by Tanya Huff
“I had no idea that tune could be played as a dirge.”
“Tadeus!”
The blind bard rocked back on his heels as Annice flung herself up out of the chair and into his arms. “Hey, I missed you, too, but …” Then he paused, took hold of her shoulders, and pushed her gently an arm’s reach away. One hand dropped to trace the swelling at her waist.
Annice stifled the urge to jerk away. Tadeus was one of only two she’d allow that kind of license. Tadeus, Stasya, and herself had all learned to Sing air together as fledglings. Poor Jazep, with only earth to Sing, had been odd man out that year.
Brows appeared for an instant like the single beat of ebony wings above the edge of the brilliantly yellow silk scarf tied over his eyes and Tadeus lifted his fingertips to her face. After a moment he smiled. “I guess this explains why the kigh kept insisting you didn’t exist. I wondered what you’d done to piss them off although I have to admit this never occurred to me.”
He waited until he felt her smile in turn, then dropped his hand, using the other, still on her shoulder to guide her around to the cushioned bench by the wall. “Let’s hope they haven’t rearranged the furniture on me.”
“They wouldn’t dare.
“Good. Sit.” He dropped gracefully down beside her, one leg tucked up so that he was half reclining in the high carved corner of the bench. “Explain. Start with why you didn’t send me a message through someone else. I assume Stasya knows?”
“She was there when I found out. You know we always try to end our Walks at the same time. And I could hardly send you a message about it when we’re trying to keep the whole thing quiet. In case you’ve forgotten, His Majesty expressly forbade me to have children.”
“Children?” He recoiled. “Nees, tell me it isn’t twins!”
“Tadeus!” She pushed his name out through clenched teeth.
His whole manner became abjectly, and unbelievably, apologetic. “I’m sorry, really.” Then he dropped the pretense. “But it was a stupid, impossible condition for him to put on you and I’m glad you’re challenging it.” He reached up and tugged on a bit of her hair. “That is, if you’re glad …?”
Annice glanced nervously around the common room, suddenly aware that at any moment someone could come in from the library or the hall. Neither door locked; in damp weather one of them barely closed. “Tadeus, can we go somewhere more private and talk?”
“More private? Nees, the best place to tell a secret is out in the open. That way no one suspects you’re hiding something.” He cocked his head, obviously listening. “There’re three people in the library and no one in the hall. I’ll let you know if anyone’s on their way in.”
“But the kigh …”
“Are avoiding you as if you were tone deaf. Talk.”
“I need to ask you about that charge of treason against the Duc of Ohrid.”
“You need?” He pounced on the word. “Is this to do with Stasya going into the mountains? Are you worried about her?”
“Of course I am. You know what travel in Fourth Quarter is like. And I hate being out of contact.” She took a deep breath and fought to relax her jaw. “But that’s not it. Is there any chance you could have misinterpreted that Cemandian? I mean, you can’t Command …”
“No. But the captain can and did and there’s no mistake. Leksik believed, heart and soul, that the duc had sold out to Cemandia and would open the pass to an invading army.”
“He might have been made to believe that. Lied to.”
Tadeus shrugged. “Why bother when we can just ask the duc for the truth?”
“I don’t know. But it’s just not something Pjerin would do.”
“Pjerin?”
“The Duc of Ohrid.” Picking at the tasseled corner of a cushion, she watched the expression that flickered across Tadeus’ face and disappeared behind the band of primrose silk. His mind worked on circular paths and he knew that she’d done a long Walk into the mountains because he’d gone as far as Riverton with her. With Stasya gone, she needed desperately to share her fears; but she couldn’t tell him the one thing that would make him understand. The words just wouldn’t come. He has to ask.
After a moment of thought, it seemed he’d followed the circle around to its logical conclusion. “Nees.” He paused, and pulled her hand off the tassel, folding it in both of his. “Is the Duc of Ohrid the father of your baby?”
She nodded, remembered, winced, and said, “Yes.”
