Honor's Paradox-ARC (6 page)

“Half of it is the lordan of your house.”

“For a while. Until his father gets tired of his failures.”

“Which are?”

His smile broadened. “Well, you’re still here, aren’t you? At least until this afternoon.”

“And then?”

“You’ll see, beastie girl. You’ll see.”

With that he turned on his heel and strolled off, laughing softly.

IV

Brier Iron-thorn spent the lesson period after lunch in the barracks, overseeing the ongoing renovations to her lady’s chambers and setting the garrison’s affairs in order for the coming week.

She preferred to do the latter in the privacy of the empty dining hall, having only learned how to read and write since she had come to Tentir and feeling that her efforts still halted badly.

There. The wretched quill had sputtered and blotched again as she leaned too heavily on it. Incompetence fretted Brier almost as much as cowardice; certainly, one saw the first more often than the second in the Kencyrath, where neither should exist at all. Grumbling, she started afresh, a swath of hair like fresh-cut mahogany swinging into her jade-green eyes.

Like most traditional Kendar, Brier trusted her memory more than words on paper. Paper could be destroyed. Well, then, so could people. That had been an added tragedy to the Fall: so much knowledge had been left behind that now fact and the singers’ cherished Lawful Lie were often hard to tell apart. There was something to be said, however, for a notice that could be nailed to the wall rather than repeated nine times to the other house commanders. Certainly, the posted, official lesson schedule made planning easier, even when subject to last-minute alterations.

It still struck her as odd that, following Vant’s demotion and subsequent death, she had become the barracks’ acting master-ten while remaining the Knorth Lordan’s five-commander, a backward situation if ever there was one. The former never would have worked in her early days at the college when most Knorth had seen her only as a Caineron turn-collar inexplicably accepted by the Highlord into his service. She supposed that she had won their trust, although how remained a mystery to her when she still didn’t trust herself. Maybe being competent was its own reward, assuming that she was.

Her own feelings about her change of allegiance remained confused. Yes, she would serve her new lord with body, soul, and honor, yet behind her stood generations of Caineron yondri-gon. Did one ever successfully change houses or lords?

Scullery, stable, laundry, latrine, trock duty . . .

With their lord’s newfound wealth from selling Aerulan’s death banner in perpetuity to the Brandan, he could have afforded to assign some of his Kendar to act as servants for his cadets as was done in other houses such as the Caineron and Ardeth. However, Jameth hadn’t asked for them. Brier approved. They had done well enough so far without such help, sharing the least favorite duties. Being a randon wasn’t all glory—far from it. Lessons in discipline and endurance learned at the college would be invaluable later.

She paused to consider what to assign her own ten-command with its lordan leader. Vant had thought he could drive Jameth out by heaping unpleasant chores on her, not that her ten had let her accompany them on the worst of these. To have their lordan up to her knees in sewage hadn’t pleased any of them, as willing as she had been to serve. But she was also considerate and honored their feelings.

Usually.

All in all,
thought Brier, dripping the pen again,
what a long way they both have come.

In the early days at the college, no one had been able to look the Highborn in her bare face, so used were they to females of her sequestered caste wearing masks. And that scar across her cheekbone—could it really have come from some squabble in the Women’s Halls? Who would have dared to cut her? Moreover, how had they survived her backlash? People didn’t affront Jameth without cost. That much Brier had learned in her short time under Knorth rule. Once the thought of a lady striking back would have horrified her house. Now most of its Kendar showed an odd pride in Jameth’s eccentricities and knack for absurd situations.

Brier herself reserved judgment. Nothing in her past as a Caineron yondri inclined her to trust any Highborn, not that the Knorth hadn’t treated her well. That more than anything else kept her off balance, waiting for them to show their true colors. Still, there was something about this odd lordan that, against her will, compelled her attention.

“Fallen for the Knorth, have you?” jeered the Caineron lover whom she had left behind. “And you really think that you can trust them?”

Brier didn’t know, but she would try. What else, after all, could she do?

Voices sounded in the outer hall. Someone laughed. Brier gratefully put down the again sputtering quill and went to investigate.

