Inda (65 page)

By the end of the meal the Sierlaef had regained his equilibrium, and had even begun to hope that the chase was done, and he just had to find her alone. And so he retired in a far better mood.

He had no idea how many people had observed those hungry glances Joret’s way.

 

 

 

In the royal castle Sponge finished another session with Hadand and then raced upstairs to check over his gear for New Year’s Convocation. Some of the other Tveis—still pigtails though, like him, some had reached seventeen—were coming to demonstrate riding exercises during the Fourthday Games. He checked his own gear because he still did not have a personal Runner—nor did he want one. There were enough spies in the castle reporting to his uncle without his accepting one attached to him personally. The thought was sickening.

The sight of his academy gear cast his troubled mind ahead to spring. On the surface it seemed he’d return to another good year at the academy, an even better year, surrounded by friends, granted more freedom, and more interesting training: this year, for instance, they would be given battle problems for the first time, the solutions to be drawn out on paper. But it was that freedom, and those friends, that also troubled him. He could not endure the possibility of losing either of them.

 

 

 

At the north end of the castle, down in the queen’s barracks, Tdor did not spare New Year’s a thought.

She was entirely preoccupied with Shen Montredavan-An. On Shen’s Name Day last year—this very week—she had proved that she was not as frivolous as she led the world to believe.

Last year Tdor had gone to their bunks, having seen a Runner in Montredavan-An black and gold passing through the stable where she was working. She expected to find a happy Shen surrounded with little gifts and what was always more welcome, letters.

Instead she found Shen face up on her bunk. Not weeping, no. That would have been easier, somehow. But that rigid body and compressed breathing, the blanched face, the tearless eyes staring upward, eyelids tight with just barely controlled anguish, had sent Tdor tiptoeing right out again.

It was through Hadand that she discovered the news that Shen’s beloved brother Savarend, who had been making sporadic cruises at sea from a young age, had been aboard the
Cassad,
and her Name Day, by cruel coincidence, was the anniversary of the day she’d found out about its destruction six months after the attack. Tdor had realized, with silent compassion, that Shen, who professed not to believe in hope or justice, had silently passed the intervening years waiting for news that Savarend had survived, just as Ndara-Harandviar silently hoped that Barend might yet turn up alive.

Apparently this anniversary she had decided it had been too long to wait.

Now, a year later, Shen’s Name Day was again here. Tdor—again having been assigned early-morning stable duty—was braced to see that same unhappiness. She approached their bunk bed, her tread soft in case she must vanish again.

Instead she found Shen sitting on her bunk, smiling a very strange smile, a characteristic one, wide, with the corners quirked tight. In anyone else it would be a sarcastic smile, but in her somehow it was merry, an inward sort of laughter that reminded Tdor again how little Shen actually revealed of herself. Remarkable in one who talked so much.

She was fixing a bulky pouch to her belt, looked up, and dropped her hands to her knees. “Oh, there you are.”

Tdor hesitated, not sure what to say.

Shen gave a soft laugh. “No, our Runner isn’t here yet, and yes, we’ll make merry later. I only had one brother to lose, and I’ve finally accepted that he’s dead. So there is nothing to fear.” And before Tdor could fumble out something sympathetic, Shen tipped her head. “Your Name Day is in a month or two. Do you want a coming-of-age fete?”

Shen’s asking now meant she must have somehow known that Tdor had had to use the Waste Spell three times now for monthly courses. Tdor wondered what about her had changed, since she was still as flat in front as she’d been at ten, and the rest of her seemed more or less the same as she’d always been.

Her face burned. “I think I want to wait until I return to Tenthen.” She knew that many girls did that, celebrated their coming of age at home.

Shendan opened a hand, and the subject dropped. Obviously Tdor wasn’t in any hurry to sample the delights of the pleasure houses; Shen, like some, went every chance she could get.

Shen turned thumb toward the door. “Then let’s get to mess and eat fast. We’ll want to get right to our break-in.”

