Sasharia En Garde (12 page)

“Oh. Blockade. Right. But . . . we aren’t
exactly racing.”

“That’s because the blockade will be raised guarding the
main harbors, on the other side of the kingdom. And if the king issued the
order, you can be sure the orders were sent by magic.”

I remembered those magical message boxes. Like email, only
with real paper. “Right.”

“So we’ll make speed soon as we get a favorable wind, but we
do need to be ready for anything. Though I have an idea.”

“I suppose you can’t land me on the coast somewhere?”

“Far too dangerous.”

I had a vague memory of my father being told the same thing,
back in our smuggling-boat days: lee shore winds, rocks, cliffs . . .
 
Khanerenth’s coastline outside of
the harbors was terrible on ships.

“Thank you.” I turned toward the cabin door. He did not stop
me.

Outside, I found that tall young woman with the blond hair.

“I’m Gliss,” she said, before I could speak. “Captain of the
tops, starboard. The mates invited the sail captains to mess. And you. If
you’ll come.” She sounded gruff, almost as if she didn’t want me to, but her
eyes were more brooding than angry.

“Thank you,” I said. “Lead on.”

“Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap,” Sun muttered with each painful
step.

“Shhh.” The admonitory hiss blended in with the patter of
the rain.

Lightning flared, revealing reproach in Silvag’s wet face.
Sun realized she’d been speaking instead of thinking. But oh, her feet hurt so
much, so very much—

Another flare, farther off; Silvag held a hand flat toward
the ground.
Sit
.

She sat right where she was, mud squelching under her butt.
She didn’t care. It meant her feet could rest.

The next flare brought a long, rumbling judder of thunder
across the sky, and the patter became a roaring downpour. Folgothan splashed
down next to her, his bad leg held straight out. Leaning close, she muttered,
“Sorry.”

He shook his head, drops flying off his gray hair. She’d
apologized at least fifty times by now, but the sight of his pain filled her
with fresh remorse.

Haxin, the ferrety one, had been looking around carefully
during the flashes. Now he leaned close. “He’s gone ahead. If it’s clear, we’ll
have a cart back.”

He didn’t mean clear of enemies, though that was implied.
Silvag had already explained that his wife had expected him to come home with
some money. She had said she didn’t care how. He didn’t know how serious she’d
been.

Wincing and grimacing, she peeled off her socks and set her
feet out in the warm rain. The sting slowly diminished, and she almost nodded
off into sleep when she heard Haxin splash upright, hand on his sword.

“It’s us,” came Silvag’s low voice.

Moments later hands helped Sun to rise. She picked up her
shoes and socks, walking barefoot through the mud. Little stones jabbed into
her feet, internal lightning flares of agony, but she thought of Folgothan and
kept silent. Presently they reached an old cart, pulled by a patient horse. She
sat on the lowered ramp, her feet hanging over. Folgothan sat next to her,
swinging his bad leg up. Haxin clambered up behind them, sitting by Silvag on the
buckboard.

Sun leaned her cheek against the rough wood of the cart and
this time she did fall into an uneasy slumber, waking stickily when the cart
rolled to a stop. The rain had ended.

She hobbled behind Folgothan, whose breathing was a
constant, painful hiss in and out. They entered a low cottage built in a jagged
sort of rectangle, obviously each room added at different times, sized
according to what materials they’d managed to scrounge.

They passed through two or three small, scrupulously tidy
rooms. At last she was pointed to a rough-and-ready loveseat, cushioned by
mismatched, homemade pillows. She sank down gratefully, but stood right up
again. “I’m wet,” she said in dismay.

A square-faced woman her own age advanced, thin from worry
and under-eating. Her expression was forbidding, but after Sun’s exclamation
she said politely enough, “Never mind that. Those pillows dry out nice.”

Sun sank down with a sigh. “Here.” She twisted off her opal
ring and handed it to the woman.

“For?”

“The household, with my gratitude.”

Sun watched the woman’s brow clear, and relief pooled inside
her. She’d remembered right. People in this country had different attitudes
toward work, toward charity, toward a lot of things, than Sun had grown up with
in L.A. Silvag’s wife might have resented it if Sun had expected her to use the
ring to barter for princess things, but a donation to the house was acceptable.

