King's Shield (19 page)

Warmth rushed through her veins, leaving the tingle of possibility as she raised her own cup. And she braced herself to meet again those amazing eyes, touched with gleams of light reflected from the candles.

“Ah, it’s good to eat home food again,” Inda said into the protracted silence that he hadn’t even noticed. He reached over to help himself to more rice-and-cabbage balls.

“What do you eat on your ships?” Tdor asked, exasperated.
No one cares about songs. Let’s do food again.

Inda grinned at her. “Don’t be imagining shipboard food is bad. Not on the
Death.
Lorm is a great cook. Trained in Sarendan. They use a lot more spices, and cream in a lot of things.”

“Like the Adranis,” Hadand said.

“Lorm—our cook—couldn’t often get cream, but the spices he had in bunches all over the galley, and even growing right on the ship, in pots, during the warmer seasons. Since nobody but me likes our food—they think it too plain—” He waggled a hand. “The spices were popular. Especially on long cruises when there isn’t much of a change.”

“What’s the best food you ever had?” Hadand asked, turning politely to Jeje.

“Colendi. The real stuff.” Jeje jerked a thumb at Tau. “He showed me where to get it, when we were grounded in Bren.”

Hadand turned Tau’s way again, and he enjoyed the tingle of anticipation that burned along his nerves at the impact of her gaze. Laughter flared behind his ribs at the unexpected: he never thought to sit at a table flirting with a queen under her king’s nose. But marriage was different for the likes of kings, not just here but in most places. Royal marriage was often a dynastic or diplomatic requirement—you needed heirs, you needed one of each of the two sexes as symbolic heads—it seldom had much to do with the heart.

“Tell me about Colendi cooking,” Hadand said.

“Typical of Colendi life. The senses must all be in harmony, including sight. You could therefore say that in Colend, food is an art . . .” He brought his discourse to a smooth close, with reference to the Colendi penchant for music and illusory art in their plays.

“They have Colendi plays in Anaeran-Adrani,” Hadand said, elbows on the table, chin on her laced fingers. “Even though I couldn’t hope to catch all the references, I came to enjoy them very much. Once I learned how to watch a play.”

Tau savored the curve of her lips, the hint of rueful humor there. Inda’s sister! How much of his attraction stemmed from his long friendship with Inda? She did not have any of the grace, style, or perfection of feature of the Comet, his lover in Bren, but he found her far more compelling just from one day’s acquaintance. Comet was too artful, too much like Tau himself. This Hadand seemed to have Inda’s total lack of guile, though she was not as open.

“. . . what I want to know is, what are magic’s limitations?” Evred asked, rapping his knuckles gently against his still-full wine cup.

Tau and Hadand forced their attention away from each another.

“Is your context that of battle?” Signi spoke for the first time. “Magic is not a weapon.” She said the words, yet knew them for a lie. Because the Dag Erkric, once the head of the Venn mages in the south, had been courting Norsunder in search of exactly such magic: that to be used as a weapon. This was in part why Signi sat here now, an anomalous prisoner.

The path of Ydrasal had led her steps here. She met the young king’s watchful gaze and said, “Magic moves, mends, heals. It serves, it does not conquer.”

Inda flicked his fingers. “Magic isn’t used for the military. I know you can’t make swords fight on their own or enemies burst into flame.” Then he turned to her, struck by a thought he’d never followed before—never had time to follow. “How about art? Do mages live in fabulous palaces and whenever they want a change, they do a spell?”

“No. It takes as much labor to make a thing by magic as it does by hand, it is just a different kind of labor.”

“Can you make art?” Hadand asked, resisting the impulse to ogle Tau. She felt his presence like the warmth of the summer sun: even when not looking up at the sky, her body always knows precisely where it is. “Artists talk so about their own limitations, about vision being greater than execution.”

Signi smiled. “There is no spell for beauty, not outside of illusion. You can create illusion, but it changes nothing material.”

“Is art illusion?” Tau asked.

Signi’s serious face turned his way. “How do you mean?”