Tdor sighed, relieved to have the personal questions over with. “I was just grumping to myself about it. You’d think at least the snowstorm could have waited a day. But no, we get all that mess to slog through—leaving huge tracks—and a clear sky, to assure we’ll be spotted even by girls half asleep. We’ll be caught before midday.”

Shen’s smile deepened at the corners. “Oh, we’ll get in.”

“We will?”

Shen laughed without making a sound. “This place is rife with hidey-holes. The Venn will never be the ones to find ’em.”

Tdor asked, “Is that why you volunteered to lead? I mean, you never have before.”

Shen gave another of those smiles. “Do you think it would be universally welcome, a Montredavan-An wanting to lead?” She left without waiting for an answer.

Tdor opened her mouth, and then shut it. Once Tdor had seen a brief look exchanged between Shen and Marend Jaya-Vayir—who had been Savarend’s intended—when the fox banner was seen streaming past at the head of a riding of horsetails, and Tdor remembered that that had once been the Montredavan-An banner, carried by the heirs.

She flushed, though Shen’s words had in no way been directed at her as accusation.
I keep thinking I’m the only observant one,
Tdor thought as the two raced through the halls to the mess hall for a hasty breakfast.
Maybe I’m like the girl in the old song, counting acorns on the ground and not seeing the crows in the air flying from the coming storm.

The defending ridings were already at the archery court. The rules were that the riding assigned to break in had half a bell to get out and in place before the defenders were released to start guarding.

Shen and Tdor gathered their riding and Shen led them past the older stables, past the outer wall, over the old road that was slushy from countless feet and hooves even at dawn, to the fields just south of the half-frozen river.

“All right, girls,” she said with breezy cheer, her breath clouding as she handed out strips of cloth from her belt pouch. “This exercise is going to benefit us as well as the other girls. I am going to tie these on personally, and I will lead by voice. You, in turn, are to use all your other senses but sight, and after our win, we will compare notes on how much you observed of our route.”

“After our win.” No one had won a break-in since last year, and that had been by a superb ruse, led by Hadand herself. She’d set the older girls in an uproar, for apparently quite a number of bets had been laid. It had also been her last training exercise with the girls before she moved to training with the Queen’s Guard.

It was thus in an atmosphere of intense anticipation that the girls stood in a row, holding hands as Shendan tied on the strips of cloth, checking each one to make certain that no sliver of light penetrated. Each girl felt the visible world shut out, her head bound tightly, the sensation intensifying the helpless feeling. Hearing sharpened, smell, and touch, though in that they were limited by having to hold hands. Strange! Shen’s plan was so strange, but it did sound fun, especially if they managed to win.

Tdor stood last in line, waiting for hers, but Shen shook her head, and indicated for Tdor to pocket the cloth and take the last girl’s hand. Then they began to walk, in a slow, snaking line. Tdor, closing her eyes briefly, realized she would have thought they were going straight when they actually veered from the road over to the rocky outcrop in the river where the falls would be in spring.

Then they stood, and Shen said, “Hands down. Now, listen hard. Here’s the first exercise, just for us. It’s midnight, and foggy, and the enemy is coming, but we can’t see them. How will we sense them? Count up how many things you detect, and remember them for tomorrow.”

Then Shen pulled a broom from behind some rocks, where it had obviously been placed to await them, and handed it to Tdor. Shen motioned to the snow up to the road, and Tdor at once moved away, smoothing out their tracks.

When she caught up with the group, it was to find a hole gaping in the rocks behind where the fall would be. How had Shen found
that
? Inside was a tunnel lit by glowglobes!

“Form hands,” Shen said. “Now we’re the enemy in the fog, finding our way. Again, listen, smell.” As she spoke she took the broom, then motioned for Tdor to gather snow in a shallow bucket that was also waiting.

The girls were led into the tunnel, and from time to time Shen fanned the girls with a Colendi court fan that she pulled from her pouch—a strange, rare sight indeed—and then she dripped snow on them, just as snow might drift down from a roof in a light wind. Three or four times Shen brought from her pockets various pods and spices, and dusted the air with them.