“I’m Plir,” the woman said with cautious approval.

“Atanial.” The old king had declared that “Sun” was not an
appropriate name for a princess. At home when she’d changed her name, it meant
paperwork, fees, and standing in long lines at City Hall. Here, a king could
change names on a whim. He’d decided that she’d be Atanial, a Sartoran name.

“My daughter is fixing you a bath, your highness. We’ll have
those clothes through the frame while you soak, and then planning. But first
here. Lark, bring it in.”

A teenage girl stood in the doorway. Lark was short and
strongly built like her mother, with her father’s jug ears. Sun noticed she
wore her braids firmly back behind them, with no attempt to hide the ears. If
anything, the braids framed them. That won Sun over at once. Lark had spirit.

She came in, carrying a mug of listerblossom tea, which Sun
took with a word of thanks.

Before long she felt human again. The ache of her feet
receded to twinges whenever she flexed her toes. Her clothes were still wet,
but the evening’s warmth mitigated the dampness.

The men joined Sun and Plir in another room with a big
table. Haxin was busy repairing what looked like a piece of harness gear.
Folgothan sat back, eyes closed, hands loosely clasped around a mug of
listerblossom tea. This tea was a pain reliever.

As Lark silently set out bowls and spoons, the others all
faced Sun. “Your highness,” Silvag began, after a look sideways at his silent
companions. “What is it you wish to do?”

“Get to Steward Eban.”

Silvag and Plir exchanged a glance—each obviously reading
the other for cues—then Plir said, “When?”

“Whenever it’s safe.” Sun hoped tiredly that would be in a
week. Except these people would be scrounging extra food for a week.

“They’re watched all the time,” Silvag muttered.

Lark eyed the grown-ups. “I’m the only one who goes through.
No one heeds me.”

Sun regarded her, hesitating.

“Question?” Plir prompted. This off-worlder princess might
have abandoned them for twenty years, or she might not have been able to get
back. She was withholding judgment.

Sun said, “If the king’s people don’t heed you, it means
they see you. Or are you able to get by them unseen?”

Lark grinned. “It was the first, early on. Nobody looked
twice at a girl coming round to sell eggs in a basket. Our one thing is our
hens, see. They’re all good layers. But we can’t live on eggs. So I sell ’em.
Or trade, more like. Anyways, now I think I know where the spies be.”

“When would you suggest we go there?”

“Tonight,” Lark said promptly. “It’s not far.”

Sun winced down at her feet.

“I have some salve, and we could wrap ’em tight,” Plir
offered.

Sun heard that as a hint that while visitors were fine for a
short time, they would age as fast as old fish. She forced herself to nod, and
to rise. “Thanks. Sooner done, sooner no one worries.”

Nobody argued with that.

o0o

Afterward, Sun—Atanial—insisted the less said about that
trip the better. Yes, her feet had been wrapped after a liberal slathering with
salve. The blisters still hurt and her bones ached.

But for all that, the walk was indeed not far. She learned
that Silvag had settled outside of the city of Vadnais because his duty rotation
back in the old days had him spending five days in the guardhouse, with two
days off. And after he lost his job, the house was the only thing they had, so
the family perforce stayed there. Steward Eban had moved to the outskirts of
the city when she was dismissed from the royal palace. She’d expected to live
relatively cheaply and in obscurity, and indeed it was that way for a time, but
over the past few years she’d become the central repository for messages,
reports and complaints about the outrages of Canardan’s adherents.

Lark led them by a circuitous route, keeping up a running
stream of assurances that this hill was easy, that stream shallow, and it
wasn’t much farther.

The two middle-aged folks reflected on what a strong,
energetic young teen regarded as easy as they shuffled onward, the rain
sometimes heavy, sometimes light, but always making a sloggy mess for their
feet.

But at last Lark said, “There it is.”

Silvag looked around, decided it was safe, and vanished into
the darkness. Lark led the way over a gentle hill between carefully tended
fruit trees and down through fragrant border shrubs to another long, low house
built much like Silvag’s.

