadences of the upper ranks. Scarf had spoken like one tutored to the upper ranks, but she hadn’t taught her nephew to speak so. More to the point, she hadn’t taught him the vocabulary to speak well.

  That was it. Had she deliberately kept him ignorant? Intent was now past question, thanks to Mistress Svanith’s summary justice. The fact remained the nephew had been ignorant. And . . .

  Fox tipped his head back, listening to the rise and fall of young voices on deck. Mutt, the oldest of their young ones, celebrating his first command of one of the small schooners. He loved being a privateer. Fox wondered if he’d turn pirate if given a chance. What other life did he know? What was he, eleven or twelve when Inda first hired him, a hungry castaway off the docks at Freeport Harbor?

  Fox took a long pull from the bottle, wrenched open the cabin door and yelled, “Mutt!”

  The song on deck faltered for a moment, then resumed. Mutt’s bare feet slapped down the hatchway a moment later, and he dashed into the cabin, his strong-boned face emerging from the roundness of childhood, his gangly limbs beginning to take on the shape of the man he would be. If he weren’t killed. During the past two years they’d lost three of the young ones in battle (one recently returned); the others had cried fiercely at the time, but then recovered, eternally optimistic about the future and their place as future commanders.

  “Do you know how to read?” Fox asked.

  Mutt’s mouth dropped open. His eyes shifted to the bottle—

  “No. I’m not drunk. Yet. Do you know how to read?”

  Mutt looked affronted. “Inda never made us—”

  Fox’s hand snapped out, quicker than a whip. He didn’t use a knife, or even much force, but the Marlovan women’s fighting style, called Odni, illegally taught to Fox by his own mother, enhanced Fox’s speed so he caught Mutt off balance. He fell on his butt.

  “I thought you stopped that.” Mutt scrambled to his feet, rubbing one butt cheek. “Anytime anyone mentions Inda. It’s not like we’ll ever forget him—”

  “If you want a life of violence,” Fox cut in, “you have to be ready at all times. Now answer my question.”

  “A little,” Mutt said reluctantly, glowering through his tangled hair at the pile of books. Then away, as if they were more a threat than Fox’s ready fist.

  A little. Fox knew that Inda, at age twelve, had taught his fellow ship rats how to read the winter they were all imprisoned in Khanerenth when it was undergoing its political upheavals. But he had apparently stopped teaching when they lost the Pim ships, and any hope of a legal existence. After that, all his energy had gone into building his defense marines. Mutt had been hired during that time.

  “From now on, your duties will include reading to me at night.”

  “Me? Why?” Mutt glanced at Fox’s long hands lying there so lightly on the one knee he’d cocked over the other as he leaned back in his chair. Then his wary brown eyes turned upward to Fox’s ironic gaze.

  “Quiet,” Fox said. “And before you continue whining questions about why you’re singled out for this torture, and what did you do, you may pass the word among the rest of the rats that you will be rotating this duty. You will all continue until you’ve all read these books. Even the ones in Sartoran.”

  “But I don’t know any Sartoran!”

  “You had better find the time to learn it, hadn’t you? Go away. Finish your dancing and drinking. I’m certainly going to finish mine.” Fox picked up his bottle. “Tomorrow, you start.”

  Mutt ran out. His young honk was audible from the deck as he reported Fox’s newest outrage, his tone the distinctive teenage mix of belligerence and injury.

  Fox turned back to the books, sliding them aside one by one until he reached one bound in finest blackweave edged with gold. His colors.

  Over his life so far he had sustained many temptations, not the least of which was to kill Inda and take the secret treasure of the Brotherhood of Blood, now known to only five people in the world. Six, if you counted Ramis of the Knife—wherever he was.

  And now a new temptation . . .

  He dropped the black-and-gold bound book, uncorked the bottle, took a swig, stepped to the open windows. Then smashed the bottle against the stern timbers. And at the sudden silence abovedecks, he laughed.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  TAU and Jeje were given a tent to themselves. They set up next to Inda and Signi, who were next to the king in the center of camp.

  Everyone rose before dawn for warm-up drills before they took to horse.

  Evred asked Inda to run the morning drills for the warriors. After some talk with Tau and Jeje, Inda decided to stay with single knife drills. He would attempt to train them in Fox’s and his refinements on fighting techniques they knew. He would not attempt to train them in the two-knife style. The Venn would not wait for them to gain expertise.

  So Inda did his double-knife drills on his own, then drilled the men while breakfast was made and packed up camp.

  Tau and Jeje did not join the warriors out on the nearest grassy field, but worked between their tent and Inda’s. They were used to lack of space. They had trained on shipboard, and then, for almost two years, they had practiced on a narrow rooftop with no rail.