Her ten-command were shedding their winter coats and shaking snow off of them. Smallest and slightest among them, the lordan was easy to spot. But what had happened to her face? Brier stalked over and caught Jameth by the chin, turning her head to see. The Highborn gave her a rueful smile. One of her eyes had swollen almost shut and her lip was split.

“I got run over by a cow,” she said.

It was calving season for the black, bad-tempered herd, whose expectant mothers liked to wander off to bear their young in private. Cadets were duly sent to bring them back. That had been the ten’s charge instead of their usual third-period class.

Dar grinned. “We came on her just after she’d dropped, with the calf steaming in the snow, barely on its feet. Of course she charged us. M’lady’s horse threw her, getting out of the way, and both beasts trampled her.”

“Actually,” said Killy, “I think it was the calf scrambling to catch up who did the worst damage.”

Brier let go of the lordan’s chin.
I sent her on that duty,
she thought, then chided herself:
Am I to blame that the chit can’t stay out of trouble? And who am I, anyway, to touch her?

“You could have been gored,” she said gruffly.

Jameth shrugged it off, as unnervingly dismissive of risk as always. “So could any one of us.”

“There was a funny smell, too,” said stolid Erim, obviously following his own line of thought. “Like burning fur. And we saw prints in the snow.”

“Cave bear?” Brier asked sharply. Any large predator on the prowl was cause for concern with the herd willfully astray.

“Bigger than that, and melted, then frozen again, around the edges.”

“I think it was the Dark Judge,” said Mint, for once without the trace of a smile. “Haven’t you heard him howling in the night?”

They had all heard something.

“The wind,” said Killy, uncertainly.

“Wolves,” suggested Quill.

“All things end, light, hope, and life. Come to judgment. Come!”

A shiver ran though the assembled cadets as the lordan murmured the blind Arrin-ken’s terrible cry. The third of the Three People had disappeared into the wilds of Rathillien so long ago that they had come to seem like legends of another age. It was hardly fair that the Riverland itself should be haunted by the most dire of their ranks, a great cat blinded by the changer Keral with burning coals on the Master’s own hearth, now as bent on justice as a lesser creature might be on revenge. Indeed, could he still tell one from the other? Either way, who was he hunting now?

Brier clapped her hands, making them all jump.

“Enough shivering at shadows. Time for your fourth-period class.”

As the cadets dispersed, Brier touched the Highborn’s sleeve.

“They go to study the Senetha,” she said. “The Commandant has sent word that he expects you in the Bear Pit.”

One eyebrow raised while the other twitched over its swollen socket. “So that was what Fash meant,” the lordan murmured to herself. “Thank you, Brier. I’ll see you at dinner. I hope.”

And with that she was gone, leaving her coat a muddy, forgotten mound on the floor.

V

The Pit was as Jame remembered it—a windowless thirty-foot-square room deep in Old Tentir, its walls serrated with splinters, its floor gouged here, stained there. A round hole in the ceiling surrounded by a waist-high wall opened into the room above, forming a balcony. Torches flared there, casting a wavering circle of light on the floor below. No sound penetrated this far into the old fortress. One might have been stricken deaf. This was the dark, bloody heart of the Shanir, where their god’s chosen monsters battled with claw and tooth, where those such as Jame—gifted (or cursed)—learned how to fight.

The arena was empty, the balcony deserted, but a heavily padded coat and leather helmet with a metal face grid hung from the wall. Jame put them on.

As she waited, her thoughts returned to the Dark Judge. If he was nosing around, someone was guilty of something, or so he at least believed. His prey were Shanir linked to That-Which-Destroys, and she knew that he ached for the excuse to judge her.

By association, she considered the Burnt Man, now safely in the ground until Summer’s Eve. He and the blind Arrin-ken had made a lethal pair, the most dangerous aspects of Rathillien and the Kencyrath combined. She had noticed before how this world responded to such correspondences.

What would the Burning Ones do in their master’s absence? If she had guessed right at the solstice, Vant now led them in another cross between the two worlds. So, whom did the Dark Judge and the Burning Ones hunt, assuming they both followed the same trail? Vant was the crux, and Ancestors knew he had no love for her. At least like the Burnt Man, the Burning Ones tended to stay far to the north, on Merikit land. It wasn’t their footsteps that she had seen melted into the snow.

