Land of the Burning Sands (36 page)

“I thought—” Tehre began, then stopped. She said instead, warmly, “Fareine did tell me you were sensible.” Then she turned to glare at her brother. “And I thought
you
were sensible, too! I want to know what’s going on in the north. Don’t
you
want to know?” She flung up her hands at Sicheir’s blank look. “
What
did Fareine write in that letter?”

Sicheir hesitated, his gaze sliding sideways toward the foreign lord.

“Never mind,” Meierin said before the pause could grow awkward. She patted Tehre’s hand urgently. “You can discuss the letters with your honored brother
later
, honored lady.”

“There’s no need for haste,” Sicheir seconded. He rapped the table firmly to summon the inn’s staff. “We’ll have supper—Lord Bertaud, won’t you permit me the privilege?”

Tehre rested her elbow on the table, set her chin on her palm, and stopped listening to the polite argument about who was whose guest. She thought instead about time and travel and uncertainty, and who knew what about everything. Or anything.

After some time, she put her spoon down, only then realizing that supper had been served and that she had been eating it. It was a thick barley soup with beef and carrots, a very northern dish that reminded Tehre, once she noticed it, of her home. She suddenly longed for home, for her mother’s voice calling cheerfully down the polished halls, for her father’s quick interest in building and materials and making and, really, everything… She thought of the griffin they had seen, the way the late sunlight had struck across the metallic feathers of its wings and turned its lion pelt to ruddy gold. The fierce unhuman stare it had turned their way.

Then she thought of that griffin flying above her father’s lands and house. For some reason she did not understand, the image made her shudder with dread. Looking up at her brother, she said, “You need to come north with us, Sicheir.”

A startled silence fell. Tehre looked from Sicheir to Lord Bertaud. They both looked equally baffled.

“Yes, Tehre,” Sicheir said at last. “We were just agreeing that might be as well.”

Tehre flushed. “Oh, were you?” She had missed this. “But your work?”

Sicheir only shrugged. “Family comes first. I’ll send some of your drawings back to Prince Bestreieten with a suggestion that he consider something like it.”

“Oh.” Tehre thought about this. “Tell him, tell them all, that the drawings are yours. The administrators are much more likely to try the design if all their pet builders think it’s yours and not mine.”

“Tehre—”

“Later, after the bridges are built, you can tell them the design is mine. There’s nothing they can do about it then. I want to see this,” she tapped her rough sketch with the tips of two fingers, “built and raised and carrying proper loads. Don’t you?”

Sicheir gave a conceding little flip of his hand, frowning. “Maybe you’ll agree to go west with me later.”

Lord Bertaud slid the sketch across the table and studied it with interest. “Most unusual.”

“I got the idea from a Linularinan bridge,” Tehre explained. “And from thinking about ways to actually
use
really steep arches.”

“I wish to see this design put to a practical test,” the foreign lord declared, and raised his eyebrows at Sicheir.

“Huh.” Sicheir sat back in his chair, looking extremely thoughtful. “Yes. That might do.”

Baffled, Tehre looked from one of them to the other. If Fareine had been here, she would have asked her later what they meant. But Fareine was not here. She glanced at Meierin. To her surprise, the girl was nodding and looking pleased. She leaned toward Tehre and whispered, “It’s how Lord Bertaud will explain why you agreed to guide him into the north: He promised you patronage and you knew he would be a very powerful patron, at least for a little while, until everyone can see your bridges are the best. Everyone will understand this explanation. It’ll prevent all sorts of, you know. Other questions.”

“Oh.” Tehre tried to decide whether this actually made sense but gave up almost at once. Materials and mathematics were far more straightforward than deciphering what people thought. They so seldom seemed to think at all, really, which was probably part of the problem. “Well, if you think so,” she added, and, as everyone now seemed contented to go north, went back to sketching bridges. But even while structures of iron and stone flowed out of her quill, griffins continued to fly through the back of her mind.

