Senrid

by Sherwood Smith

  “Thanks…whoever you are.” Kitty looked ready to cry.

  “The thanks go to Leander and Clair. Now, brush your hair! Groanboils! There’s no time for a bath, but there’s a pitcher of water, and that room has to be the bathroom, so at least you can wash your face and hands.”

  I bounded to the door of the wardrobe and pulled it open, deciding I’d better change into a warmer gown, if I could find one.

  All Ndand’s things were much fancier than I’d choose, though not nearly as fancy as Kitty’s dress, with its silken lacings down the front and the embroidery and flounces. Still, Ndand’s clothing was very well made—a wardrobe fit for a princess. As I looked over the many gowns, I wondered if Tdanerend really loved his daughter after all, or if that fancy wardrobe was a kind of proof of his ambition.

  So far, everything pointed to the second choice.

  I picked a sturdy woolen gown that had close sleeves and ought to keep me warm even in a drafty, unwarmed castle on the verge of winter. Moving fast, I unlaced the old linen one, stepped out, and got into the other. Just as Senrid’s knock came, I finished tying the sash.

  After ramming the spectacles onto my nose, I sprang to the door and opened it. Senrid was a blur. I hate not seeing danger.

  “Did she try to run away?”

  “No. Too busy,” I said shortly.

  A quick peek at Kitty showed her clothes brushed, her face clean, and her hair damp but orderly down her back. She looked tired and limp, and not in the least like someone about to make a mad dash through a castle that seemed to be guarded by as many people as our entire population on the cloud-top city at home. If not the entire population of Mearsies Heili!

  “Come on, Kyale,” Senrid said from the doorway.

  Peek. He had also changed, into one of those black-and-tan uniforms, a high-collared, close-fitted black tunic with a line of gold stitchwork edging the stiff collar and narrow long trousers, black except for a narrow gold stripe down the outer seam, high blackweave riding boots, plain black sash round the fitted middle. His uniform was completely bare of any kind of rank markers or insignia. Ndand had said in her bland, emotionless voice that Tdanerend insisted on protocol whenever any of them were in the throne room or overseeing military exercises, but Senrid had not earned any rank in their military academy—he wasn’t even allowed to go, yet—therefore he had no army rank.

  Not until we had gorbanzoed down what seemed another 500 miles of rich-but-somberly-furnished castle and entered a truly spectacular throne room did I begin to see what this meant.

  Ancient banners alternated with newer ones high on the vaulted walls, many of them tattered and spattered nastily with old brown bloodstains. Below each was mounted a sword, sometimes a sword and a crown, the polished metal glimmering with baleful red highlights like a beating heart in the inescapable torchlight. The dimensions of the vast room, the heavy black stone and steel and gold all were meant to intimidate, and it worked.

  The throne was a great thing, mostly highly polished blackwood gilt with finely worked gold, with some dark blue gems set into the carving along the top in a pattern of galloping horses. The black and gold were the same colors as the great screaming eagle banner, gold on black, hung high behind the throne: the flag of Marloven Hess, emblem of ages of bloody War.

  Next to the throne was a smaller chair, and on it Tdanerend sat, alone, waiting for us, I guess. Or maybe he liked to lurk around in there and brood. Anyway, when we entered, except for the guards at the far doors, we appeared to be alone. The hour was very late by then, and I kept fighting yawns.

  “Senrid. You have wasted too much time,” the man on the lesser throne said, as soon as we were within hearing distance. His harsh voice echoed. “Were you fraternizing again?”

  “No,” Senrid said. His voice sounded light and kid-like by contrast. “Not at all, Uncle Tdanerend. We—Ndand and I—got lost in a long discussion of how well you are managing the kingdom for my sake, and how much I must learn before I am to be deemed worthy of the title to which I was born.”

  Wow! I wouldn’t have believed that gas even if I’d been totally unconscious—but Tdanerend seemed to swallow it right down like fresh chocolate pie.