Ah, enough of that, she thought, shaking herself. Back to the matter at hand.

It was a long time since her last lesson here, before her brain-damaged Senethari had been judged too dangerous to impart such potentially lethal instruction. She had worried about him, but denied entrance to his hot, close apartment, she had been unable to visit him, much less to see to his needs.

No one else understands, she thought. He’s trapped. Buried alive. His brother should know better.

As if in answer to her thought, she heard a whisper of cloth above and looked up to see a dark silhouette behind the balcony wall. The face was invisible, but firelight turned the Commandant’s white scarf red as if dipped in blood.

Jame saluted him in silence. In silence, he inclined his head.

The opposite door opened. Through it came a shuffling, snuffling sound, and then a dark, hunched form that filled the frame from side to side.

Jame hadn’t seen Bear since the night when renegade Randir cadets had tried to assassinate their natural lord in Tentir’s stable. As Bear emerged blinking into the light, she was appalled at his filthy condition, even more so by his enormous ivory claws, far too large to retract. Those on his fingers were bad enough; those on his toes, however, had again grown to curve back on themselves, piercing the soles of his feet. He entered, shambling, on all fours. Firelight defined the fearful cleft in his skull left by an enemy’s axe, seared by the pyre that had failed to consume him. No one so grievously wounded should still be alive, but Kencyr are hard to kill. So he had been for the past thirty-some years.

Jame stared. It had been some time since she had last seen him, admittedly, but wasn’t the chasm in his skull marginally shallower than it had been? She remembered it as nearly splitting an eyebrow. Now the stub of a white scar rose to disappear into the wild tangle of his gray hair.

He sat back on his haunches and surveyed the room. Her heart ached for him; this wreckage had been one of the Kencyrath’s greatest war-leaders, victor of a hundred battles. No one, great or small, should come to such a state.

His nostrils flared and he grunted.

The next moment, he was upon her.

Jame ducked as lethal claws swept over her head, raking splinters off the wall. Their return stroke rasped against the metal mesh protecting her face. She dived sideways, but he followed, teeth bared. His bite tore away half of her sleeve. She blocked with the other one, desperately wishing for her knife-fighter’s d’hen with its reinforced fabric. Mere padding was slight protection here. Rolling out of his reach, she set herself on guard with claws out. Sweet Trinity, did she really want to use them on him, against no armor at all? On the other hand, he seemed set to disembowel her if he could.

The Commandant had discontinued their lessons because he had deemed them too dangerous. Why had he changed his mind?

Here Bear came again. As she threw herself under the arc of his blow, she felt his claws rip open the lacing of her helmet and tangle in her hair. Now he was lifting her. Her feet left the floor.

With a swirl of black, the Commandant vaulted the railing and landed behind his brother. Jame pulled off her mask, keeping her eyes on Bear.

“S-senethari . . .”

“Huh.” He lifted her further still and held her inches from his face. “You.” He touched her blackening eye, the split lip. A tremor wracked him. He dropped her and retreated, shaking his head as if it hurt. “Ca . . . ca . . . can’t!”

The Commandant put a hand on his shoulder and escorted him from the room. Jame, left alone, thoughtfully stripped off what was left of her armor.

VI

On the way back to her quarters, crossing the great hall, she encountered Timmon, his mother, and Ran Aden.

Lady Distan wore a damask travel cloak trimmed with pink fur over a rippling peach gown. Head to foot, she seemed all the hues and fragrances of a walking rose garden, yet so proud and sleek as to put that lovely flower to shame. Under her mask, no doubt she strongly resembled both her handsome son and his father, her consort and half-brother Pereden.

“So,” she said, regarding Jame down her exquisite nose, “this is your little friend.”

Jame raised an eyebrow. If the lady was taller than she, that was due to undoubtedly lovely hair piled up under her riding hood. In all her elegant assurance, though, she did make one feel small, especially with a bruised face and torn clothes.