She and Sun crossed the kitchen garden, past the grape
vines, and stepped onto a porch entrance where the boots and coats were kept
during winter.

“Oh, oh, oh! Princess Atanial.” A short woman with silver
flyaway hair bustled up. “Is it truly you, highness?”

“Kreki.” Sun—no, Atanial. She would have to get used to her
name as Math’s wife again, and all the assumptions (and the responsibility) the
name implied. “Oh, it’s good to see you.”

She threw her arms around the smaller woman and hugged her,
then they stepped back and studied one another. Kreki, blushing at being hugged
by a princess, turned her head to call, “Dinner! Anything that can be warmed,
and some berries and cream?”

“Sounds wonderful,” Atanial vowed with passionate sincerity,
her stomach growling.

In the background two servants began taking down dishes and
wrapped food, the third servant vanishing through the opposite door.

Atanial turned back to Kreki, whose round face had aged. Her
dark eyes were wide and alert, her blond hair now silver. She was stouter, but
still moved like a guided missile.

Kreki found Atanial as beautiful as ever, her hair the same
wheat color, the fine skin of her face softened by time over spectacularly
handsome bones. “All these years.” Her brow puckered.

Atanial spread her hands. “Mathias made me promise to stay.
But he never came back for us.”

Kreki Eban touched her lips and glanced toward Lark, who
stood in the corner, smiling with the peculiar mix of smugness and uncertainty
that characterizes teens who
think
they did something clever, something adult—but the adults might still turn on
them.

When Kreki nodded slightly, Atanial realized that their
coming this night had some special significance.

Kreki said, “Would you honor us by stepping into the pantry?
I’m afraid that’s where we have our meetings.”

She led Atanial through a kitchen with its central stove,
fueled by magical Fire Sticks. A door opened into an aromatic pantry. Ceramic
pots and jars held dried spices and nuts. Below those a row of barrels
contained wheat, cornmeal and other foodstuffs.

They walked single file between the goods to the back wall,
which swung silently aside and led steeply down into a cellar lit by a
glowglobe. The dirt walls were stacked with barrels of ale and carefully angled
rows of square bottles of wine.

In the middle of the cellar, two men and two women sat at a
rough table. Only one face was familiar, an older woman with gray hair, round
of body, who stared at Atanial with angry eyes.

Atanial’s mind caught up. It’s a meeting of the resistance
council.
And they think I abandoned them.

“Mathias sent me and my daughter back to my world because we
couldn’t stay ahead of the pursuit. After several very close escapes, we
discovered that Randart had far too good a hold over the army. We tried to
escape on a smuggling boat and nearly got caught. It was only Magister
Glathan’s magery that saved us. And that barely.”

The woman, another servant during the blissful palace days,
nodded once. She remembered that.

Atanial went on, “And we couldn’t go west, for there were
mage traps as well as the entire army camped all along the coast, and along the
border mountains, ostensibly to train.”

Now one of the two men nodded. They seemed to be father and
son, for they looked alike: brown hair and skin and eyes, big jaws, eyes with a
downward turn at the corners.

“So Math sent us to my world. Promised he’d come for us. He
never did. After many years, abruptly, I believe Perran and Canardan’s other
pet mage, what was his name? Zha-something.”

“Zhavic,” someone murmured.

“Thank you. They showed up and tried to trap my daughter.
She got brought over here by someone. I came after her as soon as I figured it
out.”

They all made little gestures of acceptance. Five days in
another world could have passed in twenty here as easily as five hundred years.
Or even “backward” in the sense of someone from farther back in history on the
one world being propelled into the future of the other.

“I think it was your son who brought her, Kreki.” Atanial
turned to Mistress Eban, who looked down at her tightly gripped hands.
“Canardan himself was at the castle with the World Gate. I heard him mention
your son. I also heard that my daughter was apparently in the hands of some
pirate?”

Eyes and mouths rounded in surprise. Atanial remembered her
husband saying, all those years ago, They aren’t trained warriors, or spies.
They are ordinary people, trying to invent
ways to stay safe from an enemy who doesn’t look different, talk different, who
might even be in the same family.