  He nodded slightly, his frown-lined face creasing in obvious self-satisfaction. He was, I could see, a man of medium height, with neat, short dark brown hair that shone with reddish tinges in the torchlight. His uniform—glittering with awards and rank markers—made him seem imposing.

  “We forgot about Kyale until now, but I remembered my responsibility,” Senrid continued. “Isn’t it so, Ndand?” He turned to me.

  Ndand did not mind lying to her father, so long as Senrid gave her the words. “Forgot Kyale.” I didn’t mind lying, either. This creep wasn’t anyone I felt obliged to be truthful with.

  Tdanerend’s gaze shifted to me, and my heart slammed again. “What did you accomplish in Vasande Leror, Ndand?” There was no emotion—no fondness or familiarity in his tone.

  “What I was assigned, father,” I said. “I helped Senrid find Kyale, and then I stayed to spy, and I saw many rooms, but all were empty, then I had to hide when I heard voices.” I kept my voice flat.

  “I see.” He visibly lost interest in me, and turned to Kyale. “You. Have you decided to consent to our plans?”

  Senrid had passed us by; he leaped up the steps before the thrones, and sat on the great one. He looked small, almost lost, except for the light on his blond hair.

  “No,” Kitty said, her voice high and angry. “I will NOT consent. And so you may’s well kill me because nothing you do will work. I got a good rest in that silly closet of yours!” At the end her voice shrilled.

  Tdanerend’s thin mouth curved in a malicious smile. “Very well. I’ll grant your wish, since you are worth nothing to us otherwise. You may witness two deaths tomorrow, after which I’ll ask you once more. If you remain obdurate, yours will be the most entertaining of the three.”

  Poor Kitty looked like a sun-bleached sheet.

  Pocalubes piled up behind my lips, but I kept myself quiet and unmoving.

  Tdanerend motioned casually at what I’d taken to be inky shadows between the great stone supports of the vaulted ceiling, and two henchminions approached. A point of the Royal Avuncular Finger and these flanked Kitty.

  “Since her fear of closed-in spaces appears to be selective,” Tdanerend said sarcastically, with a glance at Senrid in the great throne, “she will be housed on Execution Row.”

  Senrid said nothing, but I saw one hand lift, holding three fingers together. Briefly, a slight gesture.

  The henchies showed no reaction to anything.

  Poor Kyale was hauled away. The sound of their diminishing steps had barely receded when Tdanerend said to Senrid, with a patronizing expression, “You have completed this task and acquitted yourself appropriately. You may sit in judgment at Convocation.” He indicated the throne under Senrid’s royal butt.

  Senrid gave him a fast look that would have made me suspicious, but if Tdanerend even saw it, he thoroughly ignored it.

  “Now, go off to bed, both of you. It is well past midnight. You have plenty to do tomorrow, Senrid, if you are to be finished with your work by third watch, which is when I have scheduled the executions.”

  He looked expectantly at Senrid. I’d been peering over my spectacles; by the time he turned to me, I had lifted my head and saw him as a blur through the lenses. Easier on my stomach, but not safe.

  “Yes, Father,” I said meekly, since he seemed to expect a response.

  “I will check on you shortly. If you are not asleep, I’ll make you sleep.”

  I repressed a shudder, but Senrid grinned as he slid off the throne and hopped down the steps. “Don’t worry, we’ll both be asleep. We’re tired!”

  We left together. Neither of us spoke during the thousand-mile hike back to the residence area of the castle. Senrid was deep in thought, the way his eyes moved sightlessly past all the guards, fine furnishings, and zillion
s of magic-torches.

  I don’t know what he was thinking about. I didn’t want to know. I was thinking about Tdanerend and the throne and Senrid, and some of the things that pitiable Ndand had said. Now, I didn’t care at all who sat on the throne of Marloven Hess. In fact, as far as I was concerned, they could all get themselves turned into tree stumps. But I was also thinking about that execution, and so, tired and unsettled and angry, I gave in to impulse and said when we reached his room, “Does it matter if he enchants us? Aren’t we already acting enchanted when we practice unreasoning cruelty?”

  Senrid looked sharply at me, and when our eyes met, his narrowed.