But they did not go north in the morning. Tehre stayed up for a long time, sketching by candlelight. She found griffins creeping into her sketches, flying above and through and below the cliffs and chasms and bridges that flowed out of her quill. The fierceness of the mountains she drew and the fierceness of the griffins informed each other, so that sometimes when she meant to draw a jagged cliff edge she instead found herself tracing the savage line of a beak or the clean-edged sweep of wing or the taut curve of muscle beneath a lion’s pelt.

When she blew out the candles and made her way through the darkness to the bed she was sharing with Meierin, the glint of fire seemed to linger just out of sight, caught in a griffin’s fierce eye. When she finally slept, she dreamed of griffins soaring in high spirals over Breidechboden, fire falling from the wind from their wings… She murmured in her sleep, half waking in the dark.

“Lady… you’re dreaming,” Meierin whispered back, sleepily, reaching to pat her arm. “Go back to sleep.”

“Where are we?” Tehre asked her, her eyes still filled with dreams of fire, glad to have the practical, sensible girl to ask.

“Dachsichten. Remember? The inn in Dachsichten.”

“Oh,” Tehre said vaguely, not really remembering but willing to trust Meierin’s word for it. She closed her eyes again and dropped her head back to the pillow, and if she dreamed again after that, she did not remember.

In the morning, Tehre felt exactly as though she’d stayed up too late and had too many strange dreams. Her eyes felt gritty, and the incipient headache she’d ignored the previous night had shifted to the back of her skull and settled in to stay. She wanted a long bath, several cups of hot astringent tea, and to go back to bed in her own room. What she had was a cold basin to wash her face in, a wrinkled travel dress, and a long, rough carriage ride to occupy the whole day. She sighed. There should at least be tea.

She and Meierin washed their faces in the cold water, helped one another dress, came out into the hall, and found the doors of Sicheir’s room already standing open. Sicheir was sitting on the bed in his room, studying the sketch of the suspended bridge Tehre had drawn for him and frowning. He jumped up when Tehre peered around the edge of his door.

“You’re up! Good!” he said, impatiently, as though she had slept very late.

“It’s hardly past dawn,” Tehre protested. “If you’d wanted a very early start, you might have said so. Who knows if Lord Bertaud is even awake yet?”

Meierin slipped past Sicheir’s room to rap gently on Lord Bertaud’s door. The lord opened it after a moment. He looked, Tehre thought, exactly like she felt: tired and headachy and like his rest had been troubled by unusual dreams. His smile was really more a grimace. “Lady Tehre,” he said. His eyes went to Sicheir and he hesitated for a moment, then looked back at her. “I am concerned about the griffin we saw; I am concerned about what may be happening in the north of your country,” he said baldly. “We must talk.”

“Yes,” said Tehre, more certain than ever that he, too, had dreamed of griffins and fire. “But, please, over
tea
.”

But when they came down to the common room, they found the innkeeper, harried and sweating lightly, coming to meet them. With a worried jerk of his head, he indicated the finest of his tables, the one set back away from the heat of the kitchens and closest to the wide east window. The pale dawn light lay across that table and the tea things and sliced bread it held, and across the bony face and deep-set eyes of a man who sat there, waiting for them.

The man rose as they stared at him. He was clad in good-quality traveling clothes of leather and undyed linen, much too plain for a merchant but much too good for any simple tradesman or farmer. He was tall, lanky, his hands bare of rings, his face lined with weather and experience. He looked tired, as though he’d ridden through the night and only just arrived at the inn. Tehre had never seen him before in her life. She looked questioningly at her brother, at Lord Bertaud. Both men looked as puzzled as she felt.

Then the man reached into the collar of his plain shirt and took out a fine gold chain, on which hung, pendent, a carved bone disk that had been dyed purple.

Tehre stood frozen, and felt Meierin and her brother go as suddenly still beside her. Lord Bertaud, puzzled, glanced from each of them to the others. A wariness came into his eyes, and the politely neutral courtier’s expression came down across his face. He drew a breath, but he did not speak, waiting instead for Tehre or Sicheir to give him a lead he could follow. Tehre would have been happy if she’d had an idea about what lead to give.

The man let the token fall against his shirt in plain sight and came forward a step. “Tehre Amnachudran Tanshan?” he asked her. His eyes moved to Lord Bertaud. “Lord Bertaud, son of Boudan?”