“It can’t be,” Inda said. Now he was rocking back and forth on his mat. “I don’t remember exactly, but I think my mother once read me something about art being truth.” He laughed. “And you talked me out of it, Sponge, remember? Oh, the yapping we did while wanding out the stables. We took ourselves so seriously. And the masters must have laughed themselves hoarse.”

The red-haired king smiled, the tension momentarily gone from his face. Tau heard a short intake of breath from Tdor.

Evred’s nerves tingled. Inda’s enthusiasm was exactly the same, despite the scars, despite the years. He cleared his throat, long habit controlling his voice. “I remember now. I asked you something my father had recently had read to me. Is art truth, or beauty? I do not see a mirror, or art which reproduces the effect of a mirror, as art. Just so truth is not art.”

“Then it
is
illusion,” Tau said, to keep the conversation going. “Hah.”

“Contrary.” Evred’s smile was easy, even friendly in a detached way. It was not the sudden, unthinking beam of inward elation that he gave Inda, and Inda only.

Hadand, in her determination not to be staring at Tau at table, turned her attention to her husband to discover the merry, free smile of their days in the schoolroom together, when the Sierlaef was safely far away. Surprised, delighted, she thought:
Inda’s return has brought his boyhood back again.

Evred said, “It was Adamas Dei of the Black Sword who wrote that art is harmony of all things perceivable, our finite attempt to express the sublime—the infinite. True art strives to break the bonds of the finite, and the effect of art makes us part of that harmony, for a time.”

Signi pressed her hands together then opened them outward, a stylized gesture of grace. “Art transcends.”

Tau waved a hand to and fro. One of his conversational skills was the ability to pose as antagonist to bring the others together, if only to argue with him. “Most art demands wealth. Art separates the leaders of style from those who want to be perceived as stylish; it enhances prestige. Or the pretence of prestige.”
Is Hadand impressed with my pomposity?
“I can’t think of towering pastries that look like castles and cost a gold coin apiece as art but merely as ostentation.”

“It’s art to the pastry-maker,” Tdor observed. “There is beauty in all things to those who perceive it.”

Signi’s lips moved as she translated, then she smiled, lips parted.

Tau made a gesture of deference. “But then you are saying that art is beauty. Is beauty therefore art?”

Inda rose to his feet, surprising them all. “What I want to know is, is art necessary to magic?” Without waiting for an answer, he loped out, wincing at every step.

Chapter Seventeen

HADAND frowned.
We will not come back to war, we are not barbarians
. “Magic is necessary to life. We have been learning again what our ancestors knew, as our magics begin to fade.”

Signi said, “I know. I have seen. I will do what I can.”

Hadand’s expression eased. Her husband’s remained inscrutable.

Inda reappeared then, and set on the table eight slim golden cases. Six of them were paired, each pair covered with matching images in very fine scrollwork: leaves, ribbons, poppies. One had roses—Jeje recognized that as the mate to the one she had in her gear—and one, the mate to the box he’d given Fox, was carved with stylized flames.

“Tau there knows what they are; he got ’em for me. Only one is missing—staying aboard my flagship.” He avoided Fox’s name. “T’other missing one Jeje has. They’re made as art, but my use was intended to be military. Your Rajnir must use ’em, right?” He turned to Signi, who bowed her head in assent. “Well, my first question is, must they be in gold with all the artwork, and second, how does he manage with eighty-one pairs in order to talk to his captains?”

Signi said, “Eighty-one pairs? I do not comprehend.”

Inda turned on Tau. “You said they only came in pairs.”

“So the mage told me.”

“Ah.” Signi’s brow cleared. “It is a misapprehension. You do not have to have them in pairs. Perhaps your mage thought that was what you required?”

As Tau assented, Signi observed tension in both men. She remembered the rueful conversation by the Marlo-Vayir people about the lack of mages for spell renewal. Here was yet another fraught question: magic. Would they accept the magic renewal so badly needed if offered by a Venn?

She forced her thoughts back to the subject at hand. “You can make them talk with as many others as you wish, but the cost is greater because each must be spelled to match each of the others in turn. Every possible exchange requires another layer of spells.”

