The Lady

by K V Johansen

  “Lord Fairu.” Deyandara nodded to him, but she was looking around. No need to ask which was Lord Marnoch. A dark-haired young man’s strained face lit at the sight of her, and she made a sudden movement as if she would dart to him, checking it even before Lin’s restraining hand could do more than rise. But he smiled as if the sun had come out, and whispered to the woman at his side, who came around behind the lords to them, her bard’s ribbons blood-stained.

  The high king was before her, striding across to take the girl by the shoulders. For a moment he had looked about to hug her but had checked the impulse at the last, fool, when being a brother before a king might have done him more good in the eyes of all, not least his sister. “Deyandara, where in the cold hells have you been?”

  She flinched and pushed back from him. “Later,” she said unsteadily. “It will make a long tale. I’ve come from Dinaz Catairna—”

  “Lady Lin, you were to find her and bring her to me,” Durandau interrupted, shifting his grip to Deyandara’s injured arm, as if he thought she might run off. She winced. “What were you thinking, to take her into the duina? And now you’re accused of being Ketsim’s ally, which I don’t believe, but—”

  “The former was my lady’s wish, the latter, a misunderstanding, my lord,” Yeh-Lin said. “There was a matter I thought I had to see to. But my lady would—”

  “Misunderstanding! From what I hear, you handed her over to the Catairnans and they promptly lost her to Ketsim. Great Gods, Deyandara, you’ve come from Ketsim, haven’t you? I should have expected that. Trust you to make a bad mess worse. I suppose she’s been sent to make terms for him,” he said to Ahjvar. “It won’t do the damned Grasslander any good, or the rest of you traitors either. Who are you, anyway? One of Hicca’s men? The girl’s my mother’s bastard, yes, but there’s no proof her true father was the Catairnan prince. She has no claim any but the desperate would acknowledge, and you can take that word back to your master Ketsim yourself without her, she’s certainly not going back to his bed.”

  Did he hear himself, and wasn’t he planning to use her Catairnan blood himself? Desperate, hah, Durandau should be that.

  Deyandara yelped with what sounded indignation as much as pain as her brother turned, dragging her, towards his chair again. Ahjvar caught his wrist.

  “Let her go.”

  Durandau did so, and Deyandara sprang away, hugging her left arm close against her chest, white-lipped. Grant that the man looked shocked as much at his sister’s recoil and pain as that someone had laid hands on him. Lords Marnoch and Fairu both came pushing through to stand behind her with the bard and Faullen, Marnoch almost as pale as the girl, which was smothered rage, Ahjvar judged. He let the king go and backed a single deliberate step before the spearmen could make up their minds quite what was happening. Useless bunch. If he had been Ketsim’s, sent to negotiate, he’d have given up on talk and handed the Grasslander the kingship he wanted by now. The high kingship and the heads of half the kings at the very least. Durandau certainly wasn’t going to be able to hold his title after this. Down in the Five Cities it was said Durandau had only ever been the compromise that prevented all-out war between the Duina Galatan and the Duina Noreia over the high kingship, the choice nobody really wanted and whom nobody really saw as a threat.

  “Ketsim is dead,” Deyandara said. “Hicca is dead. Catairanach is—gone. This is over.”

  That made a long moment’s silence. Marnoch broke it to ask practically, “Who holds Dinaz Catairna now, my lady?”

  “It’s empty. Burnt. A pyre for Grasslanders dead of the southern pox,” Deyandara said. “Those who didn’t die there rode to Orsamoss.” She had been paying attention to the signs of the land as much as Ahjvar, then, or more, given the haze he’d ridden in. “You know better than we what became of them.” A bard’s cadences for the hall, but her smile was for Marnoch. Deyandara was finding her feet, though she herself might not yet have noticed it. Even Durandau didn’t interrupt. “Those of Hicca’s folk who remained fled the goddess’s wrath and are suffering her punishment, even now.”

  “But Catairanach?” asked the bard. “My queen, you say gone?”

  “Lost to us,” Deyandara said carefully. “But her sacrifice has freed the land.”

  “The Red Masks failed,” said a woman who still stood at the high king’s empty chair. “They all died and fell at one time. You mean, the goddess gave herself to destroy them?”

