By the Sword (29 page)

That was the answer she was looking for. She felt tension leaving her, as she turned her back on the setting sun, and headed home with her shadow reaching out before her, black against the blue-tinged snow.

And that was why she wouldn't give in to Daren, and to what he was offering. The love he was offering came with restrictions, restrictions on what made her unique. If he truly loved what she was, rather than what he thought he saw, he would never have placed those restrictions on her.

If she took him up on his offer of marriage, she would be offering him considerably less than true coin. She didn't love him, she didn't think she could ever learn to love him. In time, she might even come to hate him for the lie he was making her live.

What if one day he outgrew this infatuation, and found someone he really did love? That would be a tragedy as horrible as anything in any of the romantic ballads. Worse, really; there they'd be, living double lies, and trapped in the agreements they'd made when neither of them was thinking particularly clearly.

What if she found someone?

But that notion made her grin, sardonically.
Right. Me in love. About as likely as having my horse decide to talk to me. I may not be
she‘chorne,
but I don't think there's been a man born that could be my partner, and I won't settle for anything less than that.

No, liking Daren was entirely the wrong reason to go through with this charade of his. It would be just as false as putting on a dress and pretending to be something she wasn't for the sake of appearances.

And it was ironic that the things that made her so different—and that he now deplored—were the things that had attracted him to her in the first place.

 

Daren found himself caught between anger and bewilderment. First Kero stormed off and left him standing in the middle of her room, torn between frustration and feeling foolish. He couldn't understand what was wrong with her; why couldn't she see that she was going to have to adjust herself to what people expected of her? The world wasn't going to change just because she was different! He'd offered her something any woman in her right mind—and certainly every single woman at Court—would have pledged her soul to have, and she stormed off because he'd told her the truth of the matter, and how she would have to change.

He waited for her to come to her senses and return, to apologize and take his hands and say she never wanted to fight like that again—

But she didn't come back, and she didn't come looking for him after he returned to his own room. Tarma showed up, toward sunset; she looked older, somehow, and he guessed that his father's death had hit her pretty hard.

“Well,” she said. “It's official. Faram wants you up there yesterday, so you'd better get yourself packed up. You'll need to be on the road tomorrow.”

“Will I need an escort?” he asked, a little doubtfully. He didn't really
want
one, and a retinue would slow him down.

Tarma shook her head. “I don't think so. You can take care of yourself quite well, youngling, and if you have any enemies out there, they won't be looking for one man and his beasts, they'll be looking for a damned parade.”

He sighed. “Well, I guess this is the end of my stay here. I‘ve—not precisely liked it, but—Tarma, I appreciate all you've done for me. I can't really say how much, because I won't know exactly how much you've taught me for years yet.”

She smiled a little. “Then you're wiser than I thought, if you've figured that out. Wise enough to know that you'll be better off packing up now so you can leave straight away in the morning.”

“Does Kero know I'm leaving tomorrow?” he managed to get out. Tarma looked at him oddly for a moment, then nodded.

“I told her,” the Shin‘a'in said, her expression utterly deadpan. “She didn't say anything. Did you two have a fight?”

He started to tell her what had happened between them, then stopped himself; why, he didn't really know, unless it was just that he didn't want anyone else to now about this particular quarrel. “Not really,” he said. “It's just I haven't seen her all afternoon....” He let his words trail off so that Tarma could read whatever she wanted to in them.

She nodded. “Good-byes are a bitch,” she said shortly. “Never got used to them, myself. Travel well and lightly,
jel‘enedre.
I'll miss you.”

She gave him a quick, hard hug, and there was a suspicion of tears in her eyes. Then she left him alone in his suddenly empty room. Left him to pack the little he had that he wanted or needed to take with him. Not the clothes, certainly, except what he needed to travel with—Faram would have him outfitted the moment he passed the city gates in the finest of silk and wool, velvet and leathers. Not the books; they were Tarma's. The weapons and armor, some notes and letters. A couple of books of his own. His life here had left him very little in the way of keepsakes....

And where was Kero? Why didn't she come to him?

She didn't appear at his door any time that evening; he finished packing and tried to read a book, but couldn't concentrate on the words. Finally he took a long hot bath, and drank a good half-bottle of wine to relax. He thought about his father; he and Kero had that in common as well, after the first shock, he was having a hard time feeling the way, perhaps, he should. He hardly knew the King—he'd spent more time away from Court than in it, mostly because of Thanel. Faram had been more of a father than Jad. The King had been the King, and word of his death was enough to shock any dutiful subject into tears. If it had been Faram, now—

He finished the bottle, tried once more to read, then gave up and climbed into bed. He more than halfway expected Kero to drift in through his door after he blew out the candle.

But no; though he waited until he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore, despite tension that had his stomach in knots and his shoulders as tight as braided steel, she didn't come.

By morning, he'd finally begun to believe that she wouldn't. That he'd said the unforgivable.

He hadn't expected her, but as he was saddling up his old palfrey, Tarma came down the stairs to the stable to see him off.

He'd never had more than cursory contact with Lady Kethry, and he wasn't surprised when she didn't appear at her partner's side, but he was unexpectedly touched to see Tarma again.

“Couldn't let you go without a parting gift, lad,” she said. “You'll need it, too. Take Roan.”

“Take
Roan? ”
He could hardly believe it. The gelding he'd been using was a fine saddle-bred of her Clan's breeding; he was astonished and touched, and very nearly disgraced himself by breaking into tears again.

