King's Shield (2 page)

Signi shifted her gaze from the horizon to Inda’s hopeful face. The gulf between twenty and thirty-two had never seemed wider. What could she say?
You are notorious throughout the world, but you are coming home. I am renegade only to my people, and nothing to the world. There is no home for me.
No. If he did not see the difference, why cause him pain?

He said, “Don’t your people have a lot of songs about evil villains or great heroes? Mine do. In ours, you Venn are always the villains strewing blood and death everywhere—and I’m sure we Marlovans are the same in yours.”

Inda flashed a smile aft at Tau, lounging at the taffrail next to Jeje, who had insisted on handling the tiller until they reached land. “Tau,” Inda called into the wind. “This is more your skill. Make up a ballad? A heroic one.” He smacked his chest, then indicated Signi with his thumb. “About us.”

“You want a hero’s song?” Taumad’s manner was languid as he covertly studied the two forward: the small, spare Venn mage with her hands gripped together, and Inda, not much taller, broad and strong through the chest, golden hoops affixed with rubies glittering at his ears. His face had been scarred in battle, making him seem older than his twenty years. He was a sinister figure, except for his expression. His worry was as evident as her tension.

Tau flicked a glance between them again, and guessed with typical accuracy at Inda’s motive. Tau had been trained to sing as well as to observe, and making up verses was an old game for him.

“Hey,” Inda protested. “It’s supposed to be about
my
greatness.”

“But there isn’t any,” Tau retorted.

The banter sparked chuckles from a pair of brothers crewing for Jeje, and a deep, husky laugh from her.

For a moment a smile eased Dag Signi’s expression. She raised a hand, the gesture—like all her movements—stylized with trained poise. She said something in a low voice; Inda bent his head to touch hers as they talked privately.

Jeje muttered, “She’s got to be scared now that we’re close to land.”

“I would be.” Tau hitched himself up onto the rail. “A Venn, landing in a kingdom that’s been under Venn attack—or Venn-directed pirate attack—for five or six years?” He shook his head. “Does anyone besides me appreciate the irony that she, an enemy, has more recent news about what’s going on in our homeland than the three of us?”

Jeje scowled landward. “I suppose it’s stupid to say that Inda will make everything all right when he doesn’t know what kind of a welcome
he’s
gonna get after all these years.”

“His boyhood friend is now king,” Tau reminded her.

But she just flipped up the back of her hand. “Kings,” she uttered in disgust.

Tau and Jeje had been with Inda for the entirety of his exile. They’d met as deck rats on an old trader. During those nine years—as they’d followed him from the trader to the Freedom Islands to become marine defenders, been taken as pirates, and escaped just to turn around and take on the worst pirates of all—Inda had told them absolutely nothing about his past. When he announced a few days ago to his fleet that he was going to return to his homeland to warn them of imminent invasion by the Venn, everyone had assumed it an act of madness. He’d be killed! Thrown into a dungeon! Thrown into a dungeon
then
killed!

Jeje leaned into the tiller as the
Vixen
sped closer and closer to the coastline; Tau lounged forward to help the brother on day watch shift the tall, curved mainsail.

The contrast between the two secretly entertained Jeje, though she had long known better than to comment to Tau. He was astonishingly beautiful—well made, golden-eyed, with silver-touched hair the color of ripened wheat. Her young crewman, who towered over Tau, was gangly and knot-limbed, with a beaky nose exceeded only by that of his brother. Not that they were bad-looking fellows—it’s just that everybody looked a little rough and unfinished next to Tau.
Especially me,
Jeje thought with an inward laugh.

Inda stayed at the rail, sea glass at his eye, his body leaning toward the shore as if doing so would get him there faster.

They did not want to be seen by Venn spies up near the peninsula, so they had sailed round the curve of land bulking out to the west that encompassed Khani-Vayir, then dove in eastward toward one of the great rivers that flowed seaward from the eastern border of the kingdom. Inda had chosen this landing place after days of sailing past cliff-lined shores that looked pretty much the same.

Earlier, Jeje, who had spent her childhood on the shore they first passed, had said, “We ought to bring in some catch as a peace-gift, so they don’t shoot us from the shore. People here know one another. If the Venn have been trying to land spies as well as invade, not to mention burning their fishing boats whenever they catch ’em, they’re going to really hate strangers.” Inda had agreed.

