A few days after Talat had trotted halfway round his pasture with Aerin on his back, she asked Hornmar what had become of Talat’s tack. She knew that each of the court horses had its own, and Kethtaz would never be insulted by wearing bits of his predecessor’s gear; but she was afraid that Talat’s might have been destroyed when his leg had doomed him. Hornmar, who had seen Talat jogging around his field with Aerin at attention on his back, brought out saddle and girth and bridle, for while he had thought they would never be used again, he had not had the heart to get rid of them. If Aerin noticed that they appeared to have been freshly cleaned and oiled, she said nothing but “Thank you.” The same day that she carried Talat’s gear up to her room and hid it in her wardrobe (where Teka, finding it later, also found that it had left oil spots on Aerin’s best court dress), she saw from her window Tor riding in from one of his rounds of political visits; and she decided it was time to waylay him.
“Aerin,” he said, and hugged her gladly. “I have not seen you in weeks. Have you your dress made yet for the wedding of the century? Who won, you or Teka?”
She pulled a face. “Teka has won more ground than I, but I refused to wear it in yellow at all, so at least it’s going to be a sort of leaf green, and there’s less lace. It’s still quite awful.”
Tor looked amused. When he looked amused she almost forgot she had decided that it was better that they weren’t such good friends any more. “Have supper with me,” he said. “I must have dinner in the hall—I suppose you are still pleading ill health and dining peacefully with Teka? But supper I may have alone in my rooms. Will you come?”
“Pleading ill health indeed,” she said. “Do you really want me to have a dizzy moment and drop a full goblet of wine in the lap of the esteemed guest at my right—or left? I’m less likely to cause civil war if I stay away.”
“A very convenient excuse. I sometimes think if I have to look at Galanna purring over the latest detail of the upcoming event I shall throw an entire cask at her. You’d think we were declaring bloody independence from a genocidal tyrant, the way she goes on about the significance of the seating of the barons’ third cousins twice removed. Did you know that Katah doesn’t want to come at all? Her husband says he may have to put a bag over her head and tie her to her horse. Katah says that she knows Galanna and he doesn’t. Will you come to supper?”
“Of course, if you’ll shut up long enough for me to accept.” She grinned at him.
He looked at her, feeling a twitch of surprise; in her smile for the first time he saw that which was going to trouble his sleep very soon; something very unlike the friendship they’d enjoyed all their lives thus far; something that would raise the barrier between them much faster than anything else could; the barrier that thus far Aerin alone saw growing.
“What’s wrong?” she said; some of the old familiarity still worked, and she saw the shadow pass over his face, although she had no clue to what caused it.
“Nothing. I’ll see you tonight, then.”
She laughed when she saw the place settings for their supper: gold. The golden goblets were fishes standing on their tails, their open mouths waiting for the wine to be poured; the plates were encircled by leaping golden deer, the head of each bowed over the quarters of the one before, and their flying tails made a scalloped edge; the spoons and knives were golden birds, their long tails forming handles. “Highly unbreakable. I can still spill the wine.”
“We’ll have to make do.”
“Where in Damar did you get these?”
Something like a flush crept up his face. “Four settings of the stuff was one of my coming-of-age gifts; it’s from a town in the west known for its metalwork. I only just brought it back, this trip.” It had been given him for his bride, the town’s chief had told him.
Aerin looked at him, trying to decide about the flush; he was brown to begin with, and copper-colored from sunburn, and it was hard to tell. “It must have been a long and gaudy ceremony, and they covered you with glory you don’t feel you’ve earned.”
Tor smiled. “Near enough.”
She didn’t spill anything that evening, and she and Tor reminded each other of the most embarrassing childhood moments they could think of, and laughed. Galanna and Perlith’s wedding was not mentioned once.
“Do you remember,” she said, “when I was very young, almost a baby still, and you were first learning to handle a sword, how you used to show me what you’d learned—”
“I remember,” he said, smiling, “that you followed me around and wheedled and wept till I was forced to show you.”
