King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  He opened a hand—invitation or command, she wasn’t sure which. Maybe both. She followed him back in the direction she’d gone with Tau, his long-legged stride rapid enough to require her to hop a couple of times to keep up.

  When they were well beyond the horse picket she demanded, “What do you want?”

  “Right now, to understand your place in Inda’s life,” the king replied, without heat.

  Jeje did not consider herself the acute observer of the silent language of the body, as Tau put it, but she could see that Evred was trying to put her at ease without being em barrassingly (or condescendingly) vocal about it. After all, he could have summoned those muscular Runner fellows to haul her into that big tent of his, with all those commanders and their swords clanking around inside.

  And she had started wrong, with her comment just outside that same tent. She grimaced, knowing she’d never remember that even if you can’t see into these blasted tents, or see who’s just outside, you can hear everything, unlike on a ship, where with the scuttles, hatches, and windows closed, there is a semblance of privacy, if you keep your voice low.

  So she said far less trenchantly than she might have, “I came along as a bodyguard.”

  His brows lifted. In the gray light of dawn, the fine mist heightened his coloring. He really did remind her unsettlingly of Fox. It was not just how tall he was. Fox was taller, though more lean. Fox’s hair was a much brighter red, his eyes the color of spring grass, whereas the ones regarding her so steadily now were more grayish than green. Their faces were wholly different—it was their manner that sent echoes through memory. Even though Fox, at his most mordant, also reminded Jeje of Tau in his most withdrawn, artificial mood.

  Meanwhile, Evred observed the change of emotion in Jeje’s face. He had been far too busy to spend time or thought on this woman who’d come along in Inda’s party, who did not fit in anyplace he could conceive.

  Then she made that remark about Marlovan nosers right outside his tent. Not deliberately—she hadn’t used the tone for that and had spoken in the odd sort of Sartoran that Barend had called Dock Talk. But it was intriguing enough for Evred to set aside his ongoing tasks and wait for her return.

  “Inda did not tell you we were friends when we were young?” he asked.

  She shrugged rather sharply, her lips compressed into a line. He leaned forward, trying to divine the emotion behind that glowering brow. She did not betray the manner of a spurned lover. Then there was what Inda had said shortly after his arrival: Jeje was here to protect him from the wiles of kings.

  Wiles. Inda had meant it as a joke, but there was some kind of truth behind it. Yet she just stood there, arms crossed, fists hidden down by her sides.

  “Speak freely,” he said, and with a smile, “Inda does. And there is no risk of retribution.”

  She snorted her breath out. “For how long?”

  Evred rocked back on his heels. “What?”

  Jeje clenched her fists more tightly, determined not to reach into her sleeves and grip her knife handles. “You said to speak freely. Well, then, I’m going to, but I warn you, you won’t like what you’re going to hear.”

  “Which is?” He crossed his arms, but in an attitude of relaxed waiting, of listening.

  She was briefly distracted, noticing he had fine hands. And they were no more revealing than his face.

  Another snort, and she let it all out. “I hate kings,” she stated. “I hate the very idea that one person can wake up in a foul mood and launch an army against people he’s never seen. Or she’s never seen. Near as I can tell, there’s plenty of queens just as bad.”

  “You seem to assume that kings escape the consequences of their actions. I assure you it is not true.”

  “It’s not the same. I wake in a foul temper and my mates joke me out of it, or give me a trimming. Or Fox gives me extra watches of drill. Your father wakes up one day, and maybe he didn’t like his dinner the night before, but the next thing Idayago knows, they are under his yoke—and he can’t possibly know all the consequences. I don’t mean just on land, though from everything I heard in Bren Harbor, those were bad enough. But our captain, as good a man as ever lived, at one far away stroke, ended up deprived of his whole life.” Her voice trembled. “Don’t tell me you ever even heard of Captain Peadal Beagar.”

  “He was the captain of Inda’s first ship,” Evred said. “A merchant trader, one of a fleet of three.”

