Land of the Burning Sands (24 page)

But Lord Bertaud only nodded and said, “Yes. That is true.”

Well, no wonder he was worried. And if this Feierabianden lord had been involved in all those events during the summer, no wonder the king did not want to tell him anything important. The memory of that defeat must burn like fire to a proud king such as the Arobern.

It occurred to Tehre, belatedly, that perhaps she should not say more to Lord Bertaud when her own king had already rebuffed him. But, then, she really could not tell him anything; she did not
know
anything. She explained, this time careful to speak Terheien, “I wonder also. I ask many question also. I do not know. My lord king the Arobern, he says, yes, there is a problem. But he does not tell me what.” She echoed the lord’s earlier gesture of frustration. “I do not know.”

“Ah.” Lord Bertaud looked down for a moment. Then he looked over at the map on the table. “That?”

“Oh…” Tehre did not know quite what to say.

The lord got to his feet, went to the table, bent his head over the map for a long moment. He traced the crooked line of the Teschanken River with the tip of his finger. Tapped a spot in the far north, hard against the mountains. “Here,” he said. “Melentser. Is that so?”

“Yes…”

“Yes.” The lord turned from the map, crossed his arms over his chest, and regarded Tehre for a long moment. “You go north?”

Tehre, startled, began to say “no.” But then, returning that earnest gaze, she did not deny it after all.

“You must be joking,” said Fareine, gazing at her in total exasperation. “Except you never joke.
Tehre
…”

“I think,” Tehre said slowly, in Terheien, not looking away from Lord Bertaud. “I think… maybe I go north.” And, to Fareine, “Hush, Fareine! I can certainly go visit my parents, can’t I? That’s perfectly respectable, and I want to
know
what’s happening in the north, not just sit here and worry! Don’t you? And I’m a very broadly skilled maker, you know, much more so than Gereint. Maybe the king believes he has to have a man to deal with whatever is wrong; maybe Beguchren Teshrichten, for whatever reason, believes Gereint is just the right man, but maybe they both ought to consider their options a little more widely, do you think?”

Fareine, who had opened her mouth, looked faintly nonplussed and shut it again.

“Surely you wouldn’t think I just wanted to chase north after a… a…” Tehre glanced quickly at the foreign lord and instead of
lover
finished with a far more obscure word: “Swain.” She let the tartness of her tone suggest what she thought of this suggestion.

Fareine blushed, but she said stubbornly, “Tehre, dear, traveling with a foreigner? Meaning no offense to the honored lord, but your reputation isn’t something to toss aside into the street—think of your honored father and lady mother!”

“There’s no reason for anyone to think anything of my reputation one way or the other,” Tehre said crisply. “As you know perfectly well. If anyone even notices anything I do, and why would they? But if I decide to visit my parents and then choose to travel in company with a respectable and honorable foreign lord who also happens to be going north, that’s just good sense and why ever would anybody think twice about it?”

From Fareine’s expression, she would have liked to argue with this, but she couldn’t quite manage it. But she said, “Aside from ‘everybody,’ you might give a thought to what the
Arobern
might think! You’re used to being cleverer than most people, but he’s not a fool, Tehre.”

Tehre paused. This was harder to answer. At last she merely shrugged. To the foreigner, she said again, “I think maybe I go north. My…” She could not remember the Terheien for “parents.” “My father and mother live here.” She touched the map. “I think maybe I go, ah, see my mother. One day, two, maybe. Then I go. But the…” “path,” “street,” “trail,” what was the word for “road”? “The way is, ah, it is not safe. I find other person to go with. Yes?”

Lord Bertaud nodded. The swift exchange with Fareine had been too fast for him, but he understood her slow Terheien well enough, however clumsy. It was the satisfied sort of nod that said,
I knew I was right
. He said, “I go north. You, me, is that so?”

“Yes,” Tehre said, satisfied. “You are kind to offer.”

“The Arobern—” Fareine began, herself far from satisfied.

But Lord Bertaud only shook his head and held up a hand, smiling at the old woman. He said to Tehre, but also to Fareine, “I do not ask leave to come and go.” He smiled at Tehre, not a cheerful smile, but somehow confident and grim and sad all at once. “But I do not, ah. Speak well. I do not… I am from Feierabiand, anyone can see. It would be good to go with a person from Casmantium. You go north, I go north, is better, yes?”

Tehre met the foreign lord’s eyes. She tapped the map again, north of Tashen, where her father’s house lay. “You, mmm… You might come and will be, mmm, my mother’s guest?”

Lord Bertaud looked at the map, and then carefully at Tehre. “Generous, you. Yes. I come.”

Tehre remembered very clearly the Arobern telling her,
Go home
. “I,” she said firmly, “also do not ask leave to come and go.”

W
hen Gereint left Tehre’s house, in the dark before dawn, he headed down the street with a long stride as though he knew exactly where he was going. But, though he had not admitted it to Tehre, he was actually struggling with a dilemma. Because the Emnerechke Gates were not the only gates that led out of the city. There was still the other road, the one that ran west toward Feierabiand.

Trouble in the north
; yes, that was interesting. But then, an intelligent man would not necessarily rush
toward
trouble. If the
king’s
own mage
was heading north, how crucial could Gereint’s presence be? All this
I need a maker
aside… there were no few strongly gifted, highly skilled makers in Breidechboden. Some of them must surely suit Beguchren’s need, whatever that might be. If Gereint did not appear at the Emnerechke Gates at dawn, Beguchren Teshrichten could invite or compel one of them. Or a dozen. Earth and iron, the king’s mage could probably march every maker from the city into the far north in one long
parade
if he chose. They’d probably feel it an
honor
. Gereint did not even want to know why the king’s mage had found
him
so uniquely suitable for whatever purpose he had in mind. Though probably he was going to find out.