  Deyandara glanced at Yeh-Lin. If she gave any sign, Ahjvar didn’t see it.

  “Catairanach is gone,” Deyandara repeated. “Marakand is defeated. The duina is free, all Praitan is safe.”

  Save for the pox and the murrain and the Old Great Gods knew how many lordless Grasslanders and lost Marakanders roaming the borders of the road, to be preying on whatever travellers and lone steadings or small villages they could.

  “Well,” said Durandau, “that makes things easier. Deyandara, tomorrow we’ll ride to Dinaz Catairna to see for ourselves. I’ll appoint you counsellors; perhaps Lady Elissa, for now, could take you in hand, since I am not pleased with Lady Lin’s—”

  Marnoch stirred. “My lord, the queen has no need for you to name guardians over her, like a child, and the high king has no right to order who sits in a duina’s councils.”

  Deyandara bit her lip and looked at Marnoch. “Am I your queen?”

  “My lady, if we’d known you were carried to the dinaz, we’d never have left you. We thought they must have taken you to the captain from the city; we thought Ketsim would be with him and that if we had any chance of saving you, it was in joining Durandau to defeat this army. If we’d known . . .”

  She moved to take Marnoch’s hand, and a deep breath with it. Durandau frowned.

  “My brother the high king would make me queen of a folk who have already named me their queen,” she told the tent at large, the lords and the wizards and the bards, and two sandy-haired young lords who might be more brothers. “It’s not for him to decide that. It’s not for you, my lords and ladies of the duinas, only for the Catairnans and Catairanach, who is gone. I was Queen Cattiga’s only heir to survive this past year. I’ve seen Ketsim slain and the traitor Hicca, and witnessed Catairanach’s judgement on the traitors for this duina, as its queen, but to be lady of this folk and this land isn’t the road the Old Great Gods have laid before my feet. I know it. I would name Lord Marnoch to be king of the land and the folk that were Catairanach’s.”

  And she had the judgement of words to stop there, to not lay all the arguments in his favour out, but to wait.

  “Deya!” Marnoch protested, a whisper.

  “It’s right,” she said, with another glance at Ahjvar. But maybe she could carry it on her own.

  Maybe not. “Andara give me strength!” Durandau burst out. “Deyandara, you can’t just hand kingship over like an outgrown toy.” He grabbed for her again, as if she were six and he meant to march her from the tent for private chastisement.

  This time Ahjvar put himself between them. His sword didn’t, quite, touch the high king.

  “No,” he said, and stood where he was a moment, till the world stopped tilting. Old Great Gods prevent he didn’t fall on his face. Not yet, at any rate. Maybe this was dying at last.

  Maybe this was a month with next to no sleep. If he was being a fool, drawing a blade on the high king in the very council of the seven kings . . . Ghu wasn’t here to say so. He hadn’t followed into the tent.

  “If this man is one of yours, Marnoch, I want him out of here now,” Durandau said.

  “He seems to be my lady’s,” Marnoch said evenly.

  “Cairangorm’s champion,” Ahjvar declared. “Cairangorm’s heir. You did not make Deyandara queen and you will not deny her right to step aside for another, and you will not deny me, in this land that was my father’s, the right to add my voice to hers. The kingship falls on Marnoch of the Red Hills. It’s time the leopard and the bull both were set aside, and Durandau, you can face me in the circl
e if you want to contest this, or name a champion to do so, but you do not manhandle your wounded sister as if she’s some captive brigand while I am still on my feet.”

  Durandau’s hand was on his sword. Damned gods, he did not want to kill Deya’s brother in front of her, but the man wasn’t in a temper for a fight to mere blooding. It wasn’t going to go to the circle and any formality of law anyway. Durandau was going to attack him as an outlaw in the hall, and they would have a bloody free-for-all before it was done.

  But the man, breathing heavily through his nose, slowly took his hand away from his hilt, waved back his bench-companions and spearmen. Not, after all, a fool. Of the kings and lords, other than Durandau’s own, none had moved in to back him. The high king had laid hands on a queen of the folk in violence, and most were not sure, quite, but what Ahjvar had the right to stand where he stood.