Now, as they loosened sail, Inda said, “Leave the talking to me.”

Jeje was surprised. After all, they didn’t look the least like Venn. Even Signi looked anonymous. And though they were far south of Jeje’s village, the people were pretty much the same mixture of old Iascan and Marlovan that she’d known from babyhood.

But as the sun slanted behind them toward the western horizon and they drifted into a cove, suspicious villagers lined the shore. The people did not hide their ready weapons—even when they could clearly see the nets of fish that the
Vixen
trailed behind. The villagers watched the four climb down into the rowboat, attach the nets, and row for shore. By the time they jumped out and brought the boat ashore, Jeje was thoroughly intimidated and felt no desire to speak.

Inda called out formal greetings in Iascan. His accent seemed to calm the people enough for them not to kill the newcomers outright, as the villagers came down to help haul in the net of fish. But no one, they all noted, let go of their grip on their spears and knives, despite the peace-gift.

The Fisher brothers and the wakened night crew sailed the
Vixen
away, hoping they would be able to catch the rest of the fleet, now commanded by Inda’s second, known to them only as Fox.

Jeje forced herself to watch the
Vixen
slant toward the setting sun, though it felt like her heart was pulled thinner with every surging wave. Then she turned her back. It was her choice to be here.

They were brought to the central house of the small coastal village, a round structure made of heavy, thick stone. The door was on the east, a custom inherited from their ancient Venn ancestors, who’d come from the north where wintry winds and storms blustered and howled in from the west, over the sea. The floor was covered by bright, thick rugs, woven in patterns of running animals: foxes, deer, wolves, horses. Later they would discover that the rugs covered trap doors, connecting tunnels built for escape against the Venn and pirate incursions of the past five or six years.

The people dressed like those in Jeje’s village had when she was small: tunics sashed or belted at the waist, leggings or loose trousers, everything with some embroidery at the edges. The people themselves were the usual mix of Marlovan and Iascan—dark people like Jeje among blond heads, and all shades between. “It’s a good day’s catch you give us,” said a man, entering the roundhouse.

“The fish are a gift,” Inda said. “The boat is trade.”

All deferred to the man, whose attention stayed on Inda. He was older, his blond hair gone gray. “What do you want in trade?”

“The loan of mounts for our journey, as far as we need until we can arrange for our own. Then we will send them back.”

“Where do you go?”

A young man, strong of arm and gripping a knife, said, “How can you prove you are not Venn spies?”

Inda pointed eastward. “I am first going into Marlo-Vayir land, where I have allies. And then to the royal city, with news that will not wait.”

Quick looks. “Who’s your ally?” the headman asked, not hiding his suspicion.

Inda attributed that suspicion to the years of war. He had no idea his accent was an anomaly: he sounded like an aristocrat, but he looked like a brigand off the sea.

“Cherry-Stripe—uh, that is, Landred-Dal Marlo-Vayir,” Inda said. “And if you are going to try to trick me with questions about his personal life, you will find out quickly that I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Your name being?” the headwoman asked, her suspicion far less hostile since the stumble over the private name of Landred Marlo-Vayir.

But then Inda hesitated, and suspicion narrowed eyes and tightened shoulders again as he wrestled with that old memory, the orders from the King’s Runner, Captain Sindan, when he was eleven years old:
You must find another name, another life.

So Tau spoke up from where he lounged against the wall: “He is Indevan-Dal Algara-Vayir of Choraed Elgaer.”

Tau’s accent was a perfect mirror to Inda’s. Eyes turned his way, observing the long, hard body below the watchful face that brought to mind the old goldstone carvings of ancient kings. They observed the presence of three visible weapons near his hands. Those who knew about such things saw instantly that from his position in the room, he could take out the three most important adults before anyone could reach him.

Jeje bit her lip. Beside her Signi breathed softly, slowly, but the older woman kept her gaze lowered, her hands folded.

