Read Banner of the Damned Online
Authors: Sherwood Smith
Banner of the Damned (92 page)
As Kaidas chased Vasande around in a circle, and the boy laughed, she suppressed the image of the beautiful daughter. What if he monopolized her as much as he did Vasande? Whenever Kaidas was in Alarcansa, every free moment was given to Vasande. Carola gritted her teeth against bitter resentment. Kaidas never came to her freely. She always had to summon him. She would not lose what time she had to another child, not until her interest in him died. Some days, she hoped it would die soon.
On this bitter thought, the Herskalt shifted us to Kaidas, whose emotions buffeted me like a wind storm, so fierce was his love for Vasande, and so strong was his longing for freedom.
That was as much as I could discern before the headache threatened to overcome my wits. Already I was dizzy and sour-mouthed with nausea.
Once again he had a cup of kinthus waiting for me. When the pain and nausea had lessened, I said hoarsely, “They are evil people, the Definians.”
“They are angry people.”
“Bitter as iron gall. Why is that? They are wealthy, they have everything they want.”
“They do not have everything they want. They have everything others want. Experiences shape us, but so do the choices we make in reaction to those experiences. Tatia craves her cousin’s title. The other cousin, Falisse Ranalassi, ran away and learned to sing. In your terms, the latter chose the path of civility—art—and the former pretends to civility.”
The hunger was there again, this time to dive into this other cousin’s mind, to know through experience what shaped Falisse Ranalassi. Uneasy at the intensity of my own passion I asked, “Is it not a trespass, to delve into people’s secret thoughts like this, unasked?”
“Almost everything we do in life is a trespass by someone’s standards.
You Colendi object if someone steps on your shadow inside a house, but in other kingdoms, no one notices shadows. Ask yourself this instead: will you do harm or good with the knowledge that you have gained? And ask yourself if you ever have enough knowledge, when you are making decisions that will affect other lives?”
I made The Peace. My thoughts tumbled in painful confusion. Knowledge, the gaining of knowledge, that steadied me. Knowledge led to wisdom.
“I believe the time has come to let you explore on your own.” The Herskalt laid the dyr in a shallow dish of thin porcelain, chased round the rim with tiny red-centered golden blossoms and blue laurel leaves—it was not Marloven, whose styles were variations on interlocking figures. I had this sense that it was
old
. “I am going to be busy for a time. I have a very difficult set of wards to set up. I believe you are aware of the dangers of using this magical artifact, so you will follow my instructions exactly.”
I was so amazed I couldn’t speak. But I did not need to. I am certain my longing was plain in my face.
“No more than one memory a day—if I am not here, and you lose consciousness while under the influence of the magic…”
The idea was so terrible that I made a gesture of repudiation that I could not control. He left the sentence unfinished and said, “You must always come here. If you take the dyr anywhere, there are powerful wards that will alert interested mages to its presence. You may find yourself in a difficult situation, and again, I would be unable to rescue you.”
I assented, reflecting on all those castle wards still awaiting replacement. The sooner I freed the city of ancient bindings and granted the Herskalt access, the better for us all.
He issued a long list of magical instructions specific to the circumstances, so useless to duplicate in this defense.
Two days later, Anhar returned. She burst into the tower and thrust open the door to my study, bringing the scents of Colend with her, and a basket of fresh pastries and late-season berries, plus a letter from Birdy. Her eyes were wide as she said, “You certainly stirred him up the night after I arrived. That next day he went off to the archive, and every time I turned around he and the duke were talking about this record or that, or Birdy was scribbling this letter.” She laughed as she handed me a fat scroll tied
with the green of sincerity—far too lengthy to be stuffed into a scrollcase without being put in three separate sendings. I sat down and opened it, with her looking on; my worry about magic was foremost in my mind.
Who have you been talking to, Em? Is Lasva turning on her land of birth?
That is not to deny that some heralds didn’t interfere in foreign affairs. We were told about them and shown how short-sighted such a policy was. Did Lasva really say that “all heralds were educated to cause trouble in other kingdoms” or is that the careless hyperbole of discussion?
The Duke of Alarcansa and I both agree that Colend has never set out to make trouble for other kingdoms. Many name Mathias the Magnificent, our single emperor, as the height of ambition, but if you read all his records, he firmly believed that the creation of his empire was an exercise in civilizing people. There was a Lassiter as equerry on that famous journey, and I finished reading his account last night. According to the words he heard spoken by the emperor, Mathias’s definition of civilization was food, shelter, and meaningful work for everyone. His military strategy (if you can call it that, when there was little or no actual fighting) was to push his indefensible borders out to defensive ones.
When he approached a new border, and invited the rulers of the kingdom to talk to him, he explained at length—you can read the records written AT THE TIME by herald scribes from both sides, as one of our exercises was to compare them word for word, translating them back and forth from Sartoran to Kifelian—that he was constantly formulating experiments to better all three of those for the good of all and that he invited client kings to actively contribute.
His laws were set to protect all people and their property. Show me any empire that has done the same. Including that Marloven one. I’ve been reading its history, as much as I can. There is scarcely anything available, unless you want to send me copies.