  I lifted my head. His grayish-blue eyes blurred.

  He opened his door and motioned me in, then shut it. “You’ve never asked that kind of question before,” he said slowly. “What exactly happened at Leander’s?”

  My heartbeat seemed to thump behind my aching eyeballs, and I wished I’d kept my mouth closed.

  Except it had felt so good to say it.

  “Lots of time to think,” I said in my dullest voice. “Sitting alone in the library.”

  He took quick steps across his room, turned, paced back. “I have to prove myself. Uncle is right about that, though I sometimes think he’s preventing me from learning more than he’s teaching me. I don’t know! I thought my father was strong—stronger than anyone—but he wasn’t if he could get himself killed. Maybe Uncle is right about his going weak by marrying a white, and I’m weak because of their influence. It’s as if our mothers put spells on us through their white influence, and Uncle has to find ways to counteract it.”

  “Oh. Thank you for telling me, Senrid,” I said in sickly-sweet gratitude. “Though if our mothers died so early, when we were too small to remember them, how great can their influence have been?” I opened his door and walked out, shutting it behind me.

  Once I’d settled into Ndand’s bed, my tired brain sent thoughts and images skittering about, like sightless mice. But when Tdanerend tromped in, as he’d threatened, I faked sleep, and he tromped out again after a short scan.

  I heard his boots thump down the hall to Senrid’s room.

  Bed checks? He couldn’t be afraid that Ndand would be up and plotting anything. But he was afraid of what Senrid might be doing—like learning.

  While we were mountaineering back up to the bedrooms, poor Kyale found herself marched back down into the everlasting darkness of the dungeon by two hulks who didn’t bother to shorten their mile-long strides. Once she tripped over a torn flounce and fell headlong, skinning her elbow through the flimsy fabric of her gown, but they just hauled her up, set her more or less on her feet again, and gave her a shove to get her moving.

  Down down down some more, until what seemed ages later they pushed her into a cell, slammed the door, and marched away.

  She paced the perimeter until her eyes adjusted, rejoicing over every indication of space. She couldn’t reach any ceiling, and the grating in the door let in a distant flicker of torchlight. Above—she could just make them out—tiny air holes.

  She wouldn’t feel closed in here. No, she wouldn’t. There was plenty of space. Not like—

  No, don’t think about it. But she wouldn’t give in, even so, no, she wouldn’t.

  She stood on tiptoe and peered through the little grating in the door. Space. And—she heard voices, a high voice. Yes! One sounded like a kid!

  Familiar? She heard a laugh, and memory bloomed. Faline! Knowing Faline was there too made everything less frightening. It had to mean the girl with Senrid was telling the truth, and there really was a rescue plan.

  Kyale curled up on the floor, using part of her skirt as a pillow, and soon fell asleep.

  SIX

  We had yet to learn that people who get drawn into others’ power struggles seldom stay isolated; the results of their actions eddy out in ever widening circles, intersecting more and more lives.

  World events intersected our lives on a personal level, because while we have no interest whatsoever in politics or war, we do get caught up in the causes of people worth helping.

  Well, an old adventure was about to intersect with my life once again, causing change for us all. Today was the first ripple, made by two very tired kids who stumbled over the border of Marloven Hess as a bleak dawn began to lighten the landscape.

  One was feeling sick, and she could hardly walk. She didn’t look for reason or relief. These things had become as meaningless as the passage of time.

  They spied a cave in the hills through which they’d been wandering aimlessly—or what seemed to be aimlessly. They did not know they were drawn by a well of hidden magic pooled over centuries.

  “Over here, Laurel,” said the girl’s twin brother. “A little farther, then you can lie down and rest.”

  “Is this a Place?” she asked listlessly.

  “I don’t know. You too sick to sense anything?”

  “Yes,” she sighed.

  They picked their way up a short, rock-strewn trail, and reached the cave. To them the world was shades of gray, black, and white, all wearying, the other senses diminished to small irritants that served only to push them ever onward in their wanderings.

