King's Shield (23 page)

In the faint ruddy glow from the cook fires fifty paces away, Jeje glanced around furtively, then motioned for him to follow. They passed Inda’s tent and were crossing behind the king’s before Jeje spoke. “Let’s go somewhere these Marlovan nosers can’t hear us.”

They paced through the tough green grass to the other side of the enormous horse picket, swinging their arms in the old warm-up pattern.

Tau matched his rhythm to hers as they snapped into strike-block, whirl, lunge, strike-block, kick, whirl, strike-block-strike. So they had worked every day during their time in Bren harbor. They had talked freely about everything while running through these mock fights.

Jeje threw Tau. He rolled to his feet and lunged.

She whirled away, circling, then said abruptly, “Inda spent two years with that Evred. With these others like Cherry-Stripe. He lived with us for
nine
years. Or most of that. And he thinks of them as home.”

“They
were
home.” Tau feinted, blocked, sidestepped, and slammed her over his hip. “You seem to forget—”
Smack
! Block. Whirl, kick. “—we all chose the sea. He was forced aboard the
Pim Ryala
.”

“I thought he liked it with us.”

“He liked us, not the sea life. Though he got used to it. You seem to be mixing the idea of home with friendship.”

Snap, feint. Block,
wham-wham-wham.
“What do you mean?”

She dropped, snapped a hook kick round his ankle, caught him just before he could shift his weight, and flipped away as he fell trying to take her down.

He laughed as they rolled to their feet. “I think I mean that there is no single definition of home. For you and me, home is wherever we are comfortable. You on
Vixen,
me anywhere I have . . . interests. For Inda, home is here. This flat land that smells like horse and rye and wind-borne weed.”

She ducked her head in acknowledgment and began again: strike-block, feint-block-lunge. “Which is one of the reasons why I’m gonna leave.”

“What?”

Her palm smacked against the side of his nose, splashing shards of pain-lights across his vision.

“Ow!”

“Augh!” She hooted. “You should have warded that!”

Tau clapped a hand to his nose, blinking away the stinging tears. He pulled his hand free—no blood. He repeated, far less forcefully “What?”

“I’m leaving.” Her voice was a growl. “And don’t even try to argue. I was awake all last night arguing with you in my mind, and I won. I’m not going through it again.”

Tau wheezed a laugh as he carefully fingered his nose. “Why?” He winced, trying to think past the pain reverberating through his eyeballs. “Is it this ride? The Marlovans themselves?”

“I could stand the ride, the smells, the boring food, the war gabble—I could even bear being treated like I am as invisible as a ghost. Did you see it on Restday, how they acted as if Signi and I didn’t even exist? I mean, I guess I can see why they wouldn’t ask Signi to pass round the bread, her being a Venn. But what’s wrong with me?”

Tau said, “You weren’t left out of the wine, were you?”

“No.”

“They aren’t used to bread while on ride, you could see that. Bread and wine are for home, with their families.”

“I know, I know.” Jeje waved her knife back and forth. “See, none of that would matter if Inda really needed me. But he doesn’t. I’m about as useful as a rug in water.”

“It’s not—”

“I know what it’s not. Marlovan women don’t ride to war, so these fellows don’t know what to do with me. I don’t fit anywhere, not even on Restday—they pretended I was another fellow. I wouldn’t care about any of that if Inda needed me. I’ve been thinking about what you said, our first night at that inn. Inda
didn’t
get a knife in the back when these people saw him again. He didn’t even get a bad welcome. He doesn’t need me to protect him, not with that king sticking to him like a barnacle on a hull. Anyway, he’s got you. And Signi.”

Tau rubbed his hand over his head. “But what will you do? Fox and the fleet are long gone. Maybe as far’s the Land Bridge by now, if not farther.”

To Tau’s surprise she gave him an evasive glance and a tight shrug. “I have my plans. All thought out. I have a-a thing to do,” she said to the tumbled gray clouds, then faced him. “So don’t try to stop me, because you can’t. I’ve got my dunnage packed, and I’m just going to wait until I can catch Inda alone, then I’m off.”

Tau stood there with cold rain tapping his scalp and trickling down into his collar, scouring his mind for any possible secret.