  She was momentarily checked, then shook her head. “Oh, yes. You could send spies, or whatever, to find out what happened to Inda, once you gained power. Bad example.”

  Evred suppressed the heat of irritation. “Never mind examples. To your original point. If you assume that my father’s decision to take action against Idayago was a whim borne of mood, then you assume wrong. Nor did he escape the consequences of that action.”

  She jerked her head, then wiped impatiently at the beads of mist along her lashes. “Never mind, never mind, I know what’s coming next, and no, I don’t know anything about your politics. Don’t care to. Here’s what I’m worried about. You could wake up one day and not like something Inda says, and next thing he knows, he’s on the death list.”

  Evred’s eyes narrowed, and a betraying flush edged his cheekbones. “You really think I’d do that?”

  “Of course!” she said. “Because you can! You’re one person. That is, you’ve got one man’s temper, but because you’re a king you have a kingdom’s worth of warriors to throw at someone when you’re crossed. And no one can stop you.”

  Evred gripped hard on his temper. Not that he was about to sic the guard on her. The idea was absurd! He, who had spent his lifetime laboring to control—to disengage from—the danger of emotions, did not want to betray how annoyed he was with her assumptions. Power! She did not know how very powerless he’d been most of his life. But yes, he did have power now.

  And so. To the real issue. “You are here,” he said, “not to protect Inda from the Venn, or even from my people, but to protect him from me.”

  And she said, “Yes.”

  Another wave of anger, this time a deep stirring of rage. But again he controlled it. She did not know him. She made assumptions about kings. And most of them were regrettably true.

  She let out an unsteady breath, and he understood that she was as upset as he. She said, “That is, that was my purpose. I can see that everything is fine. May stay fine. I don’t know. What I do know is that Inda doesn’t need me right now. He won’t need me in this battle, either. I’m best in sea battles, carrying him about the line, and while you could probably use my bow, it seems to me you’ll have plenty of bows on hand. So I’m going to see to another matter.”

  Evred did not smile, but a hint of humor was there in the deepened corners of his mouth. “In fact you have decided to entrust him to me—for now?”

  Jeje blushed. “Inda can take care of himself. And I know I’m being a busybody. Just, we didn’t know what he’d find, coming to land,” she admitted. “And I can’t help worrying.”

  “Then how about this?” Evred lifted his hand, that same gesture Inda had used, which they could never quite figure out. “All I can offer is my word. Not as a king, but as a person. If I ever get angry enough with Inda to want to throw a kingdom at him, I promise I will halt long enough to summon you from wherever you are to defend him first. How is that?”

  She scrutinized him in suspicion, suspecting facetiousness. But he’d never spoken facetiously, and there was no smirk now. Then she wanted to reject his words as the useless words of a king, except wasn’t that a kind of reverse swagger? She could just hear Tau! Oh, you say kings are just people who happen to have power, but when they speak as just people, you won’t believe them because they are kings?

  She gave a curt nod. “All right. I’ll take you at your word.”

  Evred opened a hand in agreement, then started back. Once again Jeje tramped through the mud past the row of smelly horses, this time not in companionsh
ip but next to a stranger she thought of as a waiting thunderstorm in human form.

  But she’d been given the sign for clear sailing. She’d already readied her gear. The king walked out beyond the tents to where his captains and the rest were doing their best to follow one of Inda’s and Fox’s knife drills, and she had to admit they were doing really well.

  She watched Inda striding back and forth, and listened to the sound of his voice. His countenance was so different from what they’d thought normal. This lifted face, the easy laughter, the quick, broad smile that brought out long dimples in his cheeks—this was his normal face. This observation left her with a heartsick sense that she didn’t really know him.

  Well, Tau would say whatever needed to be said.

  She reclaimed the horse that had been assigned to her, and during the rush to break camp and get breakfast she rode away, unnoticed except by Tau, who did not trouble her with any unnecessary words, and by the vigilant sentries on their perimeter patrols, and finally by Evred, who felt a strong sense of relief that one of his many minor problems had so neatly solved itself.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  TAU sat on his mat near Inda and Signi, across from Evred. They had their own campfire, pleasant under a sky full of stars. The golden haze of the men’s campfires outlined the jutting skyline of tents surrounding them. The air smelled of the supper Runners brought in wooden bowls, cheese-sprinkled rice-and-cabbage balls cooked in pressed olives.