“So that’s how it works.” Inda dropped the one he’d been holding. “Too bad they’re worthless on the sea.” He turned Evred’s way. “I’d thought we could put together a semblance of the Venn communication, but you need line of sight. There are no landmarks beyond the horizon to give your position in reference to anyone else.” He turned back to Signi. “Your navigation is like a net laid over the world, right? And only your captains know the system of knots.”

“True.” She inclined her head. “As for your first question, gold is merely the conduit. Those in power have always preferred gold. My chief dag said it was the way of the powerful—whether in governing or in trade—to secure this tool to themselves, for who else can afford so much gold?”

Tau added, “So there’s truth in the assertion about ostentation. The paired ones are called lovers’ golds in Sartor. When I bought these I told the mage they were for a popular player in Bren. For her dalliances and as gifts to favored admirers. It was the only thing I could think of to deflect any interest in why I wanted ’em. In case mages duplicate messages for some political reason.”

“You cannot do that.” Signi leaned forward. “You cannot make two sheets of paper out of one, except like this.” She mimed tearing. “But you can divert a message, often without the correspondents knowing. And then restore it.”

Evred’s brow puckered in doubt, then he walked out. He was gone only a very short time, returning with a golden locket suspended from a chain. Everyone except Hadand looked at it in surprise.

“Have you ever diverted anyone’s messages without them knowing?” Inda asked, turning back to Signi.

“Not I,” Signi said, scrupulous as always. “But my . . . my mistress had begun to try, yes. To Dag Erkric. To do so is very, very dangerous,” she added.

Evred had been toying with the locket, his ambivalence obvious to Hadand and to the observant Tau. With a sudden movement he cast the locket onto the table before Signi. “Can messages sent inside of these be diverted?”

Signi touched it with a tentative finger. It was warm, as if it had been just taken off; she was startled, but hid her reaction. “This is old-fashioned,” she said. “It is a court love locket, from Sartor, very common the generation before us. They usually come in pairs.”

Evred said, “It is not a single artifact. Can its messages be diverted and read?”

“No. No one would think to divert them: the magic transfers love tokens from one locket to the other, and it would take the presence of both before they could be re-spelled to cause a third party to receive their tokens first.”

Evred retrieved his locket, ran his fingers through the chain as if to lift it, then he dropped the whole into his pocket.

Signi was astonished. That old-fashioned, quaint ornament—intended for the idle times of wealthy Sartoran city dwellers—functioned as a communications device for this king. Were they truly so devoid of magical aid here? She wondered if she should have told young Shendan, who had taken her by surprise after the king had sent her and Hadand away from the map room, what she had about basic magery and how to find books on learning. Yet knowledge was to be shared—that was what her own secret order had sworn.

As the meal ended and talk became general again, Signi came to a decision. She whispered it to Inda.

Evred’s head turned sharply at the sound of her soft voice, but he said only, “Inda. We must get you equipped, and see to the last of the preparations.”

He leaned down to speak to Hadand. She rose, and together they went out, talking rapidly in low voices.

“Do it,” Inda said to Signi, pointing with his chin in the direction Evred and Hadand had gone. “From the sound of it, we’ll be busy a watch, maybe more. And you’re right, it will be a while before he trusts you. Go ask Hadand. I think she’d welcome your help.”

Evred was going to keep Inda busy most of the night with preparations to ride. Signi would have the night to herself in this vast, martial castle. She would use it to do some good for those whose patient faces turned their king’s way—and Inda’s—with such hope.

Chapter Eighteen

MARLOVAN women had been required to defend their camps back in the plains riding days.

Their defenses had been adapted to castles ever since the Marlovans had taken Iasca Leror. And so Hadand and Evred swiftly arranged the shift of certain of his duties from him to her on the walk to their royal suites across the hall from each other. Each was matter of fact, terse in speech because each understood the other so well. There would not be another chance to speak; Evred’s mind was clearly racing ahead to the north.

He left her after this short colloquy and she summoned her captains, issuing orders for new patrol patterns to be given out. Among their new duties the women would take to horse, defending the city’s perimeter. The girls here for training would combine with the men over fifty and the boys in the academy under eighteen for sentry and gate duty.