Regret sharpened to ache when he remembered that Jeje had a home. A family. People she cared about, from whom she had not parted in anger, unless the war had struck them down. But Jeje had maintained stoutly that they were too smart to be caught short.

Jeje knew that Tau’s own mother had been caught short—that is, she’d been taken aboard a pirate ship, her house burned down, and he had wasted much time and money in Bren trying to find word of pirate ships that might have carried a golden-haired pleasure-house owner of astonishing beauty from Parayid Harbor in Iasca Leror.

Of course Jeje wouldn’t want to say anything about going home!

Jeje glared at him. How he loved that face, a love that he had defined as wholehearted and free of restraint or expectation. So how would he endure this great hollow behind his ribs?

“I thought you’d stay,” he said finally, and laughed somewhat shakily, a sound that came out a nasal honk through his throbbing nose.
I came here because of you,
he thought, but he knew it had been a whim, not a purpose.
I don’t have a purpose.

Her cheeks reddened. “Look, Inda gave me the gold case back, after Signi did whatever it was she did to them. You can get one from him, too. He did say you should have one. And I remember Inda’s writing lessons just fine.”

“Yes.” Relief flooded through Tau. “Good.”

He held out his arms, and Jeje flung herself into them. They hugged, hard, a bone-cracking grip of wordless fervor, then she gave a strangled laugh that was half sob, and pushed away. “Oh, Norsunder take drill. I’m off. Sun’s up anyway.”

It was true. Muted by the heavy mist came the cadenced clashes of others working somewhere on the far side of the tent city. The horses were being fed and saddled by the young Runners on duty, horses and gangling boys now clearly visible in the strengthening gray light.

They walked back in silence, heads bent, and when she slipped around the other side of Inda’s tent, he forced himself to walk on.

Jeje stopped behind Inda’s tent, eyes squeezed shut. The worst was over, she repeated inside her head. Worst was over, worst was over—now to find Inda, if she could just get him away from that—

“Shall we,” someone said in Sartoran, “go somewhere the Marlovan nosers cannot overhear?”

Jeje started violently, then whirled round. There was that red-haired king not two paces away, and much taller than he seemed when glimpsed across the camp, his attention on someone else.

She sidled furtive glances left and right. Sure enough, he was—for the first time—speaking to
her
. Anger burned away the numbness of shock. But since she was leaving, why not answer? “You’re the king,” she retorted. “Seems to me you can go right ahead and order people out of hearing any time you want to.”

He opened a hand—invitation or command, she wasn’t sure which. Maybe both. She followed him back in the direction she’d gone with Tau, his long-legged stride rapid enough to require her to hop a couple of times to keep up.

When they were well beyond the horse picket she demanded, “What do you want?”

“Right now, to understand your place in Inda’s life,” the king replied, without heat.

Jeje did not consider herself the acute observer of the silent language of the body, as Tau put it, but she could see that Evred was trying to put her at ease without being em barrassingly (or condescendingly) vocal about it. After all, he could have summoned those muscular Runner fellows to haul her into that big tent of his, with all those commanders and their swords clanking around inside.

And
she
had started wrong, with her comment just outside that same tent. She grimaced, knowing she’d never remember that even if you can’t see into these blasted tents, or see who’s just outside, you can hear everything, unlike on a ship, where with the scuttles, hatches, and windows closed, there is a semblance of privacy, if you keep your voice low.

So she said far less trenchantly than she might have, “I came along as a bodyguard.”

His brows lifted. In the gray light of dawn, the fine mist heightened his coloring. He really did remind her unsettlingly of Fox. It was not just how tall he was. Fox was taller, though more lean. Fox’s hair was a much brighter red, his eyes the color of spring grass, whereas the ones regarding her so steadily now were more grayish than green. Their faces were wholly different—it was their manner that sent echoes through memory. Even though Fox, at his most mordant, also reminded Jeje of Tau in his most withdrawn, artificial mood.

Meanwhile, Evred observed the change of emotion in Jeje’s face. He had been far too busy to spend time or thought on this woman who’d come along in Inda’s party, who did not fit in anyplace he could conceive.