  “I don’t intend my sister any harm,” Durandau said, sounding more baffled than angry. “How in the cold hells could you think that? But I don’t see by what right you speak for her, whoever you are.”

  “By what right do you?”

  “She’s not of age.”

  “She’s travelled a longer road than you, alone, across the Tributary Lands and to the skirts of the Five Cities, and to Marakand itself, taking on a bard’s duties all untrained for them, when there was no one else the goddess could send.” Words grated. He felt as though he were still swallowing ash and soot. “She’s seen more blood shed in this war and endured more trials for her land’s sake than you. And my lord, you sent her away from your dinaz and her own god with only a lone woman to accompany her, like any young apprentice, and you made no effort to find what had become of her, after that. You made no provision to guard her on her road. You never gave her another thought, until you realized the Duina Catairna was without a king and that she might have a claim, and even then you didn’t rush, coming as you thought to put her where she had already been put by her own folk. She’s proven herself a servant of this land and a woman fit to know her own mind by her deeds, as the goddess of the land would attest, were she still here to do so.” He could still lie kingly when he had to. Ghu hadn’t corrupted him from that. “You’ve only shown yourself a neglectful guardian.”

  An older king who had been whispering with his spearmen stepped forward. “As her maternal grandfather, I have a voice in this as well. And my grandson the high king, with respect, is only her half-brother. I will claim guardianship—”

  “Why haven’t the Five Cities overrun you all yet?” Ahjvar muttered, not quietly enough. Someone snickered, away behind the high king’s back. “My lord of the Lellandi, we can argue this till she does come of age, but—”

  There had been some other whispering debating going on behind him all the while, women’s voices. Deyandara and the bard, with deeper interjections from Marnoch, mostly consisting of negatives. Now Deyandara ducked around him. Ahjvar checked his impulse to fling her out of harm’s way, lowered his sword instead, and leaned on it. The girl put herself deliberately where stepping back a mere few inches would have her shoulders against his chest. The little black dog gave a sharp bark and bounded forward. Yeh-Lin raised a finger, pointed at the ground, and it sat, quivering, eyes fixed on the high king, but its teeth were bared. Comedy, the high king defied by a cattle-dog, but no one was watching it.

  “I’m a widow,” Deyandara said tersely. “And that, my lord brother, gives me my majority and the right to speak for myself.”

  Durandau looked, for a moment, uncommonly like a fish, gaping at flies.

  “Who?” he demanded indignantly. “You had no right marrying without my permission, and especially at your age.”

  “Well, nobody asked you!” she snapped. “Or me either, if it comes to that, but married I was, and widowed by the next morning, and if you want witnesses, I’m sure you can hunt down some of Hicca’s men who were at my wedding feast, as my lord Ah—Catairlau didn’t kill quite all of them.

  Thank you, Deya. Three, was it, he had slain? Hardly any. And it was hardly a legal marriage: abduction and intended rape, no god bearing witness and even if it had been otherwise, unconsummated—but if she could carry them past all that unquestioned. . . . Once get Marnoch acknowledged by even some of the kings . . . it would be so much simpler to settle it in the circle, by the sword’s edge. Which was why he was no fit king, certainly, such thinking. Catairlau? he heard whispered by the Catairnan bard, who had let Cairangorm’s heir pass unremarked, or had missed it. Forget that. How many bards were here, how many voices who knew the law? The one at his back was not asking the questions a speaker of the law should, at this point.

  “You married Hicca?”

  “I was married to Ketsim the Grasslander, and my lords and ladies, and my lord brothers, and grandfather of the Lellandi, if you all hadn’t sat so long in your tents waiting and hoping the pox would do your work for you, there would be many fewer widows and orphans in my duina now. I will speak for myself. I have bloody well earned that right—”

  Not bardlike, that phrasing. Keeping bad company lately. He saw Yeh-Lin’s lip twitch, out of the corner of his eye. Also not true, that lives would have been saved if only they had acted more swiftly. The Red Masks would have broken them and left the lands kingless, if Ghu hadn’t come for him. But shame them, yes, she had the right idea there, because there was still Marakand, and the temple might yet raise a real army from the city, without relying on the necromancy of its false god, and the iron road from the forest still crossed Praitan to the Five Cities.