“Wheedled, yes,” she said. “Wept, never. And you started it; I didn’t ask to get put in a baby-sack while you leaped your horse over hurdles.”
“My own fault, I admit it.” He also remembered, though he said nothing of it, how their friendship had begun. He had felt sorry for his young cousin, and had sought her first out of dislike for those who wished to ostracize her, especially Galanna, but soon for her own sake: for she was wry and funny even when she could barely speak, and loved best to find things to be enthusiastic about; and did not remind him that he was to grow up to be king. He had never quite learned to believe that she was always shy in company, nor that the shyness was her best attempt at a tactful acknowledgement of her precarious place in her father’s court; nor that her defensive obstinacy was quite necessary.
It was to watch her take fire with enthusiasm that he had made a small wooden sword for her, and shown her how to hold it; and later he taught her to ride a horse, and let her ride his own tall mare when the first of her pretty, spoiled ponies had made her wish to give up riding altogether. He had shown her how to hold a bow, and to send an arrow or a spear where she wished it to go; how to skin a rabbit or an oozog, and how best to fish in running streams and quiet pools. The complete older brother, he thought now, and for the first time with a trace of bitterness.
“I can still hunt and fish and ride,” she said. “But I miss the swordplay. I know you haven’t much spare time these days—” She hesitated, calculating which approach would be likeliest to provoke the response she desired. “And I know there’s no reason for it, but—I’m big enough now I could carry one of the boys’ training swords. Would you—”
“Train you?” he said. He was afraid he knew where her thoughts were tending, although he tried to tell himself that this was no worse than teaching her to fish. He knew that even if he did grant her this it would do her no good; it didn’t matter that she was already a good rider, that she was, for whatever inbred or circumstantial reasons, less silly than any of the other court women; that he knew from teaching her other things that he could probably teach her to be a fair swordswoman. He knew that for her own sake he should not encourage her now.
The gods prevent her from asking me anything I must not give, he thought, and said aloud, “Very well.”
Their eyes met, and Aerin’s dropped first.
The lessons had to be at infrequent intervals because of Tor’s ever increasing round of duties as first sola; but lessons still Aerin had, as she wished, and after several months’ time and practice she could make her teacher pant and sweat as they danced around each other. Her lessons were only a foot soldier’s lessons; horses were not mentioned, and she was wise enough, having gained so much, not to protest.
She took pride, in a grim sort of way, in learning what Tor taught her; and he need not know the hours of drill she put in, chopping at leaves and dust motes, when he was not around. She made what she considered to be obligatory protests about the regular hiatuses in her progress when Tor was sent off somewhere, but in truth she was glad of them, for then she had the time to put in, grinding the lessons into her slow, stupid, Giftless muscles. But she was always eager for her next meeting with the first sola, and what he guessed about her private practice sessions was not discussed, any more than the fact that he had not fought unhorsed since he was a little boy and learning his first lessons in swordplay. A sola always led cava
lry. Aerin knew pretty well when the time came that if she had been in real training she would have been put on a horse; but this moment too passed in silence.
But there was one good thing that also passed in silence, for Aerin was too proud, for different reasons, to mention it: the specific muscular control and coordination of learning to wield a sword finally sweated the last of the surka out of her system. It had been two years since her meeting with Galanna in the royal garden.
Tor and Aerin’s meetings on the farthest edge of the least used of the practice fields also gave them an excuse to be together, as they had always been together, without having to acknowledge the new restraint between them, without discovering that conversation between them was growing awkward.
Aerin knew that Tor was careful not to use his real strength when he forced her back; but at least, as she learned, he had to be quick to keep her off; and strength, she hoped, would come. She was growing like a weed; her seventeenth birthday had come and gone, with the tiresome pomp necessary to a king’s daughter, and the stiff courtesy inspired by an unsatisfactory king’s daughter, and she was far too old to be suddenly growing taller. Not that she minded towering over Galanna; Galanna’s perfect profile, when seen from above, seemed to beetle slightly at the brows and narrow slightly around the eyes. Aerin also had hopes that she would outgrow the revolting Kisha and be given a real horse.