Then she made that remark about Marlovan nosers right outside his tent. Not deliberately—she hadn’t used the tone for that and had spoken in the odd sort of Sartoran that Barend had called Dock Talk. But it was intriguing enough for Evred to set aside his ongoing tasks and wait for her return.

“Inda did not tell you we were friends when we were young?” he asked.

She shrugged rather sharply, her lips compressed into a line. He leaned forward, trying to divine the emotion behind that glowering brow. She did not betray the manner of a spurned lover. Then there was what Inda had said shortly after his arrival: Jeje was here to protect him from the wiles of kings.

Wiles. Inda had meant it as a joke, but there was some kind of truth behind it. Yet she just stood there, arms crossed, fists hidden down by her sides.

“Speak freely,” he said, and with a smile, “Inda does. And there is no risk of retribution.”

She snorted her breath out. “For how long?”

Evred rocked back on his heels. “What?”

Jeje clenched her fists more tightly, determined not to reach into her sleeves and grip her knife handles. “You said to speak freely. Well, then, I’m going to, but I warn you, you won’t like what you’re going to hear.”

“Which is?” He crossed his arms, but in an attitude of relaxed waiting, of listening.

She was briefly distracted, noticing he had fine hands. And they were no more revealing than his face.

Another snort, and she let it all out. “I hate kings,” she stated. “I hate the very idea that one person can wake up in a foul mood and launch an army against people he’s never seen. Or she’s never seen. Near as I can tell, there’s plenty of queens just as bad.”

“You seem to assume that kings escape the consequences of their actions. I assure you it is not true.”

“It’s not the same. I wake in a foul temper and my mates joke me out of it, or give me a trimming. Or Fox gives me extra watches of drill. Your father wakes up one day, and maybe he didn’t like his dinner the night before, but the next thing Idayago knows, they are under his yoke—and he can’t possibly know all the consequences. I don’t mean just on land, though from everything I heard in Bren Harbor, those were bad enough. But our captain, as good a man as ever lived, at one far away stroke, ended up deprived of his whole life.” Her voice trembled. “Don’t tell me you ever even heard of Captain Peadal Beagar.”

“He was the captain of Inda’s first ship,” Evred said. “A merchant trader, one of a fleet of three.”

She was momentarily checked, then shook her head. “Oh, yes. You could send spies, or whatever, to find out what happened to Inda, once you gained power. Bad example.”

Evred suppressed the heat of irritation. “Never mind examples. To your original point. If you assume that my father’s decision to take action against Idayago was a whim borne of mood, then you assume wrong. Nor did he escape the consequences of that action.”

She jerked her head, then wiped impatiently at the beads of mist along her lashes. “Never mind, never mind, I know what’s coming next, and no, I don’t know anything about your politics. Don’t care to. Here’s what I’m worried about. You could wake up one day and not like something Inda says, and next thing he knows, he’s on the death list.”

Evred’s eyes narrowed, and a betraying flush edged his cheekbones. “You really think I’d do that?”

“Of course!” she said. “Because you can! You’re one person. That is, you’ve got one man’s temper, but because you’re a king you have a kingdom’s worth of warriors to throw at someone when you’re crossed. And no one can stop you.”

Evred gripped hard on his temper. Not that he was about to sic the guard on her. The idea was absurd! He, who had spent his lifetime laboring to control—to disengage from—the danger of emotions, did not want to betray how annoyed he was with her assumptions. Power! She did not know how very powerless he’d been most of his life. But yes, he did have power now.

And so. To the real issue. “You are here,” he said, “not to protect Inda from the Venn, or even from my people, but to protect him from me.”

And she said, “Yes.”

Another wave of anger, this time a deep stirring of rage. But again he controlled it. She did not know him. She made assumptions about kings. And most of them were regrettably true.

She let out an unsteady breath, and he understood that she was as upset as he. She said, “That is, that was my purpose. I can see that everything is fine. May stay fine. I don’t know. What I do know is that Inda doesn’t need me right now. He won’t need me in this battle, either. I’m best in sea battles, carrying him about the line, and while you could probably use my bow, it seems to me you’ll have plenty of bows on hand. So I’m going to see to another matter.”