  Before Inda and the king could begin another of the endless iterations of past battles, often blow-by-blow, Tau said, “Jeje’s gone.”

  “She’s gone?” Inda asked, slewing around as if searching for her. “I thought she just rode off exploring.”

  Signi sustained one of those painful heart constrictions: she felt she had failed Jeje. Two women alone, and one had inadvertently so shut the other out that she departed unnoticed. She pressed her hands over her face, her head bowed forward. Sitting there in Inda’s shadow, she was unnoticed by everyone except Evred.

  Tau said, “I think she went home. There wasn’t really a place for her here.” Or for me either. He would have gone with Jeje if she’d asked, but she’d been very clear about going alone.

  Evred said nothing, which Tau found interesting as he’d glimpsed him talking with Jeje shortly before she rode off.

  Inda rubbed his jaw. “Well, then, we’ll know where to find her. And she’ll know where to find us.”

  “Where was her home? Do you know?” Signi asked, raising her head.

  “Just below Lindeth,” Tau replied. “Though she had relations in Parayid.”

  The fire snapped, whirling sparks into the air; a shout of laughter rose from a campfire fifty paces away. Neither Evred nor Inda noticed. They’d withdrawn into reverie.

  The day Inda arrived Evred found himself in another condition of being. Words like happiness or desire or pain lost their meaning the same way red or blue or green weakened in hue in the midday summer sun.

  Pain and enchantment whipsawed Evred. The moments of enchantment were brief, and deeply concealed: he cherished Inda’s manner of eating, unchanged from his ten-year-old self. Either Inda bent over and ate fast, laughing, talking, or listening, or he sat motionless—as now—spoon suspended above his dish, gazing beyond the world.

  Pain . . . was more complicated, the sharper because Inda had not returned alone, but with this woman at his side, hands so gracefully composed as she listened, or talked inanities with Taumad. There was nothing offensive in her voice, her presence, or her manner. It had taken Evred only a day to observe how hard she worked to keep it so. Not that her effort showed. It was the opposite. Only someone who has learned habitual wariness can recognize another who never ceases vigilance.

  She was as plain as a woman could be; what figure she had was entirely hidden by the old smocks she’d apparently gotten from the Marlo-Vayir women, the worn riding trousers and riding boots cast off by one of the castle girls. From a distance Dag Signi resembled one of the half-grown runners-in-training whom Vedrid had as part of his staff, only she was shorter than those boys, her shoulders rounder. When she wore the old hooded cloak one of the Runners had given her, she was indistinguishable from the boys. What could Inda see in her?

  Inda had said that he was in love with her, but what exactly did “in love” mean? The definition changed from person to person. Inda did not follow her with his eyes the way her eyes followed him, but he sat close to her, some part of them touching, when at rest. And during the first night on the road, when Inda had cried out in some kind of nightmare, it had been her voice that soothed him into sleep. Evred had waited through the night for another cry, and in the morning for explanation, but Inda appeared to have forgotten, and the mage moved about in her courteous way as if nothing had happened.

  The matter remained: she was a Venn. One who was aware that men had been detailed to guard her. She never strayed far, and sometimes even paused for them to keep her in sight. As if she knew they would be flogged if even once they lost sight of her.

  Evred had seen how his Runners and staff walked around her as if she did not exist, not knowing how else to react to so puzzling an anomaly in their midst.

  She is not just a Venn, but a mage. So far she had done no spells that he was aware of, and more important, had not asked for paper or pen, so she could not have sent off spy reports.

  Perhaps it was time to examine the subject further. “I have some questions,” he said.

  No response. Inda’s brown eyes did not even blink as they reflected the fires he stared beyond.

  “Inda! Wake up.” Tau leaned forward.