  Now they fumbled with brief, weak gratitude into the cave, which was large, and would be easily spotted by anyone with a mind to search, but they didn’t consider that. It felt like a Place. They didn’t know, or care, that their Places were always spots—usually long forgotten—where ancient magic concentrated.

  The girl paused inside, kicked rocks away from a spot, then she sank down, groaning crossly.

  “Quiet,” the boy said.

  “Oh, you be quiet, Lael,” she retorted with no energy. “I wish you were sick instead, so you could feel what it’s like.”

  “I’m sick of your complaining. Tired of it, too. Tired.” The boy sat disconsolately on a rock, kicking at it with his feet.

  The girl endured the rhythmic tapping for a short space, then cried, “Stop it!”

  For a century of outside time they had wandered, though they had no sense of day or night. They didn’t need to eat or drink, nor had they aged; decades had slid by without anyone seeing any more of them than their shadows. It was a nightmare sort of existence, and they had become nightmare versions of themselves during the long years of their roaming.

  “Make me,” he responded, with the empty threat of unthinking habit. But he blinked at her in slightly bewildered annoyance. She really did sound sick.

  “I hate it,” she fretted, then stopped, too worn to continue. And likewise the boy was too dispirited to ask what ‘it’ was—even if he had cared.

  Their thoughts drifted like fog vapors as they sat in the cold, dark cave. Memories, or scraps of memories, flickered in minds that had dwindled into distortions.

  Presently the boy reached into a pocket and pulled out a stale crust that had petrified long ago. He looked at it without hunger. “Want some, Laurel? There’s enough for a bite or two.”

  “No! Where’d you get that disgusting stale…” The listless whine died away.

  Even though he felt no hunger, it was something to do. He bit off a piece and munched it methodically in a dry mouth, and when he’d swallowed it down, he moved across the cave from Laurel, where the sharp reach of the wind lessened.

  “Lael?” Laurel’s voice sounded odd. “I was trying to count up the time we’ve been away. Winters. Years. Winters, winters, winters!”

  Lael felt the impact of those hundred winters, as if someone had opened a well in his head and he was about to drop down. “Quiet,” he said, without any force. “It’s making me sick, too.” He sounded small, and young.

  Silence shrouded them, and eventually they slept.

  Well before dawn in the royal castle in Choreid Dhelerei, I awoke as though being forced up through heavy waters. Unwillingly I moved stone-weighted limbs, burying my face firmly in the pillow.

  “Uh…don’t,” I groaned.

  But the somethi
ng persisted in disturbing me. The something resolved into a hand on my shoulder, shaking.

  “Ndand,” a soft, nervous voice whispered. “Ndand! Wake up! You overslept!”

  Ndand? Who was—?

  Alarm zapped through me, fletching the arrow of memory. I had to wake up before the unknown person touched my hair and noted that it didn’t feel at all like it looked.

  I flung off her hand and sat up in bed, staring at a young serving woman dressed in gray. She bore a lamp in one hand, and its light shone on her frightened face.

  “The king sent me. It’s late, almost dawn. The Regent will be down to breakfast very soon.”

  “I’m awake,” I croaked. “I’ll be quick. Thanks.”

  The woman touched her hand to her heart, her expression relieved, and she hurried away.

  The room was already lamp-lit, and I saw light glowing from the dressing room next door. I got up and ran in, and found a steaming bath waiting. Steaming! For a moment I stared down at this evidence of more Marloven arrogance; cleaning frames use far less magic than transferring, heating, and then filtering lots of water. Usually baths are made for everyone, like for a village, or everyone in a castle, and then are almost always diverted from streams, so the only magic is heating and what we on Earth would call filtering. That we all had private baths high up in the castle was so wasteful of magic I was disgusted, but not disgusted enough to refuse to thoroughly enjoy warming up in that clean water. Though I dared not stay long.

  Then I thrashed into a sturdily made cotton-wool gown. The room was bitterly cold. Ran a brush through my hair, shoved my feet into Ndand’s shoes, which were wider than my feet, so they more or less fit, grabbed the spectacles, and ran.