  A crane flew in the open door of the tent, silencing Deyandara. The white wings shed a silver light over them as she landed, rustling and settling her plumage.

  “Orsa,” he said, and bowed. That much courtesy he could find.

  “Catairlau. And Deyandara. Who speak with full right for this land.” Her voice was human enough, soft and high, and gave the words an ironic twist as she bobbed her head to them and turned to give Durandau a long, head-tilted look along her beak. The high king did not bow but dropped to his knees.

  She reared back and beat her wings. Everyone there went down on their knees, save Ahjvar himself and the devil. He wasn’t kneeling to the gods who had turned their backs on him, however well-disposed they might be now, and the devil merely folded her arms and looked sardonic. The look the goddess gave her was equally so, though how a crane could convey that much expression . . .

  “The goddesses of this land have spoken through the web of waters, and the gods through the deep bones of the hills, and they affirm, Marnoch of the Red Hills will be king of the duina, as Catairlau who was king has said and Deyandara who is queen has said. Marnoch will speak with the gods of the hills and the goddesses of the waters, a new god will be chosen to give his name to the land. The high king will acknowledge this, or there will be a new high king, for even Praitanna of the Avain Praitanna, the great river, the goddess of the Duina Praitanna, the heart of the seven kingdoms, even she says, it shall be so. The folk of this duina have suffered the neglect and disdain of their chosen goddess long enough. Catairanach is gone. Let no one call her back.”

  Feathers drew out like tendrils of mist, still glowing as if caught in sunlight, and she drifted, a shadow-bird, then a form like a child, to Deyandara, putting arms about her, with the kneeling girl’s head bowed to her shoulder. If the goddess spoke to her it was in silence, for Deyandara alone, but then she raised solemn silver eyes to Ahjvar.

  “Your place is not here, Catairlau,” he heard, but the goddess’s lips did not move.

  “I know,” he said roughly. The black dog wagged its tail, all adoration of the goddess, but nothing else stirred, as if they all hung in the dream of a moment, stretched long.

  “I am sorry,” Orsa said. She raised one hand towards him, didn’t touch, but he could feel the damp, cool air of dawn about her. “There is too much death in you, and no peace for you here. Catairanach is sunk deep in forgetting, but the thing that you carry lives without her and is s
till beyond us. Go.”

  He sheathed his sword, fumbling. It took several tries. Bent to kiss the top of Deyandara’s head. He didn’t think she knew he was there, to know it was farewell. So the gods took that, too. “Be well, granddaughter,” he wished her. A breeze flapped the tent door and stirred Deyandara’s hair, touched Marnoch’s where he knelt, his eyes fixed on Deya, not the small goddess.

  “You,” he said, because it wanted saying even if the man couldn’t hear, “do well by her. And come the winter solstice, they’ll be electing a new high king. Durandau can’t hold it after this. None of these here have proven they deserve such a place. You see it’s you. Time it came back to us.”

  “And you accuse me of wanting to make emperors,” Yeh-Lin said. “I’ll tell him. I’ll tell them. I,” and she raised eyebrows at Orsa, “am not going anywhere, yet. I swore to serve Deyandara. I think I shall do so. For a little longer.” She grinned. “If only to tease these little gods.”

  Orsa did not look best pleased at that.

  Good.

  So he left them.

  The long shadows were falling from the west, and away from the pavilion of the high king’s council, the business of the camp was going on, loudly, both in mourning and triumph. The captains of the kings would be pursuing the Marakander survivors, disarming them, chivvying them to the road. If they wanted less trouble, they should see their enemies had mounts and food and give them escort, Marakander and Grasslander alike, till they were well into the rising hills before the pass, but that wasn’t Ahjvar’s affair to order. Nobody paid him any attention. He felt slow as an old man, clumsy as a drunk, and sick with he didn’t know what. Weariness. Hurt. He would call curses down on the gods of all Praitan, except he had given up cursing and he was too tired. He didn’t know where Ghu had gone.

  But the dogs found him, nosing in one from each side, as if he needed herding, and then Ghu was there, a shadow battered and smoke-blackened and hollow-eyed as he himself must be.