  Early one morning a few days outside out of the royal city, Tau finished warm-ups with Jeje in the dim predawn light, then wandered toward the cook tent for something to drink to find Vedrid waiting for him.

  Vedrid was outlined in the glow from the cook fires, fine pale hairs drifting down on either side of his face as they were not really long enough for even the back of the neck tuft that confined the rest of his hair.

  Tau felt a pang of sympathy. He’d once cut off his hair on a whim he still could not entirely explain. Consequently he’d endured the tickle and annoyance of short hair for a couple of years until, at last, it was long enough to bind back again. It had surprised him at first that Vedrid, the only one of the Runners with this absurd tuft sticking
out over his collar, endured no teasing. After several nights at the Runners’ camp, he recognized that Vedrid’s short hair was a badge of honor.

  Vedrid extended an armload of cloth.

  Tau held it up to the ruddy light and discovered a newly made Runner’s blue coat. “Thanks,” he said.

  Inda popped out of the tent beyond Tau’s, his bare feet slapping through a rain puddle. Tau laughed inwardly at Inda’s obliviousness to the bemused looks that followed his rolling sailor’s walk as he crossed to the field where the men were gathering for morning drill, his sailor-braid flapping against the Marlovan coat Buck had given him.

  “No bandages today,” Tau observed. “He must be getting used to being shod.”

  The planes of Vedrid’s face shifted as he smiled. “We fixed the uppers of Landred-Randael’s boots with cotton-wool.”

  Landred-Randael? Oh, yes. Cherry-Stripe. Why don’t these Marlovans get rid of their titles entirely, and just use their academy names?

  Tau signified agreement in the Marlovan manner—hand opening—which seemed to satisfy Vedrid, for he departed, vanishing in the gloom to go about his morning’s tasks.

  Tau smoothed his hand down his new Runner’s coat. Someone had been stitching that by firelight every night since their departure. Of course he must wear it.

  He had always believed that identity is mutable, at least group identity, if not individual. You dress like others, mimic their manner of speech and their interests and the way they move, and you become one of Us, and cease to be Them.

  He’d played at roles ever since he was small, and been aware of himself playing at roles. Pulling on the long-skirted blue coat for the very first time changed the way he stood, the way he moved. It was tight through chest and shoulders, yet cut for a range of motion in using sword or bow; the high collars kept out wind as one rode, the long skirts warded the worst splashing from streams and puddles. For part of the day his spine seemed spiked, but by late afternoon, when they customarily halted, he felt as if he’d been wearing the coat all his life; only his muscles pulled from the alteration in his bearing, forcing shoulders back and down.

  By sundown the Marlovans’ attitudes toward him had altered. He’d made the transformation from stranger to Runner.

  The day they expected to cross the Eveneth River into the southeast corner of Marlo-Vayir land, where they would be resupplied, they rose to a thin, chill rain. To Tau’s surprise Jeje did not step between Inda’s tent and theirs to begin warm-up drill.

  In the faint ruddy glow from the cook fires fifty paces away, Jeje glanced around furtively, then motioned for him to follow. They passed Inda’s tent and were crossing behind the king’s before Jeje spoke. “Let’s go somewhere these Marlovan nosers can’t hear us.”

  They paced through the tough green grass to the other side of the enormous horse picket, swinging their arms in the old warm-up pattern.

  Tau matched his rhythm to hers as they snapped into strike-block, whirl, lunge, strike-block, kick, whirl, strike-block-strike. So they had worked every day during their time in Bren harbor. They had talked freely about everything while running through these mock fights.

  Jeje threw Tau. He rolled to his feet and lunged.

  She whirled away, circling, then said abruptly, “Inda spent two years with that Evred. With these others like Cherry-Stripe. He lived with us for nine years. Or most of that. And he thinks of them as home.”

  “They were home.” Tau feinted, blocked, sidestepped, and slammed her over his hip. “You seem to forget—” Smack! Block. Whirl, kick. “—we all chose the sea. He was forced aboard the Pim Ryala.”

  “I thought he liked it with us.”

  “He liked us, not the sea life. Though he got used to it. You seem to be mixing the idea of home with friendship.”

  Snap, feint. Block, wham-wham-wham. “What do you mean?”

  She dropped, snapped a hook kick round his ankle, caught him just before he could shift his weight, and flipped away as he fell trying to take her down.

  He laughed as they rolled to their feet. “I think I mean that there is no single definition of home. For you and me, home is wherever we are comfortable. You on Vixen, me anywhere I have . . . interests. For Inda, home is here. This flat land that smells like horse and rye and wind-borne weed.”

  She ducked her head in acknowledgment and began again: strike-block, feint-block-lunge. “Which is one of the reasons why I’m gonna leave.”

  “What?”

  Her palm smacked against the side of his nose, splashing shards of pain-lights across his vision.