I glanced rapidly down the rest and found that he’d listed every source he had to hand, with salient quotations copied out in a handwriting that got more hasty and scribbled toward the end.
I looked up, to discover Anhar waiting, her expression curious and intent. She was going to report back, of course. Relieved that the question of magic had not come up at all, I said, “We studied this question
when we were young, but it’s interesting to delve into it now—except that I don’t have access to Colendi records anymore.” I pointed to the pastries. “Nifta is back, and Pelis is restless, as it’s been snowing since New Year’s Lastday. Shall we go to the queen’s rooms and share these out while they are fresh?”
I still walked to the queen’s suite each morning at the daybreak bells to spend an hour with Lasva doing the Altan fan form. Twice she asked me if I had begun reading Hadand’s letters, and both times I told her that, so far, my tasks had precluded this reading, but if she desired me to do so, I would lay aside another task.
I was aware as I repeated those words a second time that she would take the reiteration as an oblique question: is this an order? If she ordered me to read those letters, I would. I believe she knew that. What I did not see at the time was the hurt I caused in putting her in that position; I just wanted to be free of the obligation. I knew that she was seeking something from them, but I had no time for toiling through four-centuries’ old letters in search of the long dead queen’s inner mind, not when I had the means to visit people’s thoughts directly. I consoled myself with the thought that gunvaer affairs could be safely left to the current-day gunvaer. I had my own tasks.
I was tempted to venture into Hadand’s mind with the dyr. All I required was one letter to use as a focus. But the Herskalt had warned me about people with whom I had no contact, and I feared that the distortion of old-fashioned Marlovan would be difficult to endure.
And anyway, how would I explain my sudden expertise to Lasva? Telling her about the dyr was impossible, not without admitting what I had seen. Because I suspected that her first question—it was only human nature—would be,
Did you use it on me without my being aware?
It was a relief one morning when she said, “If you are busy with your own tasks, Emras, you are free from practicing the Altan fan. I am teaching some of the guardswomen—I find that nothing reinforces good form like being required to explain it. But I fear it would be unforgivably dull for you to revert to the very basic steps.” She smiled. “But you are welcome to continue eating with the staff, as always.”
I bowed and withdrew.
By then I’d been back to the dyr three times. I’d begun with Tatia, Falisse Ranalassi, and Carola, separately at first, and the day before the above, the three together the day of the fight in the salon.
I was so deeply involved that I actually forgot about my letters to Birdy, until I woke up after falling into bed, and discovered his last letter on the floor; though servants did come through to clean my rooms, I had told them not to touch any papers or books. They obeyed assiduously, apparently unwilling to have any interaction with anything that might be magical, and therefore dangerous.
So I picked up the letter from the floor and read it through. After a day of work at the wards, I sat down to answer:
Birdy:
If I read your words correctly it appears to you as if Lasva has turned on her homeland, and because of that, I’ve done the same. Oh Birdy, the truth is very different. I have resisted reading Marloven history because I am so busy dealing with Marlovens in the present, but from what I hear in ballads and stories the Marlovens tell on themselves, they imposed their empire by military force onto people who had no loyalty or interest in being Marloven. They demanded loyalty through fear and punitive laws instead of inviting it. Worse, they claimed pre-eminence of a cultural entity, the Marlovens, which by our definition is evil. Colend does not claim pre-eminence of any cultural entity.
We do make it plain by misdirection, however, that we consider the Chwahir a sub-eminent cultural entity. But the Chwahir do the same to us, according to what we were taught. The Chwahir as well as the Marlovens exalt themselves by praising the violence by which they prevail, and they constantly seek to advance in the skills of war.
I am merely attempting to look at how and why kingdoms form. As a child, I understood that they just were, with King Martande bettering everyone else. I am looking at all my unquestioned assumptions as there is little else to do in the grip of winter. How I envy you in Colend’s temperate weather!
I was so busy with my secret pursuit (meted out to myself as a reward for work) that Birdy’s letters sat for longer and longer periods before I’d
remember to answer them. I had closed myself completely into the world of magic and other people’s lives.
… but according to what we heralds are taught (and I will search out the sources in just a moment), each development of war, from stone to fire, steel to arrows, has cost the civilization that made them.
Next day. Last night the duke came to visit. I brought up this topic. He corroborated my point, quoting what the queen said to him the first year he was appointed Commander: War material has to be made, like everything else, but unlike everything else isn’t used in trade, in sustenance, or to make life better. It is spent to cause death.
You remember our class in the history of kingdoms. First tenet, humans like hierarchies. Second tenet, shifts from small kingdoms to large was in part due to the need to raise, train, and supply royal armies. King Martande did away with royal armies, requiring his nobles to supply said warriors on need. Then he set about creating policies that would preclude that need.
Do we claim moral superiority? Sometimes. But what does it really mean? That Colend’s determined policy of avoiding war is simple practicality? We can look at the world in terms of survival and necessity, denying such ideals as honor and loyalty, compassion and mercy, and so on, but in that case you may as well deny the existence of knowledge and wisdom, because such an argument also denies the validity of human reasoning—and renders meaningless such concepts as virtue, because it denies free choice. And virtue depends on free choice….
