Inda (23 page)

Smartlip despised Kepa for that—and despised himself for listening to it—but it was better than no company at all.

And so the sun, unnoticed, tipped past its highest arc and slowly started dropping northward each day. Now the topic of conversation was the academy banner game, which was a week-long wargame in the field, the entire academy divided into two armies, competing to capture one another’s flag, which could then be displayed outside a chosen barracks until the next spring.

After the banner game came the academy games at the end of the season, which was the chance for the academy boys and the girls in the Queen’s Guard training to compete before the city and their families. The culmination of the games was a battle in the great parade ground between the older boys and girls over a construct erected solely for that purpose. The winners set it aflame and danced and sang and celebrated around the bonfire half the night.

The older boys redoubled their efforts in drill, thinking they could bully their little brothers into doing their chores to give them more time for practice. But the scrubs were nowhere to be found during free time—they had some secret or other.

Down in the pigtails’ barracks, Whipstick Noth smiled to himself, but as usual he said nothing.

 

 

 

Far to the west, all along the coastal border existed a different sort of watchfulness. Not against the Venn, but against pirates. Everyone was afraid of pirates. Word of a bad attack somewhere in the southern seas was whispered from harbor to harbor, and the rumors Standas had reported to Jarend-Adaluin months ago of a mysterious pirate ship with sails black as a starless night had spread.

 

 

 

The night before the games were to begin, at Tarual Harbor on the west coast of Iasca Leror, Barend-Dal Montrei-Vayir stepped onto his home soil after two long years at sea. The first thing he did was sniff the brisk autumnal air. During his four years as a ship’s rat he’d discovered that ports, and the land immediately around them, looked more or less the same. It was the smell that differentiated them.

Mardgar’s southern port smelled like olives. The Sartoran port at Yldes smelled of steeped leaf, though Barend was assured the plants were many days’ ride away, on the mountainsides. He didn’t care. The offshore winds there carried the aroma of green, summery steep-leaf like nowhere else in the world.

Home smelled of sedge, grass, and spiced cabbage, a plains smell also unlike anything in the world. Barend sniffed as he walked up the quay, stumping at each step because land always threw a sailor’s balance off until his body realized it didn’t have to adjust to the heel and roll of a deck.

Then he looked around, seeing but not seeing the crowds of porters trundling goods to and from the various ships, the fishing fleet at the south end unloading the day’s catch, sailors of various lands lounging along Port Street, the row of inns and pleasure pits of various sorts and prices.

He lifted his eyes to the sunlit hills behind Port Street and scanned the roads for the disturbance in traffic he dreaded. But instead of a crimson and gold, banner-waving Honor Guard that would force its precedence over everyone, what emerged from the jumble of traffic were four riders with no banners, two of them in Runner blue, the other two in the gray-dyed woolen coats that Marlovan plainsmen had worn for uncounted generations.

His first impression—not a new one—was how short Marlovans were in comparison with most other people. It wasn’t obvious when living among them. Or when the warriors rode. Or when they looked at you.

The realization, mixed with the relief of recognition, made Barend grin. None of his father’s men came, but Uncle Sindan had!

Barend did not yell or run. His first ten years of rough treatment by his father, and in the royal schoolroom by the Sierlaef, followed by four rough years at sea, had made him learn patience. Uncle Sindan would see him in a moment. For now Barend could watch as his two worlds mixed and separated, like the intersecting ripples of two rocks thrown into a stream.

People flowed around the four riders on their exquisite horses, animals so well trained that only flicks of their ears betrayed their awareness of the banging, bellowing noise of the harbor.

On shipboard, each time he was reposted, Barend earned his rating, low as it was, until he was finally accepted on his own merit. Now he felt himself drawn back into the invisible circles of power that propagated out from his father, the Sierandael, and from the king—those rocks in the stream again.

“Barend.” Uncle Sindan greeted him, his rare smile making his long, lined face look a little younger.

“Hullo,” Barend caroled. He recognized Ranet, his mother’s favorite Runner, like Uncle Sindan wearing her blue tunic blank, without the crown over the heart. As for the two in gray, he thought he recognized his mother’s armswoman, but the man he did not know. This man held down his hand for Barend’s seabag and pulled it up behind him.

“Come,” Ranet said, reaching.

Barend took her hand and scrambled up awkwardly behind her, mostly tugged by the woman’s strong arm. He always had to relearn riding when he came home.

Home. Barend felt his gut knot. When he was in far waters, he used to like to think of the cozy warm nursery rooms, drinking hot cider or chocolate and drawing endless pictures while farther down the table Sponge and Hadand sat reading, talking over what they read, and little Kialen listened, silent as always. Just the four of them, for he’d grown up knowing there would be no wife for the son of a Shield Arm, that he was basically a spare heir, and if something happened to Sponge, he’d have to marry Kialen and take his place.

Four of them together, long pleasant afternoons, warm afternoons. Even the Sierlaef didn’t seem so bad when Barend was far away, shivering on watch during dark, bitter winter nights, because his memories would dwell on the days when they successfully hid from him, holing up somewhere—preferably with food snatched from the Sierlaef’s own rooms—in warmth and comfort, as the bullying heir stamped by, bleating Sponge’s name.

But now that he was on home ground, his desire to see his mother again, and Spongie and Hadand and even quiet little Kialen, was outstripped by dread of his father.

He wished suddenly that they were in Lindeth Harbor, at the northernmost limits of the kingdom. That would mean a long, quiet ride home. But Tarual Harbor was much farther south; home was only a week or so of hard riding to the southeast.
So think of the good things, then.

No one spoke as the horses threaded through the crowds. It did not take long. Harbor mobs were like a long rope following the shape of the harbor, unlike a walled city, where they formed a circle or rectangle, becoming more knotted toward the middle.

