King's Shield (88 page)

Then she turned in a slow circle, her hands rising, palms up. The robe flared, revealing the plain linen gown beneath.

She danced in silence, at least most thought so, but the front spectators heard her humming in a soft voice that wasn’t particularly musical. It was her movements, so fluid, so flowing, like water down a mountain or widening in a pool, that became conduits to vision. You were not seeing a small, plain woman dancing alone on the great stone flags, but youth, and summer days, and the long bonds of friendship and faithfulness.

But she was not done. She whirled and leaped across the floor in a startling change, evoking the horse and rider on the charge: the dash and valor of battle. The dread and clash of wills as well as swords and lances, and then, and then, she stood in the center again, arms raised, muscles articulating an agony of grief so expressive that throats tightened as muscles remembered private griefs. She threw back her head, mouth open as if uttering a long, wrenching howl.

Many wept, and Tdor, wiping her eyes, thought,
Oh, what have I done?

But Signi had not finished.

She raised her arms again, and this time leaped, light as a drifting leaf, her wrists arched and airy as she scudded in a circle with the freedom of a childhood dance. Hearts lifted with remembered joy as Signi mimed the bonds of childhood. Her arms circled, her head canted, and there was a mother holding her baby; her shoulder led as she bent, and there was a young father teaching his son to walk. And then the child grew, and with a flirt of hip and a curling of fingers she danced the entrancing magic of attraction, miming the young who look on one another with the gleaming smile of spring.

Tau’s dance had been unabashedly sexy, but this dance celebrated love—all the forms of love, transcending the physical and emotional into the upward-yearning realm of the spirit.

When Signi finished she bowed her head and folded her hands into peace mode, and people laughed, talked, exclaimed. Dannor smiled at Branid, who turned anxiously Inda’s way as if to get a cue to how he should be feeling. The mulling rods were then brought out, and the sweet, heady scent of warmed spiced wine filled the air as everyone shared the wedding cups.

And at last the midnight bells rang, and Signi wasn’t there. Inda, befuddled with wine and tiredness, met Tdor’s gaze. He saw the invitation there, the faint pucker of question in her straight brow, and the profound tenderness that had overwhelmed him at the first sight of his wedding shirt seized him anew.

“Will you come to my bed?” she asked, holding out her hand.

Inda took her hand, and it was not the slim child’s hand he had remembered from childhood, capable and square. Her hand was nearly the size of his—not as broad, but her fingers were long, her palm rough as all Marlovan women’s were, her clasp steady.

Her room was unchanged from what he remembered in childhood. It confused him. He looked around at the familiar objects as if all were new, and then back at Tdor, who let go of his fingers and gripped her forearms.

He smiled and took a turn around the room. “All those years. I saw you as I left you. I even talked to you in my head. You were my guide. But you didn’t change.”

“I grew up.” Her smile was crooked. “Same as you did.”

“I know.” He made a helpless gesture.

“Inda. Once before we tried to lie together. Do you remember? I think you were nine, and I was ten, almost eleven, and thought myself so wise.”

“You were always wise,” he said, laughter smoothing his face beneath those terrible scars.

“I was always curious. And far too bossy.” Her fingers trembled, but she stilled them as she shed her robe, and then loosened her shirt laces. “I think we might try again. And if nothing happens, well, then we’ll have a pleasant nap, just like we did that time.”

Inda grinned. It was not the grin of a ten-year-old boy.

The warmth of his grin tingled through her, intensifying at the sight of those broad, powerful shoulders as he carefully lifted his wedding shirt over his head.

Sex had always been a duty for her. A sensible person saw to the needs of the body, so she had been raised. But though she had earnestly sought enlightenment in the matter of sex, she’d never felt what the songs had talked about, and she’d concluded that she wouldn’t. It was the way she was made.

Then Inda had come back, both alien and dear, grown yet still so much like the boy she’d known from babyhood. For the first time, the fires within had lit for her. But he’d had to go off to war.

He stood naked before she did. He unclasped his hair, braiding it swiftly; her heartbeat quickened as his gaze drifted down her length, a slow gaze of appreciation.

He held out his hands.

“You’re grown up.” His fingers caressed her cheek, and then stroked lightly down the contours of her body, his hands warm and lingering.

Her heartbeat thundered in her ears.

“You look so strong.” He buried his face in her neck.

“I am strong.” She gave in to impulse at last, pressing a light kiss over the scar just below the hollow of his throat. “I am very strong.” And she was. For the very first time, the strength of need and promise and desire beat power through her veins, and she laughed, and reached for him. “Come see how strong I am,” she whispered, pulling him down beside her.

 

 

 

Signi was wrong about Tau. He stood up on the tower under the sentry roof, watching the torchlight gleam through the sleeting rain, and then he tried one more time with his golden case:

He shoved it into the case without reading it over. He suspected that if he were sober, he’d throw it into the fire. But he was drunk, and so he tapped out the pattern that had become so familiar, and off his fool letter went into the void.