But when he came to the cross street, he paused. He looked for a while down one cobbled avenue, where chilly wisps of morning mist drifted pearl white in the lamp light of the streets, hiding the farther reaches of the city from view. Then down the other way, equally veiled in dim light and mist. North? Or west? If he went west, how far would he get before he found Beguchren Teshrichten waiting for him? The man was, after all, a mage. Gereint could easily visualize his inscrutable smile as Gereint came around some bend in the road and found him standing there, waiting.

Though he would more likely be sitting in the courtyard of some pleasant inn, sipping ale while he waited. Or an expensive vintage of wine, more likely. And he might not be smiling, if Gereint tried to run for Feierabiand.

Gereint also thought of the
geas
rings chiming down out of the Arobern’s hand:
I shall find something else to do with these, do you understand?
The threat frightened and angered him in nearly equal measure. He might challenge the king’s mage. But he was afraid to try the king’s own temper.

And he had told Eben Amnachudran,
You will not regret this by anything I do.
He had promised him, promised Tehre.
No harm will come to you because of me
. Had he not said that to each of them? Promises like that were meant to be like stone, like earth: solid and enduring. Had he made his to be merely like the morning mist, dissolving at the first glint of sunlight? He stood for a moment longer, staring away to the west.

But then he turned, reluctantly, to the north.

The streets in this part of Breidechboden were wide, well cobbled, lit by glimmering lamps whose silvery light echoed the moon. The lamps shed their light across the facades of beautifully appointed houses and across the wrought-iron gates that guarded them. Many of the gate posts were topped with figures that rose out of the drifting mist, startling and vivid—grotesques with badger bodies and bat faces, or mastiff dogs, or slim falcons. The figures announced family and affiliation to any knowledgeable visitor. Gereint knew some of them: The bat-faced grotesques marked the house of some scion of the Pamnarech family, and the mastiff dogs indicated an affiliation with the noble Wachsen house… Gereint passed them by, feeling oddly homesick for the leaping deer that marked the Amnachudran townhouse.

No one else was out upon the streets. Gentlefolk were all abed, even their servants not yet stirring. Bakers might be already sliding loaves into their ovens and carters were certainly bringing produce to the market stalls, but there were no shops here. Yet somehow Gereint did not feel either obtrusive or out of place in this solitude. He walked quickly through the dim streets, his head up, listening to the sound of his own sandals on the cobbles. His own footsteps seemed very nearly the only sound in all the city.

The great houses of the nobility and the wealthy eased imperceptibly into the apartment blocks of the moderately well-to-do. Late carts and wagons were audible in the near distance; several wagons passed Gereint as he came to the part of the city that held shops and markets as well as apartments.

The first shutters clattered open in one of the apartments near at hand and a woman leaned out, peering at the morning with an expression of weary surprise, as though she’d never seen the gray predawn streets before in her life. Her eyebrows went up when she saw Gereint. She gave him an unenthusiastic but companionable nod, one person up too early to someone else up even earlier, but withdrew back into her apartment without waiting for him to return her nod.

The Twin Daughters glimmered near one horn of the crescent moon, almost lost in the pearl-and-lavender dawn, and then the sun rose behind Gereint and both the moon and the late stars were lost in its strengthening light. The sunlight struck off the east-facing walls of apartments and tenements and shops, turned plaster to ivory and brick to amber, gilded the damp cobbles, and outlined the heavy stone pillars of the Emnerechke Gates in fire.

Breidechboden rose up the hills behind him. High cirrus clouds stretched out in feathery peach and pink above the hills. The distant city, clean and silent in this moment between night and day, was all rose-washed ivory where the early light fell across it, or lavender and slate and pearl gray where the shadows of the hills still lingered. To his right, the open road led north through fields gone late-summer gold with ripening grain.

A fancy carriage with gold-scrolled doors and high narrow wheels, matching coppery chestnuts with braided manes standing before it, waited just inside the Emnerechke Gates, catching the eye with its stillness as well as its ornate decoration. The common carts and wagons made their way around the carriage, its fineness preventing their drivers from any display of annoyance more overt than a roll of their eyes.

Did Beguchren Teshrichten reject simplicity and plainness on principle? Though Gereint supposed it was at least possible the carriage belonged to some other lord… but he knew it belonged to the king’s mage. He walked slowly toward it.

Not at all to his surprise, the driver set the brake, twisted the reins of the horse around the post, and jumped down to open the door for him as he came up. From within the carriage, Beguchren Teshrichten, his expression blandly uncommunicative, turned to give Gereint a little nod and gestured toward the bench beside him.

Gereint stepped up into the carriage, ducking his head under the low roof, and somewhat uneasily took the indicated seat. He would have preferred to sit farther away from the mage, but the carriage was a small one. Even so, Gereint felt the presumption of sharing the lord mage’s bench. He sat as far toward the window as he could and said nothing. The driver picked up the reins and started the horses moving at an easy trot, weaving among the farmer’s wagons and easily outpacing the common outbound traffic as they left the crowds behind.

“Good morning,” Beguchren said, in exactly the polite tone he might have used to an honored guest in his own house. The little mage was as finely dressed as he had been the previous day: lace at his wrists and gold thread on his shirt, tiny pearls beading the cuffs of his high-heeled boots, and, on three fingers of his left hand, those delicate sapphire rings. He might have been heading across the city to attend a court function rather than departing Breidechboden for a long journey north.