Quite suddenly the businesses gave way to warehouses, their weatherworn wood sidelit by the westering sun. Those gave way to houses, most of them round, and the open road pointing up over the palisades toward the plains of Khani-Vayir, one of the westernmost, and largest, of the Jarl-holdings.

It wasn’t until they had passed a long row of wagons rumbling harborward that Uncle Sindan looked over and said, “And how was your journey, young Dormouse? Two years!”

Barend wriggled on the saddle pad behind Ranet, delighted to hear his nickname again. Soon enough they’d cross some invisible line and Uncle Sindan would assume his wood face once again, addressing him as Barend-Dal. That meant the bad side of home: spies and Father’s sudden, unearned beatings.

“Oh, it was mostly all right,” Barend said.

He’d learned that nobody wanted to hear about splintered masts, or horrible storms and beating miserably westward against east-moving currents when no progress was made for one long month, or passing too near to a terrible sea battle between the powerful Chwahir and the even more powerful Venn. No one at home knew a thing about winds, or sails, or other lands, nor did they care. “Convoy duty is always the same, if there are no pirates. At the end of winter the winds were wrong in the straits, and we were months too late to make the big convoy out of the Sartor Sea, so we had to wait to come west. We were stuck at Ymar until the Venn and Chwahir finished their fighting.”

“Ymar!” Ranet whistled. “Did you see any morvende? Are they really pale as bleached cotton? And bird-clawed?”

Barend said, “White hair, yes. Whiter than winter snow. Pale skin too. You can see their veins, which is kind of disgusting, but they don’t let you see much skin, for they wear these robes of real thin material with lots of folds. But their fingers are like ours, just with long talons at the ends, kind of. They don’t wear shoes, either.”

“Did they sing?”

“Yes. It was a death wake for some ruler.” Barend looked back in memory to Ymar’s great harbor, gazing awestruck at the slow-walking figures with their drifting hair like bird down, the wide, light eyes, and he heard again the beautiful, antiphonal singing in running triplets, all plangent minor key, so beautiful it hurt his throat and made his chest ache. “The music was a little like the real old songs, the New Year songs, that some of the people in the south sing. Only better.”

Ranet whistled again, this time appreciatively, then said, “It was the Queen of Ymar who died, was it not?”

Barend smothered a yawn. “I dunno. I don’t know their lingo, and none of ’em use Dock Talk. But it touched off a war.”

Sindan and Ranet exchanged glances. It was Ranet who—first wetting her dry lips—asked, “Did anyone say why the death wake was in the harbor, and not the royal city?”

“Nobody tells us rats anything.” Barend gave a one-shoulder shrug. “And it’s not as if it was someone we knew. I confess I was more worried about the inns being closed and that we wouldn’t get a hot meal before it was back to rocks and gruff.”

“I heard somewhere that they call ship’s biscuit rocks. But gruff?” Ranet asked, smiling.

Barend’s mind suddenly shifted, making him feel he was on deck again and the ship giving a sudden lee lurch. “The Guards call it slurry. Same sort o’ thing, you know. Only potato, instead of rice. Cabbage, cheese, the same.”

Uncle Sindan said, “The Venn did not give you trouble?”

Was there something funny about Uncle Sindan’s voice? No, he was only looking at those people planting winter rye.

“Not us. Once they saw us sailing west, they cleared the straits—the sea battle part of the war was east of us. The Venn don’t do anything if you obey, and don’t carry forbidden cargos, and if you pay up,” Barend said carelessly, watching some birds high overhead. The sea birds had given way to land birds now, but they still acted the same: the flights indicated a wind change nigh, and maybe rain out of the west. Ugh. If it was out of the west this time of year, that meant cold.

“So, hear any news when you landed?” Ranet asked.

Barend shrugged. “Lots of talk, of course. Too busy complaining about trade cuts. Any late convoys going east had to turn back—” A yawn caught him by surprise, a huge, gaping yawn that made his eyes water. “Sorry.” He smiled. “My watch this week began before dawn, y’see, and we had to prep the ship against coming in. Captain said I was good overall, says that I ought to be posted as a mid to the
Talas
. Or maybe even the
Cassad,
since . . . you know.” A whirl of the hand, indicating family influence. Another yawn took him. “It’s all in the letter to m’ father, he said,” Barend added, pointing to his battered seabag behind the armsman.

“Full of praise?” Uncle Sindan asked. “May I read it?”

“I would say yes, except it’s sealed.” Barend saw Ranet and Uncle Sindan look at one another, one of those annoying, adult sort of looks that meant they could hardly wait until he was gone to talk—and he might as well forget asking, because they’d just lie like rugs.

“Did you see the
Cassad
at all, then? Or our other two ships?” Uncle Sindan asked, and Ranet looked sharply at him.

Barend shook his head. “Heard they were supposed to make landfall at Novid or Lindeth, but you know what the winds are like. Well, you don’t know, I guess, but—” Another yawn.

Uncle Sindan laughed. “Sorry, Dormouse. I suspect you need food and sleep, and no questions. We’ll see to just that.”

Barend sighed with gratitude. “Oh, good.”

Uncle Sindan clucked softly and the horses increased their gait. Barend daydreamed and dozed, noting with vague interest that they did not take the road turnoff inland but kept to the south, along the coast, though that was the longer way back home.

He didn’t care. It was fine to ride like this, no watch bells, no rope’s end if he was caught napping . . .

Not long afterward they settled into a crossways inn, just before the rain began tapping at the windows. The inn was old and plain and never used by aristocrats. Jened Sindan knew it well, netting them a small but snug pair of rooms up under the roof. While the armsman went down to the common room to eat and listen, and the armswoman to the stable to see to their animals and listen, Sindan and Ranet got a good, hot meal into Barend.