Then he trod downstairs to fall into bed.

But halfway down the stairs he felt, at last, the tap of an answer. His heart thumped with joy as he sat on a stair under a sconced torch and opened the case.

And there were the rounded, careful letters that Inda had taught Jeje to use so long ago, when they were in prison during Khanerenth’s civil war:

THE docks in Bren Harbor were deserted except for the roaming patrols of guards, all fully armed. On every single rooftop along the quay—warehouses, stores, taverns—guards roosted in the cold, snowy weather, bows to hand, and a cache of arrows apiece.

Behind windows, people watched. They speculated to no purpose, worried, cursed, laughed, laid bets. Others threw up their hands and went on with their lives, some with a pirate-thumping weapon ready to hand, just in case.

The sinister black pirate trysail floated in the middle of the harbor, its consorts at either side, crews (at least a hundred spyglasses made certain) ready to flash sail at word or sign from the lone red-haired figure, dressed all in black, lounging on the captain’s deck.

Through an entire day the spyglasses stayed trained on that ship. Not long after nightfall, a stir at the main dock brought word relayed up to the watch commander: “Woman wants to hire a boat to take her out to the pirate.”

“What? This I have to witness.”

 

 

 

Jeje never saw Barend. As soon as she returned from her interview, she skinned out of the fancy clothes, rolled them up into a ball (with some regret treating silk with so little respect) and shoved them into her bag. She got into her sailor gear, pulled on the shapeless wool hat hanging by the door for everyone to use when going into the small truck garden. Always scrupulous (according to her lights) Jeje left her old knit sock cap in its place—too obviously a sailor’s cap. Then she hefted her new gear bag and under cover of darkness slipped through the garden, over the back fence, through another garden, and into the street, walking anonymously past the patrolling guards.

She had spent the night at Chim’s, as the weather had turned too rough for rowing out into the harbor. Then there was the matter of the King’s Guard having the entire harbor locked down. Chim sent word to a couple of his more trusty watermen to be standing by when Jeje reached the first perimeter.

“Who are you? Where are you going?” the sentry captain asked.

“I want to hire a boat.” Jeje poked a thumb toward the hire craft floating at the dock. “Get back on board.”

“On board what?”

“My ship.”

“Which would be?”

She hesitated. By now she was surrounded. In the lantern light, naked swords gleamed. Not the time to be mouthy. “My ship’s out there on the water—”

“Look at this,” one interrupted, pointing under the terrible hat, where her ruby glittered in the lantern light. “She’s gotta be the pirate Jeje. I think you better get the Commander.”

“I’m not a pirate.” At the various shufflings, shiftings, and snortings of disbelief, Jeje sighed. “Look, no one wants any trouble. I just want to get back on deck. Princess Kliessin already interviewed me yesterday,” she added.

The mention of the princess caused more looks and shuffles, then someone sent someone else loping off into the darkness as the warriors closed in around her, standing within sword length.

They stood like that, no one talking (Jeje wondering if she’d start a war if she asked the one who’d been eating fried onions not to stand on her toes), until the approach of running feet broke the circle. A tall, strong man with grizzled hair marched up. This just had to be the watch commander.

“You belong to yon pirate?” he asked.

“Yes.” That was simplest. “I’ve been acting as envoy,” Jeje said. “Saw the princess yesterday. Now I’m supposed to report back.” She jerked her mittened thumb toward the
Death
.

Heads snapped seaward, then back. Another day she’d remember that and laugh. Now she just stood there, jaw jutted, feet planted, arms crossed, mittened hands gripping her knife hilts.

“Send her.” The commander waved, his attitude adding
good riddance
.

Chim’s watermen appeared as if by magic, and Jeje, recognizing them, said loudly, “Got a boat I can hire?”

“Right at the dock,” was the answer, hint hint, wink wink.

The commander rolled his eyes at this lumbering attempt at covert communication. If these people were sophisticated international spies, he was a Venn. “Row her out, and
you
’ll report back to me before you run off to Chim,” he added grimly, causing the would-be secret emis saries to deflate a little.

 

 

 

On board the
Death
, Fox had posted sharp eyes at the mastheads, watching the coast as steadily as it watched him. He’d expected someone to row out and demand his business; the long wait made him wonder what was going on inside the city. He was considering whom to send when, at last, a boat set out from the main dock, lanterns aswing at every heave of the oars.

“I think that’s Jeje,” Mutt yelled, his voice cracking. He was acting as lookout, and as captain of the foremast bow team. And then a triumphant aside to one of his cronies on the mizzen-mast, “Nugget’s gonna be
fried
she wasn’t here t’see her first.”

“She’s too busy showing off for Cap’n Eflis,” came the hoarse reply.

Mutt scowled into the darkness.

Below, Fox was quite able to hear the sotto voce conversation going on over his head, but the time for absolute silence had passed. And Mutt of course had known that very well.