His grip tightened. “What a mess.”
“It’s not that I love him, because I don’t—I don’t even like him very much—but treason is punishable by death and …”
“You don’t want him to die.”
Her mouth twisted and she pulled his hands over so that they rested on the swelling below her heart. “It’s more than that, actually; I don’t want us to die with him.”
Six
“Your Grace, there appear to be people approaching up the valley.”
“Appear to be, Bohdan?” Pjerin turned, his breath pluming in the damp of the cellar.
The elderly steward pulled his heavy wool cloak tighter around his shoulders and frowned at his duc. “I sent young Karli up the north gate tower to knock off that icicle, the one that threatens the life of anyone coming or going should we have a thaw—which, all things being enclosed, we’ll have to have sooner or later no matter how little it looks like it now—and she came down saying there appeared to be nearly twenty people making their way up from the edge of the woods.”
“Were they in trouble?”
“She says not, but who can tell at that distance?
“Well, if they’re not in trouble, why are they traveling in the mountains at this time of the year?”
“Exactly, Your Grace.”
“They can’t think that the pass is open.”
“I personally don’t make those kind of assumptions about lowlanders, Your Grace.”
Pjerin grinned and lifted his torch out of the ancient metal holder.
Bohdan sniffed. “Barbaric.”
“You’d have had more to say if I’d wasted beeswax or oil down here, and a tallow dip would’ve been useless.” Holding the torch over his head, he gestured at one of the huge, square-cut beams. “Does that look like rot to you?”
“No, Your Grace. It looks like frost.”
Grin broadening, Pjerin took the hint and led the way up to the relative warmth of the ground floor. “Have Karli ski down to meet them. The sooner we know who or what they are, the better.”
Bohdan clicked his tongue and shook his head disapprovingly. “You could be sending her into danger. Suppose they’re robbers, driven out of their winter lair by the cold and storms?”
“Robbers?” Pjerin extinguished the torch in a bucket of half-melted snow he’d left at the top of the stairs for just that purpose. Peering at his steward through the cloud of smoke and steam, he had to wait for the hiss and sputter to die down before he could continue. “Even supposing that Ohrid could support a band of robbers twenty strong, why would they be on their way here?”
“To throw themselves on your mercy, of course. So that you’ll keep them fed for the rest of the winter.”
“Then they’re not likely to slaughter my messenger. Besides, Bohdan, even robbers have better sense than to travel very far at this time of the year.”
* * * *
“A Troop of the King’s Guard?” Karli stared at Troop Captain Otik in awe. “And you’ve traveled all the way from Elbasan?” Elbasan was on the other side of the world as far as she was concerned. “To see the duc?”
“That’s right,” the captain grunted, plodding forward on a pair of borrowed snowshoes. He spoke the local dialect with an atrocious accent, but bardic tricks had given him a basic command of the language over the tedious days of travel. “A Troop of the King’s Guard from Elbasan to see the duc.”
“Why?”
“That’s between us and the duc.”
Stasya watched, jealo
us, as the young woman poled herself effortlessly over the snow. The town where they’d left the horses could’ve supplied her with skies, but with the troop confined to the much slower snowshoes there would’ve been little point. She hadn’t wanted to push it as the situation had already left the captain in a decidedly foul mood.
“There’s no forage,” she’d told him bluntly, “and past this point, if we find shelter every night—which I can’t guarantee—you’ve no right to have your beasts eat up someone else’s winter supplies.”
“But we’re on the king’s business.”
“And these are the king’s people and I don’t think he intended them to starve their own livestock for yours. We can carry enough food for ourselves but not for the horses. From here on, we walk.”
Fortunately, someone in Elbasan had been thinking ahead and most of the troop turned out to be country-bred even if their captain was not.
“So what am I supposed to tell His Grace?” Karli demanded.
Captain Otik’s head jerked up and around. “You’ll tell him nothing, You’ll travel with us until we reach the keep.”