  “Ow!”

  “Augh!” She hooted. “You should have warded that!”

  Tau clapped a hand to his nose, blinking away the stinging tears. He pulled his hand free—no blood. He repeated, far less forcefully “What?”

  “I’m leaving.” Her voice was a growl. “And don’t even try to argue. I was awake all last night arguing with you in my mind, and I won. I’m not going through it again.”

  Tau wheezed a laugh as he carefully fingered his nose. “Why?” He winced, trying to think past the pain reverberating through his eyeballs. “Is it this ride? The Marlovans themselves?”

  “I could stand the ride, the smells, the boring food, the war gabble—I could even bear being treated like I am as invisible as a ghost. Did you see it on Restday, how they acted as if Signi and I didn’t even exist? I mean, I guess I can see why they wouldn’t ask Signi to pass round the bread, her being a Venn. But what’s wrong with me?”

  Tau said, “You weren’t left out of the wine, were you?”

  “No.”

  “They aren’t used to bread while on ride, you could see that. Bread and wine are for home, with their families.”

  “I know, I know.” Jeje waved her knife back and forth. “See, none of that would matter if Inda really needed me. But he doesn’t. I’m about as useful as a rug in water.”

  “It’s not—”

  “I know what it’s not. Marlovan women don’t ride to war, so these fellows don’t know what to do with me. I don’t fit anywhere, not even on Restday—they pretended I was another fellow. I wouldn’t care about any of that if Inda needed me. I’ve been thinking about what you said, our first night at that inn. Inda didn’t get a knife in the back when these people saw him again. He didn’t even get a bad welcome. He doesn’t need me to protect him, not with that king sticking to him like a barnacle on a hull. Anyway, he’s got you. And Signi.”

  Tau rubbed his hand over his head. “But what will you do? Fox and the fleet are long gone. Maybe as far’s the Land Bridge by now, if not farther.”

  To Tau’s surprise she gave him an evasive glance and a tight shrug. “I have my plans. All thought out. I have a-a thing to do,” she said to the tumbled gray clouds, then faced him. “So don’t try to stop me, because you can’t. I’ve got my dunnage packed, and I’m just going to wait until I can catch Inda alone, then I’m off.”

  Tau stood there with cold rain tapping his scalp and trickling down into his collar, scouring his mind for any possible secret.

  Regret sharpened to ache when he remembered that Jeje had a home. A family. People she cared about, from whom she had not parted in anger, unless the war had struck them down. But Jeje had maintained stoutly that they were too smart to be caught short.

  Jeje knew that Tau’s own mother had been caught short—that is, she’d been taken aboard a pirate ship, her house burned down, and he had wasted much time and money in Bren trying to find word of pirate ships that might have carried a golden-haired pleasure-house owner of astonishing beauty from Parayid Harbor in Iasca Leror.

  Of course Jeje wouldn’t want to say anything about going home!

  Jeje glared at him. How he loved that face, a love that he had defined as wholehearted and free of restraint or expectation. So how would he endure this great hollow behind his ribs?

  “I thought you’d stay,” he said finally, and laughed somewhat shakily, a sound that came out a nasal ho
nk through his throbbing nose. I came here because of you, he thought, but he knew it had been a whim, not a purpose. I don’t have a purpose.

  Her cheeks reddened. “Look, Inda gave me the gold case back, after Signi did whatever it was she did to them. You can get one from him, too. He did say you should have one. And I remember Inda’s writing lessons just fine.”

  “Yes.” Relief flooded through Tau. “Good.”

  He held out his arms, and Jeje flung herself into them. They hugged, hard, a bone-cracking grip of wordless fervor, then she gave a strangled laugh that was half sob, and pushed away. “Oh, Norsunder take drill. I’m off. Sun’s up anyway.”

  It was true. Muted by the heavy mist came the cadenced clashes of others working somewhere on the far side of the tent city. The horses were being fed and saddled by the young Runners on duty, horses and gangling boys now clearly visible in the strengthening gray light.

  They walked back in silence, heads bent, and when she slipped around the other side of Inda’s tent, he forced himself to walk on.

  Jeje stopped behind Inda’s tent, eyes squeezed shut. The worst was over, she repeated inside her head. Worst was over, worst was over—now to find Inda, if she could just get him away from that—

  “Shall we,” someone said in Sartoran, “go somewhere the Marlovan nosers cannot overhear?”

  Jeje started violently, then whirled round. There was that red-haired king not two paces away, and much taller than he seemed when glimpsed across the camp, his attention on someone else.

  She sidled furtive glances left and right. Sure enough, he was—for the first time—speaking to her. Anger burned away the numbness of shock. But since she was leaving, why not answer? “You’re the king,” she retorted. “Seems to me you can go right ahead and order people out of hearing any time you want to.”