“Dear gods, we've got Ironheart and Hellsbane, plus a couple of mules. He'll be eating his head off in the stable if you don't take him.” She led the gelding out of his stall and tethered him beside the palfrey. “Look at him, he'd be perfectly happy to do just that. I'd say it's your duty to save the overstuffed beggar from his own stomach.”

“In that case,” he said, “I guess I have no choice.”

“Never try to cross a Shin‘a'in, boy,” she told him gravely. “We always get our way.”

“So I've learned.” He dared to reach for her bony shoulders and hug her; she returned it, and they both came perilously close to damp eyes.

“Now get out of here before I have to feed you again,” she said, pushing him away, gently. “Star-Eyed bless, but the amount of provisions we've had to put in to keep you fed! You and that gelding make a matched set!”

It was a feeble joke, but it saved him, and he was able to take his leave of her dry-eyed, saddle up Roan, and ride off down the path to the road.

Then, as he stared back at the Tower, his eyes burned and stung after all.

She hadn't even come to say good-bye.

He turned his back on the place resolutely. She'd made her choice; he had to get on with his life. Only his eyes kept burning, and not all the blinking in the world would clear them. He was rubbing them with the back of his hand, when like the ending to a ballad, he heard hoofbeats behind him—hoofbeats he recognized; the staccato rapping of Kero's little mare's feet on the hard-packed snow. He'd know that limping gait anywhere, any time; Verenna had favored her right foreleg ever since an accident in his second year here, and he knew her pace the way he knew the beat of his own heart.

He turned his gelding to greet her, his heart filled to bursting.
She came to her senses! She's coming with me! I won her over-

Then as she came into view, he felt a shock, and stared, his eyes going so wide he thought they were going to fall out of his head.

It was Kero, all right. With her face made up like one of the Court flowers, her hair in an elaborate arrangement that must have taken hours to do. In a dress. A fancy, velvet dress, a parody of hunting-gear. It was years, decades out of date, and she must have gotten it out of her grandmother's closet.

She looked like a fool. It wasn't just the dress, it wasn't even mostly the dress, old and outdated as it was. It was that she was
simpering
at him, her eyes all wide and dewy, her lips parted artfully, her expression a careful mask of eager, honeyed anticipation.

“Oh,
Daren,
” she gushed, as she rode within hearing distance. “How could you ever have thought I'd stay behind? After all you've offered me, after all we've meant to each other, how could you have ever doubted me?”

She rode up beside him and laid a hand on his elbow, a delicate, and patently artificial gesture. “I thought over what you'd said, and I realized how wise you are, Daren. The world isn't going to change, so I might as well
adapt
to it! After all, it isn't every day a
prince
of the
blood
offers to make
me
his
consort!”

She giggled—not her usual hearty laugh, or even her warm, friendly, sensuous chuckle, but a stupid little giggle. Her mare sidled a little, and she let it, instead of controlling it.

That's when it dawned in him. She was acting exactly the way those little ninnies at Court had been acting—vacuous, artfully helpless, empty-headed, greedy-Sickening. He pulled away from her, an automatic, unthinking reaction.

Abruptly, her manner changed. The artificial little fool vanished as completely as if she had never existed. Kero looked at him soberly, the absurd riding habit, painted cheeks and ridiculous hair all striking him as entirely unfunny. Verenna tried to sidle again, and this time Kero controlled her immediately.

“I just gave you everything you said you wanted me to be, yesterday. That's exactly the way you asked me to behave.”

“In public!” he protested. “Not when we're together!”

“Oh, no?” She tilted her head to one side. “Really? And how private is a prince of the blood? When can you be absolutely sure that our little secrets won't be uncovered? When can you guarantee that we won't be interrupted or watched from a distance?”

He was taken rather aback—and vivid recollections came pouring back, of private assignations that had become public gossip within a week, of secrets that had been out as soon as uttered, of all the times he'd sought privacy only to find watchers everywhere. Roan stamped impatiently, reflecting his rider's unease.

“Even if you can get away from your courtiers,” she persisted, her brows creased as she leaned forward earnestly in her saddle, “even if you can escape the gossips, how do you keep things secret from the servants? They're everywhere, and they learn everything—and what they learn, sooner or later, the entire Court knows.”

She sat back in her saddle, and watched his face, her eyes following his. “Besides, what you live, you start to become. The longer I act like a pretty fool, the more likely I am to turn into one. Is that really what you want from me?”

“No!” he exclaimed, startling Roan into a snort. “No, what I love about you is how strong you are, how clever you are, how much you're like a friend—the way I can talk to you like another man—”

He stopped himself, appalled, but it was too late. She was nodding.

“But
this
is what you asked me to become,” she replied, taking in dress, hair, and all with a single gesture. “Daren, dearheart, you don't
really
want me as a lover, you want me as a
friend,
a companion. But I can't be a companion in your world—I can only be something like this.”

He tried to say something to refute her, but nothing would come out.

“Daren, you have a companion and partner waiting for you—someone who needs your help and support and the fact that you love him, and needs it more than I ever will,” she said softly, but emphatically. “Your brother is and will be more to you than I ever can. Or ever should. And once we'd both gotten to the Court, you'd have found that out. I could never be more than a burden to you then, and it would frankly be only a matter of time until my temper made me an embarrassment as well.”