“I don’t think so.” She glided half a dozen steps ahead. “We may be moving uphill, but there’s not much of a slope until I reach the village. I can beat you back by hours.”
“You don’t understand,” the captain told her, all at once sounding as though he were not a person to be argued with. “You haven’t any choice in the matter.”
Stasya watched the young woman’s face, anger rapidly replacing disbelief, and broke in just before the heated protest. “He’s an asshole, isn’t he?” Half the strength of Charm was to find a common ground. “What’s your name?”
“Karli i’Celestin.” Grinning broadly, she skied to Stasya’s side. “What’s yours?”
“Stasya.”
“Just Stasya?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, you don’t look much like a priest …” Karli’s grin slid into speculation. “… so you must be a bard.”
“Right the first time.”
“We had a bard here last quarter.”
“I know. Annice. She’s a friend of mine.”
“Really?”
“Really. Why don’t you travel with us to the keep and we can talk about her?”
“That’d be great. She sang a song called ‘Darkling Lover’. Do you know it? It really steamed His Grace.”
“I’ll bet.” Stasya shot Captain Otik a superior look as Karli expanded on just what she meant by steamed. The captain had wanted the approaching skier kept with them under threat of crossbow fire.
“If the duc finds out what we are,” he’d declared in a tone that suggested no room for argument, “he’ll close the gates and we’ll never pry him out. If we keep his messenger, he’ll have no idea of what happened; a request for assistance, a broken ski, a sudden love affair. He may suspect trouble, but he won’t know for sure.”
Stasya had not taken the suggestion, had argued, and had won.
Weapons remained undrawn.
Karli remained with them.
They’d be at the keep by noon.
* * * *
“You told her to come right back?”
“I did.” Bohdan hunched his shoulders against the cold wind blowing down from the mountains and funneling out through the gate of the keep. “I told her to find out who the travelers were and what they wanted and to return immediately.”
Pjerin beat his fist lightly against the stone of the north gate tower as he peered down the length of the valley. Although they were still some distance away, individuals could now be picked out of the moving mass and counted. Twenty-two; twenty-three including Karli. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Bohdan. Karli’s probably just found someone new to talk to.”
His steward grunted and didn’t seem reassured.
He wasn’t particularly reassured himself.
* * * *
The Cemandian has spoken to no one since Tadeus found him. The duc cannot have been warned of your coming. Inform me immediately upon questioning.
The messages the kigh carried were high in concept and low in structure and therefore open to interpretation depending on the personal style of the bards involved, but in this particular instance, there hadn’t been much room for flexibility.
Stasya lifted her gaze to the imposing bulk of the keep where it perched on a steep-sided spur of rock, brooding over the pass, the village, and the valley below. Even the Citadel seemed open and welcoming in comparison. What kind of a man would such a stronghold produce? By all accounts, one who knew his own strengths and had every intention of keeping Ohrid safe behind them.
“… well it’s a pretty well-known fact that the duc’s aunt—that’s his father’s youngest sister, she lives in the keep, too—wants more trade with Cemandia, but he says that he won’t be relegated to just a tollgate between the two countries, that he wants more for Ohrid than that.”
“You heard him say that?” Captain Otik barked.
Karli shot the captain a disgusted look. “Of course I have. Well, mostly. Everyone knows that’s what he says.”
* * * *
As they came closer, it became apparent that distance alone had not created the similarities between the travelers.
“Twenty-one in a Troop of Guard,” Pjerin muttered. But who the twenty-second might be he had no idea. Why would a Troop of Guard be sent to Ohrid? He had no need of them. He didn’t want them. He didn’t care what kind of lowlander lunacy brought them into the mountains in Fourth Quarter. Whatever their reason, they weren’t staying and that was final.
He buried the urge to strap on his own skis by joining his forester at the splitting stump, but his unease grew as he returned again and again to watch the slow, inexorable progress up the valley.
“The next trader through here with a distance glass,” he growled in frustration, “makes a sale.”