“Yes,” Tehre admitted, her mouth dry. Lord Bertaud lifted an eyebrow and inclined his head. If he felt in the least nervous, his courtier’s mask hid it so well Tehre could not tell.

The man bowed his head a little and then asked Sicheir, “And you, honored sir?”

“I—” Sicheir cleared her throat. “Sicheir Amnachudran, my lord. This lady’s brother.”

“Of course,” the man murmured, neither surprised nor, apparently, curious about Sicheir’s presence. He turned back to Tehre. “Lady Tehre, I am Detreir Enteirich. My master, Brechen Glansent Arobern, sends me to you to proclaim his desire that you attend him at once in Breidechboden. Will you come?”

It had never crossed Tehre’s mind that the king would actually care that she had ignored his wishes and instead headed north; it was so small a defiance, and she so unimportant, it seemed incredible he had even noticed. And instead he had not only noticed but cared enough to send one of his own agents after her… She wondered whether the agent had tracked them through the back roads around the capital, or whether he’d simply come straight to Dachsichten… Her family always did stay at this inn when they traveled either north or south. It had not occurred to her to stay anywhere else. She could only say, helplessly, “Of course.”

Detreir Enteirich bowed acknowledgment. Then, straightening, he turned to Lord Bertaud. “My lord,” he said gravely, “my royal master acknowledges that he cannot require your attendance. However, he requests your presence at his court. He bids me say to you: As you were so kind as to escort Lady Tehre north, he hopes your kindness will not permit you to abandon her as she returns south.”

Lord Bertaud flushed, slowly. His jaw set, the neutral courier’s manner falling away like the mask it was. “Does he say that?” He paused, clearly on the edge of continuing:
Well, you can tell your royal master
. But he didn’t say it. He glanced at Tehre, hesitated, and said to her instead of addressing the king’s agent, “Lady Tehre, I would be honored if you would permit me to escort you wherever you wish to go.”

Tehre nodded gratefully. If the king was angry enough to send one of his agents after her, she thought she might be very happy to have the Feierabianden lord ready to speak for her before the throne.

“I’m coming, too,” Sicheir said sharply, just a little too quickly.

The agent turned his head to gaze at Sicheir. “Yes,” he said, and paused, studying the other man. Then he continued, “I believe that would be wise. I am permitted, if not required, to inform you that Casnerach Fellesteden has brought a legal action against Lady Tehre and against your family, in regard to the death of his uncle, Perech Fellesteden.”

There was a small, frozen pause. Sicheir drew a breath, looked once at Tehre, and let it out without speaking. Then he said, “We’ll want to begin legal proceedings against Casnerach Fellesteden and against the Fellesteden estate.”

“Of course,” agreed the agent. “That is why I suggested you return to the capital. I think—personally, you understand—that you would be very wise to return to Breidechboden and address your legal affairs.” He glanced at each of them in turn and added to Tehre, “I am instructed to make all reasonable haste. A brief delay for tea and breakfast seems reasonable. But, Lady Tehre, I must ask you to accommodate my necessity.”

“Yes,” she said numbly.

The agent bowed again, politely, and strolled out to the courtyard to wait for them.

Tehre blinked, swallowed, and said at last, “Meierin—tell the innkeeper we will want plenty of tea, will you?” and walked over to the table where the Arobern’s agent had been sitting.

“How can you be so calm?” Sicheir demanded, taking a long stride to get in front of her, gripping her arm to make her stop and face him. “Tehre—”

“You’re shouting,” Tehre observed. “People will look.” It wasn’t quite true, and the common room was still nearly empty, but it made her brother stop and think, and it got him to let her go. Tehre pulled out a chair and dropped into it, feeling that she might still be dreaming—she would have preferred to dream of griffins and a fiery wind rather than think about what had just happened. She thought she might never have woken into a less welcoming morning. She would have gladly pulled the inn down on itself, brick by ugly yellow brick, if it would have hurried the staff with the tea. Instead, she rested her elbows on the table and laced her fingers over her eyes. The headache reverberated at the back of her skull.