Tdor realized at last what Shen was doing: she had no intention of the girls discovering they had been inside a tunnel. That meant the tunnel was secret—a secret of the royal castle known by a girl who had not grown up there.

Tdor set aside her conflicted feelings for later consideration and watched the girls register the smells, the snow, and several times the sound of water dripping, and once rushing by in an underground stream—all commented on by Shen in a misleading way, to make them believe they were aboveground.

No one spoke except for Shen as they made their way steadily but gradually down, twice making sharp turns, and finally up, up, up.

The tunnel appeared to be very old. Moss-covered walls, and there were a number of branches. It gave Tdor a strange feeling to know that it lay under the city, yet she had never heard of it, not even from Hadand. She wondered if Hadand knew about it, and how old it was.

Shen’s thoughts ran in a stream: the girls, Tdor’s blank surprise and then speculation, the timelessness of tunnels, and what, really, is time, anyway?
Is it truly imposed on us, or do we impose on it?

Up, up, and again a stop, near water, then forward, through a wooden door that turned out to enter one of the old storerooms behind the kitchens. Shen led the girls through, and Tdor watched triumphant smiles crease the girls’ faces as they each registered the familiar cabbage and braised chicken and bread smells of the castle kitchens. “Bindings off.”

The girls obeyed.

“We’re in the kitchens,” said Ondran Stalgoreth, looking around in wonder. “How did we
do
that?”

Shen grinned as, for a short time all the girls talked at once, each convinced she knew the route through the castle grounds that they had taken naming the two canals, and several buildings that had distinctive smells, not realizing those smells had been evoked by dust.

Finally Shen said, “We’ll talk over your observations tomorrow. Now we have to capture as many as we can before they discover we breached the defenses. I suggest we capture riding leaders, for it shows far more finesse. Tdor and I,” she added, “are going for Mudface.”

The girls all smiled. Tdor was certain no one actually liked arrogant, mean Dannor Tya-Vayir, sister of Horsebutt, who had gotten her nickname after she’d done something exceptionally vicious when small, vicious enough to cause the austere Jarlan of Yvana-Vayir, once a princess, to take her by the scruff of the neck down to the kitchen garden and scrub her face in the mud. Friends she did not have—and she made it clear how much she despised any girls below her rank—but she did have followers who obviously wanted her influence, for she came from one extremely powerful family and was marrying into another.

It was either influence or something else that had gotten her leave to stay an extra year or two here in the royal city, when by rights she should have gone home for good long ago. But she was bored at Yvana-Vayir and liked the excitement of the city, so she was here, ostensibly as an auxiliary tutor. Hadand had said to Tdor,
I suspect the Yvana-Vayirs are hoping she’ll learn a little civility while they’re rid of her
.

Shen nodded. “Now, in the interests of making ourselves look as good as possible, let’s divide up. We’ll be that much faster.” She assigned girls to the city and the outer buildings of the castle, reserving the residence portion for herself and Tdor. Everyone agreed—they all knew quite well that Mudface would consider it beneath her to patrol any area outside of the royal living area—and dispersed.

Shen said, “Let’s get rid of Mudface first.”

Tdor realized then that Shen’s brisk hurry all was to a purpose, one that lay outside of the game.

“Shen?”

The curly blond head turned, though Shen did not slow her pace as they bustled through the old storage hallways. “Maybe it’s a cheat to use a tunnel, though I don’t care. I will never have to defend this castle, so it’s no matter to me.” She laughed softly. “And yes, I knew about the tunnel. And now so do you.”

Yes, and if I ever break confidence and tell someone, you’d find out,
Tdor thought, feeling unsettled. Shen had obviously thought of everything. She’d also waited, with amazing patience, for the right time to use that tunnel.

Their capture was absurdly easy to make. The two sneaked up the servants’ passageways and surprised Mudface, who was indeed dawdling outside the queen’s suite. They bound and gagged her, and left her, furiously glaring, sitting just inside the despised servants’ entrance, where she’d be sure to be overlooked, most scrupulously and correctly—servants never interfered in the games, unless, of course, bribed—until Shen’s triumphant band sent someone for her.