When the strangers reached the village but continued on up the steep path to the keep, snowshoes shouldered and Karli mad obvious by the silhouette of her skies, he sent a message to Bohdan and another to Olina. The tabards proclaiming them King’s Guard were now visible over bulky winter clothing.
“You didn’t mention we were being invaded,” Olina pointed out as she arrived at the gate, nodding at the heavy splitting ax Pjerin still carried. “Should I have brought you the Ducal sword and taken the time to arm myself?”
Bohdan, hurrying up in time to hear her question, shot a startled look at his duc. “Your Grace! They’re King’s Guard. ‘Tis treason to deny them.”
“And an unenclosed pain to feed them,” Pjerin grunted, laying the ax aside; but not so far aside that he couldn’t reach it if he had to. “I wonder what they want?”
Together they stood and watched the twenty-two cover the last bit of ground followed by a chattering crowd of villagers, mundane tasks abandoned in the face of this unusual occurrence. The last time a troop of King’s Guard had come to Ohrid, it had been as a part of the army that had secured the mountain principalities for Shkoder.
A similar crowd, consisting of the inhabitants of the keep, had gathered just inside the gate—the majority ranged behind their duc, the more adventuresome risking ice-covered stairs for the better view from the top of either gate tower.
“Is it the king, Papa?” Gerek pushed his way through until he could peer wide-eyed around his father’s legs. “Is it the king?”
Before he could answer, Karli called out, “They’ve come to see you, Your Grace. All the way from Elbasan. This is Stasya. She’s a bard.”
Pulled forward, Stasya inclined her head, pack and snowshoes precluding a bow. The duc was, as Annice had said, absolutely gorgeous: tall, broad shouldered, narrow hipped, a thick mass of blue-black hair tied at the nape of his neck, dark violet eyes surrounded by a fringe of ebony lashes, high cheekbones, a straight nose, and good teeth. I suppose for people who like that sort of thing … His bearing stopped just short of challenge. And Nees has never been able t
o resist a challenge.
While he certainly didn’t look happy to see them, neither did he look like a man guilty of treason suddenly faced by a Troop of King’s Guard and the prospect of being questioned under Bardic Command. Annice believes he’s innocent of the charges. Tadeus had sent that message right after he’d returned to the hall. Stasya wasn’t sure it helped. Why did Annice believe the duc innocent? Did she have a rational reason or was it merely the influence of the child she carried?
“Pjerin a’Stasiek, Duc of Ohrid.” Troop-Captain Otik dropped his pack and squared off in front of the gate, his eyes narrowed and his beard jutting out aggressively. “You have been charged with high treason; with the breaking of your oaths to Shkoder; with the surrendering of Defiance Pass to the Cemandians, the enemies of Shkoder. These charges have been Witnessed and confirmed.”
The crowd, shocked into disbelieving silence by the captain’s words, drew in its collective breath. The charges were Witnessed and confirmed. The bards had already determined the truth.
Stasya felt a number of eyes on her back. She kept her own on the duc’s face which, so far, showed no emotion at all.
“We are here,” the captain continued, “in the name of Theron, King of Shkoder, High Captain of the Broken Islands, Lord over the Mountain Principalities of Sibiu, Ohrid, Ajud, Bicaz, and Somes, in order that you may answer this charge and that the truth may be determined.” His tone made it plain that, for as far as he was concerned, the truth had been determined already and every moment the duc spent out of irons was wasted time.
Stasya watched a muscle jump in the duc’s jaw, noted how both hands curled into fists, and was impressed by the tight grip he kept on his rage. Although his lips had thinned to bloodless lines, he said only, “Bohdan, open the Great Hall.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The old man’s voice barely rose above his shock.
Pjerin turned and unfolded one fist long enough to touch his trembling steward gently on the arm. “It’ll be all right, Bohdan.”
Bohdan nodded and squared his shoulders. “Yes, Your Grace.”