A real horse. She began to have to close her lips tighter over her determination not to mention horses to Tor. A mounted man’s strength was his horse—or a mounted woman’s. But if she asked Tor to teach her to fight from horseback he would have to admit to knowing how much it meant to her, that it was not only an amusing private game she was playing; and she knew he was troubled about what they were doing already. His curious silence on the cause of her eagerness to learn told her that; and he could still read as many of her thoughts as she could of his.
Chapter 6
TALAT GREW FIT and shining: He was always a little short with the right hind when she mounted, but it took less and less time for him to work out of it. She rode him without gear for weeks, while the saddle and bridle shed oil all over the inside of her wardrobe, for she found herself superstitiously reluctant to use it—as if something would be spoiled, or a gift would become a duty, once tack officiated over their rides together. “I suppose even the pleasantest convalescence must come to an end someday,” she said to him one evening; and the next day she brought all his gear and her boy’s sword out to the pasture. He sniffled them all over, slowly and then with enthusiasm, and danced with impatience while she tacked him up, till she pounded on his shoulder with her fist and yelled at him to behave.
He moved off proudly and obeyed each command at once; and yet she found the jingling of the various bits and buckles annoying, and the reins took up too much of her hands and her concentration. “How does one deal with a sword and these thrice-blasted reins?” she said to the small white ears. “There must also be a way to hang the rotten thing so it doesn’t bang into you when you’re not using it. I carry the reins in my teeth—and accidentally strangle myself in them—and meanwhile I can’t shout blood-curdling war cries of Victory! and For Damar! to bring terror into the hearts of my enemies, with my mouth full of reins.” As they stood, she pulled the sword from its scabbard and swung it experimentally just as Talat turned his head to snap at a fly on his shoulder, and the sword tangled itself in the reins till Talat could not straighten his neck again, but remained with his head bent around and one reproachful dark eye fixed on his rider, and the blunt blade snuggled along his cheek.
“Ah, hells,” she said, and yanked the sword free. One rein parted. Talat stood, either waiting for directions or afraid to move; the short end of the cut rein dangled a few inches beneath his chin, and he ducked his head and grabbed it, and chewed it thoughtfully.
“We did just fine without,” she said furiously, dismounted, tore the bridle off and dumped it on the ground, holding her unwieldy sword in the other hand like a marauding bandit. She remounted and dug her legs into Talat’s sides—harder than she meant for the saddle skirts muddled her. Talat, delighted, set off on his first gallop since the day he was wounded; and Aerin had wrought better than she knew, for he had the strength and stamina now to gallop quite a distance.
He tore across his pasture. Aerin failing to collect either her wits or her stomach, which seemed to be lying back on the ground with the bridle; and then she discovered that just as the saddle had made her misjudge how hard to squeeze, so now its bulk made it very easy for Talat to ignore her as she tried to tell him to stop by sitting heavily on his back. The fence loomed up before them; “Oh no,” moaned Aerin, dropped her sword, and grabbed two handfuls of mane; and they were up and over. The take-off was a lurch, but they came down lightly, and Aerin discovered that while her ex-convalescent was still disinclined to stop, he was willing to listen to her legs again; and eventually the circles got smaller, and the gallop more like a canter, and finally when she sat back he came down docilely to a walk.
But his head and tail were still up, and he reared suddenly, and Aerin frantically clutched him around the neck. He neighed, and struck out with his forelegs. Aerin had seen him do this years before, when her father rode him, for war-horses were trained to do battle as well as to carry their riders into it; and she had seen them and others of the cavalry on the practice fields, and at the laprun trials. But it was a lot different, she found, when one was on the horse performing.