  Clack! The spoon dropped. Inda looked around with an air of surprise. “It’s the smells,” he said, as if continuing a conversation—one that had never taken place.

  Puzzled, Evred sniffed the air. “Smells?”

  “Home smells. Horse. Grass. Rye—”

  “Rye? What do they eat, elsewhere in the world?”

  “Seldom rye. Someone is burning rye biscuits.” He waved in the direction of one of the distant campfires, and everyone sniffed the breeze, now aware of the distinct aroma of singed bread. “Like they did on our last night all together, that spring, on the ride to the royal city. When I was eleven.” He shook himself. “Never mind. Did I miss something?”

  “The Venn,” Evred said. “We postponed discussion of them. Now perhaps is the time. I want to know more about Prince Rajnir. And his commanders.” He turned to Signi, his manner polite, formal. “I do not ask you to betray any military information that you possess. I would like to understand the individuals—especially this Dag Erkric, whose intention to use magic to ensorcel my will is part of what brought you here.”

  Her face did not change, but her shoulder tensed against Inda’s arm. “You must understand that I am a sea dag. I know nothing about land war.”

  Inda flashed a grin. “She was right there in the sea battle off Chwahirsland. Remember when we were small, and heard about it? But the sea dags navigate, and do some ship repair, and healer spells. They don’t fight.”

  “Understood,” Evred said.

  Inda was sensitive to voices; a subtle flatness to Evred’s tone indicated some kind of conflict, or ambivalence. Yet he’d started this conversation.

  Make it easy for them, talk about what she’s told you, Inda thought. And, to Signi, “You said that Rajnir’s commanders are a lot older than he is.” On her nod, “I noticed when I was in Ymar that the army was war-gaming far from the coast. If I was planning an invasion in the next year, I would have army and navy together, practicing landing and launching an attack over and over on a coast with as similar a terrain as possible. Why didn’t Rajnir order them to drill together?”

  “He cannot.” Signi laid her palms together, fingertips pointing outward. Evred had seen her do that before, and again wondered at its significance. “That is, he could. He is the prince, though his position as deposed heir is anomalous. But then the heirship itself, for the
first time in centuries, is anomalous.”

  Evred drew a slow breath. Signi regarded him in mute question, her manner tranquil.

  “Go on.” Inda smiled encouragingly. She sensed his concern, and tried not to let it magnify her own as he went on, “You told me there’s rough weather between sea and land forces.”

  She spread her hands, then closed them again. “Hilda—that is the land warriors. Hilda Commander Talkar is well-respected by the Oneli Commander, Hyarl Durasnir.”

  “The Oneli are the sea lords,” Evred said. “Correct?”

  Signi bowed her head over her steepled fingers. “Hyarl Durasnir and Hilda Commander Talkar respect one another, all attest to it. Yet all Venn grow up knowing that in the lost times, when Venn came to this world, they sailed through the sky-between-worlds aboard a drakan, the first Venn warship. The Oneli are the First Venn, the sea lords. They have the precedence. The kings are chosen from Oneli families. There are Hilda families, but they have precedence only over commons. Anyone may join the Hilda.”

  “So they don’t work together,” Inda prompted. “Outside of orders.”

  Signi considered, then bowed her head in agreement. “They will do what they are ordered to do, for that is the oath of Drenskar. The-the military oaths lie alongside our own—”

  Drenskar. Evred heard a twisted version of the Marlovan word for honor and knew it for the origin of their own word. “I am familiar with it. Back to the commanders, if you will.”

  Signi’s fingertips touched gracefully in peace mode. “They respect one another. But each makes his own plans in order to carry out orders from the prince.”

  “The prince won’t command by himself?” Evred asked. “I was told that he led the ship battle Inda just mentioned, when your people took Ymar.”

  Inda flicked his hand out. “He lost. And that was after Ymar’s queen made some kind of deal with Durasnir to hand over the kingdom.”

  “The Ymaran queen is believed to have died by treachery,” Signi said. “Not by our people. She was killed by one of her own relations, the young Count of Wafri.”