Jeje winced, remembering the danger Signi was in. No. She was a mage—what the Venn called a sea dag. Supposedly, that meant she could gabble some spell or other and transfer away in a poof of air. What Signi had to be feeling was fear of discovery, and Jeje considered what it must mean for her to be a renegade, wanted by both sides once the Marlovans found out who she was. “Wanted” not in welcome, but the opposite.

Jeje flicked a look Signi’s way, unsettled by how the woman made herself unobtrusive. Not by magic. It was the way she moved, subtleties of posture that you couldn’t really put words to, but the overall effect was unmistakable: Signi was adept at vanishing in plain sight.

A coltish young girl announced, “I know
all
the Jarl families, including in Choraed Elgaer. My tutor made us learn them. There is no Indevan-Dal in Choraed Elgaer.”

“Yes, there was,” said the headwoman, finally. “I remember the stories from some ten years ago, though most of that was deemed mere rumor. I also heard other stories, from the Queen’s Runners—so more believable—that Indevan-Dal had gone to sea under another name, a name associated with the defeat of the pirates belonging to the Brotherhood of Blood two years ago.”

Jeje hooked her thumb in Inda’s direction as she said proudly, “Elgar the Fox.”

“Ah,” said the headman, and smiled.

Later, as they sat in a circle and listened to local stories of pirate and Venn attacks and burnings, Jeje leaned over and whispered to Tau, “Why didn’t Inda come out with his own name?”

Tau whispered, “Later. When we’re alone.”

Jeje quieted. These people unnerved her, and they were coast folk: Iascans, like her own family. The inlanders might well be much stranger because they would all be Marlovans.

Chapter Two

“I GAVE orders for a castle attack.”

Tdor Marth-Davan stiffened at the sound of Branid Algara-Vayir’s voice.

This was just about the time Inda and the
Vixen
parted with the Fox Banner fleet. Dawn had brought the first clear spring day to the beleaguered principality of Choraed Elgaer. The warmer breezes coming through the castle’s open windows had carried the smells of loam and budding greenery. People rose with strengthened will, and laughed again. There was a pervasive, heart-lifting sense of renewal, and of possibility.

Tdor had gone with the castle folk to begin the spring planting in the rich fields lying east of the outer wall. She did not really need to be there, but it felt right to see them choose this year’s soil and hook up the oxen to the plow.

Her good mood vanished the moment she heard Branid’s voice. She closed her eyes and made certain her own voice was even. “A castle attack can wait. It’s the first good day. We have to get the plowing and harrowing done.”

“It’s our
tradition
to have a war game on the first good day of spring,” Branid retorted, as if Tdor hadn’t spent most of her almost twenty-two years in this castle.

He was always going to remind her that she was “just” a Marth-Davan because he wanted the authority she already had. She knew it. She’d grown up knowing it. But it was always a struggle to speak to him as if his words deserved consideration, to grant him the dignity he never granted her.

“The Iofre said we must get the plowing and harrowing finished first.”

Here comes the insult, Tdor thought.

“That old woman!” Branid scoffed. “She squats in that tower of hers with her nose in her stupid scrolls. If she knew anything about defense, which my grandmother says she never did—”

A slight noise behind Tdor reminded her of the tall, solid woman standing there. Head of the fielders, she’d worked under Fareas-Iofre since she was a girl.

The field boss glared at Branid. His lack of respect for the princess infuriated her. Tdor sensed that fury in the woman’s audible breathing, the way she shifted on the muddy ground. But she would not speak, so Tdor had to.

“Branid. All of us would love a game. We’ve been closed in the castle far too long.”

His face tightened in the familiar frown of fretful anger. How could he not be aware of the mood of the people around him? They so needed a sense of hope, of control over one small aspect of life. The old prince, Jarend-Adaluin, was weakening by degrees; the long sorrow of the princess, Fareas-Iofre, whose elder son, Tanrid, had been murdered and whose younger, Inda, had been sent from home nine years ago; the fading of the magic spells that eased daily life because the distant Mage Council saw Iasca Leror as a kingdom of warmongers; the years of pirate raids on the Iascan harbors culminating in deliberate destruction by powerful Venn warships—all had steadily ground away spirit as well as strength and resource. So when Castle Tenthen’s people woke with spring’s clear light at last, they did not need any reminders of war.