“Shh,” she said. “If someone notices we’re out here, there will be trouble.” Talat bounced stiff-legged once or twice and subsided. “And how am I supposed to get you back into your pasture again, dimwit?” she addressed him, and his ears flicked back for her voice. “The gate is right under anyone’s eyes watching from the barn; and there’s always someone in the barn.” His ears twitched. “No, we will not jump back in.” She was shaking all over; she felt that her legs were clattering against Talat’s sides.
She turned him back toward the far side of the pasture again, feeling that anything was better than being seen; and they made their way to the place where Talat had made his leap. Aerin dismounted. “You stay right here or I’ll chop your other three legs,” she told him. He stood still, watching her, as she clambered cautiously up the low rock wall and the wooden rails above it. She cast around a few minutes, and found her discarded sword; came back to the fence and began banging the end of the top rail with the hilt till it slid protestingly out of the post and fell to the ground. The other followed. Aerin examined her blisters grimly, and wiped her sweating face. Talat was still watching her intently, and had not stirred a hoof. Aerin grinned suddenly. “Your war-horse training is no joke, hey? Only the best carries the king.” He wrinkled his nose at her in a silent whicker. “Or even a third-rate first sol, now and then.”
She stepped back from the fence. “Now, you. Come here.” She beckoned him as if he were one of the king’s hunting dogs. He bunched his feet together and sprang over the low stones, the stirrups clanging against his sides. She ground the rails back into the post holes again, picked up the sword, and with Talat following—she felt she’d had enough of riding for one day—they walked back to the pool and the mounting stone, and the heap of bridle and scabbard.
Talat was very lame the next day, and Aerin chased him on foot for three days to make him trot and work the soreness out before mounting him again. She reverted to riding him without saddle or bridle, but she took her sword with her, and slashed at dangling leaves and cobwebs—and fell off occasionally when a particularly wicked swing overbalanced her—and learned to hang on with her legs when Talat reared. They also cantered endlessly to the left to strengthen the weak leg, although some days she had to yell and thump on his shoulders and flanks to make him pick up the left lead at all.
She asked Tor, idly, what cues the war horses knew for their leaps and plunges, and Tor, who did not know about Talat and feared what she might be doing, warily told her. Talat nearly unsea
ted her the first time she asked him these things, and didn’t settle down again for days, hoping for more signals to do what he loved best, going off in corvettes when she only wanted him to trot.
The bridle she did not return to her wardrobe, but instead only threw it under her bed out of sight. (Teka, who had rearranged the wardrobe to allow for saddle oil, wondered about this new arrangement, but on the whole found it preferable, since court dresses were not kept under the bed.) She pulled the stirrups off the saddle and began to wrench the stitching out of its bottom, pulled most of the stuffing out, and sewed what remained back together again.
She put the resulting wreck on Talat’s back, sat on it, said hells, took it off, pulled it entirely to bits, and began painstakingly to redesign it to follow exactly the contours of Talat’s back and her legs, which meant that for several weeks she was putting it on him and climbing into it maybe half a dozen times in an afternoon, and Talat was a bit cross about it. She also had to borrow leather-working tools from Hornmar. Her heart was in her mouth for the questions Hornmar had never asked her but might yet someday; but he gave her the tools silently and willingly.
Her saddle was finished at last. She had left the breastplate links on it so that Talat could still wear the royal insignia; and when she put the saddle and breastplate on him she was surprised at how handsome it looked.
“I did a good job on this,” she said, staring at her handiwork; and she blushed, but only Talat was there to see.
Meanwhile the long-awaited wedding of Galanna and Perlith finally occurred, with Tor performing the functions of first companion to Perlith with a blank and sober face, and Galanna almost transcendent with gratified vanity, for the eyes of the entire country were upon her. She was as beautiful as summer dawn, in rose and gold and turquoise, her black hair bound only with flowers, pink and white and pale blue; but she made up for this uncommon self-restraint by wearing rings on every finger and two on each thumb, so that when she made the ritual gestures her hands seemed on fire as the gems caught the sunlight.
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